Junker (social class)

“ If there were such a proletariat it would be hopelessly in the hands of a body of plutocratic capitalists, and a society so organized would, no doubt, be far worse than a society composed only of nobles and serfs, which is the worst society the world has seen in modern times.
At every turn, therefore, it appears that the number of men and the quality of men limit each other, and that the question whether we shall have more men or better men is of most importance to the class which has neither land nor capital. ”

“ We shall find that, in our efforts to eliminate the old vices of class government, we are impeded and defeated by new products of the worst class theory. We shall find that all the schemes for producing equality and obliterating the organization of society produce a new differentiation based on the worst possible distinction—the right to claim and the duty to give one man's effort for another man's satisfaction. We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty.
It is very popular to pose as a "friend of humanity," or a "friend of the working classes." ”

“ The man who by his own effort raises himself above poverty appears, in these discussions, to be of no account. The man who has done nothing to raise himself above poverty finds that the social doctors flock about him, bringing the capital which they have collected from the other class, and promising him the aid of the State to give him what the other had to work for. In all these schemes and projects the organized intervention of society through the State is either planned or hoped for, and the State is thus made to become the protector and guardian of certain classes. ”

“ The economic conditions all favor that class. There is a great continent to be subdued, and there is a fertile soil available to labor, with scarcely any need of capital. Hence the people who have the strong arms have what is most needed, and, if it were not for social consideration, higher education would not pay. [111] Such being the case, the working-man needs no improvement in his condition except to be freed from the parasites who are living on him. All schemes for patronizing "the working classes" savor of condescension. They are impertinent and out of place in this free democracy. ”

“ It would involve a denunciation of the enslavement of man's spirit to the production of material wealth. Each man would be a member of a community of personalities, each of unique value, treating each other, not as means to their own particular selfish ends, but as ends in themselves. At the same time it would involve the putting of the personality of the citizen in the foremost place in our social and political life, instead of a development of a purely class consciousness with its mischievous distinctions. ”

“ Thus, the division of common property is succeeded by an inequality of personal property—an inequality which, from the very beginning, shows an unconquerable tendency to increase. This tendency is fostered by the fact that political organization makes it possible for individuals to exercise a certain control over common affairs. Property considerations become more and more decisive as regards class distinctions. In addition to descent from privileged ancestors, it is property that gives the individual his social position. ”

“ Nevertheless, even then it was producing crying social abuses—the herding together of a homeless population in the worst quarters of the large towns; the loosening of all traditional moral bonds, of patriarchal subordination, of family relations; overwork, especially of women and children, to a frightful extent; complete demoralization of the working-class, suddenly flung into altogether new conditions, from the country into the town, from agriculture into modern industry, from stable conditions of existence into insecure ones that changed from day to day. ”

“ These class-conscious workers—these Socialists—realize the fact that the labor question, in its full and vital sense, is also a political question, and that the working class must be taught to extend the principle of unionism to the political field, and there organize on the basis of their economic class interests; and, although they are engaged in a herculean task, the forces of industrial evolution and social progress are back of them, and all the powers of reaction cannot prevail against them. ”

“ During the century which has elapsed the triumphant bourgeois have steadily persisted in throwing around themselves a practically impenetrable wall of legal and social privilege in their turn. And now there is a spontaneous upheaval of the excluded, unprivileged, inferior class. ”

“ But the same evolution which, according to the conviction of the reformists, was to do away with the necessity of a revolution, soon showed to the workers the utter absurdity of the reformistic illusions. The Junkers defended themselves against the growing competition of the young agrarian nations by raising the price of food by, means of agrarian tariffs. The development of Capitalism led to the formation of trusts and cartels, big capitalist organizations, which pushed aside and conquered not only the crafts but also the middle class. ”

“ They have, as is alleged, one foot in the camp of the proletariat still. They live and move and have their being among working people, and constitute by their presence and social connections a stimulating and elevating agency. It is through connections like these that the ideas of comfort and culture that prevail among an upper class permeate through to a lower, and thus elevate the general standard of living upon which the level of wages so much depends. ”

“ There are bad, harsh, cross employers; there are slovenly, negligent workmen; there are just about as many proportionately of one of these classes as of the other. The employers of the United States—as a class, proper exceptions being understood—have no advantage over their workmen. They could not oppress them if they wanted to do so. The advantage, taking good and bad times together, is with the workmen. The employers wish the welfare of the workmen in all respects, and would give redress for any grievance which was brought to their attention. ”

“ No instance has yet been seen of a society composed of a class of great capitalists and a class of laborers who had fallen into a caste of permanent drudges. Probably no such thing is possible so long as landlords especially remain as a third class, and so long as society continues to develop strong classes of merchants, financiers, professional men, and other classes. ”

“ The working class is forced to conduct almost in public a normal and varying festive habit, which the upper class can afford to conduct in private; and a certain section of the middle class, that which happens to concern itself most with local politics and social reforms, really has or affects a standard quite abnormal and even alien. ”

“ On this point they are all, in their essential nature of the same social class and, in spite of certain sentimental sympathies, the adversaries of the working class and of those who, although born on the other shore, have embraced the political programme of that class, a programme necessarily corresponding to the primordial economic necessity—that is to say, the socialization of the land and the means of production with all the innumerable and radical moral, juridical and political transformations, which this socialization will inevitably bring to pass in the social world. ”

“ It is the tendency of all social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force the society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme.
It is in the nature of the case impracticable to adjust social burdens proportionately to the power of individuals to support them. ”

“ As fast as they become class-conscious they will recognize and praise as moral all conduct that tends to hasten the social revolution—the triumph of their class, and they will condemn as unhesitatingly as immoral all conduct that tends to prolong the dominance of the capitalist class. Already we can note manifestations of this new proletarian morality in that sense of class solidarity exhibited by the workers in the many acts of kindness and assistance of the employed to the unemployed, and more especially in the detestation in which the scab is held. ”

“ As a well-known economist has recently pointed out, the large defection in the ranks of domestics is there regarded as a sign of revolt against an "unconscious slavery," while English and American writers appeal to the statistics which point to the absorption of an enormous number of the class from which servants were formerly recruited into factory employments, and urge, as the natural solution, that more of the products used in households be manufactured in factories, and that personal service, at least for healthy adults, be eliminated altogether. ”

“ The separation between the rest of the community and the unskilled laborer is therefore practically complete. His class stands as a permanently outlawed class. He has no part or lot in the existing social system. The occasions when he is interested in the present system are when he comes into collision with it and the officers of the law inflict every indignity upon him and render his necessary migration through the land as difficult and as dangerous as possible. ”

“ Sermons, essays, and orations assume a conventional standpoint with regard to the poor, the weak, etc.; and it is allowed to pass as an unquestioned doctrine in regard to social classes that "the rich" ought to "care for the poor;" that Churches especially ought to collect capital from the rich and spend it for the poor; that parishes ought to be clusters of institutions by means of which one social class should perform its duties to another; and that clergymen, economists, and social philosophers have a technical and professional duty to devise schemes for "helping the poor." ”

“ The most that a working-class party could do, even if its politicians remained honest, would be to form a strong faction in the legislatures which might, by combining its vote with one side or another, win certain political or economic palliatives.
But what the working-class can do, when once they grow into a solidified organization, is to show the possessing class, through a sudden cessation of all work, that the whole social structure rests on them; that the possessions of the others are absolutely worthless to them without the workers' activity; ”

“ Such a form coexists neither with an actual ungraded equality of individuals throughout the group, nor if the group consists of an upper and a lower class separated from each other by no intervening medium. The middle class, in fact, adds an entirely new sociological element. ”

“ If society were only relieved of the waste and expense of keeping a lazy class, and the equally great expense of the paraphernalia of protection this lazy class requires, the social tables would contain an abundance for all, including even the occasional lazy individual. ”

“ Of specific remedies, the first class to be suggested concerns the social degradation as yet entailed by the occupation. For the most part the oppressive conditions are the lack of all social and educational advantages, the use of an obnoxious epithet applied to the individuals of the class, the universal use of the familiar Christian name in address, the requirement of livery, enforced servility of manner, and the offering of fees to several large subdivisions of the class. Every one of these must seem a reasonable objection to one who can put himself in the place of another ”

“ I found that the Marxian influence tended to lead workers to believe that, irrespective of the health of the poor mothers, the earning capacity of the wage-earning fathers, or the upbringing of the children, increase of the proletarian family was a benefit, not a detriment to the revolutionary movement. The greater the number of hungry mouths, the emptier the stomachs, the more quickly would the "Class War" be precipitated. The greater the increase in population among the proletariat, the greater the incentive to revolution. ”

“ M. Duquesnoy, a member of the Conseil, furnishes a valuable report upon "secours à domicile." The needs of the indigent class, he says, are, "first and foremost, education, primary, moral, religious, and technical; secondly, work; thirdly, relief ... but mendicity must be repressed, and even if that is not the duty of 'bienfaisance,' it has a corresponding duty not to encourage the evil by refusing relief; but to multiply relief without discrimination is to increase the class of the poor. ”

“ And so all over the world two classes were forming, with an unbridged chasm between them—the capitalist class, with its enormous fortunes, and the proletariat, bound into slavery by unseen chains. The latter were a thousand to one in numbers, but they were ignorant and helpless, and they would remain at the mercy of their exploiters until they were organized—until they had become "class-conscious." ”

“ That was the competitive wage system; and if Jurgis wanted to understand what Socialism was, it was there he had best begin. The workers were dependent upon a job to exist from day to day, and so they bid against each other, and no man could get more than the lowest man would consent to work for. And thus the mass of the people were always in a life-and-death struggle with poverty. ”