Rake (social class)

“ The first question of the Social Revolution which confronts the working class is this: When can the Social Revolution come? As Marxism showed the workers that the victory of Socialism is dependent on the development of the forces of production, a perverted conception became rooted in the ranks of the Marxists that the Social Revolution would only then become possible when Capitalism had the entire economic life of the nation in its grasp, when, so to say, it had divided it relentlessly into a small group of capitalists and oppressed proletariat. ”

“ Just because the Social Revolution must transform the entire economic system of Capitalism, which gave to one class unheard-of privileges, it must necessarily arouse the strongest opposition of this class, an opposition which can only be broken by the use of guns. And the stronger Capitalism is developed in a country, just so much more ruthless, just so much wilder will the defensive struggle be, just so much bloodier the proletarian revolution, and just so much more ruthless the measures by means of which the victorious working class will hold down the defeated capitalist class. ”

“ They ask the State to inspect factories, or to legalize trades unions, or to organize working-class insurance, or to fix fair wages. Their requests may be wise or foolish, but none of them, nor all of them together, would either subvert or transform the existing industrial system; and those who propound them are called socialists merely because they make it part of the State's business to deal with social questions, or perhaps more particularly because they make it the State's business to deal with social questions in the interest of the working class. ”

“ But that is precisely one of their chief advantages, and in making this objection socialists only betray how completely they ignore the operation of those portions of human nature that are the real forces and factors of social progress. It is only by linking a lower class to a higher that you can raise the level of the whole, and every pathway the working class makes into a comfortable equality with the lower bourgeoisie will constitute at once an opportunity and a spur for others to follow them, which will exercise an elevating effect upon the entire body. ”

“ It is this class regardless of color that creates and supports all civilization; this class that in all the ages of the past, throughout history, in every nation on earth has been the lower class; for the badge of Labor has always been the symbol of servitude and upon the brow of Labor there has always been the brand of social inferiority. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The workers, as long as Capitalism lasts, will not only be under the influence of the bourgeois Press, and bourgeois education and inherited superstitions, but they will also be impressed by the power of the bourgeoisie. The most oppressed or the most mentally active elements of the working class will free themselves from these influences in the process of revolution. ”

“ It is the cruel inveterate prejudice against the whole class that has led to their degradation. They have accepted the verdict passed on them by the pure races, and it has crushed them. Their tendency is to look down on manual labour, and yet in industrial callings they cannot hold their own with the inhabitants of the soil. The poor among them have sunk so low, wearing out hopeless lives in wretched crowded dens. Often only a shed with a mat as covering suffices for a home. They have neither physical nor mental energy to strike out careers for themselves. ”

“ But socialism is not a feeling for the poor, nor yet for the responsibilities of society in connection with their poverty; it is neither what is called humanitarianism, nor what is called altruism; it is not an affair of feeling at all, but of organization, and the feeling it breathes may not be altruistic. The revolutionary socialists of the Continent, for instance, are animated by as vigorous a spirit of self-interest and an even more bitter class antagonism than a trade union or a land league. ”

“ In ways still untold the labour class is gradually attaining to social equality with the idle class and to that independence hitherto the privilege of those who do nothing. The workman's power of self-defence grows—his influence extends—his rights enlarge. Injury suffered in industry is beginning to be compensated ”

“ It cannot degenerate, as the bourgeoisie had done, into a privileged and exclusive caste; because, consisting as it does of the great body of the people, its class interest and the common good are identical, or at least harmonious. "Your affair is the affair of mankind; your personal interest moves and beats with the pulse of history, with the living principle of moral development."
Such then is the idea of the working class, which is, or is destined to be, the ruling principle of society in the present era of the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It contains many ranks and inequalities and standards of social refinement and comfort, and the presence of these side by side develops a more active tendency upward, which, by supplying a stronger check than before on improvident marriages, will enable the labourers, class after class of them, to appropriate securely more and more of the common domain of advancing civilization. We have had abundant experience of a rise in the standard of life, and a rise in the rate of wages, both remaining as permanent possessions of sections of the labouring class. ”

“ 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; ”

“ 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. ”

“ The working class will only acquire this will after long experience, many struggles, defeats and victories. As a subject class, descended from the subject sections of the pre-capitalistic historical period, as a class in whose veins flows the blood of those accustomed for centuries to obey the will of others, the working class today has not that iron will to dominate which has been so highly developed by, for example, the Prussian Junkers and the English bourgeoisie. ”

“ It taken care of, they might have become useful members of human society; as it is, many of them turn criminals. Do you think, the poor workman does not feel that, would not like to help and prevent it, if it were in his power? Verily it is high time for remedy! But a majority of the working-class succeed in seeing their efforts crowned, they lead a happy family-life. If they do not succeed—whose fault is it? Is it the fault of the Socialists?
If a rich man keeps a mistress, if his gold enriches the keepers of bad houses, is it the fault of the Socialists that his family-life is destroyed? ”

“ 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. ”

“ An ill service was done to the working class by utterances on marriage and the family, which gave the ruling classes who keep the workers out of their rights the plea that they were maintaining the fundamental principles of social order. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Manifesto begins by describing the revolutionary situation into which the course of industrial development has brought modern society. Classes were dying out; the yeomanry, the nobility, the small tradesmen, would soon be no more; and society was drawn up in two widely separated hostile camps, the large capitalist class or bourgeoisie, who had all the property and power in the country, and the labouring class, the proletariat, who had nothing of either. The bourgeoisie had played a most revolutionary part in history. ”

“ And it is true that in every community where human beings are herded in foul tenements, herded in crowded, unsanitary factories, or live their days underground in mines, we shall continue to breed a class mentally, morally, and physically defective, some of whom will inevitably be subject to criminal outbreaks. ”

“ With these remarks, we may dismiss the specific charge of injustice brought by socialists against the present order of things, and the specific claim of right for the labouring class which they prefer. Let us now submit their proposals to a more practical and decisive test—will they or will they not realize the legitimate aspirations, the ideal of the working class? ”

“ Capitalism leads to the bloodiest anarchy, to the destruction of the few cultural achievements which have been created, to the deepest misery of the masses and their literal enslavement, so that this lesson might be converted out of a theoretical thesis into a crying and burning certainty, at least in the minds of the front ranks of the working class. ”

“ In addition to its manifest effect in encouraging a tyrannical and ferocious spirit in the masters, it cast a stigma upon all labour, and at once degraded and impoverished the free poor. In modern societies the formation of an influential and numerous middle class, trained in the sober and regular habits of industrial life, is the chief guarantee of national morality, and where such a class exists, the disorders of the upper ranks, though undoubtedly injurious, are never fatal to society. ”

“ The historical moment when Bolshevism triumphed for itself in Russia and social democracy fought victoriously for the old world marks the inauguration of the state of affairs that is at the heart of the modern spectacle’s domination: the representation of the working class has become an enemy of the working class. ”

“ All the means of violence in the hands of the bourgeoisie were unavailing in face of the fact that proletarians and peasants were in a majority in the army, and that the working class were in control of industrial and governmental centers. In November 1917, the power of the bourgeoisie was at an end. ”

“ Every requisite of revolution is there, and yet the people will not rise. The yeomanry are gone. The land has come into the hands of a few. Industry is carried on by great centralized capital. The large system of production has almost finished its work. The mass of the people is a proletariat; they are thronged in large towns; every tenth person is a pauper; and the great mansions of the rich cast an evil shadow into the crowded dens of the wretched. "The English," says Eugène Dupont, a leading member of the old International, "possess all the materials necessary for the social revolution ”

“ The slaves constitute essentially the lowest class, and society is immeasurably benefitted by having this class, which constitutes the offensive fungus—the great cancer of civilized life—a vast burthen and expense to every community, under surveillance and control; and not only so, but under direction as an efficient agent to promote the general welfare and increase the wealth of the community. ”

“ We now see that the condition of the lowest grade of independent labourer—whether he is chronically "under-employed" like the whole class of dock and other casual labourers, or "sweated" like the home-working chair-maker or slipper-maker—is so deplorably below the level of adequate subsistence that to make the lot of the pauper "less eligible" means to reduce him below any acceptable standard of civilised existence. ”

“ Now, it is the numerical prevalence of individuals, in any mixed community, that gives that community its distinctive type, whether of class or of race. If we see gathered together in a socialistic assemblage a proletarian crowd, suffering from the effects of pauperism, the majority of the individuals have stooping shoulders, ugly faces and pallid complexions; all this gives to the crowd a general aspect, one might say, of physical inferiority. And we say that this is the type of the labouring class of our epoch in which labour is proletarian—a type of caste. ”

“ They were so much the richer themselves, but their grooms were ruined and thrown upon the world without horse or home. Now class privations like these are incidental to industrial transformations, and in an age of unusual industrial transitions like ours, they may be expected to be unusually numerous. But the effect of material progress on the whole is to prevent such privations rather than cause them. ”