Working-class movement

“ That the conclusions arrived at in this work are daily more and more becoming the fundamental principles of the great working class movement, not only in Germany and Switzerland, but in France, in Holland and Belgium, in America, and even in Italy and Spain; that everywhere the working class more and more recognises, in these conclusions, the most adequate expression of its condition and of its aspirations, nobody acquainted with that movement will deny. ”

“ Finally, that all so-called "immediate demands" of the workers, such as the eight hour work day, employers' liability, limitation of child labor, protection of machinery, etc., can be obtained and made effective only through the action of a united and powerful movement of the working class on the industrial field. ”

“ But if they can be socialized into a new ideology, the makings of a radical industrial working class is both theoretically and practically possible. —If nothing else is gained, many workers learn to respect the students. Out of wildcats emerges a cadre of revolutionary workers who see their role as organizers laying the ground work for a mass-based working class movement. —Bringing young working people into the new left would change the 'middle class' character of the movement. ”

“ So much for the preliminary conditions of labor reform. The workingmen have been advised, perhaps honestly enough, to keep out of politics and busy themselves solely with their economic interests, as if political and economic interests could be separated as kindlings are split, with a hatchet. Whoever has followed our line of reasoning thus far cannot, I think, be in doubt that precisely the working class must first of all and most of all resolve to transform political conditions in the direction of freedom. ”

“ To urge the comparative prosperity of the American working class as an explanation of the backwardness of our labor movement is just as futile as to blame it upon the foreigners. The fact is that exceptional prosperity, instead of being a deterrent, is a direct stimulus to labor organization and radicalism. ”

“ It is enough to cite Homestead, Pullman, Ludlow, McKees Rocks, Lawrence, Mesaba, the steel strike, Herrin, West Virginia, and the whole history of the coal miners, to understand that the American working class contains within itself the' forces of proletarian revolution corresponding to the productive forces of American Capitalism, the greatest in the world. ”

“ RUFUS CHOATE AND DANIEL WEBSTER labor, say the critics. But every man who reads of the labor question knows that it means the movement of the men that earn their living with their hands; THAT ARE EMPLOYED, AND PAID WAGES: are gathered under roofs of factories, sent out on farms, sent out on ships, gathered on the walls. In popular acceptation, the working class means the men that work with their hands, for wages, so many hours a day, employed by great capitalists; that work for everybody else. Why do we move for this class? "Why," asks a critic, "don't you move FOR ALL WORKINGMEN?" ”

“ Let the employers who think the organised working class can be driven still further back take warning from this, This movement of ours has learned many lessons during these years of reaction engineered by the employers, and one of the lessons is that a militant and progressive policy, consistently and steadily pursued, is the only policy that will unify, consolidate, and inspire our rank and file. ”

“ The proletariat makes no appeal to any but the wage working class, though it realizes that the growth of the Social Consciousness among all classes must bring thousands to its standard, whose immediate personal interests would be conserved by an opposite course. ”

“ The movement is disunited and fragmentary, and confined almost entirely to the large towns, where many circumstances conspire to favour its growth. The French working class are born to revolutionary traditions. ”

“ Then the workers will be the sovereign-citizens, the rulers of this earth. They will build houses and live therein; they will plant vineyards and eat the fruit thereof. The labor question will have been settled, and the working class, emancipated from the fetters of wage-slavery, will begin the real work of civilizing and humanizing the human race. ”

“ And this brings an important fact to our attention, and that is that the struggle in which we are engaged today is a class struggle; and labor unionism to be of any real value to the working class, must be organized, not along craft lines, but along class lines.
The Industrial Workers is a working class organization, so all-inclusive, so comprehensive, that it will embrace every man and woman who does useful work for a livelihood. ”

“ When workingmen join the one economic working class organization that unites them upon the basis of the class struggle they can do something to better their working condition; not only will they have the economic power to do this, but they will represent a new and a vital force to which they are now total strangers—the revolutionary force that industrial unionism generates in the body. ”

“ It has been shown, theoretically and actually, that there is a class struggle in the United States. The quarrel over the division of the joint product is irreconcilable. The working class is no longer losing its strongest and most capable members. These men, denied room for their ambition in the capitalist ranks, remain to be the leaders of the workers, to spur them to discontent, to make them conscious of their class, to lead them to revolt. ”

“ The modern working class, although it has not learned all the needed lessons of the situation in which it finds itself, is nevertheless rapidly becoming free from capitalist illusions and is reorganizing itself accordingly, industrially and politically. ”

“ As we have explained in speeches, tracts, and articles, we include in the working class all those who live exclusively or principally by means of their own labor, and who do not grow rich from the work of others.
"Thus, besides the wage earners, we should include in the working class the small farmers and small shop keepers, who tend more and more to drop to the level of the proletariat—in other words, all those who suffer from our present system of production on a large scale." ”

“ The antagonism between the two divisions of the people takes the form of a class struggle, in which the capitalist class seeks to subjugate the working class, and thereby to get more and more of the product of labor, while at the same time the workers endeavor to keep more and more for themselves in the form of higher wages, a shorter work day and better conditions generally. ”

“ The task of the working class now lies in enlarging and strengthening by all possible means the workers' management of industry, educating the vast masses of the people in this direction. The proletariat taking production into his own hands, not as the property of separate individuals or groups, but as the property of the whole workings class, should concern itself with supporting the central and district workers' organisations by thousands of branches, by and at the various works and factories. ”

“ The working class must get rid of the whole brood of masters and exploiters, and put themselves in possession and control of the means of production, that they may have steady employment without consulting a capitalist employer, large or small, and that they may get the wealth their labor produces, all of it, and enjoy with their families the fruits of their industry in comfortable and happy homes, abundant and wholesome food, proper clothing and all other things necessary to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” ”

“ The economic dictatorship of the working class has created new conditions which stirred up the activity of the large masses of the workers. Through their vocational associations the workers have been called upon to organize the country’s economic life and to participate in the management of production. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The dice are loaded against the working class, and pending the time when the whole capitalist regime will be overthrown, the workers should realize that they must give their support to co-operative movements. ”

“ But these unknown heroes of the great struggle of the classes did precede him with their loyal hearts and strong hands; otherwise workers now organized would have to start the long hard battle at the beginning and count their gains a step at a time, just as did the early champions of industrial organization, or as the loggers of the West Coast are now doing.
The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized industry. ”

“ In varying degrees, now in outright abuse and again in sneering and ridicule, the working class was held up as an ignorant, discontented, violent aggregation, led by dangerous agitators, and arrogantly seeking to upset all business by seeking to dictate to employers what wages and hours of labor should be.
And, after all, little it mattered to the capitalists what the workers thought or said, so long as the machinery of government was not in their hands. ”

“ But the field from which I expect the most direct and extensive harvest to the working class is the development of their own personal [Pg 313] efficiency. At present neither employers nor labourers seem fully alive to the resources which this field is capable of yielding, if it were wisely and fairly cultivated. Both classes are often so bent on immediate advantage that they lose sight of their real and enduring interest. ”