War of the Classes(阶级斗争)

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War of the Classes

Jack London

War of the Classes

PREFACE

When I was a youngster I was looked upon as a weird sort of creature,

because, forsooth, I was a socialist. Reporters from local papers

interviewed me, and the interviews, when published, were pathological

studies of a strange and abnormal specimen of man. At that time (nine or

ten years ago), because I made a stand in my native town for municipal

ownership of public utilities, I was branded a "red-shirt," a "dynamiter,"

and an "anarchist"; and really decent fellows, who liked me very well,

drew the line at my appearing in public with their sisters.

But the times changed. There came a day when I heard, in my native

town, a Republican mayor publicly proclaim that "municipal ownership

was a fixed American policy." And in that day I found myself picking up

in the world. No longer did the pathologist study me, while the really

decent fellows did not mind in the least the propinquity of myself and their

sisters in the public eye. My political and sociological ideas were ascribed

to the vagaries of youth, and good-natured elderly men patronized me and

told me that I would grow up some day and become an unusually

intelligent member of the community. Also they told me that my views

were biassed by my empty pockets, and that some day, when I had

gathered to me a few dollars, my views would be wholly different,--in

short, that my views would be their views.

And then came the day when my socialism grew respectable,--still a

vagary of youth, it was held, but romantically respectable. Romance, to

the bourgeois mind, was respectable because it was not dangerous. As a

"red-shirt," with bombs in all his pockets, I was dangerous. As a youth

with nothing more menacing than a few philosophical ideas, Germanic in

their origin, I was an interesting and pleasing personality.

Through all this experience I noted one thing. It was not I that changed,

but the community. In fact, my socialistic views grew solider and more

pronounced. I repeat, it was the community that changed, and to my

chagrin I discovered that the community changed to such purpose that it

was not above stealing my thunder. The community branded me a "red-

War of the Classes

shirt" because I stood for municipal ownership; a little later it applauded

its mayor when he proclaimed municipal ownership to be a fixed

American policy. He stole my thunder, and the community applauded the

theft. And today the community is able to come around and give me points

on municipal ownership.

What happened to me has been in no wise different from what has

happened to the socialist movement as a whole in the United States. In the

bourgeois mind socialism has changed from a terrible disease to a youthful

vagary, and later on had its thunder stolen by the two old parties,--

socialism, like a meek and thrifty workingman, being exploited became

respectable.

Only dangerous things are abhorrent. The thing that is not dangerous is

always respectable. And so with socialism in the United States. For several

years it has been very respectable,--a sweet and beautiful Utopian dream,

in the bourgeois mind, yet a dream, only a dream. During this period,

which has just ended, socialism was tolerated because it was impossible

and non-menacing. Much of its thunder had been stolen, and the

workingmen had been made happy with full dinner-pails. There was

nothing to fear. The kind old world spun on, coupons were clipped, and

larger profits than ever were extracted from the toilers. Coupon-clipping

and profit-extracting would continue to the end of time. These were

functions divine in origin and held by divine right. The newspapers, the

preachers, and the college presidents said so, and what they say, of course,

is so--to the bourgeois mind.

Then came the presidential election of 1904. Like a bolt out of a clear

sky was the socialist vote of 435,000,--an increase of nearly 400 per cent

in four years, the largest third-party vote, with one exception, since the

Civil War. Socialism had shown that it was a very live and growing

revolutionary force, and all its old menace revived. I am afraid that neither

it nor I are any longer respectable. The capitalist press of the country

confirms me in my opinion, and herewith I give a few post-election

utterances of the capitalist press:-

"The Democratic party of the constitution is dead. The Social-

Democratic party of continental Europe, preaching discontent and class

War of the Classes

hatred, assailing law, property, and personal rights, and insinuating

confiscation and plunder, is here."--Chicago Chronicle.

"That over forty thousand votes should have been cast in this city to

make such a person as Eugene V. Debs the President of the United States

is about the worst kind of advertising that Chicago could receive."--

Chicago Inter-Ocean.

"We cannot blink the fact that socialism is making rapid growth in this

country, where, of all others, there would seem to be less inspiration for

it."--Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

"Upon the hands of the Republican party an awful responsibility was

placed last Tuesday. . . It knows that reforms--great, far-sweeping reforms-

-are necessary, and it has the power to make them. God help our

civilization if it does not! . . . It must repress the trusts or stand before the

world responsible for our system of government being changed into a

social republic. The arbitrary cutting down of wages must cease, or

socialism will seize another lever to lift itself into power."--The Chicago

New World.

"Scarcely any phase of the election is more sinisterly interesting than

the increase in the socialist vote. Before election we said that we could not

afford to give aid and comfort to the socialists in any manner. . . It

(socialism) must be fought in all its phases, in its every manifestation."--

San Francisco Argonaut.

And far be it from me to deny that socialism is a menace. It is its

purpose to wipe out, root and branch, all capitalistic institutions of

present-day society. It is distinctly revolutionary, and in scope and depth is

vastly more tremendous than any revolution that has ever occurred in the

history of the world. It presents a new spectacle to the astonished world,--

that of an ORGANIZED, INTERNATIONAL, REVOLUTIONARY

MOVEMENT. In the bourgeois mind a class struggle is a terrible and

hateful thing, and yet that is precisely what socialism is,--a world-wide

class struggle between the propertyless workers and the propertied masters

of workers. It is the prime preachment of socialism that the struggle is a

class struggle. The working class, in the process of social evolution, (in

the very nature of things), is bound to revolt from the sway of the

War of the Classes

capitalist class and to overthrow the capitalist class. This is the menace of

socialism, and in affirming it and in tallying myself an adherent of it, I

accept my own consequent unrespectability.

As yet, to the average bourgeois mind, socialism is merely a menace,

vague and formless. The average member of the capitalist class, when he

discusses socialism, is condemned an ignoramus out of his own mouth. He

does not know the literature of socialism, its philosophy, nor its politics.

He wags his head sagely and rattles the dry bones of dead and buried ideas.

His lips mumble mouldy phrases, such as, "Men are not born equal and

never can be;" "It is Utopian and impossible;" "Abstinence should be

rewarded;" "Man will first have to be born again;" "Cooperative colonies

have always failed;" and "What if we do divide up? in ten years there

would be rich and poor men such as there are today."

It surely is time that the capitalists knew something about this

socialism that they feel menaces them. And it is the hope of the writer that

the socialistic studies in this volume may in some slight degree enlighten a

few capitalistic minds. The capitalist must learn, first and for always, that

socialism is based, not upon the equality, but upon the inequality, of men.

Next, he must learn that no new birth into spiritual purity is necessary

before socialism becomes possible. He must learn that socialism deals

with what is, not with what ought to be; and that the material with which it

deals is the "clay of the common road," the warm human, fallible and frail,

sordid and petty, absurd and contradictory, even grotesque, and yet, withal,

shot through with flashes and glimmerings of something finer and God-

like, with here and there sweetnesses of service and unselfishness, desires

for goodness, for renunciation and sacrifice, and with conscience, stern

and awful, at times blazingly imperious, demanding the right,--the right,

nothing more nor less than the right.

JACK LONDON. OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA. January 12, 1905.

War of the Classes

THE CLASS STRUGGLE

Unfortunately or otherwise, people are prone to believe in the reality

of the things they think ought to be so. This comes of the cheery optimism

which is innate with life itself; and, while it may sometimes be deplored, it

must never be censured, for, as a rule, it is productive of more good than

harm, and of about all the achievement there is in the world. There are

cases where this optimism has been disastrous, as with the people who

lived in Pompeii during its last quivering days; or with the aristocrats of

the time of Louis XVI, who confidently expected the Deluge to

overwhelm their children, or their children's children, but never

themselves. But there is small likelihood that the case of perverse

optimism here to be considered will end in such disaster, while there is

every reason to believe that the great change now manifesting itself in

society will be as peaceful and orderly in its culmination as it is in its

present development.

Out of their constitutional optimism, and because a class struggle is an

abhorred and dangerous thing, the great American people are unanimous

in asserting that there is no class struggle. And by "American people" is

meant the recognized and authoritative mouth- pieces of the American

people, which are the press, the pulpit, and the university. The journalists,

the preachers, and the professors are practically of one voice in declaring

that there is no such thing as a class struggle now going on, much less that

a class struggle will ever go on, in the United States. And this declaration

they continually make in the face of a multitude of facts which impeach,

not so much their sincerity, as affirm, rather, their optimism.

There are two ways of approaching the subject of the class struggle.

The existence of this struggle can be shown theoretically, and it can be

shown actually. For a class struggle to exist in society there must be, first,

a class inequality, a superior class and an inferior class (as measured by

power); and, second, the outlets must be closed whereby the strength and

ferment of the inferior class have been permitted to escape.

That there are even classes in the United States is vigorously denied by

War of the Classes

many; but it is incontrovertible, when a group of individuals is formed,

wherein the members are bound together by common interests which are

peculiarly their interests and not the interests of individuals outside the

group, that such a group is a class. The owners of capital, with their

dependents, form a class of this nature in the United States; the working

people form a similar class. The interest of the capitalist class, say, in the

matter of income tax, is quite contrary to the interest of the laboring class;

and, VICE VERSA, in the matter of poll-tax.

If between these two classes there be a clear and vital conflict of

interest, all the factors are present which make a class struggle; but this

struggle will lie dormant if the strong and capable members of the inferior

class be permitted to leave that class and join the ranks of the superior

class. The capitalist class and the working class have existed side by side

and for a long time in the United States; but hitherto all the strong,

energetic members of the working class have been able to rise out of their

class and become owners of capital. They were enabled to do this because

an undeveloped country with an expanding frontier gave equality of

opportunity to all. In the almost lottery-like scramble for the ownership of

vast unowned natural resources, and in the exploitation of which there was

little or no competition of capital, (the capital itself rising out of the

exploitation), the capable, intelligent member of the working class found a

field in which to use his brains to his own advancement. Instead of being

discontented in direct ratio with his intelligence and ambitions, and of

radiating amongst his fellows a spirit of revolt as capable as he was

capable, he left them to their fate and carved his own way to a place in the

superior class.

But the day of an expanding frontier, of a lottery-like scramble for the

ownership of natural resources, and of the upbuilding of new industries, is

past. Farthest West has been reached, and an immense volume of surplus

capital roams for investment and nips in the bud the patient efforts of the

embryo capitalist to rise through slow increment from small beginnings.

The gateway of opportunity after opportunity has been closed, and closed

for all time. Rockefeller has shut the door on oil, the American Tobacco

Company on tobacco, and Carnegie on steel. After Carnegie came Morgan,

War of the Classes

who triple- locked the door. These doors will not open again, and before

them pause thousands of ambitious young men to read the placard: NO

THOROUGH-FARE.

And day by day more doors are shut, while the ambitious young men

continue to be born. It is they, denied the opportunity to rise from the

working class, who preach revolt to the working class. Had he been born

fifty years later, Andrew Carnegie, the poor Scotch boy, might have risen

to be president of his union, or of a federation of unions; but that he would

never have become the builder of Homestead and the founder of

multitudinous libraries, is as certain as it is certain that some other man

would have developed the steel industry had Andrew Carnegie never been

born.

Theoretically, then, there exist in the United States all the factors

which go to make a class struggle. There are the capitalists and working

classes, the interests of which conflict, while the working class is no

longer being emasculated to the extent it was in the past by having drawn

off from it its best blood and brains. Its more capable members are no

longer able to rise out of it and leave the great mass leaderless and helpless.

They remain to be its leaders.

But the optimistic mouthpieces of the great American people, who are

themselves deft theoreticians, are not to be convinced by mere theoretics.

So it remains to demonstrate the existence of the class struggle by a

marshalling of the facts.

When nearly two millions of men, finding themselves knit together by

certain interests peculiarly their own, band together in a strong

organization for the aggressive pursuit of those interests, it is evident that

society has within it a hostile and warring class. But when the interests

which this class aggressively pursues conflict sharply and vitally with the

interests of another class, class antagonism arises and a class struggle is

the inevitable result. One great organization of labor alone has a

membership of 1,700,000 in the United States. This is the American

Federation of Labor, and outside of it are many other large organizations.

All these men are banded together for the frank purpose of bettering their

condition, regardless of the harm worked thereby upon all other classes.

War of the Classes

They are in open antagonism with the capitalist class, while the manifestos

of their leaders state that the struggle is one which can never end until the

capitalist class is exterminated.

Their leaders will largely deny this last statement, but an examination

of their utterances, their actions, and the situation will forestall such denial.

In the first place, the conflict between labor and capital is over the division

of the join product. Capital and labor apply themselves to raw material and

make it into a finished product. The difference between the value of the

raw material and the value of the finished product is the value they have

added to it by their joint effort. This added value is, therefore, their joint

product, and it is over the division of this joint product that the struggle

between labor and capital takes place. Labor takes its share in wages;

capital takes its share in profits. It is patent, if capital took in profits the

whole joint product, that labor would perish. And it is equally patent, if

labor took in wages the whole joint product, that capital would perish. Yet

this last is the very thing labor aspires to do, and that it will never be

content with anything less than the whole joint product is evidenced by the

words of its leaders.

Mr. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor,

has said: "The workers want more wages; more of the comforts of life;

more leisure; more chance for self-improvement as men, as trade-unionists,

as citizens. THESE WERE THE WANTS OF YESTERDAY; THEY ARE

THE WANTS OF TODAY; THEY WILL BE THE WANTS OF

TOMORROW, AND OF TOMORROW'S MORROW. The struggle may

assume new forms, but the issue is the immemorial one,--an effort of the

producers to obtain an increasing measure of the wealth that flows from

their production."

Mr. Henry White, secretary of the United Garment Workers of

America and a member of the Industrial Committee of the National Civic

Federation, speaking of the National Civic Federation soon after its

inception, said: "To fall into one another's arms, to avow friendship, to

express regret at the injury which has been done, would not alter the facts

of the situation. Workingmen will continue to demand more pay, and the

employer will naturally oppose them. The readiness and ability of the

War of the Classes

workmen to fight will, as usual, largely determine the amount of their

wages or their share in the product. . . But when it comes to dividing the

proceeds, there is the rub. We can also agree that the larger the product

through the employment of labor-saving methods the better, as there will

be more to be divided, but again the question of the division. . . . A

Conciliation Committee, having the confidence of the community, and

composed of men possessing practical knowledge of industrial affairs, can

therefore aid in mitigating this antagonism, in preventing avoidable

conflicts, in bringing about a TRUCE; I use the word 'truce' because

understandings can only be temporary."

Here is a man who might have owned cattle on a thousand hills, been a

lumber baron or a railroad king, had he been born a few years sooner. As it

is, he remains in his class, is secretary of the United Garment Workers of

America, and is so thoroughly saturated with the class struggle that he

speaks of the dispute between capital and labor in terms of war,--workmen

FIGHT with employers; it is possible to avoid some CONFLICTS; in

certain cases TRUCES may be, for the time being, effected.

Man being man and a great deal short of the angels, the quarrel over

the division of the joint product is irreconcilable. For the last twenty years

in the United States, there has been an average of over a thousand strikes

per year; and year by year these strikes increase in magnitude, and the

front of the labor army grows more imposing. And it is a class struggle,

pure and simple. Labor as a class is fighting with capital as a class.

Workingmen will continue to demand more pay, and employers will

continue to oppose them. This is the key-note to LAISSEZ FAIRE,--

everybody for himself and devil take the hindmost. It is upon this that the

rampant individualist bases his individualism. It is the let-alone policy, the

struggle for existence, which strengthens the strong, destroys the weak,

and makes a finer and more capable breed of men. But the individual has

passed away and the group has come, for better or worse, and the struggle

has become, not a struggle between individuals, but a struggle between

groups. So the query rises: Has the individualist never speculated upon the

labor group becoming strong enough to destroy the capitalist group, and

take to itself and run for itself the machinery of industry? And, further, has

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WaroftheClasses1WaroftheClassesJackLondonWaroftheClasses2PREFACEWhenIwasayoungsterIwaslookeduponasaweirdsortofcreature,because,forsooth,Iwasasocialist.Reportersfromlocalpapersinterviewedme,andtheinterviews,whenpublished,werepathologicalstudiesofastrangeandabnormalspecimenofman.Atthattime(nineortenye...

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War of the Classes(阶级斗争)

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