Book: War of the Classes

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War of the Classes

by Jack London




Contents:



Preface
The Class Struggle
The Tramp
The Scab
The Question of the Maximum
A Review
Wanted: A New Land of Development
How I Became a Socialist



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-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 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 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.



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 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, 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. 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 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 the individualist never speculated upon this being still a
triumphant expression of individualism,--of group individualism,--if
the confusion of terms may be permitted?

But the facts of the class struggle are deeper and more significant
than have so far been presented. A million or so of workmen may
organize for the pursuit of interests which engender class
antagonism and strife, and at the same time be unconscious of what
is engendered. But when a million or so of workmen show
unmistakable signs of being conscious of their class,--of being, in
short, class conscious,--then the situation grows serious. The
uncompromising and terrible hatred of the trade-unionist for a scab
is the hatred of a class for a traitor to that class,--while the
hatred of a trade-unionist for the militia is the hatred of a class
for a weapon wielded by the class with which it is fighting. No
workman can be true to his class and at the same time be a member of
the militia: this is the dictum of the labor leaders.

In the town of the writer, the good citizens, when they get up a
Fourth of July parade and invite the labor unions to participate,
are informed by the unions that they will not march in the parade if
the militia marches. Article 8 of the constitution of the Painters'
and Decorators' Union of Schenectady provides that a member must not
be a "militiaman, special police officer, or deputy marshal in the
employ of corporations or individuals during strikes, lockouts, or
other labor difficulties, and any member occupying any of the above
positions will be debarred from membership." Mr. William Potter was
a member of this union and a member of the National Guard. As a
result, because he obeyed the order of the Governor when his company
was ordered out to suppress rioting, he was expelled from his union.
Also his union demanded his employers, Shafer & Barry, to discharge
him from their service. This they complied with, rather than face
the threatened strike.

Mr. Robert L. Walker, first lieutenant of the Light Guards, a New
Haven militia company, recently resigned. His reason was, that he
was a member of the Car Builders' Union, and that the two
organizations were antagonistic to each other. During a New Orleans
street-car strike not long ago, a whole company of militia, called
out to protect non-union men, resigned in a body. Mr. John
Mulholland, president of the International Association of Allied
Metal Mechanics, has stated that he does not want the members to
join the militia. The Local Trades' Assembly of Syracuse, New York,
has passed a resolution, by unanimous vote, requiring union men who
are members of the National Guard to resign, under pain of
expulsion, from the unions. The Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers'
Association has incorporated in its constitution an amendment
excluding from membership in its organization "any person a member
of the regular army, or of the State militia or naval reserve." The
Illinois State Federation of Labor, at a recent convention, passed
without a dissenting vote a resolution declaring that membership in
military organizations is a violation of labor union obligations,
and requesting all union men to withdraw from the militia. The
president of the Federation, Mr. Albert Young, declared that the
militia was a menace not only to unions, but to all workers
throughout the country.

These instances may be multiplied a thousand fold. The union
workmen are becoming conscious of their class, and of the struggle
their class is waging with the capitalist class. To be a member of
the militia is to be a traitor to the union, for the militia is a
weapon wielded by the employers to crush the workers in the struggle
between the warring groups.

Another interesting, and even more pregnant, phase of the class
struggle is the political aspect of it as displayed by the
socialists. Five men, standing together, may perform prodigies; 500
men, marching as marched the historic Five Hundred of Marseilles,
may sack a palace and destroy a king; while 500,000 men,
passionately preaching the propaganda of a class struggle, waging a
class struggle along political lines, and backed by the moral and
intellectual support of 10,000,000 more men of like convictions
throughout the world, may come pretty close to realizing a class
struggle in these United States of ours.

In 1900 these men cast 150,000 votes; two years later, in 1902, they
cast 300,000 votes; and in 1904 they cast 450,000. They have behind
them a most imposing philosophic and scientific literature; they own
illustrated magazines and reviews, high in quality, dignity, and
restraint; they possess countless daily and weekly papers which
circulate throughout the land, and single papers which have
subscribers by the hundreds of thousands; and they literally swamp
the working classes in a vast sea of tracts and pamphlets. No
political party in the United States, no church organization nor
mission effort, has as indefatigable workers as has the socialist
party. They multiply themselves, know of no effort nor sacrifice
too great to make for the Cause; and "Cause," with them, is spelled
out in capitals. They work for it with a religious zeal, and would
die for it with a willingness similar to that of the Christian
martyrs.

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