A Factory Floor Talk

Does the employer himself want to work, to do something useful? Far from it. His money works for him, his money makes money, as the saying goes, his money is the channel through which the earnings of other industrious people flow into his pockets. Socialists call all kinds of property in this respect “capital,” this expression comprising all productive machinery. And because one class of the people possess, by their wealth, these means – that is, capital – another, and by far the largest class, have only their physical or mental strength and skill for labour. Hence capital becomes a means for enslaving workers forcing them to give up the greater part of their produce to him who owns the capital. They themselves obtain hardly enough to support themselves and their families, while the capitalists enjoy life and get richer without working at all.

What right has the owner of a bee hive to rob the bees of the fruit of their industry and labour? They are his property, his is the might. What right has capital to rob the working class of the greater part of the fruit of their industry and labour? The wage-labourers, the mechanics, the farm hands, are they the property of the capitalist? Are they his slaves? As things stand to-day, they are!

Might is right, and by the title of such right the slave-owner considers the fruit or the work of his slaves his property; by this right, in former times, the feudal landowner made his serfs work for his employment and benefit. Slavery is injustice; serfdom is injustice; so the right which capital claims to the work of the worker which imposes wage-slavery is injustice.

 As far as anything is the personal property of a person he may enjoy it as he chooses; nobody has a right to interfere. But as soon as he tries to use this property to enslave other people, he steps over the line. No-body has a right of ownership over others. Slavery has been abolished, serfdom has been abolished, so the power which capital exercises now will be abolished.

Individuals may be deceived, classes rarely.