Page:Onward Sweep of the Machine Process (ca 1917).pdf/21

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THE ONWARD SWEEP
19

standpoint, the principle of compulsion, which means no more nor less than industrial conscription, has come to stay in industry, so far as the master class is concerned.

All this goes once more to show what the I. W. W. unceasingly teaches, that the war against exploitation must of necessity in the future be carried out on the job. Every new move of the master class to increase the intensity of labor, and thereby the total product, calls for a counter move and new tactics on the part of the workers right where such products are created.

This is bound to raise a howl of execration from the efficiency experts; but the revolt of the South Wales miners at present in progress affords a striking illustration of the hypocrisy and falsehood of their economic teaching, showing conclusively that though the workers' output be ever so large, they have to fight stubbornly for every cent wrested from the rapacious hand of the class alone which benefits by efficiency.

This strike also shows that, despite the chloroforming propensities of war-mad jingoes, the instinct of the workers is, at bottom, correct, and affords a better criterion of what constitutes economic truth than all the theorizing of the spectacled "experts" who study the production and distribution of wealth, and the class struggle arising therefrom, from the comfortable depths of an arm-chair.

It is manifest that the war must cause a considerable shortage of labor-power in the market when peace is again restored, as compared with the previous supply. Every possible effort is therefore going to be made to get the last ounce of value out of the labor-power available, and that the master class is fully alive to the occasion the following cable from a recent issue of the "Sun" amply proves:—

SCIENCE IN INDUSTRY.
AN IMPORTANT MOVEMENT.
(Published in the Times.)

LONDON, Tuesday,

A Government White Paper outlines a scheme of