Page:Proletarian and Petit-Bourgeois (1912?).pdf/26

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PROLETARIAN AND PETIT-BOURGEOIS

administrations, nor is there the slightest prospect that its condition will be changed.

In other words, the whole machine runs on exactly as before, the vast elaborated machine by which the toilers are exploited and parasites are fed. Once in power, the Labor Party proceeded to do such things as other parties had done for the purpose of keeping in power, and it is these things that maintain the machine.

On the night of the election, when the returns began to indicate the result, the gentleman that is now Attorney General of the Commonwealth was in the Labor Party headquarters, jumping up and down with uncontrollable glee.

"We're in!" he shouted. "We're in! We're in!"

That was an excellent phrase and neatly expressed the whole situation. The Labor Party was in; it had won the offices and the places of power and honor; it had defeated the opponents that had often defeated it. It was "in." The next thing was to keep in, and this is the object that it has assiduously pursued ever since. "We are in; now let us stay in. We have the offices; let us keep the offices."

The first thing it does is to increase its strength with the bourgeoisie and the great middle class always allied with its enemies. To its opponents in the campaigns the handiest weapon and most effective was always the charge that the Labor Party was not patriotic, that it did not love the dear old flag of Great Britain with the proper degree of fervor and ecstasy; that it was wobbly on the subject of war and held strange, erratic notions in favor of universal peace instead of yelling day and night for British supremacy, whether right or wrong—which is well known to be the duty of the true and pure patriot. This argument was continually used and had great effect.

Naturally, as the Labor Party was now in and determined to stay in, the wise play, indicated in the game upon which it had embarked, was to disprove all these