The Object of the Labor Movement/The Object of the Labor Movement
THE OBJECT OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT.
Fellow Citizens and Friends:
Permit me to-day to make the Labor Movement, the so-called Social Question, the subject of my remarks. In view of the close connection between the political and the social conditions of a nation, every constituent has a well-founded right to demand of his representative a social confession of faith besides his political one. I shall endeavor to meet this demand with the utmost frankness.
One of the greatest thinkers of antiquity, Aristotle, divides the whole human race into two classes, free men and slave natures. The Greeks he declares are appointed by reason of their free nature to rule over other peoples. The barbarous races on the contrary, are fitted for being ruled and performing the services of slaves. But slavery and slave-labor he explains as a social necessity, as the indispensable material foundation of State and Society; for if the free citizens were obliged to do the work required for their maintenance, how could they have the time and the wish to cultivate their intelligence and attend to the affairs of the State? And yet, Aristotle makes a remarkable observation as to the conceivableness of a society without slavery. If, he says, an inanimate object, a tool, an implement, could render the service of the slave, if every instrument could perform its function at command or, still better, without even a command, as the old tradition relates of the statues of Dædalus, and Homer sings of the three-legged table of Hephæstus which entered the halls of the gods of its own motion; if the looms could weave and the zither produce its tones spontaneously, then the artificers would need no helpers and the masters no slaves.
Now, everyone knows that the miracle here sketched has to a great extent been wrought and that without the help or intervention of the gods, in the most natural way in the world, by insight into the laws of nature and mastery of its forces. What once seemed impossible to the wisest of the Greeks happens daily before our eyes. But how has the miracle worked? Has the success which Aristotle supposed, attended it? Experience teaches that the wealth of nations has been immeasurably increased by the magnificent mechanical appliances of our time. Yet, the toilsome, anxious lot of the laboring class has been anything but lightened.
Now, let us carry this dream of Aristotle farther in the light of actual experience. Let us assume that in the remote future of the human race the soil of the whole earth had passed into the hands of individual owners, and man had attained by the progress of knowledge to the absolute control over Nature. Suppose the perfection of mechanical contrivance to have gone so far that machinery itself is produced and tended by machinery, and human labor is thus minimized if not superseded. What would be the result of such a state of things? In consequence of the attractive power which large capital exercises upon small, a comparatively small number of wealthy persons would hold exclusive possession of all machinery and other implements of labor. The whole income of the nation, all the goods requisite for the necessities and enjoyments of life would fall to these few alone and that rightfully according to the views now current.
Under such circumstances, human labor being wholly valueless, what would become of the non-possessing mass if the capitalists did not furnish them the bread of charity? What else would remain to these unfortunates than to die of starvation or to reverse the existing conditions of production and possession if not by cunning, then by force?
It will be said that this picture is merely a horrible fancy, that such a state of things can never be reached. This, I admit, not because the thing: itself is inconceivable but because sane men and women will never let it go so far. But can we deny that our present social life, founded upon Capitalist rule and Wage-Labor, moves in a direction which, if it should continue unchanged, must bring us with every passing day nearer to the social conditions just depicted? Must we not admit that even now, the income of the nation is distributed in a manner which subjects at least a part of the proletariat to the want just described?
In such a state of affairs it becomes the duty of every good and thoughtful human being to ask himself the question:
"How are the present economic and social conditions to be so changed as to attain an equitable distribution of the income of the people and to lessen the daily-increasing poverty of the workers?"
Let us examine more closely the problem that is to be solved.
Two cardinal features characterize our present methods of production and distinguish them from those of the past, namely, wages labor and production upon a large scale.
Whereas formerly, productive labor was chiefly performed by slaves, serfs or bondsmen, all rights of ownership in human beings ceased at the French Revolution. Rightfully, legally, every worker is free and his own master. But as a matter of fact he is anything else rather than free. Cut off from the means and conditions of employment, with no other possession than his labor power, he is forced to work for wages in the employ of others, and for wages which suffice at the utmost for the bare necessities of life. But if he finds no purchaser for the only commodity at his command, for his force of labor, he and his fall into the utmost misery. Yet, despite this wretched insecurity of his position, it will hardly occur to any workman to wish the old conditions back. It is a life worthy of man that he strives for, and he knows that this can be attained only in a state of freedom.
As the French Revolution proclaimed the workers personally free, so did it liberate inanimate property from the last shackles of the Middle Ages. Without reference to previous restrictions and obligations, whoever was in possession at the moment, found his right to the absolute control of his property recognized. This release of property, the application of steam power which followed soon after, and the general introduction of machine work produced a mighty and far-reaching transformation in the existing economic and social conditions.
Handicraft and trade upon a small scale were ever more crowded into the background; production by wholesale, the capitalistic method of production, took their place. But precarious as this change has rendered the lot of the handicraftsman without means and the small retail dealer, the advantages for the development of civilization connected with production and distribution upon a large scale are too weighty for Society ever to renounce them. A general return to production on a small scale by handicraft is as impossible as a return to slavery.
We must therefore limit the question under consideration as follows: How can a more equal distribution of the national income in the interest of all be attained without limiting freedom of labor, and without interfering with the progress of civilization won by production on a large scale?
The answer cannot be doubtful, for us at least. There is but one means to that end: ABOLITION of the WAGE-SYSTEM and the substitution for it, of Co-operative Labor.
Whoever has an open eye for the signs of the the times must recognize that this thought more or less clearly formulated forms the basis of the Labor Movement now making itself felt in every country in Europe. As slavery and serfdom, once a "necessary" social institution also, at last made way for Wage-Labor, so in our day there is coming about a similar change of no less importance, the transition from the Wage-System to free co-operative work. The important point is that the transition should take place in the most peaceful way. But this is possible only on condition of the harmonious activity of all the social forces concerned.
The question which occupies our attention should therefore finally be formulated thus:
What has the workman, what has the capitalist employer, and what has the State to do to further the transition already begun to the co-operative method of production, and to bring this change to its consummation in the way most advantageous to the community?
We shall see that to answer this question we need do no more than collate the facts before our eyes, a clear proof that the present age is in the midst of the process of social remodelling.
First as to the workers themselves. The main point is that they become clearly conscious of their own situation and that they recognize and respect their own inherent nobler nature.
I have stated in the foregoing that as a rule the worker's wages barely suffice for scanty maintenance for himself and his family. If any one doubts this relation, the so-called iron law of wages, let him refer to the testimony recently given by the Committee of the German Board of Trade in an opinion upon the seizure of wages.
There he will find, word for word, this statement:
"We cannot let pass without qualification the assertion that there is a considerable difference between the laborer's wages and the means of subsistence requisite for his scant maintenance. It is exactly this point, the rate of wages, upon which practically the whole great social question turns. The workingmen insist upon the insufficiency of the wages rate. The employers do not deny this, but explain the rate of wages as a link in the chain of economic phenomena which they cannot arbitrarily change (under the pressure of the market in the midst of which they themselves stand) without destroying the whole chain. So long as this controversy is not settled, and we fear it is an everlasting one (sic), so long shall we be obliged to maintain the opinion as the only correct one, that the expressions 'wages of labor' and 'necessary means of subsistence' are in general identical."
The "indestructible chain of economic phenomena!" Indeed a more striking expression could not have been found! True the capitalist rulers of labor are not prevented by it from heaping capital upon capital, but heavily does the "chain of economic phenomena" press upon the laboring class. Yet, even here the poet's word proves true:
"There dwelleth a spirit of Good in all Evil."
The ruling industrial system, by making indispensable the assemblage of masses of workers at one point, gives the first impulse to the removal of the evil itself has created. As man first sees his own features in the mirror, so the laborer first awakens to a full appreciation of his own pitiable situation when, in the misery of masses of his comrades in suffering the image of his own lot stares him in the face. Sharing the life of his companions in toil, men placed like himself and equally oppressed, in constant contact and interchange of thought with them, working together for reciprocal support and the common defense against common danger, there arises a class consciousness which sustains and elevates the individvual and inspires the masses to battle for their social rights. It is a strange fate which decrees that Capitalist production itself shall assemble and drill the powers destined to make an end of capitalist and class rule.
From the great central rallying places of industry the Labor Movement has proceeded, which within a few decades has spread from England over France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, and has attained power and definite form in the foundation of the International Workingmen's Association. Everywhere we see unions forming whose object is the improvement of the material condition of the laboring class; craftsmen's guilds and workingmen's clubs, educational and beneficial associations, co-operative, loan and credit societies, trades unions and co-operative manufacturing companies. Under the prevailing conditions of credit and production all these undertakings, originating in the working class and resting upon the principle of self-help must prove powerless to cure the misery of the masses. But they have accomplished a vast work for the intellectual and moral elevation of the laboring class and in paving the way for a thorough reform of labor. The true significance of these associations, their value which cannot be overestimated lies in this that, wholly apart from the especial object at which they aim, they are a school for self-culture for their members; that they confer upon them skill in the independent management of their own affairs and in harmonious action with others for common ends; that by education, promotion of a comprehension of business and fraternal public spirit they prepare the worker for a gradual transition from the prevailing Wage-System to the co-operative method of production of the future.
It was the spirit of co-operation which in the the Middle Ages raised the working middle class to so high a level of culture and prosperity, of power and consequence. The re-awakening of the spirit of co-operation in our day will bear similar and still more precious fruit, not for one class alone but for the whole human society. The labor question as we apprehend it, is no mere stomach and money question, it is a question of Civilization, Justice and Humanity. When our saving of State and Society, the "glorious" achievements of our policy of blood and iron like a lost tradition shall long have been forgotten, it will be remembered to the credit of our time that it quickened and cherished the spirit of co-operation, the germ of human greatness and virtue in the laboring world, so laying the foundation for a new and truly moral social life which shall rest upon the principle of equality and fraternity. The founding of the smallest workingmen's club will be for the historian of Civilization of greater worth than—the victory of Sadowa.
Let us pass to the second question:
What has the employer to do?
The demand that we make of him is simply this, that he respect in every worker the human being, that he recoznize the laborer whom he employs as a being fully his own equal, and that he treat him accordingly.
Everything, they say, has two sides. In this every-day saying lurks a good piece of popular wisdom;—the most difficult problems of knowledge as of life find their solution in it. Like everything else man himself has two sides, a personal one peculiar to himself as an individual, and a universal one which marks him as a member of a greater whole. In reality the two sides can neither be separated nor sharply distinguished, for it is the two taken together which in their unity, make the man. But in our consciousness temporarily or permanently one side or the other can very well press into the foreground and assert a predominant influence upon our thought and action. Let us assume the case that the special, individual side predominates in a man's character. It would find expression primarily in his estimate of himself, as self-consciousness, self-confidence. "Help yourself," "Hercules helps him who helps himself," becomes such a man's maxim, the rule of his thought and action. If he retains the consciousness of the other universal side of his nature, not losing sight of the connection between himself and his fellow men, he will admit that his own powers do not suffice to obtain him by his personal effort alone, a subsistence worthy of a human being; that man can live and prosper only in society, that brotherly co-operation with others therefore lies in his own interest. Respect for others, sympathy and public spirit will hold his self-consciousness and self-confidence properly in check. Quite otherwise if the consciousness of self gets the upper hand in a man. True, the insufficiency of his own unaided powers cannot escape him even then, for the consciousness of the broad, universal side cannot be wholly suppressed. But the conclusion which he draws from it is in this case different, he will regard others not as his equals, not as equal members of a great whole, of which he, too, forms a part, but as subservient to himself, mere tools for satisfying his needs and gratifying his desires. Thus the consciousness of self, praiseworthy enough in its place, deteriorates into selfishness, and self-consciousness into conceit. Selfishness, pretension and the desire to rule tempt him to make his fellow men serve his own will, all that he believes to be for his own advantage.
What is here said of the individual applies to the whole community. The same powers which are active in the mind of the individual make themselves felt in the life of peoples, in the history of the human race.
The power of man over man, the right of the strong and the oppression of the weak, that is the characteristic feature, the scarlet thread that is woven into the history of antiquity and of the Middle Ages. And is it otherwise now?
Does not the order of society to-day, rest in spite of the much-praised progress of Civilization, upon the same principle of human subservience? Has the Present a right to look back to the conditions of heathen antiquity and of the Christian Middle Ages with pride and self-satisfaction?
With a frankness which leaves nothing to be desired a statesman of the Nineteenth Century, Count Joseph de Maistre, has expressed himself, literally, thus:
"The human race was created for the benefit of a few men. It is the business of the clergy, the aristocracy, and the higher officers of the State to teach the people what is good or bad, true or false in the worlds of morals and intellect. Other persons have no right to dispute about such matters, they must endure without murmuring."
If this is rather highly colored, the picture is none the less drawn from nature. So long as the shepherds of the nations go to war without saying "by your leave" to the people, so long as ecclesiastics come together in council and synod "To judge false human science under the auspices of the Holy Ghost," so long we have no right to accuse de Maistre of falsehood. But wrong and incomprehensible it is that de Maistre approves this state of things, that he dreams such conditions can and will endure for all time.
Let me produce another witness:
Robert Owen, the founder of the co-operative system in England, once met in the house of a Frankfort banker Fredrich von Gentz, the well-known statesman. Owen set forth the excellence of his socialistic system and observed:
"If only unity could replace disunion all men would have enough to live upon."
"That may be true," replied von Gentz, "but we do not wish the masses to be prosperous and independent of us, for how could we then continue to govern?"
There we have the whole Social Question of the present in a nutshell! If Owen speaks the word of deliverance, the Unity of Mankind, Gentz proclaims the fundamental evil that stands in the way of redemption: the love of power of the more favored classes. Aristotle also divided mankind, it will be remembered, into two classes, such as are destined to command and such as are born to serve. But it was difference of nationality, as between Greeks and Barbarians, which lay at the foundation of his distinction. Gentz and de Maistre on the contrary draw a dividing line within the same race, between the upper ten thousand who are ordained to rule and prosper, and the remaining masses destined to be governed and to languish.
Whether we examine the state of the Church, the State or Society everywhere—we cannot ignore it—we meet with the class rule of the Middle Ages, the mediæval system of guardianship. In one point only does the Present differ from the Past, namely that, thanks to the German Reformation and the French Revolution, the conviction gains ground from day to day in ever-widening circles down to the lowest strata, that it cannot go on so forever, that men are not created to be ruled and governed, held in leading strings and oppressed by their fellow-men. For thousands of years love of one's neighbor and the fellowship of man have been preached to the people. The present demands that in every deed, in daily life, in the State and Society this teaching be applied in earnest.
There was a time—the older among you remember it—when everyone who doubted the right of absolute government was branded a rebel. To-day a similar fate is the lot of everyone who ventures to lay hands upon the "chain of economic phenomena." Do but venture to attack the privilege of the possessing class, the abuse of power by Capital, the prevailing credit and loan system, or even to broach a more equal distribution of material goods, and you are in certain circles branded forthwith as the enemy of all social order, a social heretic, a Communist. But this shall not deter me from recognizing freely and publicly that all individual property, material not less than intellectual, is the common good of society. Like man himself, every form of the property of man possesses, besides its special character which makes it the private possession of an individual, a universal side which men gives the community a well-grounded claim to a right to it. That the State and the municipality appropriate a part of the property of every citizen as taxes we all consider a matter of course, or that the law limits the free control of the individual's property. But, we ask, has the property-holder no other duties than those which the law of the land prescribes and in case of need compels him to fulfil? Has he not duties to society as well as to the family, the municipality, the commonwealth? What the individual calls his own, whether of real or personal property, is it, can it be solely the product of his own activity? Does he not owe by far the greater part of it to the co-operation of others, to the social labor, the labor in common, of the people who have lived before him and of his contemporaries? And as the individual attains possession of property only by means of the help of others, so he cannot enjoy its fruits without the help of others. Only in society has property value, only in society can man rejoice in it. Hence the moral obligation of every owner of property so to use his fortune that it may be of use not to himself alone but to the community as well, especially to those of his fellow men who are less favorably placed than himself.
The grand Labor Movement of the last forty years has had a wholesome effect in this respect. As it has awakened in the workman the consciousness of his social rights, so has it sharpened in the possessing class the sense of social duty.
We are glad to admit that there are employers for whom the laborer is not a commodity which one buys as cheaply as possible, like every other commodity, to make the most of the use of it. In England, France, and even with us in Germany, there is no lack of individual examples of mill-owners, business men and landlords who endeavor to improve the sad lot of their employes through increase in wages, or shortening the hours of labor, the foundation of savings-banks, beneficial societies and insurance for old age, or by the erection of healthful dwellings, asylums, hospitals, educational institutions, and other means. Especially worthy of notice in this respect is the system of profit-sharing, according to which the workman receives besides his wages a regular share of the profit obtained by his labor. In England alone there are some ten thousand workmen who hold this relation to their employer, and both sides have reason to be content with their success. Yet, we must not overlook the fact that here everything depends more or less upon the good will of the employer, and that in the best case certain workingmen or groups of workingmen only are benefitted by it. Valuable as such humane endeavors are as educational preparation for the removal of the social wretchedness which has arisen out of the wages system they are as little adequate as the workmen’s attempt at self-help. That great task requires another power, capable of taking general and radical measures. And this brings us to the third question:
What has the State to do to bring about a peaceful solution of the Labor Question?
The new constitution of the Canton Zurich adopted April 18th, 1869, answers our question as follows:
Art. 23. "The State promotes and facilitates the development of the co-operative system based upon self-help. It enacts through its law-giving power the provisions requisite for the protection of the workers."
Art. 24. "It creates, for the furtherance of the general credit, a Cantonal bank."
The original wording of the articles was still more precise. It was as follows:
Art. 23. "It is the duty of the State to protect and advance the welfare of the working class and the development of the co-operative system."
Art. 24. (As above).
Protection, Advancement—in these two words the object of the great co-operative body which we call the State is sharply and clearly formulated. But how are protection by the State and advancement by the State to be understood? The despot calls himself shield and protector of the people, and war is praised as a means of promoting civilization. Vera rerum vocabula amissimus, the right names of things are lost to us. The more need then to specify the sense in which the terms are here used.
"Protection by the State" means the duty of the whole body of persons assembled and united into a State to protect each individual in the free development and employment of his power so far as the like freedom of others is not thereby interfered with.
But with mere protection the duty of the State is not exhausted, however much the politician may prefer to limit it thereto. The reciprocal advancement of the members of the State must be added.
Under advancement by the State we understand the duty of the whole community to step in with its means wherever the welfare of the individual does not suffice to obtain him a life worthy of a human being.
As protection by the State corresponds to the principle of Liberty, and Advancement by the State to the principle of Fraternity, so the assurance of protection and advancement to all, "to each according to his need," meets the demand of Equality.
This doctrine of the object of the State is quite the same as that which I expressed on a former occasion in the formula:
Each for all—is human Duty!
All for each—is human Right;
"But," some one may object, "if protection and advancement by the State are to be afforded to all equally, why is the working class especially emphasized in the article of the Zurich constitution? Is the working class to be especially favored by the State, advanced at the cost of the others?"
Reasonable as this objection at first sounds, it does not bear scrutiny.
It must be remembered that the equality of all consists solely in every man's being protected and helped "according to his need;" and who can deny that at this time it is precisely the wage-worker who most needs protection and help?
But wholly apart from this greater need, there is another circumstance which, for the Present and the immediate Future, makes an especial consideration of the working class by the State a demand of reparative justice.
It is only necessary to call to mind the genesis of what is commonly called capital to make this perfectly clear. However the definitions of capital may differ, in this they all agree, that it is accumulated labor, applicable to further productive ends. But who has performed this labor? They, perhaps, who now control capital! Does the manufacturer, the merchant, the landlord, owe his wealth of accumulated labor to his own activity and the industry of his ancestors? Is the want of capital, the poverty of the toiling proletarians solely due to their own and their fathers' fault? But if the present inequality of fortune is not solely due to the economically correct action of the property-holding class and the shiftlessness of the non-possessing class, to what other cause can it be attributed? Whence comes it that Capital concentrates more and more in the hands of the small minority while the mass of wage-laborers, despite their industry, can scarcely satisfy their barest needs? The reason for this can evidently be found nowhere else than in a distribution of the product of labor disproportionate to the labor performed, and therefore, unjust.
We shall not investigate the chain of historical conditions in consequence of which the workman was gradually separated from the means of production and the present disproportion between work and wages brought about. The question now is:
What has the State done to bring about a more just distribution of the product of labor? Has it made any attempt by legislation or otherwise to protect the workingman against the superior power of capital or to set a limit to the social inequality that is growing from day to day?
Whoever scrutinizes the history of the nations down to the present day will find that in this direction practically nothing has been done.
Nobility, clergy and the higher dignitaries of State have separately and together exercised an almost exclusive control in public affairs; they have not hesitated to turn to account for themselves and their own interests power and wealth from which all should have profited equally. Legislation itself, far from distributing air and sunshine equitably in the economic race, has contributed its large share by conferring privileges on the one hand and interfering with liberty on the other, to widen and deepen the chasm between the property-holding and the non-possessing classes.
How then can any one blame the men of toil, if, having awakened to the consciousness of their rights and their power, they demand from the State a very special consideration of their so long neglected interests? When, in the article of the Zurich Constitution, State protection and State help is especially promised to the workers, there is involved in this no infringement upon the principle of equality. There is no question, as some anxious souls fear, of feeding the poor working man at the cost of the rich citizen; still less of forming a privileged class of workingmen, stipendiaries of the government. It is simply the frank and honorably outspoken recognition by the law-givers of the State's duty to do that which has been left undone and to expiate injustice committed, so righting the social wrong for which the State is, in part, responsible. It is only the wished-for fulfillment of that which we have called the demand for reconciliating and reparative justice.
But the Zurich Constitution does not stop with the recognition of the duty and responsibility of the State in general, it specifies in precise terms the means by which alone the working class can now be helped:
"The development of co-operation based upon self-help shall be promoted and assisted."
The ultimate object of this process of development is: The abolition of wages-labor by the gradual transition from the wages system to that of co-operative labor.
Let us glance now in detail at the demands to be made of the State, i. e., the whole community of individuals.
First comes unrestricted freedom of opinion and the right to organize and hold meetings at will. The repeal of all laws framed for the purpose of limiting or, as the phrase goes, "regulating" liberty. Next, equal right of participation in public affairs for all, universal, direct suffrage and its corollary, universal direct participation of the people in legislation and administration. Further, free compulsory education in public secular institutions and the introduction of universal compulsory military training in place of standing army and militia. These two demands we combine because public instruction and the peoples' power of defense are most closely connected. For the conduct of war the primary need is money and efficient soldiers; both are secured by efficient schools. The wealth of a country depends upon the successful labor of its inhabitants, but work is the more successful the better the workman can calculate the success of what he undertakes, that is, the more intelligent he is. And the soldier, like the workman, will be more skillful in the performance of his task, the defense of his country. With us in Germany, as in most of the countries of Europe, nearly half of the nation's income is spent in preparation for war, while education and culture are put off with sums scarcely worth mentioning. Let us reverse the proportion and the people's wealth will multiply ten-fold without injury to our power of defense. A Minister of Education who understands his business is the best Minister of Finance and War.
For the working class especially, and that in the interest of the Commonwealth, we demand:
SHORTENED HOURS OF LABOR AND A LEGAL
WORKING DAY.
The wage-worker, too, must have time and leisure "to cultivate his intelligence and attend to the affairs of State." The Congress of English Trades Unions, held last year in Birmingham, recommended the eight-hour working day for all trades, and expressed its conviction that by this means "the physical and mental power of the workers will be increased and morality promoted and the number of the unemployed diminished."
Prohibition of the employment of Children and equal pay for equal work for Men and Women.
Both are necessary to prevent the further sinking of wages and to save the rising generation from deterioration.
Abolition of indirect Taxes and introduction of a Progressive Income Tax.
Every tax upon necessaries of life is a tax upon the worker's force of labor, hence a restriction upon production and an injury to the prosperity of the people.
Finally: Reform of the Money and Credit System, and promotion of Industrial and Agricultural Productive Co-operative Associations by the intervention of State Credit or State Guaranty.
The point is to make credit accessible to the working class. This the State has done in most generous measure both directly and indirectly for the promotion of the capitalistic method of production. Let the State now in its own interest do the same for the co-operative associations of the workers. Nothing is more advantageous to the Commonwealth than justice in all things.
So much for the preliminary conditions of labor reform. The workingmen have been advised, perhaps honestly enough, to keep out of politics and busy themselves solely with their economic interests, as if political and economic interests could be separated as kindlings are split, with a hatchet. Whoever has followed our line of reasoning thus far cannot, I think, be in doubt that precisely the working class must first of all and most of all resolve to transform political conditions in the direction of freedom. State-help no less than self-help is needed for securing to the worker the full, undiminished result of his industry, that is, an existence worthy of a man.
The State alone, and only a free State will help the workers!
Let us sum up briefly, the substance of the foregoing:
The system of wages-labor meets the demands of Justice and Humanity as little as did the slavery and servitude of former times. Like slavery and servitude, wages-labor was once a step forward in civilization from which undeniable advantages have accrued to society.
The social question of the Present is how to abolish the wages system without losing the advantages of production and distribution en gros by means of associated labor.
To this end there is but one means, the system of free associated labor, the co-operative system. The Present is a time of transition from the wages system (capitalistic method of production) to the system of Associated Labor.
In order to secure a peaceful transition, the worker, the employer and the State must work together:
It is the part of the workers to offer united resistance to the pressure of capitalistic rule, and by self-culture to prepare themselves for independence.
It is the part of the employer to concern himself for the welfare of the workers, and especially to yield them a share of the profits.
It is the duty of the State to promote the efforts of the workers for self-culture by promoting their organization, determining a legal working day and affording adequate opportunity for free instruction. It is the further duty of the State to assist the development of the co-operative system by reform of the bank and credit system and by affording to co-operative effort the support of State-credit.
Such help being possible only on the part of a free State, it follows that all workers, and all friends of the workers, must aim primarily at establishing true freedom within the State. Political and social freedom, freedom of the citizen without the sacrifice of the majority of mankind as wage-slaves; this is the task of our century. The achievements of the policy of blood and iron, the clang of arms in these, our days, the chase and struggle for wealth and sensual enjoyment, these are but ripples upon the surface of the stream of the spirit of our time. In the depths, still but ceaseless is the forward movement of our knowledge of nature and of mind, and with this knowledge the consciousness of the sovereignty of man, that thought which moves the world, the Liberty, Equality, Fraternity of all. Though years may pass in vain, the word of scripture shall yet be fulfilled, the joyful message which the electric wire sped as its first greeting from free America to Europe still armed to the teeth:
"Peace on Earth; Good Will to Men!"
THE END.