“Simpleton! Their governors had fallen out, and, instead of shooting one another, had these poor blockheads shoot.”
That is the cause of war between nations—“the governors fall out.” And who are the governors? Nobody but the representatives of the ruling class, who clash in their race for plunder and deceive workingmen into doing their fighting for them.
Now, let us go back a bit. You may recall that I said that the ruling capitalist class uses government as a two-handed claw with which to pull golden chestnuts out of the fire. One hand of this claw is the power to make and enforce laws. The other hand—the power to wage war—is used to grab what cannot be grabbed with laws. Wars between nations illustrate one form of effort to get what laws cannot give. Here is another:
The United States is dotted with forts, arsenals and armories. Far in the interior, where, by the widest stretch of the imagination, no foreign army could come, we see these grim reminders and prognosticators of war. Under the Dick Military Law, the President of the United States, without further legislation, can compel every man in the United States, between the ages of 18 and 45 years, to enlist in the militia of his state and serve under the orders of the President of the United States. The President, therefore, has it in his power at any time to raise an army of about 12,000,000 men and place them in the field.
What for? To fight a foreign foe? Not much. The Constitution of the United States forbids the President to make war against a foreign nation without the explicit authorization of Congress. But the Dick Law authorizes the President to raise this enormous army and to command it.
Here is the question. At whom is this enormous potential army aimed? Why is the land strewn with arsenals and armories that could be of little or no service in a foreign war?
To quote a word from Carlyle, “Simpleton,” do you not know that all of these arrangements are made to shoot you if the capitalist class should ever decide that you should be shot? Nor, have you never noticed against whom the state militia is invariably used?
If you have noticed none of these things, perhaps it would be well for you to wake up. The militia of the states is practically never used except to beat down workingmen who have revolted against the outrageous wrongs heaped upon them by their employers. American workingmen do not readily revolt. Nowhere are they any too prosperous. Millions believe from the bottoms of their hearts that they are being robbed. Yet, they keep on. Only when they are ground into the dust, as they were by the Woolen Trust at Lawrence, or by the Coal Trust in Pennsylvania, do they rebel.
Please, therefore, note this monstrous situation:
Under the laws of the land, the capitalists have a right to grind their employees as deeply into the dust as they can grind them.