Patriotically for thousands of years we have stormed the world with the cannon’s roar—but never won a real victory for our class.
And for a hundred years—when we could vote—we have stupidly followed the political crook to the ballot-box, and then we have meekly teased for laws, whined for relief, and humbly coaxed the “reformer.”
Gullibly we swallow the traducer’s lies that paralyze our brains, bind our wrists, and lay us under the employer’s lash.
Deafened and stunned with a fool’s “hurrah,” we wade in our own blood while those we love are broken in the embrace of despair.
And when on strike for bread and for the betterment of the women and the little children, blindly on horseback we ride down and club one another, blindly we bayonet one another at the factory, blindly we crush one another at the mines, blindly with Gatling guns we sweep the streets and hills with storms of lead and steel, and in a thousand ways blindly our class destroy our class in the bitter and stupid civil war in capitalist industry—cheaply we lend and rent ourselves for our own ruin.
Ah, my friend, there is a political earthquake coming which will swallow up the political prostitutes and the industrial parasites and Caesars of society—when our class open wide their eyes and see the great red crime—not only on the battlefield, but around the factory and before the miner’s cabin door. Not blindly but proudly and defiantly the workers will then—but not till then-defend THEMSELVES.
This book is not a parasite’s platitudes, nor a hypocrite’s pretenses in a Fakir’s Parliament; this book is not a tearful lament about war nor a long-winded essay on militarism, nor a coward’s whine for peace.
This book is not intended to be harsh; it is frankly intended to be a short, shrill call: “Danger!” and also a guide-board for the producer’s road to power.
Too long, too madly and sadly, too gullibly the flimflammed working class have broken their own hearts and wet the earth with their own blood and tears; too meekly and weakly the toilers sweat themselves into stupidity and then—like cheated children—gullibly hand over the choicest culture, clothing, bread, wine and shelter to the robbers and rulers who despise them and betray them.
What for?