Under this form of society there would be no industrial classes; and therefore, class robbery would not be and could not be organized, legalized and easy.
Second Possible Form of Social Organization: On the Plan of Antagonism—that is, with a Class-Labor System—under which the INDUSTRIAL FOUNDATIONS of society are PRIVATE PROPERTY,—privately owned by one class and productively used by the other class.
Society can, indeed, be organized for the performance of this great industrial function of production on the plan of a class-labor system—one part of society being in the strategic position of industrial masters, a ruling class, their mastery being due to the fact that they own as private property the chief material means of production;—the other part of society being in the helpless position of industrial dependents, a working class,—their industrial dependence being due to the fact that they have no effective share in the ownership and control of the chief material means of production.
This form of society we may properly call an industrial despotism.
The purpose of this form of society is the special welfare of part of the members of society.
Under this class-labor form of society, class robbery is organized, legalized, and easy.
The foundation institution of all despotism is the institution of private property in the economic foundations of society—that is, in the means of production. This is the rock-bottom of organized, legalized and easy robbery of the workers by the shirkers.
Historically society has been organized in a class-labor form in three different ways,—as follows:
(1) Chattel slavery, instituted thousands of years ago, was a class-labor system,—an organized, legalized opportunity for wholesale class robbery; and under that form of class-labor system, with class robbery legally arranged for, class robbery was, of course, respectable, profitable and easy—and therefore inevitable.
Peace was impossible.