What! Shall we destroy the rich men, the capitalists?
No, of course not.
That would not be fair. Capitalists are capitalists legally—permitted by the working class.
By politically created laws and institutions capitalists are legally in position to rule and rob the working class.
And by politically created laws and institutions the ruling class shall cease to be in that position.
The personal destruction of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of capitalists would not in the least degree mend matters. The children of chattel slave owners became slave owners by the politically created laws of inheritance. Just so the children of capitalists become capitalists through neither virtue nor vice of theirs—they become capitalists through politically created laws of inheritance.
The legal right to own privately the industrial foundations of society must be destroyed, legally. If the capitalists should become anarchists and illegally resist legal methods they could not reasonably object to having their own laws against anarchists applied to themselves vigorously.
Of course it is true that the capitalists fleece the workers of surplus value all the time, and many of the capitalists are malignant and cruel toward the workers and by a thousand persecutions invite their own personal destruction. Some of the capitalists have destroyed themselves, have committed suicide, to escape the disgrace of their crimes. Some capitalists are now in the penitentiary; many more capitalists should be in the penitentiary—as many of their own class confess; a far larger number of capitalists, if the laws were enforced, would promptly leave the country to keep out of the penitentiary—some have done so; and a large number of capitalists are also bribing juries and prosecuting attorneys in order to avoid the penitentiary; many prominent business men, trust magnates, have had the anti-trust law changed to enable them to more easily avoid the penitentiary—so President Taft said in Columbus, Ohio, August 19, 1907.[[318]]
And the capitalist class outrage the working class in a thousand ways. This is all true. The multitude of capitalist outrages are sufficient to provoke revenge. But we do not seek revenge. Revenge is not fine. Revenge is not noble. Moreover we cannot escape war by means of revenge, and, still more important, rich men and women are not a form of society. They are members of society and they behave naturally—under the circumstances; that is, being a ruling class in a class-form society, they behave as masters.
Capitalism as a form of society must be destroyed.