I might go on indefinitely citing the words of prominent Socialists who have preached Marx’s doctrine of class hatred; but, as the whole story is summed up by our own “Rev.” George D. Herron, I shall (as a final example) permit him to tell us what the class-struggle means to the Socialists. He says:
“There are no words that can make this fact hideous and ghastly enough, or vivid and revolutionary enough—the fact that society and its institutions are organized for the purpose of enabling some people to live off of other people, the few to live off the many. There is no language realistic enough, or possessed of sufficient integrity, to lay bare the chasm between the class that works and the class that reaps the fruit of that work; between the class that is grist for the great world-mill of economic might and the class that harvests that grist. And until the working class becomes conscious of itself as the only class that has a right to be, until the worker understands that he is exploited and bound by the power which his own unpaid labor places in the hands that exploit and bind him ... our dreams and schemes of a common good or better society are but philistine utopias, our social and industrial reforms but self-deceit, and our weapons but the shadows of stupidity and hypocrisy” (“From Revolution to Revolution,” p. 3).
Now, John, as a matter of fact, have you in your experience as a working man ever run across the class struggle as Socialists define it?
I have put this question to scores of workers and the answer has always been the same. Not one of them, unless he happened to be a red-card Socialist who took the “class struggle” on faith, has ever found the class-consciousness out of which the revolution is to generate.
I do not deny that there is such a factor as class-interest in the industrial world. We see this interest exhibited in the industrial struggles that are almost daily taking place. The labor organizations are evidence of the existence of a class interest, but, beyond this, there is no class consciousness other than that which is incited by the Socialist agitators in the hope that they may tempt the worker to deeds of violence.
Think of it, John! The Socialist agitator must know, if he has even ordinary common sense, that the worker is not entitled to the whole product of labor—that it is not labor that finally fixes the value of a commodity. Yet, basing his arguments upon this self-evident fallacy, he calls upon the workers to unite and overthrow the present industrial system that they may take back from their employers the capital “of which they have been robbed.”
Nor will any real Socialist deny that this is the purpose of their propaganda. Even Hyndman, who is anything but a rank revolutionist, said in his celebrated debate, “Will Socialism Benefit the English People?”: “We are accused of preaching discontent and stirring up actual conflict. We do preach discontent, and we mean, if we can, to stir up actual conflict.”
After this frank admission you will probably not be surprised to read Jack London’s declaration of war:
“We intend nothing less than to destroy existing society and to take the whole world. If the law of the land permits, we fight for this end peaceably, at the ballot box. If the law of the land does not permit the peaceful destruction of society, and if we have force meted out to us, we resort to force ourselves. In Russia the Revolutionists kill the officers of the Government. I am a Revolutionist.”
And Harry Quelch, in Justice (October 21, 1893), voiced just as crude an expression of the Marxian “gospel of hate”: