Our study of human society leads us to the conclusion that it is composed of two classes – the working class and the capitalist class. Between the two there are groups and individuals that battle classification on a scientific basis. They are border line cases.
In the ranks of each of the two classes there are individuals that vary from the norm. We occasionally meet workers who have a few hundreds, or even a few thousands of dollars in the bank, or own a few shares of General Motors or Western Union stock. Such ownership does not make capitalists out of them, regardless of the fact that the things they own assume the status of capital by virtue of the interest or dividends that annually accrue. There are individuals in the capitalist class who work long hours in banks or factory offices without such exposure to toil forcing them over the divide into the domain of the workers.
Between the two classes, comprising modern society, the lines of demarcation are clearly drawn. One class owns the wealth of the world, without producing it, while the other class produces the wealth without owning it.
The working class is marked by the fact that its members own nothing in the way of social property, and have to sell their mental and physical energy in order to make a living. The capitalist class has complete control and ownership of the means of production and uses those things for the purpose of getting the profits upon which it lives.
The well defined and easily seen, material interests of each side makes of it a class, with common aims and objectives within it, and a hostile attitude, engendered by the opposition of interests, toward the other class. The conflict between the two factions expresses itself in the buying and selling of labor power, as well as in the attempt to control the processes of production and exchange.
In the conscious political battle to abolish Capitalism, and introduce Socialism, some means must be utilized in effecting the change. The Socialist method is the vote or ballot. History teaches us this method is revolutionary, scientific and effective.
The vote is not something recently devised and patented for the purpose of making changes in the social milieu. Its merits were recognized at an early period of human history. Before the discovery of the efficacy of the vote, brute force was resorted too in all affairs that custom could not decide.
In such contests the side with the greatest numbers was likely the victor providing the weapons and shield were equal. Instead of cracking each others heads with clubs, when an argument arose, they gradually learned that counting the heads was just as efficient, and obviated the migraine headaches the next morning. So the vote was born.
In modern society, where civilized custom prevails, the vote is invariably resorted to in order t translate thought and desire into action. The Socialist knows that the vote is not merely a token, or gesture, or means of measurement, or scrap of paper, but a potent and effective weapon providing, of course, that there is an educated, determined individual behind the vote.
The state is the centralized organized power of the capitalist class. In the interests of that class it performs a dual function – administers the property affairs of the various sections compromising the class, and takes whatever steps are considered necessary to keep the working class in order.
It is the latter coercive function of the state that concerns us here. It controls every department of the armed forces, all the way from the policemens club up to the colossal force of the atomic bomb. So long as the capitalist class is allowed to remain in control of those military, naval and aerial weapons there would be no chance of dispossessing the capitalists, or abolishing their system.
The primary move on the part of a revolutionary working class entails gaining control of the armed forces. As the state represents the warehouse, so the show window is congress, House of Commons, Reichstag, Storting or Dail, depending upon which section we examine. Those so called popular assemblies control the armed forces. Every bill presented, and every law passed, regarding every phase of army and navy expenditure, reduction, or increase, has to go through the parliamentary channels.
There is no possibility of the workers successfully engaging the capitalist class on the basis of brute force or violence. Did the capitalist means of combat solely of police clubs, then, we might organize workers’ battalions armed with the same weapons, and prepared by ten easy lessons in ju-jitsu, and give a good account of ourselves on the field of action.
But the tremendous and destructive nature of military and naval weapons in society today preclude the possibility of successful competition. Nor is it necessary to contemplate such a situation. Every representative in the halls of parliament is there through the vote of his constituents to work for the interests of the class which he represents.
There is nothing to prevent us taking the same steps in our interests. Nothing, that is, excepting the fact that we need an educated working class to accomplish the feat. Education is our primary necessity. Given a working class that understands the nature of Capitalism and Socialism, and the revolutionary action that is essential to change one into the other, we need have no fear concerning the weapon of emancipation – the vote.
J.A. McDonald
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