The situation, the “lay of the land,” must be clearly seen by every member of the working class who wishes to help himself and his fellow workers avoid the vicious sacrifice of the working class by the capitalist class.

In Chapter Ten of this book the unsocial nature of the present form and structure of society is explained more fundamentally; but just here notice the clash of class interests in a war. War is a “good thing” for one class and war is simply hell for the other class.

Who want war?—What for?

Who declare war?—What for?

Who fight the wars?—What for?

Get these questions straight in your mind. First study the Situation; then the Explanation. Now for the Situation. Here it is:

Capitalists—“Captains of Industry”—“Leading Citizens”:—

“We want war.

“Mr. Wage-Earner, it is none of your business why we business men want war. You are impudent even to inquire about such things. Little boys and working men should be seen and not heard. You poor deluded wage-earner, you just keep right on working and sweating till we have you ordered to the front.

“Ha, ha, when we business men want a war we have a war—whether the working people like it or don’t like it. We just show them some bright-colored calico and urge them to follow the flag. Then they promptly get ‘behind the gun’ (also in front of the gun). They like it all right—we have ’em taught to like it.

“They are so easy.”

“We declare war.

“Mr. Wage-Earner, don’t you ask any impertinent questions about why we statesmen declare war. That’s our business. Attend to your own business—working—just working and sweating—till we statesmen order you to the front and ‘sic’ you on some other working people somewhere. When we conclude to declare war, we don’t consult the working men’s wishes. We simply don’t have to.

“They are so easy.”

Working Class Brothers—Off for the Front—To Kill “the Enemy,” Their Working Class Brothers:

“We fight the wars.

“Friend, please don’t ask us to explain why we fight the wars. We really do not know why we fight the wars. We modern wage-earners do just as the ancient chattel slaves and serfs did. We meekly do as we are told to do by the ‘best people.’ The sleek, glossy folks tell us to ‘rush to the front’—so we meekly march right to the front and blaze away. We furnish the tears, blood, cripples and corpses. We are dead easy—and we don’t understand it at all. Of course, we don’t like to shoot and bayonet one another. It seems so strange to us that the working men should always be ordered to shoot working men;—but our ‘betters,’ our ‘social superiors,’ the ‘men with the brains,’ tell us to ‘show the stuff that is in us’—so it must be all right. Great business men tell us frequently, ‘What this country needs is confidence.’ Well, we working people have the confidence—also the blisters and the lemons and the cold lead.

“We are so easy.”

THE EXPLANATION.^[10]

(A)—Capitalists want war—because—

War sends up prices—of most things.

War stimulates business—makes business brisk;—the more blood the more business.

War means more investments and more profits;—the more blood the more bonds, more interest; more land and more rent;—more unearned income.

War helps solve the problem of the unemployed. Simply have the surplus workers go into a big field and kill themselves off—butcher one another. It is so simple and easy.

War makes the working people clap their hands and yell so loudly they can’t think, and as long as the working people don’t think, it is easy to keep the bridles and saddles on them. It is surely a thoughtful scheme;—really, it is successful.

War—to advocate war, sometimes makes newspapers vastly more popular and therefore more profitable; for recent example, the Hearst papers for the Cuban war and the English jingo papers in the Boer war.^[11]

War makes a larger home market for toys; that is, for fifes and drums with which the working people excite one another and get themselves into a butchering mood,—“ready to die for their homes and country,” the United States, for example, in which far more than half of all the people have no homes of their own and live in rented houses, and more than one-eighth of all the people live in mortgaged homes,^[12] and in which nearly all of the working class are kept so poor that they can’t even have cream—real cream and plenty of it—for their cheap coffee. The fife and drum and some patriotic wind stampede the working class easily.

“A nod from a lord is a breakfast for a fool.”

War—you see in a war soldiers produce nothing, but they consume and destroy vast quantities of many things. Thus soldiers in war create a larger market—though they create nothing whatever for that market. This is fine for those capitalists whose puny souls can hope and plan for nothing higher than more markets—and thus have more opportunity to sweat more wage-earners simply in order to make more profits. Funerals look good to the coffin trust and the undertaker, and war looks good to the capitalist class.

War—PREPARATION for war on the huge scale of the present day—furnishes a market for an enormous amount of commodities for sale by the capitalist class, such as steel, clothing, leather products, lumber, food products, horses, and the like. True, these things are worse than wasted; but just as the capitalist class are willing to destroy part of the coffee crop—in Brazil, for example—in order to keep up the price for profit’s sake, so also are the capitalist class willing to fan the flames of war and urge “preparation for war,” vast and senseless “preparation for war,” in order to have a market into which to dump at a profit immense stores of commodities.

“There is money in it.”

War is a means of opening up or protecting, for modern capitalistic exploitation, new territory, such as Egypt, Algeria, Madagascar, South Africa, India, Alaska, The Philippines, Borneo, Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, China, Korea.

United States Senator A. J. Beveredge puts the matter thus:^[13]

“Every progressive nation in Europe today is seeking new lands to colonize and governments to administer.”

J. H. Rose:^[14]

“In short, the crystallization of national existence at home has necessitated the eager exploitation of new lands which forms so noteworthy a feature of the life of today.”

Thus John Jay:^[15]

“It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it.”

Alexander Hamilton sneers thus at the windy blood-for-profit statesmen:^[16]

“Has commerce hitherto done anything more than change the objects of war? Is not the love of wealth as domineering and enterprising a passion as that of power or glory? Have not there been as many wars founded upon commercial motives since that has become the prevailing system of nations as were before occasioned by the cupidity of territory or dominion? Has not the spirit of commerce, in many instances, administered new incentives to the appetite, both for the one and for the other?”

Professor Simon N. Patten (University of Pennsylvania) states the case bluntly:^[17]

“Most nations have been formed by conquest, and have therefore started with a dominant and a subject class. The former seize the surplus, and force the latter to work for a bare minimum.”

The New York World is commendably frank concerning this matter:^[18]

“Commerce and conquest have always been the main causes of war. Back of most slogans of strife has ever been the commercial watchword—‘trade follows the flag.’”

As illustrations of wars due to economic causes, The World mentions the wars of Venice and Genoa, The Crusades, our French-and-Indian-War, the American Revolutionary War, and the American Civil War.

General Fred D. Grant, of the United States Army, threw this into the teeth of the lard-and-tallow magnates:^[19]

“It is your statesmen and your people that create wars. First the people become irritated, generally through some commercial transaction. The statesmen then take hold of the matter and they compromise, or try to, if the nations are nearly equal. If they are not nearly equal the stronger one slaps the weaker one in the face and the soldier is then called in to settle the matter.”

War tightens the grip of the industrial ruling class on the working class at home and all over the world.

War—mark this—war absolutely concentrates public attention upon one thing, the war, the events of the battlefield. This gives the crafty capitalists a perfect opportunity to sneak, to do things in the dark, while the people are “not looking,” opportunity to slip into city council chambers, state legislatures and national legislatures, and there get “good things”—charters, contracts, franchises and other profitable privileges.

Here is the substance of the matter:

Under capitalism the worker’s consuming power is arbitrarily restricted. Under a CLASS-labor system the worker’s life is always arbitrarily repressed, the worker is FORCED TO PRODUCE MORE THAN HE IS PERMITTED TO CONSUME, leaving a SURPLUS for the ruling class. Under chattel slavery, of course, the slave’s life was arbitrarily restricted by his master. The chattel slave was a human animal used to produce his “keep”—and a surplus. Of course you see that—don’t you? Under serfdom the serf’s life was arbitrarily restricted by his landlord-and-master. The serf was a human animal used to produce his “keep”—and a surplus. That’s easy to see, isn’t it? And now under capitalism the wage-earner’s life is arbitrarily restricted, limited, by his employer-master who allows the wage-earner a reward called wages. The wage-earner is used as a human animal to produce his “keep”—a living for himself and his family—and a surplus.

Notice: wages will not buy plenty of excellent food. Wages will not buy plenty of good clothing. Wages will not buy plenty of thoroughly good shelter. Wages will not buy plenty of high-grade furniture. Though the wage-earner is able and willing to produce and does produce all these things abundantly, yet his wages will not permit him to consume these things abundantly. Wages will not buy as much value as wage-paid labor produces.

Thus there is a surplus.

If you will think about this a moment (if you will think) you will understand how it is that a glossy, well-fed employer often smilingly asserts that “there is prosperity—times are good—no cause for complaint,” and so forth—even tho’ millions of the poor are in sore want. You see he can smile as gently and fraternally as a hyena—he feels good; he can smile as long as there is that surplus. That’s his. It’s lovely—for him.

Surplus—fascinating surplus.

Surplus—for “our very best people.”

“... As soon [in the evolution of human industry] as the amount produced began at all to exceed the immediate requirements of life, the struggle commenced for the possession of the surplus. The methods employed were as varied as the human mind was fertile.”^[20]

Not alone chattel slaves and serfs, but wage-slaves also, are used simply, only, always, as domesticated human animals to produce a surplus for their masters.

Slavery was a surplus game.

Serfdom was a surplus game.

Capitalism is also a surplus game.

By pinching, repressing, restricting the wage-earner’s life the capitalist employer skims off a surplus. By belittling the wage-earner’s life the employer increases his own life—with the surplus legally filched from the life of the wage-earner.

The wage-worker, under capitalism, is forced by the lash of threatening starvation, forced by the fear of the bayonet, forced by the threat of the injunction court—is forced to produce a surplus.

Besides producing the equivalent of his wages and all other necessary expenses of production the worker is compelled to toil on for weary hours producing for his capitalist employer THIS SURPLUS. (See Note, end of present Chapter.)

This surplus is the sacred wafer of the capitalist.

This surplus is the capitalist’s heart’s desire.

This surplus is the lode-stone, the purpose, the one and only true god of the capitalist class.

With this surplus the capitalist pays the capitalist’s “other expenses,” and also pays political party campaign expenses, bribes city councils, state and national legislatures, courts, mayors, governors, and presidents—and precinct captains.

With this surplus the capitalist buys fine wine, beautiful automobiles, yachts, opera boxes, and homes—“and so forth.”

With this surplus the capitalist pets and protects his parasitic favorites, male and female.

This sacred surplus.

Sweet and juicy surplus, bubbling, bubbling, ever bubbling up from the well-springs of capitalism—that is, from certain “sacred” property rights, the right to own PRIVATELY the industrial FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIETY.

Surplus—stolen life—by means of the wage-system legally pumped from the veins of the wage-paid toilers.

Surplus.

Let that word sink deep into your mind.

Fasten your eye upon that surplus.

Now, notice carefully:

First—Part of this surplus the capitalists at present consume personally;

Second—Part of this surplus the capitalists invest profitably;

Third—For a part of this surplus a foreign market must be found. Even tho’ millions of honest workers whose labor produced this surplus, even tho’ these and millions of their wives and children starve and shiver for the use of this surplus—still part of this surplus must be shipped out of the country. For the part of the surplus which the capitalist class do not consume personally and cannot invest profitably—for that part of the surplus a foreign market must be had tho’ millions suffer and sicken for higher WAGES WITH WHICH TO BUY that surplus which is being shipped abroad. Because your wages will not permit you to buy and enjoy even that part of the surplus, a foreign market must be found and defended.

And now we come to the bayonet and the Gatling gun—what they are for.

Commit to memory and discuss with your fellow workers the following:

Capitalists want soldiers, marines, militia, cossacks, Pinkertons, “coal-and-iron police,” and so forth—chiefly for THREE general purposes:

First: To hold down the wage-earners and force them to consent to produce a surplus,—that is, more than their wages will buy;—or, in other words, to force them to consent to produce far more than they are permitted to consume. If the employer can’t get a palavering, lying prostitute to wheedle the workers to consent—well, there’s the bayonet. See that?

Second: To open up foreign markets for that part of the surplus which the workers are not permitted to consume and the capitalists do not consume personally or invest profitably;

Third: To defend the foreign markets for this part of the surplus.

Professor. T. N. Carver (Department of Political Economy, Harvard University) states the case perfectly:^[21]

“While competition is absent, commerce is indeed a bond of peace and good will between those who sell in return. But the moment that two nations embark extensively in the same line of industry, that moment commerce becomes a sword, dividing and setting at enmity those who are rivals for the same markets.... The prosperity of one is the other’s destruction. Such nations stand to each other as two Indian tribes where there is but game enough for one.”

Thus commerce develops into militarism.

A protective tariff wall is evidence and confession of the existence of embarrassing national surpluses of products.

The capitalist employer does not wish the wage-earners to get such things into their minds.

“Don’t say a word,” caution the capitalists,—“the workers can’t see the point at all. Ha, ha,—all they want is a job. How meek they are. How lamblike.... Just suppose they should wake up.... Here! you flunkies, you bribed lecturers, orators and editors, keep busy. Keep right on talking to the working people. Tell the working class to be satisfied and humble and contented; preach to them that it will be all right in the ‘sweet bye and bye.’ Oh, ha, ha, ha—all right for the workers ‘in the end.’ Don’t tell them which end. Tell the workers that ‘something will turn up, sometime—sure.’ Tell them to be ‘patient and hopeful,’ to ‘hope for a home over there.’ (See Chapter Eleven.)

“It is a ‘cinch.’

“If the workers go on strike to get a small thin slice of the surplus—why, we CAPITALISTS have the militia, we capitalists have police, we capitalists have the cossacks, we capitalists have the mounted State guards, we capitalists have the regular troops and marines, and we capitalists also have the injunction courts and jails and ‘bull-pens,’—we capitalists have all this armed, bribed outfit to help us starve the workers back to their jobs.

“We have a ‘sure thing.’

“Lie low. Keep quiet.

“Let no one speak to the workers about this matter of the surplus. The worker who sees that beautiful thing called surplus, ceases to be a tame, blind thing, a humble lump, contented with only part of the product of his labor.... But whatever happens—we business men control the powers of government—and that gives us the use of all the judges in gowns and all the armed men in khaki we need to defend our surplus game. A meek, satisfied, contented wage-earner is such a useful animal—just as satisfactory as a chattel slave. Like the slave, he’s willing to produce a surplus. When he objects we have him whipped and kicked—with a policeman’s club or a bayonet.”

Discuss with your fellow-workers this also:—

Armed men, MORE AND MORE ARMED MEN, must be had at once for a new and special reason. A new danger is now growing vast and dark,—like an increasing storm. The army of the unemployed—hungry, insulted and angry, not permitted to work, not permitted to produce, not permitted to enjoy, not even permitted to beg,—this army of eager, disgusted, angry men and women are looking through the masters’ palace windows, where the masters and their pets feast on good things and sneer at the unemployed. With modern machinery, modern methods, modern knowledge, and modern skill the workers can produce vast surpluses so rapidly that the capitalists can’t dispose of it all promptly either in home markets or foreign markets; and thus cannot—dare not—employ all the workers all the time all the workers are willing to work. Thus some factories are run part time, some are run reduced force, and thus millions of willing workers are snubbed at the mill, snubbed at the mine, and snubbed at the factory door where they coax for permission to serve society by producing useful things. Millions in danger of losing their jobs, millions working part time, millions with wages reduced, millions out of work—millions—these millions are growing restless, fretful, thoughtful; the capitalist fears this meek fretfulness and thoughtfulness will grow into a vast, loud, BOLD ROAR OF PROTEST-AND-DEMAND BY THE WORKING CLASS.

Therefore,

Capitalists want more military legislation—and get it.

Capitalists want the strongest, healthiest jobless men to join the militia and the army and be ready to crush the other jobless men, ready to thrust bayonets into the rag-covered breasts of their weaker brothers if they should become loudly desperate with hunger.

Therefore,

Congress in 1907–08, legislating, as usual, in the service of the capitalist class, logically, naturally, obediently, still further developed the armed guard—the militia, the army and the navy—the fighting machine, the fist of the capitalist class. In March, 1908, the United States Government suddenly opened up many extra recruiting stations in New York City—in the open air in the public parks, where tens of thousands of jobless, discouraged, hungry men were to be found. The recruiting officers’ chief argument was “plenty of good food and clothing and not much to do.”^[22]

Capitalists want working class militiamen and soldiers, in order also to keep them so flattered and excited about “protecting property” that they won’t notice the fact that the armed defenders of property have no property of their own to protect.

It is so simple and easy.

Capitalists do indeed want war and military servants—but the capitalists are too shrewd, too self-respecting, too proud to expose their own well-fed glossy bodies to the modern butchering machinery. In time of war or “labor troubles” these “prominent citizens” stay at home, eat fine food, wear good clothes, sleep in warm dreamy beds—and secretly laugh at the poor hoodwinked fellows on the firing line eating “hard-tack”;—they stay at home and plan for more profits—ever more profits from the increasing surplus.

Capitalists band together and stand together. Capitalists are CLASS loyal. The capitalist class even hire working-class men to defend the capitalist class with rifles; shrewdly the employers confuse and hire the working class to get “behind the gun” to murder the working class in front of the gun.

(B)—The politicians declare war:

Because the capitalists want war.

The politicians are either capitalists themselves or the political lackeys of the capitalists; and these ignoble flunkies take their pay in offices and opportunities to get graft. The capitalists pay the campaign expenses of their political flunkies, and, of course, whenever the capitalists want war their political flunkey prostitutes declare war.^[23] After the war, on great public occasions, the politicians serve up some oratorically noisy nonsense to the widows and orphans and the poor old broken-down veterans about the “glory” of the war—about the grandeur of slaughtering and being slaughtered. Right here is where the fun comes in for the politicians, and sometimes for some ministers,—in seeing an opera-houseful or a groveful of working men clap their hands together and yell when the politicians, or some ministers, sometimes, whoop and yawp and tell the working class all about the glory and grandeur of war. No wonder the politicians secretly laugh. How stupidly ridiculous!

The glory of brothers butchering and being butchered—by themselves!

To “declare war” makes statesmen and rulers popular. In our own country “war” presidents, “war” governors, “war” congressmen, are almost invariably re-elected.

“The temptations of party politicians are of many kinds.... The worst is the temptation to war.... Many wars have been begun or have been prolonged in order to consolidate a dynasty or a party; in order to give it popularity or at least to save it from unpopularity; in order to divert the minds of men from internal questions which have become embarrassing, or to efface the memory of past quarrels, mistakes or crimes. Experience unfortunately shows only too clearly how the combative passion can be aroused and how much popularity can be gained from a successful war.”^[24]

Politicians do not join the militia and the army for actual service on the firing line—oh, no! No, thank you. They pass laws “to make the service attractive”—but they are so very careful not to let the attractions attract them.

The fact is, my friend, the “cold shoulder” from superior officers, and cold victuals, cold tents, cold lead, cold steel, and a puny fifteen or twenty dollars per month for murdering and being murdered—and the cold, cold ground for their own cold corpses—with infinite heartache, sighs, sobs, tears, and loneliness for their own dear ones—these things have no attraction for the shrewd men who profit by war and the crafty men who declare war.

Capitalist statesmen—that is, small men with big manners—politicians of the capitalist class, politicians financed by and for the capitalist class—these all band together, stand together. The capitalist “reformer” always stands for CAPITALISM—tho’ he is willing to spray it heavily with perfume. These are CLASS loyal. They manipulate all the powers of government—including the department of war—in defence of the capitalist CLASS. They even hire working men—with rifles.

(C)—The working men fight the war:

Because they are meek and modest and humble and docile, and are always gullibly ready to obediently do whatever their crafty political and industrial masters order them to do. So, whenever the capitalists want war and the politicians declare war, the flimflammed, bamboozled working man straps on a knapsack, shoulders a rifle (or takes a policeman’s club), kisses his wife and children good-bye, and marches away to fight a war he didn’t want, a war he didn’t declare, a war that belittles and wrongs him by injuring his class,—and marches away to butcher other working men whom he doesn’t know and against whom he has no quarrel. He yells, kills, and slaughters—because—simply because—because—some crafty crooks, called “prominent people,” tell him to do so. He screams and gets slain, he yells and gets slaughtered—simply because he does not understand the sly, devilish trick that is thus being played upon him and his class. Young working men are shrewdly flattered into joining the militia and the army in order to help the capitalist class force the working class to keep still and starve; or accept cheap food, cheap clothing, cheap shelter and cheap furniture as all of their share for all their work for all their lives.

Suppose the working man has a son in the local militia company, and suppose Mr. Workingman goes out on strike for two or three more nickels per day with which to buy better food for the young militiaman’s own mother and his little brothers and sisters. This young man in the militia company can be ordered to shoot or bayonet his own father who, on strike, is struggling for a few cents more with which to buy better food for the humble mother and hungry little brothers and sisters—if the father on strike doesn’t keep quiet and remain docile while the local industrial masters starve him back to his old job at his old wages. The capitalist holds the whip of hunger over the working class father’s back, and the working class son holds a rifle at his own father’s breast. The father must surrender. Thus the young militiaman wrongs his own class, outrages his own father, helps humble his own little brothers and sisters, and spits in his own mother’s face.

The war is the class war.

The militiamen and policemen are local soldiers ready for orders to shoot their neighbors, friends and relatives in the struggle for existence. In the industrial civil war the capitalist class starve, seduce and bribe the working class to fight BOTH SIDES OF THE BATTLES.

The rulers rule. They think—and win BY THINKING.

Think it over, young man. Be loyal to your own father and mother and your own brothers and sisters—and your own class. Be class loyal.

The working class themselves must save the working class.

Read Chapter Ten: “Now, What Shall We Do About It?”

Note: It is of the greatest importance that the working class reader should learn what his employer does not wish to have him learn concerning value, surplus value, rate of surplus value, profit, rate of profit, profit to capitalist class, profit to individual capitalist employer, division of the spoils of exploitation among capitalists, etc., etc. Mr. Joseph E. Cohen’s small book, Socialism for Students, is a model of clearness for the reader who is too busy to read big books and yet wishes to inform himself accurately on the secrets of this legalized robbery. This book (published by Charles H. Kerr and Company, Chicago) is just what a busy worker needs in making a beginning in those economic and sociological studies which will give him a large outlook upon the world and a deep inlook into the mainsprings of human society.