On the Workers’ Awakening 1911

The Worker’s Awakening

For centuries the workers of the world have bowed their necks to the yoke of slavery in one form or another. They have plodded wearily along the pathway of existence bearing the burdens of civilization upon their slavish backs and always subject to the masters’ lash if, perchance, they faltered in the task. Usually their submission has been of the stupid, sullen kind that will not allow of its victim rising above the level of the horse or ass that balks in harness when the burden becomes unbearable, instead of dumping the load and kicking the driver to smithereens. Evidence, however, is by no means lacking to show that a change is coming over the spirit of the workingman’s dream. He is evidently awakening to at least some sort of a comprehension of the wrongs perpetrated upon him by those who have set themselves, in authority to rule over him. He is beyond question cultivating a healthy determination to do something more drastic than merely to balk in harness and patiently submit to the lash being applied to his quivering flesh.

It is particularly noticeable that in the event of a strike, at least of any proportions, there is an ever-increasing sentiment finding expression for something entirely outside of and away from the mere matter of an increase in wages or more tolerable conditions of slavery in general. The determination to end the wage system by the complete overthrow of the rule of capital each day finds a more clear expression. Even the careless observer of passing events can scarce fail to notice it.

Time was, and not many years since, when it was almost as much as one’s life was worth to apply the term slaves to a bunch of workingmen. It is now quite the common thing for them so to designate themselves. This realization of their status under capitalist civilization is one of the most cheering signs of the times. It affords most convincing evidence of an awakening of labor that portends no end of trouble for the sleek, well-fed pirates and swashbucklers that constitute the present ruling class. At least no end of trouble until the sceptre of power has been stripped from their bloody hands and the reign of capital brought to an inglorious finish.

Everywhere the workers are turning their attention more and more to the conquest of the capitalist state. They are recognizing the state to be the sole bulwark of capitalist property. They see in it, and correctly, too, the instrument by means of which the capitalists maintain their title of ownership in the means of production and their consequent power to rule and rob the working class.

The determination of the workers to conquer the state and use its organized powers for the purpose of striking the fetters of wage slavery from their limbs by the abolition of capitalist property, marks the awakening of labor. Fully aroused to the necessity of action in its own behalf the working class will speedily solve the problem of what to do with the resources of the earth and the instruments of production so as to admit of human society moving forward to a saner and more decent civilization.

Capitalist civilization is today rotten to the core. The chronicle of daily events is but a disgusting story of vice, crime, corruption, graft, chicanery, pollution and fraud unspeakable. A slave civilization, it cannot rise above the level of that from which it springs. It is up to the slave to break his chains and by so doing relegate to oblivion the most hypocritical and vulgar ruling class that has ever cursed the earth with its presence.

The proletarian battalions are marshalling for the fray. Labor is awakening to the task in hand. In the conquest of the state by the proletariat and the use of its powers to abolish capital and the wage slavery from which it sucks its sustenance, lies the hope of the future.

And the proletariat is awakening. Speed the day of its triumph.

K.