On Class War 1919

The Class War Is Now On!

Civilization is synonymous with human slavery.

The civilized period began with the birth of slavery and that accursed infamy still remains as the cornerstone which the entire superstructure of civilization rests.

Upon the one hand stands the class masters and exploiters; the ruling class that governs the workers that it may rob them of the fruits of their labor, and rob them because it governs them.

Upon the other hand the working class, the producers of all wealth, driven like galley slaves to their tasks by the lash of necessity, and plundered of their products by the class that lives and thrives by rule and robbery.

For thousands of years the toilers of the world have been thus ruled and robbed, first as chattels, then as serfs and now as wage slaves, by the self-appointed rulers and ruffians who have forced the shackles of servitude upon them.

Government is now, as it always was, the instrument of the ruling class, the enginery of oppression and repression whereby the rulers and robbers maintain their stranglehold upon the workers and complete mastery over the products they bring forth.

It is the sole means whereby masters can retain their mastery, and slaves be held in leash for that exploitation out of which alone can be built and maintained the empire of pomp, magnificence and vulgar ceremony so dear to the ruling class heart and consoling to the ruling class conscience.

With its armies, navies, its police, parliaments, and its official staff of rogues and stool-pigeons from the great statesmen at the top to the lowest type of secret service sneak at the bottom, its terrific powers of oppression, repression and persecution are made to reach to the uttermost parts of the land, and from which no individual or fireside may escape.

With its absolute control of all legal means of education and the dissemination of information; with its control of all means of communication such as postal service, telegraph, cables, wireless, telephones, etc., it becomes a most deadly influence against the extension of human knowledge, and a most powerful factor in deepening the ignorance of human kind, through such dissemination of falsehoods and such appeals to prejudice as are well calculated to awaken to activity the baser passions of mankind.

Government is the very citadel and sole bulwark of class rule and power; it is the gun held at the breast of the victim while the robber goes through his pockets; it is supreme master of the field of industry from which is gathered the rich plunder that constitutes the boasted wealth and power of the class that now as truly rules and robs the slaves as did the chattel slave masters and feudal lords of old.

Government is master of the shop, the job, the slaves and the product of his toil, because government is the instrument, the servant, the agent, the orderly, the very ‘Rock of Ages’ of the ruling class, and without which it would not and could not be.

There is nothing in common between master and slave. There can be nothing in common between, them. There is no point upon which they can agree without sacrificing and destroying the interest of either one or the other. Their interests are diametrically opposed at all times and under all circumstances. The interest of the master is to hold the slave in subjection and rob him; the interest of the slave is to attain his freedom from such robbery. And there is no middle ground upon which they can meet.

Civilization all down through the ages has been but a thinly veiled civil war during times of so-called peace, and an open and unconcealed slaughter of slaves during times of war, the grand culmination of which occurred during the last four or five years in the grandest slaughter of the kind for the purpose of a ruling class holiday ever recorded.

Slave revolts there have been at intervals, during the civilized period, right down to the present time. These revolts have always been quelled by using loyal slaves to beat or shoot the rebels either into oblivion or submission. But out of the ruling class fury of the last four years, which resulted in the slaughter of millions of slaves, there has come a revolt that is not mere rebellion—but revolution. The exploited slaves of the earth are rising for the complete overthrow of the class that has for so long ruled and robbed them.

The last dynastic war has been fought; the last sacrificial offering of millions of slaves upon the altar of ruling class-fury has been recorded. The class war is now on throughout the earth. In Russia the blow has been struck and the capitalist and landlord abolished. The peasants and workmen are bringing order out of the chaos and misery that centuries of ruling class plunder and rapine have brought upon the land. The sorry remnants of the old brutal tyranny of class rule and robbery, that are left upon Russian soil, are maintained only by the bayonets of the western nations that attempt to camouflage their worse than Prussian autocracy by the flimsiest of hypocrisy and democratic pretense.

In Germany the same revolutionary uprising against the regime of slavery and plunder is slowly but surely forging on to victory. The capitalist and landlord robbers are doomed to extinction, as forces of plunder and rapine. The slaves will come into their own no matter what the cost. When Prussian militarism went down it pulled down the entire establishment, of exploitation, trade and commerce that rested upon it, and the victorious “Allies” now stand aghast at the ruin wrought, for by the same token their own precious establishments of similar import are tottering to destruction.

In all lands of Europe the ghost of revolution is knocking at the outer gates and there is fear and trembling within the ruling class camp. The slaves are becoming restless and the rulers have no comforting medicine to soothe their excitement. They are making ever more pressing demands upon their masters and the masters find it ever more and more impossible to comply. The ruling class establishment of the entire world has been well nigh wrecked by the fury and blast of the bloody and destructive storm of war, a war that brought to a swift, culmination all of the possibilities of impotence, for any other purpose than that of slaughter and devastation of a civilisation based upon the exploitation and torture of slaves by masters. It brought clearly to the vision of millions just what such a civilization really is, as well as the sole function and purpose of governments of a ruling class, a function expressed only in repression, slaughter and rapine.

And the ghost of revolution hovers over the scene here upon this western continent, affrighting the rulers by day and haunting their dreams by night. Never was there such alarm in the dovecote of ruling class democracy before. Never were the magicians of the mouth so busily engaged in verbal efforts to forefend the evil threatening the ruling class; never were the low stool-pigeons of authority more zealous in performing their nefarious task of safeguarding the interests of their masters and employers eavesdropping and peeking through keyholes. Never was the noble art of lying and the spreading of falsehood brought to such a high state of efficiency, as has now been attained by the paid liars of the press, pulpit and platform of capitalism, for the eminently worthy purpose of making the criminal ruling class appear white, while its now revolutionary victims are painted in the blackest of colours.

But it is of no use. The ghost, like, Banquo’s, will not down. The war bought forth the Nemesis of capitalism, the revolutionary proletariat of all lands. And nothing else could have come out of it, for the working class, the only useful part of human society, can no longer live under slavery. Its exploitation has become so intense, the efficiency of the mechanism of exploitation has become so great that neither masters nor slaves can longer continue it. The masters cannot dispose of the products except by war and that forces the entire establishment into irretrievable bankruptcy because war is nonproductive and capital cannot grow upon that which is solely destructive. War thus hastens the end. The slaves cannot live under perpetual war, because it will in time exterminate them. They can no longer exist under capitalism because it can no longer give them employment and insure them sufficient remuneration to sustain themselves and [their] families.

During war, while working people are killing each other by the thousands, capitalists are patriotically piling up wealth in figures, that in orders upon the future, beyond the dreams of avarice. They continue to exploit those who are not in uniform and they do it with the same degree of cheerfulness and aplomb that they feed the uniformed ones into the cannon’s mouth. They go “over the top” in their particular line as gaily and with an intense love of country, as the soldier in the trenches goes “over the top” for “liberty, democracy and the rights of small nations.”

The interests of capitalists are alike in all countries. Capital is international. The ousted capitalists and landlords of Russia have the heartfelt sympathy of all of their precious breed and ilk throughout the world. They are all blood of the same blood, and flesh of the same flesh. The aid that is now being given by the capitalist and landlord governments of western Europe and this continent to the monarchist, capitalist and landlord remnants of the Czarist regime, affords ample proof of the fact. Were it not for that aid and support, by bayonets and munitions, the peasants and workers regime of Russia would be swiftly completed over the entire country and the bloodthirsty and rapacious remnants of the old tyranny would be swept into oblivion where they properly belong.

As capital is international, so is labor international. The interests of labor are identical all over the earth. The workers are no less slaves in Britain, France, Italy, Canada and the United States, than they are in any other land, in spite of the loud-mouthed asseverations of “democracy” to the contrary notwithstanding. No matter whether they are exploited by capitalists of their own race and tongue, or by aliens, they are skinned to the quick with equal contempt for their squeals. They are as mercilessly ruled and robbed by their own countrymen as by any others!

An injury, to the workers of one land is an injury to the workers of all lands. A shot fired at the peasants and workers of Russia is a shot fired at the working class of the world, no matter if that shot be fired by a Canadian workingman in the king’s uniform, or a renegade Russian workingman under command of a Kolchak or other monarchist remnant who is struggling to reinstate the old regime. All workers are equally guilty in being used as tools to crush their fellow slaves into subjection, it matters not what uniform they wear or whose orders they obey.

It is up to the workers of all other lands, that is if they are worthy to become men, to make imperative demands upon their precious governing authorities to withdraw such troops as they may have in Russia at once, and leave the settlement of the internal affairs of that country to those who inhabit it. And the workers of all countries have upon occasion laid down their tools for far less worthy purposes than for the enforcement of such a demand.

It should not stop there. A similar and equally emphatic demand should be simultaneously made by the workers of all lands, that all troops should be withdrawn from other countries immediately, and that without exception. A halt should be called at once upon all such ruffianism as the occupation of any country by the uniformed conscripts or volunteers of another.

The class war is on, and all the talk of verbose magicians of reconciliation about bringing harmony and understanding to capital and labor is so much moonshine. Oil and water cannot mix. The elements of cohesion are not there. Neither can the slave and his master be reconciled. Their interests are always in opposition, no matter how much verbal oil may be poured upon the troubled waters. It is war to the knife and the knife to the hilt between them. There can be no peace until the slave is free, his shackles and the authority of his erstwhile master thrown into the discard of oblivion, never to be resurrected.

The class war centres around the control of the state, the rulers to maintain it for the purpose of perpetuating their rule and robbery of slaves; the latter to gain control of it for the purpose of spiking its guns as against the working class; and using its powers to effect the transformation of civilization and society from slavery to freedom. With such transformation completed the state, as a repressive and coercive force, will die out, being resolved merely into an administrative process of the common affairs of a free people, a people no longer exploited by rulers and ruling classes.

Let no misguided disciple of “One Big Union,” or other similar conception, delude himself into fancying that the hold of the ruling class can be broken without first stripping from its hands the control of that instrument (the state) solely by means of which it maintains its mastery over the working class and its products.

The class war is on. Line up, oh ye slaves, for the battle! Use the legal weapon of the franchise where and when ye still possess it. Where you have it not, struggle to get it. If that be denied you, then take whatever weapons the occasion may warrant and circumstances place within your reach.

But remember the class war is now.

E. T. Kingsley