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Class Warrior: On Slavery and War. 1917

Class Warrior
On Slavery and War. 1917

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Notes

table of contents
  1. Cover
  2. Foreword
  3. Introduction
  4. Part I: Selected Writings of E. T. Kingsley
    1. 1900   On Washington State’s Primary Law
    2. 1903   On Political Action
      1. On Reformism and Electoral “Fusion”
      2. On Trade Unions
    3. 1905   On the Single Tax
      1. On a Journey to Seattle
    4. 1906   On the Arrest of US Labour Leaders and State Power
    5. 1908   On the Socialist Movement and Travels across Canada
    6. 1909   On War
      1. On the Vancouver Free Speech Fight
    7. 1911   On Property
      1. On the Workers’ Awakening
      2. On Economic Organization
      3. On the Capitalist State
    8. 1914   On the Causes of the First World War
    9. 1916   On Carnage
    10. 1917   On Slavery and War
      1. On War Finance
      2. On the War Effort
    11. 1918   On the Bolshevik Revolution
      1. On Capitalism Getting Rich Quick
    12. 1919   On Control of the State by the Working Class
      1. On Reconstruction
      2. On Collaboration between Labour and Capital
      3. On Wealth
      4. On Gold
      5. On Class War
      6. On the Paris Peace Conference
      7. On Capitalist Civilization
    13. 1921   On the 1921 Canadian Parliamentary Election
  5. Part II: Selected Speeches of E. T. Kingsley
    1. 1895   On the Aims of Socialism
    2. 1896   On Socialism and the Economy
    3. 1899   On American Imperialism in Cuba and the Philippines
    4. 1903   On the Labour Problem
      1. On the Political Organization of Miners in Cumberland
      2. On Stirring the Emotions of His Audience
      3. On Wages, Profit, and Capital
      4. On the 1903 British Columbia Election
    5. 1905   On the 1905 Russian Revolution
      1. On Workers and Rockefeller
      2. On the Mission of the Working Class
    6. 1906   On the Paris Commune
    7. 1908   On Labour and Its Economies
      1. On the Working Class Using Clubs If Necessary
      2. On Working-Class Political Power
    8. 1912   On the Vancouver Free Speech Fight
    9. 1913   On the Vancouver Island Miners’ Strike
    10. 1914   On the Komagata Maru Incident
    11. 1917   On Conscription
      1. On Working-Class Opposition to Conscription
      2. On Conscription and Wiping Out Ruling-Class Laws
      3. On the 1917 Conscription Election
    12. 1918   On the Formation of the Federated Labor Party
      1. On Laws
      2. On Reconstruction
      3. On the Armistice and Postwar Moment
      4. On Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War
    13. 1919   On Lenin and Trotsky
      1. On the Belfast General Strike, Unemployment, and the Postwar Challenge to Capitalism
      2. On the Bolshevik Revolution
      3. On the One Big Union
      4. On the Class Struggle
      5. On the Machine
      6. On Capitalism
      7. On the Defeat of the Winnipeg General Strike
      8. On the Machinery of Slavery
      9. On Civilization
    14. 1920   On Mechanization of Production
      1. On the Paris Commune
      2. On the Collapse of Civilization
      3. On the Bankruptcy of the Capitalist System
  6. Part III: The Genesis and Evolution of Slavery
    1. 1916   The Genesis and Evolution of Slavery: Showing How the Chattel Slaves of Pagan Times Have Been Transformed into the Capitalist Property of To-day
  7. Part IV: On the World Situation
    1. 1919   On the World Situation
  8. Appendix
  9. Kingsley’s Speeches
  10. Index

On Slavery and War 1917

Slavery, which consists of serving masters for masters’ profits, exists just as truly to-day as it did in the old times of the chattel slaves, and every war, from the earliest to the present, has arisen from quarrels between masters over plunder accruing from the robbing of slaves.

E. T. Kingsley

The following article by Kingsley appeared in the Sydney International Socialist in the midst of the First World War, one of many articles by Kingsley published in the Australian labour press during and after the war. The Australian labour press also regularly published the above quote from Kingsley, which is taken from a speech he delivered in Vancouver in 1917. Excerpts from that speech later appeared in part in the Adelaide Daily Herald in 1918, in the Darwin Northern Standard in the late 1920s, and in nine issues of the Brisbane Worker between 1927 and 1943.

The Evolution of the Slave

Exactly how slavery originated it is impossible to know. It came into being so long before the age of inscribed records that not even a tradition of its origin exists.

But, while we are in the dark as to how it originated, why it did so we may very easily surmise by merely examining into the motives that would impel one individual to enslave others. When we do this we immediately perceive that the one incentive to enslavement in the first place would be that the slave should provide or aid in providing for the wants of the masters. This is, of course, subject to the condition that the labor of the slave should produce more than sufficient to feed, clothe and shelter the slave himself. For so long as the labor of any individual did not produce any more than the keep of that individual there would be nothing left for the master, and there would therefore be no material advantage to enslaving him.

It was also necessary that the master should be in a position to compel the slave to work for him, and to surrender into his hands the products of his toil. Probably, in the most primitive stages enslavement was achieved by mere brute force, and the slaves prevented from escaping by means of armed guards, shackles, etc. Later, as society became more closely knit and slavery had become a regular institution, law, custom, and religion were invoked in aid of the masters. The slave was taught to accept servitude as his lot, and an attempt to escape became not only a crime, punishable in the world, but sin, involving sure and certain retribution in the next. Further, the ever widening monopolization of the earth and its resources by the masters, made ever more difficult the avoidance of slavery by the masses, who were held in subjection by means of the powers of government resting always in the hands of the masters, and by them ruthlessly used to crush any revolt.

The next step in the evolution of the slave was from the state of chattel slavery to that of serfdom, when he, from being the private property of a direct owner became indirectly but no less actually, the property of a land-owner by being attached to the land as a part and parcel of the domain. Here the condition of his servitude was that he was allotted a parcel of land to cultivate for his own use on condition that he cultivated also an adjoining parcel for the use of his lord. Escape in the majority of cases was out of the question, for there was no-whither to escape. This system of serfdom continued and flourished so long as agriculture remained the chief industry though, towards the last, serious in-roads upon its predominance were made by the growing activity of manufacture. It was given its death blow by the application of steam-power, which opened the way to the factory system. Industry after industry, such as spinning and weaving, was transferred from the farm to the factory, the farm industry being incapable of surviving the competition of the more economical factory. Despite the hostile legislation of the land owners, who yet held the reins of power, the laborers followed the industry, and finally the rule of the lords was broken and the serfs emancipated from the soil, in order that the over-growing demand of the factories for labor might be met.

But this emancipation was one of form rather than of fact. The slave was released from his master, and was free—to go and find one. A master he must have or die. Into the hands of that master he must, as of yore, surrender the product of his toil. Escape for him is more impossible than ever. Ownership now, not only of the earth and its resources, but of all the means of production, is monopolized by the master class. For them he must toil.

He is no longer sold bodily as a chattel, or with the land as an attachment to the soil. But he must now himself sell his labor power, his physical energy, for what it will fetch. To the product of his toil he has no more claim than had his forbears. Like them he receives but his keep. Worse than that, he receives it only when he can find a master; they were moderately sure of it for life.

As of old the powers of government rest in the hands of his masters and are, as of old, ruthlessly used against him.

E. T. Kingsley

—“The Evolution of the Slave,” Sydney International Socialist, 14 July 1917, 1. See also reprinted excerpts: “Socialist Shots,” Adelaide Daily Herald, 8 Feb. 1918, 5; Brisbane Worker, 5 Jan. 1927, 5 Sept. 1928, 31 Aug. 1932, 20 Dec. 1933, 12 Feb. 1935, 9 Feb. 1937, 19 July 1938, 5 Nov. 1940, 15 Feb. 1943; Darwin Northern Standard, 27 Nov. 1928, 14 Dec. 1928.

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