On the Capitalist State 1911

The Sole Instrument by Means of Which the Present Ruling Class Maintains Its Economic Dominion Over the Working Class and Gathers Rich Profits From Its Exploitation

In their struggles against the exactions of their employers, many workingmen are prone to overlook one point of vantage possessed by employers, the possession of which renders their position invulnerable against all attacks made upon them in the field of industry. This point of vantage is the State. True it is that the State had its inception in the needs of a ruling class. It was born and has grown to its present maturity, as the instrument whereby a ruling class could hold in subjection those over whom it desired to exercise authority. It is a means of representation and subjugation. It is an Institution inconceivable except in a society based upon slavery in some form or other.

The present State is essentially the instrument or means whereby capitalist property maintains its sway and enforces its scheme of rapine and robbery upon its working class victims. It is only by and through the State that the enslavement of labor can be maintained and enforced. So long as the State remains in control of the capitalists, it stands to reason that it will be used solely for the purpose of conserving the interests of that class in human society, by holding the workers in subjection to that exploitation from which all profits arise.

The State is not, as so many suppose, an impartial something that stands between warring individuals as classes in human society for the purpose of preventing them from cutting each other’s throats. It is merely an expression of organized force to be used by the individual or class that may be in possession of it in such manner as may best conserve his or their interests. Every act of the State is determined by the economic interests of he or they who are, for the time being, in control of its machinery and powers. An excellent illustration of this was afforded a few years since in the persecution of the officials of the Western Federation of Miners. All the powers of the State were used to effect the murder of men who had dared to expend their energy along the lines of a labor movement that seriously threatened the right of Capital to rule and rob. Long established forms of law and methods of procedure were thrown to the winds and brute force brazenly resorted to for the accomplishment of the end in view. That the contemplated murder was not carried out was undoubtedly due to the fact that the interests behind the scheme were held back through fear of such uprising of labor as might sweep the rule of Capital into oblivion. Another equally splendid illustration of the vicious class character of the modern State is afforded in the seizure and imprisonment of the McNamara Brothers. That this is but another attempt to effect the legal murder of men in the Labor movement whose activities are along lines considered dangerous by ruling class interest, must be patent to any one who cares to follow the proceedings of the case. The same brazen disregard of all constitutional rights and previous established procedure; and the same coarse and brutal determination to accomplish the murder of the accused men is evidenced in the case of the McNamara’s as in that of the W. F. M. officials in 1907. The only thing that will prevent is [sic] consummation will be such an expression of working class solidarity as will make such a consummation too threateningly dangerous.

Be that as it may, however, the fact remains that so long as the capitalists retain undisturbed possession of the machinery of the State, the workers will be clubbed, beaten or shot into subjection whenever they dare to seriously threaten the right of their masters to exploit them to the last drop of juice in their bones.

Determined and persistent assault upon the political entrenchment of capital, i.e. the State by the working class will soon force its surrender. With this instrument in its possession the working class can turn its powers to its own purpose by relegating to the lumber room of history that form of property (capitalist) that today curses the earth by grinding the men, women and children of toll into profit for capitalists. It might even be considered a sort of just retribution were a victorious working class to deal out to the capitalists themselves some of the State medicine that these ruling class pirates now so lavishly bestow upon their enslaved and exploited victims.

The conquest of the capitalist State by the working class will open the gateway for the transformation of capitalist property into the collective, or common, property of the working class. This will mean the ending of the wage slave system, the last and most merciless and brutal slavery the world has ever known.

With the ending of the rule of capital, “the State will die out,” as Marx and Engels have said. With no longer a ruling class and a class to be ruled it would no longer have a function to perform. It would become obsolete.

In the struggle against the exactions of their masters the workers should never forget that the domination of industry by those masters is due solely to their control of the State. By means of that control they are always in a position whereby they can make and enforce all the rules of the industrial game. This is what is commonly termed the “Law.” That is why capitalists are masters and workers are slaves. Also that is why the slaves always get the worst of it in their struggles for better wages, hours and treatment in general.

But as the workers are many and capitalists few, it would seem that a word to the wise would be quite sufficient. But it is not.

E. T. K.