9.

The Working Class and Revolutionary Action

In our day and generation there is only one class which can be depended upon for consistent revolutionary action. That class is the working class. Not because the working class is in its individual members better than other classes, but because it is the only class in the community which has nothing to hope from the maintenance of present conditions.

The onward march of capitalist society crushes the workers lower and lower in the mire, makes life more and more precarious for the toilers, and as a consequence confronts the manhood of labor with the grim alternative—either revolution to enable the workers to grasp the power of the state and so render possible the restoration to the laborer of the control of the means of existence, and thus a healthy, happy, human life, or else a lifetime of hard and degrading toil with the workhouse as a final reward.

The worker who realizes his class position is consistent throughout, and his consistency carries with it the destruction of modern capitalism and all the governments and institutions which maintain its rule.

Workers’ Republic, December 16, 1899