Quotation from: War of the Classes

Written by: Jack London


Once the crisis were past, the ruling class, still holding the curb
in order to make itself more secure, would proceed to readjust
things and to balance consumption with production. Having a
monopoly of the safe investments, the great masses of unremunerative
capital would be directed, not to the production of more surplus
value, but to the making of permanent improvements, which would give
employment to the people, and make them content with the new order
of things. Highways, parks, public buildings, monuments, could be
builded; nor would it be out of place to give better factories and
homes to the workers. Such in itself would be socialistic, save
that it would be done by the oligarchs, a class apart. With the
interest rate down to zero, and no field for the investment of
sporadic capital, savings among the people would utterly cease, and
old-age pensions be granted as a matter of course. It is also a
logical necessity of such a system that, when the population began
to press against the means of subsistence, (expansion being
impossible), the birth rate of the lower classes would be lessened.
Whether by their own initiative, or by the interference of the
rulers, it would have to be done, and it would be done. In other
words, the oligarchy would mean the capitalization of labor and the
enslavement of the whole population. But it would be a fairer,
juster form of slavery than any the world has yet seen. The per
capita wage and consumption would be increased, and, with a
stringent control of the birth rate, there is no reason why such a
country should not be so ruled through many generations.

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