Quotation from: War of the Classes

Written by: Jack London


Starting on the assumption that society is at present in a state of
flux, Mr. Ghent sees it rapidly crystallizing into a status which
can best be described as something in the nature of a benevolent
feudalism. He laughs to scorn any immediate realization of the
Marxian dream, while Tolstoyan utopias and Kropotkinian communistic
unions of shop and farm are too wild to merit consideration. The
coming status which Mr. Ghent depicts is a class domination by the
capitalists. Labor will take its definite place as a dependent
class, living in a condition of machine servitude fairly analogous
to the land servitude of the Middle Ages. That is to say, labor
will be bound to the machine, though less harshly, in fashion
somewhat similar to that in which the earlier serf was bound to the
soil. As he says, "Bondage to the land was the basis of villeinage
in the old regime; bondage to the job will be the basis of
villeinage in the new."

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