Quotation from: War of the Classes

Written by: Jack London


The second great tenet of Socialism, itself a phase of the
materialistic conception of history, is the class struggle. In the
social struggle for existence, men are forced into classes. "The
history of all society thus far is the history of class strife." In
existing society the capitalist class exploits the working class,
the proletariat. The interests of the exploiter are not the
interests of the exploited. "Profits are legitimate," says the one.
"Profits are unpaid wages," replies the other, when he has become
conscious of his class, "therefore profits are robbery." The
capitalist enforces his profits because he is the legal owner of all
the means of production. He is the legal owner because he controls
the political machinery of society. The Socialist sets to work to
capture the political machinery, so that he may make illegal the
capitalist's ownership of the means of production, and make legal
his own ownership of the means of production. And it is this
struggle, between these two classes, upon which the world has at
last entered.

PREVIOUS GROUP HOME SITE HOME NEXT
Old Dominion University CS Dept
Designed by Joan A. Smith for the CRATE project
Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
Part of the CratePreservation Project
Change Tag: ~~ 0 ~~
Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.