Jack London
International Socialist Review/May, 1914
THERE are 10,000,000 comrades in an organized, international, worldwide revolutionary movement. Here is a tremendous human force. It must be reckoned with. Here is power. And here is romance—romance so colossal as to be quite beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. These revolutionists are swayed by a great passion. They have a keen sense of personal right, much of reverence for humanity, but little reverence, if any at all, for the rule of the dead. They refuse to be ruled by the dead.
To the bourgeois mind, their unbelief in the dominant conventions of the established order is startling. They laugh to scorn the sweet ideals and dear moralities of bourgeois society. They intend to destroy bourgeois society with most of its sweet ideals and dear moralities, and chiefest among these are those that group themselves under such heads as private ownership of capital, survival of the fittest, and patriotism—even patriotism.
Such an army of revolution, 10,000,000 strong, is a thing to make rulers and ruling classes pause and consider. The cry of this army is: “No quarter! We want all that you possess. We will be content with nothing less than all that you possess. We want in our hands the reins of power and the destiny of mankind. Here are our hands. They are strong hands. We are going to take your governments, your palaces, and all your purpled ease away from you, and in that day you shall work for your bread even as the peasant in the field or the starved and runty clerk in your metropolises. Here are our hands. They are strong hands.”
Well may rulers and ruling classes pause and consider. This is revolution. And, further, these 10,000,000 men are not an army on paper. Their fighting strength in the field is 10,000,000. Today they cast 10,000,000 votes in the civilized countries of the world.
Yesterday they were not so strong. Tomorrow they will be still stronger. And they are fighters. They love peace. They are unafraid of war. They intend nothing less than to destroy existing society and to take possession of the whole world. If the law of the land permits, they fight for this end peaceably, at the ballot box. If the law of the land does not permit their peaceable destruction of society, and if they have force meted out to them, they resort to force themselves. They meet violence with violence.
The time has come for the revolution to demand consideration. It has fastened upon every civilized country in the world. As fast as a country becomes civilized, the revolution fastens upon it. With the introduction of the machine into China, Socialism was introduced. Socialism marched into the Philippines shoulder to shoulder with the American soldiers. The echoes of the last gun had scarcely died away when Socialist locals were forming in Cuba and Porto Rico.
One thing must be clearly understood. This is no spontaneous and vague uprising of a large mass of discontented and miserable people—a blind and instinctive recoil from hurt. On the contrary, the propaganda is intellectual, the movement is based upon economic necessity and is in line with social evolution; while the miserable people have not yet revolted. The revolutionist is no starved and diseased slave in the shambles at the bottom of the social pit, but is, in the main, a hearty, well-fed working man, who sees the shambles waiting for him and his children and declines to descend. The very miserable people are too helpless to help themselves. But they are being helped, and the day is not far distant when their numbers will go to swell the ranks of the revolutionists.
Another thing must be clearly understood. In spite of the fact that middle-class men and professional men are interested in the movement, it is nevertheless a distinctly working-class revolt. The world over, it is a working-class revolt. The workers of the world, as a class, are fighting the capitalists of the world, as a class.
The capitalist class has managed society, and its management has failed. And not only has it failed in its management, but it has failed deplorably, ignobly, horribly. The capitalist class had an opportunity such as was vouchsafed no previous ruling class in the history of the world. It broke away from the rule of the old feudal aristocracy and modern society. It mastered matter, organized the machinery of life, and made possible a wonderful era for mankind, wherein no creature should cry aloud because it had not enough to eat, and wherein for every child there would be opportunity for education, for intellectual and spiritual uplift. Matter being mastered, and the machinery of life organized, all this was possible. Here was the chance, God-given, and the capitalist class failed. It was blind and greedy. It prattled sweet ideals and dear moralities, rubbed its eyes not once nor ceased one whit in its greediness, and smashed down in a failure as tremendous only as was the opportunity it had ignored.
But all this is like so much cobwebs to the bourgeois mind. As it was blind in the past, it is blind now and cannot see nor understand.
The caveman, with his natural efficiency of 1, got enough to eat most of the time, and no caveman ever went hungry all the time. Also, he lived a healthy, open-air life, loafed and rested himself, and found plenty of time in which to exercise his imagination and invent gods. That is to say, he did not have to work all his waking moments in order to get enough to eat. The child of the caveman (and this is true of all the children of all savage peoples) had a childhood, and by that is meant a happy childhood of play and development.
Unlike the caveman, modern man cannot get food and shelter by working for it. Modern man has first to find the work, and in this he is often unsuccessful. The misery becomes acute. This acute misery is chronicled daily in the newspapers.
So fares modern man and the child of modern man in the United States, most prosperous and enlightened of all countries on earth.
Not since the day of the caveman has man’s efficiency for food-getting and shelter-getting diminished. It has increased a thousand-fold. Since the day of the caveman, matter has been mastered. The secrets of matter have been discovered. Its laws have been formulated. Wonderful artifices have been made, and marvelous inventions, all tending to increase tremendously man’s natural efficiency of 1 in every food-getting, shelter-getting exertion, in farming, mining, manufacturing, transportation, and communication. From the caveman to the hand workers of three generations ago, the increase in efficiency for food and shelter-getting has been very great. But in this day, by machinery, the efficiency of the hand worker of three generations ago has in turn been increased many times. Man’s efficiency for food and shelter-getting being increased a thousandfold over the efficiency of the caveman, then why is it that millions of modern men live more miserably than lived the caveman? This is the question the revolutionist asks, and he asks it of the managing class, the capitalist class. The capitalist class does not answer it. The capitalist class cannot answer it.
If modern man’s food and shelter-getting efficiency is a thousandfold greater than that of the caveman, why, then, are there 10,000,000 people in the United States today who are not properly sheltered and properly fed? If the child of the caveman did not have to work, why, then, today, in the United States, are 80,000 children working out their lives in the textile factories alone? If the child of the caveman did not have to work, why, then, today, in the United States, are there 1,752,187 child laborers?
It is a true count in the indictment. The capitalist class has mismanaged, is today mismanaging.
With the natural resources of the world, the machinery already invented, a rational organization of production and distribution, and an equally rational elimination of waste, the able-bodied workers would not have to labor more than two or three hours per day to feed everybody, clothe everybody, house everybody, educate everybody, and give a fair measure of little luxuries to everybody. There would be no more material want and wretchedness, no more children toiling out their lives, no more men and women and babes living like beasts and dying tike beasts. Not only would matter be mastered, but the machine would be mastered.
This was the opportunity vouchsafed the capitalist class. Less blindness on its part, less greediness and a rational management were all that was necessary. A wonderful era was possible for the human race. But the capitalist class failed to take advantage of this opportunity.
The revolution is a revolution of the working class. How can the capitalist class, in the minority, stem this tide of revolution? What has it to offer? What does it offer? Employers’ associations, injunctions, civil suits for plundering of the treasuries of the labor unions, clamor and combination for the open shop, bitter and shameless opposition to the eight-hour day, strong efforts to defeat all reform child-labor bills; graft in every municipal council, strong lobbies and bribery in every legislature for the purchase of capitalist legislation, bayonets, machine guns, policemen’s clubs, professional strike breakers, and armed Pinkertons—these are the things the capitalist class is dumping in front of the tide of revolution, as though, forsooth, to hold it back. No overthrown ruler or class in the past ever considered the revolution that overthrew it, and so with the capitalist class of today. Instead of compromising, instead of lengthening its lease of life by conciliation and by removal of some of the harsher oppressions of the working class, it antagonizes the working class, drives the working class into revolution.
The revolution is a fact. It is here now. Ten million revolutionists, organized, working day and night, are preaching the revolution—that passionate gospel, the Brotherhood of Man. The capitalist class has been indicted. It has failed in its management and its management is to be taken away from it. Ten million men of the working class say that they are going to get the rest of the working class to join with them and take the management away. The revolution is here now. Stop it who can.
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