Mary E. Marcy making it plain.

‘Why Socialists Must “Harp On” the Class Struggle’ by Mary E. Marcy from the Northwest Worker (Everett). No. 252. November 4, 1915.

Somebody said, “Let’s stop talking about the class struggle.” and some- body said, “Let’s.” And then the Innocent Bystander inquired, “What IS the class struggle?”

That is the question: What IS the CLASS STRUGGLE?

It is the struggle between workers and the bosses for the things produced BY the WORKERS. It would be as easy to stop talking about the class struggle as it would be to stop talking about food and rent and marriage and death and disease–for the class struggle is intermingled with all of these things.

The working class produced all the commodities existing in the world today; all the food, houses, street cars, railroads, all of the clothing. All the coal has been dug by workers, the lumber has been cut and hauled by the workers, the food has been planted and raised and cooked by the workers.

But the class struggle arises over the fact that the employers of labor appropriate all these things produced by the workers. These employers pay the workers who produce all these commodities miserable wages, while they, who produce nothing, keep our commodities.

For example: A coal miner may dig $18 worth of coal in a day. The coal mine owner pays him $3 in wages and keeps the $18 worth of coal-which leaves $15 surplus value appropriated by the mine owner. The class struggle is the fight over the $15 of surplus value, produced by the WORKER and taken by the boss. The miner wants more or all of the value of his product, while the boss wants to pay him less. The boss thinks $3 a day is an enormous wage for the men who produce $18 worth of wealth every day.

The whole life of the working class is determined by what portion of the value of his product he receives. If he can force the coal operator to give him $6 out of the $18 worth of coal he has dug, it is obvious that the miner can change his whole mode of life from what it was when he received only $3 a day in wages.

He can live in a better house, buy better food, afford to get married and wear better clothes. When his children are sick he can engage a good doctor and buy medicine. His whole life depends upon just how much he gets out of the coal he digs.

The class struggle is the most important thing in the life of the working class today. We could not stop talking about it if we wanted to. Every time we ask for more wages and the boss feels that he has to give them to us, we have gained a little bit more of the value we have produced, and we have left a lower dividend for the boss. We have fought a small part of the class struggle.

WAGING THE BATTLE

The bosses want low wages and long hours because they know that low wages and long hours mean more surplus value (or more profits) for them. Every workingman and woman wants higher wages and shorter hours, although they know this will leave smaller dividends for their employers.

The class struggle is the struggle of the whole working class with the owning class for more of, and finally all of, the value of the things it produces. It is a struggle because the capitalist class opposes all these benefits for the workers, higher wages and shorter hours, with all its power. The capitalist class knows that when the workers organize and unite to keep the entire value of the things they make, there will be no more profits for the exploiters of labor.

INFLUENCES EDUCATION

The sort of things that are taught in the colleges, schools and universities are determined by the class struggle; the rich and owning class insists that pupils and students shall be taught to be honest, contented, hard-working, humble, wage-workers–so that even education is a part of the class struggle. But education represents the interests of the owning class just so far as the owning class can control the educational institutions of a country.

Prof. Scott Nearing was thrown off the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania because that university is controlled by some of the biggest profit takers in America, and because he told the truth in his lectures and books about the conditions in the mines, mills and factories owned by these millionaires.

Every social institution, even when it is supposed to be “free” as it is in this country, represents the interests of one of the two opposing sides in the class struggle. Take the church, the state, or the government; the laws, judges, police, the army and navy; the schools and the press–nearly all these represent the class that TAKES the things which the workers MAKE.

Nearly all Socialist and labor periodicals, particularly the industrial union periodicals, try to represent only the working class in its struggle for more of its products and finally to abolish the wage system and to give to the workers the entire value produced by the workers.

About the only way the workers can get anything from the bosses today is by organizing with other workers. Up to a few years ago much of the struggling between the owning class and the working class was entirely on the question of more wages or less wages, longer or shorter hours. But now the workers in every “civilized” country in the world are beginning to agitate and educate and organize the workers of the whole world to carry on a gigantic struggle against the capitalist or owning class–not for shorter hours and higher wages- not for more of the things produced by the workers, to be owned by the workers, but in order to take the great manufacturing plants and producing plants and factories, the mines mills and lands for the workers, so that the workers of the world, and only the workers, may receive the full value of the things they produce.

This is the Class Struggle on which is based every labor and Socialist movement worthy of the name today.

Nobody likes the Class Struggle. Every intelligent man and woman in the world today regrets that there is raging everywhere such a mighty class war.

Sometimes in some countries those who rob the workers can fool and force and deceive them into fighting battles for the owning class by pretending that a war will prove of benefit to the working class of that country.

But when these wars are over the workers always find that the bosses have deceived them. They find that they are still forced to make all the useful and beautiful things used by mankind while the owning class continues to take these things, for which it pays the workers only the lowest possible wage.

And then, very gradually, the workers begin to wake up and to join hands again with their robbed and exploited comrades across the national boundary lines. Then they being to learn the meaning of “Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.”

The Washington Socialist was a weekly newspaper of the Socialist Party of Snohomish County published in Everett, Washington and edited by Maynard Shipley. Closely aligned with the Industrial Workers of the World, who were strong in the Pacific Northwest’s lumber industry, the paper ran for only 18 months when it was renamed The Northwest Worker with Henry Watts as editor in June, 1915, and again Co-Operative News with Perter Husby as editor in October, 1917. Like virtually all of the left press, the Co-Operative News was suppressed in June 1918 under the Federal Espionage Act.

PDF of full issue: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88085770/1915-11-04/ed-1/seq-2/