What is holy for the ruling class, is profane for us. An article exemplary of Mary E. Marcy’s writing, it showcases her method and style; telling small stories to make points; speaking directly to workers as one of them; amplifying simple words; using an active voice; and not evading, but embracing struggle and confrontation. Originally published under her pen-name ‘Jack Morton.’

‘The One Thing Sacred’ by Mary E. Marcy from International Socialist Review. Vol. 16 No. 7 January, 1916.

IF you want to know what it considers most sacred, look at the institutions of a country. Take the laws of these United States, for example. We have heard it said by well-known lawyers, that fully 95 per cent of the laws passed here are for the protection, and in the interests, of Private Property.

No government ever seriously considered the welfare of its working class sufficiently to enact laws to protect the lives and the health of its workers, except the German government. And it protected the German youth and looked after its health and welfare in order to build up the most powerful army the world has ever known. Germany fostered health and strength in her young men, not because she so valued the lives of her workers as such, but because she needed strong soldiers to kill and be killed in the interests of a bigger empire, and the German ruling class.

Millions of lives are being sacrificed today in the attempt to gain more property or to hold property already owned. Owned by whom? By the capitalist class, of course. The working class owns no property. Nobody ever heard of one-tenth the vast sums of money now being expended in property-seeking and property-saving warfare being spent in an effort to save human lives.

Germany pretends that her people required more land; but the German working class would have been welcomed in North America and South America, in Russia and in Canada. The German workers will not benefit through a German victory. England pretends that she is waging a war to save England for the “people”–or workers of England. She declared war upon Germany because she feared that unless she joined France, and Germany emerged victorious from this war, the private property of the British-owning class would be jeopardized or seized.

And Private Property is the cause of all wars today when LIVES are paid to enrich the owning classes.

Today everything is colored with the taint of Private Property. Nothing is free from it. While 95 per cent of the laws are passed DIRECTLY in the interests of the owning class, and for the protection of their property, almost ALL laws are indirectly passed for the property interests.

Neither the working class nor the capitalist class has ever been caught supporting a lobby at Washington for the passing of laws providing work for the unemployed. There is “nothing in it” for property owners. Nobody ever heard of any bribe being paid to get a bill through the legislature for a six-hour workday. Was it not Victor Grayson, British M.P., who “made a fool of himself” and arose in the out-worn English Parliament and demanded that something be immediately done to “feed the starving unemployed?” And was he not discredited everywhere as a hair-brained crank who did not know that Parliament was not the place to discuss the relief of the hungry and out-of-works? Grayson was thrown out of Parliament bodily and recalled, or impeached, or whatever they call it in England. Anyway, he was put out. He didn’t belong. Now if he had discussed Work House appropriations or something sensible. Anyway, Grayson never went back.

Again, questions vital to the lives of the working class are never discussed in the halls of Congress or Reichstag, except where they menace or bulwark Property Interests.

Almost every day we read about striking workingmen being shot down and murdered because they have menaced the profits, or private property, of their employers. Employers of labor will go to any lengths to prevent their workers from securing a larger portion of the things they produce–because shorter hours and higher wages mean less private property for them. Lives of workingmen and money are spent lavishly to insure future profits for the owners of industry. Employers of labor do not sacrifice a portion of their dividends to preserve and protect and enrich human life.

Let fifty workingmen be shot down by gunmen hired by a mine owner. Whoever heard of the state militia being sent to protect them? But let the striking miners flood the mines or menace profits and the troops are rushed to the scene to protect private property.

Look at the national educational institutions. Those that are producing ideas in favor of the owning class, those that are manufacturing future teachers that will spread and instill ideas favorable to the propertied interests, receive the support of state assemblies and philanthropic (?) millionaires; institutions that turn out men who are of “practical” profit to large landholders, or to big manufacturers are in great demand.

Professors may teach ancient Greek that is not even understood by the Greeks in Greece today to the thousands and nobody complains; learned Ph. D.’s may specialize in anthropology and exhibit prehistoric man in all his primitive instincts and emotions in all his primitive instincts and emotions with impunity; but, let somebody, like Scott Nearing, come along and discuss the PAY earned by the WORKERS and everybody, from the church to the bribed state officials, from factory owner to city alderman, jumps up on their hind feet and demand that the heretic cease talking about things not in line with the “dignity and policy” of the university.

Take the “free press” (?) of America. It is owned by capitalists and supported largely by the big advertisers. It could not print the truth if it tried because, from garret to cellar, it is tainted with the viewpoint of the PROPERTIED CLASS. It is literally owned, “body, soul and breeches,” by those who live by OWNING and not by PRODUCING.

Many churches are large property holders. They are one of the chief bulwarks of private ownership. Ask any large employer of labor and he will concede that he prefers “Christian” workingmen to non-christian workers. He will tell you they are more reliable and less extravagant workers. They ask less pay and produce more PRIVATE PROPERTY for their employers.

Imagine a middle-aged workingman, out of a job, coming to Chicago to seek work. It is winter. He has spent his last cent for a meagre breakfast and has tramped the streets all day looking for a chance to sell his labor power.

Darkness approaches and he turns his steps toward the lake front in the hope of finding some sheltered doorway, some secluded nook into which he may tuck himself away for the night.

Bright lights are glimmering all along the beautiful Lake Shore Drive. Soft strains of music can be heard in the big houses and the gay voices of dinner party guests greet the ears of the workingman, out of a job for the first time in twenty years.

Through the windows he sees deft waiters serving dinner courses; he sees sparkling champagne, delicate dishes and lovely women. He sees men whose names spell millions of dollars and who have never soiled their hands or strained their brains with one day’s honest work.

He thinks it over as he walks along, spurred onward by the silent blue-coated figures that pace softly up and down before the castles of the do-nothings, who own nearly all the wealth of the world.

He is just one among millions of other workingmen. For twenty years he has labored every day, earning barely enough to raise his family of girls and boys. And now, that his fingers have grown stiff and a little slow, so that the young fellows can better keep pace with the whirring machines, he has been turned out–out of shop, out of a job, out of his rented “home,” out upon the streets to starve.

He knows that every other worker in the shop where he has labored all these years, would be in the same predicament if thrown out of work for two or three months–or even weeks–and he knows that the holdings of his employers–the great Consolidated Steel Company–have increased in value from $500,000 to $5,000,000 in twenty years.

And he knows that he and his shopmates have MADE that value, which has become the PRIVATE PROPERTY of their employers, instead of remaining the property of the WORKERS who created it. He knows that they have been robbed of their products and paid wages instead. They who have worked, have existed, and that is all; while those who did no useful work, performed no useful service, are rated among the land’s great millionaires.

No gun was pointed at the heads of these workers. The great hold-up men did not command them to throw up their hands.

They did not go through their pockets. They hired other workers to build the great shops, with money which their fathers had in turn wrung from other workingmen. The employers had OWNED the shops, just as employers everywhere own ALL the shops and railroads, the factories and mines. And the workers had to go to them to sell their laboring power; had to ask them for jobs. All these workers would have liked to collectively own the things they made, but they had to turn them over to their employers and accept wages that meant only a shelf to sleep on, bread and clothing.

If the workers, who made the raw material and built the shops and produced commodities IN THE SHOPS, together with the makers of the great machines, could have combined to keep the things they had made collectively, each and every workingman would have enjoyed steady work, at short hours, safety, leisure and comfort for life–for themselves and for their families.

No, the employers do not hold you up with a gun. They OWN the shops and your stomachs, force you to accept their terms when you MAKE THINGS IN THAT SHOP.

This workingman, out-of-work, looked into the windows of the rich. He was outside, penniless, homeless. And around about these great palaces, he saw soft-footed policemen guarding the private property of the owners. They were there to KEEP HIM and his kind OUTSIDE. They were there to keep OUT the very men who had toiled and slaved in building these wonderful homes, who had filled these homes with useful things.

This is the grand hold-up comedy in which we are all taking part today. Workingmen and women are TURNED OUT when their work is done; when the mansion is finished, when the clothing is made, when the food is prepared and stored. They are turned out, robbed of their products, with only a few pieces of silver in their hands. The workers give much–all the useful, comfortable, beautiful and necessary things in life are made by their hands and brains–and they get just enough to live on WHILE THEY ARE MAKING THEM FOR SOMEBODY ELSE TO KEEP.

For there are so many workers after every job that somebody almost always offers to work for wages that are his “bare keep.” And so everybody’s wages become bare board and bed and clothing. And so we understand that Private Property, that does not mean service rendered for service, work for work, value for value, hour for hour, MEANS THEFT AND NOTHING ELSE.

Nobody would be foolish enough to try to prove that any employer grew rich paying his employes the VALUE of the things they produced. That would not be wages. Wages mean A PART OF, a part of the value produced by the workers. And this is why revolutionary workers intend to abolish the wages system.

We don’t want A PART OF, we want ALL OF what we produce. Then, if we only worked four hours a day, and gave the other fellows a chance the other half day, we would still get two or three times what we receive now.

The capitalist class is not necessary in society today. The shop and land and mine and factory and railroads are necessary; but these were built or are mined or made by workingmen. We want to own and control these things so that what the workers produce, by working together, they shall own in common.

The great owners of private property are the great hold-up men of the world. They have produced nothing; they have stolen everything we have made. The revolution will, to use a polite phrase, expropriate the thieves, and teach men to regard human life alone as sacred.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v16n07-jan-1916-ISR-gog-Princ-ocr.pdf