Our interests are not different to those of the ruling class, they are irredeemably opposed.

‘Nothing in Common’ by Covington Hall from Voice of the People (New Orleans). Vol. 2 No. 44. November 6, 1913.

The more one looks into the facts at the base of the labor movement, the more he is compelled to render homage to the clear, keen insight, the dauntless courage, the glorious genius of Karl Marx, the greatest and grandest intellect of the nineteenth century, a man without fear and without reproach, without guile and without superstition, a man fitted by every quality of heart and mind to be, what he is, the captain general of the social revolution. “The working class and the capitalist class,” he declared, “have nothing in common.” This, like all else he said, is true. Labor has never disregarded, save at its own peril, the fundamentals laid down by him.

All the ships of compromise and revision alike have been wrecked at last upon the rock of his truth-founded reasoning, which reasoning builds from the facts and not from the fancies of life. And so the working class and the capitalist class have NOTHING in common.

Hear it, you “Bergerites,” hear it, you “Gomperites;” hear it, you “Christian Socialists;” hear it, you politicians, priests and preachers of all creeds and kinds; hear it again, lest you forget it.

The working class and the capitalist class have NOTHING in common. NOTHING IN COMMON.

All the self-interest of the working class is opposed to ALL the self interest of the capitalist class.

It is to the self-interest of the working class to raise wages ever and ever higher; to the self-interest to the capitalist class to press them ever lower and lower; of the working class to shorten and ever shorten the hours of toil; of the capitalist class to ever and ever lengthen them; of the working class to keep its children out of the sweatshops, of the capitalist class to keep them there; of the working class to produce food, clothing and shelter to the utmost limit of abundance, of the capitalist class to restrict the production thereof, not to allow an abundance, lest that very abundance wreck their system and ruin their thrones.

It is to the self-interest of the working class to allow science a free hand everywhere, to the self-interest of the capitalist class to cripple its hands, to see that it serves only the famine-producing game of profit.

It is to the self-interest of the working class to unchain the mind of the teacher and to force secular education through modern schools on all children, to the self-interest of the capitalist class to prevent this at all hazards, since, in free schools, the truth always abides.

As in the domain of self-interest, so, too, in the field of ethics, the working class and the capitalist class have nothing in common.

Their gods are not our gods–their God is nothing but the chief of police, the Pinkerton of the skies, a brutal and incarnate fiend—our God, the one that gave us birth, from whom comes all things we have or ever will have, who is punishing us now for our violation of her shrines, is our MOTHER NATURE.

Their morals are not our morals, for to the working class the restriction of the productive forces of nature or the wasting thereof must forever be a criminal operation, since it spells for us but want and hunger, yet is it moral to the capitalist class since it conserves profit and tends, by hungerfying the workers and otherwise, to bolster up its reign. So, too, child labor, and any toil that saps the mother-strength of our women, is immoral to the working class, since it violates the love-instinct and by so doing weakens the class in body, heart, soul and mind, yet it is for this very reason moral to the capitalist class, since it makes the work of exploitation easier.

Nor is their law our law, their legality our legality, and for the reason that we cannot make a move anywhere, in any direction for the protection and advancement of our interests, material of ethical, without violating their law, since the law, like all things else, is born of necessity and is always written by the owning class for the safe-guarding of its plunder. Wherefore it is impossible for a labor union to make a contract with the capitalist class without committing treason against the working class, since such an instrument must violate all the interests and therefore all the law of the working class. The “SACRED CONTRACT” of the John Mitchells and their ilk is in reality but a poetical name for scabbery, and scabbery is and must be, as treason ever is, the crime of crimes, the immortality of immortalities, the sin of all unpardonable sins, to the working class, while he or the union that commits it is and always will be “respectable,” “safe and sane” and “heroic” to the capitalist class. The attitude of the two classes toward the scab shows more clearly than any other one thing that they have NOTHING, materially or ethically, in common, for to one he is the vilest traitor, to the other he is a “hero.” As the workers hate and despise the individual scab today, so they will learn to far more hate and despise the scabbing union tomorrow. And at the last, their STATE and our UNION have NOTHING in COMMON, for the STATE is a PLUNDERBUND and the UNION a COMMONWEALTH.

The STATE is of, deals with and is the servant of property: the UNION is of, deals with and is the servant of MAN. One is the legitimate child of robbery, the other of industry.

The STATE is a political organization of property holders evolving toward a world-wide INDUSTRIAL DESPOTISM; the UNION is a social organization of workers evolving toward a world-wide INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY.

Their organization, interests, aims, hopes, laws, morals and gods are antagonistic to each other everywhere and at all points even today, and as time goes on the breach between them must widen and deepen with every hour until at last they challenge each other on the field of revolution for supremacy and the ownership of the earth and all the wealth that the genius of labor has placed thereon.

Hear it again, ye who seek to revise and compromise the master’s teachings–the WORKING CLASS and the CAPITALIST CLASS HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON.

Everywhere, in tones of thunder, necessity is proclaiming the need of the industrial unity of the working class and, in propagating the mandates of necessity, the I.W.W. becomes the voice of the living truth, which is why no power on earth has been able to crush it or ever will be.

Hear it again: THE WORKING CLASS AND THE CAPITALIST CLASS HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON.

The Voice of the People continued The Lumberjack. The Lumberjack began in January 1913 as the weekly voice of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers strike in Merryville, Louisiana. Published by the Southern District of the National Industrial Union of Forest and Lumber Workers, affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World, the weekly paper was edited by Covington Hall of the Socialist Party in New Orleans. In July, 1913 the name was changed to Voice of the People and the printing home briefly moved to Portland, Oregon. It ran until late 1914.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/lumberjack/131106-voiceofthepeople-v2n44.pdf