Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/267

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The sentiment in regard to the unendurable conditions of affairs in the economic world is universal. The wretched operative whose daily hunger keeps the subject always in his mind, knows that he produces wealth by the labor of his hands, and he is demanding his share of the riches he thus creates. But he commits the mistake of founding his demand upon all sorts of reasons that do not stand the test of criticism. There is only one single true and natural argument which he can call to his aid, and that is unanswerable: the argument that he has the power to take possession of the goods which he produces, that the rich are in the minority and unable to prevent this appropriation, consequently that he has the right to keep what he makes and to help himself to what he needs. The whole of the present structure of society is built upon this argument as its sole foundation. This argument makes the weaker individuals and peoples slaves of the stronger; it makes millionaires out of shrewd and unscrupulous men and sets up Capital as the absolute master of the whole world. The minority, the loafers and plunderers, make constantly use of this argument to silence the demands of the laboring and plundered classes. But the wages-receiver, whose mind in spite of all its Radicalism, is still entangled in the meshes of the ideas of right and morality inculcated by Capital, he hesitates to employ this unanswerable argument, based upon the laws and instincts of nature. He prefers to seek the justifiableness of his claims in all kinds of out of the way excuses and ideas, among which Communism is the most widely accepted and believed. Thus, in the most foolish manner, he enters upon territory in which he is sure to be defeated.

Capital has no difficulty at all in proving the