Page:Eleven Blind Leaders (1910?).pdf/27

 of government has grown up, ostensibly designed to administer equitably the affairs of the people within the given territory. The machinery of that government consists of the legislative (or law making), the judicial (or law interpreting), and the executive (or law enforcing) departments. Theoretically, again, the government is supposed to be of, by and for the whole people. That theory might hold good on the basis of territorial relations alone.

But property relations in capitalist society inevitably enter into the situation, resulting in a modification of the "purposes of government," and in an entirely different division of the people. That division is not territorial; it is economic. A part of the people become distinguished from the rest by reason of the fact that that part own and control the land and the machinery of wealth production. But "labor creates all wealth." Consequently that division of the people who possess nothing but their labor power are compelled to sell that labor power to the owning class in order to get access to the means of life. Thus capitalist society becomes divided into economic classes—the capitalist and the working class.

The capitalist class buys the use of the social labor power of the working class, and in the process of wealth production extracts a surplus value from the product of labor. That is to say, the workers on an average produce not only the equivalent of their wages, but also the value of the raw materials, the value of the wear and tear of machinery, and surplus value besides, which accumulates in the hands of the capitalist class in ever greater volume as the system develops. The result of this process is that the capitalist class becomes relatively more powerful in an economic sense, while the working class becomes relatively more dependent, as the system develops. So that economic relationships become more pronounced, and territorial relationships less significant, as capitalism proceeds in its evolution. The "government," supposedly of, by and for all the people, becomes more and more