Page:Friedrich Adolf Sorge - Socialism and The Worker (1890).pdf/12

 in our time, but they are not Socialists who violate the sanctity of property in these cases, although it must be confessed that in many instances an abrogation of the right of a property-holder becomes necessary. Socialists cannot be reproached with ever having condemned houses or tracts of land for the purpose of building a street or opening a railroad. They certainly are not Socialists who seize and sell houses or lots at auction for unpaid taxes. Nor will you find Socialists who connive at those shamefully unjust appropriations of the property of others which however go on in a lawful form.

One thing, however, calls forth all the energy of the Socialists, and they will try with all their might to remedy it. I have stated already, they do not care whether a person owns hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds, whether that person makes use of his money one way or the other, whether he spends it wisely or foolishly. He may spend his own as he chooses. But—these sums of money are not used simply to be spent, but to bring interest, to increase, if possible, the wealth of the possessor. Does he himself want to work, to do something useful? Far from it. His money works for him, his money makes money, as the saying is; or in plain English, his money is the channel through which the earnings of other industrious people flow into his pockets. Socialists call all kinds of property in this respect "capital," this expression comprising all means for production. And because one class of the people possess, by their wealth, these means—that is, capital—another, and by far the largest class, have only their physical or mental strength and skill for labour. Hence capital becomes a means for enslaving workers, forcing them to give up the greater part of their produce to him who owns the capital. They themselves obtain hardly enough to support themselves and their families, while the capitalists enjoy life and get richer without working at all. This is the point: dead property deprives living work of its fruits. Now since work should, by rights, own what it produces as its sole and legitimate earning, dead property becomes the bitter enemy of working life.

Hence the struggle of labour against capital.

Returning to the question, "What is property?" the answer given above appears unsatisfactory. We must add another question: To whom justly belongs what the working part of the human race produces?

The answer to this question is of the greatest importance. Now it is capital which appropriates the greater part of it, leaving to the workers, who form by far the greater number, only so much of it that they may keep alive. They are treated like bees; they are robbed of the honey they make. This class is excluded from enjoying the blessings of civilisation; the greater part of their product is taken by capital.

What right has the owner of a beehive to rob the bees of the fruit of their industry and labour? They are his property, his is the might. What right has capital to rob the working class of the greater part of the fruit of their industry and labour? The wage