Page:Johann Jacoby - The Object of the Labor Movement - tr. Florence Kelley (1887).djvu/6

Rh economic condition of Germany in his day and the consequent far from conspicuous class antagonisms.

Wholly different is the position of Henry George. This can be clear and well considered to its utmost consequences. He has the good fortune to live and work in a country which is economically and politically perhaps the most advanced; in which the antagonism of the classes is glaring, blurred by no mediæval social traditions such as are so frequent even in the most advanced States of the Old World where the so-called middle parties base their existence upon them.

Here, no one who has eyes for the reality can fail to recognize the comparatively small class of capitalists mighty by reason of their possessions; and face to face with it, separated by diametrically opposed interests, by a gulf that can neither be bridged over nor filled up with specious phrases of harmony, the Laboring Class.

Another factor must be especially emphasized which is of eminent importance, namely, the possibility of clear insight into the economic process going on about us and a true comprehension of it, i. e., scientific enlightenment such as exists to a considerable extent in the more progressive proletarian movements of Europe and in an especially high degree among our German brothers who can already point to a brilliant political Past.

Our young Labor Party is now on the way towards becoming a great political party, and its next task, as it has itself recognized, is the work of consolidation in a national Party. With its growth and the simultaneous increase in political influence, the need of that enlightenment which is now naturally wanting, will become more urgent in order that the Labor Party may press with full intelligence towards the attainment of its main object, the political and economic emancipation of the Laboring Class.

The labor question has left the phase of utopian plans far behind it. It has become a science, among whose chief representatives recognized as founders of Modern Scientific Socialism are Karl Marx and his lifelong friend and co-worker, Frederick Engels. The fundamental works upon Socialism, Marx's Capital and Engels' Condition of the Working Class in England, have very recently been made accessible in translations to English-reading workers.

To return to the accompanying pamphlet. There are two points in which Socialists to-day will not agree with the author as to the means by which the Object of the Labor Movement is to be attained.

Socialists differ from Jakoby in his estimate of profit-sharing, finding it a measure irrational in theory and reactionary in its practical working, a trick of the employer to divert the attention of the workers from their class interests.

All profit is produced by labor, is in the ultimate analysis unpaid labor. The workers' share would therefore naturally be the whole of the profit. But under our present system the workmen have