Page:Max Eastman's Address to the Jury in the Second Masses Trial (1918).pdf/11

 against any of us as individuals. It is only binding against the corporation, because it was published by an assistant editor and without the knowledge of any of the defendants.

There is just one string to Mr. Barnes's argument that there was a conspiracy in that office, and that is the fact that each of us defendants happens to believe that the proletariat ought to replace the bourgeoisie in the position of social and industrial and political control of our civilization. And Mr. Barnes, I believe, is going to make the most that he possibly can of that fact. He is going to try to prove to you that we conspired to overthrow the enterprise of the United States Government because we believe in that philosophy, of historic development which asserts that the next step in the progress of democracy beyond what we have now, is the coming into political power of the working class, and the taking over by the working class—by the mass of the people as a single whole—of the instruments of production. And if that is a proof of conspiracy, if everybody who holds that opinion about history and about the changes which are going on under our eyes today, is liable to the assumption of conspiracy, then we are conspiring with Albert Thomas, who is the minister of munitions in the French Cabinet, and who was appointed there exclusively because he holds these opinions, and because so many millions of people in France hold these opinions that they could not form a Cabinet which the people would trust unless they took him into it. He is one of the most important members of the French Cabinet, and he is a revolutionary socialist—no less. And he says so all the time. And he goes as a delegate from France to the international meetings of the Socialist Party. We have been conspiring with him. We have been conspiring with him for thirty years. And we have