Page:Max Eastman's Address to the Jury in the Second Masses Trial (1918).pdf/16

 simple, quick, sensible thing to do in an emergency. But Socialists believe that the fact that 10 per cent. of the people own 90 per cent. of the wealth, and that 2 per cent. of the people own 60 per cent. of the wealth, is an emergency, and that we ought to do the simple, quick, sensible thing on that account, and do it everywhere, and do it a little more thoroughly.

That is all there is to Socialism, except this—we know just as well as you know that it would not be practical to expect the rich people, the capitalists, those who benefit by the present system of politics and industry, to be the ones who are going to want to change it. We know perfectly well that the people who are going to want to change it are the poorer people—the working people—the small farmers—the small business men, who are not very sure of their jobs, and who are immediately under the domination of somebody, and do not feel very free. It is the people who will benefit by the change, who can be depended upon to change the world.

And so the Socialists try to band together all these people who live upon wages, or the pay which they receive for their work. They try to band them together into a group which will ultimately become a majority, and will therefore have power to change our system of life into an industrial ,as well as a political democracy. Those people are the proletariat, and those people are what we mean when we use loosely the expression "working classes." And we expect to find lined up against us in this effort another class which we loosely describe as the capitalists, and by the capitalists we mean those who, no matter how hard they may work because they want to, do not live upon wages or pay which they receive for their work, but upon the profits and interest from