Page:Olive Malmberg Johnson - Woman and the Socialist Movement (1908).djvu/42

 40 which take in some more again, nor without food, clothin and shelter which come near taking in, directly or indirectly all the rest.

The process of labor is co-operative in the fullest sense of the word. The workshop only is private property. Thousands of workers have never seen their employer and often do not know who he is, still some one, somewhere, owns the machines and appropriates the product. It is, under such circumstances, only natural that the co-operative process of labor should point to the co-operative ownership of the machine and the products.

It is only on account of the wrong vision of the working class that it submits to this exploitation. They imagine that the capitalist gives the workers work and that they therefore are dependent upon the capitalists. It can be only a matter of time until the workers must realize their illusion, and then the real truth will appear plainly, namely that it is they who give up the products of their labor and that, therefore, it is the capitalists who are dependent upon the workers. They will then realize the necessity of the machines becoming collective property, and as they already are in reality in possession of the machines, it will be an easy matter to oust the present owners.

But the capitalist class, like every other ruling class, will try to perpetuate its power to the very last. So they set race against race and man against woman in order to blur the class struggle. Through the press and other mouth-pieces they declaim loudly against the Mongolians, but the capitalist class see to it that they get plenty of cheap and easily exploited Mongolians into the country. Through the same organs they tell about women being the competitor of man and how she lowers his wages and his standard of living, but they joyfully hire women and exploit them to the very last notch. The capitalists never take themselves seriously. It is only the workers that are supposed to take them seriously!

But you cannot fool all the people all the time. It is only a matter of time until the mass of workers will realize the iniquities of capitalism even as the Socialists already do. The