Page:One Big Union of All the Workers the Greatest Thing on Earth (ca 1919, Chicago).pdf/4



Social relations are the reflex of the grouping of industrial possessions. The owners of all resources and means of wealth form a class of their own; the owners of labor power as their only possession in the market, another. Political, judicial, educational and other institutions are only the mirror of the prevailing system of ownership in the resources and means of production.

One class owns and controls the necessaries, to-wit: the economic resources of the world. That class, for its own protection and perpetuation in power, subjects all other institutions to their prevailing class interests. Conversely, there is a class that strives to change the foundation of the industrial arrangement. The workers realize that immediately following the change these social relations will also be shifted; institutions deriving their support and sustenance from the class in power will be made to conform to new conditions after the overthrow of the previously existing industrial system.

Social structures collapse as a result of ever recurring changes in their economic foundation. But the new structure is not a ready-made product of each of the epochs of reconstruction. An historic process of evolution reaches a climax in a revolutionary upheaval. Achievements of preceding epochs are always utilized in the constructive work of a never-resting, always advancing civilization.

Decaying elements render nourishment to Mother Earth for the generation of new species and structures. Nothing is lost in the reciprocal process of nature. Precisely so in social systems. Achievements of social and