Page:Proletarian and Petit-Bourgeois (1912?).pdf/11

Rh The very phrases which have accompanied the labor movement show this to be the case. "A fair day's work for a fair day's wage" is nothing but a demand that the laborer should have the price on the market for which he is willing to part with his property. "Labor has rights as well as capital"—what is this but a recognition of the property in labor power? Under circumstances in which the capitalistic control of the government has become so apparent that the unions have considered it to be essential that they should make an effort to retrieve their position by the acquisition of political power, or where the unions have grown to such an extent that their economic power naturally seeks its political expression we get political platforms which express the views of these unions. An examination of these views will show that they do not differ essentially from those of the petite-bourgeoisie but are directed to the protection of themselves in terms of the existing system and do not offer any real revolutionary tendency.

The San Francisco Labor Party platform is one in point. In it the rights of capital are fully recognized and the claim is made that under the banner of trade union political victory all classes of the community will flourish, a statement which could be made equally well by any political party. In fact, the sole attack on the union labor administration by its enemies is that it is a political effort to protect the job, to-wit, the property of the union men, to the detriment of the property of other proprietors, the merchant, the manufacturer and the small capitalist. In England, where the unionists went into politics on their own account under the name of the Independent Labor Party, the essential unity of the union man with the petite-bourgeoisie has been shown in the fact that the Independent Labor Party has become little more than an appendage of the Liberal Party. Even the German Social Democratic Party cannot be shown to be other than of the same stripe, and its success in point of numbers has lain in the political sagacity of its leaders, which has