Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/56

6 the workers should be called upon to take part in the management of the work. They should have a share in the economic government of the shop, just as universal suffrage gives them a share in the political government of the city. Now, in the capitalist organisation of labour, the labourers play a passive rôle. They neither decide, nor do they help in deciding, what work shall be done nor in what direction available energies shall be employed. Without their consent, and often even without their knowledge, the capital which they have created undertakes or abandons this or that enterprise. They are the "hands" of the capitalist system, only required to put into execution the schemes that capital alone has decided on. And the proletariat accomplishes these enterprises planned and willed by capital under the direction of chiefs selected by capital. So that the workers neither co-operate in determining the object of the work nor in regulating the mechanism of authority under which the work is performed. In other words, labour is doubly enslaved, since it is directed towards ends which it has not willed by means which it has not chosen. And so the same capitalist system which exploits the labour power of the workman restricts the liberty of the labourer. Thus the personality of the proletarian is lessened as well as his substance.

But this is not all. The capitalist and owning class is only a class apart when considered in relation to the wage earners. It is itself divided