Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/246

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS this law into force in order to permit capital to scatter railroads across the peasants' fields, to permit capital to establish great vested interests in your cities, after having made use of this law for the benefit of capitalistic might, the hour is come to make use of it for the benefit of labor demanding its rights.

Values to-day permit their holders either to purchase means of production and of profit or their products. In the transformed society, when the private capital of production and exploitation shall have been made social, when the social community shall have placed the means of production at the disposition of associated laborers, the indemnity values which shall have been given the capitalists of yesterday will permit them no longer to buy the means of production, of rent, and of profit: they will permit them to buy only the products of the transformed social activity.

Gentlemen, when the law abolished slavery and indemnified the slaveholders, the latter could not use this indemnity to buy slaves on the morrow. Similarly, when capitalistic property shall have become socialistic, the indemnity holders shall be able to purchase neither the means of production nor the producers: they shall be able to purchase products only. [Applause from the extreme left; uproar in the center and right.] What! You are astonished, you are scandalized that man should no longer purchase man!

Gentlemen, whatever be your judgment of 210