"Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most - that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least."
-Eugene V. Debs
I've been thinking about Labor Day and what it means, and I wanted to write a blog about it here. Today I was reading some writings by Eugene V. Debs, and I decided that because Debs and his American Railway Union are the main reason why Labor Day is a natioal holiday, I should post one of his writings.
This writing is important because here, Debs is speaking for "unskilled" laborers who are so often forgotten by unions and people in general. If the Socialist Party stands for anything, it stands for the interests of working people, educated or "uneducated", skilled or "unskilled" (though we dislike the terms in quote marks). Sorry about the formatting. Click the URL for a better version. Here it is.
The Common Laborer.
by Eugene V. Debs
Published in Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine (Terre Haute, IN), v. 14, no. 4 (April 1890), pp. 293-294.
We use the term “common laborer” in no derogatory
sense. There are a vast number of workingmen
who are without trades: termed, not always rightfully,
“unskilled” laborers. Their importance in carrying
forward the great industrial enterprises of the world
has not been recognized in the past, and is not appreciated
now. In this fact lies the germ of discontent and
danger. This magazine is the organ of a body of workingmen,
of whom it has been said, they are not “skilled
laborers,” and that they do not become such until they
are promoted to the position of engineers. Manifestly,
this is an error. No one at all capable of giving an opinion
in the matter hesitates to say that it requires skill
to properly fire a locomotive. The term “skill” is often
used in a sense which does great injustice to men who
do not wear the badge of some particular trade, and
hence, the term “skilled laborer” is never applied to
men who are known as “common laborers.”
The Firemen’s Magazine is watchful of the interests
of the great body of men who are members of the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. It observes with
profound interest the movements of all labor organizations,
because in such movements if professes to
behold the redemption of labor from oppression and
degradation. We make no apology for asserting that
the welfare of the country centers in the one fact of
doing absolute justice in all matters relating to fair
wages for work, by which we mean such wages as shall
make the home of the American workingman exempt
from the ceaseless peril of mendicancy.
The American idea is to obtain such wages for
work as will make the American home comfortable,
where there shall be an abundance of food, decent
clothing, apartments for rest and recreation — not
shanties — not tenement houses, fit only for beasts
and bats — bit dwellings, fit places for American children
to be born and reared, and when the wages are
sufficient to secure such needs the American idea is to
maintain them, and when wages fall below securing
such requirements the American idea is to organize
for the purpose of obtaining them. It is clear, therefore,
that the American idea is the betterment of the
American workingman regardless of trade. In saying
this, we state the whole case.
The American workingman is an American citizen.
He has the same sovereign rights and prerogatives
as any other citizen. If he can secure sufficient wages,
he will be in a position to appreciate his privileges and
dignity, his sovereignty. If circumstances are created
which deny him such wages, which compel him to
live like a pagan, like a degraded Hungarian, Italian,
or Pole, who have no more conception of American
citizenship than savages, those who create them and
profit by them are not only enemies of workingmen,
but are enemies of their government, and if their purposes
cannot be thwarted, they will ultimately inaugurate
revolution.
We have said the hopes of the country center in
the emancipation of the workingmen from conditions
which compel them to accept such wages as keep them
forever on the ragged edge of mendicancy, bring them
in close contact with famine, make life a ceaseless burden
and horror.
The organization of men of the same trade or
calling has a cheering significance. It means resistance
to wrong; it makes federation to secure and to maintain
the right. It means fair wages, but those organizations
leave out the common laborer, that vast army of
workingmen who work and whose work is necessary
to enable the skilled laborer to work and without whose
work every industrial enterprise in all lands would
cease.
Do we overestimate the importance of the common
laborer? They perform the initial work in all enterprises.
We need not particularize. No intelligent
reader will be at a loss for illustration. We do not care
where the reader begins. It may be the statue of Michelangelo,
the painting of Raphael or St. Peters, from
foundation to dome; it may be the most delicate piece
of mechanism seen in the Paris Exposition or the ponderous
engine, whose mighty arms set in motion the
wheels and spindles and lathes of the mills; all, all,
everywhere, from the deep solemnity of the mine to
the cap stone of monuments; cottage, palace, steepled
church, domed capitols and cathedrals, the steamship
and the steam-car, the bridge, the tunnel, the canal,
the steel highways, the telegraph, the telephone, the
fruitful fields, where the bearded wheat and tasselled
corn nod in the breeze, tell of the work and importance
of the common laborer.
Well, what is the world doing for the common
laborer? Who will answer? He has been left out in the
cold. He does not organize. We have had, and we hope
still to have, words of appreciation for the organization
known as the Knights of Labor. We glory in its
growth. We deprecate anything that hinders its advancement.
The Knights of Labor organization takes
in the common laborer. In doing this, it meets a requirement
of incalculable importance and is deserving
of the highest commendation.
In the organization of the Knights of Labor the
common or the unskilled laborer finds a home, a retreat
where he can do that for himself which the skilled
laborer does for himself in his organization. If the labor
organization confers benefits, and none doubt the
fact who know anything of their operations, why
should not the common laborer, the unskilled workingman,
participate in such blessings? Why should not
the home of the common laborer be made bright and
beautiful? Why should not the wife and children of
the common laborer be surrounded with the comforts
of life? No good reason why such should not be the
case ever was furnished, nor will it ever be supplied.
And the Knights of Labor, comprehending the importance
of having such men organized, take them in,
and incalculable good is to result from the movement.
The labor organization is in many regards a school, an
educating, elevating force; and the fact that the common
laborer is to enjoy the advantages of such an organization
is well calculated to inspire hopefulness in
the future for the common laborer of the country. The
work in which the Knights of Labor are engaged is a
noble one, and all friends of the toiling masses will
rejoice to see the organization achieve success.
(The End)
Thank you for reading. We hope you will check out our party page and find out what the Socialist Party is all about.
Yours for the revolution,
Imagine89- U4Prez Socialist Party Chairman.
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http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/unions/blf/1890/0400-debs-commonlaborer.pdf
JUST REMADE THE U4PREZ SOCIALIST PARTY PLATFORM. CHECK IT OUT!
There has always been a lot of trash talking on socialists, but it seems to be growing more popular recently with the election of Barack Obama (who is, as many socialist organizations have already pointed out, not one of us.)
So many people say we socialist are evil fascists. But, that's not true at all.
Most arguements against socialists, that I've seen, are strawman arguements that won't hold up against a true democratic socialist.
And the other arguements are simply that socialists are naive, or stupid.
We socialist are proud to boast that many well known, intelligent, influential people have been socialists just like us.
The list includes Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Woody Guthrie, George Orwell, Jack London, Albert Einstein, and Martin Luther King Jr. among many others.
Instead of listeining to the whacko far right tell you that we democratic socialists are nazis and stalinists, why don't you find out for yourself what we're all about?
Instead of believing the same tired mumbo jumbo about Socialists being out to take your rights away and force you into poverty, why don't you find out where we stand on the issues for yourself?
I have just finished remaking the U4Prez Socialist Party platform. It's a fairly general platform, but it will give you an idea of where we as democratic socialists stand on the important issues.
You need not agree with the party platform on every issue to become a member. We are a diverse group of people of many different backgrounds with many different opinions. Check out the U4Prez Socialist Party's page and find out what socialism is all about!
Yours for the revolution,
Imagine89, Chairman of the U4Prez Socialist Party
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http://www.u4prez.com/ProfileView.aspx?UserID=5999
"Why Socialism?"
By Albert Einstein
Originally published in The Monthly Review, May 1949
Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.
Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.
But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called "the predatory phase" of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.
Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and—if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous—are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.
For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.
Innumerable voices have been asserting for some time now that human society is passing through a crisis, that its stability has been gravely shattered. It is characteristic of such a situation that individuals feel indifferent or even hostile toward the group, small or large, to which they belong. In order to illustrate my meaning, let me record here a personal experience. I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supra-national organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: "Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?"
I am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind. It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding. It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days. What is the cause? Is there a way out?
It is easy to raise such questions, but difficult to answer them with any degree of assurance. I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.
Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept "society" means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is "society" which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.”
It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished—just as in the case of ants and bees. However, while the whole life process of ants and bees is fixed down to the smallest detail by rigid, hereditary instincts, the social pattern and interrelationships of human beings are very variable and susceptible to change. Memory, the capacity to make new combinations, the gift of oral communication have made possible developments among human being which are not dictated by biological necessities. Such developments manifest themselves in traditions, institutions, and organizations; in literature; in scientific and engineering accomplishments; in works of art. This explains how it happens that, in a certain sense, man can influence his life through his own conduct, and that in this process conscious thinking and wanting can play a part.
Man acquires at birth, through heredity, a biological constitution which we must consider fixed and unalterable, including the natural urges which are characteristic of the human species. In addition, during his lifetime, he acquires a cultural constitution which he adopts from society through communication and through many other types of influences. It is this cultural constitution which, with the passage of time, is subject to change and which determines to a very large extent the relationship between the individual and society. Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.
If we ask ourselves how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible, we should constantly be conscious of the fact that there are certain conditions which we are unable to modify. As mentioned before, the biological nature of man is, for all practical purposes, not subject to change. Furthermore, technological and demographic developments of the last few centuries have created conditions which are here to stay. In relatively densely settled populations with the goods which are indispensable to their continued existence, an extreme division of labor and a highly-centralized productive apparatus are absolutely necessary. The time—which, looking back, seems so idyllic—is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that mankind constitutes even now a planetary community of production and consumption.
I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.
The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.
For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call “workers” all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production—although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is “free,” what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists' requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free. Of course, there is no such thing as a pure capitalist society in this sense. In particular, it should be noted that the workers, through long and bitter political struggles, have succeeded in securing a somewhat improved form of the “free labor contract” for certain categories of workers. But taken as a whole, the present day economy does not differ much from “pure” capitalism.
Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers' goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.
This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?
Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service.
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A while ago, Arjay created the unofficial u4prez socialist party. He recruited myself, hgenovese93 and idahoan virginian to join. We've been pushing for official recognition for a long time, and we finally got it.
I was frustrated with the lack of socialist support on U4Prez, and briefly tried to push the Liberal/Progressive Party to unite all liberals. The lefties on here didn't seem to interested in uniting in that pary.
But since LC announced the creation of the new third parties, I'm going to bring the U4Prez Socialist Party back full force.
Arjay passed leadership of our then unofficial socialist party to me a few weeks ago. And being that I'm the only frequent socialist on u4prez, I am going to go out on a limb and claim the title of Chairman of the now official U4Prez Socialist Party. When others join, I will gladly put my self appointed title up for grabs and hold an election for the position of chairman or chairwoman of the Socialist Party among party members.
I encourage everyone to hear us out and check out our party's page.
The Socialist Party is back in full force on U4Prez.
Yours for the revolution,
Imagine89- Chairman of the finally official U4Prez Socialist Party.
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