 This document provides insight into the
ideas and demands of a growing group of citizens and immigrants who felt democracy left
them out in the cold.
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I. The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be
no peace as long as hunger and want are found among the millions of the working people and
the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things in life. II. Between
these two classes a struggle must go until the workers of the world organize as a class,
take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.
III. We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer
hands make the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing
class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be
pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping to defeat one
another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class in misleading the
workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their
employers.
IV. These conditions can be changed and the interests of the working class upheld only
by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in
all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any
department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
V. Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's
work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of
the wage system."
VI. It is the historic mission of the working class to do away
with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the everyday
struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been
overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure for the new society
within the shell of the old. |
