Common Ownership

Under capitalism the worker is a slave who sells himself for a wage with which to buy his rations, which is the only difference between this system and negro slavery where the master bought the rations and fed the slave himself. The American Civil War was not a war for the emancipation of the blacks but a war for the preservation of the industrial hegemony of the North, a choice between forced labour in the South and wage slavery in the North.

In Athens and Rome there was slavery. The slaves either cultivated the lands of their Greek or Roman master or laboured for his profit in the city workshops. Individuals owned them, disposed of them, forced them to labor, gave them away as presents, sold them or left them to their heirs. And in the same way, when after the collapse of the ancient society and the Roman regime founded on conquest, slavery was amended to serfdom, the serfs, too, bound to the land, were objects of certain private property rights. Under the feudal kings there were royal slaves attached to the royal lands, and church slaves attached to the church lands, but the immense majority of the serfs belonged to lords who were in the end practically great landed proprietors with a personal property right in their possessions. It was the lord who disposed of the labour of the serfs. Agricultural serfs, thinly scattered over the great rural domains, and industrial serfs, bakers, smiths, goldsmiths, spinners and weavers, gathered together in the outbuildings of the castles and all were under the domination of an individual noble; they were included in his property and sold by him with the estate. They were, like the land itself, like the fields, the vine-yards, the cattle, one of the objects upon which the right of private property was exercised.

The Roman slave-owner had his “labour troubles”. The slave uprising led by Spartacus proves that.  The medieval baron, lord over many serfs, also had his “labor troubles”. Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, and the Peasant Wars in Germany, testify how bloody these “labor troubles” became. The Southern U.S. plantation owners, had “labor troubles” also. The Fugitive Slave Act bears proof of this. Today a pick up of any capitalist newspaper will show the existence of modern capitalist and his “labor troubles”. But unlike then when  the slave would revolt to flee from employment and suffered crucifixion, hanging, quartering, mutilating and flogging we have workers who are clubbed and imprisoned for having the audacity to demand work, for a chance to slave.  Before the master sought the slave, now the slave seeks the master.  They stand in line, they beg for work and they scab on their fellow worker by pledging to work more for less. We are told that we are free and the bosses are free. He is free to offer us whatever terms he wishes –and we are free to starve unless we accept his terms. The free boss can lay off the free worker to freely starve in the midst of a land of full warehouses which the worker filled. Who needs the cat-o’-nine-tails to make the workers serve their master. We are fed on adulterated foods, clad in shoddy clothes, poorly housed in slums or sub-urban boxes and becoming ever more vulnerable than ever to chronic illness and disease. And all the time capitalism greedily demands more and more profits, installs more and more technology into the factories which produce goods and profits at a faster and faster rate. More and more workers are thrown on the streets or offered short-time contracts.

There is only one remedy for this slavery of the working class and that remedy is the socialist system of society in which the land and all houses, railways, factories and everything necessary for work shall be owned and operated as common property.  Socialists cannot offer a cure for unemployment under the capitalist system which is endemic and a fundamental component to it. Only by overthrowing the system of capitalism will unemployment be done away with. The society of socialism alone can eliminate the terror of unemployment. Capitalism will be replaced by employment for those who wish and plenty for all. Every capitalistic element will disappear; no man or woman will be able to make use of another person to create dividends for him or herself, or profit, or an income, or rent.  No person will be handed over to the exploitation of another or  the despotism of the nation. To help bring this about all workers should join the Socialist Party and help fight for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. The master and slave, the lord and serf of past ages, are gone, and the capitalist and wage workers of our day must follow them. The time is not too far off when no one will be able to speak about the preservation of private property without covering themselves with ridicule. Private property will become void and meaningless. When everybody shares in common ownership, no-body is the owner.