ness men and independent farmers, the _larger part_ of
whose income is to be set down as the direct result of their own labor
and not a result of their ownership of a small capital, or who feel that
they are being reduced to such a condition, are commencing in many
instances to look upon themselves as non-capitalists rather than
capitalists--and to work for equality of opportunity through the
Socialist movement.

The process of building up a truly democratic society has two parts:
first, the organization and union in a single movement of all classes
that stand for the abolition of classes, and class rule; and second, the
overthrow of those social elements that stand in the way of this natural
evolution, their destruction and dissolution _as classes_, and the
absorption of their members by the new society as individuals.

It becomes of the utmost importance in such a vast struggle, on the one
hand, that no classes that are needed in the new society shall be marked
for destruction, and on the other that the movement shall not lean too
heavily or exclusively on classes which have very little or too little
constructive or combative power. What, then, is the leading principle by
which the two groups are to be made up and distinguished? Neither the
term "capitalist classes" nor the term "working classes" is entirely
clear or entirely satisfactory.

Mr. Roosevelt, for example, gives the common impression when he accuses
the Socialists of using the term "working class" in the narrow sense and
of taking the position that "all wealth is produced by manual workers,
that the entire product of labor should be handed over to the
laborer."[215] I shall show that Socialist writers and speakers, even
when they use the expression "working class," almost universally include
others than the manual laborers among those they expect to make up the
anti-capitalistic movement.

Kautsky's definition of the working class, for example, is: "Workers
who are divorced from their power of production to the extent that they
can produce nothing by their own efforts, and are therefore compelled in
order to escape starvation to sell the only commodity they
possess--their labor power." In present-day society, especially in a
rich country like America, it is as a rule not sheer "starvation" that
drives, but needs of other kinds that are almost as compelling. But the
point I am concerned with now is that this definition, widely accepted
by Socialists, dr