o lighten their burdens.
They strive to get better conditions, higher wages and shorter
hours, and in general the ideal of the working class is to throw
off the yoke of capitalism.
No one rightfully can say that this struggle is merely a theory. We
can see this struggle in the attempts of the capitalist class to
destroy the victorious Russian Proletariat. It is mirrored before
our eyes in the continual strikes. Nothing can stop this struggle
except the abolition of exploitation.
No matter how hard the Citizens' Committees, Boards of Arbitration,
of Conciliation and of Mediation, with their so-called impartial
members try to convince the world that it is possible to bring the
warring classes into closer relations, their attempts are doomed to
failure. At best their success is only temporary and their efforts
succeed only in blinding the eyes of the working masses. And if at
some time these boards claim a victory, the credit is not due to
them, but to the force exerted by the workers. It is the
strike-weapon, held in reserve by the toilers, that brings victory
to the workers--not the efforts of the philanthropic gentlemen.
Furthermore the efforts of these gentlemen greatly harm the
workers, for at times when the workers can attain success through
the use of the strike, these philanthropists interfere, and deaden
the initiative and aggressiveness of the strikers. Often this
causes strife between the strikers themselves. They lose confidence
in one another, and the existence of the organizations which the
workers succeeded in building up through their efforts and
sacrifices are jeopardized.
The "Conciliation," however, can bring no conciliation between the
employers and workers, because that is unnatural. On the contrary,
the hatred of one side to the other is intensified and war breaks
out oftener and assumes a more bitter and more obstinate character.
Thus viewing the two struggling classes of capitalist society,
revolutionary industrial unionism comes to the logical conclusion
that between capital and labor there exists nothing in common, that
the struggle must go on and peace can come only when economic
oppression will cease, which is possible only when the program of
revolutionary unionism will be realized; namely, when the workers
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