t
by no means invalidates the contention that, in general, men will
recognize and unite upon a basis of common class interests. In both
classes are to be found individuals who attach greater importance to the
preservation of racial, religious, or social, than to economic,
interests. But because the economic interest is fundamental, involving
the very basis of life, the question of food, clothing, shelter, and
comfort, these individuals are and must be exceptions to the general
rule. Workers sink their racial and religious differences and unite to
secure better wages, a reduction of their hours of labor, and better
conditions in general. Employers, similarly, unite to oppose whatever
may threaten their class interests, without regard to other
relationships. The Gentile who is himself an anti-Semite has no qualms
of conscience about employing Jewish workmen, at low wages, to compete
with Gentile workers; he does not object to joining with Jewish
employers in an Employers' Association, if thereby his economic
interests may be safeguarded. And the Jewish employer, likewise, has no
objection to joining with the Gentile employer for mutual protection, or
to the employment of Gentile workers to fill the places of his
employees, members of his own race, who have gone out on strike for
higher wages.

III

The class struggle, therefore, presents itself in the present stage of
social development, in capitalist countries, as a conflict between the
wage-paying and the wage-paid classes. That is the dominating and
all-absorbing conflict of the industrial age in which we live. True,
there are other class interests more or less involved. This is
especially true in the United States with its enormous agricultural
industry, to which the description of the industrial conflict cannot be
applied. There are the indefinite, inchoate, vague, and uncertain
interests of that large, so-called middle class, composed of farmers,
retailers, professional workers, and so on. The interests of this large
class are not, and cannot be, as definitely defined. They vacillate,
conforming now to the interest of the wage-workers, now to the interest
of the employers. Thus the farmer may oppose an increase in the wages of
farm laborers, because that touches him directly as an employer. His
relation to the farm laborer is substantially that of the capitalist to
the city worker, and his attitude upon that question is the attitude of
the capitalist class as a