IX
THE WAR OF THE CLASSES
Among syndicalist "fundamentals" is the clear division of our society into the tool-owning capitalist class, on the one side, and the wage receiving class on the other. These confront each other as enemies. The employing class is entrenched behind citadels of private property; behind the whole stupendous mechanism of production, behind the Constitution, the courts, and all that "law and order" mean when interpreted and enforced by the possessing classes. Here, massed in fancied security, is the foe of labor. Without, is the vast, ill-organized multitude of the workers, stupefied and confused by religious and secular instruction guided in the interest of those behind the fortress. The task of Syndicalism is to wake this formless mob of dupes out of its stupor; to make them see the enemy as he is, and to see himself the victim, purposely shut out and excluded from the feasting trenchers behind the walls. Between this guarded minority and the huge, straggling multitude on the outside there is as little in common as between the robber and the robbed. With these beliefs, Syndicalists ask, how is this formless multitude to be brought to its senses? How make it see the ugly facts of its own enslavement?
For this, the propaganda of the I. W. W. exists. Its teeming literature bristles with metaphors, carica-
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