adapted to serve the interests of the ruling class, and finally becomes merely a committee to protect the economic power of the masters and help keep in subjection the working class.
The antagonism between the two divisions of the people takes the form of a class struggle, in which the capitalist class seeks to subjugate the working class, and thereby to get more and more of the product of labor, while at the same time the workers endeavor to keep more and more for themselves in the form of higher wages, a shorter work day and better conditions generally.
The class struggle is fought out primarily in the workshops—on the industrial field. There, the capitalist class, in obedience to its economic interests, seeks to control the social labor power of the working class; there, the working class disputes that control with the capitalist. Hence we have strikes, lockouts, and other manifestations of the class conflict.
It is on the industrial field that the unity of the classes first takes shape, and it is a well known historical fact that all so-called political movements of capitalism grow out of the economic movements of the classes. The possession of economic power is a pre-requisite to the possession of political power; for political power, as defined by Marx, "is but the organized power of one class to oppress another class."
The capitalist class controls the legislative, judicial and executive departments of the national government today because it controls the social labor power of the workers in industry. Let the workers organize as a class on the industrial field, and the political as well as the economic power of the capitalist is at an end. Not before, nor otherwise.
Now the Preamble of the I. W. W. says "it is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism." It does not, like Debs, paraphrase Taft with his "God knows!" and say that "no one on earth
