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346 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
the logic of things and of the logic of Marx— the actual
positions of the two classes have been completely transposed.
Marx persuaded the workers to take up a weapon
which they alone can use. Like Siegfried, they have
taken the fragments — of a sword and welded them into
a mighty weapon so mighty, indeed, that the working
class alone, with its innumerable millions, is capable of
wielding The it. workers are the only class in society
with the numerical strength to become the majority and
the only class which, by unity and organization, can employ
the suffrage effectively. While fifty years ago the
workers had every legal and peaceable means denied
them, to-day they are the only class which can assuredly
profit through legal and peaceable means. It is obvious
that the beneficiaries of special privilege can hope to retain
their power only so long as the working class is
divided and too ignorant to recognize
its own interests.
As soon as its eyes open, the privileged classes must lose
its political support and, with that political support, everything
else. That is absolutely inevitable. The interests
of mass and class are too fundamentally opposed to permit
of permanent political
harmony.
Nobody sees this more clearly than the intelligent capi-
As the workers become more and more conscious
and more and more convinced
talist.
of their collective power
that through solidarity they can quietly take possession
of the world, their opponents become increasingly conscious
of their growing weakness, and already in Europe
there is developing a kind of upper-class syndicalism, that
despairs of Parliaments, deplores the bungling work of
politics, and ridicules the general incompetence of democratic
institutions. At the same time, however, they
exercise stupendous efforts, in the most devious and
questionable ways, to retain their political power.
Facing