Chapter 8 - Justice

Chapter 8 - JUSTICE

I have taken some excerpts from Libcom.org's chapter 8 on Justice, because it is a beast.


No, my friend, terrible as it is to admit it, there is no justice in the world.

Worse yet: there can be no justice as long as we live under conditions which enable one person to take advantage of another's need, to turn it to his profit, and exploit his fellow man.

We have seen that the interests of the employer and employee are different; so different that they are opposed to each other.

Can there be justice between them? Justice means that each gets his due. Can the worker get his due or have justice in capitalist society?

If he did, capitalism could not exist: because then your employer could not make any profits out of your work. If the worker would get his due - that is, the things he produces or their equivalent - where would the profits of the capitalist come from? If labor owned the wealth it produces, there would be no capitalism.

The industrial lords know that it is good for them to keep you unorganized and disorganized, or to break up your unions when they get strong and militant. By hook and crook they oppose your every advance as a class-conscious worker. Every movement for the improvement of labor's condition they hate and fight tooth and nail. They'll spend millions on the kind of education and propaganda that serves the continuation of their rule rather than on improving your conditions as a worker. They will spare neither expense nor energy to stifle any thought or idea that may reduce their profits or threaten their mastery over you.

The cases I have cited are but a few of the numerous struggles of American labor against capital. The same can be duplicated in every country. They clearly demonstrate the fact that

(1) there is only class justice in the war of capital against labor; there can be no justice for labor under capitalism.
(2) law and government, as well as all other capitalist institutions (the press, the school, the church, the police, and courts) are always at the service of capital against labor, whatever the merits of any given case. Capital and government are twins with one common interest.
(3) capital and government will use any and all means to keep the proletariat in subjection: they will terrorize the working class and ruthlessly murder its most intelligent and devoted members.

Original Article Location

Libcom.org