when that power is undermined, when its protecting strength weakens and fails, all these institutions must naturally totter and fall.
Man is like the bug—he travels in the direction of the food supply—and institutions are like men—they perish when unfed. The master class, besieged upon the economic field by an aroused and class conscious proletariat holding the sources of wealth in its determined grasp, must go down in defeat and its class institutions must be drawn down with it into the abyss, thus clearing the field and making room for those better and fairer structures which the genius of the new society will erect.
THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER
The first duty of a ruling class is to direct production, and the fact that it can and does prevent chaotic conditions in distribution generates confidence in it, breaks down opposition and gathers adherents to its cause. Therefore, the proletariat, in its struggle for power, must grasp at the means of production and distribution—in fact, the success of its movement depends upon its ability to seize the lands, tools and machinery, and set itself up as the supreme economic factor in the life of mankind. It must be in a position to starve out all opposition and dictate the terms of surrender, just as the present master class starves the rebellious workers into subjection and makes submission the condition on which they may be admitted to the use of the machines.
The conquest of economic power is the supreme consideration of the workers and the stupendous fact of the new labor movement is the contest for ownership. The master's right to possession is challenged and the right of the workers, based upon their use of the machines, is set up in opposition. "Only those who use shall possess." An open and conscious class struggle begins, in the course of which, modern society is shaken to its foundations.
The miseries of the working class arise from exploi-
