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INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY
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tation at the point of production—robbery on the economic field. Its struggles constitute a daily battle, taking place on the farms and in the mills, mines, shops and factories—around the machines, by access to which it lives—therefore it must organize its forces at the machines and in terms of industry in order to fight successfully. Without an organization conforming consistently to present economic conditions, it is a defeated class. It must marshal its hosts on the true battlefield—in the place where it daily meets its enemy and where its class weapons are ready fashioned to its hands.

The craft method of organization, as practiced by the A. F. of L., the A. W. U. and the British Amalgamated Societies, is foreign to the proletariat, since its mental viewpoint differs from that of the craftsmen. Its experience is a machine experience—not the experience of the hand tool; the exclusive skill, or property, idea does not exist, because the machines have scattered skill, and exclusion cannot be practiced by machine workers. Modern industrial methods have destroyed individuality—"by group effort, or team work about the machines, the proletariat earns its bread"—"access to the machines is the basis of proletarian life"; and, with the loss of individuality and the property idea, the workers think no longer in the restricted terms of property institutions, but in the terms of an industrial class. Realizing themselves as a class—knowing that only as a class may they hope to survive—they attack modern society in the place where they function within that society—at the point of production. Their whole attitude is one of opposition and, therefore, distinctly revolutionary.

Realization of class character naturally strengthens the class characteristics; realization of class needs generates class aspirations and ideals; and realization of class power leads to class organization in order to use that power in supplying class needs and attaining class aspirations and ideals. "The world for the workers" is