Destroy Property
In 1880, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad established the Baltimore and Ohio Employees’ Relief Association. It provided coverage for illness, on-the-job accidents and death. In 1884, the B&O offered a pension paying up to 35 percent of pay to workers 65 and older with at least 10 years of service.
The B&O did not offer these concessions because it was a particularly benevolent employer — it paid the worst wage of any major railroad — but because it knew the consequences of upsetting its workers. In 1877, the B&O cut wages three times in a year and triggered the “Great Upheaval,” a 45-day, multi-state industrial action that had to be put down by federal troops and resulted in the deaths of around 100 people. It saw over 100,000 workers rise up and destroy dozens of railroad buildings, dozens of locomotives and passenger cars, and over a thousand freight cars. The American bourgeoisie feared the strike would turn into a socialist revolution akin to the Commune of Paris.
The American ruling class has never been moved by moral arguments. They set children to work in factories and in mines; they packed immigrants into tenements or shipped them west to die building railroads. They paid to raise private militias and murder striking workers. The southern planters of the Confederacy went to war — a war that killed 700,000 — in an attempt to preserve slavery. The American ruling class will invade and bomb and sow chaos around the world — in Vietnam, Cambodia, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Sudan — to advance its interests, with little thought to the suffering of millions.
While their grasp on morality may be limited, capitalists do understand cost-benefit analysis. If they do not respond to arguments of morality, they must be dealt with on terms that do matter to them: the appropriation and destruction of their wealth.
The ruling class becomes rich through exploitation. They pay wages to workers to deprive them of the full value of their productive labor. The capitalist’s dividend is paid by the ache of the worker’s back. Wealth gives the rich the time, resources, and influence to assert control of government. They subvert it, turning it away from being a government of the people and into the legitimizing facade of a rotten oligarchy. They exempt and excuse themselves from tax while directing the taxes of others into their own pockets; they eliminate services and undermine regulations that protect the many from the powerful few.
This situation will never be remedied through reforms within capitalism. The forces of capital are relentless in their attacks on social services, worker protections, environmental regulations, international peace, and human dignity itself. The only reform that can ever succeed is the abolition of the ruling class — their wealth returned to the people if possible, destroyed if necessary. They must be forced to make intermediary concessions: roll back right-to-work and repeal the Taft–Hartley Act; end their attacks on immigrants, minorities and LGBTQ persons; enact single-payer healthcare and robust banking regulations. Take them and press on — these concessions are end objectives, yes, but also the means to limit the power of individuals and achieve the ultimate end of a just society for all.
If the rich will not respond to moral appeal, if they have closed off legitimate political discourse to those outside the ruling class and their faux meritocracy, then we are obligated to make that appeal by other means. The tactics are the same as ever: organize, build solidarity, gather strength. Tear down their monuments and break their windows. Occupy their buildings and public spaces. Meet their reactionary forces in the street. Make the capitalists and their fascist allies fear the working class once again.
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