The Instinct Gag

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 2, 1 March 1913, Page 4

The Instinct Gag

Capitalist wiseacres would have us believe that the right of private ownership of land, and all that proceeds from the land—stone buildings, iron machines, foodstuffs, all the products of labour applied to natural resources —is a natural right, one that should be tampered with in no shape or form, and that each individual human recognises such right instinctively. They go further, these sly philo-

sophers; they assert that it is a sacred right that must be guarded at all costs.

Guarded from the depredations of whom ? Others than the human species ? No. guarded from the depredations of human beings themselves. Then there must be some portion of humanity who lack property, some who must be guarded against, who have not that sacred right of private ownership, and whose instincts do not count according to the Capitalist philosophers.

When we consider that thousands of laws, and millions of interpretations thereof, have been made and enforced by vast armies of police, soldiers, judges and the like, there must be a huge proportion of humanity outside this instinctive, natural right. But natural, instinctively recognised laws, governing any species, apply to the whole of that species, and do not need any portion of it to enforce them upon the remainder.

Therefore, the right of private ownership is not a natural right, but an unnatural condition bolstered up by force. But, you say, every human has a passion for possession • every human strives to be the owner of something.

Yes, self-preservation is the inexorable law of life, the first basic principle of existence. The human knows, not instinctively, but; consciously, that his position in Society is menaced so long as he himself is property less and his neighbour otherwise. He knows that his propertied neighbour has the power to make him a slave. Liberty is an instinctive desire. To preserve his liberty he must have, or share, similar power. He must possess such a weapon that he may strive in no unequal conflict. Not that he recognises any natural, inalienable right of possession, but he must match, in order to meet, the wea.

pon of his oppressor. He, too, must possess property. Hence, the individual human rebels against the private ownership, by another of the means of life; but proclaims his rebellious instinct paradoxically by striving for that which he, instinctively, denies to others. He must, to preserve himself, meet claw with claw.

It is computed that only two per cent, of the world’s population own the earth; that is, ninety-eight out of every hundred people own no property at all. Which means that the slaves are very, very many, and the others are very, very few. Compare their fighting strengths. Eh? But as things are now, wouldn’t the bosses win ? Wouldn’t the workers—police, soldiers, sailors, scabs, etc., simply turn around and chew each other up? And why? The workers arc divided. They lack solidarity. Industrial Unionism breeds class-consciousness which is the soul of solidarity. Only through solidarity can the workers gain anything.

Confronted by the solidarity of the working class, all the tyrannical forces of Capitalism become as helpless as an unlaid egg.

Organise industrially, attain solidarity, and the earth is yours —■for the taking.—A.H.