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London, Jack, 1876-1916

"Revolution, and Other Essays"

It is true, it offers some few antiquated
notions which were very efficacious in the past, but which are no
longer efficacious. Fourth-of-July liberty in terms of the
Declaration of Independence and of the French Encyclopaedists is
scarcely apposite to-day. It does not appeal to the working-man who
has had his head broken by a policeman's club, his union treasury
bankrupted by a court decision, or his job taken away from him by a
labour-saving invention. Nor does the Constitution of the United
States appear so glorious and constitutional to the working-man who
has experienced a bull-pen or been unconstitutionally deported from
Colorado. Nor are this particular working-man's hurt feelings
soothed by reading in the newspapers that both the bull-pen and the
deportation were pre-eminently just, legal, and constitutional. "To
hell, then, with the Constitution!" says he, and another
revolutionist has been made--by the capitalist class.
In short, so blind is the capitalist class that it does nothing to
lengthen its lease of life, while it does everything to shorten it.


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