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| Title | The road to power, or, the constructive elements of socialism |
| Creator (LCNAF) |
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| Publisher | Literature Bureau of the Workers' International Industrial Union |
| Place of Creation (TGN) |
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| Date | 1919 |
| Subject.Topical (LCSH) |
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| Genre (AAT) |
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| Language | English |
| Type (DCMI) |
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| Original Item Extent | 33 pages: chart; 17 cm. |
| Original Item Location | HX86.D25 1919 |
| Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b8304529~S11 |
| Original Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
| Digital Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
| Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/scpamp |
| Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
| Repository URL | http://libraries.uh.edu/branches/special-collections |
| Use and Reproduction | This item is in the public domain and may be used freely. |
| File Name | index.cpd |
| Title | Image 14 |
| Format (IMT) |
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| File Name | uhlib_12374394_013.jpg |
| Transcript | 12 THE ROAD TO POWER outset doomed to ignominious failure and defeat. This deduction applies particularly to the struggle of the proletariat against the exploiting class. In our investigation we have clearly defined the seat of the capitalists' economic power, and, therefore, fully appreciate the significance and source of the political and social influence exercised by this class in society. We know that the title of private ownership in the means of production, vested in the capitalist class, is at the bottom of it all. In the face of such a powerful force, what form of economic power can the working class organize with which to be able to overcome- and obliterate the property prerogatives of Capitalism? We are fully aware that all ruling classes in the past have based or established their social supremacy upon some form of ownership, i. e., upon some property prerogative. The patricians of Rome considered birth and the possession of land, cattle and a multitude of slaves a fitting recommendation to rule; the feudal lord pivoted his era of the mailed fist upon the absolute control of the land; and the capitalist is in undisputed possession of the ship of state, by virtue of his absolute control over all the agencies of production in society. The working class, mustering its forces to give battle to the advocates and upholders of the present system, finds itself the only class in the long chain of social development that seeks to acquire the economic and political supremacy in society without possessing or attempting to fortify this supremacy with some form of property prerogatives. The working class, being toolless and stripped of every vestige of property, can not organize its economic forces along the lines of ownership. The economic powrer of the proletariat rests not, as it is and has been the case with all parasitic ruling classes, in the power of ownership, but in the |