First published as an editorial in The Catholic Worker, Volume XIV, Number 11, 1 February 1948.

We will have an end to class war when we have an end to acquisitive class society. The fallacy of the traditional unionist approach to this problem is in assuming the possibility of class collaboration which cannot take place under capitalism except at the expense of the workers. This is so because the interests of the workers and employers are of necessity opposed under such a system. It is the aim of the capitalists to have cheap labor and high prices; it is the aim of the workers to have high wages and low prices. There is conflict there that cannot be resolved by piety. It is a conflict which is inherent in the system, and it is a system which must go if the conflict is to cease. For if the acquisitive capitalist system is supplanted by a co-operative system with production for use and in which there is worker ownership of the means of production and distribution and in which the centralized state ceases to exist, then there will be an environment in which there will be no necessary opposition of class to class. For what classes might exist will be of a functional nature and will have no economic basis. It will be possible to co-operate for all will be workers in one way or another and all will receive the full products of their labor. Those incapable of work, the aged, infirm, mentally deficient, etc... will be taken care of as in justice entitled to share in the communal good.

The failure to recognize the reality of class war ends in an advocacy of reformism, of patching up the capitalist system till we have what is called "progressive capitalism" — which is but a mild form of socialism whose most prominent feature is a vast increase in bureaucratic and centralized government and a guaranteed proletarian coloring to society. Of course class war is undesirable, of course the Pope speaks against it, but when it exists as a reality, when it exists as an inevitable consequence of an unjust economic system, we can only rid ourselves of it when we rid ourselves of the system that produces it. And we are not going to rid ourselves of the system that produces it by adhering to a type of unionism that does not go beyond a wages and hour mentality, which advocates the conference table and class collaboration. Such a procedure inevitably ends in a betrayal of the workers and the establishment of union bureaucracy and exclusivism. The unions could very well serve as mediums of propaganda for a stateless society in which acquisitive classes would cease to exist and in which decentralized associations would take over what functions of government might be necessary. Where we are to find such unions under the present set-up is another and most difficult question. If they cannot be found then they should be abandoned as hindrances to revolution and cels should be formed of all men of good will who have these ends in view and who will work by direct action for these things which we have found impossible of attainment by political and legal means.

Those who are NEVER pacifists in international war but ALWAYS pacifists in class war are constantly pointing out that such a frank recognition of the reality of class war is offensive to Christian charity and that it is impossible to talk of the elimination of acquisitive classes without offending against charity and without having recourse to violence. And they are horrified at violence in this connection. It becomes such a personal thing and so near at home and would inconvenience so many. A war with Germany or Japan or Russia is so much more comfortable, so much more impersonal. These people are blind to the fact that class war exists whether they will it or not, that it will continue to exist until mankind rids itself of acquisitive classes (not by physical or violent liquidation, but by assimilation). Nor will enmity of man for man disappear until there is complete acceptance of the Sermon on the Mount. But the thing we must realize is that capitalist society creates a social pattern that aggravates and encourages this enmity, which builds OF PURPOSE on all the most unlovely aspects of man and provides the environmental conditions leading to exploitation of labor, and which SETTLES labor in a permanent proletarian condition—a condition alienating him from effective ownership of property or of the means of production.

Charity is an indispensable Christian obligation to all men. But it is also a long range charity which can indeed seem harsh to the individual who is asked to step out of a class because by remaining to it he is doing harm to his fellows. That is what we mean when we speak of "feeding the poor and starving the bankers” — we mean that the banker should cease to be a banker and earn his living honestly and then there is no need for him to starve. It is the same story with the whole capitalist class. There is but need for one class in which all are workers, performing different functions indeed, but in which no one preys on his fellow or lives off the produce of the community without rendering service to the community, service either of a manual, educative or spiritual nature.

Charity demands that we love all men but it does not demand that we uphold an economic system that is unjust because, in eradicating it, some toes will have to be stepped on. And if, in the process of opposing an unjust system, we address harsh words to those who are its representatives, then it must be because we would bring home to the individual his personal responsibility in the matter and remind him of his duty to take steps out of the system. If in the process of doing so we find that we are caught up in the enjoyment of censure, if it becomes a conscious release of venereal abnormalities, then we must know that we have defeated our purpose, have betrayed the revolution, have denied the responsibility that all men must bear who by personal sin offend God and man and add to the total misery that comes from any life or any system that departs from Christian morality. Revolutions fail that engender personal hate or proceed by violence and that is why we have grown weary of revolution, why there is no longer any enthusiasm for it, why it is something we assign to the intelligentsia of the 1920's. But the Christian cannot dismiss the revolution that easily, he cannot make it dependent upon fashion, it cannot become dated. For it is a novel revolution we must press on to. A revolution that begins within ourselves and as it spreads to society clings fanatically to the spirit of Christ by insisting all the way on non-violence, on respect for the person, a respect that will have no part with torture chambers, that will not kill the opponents of revolution, that will not set up an Inquisition, that will have all [be] Christian but never at the expense of freedom, that will ask for no special concessions for the Church but will proceed in personal tolerance and persuade in love. That is the only revolution worthy of the name. The only one that will succeed without ending in new tyrannies—it is an untried revolution. No one can say with certainty that it will come about, but then no one can say with certainty that it is impossible, for there are no limits to those things that can be possible in Christ.

Christians, those who make up the Church, must be prepared to sacrifice for the revolution. To recognize that the spiritual power of the Church increases in proportion as her material power decreases. Because then men adhere to her because they believe in her, not because she is a great and influential temporal power. What a great magnificence it would be if all Christians, ecclesiastical and lay, would withdraw from the evils of capitalism and landlordism, if even the papacy would cast off what little temporal power remains to it! If there would come about a frank recognition of the evils of the modern centralized state, and an end to all flirtations with authoritarian regimes, and a concentration on the Person whose claims go beyond governments and rest finally in God. It is then that we would truly become the leaven that permeates the whole mass, it is then that we could truly move the world for there is no violence that can trouble, there is no tyranny that can oppress but what it will meet with an invincible fortress which is the soul of man redeemed by Jesus Christ, and man who will not rest as long as injustice exists, who will be forever revolutionary and at odds with the world, who will indeed only rest when he goes to view God the other side of the grave.

It is well then to stress that there will be class war as long as we are content with an economic system (and the state which is its front), which is built on the existence of acquisitive classes, classes who are necessarily at each others throats because their function in the economy puts them in that position. And that this condition will exist until such time as we are willing to undertake radical measures to eliminate it and to [re]build society along co-operative lines wherein all men will share in justice the earth and the products of the earth and no one will have more than he can use and there will be no point to adding wealth to wealth or accumulating material things, for spiritual values will hold preeminence and renew all things on the face of the earth.