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Title: The Honest Worker Author: Zo d’Axa Date: 1898 Language: en Topics: anti-work Source: Retrieved on August 4, 2009 from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/zo-daxa/1898/honest-worker.htm Notes: Source: La Feuille, No. 24, 1898; Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) Marxists.org 2007.
It’s the amazing fattening of the mass of the exploited that creates the
increasing and logical ambition of the exploiters.
The kings of the mines, of the coalfields, and of gold would be wrong to
worry. Their serfs’ resignation consecrates their authority. They no
longer needs to claim that their power is be based on divine right, that
decorative joke: their sovereignty is legitimated by popular consent. A
workers’ plebiscite, consisting of patriotic adherence, declamatory
platitudes or silent acquiescence assures the boss’s hold and the
bourgeoisie’s reign
In this work we can recognize the artisan.
Be it in the mine or the factory, the Honest Worker, that sheep, has
given the herd the mange.
The ideal of the supervisor has perverted the instincts of the people. A
sports coat on Sunday, talking politics, voting...these are the hopes
that take the place of everything. Odious daily labor awakens neither
hatred nor rancor. The great party of the workers hates the lazybones
who badly earns the money granted him by the boss.
Their heart belongs to their job.
They’re proud of their calloused hands.
However deformed the fingers, the yoke has done worse to the brain: the
bumps of resignation, of cowardice, of respect have grown under the
leather with the rubbing of the harness. Vain old workers wave their
certificates: forty years in the same place! We hear them telling about
this as they beg for bread in the courtyards.
“Have pity, ladies and gentlemen, on a sick old man, a brave worker, a
good Frenchman, a former non-commissioned officer who fought in the
war...Have pity, ladies and gentlemen.
It is cold: the windows remain closed. The old man doesn’t understand.
Teach the people! What else is needed? His poverty has taught him
nothing. As long as there are rich and poor the latter will hitch
themselves up so as to fill the service demanded. The worker’s neck is
used to the harness. When still young and strong they are the only
domestic beasts to not run wild in their shafts.
The proletarian’s special honor consists in accepting all those lies in
whose name he is condemned to forced labor: duty, fatherland, etc. He
accepts, hoping that by doing this he will raise himself into the
bourgeois class. The victim makes himself an accomplice. The unfortunate
talks of the flag, beats his chest, takes off his cap and spits in the
air:
“I’m an honest worker.”
And it falls right back onto his face.