The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

THE FALLACIES OF CLASS WARFARE
Today’s alleged conflict between “1%” and “the 99%” is simply the lat-
est incarnation of the primarily self-serving agenda of the fomenters of 
class warfare. Ford was a member of both these classes during his lifetime 
and, even after he became perhaps the wealthiest person on Earth, he still 
counted himself as a member of the working class. This is probably why 
he could look at wages from the perspective of both the employer and the 
worker, and conclude that a square deal for both was a prerequisite for 
organizational prosperity. Ford (1922, p. 179) elaborates on this as follows, 
and the reference also uses the phrase “industrial justice.”
And if so be an employer, having been once a workingman himself, sees the 
need of adjustments and makes them before his men ask him, so much the 
better—his act means a great increase in confidence and a new feeling that 
the world still has a square deal left in it.
* * *
Perhaps no word is more overworked nowadays than the word “democ-
racy,” and those who shout loudest about it, I think, as a rule, want it least. I 
am always suspicious of men who speak glibly of democracy. I wonder if they 
want to set up some kind of a despotism or if they want to have somebody do 

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226  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
for them what they ought to do for themselves. I am for the kind of democ-
racy that gives to each an equal chance according to his ability. I think if we 
give more attention to serving our fellows we shall have less concern with the 
empty forms of government and more concern with the things to be done. 
Thinking of service, we shall not bother about good feeling in industry or life; 
we shall not bother about masses and classes, or closed and open shops, and 
such matters as have nothing at all to do with the real business of living. We 
can get down to facts. We stand in need of facts.
It is a shock when the mind awakens to the fact that not all of humanity 
is human—that whole groups of people do not regard others with humane 
feelings. Great efforts have been made to have this appear as the attitude of a 
class, but it is really the attitude of all “classes,” in so far as they are swayed 
by the false notion of “classes.” Before, when it was the constant effort of 
propaganda to make the people believe that it was only the “rich” who were 
without humane feelings, the opinion became general that among the “poor” 
the humane virtues flourished.
But the “rich” and the “poor” are both very small minorities, and you 
cannot classify society under such heads. There are not enough “rich” and 
there are not enough “poor” to serve the purpose of such classification. Rich 
men have become poor without changing their natures, and poor men have 
become rich, and the problem has not been affected by it.
Between the rich and the poor is the great mass of the people who are nei-
ther rich nor poor. A society made up exclusively of millionaires would not 
be different from our present society; some of the millionaires would have 
to raise wheat and bake bread and make machinery and run trains—else 
they would all starve to death. Someone must do the work. Really we have 
no fixed classes. We have men who will work and men who will not. Most of 
the “classes” that one reads about are purely fictional. Take certain capitalist 
papers. You will be amazed by some of the statements about the labouring 
class. We who have been and still are a part of the labouring class know that 
the statements are untrue. Take certain of the labour papers. You are equally 
amazed by some of the statements they make about “capitalists.” And yet on 
both sides there is a grain of truth. The man who is a capitalist and nothing 
else, who gambles with the fruits of other men’s labours, deserves all that 
is said against him. He is in precisely the same class as the cheap gambler 
who cheats workingmen out of their wages. The statements we read about 
the labouring class in the capitalistic press are seldom written by manag-
ers of great industries, but by a class of writers who are writing what they 
think will please their employers. They write what they imagine will please. 
Examine the labour press and you will find another class of writers who simi-
larly seek to tickle the prejudices which they conceive the labouring man to 
have. Both kinds of writers are mere propagandists. And propaganda that 

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Democracy and Industry  •  227
does not spread facts is self-destructive. And it should be. You cannot preach 
patriotism to men for the purpose of getting them to stand still while you 
rob them—and get away with that kind of preaching very long. You cannot 
preach the duty of working hard and producing plentifully, and make that a 
screen for an additional profit to yourself. And neither can the worker con-
ceal the lack of a day’s work by a phrase.
Undoubtedly the employing class possesses facts which the employed 
ought to have in order to construct sound opinions and pass fair judgments. 
Undoubtedly the employed possess facts which are equally important to the 
employer. It is extremely doubtful, however, if either side has all the facts. 
And this is where propaganda, even if it were possible for it to be entirely suc-
cessful, is defective. It is not desirable that one set of ideas be “put over” on a 
class holding another set of ideas. What we really need is to get all the ideas 
together and construct from them.
Take, for instance, this whole matter of union labour and the right to 
strike.