"Each man has an equal social right to multiply his power of motion by all the social factors of civilization. Private property in any of these factors is inconsistent with this fundamental right; it must, obviously, prove a source of economic despotism and industrial slavery"
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De Leon writes like a man trying to strip the velvet off “freedom” and show the machinery underneath. His key move is to define liberty not as a mood or a moral posture, but as leverage: “power of motion” multiplied by “the social factors of civilization.” Those factors - technology, infrastructure, knowledge, capital, institutions - aren’t presented as natural blessings. They’re accumulated, social, and therefore contested. The intent is bluntly redistributive, but rhetorically it’s also an indictment: if civilization is a collective product, then treating its levers as private loot isn’t merely unfair, it’s a rights violation.
The subtext is aimed at liberal capitalism’s favorite alibi: that property is a neutral safeguard against tyranny. De Leon flips it. Property, when it encloses the tools and systems everyone needs to work and live, becomes the tyranny. “Economic despotism” and “industrial slavery” are not decorative metaphors; they’re a reclassification of wage labor under industrial conditions as coercion with paperwork. “Obviously” is doing a lot of work here: he’s not inviting a debate so much as daring the reader to deny what he considers visible in every factory gate and company town.
Context matters. De Leon, a leading figure in American socialist and labor politics around the Gilded Age and early 20th century, is speaking into an era of trusts, strikes, violent suppression, and widening inequality. His language compresses that world into a single proposition: a society that privatizes the means of collective advancement inevitably privatizes power itself.
The subtext is aimed at liberal capitalism’s favorite alibi: that property is a neutral safeguard against tyranny. De Leon flips it. Property, when it encloses the tools and systems everyone needs to work and live, becomes the tyranny. “Economic despotism” and “industrial slavery” are not decorative metaphors; they’re a reclassification of wage labor under industrial conditions as coercion with paperwork. “Obviously” is doing a lot of work here: he’s not inviting a debate so much as daring the reader to deny what he considers visible in every factory gate and company town.
Context matters. De Leon, a leading figure in American socialist and labor politics around the Gilded Age and early 20th century, is speaking into an era of trusts, strikes, violent suppression, and widening inequality. His language compresses that world into a single proposition: a society that privatizes the means of collective advancement inevitably privatizes power itself.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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