replied and can never reply.

The capitalist class has managed society, and its management has failed.
And not only has it failed in its management, but it has failed
deplorably, ignobly, horribly. The capitalist class had an opportunity
such as was vouchsafed no previous ruling class in the history of the
world. It broke away from the rule of the old feudal aristocracy and
made modern society. It mastered matter, organized the machinery of
life, and made possible a wonderful era for mankind, wherein no creature
should cry aloud because it had not enough to eat, and wherein for every
child there would be opportunity for education, for intellectual and
spiritual uplift. Matter being mastered, and the machinery of life
organized, all this was possible. Here was the chance, God-given, and
the capitalist class failed. It was blind and greedy. It prattled sweet
ideals and dear moralities, rubbed its eyes not once, nor ceased one whit
in its greediness, and smashed down in a failure as tremendous only as
was the opportunity it had ignored.

But all this is like so much cobwebs to the bourgeois mind. As it was
blind in the past, it is blind now and cannot see nor understand. Well,
then, let the indictment be stated more definitely, in terms sharp and
unmistakable. In the first place, consider the caveman. He was a very
simple creature. His head slanted back like an orang-outang's, and he
had but little more intelligence. He lived in a hostile environment, the
prey of all manner of fierce life. He had no inventions nor artifices.
His natural efficiency for food-getting was, say, 1. He did not even
till the soil. With his natural efficiency of 1, he fought off his
carnivorous enemies and got himself food and shelter. He must have done
all this, else he would not have multiplied and spread over the earth and
sent his progeny down, generation by generation, to become even you and
me.

The caveman, with his natural efficiency of 1, got enough to eat most of
the time, and no caveman went hungry all the time. Also, he lived a
healthy, open-air life, loafed and rested himself, and found plenty of
time in which to exercise his imagination and invent gods. That is to
say, he did not have to work all his waking moments in order to get
enough to eat. The child of the caveman (and this is true of the
children of all savage peoples) had a childhood, and by that is meant a
happy childhood of play and development.

An