Articles by Engels in the Labour Standard 1881

Social Classes — Necessary and Superfluous


The question has often been asked, in what degree
are the different classes of society useful or even necessary? And the
answer was naturally a different one for every different epoch of history
considered. There was undoubtedly a time when a territorial aristocracy
was an unavoidable and necessary element of society. That, however, is
very, very long ago. Then there was a time when a capitalist middle class,
a bourgeoisie as the French call it, arose with equally unavoidable
necessity, struggled against the territorial aristocracy, broke its political
power, and in its turn became economically and politically predominant.
But, since classes arose, there never was a time when society could do
without a working class. The name, the social status of that class has
changed; the serf took the place of the slave, to be in his turn relieved
by the free working man -- free from servitude but also free from any earthly
possessions save his own labour force. But it is plain: whatever changes
took place in the upper, non-producing ranks of society, society could
not live without a class of producers. This class, then, is necessary under
all circumstances -- though the time must come, when it will no longer
be a class, when it will comprise all society.

Now, what necessity is there at present for the existence of each
of these three classes?

The landed aristocracy is, to say the least, economically useless
in England, while in Ireland and Scotland it has become a positive nuisance
by its depopulating tendencies. To send the people across the ocean or
into starvation, and to replace them by sheep or deer -- that is all the
merit that the Irish and Scotch landlords can lay claim to. Let the competition
of American vegetable and animal food develop a little further, and the
English landed aristocracy will do the same, at least those that can afford
it having large town estates to fall back upon. Of the rest, American food
competition will soon free us. And good riddance -- for their political
action, both in the Lords and Commons, is a perfect national nuisance.

But how about the capitalist middle class, that enlightened and
liberal class which founded the British colonial empire and which established
British liberty? The class that reformed Parliament in 1831, [1]
repealed the Corn Laws, [2] and reduced tax after tax?
The class that created and still directs the giant manufactures, and the
immense merchant navy, the ever spreading railway system of England? Surely
that class must be at least as necessary as the working class which it
directs and leads on from progress to progress.

Now the economical function of the capitalist middle class has
been, indeed, to create the modern system of steam manufactures and steam
communications, and to crush every economical and political obstacle which
delayed or hindered the development of that system. No doubt, as long as
the capitalist middle class performed this function it was, under the circumstances,
a necessary class. But is it still so? Does it continue to fulfil its essential
function as the manager and expander of social production for the benefit
of society at large? Let us see.

To begin with the means of communication, we find the telegraphs
in the hands of the Government. The railways and a large part of the sea-going
steamships are owned, not by individual capitalists who manage their own
business, but by joint-stock companies whose business is managed for them
by paid employees, by servants whose position is to all intents
and purposes that of superior, better paid workpeople. As to the directors
and shareholders, they both know that the less the former interfere with
the management, and the latter with the supervision, the better for the
concern. A lax and mostly perfunctory supervision is, indeed, the only
function left to the owners of the business. Thus we see that in reality
the capitalist owners of these immense establishments have no other action
left with regard to them, but to cash the half-yearly dividend warrants.
The social function of the capitalist here has been transferred to servants
paid by wages; but he continues to pocket, in his dividends, the pay for
those functions though he has ceased to perform them.

But another function is still left to the capitalist, whom the
extent of the large undertakings in question has compelled to "retire"
from their management. And this function is to speculate with his shares
on the Stock Exchange. For want of something better to do, our "retired"
or in reality superseded capitalists, gamble to their hearts' content in
this temple of mammon. They go there with the deliberate intention to pocket
money which they were pretending to earn; though they say, the origin of
all property is labour and saving -- the origin perhaps, but certainly
not the end. What hypocrisy to forcibly close petty gambling houses, when
our capitalist society cannot do without an immense gambling house, where
millions after millions are lost and won, for its very centre! Here, indeed,
the existence of the "retired" shareholding capitalist becomes not only
superfluous, but a perfect nuisance.

What is true for railways and steam shipping is becoming more
and more true every day for all large manufacturing and trading establishments.
"Floating" -- transforming large private concerns into limited companies
-- has been the order of the day for the last ten years and more. From
the large Manchester warehouses of the City to the ironworks and coalpits
of Wales and the North and the factories of Lancashire, everything has
been, or is being, floated. In all Oldham there is scarcely a cotton mill
left in private hands; nay, even the retail tradesman is more and more
superseded by "co-operative stores", the great majority of which are co-operative
in name only -- but of that another time. Thus we see that by the very
development of the system of capitalists' production the capitalist is
superseded quite as much as the handloom-weaver. With this difference,
though, that the handloom-weaver is doomed to slow starvation, and the
superseded capitalist to slow death from overfeeding. In this they generally
are both alike, that neither knows what to do with himself.

This, then, is the result: the economical development of our actual
society tends more and more to concentrate, to socialise production into
immense establishments which cannot any longer be managed by single capitalists.
All the trash of "the eye of the master", and the wonders it does, turns
into sheer nonsense as soon as an undertaking reaches a certain size. Imagine
"the eye of the master" of the London and North Western Railway! But what
the master cannot do the workman, the wages-paid servants of the Company,
can do, and do it successfully.

Thus the capitalist can no longer lay claim to his profits as
"wages of supervision", as he supervises nothing. Let us remember that
when the defenders of capital drum that hollow phrase into our ears.

But we have attempted to show, in our last week's issue, that
the capitalist class had also become unable to manage the immense productive
system of this country; that they on the one hand expanded production so
as to periodically flood all the markets with produce, and on the other
became more and more incapable of holding their own against foreign competition.
Thus we find that, not only can we manage very well without the interference
of the capitalist class in the great industries of the country, but that
their interference is becoming more and more a nuisance.

Again we say to them, "Stand back! Give the working class the
chance of a turn."