(11,11 Wages are determined through the antagonistic struggle 
between capitalist and worker. Victory goes necessarily to the 
capitalist. The capitalist can live longer without the worker than can 
the worker without the capitalist. Combination among the capitalists 
is customary and effective; workers’ combination is prohibited and 
painful in its consequences for them. Besides, the landowner and the 
capitalist can make use of industrial advantages to augment their 
revenues; the worker has neither rent nor interest on capital to 
supplement his industrial income. Hence the intensity of the 
competition among the workers. Thus only for the workers is the 
separation of capital, landed property, and labour an inevitable, 
essential and detrimental separation. Capital and landed property 
need not remain fixed in this abstraction, as must the labour of the 
workers. 

The separation of capital, rent, and labour is thus fatal for the worker. 

The lowest and the only necessary wage rate is that providing for 
the subsistence of the worker for the duration of his work and as 
much more as is necessary for him to support a family and for the 
race of labourers not to die out. The ordinary wage, according to 
Smith, is the lowest compatible with common humanity,” that is, 
with cattle-like existence. 

The demand for men necessarily governs the production of men, as of 
every other commodity. Should supply greatly exceed demand, a section 
of the workers sinks into beggary or starvation. The worker’s 
existence is thus brought under the same condition as the existence 
of every other commodity. The worker has become a commodity, 
and it is a bit of luck for him if he can find a buyer. And the demand 
on which the life of the worker depends, depends on the whim of the 

rich and the capitalists. Should supply ex[ceed]* demand, then one 
of the consti{tuent] parts of the price— profit, rent or wages — is 
paid below its rate, [a part of these] factors is therefore withdrawn 
from this application, and thus the market price gravitates [towards 
the] natural price as the centre-point. But (1) where there is 
considerable division of labour it is most difficult for the worker to 
direct his labour into other channels; (2) because of his subordinate 
relation to the capitalist, he is the first to suffer. 

Thus in the gravitation of market price to natural price it is the worker 
who loses most of all and necessarily. And it is just the capacity of the 
capitalist to direct his capital into another channel which either 
renders the worker,° who is restricted to some particular branch of 
labour, destitute, or forces him to submit to every demand of this 
capitalist. 

\|II,11 The accidental and sudden fluctuations in market price hit 
rent less than they do that part of the price which is resolved into 
profit and wages; but they hit profit less than they do wages. In 
most cases, for every wage that rises, one remains stationary and 
one falls. 

The worker need not necessarily gain when the capitalist does, but he 
necessarily loses when the latter loses. Thus, the worker does not gain if 
the capitalist keeps the market price above the natural price by virtue 
of some manufacturing or trading secret, or by virtue of monopoly 
or the favourable situation of his land. 

Furthermore, the prices of labour are much more constant than the 
prices of provisions. Often they stand in inverse proportion. In a 
dear year wages fall on account of the decrease in demand, but 
rise on account of the increase in the prices of provisions— and 
thus balance. In any case, a number of workers are left without 
bread. In cheap years wages rise on account of the rise in demand, 
but decrease on account of the fall in the prices of provi- 
sions—and thus balance. 

Another respect in which the worker is at a disadvantage: 

The labour prices of the various kinds of workers show much wider 
differences than the profits in the various branches in which capital is 
applied. In labour all the natural, spiritual, and social variety ot 
individual activity is manifested and is variously rewarded, whilst 
dead capital always keeps the same pace and is indifferent to real 
individual activity. 

In general we should observe that in those cases where worker and 
capitalist equally suffer, the worker suffers in his very existence, the 
capitalist in the profit on his dead mammon. 

The worker has to struggle not only for his physical means of 
subsistence; he has to struggle to get work, i. e., the possibility, the 
means, to perform his activity. 

Let us take the three chief conditions in which society can find 
itself and consider the situation of the worker in them: 

(1) If the wealth of society declines the worker suffers most of all, 
and for the following reason: although the working class cannot gain 
so much as can the class of property owners in a prosperous state of 
society, no one suffers so cruelly from its decline as the working class.* 

IW11I, 1] (2) Let us now take a society in which wealth is increasing. 
This condition is the only one favourable to the worker. Here 
competition between the capitalists sets in. The demand for workers 
exceeds their supply. But: 

In the first place, the raising of wages gives rise to overwork among 
the workers. The more they wish to earn, the more must they 
sacrifice their time and carry out slave-labour, completely losing all 
their freedom, in the service of greed. Thereby they shorten their 
lives. This shortening of their life-span is a favourable circumstance 
for the working class as a whole, for as a result of it an ever-fresh 
supply of labour becomes necessary. This class has always to sacrifice 
a part of itself in order not to be wholly destroyed. 

Furthermore: When does a society find itself in a condition of 
advancing wealth? When the capitals and the revenues of a country 
are growing. But this is only possible: 

(a) As the result of the accumulation of much labour, capital being 
accumulated labour; as the result, therefore, of the fact that more 
and more of his products are being taken away from the worker, that 
to an increasing extent his own labour confronts him as another 
man’s property and that the means of his existence and his activity 
are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the capitalist. 

(8) The accumulation of capital increases the division of labour, 
and the division of labour increases the number of workers. 
Conversely, the number of workers increases the division of labour, 
just as the division of labour increases the accumulation of capital. 
With this division of labour on the one hand and the accumulation of 
capital on the other, the worker becomes ever more exclusively 
dependent on labour, and on a particular, very one-sided, machine- 
like labour at that. Just as he is thus depressed spiritually and 

physically to the condition of a machine and from being a man 
becomes an abstract activity and a belly, so he also becomes ever 
more dependent on every fluctuation in market price, on the 
application of capital, and on the whim of the rich. Equally, 
the increase in the IIIV,1! class of people wholly dependent on 
work intensifies competition among the workers, thus lowering their 
price. In the factory system this situation of the worker reaches its 
climax. 

(y) In an increasingly prosperous society only the richest of the 
rich can continue to live on money interest. Everyone else has to 
carry on a business with his capital, or venture it in trade. As a 
result, the competition between the capitalists becomes more 
intense. The concentration of capital increases, the big capitalists 
ruin the small, and a section of the erstwhile capitalists sinks into 
the working class, which as a result of this supply again suffers to 
some extent a depression of wages and passes into a still greater 
dependence on the few big capitalists. The number of capitalists 
having been diminished, their competition with respect to the 
workers scarcely exists any longer; and the number of workers 
having been increased, their competition among themselves has 
become all the more intense, unnatural, and violent. Consequently, 
a section of the working class falls into beggary or starvation just 
as necessarily as a section of the middle capitalists falls into the 
working class. 

Hence even in the condition of society most favourable to the 
.worker, the inevitable result for the worker is overwork and 
premature death, decline to a mere machine, a bond servant of 
capital, which piles up dangerously over and against him, more 
competition, and starvation or beggary for a section of the 
workers. 

IIV,1! The raising of wages excites in the worker the capitalist’s 
mania to get rich, which he, however, can only satisfy by the 
sacrifice of his mind and body. The raising of wages presupposes 
and entails the accumulation of capital, and thus sets the product 
of labour against the worker as something ever more alien to him. 
Similarly, the division of labour renders him ever more one-sided 
and dependent, bringing with it the competition not only of men 
but also of machines. Since the worker has sunk to the level of a 
machine, he can be confronted by the machine as a competitor. 
Finally, as the amassing of capital increases the amount of industry 
and therefore the number of workers, it causes the same amount 
of industry to manufacture a larger amount of products, which leads 
to over-production and thus either ends by throwing a large 

section of workers out of work or by reducing their wages to the 
most miserable minimum. 

Such are the consequences of a state of society most favourable 
to the worker—namely, of a state of growing, advancing wealth. 

Eventually, however, this state of growth must sooner or later 
reach its peak. What is the worker’s position now? 

3) “In a country which had acquired that full complement of riches [...] both 
the wages of labour and the profits of stock would probably be very low [...] the 
competition for employment would necessarily be so great as to reduce the wages 

of labour to what was barely sufficient to keep up the number of labourers, and, 
the country being already fully peopled, that number could never be augmented.” * 

The surplus would have to die. 

Thus in a declining state of society—increasing misery of the 
worker; in an advancing state— misery with complications; and in 
a fully developed state of society — static misery. 

NVI,11 Since, however, according to Smith, a society is not happy, 
of which the greater part suffers*—yet even the wealthiest state 
of society leads to this suffering of the majority—and since the 
economic system (and in general a society based on private 
interest) leads to this wealthiest condition, it follows that the goal 
of the economic system is the unhappiness of society. 

Concerning the relationship between worker and capitalist we 
should add that the capitalist is more than compensated for rising 
wages by the reduction in the amount of labour time, and that 
rising wages and rising interest on capital operate on the price of 
commodities like simple and compound interest respectively. 

Let us put ourselves now wholly at the standpoint of the political 
economist, and follow him in comparing the theoretical and 
practical claims of the workers. 

He tells us that originally and in theory the whole product of 
labour belongs to the worker. But at the same time he tells us that 
in actual fact what the worker gets is the smallest and utterly 
indispensable part of the product—as much, only, as is necessary 
for his existence, not as a human being, but as a worker, and for 
the propagation, not of humanity, but of the slave class of 
workers. 

The political economist tells us that everything is bought with 
labour and that capital is nothing but accumulated labour; but at 
the same time he tells us that the worker, far from being able to 
buy everything, must sell himself and his humanity. 

Whilst the rent of the idle landowner usually amounts to a third 
of the product of the soil, and the profit of the busy capitalist to as 
much as twice the interest on money, the “something more” which 
the worker himself earns at the best of times amounts to so little 
that of four children of his, two must starve and die. 

IIVII,1-31 Whilst according to the political economists it is solely 
through labour that man enhances the value of the products of 
nature, whilst labour is man’s active possession, according to this 
same political economy the landowner and the capitalist, who qua 
landowner and capitalist are merely privileged and idle gods, are 
everywhere superior to the worker and lay down the law to him. 

Whilst according to the political economists labour is the sole 
unchanging price of things, there is nothing more fortuitous than 
the price of labour, nothing exposed to greater fluctuations. 

Whilst the division of labour raises the productive power of 
labour and increases the wealth and refinement of society, it 
impoverishes the worker and reduces him to a machine. Whilst 
labour brings about the accumulation of capital and with this the 
increasing prosperity of society, it renders the worker ever more 
dependent on the capitalist, leads him into competition of a new 
intensity, and drives him into the headlong rush of over- 
production, with its subsequent corresponding slump. 

Whilst the interest of the worker, according to the political 
economists, never stands opposed to the interest of society, society 
always and necessarily stands opposed to the interest of the 
worker. 

According to the political economists, the interest of the worker 
is never opposed to that of society: (1) because the rising wages 
are more than compensated by the reduction in the amount of 
labour time, together with the other consequences set forth above; 
and (2) because in relation to society the whole gross product is 
the net product, and only in relation to the private individual has 
the net product any significance. 

But that labour itself, not merely in present conditions but 
insofar as its purpose in general is the mere increase of 
wealth—that labour itself, I say, is harmful and pernicious— 
follows from the political economist’s line of argument, without 
his being aware of it. 

In theory, rent of land and profit on capital are deductions 
suffered by wages. In actual fact, however, wages are a deduction 

which land and capital allow to go to the worker, a concession 
from the product of labour to the workers, to labour. 

When society is in a state of decline, the worker suffers most 
severely. The specific severity of his burden he owes to his posi- 
tion as a worker, but the burden as such to the position of society. 

But when society is in a state of progress, the ruin and 
impoverishment of the worker is the product of his labour and of 
the wealth produced by him. The misery results, therefore, from 
the essence of present-day labour itself. 

Society in a state of maximum wealth—an ideal, but one which 
is approximately attained, and which at least is the aim of political 
economy as of civil society—means for the workers static misery. 

It goes without saying that the proletarian, i. e., the man who, 
being without capital and rent, lives purely by labour, and by a 
one-sided, abstract labour, is considered by political economy only 
as a worker. Political economy can therefore advance the proposi- 
tion that the proletarian, the same as any horse, must get as much 
as will enable him to work. It does not consider him when he is 
not working, as a human being; but leaves such consideration to 
criminal law, to doctors, to religion, to the statistical tables, to 
politics and to the poor-house overseer. 

Let us now rise above the level of political economy and try to 
answer two questions on the basis of the above exposition, which 
has been presented almost in the words of the political economists: 

(1) What in the evolution of mankind is the meaning of this 
reduction of the greater part of mankind to abstract labour? 

(2) What are the mistakes committed by the piecemeal reform- 
ers, who either want to raise wages and in this way to improve 
the situation of the working class, or regard equality of wages (as 
Proudhon does) as the goal of social revolution? 

In political economy labour occurs only in the form of activity as 
a source of livelthood.* 

|} VIUI, 1] “It can be asserted that those occupations which presuppose specific 
talents or longer training have become on the whole more lucrative; whilst the 
proportionate reward for mechanically monotonous activity in which one person 
can be trained as easily and quickly as another has fallen with growing competition, 
and was inevitably bound to fall. And it is just this sort of work which in the 
present state of the organisation of labour is still by far the commonest. If 
therefore a worker in the first category now earns seven times as much as he did, 
say, fifty years ago, whilst the earnings of another in the second category have 

remained unchanged, then of course both are earning on the average four times as 
much. But if the first category comprises only a thousand workers in a particular 

country, and the second a million, then 999,000 are no better off than fifty years 
ago—and they are worse off if at the same time the prices of the necessaries of life 
have risen. With such superficial calculations of averages people try to deceive 
themselves about the most numerous class of the population. Moreover, the size of 
the wage is only one factor in the estimation of the worker’s income, because it is 
essential for the measurement of the latter to take into account the certainty of its 
duration—which is obviously out of the question in the anarchy of so-called free 
competition, with its ever-recurring fluctuations and periods of stagnation. Finally, 
the hours of work customary formerly and now have to be considered. And for the 
English cotton-workers these have been increased, as a result of the entrepreneurs’ 
mania for profit, [[IX,1| to between twelve and sixteen hours a day during the past 
twenty-five years or so—that is to say, precisely during the period of the 
introduction of labour-saving machines; and this increase in one country and in 
one branch of industry inevitably asserted itself elsewhere to a greater or lesser 
degree, for the right of the unlimited exploitation of the poor by the rich is still 
universally recognised.” (Wilhelm Schulz, Die Bewegung der Production, p. 65.) 

“But even if it were as true as it is false that the average income of every class ot 
society has increased, the income-differences and relative income-distances may 
nevertheless have become greater and the contrasts between wealth and poverty 
accordingly stand out more sharply. For just because total production rises—and in 
the same measure as it rises—needs, desires and claims also multiply and thus 
relative poverty can increase whilst absolute poverty diminishes. The Samoyed living 
on fish oil and rancid fish is not poor because in his secluded society all have the 
same needs. But in a state that is forging ahead, which in the course of a decade, say, 
increased by a third its total production in proportion to the population, the 
worker who is getting as much at the end of ten years as at the beginning has not 
remained as well off, but has become poorer by a third.” (op. cit., pp. 65-66.) 

But political economy knows the worker only as a working 
animal—as a beast reduced to the strictest bodily needs. 

“To develop in greater spiritual freedom, a people must break their bondage to 
their bodily needs—they must cease to be the slaves of the body. They must, above 
all, have time at their disposal for spiritual creative activity and spiritual enjoyment. 
The developments in the labour organism gain this time. Indeed, with new motive 
forces and improved machinery, a single worker in the cotton mills now often 
performs the work formerly requiring a hundred, or even 250 to 350 workers. 
Similar results can be observed in all branches of production, because external 
natural forces are being compelled to participate [|X,1] to an ever-greater degree in 
human labour. If the satisfaction of a given amount of material needs formerly 
required a certain expenditure of time and human effort which has later been 
reduced by half, then without any loss of material comfort the scope for spiritual 
activity and enjoyment has been simultaneously extended by as much.... But again the 
way in which the booty, that we win from old Cronus himself in his most private 
domain, is shared out is still decided by the dice-throw of blind, unjust Chance. In 
France it has been calculated that at the present stage in the development of 
production an average working period of five hours a day by every person capable of 
work could suffice for the satisfaction of all the material interests of society... 
Notwithstanding the time saved by the perfecting of machinery, the duration of the 
slave-labour performed by a large population in the factories has only increased.” 
(Schulz, op. cit., pp. 67, 68.) 

“The transition from compound manual labour rests on a break-down of the 
latter into its simple operations. At first, however, only some of the uniformly- 
recurring Operations will devolve on machines, while some will devolve on men. 
From the nature of things, and from confirmatory experience, it is clear that 
unendingly monotonous activity of this kind is as harmful to the mind as to the 
body; thus this combination of machinery with mere division of labour among a 
greater number of hands must inevitably show all the disadvantages of the latter. 
These disadvantages appear, among other things, in the greater mortality of 
factory |[XI,1{ workers.... Consideration has not been given... to this big distinction 
as to how far men work through machines or how far as machines.” (op. cit., p. 69.) 

“In the future life of the peoples, however, the inanimate forces of nature 
working in machines will be our slaves and serfs.” (op. cit., p. 74.) 

“The English spinning mills employ 196,818 women and only 158,818 men. For 
every 100 male workers in the cotton mills of Lancashire there are 103 female 
workers, and in Scotland as many as 209. In the English flax mills of Leeds, for 
every 100 male workers there were found to be 147 female workers. In Druden* 
and on the east coast of Scotland as many as 280. In the English silk mills... many 
female workers; male workers predominate in the woollen mills where the work 
requires greater physical strength. In 1833, no fewer than 38,927 women were 
employed alongside 18,593 men in the North American cotton mills. As a result of 
the changes in the labour organism, a wider sphere of gainful employment has 
thus fallen to the share of the female sex... Women now occupying an 
economically more independent position ... the two sexes are drawn closer together 
in their social conditions.” (op. cit., pp. 71-72.) 

“Working in the English steam- and water-driven spinning mills in 1835 were: 
20,558 children between the ages of eight and twelve; 35,867 between the ages of 
twelve and thirteen; and, lastly, 108,208 children between the ages of thirteen and 
eighteen.... Admittedly, further advances in mechanisation, by more and more 
removing all monotonous work from human hands, are operating in the direction 
of a gradual ||XII,1} elimination of this evil. But standing in the way of these more 
rapid advances is the very circumstance that the capitalists can, in the easiest and 
cheapest fashion, appropriate the energies of the lower classes down to the 
children, to be used instead of mechanical devices.” (op. cit., pp. 70-71.) 

“Lord Brougham’s call to the workers— ‘Become capitalists’. ... This is the evil 
that millions are able to earn a bare subsistence for themselves only by 
strenuous labour which shatters the body and cripples them morally and intellectu- 
ally; that they are even obliged to consider the misfortune of finding such work a 
piece of good fortune.” (op. cit., p. 60.) 

“In order to live, then, the non-owners are obliged to place themselves, directly or 
indirectly, at the service of the owners -—-to put themselves, that is to say, into a position 
of dependence upon them.” (Pecqueur, Théorie nouvelle d’économie soc., etc., p. 409.) 

Servants — pay; workers — wages; employees—salary or emoluments.© (loc. cit., pp- 
409, 410.) 

“To hire out one’s labour”, “to lend one’s Jabour at interest”, “to work in 
another’s place” | 

“To hire out the materials of labour”, “to lend the materials of labour at 
interest”, “to make others work in one’s place”.* (op. cit., p. 411.) 

WXIIL, 1] “Such an economic order condemns men to occupations so mean, to a 
degradation so devastating and bitter, that by comparison savagery seems like a 
kingly condition....”° (op. cit., pp. 417, 418.) “Prostitution of the non-owning class 
in all its forms.” ° (op. cit., p. 421 £.) Ragmen. 

Charles Loudon, in the book Solution du probléme de la population, 
etc., Paris, 1842,°' declares the number of prostitutes in England 
to be between sixty and seventy thousand. The number of women 
of doubtful virtue is said to be equally large (p. 228). 

“The average life of these unfortunate creatures on the streets, after they have 
embarked on their career of vice, is about six or seven years. To maintain the 
number of sixty to seventy thousand prostitutes, there must be in the three 
kingdoms at least eight to nine thousand women who commit themselves to this 
abject profession each year, or about twenty-four new victims each day—an 
average of one per hour; and it follows that if the same proportion holds good over 
the whole surface of the globe, there must constantly be in existence one and a half 
million unfortunate women of this kind.” (op. cit., p. 229.) 

“The numbers of the poverty-stricken grow with their poverty, and at the 
extreme limit of destitution human beings are crowded together in the greatest 
numbers contending with each other for the right to suffer... In 1821 the 
population of Ireland was 6,801,827. In 1831 it had risen to 7,764,010—an in- 
crease of 14 per cent in ten years. In Leinster, the wealthiest province, the popu- 
lation increased by only 8 per cent; whilst in Connaught, the most poverty-stricken 
province, the increase reached 21 per cent. (Extract from the Enquiries Published 
in England on Ireland, Vienna, 1840.)”*° (Buret, De la misére, etc, t. I, pp. 36, 37.) 

Political economy considers labour in the abstract as a thing; 
labour is a commodity. If the price is high, then the commodity is 

in great demand; if the price is low, then the commodity is in 
great supply: the price of labour as a commodity must fall lower 
and lower. (Buret, op. cit., p. 43.) This is made inevitable partly by 
the competition between capitalist and worker, partly by the 
competition amongst the workers. 

“The working population, the seller of labour, is necessarily reduced to accept- 
ing the most meagre part of the product.... Is the theory of labour as a commodity 
anything other than a theory of disguised bondage?” * (op. cit., p. 43.) “Why then 
has nothing but an exchange-value been seen in labour?”” (op. cit., p. 44.) 

The large workshops prefer to buy the labour of women and 
children, because this costs less than that of men. (op. cit.) 

“The worker is not at all in the position of a free seller vis-d-vis the one who 
employs him.... The capitalist is always free to employ labour, and the worker is 
always forced to sell it. The value of labour is completely destroyed if it is not sold 
every instant. Labour can neither be accumulated nor even be saved, unlike true 
[commodities]. 

|{XIV, 1| “Labour is life, and if life is not each day exchanged for food, it suffers 
and soon perishes. To claim that human life is a commodity, one must, therefore, 
admit slavery.” (op. cit., pp. 49, 50.) 

If then labour is a commodity it is a commodity with the most 
unfortunate attributes. But even by the principles of political econo- 
my it is no commodity, for it is not the “free result of a free transaction” . 
[op. cit., p. 50.] The present economic regime 

“simultaneously lowers the price and the remuneration of labour; it perfects the 
worker and degrades the man”‘ (op. cit., pp. 52-53.) “Industry has become a war, 
and commerce a gamble.” © (op. cit., p. 62.) 

“The cotton-working machines”! (in England) alone represent 84,000,000 
manual workers. [op. cit., p. 193, note]. 

Up to the present, industry has been in a state of war, a war of 
conquest: 

“It has squandered the lives of the men who made up its army with the same 
indifference as the great conquerors. Its aim was the possession of wealth, not the 
happiness of men.” * (Buret, op. cit., p. 20.) “These interests” (that is, economic 
interests), “freely left to themselves ... must necessarily come into conflict; they 
have no other arbiter but war, and the decisions of war assign defeat and death to 
some, in order to give victory to the others... It is in the conflict of opposed forces 
that science seeks order and equilibrium: perpetual war, according to it, is the sole 
means of obtaining peace; that war is called competition.” ” (op. cit., p. 23.) 

“The industrial war, to be conducted with success, demands large armies which 
it can amass on one spot and profusely decimate. And it is neither from devotion 
nor from duty that the soldiers of this army bear the exertions imposed on them, 
but only to escape the hard necessity of hunger. They feel neither attachment nor 
gratitude towards their bosses, nor are these bound to their subordinates by any 
feeling of benevolence. They do not know them as men, but only as instruments of 
production which have to yield as much as possible with as little cost as possible. 
These populations of workers, ever more crowded together, have not even the 
assurance of always being employed. Industry, which has called them together, only 
lets them live while it needs them, and as soon as it can get rid of them it abandons 
them without the slightest scruple; and the workers are compelled to offer their 
persons and their powers for whatever price they can get. The longer, more 
painful and more disgusting the work they are given, the less they are paid. There 
are those who, with sixteen hours’ work a day and unremitting exertion, scarcely 
buy the right not to die.” (op. cit., pp. 68-69.) 

XV, “We are convinced ... as are the commissioners charged with the inquiry 
into the condition of the hand-loom weavers, that the large industrial towns would 
in a short time lose their population of workers if they were not all the time 
receiving from the neighbouring rural areas constant recruitments of healthy men, 
a constant flow of fresh blood.”* (op. cit., p. 362.) Xvi