1. The daily wage the worker takes home is the profit which his 
machine, his body, yields to its owner. Included in it is the sum 
necessary to replace the wear and tear’ of the machine, or, what is the 
same thing, to replace old, worn-out workers by new ones. 

2. It is inherent in the minimum wage that the abolition of 
Sunday, for example, would be a sheer loss to the worker. He would 
have to earn his wages in harder conditions. This is the purpose of 
the brave philanthropists who zealously argue against the observance 
of Sabbath. 

3. Although the minimum wage is determined on average by the 
price of the most indispensable provisions, it is nevertheless to be 
remarked: 

Firstly: that the minimum is different in different countries, the 
potato in Ireland, for example.”° 

Secondly: not only that. The minimum itself has a_ historical 
movement and sinks always further towards the absolutely lowest 
level. Example of brandy. Distilled first from draff, then from grain, 
finally from spirits. 

Towards bringing about the really lowest level of the minimum 
contribute not only 

1) the general development of the working machines, the division 
of labour, the increase in competition among the workers themselves 
and its liberation from local fetters, but also 

2) the growth of taxation and the greater costliness of the state 
budget, for, although, as we have seen, the abolition of a tax does not 
benefit the worker, he is harmed by the introduction of any new tax 
so long as the minimum has not yet fallen to its lowest possible 
expression, and this is the case with all perturbations and difficulties 
of civil relations. The growth of taxation, incidentally, brings about 
the ruin of the small farmers, bourgeois and craftsmen. 

Exam ple—after the war of liberation.?° The progress of industry, 
which brings with it cheaper products and substitutes. 

3. This minimum tends to become the same in different countries. 

4. When wages have once fallen and later rise again, they never 
rise, however, to their previous level. 

In the course of development, there is a double fall in wages: 

Firstly: relative, in proportion to the development of general 
wealth. 

Secondly: absolute, since the quantity of commodities which the 
worker receives in exchange becomes less and less. 

5. With the development of large-scale industry time becomes 
increasingly the measure of the value of commodities, hence also the 
measure of wages. Simultaneously the production of the commodity 
labour becomes cheaper and cheaper and costs less and less working 
time as civilisation progresses. 

The peasant still has free time and can earn something on the side. 
But big industry (not manufacture) does away with this patriarchal 
situation. Every moment of the worker’s life, of his very existence, 
thus becomes more and more a matter of haggling. 

(Here add the following sections: 

1. Suggestions for the improvement of the workers’ position. 
Malthus; Rossi etc.; Proudhon; Weitling. 

2. Workers’ associations. 

- 3. Positive significance of wage labour.) 

VI. SUGGESTIONS FOR REMEDIES 

1. One of the most popular suggestions is the system of savings 
banks. 

We will say nothing at all of the impossibility for most of the 
workers to save. 

The purpose, at least the strictly economic meaning of savings 
banks, is supposed to be: that by their own foresight and wisdom the 
workers can equalise the good working times with the bad, i.e., 
distribute their wages in the cycle through which the industrial 
movement runs in such a way that they actually never spend more 
than the minimum wage, that which is indispensable to sustain life. 

But we have seen that the fluctuations of wages not only 
revolutionise the worker, but that without the temporary rise of 
wages above the minimum he would remain excluded from all 
advances of production, from public wealth, from civilisation, hence 
from all possibility of emancipation. | 

He must therefore turn himself into a bourgeois calculating 
machine, make thrift into a system, and give misery a stationary, 
conservative character. 

In addition, the savings bank system is a triple machine of 
despotism: 

a) The savings bank is the golden chain by which the government 
holds a large part of the working class. By it they not only acquire an 
interest in the preservation of the existing conditions. Not only does 
it lead to a split between that portion of the working class which takes 
part in the savings banks and the portion which does not. The 
workers themselves thus give into the hands of their enemies the 
weapons to preserve the existing organisation of society which 
subjugates them. 

8) The money flows back into the national bank, this lends it again 
to the capitalists and both share in the profits and thus, with the 
money borrowed from the people at a miserable rate of inter- 
est—which only by this centralisation becomes a mighty industrial 
lever—increase their capital, their direct ruling power over the 
people. 

2. Another suggestion, very popular with the bourgeoisie, is 
education, especially comprehensive industrial education. 

a) We shall not draw attention to the trite contradiction which lies 
in the fact that modern industry replaces compound labour more 
and more with simple labour which requires no education; we shall 
not draw attention to the fact that it throws more and more children 
from the age of seven upwards behind the machine and turns them 
into a source of income not only for the bourgeois class but for their 
own proletarian parents; the factory system frustrates the school 
Jaws, example Prussia; nor shall we draw attention to the fact that the 
education of the mind, if the worker had such an education, has no 
direct effect at all on his wages, that education is altogether dependent 
on the conditions of life, and that by moral education the bourgeois 
understands indoctrination with bourgeois principles, and that, 
finally, the bourgeois class neither has the means, nor if it had them 
would it use them, to offer the people a real education. 

We confine ourselves to stressing a purely economic viewpoint. 

B) The true purpose which education has with the philanthropic 
economists is this: every worker should be trained in as many 
industries as possible, so that if by the introduction of new machines 
or by a change in the division of labour he is thrown out of one 
industry, he can as easily as possible find employment i in another. 

Assuming this to be possible: 

The consequence would be that if there were a surplus of hands in 
one industry, this surplus would at once spread to all other 
industries, and even more than before the reduction of wages in one 
business would lead directly to a general reduction in wages. 

Even as it is, since modern industry simplifies work everywhere 
and makes it easy to learn, the rise of wages in one industry at once 
causes an influx of workers into this industry and the reduction of 
wages will more or les« directly assume a general character. 

We cannot here, of course, consider all the many minor pallhatives 
which are suggested from the bourgeois side.’ 

3. We must, however, turn to a third suggestion, which has had, 
and continues to have, very significant practical consequences—the 
Malthusian theory. 

This entire theory, in so far as we have to consider it here, amounts 
to the following: 

a) The level of wages depends on the proportion of the hands 
which offer themselves to the hands which are required. 

Wages can rise in two ways. 

Either when the capital which sets the labour in motion increases 
so rapidly that the demand for workers increases more rapidly, in 
quicker progression, than their supply. 

Or, secondly, when the population is growing so slowly that 
competition among the workers remains weak although productive 
capital does not grow rapidly. 

On one side of this proportion, namely the growth of productive 
capital, you workers can exert no influence. 

But you can on the other side. 

You can reduce the supply of workers, i.e., the competition among 
them, by making as few children as possible. 

To reveal the utter stupidity, baseness and hypocrisy of this 
doctrine, the following is sufficient: 

8) (This is to be included in I: How does the growth of the 
productive forces affect wages?) 

Wages rise when the demand for labour grows. This demand 
grows when the capital grows which sets the labour in motion, i.e., 
when the productive capital grows. 

Here there are two main points to be made: 

Firstly. A main condition for the rise of wages is the growth of the 
productive capital, and its most rapid possible growth. The main 
condition for the worker to be in a passable position is, therefore, to 
depress his position in relation to the bourgeois class more and more, 
to increase as much as possible the power of his opponent, capital. 
That is, he can only be in a passable position provided he creates 
and reinforces the power which is hostile to him, his own opposite. 
On this condition of creating this hostile power, the means of 

employment flow to him from that power and turn him anew into 
part of the productive capital and into the lever which increases the 
latter and hurls it into an accelerated movement of growth. 

Incidentally, when one has grasped this relationship of capital and 
labour, all Fourierist and other attempts at mediation appear in their 
true absurdity. 

Secondly: Having thus explained this crazy relationship, we must 
add a second, even more important element. 

Namely, what does it mean: Growth of productive capital, and in 
what conditions does it take place? 

Growth of capital=accumulation and concentration of capital. In 
the same measure in which capital is accumulated and concentrated, 
it leads: 

to work on a larger scale and hence to a new division of labour 
which simplifies the work still more; 

then to the introduction of machinery on a larger scale and to the 
introduction of new machinery. 

That means, therefore, that in the measure in which productive 
capital grows, there grows 

the competition among the workers because the division of labour 
is simplified and every branch of labour is open to everybody. 

Competition also grows amorig them because in the same measure 
they have to compete with the machines and are thrown out of work 
by them. By constantly increasing the scale of operations and because 
the rate of interest tends to fall more and more through the 
competition among the capitals offered, the concentration and 
accumulation of productive capital brings about the following: 

Small industrial enterprises are ruined and cannot stand up to 
competition with the big ones. Entire sections of the bourgeois class 
are thrown down into the working class. The competition among the 
workers is therefc e increased by the ruin of the small industrialists 
which is fatally linked with the growth of productive capital. 

And at the same time as the rate of interest falls, small capitalists 
formerly not participating in industry directly are forced to become 
industrial, i.e., to supply big industry with further victims. From this 
side, too, the working class is enlarged and competition among the 
workers increased. 

While the growth of the productive forces leads to work on a 
larger scale, momentary overproduction becomes more and more 
necessary, the world market more and more extensive, and 
competition more universal. The crises, therefore, become more and 
more violent. So the workers are given a sudden encouragement to 
marry and multiply, they are agglomerated and concentrated in 

large masses, and their wages fluctuate more and more. Every new 
crisis, therefore, creates directly much bigger competition among the 
workers. 

Speaking generally, the growth of the productive forces, with their 
more rapid means of communication, accelerated circulation and 
feverish turnover of capital consists in the fact that in the same time 
more can be produced, and hence, under the law of competition, 
more must be produced. That is, production takes place in more and 
more difficult conditions, and so that competition can be put up with 
in these conditions, production must take place on an ever growing 
scale and capital must be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. 
And so that this producing on a larger scale may be fruitful, the 
division of labour and machinery must be constantly and dispropor- 
tionately extended. 

This producing in more and more difficult conditions also extends 
to the worker as part of capital. He must produce more, in more and 
more difficult conditions, i-e., for less and less wages and more work, . 
at constantly decreasing production costs. So the minimum itself is 
constantly being reduced to greater exertions with minimum 
enjoyment. 

The disproportion rises geometrically, not arithmetically.? 

The growth of the productive forces therefore leads to increased 
power of big capital, to the machine called the worker becoming 
more and more simple, to an increase in direct competition among 
the workers through greater division of labour and use of 
machinery, through a positive premium being placed on the 
production of people, through the competition of the ruined 
sections of the bourgeois class, etc. 

We can formulate the matter still more simply: 

Productive capital consists of three constituent parts: 

1) the raw material which is worked up; 

2) the machines and materials such as coal, etc., which are 
necessary to drive the machines; buildings, etc.; 

3) the part of capital intended for the maintenance of the workers. 

Given the growth of productive capital, in what proportion do 
these three constituents stand to each other? 

The growth of productive capital is linked with its concentration, 
and with that the fact that it can only be profitable if it is exploited on 
an ever larger scale. 

A large part of capital will therefore be transformed directly into 
instruments of labour and will operate as such, and the more the 

productive forces grow, the larger will be this part of capital which is 
directly transformed into machinery. 

The growth of machinery and of the division of labour has the 
consequence that in a shorter time far more can be produced. Hence 
the store of raw materials must grow in the same proportion. In the 
course of the growth of the productive capital the part of capital 
transformed into raw materials necessarily increases. 

There is still the third part of capital, that which is intended for the 
maintenance of the workers, i.e., transformed into wages. 

In what proportion does the growth of this part of productive 
capita] stand to the two others? 

The greater division of labour causes a worker to produce as much 
as three, four, or five did formerly. Machinery has as a consequence 
the same proportion on a much larger scale. 

It further stands to reason that the growth of the parts of 
productive capital transformed into machinery and raw materials is 
not accompanied by a similar growth of the part of productive capital 
intended for wages. In that case the purpose of the use of machinery 
and the increased division of labour would, of course, be thwarted. It 
stands to reason that the part of productive capital intended for 
wages does not grow in the same measure as the part intended for 
machinery and raw materials. Moreover, in the same measure in 
which productive capital grows, i.e., the power of capital as such, in 
the same measure there increases the disproportion between the 
capital invested in raw materials and machinery and that spent on 
wages. That means, therefore, that the part of productive capital 
intended for wages becomes smaller and smaller in relation to that 
which acts as machinery and raw material. 

After the capitalist has put a larger capital into machinery, he is 
compelled to spend a larger capital on the purchase of raw materials 
and the fuels required to drive the machines. But if formerly he 
employed 100 workers, now he will need perhaps only 50. Otherwise 
he would have perhaps to double the other parts of his capital] again, 
j.e., make the disproportion still greater. He will therefore dismiss 
50, or else the 100 must work for the same price as formerly the 50 
did. There are, therefore, redundant workers on the market. 

With improved division of labour only the capital for raw material 
will have to be increased. The place of three workers will perhaps be 
taken by one. 

But take the most favourable case. Let the capitalist expand his 
enterprise so that he can not only retain the previous number of his 
workers—and, of course, he does not care a fig about waiting until he 
can do so—but even increase it; in this case production must have 

been enormously expanded for it to be possible to retain the same 
number of workers or even increase it, and the proportion of 
workers to the productive forces has relatively become infinitely 
more a disproportion. Overproduction is thereby accelerated, and in 
the next crisis more workers than ever are unemployed. 

It is, therefore, a general law which necessarily arises from the 
nature of the relation between capital and labour that in the course of 
the growth of the productive forces the part of productive capital 
which is transformed into machinery and raw material, i. e., capital as 
such, increases in disproportion to the part which is intended for 
wages; i. e., in other words, the workers must share among themselves 
an ever smaller part of the productive capital in relation to its total 
mass. Their competition, therefore, becomes more and more violent. 
In other words: the more productive capital grows, the more, in 
proportion, the means of employment and the means of subsistence 
for the workers are reduced, and the more rapidly, in other words, 
the working population grows in proportion to its means of 
employment. And this increases in the same measure in which the 
productive capital as a whole grows. 

To compensate the above disproportion it must be enlarged in 
geometrical proportion, and in order afterwards, in a time of crisis, 
to readjust it, it is enlarged still more. 

This law, which arises simply from the relation of the worker to 
capital, and which turns even the condition most favourable for him, 
the rapid growth of productive capital, into an unfavourable one, the 
bourgeois have changed from a social law into a law of nature by 
saying that by a law of nature the population grows more rapidly 
than the means of employment or the means of subsistence. 

They fail to understand that the growth of this contradiction is 
inherent in the growth of productive capital. 

We shall return to this later. 

Productive force, in particular the social force of the workers 
themselves, not paid for, is even directed against them. 

Y) First absurdity: 

We have seen that when productive capital grows—the most 
favourable case presupposed by the economists—when, therefore, 
the demand for labour increases relatively, it is in the nature of 
modern industry and in the nature of capital that the means for the 
employment of workers do not grow in the same proportion, that the 
same circumstances which make productive capital grow, make the 
disproportion between the supply of labour and the demand for it 
grow still more rapidly, in a word, that the growth of the productive 

forces makes grow at the same time the disproportion between the 
number of workers and the means for their employment. This 
depends neither on the increase of means of subsistence nor on the 
increase of the population regarded by itself. It follows necessarily 
from the nature of large-scale industry and the relationship of 
labour and capital. 

If the growth of productive capital progresses only slowly, 
however, if it remains stationary or even decreases, the number of 
workers is always too large in proportion to the demand for labour. 

In both cases, the most favourable and the most unfavourable, it 
follows from the relationship of labour to capital, from the nature of 
capital itself, that the supply of labour will always be too great for the 
demand for labour. 

0) Leaving aside the nonsense that the entire working class cannot 
possibly take the decision not to make any children, their condition, 
on the contrary, makes the sexual instinct their chief pleasure and 
develops it one-sidedly. 

After the bourgeoisie has depressed the existence of the workers 
to a minimum, it wants in addition to limit their acts of reproduction 
ty a minimum. 

e ) That the bourgeoisie, incidentally, does not and cannot mean 
these phrases and counsels seriously, is clear from the following: 

Firstly: By replacing adults with children, modern industry places a 
veritable premium on the making of children. 

Secondly: Big industry constantly requires a reserve army of 
unemployed workers for times of overproduction. The main 
purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to 
have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only 
possible when the supply of this commodity 1s as large as possible in 
relation to the demand for it, i.e., when the overpopulation is the 
greatest. 

Overpopulation is therefore in the interest of the bourgeoisie, and 
it gives the workers good advice which it knows to be impossible to 
carry out. 

t) Since capital only increases when it employs workers, the 
increase of capital] involves an increase of the proletariat, and, as we 
have seen, according to the nature of the relation of capital and 
labour, the increase of the proletariat must proceed relatively even 
faster. 

x) The above theory, however, which is also expressed as 
a law of nature, that population grows faster than the means of 
subsistence, is the more welcome to the bourgeois as it silences his 
conscience, makes hard-heartedness into a moral duty and the 

consequences of society into the consequences of nature, and finally 
gives him the opportunity to watch the destruction of the proletariat 
by starvation as calmly as other natural event without bestirring 
himself, and, on the other hand, to regard the misery of the 
proletariat as its own fault and to punish it. To be sure, the proletarian 
can restrain his natural instinct by reason, and so, by moral 
supervision, halt the law of nature in its injurious course of 
development. 

4) The poor laws may be regarded as an application of this theory. 
Extirpation of vermin. Arsenic. Workhouses.* Pauperism in general. 
The treadmill again within civilisation. Barbarism reappears, but 
created in the lap of civilisation itself and belonging to it; hence 
leprous barbarism, barbarism as leprosy of civilisation. Workhouses? 
the Bastilles of the workers. Separation of man and wife. 

4. We will now briefly speak of those who want to improve the 
condition of the workers by a different way of fixing wages. 

Proudhon. 

5. Finally, among the remarks which philanthropic economists 
have made on wages, yet another view must be mentioned. 

a) Among other economists Rossi, in particular, has expounded 
the following: 

The manufacturer only advances to the worker his share in the 
product because the worker cannot wait for its sale. If the worker 
could maintain himself until the product was sold he would, as an 
associé, afterwards claim his share, as is the case between the actual 
and the industrial capitalist. That the worker’s share has the 
particular form of wages is an accident, the result of a speculation, of 
a specific act which takes place alongside the production process and 
does not form any necessary constituent element of it. Wages are 
merely an accidental form of our social conditions. They do not 
necessarily belong to capital. They are not an indispensable factor of 
production. They can disappear under another organisation of 
society. 

8 ) This whole trick amounts to the following: If the workers 
possessed enough accumulated labour, i.e., enough capital, not to 
have to live directly on the sale of their labour, the wage form would 
end. That is, if all workers were at the same time capitalists; which is 
to presuppose and preserve capital without the contrast of wage 
labour without which it cannot exist. 

1) Nevertheless, the following admission is to be observed: Wages 
are no accidental form of bourgeois production, but the whole of 

bourgeois production is a passing historical form of production. All 
its relationships, capital as well as wages, rent, etc., are transitory and 
can be abolished at a certain point of development.