Russians are Coming: The Politics of Anti-Sovietism (V.L. Allen)
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Russians are Coming: The Politics of Anti-Sovietism | |
|---|---|
| Author | V.L. Allen |
| Publisher | The Moor Press |
| First published | 1987 |
| Type | Book |
| https://dn790006.ca.archive.org/0/items/TheRussiansAreComing/The%20Russians%20are%20Coming_text.pdf | |
Dedication
To the adamantine incarnation of all the greatness and vigour of the proletariat; to that which incorporates its heroism, the definiteness of its class-consciousness, its deadly hatred for capitalism, and its splendid impulse towards the creation of a new society - to the great Communist Party - we dedicate this book.
We dedicate it to the Party which commands an army of a million men, dwells in the trenches, administers a vast realm, carts wood on Communist Saturdays, makes ready for the resurrection day of mankind.
We dedicate it alike to the veterans of the Party, steeled in battles and victories, and to the young recruits of the Party, destined to carry our work to its end.
To the warriors and martyrs of the Party, to those who have perished on the numberless fronts, who have been done to death in prison, who have perished under torture, who when doing the Party’s work have been hanged or shot by our enemies, we dedicate this book.
FOREWORD
The ABC of Communism should, in our opinion, be an elementary textbook of communist knowledge. Daily experience of propagandists and agitators has convinced us of the urgent need for such a textbook. There is an unceasing influx of new adherents. The dearth of teachers is great, and we have not even a sufficiency of textbooks for such institutions as the party schools. Obviously, the older Marxist literature, such as The Erfurt Program is largely inapplicable to present needs. Answers to new problems are extremely difficult to find. All that the student requires is scattered in various newspapers, books, and pamphlets.
We have determined to fill this gap. We regard our ABC as an elementary course which is to be followed in the party schools; but we have also endeavoured to write it in such a manner that it can be used for independent study by every worker or peasant who desires to acquaint himself with the party program.
Every comrade who takes up this book should read it all through, so that he may acquire an idea of the aims and tasks of communism. The book has been written in such a way that the exposition forms a running commentary upon the text of the party program. At the end of the volume, for the convenience of our readers, we have appended this text, which is divided into numbered paragraphs; to each paragraph of the program there correspond certain explanatory paragraphs of the book, the numeration in the text being identical with that in the program.
Fundamentals are printed in ordinary type, whilst smaller type is used for more detailed explanations, examples, numerical statements, etc. The paragraphs in small type are chiefly intended for those comrades who are studying the work without assistance, and who have neither time nor opportunity for access to information concerning matters of fact.
For those who wish to carry their studies further, a brief bibliography is appended to each chapter.
The authors are well aware that their book is defective in many ways; it was written fragmentarily, and in scant intervals of leisure. Communists have to pursue their literary labours under conditions that can hardly be described as normal. The present work affords an interesting example of this, for the manuscript (to say nothing of both its authors) narrowly escaped destruction in the explosion at the Moscow Committee Rooms. . . . Nevertheless, with all its defects, we have decided to publish the book at once. We merely ask that comrades should furnish us with any relevant information which practice discloses to them.
The theoretical section, comprising Part One, the beginning of Part Two, together with the chapters on The Soviet Power, The Organization of Industry, Labour Protection and Social Welfare, and Public Hygiene, were written by Bukharin; the rest of the work was penned by Preobrazhensky. Obviously, however, both the authors accept full responsibility for the work.
The title of our book, ABC, is an expression of the task we set ourselves. Should the work prove helpful to beginners and to propagandists, we shall feel sure that our labour has not been in vain.
1. INTRODUCTION
OUR PROGRAM
1. What is a program?
Every party pursues definite aims, whether it be a party of landowners or capitalists, on the one hand, or a party of workers or peasants, on the other. Every party must have definite aims, for otherwise it is not a party. If it be a party representing the interests of landowners, it will pursue the aims of landowners; it will endeavour to tighten the grasp of the owners upon the soil; to hold the peasants in bondage; to secure a high price for the produce of the land-owners’ estates; to hire labour cheaply; to rackrent the farms. If it be a party of capitalists and factory owners, it will likewise have its own aims: to procure cheap labour, to keep the workers well in hand, to find customers to whom the wares can be sold at the highest possible price, to obtain ever larger profits, for this purpose to compel the workers to toil harder — but, above all, so to arrange matters that the workers will have no tendency to allow their thoughts to turn towards ideas of a new social order; let the workers think that there always have been masters and always will be masters. Such are the aims of the factory owners. It is self-evident that the workers and peasants will have utterly different aims from these, seeing that their interests are utterly different from those of the capitalists and landowners. People used to say: “What is wholesome for a Russian is death to a German.” It would, in fact, be more accurate to say: “What is wholesome for a worker is death to a landowner or capitalist.” That is to say, the worker has certain things to do, the capitalist other things, and the landowner yet others. Not every landowner, however, thinks out logically what is the best way of getting the last farthing out of the peasants; many landowners are drunk most of the time, and do not even trouble to consider their bailiff’s reports. The same thing happens in the case of the peasants and of the workers. There are some who say: “Oh, well, we shall get along somehow; why bother? We shall go on living as our fathers have always lived.” Such persons never achieve anything, and do not even understand their own interests. On the other hand, those who realise how they can best defend their own interests, organise themselves into a party. Of course the class as a whole does not enter the party, which is composed of the best and most energetic members of the class; thus those who enter the party lead the rest. To the Workers’ Party (the Party of Communist Bolsheviks) adhere the best of the workers and poorer peasants; to the Party of Landowners and Capitalists (Cadets, the Party of Popular Freedom) adhere the most energetic among the landowners, the capitalists, and their hangers-on — lawyers, professors, military officers, etc. Consequently, every party is composed of the most intelligent elements in the class to which it corresponds. For this reason a landowner or capitalist who is a member of an organised party will combat the peasants and workers far more successfully than if he were not in such an organisation. In like manner an organised worker will be better able than an unorganised worker to strive against the capitalists and landowners; for the organised worker has well pondered the aims and interests of the working class, knows how these interests are to be pursued, and has learned the shortest road.
ALL THE AIMS WHICH A PARTY REPRESENTING THE INTERESTS OF ITS CLASS VIGOROUSLY PURSUES, CONSTITUTE THE PARTY PROGRAM. Thus in the program is specified that for which any particular class has to strive. In the program of the Communist Party is specified that for which the workers and the poorer peasants have to strive. The program is for every party a matter of supreme importance. From the program we can always learn what interests the party represents.
2. What was our previous program?
Our present program was adopted by the eighth Party Congress at the end of March, 1919. Prior to this we had not a precise program, written on paper. We had nothing but the old program elaborated at the second Party Congress in the year 1908. When this old program was compiled, the bolsheviks and the mensheviks constituted a single party, and they had a common program. At that date the organisation of the working class was only just beginning. There were very few factories and workshops. Disputes were actually still goimg on as to whether a working class would ever come into existence in Russia. The “narodniks” (the fathers of the present social revolutionaries) considered that the working class was not destined to develop in Russia, that in our country there would be no extensive growth of factories and workshops. The Marxists — the social democrats, subsequently to divide into bolsheviks and mensheviks — supposed, on the other hand, that in Russia, as elsewhere, the working class would continue to grow and would constitute the main strength of the revolution. Time proved that the views of the narodniks were wrong and that those of the social democrats were right. But at the date when the program of the social democrats was elaborated by the second Party Congress (both Lenin and Plekhanov participating in the work), the strength of the Russian working class was extremely small. That is why no one then imagined that it would be possible to undertake the direct overthrow of the bourgeoisie. At that time the best policy seemed: to break the neck of tsardom; to win freedom of association for the workers and peasants in conjunction with all others; to establish the eight-hour day; and to reduce the power of the landowners. No one then dreamed that it would be possible to realise the rule of the workers once and for all, or immediately to dispossess the bourgeoisie of its factories and workshops. Such was our old program of the year 1908.
3. Why was it necessary to draw up a new program?
A considerable period intervened between 1908 and the revolution of 1917, and during this time circumstances altered profoundly. In Russia, large-scale industry advanced with giant strides, and concomitantly there occurred a great increase in the numbers of the working class. As early as the revolution of 1905, the workers showed their strength. By the time of the second revolution (1917) it had become plain that the victory of the revolution could only be achieved through the victory of the working class. But in 1917 the working class could not be satisfied with that which might have contented it in 1905. The workers had now so fully matured that it was inevitable they should demand the seizure of the factories and workshops, the overthrow of the capitalists, and the establishment of working-class rule. That is to say, since the formulation of the first program there had occurred in Russia a fundamental change in internal conditions. Yet more important is it that in like manner there had taken place a change in external conditions. In the year 1905, “peace and quiet” prevailed throughout Europe. In the year 1917, no intelligent person could fail to see that the world war was leading up to the world revolution. In 1905, the Russian revolution was followed by nothing more than a slight movement among the Austrian workers, and by revolutions in the more backward countries of the east — Persia, Turkey, and China. The Russian revolution of 1917 is being followed by revolutions in the west as well as in the east, by revolutions in which the working class raises its banner on behalf of the overthrow of capitalism. Both at home and abroad, therefore, conditions are very different from those of the year 1908. It would be absurd for the party of the working class to have one and the same program in 1908 and in 1917-19, seeing that now the circumstances are utterly different. When the mensheviks find fault with us on the ground that we have “repudiated” our old program, and that in so doing we have repudiated the teaching of Marx, we reply that the essence of Marx’s teaching is to construct programs, not out of the inner consciousness, but out of life itself. If life has undergone great changes, the program cannot be left as it was. In winter we have to wear thick overcoats. In the heat of summer only a madman wears a thick overcoat. It is just the same in politics. Marx himself taught us that we should always study the existing conditions of life and act accordingly. This does not mean that we should change our convictions as a fine lady changes her gloves. The primary aim of the working class is the realisation of the communist order. This aim is a permanent aim. It is, however, self-evident that, according as the working class stands far from or close to its goal, it will put forward different demands. Under tsarist rule working-class organisations were driven underground and the workers’ party was persecuted as if its members had been criminals. Now, the working class is in power, and its party is the ruling party. Obviously no intelligent person could advocate exactly the same program for the year 1908 and for the present time.
Thus, the changes in the internal conditions of Russian life and the changes in international circumstances have necessitated changes in our program.
4. The Meaning of our program.
Our new (Moscow) program is the first program drawn up by the party of the working class since it attained to power some time ago. It is therefore necessary for our party to turn to account all the experience which the working class has gained in administering and upbuilding the new life. This is important, not only for ourselves, not only for the Russian workers and poorer peasants, but also for our foreign comrades. For from our successes and failures, from our mistakes and oversights, experience will be gained, not by ourselves alone, but by the whole international proletariat. This is why our program contains, not merely what our party wishes to accomplish, but also that which it has to some extent accomplished. Every member of our party must be familiar with the program in all its details. It constitutes the most important guide to the activities of every group and of every individual member of the party. For no one can be a member of the party unless he has accepted the program, unless he regards the program as sound. And no one can regard it as sound without knowing it. There are of course many persons who have never glanced at the program, but who thrust themselves into the communist ranks and swear by communism, simply in the hope of snatching up some unconsidered trifle or of feathering their nest. We have no use for such members, who can do us nothing but harm. Without knowledge of the program no one can be a genuine communist bolshevik. Every intelligent Russian worker and poor peasant ought to become acquainted with the program of our party. Every non-Russian proletarian ought to study it, that he may profit by the experience of the Russian revolution.
5. The scientific Character of our program.
We have already said that it is wrong to manufacture a program out of our own heads, and that our program should be taken from life. Before the time of Marx, those who represented working-class interests were apt to draw fancy pictures of a future paradise, without troubling to ask themselves whether this paradise could ever be reached, and without seeing the right road for the workers and peasants to follow. Marx taught us another way. He examined the evil, unjust, barbaric social order which still prevails throughout the world, and studied its structure. Precisely after the manner in which we might study a machine, or, let us say, a clock, did Marx study the structure of capitalist society, in which factory owners and landowners rule, while workers and peasants are oppressed. Let us suppose we have noticed that two of the wheels of our clock are badly fitted, and that at each revolution they interfere more and more with one another’s movements. Then we can foresee that the clock will break down and stop. What Marx studied was not a clock, but capitalist society; he examined it thoroughly, examined life under the dominion of capital. As the outcome of his researches, Marx recognised very clearly that capitalism is digging its own grave, that the machine will break down, and that the cause of the break-down will be the inevitable uprising of the workers, who will refashion the whole world to suit themselves.
Marx’s chief instruction to all his followers was that they should study life as it actually is. Thus only can a practical program be drawn up. It is self-evident, therefore why our program begins with a description of the capitalist regime.
The capitalist regime has now been overthrown in Russia. What Marx prophesised is being fulfilled under our very eyes. The old order is collapsing. The crowns are falling from the heads of kings and emperors. Everywhere the workers are advancing towards revolution, and towards the establishment of soviet rule. In order fully to understand how all this has come about, it is necessary to be thoroughly well acquainted with the nature of the capitalist system. Then we shall realise that its breakdown was inevitable. Once we grasp that there will be no return of the old system and that the victory of the workers is assured, we shall have full strength and confidence as we carry on the struggle on behalf of the new social order of the workers.
2. THE CAPITALISTIC SOCIAL ORDER
§ 6. Commodity Economy.
If we study how economic life is carried on under the capitalist regime, we see that its primary characteristic is the production of commodities. “Well, what is there remarkable about that?” the reader may ask. The remarkable point is that a commodity is not simply a product, but something produced for the market.
A product made for the producer himself, made for his own use, is not a commodity. When a peasant sows rye, gathers in the harvest, threshes it, mills the grain, and bakes bread for himself, this bread is certainly not a commodity; it is simply bread. It only becomes a commodity when it is bought and sold; when, that is to say, it is produced for a buyer, for the market. Whoever buys it, owns it.
Under the capitalist system, all products are produced for the market, they all become commodities. Every factory or workshop produces in ordinary circumstances one particular product only, and it is easy to understand that the producer is not producing for his own use. When an undertaker, in his workshop, has coffins made, it is perfectly clear that he does not produce these coffins for himself and his family, but for the market. Again, in the case of a castor oil manufacturer, it is equally clear that even if the man continually suffers from digestive disorder it will be impossible for him to use for his own purposes more than an infinitesimal proportion of all the castor oil which his factory turns out. The same considerations apply, under capitalism, to any products you like to consider.
In a button factory, buttons are made; but these millions of buttons are not produced in order that they may be sewn on to the manufacturer’s waistcoat; they are for sale. Everything produced under the capitalist system is produced for the market. To this market come gloves and sausages; books and blacking; machines and whisky; bread, boots, and small-arms — in a word, everything that is made.
A commodity economy necessarily implies private ownership. The independent artisan who produces commodities owns his workshop and his tools; the factory owner or workshop owner owns the factory or the workshop, with all the buildings, machinery, etc. Now, wherever private ownership and commodity production exist, there is a struggle for buyers, or competition among sellers. Even in the days before there were factory owners, workshop owners, and great capitalists, when there were only independent artisans, these artisans struggled one with another for buyers. The strongest and most acquisitive among them, the one who had the best tools and was the cleverest, especially the one who put by money, was always the one who came to the top, attracted custom, and ruined his rivals. Thus the system of petty ownership and the commodity economy that was based upon it, contained the germs of large-scale ownership and implied the ruin of many.
WE SEE, THEREFORE, THAT THE PRIMARY CHARACTERISTIC OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS A COMMODITY ECONOMY; THAT IS, AN ECONOMY WHICH PRODUCES FOR THE MARKET.
§ 7. Monopolisation of the Means of Production by the capitalist Class.
The mere existence of a commodity economy does not alone suffice to constitute capitalism. A commodity economy can exist although there are no capitalists; for instance, the economy in which the only producers are independent artisans. They produce for the market, they sell their products; thus these products are undoubtedly commodities, and the whole production is commodity production. Nevertheless, this is not capitalist production; it is nothing more than simple commodity production. In order that a simple commodity economy can be transformed into capitalist production, it is necessary, on the one hand, that the means of production (tools, machinery, buildings, land, etc.) should become the private property of a comparatively limited class of wealthy capitalists; and, on the other, that there should ensue the ruin of most of the independent artisans and peasants and their conversion into wage workers.
We have already seen that a simple commodity economy contains within itself the germs that will lead to the impoverishment of some and the enrichment of others. This is what has actually occurred. In all countries alike, most of the independent artisans and small masters have been ruined. The poorest were forced in the end to sell their tools; from “masters” they became “men” whose sole possession was a pair of hands. Those on the other hand who were richer, grew more wealthy still; they rebuilt their workshops on a more extensive scale, installed new machinery, began to employ more workpeople, became factory owners.
Little by little there passed into the hands of these wealthy persons all that was necessary for production: factory buildings, machinery, raw materials, warehouses and shops, dwelling houses, workshops, mines, railways, steamships, the land — in a word, all the means of production. All these means of production became the exclusive property of the capitalist class; they became, as the phrase runs, a “monopoly” of the capitalist class.
THE SMALL GROUP OF THE WEALTHY OWNS EVERYTHING; THE HUGE MASSES OF THE POOR OWN NOTHING BUT THE HANDS WITH WHICH THEY WORK. THIS MONOPOLY OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION BY THE CAPITALIST CLASS IS THE SECOND LEADING CHARACTERISTIC OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM.
§ 8. Wage Labour.
The vast numbers who were left without any property were transformed into the wage labourers of capital. What indeed was left for the impoverished peasant or artisan to do? Either take service as agricultural labourer under the capitalist landowner, or else go to the town and there seek employment in factory or workshop. There was no other way out. Such was the origin of wage labour, the third characteristic of the capitalist system.
In earlier days, when there were serfs or slaves, every serf or slave could be bought and sold. Persons with skin, hair, arms, and legs, were the private property of their lord. The lord would flog one of his serfs to death in the stable as lightly as, in a drunken fit, he would break a stool or a chair. The serf or slave was merely a chattel. Among the ancient Romans, a master’s property, all that was neccessary for production, was classified as “dumb tools” (things), “half-speaking tools” (beasts of burden, sheep, cows, oxen, etc. — in a word, inarticulate animals), and “speaking tools” (slaves, human beings). A spade, an ox, a slave, were for the master all alike tools or utensils, which he could buy, sell, misuse, or destroy, at pleasure.
The wage labourer can be neither bought nor sold. What can be bought and sold is his labour power; not the man or woman, but the capacity for labour. The wage labourer is personally free; the factory owner cannot flog him in the stable, or sell him to a neighbour, or exchange him for a wolf-hound puppy, though all these things could be done when serfdom prevailed. The wage worker can merely be hired. To all appearance the capitalist and the wage worker are equals. “Don’t work if you don’t want to; there is no compulsion,” says the factory owner. The employer actually declares that he feeds the worker, gives work to the employee.
As a matter of fact, however, the conditions are far from being the same for wage earner and capitalist. The workers are enchained by hunger. Hunger compels them to hire themselves out, that is, to sell their labour power. There is no other solution for the worker; he has no choice. With his hands alone he cannot produce “his” product. Just try without tools and machinery to found steel, to weave, to build railway carriages. Under capitalism, the very land is all in private hands; there remains no spot unowned where an enterprise can be carried on. The freedom of the worker to sell his labour power, the freedom of the capitalist to buy it, the “equality” of the capitalist and the wage earner — all these are but hunger’s chain which compels the labourer to work for the capitalist.
In this manner, the essence of wage labour consists in the sale of labour power, or in the transformation of labour power into a commodity. In the simple commodity economy which wes described in § 6, there were to be found in the market: milk, bread, cloth, boots, etc.; but not labour power. Labour power was not for sale. Its possessor, the independent artisan, had in addition his own little dwelling and his tools. He worked for himself, conducted his own enterprise, applied his own labour power to the carrying of it on.
Very different is it under capitalism. The worker no longer owns the means of production; he cannot make use of his labour power for the conduct of his own enterprise; if he would save himself from starvation, he must sell his labour power to the capitalist. Side by side with the markets where cotton, cheese, and machines are sold, there also comes into existence the labour market where proletarians, that is to say wage workers, sell their labour power.
WE SEE, THEN, THAT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CAPITALIST ECONOMY AND THE SIMPLE COMMODITY ECONOMY CONSISTS IN THIS, THAT IN THE CAPITALIST ECONOMY LABOUR POWER ITSELF BECOMES A COMMODITY. THUS, THE THIRD CHARACTERISTIC OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS THE EXISTENCE OF WAGE LABOUR.
§ 9. Conditions of Production under Capitalism.
There are, therefore, three characteristics of the capitalist system, namely: production for the market (commodity production); the monopolisation of the means of production by the capitalist class; wage labour, that is, labour founded upon the sale of labour power.
All these characteristics are associated with the question. What are the mutual relationships between the individuals engaged in production and distribution? When we say “commodity production” or “production for the market,” what does the phrase mean? It means that individuals work for one another, but that each produces for the market in his own enterprise, not knowing beforehand who will buy his wares. Let us suppose that there are an artisan named John and a peasant named George. John the artisan, a bootmaker, takes boots to the market and sells them to George, and with the money which George pays for them he buys bread from George. When John went to the market he did not know that he would meet George there, nor did George know that he would meet John; both men simply went to the market. When John bought the bread and George bought the boots, the result was that. George had been working for John and John had been working for George, although the fact was not immediately obvious. The turmoil of the market place conceals from people that in actual fact they work for one another and cannot live without one another. In a commodity economy, people work for one another, but they do so in an unorganised manner and independently of each other, not knowing how necessary they are to one another. Consequently, in commodity production, individuals stand in definite relationships one to another, and what we are here concerned with is these mutual relationships.
In like manner, when we speak of “the monopolisation of the means of production” or of “wage labour,” we are really talking about the relationships between individuals. What, in fact, does “monopolisation” signify? It signifies that persons work under such conditions that those who labour do so with means of production belonging to others; it signifies that the workers are subordinated to the owners of these means of production, namely to the capitalists. In a word, here also we are concerned with the question. What are the mutual relationships between individuals when they produce goods? The mutual relationships between individuals during the process of production are termed the relationships of production.
It is easy to see that the relationships of production have not always been the same. Very long ago, when people lived in small communities, they worked together in comradely fashion (hunting, fishing, gathering fruit and roots), and they divided everything among themselves. Here we have one kind of relationships of production. In the days of slavery, the relationships of production were of another kind. Under capitalism there is a third kind of relationships. There are, therefore, various kinds of relationships of production. We speak of these kinds of relationships of production as the economic systems (types) of society or as the methods of production.
“CAPITALIST RELATIONSHIPS OF PRODUCTION,” OR IN OTHER WORDS “A CAPITALIST TYPE OF SOCIETY,” OR “THE CAPITALIST METHOD OF PRODUCTION” — THESE TERMS EXPRESS THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS IN A COMMODITY ECONOMY CHARACTERISED BY THE MONOPOLY OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION ON THE PART OF A SMALL GROUP OF CAPITALISTS, AND CHARACTERISED BY WAGE LABOUR ON THE PART OF THE WORKING CLASS.
§ 10. The Exploitation of Labour Power.
The question now arises, For what reason does the capitalist class hire workers? Everyone knows that the reason is by no means because the factory owners wish to feed the hungry workers, but because they wish to extract profit from them. For the sake of profit, the factory owner builds his factory; for the sake of profit, he engages workers; for the sake of profit, he is always nosing out where higher prices are paid. Profit is the motive of all his calculations. Herein, moreover, we discern a very interesting characteristic of capitalist society. For society does not itself produce the things which are necessary and useful to it; instead of this, the capitalist class compels the workers to produce those things for which more will be paid, those things from which the capitalists derive the largest profit. Whisky, for example, is a very harmful substance, and alcoholic liquors in general ought to be produced only for technical purposes and for their use in medicine. But throughout the world the capitalists produce alcohol with all their might. Why? Because to ply the people with drink is extremely profitable.
We must now make it perfectly clear, how profit is made. For this purpose we must examine the question in detail. The capitalist receives profit in the form of money when he sells commodities that have been produced in his factory. How much money does he get for his wares? That depends upon the price. The next question is, How is the price determined, or why does one commodity fetch a high price and another a low price? It is easy to understand that if, in any branch of production, new machinery is introduced and labour is advantageously applied (or, as the phrase goes, is very productive), then the price of the commodity falls. If, on the other hand, production is difficult, if the quantity of goods produced is small, if labour is unsuccessfully applied or is comparatively unproductive, then the price of the commodity rises.1
If society must expend on the average much labour in order to produce any article, the price of that article is high; if on the average little labour is required, the price of the article is low. Assuming average efficiency of manufacture (that is to say, when the machinery and tools employed are neither the very best nor the very worst), the amount of social labour requisite for the production of a commodity is termed the value of that commodity. We see that price depends upon value. In actual fact, price is sometimes higher than value and sometimes lower, but for simplicity we may here assume that they are one and the same.
We must now recall what we said concerning the hiring of wage workers. The hiring of a worker is the sale of a peculiar commodity, the name of which is “labour power.” As soon as labour power has become a commodity, what applies to other commodities applies to labour power. When the capitalist hires the worker, the former pays the latter the price of his labour power (or, to speak simply, the value of his labour power). By what is this value determined? We have seen that the value of all commodities is determined by the quantity of labour expended in producing them. The same thing applies to labour power.
What, however, do we mean by the production of labour power? Labour power is not indeed produced in a factory, like cloth, blacking, or machinery. How then are we to explain it? We have merely to look at contemporary life under capitalism in order to understand with what we are concerned. Let us suppose that the workers have just finished their day’s work. They are tired out, all their vital energy has been used up, they cannot work any more. Their labour power is practically exhausted. What is needed to restore it? Food, rest, sleep, recuperation, and therewith strength will be restored. Then will reappear the capacity for work; then, once more, they will have labour power. This means that food, clothing, and shelter — in a word, the necessaries that the worker consumes — effect the production of his labour power. Additional elements have to be considered, such as expenditure upon training when skilled workers are needed, and so on.
Everything that the working class consumes in order to restore its labour power, has value. For this reason, the value of articles of consumption and also of expenditure upon training constitute the value of labour power. Different commodities possess different values. In like manner, each kind of labour power has its peculiar value. The labour power of the compositor has one value, the labour power of the unskilled labourer has another.
Let us now return to the factory. The capitalist buys raw materials, fuel, machinery, lubricants, and other necessaries; then he buys labour power, “engages hands.” He pays cash for everything. The work of production begins. The workers work, the wheels turn, the fuel is burned, the lubricant is used, the factory buildings suffer wear and tear, the labour power is expended. As a result, there issues from the factory a new commodity. The commodity, like all commodities, has value. What is this value? First of all, the commodity has absorbed into itself the value of the means of production that have been used up; that which has passed into it — raw materials, fuel consumed, the worn parts of the machinery, and so on. All this has now been transformed into the value of the commodity. In the second place, there has passed into the commodity the labour of the workers. If the workers were 80 in number, and if in the production of the commodity each worked for 30 hours, then there will have been expended in all 900 working hours. The full value of the product will therefore consist of the value of the utilised materials(let us assume that the value of these is equivalent to 600 hours), together with the new value which the workers have added by their labour, namely 900 hours. The total is therefore 600 + 900 = 1,500 working hours.
But how much did the commodity cost the capitalist? For the raw materials he paid in full; that is to say, he paid a sum of money corresponding to the value of 600 working hours. But what did he pay for labour power? Did he pay for the whole 900 hours? Here lies the key to the riddle. By our hypothesis, he has paid the full value of the labour power for the working days. If 80 workers have worked 30 hours, three days for 10 hours a day, the factory owner will have paid them whatever sum was necessary for the recuperation of their labour power during these days. How much will this sum have been? The answer is plain; it will have been considerably less than 900. Why? Because the quantity of labour which is necessary to recuperate my labour power is one thing, whereas the quantity of labour which I am able to expend is another thing. I can work 10 hours a day. To provide a sufficiency of food, clothing, etc., my daily needs are a quantity of articles the total value of which is equal to 5 hours. That is to say, I can do more work than the work which is requisite to recuperate my labour power. In our example, the workers consume, let us say, in the form of food, clothing, etc., during the three days, articles to the value of 450 working hours; but they supply 900 hours of labour. There remain for the capitalist 450 hours; these form the source of his profit. In fact, the commodity has cost the capitalist, as we have seen, 600 + 450 = 1050 hours; but he sells it for the value of 600 + 900 = 1500 hours; 450 hours are surplus value created by labour power. It results that for half their working time (namely for 5 hours in a ten-hour working day) the workers are working to redintegrate what they have used up for themselves; but during the other half of the day they are working entirely for the capitalist.
Let us now consider society as a whole. What the individual factory owner or the individual worker does is of very little interest to us. What interests us is the structure of the huge machine which goes by the name of capitalist society. The capitalist class hires the working class, the latter being numerically of enormous size. In millions of factories, in mines and quarries, in forest and field, hundreds of millions of workers labour like ants. Capital pays them their wages, the value of their labour power, with which they unceasingly renew this labour power for the service of capital. By its labour, the working class does not merely pay its own wages, but it creates in addition the income of the upper classes, creates surplus value. Through a thousand runnels, this surplus value flows into the pockets of the master class. Part goes to the capitalist himself, in the form of entrepreneur’s profit; part goes to the landowner; in the form of taxes, part enters the coffers of the capitalist State; other portions accrue to merchants, traders, and shopkeepers, are spent upon churches and in brothels, support actors, artists, bourgeois scribblers, and so on. Upon surplus value live all the parasites who are bred by the capitalist system.
Part of the surplus value is, however, used over again by the capitalists. They add it to their capital, and the capital grows. They extend their enterprises. They engage more workers. They instal better machinery. The increased number of workers produces for them a still greater quantity of surplus value. The capitalist enterprises grow ever larger. Thus at each revolution of time, capital moves forward, heaping up surplus value. Squeezing surplus value out of the working class, exploiting the workers, capital continually increases in size.
§ 11. Capital.
We now see clearly what capital is. Before all else, it is a definite value: it may be in the form of money; it may be in the form of machinery, raw materials, or factory buildings; it may be in the form of finished commodities. But it is value of such a kind as serves for the production of new value, for the production of surplus value. CAPITAL IS VALUE WHICH PRODUCES SURPLUS VALUE. CAPITALIST PRODUCTION IS THE PRODUCTION OF SURPLUS VALUE.
In capitalist society, machinery and factory buildings take the form of capital. But do machinery and buildings always take the form of capital? Certainly not. If the whole of society were a cooperative commonwealth producing everything for itself, then neither machinery nor raw materials would be capital, seeing that they would not be means for the creation of profit for a small group of rich persons. That is to say, machinery, for example, only becomes capital when it is the private property of the capitalist class, when it serves the purpose of exploiting wage labour, when it serves to produce surplus value. The form of the value is here unimportant. The value may be in the form of gold coins or paper money, with which the capitalist buys the means of production and labour power. It may be in the form of the machines with which the workers work; or of the raw materials out of which they make commodities; or of the finished articles which will subsequently be sold. If, however, this value serves for the production of surplus value, it is capital.
As a rule capital is continually assuming new aspects. Let us study how these transformations take place.
I. The capitalist has not yet bought labour power or the means of production. He is, however, eager to engage workers, to procure machinery, to obtain raw matcrials of the best quality, to get a sufficient supply of coal, and so on. As yet, he has nothing except money. Here we have capital in its monetary form.
II. With this supply of money the capitalist makes his way to the market — not of course in his own person, since he has the telephone, the telegraph, and a hundred servants. Here takes place the purchase of the means of production and of labour power. The capitalist returns to the factory without money, but with workers, machinery, raw matcrials, and fuel. These things are now no longer commodities. They have ceased to be commodities; they are not for sale. The money has been transformed into means of production and into labour power. The monetary wrapping has been cast aside; the capital has assumed the form of industrial capital.
Now the work begins. The machinery is set in motion, the wheels turn, the levers move to and fro, the workers drip with sweat, the machinery undergoes wear and tear, the raw materials are used up, the labour power is tired out.
III. Thereupon, all the raw material, the wear and tear of the machines, the labour power, undergo a gradual transformation into masses of commodities. Thus the capital assumes a new guise; its factory embodiment vanishes, and it takes the form of quantities of commodities. We have capital in its commodity form. But now, when production is completed, the capital has not merely changed its wrapping. It has increased in value, for in the course of production there has been added to it surplus value.
IV. In production, the aim of the capitalist is not to provide goods for his own use, but to produce commodities for the market, for sale. That which was stored up in his warehouse, must be sold. At first the capitalist went to market as a buyer. Now he has to go there as a seller. At first he had money in his hands, and he wanted to buy commodities (the means of production). Now he has commodities in his hands, and he wants to get money. When these commodities are sold, capital jumps back from its commodity form into its monetary form. But the quantity of money which the capitalist receives differs from the quantity which he originally paid out, inasmuch as it is greater by the whole amount of the surplus value.
This, however, does not end the movement of capital. The enlarged capital is set in motion once again, and acquires a still larger quantity of surplus value. This surplus value is in part added to capital, and begins a new cycle. Capital rolls on like a snowball, and at each revolution there adheres to it a larger quantity of surplus value. The result of this is that capitalist production continually expands.
Thus capital sucks surplus value out of the working class and everywhere extends its dominion. Its peculiarities account for its rapid growth. The exploitation of one class by another took place in earlier days. Let us consider, for example, a landowner when serfdom prevailed, or a slaveowner in classical antiquity. They lived on the backs of their serfs and slaves. But all which the workers produced, the landowners and slaveowners ate, drank, and wore — either themselves, or else their servants and their numerous hangers-on. At that time there was very little commodity production. There was no market. If the landowner or slaveowner had compelled his serfs or slaves to produce vast quantities of bread, meat, fish, etc., all this would simply have rotted. Production was restricted to the gratification of the animal needs of the landowner and his household. It is very different under capitalism. Here production takes place, not for the gratification of immediate needs, but for profit. Under capitalism, the commodity is produced for sale, for the sake of gain, in order that profits may be heaped up. The larger the profit, the better. Hence the mad hunt for profit on the part of the capitalist class. This greed knows no limits. It is the pivot, the prime motive, of capitalist production.
§ 12. The capitalist State.
As we have seen, capitalist society is based upon the exploitation of labour. A small minority owns everything; the working masses own nothing. The capitalists command. The workers obey. The capitalists exploit. The workers are exploited. The very essence of capitalist society is found in this merciless and ever-increasing exploitation.
Capitalist production is a practical instrument for the extraction of surplus value.
Why has this instrument been able to continue in operation so long? For what reason do the workers tolerate such a state of affairs?
This question is by no means easy to answer at first sight. Speaking generally there are two reasons for it: in the first place, because the capitalist class is well organised and powerful; secondly, because the bourgeoisie frequently controls the brains of the working class.
The most trustworthy means at the disposal of the bourgeoisie for this purpose is its organisation as the State. In all capitalist countries the State is merely a union of the master class. Let us consider any country you like: Britain, the United States, France, or Japan. Everywhere we find that the ministers, high officials, members of parliament, are either capitalists, landowners, factory owners, and financial magnates, or else the faithful and well-paid servants of these — lawyers, bank managers, professors, army officers, archbishops, and bishops, who serve the capitalists, not from fear but from conviction.
The union of all these individuals belonging to the bourgeoisie, a union which embraces the entire country and holds everything in its grasp, is known as the State. This organisation of the bourgeoisie has two leading aims. The first and most important of these is to suppress disorders and insurrections on the part of the workers, to ensure the undisturbed extraction of surplus value from the working class, to increase the strength of the capitalist means of production. The second aim is to strive against other organisations of the same kind (that is to say, against other bourgeois States), to compete with them for a larger share in surplus value. Thus the capitalist State is a union of the master class, formed to safeguard exploitation. The interests of capital and nothing but the interests of capital — here we have the guiding star towards which are directed all the activities of this robber band.
Against such a view of the bourgeois State, the following considerations might be adduced.
You say that the State is exclusively run in the interests of capital. Consider this point, however. In all capitalist countries there is factory legislation forbidding or restricting child labour, limiting the working day, and so on. In Germany, for example, in the days of William II, there prevailed a fairly good system of State insurance for the workers. In England, the typically bourgeois minister Lloyd George introduced the Insurance Act and the Old-Age Pensions Act. In all bourgeois lands, there are hospitals, dispensaries, and sanatoriums for the workers; railways are constructed, and by these all can travel, rich and poor alike; waterworks are instituted for the supply of the towns, and so on. Such things are for the public service. This implies, many will say, that even in those countries where capital rules, the State is not run solely in the interests of capital, but is concerned likewise with the interests of the workers. The State actually punishes factory owners who infringe factory legislation.
These arguments are fallacious, for the following reasons. It is perfectly true that the bourgeois authority occasionally passes laws and regulations useful to the working class. They are, however, passed in the interest of the bourgeoisie. Let us take as an example the railways. The workers travel by them, and for this reason they are useful to the workers. But they are not built for the sake of the workers. Merchants and factory owners need railways for the carriage of their wares, for the transport of troops, for the conveyance of workers, etc. Capital needs railways, and builds them in its own interest. They are useful to the workers too, but that is not why the capitalist State constructs them. Again, let us take the cleaning of the towns, or urban sanitation as it is called, and let us consider the hospitals. In these cases the bourgeoisie is concerned about the working-class districts as well as about the others. It is true that, in comparison with the bourgeois quarters in the centre of the town, we find, in the working-class suburbs, dirt, the abomination of desolation, disease, etc. Nevertheless, the bourgeoisie does do something. Why? Because illness and epidemics sometimes spread all through the town, and if such a thing should happen the bourgeoisie, too, would suffer. Inthis matter, therefore, the bourgeois State and its urban instruments are simply pursuing bourgeois interests.
Here is another example. During the nineteenth century, the French workers learned from the bourgeoisie the practice of birth control. By artificial means they arranged either to have no children at all or no more than two children. The poverty of the workers was so great that to rear a larger family was difficult or almost impossible. As a result of this practice, the population of France remained nearly stationary. The French bourgeoisie began to be short of soldiers. A clamour was raised: “The nation is perishing! The Germans are increasing more rapidly than we are! They will have more soldiers!” It may be remarked in passing that year by year those who were called up for military service proved less and less fit; they were shorter, had a smaller chest measurement, were more weakly. And now, behold, the bourgeoisie grew “free-handed”; it began to insist upon improved conditions for the working class, in order that the workers might rear more children. Undoubtedly, if you kill the hen, you will not get any more eggs.
In all these cases, the bourgeoisie has certainly taken steps useful to the workers; but it has done so solely in its own interests. In many instances, however, measures useful to the workers have been inaugurated by the bourgeois State owing to the pressure of the working class. Nearly all the factory laws were secured in such a manner, in consequence of threats on the part of the workers. In England, the first legal limitation of the working day (to 10 hours) was brought about by working-class pressure. In Russia, the tsarist government passed the first factory laws owing to its alarm on account of disorders and strikes among the workers. In these matters the State, which consists of the enemies of the working class, the State, which is an economic organisation, reckons up its own interests, saying: “It is better to yield a certain amount to-day than to yield twice as much to-morrow; and it is better to yield than to risk one’s skin.” The factory owner who yields to the demands of his workers on strike and concedes them an extra halfpenny, does not cease to be a factory owner; nor does the bourgeois State in any way lose its bourgeois characteristics when it makes some small concession owing to working-class pressure.
The capitalist State is not only the largest and most powerful among bourgeois organisations; it is at the same time the most complex of these organisations, for it has a very large number of subdivisions, and tentacles issue from these in every direction. The primary aim of all this is to protect, to consolidate, and to expand the exploitation of the working class. Against the working class, the State can employ measures of two different kinds, brute force and spiritual subjugation. These constitute the most important instruments of the capitalist State.
Among the organs of brute force, must first be enumerated the army and the police, the prisons and the law-courts. Next must be mentioned accessory organs, such as spies, provocative agents, organised strikebreakers, hired assassins, etc.
The army of the capitalist State is organised in a peculiar fashion. At the head is the officers’ corps, the group of “epaulet wearers.” They are drawn from the ranks of the landed gentry, from those of the wealthier bourgeoisie, and in part from those of the intelligentsia (professional classes). These are the bitterest enemies of the proletariat. From childhood they have been brought up in special schools (in Russia, in cadet corps and in junker schools) where they have been taught how to knock the men about, and how “to maintain the honour of the uniform,” this meaning to keep the rankers in absolute subjection and to make mere pawns of them. The most distinguished members of the nobility and the wealthier bourgeoisie, if they enter the military or naval profession, become generals or admirals, persons of high rank, wearing orders and ribbons.
Nor are the officers ever drawn from among the poor. They have the mass of common soldiers entirely in their hands. These latter are so completely under the influence of their environment that they never ask what they are fighting for, but simply keep their ears cocked for orders. Such an army is primarily intended to hold the workers in check.
In Russia, the tsarist army was repeatedly used to keep down the workers and peasants. During the reign of Alexander II, before the liberation of the serfs, there were numerous risings of the peasantry, and these were all suppressed by the army. In the year 1905, the army shot down the workers during the Moscow rising; it carried out punitive expeditions in the Baltic provinces. In the Caucasus, and in Siberia; in the years 1906-1908, it suppressed peasant risings and protected the property of the landowners. During the war, the army shot down the workers at Ivanovo-Voznesensk, at Kostroma, and elsewhere. The officers were especially ruthless. Foreign armies behave in just the same way. In Germany, the army of the capitalist State has likewise been used to keep the workers down. The first naval rising was suppressed by the army. Risings of the workers in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, all over Germany, were crushed by the army. In France, the army has frequently shot down strikers; quite recently it has shot the workers, and also a number of Russian revolutionary soldiers. In the British Empire, in quite recent days, the army has frequently crushed risings of the Irish workers, risings of the Egyptian fellahin, risings in India; in England itself, the soldiers have attacked great meetings of the workers. In Switzerland, during every strike, the machine-gun corps is mobilised and the so-called militia (the Swiss army) is summoned to the colours; so far, however, the militia has not fired on the proletarians. In the United States, the army has frequently burned working-class settlements and has razed houses to the ground (for instance, during the strike in Colorado). The armies of the capitalist States are to-day combining to strangle the workers’ revolutions in Russia, Hungary, the Balkans, and Germany; they are crushing revolts all over the world.
The police and the gendarmerie. In addition to the regular army, the capitalist State has an army of picked ruffians, and of specially trained troops, peculiarly adapted for the struggle with the workers. These institutions (the police, for instance) have, indeed, the function of combating theft and of “protecting the persons and property of citizens”; but at the same time the police are maintained for the arrest, prosecution, and punishment, of discontented workers. In Russia, the police have been the most trustworthy protectors of the landlords and the tsar. Especially brutal, in all capitalist countries, have been the members of the secret police and of the corps of gendarmes — in Russia the secret police force or “political police” was known as the ohrana (protection). Large numbers of detectives, provocative agents, spies, strikebreakers, ete. work in cooperation with the official police.
Interesting, in this connexion, are the methods of the American secret police. They are in league with a vast number of private and semi-official “detective bureaux.” The notorious adventures of Nat Pinkerton were really a campaign against the workers. The detectives palmed off bombs on the workers’ leaders, incited them to kill the capitalists, and so forth. Such “detectives” likewise recruit vast numbers of strikebreakers (known in the United States as “scabs”), and troops of armed ruffians who murder strikers when opportunity arises. There is no villainy too black for these assassins, who are employed by the “democratic” State of the American capitalists!
The administration of justice in the bourgeois State is a means of self-defence for the bourgeois class. Above all, it is employed to settle with those who infringe the rights of capitalist property or interfere with the capitalist system. Bourgeois justice sent Liebknecht to prison, but acquitted Liebknecht’s murderer. The State prison service settles accounts quite as effectively as does the executioner of the bourgeois State. Its shafts are directed, not against the rich, but against the poor.
Such are the institutions of the capitalist State, institutions which effect the direct and brutal oppression of the working class.
Among the means of spiritual subjugation at the disposal of the capitalist State, three deserve especial mention: the State school; the State church; and the State, or State-supported, press.
The bourgeoisie is well aware that it cannot control the working masses by the use of force alone. It is necessary that the workers’ brains should be completely enmeshed as if in a spider’s web. The bourgeois State looks upon the workers as working cattle; these beasts must labour, but they must not bite. Consequently, they must not merely be whipped or shot when they attempt to bite, but they must be trained and tamed, just as wild beasts in a menagerie are trained by beast-tamers. Similarly, the capitalist State maintains specialists to stupefy and subdue the proletariat; it maintains bourgeois teachers and professors, the clergy, bourgeois authors and journalists. In the State schools these specialists teach children from their earliest years to obey capital and to despise and hate “rebels.” The children’s heads are stuffed with fables about the revolution and the revolutionary movement. Emperors, kings, and industrial magnates are glorified. In the churches, the priests, who are salaried by the State, preach that all authority comes from God. Day after day, the bourgeois newspapers trumpet these lies, whilst working-class papers are in most cases suppressed by the capitalist State. Under such conditions, is it easy for the workers to extract themselves from the quagmire? A German imperialist bandit wrote: “We do not only need the soldiers’ legs, but also their brains and their hearts.” The bourgeois State, in like manner, aims at educating the workers so that they may resemble domestic animals, who will work like horses, and eat humble pie.
In this manner the capitalist system ensures its own development. The machine of exploitation does its work. Surplus value is continually extracted from the working class. The capitalist State stands on guard, and takes good care that there shall be no uprising of the wage slaves.
§ 13. Fundamental Contradictions of the capitalist System.
We must now examine whether capitalist or bourgeois society is well or ill constructed. Anything is sound and good when the mutual adaptation of its parts is entirely satisfactory. Let us consider the mechanism of a clock. It works accurately and freely if all the cog-wheels are properly adjusted one to another.
Let us now look at capitalist society. We can perceive without difficulty that capitalist society is far less soundly constructed than it appears to be at the first glance. On the contrary, it exhibits grave contradictions and disastrous flaws. In the first place, under capitalism the production and distribution of goods is quite unorganised; “anarchy of production” prevails. What does this mean? It means that all the capitalist entrepreneurs (or capitalist companies) produce commodities independently of one another. Instead of society undertaking to reckon up what it needs and how much of each article, the factory owners simply produce upon the calculation of what will bring them most profit and will best enable them to defeat their rivals in the market. The consequence often is that commodities are produced in excessive quantities — we are talking, of course, of pre-war days. There is then no sale for them. The workers cannot buy them, for they have not enough money. Thereupon a crisis ensues. The factories are shut down, and the workers are turned out into the street. Furthermore, the anarchy of production entails a struggle for the market; each producer wants to entice away the others’ customers, to corner the market. This struggle assumes various forms: it begins with the competition between two factory owners; it ends in the world war, wherein the capitalist States wrestle with one another for the world market. This signifies, not merely that the parts of capitalist society interfere with one another’s working, but that there is a direct conflict between the constituent parts.
THE FIRST REASON, THEREFORE, FOR THE DISHARMONY OF CAPITALIST SOCIETY IS THE ANARCHY OF PRODUCTION, WHICH LEADS TO CRISES, INTERNECINE COMPETITION, AND WARS.
THE SECOND REASON FOR THE DISHARMONY OF CAPITALIST SOCIETY IS TO BE FOUND IN THE CLASS STRUCTURE OF THAT SOCIETY. Considered in its essence, capitalist society is not one society but two societies; it consists of capitalists, on the one hand, and of workers and poor peasants, on the other. Between these two classes there is continuous and irreconcilable enmity; this is what we speak of as the class war. Here, also, we see that the various parts of capitalist society are not merely ill-adapted to one another, but are actually in unceasing conflict.
Is capitalism going to collapse, or is it not? The answer to the question depends upon the following considerations. If we study the evolution of capitalism, if we examine the changes it has undergone in the course of time, and if we perceive that its disharmonies are diminishing, then we can confidently wish it a long life. If, on the other hand, we discover that in the course of time the various parts of the capitalist machine have come to clash with one another more and more violently, if we discern that the flaws in the structure are becoming positive chasms, then it is time to say, “Rest in peace.”
We have now, therefore, to study the evolution of capitalism.
3. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CAPITALISTIC SOCIAL ORDER
§ 14. The Struggle between small-scale and large-scale Production (between working Ownership and capitalist non-working Ownership).
(a) The struggle between small-scale and large-scale capital in manufacturing industry. Huge factories, sometimes employing more than ten thousand workers, and having enormous machines, did not always exist. They appeared by degrees, growing up upon the remnants of artisan production and small-scale industry when these were under-going ruin. In order to understand why this came about, we must first of all take into account the circumstance that, under private property and commodity production, a struggle for buyers, competition, is inevitable. Who is the winner in this struggle? He is the winner who knows how to attract buyers to himself and to wrest them from his competitors. Now the chief means for the attraction of buyers is to offer commodities for sale at a lower price.1 Who can sell at a very low price? This is the first question we have to answer. It is obvious that the large-scale producer can sell more cheaply than the small-scale producer or the independent artisan, for the large-scale producer can buy more cheaply. Large-scale production has in this respect many advantages. Above all, large-scale production has this advantage, that the entrepreneur who commands much capital can install better machinery, and can procure better tools and apparatus generally. The independent artisan or the small master finds it very difficult to get along; he cannot usually command a power plant; he dares not think of installing better and larger machines; he has not the wherewithal to buy them. Nor is the small capitalist able to procure the newest machines. Consequently THE LARGER THE UNDERTAKING, THE MORE PERFECT IS THE TECHNIQUE, THE MORE ECONOMICAL IS THE LABOUR, AND THE LOWER IS THE COST OF PRODUCTION.
In the large factories of the United States and Germany there are actually scientific laboratories where new and improved methods are continually being discovered. Thus science is wedded to industry. The discoveries made in such a laboratory remain secrets of the enterprise to which it is attached, and bring profit to that enterprise alone. In small-scale production and hand production, one and the same worker conducts nearly all the stages of production. In machine production, on the other hand, where numerous workers are employed, one worker is responsible for one stage only, a second worker for a second stage, a third for a third, and so on. In this way, under the system known as the division of labour, the work goes much quicker. How great is the advantage of this system was made manifest by some American researches instituted in the year 1898. Here are the results. The manufacture of 10 ploughs. By hand labour: 2 workers, performing 11 distinct operations, worked in all 1,180 hours, and received $54. By machine labour: 52 workers, performing 97 operations (the more numerous the workers, the more varied the operations), worked in all 37 hours and 28 minutes, and received $7.90. (We see that the time was enormously less and that the cost of labour was very much lower.) The manufacture of 100 sets of clock wheels. By hand labour: 124 workers, 453 operations, 341,866 hours, $80.82. By machine labour: 10 workers, 1088 operations, 8,343 hours, $1.80. The manufacture of 500 yards of cloth. Hand labour: 3 workers, 19 operations, 7,534 hours, $135.6. Machine labour: 252 workers, 43 operations, 84 hours, $6.82. Many similar examples might be given. Furthermore, small manufacturers and hand workers are quite unable to undertake those branches of production for which a highly developed mechanical technique is essential. For instance, the manufacture of locomotive engines and ironclads; coal mining; and so on.
Large-scale production effects economies in every direction: in buildings, machinery, raw materials, lighting and heating, cost of labour, utilisation of waste products, etc. In fact, let us suppose that there are one thousand small workshops, and that there is one large factory which produces the same quantity of commodities as all the little workshops put together. It is much easier to build one large factory than a thousand small workshops; the raw materials for the workshops will be used far more wastefully; lighting and heating will be much easier in the case of the large factory; the factory will have the advantage in the matter of general supervision, cleaning up, repairs, etc. In a word, there will unquestionably be in all respects an economy, a saving, in running the large factory.
In the purchase of raw materials and of all that is necessary for production, large-scale capital is likewise at an advantage. The wholesale buyer buys more cheaply, and the goods are of better quality; furthermore, the great factory owner is better acquainted with the market, knows better where to buy cheaply. In like manner, the small enterprise is always at a disadvantage when entering the market as seller. Not only does the large-scale producer know better where to buy cheaply (for this purpose, he has travellers; he conducts his business in the exchange, where news concerning various commodities is always coming in; he has commercial ties extending almost all over the world): in addition, he can afford to wait. If, for instance, the price of his product is too low, he can retain it in his warehouses, pending a rise in prices. The small producer cannot do this. He lives from hand to mouth. As soon as he has sold his product, he begins to use for immediate expenses the money he has received; he has no margin. For this reason he is forced to sell willy-nilly, for otherwise he will starve to death. It is obvious that this is a great disadvantage to him.
It need hardly be said that large-scale production enjoys an additional advantage, in the matter of credit. If a great entrepreneur has urgent need of money, he can get it. Banks will always lend money to a “solid” firm at a comparatively low rate of interest. But hardly anyone will give credit to the small producer. If he can borrow at all, exorbitant interest will be demanded. Thus the small producer readily falls into the hands of the usurer.
All these advantages attaching to large-scale enterprise explain why small-scale production must invariably succumb in capitalist society. Large-scale capital crushes the small producer, takes away his customers, and ruins him, so that he drops into the ranks of the proletariat or becomes a tramp. In many cases, of course, the small master continues to cling to life. He fights desperately, puts his own hand to the work, forces his workers and his family to labour with all their strength; but in the end he is compelled to give up his place to the great capitalist. In many instances, one who seems to be an independent master is in truth entirely dependent on large-scale capital, works for it, and cannot take a single step without its permission. The small producer is frequently in the toils of the money-lender. Ostensibly independent, he really works for this spider. Or he is a dependent of the purchaser of his commodities. In other cases he is a dependent of the shop for which he works. In the last instance, though apparently independent, he has really become a wage worker in the service of the capitalist who owns the large shop. It may happen that the capitalist provides him with raw materials, and sometimes with tools as well; in Russia many of those engaged in home industry are in this position. In such cases it is perfectly clear that the home worker has become a satellite of capital. Another form of subordination to capital is that in which small repairing workshops are grouped around a large undertaking, so that they are, as it were, mere screws in the wall of the big building. Their independence is only apparent. We sometimes see that small masters, independent artisans, home workers, traders, or petty capitalists, when they have been driven out of one branch of manufacture or commerce, enter some other branch in which large-scale capital is less powerful. In many cases, persons who have been ruined in this way become small traders, pedlars, and the like. Thus large-scale capital tends, step by step, to replace small production everywhere. Huge enterprises come into existence, each employing thousands or tens of thousands of workers. Large-scale capital is becoming the ruler of the world. The working owner is disappearing. His place is being taken by large-scale capital.
As examples of the decline of small-scale production in Russia, let us consider the home workers. Some of these, such as furriers and basket-weavers, worked with their own raw materials and sold to anyone who would buy. In course of time the home worker began to work for one particular capitalist; this is what happened in the ease of the Moscow hatmakers, toymakers, brushmakers, etc. In the next stage, home workers procure the raw materials from their own employer, and thus pass into bondage to him (e.g. the locksmiths of Pavilovsk and of Burmakino). Finally, the home worker is paid by his employer at piece-work rates (the nailmakers of Tver, the bootmakers of Kimry, the matmakers of Makarieff, the knifeforgers of Pavlovo). The hand-loom weavers have been similarly enslaved. In England, the expiring system of small-scale production was nicknamed the “sweating system,” owing to the abominable conditions that prevailed. In Germany, during the period 1882 to 1895, the number of small enterprises diminished by 8.6 per cent.; the number of middle-sized enterprises (those employing from 6 to 50 workers) increased by 64.1 per cent.; and the number of great enterprises increased by 90 per cent. Since 1895 a notable number of middle-sized enterprises have also been crushed out. In Russia, the victory of the factory system over home industry has been fairly rapid. The textile industry (weaving) is one of the most important branches of manufacture in Russia. If we consider the changes that have taken place in the cotton industry, if we compare the number of factory workers with the number of home workers, we are able to judge how rapidly the factory system is displacing home industry. Here are the figures:
| Year | No. of factory workers | No. of home workers |
|---|---|---|
| 1886 | 94,566 | 66,178 |
| 1879 | 162,691 | 50,152 |
| 1894-5 | 241,051 | 20,475 |
In the year 1866, for every hundred workers engaged as weavers in cotton factories, there were 70 weavers working at home; in the years 1894-5, for every hundred factory workers there were only 8 home workers. In Russia the growth of large-scale production was extraordinarily rapid because foreign capital undertook its direct organisation. By the year 1902, large enterprises were already employing nearly half (40 per cent.) of all the Russian industrial workers.
In 1903, in European Russia, the factories employing more than 100 workers numbered 17 per cent. of all factories and workshops; and of the total number of workers engaged in factories and workshops 76.6 per cent. worked in these large factories.
The victory of large-scale production all over the world entails much suffering upon small producers. Sometimes whole occupations perish and entire districts are depopulated (e.g. the Silesian weavers in Germany, the Indian weavers, etc.).
(b) The struggle between small-scale and large-scale capital in agriculture. The same struggle between small-scale and large-scale production which is carried on in industry, occurs also under capitalism in agriculture. The landlord, who administers his estate just as the capitalist administers his factory; the rich peasant, grasping and usurious; the middle peasant; the poor peasant, who often accepts a job from the landlord or the rich peasant; and the agricultural labourer — we may compare this agricultural series with the industrial series of great capitalist, small capitalist, independent artisan, home worker, wage worker. In the country, as in the town, extensive possessions give an advantage when compared with small.
On a large farm, it is comparatively easy to introduce up-to-date methods. Agricultural machinery (electric or steam ploughs, harvesters, cutters and binders, drillers, threshers, steam threshers, etc.) is almost beyond the reach of the small farmer. The independent artisan cannot think of installing expensive machinery in his little workshop; he has no money to pay for it, nor could he turn such machinery to good account even if he could buy it. In like manner, the peasant cannot buy a steam plough, for, if he had the money, a steam plough would be of no use to him. A great machine like this, for its profitable utilisation, needs a large area of land; it is valueless on a patch where there is hardly room for a fowl-run.
The efficient utilisation of machinery and tools depends on the area of land under cultivation. For the full utilisation of a horse plough we need 30 hectares of land; for that of a set comprising driller, harvester, and thresher, about 70 hectares; for a steam thresher, about 250 hectares; for a steam plough, about 1000 hectares. Recently, machines driven by electric power have been used in agriculture; for these, also, large-scale farming is indispensable.
As a rule, only for farming on the large scale is it practicable to undertake irrigation, to drain swamps, to provide field drainage (the laying of earthenware pipes in the fields to carry off superfluous water), to build light railways, and soon. In agriculture, just as in manufacturing industry, where work is done on a large scale we save upon tools and machinery, materials, labour power, fuel, lighting, etc.
In large-scale farming, there will be per desyatina less waste space between the fields, fewer hedges, ditches, and fences; less seed will be lost in these waste areas.
Furthermore, the owner of a large farm finds it worth while to engage expert agriculturists, and he can work his land by thoroughly scientific methods.
In matters of trade and credit, what applies to industry, applies also to agriculture. The large-scale farmer is better acquainted with the market, he can await favourable opportunities, he can buy all he needs more cheaply, can sell at a better price. Only one thing remains for the small competitor; he struggles with all his might. Small-scale agriculture is able to continue in existence only through strenuous labour, in conjunction with the restriction of needs, with semi-starvation. Thus alone can it maintain itself under the capitalist regime. It suffers still more severely owing to heavy taxation. The capitalist State lays crushing burdens upon the smallholder. It suffices to remember what tsarist taxation signified to the peasant — “Sell all you have, so long as you pay your taxes.”
In general it may be said that small-scale production is far more tenacious of life in agriculture than in manufacturing industry. In the towns, the independent artisans and other small-scale producers are for the most part rapidly undergoing ruin, but in the rural districts of all countries peasant farming still leads a tolerably sturdy existence. Nevertheless, in the country, too, the impoverishment of the majority proceeds apace, only here the results are less obvious than in the towns. Sometimes it seems, as far as the amount of land is concerned, that an agricultural enterprise is very small, when in reality it is quite an extensive affair, because much capital has been put into it, and because it employs a considerable number of workers; this applies, for instance, to market gardens in the neighbourhood of large towns. Sometimes, on the other hand, those who seem to be independent smallholders are really for the most part wage workers; sometimes they are employed on neighbouring farms, sometimes they engage in seasonal occupations elsewhere, and sometimes they work in the towns. What is happening to the independent artisans and to the home workers, is in like manner happening to the peasants of all lands. A few of them become “kulaks” (liquor sellers, usurers, rich peasants who by degrees round off their possessions). Some of them manage to struggle on as they are. The remainder are ultimately ruined, they sell their cow and their nag, becoming “horseless men”; finally, the plot of land goes the way of the rest, the man will either settle in the town or make his living as an agricultural labourer. The “horseless man” becomes a wage worker, whereas the kulak, the rich peasant who hires workers, becomes a landlord or a capitalist.
Thus in agriculture a vast quantity of land, tools, machines, cattle, horses, etc., passes into the hands of a small group of capitalist landlords, for whom millions of workers labour, and upon whom millions of peasants are dependent.
In the United States, where the capitalist system has developed more fully than elsewhere, there are great estates which are worked like factories. And just as, in factories, only one product is turned out, so it happens on these farms. There may be huge fields where nothing but strawberries are grown, or gigantic orchards; enormous poultry farms; colossal wheat fields, worked by machinery. Many branches of agricultural production are concentrated in a few hands. In this way, for example, there comes to exist a “chicken king” (a capitalist into whose hands is concentrated, more or less completely, the rearing of chickens), an “egg king,” and so on.
§ 15. The dependent Position of the Proletariat; the reserve Army of Labour; Women’s Labour and Child Labour.
Under capitalism, the masses of the population are to an increasing extent transformed into wage workers. Ruined artisans, home workers, peasants, traders, minor capitalists — in a word, all who have been thrown overboard, who have been driven down by large-scale capital, fall into the ranks of the proletariat. The more that wealth undergoes concentration and passes into the hands of a small group of capitalists, the more do the masses of the people become the wage slaves of these capitalists.
Owing to the continuous decay of the middle strata and classes, the number of the workers always exceeds the requirements of capital. For this reason, the workers are bound hand and foot by capitalism. The worker must work for the capitalist. If he refuses, the employer can find a hundred others to take his place.
But this dependence upon capital has another cause besides the ruin of new and ever-new strata of the population. The dominion of capital over the workers is further strengthened by the way in which the capitalist is continually turning superfluous workers into the street and making of them a reserve of labour power. How does this come about? As follows. We have already seen that every factory owner endeavours to reduce the cost of production. This is why he is continually installing new machinery. But the machine commonly replaces labour, renders part of the workers superfluous. The introduction of new machinery signifies that some of the workers will be discharged. Among those hitherto employed in the factory, a certain number will be thrown out of work. Since, however, new machinery is perpetually being introduced in one branch of production or another, it is clear that unemployment must always exist under captialism. For the capitalist is not concerned to provide work for all, or to supply goods to everyone; his aim is to secure increasing profit. Obviously, therefore, he will discharge any workers who are unable to produce for him as much profit as before.
In actual fact, we see in all capitalist countries a huge number of unemployed workers in every large city. Among the ranks of these unemployed we find Chinese and Japanese workers, ruined peasants who have come from the ends of the earth in search of work; we find lads fresh from the country, ex-shopkeepers, and ex-artisans. We find also metal workers, printers, textile workers, and the like; men who have worked in factories for years, and have then been thrown out of employment owing to the introduction of new machinery. They all combine to form a reserve supply of labour power for capital, to form what Marx termed the reserve army of labour. Owing to the existence of this reserve army of labour, owing to perennial unemployment, the dependence and subjection of the working class continually increase. With the aid of new machinery, capital is able to extract more gold from some of the workers, while the others, the superfluous workers, are thrown into the street. But those who have been thrown into the street constitute a scourge in the hands of the capitalist, a whip which he uses to keep in order those who remain in employment.
The industrial reserve army gives examples of complete brutalisation, destitution, starvation, death, and even crime. Those who are out of work for years, gradually take to drink, become loafers, tramps, beggars, etc. In great cities — London, New York, Hamburg, Berlin, Paris — there are whole quarters inhabited by these out-of-works. As far as Moscow is concerned, Hitrof Market furnishes a similar example. Here, we no longer find the proletariat, but a new stratum, consisting of those who have forgotten how to work. This product of capitalist society is known as the lumpenproletariat (loafer-proletariat).
The introduction of machinery also led to the employment of women’s labour and child labour, which are cheaper, and are therefore more profitable to the capitalist. In earlier days, before the introduction of machinery, special skill was requisite for the work of production, and sometimes a long term of apprenticeship was indispensable. Some machines can be managed by children; all that is necessary is to move the arm or the leg until fatigue becomes overpowering. This is why, after the invention of machinery, the labour of women and children came to be more widely used. Women and children offer less resistance than male workers to capitalist oppression. They are more submissive, more easily intimidated; they are more ready to believe the priest and to accept everything they are told by persons in authority. Hence the factory owner often replaces male workers by females, and compels little children to transmute their blood for him into the golden coins of profit.
In the year 1918, the number of women workers of all kinds (i.e.not manual workers alone) was as follows: France, 6,800,000; Germany, 9,400,000; Austria-Hungary, 8,200,000; Italy, 5,700,000; Belgium, 930,000; U.S.A., 8,000,000; England and Wales, 6,000,000. In Russia, the number of women workers continually increased. In 1900, the women workers numbered 25 per cent. of all factory workers; in 1908, they numbered 31 per cent.; in 1912, 45 per cent. In some branches of production, the women outnumbered the men. For example, in the textile industry, out of 870,000 workers in the year 1922, 458,000 were women — more than half, over 52 per cent. During the war, the number of women workers increased enormously.
As regards child labour, this flourishes in many places, despite prohibitions. In countries of advanced capitalist development, as for instance in the U.S.A., child labour is met with at every turn.
This leads to the break-up of the working-class family. If the mothers, and very often the children as well, go to the factory, what becomes of family life?
When a woman enters the factory, when she becomes a wage worker, she is from time to time exposed, just like a man, to all the hardships of unemployment. She, likewise, is shown the door by the capitalist; she, likewise, joins the ranks of the industrial reserve army; she, just like a man, is liable to undergo moral degradation. Associated with this we have prostitution, when a woman sells herself to the first comer in the street. Nothing to eat, no work, hunted from everywhere; and even if she has work, the wages are so low that she may be compelled to supplement her earnings by the sale of her body. After a time, the new trade becomes habitual. Thus arises the caste of professional prostitutes.
In big towns, prostitutes are found in very large numbers. In such cities as Hamburg and London, these unfortunates are reckoned by tens of thousands. Capital uses them as a source of profit and enrichment, organising vast brothels on capitalistic lines. There is an extensive international commerce in white slaves. The towns of Argentina used to be the centres of this traffic. Especially repulsive is child prostitution, which flourishes in all European and American towns.
In capitalist society, as better and better machinery is invented, as larger and larger factories are built, and as the quantity of commodities increases, there is a concomitant increase in capitalist oppression, the industrial reserve army becomes more degraded and impoverished, and the working class grows more dependent upon its exploiters.
If private ownership did not exist, if everything were cooperatively owned, a very different state of affairs would prevail. Then people would shorten the working day, would husband their strength, economise toil, enjoy ample leisure. When the capitalist introduces machinery, his concern is for profit; he does not think of reducing the working day, for he would only lose by this. The capitalist does not use machinery to emancipate people, but to enslave them. As capitalism develops, an ever-increasing proportion of capital is devoted to machinery, enormous buildings, huge furnaces, and so on. On the other hand, the proportion of capital expended upon the wages of labour grows continually smaller. In earlier days, when hand labour still prevailed, the expenditure upon looms and other gear was trifling; nearly all the expenditure of capital was upon the wages of labour. Now, conversely, much the larger portion is devoted to buildings and machinery. The result is that the demand for working hands does not keep pace with the increase in the number of proletarians, does not suffice to absorb the influx of those who are ruined by capitalism. The more vigorous the advance of technique under capitalism, the more cruelly does capital oppress the working class; for it grows ever harder to find work, more and more difficult to live.
§ 16. The Anarchy of Production; Competition; Crises.
The miseries of the working class continually increase concomitantly with the progress of manufacturing technique. Under capitalism this progress, instead of bringing advantages to all, brings increased profit to capital, but unemployment and ruin to many workers. There are, however, additional causes for the increasing misery.
We have already learned that capitalist society is very badly constructed. Private ownership holds sway, and there is no definite plan whatever. Every factory owner conducts his business independently of the others. He struggles with his rivals for buyers, “competes” with them.
The question now arises whether this struggle becomes enfeebled or intensified as capitalism develops.
At first sight it might seem that the struggle is enfeebled. In actual fact, the number of capitalists grows continually smaller; the great fish eat up the small fry. Whereas in earlier days ten thousand entrepreneurs were fighting one with another and competition was embittered, since now there are fewer competitors it might be imagined that the rivalry would be less acute. But this is not so in reality. The very opposite is the case. It is true that there are fewer competitors. But each one of these has become enormously stronger than were the rivals of an earlier stage. The struggle between them is greater, not less; more violent, not more gentle. If in the whole world there should rule only a few capitalists, then these capitalist governments would fight with one another. This is what it has come to at long last. At the present time the struggle goes on between immense combinations of capitalists, between their respective States. Moreover, they fight with one another, not solely by means of competitive prices, but also by means of armed force. Thus it is only in respect of the number of competitors that competition can be said to diminish as capitalism develops; in other respects it grows continually fiercer and more destructive.2
One more phenomenon must now be considered, the occurrence of what are termed crises. What are these crises? What is their real nature? The matter may be stated as follows. One fine day it appears that various commodities have been produced in excessive quantities. Prices fall, but the stock of goods cannot be cleared. The warehouses are filled with all kinds of products, for which there is no sale; buyers are lacking. Needless to say, there are plenty of hungry workers, but they receive no more than a pittance, and cannot buy anything in excess of their usual purchases. Then calamity ensues. In some particular branch of industry the small and middle-sized undertakings collapse first, and are closed down; next comes the failure of the larger enterprises. But the branch of production thus affected bought commodities from another branch of production; this latter bought from a third. For instance, tailors buy cloth from the cloth makers; these buy wool from the yarn spinners; and so on. The tailors come to grief, and in consequence there are no customers for the cloth makers. Now the cloth makers fail, and their failure reacts upon the firms that supply them with woollen yarn. Factories and workshops everywhere close their doors, tens of thousands of workers are thrown on the streets, unemployment grows to unprecedented proportions, the workers’ life becomes even worse. Yet there are plenty of commodities. The warehouses are bursting with them. This was continually happening before the war. Industry flourishes; the manufacturers’ businesses work at high pressure. Suddenly there is a crash, followed by misery and unemployment, and business is at a standstill. After a time, recovery sets in; there comes a renewed period of excessive activity, to be followed in turn by a new collapse. The cycle is repeated over and over again.
How can we explain this absurd state of affairs, wherein people become paupers in the midst of wealth ?
The question is not easy to answer. But we must answer it.
We have already learned that in capitalist society there prevails a disorder, or so to say an anarchy of production. Every factory owner, every entrepreneur, produces for himself, on his own responsibility, and at his own risk. The natural result in these circumstances is that sooner or later too many commodities are produced — there is overproduction. When there was production of goods but not of commodities, when, that is to say, production was not effected for the market, then there was no danger of overproduction. It is quite otherwise in the case of commodity production. Every manufacturer, in order that he may buy what he requires for further production, must first of all sell his own products. If in any particular place there is a stoppage of machinery on account of the anarchy of production, the trouble quickly spreads from one branch of production to another, so that a universal crisis ensues.
These crises have a devastating influence. Large quantities of goods perish. The remnants of small-scale production are swept away as if by an iron broom. Even the big firms often fail.
Most of the burden of these crises is of course borne by the working class.
Some factories close down altogether; others reduce production, working only half-time; others are temporarily closed. The number of unemployed increases. The industrial reserve army grows larger. Simultaneously there is an increase in the poverty and oppression of the working class. During these crises, the condition of the working class, bad at the best of times, grows even worse.
Let us consider, for example, the data of the crisis of 1907-1910, affecting both Europe and America, in fact the whole capitalist world. In the United States, the number of unemployed trade unionists increased as follows: June, 1907, 8.1 per cent.; October, 18.5 per cent.; November, 22 per cent.; December, 32.7 per cent. (in the building trades, 42 per cent.; in the dressmaking trade, 43.6 per cent.; among tobacco workers, 55 per cent.). It goes without saying that the total number of unemployed, taking into account the unorganised workers as well, was still larger. In England, the percentage of unemployed in the summer of 1907 was 3.4 to 4 per cent.; in November, it rose to 5 per cent.; in December, to 6.1 per cent.; in June, 1908, it reached 8.2 per cent. In Germany, during January, 1908, the percentage of unemployed was twice as great as during the same month of the previous year. Like conditions were observable in other countries.
As regards the falling-off in production, it may be mentioned that in the United States the production of cast-iron, which had been 26,000,000 tons in 1907, was only 16,000,000 tons in 1908.
In times of crisis, the price of commodities falls. The capitalist magnates, eager to continue profit making, do not hesitate to impair the quality of production. The coffee-growers of Brazil dumped innumerable sacks of coffee into the sea in order to keep up prices. At the present time the whole world is suffering from hunger and from the non-production of goods, the result of the capitalist war. For these things are the offspring of capitalism, which decreed the disastrous war. In times of peace, capitalism was overwhelmed by a glut of products, which, however, did not advantage the workers. Their pockets were empty. The glut brought nothing to the workers except unemployment, with all its attendant evils.
§ 17. The Development of Capitalism and of Class. The Intensification of the Class Struggle.
We have seen that capitalist society is affected by two fundamental contradictions, two fundamental ills. In the first place, it is “anarchistic”; it lacks organisation. In the second place, it is in fact composed of two mutually hostile societies (classes). We have also seen that, as capitalism develops, the anarchy of production, finding expression in competition, leads to ever-increasing strife, disorder, and ruin. The disintegration of society, far from diminishing, is actually increasing. Now all this arises from the splitting-up of society into two portions, into classes. As capitalism develops, this severance, this cleavage between classes, likewise continues to increase. On one side, that of the capitalists, all the riches of the world are heaped up; on the other side, that of the oppressed classes, is an accumulation of misery, bitterness, and tears. The industrial reserve army gives birth to a stratum of debased and brutalised individuals, crushed to the earth by extreme poverty. But even those who remain at work are sharply distinguished from the capitalists by their manner of life. The differentiation of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie continually increases. Formerly there was quite a number of lesser capitalists, many of whom had close relationships with the workers and lived little better than these. Things are very different to-day. The lords of capital live in a manner of which no one dreamed in earlier days. It is true that the workers’ standard of life has improved in the course of capitalist development. Down to the beginning of the twentieth century, there occurred a general rise in wages. But during this same period, capitalist profits increased still more rapidly. To-day there is a great gulf fixed between the toiling masses and the capitalist class. The capitalist now leads an entirely different sort of life; he himself produces nothing. The more capitalism develops, the more exalted becomes the position of the small group of extremely wealthy capitalists, and the wider grows the chasm between these uncrowned kings and the millions upon millions of enslaved proletarians.
We have said that the wages of the workers have risen on the whole, but that profit has increased still more rapidly, and that for this reason the chasm between the two classes has widened. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, however, wages have not risen but fallen; whereas during the same period profits have increased as never before. Hence there has during recent years been an exceptionally rapid increase in social inequality.
It is perfectly clear that this social inequality, in its continued growth, must sooner or later lead to a clash between the workers and the capitalists. If the contrast between the two classes were diminishing, if the life conditions of the workers were becoming approximated to those of the capitalists, then, of course, we might look for a regime of “peace on earth and goodwill towards men.” What actually occurs, however, is that in capitalist society the worker is day by day farther removed from the capitalist instead of drawing nearer to him. The inevitable result of this is a continuous accentuation of the class war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
Bourgeois theorists put forward many objections to such a view. They would like to show that in capitalist society the condition of the working class undergoes continuous improvement. The socialists of the right wing sing the same tune. Writers of both these schools contend that the workers grow gradually richer, and can look forward to becoming petty capitalists themselves. Such expectations have been falsified. In actual fact the condition of the workers as compared with that of the capitalists has persistently grown worse. Here is an example drawn from the United States, the land of most advanced capitalist development. If we consider the purchasing power of labour (that is to say, the quantity of necessaries which the workers can buy), taking the years from 1890-1899 as a standard at 100, the purchasing power in various years was as follows: 1880, 98.6; 1895, 100.6; 1900, 103.0; 1905, 101.4; 1907, 101.5. This means that the workers’ standard of life has undergone practically no improvement. The quantities of food, clothing, etc., bought by the average worker in 1890 was increased by no more than 8 per cent. in subsequent years; this was the utmost rise in the purchasing power of his wages. But during the same period the American millionaires, the industrial magnates, were making enormous profits, and the quantity of surplus value they were receiving was increasing to an immeasurable extent. As far as the capitalist standard of life, capitalist luxuries, and capitalist incomes, are concerned, it is obvious that these were increased many times over.
The class war arises out of the conflict of interests between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. These interests are as essentially irreconcilable as are the respective interests of wolves and sheep.
It is plain that the capitalist will find it advantageous to make the workers work as long as possible and to pay them as little as possible; on the other hand, the workers will find it advantageous to work for the minimum hours and for the maximum wages. Obviously, therefore, since the time when the working class first began to exist, there must have been a struggle for higher wages and shorter hours.
This struggle has never been interrupted, and has never been stilled. It has not, however, been restricted to a struggle for a trifling advance in wages. Wherever the capitalist system has developed, the toiling masses have become convinced that they must make an end of capitalism itself. The workers began to consider how this detested system could be replaced by a just and comradely system based upon work. Such was the origin of the communist movement of the working class.
In their struggle, the workers have experienced numerous defeats. But the capitalist system bears within its womb the final victory of the proletariat. Why? For this reason, because the development of capitalism entails the proletarianisation of the broad masses of the people. The victory of large-scale capital effects the ruin of independent artisans, small traders, and peasants; it swells the ranks of the wage workers. At each step in capitalist development, the proletariat grows more numerous. It is like the Hydra, the many-headed monster of fable; if you cut off one of its heads, ten new ones grow. When the bourgeoisie suppressed a working-class rising, it thereby strengthened the capitalist system. But the development of this capitalist system ruined petty proprietors and peasants by the million, throwing them under the feet of the capitalists. By this very process it increased the number of proletarians, the enemies of the capitalist class. But the increase in strength of the working class was not numerical merely. In addition, the working class became more strongly integrated. Why did this happen? Because, as capitalism developed, there was an increase in the number of great factories. Each great factory assembles within its walls a thousand workers, sometimes as many as ten thousand. These workers labour shoulder to shoulder. They recognise how their capitalist employer is exploiting them. They perceive that to each worker his fellow-workers are friends and comrades. In the course of their work the proletarians, united in the factory, learn how to unite forces. They more readily come to an agreement one with another. That is why, as capitalism develops, there is not merely an increase in the number of the workers, but an increase in working-class solidarity.
The more rapidly huge factories extend, the more rapidly does capitalism develop, and the more speedy is the ruin of independent artisans, home workers, and peasants. The faster, likewise is the growth of gigantic cities with millions of inhabitants. Finally, in large towns, there is gathered together upon a comparatively restricted area an immense mass of persons, and the great majority of them belong to the factory proletariat. These masses are housed in foul and smoky quarters of the town, whilst the small group of the master class, the owners of all things, lives in luxurious mansions. The numbers of those constituting this small group are continually diminishing. The workers incessantly increase in numbers and their solidarity grows ever greater.
Under such conditions, the inevitable increase in the intensity of the struggle cannot fail in the long run to lead to the victory of the working class. Sooner or later, notwithstanding all the wiles of the bourgeoisie, the workers will come into violent collision with the master class, will dethrone it, will destroy its robber government, and will create for themselves a new order, a communist order based on labour. In this manner, capitalism, by its own development, inevitably leads to the communist revolution of the proletariat.
The class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie has assumed various forms. Three leading types of working-class organisation have arisen in the course of this struggle. First of all we have the trade unions, grouping the workers according to occupation. Next come the cooperatives, which are mainly concerned with distribution, for it is their aim to free the workers from the grip of middlemen and traders. Last of all we have the political parties of the working class (socialist, social-democrat, and communist) whose program it is to guide the working class in its struggle for political power. The fiercer the struggle between the two classes became, the more essential was it that all sections of the working-class movement should concentrate upon a single aim — the overthrow of the bourgeois State. Those leaders of the working-class movement who have most perfectly realised the situation have always insisted upon the necessity for a close collaboration between all working-class organisations. They pointed out, for example, the essential need for unity of action between the trade unions and the political parties of the proletariat; and they declared that the trade unions could not remain “neutral” (that is to say, indifferent in political matters). The unions, they said, must march shoulder to shoulder with the political parties of the working class.
Quite recently, the workers’ movement has assumed yet newer forms. The most important of these is the constitution of councils of workers’ delegates (soviets). We shall have to speak of these again and again in the course of the book.
Thus from our study of the development of the capitalist system we can confidently deduce the following conclusions: THE NUMBER OF THE CAPITALISTS GROWS SMALLER, BUT THESE FEW CAPITALISTS GROW RICHER AND STRONGER; THE NUMBER OF THE WORKERS CONTINUALLY INCREASES, AND WORKING-CLASS SOLIDARITY LIKEWISE INCREASES, THOUGH NOT TO THE SAME EXTENT; THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE WORKERS AND THE CAPITALISTS GROWS EVER GREATER. INEVITABLY, THEREFORE, THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM LEADS TO A CLASH BETWEEN THE TWO CLASSES, THAT IS, IT LEADS TO THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION.
§ 18. The Concentration and Centralisation of Capital as Casual Factors of Communism.
Capitalism, as we have seen, digs its own grave. For it creates its own grave-diggers, the proletarians. The more it develops, the more does it multiply those who are its mortal enemies, and the more does it unite them against itself. But it does not merely breed its enemies. It likewise prepares, the ground for a new organisation of social production, for a new economic order which will be comradely and communistic. How does it do this? We shall speedily give the answer.
We have previously seen (glance at or reread §11. “Capital”) that capital is continually increasing in amount. The capitalist adds to his capital, part of the surplus value which he extracts from the working class. By such means, capital grows larger. But if capital increases in amount, this implies that production must extend. The increase in capital, the growth of the amount held by one pair of hands, is termed the accumulation or concentration of capital.
We have likewise seen (refer to §14. “The Struggle between large-scale and small-scale Production”) that the development of capitalism involves the decay of small-scale and medium-scale production; that the small and medium producers and traders are ruined, not to speak of the independent artisans; we have seen that the great capitalist gobbles them all up. The capital which was previously owned by the small and medium capitalists slips from their grasp, and by various routes finds its way into the maw of the big sharks. The capital owned by the great capitalists is consequently increased by the amount which they have wrested from the lesser capitalists. There is now an accumulation of capital in the hands of one individual, an accumulation of what had previously been distributed among various hands. Now, after the ruin of the lesser capitalists, their capital has become the spoil of the victors. This accumulation of capital which had previously been dispersed is spoken of as the centralisation of capital.
The concentration and centralisation of capital, the accumulation of capital in a few hands, does not as yet imply the concentration and centralisation of production. Let us suppose that a capitalist has used the accumulation of surplus value to buy a small factory from a neighbour, and that he keeps this factory running on the old lines. Here accumulation has taken place, but there is no change in production. Usually, however, things take a different course. In actual fact it much more frequently happens that the capitalist (because it is profitable to him) remodels and extends production, that he enlarges his factories. This results, not merely in the expansion of capital, but in the expansion of production itself. Production is conducted on an enormous scale, utilising vast quantities of machinery, and assembling many thousands of workers. It may happen that a dozen or so of huge factories will supply the demand of a whole country for a particular commodity. Essentially what happens is that the workers are producing for the whole of society, that labour, as the phrase goes, has been socialised. But control and profit are still in the hands of the capitalist.
Such a centralisation and concentration of production actually paves the way for cooperative production after the proletarian revolution.
Had this concentration of production not taken place, if the proletariat were to seize power at a time when the work of production was carried on in a hundred thousand tiny workshops each employing no more than two or three workers, it would be impossible to organise these work-shops satisfactorily, to inaugurate social production. The further capitalism has developed and the more highly centralised production has become, the easier will it be for the proletariat to manage production after the victory.
THUS CAPITALISM DOES NOT MERELY CREATE ITS OWN ENEMIES AND DOES NOT ONLY LEAD TO THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION, BUT IT BRINGS INTO BEING THE ECONOMIC BASIS FOR THE REALISATION OF THE COMMUNIST SOCIAL ORDER.