Collectivists of this group are called “Possibilists” and “Opportunists,” on account of their temporizing inclinations. Although M. de Laveleye states that they are gaining favor with the laborers as opposed to the Irreconcilables, they have few leaders, or, at any rate, talkers of note. On occasion of the election at Belleville, when a deputy was to be elected to replace Gambetta, the evolutionist collectivists nominated a respectable mechanic by the name of J. B. Dumay. He was not, however, elected.

The revolutionary collectivists, also called Marxists, are divided into two factions, owing to personal rivalries. These are called the “Fédération du Centre,” among whom are Jules Guesde, Paul Lafargue, Émile Massard, and Gabriel Deville; and the “Union Fédérative,” among whom are B. Malon, author of the work which I have several times cited; Paul Brousse, and Joffrin, a municipal councillor, who recently demanded of the council the execution of a large number of socialistic measures, like the erection of city workshops (ateliers municipaux) to furnish work to the unemployed, the establishment of bakeries and meat-markets in order to sell provisions at a moderate price, and the construction of houses to be let to laborers at cost price.

At the time when Dumay was candidate at Belleville for the place in the Chamber of Deputies which Gambetta’s death left vacant, the revolutionary collectivists nominated Jules Guesde, who received only a small number of votes. He issued, however, an electoral programme, which is valuable as an authentic statement of principles approved by his party at several different congresses between 1879 and 1882. It is as follows:

Clovis Hugues, mentioned as “unclassed,” is a collectivist deputy. It is stated, however, that he has announced his intention of leaving the party, on account of the tyranny with which they have attempted to control him in every step. Joffrin refused to attend Louis Blanc’s funeral, as he held that he had proved false to the laborers in 1871. Hugues, an old friend of Blanc’s, attended, and was reproved for this, whereupon he indignantly declared the above-mentioned intention, maintaining that Louis Blanc was an honorable, high-minded man, and a true friend of the laborer.

De Laveleye believes that a majority of French workmen are socialists, while Malon confidently speaks of the socialists as forming the élite of the proletariat. The latter states their views and tendencies at the present time in the following language: “We have rejected all religious regenerations, whether they are called New Catholic, New Christian, pantheistic, or theo-humanitarian; and we have accepted every scientific demonstration, however much opposed it might be to the previous order of our conceptions.

“We have recognized that the social and intellectual world, like the physical world, are governed by natural laws, and are subject to relations of succession and similitude independent of our personal intervention. We have admitted that our will itself is determined by natural laws which, it may not break.

“This has given us larger views, and especially has taught us to seek in a terrestrial future the ideal which is at the basis of every human nature.

“We have acquired a more profound knowledge of the laws which govern social phenomena. We know that as our human nature is essentially capable of modification and perfection, so social phenomena and industrial phenomena, being based thereon, are modifiable in large degree, and we labor to modify them as much as possible.”[154]

CHAPTER IX.
RODBERTUS.

In turning our attention to Germany “we come to the period of classical epoch-making socialism.” It is the only living socialism of world-wide importance; for, with few comparatively unimportant exceptions, all socialism of to-day, whether found in Paris or Berlin, in New York or Vienna, in Chicago or Frankfort-on-the-Main, is through and through German.

The German socialists are distinguished by the profundity of their systems. These are not exhausted by a few hours’ study. You can come back to them time and time again, and obtain ever new ideas. A great German economist (Schäffle) declares that it took him years to comprehend the full significance of German socialism. It gives no evidence of decreasing power, but, on the contrary, its influence is manifestly spreading and becoming more and more deeply rooted in the minds and hearts of large masses. Its vitality is due, on the one hand, to the logical and philosophical strength of the systems on which it is based; on the other, to the patience and indomitable perseverance of its leaders.

One of its leading characteristics is its thoroughly scientific spirit. Sentimentalism is banished, and a foundation sought in hard, relentless laws, resulting necessarily from the physiological, psychological, and social constitution of man, and his physical environment. Like French socialism, its most prominent side is its negative character, but this is not declamatory. Coldly, passionlessly, laws regulating wages and value are developed, which show that in our present economic society the poverty of laborers and their robbery by capitalists are as inevitable facts as the motions of the planets. Histories, blue books, and statistical journals are searched, and facts are piled on facts, mountain-high, to sustain every separate and individual proposition. Mathematical demonstrations as logical as problems in Euclid take the place of fine periods, perorations, and appeals to the Deity. Political economy is not rejected, but in its strictest and most orthodox form becomes the very corner-stone of the new social structure. No writer is valued so highly as Ricardo, who, in political economy, was the strictest of the strict, a Pharisee of the Pharisees. English political economy is developed to its logical and consistent conclusion with wonderful learning and skill. In the German socialists, says Rudolf Meyer, “we have learned men belonging to the higher mercantile and professional classes, in affluent circumstances, who, out of pure love for the cause, devoted themselves to profound economic investigations, and who united a serious, searching mind with thorough knowledge of history, philology, and law. They are political economists equal to the great English leaders in this study, but having at their command a greater scientific apparatus, especially such as is afforded by statistics.”[155] Roscher, indeed, finds in them alike the strength and the weakness of the English school. He describes them thus in his “History of Political Economy in Germany.” “Some of them seem to be more historical than the Free-trade School, but this is only an appearance, as they apply history so sophistically. As far as doctrinal abstractions are concerned, they are at least equal to the extreme Free-traders.[156] They indulge in the same cosmopolitism, which entirely overlooks real peoples, states, and degrees of culture, in the same naïve assumption of the equality of all men, ... and in the same mammonistic undervaluation of ideal goods.”[157]

Two of the earliest adherents of this school were Friedrich Engels, who wrote a work on the “Condition of the Laboring Classes in England;”[158] and K. Marlo, who published, in 1849, his “System of World-Economy, or Investigations Concerning the Organization of Labor;”[159] and proposed a federation of socialistic communities. Both of these writers, however, were soon so far surpassed in importance by the three socialists, Rodbertus, Marx, and Lassalle, that they are scarcely noticed in the great current of German socialism. We will consequently at once proceed to the consideration of the life and teachings of Rodbertus, from whom it may be considered as taking its beginning. Its growth from the time he published his doctrines has been unbroken.

Karl Rodbertus, who lived from 1805 to 1875, was a man of social standing, universally respected alike for learning and character. He was at first a jurist, and afterwards a farmer, having purchased the estate in Pomerania called Jagetzow. On this account he is often called Rodbertus-Jagetzow.[160]

Rodbertus took some part in politics during the stirring events of 1848, and for a short time thereafter. He was member of the National Assembly in 1848, and in 1849 of the Second Chamber of the Prussian Parliament. He was Prussian Minister of Education and Public Worship for a brief period. But he finally abandoned politics and led a quiet life in his country home, devoting himself chiefly to scientific and literary pursuits. His knowledge of some parts of Roman history is considered quite profound.

Rodbertus, one of the ablest socialists who ever lived, is perhaps the best representative of pure theoretical socialism. Professor Wagner of Berlin calls him the Ricardo of socialism. This gives him an important place in the history of political economy, for political economists may be considered as practically unanimous in the opinion that “scientific socialism represents an economic system which no science of political economy can any longer neglect” (Wagner). It is certain that he resembles Ricardo in many respects, and I personally am quite inclined to think he equalled him, though his name has never become very popular, as his life was a quiet, retired one, and he took no part in agitation. His writings are rather difficult reading for laborers, and they are consequently little acquainted with him. His influence on the greatest living economists has been remarkable.[161]

Rodbertus’s principal works are:

The aim of Rodbertus is naturally to solve the social problem, to abolish the sharp contradiction between the real life of society and the desired and striven-for ideal. But there are two chief evils in the existing economic life of man, which are the cause of most of the others. These evils are pauperism and commercial and financial crises, the latter leading to over-production and a glut in the market. Rodbertus directs his attention principally to the means of abolishing these evils.

The starting-point of Rodbertus’s political economy is his conception of labor expressed in the following sentence: “All economic goods are to be regarded only as the products of labor, and they cost nothing but labor.”[162] This proposition he claims was first introduced into economic science by Adam Smith, and was more firmly established by the school of Ricardo. His whole theory consists of a logical extension of this theory, according to which pauperism and crises result from one and the same circumstance—viz., “that when economic processes are left to themselves in respect to the distribution of goods, certain relations (Verhältnisse) connected with the development of society bring it about that as the productivity of social labor[163] increases, the wages of the laboring classes constitute an ever-decreasing portion of the national product.”[164] This does not mean necessarily that what the laborer receives becomes absolutely smaller; only that it decreases relatively. If ten laborers produce now twenty bushels of wheat in a given time, and receive ten bushels as wages, and at a later period the productivity of labor has increased to such an extent that they produce thirty bushels in the same time, but receive only thirteen, their portion, their quota has decreased.[165]

Now let us see how this produces pauperism and crises.

In society we find laborers, capitalists, and landlords. These classes can exist only because there is a division of labor, and laborers produce more than they consume. Landlords and capitalists receive what is called rent, which is any income derived from the fact of possession and not from labor. All the rest is labor’s share. Now how does it happen that rent-receiving classes are able to exist? in other words, how is one man enabled to take from another a part of the fruits of his labor? This is because private property in land and capital exists. Land and capital constitute the instruments of labor, and without them production is impossible. Their possessors refuse to give them up to another’s use unless a share of the produce is guaranteed them therefor, while the laborer’s hunger and the sufferings of his family compel him to assent. Labor is treated as a commodity. It is bought and sold like other commodities, and its value depends on its cost. What is the cost of labor? Manifestly the cost of continuing labor; in other words, such means as will enable the laborer himself to live and to beget children who shall continue to labor after he is gone. What the laborers require to live, and to marry, and beget children in sufficient numbers to supply the labor market, is their standard of life. This they obtain and no more. Labor costs labor, and is measured by labor; but labor produces more than it consumes, and this surplus-value is rent. Does the laborer’s standard of life rise with the increase in productivity of economic forces? No, it is even doubtful whether it is rising at all. Then the conclusion is inevitable that labor’s proportion or quota decreases. Rodbertus thinks he can prove, from the income returns in England since 1800, and from the division of the national product of England into rent, wages, and profits, that the increased production of machine power, estimated as equal to the labor of five hundred and fifty millions of men, has benefited wholly and entirely landlords and capitalists.[166] Rodbertus puts the matter as follows to laborers: “Under the régime of laissez-faire and with our present property laws, your level, your portion of the goods produced, tends to fall, not to rise; to convince yourselves, look at our situation in general. Has the separation in the incomes of social classes become greater or smaller since we possess machines and railroads, and productivity and production have increased so remarkably? The answer cannot, indeed, be doubtful. Or consider our situation in particular, and ask the oldest among you whether, during the last forty years, wages—real wages, measured in what wages will buy—have increased as much in your fatherland or your native city as land-rent, or, what is the same, the value of the land, and as much as capital has increased.”[167] We have here, then, an explanation of pauperism and of discontent. A man’s poverty does not depend so much upon what he has absolutely, as upon the relation in which his possessions stand to those of others about him, and upon the extent to which they allow him to share in the progress of the age. A cannibal in the Sandwich Islands is not poor because he has no coat; an Englishman is. When the vast majority were unable to read, a man was not poor or oppressed because he was unable to purchase books, but a German who to-day has not the means to do so is both poor and oppressed.[168]

Rodbertus undertakes, in the second place, to prove that crises result from the continued decrease in labor’s share of all the goods produced. His arguments are remarkable, and contain the ablest explanation yet given of the commercial and industrial crashes which occur every few years.[169]

Let us suppose that the total national production equals at a given moment ten millions of units. It makes no difference what a unit is. It may represent the value of ten oxen, five horses, one thousand bushels of wheat, ten tons of hay, and one hundred sheep, or it may equal the value of any other amount of economic goods. That is a matter of indifference. This production is divided between landlords, capitalists, and laborers, so that each class receives three millions of units, one million going to the state in the shape of taxes. Let us further assume that there is at this moment an equilibrium in production. Three millions of units of such goods, necessaries and comforts, as laborers require, are produced; three millions of units of necessaries, comforts, and luxuries are produced for capitalists; and a like amount for landlords. One million units of goods, such as the state requires, are produced. So long as this relation is maintained a cessation in production is needless. The laborers have the means of purchasing all that is produced for them, as have also landlords, capitalists, and state. If production is doubled, and the same relations are preserved, no crisis is thereby occasioned. But the difficulty lies in the fact that the same proportions are not preserved. Production increases, but the laborer’s share diminishes. He has not the means of purchasing what is produced for him. The capitalists and landlords do not increase their consumption of luxuries pari passu with the diminishing consumption of laborers, as they save in order to become wealthy. Their savings are invested in putting up factories and producing goods for laborers, which laborers have not the means of purchasing in the additional amounts. Cotton goods, cloths, and other commodities are heaped up, and finally there comes a crash. During the period of depression the proper relations are gradually restored. The production has increased to twenty millions of units, let us say, of which the laborers receive four millions of units. Equilibrium is restored, when four millions are produced for them and sixteen millions for the other classes of society. Consequently, in a state of increasing production, we observe an increased consumption of luxuries after every crisis. Production continues to increase in the same relations until the laborers are again unable to purchase what is produced for them, when goods are again heaped up, and we have the anomaly of magazines full of commodities for which there are no purchasers, although there are plenty who desire them. Those for whom they were destined have not the means of purchasing them; and this entails also distress upon others, those who handle these commodities, as well as upon a large part of the rest of society, owing to the close relations existing between different members of the social body. Equilibrium is finally restored by an increased consumption of luxuries. So long as economic life is not regulated these processes will never cease to repeat themselves.

Poverty and commercial panics can be banished only by arrangements which guarantee to laborers a share in the national product, which increases pari passu with increasing production. How is this to be done? I cannot, in this place, give the details, which must be sought in Rodbertus’s writings, particularly in his “Normal Arbeitstag.” I will sketch the outlines of his plan.

The state must interfere. An estimate must be made of the value of the national product, and of the share which laborers receive at the time of the valuation. We will assume that all the products of society during a year can be produced by four millions of hours of the labor of an average man. The value of the yearly production equals four millions of hours. Let us suppose that the laborers receive the product of one million hours. They are given in exchange for this receipts, a kind of paper money, the unit of which is one hour. All that is produced finds its way first into magazines, and laborers and others, on presenting labor-time money, receive its value in goods. If the productivity of labor doubles, an hour will secure double the amount of goods. This is the solution, then, of the problem of securing for the laborers a fixed share of production and an amount of goods which increases with increased production.

It is probably in itself, per se, not impossible. What is lacking is the will. This makes it practically impossible. Many practical men have regarded the scheme with favor. Indeed, a German architect has prepared and published tables showing the value of the product of an average hour’s work in the building trade, and of the share received by the laborer himself.[170] Their accuracy was not disputed by builders, though they doubted the advisability of letting the laborers know exactly the proportion which constituted their wages. Rodbertus did not claim that it would be the task of a day to carry out this plan, but he thought a state which regarded lightly the expenditure of four hundred millions for military purposes ought not to begrudge one hundred millions at once, and perhaps more hereafter, to banish pauperism and stagnation in trade and industry. He spoke of one or two centuries as necessary to realize these plans. He did not, however, regard private property in land and capital as the ultimate form of their possession, although the above scheme allows both. He thought there were three stages in economic development. In the first, private property in human beings—slavery, serfdom, and vassalage—existed; in the second, that in which we now live, private property in capital—i.e., the instruments and means of labor—was a social institution; in the third, private property in income alone was to be allowed. Each one was to enjoy in this third stage the full fruits of his labor.

It is needless to say that Rodbertus waged no crusade against land or capital. No one was ever so great a fool as to do that. Every social democrat, even, admits the necessity of both land and capital. He did not, however, believe that it was forever necessary that capitalists and landlords as separate classes should exist. There is the same difference between capital and capitalist as there is between labor and slave. Once, he who waged war on slavery was looked upon as a man who was trying to abolish labor. In the future Rodbertus thinks we will separate in the same manner capital and capitalist, and abolish the capitalist class as we have already abolished the slave-holding class. This does not at all imply equality. Great differences could still exist, but they would be based on merit.

A period of laissez-faire was held by Rodbertus to denote a transitional stage and a preparation for a different social organization. After the social order of the Roman republic, which was founded on the possession of many slaves, and production on a large scale by them, had had its day, freedom in trade and commerce reigned under the emperors, but was terminated by the feudal system of the Middle Ages, for which state it was only preparatory. In the same manner, the present imperfect and unsatisfactory organization, or, as he perhaps would have said, disorganization, was to end in a higher social stage. It was wicked and impious to hope for an improvement from laissez-faire, which he called a fool’s paradise. Good things did not come to us in this world of themselves. It was intended that we should work for them, and for their attainment use all the instrumentalities which Providence has committed to us, the state included.

All of the leading socialists of to-day, to whatever socialistic group they may belong, have been influenced greatly by Rodbertus. An understanding of his theories renders it comparatively easy to understand Marx and Lassalle.

German socialists of to-day may be divided into three groups—viz., social democrats, professorial socialists, and Christian socialists. We also hear of state socialists, who form one class with professorial socialists; save that a few of them may, perhaps, belong to the social democrats. Sometimes they are separated from professorial socialists and made to include simply German office-holders, but the ideas of German office-holders, as such, can have no interest for us in this place. The same man is sometimes called a professorial socialist and sometimes a state socialist, as, for example, Professor Wagner—state socialist as an office-holder who lays stress on the beneficial effects of state activity, professorial socialist as a professor who does the same. It is best to use the term professorial socialists in a wide sense, so as to include all holding similar views.

CHAPTER X.
KARL MARX.

The more immediate theoretical founder of social democracy, and for many years its leading representative, was Karl Marx, born in 1818 in Treves (Trier). The social position of his family in Germany was excellent. His father, a converted Jew, occupied a high position in the civil service. Marx studied law at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. In the latter place he became so much interested in philosophy that he abandoned law. The philosophy which he adopted was the Hegelian. He intended to become a professor, but was led into politics and journalism by the apparent dawn of freedom accompanying the succession of Frederick William IV. to the Prussian throne in 1840. He soon became editor-in-chief of the Rhenish Gazette (Rheinische Zeitung), which had been founded by leading liberals, and began to criticise the government with what was then called unheard-of boldness. But he was so skilful in his expressions that the special censor of the press, who was sent from Berlin to Cologne to watch the paper, could find no cause for legal proceedings against him. Finally, government becoming weary of such attacks, and having then the power to do so, simply decreed that at the expiration of the first quarter-year of 1843 the paper should cease to appear.[171] The interest which Marx had begun to take in matters of government showed him the necessity of informing himself more fully on subjects of political economy. He went to Paris, accordingly, after the suppression of the Rheinische Zeitung, to study that science, thinking that France then afforded better advantages for that purpose. He was, no doubt, right in this, as the Germans have only lately become great in political economy. In Paris he continued to wage war with the pen on the Prussian government, and was banished from France in 1844 by Guizot, to please Prussia. Going to Brussels, he continued his economic studies, interested himself in the cause of the laborers, and in his writings at this time expressed views similar to those which he held at the time of his death. In 1847, in company with Friedrich Engels, he composed and published a manifesto of the communistic party, which closed with these words: “The communists scorn to conceal their views and purposes. They declare openly that their aims can be attained only by a violent overthrow of the existing social order. Let the ruling classes tremble before a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose except their chains. They have a world to gain. Proletarians of all lands, unite!”

The events of 1848 brought Marx to Germany again, where, with his friends, Engels, Wolff, and the poet Freiligrath, he founded the New Rhenish Gazette (Neue Rheinische Zeitung). For one year this paper was an able advocate of the cause of the laborers. German democracy and reaction were alike rejected, and the interest of the laborers was represented as irreconcilably opposed to that of all other classes. The paper was suppressed in 1849, and its founders banished from Germany. Marx lived thereafter in London.

The last issue of the paper contained a spirited farewell poem, by Freiligrath, promising the reappearance of the journal when its undying spirit should have triumphed over all its foes. The following is a good translation:[172]

In London, Marx continued his agitation and literary work uninterruptedly—the former reaching its climax in the foundation of the International, in 1864; the latter in the appearance of his most important work, “Das Kapital” (“Capital”), in 1867.[173] It is a development and continuation of his “Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie”—“A Critique of Political Economy”—published in 1859. Marx intended, in “Das Kapital,” to present a complete system of political economy in three volumes, but had published only the first, “On the Process of Capital Production,” at the time of his death, March 14, 1883. The delay was due, it is said, to the extraordinary thoroughness with which he worked. He had, however, practically completed the second volume and had the third volume well under way before his decease. These two volumes, treating of the “Circulation of Capital” and “The Forms of the Entire Process and the History of the Theory,” will be brought out by his friend, Friedrich Engels. It is further stated that Marx had prepared a third and improved edition of the first volume, which is now in press.

Marx’s book, “Capital,” has been called the Bible of the social democrats, and it deserves the name. It defends their doctrines with acuteness of understanding and profundity of learning, and certainly ranks among the ablest politico-economic treatises ever written. I should place it on a par with Ricardo’s “Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.” Much has been said against its style. I think it, at least, equal to Ricardo’s. It is difficult reading, not because it is poorly written, but because it is deep. Any one, however, who has had some training in political economy, and is ordinarily bright, ought not to find its difficulty insurmountable.

Marx lived a quiet life in London, directing from that point the movements of the International, corresponding for the New York Tribune for a time, besides writing his books and pamphlets, and enjoying the society of his friends. His family life was a happy one. His wife was Jenni von Westphalen, daughter of the Prussian minister of the same name, who belonged to the celebrated reactionary ministry of which Von Manteuffel was president. He had four children, of whom two have already been mentioned as wives of well-known French socialists. The death of a son in early life was a severe blow to him, and he never recovered from the death of his wife, in 1881.

About the ability of Marx there is unanimity of opinion. The philosopher Professor Friedrich A. Lange regarded him as one of the ablest political economists that ever lived. So conservative a man as Professor Knies, of Heidelberg, has often spoken in high terms of his talents and acquisitions; and the well-known Cologne Gazette used these words in an obituary notice:[174] “He exercised, perhaps, a more lasting influence on the inner politics of civilized states than any one of his contemporaries. Political economy, especially in Germany, knows no writer who has influenced both masses and scholars in a more decided, thoroughgoing manner than Karl Marx.... He was one of the sharpest thinkers and readiest dialecticians ever possessed by economic science.... His ‘Capital’ is classical and indispensable for every one who wishes to concern himself earnestly with social and economic science.”

Immediately after the death of Marx, meetings were held in all parts of the United States and elsewhere, as far as the laws would allow it, to do honor to his memory. One characteristic feature of these meetings was the vow which was taken in all to spread the works and to disseminate the ideas of their departed leader. At the mass-meeting in the Cooper Institute, in New York city, undoubtedly the largest one held, the following resolutions were read and adopted:

Similar resolutions were adopted at the other meetings, in Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, etc.

Marx’s followers boast particularly of two discoveries which he made—viz., the correct theory of the development of history and his doctrine of value. While it is not true that these were, by any means, entirely original with him, no one would dispute that his presentation is worked out in an original and remarkable manner.

His theory of history is that it is a development, and is shaped at each period by the economic life of the people, by the manner in which goods are produced and distributed. He takes, as his starting-point, the fact that men must eat, drink, wear clothes, and find shelter from rain, snow, and cold. Art, religion, and science come after the satisfaction of these elementary wants. The production of wealth by slaves gave form to the history of the classical world, while that of the Middle Ages is dominated by serfdom and its accessories. The governing idea of the present age is capitalistic production—that is to say, concentration of large masses in factories, running a race with immense machines, and systematically robbed by their employers. When we take the view that history is a growth governed by the necessities of production, past ages do not seem so inhuman as they otherwise do. It has hitherto been necessary that the vast majority should toil incessantly, while only few devoted themselves to the pursuit of the higher goods. The processes of production were so primitive and imperfect that it was physically impossible for the many to enjoy leisure for cultivating their minds and bodies. Hence it was that the ancients regarded slavery as necessary and natural. Plato and Aristotle both considered it a law of nature, just the same as it has hitherto been supposed that private property in land and capital was a law of nature; whereas, as already shown by Rodbertus, they are all only institutions of positive and changeable law. Private property in the instruments of production can be abolished, as private property in human beings has been. This abolition could not, however, take place until society had made such advance in the art of producing goods that all requisites for human existence and progress could be produced without requiring the unceasing toil of the vast majority. That time has come. It is now easy to produce all the requirements of civilization and at the same time to leave leisure to each one to make the most of himself. Aristotle, in defending slavery, uttered words which sound almost like a prophecy. In his “Politics” (i. 4) he uses this language: “Every servant is an instrument more valuable than any other instrument. For if every instrument at command, or from foreknowledge of its master’s will, could accomplish its special work—if the shuttle thus should weave and the lyre play of itself—then neither would the architect want servants nor the master require slaves.” These remarks seem to contain a dim foreboding of the marvellous invention of machinery which has taken place in this age, and has substituted iron and steel for bone and muscle.

A feudal aristocracy was once required to protect and guide industry and agriculture. The growth of the bourgeoisie in the cities finally rendered feudalism an antiquated institution, and it had to make way for the third estate, under whose guidance wealth has increased most marvellously and laborers have been gathered together and organized. But the bourgeoisie has fulfilled its mission. It is now but a hinderance and an obstacle. The repeated crises and the continual concentration of property in the hands of a few mammoth millionaires prove conclusively that they are not equal to the task of leadership. The time has arrived when the proletariat, the fourth estate, must take the reins into its own hands. It is now to play the grand rôle in the history of the world. “With the continually decreasing number of the magnates of capitalism, who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of the changed form of production, there is an accompanying increase in the mass of misery, of oppression, of bondage, of degradation, of exploitation; but there also arises a revolt of an increasing class of laborers, who have been schooled, united, and disciplined by the mechanism of the capitalistic processes of production. The monopoly of capital becomes a shackle to the method of production, under and with which it has grown up. The concentration of the means of production and the association of laborers reach a point where they are incompatible with their capitalistic shell. The shell is broken. The death-knell of capitalistic private property sounds. The expropriateurs are expropriated.”[175] Thus dawns a new and better era in the history of human development.

The key to Marx’s economic doctrines is his theory of value, with an exposition of which “Das Kapital” opens. It is based on Ricardo and Rodbertus, but is developed and defended in an original manner. He begins by separating value in use from value in exchange. Value in use is utility, arising from the adaptation of an article to satisfy some human need. Air, water, sunshine, wheat, potatoes, gold, and diamonds are examples. It does not necessarily imply exchange value. Many goods are very useful but not exchangeable, because they are free to all. Such is the case, usually, with water. On the other hand, no good can have value in exchange unless it is useful. Men will not give something for that which satisfies no want or need. Both value in use and value in exchange are utilities, but, as they differ, there must be some element in the one which the other does not per se contain. We find what that is by analyzing the constituent elements of different goods which possess exchange value. How can we compare them? Only because they contain some common element. But what is there in common between a horse and a house? You cannot say that this stick is longer than that sugar is sweet. Yet you say this house is worth ten times as much as that horse. Materials are not compared, nor stability with swiftness, nor color with color. The common element is found alone in human labor. You compare labor with labor. It requires ten times the amount of average social labor (gesellschaftliche Durchschnittsarbeitskraft) to secure such a house as it does to put one in possession of such a horse. Labor-time is the measure which we apply to different commodities in order to compare them. We mean thereby the ordinary average labor which is required at a given time in a given society. The average man is taken as a basis, together with the average advantages of machinery and the arts. This is average social labor-time. Complicated labor is simply a multiple of simple labor. One man’s labor, which has required long and careful training, may count for twice as much as ordinary, simple labor; but the simple labor is the unit.

This distinction between value in use and value in exchange enables us to understand how capitalists exploit their laborers. They pay for labor its exchange value, which depends upon the cost of labor or the standard of life of the laborer, as we have already seen in our examination of Rodbertus’s system. What it takes to support a laborer’s family is the exchange value of all the labor which can be got out of that family.

Let us suppose that a laborer requires each day goods whose value is denoted by A, each week in addition thereto goods denoted by B, besides quarterly needs which are satisfied by goods whose value is C. Then his support for each day will require the value of

Now, if it requires six hours to produce these goods, the laborer is producing surplus value if he labors more than that time. This the capitalist requires him to do, as he has hired his entire labor power. Under these circumstances, the laborer who works twelve hours a day for his employer is paid for six hours’ work, while he is robbed of the product of the other six hours’ labor. The capitalist is able to do this because he possesses the means of production. The laborer would gladly work without recourse to the capitalist, but he has not the means, the instruments with which to produce. He must accede to the terms of the capitalist or starve. The capitalist goes on the market and finds there the commodity, labor, for which he pays its value in exchange, as for any other commodity. But value in use does not depend upon value in exchange. The value in use of labor to the capitalist is all that he can squeeze out of it. The capitalist pockets the surplus value, and it becomes capital, enabling him to continue and enlarge his process of exploitation.

Let the line,

a——b——c,

represent the labor of twelve hours, b dividing it into two equal parts; a——b is necessary labor; b——c is unpaid labor productive of surplus value. It is the capitalist’s interest to extend b——c as much as possible, as that governs his accumulations. Hence, the efforts of employers to increase the length of a day’s labor; hence, the efforts of employees to shorten a————c, as they thereby diminish the amount of unpaid labor, of whose value they are robbed.

This enables us to comprehend the significance of Marx’s definition of capital, which is as follows: “A negro is a negro. In certain relations he becomes a slave. A cotton-spinning-machine is a machine for spinning cotton. It becomes capital only in certain relations. Capital is a social relation existing in the processes of production. It is an historical relation. The means of production are not capital when they are the property of the immediate producer. They become capital only under conditions, in which they serve at the same time as the means of exploiting and ruling the laborer.... The foundation of the capitalistic method of production is to be found in that theft which deprived the masses of their rights in the soil, in the earth, the common heritage of all.”[177] That is to say, Marx limits the name capital to economic goods in the hands of employers.

The capitalist buys the commodity labor (l), for money (m), and sells its product for more money (m+). The formula of capitalistic production is therefore m-l-m+. In the socialistic state, the +, surplus value, vanishes. The entire product belongs to the producer. If he exchanges it for other products by means of money which must be based on labor-time—labor-time money—the formula will be c-m-c. Money becomes simply a medium of exchanging commodities (c) of equal value. The only source, then, of obtaining the fruits of labor will be—labor, physical or mental, but always labor of some kind or another. Idlers will disappear from the earth. The race of parasites will become extinct.

One of Marx’s most important doctrines is his theory of crises. During prosperous times manufacturers employ all the men, women, and children who will work. The laboring classes prosper, marriage is encouraged, and population increases. Suddenly there comes a commercial crisis. The greater part of the laborers are thrown out of employment, and are maintained by society at large; that is, the general public has to bear the burden of keeping the laborers—the manufacturer’s tools—for their employer until he may need them again. These laborers without work constitute an army of reserve forces for the manufacturer. When times begin to improve, he again gradually resumes business, and becomes more prosperous. The laborer’s wages have previously been reduced on account of hard times, and the manufacturer is not obliged to raise them, as there is a whole army in waiting, glad to take work at any price. “If a surplus labor population is a necessary result of the accumulation or the development of wealth on a capitalistic basis, this surplus population is in turn a lever of capitalistic accumulation. It forms an always ready, industrial reserve army which belongs as absolutely to capital as if it had been at the expense of raising it.... Surplus capital presses forward with frenzy into all established branches of production, whose market suddenly widens, and into new ones, as railroads, etc., the need of which springs from this development. In all such cases must large masses of men suddenly, and without loss to the leaders of production in other places, be ready to be employed at the important point. These masses are furnished by the surplus population.”[178]

CHAPTER XI.
THE INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN’S ASSOCIATION.

The International Workingmen’s Association (Internationale Arbeiterassociation) is a society based on social democratic principles, and intended to embrace all the laborers of Christendom. The Internationalists believe that working-men, having nothing to hope from the higher classes, must fight out their own emancipation. They hold, also, that the interests of labor throughout the civilized world are so vitally connected, that it is necessary for all lands to march together. They are thoroughgoing cosmopolitans.

The following permanent “statutes” (by-laws) were adopted at its first meeting in London, September, 1864, and confirmed at its congress in Geneva in 1866: