was essentially directed towards satisfying the wants of the
individual. It satisfied, in the main, only the wants of the producer
and his family. Where relations of personal dependence existed, as in
the country, it also helped to satisfy the wants of the feudal lord.
In all this there was, therefore, no exchange; the products,
consequently, did not assume the character of commodities. The family
of the peasant produced almost everything they wanted: clothes and
furniture, as well as means of subsistence. Only when it began to
produce more than was sufficient to supply its own wants and the
payments in kind to the feudal lord, only then did it also produce
commodities. This surplus, thrown into socialized exchange and offered
for sale, became commodities.
The artisans of the towns, it is true, had from the first to produce
for exchange. But they, also, themselves supplied the greatest part
of their own individual wants. They had gardens and plots of land.
They turned their cattle out into the communal forest, which, also,
yielded them timber and firing. The women spun flax, wool, and so
forth. Production for the purpose of exchange, production of
commodities, was only in its infancy. Hence, exchange was restricted,
the market narrow, the methods of production stable; there was local
exclusiveness without, local unity within; the mark[5] in the country,
in the town, the guild.
But with the extension of the production of commodities, and
especially with the introduction of the capitalist mode of production,
the laws of commodity-production, hitherto latent, came into action
more openly and with greater force. The old bonds were loosened, the
old exclusive limits broken through, the producers were more and more
turned into independent, isolated producers of commodities. It became
apparent that the production of society at large was ruled by absence
of plan, by accident, by anarchy; and this anarchy grew to greater
and greater height. But the chief means by aid of which the capitalist
mode of production intensified this anarchy of socialized production,
was the exact opposite of anarchy. It was the increasing organization
of production, upon a social basis, in every individual productive
establishment. By this, the old, peaceful, stable condition of things
was ended. Wherever this organization of production was introduced
into a branch of industry, it brooked no other method of production by
its side. The field of labor became a battle-ground. The great
geographical discoveries, and the colonization following upon them,
multiplied markets and quickened the transformation of handicraft into
manufacture. The war did not simply break out between the individual
producers of particular localities. The local struggles begat in their
turn national conflicts, the commercial wars of the seventeenth and
the eighteenth centuries.
Finally, modern industry and the opening of the world-market made the
struggle universal, and at the same time gave it an unheard-of
virulence. Advantages in natural or artificial conditions of
production now decide the existence or non-existence of individual
capitalists, as well as of whole industries and countries. He that
falls is remorselessly cast aside. It is the Darwinian struggle of the
individual for existence transferred from Nature to society with
intensified violence. The conditions of existence natural to the
animal appear as the final term of human development. The
contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic
appropriation now presents itself as _an antagonism between the
organization of production in the individual workshop and the anarchy
of production in society generally_.
The capitalistic mode of production moves in these two forms of the
antagonism immanent to it from its very origin. It is never able to
get out of that "vicious circle," which Fourier had already
discovered. What Fourier could not, indeed, see in his time is, that
this circle is gradually narrowing; that the movement becomes more and
more a spiral, and must come to an end, like the movement of the
planets, by collision with the center. It is the compelling force of
anarchy in the production of society at large that more and more
completely turns the great majority of men into proletarians; and it
is the masses of the proletariat again who will finally put an end to
anarchy in production. It is the compelling force of anarchy in social
production that turns the limitless perfectibility of machinery under
modern industry into a compulsory law by which every individual
industrial capitalist must perfect his machinery more and more, under
penalty of ruin.
But the perfecting of machinery is making human labor superfluous. If
the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of
millions of manual, by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery
means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers
themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number
of available wage-workers in excess of the average needs of capital,
the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it
in 1845,[6] available at the times when industry is working at high
pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash
comes, a constant dead weight upon the limbs of the working-class in
its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for the keeping
of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital.
Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most
powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working-class; that
the instruments of labor constantly tear the means of subsistence out
of the hands of the laborer; that the very product of the worker is
turned into an instrument for his subjugation. Thus it comes about
that the economizing of the instruments of labor becomes at the same
time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labor-power, and
robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labor functions;
that machinery, "the most powerful instrument for shortening
labor-time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment
of the laborer's time and that of his family at the disposal of the
capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital"
("Capital," American edition, p. 445). Thus it comes about that
over-work of some becomes the preliminary condition for the idleness
of others, and that modern industry, which hunts after new consumers
over the whole world, forces the consumption of the masses at home
down to a starvation minimum, and in doing thus destroys its own home
market. "The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus
population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of
accumulation, this law rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than
the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an
accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital.
Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time,
accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality,
mental degradation, at the opposite pole, _i.e._, on the side of the
class that produces _its own product in the form of capital_." (Marx'
"Capital" Vol. I [Kerr & Co.]. p. 709.) And to expect any other
division of the products from the capitalistic mode of production is
the same as expecting the electrodes of a battery not to decompose
acidulated water, not to liberate oxygen at the positive, hydrogen at
the negative pole, so long as they are connected with the battery.
We have seen that the ever-increasing perfectibility of modern
machinery is, by the anarchy of social production, turned into a
compulsory law that forces the individual industrial capitalist always
to improve his machinery always to increase its productive force. The
bare possibility of extending the field of production is transformed
for him into a similar compulsory law. The enormous expansive force of
modern industry, compared with which that of gases is mere child's
play, appears to us now as a _necessity_ for expansion, both
qualitative and quantitative, that laughs at all resistance. Such
resistance is offered by consumption, by sales, by the markets for
the products of modern industry. But the capacity for extension,
extensive and intensive, of the markets is primarily governed by quite
different laws, that work much less energetically. The extension of
the markets can not keep pace with the extension of production. The
collision becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any real
solution so long as it does not break in pieces the capitalist mode of
production, the collisions become periodic. Capitalist production has
begotten another "vicious circle."
As a matter of fact, since 1825, when the first general crisis broke
out, the whole industrial and commercial world, production and
exchange among all civilized peoples and their more or less barbaric
hangers-on, are thrown out of joint about once every ten years.
Commerce is at a stand-still, the markets are glutted, products
accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash
disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the
workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have
produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows
upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for
years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed
wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filter
off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange
gradually begin to move again. Little by little the pace quickens. It
becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter
in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of
industry, commercial credit, and speculation, which finally, after
breakneck leaps, ends where it began--in the ditch of a crisis. And so
over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, gone through
this five times, and at the present moment (1877) we are going through
it for the sixth time. And the character of these crises is so clearly
defined that Fourier hit all of them off, when he described the first
as "_crise plethorique_," a crisis from plethora.
In these crises, the contradiction between socialized production and
capitalist appropriation ends in a violent explosion. The circulation
of commodities is, for the time being, stopped. Money, the means of
circulation, becomes a hindrance to circulation. All the laws of
production and circulation of commodities are turned upside down. The
economic collision has reached its apogee. _The mode of production is
in rebellion against the mode of exchange._
The fact that the socialized organization of production within the
factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the
anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and
dominates it, is brought home to the capitalists themselves by the
violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, through
the ruin of many large, and a still greater number of small,
capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production
breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its own
creations. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of means of
production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason the
industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production,
means of subsistence, available laborers, all the elements of
production and of general wealth, are present in abundance. But
"abundance becomes the source of distress and want" (Fourier), because
it is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the means of
production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalistic society
the means of production can only function when they have undergone a
preliminary transformation into capital, into the means of exploiting
human labor-power. The necessity of this transformation into capital
of the means of production and subsistence stands like a ghost between
these and the workers. It alone prevents the coming together of the
material and personal levers of production; it alone forbids the means
of production to function, the workers to work and live. On the one
hand, therefore, the capitalistic mode of production stands convicted
of its own incapacity to further direct these productive forces. On
the other, these productive forces themselves, with increasing energy,
press forward to the removal of the existing contradiction, to the
abolition of their quality as capital, to the _practical recognition
of their character as social productive forces_.
This rebellion of the productive forces, as they grow more and more
powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger
command that their social character shall be recognized, forces the
capitalist class itself to treat them more and more as social
productive forces, so far as this is possible under capitalist
conditions. The period of industrial high pressure, with its unbounded
inflation of credit, not less than the crash itself, by the collapse
of great capitalist establishments, tends to bring about that form of
the socialization of great masses of means of production, which we
meet with in the different kinds of joint-stock companies. Many of
these means of production and of distribution are, from the outset, so
colossal, that, like the railroads, they exclude all other forms of
capitalistic exploitation. At a further stage of evolution this form
also becomes insufficient. The producers on a large scale in a
particular branch of industry in a particular country unite in a
"Trust," a union for the purpose of regulating production. They
determine the total amount to be produced, parcel it out among
themselves, and thus enforce the selling price fixed beforehand. But
trusts of this kind, as soon as business becomes bad, are generally
liable to break up, and, on this very account, compel a yet greater
concentration of association. The whole of the particular industry is
turned into one gigantic joint-stock company; internal competition
gives place to the internal monopoly of this one company. This has
happened in 1890 with the English _alkali_ production, which is now,
after the fusion of 48 large works, in the hands of one company,
conducted upon a single plan, and with a capital of L6,000,000.
In the trusts, freedom of competition changes into its very
opposite--into monopoly; and the production without any definite plan
of capitalistic society capitulates to the production upon a definite
plan of the invading socialistic society. Certainly this is so far
still to the benefit and advantage of the capitalists. But in this
case the exploitation is so palpable that it must break down. No
nation will put up with production conducted by trusts, with so
barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of
dividend-mongers.
In any case, with trusts or without, the official representative of
capitalist society--the State--will ultimately have to undertake the
direction of production.[7] This necessity for conversion into
State-property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse
and communication--the postoffice, the telegraphs, the railways.
If the crisis demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for
managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of
the great establishments for production and distribution into
joint-stock companies, trusts, and State property, show how
unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social
functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees.
The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing
dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange,
where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital.
At first the capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers.
Now it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it
reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus population, although
not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.
But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies and trusts,
or into State-ownership does not do away with the capitalistic nature
of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts this
is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that
bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions
of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments, as
well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern State, no
matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state
of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national
capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces,
the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more
citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers--proletarians.
The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to
a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of
the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but
concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the
elements of that solution.
This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the
social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the
harmonizing the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange with
the socialized character of the means of production. And this can only
come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the
productive forces which have outgrown all control except that of
society as a whole. The social character of the means of production
and of the products to-day reacts against the producers, periodically
disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of Nature
working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But with the taking over by
society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of
production and of the products will be utilized by the producers with
a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source
of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful
lever of production itself.
Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly,
forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon
with, them. But when once we understand them, when once we grasp their
action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves
to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to
reach our own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty
productive forces of to-day. As long as we obstinately refuse to
understand the nature and the character of these social means of
action--and this understanding goes against the grain of the
capitalist mode of production and its defenders--so long these forces
are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master
us, as we have shown above in detail.
But when once their nature is understood, they can, in the hands of
the producers working together, be transformed from master demons into
willing servants. The difference is as that between the destructive
force of electricity in the lightning of the storm, and electricity
under command in the telegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference
between a conflagration, and fire working in the service of man. With
this recognition at last of the real nature of the productive forces
of to-day, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social
regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs
of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of
appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer and
then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the
products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of
production; upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means
to the maintenance and extension of production--on the other, direct
individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment.
Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely
transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it
creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is
forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and
more the transformation of the vast means of production, already
socialized, into State property, it shows itself the way to
accomplishing this revolution. _The proletariat seizes political power
and turns the means of production into State property._
But in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all
class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the State as
State. Society thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the
State. That is, of an organization of the particular class which was
_pro tempore_ the exploiting class, an organization for the purpose of
preventing any interference from without with the existing conditions
of production, and therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly
keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppression
corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom,
wage-labor). The State was the official representative of society as a
whole; the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But it
was this only in so far as it was the State of that class which itself
represented, for the time being, society as a whole; in ancient times,
the State of slave-owning citizens; in the middle ages, the feudal
lords; in our own time, the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the
real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself
unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held
in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for
existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the
collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more
remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is
no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really
constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society--the
taking possession of the means of production in the name of
society--this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a
State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain
after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the
government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and
by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not
"abolished." _It dies out._ This gives the measure of the value of the
phrase "a free State," both as to its justifiable use at times by
agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also
of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the
State out of hand.