The preparation and training of the working-class (for their high
functions) by the productive powers, the growing and inevitable
development and crystallization of the collective tendencies of the
latter, the increasing incompatibility between their essential
character and their private ownership, all lead to a new economic
regime in which they will be owned and controlled collectively just as
they are operated collectively, in which they will be conducted by
society and for society. And all the socialism of the socialists
consists of wishing to perpetuate in a fully developed form the
present social character of the material conditions of life.
I say socialism of the socialists because we have seen flourish in our
day a peculiar socialism, the socialism of those good people who
earnestly wish to remove the inconveniences and injustices of our
present social state, but who also wish a little more earnestly to
preserve the cause of these inconveniences, who wish at once to
suppress or abolish the proletariat and to preserve the capitalist
form of society. It is quite possible for socialism also to have its
converts and even its backsliders; it asks its adherents, not whence
they come, but to go whither it is going, or, at least, to permit it
to proceed upon its road without attempting to turn it aside from it.
As one of our adversaries declares, we can say in our turn: 'On one
side are the socialists, on the other those who are not socialists,'
and among the latter may be counted those who accept the name while
rejecting the thing.
Apart from the socialization of the means of labor which have already
taken on a collective form, there may be and there often is
charlatanry, but there is no real possibility of emancipation, there
is no socialism.
So long as the means of labor and labor shall not be united in the
same hands, the means of labor will retain the character of capital,
and capital will inevitably exploit the workingman and wring from him
labor for which it will not pay him. The source of the troubles of the
working-class is to be found in their expropriation from the means of
labor; now, the harder they work on the established basis of
expropriation, the more power they give the capitalist class to enrich
themselves and to expropriate those who have not yet entered the inner
circle of capitalism. On the basis of the present gigantic forms of
the instruments of labor, the collective means of labor and labor
itself can be united in the same hands, only by the transformation of
the capitalist ownership of these means of labor into social
ownership, only by the transformation of capitalist production into
social production. The logical consequence of the material facts of
the existing environment, this transformation, the socialization of
the means of production having collective tendencies, is possible, and
it appears as the only practical method of emancipating the laborers,
of emancipating society as a whole.
Emancipated the laborers will be, since their lives will no longer be
dependent upon the means of labor monopolized by others and they will
be free to make their lives what they will. In fact, they will freely
choose the kind of productive labor they prefer, and all kinds of work
will, in accordance with the law of supply and demand, be reduced in
varying proportions to definite quantities of ordinary labor. After
once deducting from the product of the labor of each a portion which
will take the place of the present taxes, the portion necessary to
replace the means of labor consumed, to provide for the extension of
the scale of production, for insurance against disastrous
contingencies, such, for instance, as floods, lightning, tornadoes,
etc., for the support of those incapable of labor, to meet generously
the expenses of administration and of satisfying the common
requirements of sanitation, education, etc., the producers of both
sexes will distribute the balance among themselves, proportionally to
the quantity of ordinary labor furnished by them severally. The right
of each laborer will be equal, in the sense that for all, without
distinction, the labor furnished will be the measure alike for all,
and this equal right may possibly lead to an unequal distribution,
according to the greater or smaller quantities of labor furnished. The
standard of rights in force in an economic environment cannot be
superior in quality to that environment, but it will go on increasing
in perfection as the environment advances toward perfection, thus
reducing, so far as material conditions shall permit, the inequalities
of natural origin.
The important point is that, from the dawn of social production, there
will be no more surplus-labor, no more classes, and, therefore, no
more exploitation, as there inevitably is under capitalist production.
Every adult able to work will receive, under one form or another,
partly in articles for personal consumption, partly in social
guarantees, in public services of every kind, the same quantity of
labor that he shall give to society. If goods are rationed out, this
rationing will not be accompanied by exploitation; as rationing can
then be due only to a deficiency in personal or social production, and
not to the spoliation which the wage-system implies, a system under
which overproduction, far from being favorable to the satisfaction of
the demand of the working-class for articles of consumption, results
for them in loss of employment and starvation diet.
During the capitalist period, it suffices for socialism to establish
the possibility of the emancipation of the working-class and to work
for that emancipation. There is no occasion to waste time in working
out and settling the details of the organization of the future
society. Each epoch has its task. Let us not have the presumption to
lay down rules for those who are to come after us, and let us be
content with present duties. The point upon which socialism trains its
guns at present, though recognizing the utility that it has had in the
past, is the capital-form; but let us not forget that the substance
beneath this form will be every whit preserved. When an office is
taken away from an office-holder, the individual is left without a
hair the less. In the same way, in taking from the means of
production their function as capital, everything that functions
to-day under that form will remain intact. Socialism then attacks the
capital-form, the form only, and it attacks it only in so far as the
economic phenomena authorize such an attack. Everything which
constitutes the substance of capital will be preserved, the
capital-form alone will disappear and along with it that power that it
involves of exploiting the labor of others.
What will be the fate of the capitalists?
Capital appears to be a collective power or force, by its origin,
since it springs from the accumulated surplus-labor of a collective
body of laborers, by its functional activity since it also requires a
collective body of laborers to enable it to enter upon its functions,
and by its mode of ownership since, if it is private property, it
tends more and more to be the private property, not of an individual,
but of a collective body, a company or trust. To make public property
of the means of production, which are capital when they are able to
exploit the labor of others and which are capital only on that
condition, is simply to generalize the collective or social character
which they already have.
Is the holder of a share in a mining or railway company or any sort of
stock-company justified in speaking of "his" property? Where is his
property? In what does it consist? What can he show if someone asks to
see it? A machine? A piece of real estate? No, simply one or several
bits of paper which represent only an infinitesimal fraction of an
undivided whole. Would this shareholder be any the less a
property-owner, if this undivided whole should become an integrant
portion of the national property? Would there be such a great
difference between "his" property, as it now is, and his quota or
share in the national property? Just as the capitalists understand
well enough to-day how to avail themselves of the national forests,
for instance, for fresh air, pleasure excursions afoot and awheel,
recreation, etc., so, after the socialization of the material objects
that make up what is at present capital, they would use this newly
nationalized property as means of labor or production.
This, then, would be a true democratization[6] of property. The
process, ordinarily called by this name, the dispersion of shares,
stocks and bonds, is only the process--called legitimate--of
extracting good hard cash from all pockets, even those most scantily
supplied, centralizing it, monopolizing the real possession of it in
exchange for a certificate of nominal ownership, making it breed or
expand, and permitting to flow back in interest, dividends, etc., only
tiny crumbs until the day comes when the poor investors cease to get
even these microscopical returns. This pretended democratization of
property results simply in the formation of a financial aristocracy
creating scandalous fortunes out of the good dollars of the small
investors, and if these dollars, when the paper accepted in their
stead is no longer worth anything, are lost for their former
possessors, they are not lost for everyone. (They have become the
reward of "abstinence."--Translator.)
Let the stocks representing part-ownership in a company lose all
value--this is an occurrence that the shareholders and bondholders of
the Panama canal, for example, can tell you is not unknown in our
bourgeois society--and the shareholder finds himself, in this
instance, permitted to enjoy all the blessings of expropriation
without any indemnifying compensation; sometimes even he has the
delicate attention of an invitation from the Receiver or the Courts to
pour some more money into the hole where his former savings
disappeared. Now even in this case the owners of this sort of personal
property do not make too much ado about the matter. Why should they
complain any more bitterly on the day when there will be, as it were,
only a substitution of one kind of stocks or shares for another, when
they will all become stockholders and bondholders of the great society
(the Co-operative Commonwealth), instead of being shareholders and
bondholders in one or several little societies or companies?
By this transformation they will gain complete assurance against risk
of loss--a real enough danger to-day when, after the actual control of
property passes into the hands of financial magnates, the revenue of
the nominal owners, the stockholders, etc., falls to zero or nearly
zero, thus cutting off their means of existence or enjoyment. They
will lose only one thing: the power of dominating the labor of others
and of appropriating its fruits; while they will have the privilege of
enjoying the common wealth and the advantages springing from its
co-operative employment.
Healthy adults will take for their own use, provided they work, their
share of the social products. If they are already accustomed to any
kind of work, they will find no hardship in this obligation to perform
useful labor; if they are not accustomed to it, they will acquire the
habit and will find their health greatly improved thereby in every
respect. If they are old and infirm they will be liberally provided
for by society.
What they can reasonably expect and insist upon having is the
sustenance of life (in a broad sense),[7] and this they will have, as
you see, in any case. The socialization will not result in such a
change in the distribution of wealth as is often caused by watering
the stock of a company. It will simply extend to all, those who hold
stocks at present included, those advantages which a minority alone
enjoys to-day, and it will benefit all, but stockholders especially,
by doing away with those risks which capitalist exploitation forces
everyone to run.
* * * * *
Finally, socialism will rob no one. I would ask those who assert the
contrary, what description then should be given to those transactions
in the goods and property of the nobility, the clergy and above all of
the communes, performed by our great radicals in the French
Revolution, by those whose work has become a "compass" for our
guidance. Just as soon as we cease simply substituting one privileged
class for another, just as soon as we enable all without exception to
enjoy the same advantages, no one will be robbed or deprived of
anything. Simply, inequality in the enjoyment of privilege will have
been abolished, another privileged class will have vanished from the
stage. Yes, the capitalists will lose, along with their special
privileges or rights over the means of production, that characteristic
or quality that makes them capitalists; but, I repeat, they will have
exactly the same rights as all others to the use and enjoyment of
those means of production, from that time forth the inalienable
property of society. With capital dethroned, the principles of the
Republic will at last be applied with controlling power to the field
of economics, just as they are to the field of politics, and political
democracy will have ceased to be a farce, for it will have developed
into its perfect flower, INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY.