It appears in every economic definition, practically, and the
terminology of the orthodox political economists is thereby often given
a new meaning, radically different from that originally given to it and
commonly understood. The student of Socialism who fails to appreciate
this fact will most frequently land in a morass of confusion and
difficulty, but the careful student who fully understands it will find
it of great assistance. Take, as an illustration, the phrase "the
abolition of capital" which frequently occurs in Socialist literature.
The reader who thinks of capital as consisting of _things_, such as
machinery, materials of production, money, and so on, finds the phrase
bewildering. He wonders how it is conceivable that production should go
on if these things were done away with. But the student who fully
understands the sociological principle outlined above comprehends at
once that it is not proposed to do away with the _things_, but with
_certain social relations expressed through them_. He understands that
the "abolition of capital" no more involves the destruction of the
physical things than the abolition of slavery involved the destruction
of the slave himself. What is aimed at is the social relation which is
established through the medium of the things commonly called capital.
II
In common with all the great economists, Socialists hold that wealth is
produced by human labor applied to appropriate natural objects. This, as
we have seen, does not mean that labor is the sole source of wealth.
Still less does it mean that the mere expenditure of labor upon natural
objects must inevitably result in the production of wealth. If a man
spends his time digging holes in the ground and filling them up again,
or dipping water from the ocean in a bucket and pouring it back again,
the labor so expended upon natural objects would not produce wealth of
any kind. Nor is the productivity of mental labor denied. In the term
"labor" is implied the totality of human energies expended in
production, regardless of whether those energies be physical or mental.
In modern society wealth consists of social use-values, commodities.
We must, therefore, begin our analysis of capitalist society with an
analysis of a commodity. "A commodity," says Marx, "is, in the first
place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies
human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether,
for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no
difference. Neither are we here concerned to know how the object
satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or
indirectly as means of production."[164] But a commodity must be
something more than an object satisfying human wants. Such objects are
simple use-values, but commodities are something else in addition to
simple use-values. The manna upon which the pilgrim exiles of the Bible
story were fed, for instance, was not a commodity, though it fulfilled
the conditions of this first part of our definition by satisfying human
wants. We must carry our definition further, therefore. In addition to
use-value, then, a commodity must possess exchange-value. In other
words, it must have a social use-value, a use-value to others, and not
merely to the producer.
Thus, things may have the quality of satisfying human wants without
being commodities. To state the matter in the language of the
economists, use-values may, and often do, exist without economic value,
value, that is to say, in exchange. Air, for example, is absolutely
indispensable to life, yet it is not--except in special, abnormal
conditions--subject to sale or exchange. With a use-value that is beyond
computation, it has no exchange-value. Similarly, water is ordinarily
plentiful and has no economic value; it is not a commodity. A seeming
contradiction exists in the case of the water supply of cities where
water for domestic use is commercially supplied, but a moment's
reflection will show that it is not the water, but the social service of
bringing it to a desired location for the consumer's convenience that
represents economic value. Over and above that there is, however, the
element of monopoly-price which enters into the matter. With that we
have not, at this point, anything to do. Under ordinary circumstances,
water, like light, is plentiful; its utility to man is not due to man's
labor, and it has, therefore, no economic value. But in exceptional
circumstances, as in an arid desert or in a besieged fortress, a
millionaire might be willing to give all his wealth for a little water,
thus making the value of what is ordinarily valueless almost infinite.
What may be called natural use-values have no economic value. And even
use-values that are the result of human labor may be equally without
economic value. If I make something to satisfy some want of my own, it
will have no economic value unless it will satisfy the want of some one
else. So, unless a use-value is social, unless the object produced is of
use to some other person than the producer, it will have no value in the
economic sense: it will not be _exchangeable_.
A commodity must therefore possess two fundamental qualities. It must
have a use-value, must satisfy some human want or desire; it must also
have an exchange-value arising from the fact that the use-value
contained in it is social in its nature and exchangeable for other
exchange-values. With the unit of wealth thus defined, the subsequent
study of economics is immensely simplified.[165]
The trade of capitalist societies is the exchange of commodities against
each other, through the medium of money. Commodities utterly unlike each
other in all apparent physical properties, such as color, weight, size,
shape, substance, and so on, and utterly unlike each other in respect to
the purposes for which intended and the nature of the wants they
satisfy, are exchanged for one another, sometimes equally, sometimes in
unequal ratio. The question immediately arises: what is it that
determines the relative value of commodities so exchanged? A dress suit
and a kitchen stove, for example, are very different commodities,
possessing no outward semblance to each other, and satisfying very
different human wants, yet they may, and actually do, exchange upon an
equality in the market. To understand the reason for this similarity of
value of dissimilar commodities, and the principle which governs the
exchange of commodities in general, is to understand an important part
of the mechanism of modern capitalist society.
This is the problem of value which all the great economists have tried
to solve. Sir William Petty, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart
Mill, and Karl Marx developed what is known as the labor-value theory as
the solution of the problem. This theory, as developed by Marx, not in
its cruder forms, is one of the cardinal principles in Socialist
economic theory. The Ricardian statement of the theory is that the
relative value of commodities to one another is determined by the
relative amounts of human labor embodied in them; that the quantity of
labor embodied in them is the determinant of the value of all
commodities. When all their differences have been carefully noted, all
commodities have at least one quality in common. The dress suit and the
kitchen range, toothpicks and snowshoes, pink parasols and
sewing-machines, are unlike each other in every other particular save
one--they are all products of human labor, crystallizations of human
labor-power. Here, then, say the Socialists, as did the great classical
economists, we have a hint of the secret of the mechanism of exchange in
capitalist society. The amount of labor-power embodied in their
production is in some way connected with the measure of the exchangeable
value of the commodities.
Stated in the simple, crude form, that the quantity of human labor
crystallized in them is the basis and measure of the value of
commodities when exchanged against one another, the labor theory of
value is beautifully simple. At least, the formula is simplicity itself.
At the same time, it is open to certain very obvious criticisms. It
would be absurd to contend that the day's labor of a coolie laborer is
equal in productivity to the day's labor of a highly skilled mechanic,
or that the day's labor of an incompetent workman is of equal value to
that of the most proficient. To refute such a theory is as beautifully
simple as the theory itself. In all seriousness, arguments such as these
are constantly used against the Marxian theory of value, notwithstanding
that they do not possess the slightest relation to it. Marxism is very
frequently "refuted" by those who do not trouble themselves to
understand it.
The idea that the quantity of labor embodied in them is the determinant
of the value of commodities was held by practically all the great
economists. Sir William Petty, for example, in a celebrated passage,
says of the exchange-value of corn: "If a man can bring to London an
ounce of silver out of the earth in Peru in the same time that he can
produce a bushel of corn, then one is the natural price of the other;
now, if by reason of new and more easy mines a man can get two ounces of
silver as easily as formerly he did one, then the corn will be as cheap
at ten shillings a bushel as it was before at five shillings a bushel,
_caeteris paribus_."[166]
Adam Smith, following Petty's lead, says: "The real price of everything,
what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the
toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the
man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it
for something else, is the toil and labor which it can save to himself,
and which it can impose on other people.... Labor was the first price,
the original purchase money, that was paid for all things.... If among a
nation of hunters, for example, it usually costs twice the labor to kill
a beaver which it does to kill a deer, one beaver would naturally be
worth or exchange for two deer. It is natural that what is usually the
produce of two days' or two hours' labor, should be worth double of what
is usually the produce of one day's or one hour's labor."[167]
Benjamin Franklin, whose merit as an economist Marx recognized, takes
the same view and regards trade as being "nothing but the exchange of
labor for labor, the value of all things being most justly measured by
labor."[168] From the writings of almost every one of the great
classical economists of England it would be easy to compile a formidable
and convincing volume of similar quotations, showing that they all took
the same view that the quantity of human labor embodied in commodities
determines their value. One further quotation, from Ricardo, must,
however, suffice. He says:--
"To convince ourselves that this (quantity of labor) is the real
foundation of exchangeable value, let us suppose any improvement to be
made in the means of abridging labor in any one of the various processes
through which the raw cotton must pass before the manufactured stockings
come to the market to be exchanged for other things; and observe the
effects which will follow. If fewer men were required to cultivate the
raw cotton, or if fewer sailors were employed in navigating, or
shipwrights in constructing, the ship in which it was conveyed to us; if
fewer hands were employed in raising the buildings and machinery, or if
these, when raised, were rendered more efficient; the stockings would
inevitably fall in value, and command less of other things. They would
fall because a less quantity of labor was necessary to their production,
and would therefore exchange for a smaller quantity of those things in
which no such abridgment of labor had been made."[169]
It is evident from the foregoing quotations that these great writers
regarded the quantity of human labor crystallized in them as the basis
of all commodity values, and their real measure. The great merit of
Ricardo lies in his development of the idea of social labor as against
the simple concept of the labor of particular individuals, or sets of
individuals. In the passage cited, he includes in the term "quantity of
human labor" not merely the total labor of those immediately concerned
in the making of stockings, from the cultivation of the raw cotton to
the actual making of stockings in the factory, but all the labor
indirectly expended, even in the making and navigating of ships, and the
building of the factories. One does, indeed, find hints of the social
labor concept in Adam Smith, but it is Ricardo who first clearly
develops it. Marx further developed this principle, and all criticisms
of the labor-value theory in Marxian economic theory which are based
upon the assumption that quantity of labor means the simple, direct
labor embodied in commodities fall of their own weight.
Thus, if we take any commodity, we shall find that it is possible to
ascertain with tolerable certainty the amount of direct labor embodied
in it, but that it is equally as impossible to ascertain the amount of
the indirect expenditure of labor power which entered into its making.
In the case of a table, for example, it may be possible to trace with
some approximation to accuracy the labor involved in felling the tree
and preparing the lumber out of which the table was made; the labor
directly spent in bringing the lumber to the factory, and the direct
labor expended in making out of the lumber a finished table; allowance
may also be made for the labor embodied in the nails, glue, stain, and
other articles used in making the table. So we have a fairly accurate
statement of the direct labor embodied in the table. But what of the
labor used to make the tools of the men who felled the trees and
prepared the lumber? What of the coal miner and the iron miner and the
tool maker? And what of the numerous and incalculable expenditures of
labor to make the railroads, the railway engines, and to provide these
with steam-power? What, also, of the machinery in the factory, and of
the factory buildings themselves, and, back of them, again, the tool
makers and the providers of raw materials? It is obvious that no human
intellect could ever unravel the tangled skein of human labor, and that
in actual exchange there can be no calculation of the respective labor
content of commodities. If the law of value holds good, it must operate
mechanically, automatically. And this it does, through the incidence of
bargaining and the law of supply and demand.
We have noted elsewhere the variations in human capacity and
productiveness. Superficial critics still frequently charge Marx with
having overlooked this very obvious fact, whereas it has not only been
fully treated by him, but was actually covered by Smith and Ricardo
before Marx! With these writers and their followers it is the law of
averages which solves the difficulties arising from variations in
individual capacity and productivity. It is the _average_ amount of
labor expended in killing the beaver which counts, not the actual
individual labor in a specified case. Nor did these writers overlook the
important differentiation between simple, unskilled labor and labor that
is highly skilled. If A in ten hours' labor produces exactly double the
amount of exchange-value which B produces in the same time devoted to
labor of another kind, it is obvious that the labor of B is not equal in
value to that of A. Quantity of labor cannot, therefore, be measured, in
individual cases, by time units. Despite a hundred passages which,
detached from their context, seem to imply the contrary, Adam Smith
recognized this very clearly, and attempted to solve the riddle by a
differentiation of skilled and unskilled labor in which he likens
skilled labor to a machine; and insists that the labor and time spent in
acquiring the skill which distinguishes skilled labor must be
reckoned.[170]
Another frequent criticism of the Marxian theory has not only been
answered by Marx himself--is, in fact, ruled out by the terms of the
theory itself--but was amply replied to by Ricardo.[171] The criticism
in question consists in the selection of what may be called "unique
values," or scarcity values, articles which cannot be reproduced by
labor, and whose value is wholly independent of the quantity of labor
originally necessary to produce them. Such articles are unique specimens
of coins and postage stamps, autograph letters, rare manuscripts,
Stradivarius violins, Raphael pictures, Caxton books, articles
associated with great personages--such as Napoleon's snuffbox--great
auks' eggs, and so on _ad infinitum_. No possible amount of human labor
could reproduce these articles, reproduce, that is to say, the exact
utilities in them. Napoleon's snuffbox might be exactly duplicated so
far as its physical properties are concerned, but the association with
Napoleon's fingers, the sentimental quality which gives it its special
utility, is not reproducible. But the trade of capitalist society does
not consist in the manufacture and sale of these things, which, after
all, form a very insignificant part of the exchange-values of the world.
III
Marx saw the soul of truth in the labor-value theory, as propounded by
his predecessors, especially Ricardo, and devoted himself to its
development and systematization. He has been accused of plagiarizing his
theory from the Ricardians, but it is surely not plagiarism when a
thinker sees the germ of truth in a theory, and, separating it from the
mass of confusion and error which envelops it, restates it in scientific
fashion with all its necessary qualifications. This is precisely what
Marx did. He developed the idea of social labor which Ricardo had
propounded, disregarding entirely individual labor. He recognized the
absurdity of the contention that the value of commodities is determined
by the amount of labor, either individual or social, _actually embodied
in them_. If two workers are producing precisely similar commodities,
say coats, and one of them expends twice as much labor as the other and
uses tools and methods representing twice the social labor, it is
clearly foolish to suppose that the exchange-value of his coat will be
twice as great as that of the other worker, regardless of the fact that
their utility is equal. Labor, Marx pointed out, has two sides, the
qualitative and the quantitative. The qualitative side, the difference
in quality between specially skilled and simply unskilled labor, is
easily recognized, though the relative value of the one compared with
the other may be somewhat obscured. The secret of that obscurity lies
hidden in the quantitative side of labor. Here we must enter upon an
abstract inquiry, that part of the Marxian theory which is most
difficult to comprehend. Yet, it is not so very difficult, after all, to
understand that the years devoted to learning his trade, by a mechanical
engineer, for instance, during all of which years he must be provided
with the necessities of life, must be reckoned somewhere and somehow;
and that when they are so reckoned, his day's labor may be found to
contain, concentrated, so to speak, an amount of labor time equivalent
to two or even many days' simple unskilled labor time. It may be, and in
fact is, quite impossible to set forth mathematically the relation of
the two, for the reason that the process of developing skilled labor is
too complex to be unraveled. Of the fact, however, there can be no
doubt.
The real law of value, then, according to Marx, is as follows: Under
capitalism, _in free competition_, the value of all commodities, other
than those unique things which cannot be reproduced by human labor, is
determined by the amount of _abstract_ labor embodied in them; or,
better, by the amount of social human labor power necessary, on the
average, for their production. We may conveniently illustrate this
theory by a concrete example. Let us, therefore, return to our
coat-makers. Now, always assuming their equal utility, no one will be
willing to pay twice as much for the coat produced by the slow worker
with poor tools as for the other. If the more economical methods of
production employed by the man who makes his coats in half the time
taken by the other man are the methods usually employed in the
manufacture of coats, and the time he takes represents the average time
taken to produce a coat, then the average value of coats will be
determined thereby, and coats produced by the slower, less economical
process will command only the same price in the market, the fact that
they may embody twice the amount of actual labor counting for nothing.
If we reverse the order of this proposition, and suppose the slower,
less economical methods to be those generally prevailing in the
manufacture of coats, and the quicker, more economical methods to be
exceptional, then, all other things being equal, the exchange-value, of
coats will be determined by the amount of labor commonly consumed, and
the fortunate producer who adopts the exceptional, economical methods
will, for a time, reap a golden harvest. Only for a time, however. As
the new methods prevail, competition being the impelling force, they
become less and less exceptional, and, finally, the regular, normal
methods of production and the standard of value.
It is this very important qualification, fundamental to the Marxian
theory, which is most often lost sight of by the critics. They persist
in applying to individual commodities the test of comparing the amounts
of labor-power actually consumed in their production, and so confound
the Marxian theory with its crude progenitors. In refuting this crude
theory, they are quite oblivious of the fact that Marx himself
accomplished that by no means difficult feat. To state the Marxian
theory accurately, we must qualify the bald statement that the
exchange-value of commodities is determined by the amount of labor
embodied in them, and state it in the following manner: _The
exchange-value of commodities is determined by the amount of average
labor at the time socially necessary for their production._ This is
determined, not absolutely in individual cases, but approximately in
general, by the bargaining and higgling of the market, to adopt Adam
Smith's well-known phrase.
Now, this theory applies to those things, exclusive of the category of
"unique values," which cannot be made by labor and are commonly supposed
to owe their value to their rarity. For example, we may take diamonds. A
man walking along the great wastes of the African _karoo_ comes across a
little stream. As he stoops to drink, he sees in the water a number of
glittering diamonds. To pick them out is the work of a few minutes only,
but the diamonds are worth many thousands of dollars. The law of value
above outlined applies just as much to them as to any other commodity.
The value of diamonds is determined by the amount of labor expenditure
necessary _on an average_ to procure them. If the normal method of
obtaining diamonds were simply to go to the nearest stream and pick them
out, their value would fall, possibly to zero:--
"When we have nothing else to wear
But cloth of gold and satins rare,
For cloth of gold we cease to care--
Up goes the price of shoddy."
IV
Most writers do not distinguish between price and value with sufficient
clearness, using the terms as if they were synonymous and
interchangeable. Where utilities are exchanged directly one for
another, as in the barter of primitive society, there is no need of a
price-form to express value. In highly developed societies, however,
where the very magnitude of production and exchange makes direct barter
impossible, and where the objects to be exchanged are not commonly the
product of individual labor, a medium of exchange becomes necessary; a
something which is generally recognized as a safe and stable commodity
which can be used to express in terms of its own weight, size, shape, or
color, the value of other commodities to be exchanged. This is the
function of money. In various times and places wheat, shells, skins of
animals, beads, powder, tobacco, and a multitude of other things, have
served as money, but for various reasons, more or less obvious, the
precious metals, gold and silver, have been most favored.
In all commercial countries to-day, one or other of these metals, or
both of them, serves as the recognized medium of exchange. They are
commodities also, and when we say that the value of a commodity is a
certain amount of gold, we equally express the value of that amount of
gold in terms of the commodity in question. As commodities, the precious
metals are subject to the same laws as other commodities. If gold should
be discovered in such abundance that it became as plentiful and easy to
obtain as coal, its value would be no greater than that of coal. It
might, conceivably, still be used as the medium of exchange, but it
would--unless protected by legislation or otherwise from the operation
of economic law, and so given a monopoly-price--have an exchange-value
equal to that of coal, a ton of the one being equal to a ton of the
other--provided, of course, that its utility remained. Since the
scarcity of gold is an important element in its utility valuation,
creating and fostering the desire for its possession, that utility-value
might largely disappear if gold became as plentiful as coal, in which
case it would not have the same value as coal, and might cease to be a
commodity at all.
Price, then, is the expression of value in terms of some other
commodity, which, generally used for that purpose of expressing the
value of other commodities, we call money. It is only an approximation
of value, and subject to a much greater fluctuation than value itself.
It may, for a time, fall far below or rise above value, but in a free
market--the only condition in which the operation of the law may be
judged--sooner or later the equilibrium will be regained. Where monopoly
exists, the free market condition being non-existent, price may be
constantly elevated above value. Monopoly-price is an artificial
elevation of price above value, and must be considered separately as the
abrogation of the law of value.
Failure to discriminate between value and its price-expression, or
symbol, has led to endless difficulty. It lies at the bottom of the
naive theory that value depends upon the relation of supply and demand.
Lord Lauderdale's famous theory has found much support among later
economists, though it is now rather unpopular when stated in its old,
simple form. Disguised in the so-called Austrian theory of final
utility, it has attained considerable vogue.[172] The theory is
plausible and convincing to the ordinary mind. Every day we see
illustrations of its working: prices are depressed when there is an
oversupply, and elevated when the demand of would-be consumers exceeds
the supply of the commodities they desire to buy. It is not so easy to
see that these effects are temporary, and that there is an automatic
adjustment going on. Increased demand raises prices for a while, but it
also calls forth an increase in supply which tends to restore the old
price level, or may even force prices below it. In the latter case, the
supply falls off and prices find their real level. The relation of
supply to demand causes an oscillation of prices, but it is not the
determinant of value. When prices rise above a certain level, demand
slackens or ceases, and prices are inevitably lowered. Prices may and do
fall with a decreased demand, but it is clear that unless the producers
can get a price approximately equal to the value of their commodities,
they will cease to produce them, and the supply will diminish or cease
altogether. Ultimately, therefore, the fluctuations of price through the
lack of equilibrium between supply and demand adjust themselves, and
prices must tend constantly to approximate values.
Monopoly-price is, as already observed, an artificial price in the sense
that the laws of free market exchange do not apply to it. The "unique
utilities," things not reproducible by human labor, command what might
be termed natural monopoly-prices. There are many other commodities,
however, the price of which is not regulated by the quantity of social
human labor necessary to produce them, but simply by the desire of the
purchasers and the means they have of gratifying it and the power of the
sellers to control the market and exclude effective competition. Since
Karl Marx wrote, the exceptions to his law of value have become more
numerous, as a result of the changes in industrial and commercial
conditions. The development of great monopolies and near-monopolies has
greatly increased the number of commodities which, for considerable
periods, are placed outside the sphere of the labor-value theory, their
price depending upon their marginal utility, irrespective of the labor
actually embodied in them or necessary to their reproduction. It may, in
the opinion of the present writer, be said in criticism of the followers
of Marx that they have not carried on his work, but largely contented
themselves with repeating generalizations which, true when made, no
longer fit all the facts. But that is not a criticism of Marx, or of his
work. What he professed to make was an analysis of the methods of
production and exchange in competitive capitalist society. His followers
have largely failed to allow for the enormous changes which have taken
place, and go on repeating, unchanged, his phrases.
Professor Seligman has pointed out that Ricardo's contention that value
is determined by the cost of production, and the contention of Jevons
that value is determined by marginal utility, are not mutually
exclusive, but, on the contrary, complementary to each other.[173] The
present writer has long contended that the marginal utility theory and
the Marxian labor-value theory are likewise not antagonistic but
complementary.[174] This is not the place to enter into the elaborate
discussion which this contention involves. Only a brief indication of
the argument for the claim is here and now possible. First, as we have
seen, Marx is very careful to insist that utility is essential to value,
and that the utility must be a social utility. But social utility does
not come of itself, from the skies or elsewhere. It is, so far as the
vast majority of commodities is concerned, the product of labor. It is
true that the value of a thing is never independent of its social
utility; it is likewise true that this is determined by the social labor
necessary to the reproduction of that utility. To regard the two
theories as antagonistic, it seems to be necessary to say either (1)
that the quantity of social labor necessary to produce certain
commodities determines their value, utterly regardless of the amount of
their social utility, or (2) that we estimate the social utility of
commodities, estimate what we are willing to pay for them, utterly
regardless of the labor necessary, on an average, for their
reproduction. The latter contention would be absurd, and the former
would involve the abandonment of the initial premises of the Marxian
theory, contained in his definition of a commodity. In so far as the
basis of social utility is the social labor necessary for its
production, the labor-value theory of Marx may be said, I think, to
include the marginal utility law, as one of the forms in which it
operates.
V
Labor, the source and determinant of value, has, _per se_, no value.
Only when it is embodied in certain forms has it any value. If a man
labors hard digging holes and refilling them, his labor has no value.
What the capitalist buys is not labor, but labor-power. Wages in general
is a form of payment for a given amount of labor-power, measured by
duration and skill. The laborer sells brain and muscle power, which is
thus placed at the temporary disposal of the capitalist to be used up
like any other commodity that he buys. The philosopher Hobbes, in his
"Leviathan," clearly anticipated Marx in thus distinguishing between
labor and laboring power in the saying, "_The value or worth of a man is
... so much as would be given for the Use of his Power_." The power to
labor assumes the commodity form, being at once a use-value and an
exchange-value. At first sight it appears that piecework is an exception
to the general rule that the capitalist buys labor-power and not labor
itself. It seems that when piece-wages are paid it is not the machine,
the living labor-power, but the product of the machine, labor actually
performed, that is bought. Superficially, this is so, of course, but it
does not affect the principle laid down, because, as a matter of fact,
the piecework system is only one of the means used to secure a maximum
of labor-power. The average output of pieceworkers in a trade always
tends to become the standard output for the time-workers, and, on the
other hand, the average wage of pieceworkers tends to keep very near the
standard of time-wages.
Now, as a commodity, labor-power is subject to the same laws as all
other commodities. Its price, wages, fluctuates just as the price of all
other commodities does, and bears the same relation to its value. It may
be temporarily affected by the preponderance of supply over demand, or
of demand over supply; it may be made the subject of monopoly in certain
cases. There is, therefore, no such thing as an "iron law" of wages, any
more than there is an "iron law" of prices for other commodities.
Lassalle took the Ricardian law of wages and, by means of his
characteristic exaggeration, distorted it out of all semblance to truth.
Says Ricardo: "The natural price of labor, therefore, depends on the
price of the food, necessaries, and conveniences required for the
support of the laborer and his family. With a rise in the price of food
and necessaries, the natural price of labor will rise; with the fall in
their price, the natural price of labor will fall."[175] This Lassalle
made the basis of his famous "iron law," according to which 96 per cent
of the wage-workers were precluded from improving their economic
position. Lassalle's chief fault lay in that he made no allowance
whatever for either state interference, or the organized influence of
the workers themselves. He also attaches too little importance to what
Marx calls the traditional standards of living.[176] It is nevertheless
true that the price of labor-power, wages, tends to approximate its
value, just as the price of all other commodities tends, under normal
conditions, to approximate their value.
And just as the value of other commodities is determined by the amount
of social labor necessary on an average for their reproduction, so the
value of labor-power is likewise determined. Wages tend to a point at
which they will cover the average cost of the necessary means of
subsistence for the workers and their families, in any given time and
place, under the conditions and according to the standards of living
generally prevailing. Trade union action, for example, may force wages
above that point, or undue stress in the competitive labor market may
force wages below it. While, however, a trade union may bring about what
is virtually a monopoly-price for the labor-power of its members, there
is always a counter tendency in the other direction, sometimes even to
the lowering of the standard of subsistence itself to the minimum of
things required for physical existence.
To class human labor-power with pig iron as a commodity, subject to the
same laws, may at first seem fantastic to the reader, but a careful
survey of the facts will fully justify the classification. The capacity
of the worker to labor depends upon his securing certain things; his
labor-power has to be reproduced from day to day, for which a certain
supply of food, clothing, and other necessities of life is essential.
Even with these supplied constantly, the worker sooner or later wears
out and dies. If the race is not to be extinguished, a certain supply of
the necessities of life must be provided for the children during the
years of their development to the point where their labor-power becomes
marketable. The average cost of production in the case of labor-power
includes, therefore, the necessities for a wife and family as well as
for the individual worker. Far from being the iron law Lassalle
imagined, this law of wages is one of considerable elasticity. The
standard of living itself, far from being a fixed thing, determined only
by the necessities of physical existence, varies according to
occupational groups; to localities sometimes, as a result of historical
development; to nationality and race, as a result of tradition; to the
general standard of intelligence, and the degree in which the workers
are organized for the promotion of their economic interests. The advance
in the culture of the people as a whole, expressing itself in
legislation for compulsory education, the abolition of child labor,
improvement of housing and general sanitary conditions, and so on,
tends to raise the standard of living. Finally, the fluctuations in the
price of labor-power due to the operation of the law of supply and
demand are much more important than Lassalle imagined.
This living commodity, labor-power, differs in one remarkable way from
all other commodities, in that when it is used up in the process of the
production of other commodities in which it is embodied, it creates new
value in the process of being used up, and embodies that new value in
the commodity it assists to produce. In the case of raw materials and
machinery this is not so. In the manufacture of tables, for example, the
wood used up is transformed into tables, embodied in them, but the wood
has added nothing to its own value. The same is true of machinery. But
with human labor-power it is otherwise. The capitalist buys from the
laborer his labor-power at its full value as a commodity. But the
laborer, in embodying that labor-power in some concrete form, creates
more value than his wages represents. For the commodity he sells, his
_power_ to labor, he has been paid its full value, namely, the social
labor-cost of its production; but that power may be capable of producing
the equivalent of twice its own cost of production. This is the central
idea of the famous and much-misunderstood Marxian theory of
surplus-value, by which the method of capitalism, the exploitation of
the wage-workers, and the resulting class antagonisms of the system are
explained. This theory becomes the groundwork of all the social theories
and movements protesting against and seeking to end the exploitation of
the laboring masses. To understand it is, therefore, of paramount
importance.
VI
As we have seen in an earlier chapter, Marx was not the first to
recognize that the secret of capitalism, the object of capitalist
industry, is the extraction of surplus-value from the labor-power of the
worker. Nor was he the first to use the term. By no means a happy term,
since it adds to the difficulty of comprehending the meaning and nature
of _value_, Marx took it from the current economic discussion of his
time as a term already fairly well understood. What we owe to the genius
of Marx is an explanation of the manner in which surplus-value is
extracted by the capitalist from the labor-power of the worker, and the
part it plays in capitalist society.
The essence of the theory can be very briefly stated, but its
demonstration involves, naturally, a more extensive study. Under normal
conditions, the worker will produce a value equivalent to his means of
subsistence, or to the wages actually paid to him, in a very small
number of hours. If he owned and controlled the means of
production,--land, machinery, raw materials, and so on,--he would,
therefore, need to work only so many hours as the production of the
necessities of life for himself and his family required. But the laborer
in capitalist society does not own the means of production, that
condition being quite incompatible with machine production upon a large
scale. A separation of the worker from the ownership of the means of
production has taken place as one of the inevitable results of
industrial evolution. So the laborer must sell the only commodity he has
to sell, namely, his labor-power. He sells the utility of that commodity
to the capitalist for its exchange-value, or market price. Like any
other commodity, the utility of labor-power, its use-value, belongs to
the purchaser, the capitalist. It is his to use as he sees fit. He has
it used to produce other commodities which he in turn hopes to sell--has
the labor-power used up in the manufacture of other commodities, just as
he has the raw materials used up. He buys, for example, the labor-power
of the workers for a day of ten hours. In five hours, say, the worker
creates value equivalent to his wages, but he does not cease at that
point. He goes on working for another five hours, thus producing in a
day double the amount of his wages, the exchange-value of the
labor-power he sold the capitalist. Thus the capitalist, having paid
wages equivalent to the product of five hours, receives the product of
ten hours. This balance represents the surplus-value (_Mehrwerth_).
This takes place all through industry. If the capitalist employs a
thousand workers under these conditions, each day he receives the
product of five thousand hours over and above the product actually paid
for. This constitutes his income. If the capitalist owned the land,
machinery, and raw materials, absolutely, without incumbrances of any
kind, the whole of that surplus-value would, naturally, belong to him.
But as a general rule this is not the case. He rents the land and must
pay rent to the landlord, or he works upon borrowed capital and must pay
interest upon loans, so that the surplus-value extracted from the
laborer must be divided into rent, interest, and profit. But how the
surplus-value is divided among landlords, moneylenders, creditors,
speculators, and actual employers is a matter of absolutely no moment to
the workers as a class. That is why such movements as that represented
by the followers of Henry George fail to vitally interest the working
class.[177] The division of the surplus-value wrung from the toil of the
workers gives rise to much quarrel and strife within the ranks of the
exploiting class, but the working class recognizes, and vaguely and
instinctively feels where it does not clearly recognize, that it has no
interest in these quarrels. All that interests it vitally is how to
lessen the extent of the exploitation to which it is subjected, and how
ultimately to end that exploitation altogether. That is the objective of
the movement for the socialization of the means of life.
Such, briefly stated, is the theory. We may illustrate it by the
following example: Let us say the average cost of a day's subsistence is
the product of five hours' social labor, which is represented by a wage
of $1 per day. In a factory there are 1000 workers. Their labor-power
they have sold at its exchange value, $1 per day per man, a total of
$1000. They use up $1000 worth of labor-power, then. They also use up
$1000 worth of raw material and wear out the plant to the extent of $100
in the course of their work. Now, instead of working five hours each,
that being the amount of time necessary to reproduce the value of their
wages, as above described, they all work ten hours. Thus, in place of
the $1000 they received as wages for the labor-_power_ they sold, they
create labor _products_, valued at just twice that sum, $2000. According
to our suppositions, therefore, the gross value of the day's product
will be $3100, the whole of it belonging to the capitalist, for the
simple and sufficient reason that he bought and paid for, at their full
value as commodities, all the elements entering into its production, the
machinery, materials, and labor-power. The capitalist pays,--
For labor-power $1000
For materials 1000
For repairs and replacement of machinery 100
-----
He receives, for the gross product 3100 $2100
The surplus-value is, therefore 1000
and this sum is the fund from which rent, interests, and profits must be
paid.
It will be observed that there is no moral condemnation of the
capitalist involved in this illustration. He simply buys the commodity,
labor-power, at its full market price, as in the case of all other
commodities. No ethical argument enters into it at all. It is very
evident, however, that the interest of the capitalist will be to get as
much surplus-value as possible, by buying labor-power at the lowest
price possible, prolonging the working day, and intensifying the
productivity of the labor-power he buys, while the interest of the
workman will be equally against these things. Here we have the cause of
class antagonism--not in the speeches of agitators, but in the facts of
industrial life.
This is the Marxian theory of surplus-value in a nutshell. Rent,
interest, and profit, the three great divisions of capitalist income
into which this surplus-value is divided, are thus traced to the
exploitation of labor, resting fundamentally upon the ownership by the
exploiting class of the means of production. Other economists, both
before and since Marx, have tried to explain the source of capitalist
income in very different ways. An early theory was that profit
originates in exchange, through "buying cheap and selling dear." That
this is so in the case of individual traders is obvious. If A sells to B
commodities above their value, or buys commodities from him below their
value, it is plain that he gains by it. But it is equally plain that B
loses. If one group of capitalists gains what another group loses, the
gains and losses balance each other; there is no gain to the capitalist
class as a whole. Yet that is precisely what occurs--the capitalist
class as a whole does gain, and gain enormously, despite the losses of
individual members of that class. It is that gain to the great body of
capitalists, that general increase in their wealth, which must be
accounted for, and which exchange cannot explain. Only when we think of
the capitalist class buying labor-power from outside its own ranks,
generally at its natural value, and using it, is the problem solved. The
commodity which the capitalist buys creates a value greater than its own
in being used up.
The theory that profit is the wages of risk is answerable in
substantially the same way. It does not in any way explain the increase
in the aggregate wealth of the capitalist class to say that the
individual capitalist must have a chance to receive interest upon his
money in order to induce him to turn it into capital, to hazard losing
it wholly or in part. While the theory of risk helps to explain some
features of capitalism, the changes in the flow of capital into certain
forms of investment, and, to some small extent, the commercial crises
incidental thereto, it does not explain the vital problem, the source of
capitalist income. The chances of gain, as a premium for the risks
involved, explain satisfactorily enough the action of the gambler when
he enters into a game of roulette or faro. It cannot be said, however,
that the aggregate wealth of the gamblers is increased by playing
roulette or faro. Then, too, the risks of the laborers are vastly more
vital than those of the capitalist. Yet the premium for their risks of
health and life itself does not appear, unless, indeed, it be in their
wages, in which case the most superficial glance at our industrial
statistics will show that wages are by no means highest in those
occupations where the risks are greatest and most numerous. Further, the
wages of the risks for capitalists and laborers alike are drawn from the
same source, the product of the laborers' toil.
To consider, even briefly, all the varied theories of surplus-value
other than these would be a prolonged, dull, and profitless task. The
theory of abstinence, that profit is the just reward of the capitalist
for saving part of his wealth and using it as a means of production, is
answerable by _a priori_ arguments and by a vast volume of facts.
Abstinence obviously produces nothing; it can only save the wealth
already produced by labor, and no automatic increase of that saved-up
wealth is possible. If it is to increase without the labor of its owner,
it can only be through the exploitation of the labor of others, so that
the abstinence theory in no manner controverts the Marxian position. On
the other hand, we see that those whose wealth increases most rapidly
are not given to frugality or abstinence by any means. It may,
certainly, be possible for an individual to save enough by practicing
frugality and abstinence to enable him to invest in some profitable
enterprise, but the source of his profit is not his abstinence. That
must be sought elsewhere. Abstinence may provide him with the means for
taking the profit, but the profit itself must come from the value
created by human labor-power over and above its cost of production.
Still less satisfactory is the idea that surplus-value is nothing more
than the "wages of superintendence," or the "rent of ability." This
theory has been advocated with much specious argument. Essentially it
involves the contention that there is no distinction between wages and
profits, or between capitalists and laborers; that the capitalist is a
worker, and his profits simply wages for his useful and highly important
work of directing industry. It is a bold theory with a very small basis
of fact. Whoever honestly considers it, must, one would think, see that
it is both absurd and untrue. Not only is the larger part of industry
to-day managed by salaried employees who have no part, or only a very
insignificant part, in the ownership of the concerns they manage, but
the profits are distributed among shareholders who, as shareholders,
have never contributed service of any kind to the industries in which
they are shareholders. Whatever services are performed, even by the
figure-head "dummy" directors of companies, are paid for before profits
are considered at all. This is the invincible answer to such criticisms
as that of Mr. Mallock, that Marx and his followers have not recognized
"the functions of the directive ability of the few." When all the
salaries of the directing "few" have been paid, as well as the wages of
the many, and the cost of all materials and maintenance of machinery,
there remains a surplus to be distributed among those who belong neither
to the "laboring many" nor the "directing few." That profit Mr. Mallock
cannot explain away. Marx himself, in "Capital," called attention to the
"directing ability of the few," quite as clearly as Mr. Mallock has
done. He first shows how the "collective power of masses" is really a
new creation; that it involves a special kind of leadership, or
directing authority, just as an orchestra does; then he proceeds to
point out the development of a special class of supervisors and
directors of industry, "a special kind of wage laborer.... The _work of
supervision becomes their established and exclusive function_."[178]
Socialists, contrary to Mr. Mallock, have not overlooked the function
exercised by the directing few, but they have pointed out that when
these have been paid, their salaries being sometimes almost fabulous,
there is still a surplus-value to be distributed among those who have
not shared in the production, either as mental or manual workers. As Mr.
Algernon Lee says:--
"The profits produced in many American mills, factories, mines, and
railway systems go in part to Englishmen or Belgians or Germans who
never set foot in America, and who obviously can have no share in even
the mental labor of direction. A certificate of stock may belong to a
child, to a maniac, to an imbecile, to a prisoner behind the bars, and
it draws profit for its owner just the same. Stocks and bonds may lie
for months or years in a safe-deposit vault, while an estate is being
disputed, before their ownership is determined; but whoever is declared
to be the owner gets the dividends and interest "earned" during all that
time."[179]
It is an easy task to set up imaginary figures labeled "Marxism," and
then to demolish them by learned argument--but the occupation is as
fruitless as it is easy. It remains the one central fact of capitalism,
however, that a surplus-value is created by the working class and taken
by the exploiting class, from which develops the class struggle of our
time.
FOOTNOTES:
[163] _The People's Marx_, by Gabriel Deville, page 288.
[164] _Capital_, Vol. I, Kerr edition, page 41.
[165] Professor J. S. Nicholson, a rather pretentious critic of Marx,
has called sunshine a commodity because of its utility, _Elements of
Political Economy_, page 24. Upon the same ground, the song of the
skylark and the sound of ocean waves might be called commodities. Such
use of language serves for nothing but the obscuring of thought.
[166] William Petty, _A Treatise on Taxes and Constitutions_ (1662),
pages 31-32.
[167] _The Wealth of Nations_, Vol. I, Chapters V-VI.
[168] Benjamin Franklin, _Remarks and Facts Relative to the American
Paper Money_ (1764), page 267.
Marx thus speaks of Franklin as an economist: "The first sensible
analysis of exchange-value as labor-time, made so clear as to seem
almost commonplace, is to be found in the work of a man of the New
World, where the bourgeois relations of production, imported together
with their representatives, sprouted rapidly in a soil which made up its
lack of historical traditions with a surplus of _humus_. That man was
Benjamin Franklin, who formulated the fundamental law of modern
political economy in his first work, which he wrote when a mere youth
(_A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency_),
and published in 1721." _A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy_, by Karl Marx, English translation by N. I. Stone, 1894, page
62.
[169] David Ricardo, _Principles of Political Economy and Taxation_,
Chapter I, Sec. III.
[170] _Wealth of Nations_, Book I, Chapter X.
[171] _Principles of Political Economy and Taxation_, Chapter I, Sec. 1,
Sec. 4.
[172] See "The Final Futility of Final Utility," in H. M. Hyndman's
_Economics of Socialism_, for a remarkable criticism of the "final
utility" theory, showing its identity with the doctrine of supply and
demand as the basis of value.
I refer to the theory of final or marginal utility as the "so-called
Austrian theory" for the purpose, mainly, or calling attention to the
fact that, as Professor Seligman has ably and clearly demonstrated, it
was conceived and excellently stated by W. F. Lloyd, Professor of
Political Economy at Oxford, in 1833. (See the paper, _On Some Neglected
British Economists_, in the _Economic Journal_, V, xiii, pages 357-363.)
This was two decades before Gossen and a generation earlier than Menger
and Jevons. In view of this fact, the criticism of Marx for his lack of
originality by members of the "Austrian" school is rather amusing.
[173] _Principles of Economics_, by Edwin R. A. Seligman (1905), page
198.
[174] Cf., for instance, my little volume, in the _Standard Socialist
Series_ (Kerr), entitled _Capitalist and Laborer_; Part II, _Modern
Socialism_, page 112.
[175] _Principles of Political Economy and Taxation_, Chapter V, Sec. 35.
[176] _Value, Price, and Profit_, by Karl Marx, Chapter XIV.
[177] It is worthy of note that the taxation of land values, commonly
associated with the name of Henry George, was advocated as a palliative
in the _Communist Manifesto_ of Marx and Engels.
[178] _Capital_, by Karl Marx, Vol. I, Chapter XIII, of Part IV.
[179] _The Worker_ (New York), February 5, 1905.
CHAPTER IX
OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE
I
Many persons who have thought of Socialism as a scheme, the plan of a
new social edifice, have been disappointed not to find in all the
voluminous writings of Marx any detailed description of such a plan, any
forecast of the future. But when they have grasped the fundamental
principles of the Marxian system of thought, they realize that it would
be absurd to attempt to give detailed specifications of the Socialist
state. As the Socialist movement has outgrown the influence of the early
Utopians, its adherents have abandoned the habit of speculating upon the
practical application of Socialist principles in future society. The
formulation of schemes, more or less detailed, has given place to firm
insistence that Socialism must be regarded as a principle, namely, the
efficient organization of wealth production and distribution to the end
that the exploitation of the wealth producers by a privileged class may
be rendered impossible. Whatever contributes to that end is a
contribution to the fulfillment of the Socialist ideal.
Still, it is natural and inevitable that earnest Socialists and
students of Socialism should seek something more tangible by way of a
description of the future state than the bald statement that it will be
free from the struggle between exploiting and exploited classes. The
question is, can we go further in our attempt to scan the future without
entering the realms of Utopian speculation? If Socialism is, objectively
considered, a state of society which is being developed in the womb of
the present, are there any signs by which its peculiar form and spirit,
as distinguished from the form and spirit of the present, may be
visualized? Within certain limits, an affirmative answer seems possible
to each of these questions. There are certain fundamental principles
which may be said to be essential to the existence of Socialist society.
Without them, the Socialist state cannot exist. Regardless of the fact
that Karl Marx never attempted to describe his ideal, to give such a
description of his concept of the next epoch in evolution as would
enable us to compare it with the present and to measure the difference,
it is probable that every Socialist makes, privately at least, his own
forecast of the manner in which the new society must shape itself.
There is nothing Utopian or fantastic in trying to ascertain the
tendencies of economic development; nothing unscientific in trying to
read out of the pages of social evolution such lessons as may be
contained therein. So long as we bear in mind that our forecasts must
not take the form of plans for the arbitrary shaping of the future,
specifications of the Cooeperative Commonwealth, but that they must, on
the contrary, be based upon the facts of life--not abstract principles
born in the heart's desire--and attempt to discern the tendencies of
social and economic evolution, we are upon safe ground. Such forecasts
may indeed be helpful, not only in so far as they provide us with a more
or less concrete picture of the ideal to be aimed at, but also, and even
more important, in that they at once enable us to gauge from time to
time the progress made by society toward the realization of the ideal,
and to formulate our policies most effectively. Especially as there are
certain fundamental principles essential to the existence of a Socialist
state, we may take these and correlate them, and these principles,
together with our estimate of economic tendencies, drawn from the facts
of the present, may provide us with a suggestive and approximate outline
of the Socialist society of the future. So far we may proceed with full
scientific sanction; beyond are the realms of fancy and dream, the
Elysian Fields of Utopia.[180] We must not set about our task with the
mental attitude so well displayed by the yearning of Omar--
"Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Remold it nearer to the Heart's Desire!"
From that spirit only vain dreams and fantastic vagaries can ever come.
What we must bear in mind is that the social fabric of to-morrow, like
that of yesterday, whose ruins we contemplate to-day, will not spring
up, complete, in response to our will, but will grow out of social
experience and needs.
II
One of the greatest and most lamentable errors in connection with the
propaganda of modern Socialism has been the assumption of its friends,
in many instances, and its foes, in most instances, that Socialism and
Individualism are entirely antithetical concepts. Infinite confusion has
been caused by setting the two against each other. Society consists of
an aggregation of individuals, but it is something more than that in
just the same sense as a house is something more than an aggregation of
bricks. It is an organism, though as yet an imperfectly developed one.
While the units of which it is composed have distinct and independent
lives within certain limits, they are, outside of those limits,
interdependent and inter-related. Man is governed by two great forces.
On the one hand, he is essentially an egoist, ever striving to attain
individual freedom; on the other hand, he is a social animal, ever
seeking association and avoiding isolation. This duality expresses
itself in the life of society. There is a struggle between its members
motived by the desire for individual expression and gain; and, alongside
of it, a sense of solidarity, a movement to mutual, reciprocal
relations, motived by the gregarian instinct. All social life is
necessarily an oscillation between these two motives. The social problem
in its last analysis is nothing more than the problem of combining and
harmonizing social and individual interests and actions springing
therefrom.
In dealing with this social problem, the problem of how to secure
harmony of social and individual interests and actions, it is necessary
first of all to recognize that both motives are equally important and
necessary agents of human progress. The idea largely prevails that
Socialists ignore the individual motive and consider only the social
motive, just as the ultra-individualists have erred in an opposite
discrimination. The Socialist ideal has been conceived to be a great
bureaucracy. Mr. Anstey gave humorous and vivid expression to this idea
in _Punch_ some years ago, when he represented the citizens of the
Socialist state as being all clothed alike, known only by numbers,
strangers to all the joys of family life, plodding through their
allotted tasks under a race of hated bureaucrats, and having the solace
of chewing gum in their leisure time as a specially paternal provision.
Some such mental picture must have inspired Herbert Spencer's "Coming
Slavery," and it must be confessed that the early forms of Socialism
which consisted mainly of detailed plans of cooeperative commonwealths
afforded some excuse for the idea. Most intelligent Socialists, if
called upon to choose between them, would probably prefer to live in
Thibet under a personal despotism, rather than under the hierarchies of
most of the imaginary commonwealths which Utopian Socialists have
depicted.
Even in the later propaganda of the modern political Socialist movement,
there has been more than enough justification for those who regard
Socialism as impossible except under a great bureaucracy. In numberless
Socialist programmes and addresses Socialism has been defined as meaning
"The social ownership and control of all the means of production,
distribution, and exchange." Critics of Socialism are not to be
seriously blamed if they take such "definitions" at their face value and
interpret them quite literally. It is not difficult to see that in order
to place "all means of production, distribution, and exchange" under
social ownership and control, the creation of such a bureaucracy as the
world has never seen would be necessary. A needle is a means of
production quite as much as an electric power machine in a factory is,
the difference being in their degrees of efficiency. A jackknife is,
likewise, in certain circumstances, a means of production, just as
surely as a powerful planing machine is, the difference being in degrees
of efficiency. So a market basket is a means of distribution quite as
surely as an ocean steamship is; a wheelbarrow quite as much as a
locomotive. They differ in degrees of efficiency, that is all. The idea
that the housewife in the future, when she wants to sew a button upon a
garment, will be obliged to go to some department and "take out" a
needle, having it properly checked in the communal accounts, and being
responsible for its return, is, of course, worthy only of opera bouffe.
So is the notion of the state owning wheelbarrows and market baskets and
making their private ownership illegal. "The socialization of _all_ the
means of production, distribution, and exchange," literally interpreted,
is folly. But none of those using the phrase must be regarded as
seriously contemplating its literal interpretation. For many years the
phrase was included in the statement of its "Object" by the English
Social Democratic Federation, and even now it appears in a slightly
modified form, the word "all" being omitted,[181] perhaps because of its
tautological character. For several years the writer was a member of the
Federation, actively engaged in the propaganda, and how we spent much of
our time explaining to popular audiences in halls and upon street
corners that the socialization of jackknives, needles, sewing machines,
market baskets, beer mugs, frying pans, and toothpicks was not our aim,
is a merry memory.
When this is understood, the nightmare of the bureaucracy of Socialism
vanishes. It is no longer necessary to fret ourselves asking how a
government is to own and manage everything without making slaves of its
citizens. The question propounded by that venerable and distinguished
Canadian scholar, Professor Goldwin Smith,[182] whether a government can
be devised which shall hold all the instruments of production,
distribute to the citizens their tasks, pick out inventors,
philosophers, artists, and laborers, and set them to work, without
destroying personal liberty, loses its force when it is remembered that
Socialism involves no such necessity.
The Socialist ideal may be said to be a form of social organization in
which every individual will enjoy the greatest possible amount of
freedom for self-development and expression; and in which social
authority will be reduced to the minimum necessary for the preservation
and insurance of that right to all individuals. There is an
incontestable right of the individual to full and free self-development
and expression so long as no other individual's right to a like freedom
is infringed upon. No individual right can be an _absolute_ right in a
society, but must be subject to such restrictions as may be necessary to
safeguard the like right of every other individual, and of society as a
whole. _Absolute_ personal liberty is not possible; to grant it to any
one individual would be equivalent to denying it to others. If, in a
certain community, a need is commonly felt for a system of drainage to
protect the citizens against the perils of a possible outbreak of
typhoid or some other epidemic disease, and all the citizens agree upon
a scheme except two or three, who, in the name of personal liberty,
declare that their property must not be touched, what is to be done? If
the citizens, out of solicitude for the personal liberty of the
objecting individuals, abandon or modify their plans, is it not clear
that the liberty of the many has been sacrificed to the liberty of the
few, which is the essence of tyranny? Absolute individual liberty is
incompatible with social liberty. The liberty of each must, in Mill's
phrase, be bounded by the like liberty of all. Absolute personal liberty
is a chimera, a delusion.
Even the Anarchist must come to a realization of the fact that liberty
is not an absolute, but a relative and limited, right. Kropotkin, for
example, realizes that, even under Anarchism, any individual who did
not live up to his obligations, or who persisted in conducting himself
in a manner obnoxious or injurious to the community, would have to be
expelled.[183] This is very like Spencer's practical abandonment of the
doctrine of _laissez faire_ individualism. Says he: "Many facts have
shown us that while the individual man has acquired liberty as a citizen
and greater religious liberty, he has also acquired greater liberty in
respect of his occupations; and here we see that he has simultaneously
acquired greater liberty of combination for industrial purposes. Indeed,
in conformity with the universal law of rhythm, _there has been a change
from excess of restriction to deficiency of restriction_. As is implied
by legislation now pending, the facilities for forming companies and
raising compound capitals have been too great."[184] Here is a very
definite confession of the insufficiency of natural law, the failure of
the _laissez faire_ theory, and a virtual appeal for restrictive and
coercive legislation.
This is inevitable. The dual forces which serve as the motives of
individual and collective action, spring, unquestionably, from the fact
that individuals are at once alike and unlike, equal and unequal. Alike
in our needs of certain fundamental necessities, such as food,
clothing, shelter, cooeperation for producing these necessities, for
protection from foes, human and other, we are unlike in tastes,
appetites, temperaments, character, will, and so on, till our diversity
becomes as great and as general as our likeness. Now, the problem is to
insure equal opportunities of full development to all these diversely
constituted and endowed individuals, and, at the same time, to maintain
the principle of equal obligations to society on the part of every
individual. This is the problem of social justice: to insure to each the
same social opportunities, to secure from each a recognition of the same
obligations toward all. The basic principle of the Socialist state must
be justice; no privileges or favors can be extended to individuals or
groups of individuals.
III
Politically, the organization of the Socialist state must be democratic.
Socialism without democracy is as impossible as a shadow without light.
The word "Socialism" applied to schemes of paternalism, and to
government ownership when the vital principle of democracy is lacking,
is a misnomer. As with Peter Bell--
"A primrose by a river's brim,
A yellow primrose was to him"
and nothing more than that, so there are many persons to whom Socialism
signifies nothing more than government ownership. Yet it ought to be
perfectly clear that Russia, with her state-owned railways, and liquor
and other monopolies, is no nearer Socialism than the United States. The
same applies to Germany with her state railways. Externally similar in
one respect to Socialism, they radically differ. In so far as they
prepare the necessary forms for Socialism, all examples of public
ownership may be said to be "socialistic," or making for Socialism. What
they lack is a spiritual quality rather than a mechanical one. They are
not democratic. Socialism is political democracy allied to industrial
democracy.
Justice requires that the legislative power of society rest upon
universal adult suffrage, the political equality of all men and women,
except lunatics and criminals. It is manifestly unjust to exact
obedience to the laws from those who have had no share in making them
and can have no share in altering them. Of course, there are exceptions
to this principle. We except (1) minors, children not yet arrived at the
age of responsibility agreed upon by the citizens; (2) lunatics and
certain classes of criminals; (3) aliens, non-citizens temporarily
resident in the state.
Democracy in the sense of popular self-government, the "government of
the people, by the people, and for the people," of which political
rhetoricians boast, is only approximately attainable in any society.
While all can equally participate in the legislative power, all cannot
participate directly in the administrative power, and it becomes
necessary, therefore, to adopt the principle of delegated authority,
representative government. But care must be taken to preserve a maximum
of power in the hands of the people. In this respect the United States
Constitution is defective. It is not, and was not intended by its
framers to be, a democratic instrument,[185] and we are vainly trying
to-day to make democratic government through an undemocratic medium. The
political democracy of the Socialist state must be real, keeping the
power of government in the hands of the people.
How is this to be done? Direct legislation by the people might be
realized through the adoption of the principles of popular initiative
and referendum. Or, if representative legislative bodies should be
deemed best, these measures, together with proportional representation
and the right of recall, might be adopted. There is no apparent reason
why _all_ legislation, except temporary legislation as in war time,
famine, plague, and such abnormal conditions, could not be directly
initiated and enacted, leaving only the just and proper enforcement of
the law to delegated authority. In practically all the political
programmes of Socialist parties throughout the world, these principles
are included at the present time; not merely as means to secure a
greater degree of political democracy within the existing social state,
but also, and primarily, to prepare the required political framework of
democracy for the industrial commonwealth of the future.
The great problem for such a society, politically speaking, consists in
choosing wisely the trustees of delegated power and authority, and
seeing that they justly and wisely use it for the common good, without
abuse, either for the profit of themselves or their friends, and without
prejudice to any portion of society. Will there be abuses? Will not
political manipulators and bosses betray their trusts? To these
questions, and all other questions of a like nature, the Socialist can
only give one answer, namely, that there is no such a thing as an
"automatic democracy," that eternal vigilance will be the price of
liberty under Socialism as it has ever been. There can be no other
safeguard against the usurpation of power than the popular will and
conscience ever alert upon the watch-towers. With political machinery so
responsive to the popular will when it is asserted and an alert and
vigilant electorate, political democracy attains its maximum
development. Socialism requires that development.
IV
With these general principles prevised, we may consider, briefly, the
respective rights of the individual and of society. The rights of the
individual may be summarized as follows: There must be freedom of
movement, including the right to withdraw from the domain of the
government, to migrate at will to other territories. Freedom of movement
is a fundamental condition of personal liberty, but it is easy to see
that it cannot be made an absolute right. Quarantine laws, for social
protection, for example, may seriously inconvenience the individual, but
be imperatively necessary for all that. There must be immunity from
arrest, except for infringing others' rights, with compensation of some
kind for improper arrest; respect of the privacy of domicile and
correspondence; full liberty of dress, subject to decency; freedom of
utterance, whether by speech or publication, subject only to the
protection of others from insult, injury, or interference with their
equal liberties, the individual being held responsible to society for
the proper use of that right. Freedom of the individual in all that
pertains to art, science, philosophy, and religion, and their teaching,
or propaganda, is essential. The state can have nothing to do with these
matters, they belong to the personal life alone.[186] Art, science,
philosophy, and religion cannot be protected by any authority of the
state, nor is such authority needed.
Subject to the ultimate control of society, certainly, but normally free
from collective authority and control, these may be regarded as
imperative rights of the individual. Doubtless many Socialists, in
common with many Individualists, would considerably extend the list.
Some, for instance, would include the right to possess and bear arms for
the defense of person and property. On the other hand, it might be
objected with good show of reason by other Socialists that such a right
must always be liable to abuses imperiling the peace of society, and
that the same ends would be served more surely if individual armament
were made impossible. Again, some Socialists, like some Individualists,
would include in the category of private acts outside the sphere of law
and social authority the union of the sexes. They would do away with
legal intervention in marriage and make it and the parental relation
exclusively a private concern. On the other hand, probably an
overwhelming majority of Socialists would object. They would insist that
the state must, in the interest of the children, and for its own
self-preservation, assume certain responsibilities for, and exercise a
certain control over, all marriages. They would have the state insist
upon such conditions as mature age, freedom from dangerous diseases and
physical defects. While believing that under Socialism marriage would no
longer be subject to economic motives,--matrimonial markets for titles
and fortunes no longer existing,--and that the maximum of personal
freedom together with the minimum of social authority would be possible
in the union of the sexes, they would still insist upon the necessity of
that minimum of legal control.
The abolition of the legal marriage tie, and the substitution therefor
of voluntary sex union, which so many people believe to be part of the
Socialist programme, is not only not a part of that programme, but is
probably condemned by more than ninety-five per cent of the Socialists
of the world, and favored by no appreciable proportion of Socialists
more than non-Socialists. There is no such thing as a Socialist view of
marriage, any more than there is a Republican or Democratic view of
marriage; or any more than there is a Socialist view of vaccination,
vivisection, vegetarianism, or homeopathy. The same may be said of the
drink evil and tobacco smoking. Some Socialists would prohibit both
smoking and drinking; others would permit smoking, but prohibit the
manufacture of intoxicating liquors; most Socialists recognize the
evils, especially of drunkenness, but believe that it would be foolish
at this time to state in what manner the evils must be dealt with by the
Socialist state.
Our hasty summary by no means exhausts the category of personal
liberties, nor does it rigidly define such liberties. To presume to do
that would be a piece of charlatanry, social quackery of the worst type.
It is not for the Socialist of to-day to determine what the citizens of
a generation hence shall do. The citizens of the future, like the
citizens of to-day, will be living human beings, not mere automatons;
they will not accept places and forms imposed upon them, but make their
own. The object of this phase of our discussion is simply to show that
individual freedom would by no means be crushed out of existence by the
Socialist state. The intolerable bureaucracy of collectivism is wholly
an imaginary evil. There is nothing in the nature of Socialism as it is
understood to-day by its adherents which would prevent a wide extension
of personal liberties in the social regime.
In the same general manner, we may summarize the principal functions of
the state[187] as follows: the state has the right and power to organize
and control the economic system, comprehending in that term the
production and distribution of all social wealth, wherever private
enterprise is dangerous to the social well-being, or is inefficient;
the defense of the community from invasion, from fire, flood, famine, or
disease; the relations with other states, such as trade agreements,
boundary treaties, and the like; the maintenance of order, including the
juridical and police systems in all their branches; and public education
in all its departments. It will be found that these five functions
include all the services which the state may properly undertake, and
that not one of them can safely be intrusted to private enterprise. On
the other hand, it is not at all necessary to assume that the state must
have an _absolute monopoly_ of any one of these groups of functions in
the social organism. It would not be necessary, for example, for the
state to prohibit its citizens from entering into voluntary relations
with the citizens of other countries for the promotion of international
friendship, for trade reciprocity, and so on. Likewise, the juridical
functions being in the hands of the state would not prevent voluntary
arbitration; or the state guardianship of the public health prevent
voluntary associations of citizens from taking measures to advance the
health of their communities. On the contrary, all such efforts would be
advantageous to the state. Our study becomes, therefore, a study of
social physiology.
The principle already postulated, that the state must undertake the
production and distribution of wealth wherever private enterprise is
dangerous, or inefficient, clarifies somewhat the problem of the
industrial organization of the Socialist regime, which is a vastly more
difficult problem than that of its political organization. Socialism by
no means involves the suppression of all private industrial enterprises.
Only when these fail in efficiency or result in injustice and inequality
of opportunities does socialization present itself. There are many
petty, subordinate industries, especially the making of articles of
luxury, which might be well allowed to remain in private hands, subject
only to such general regulation as might be found necessary for the
protection of health and the public order. For example, suppose that the
state undertakes the production of shoes upon a large scale as a result
of the popular conviction that private enterprise in shoemaking is
either inefficient or injurious to society in that the manufacturers
exploit the shoemakers on the one hand, and, through the establishment
of monopoly-prices, the consumers upon the other hand. The state thus
becomes the employer of shoeworkers and the vender of shoes to the
citizens. But A, being a fastidious citizen, does not like the factory
product of the state any more than he formerly did the factory product
of private enterprise. Under the old conditions, he used to employ B, a
shoemaker who does not like factory work, a craftsman who likes to make
the whole shoe. Naturally, B was not willing to work for wages
materially lower than those he could earn in the factory. A willingly
paid enough for his hand-made shoes to insure B as much wages as he
would get in the factory. What reason could the state possibly have for
forbidding the continuance of such an arrangement between two of its
citizens?
Or take the case of a farmer maintaining himself and family upon a
modest acreage, by his own labor. He exploits no one, and the question
of inefficiency does not present itself as a public question, for the
reason that there is plenty of farming land available, and any
inefficiency of the small farmer does not injure the community in any
manner. What object could the state have in taking away that farm and
compelling the farmer to work upon a communal, publicly owned and
managed farm? Of course, the notion is perfectly absurd.[188] On the
other hand, there are things, natural monopolies, which cannot be safely
left to private enterprise. The same is true of large productive and
distributive enterprises upon which great masses of the people depend.
Land ownership[189] and all that depends thereon, such as mining,
transportation, and the like, must be collective.
It will help us to get rid of the difficulty presented by petty
industry and agriculture if we bear in mind that collective ownership is
not, as is commonly supposed, the supreme, fundamental condition of
Socialism. It is proposed only as a means to an end, not as the end
itself. The wealth producers are exploited by a class whose source of
income is the surplus-value extracted from the workers. Instinctively,
the workers struggle against that exploitation, to reduce the amount of
surplus-value taken by the capitalists to a minimum. To do away with
that exploitation social ownership and control is proposed. If the end
could be attained more speedily by other methods, those methods would be
adopted. It follows, therefore, that to make collective property of
things not used as a means of exploiting labor does not necessarily form
part of the Socialist programme. True, some such things might be
socialized in response to an urgent demand for efficiency, but, of
necessity, the struggle will be principally concerned with the
socializing of the means of production which are used as means of
exploitation by a class deriving its income from the surplus-value
produced by another class. It is easy enough to see that, according to
this principle of differentiation, it would be necessary to socialize
the railroad, but not at all necessary to socialize the wheelbarrow;
while it would be necessary to socialize a clothing factory, it would
not be necessary to take away a woman's domestic sewing machine.
Independent, self-employment, as in the case of a craftsman working in
his own shop with his own tools, or groups of workers working
cooeperatively, is quite consistent with Socialism.
In the Socialist state, then, certain forms of private industry will be
tolerated, and perhaps even definitely encouraged by the state, but the
great fundamental economic activities will be collectively managed. The
Socialist state will not be static and, consequently, what at first may
be regarded as being properly the subject of private enterprise may
develop to an extent or in directions which necessitate its
transformation to the category of essentially social properties. Hence,
it is not possible to give a list of things which would be socialized
and another list of things which would remain private property, but
perfectly possible to state the principle which must be the chief
determinant of the extent of socialization. With this principle in mind
it is fairly possible to sketch the outlines at least of the economic
development of the collectivist commonwealth; the conditions essential
to that stage of social evolution at which it will be possible and
natural to speak of capitalism as a past and outgrown stage, and of the
present as the era of Socialism.
Socialists, naturally, differ very materially upon this point. Probably,
however, an overwhelming majority of the leaders of Socialist thought in
Europe and this country would agree with the writer that it is fairly
probable that the economic structure of the new society will include at
least the following measures of socialization: (1) Ownership of all
natural resources, such as land, mines, forests, waterways, oil wells,
and so on; (2) operation of all the means of transportation and
communication other than those of purely personal service; (3) operation
of all industrial production involving large compound capitals and
associated labor, except where carried on by voluntary, democratic
cooeperation, with the necessary regulation by the state; (4)
organization of all labor essential to the public service, such as the
building of schools, hospitals, docks, roads, bridges, sewers, and the
like; the construction of all the machinery and plant requisite to the
social production and distribution, and of things necessary for the
maintenance of those engaged in such public services as the national
defense and all who are wards of the state; (5) a monopoly of the
monetary and credit functions, including coinage, banking, mortgaging,
and the extension of credit to private enterprise.
With these economic activities undertaken by the state, a pure democracy
differing vitally from all the class-dominated states of history,
private enterprise would by no means be excluded, but limited to an
extent making the exploitation of labor and public needs and interests
for private gain impossible. Socialism thus becomes the defender of
individual liberty, not its enemy.
V
As owner of the earth and all the major instruments of production and
exchange, society would occupy a position which would enable it to
insure that the physical and mental benefits derived from its wealth,
its natural resources, its collective experience, genius, and labor,
were universalized as befits a democracy. It would be able to guarantee
to all its citizens the right to labor, through preventing private or
class monopolization of the land and instruments of production and
social opportunities in general. It would be in a position to make every
development from competition to monopoly the occasion for further
socialization. Thus there would be no danger to the state in permitting,
or even fostering, private industry within the limits described. As the
organizer of the vast body of labor essential to the operation of the
main productive and distributive functions of society, and to the other
public services, the state would automatically, so to speak, set the
standards of income and leisure which private industry would be
compelled, by competitive force, to observe. The regulation of
production, too, would be possible, and as a result the crises arising
from glutted markets would disappear. Finally, in the control of all the
functions of credit, the state would effectually prevent the
exploitation of the mass of the people through financial agencies, one
of the greatest evils of our present system.
The application of the principles of democracy to the organization and
administration of these great economic services of production, exchange,
and credit is a problem full of alluring invitations to speculation.
"This that they call the Organization of Labor," said Carlyle, "is the
Universal Vital Problem of the World." This description applies not to
what we commonly mean by the "organization of labor," namely, the
organization of the laborers in unions for class conflict, but to the
organization of the brain and muscle of the world to secure the greatest
efficiency. This is the great central problem of the socialization of
industry and the state, before which all other problems pale into
insignificance. It is comparatively easy to picture an ideal political
democracy; and the main structural economic organization of the
Socialist regime, with its private and public functions more or less
clearly defined, is not very difficult of conception. These are
foreshadowed with varying degrees of distinctness in present society,
and the light of experience illumines the pathway before us. It is when
we come to the methods of organization and management, the _spirit_ of
the economic organization of the future state, that the light fails and
we must grope our way into the great unknown with imagination and our
sense of justice for guides.
Most Socialist writers who have attempted to deal with this subject
have simply regarded the state as the greatest employer of labor,
carrying on its business upon lines not materially different from those
adopted by the great corporations of to-day. Boards of experts, chosen
by civil service methods, directing all the economic activities of the
state--such is their general conception of the industrial democracy of
the Socialist regime. They believe, in other words, that the methods now
employed by the capitalist state, and by individual and corporate
employers within the capitalist state, would simply be extended under
the Socialist regime. If this be so, a psychological anomaly in the
Socialist propaganda appears in the practical abandonment of the claim
that, as a result of the class conflict in society, the public ownership
evolved within the capitalist state is essentially different from, and
inferior to, the public ownership of the Socialist ideal. It is
perfectly clear that if the industrial organization under Socialism is
to be such that the workers employed in any industry have no more voice
in its management than the postal employees in this country, for
example, have at the present time, it cannot be otherwise than absurd to
speak of it as an industrial democracy.
Here, in truth, lies the crux of the greatest problem of all. We must
face the fact that, in anything worthy the name of an industrial
democracy, the terms and conditions of employment cannot be wholly
decided without regard to the will of the workers themselves on the one
hand, nor, on the other hand, by the workers alone without reference to
the general body of the citizenry. If the former method fails to satisfy
the requirements of democracy by ignoring the will of the workers in the
organization of their work, the alternate method involves a hierarchical
government, equally incompatible with democracy. Some way must be found
by which the industrial government of society, the organization of
production and distribution, may be securely and fairly based upon the
dual basis of common civic rights and the rights of the workers in their
special relations as such.
And here we are not wholly left to our imaginations, not wholly without
experience to guide us. In actual practice to-day, in those industries
in which the organization of the workers into unions has been most
successful, the workers, through their organizations, do exercise a
certain amount of control over the conditions of their employment. Their
right to share in the determination of the conditions of labor is
conceded. They make trade agreements, for instance, in which such
matters as wages, hours of labor, apprenticeship, output, engagement and
discharge of workers, and numerous other matters, are provided for and
made subject to the joint control of the workers and their employers. Of
course, this share in the control of the industry in which they are
employed is a right enjoyed only as a fruit of conquest, won by war and
maintained by ceaseless vigilance and armed strength. It is not
inconceivable that in the Socialist state there might be a frank
extension of this principle. The workers in the main groups of
industries might form autonomous organizations for the administration of
their special interests, subject only to certain fundamental laws of the
state. Thus the trade unions of to-day would evolve into administrative
politico-economic organizations, after the manner of the mediaeval
guilds, and become constructive agencies in society instead of mere
agencies of class warfare as at present.
The economic organization of the Socialist state would consist, then, of
three distinct divisions, as follows: (1) Private production and
exchange, subject only to such general supervision and control by the
state as the interests of society demand, such as protection against
monopolization, sanitary laws, and the like; (2) voluntary cooeperation,
subject to similar supervision and control; (3) production and
distribution by the state, the administration to be by the autonomous
organizations of the workers in industrial groups, subject to the
fundamental laws and government of society as a whole.[190]
VI
Two other functions of the economic organization of society remain to be
considered, the distribution of labor and its remuneration. In the
organization of industry society will have to achieve a twofold result,
a maximum of general, social efficiency, on the one hand, and of
personal liberty and comfort to the workers on the other. The state
would not only guarantee the right to labor, but, as a corollary, it
would impose the duty of labor upon every competent person. The Pauline
injunction, "If any man will not work, neither shall he eat," would be
applied in the Socialist state to all except the incompetent to labor.
The immature child, the aged, the sick and infirm members of society,
would alone be exempted from labor. The result of this would be that
instead of a large unemployed army, vainly seeking the right to work, on
the one hand, accompanied by the excessive overwork of the great mass of
the workers fortunate enough to be employed, a vast increase in the
number of producers from this one cause alone would make possible much
greater leisure for the whole body of workers. Benjamin Franklin
estimated that in his day four hours' labor from every adult male able
to work would be more than sufficient to provide wealth enough for human
wants; and it is certain that, without resorting to any standards of
Spartan simplicity, Franklin's estimate could be easily realised to-day
with anything approaching a scientific organization of labor.
Not only would the productive forces be enormously increased by the
absorption of those workers who under the present system are unemployed,
and those who do not labor or seek labor; in addition to these, there
would be a tremendous transference of potential productive energy from
occupations rendered obsolete and unnecessary by the socialization of
society. Thus there are to-day tens of thousands of bankers, lawyers,
traders, middlemen, speculators, advertisers, and others, whose
functions, necessary to the capitalist system, would in most cases
disappear. Because of this, they would be compelled to enter the
producing class. The possibilities of the scientific organization of
industry are therefore almost unlimited. Every gain made by the state in
the direction of economy of production would test the private enterprise
existing and urge it onward in the same direction. Likewise, every gain
made by the private producers would test the social production and urge
it onward. Whether socialized production extended its sphere, or
remained confined to its minimum limitations, would depend upon the
comparative success or failure resulting. The state would not be a force
outside of the people, arbitrarily extending its functions regardless of
their will. The decision would rest with the people; they would _be_ the
state, and would, naturally, resort to social effort only where it
demonstrated its ability to serve the community more efficiently than
private enterprise, with greater comfort and liberty to the individual
and to the community.
While in the Socialist regime labor would be compulsory, it is
inconceivable that a free people would tolerate a bureaucratic rule
assigning to each individual his or her proper task, no matter how
ingenious the assignment might be. Even if the bureaucracy were
omniscient, such a condition of life would be intolerable. Just as it is
necessary to insist that all must be secured in their right to labor,
and required to labor, it is necessary also that the choice of one's
occupation should be as far as possible personal and free, subject only
to the laws of supply and demand. The greatest amount of personal
freedom compatible with the requisite efficiency would be secured to the
workers in their chosen occupations through their craft organizations.
But, it will be objected, all occupations are not equally desirable.
There are certain forms of work which, disagreeable in themselves, are
just as essential to the well-being of society as the most artistic and
pleasing. Who will do the dirty work, and the dangerous work, under
Socialism? Will these occupations also be left to choice, and, if so,
will there not be an insurmountable difficulty arising from the natural
reluctance of men to choose such work?
In answering the question and affirming the principle of free
choice--for so it must be answered--the Socialist is called upon to show
that the absence of compulsion would not involve the neglect of these
disagreeable, but highly important, social services; that it would be
compatible with social safety to leave them to personal choice. In the
first place, much of this kind of work that is now performed by human
labor could be more efficiently done by mechanical means. Much of the
work done by sweated women and children in our cities is in fact done in
competition with machines. Machinery has been invented, and is now
available, to do thousands of the disagreeable and hurtful things now
done by human beings. Professor Franklin H. Giddings is perfectly right
when he says: "Modern civilization does not require, it does not need,
the drudgery of needle-women or the crushing toil of men in a score of
life-destroying occupations. If these wretched beings should drop out
of existence and no others take their places, the economic activities of
the world would not greatly suffer. A thousand devices latent in
inventive brains would quickly make good any momentary loss."[191]
When, in England, a law was passed forbidding the practice of forcing
little boys through chimneys, to clean them, chimneys did not cease to
be swept. Other, less disagreeable and less dangerous, means were
quickly invented. When the woolen manufacturers were prevented from
employing little boys and girls, they invented the piecing machine.[192]
Thousands of instances might be compiled in support of the contention of
Professor Giddings, equally as pertinent as these. Another important
point is that the amount of such disagreeable and dangerous work to be
done would be very much less than now. That would be an inevitable
result of the scientific organization of industry. It is likely that, if
the subject could be properly investigated, it could be shown that the
amount of such labor involved in wasteful and unnecessary advertising
alone is enormous.
Addressing an audience composed mainly of scientific men upon the
subject of Socialism, the writer was once questioned upon this phase of
the subject. "Gentlemen," was the reply, "it is impossible for me to
say exactly how the intelligence of the people in a more or less remote
future will solve the problem. The Socialist state will be a democracy,
not a dictatorship. But if I were dictator of society to-day and wanted
to solve the problem, I should assign to such men as yourselves all the
most disagreeable and dangerous tasks I could find. This I should do
because I should know that at once your inventive brains would begin to
devise mechanical and other means of doing the work. You would make
sewer cleaning as pleasant as any other occupation in the world." There
was, of course, nothing original in the reply, but the men of science
recognized its force, and it fairly states one important part of the
Socialist answer to the objection we are discussing. Still, with all
possible reduction of the quantity of such work to be done, and with all
the mechanical genius brought to bear upon it, we may freely concede
that, for a long time to come, there must be some work quite dangerous,
altogether disagreeable and repellent, and a great difference in the
degree of attractiveness of some occupations as compared with some
others. But an occupation repellent in itself might be made attractive,
if the hours of labor were relatively few as compared with other
occupations. If six hours be regarded as the normal working day, it is
quite easy to believe that, for sake of the larger leisure, with its
opportunities for the pursuit of special interests, many a man would
gladly accept a disagreeable position for three hours a day.
The same holds true of superior remuneration. Under the Socialist
regime, just as to-day, many a man would gladly exchange his work for
less pleasant work, if the remuneration offered were higher. To the old
Utopian ideas of absolute equality and uniformity of income these
methods would be fatal, but they are not at all incompatible with
modern, scientific Socialism. Nothing could well be sillier, or more
futile, than the Rooseveltian attacks upon the Socialism of to-day as if
it meant equality of possession, or equality of anything except
opportunity.[193] Finally, in connection with this question, we must not
forget that there is a natural inequality of talent, of power. In any
state of society most men will prefer to do the things they are best
fitted for, the things they can do best. The man who feels himself to be
best fitted to be a hewer of wood or a drawer of water will choose that
rather than some loftier task. There is no reason at all to suppose that
leaving the choice of occupation to the individual would involve the
slightest risk to society.
While equality of remuneration, meaning by that uniformity of reward
for labor, is not an essential condition of the Socialist regime, it may
be freely admitted that _approximate equality of income_ is the ideal to
be ultimately aimed at. Otherwise, if there should be the present
inequality of remuneration, represented by the enormous salary of a
manager like Mr. Schwab, to quote a conspicuous example, and the meager
wage of the average laborer, class formations must take place and the
old problems incidental to economic inequality reappear. There is no
need to regard uniformity of reward for all as the only solution of this
problem, however. Given such an industrial democracy as is herein
suggested as the essential condition of Socialism, there is little
reason to doubt that gradually, by the free play of economic law,
approximate equality would be attained. This brings us to the method of
the remuneration of labor.
VII
Socialists are too often judged by their shibboleths, rather than by the
principles which those shibboleths imperfectly express, or seek to
express. Declaiming, rightly, against the wages system as a form of
slave labor,[194] the "abolition of wage slavery," forever inscribed on
their banners, the average man is forced to the conclusion that the
Socialists are working for a system in which the workers will divide
their actual products and then barter the surplus for the surplus
products of other workers. Either that, or the most rigid system of
governmental production and a method of distributing rations and
uniforms similar to that which obtains in the military organization of
present-day governments. It is easily seen, however, that such plans do
not conform to the democratic ideals of the Socialists, on the one hand,
nor would either of them, on the other hand, be compatible with the wide
personal liberty herein put forward as characteristic of the Socialist
state.
The earlier Utopian Socialists did propose to do away with wages; in
fact, they proposed to do away with money altogether, and invented
various forms of "Labor Notes" as a means of giving equality of
remuneration for given quantities of labor, and providing a medium for
the exchange of wealth. But when the Socialists of to-day speak of the
"abolition of wages," or of the wages system, they use the words in the
same sense as they speak of the abolition of capital: _they would
abolish only the social relations implied in the terms_. Just as they do
not mean by the abolition of capital the destruction of the machinery
and implements of production, but the social relation in which they are
used to create profit for the few, so, when they speak of the abolition
of the wages system, they mean only the use of wages to exploit the
producers for the gain of the owners of the means of production and
exchange. Though the name "wages" might not be changed, a money payment
for labor in a democratic arrangement of industry, representing an
approximation to the full value of the labor, minus only its share of
the cost of maintaining the public services, and the weaker, dependent
members of society, would be vastly different from a money payment for
labor by one individual to other individuals, representing an
approximation to their cost of living, bearing no definite relation to
the value of their labor products, and paid in lieu of those products
with a view to the gathering of a rich surplus value by the payer.
Karl Kautsky, perhaps the greatest living exponent of the theories of
modern Socialism, has made this point perfectly clear. He accepts
without reserve the belief that wages, unequal and paid in money, will
be the method of remuneration for labor in the Socialist regime.[195]
When too many laborers rush into certain branches of industry, the
natural way to lessen their number and to increase the number of
laborers in other branches where there is need for them, will be to
reduce wages in the one and to increase them in the other. Socialism,
instead of being defined as an attempt to make men equal, might perhaps
be more justly and accurately defined as a social system based upon the
natural inequalities of mankind. Not human equality, but equality of
opportunity, and the prevention of the creation of artificial
inequalities by privilege, is the essence of Socialism.
What, it may be asked, will society do to prevent the hoarding of wealth
on the one hand, and the exploitation of the spendthrift by the
abstinent upon the other? Here, as throughout this discussion, we must
be careful to refrain from laying down dogmatic rules, giving
categorical replies to questions which the future will settle in its own
way. At best, we can only reason as to what possible answers are
compatible with the fundamental principles of Socialism. Thus we may
safely answer that in the Socialist regime society will not attempt to
dictate to the individual how he shall spend his income. If Jones
prefers _objets d'art_, and Smith prefers fast horses or a steam yacht,
each will be free to follow his inclinations so far as his resources
will permit. If, on the contrary, one should prefer to hoard his wealth,
he would be free to do so. The inheritance of such accumulated property,
other than personal objects, of course, might be denied, the state being
made the only possible inheritor of such accumulated property. Even in
the absence of such a regulation, the inheritance of hoarded wealth
would not be a serious matter and would speedily adjust itself. There
would be no opportunity for its _investment_, so that at most
individuals inheriting such property would be enabled to live idly, or
with extra luxury, until it was spent. The fact of inheriting property
would not give the individual power over the life and labor of others.
By either method, full play for individual liberty would be coupled with
full economic security for society. There would be no danger of the
development of a ruling class as a result of natural inequalities.
With such conditions as these, it is not difficult nor in any sense
romantic to suppose that the tendency to hoard wealth would largely
disappear. In the same way we must regard the possibilities of the
exploitation of man by man developing in the Socialist state, through
the wastefulness and improvidence of the one and the frugality,
abstinence, and cunning of the other, as slight. With the credit
functions entirely in the hands of the state, the improvident man would
be able to obtain credit upon the same securities as from a private
creditor, without extortion. Society would further secure itself against
the weakness and failure of the improvident by insuring all its members
against sickness, accident, and old age.
VIII
The administration of justice is necessarily a social function in a
democratic society. All juridical functions should be socialized in the
strict sense of being maintained at the social expense for the free
service of its citizens. Court fees, advocates' charges, and other
expenses incidental to the administration of justice in present society
are all anti-democratic and subversive of justice.
Finally, education is likewise a social necessity which society itself
must assume responsibility for. We have discovered that for
self-protection society must insist upon a certain minimum of education
for every child able to receive it; that it is too vital a matter to be
left to the option of parents or the desires of the immature child. We
have made a certain minimum of education compulsory and free; the
Socialist state would make a minimum--probably much larger than our
present minimum--compulsory, but it would also make _all_ education
free. From the first stages, in the kindergartens, to the last, in the
universities, education must be wholly free or equality of opportunity
cannot be realized. So long as a single barrier exists to prevent any
child from receiving all the education it is capable of profiting by,
democracy is unattained.
Whether the Socialist state could tolerate the existence of elementary
schools other than its own, such as privately conducted kindergartens,
religious schools, and so on, is by no means agreed upon by Socialists.
It is like the question of marriage, a matter which is wholly beyond the
scope of present knowledge. The future will decide for itself. There are
those who believe that the state would not content itself with refusing
to permit religious doctrines or ideas to be taught in the schools, but
would go further, and, as the protector of the child, guard its
independence of thought in later life as far as possible by forbidding
religious teaching of any kind in schools for children below a certain
age. It would not, of course, attempt to prevent parental instruction in
religious beliefs in the home. Beyond the age prescribed, religious
education, in all other than public institutions of learning, would be
freely admitted. This restriction of religious education to the years of
judgment and discretion implies no hostility to religion on the part of
the state, but complete neutrality. Not the least important of the
rights of the child is the right to be protected from influences which
bias the mind and destroy the possibilities of independent thought in
later life, or make it attainable only as a result of bitter, needless,
tragic experience. This is one view. On the other hand, there are
probably quite as many Socialists who believe that the state would not
attempt to prevent the religious education of children of any age, in
schools voluntarily maintained for that purpose, independent of the
public schools. They believe that the state would content itself with
insisting that these religious schools must be so built and equipped as
not to imperil the lives or the health of the children attending them,
and so conducted as not to interfere with the public schools,--all of
which means simply that, like vaccination, and the form of marriage
contract, the question will be settled by the future in its own way.
There is nothing in the fundamental principles of Socialism, nor any
body of facts in our present experience, from which we can judge the
manner of that settlement.