Economic struggle

“ The wars, famines, and pestilences which decimated their ranks were a blessing to those who survived and who found themselves possessed of a monopoly of labor over against a superabundance of land. That is the economic status which gives the laborer control of the market and command of the situation. ”

“ After having increased production to a considerable extent, it failed in its endeavours to regulate it, and struggled hopelessly in the toils of inextricable difficulties.
"'You are not totally ignorant, comrade, of the economic disturbances which filled the twentieth century. During the last hundred years of the capitalistic domination, the disorder of production and the delirium of competition piled up disasters high. The capitalists and the masters vainly attempted, by means of gigantic combinations, to regulate production and to annihilate competition. ”

“ You trace the deterioration in the condition of the working classes to the increase of trade and manufactures in this country?—To the increase of competitive trades and manufactures.
It is your conviction that we may look upon this vast extension of trade, and commerce, and competition, altogether [Pg 47] as an evil?—Not on the vast extension of trade, but on the vast extension of the struggle of man with man, instead of the principle of help of man by man. ”

“ These problems of job control, of wealth and income distribution, of industrial inter-relations and of the relation between the state and industry are pressing for solution in every important centre of modern economic life. Each constitutes a disturbing element and contributes its mite to the aggregate of social instability and unrest that are racking the economic world. ”

“ So evident is this, that not only among the ignorant, but by men of high economic reputation, is industrial depression attributed to the abundance of machinery and the accumulation of capital; and war, which is the destruction of capital, is looked upon as the cause of brisk trade and high wages—an idea strangely enough, so great is the confusion of thought on such matters, countenanced by many who hold that capital employs labor and pays wages. ”

“ Back of tariff and finance, therefore, back of transportation and labor, of new political parties and revolts in the old ones, of the great strikes and the increasing importance of some of the sections, lay the economic foundations of the new era. ”

“ The economy’s triumph as an independent power at the same time spells its own doom, because the forces it has unleashed have eliminated the economic necessity that was the unchanging basis of earlier societies. ”

“ The great conflict between labor and 3118capital, under free competition, has ever been how the earnings of labor shall be divided between them. In new and sparsely settled countries, where land is cheap, and food is easily produced, and education and intelligence approximate equality, labor can successfully struggle in this warfare with capital. ”

“ The first is the fomentation of a class war, based upon divisions of interests between capital and labor, producer and consumer, protected and unprotected industries. The initial skirmishes of such a conflict are already visible in every country where wages, prices, and profiteering are burning issues. ”

“ But notwithstanding all these facts I admit there are evils, serious evils, and much distress in the manufacturing districts; many are still out of employment, and in many branches of trade wages are low. We have violent fluctuations in trade, and periods when multitudes endure great suffering and it becomes this House to inquire why do these fluctuations occur, and what is the great cause of their suffering. I attribute much of this [Pg 611] to the mistaken and unjust policy pursued by this House, with respect to the trade and industry of the country. ”

“ In these crises, the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist [117] appropriation ends in a violent explosion. The circulation of commodities is, for the time being, stopped. Money, the means of circulation, becomes a hindrance to circulation. All the laws of production and circulation of commodities are turned upside down. The economic collision has reached its apogee. The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode of exchange. ”

“ With natural opportunities thus set free to labour, with capital and improvements exempt from tax and exchange released from restrictions, the spectacle of willing men unable to turn their labour into the things they want would become impossible; the recurring paroxysms which paralyse industry would cease; every wheel of production would be set in motion; trade would increase in every direction and wealth augment on every hand. ”

“ He was adapted to that stage of society when the remnants of caste gave a certain fixity of tenure to the farmer, and when prices were maintained by the cost of communication with foreign countries. As the world centralized, through conquest, these barriers were swept away. Economic competition14 became free, land tended to concentrate in fewer and fewer hands, and this land was worked by eastern slaves, who reduced the wages of labour to the lowest point at which the human being can survive. ”

“ Not only in Great Britain but all over the world, the intensity of this new competition, the gravity of this readjustment to new and restricted conditions of economic life, will provide an excuse for agitators and revolutionaries who desire to overthrow the whole structure of our present system of Capital and Labour in the hope of obtaining greater prosperity for the labouring folk and a broader control of the sources of wealth. ”

“ If Great Britain is happy and prosperous, how shall we account for the constant strikes of labor organizations for higher pay or as a protest against further reduction of wages below which man cannot live and produce? The balance of trade desire is the curse of the people of the world. It can be obtained only by underbidding other people in their own markets; and this can be done only by the maximum of production at the minimum of cost—by forcing as much labor out of the man or the machine as possible at the least possible expense. ”

“ The ideas that there is a necessary conflict between capital and labour, that machinery is an evil, that competition must be restrained and interest abolished, that wealth may be created by the issue of money, that it is the duty of the government to furnish capital or to furnish work, are rapidly making way among the great body of the people who keenly feel a hurt and are sharply conscious of a wrong. ”

“ Political economy requires farther expansion in order to include all the elements of this great social problem.
It is a true doctrine that demand and supply regulate the price of all things, labour included. ”

“ They point to these facts as showing that the production has exceeded the demand for consumption, and they point, moreover, to the fact that when government during war enters the field as an enormous consumer, brisk times prevail, as in the United States during the civil war and in England during the Napoleonic struggle. ”

“ For, it is only with the produce of its labor and capital that one country can demand, or can obtain, in exchange, the produce of the labor and capital of another. The idea that the lowering of wages can increase, or the increase of wages can diminish, the trade of a country, is as baseless as the idea that the prosperity of a country can be increased by taxes on imports, or diminished by the removal of restrictions on trade. ”

“ It is contended for as a means of checking unfair competition between a long established community with special advantages for factory methods, either in large accumulations of capital or low wages of laborers, and a newer country where capital is scarce and wages are high. ”

“ The year 1834, then, showed the commencement of the great war between capital and labor which is so damaging to all business operations, and the ultimate issue of which cannot be predicted with certainty,--but which will probably lead to a great amelioration of the condition of the working-classes and the curtailment of the incomes of rich men, especially those engaged in trade and manufactures. ”

“ But the greater and cheaper food supply, and the abundant capital of your recent times, while serving to neutralize the depressing effect of increase of population in the labor ranks, and to institute a condition of general prosperity in trade and mercantile pursuits, has at the same time offered to all your monopolists of land the opportunity to extort, under the pressure of competition, the whole surplus of the earnings of your workmen. ”

“ Material progress became impossible, industry languished, and the inability to meet foreign competition assisted the mistaken internal policy of the government in prolonging and intensifying the poverty of the people. ”

“ Little money is circulating, and commerce languishes on every side. The country is not yet sufficiently settled to induce the enterprise of the capitalist. Since the revolution, the working classes have suffered severely from the depression of business. ”

“ It is this policy only which causes peace to aggravate the distresses of nations, by making the domestick commerce for transferring property, infinitely more lucrative to unproductive occupations, and more oppressive to industry. The extravagances of war and the appreciation of currency, created capitals, bearing with less weight upon industry, whilst the prices of property were high; and the appreciation of currency, by depressing the prices of commodities, has correspondently increased the value of income. ”

“ Your trade was, a few years ago, unrestrained and flourishing—did it not enrich the most distant parts of your country? It has since been plundered and confined. Does not the industry of the country languish? Is not the income of every man impaired? If commerce were destroyed, the mercantile class, indeed, could exist no longer; but the merchant, the rich capitalist, at least, would individually suffer less than any other part of the community, because, while their property would become unproductive, the value of money would rise rather than fall. ”

“ Everything seems to be going on as usual, commerce and industry vigorous and expanding, when suddenly there comes a shock, as of a thunderbolt out of a clear sky—a bank breaks, a great manufacturer or merchant fails, and, as if a blow had thrilled through the entire industrial organization, failure succeeds failure, and on every side workmen are discharged from employment, and capital shrinks into profitless security. ”

“ Within the vitals of the economic system upon which it subsists the plutocracy has found a source of never-ending torment in the form of a constantly increasing surplus.
2. The Knotty Problem of Surplus
The present system of industry is so organized that the worker is always paid less in wages than he creates in product. A part of this difference between product and wages goes to the upkeep and expansion of the industry in which the worker is employed. Another part in the form of interest, dividends, rents, royalties and profits, goes to the owners of the land and productive machinery. ”

“ With increasing powers of production the worker’s share, and therefore his purchasing power, grows less, and this leaves an ever increasing mass of wealth for the capitalists to endeavour to consume, resulting in a constant glutting of the markets. ”

“ When these iniquities prevailed, and there was neither freedom of industry nor security of property—when capital and labour were not united—when all men consequently worked unprofitably, because they worked without division of labour, accumulation of knowledge, and union of forces—there was universal poverty, because there was feeble production. ”

“ While then the last sixteen years of the century, of which the political history still lies before us, were, except at certain crises to be noted hereafter, marked by a rapid expansion of commerce and trade, and an increase in the wealth of the richer landowners, manufacturers, and merchants, they were, as we have seen, a period of change in the conditions of labour and, as such, brought much distress on the working class, which was aggravated by the high prices consequent on bad seasons and the risks of war. ”

“ Economic crises and imperialist wars; immeasurable destruction of capital and productive forces. This is a consequence which stands in sharp contradiction to the historical task of the economic order of Capitalism, and to the immediate aims of the individual capitalists. ”

“ Of what use was it to tell a workman that his uncontrolled competition with his fellows was a spur to his ingenuity and industry, when it meant that a crowd of men, under pressure of starvation, undersold each other for a bare subsistence? Of what use was it to put capitalists and workmen into a comparison as traders, when for the one holding out of the market meant merely a temporary loss of income, and for the other it meant destitution? ”

“ Economically it extended from peasant proprietorship and a use economy to a market-money economy; from a society of working peasant farmers to an economy resting upon war captives reduced to slavery; from an economy based on production for trade and profit to an economy based on power-grabbing, special privilege, speculation and corruption; from an austerity economy based on primary production to an economy based on affluence, exploitation, and gluttony. ”

“ It was well known before the war how the members of a workmen's artel, or trade community, when trade was bad, would divide their earnings equally and all starve, if need be, together, without any attempt by the luckier workmen to save themselves at the expense of the others. ”

“ And, in the mean time, what is to become of our people, whom free trade is reducing to pauperism? The political economist, whose heart is as hard as the machinery he drives, will scarcely pause for a moment to answer so trivial a question. His ultimatum is, the factory, the workhouse, or emigration. ”