Exploitation

“ If, therefore, in our historical sketch, modern industry, on the one hand; the labour of those who are physically and legally minors, on the other, play important parts, the former was to us only a special department, and the latter only a specially striking example of labour exploitation. ”

“ Division of work requires that in industrial matters some should direct and others be directed. Material exploitation requires capital; and those who bring this capital, the fruit of former work, are as necessary to the workingmen to utilize their work as these are to the first in utilizing their capital. ”

“ As their primary task businessmen devoted themselves to the exploitation of labor power and the storage and merchandising of the products turned out by herdsmen, farmers, craftsmen. Part of their profits went into more elaborate standards of feeding, clothing and housing themselves and their dependents. ”

“ MY western friend who runs a prosperous stove-factory has been finding fault with my insistent use of the word " exploitation." My outlook on life is not sufficiently cheerful, and I am inclined to see malevolence where everything is, as they say at college, healthy, hearty and happy. ”

“ This fact is necessary to bear in mind, but it should not obscure the even more significant fact that the blighting character of industry is due to its motivation, which is wealth exploitation and not wealth creation. ”

“ But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonism, on the exploitation of the many by the few. ”

“ The artificial protection of industry, the industrial exploitation of foreign countries, the prevalence of stock-jobbing, the difficulty of improving the soil and the machinery of production—all these are causes which work together against agriculture, which indeed is burdened not only by rent, but by the whole complexity of conditions developed in a society based on exploitation. ”

“ Civilization has done little for labor except to modify the forms of its exploitation. ”

“ Every exploitation of man by man is founded on class rule. The first, and principal means of establishing class rule is to take possession of the soil. Common property at first, it gradually becomes private property. ”

“ Expanding unearned income, with one class (the propertied and privileged) owning for a living and another class (peasants, artisans, serfs, slaves) working for a living. c. Intensified exploitation of mass labor side by side with the proliferation of parasitism throughout the body social, consisting of individuals and social sub-groups whose contribution in the form of goods produced and services rendered was less than the cost of maintaining the participants. ”

“ If, therefore, on the one hand, it presents itself historically as a progress and as a necessary phase in the economic development of society, on the other hand it is a refined and civilised method of exploitation. ”

“ Unlimited exploitation of cheap labour-power is the sole foundation of their power to compete. ”

“ Their aim is to open out to capital fresh fields for exploitation, and to sanction the new forms which that exploitation continually assumes, as capital swallows up another branch of human activity, railways, telegraphs, electric light, chemical industries, the expression of man’s thought in literature and science, &c. ”

“ First, that the distribution of wealth, or more properly of work and idleness, will gradually be improved, and the exploitation of individuals in great gangs cease; hence that the workman will be able once more to see and shape what he is making, and that, on the other side, the possessor of objects will have to use them, and therefore learn their appearance and care for them ”

“ Then let them organize manufactures, agriculture, and commerce; let them make labor attractive, and the most humble functions honorable, and our praise shall be theirs. Above all, let them throw off that Illuminism which gives them the appearance of impostors or dupes, rather than believers and apostles. ↑ Individual possession is no obstacle to extensive cultivation and unity of exploitation. ”

“ within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; ”

“ In modern capitalism economic exploitation rather than political oppression is the real enemy of the people. ”

“ Rent, interest, profit—labor, human labor, produced them. It was not the land, or money, or factories; it was the toilers, sweating at their tasks, who made all of these, and who received for their toil a miserly fragment. Land, left idle, produced nothing; even natural products were worthless until man's fathering work gave them value. Money—gold calved no golden offspring, bills spawned no further bills as interest. Factories and machines produced nothing, until man's sweat and blood were poured out over them. Labor was the producer of everything; in justice, all should belong to labor. ”

“ Wherever capitalism appears, in pursuit of its mission of 106exploitation, there will Socialism, fertilized by misery, watered by tears, and vitalized by agitation be also found, unfurling its class-struggle banner and proclaiming its mission of emancipation. ”

“ The whole laboring class is agitated: it has its journals, organs, and representatives. To guarantee labor to the workingman, to balance production with sale, to harmonize industrial proprietors, it advocates to-day—as a sovereign remedy—one sole head, one national wardenship, one huge manufacturing company. For, sir, all this is included in the idea of national workshops. On this subject I wish to quote, as proof, the views of an illustrious economist, a brilliant mind, a progressive intellect, an enthusiastic soul, a true patriot, and yet an official defender of the right of property. ”

“ What are laborers in relation to each other? So many members of a large industrial society, to each of whom is assigned a certain portion of the general production, by the principle of the division of labor and functions. Suppose, first, that this society is composed of but three individuals,—a cattle-raiser, a tanner, and a shoemaker. The social industry, then, is that of shoemaking. If I should ask what ought to be each producer's share of the social product, the first schoolboy whom I should meet would answer, by a rule of commerce and association, that it should be one-third. ”

“ The means of production thus came into the hands of an ever decreasing number, while the actual producers, through the introduction of machinery, deprived of the opportunity to toil, and being at the same time disinherited of the bounties of nature, were consigned to pauperism, vagabondage—the so-called crime and prostitution—all these evils which you gentlemen would like to exorcise with your little prayer book. ”

“ Why is it that he working class are in relative misery compared with the enormous amount of wealth that is produced?
I have already given you the answer: the employer is only concerned, while engaging you, to carry through certain operations for the purpose of placing the results of your labour on the market for sale. You know full well, all of you, that when you go into the mill or the factory to produce goods, those goods are not taken by the employer for his own personal consumption. ”

“ My object is accomplished if I have succeeded in setting clearly before the reader the process of the evolution of industry—from slavery, or ownership of the laborer by the capitalist, to feudalism, or ownership by the capitalist of the land, with a lien on the laborer; from feudalism to individualism, or free competition, in an open market, of an almost wholly unorganized industry; from individualism to the wages system, or the organization of industry on oligarchic principles under captains of industry, responsible only to God and their own consciences ”

“ The means of production, that principal basis of human existence, is thereby taken out of the hands of a small number of exploiters and transferred into the hands of the working class and the Workers' and Peasants' Government. ”

“ This class owns the machinery of society, in great measure,—the ships, factories, shops, water-privileges, houses, and the like. This brings into their employment large masses of working men, with no capital but muscles or skill. The law leaves the employed at the employer's mercy. ”

“ Before capitalistic production, i.e., in the Middle Ages, the system of petty industry obtained generally, based upon the private property of the laborers in their means of production; in the country, the agriculture of the small peasant, freeman or serf; in the towns, the handicrafts organized in guilds. ”

“ Political doctrines, which hardly stirred the mind of a cottager, dividing his time between manufacturing and tilling a small plot of ground in open country, sounded loudly in the ears of an artisan, quickened by contact with machinery and constant intercourse with his fellows in the factory or in the street, cramped by living in a sunless court in a crowded town, earning a bare subsistence by exhausting labour, or thrown out of work by the introduction of a new machine or the bankruptcy of his employer. ”

“ We propose to own the commodities we produce ourselves and to exchange commodities containing a certain quantity of necessary social labor, for other commodities representing an equal quantity of necessary social labor.
You and I work for the boss because he owns the factory or mine or railroad or the mill. Ownership of the means of production and distribution (the factories, land, mines, mills—the machinery that produces things) makes masters of capitalists and wage-workers of you and me. ”

“ Little dreamed those day-laborers, as they broke ground for their rude mill, in that solitary wilderness, that the results of that day’s labor would give employment to thousands and tens of thousands of such implements as they then used; that the one spadeful of red dirt, at which they gazed so intently, at the bottom of which a few yellow bits of shining dust appeared, was soon to exert a mysterious, a profound influence upon the commerce, the welfare, the destinies of the whole human family. ”

“ All that men ever appropriate land for is to get out of it the natural materials on which they exercise their industry. Appropriation, therefore, precedes labor-production, both historically and logically. ”

“ Let him who owns and those who work, receive Their fair division of the profits reaped. The owner gives the land and the machines To work the raw material, yielding gain. Let this be calculated as his toil, And grain, proportionate to such, bestowed, While those, whose labour has produced the grain, Receive their fair share of the profits too. Thus all would have an interest in the work, 37 And feel they laboured not, nor toiled in vain. Strikes and disputes would fade like restless dreams, And Brotherhood would knit the hearts of men. ”

“ We see that now, as then, each laborer is endeavoring to obtain by his exertions the satisfaction of his own desires; we see that although the minute division of labor assigns to each producer the production of but a small part, or perhaps nothing at all, of the particular things he labors to get, yet, in aiding in the production of what other producers want, he is directing other labor to the production of the things he wants—in effect, producing them himself. ”

“ The second theory of property is the labor theory. But this theory likewise destroys property. That only is mine which I produce. The earth is mine only so long as I cultivate it. The moment another labors on my farm it becomes his property. Again, labor presupposes the instruments of labor, and where is one to obtain these in a system of private, personal property, provided one does not already possess them? The theory of labor demands the abolition of property, in order that every one may have free access to the soil and to the other instruments of labor. ”

“ For a time I felt that having brought about in my own mills a relation between capital and labor which I may go so far as to term ideal, and having published my book, my philosophy of an employer's life, I had contributed my utmost to the cause of industrial civilization. ”

“ And in the insatiable thirst of enjoyment, the ordinary revenues no longer sufficing, they were augmented; the cultivator, seeing his labors increase without compensation, lost all courage; the merchant, despoiled, was disgusted with industry; the multitude, condemned to perpetual poverty, restrained their labor to simple necessaries; and all productive industry vanished. ”

“ That not, as in former times, the individual works alone and for his own account, but dozens, hundreds and thousands of men work together in shops, in mines, on huge farms and lands, coöperating according to the most efficient division of labor, while the fruits of this cööperative labor are not reaped by the workers themselves, but are in a great measure appropriated by the owners of the means of production. ”

“ It was an industry that sought to provide homes for the people, and to dignify labor and life in the midst of surroundings that taxed every resource of action, and the ultimate verge of human daring; an industry that employed the plainest instruments—the axe to hew down the forest, and the plow to turn the furrow. ”

“ If, then, the proprietor, shielding himself behind his comfort and his rights, refuses to employ the laborer, how can the laborer live? He has ploughed an excellent field, and cannot sow it; he has built an elegant and commodious house, and cannot live in it; he has produced all, and can enjoy nothing.
Labor leads us to equality. ”

“ The proud edifice of modern industry itself, on whose account homes are turned into workshops, children into slaves, and mothers into slave-drivers, is undermined and degraded by this illegitimate competition, the most powerful of all factors in lowering wages, and preventing organization among regular factory hands. ”