Labour power

“ The new system was a system of closely aggregated wage-earners, producing goods for a common employer, who provided the machinery, the power, and the superintendence, and sold the product of their labour for his own profit. This feature of the Industrial Revolution was as important as its redistribution of industry. It meant a considerable loss of independence among the working class, and it meant the birth of an entirely new class, the employers of labour, whose wealth and importance were destined to rival and eventually to surpass that of the landed gentry. ”

“ The majority of American working men and women have as their aim the attainment of these standards: not ownership or control of business. The labour movement is a struggle for power to gain control of the “job” not the business adequate wages, short hours, security of employment, and sufficient responsibility to command respect and sustain interest in the work to be done. ”

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

“ Now, if we were to ask why on the whole the system has not been so fruitful of result in this direction we should find ourselves plunged at once into the deep waters of economic conditions, of the relations of employer and employed, of hours, of wages, of commercial competition, trade unions, and, in fact, should bring the whole Labour question about our ears. ”

“ We do not look upon the labour union as an ultimate conception of labour, but we believe that whatever progress has been made in the lot of the labourer has been due wholly to the organization of the wage-workers! ”

“ As I hinted before, in the new order of things all branches of labour will be organised in a similar way to the arrangements we see to-day in large factories, large estates, or institutions of the Government. Unnecessary work will be avoided, and the reward for work done will be greater. Labour will not be wasted in making luxuries for the idle, but will be usefully employed in making the necessaries of life for other workers. ”

“ When the reader comes to consider this,—which is the great industrial object lesson of modern times,—when he sees what the share is which Labour has appropriated so triumphantly, he will see how the conclusions we have here arrived at, with regard to the causes of production, afford a foundation for the hopes and claims of Labour, as broad and solid as that by which they support the rights of Ability. ”

“ The main substance of this immense problem of organising labour, and first of all of managing the working classes, will, it is very clear, have to be solved by those who stand practically in the middle of it, by those who themselves work and preside over work. ”

“ But law or custom may interfere to limit competition. If apprentice laws, or the regulations of corporate bodies, make the access to a particular employment slow, costly, or difficult, the wages of that employment may be kept much above their natural proportion to the wages of common labour. ”

“ Labour will be then truly employed to profit, not diverted by Bounties, Jealousies, or Legislative Interference, from its natural and beneficial course. This system will attain its real object, [52] consolidating the strength of the remaining parts of the Empire, by encouraging the communications of their market among themselves, with preference to every part against all strangers! ”

“ Stone; “but they would be sadly out of place here, and very ridiculous. All labour must be directed by the circumstances of the state of society in which it is employed; and all labour, so regulated, is equally respectable.” ”

“ This struggle about the legal restriction of the hours of labour raged the more fiercely since apart from frightened avarice, it told indeed upon the great contest between the blind rule of the supply and demand laws which form the political economy of the middle class, and social production controlled by social foresight, which forms the political economy of the working class. ”

“ Before considering the grounds of hope on this subject, a hope which many persons, no doubt, will be ready, without consideration, to pronounce chimerical, I will remark, that unless a satisfactory answer can be made to these two questions, the industrial system prevailing in this country, and regarded by many writers as the ne plus ultra of civilization—the dependence of the whole labouring class of the community on the wages of hired labour, is irrevocably condemned. ”

“ He believes that the next great political and social movement will be the emancipation of the wage-earner—the securing to the producer his fair share of the products of his labour. If that is so, it will be a big thing. ”

“ The other requisites for rendering labour attractive would, they think, be found in the execution of all labour by social groups, to any number of which the same individual might simultaneously belong, at his or her own choice: their grade in each being determined by the degree of service which they were found capable of rendering, as appreciated by the suffrages of their comrades. ”

“ Capital is that through which the Ability of one set of men acts on the muscles—that is to say, the Labour—of another set, whether by setting Labour to produce machinery, or by so organising various multitudes of labourers that each multitude becomes a single machine in itself, or by settling or devising the uses to which these machines shall be put. ”

“ That type of employer has never recognized that capital, [286] brains and manual labour fill separate and distinct rôles in industry. He looks upon himself as the all-dominant personality and Labour as his feudal and dependent hireling. ”

“ But the passing of such a measure as the above, is nevertheless a proof of the increasing demand for labour, and of the advance of regular industrial employment, which is always an important step in the progress of civilization. ”

“ The right of the State to regulate production supposes the duty of the State to interest itself in labour, and State control of the labour of society leads directly to State organisation of the labour of society. ”

“ Although these conditions were favorable at first, owing to the simple reason that the employers had to make them favorable in order to obtain a sufficient number of workers, they soon deteriorated when the supply of available labor power increased. ”

“ The growth of population, the increase and extension of exchanges, the discoveries of science, the march of invention, the spread of education, the improvement of government, and the amelioration of manners, considered as material forces, have all a direct tendency to increase the productive power of labor—not281 of some labor, but of all labor; not in some departments of industry, but in all departments of industry; for the law of the production of wealth in society is the law of “each for all, and all for each.” ”

“ Turning back to still earlier times, legislation—whatever its source or authority—must clearly be devoted to aims very different from modern aims in regulating labour, when it arose before the labourer, as a man dependent on an “employer” for the means of doing work, had appeared, and when migratory labour was almost unknown through the serfdom of part of the population and the special status secured in towns to the artisan. ”

“ The only power that the working class has is the power to produce wealth. The I. W. W. proposes to organize the workers to control the use of their labor so that they will be able to stop the production of wealth except upon terms dictated by the workers themselves. ”

“ This contrast appears most striking in the recent American efforts to achieve the elements of political control over unemployment, destitution, and conditions of labour, which have long been established as accepted factors in the working of our own economic system. ”

“ If a prudent regulation of population be not reconcilable with the system of hired labour, the system is a nuisance, and the grand object of economical statesmanship should be (by whatever arrangements of property, and alterations in the modes of applying industry) , to bring the labouring people under the influence of stronger and more obvious inducements to this kind of prudence, than the relation of workmen and employers can afford. ”

“ A society that will satisfy the needs of all, and which will know how to organize production to answer to this aim will also have to make a clean sweep of several prejudices concerning industry, and first of all the theory often preached by economists—The Division of Labour theory—which we are going to discuss in the next chapter. ”

“ With the extension of trade and the wider use of machinery the number and power of the adult employed workmen increased, and with their increase of power came a jealousy, on the one hand, toward the masters; on the other, toward the apprentices, who were regarded as cheapening labor when employed in too great numbers. The conflict which arose between employer and employed gradually merged into one between capital and labor. ”

“ The emancipation of the working class demands the transformation of the instruments of labour into the common property of society and the co-operative control of the total labour, with application of the product of labour to the common good, and just distribution of the same. ”

“ The workers, by the strength of their Trade Unions, may from time to time obtain improved conditions of employment, but until they obtain possession of the means of producing wealth, namely, the land, the mines, the railways, shipping, factories and workshops, they will remain dependent on a small section of the community providing them with employment. ”

“ We have sufficiently considered the difficulties which exist regarding Labour and Capital, two of the requisites of production, and we will now turn to another part of political economy, and inquire into the way in which Land, the third requisite, is supplied. ”

“ Whilst a system of measures concerted in such a manner as to diffuse among them a love of order and habits of regularity and industry, to enlarge the field of labour, and to render its terms more favourable to them, would have the effect to fill those pockets. ”

“ Connected as this development was with poor relief, one of its chief aims was to prevent future unemployment and vagrancy by training in habits and knowledge of industry, but not unavowed was another motive: “from children thus trained up to constant labour we may venture to hope the lowering of its price.” [5] The evils and excesses which lay enfolded within such a movement gave the first impulse to the new ventures in labour legislation which are specially the work of the 19th century. ”

“ If an increased quantity of the particular article is not required, and part of the labourers in consequence lose their employment, the capital which maintained and employed them is also set at liberty; and the general produce of the country is increased by some other application of their labour. ”

“ And thus when the division of labour is fairly inaugurated and, instead of each attempting to satisfy all of his wants by direct resort to nature, one fishes, another hunts, a third picks berries, a fourth gathers fruit, a fifth makes tools, a sixth builds huts, and a seventh prepares clothing - each one to the extent he exchanges the direct product of his own labour for the direct product of the labour of others is really applying his own labour to the production of the things he uses. ”

“ Then there is the apparently inevitable antagonism between labour and capital, between the employer and employed, which drives the worker to Social Democracy, as offering the prospect of his becoming his own master and enjoying the whole fruits of his labour. ”

“ State-help no less than self-help is needed for securing to the worker the full, undiminished result of his industry, that is, an existence worthy of a man.
The State alone, and only a free State will help the workers!
Let us sum up briefly, the substance of the foregoing:
The system of wages-labor meets the demands of Justice and Humanity as little as did the slavery and servitude of former times. Like slavery and servitude, wages-labor was once a step forward in civilization from which undeniable advantages have accrued to society. ”

“ In order to avoid the inconveniency of such situations, every prudent man in every period of society, after the first establishment of the divisions of labor, must naturally have endeavored to manage his affairs in such a manner as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one commodity or other, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their industry.
Labor is the one paramount force which develops the resources of the world. ”

“ The wages of the inferior classes of workmen, I have endeavoured to show in the first book are everywhere necessarily regulated by two different circumstances; the demand for labour, and the ordinary or average price of provisions. The demand for labour, according as it happens to be either increasing, stationary or declining; or to require an increasing, stationary, or declining population; regulates the subsistence of the labourer, and determines in what degree it shall be either liberal, moderate, or scanty. ”

“ That principle has particular application in the construction of labor legislation which is 'to a marked degree, the result of conflict and compromise between strong contending forces and deeply held views on the role of organized labor in the free economic life of the Nation and the appropriate balance to be struck between the uncontrolled power of management and labor to further their respective interests.' Local 1976, United Brotherhood of Carpenters, etc. ”

“ If the same forces that have been at work since the year 1850 continue to be at work, and if, although regulated, they are not checked, the labourers of this country will in another thirty years have nearly doubled the income which they enjoy at present. ”

“ Here, as everywhere else, labour is dependent not merely on supply and demand, but on desirable conditions of employment, and it is extraordinarily interesting to see our tentative efforts in the direction of Wages Boards, and the regulation of employment, reproduced in the form of the finished article in the Commonwealth, which had no great mass of vested interest and tradition to oppose to a generous system of Labour Legislation. ”