The present system of producing wealth we define as the Capitalist system, and we do so because the button that sets all the machinery in motion is the investment of capital. Whenever a fresh company is about to commence operations a prospectus is issued asking for capital, and describing in glowing colours how profitable such an investment will be. It is true, as the recent columns of the papers show, many companies come to grief, but this is due to many things outside of the scope of the present article.
A society lives by the production of wealth of one kind or another, and as we look back through history we find that there have been certain definite and different forms of wealth production and that each form has brought into existence certain relationships between the people who have made up each Society.
At one time the bulk of the goods were produced by what were called chattel slaves, for example, in Ancient Rome. There was a privileged class who owned the land and tools and this class bought labourers to work for them in return for food, clothing and shelter. The chattel slave then was like a horse or other domestic animal.
In later times the bulk of the goods of society were produced by serfs or bond slaves. That is, people bound by custom, and paying tribute to a privileged class in the form of a certain number of days’ free labour each week—work for nothing.
But the growth of trading altered both these forms. In each of the above instances the goods produced were consumed mainly at home or in the local area. Only a tiny fraction of what was produced was sold and trade was looked upon with disfavour. But trading grew until it ultimately became, as it is to-day, practically the sole object of production. This has made a tremendous difference in the relationships of the groups within Society. The slave owner of old occupied a paternal position towards his slaves. The relationship was a personal one. The Feudal Lord likewise had a personal connection with his serfs and discharged certain duties in the local courts. In each of these cases privilege was based upon the ownership of land. It was territorial.
The coming of universal trading with capital as its main-spring destroyed the earlier systems based upon land with personal relations between employer and employed, and substituted a new system based upon the ownership of capital. The ownership of capital carries with it the ownership of the means of production, although the capitalist finally becomes merely the holder of titles to profits. The relation of the capitalists to their employees ceased to be personal long ago. In consequence the capitalist can go to Africa or the North Pole, but his capital still brings in dividends and he still remains the controller of his employees. This fact produces, at times, some curious situations. An instance of one was given in the columns of this periodical last month, where it was shown that money left to a woman who was insane still piled up dividends for her.
Wealth, in the economic sense, is food, clothes, houses, ships, and so on. This wealth is produced by the application of human energy, in one form or another, to material supplied by nature. For instance, for the building of a wooden hut trees are felled by workmen, transported by workmen, sawn up by workmen, and erected into a hut by workmen. In order that these workmen may fell, saw, transport and erect, other workmen must produce food, clothing, and so forth, so that the hut workers may live while doing their work. That is because to-day there is a division of labour and workers specialize in different industries. Under Feudalism this degree of specialization did not exist, for huts were made from the trees grown on the manor and the serfs on the manor produced enough food and other things to keep them selves while doing the hut-building. Now industries have grown up calling for specialization, and something else has occurred as well.
Under feudalism the worker used small tools, hand tools, which he owned himself, and in the case of the handicraftsman carried with him when he changed his place of living. When trading and the use of capital became general the small tool disappeared with the handworker, and the great factory and machine tool, served by machine minders, took his place. With the coming of the machine, goods were produced rapidly and in large quantities. The natural resources near at hand were not sufficient to feed the mouth of the huge machine, and the market close at hand was not sufficient to consume what was turned out. So there began to occur periods of time between the beginning and the end of the productive process and during this period the workers who had become specialists had to live. So it became necessary to provide ever larger and larger quantities of wealth to keep the workers while they worked and it was here that capital came in and, as it were, caught the worker by the throat, for the worker is without capital and depends upon wages to keep him from week to week.
Now let us see what was the source from which this capital flowed.
If we examine the present and the past we are struck by the fact that a number of people, the privileged or ruling class in each system, have been able to live without working. The conclusion is, therefore, forced upon us that at each period those who were engaged in production must have produced far more than would keep themselves, otherwise there would not have been enough to keep the idlers.
Now feudalism with its system of customary payments makes this as clear as daylight for the serf worked 3 or 4 days for himself—that is on his own plot of land raising enough for his keep—and gave three days’ work to the lord’s land to keep the lord and his retainers. The feudal worker was, therefore, exploited and robbed of nearly half of the product of his energies and he realized this fact so well that he used to dawdle and take tilings easy when working on the lord’s land. In fact this became such a crying evil, from the lords’ point of view, that it had a great influence upon the movement for substituting money payments for payments by service.
Now the worker is also exploited to-day, but his exploitation is cioaked by the complexity of the present system. Whereas in the past the payment of service to the employer was made directly and openly, now it is hidden by the system of paying wages.
Trading is the buying and selling of goods and originally was accomplished by means of barter—that is by exchanging one kind of goods directly for another. As the business of exchanging grew, it became necessary to have a certain fixed medium of exchange, whose value would be recognised by everyone and at the most distant trading points. Custom and its handincss finally made gold the universally recognised medium or money. Later still titles to quantities of gold, if sound enough, became as good as gold in normal times, and so the habit grew of accumulating a store of money to buy goods. These goods were then sold for a greater amount of money than they cost. The trader pocketed the difference and used his original store of money over and over again.
This money that was used is capital. From the purely trading side, capital gradually intruded into the productive side until we have to-day capital as the starting-point for every productive and trading enterprise—in fact, the whole process of production and distribution, in a multitude of cases, is accomplished by the one business organisation. Big trusts, like the Oil Trust, control the product from its origin as a natural product to its delivery as a finished article to the consumer.
In all the processes connected with production money enters as a paying medium, and except in the profit accounts of the companies there is nothing to show where the exploitation of the worker comes in. For while it is said that money talks, it gives no secrets away.
Consequently, when the capitalist pays wages for work done the matter is supposed to have ended and the worker is supposed to have received full value for his work. But what in fact has the worker received? What does his wage represent? A glance at tlie condition of workers in general will give the answer. The worker receives in wages, on the average, only what is necessary to keep him fit to continue his occupation and bring up a family to replace him. Sometimes he does not even receive that, and has to resort to charitable and other sources.
But what has the worker produced during the time he has been working? The capitalist will say that the worker is but a cog in the machinery and has only taken part in the work of a fractional portion of production. Very well then ! What does the working class as a whole produce? The total wealth of society. And what docs the working class receive back? Only a fraction of what they have produced. The rest goes to provide means for the riotous living of the privileged class. It goes to help tine ladies to ride in Rotten Row—to play tennis on the Riviera, to go yachting in the Tropics. It goes to provide fine ladies and gentlemen with the army of servants to answer their beck and call.
The workers produce wealth in such quantities to-day that it chokes society, and means have to be devised to limit production ; and this because the worker’s wage limits what he can buy back, and this wage is so far below the value of what has been produced that ihe capitalists, in spite of their wasteful methods of living, cannot consume the whole of the surplus. The capitalists, therefore, live out of the surplus value extracted from the exploited worker. The sooner the workers pull up the blinds and see this fact in the clear daylight the sooner will they make away with wage slavery, and the oppression to which it gives rise.
Gilmac
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