VI.
The preparation and training of the working-class (for their high functions) by the productive powers, the growing and inevitable development and crystallization of the collective tendencies of the latter, the increasing incompatibility between their essential character and their private ownership, all lead to a new economic regime in which they will be owned and controlled collectively just as they are operated collectively, in which they will be conducted by society and for society. And all the socialism of the socialists consists of wishing to perpetuate in a fully developed form the present social character of the material conditions of life.
I say socialism of the socialists because we have seen flourish in our day a peculiar socialism, the socialism of those good people who earnestly wish to remove the inconveniences and injustices of our present social state, but who also wish a little more earnestly to preserve the cause of these inconveniences, who wish at once to suppress or abolish the proletariat and to preserve the capitalist form of society. It is quite possible for socialism also to have its converts and even its backsliders; it asks its adherents, not whence they come, but to go whither it is going, or, at least, to permit it to proceed upon its road without attempting to turn it aside from it. As one of our adversaries declares, we can say in our turn: 'On one side are the socialists, on the other those who are not socialists,' and among the latter may be counted those who accept the name while rejecting the thing.
Apart from the socialization of the means of labor which have already taken on a collective form, there may be and there often is charlatanry, but there is no real possibility of emancipation, there is no socialism.
So long as the means of labor and labor shall not be united in the same hands, the means of labor will retain the character of capital, and capital will inevitably exploit the workingman and wring from him labor for which it will not pay him. The source of the troubles of the working-class is to be found in their expropriation from the means of labor; now, the harder they work on the established basis of expropriation, the more power they give the capitalist class to enrich themselves and to expropriate those who have not yet entered the inner circle of capitalism. On the basis of the present gigantic forms of the instruments of labor, the collective means of labor and labor itself can be united in the same hands, only by the transformation of the capitalist ownership of these means of labor into social ownership, only by the transformation of capitalist production into social production. The logical consequence of the material facts of the existing environment, this transformation, the socialization of the means of production having collective tendencies, is possible, and it appears as the only practical method of emancipating the laborers, of emancipating society as a whole.
Emancipated the laborers will be, since their lives will no longer be dependent upon the means of labor monopolized by others and they will be free to make their lives what they will. In fact, they will freely choose the kind of productive labor they prefer, and all kinds of work will, in accordance with the law of supply and demand, be reduced in varying proportions to definite quantities of ordinary labor. After once deducting from the product of the labor of each a portion which will take the place of the present taxes, the portion necessary to replace the means of labor consumed, to provide for the extension of the scale of production, for insurance against disastrous contingencies, such, for instance, as floods, lightning, tornadoes, etc., for the support of those incapable of labor, to meet generously the expenses of administration and of satisfying the common requirements of sanitation, education, etc., the producers of both sexes will distribute the balance among themselves, proportionally to the quantity of ordinary labor furnished by them severally. The right of each laborer will be equal, in the sense that for all, without distinction, the labor furnished will be the measure alike for all, and this equal right may possibly lead to an unequal distribution, according to the greater or smaller quantities of labor furnished. The standard of rights in force in an economic environment cannot be superior in quality to that environment, but it will go on increasing in perfection as the environment advances toward perfection, thus reducing, so far as material conditions shall permit, the inequalities of natural origin.
The important point is that, from the dawn of social production, there will be no more surplus-labor, no more classes, and, therefore, no more exploitation, as there inevitably is under capitalist production. Every adult able to work will receive, under one form or another, partly in articles for personal consumption, partly in social guarantees, in public services of every kind, the same quantity of labor that he shall give to society. If goods are rationed out, this rationing will not be accompanied by exploitation; as rationing can then be due only to a deficiency in personal or social production, and not to the spoliation which the wage-system implies, a system under which overproduction, far from being favorable to the satisfaction of the demand of the working-class for articles of consumption, results for them in loss of employment and starvation diet.
During the capitalist period, it suffices for socialism to establish the possibility of the emancipation of the working-class and to work for that emancipation. There is no occasion to waste time in working out and settling the details of the organization of the future society. Each epoch has its task. Let us not have the presumption to lay down rules for those who are to come after us, and let us be content with present duties. The point upon which socialism trains its guns at present, though recognizing the utility that it has had in the past, is the capital-form; but let us not forget that the substance beneath this form will be every whit preserved. When an office is taken away from an office-holder, the individual is left without a hair the less. In the same way, in taking from the means of production their function as capital, everything that functions to-day under that form will remain intact. Socialism then attacks the capital-form, the form only, and it attacks it only in so far as the economic phenomena authorize such an attack. Everything which constitutes the substance of capital will be preserved, the capital-form alone will disappear and along with it that power that it involves of exploiting the labor of others.
What will be the fate of the capitalists?
Capital appears to be a collective power or force, by its origin, since it springs from the accumulated surplus-labor of a collective body of laborers, by its functional activity since it also requires a collective body of laborers to enable it to enter upon its functions, and by its mode of ownership since, if it is private property, it tends more and more to be the private property, not of an individual, but of a collective body, a company or trust. To make public property of the means of production, which are capital when they are able to exploit the labor of others and which are capital only on that condition, is simply to generalize the collective or social character which they already have.
Is the holder of a share in a mining or railway company or any sort of stock-company justified in speaking of "his" property? Where is his property? In what does it consist? What can he show if someone asks to see it? A machine? A piece of real estate? No, simply one or several bits of paper which represent only an infinitesimal fraction of an undivided whole. Would this shareholder be any the less a property-owner, if this undivided whole should become an integrant portion of the national property? Would there be such a great difference between "his" property, as it now is, and his quota or share in the national property? Just as the capitalists understand well enough to-day how to avail themselves of the national forests, for instance, for fresh air, pleasure excursions afoot and awheel, recreation, etc., so, after the socialization of the material objects that make up what is at present capital, they would use this newly nationalized property as means of labor or production.
This, then, would be a true democratization[6] of property. The process, ordinarily called by this name, the dispersion of shares, stocks and bonds, is only the process—called legitimate—of extracting good hard cash from all pockets, even those most scantily supplied, centralizing it, monopolizing the real possession of it in exchange for a certificate of nominal ownership, making it breed or expand, and permitting to flow back in interest, dividends, etc., only tiny crumbs until the day comes when the poor investors cease to get even these microscopical returns. This pretended democratization of property results simply in the formation of a financial aristocracy creating scandalous fortunes out of the good dollars of the small investors, and if these dollars, when the paper accepted in their stead is no longer worth anything, are lost for their former possessors, they are not lost for everyone. (They have become the reward of "abstinence."—Translator.)
Let the stocks representing part-ownership in a company lose all value—this is an occurrence that the shareholders and bondholders of the Panama canal, for example, can tell you is not unknown in our bourgeois society—and the shareholder finds himself, in this instance, permitted to enjoy all the blessings of expropriation without any indemnifying compensation; sometimes even he has the delicate attention of an invitation from the Receiver or the Courts to pour some more money into the hole where his former savings disappeared. Now even in this case the owners of this sort of personal property do not make too much ado about the matter. Why should they complain any more bitterly on the day when there will be, as it were, only a substitution of one kind of stocks or shares for another, when they will all become stockholders and bondholders of the great society (the Co-operative Commonwealth), instead of being shareholders and bondholders in one or several little societies or companies?
By this transformation they will gain complete assurance against risk of loss—a real enough danger to-day when, after the actual control of property passes into the hands of financial magnates, the revenue of the nominal owners, the stockholders, etc., falls to zero or nearly zero, thus cutting off their means of existence or enjoyment. They will lose only one thing: the power of dominating the labor of others and of appropriating its fruits; while they will have the privilege of enjoying the common wealth and the advantages springing from its co-operative employment.
Healthy adults will take for their own use, provided they work, their share of the social products. If they are already accustomed to any kind of work, they will find no hardship in this obligation to perform useful labor; if they are not accustomed to it, they will acquire the habit and will find their health greatly improved thereby in every respect. If they are old and infirm they will be liberally provided for by society.
What they can reasonably expect and insist upon having is the sustenance of life (in a broad sense),[7] and this they will have, as you see, in any case. The socialization will not result in such a change in the distribution of wealth as is often caused by watering the stock of a company. It will simply extend to all, those who hold stocks at present included, those advantages which a minority alone enjoys to-day, and it will benefit all, but stockholders especially, by doing away with those risks which capitalist exploitation forces everyone to run.
Finally, socialism will rob no one. I would ask those who assert the contrary, what description then should be given to those transactions in the goods and property of the nobility, the clergy and above all of the communes, performed by our great radicals in the French Revolution, by those whose work has become a "compass" for our guidance. Just as soon as we cease simply substituting one privileged class for another, just as soon as we enable all without exception to enjoy the same advantages, no one will be robbed or deprived of anything. Simply, inequality in the enjoyment of privilege will have been abolished, another privileged class will have vanished from the stage. Yes, the capitalists will lose, along with their special privileges or rights over the means of production, that characteristic or quality that makes them capitalists; but, I repeat, they will have exactly the same rights as all others to the use and enjoyment of those means of production, from that time forth the inalienable property of society. With capital dethroned, the principles of the Republic will at last be applied with controlling power to the field of economics, just as they are to the field of politics, and political democracy will have ceased to be a farce, for it will have developed into its perfect flower, Industrial Democracy.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] This is not an English word, but I will take the liberty of borrowing it from the French.—Tr.
[7] "The world owes every man a living," is a common saying.