[184] "A French workman, on his return from San Francisco, writes as follows: 'I never could have believed that I was capable of working at the various occupations I was employed on in California. I was firmly convinced that I was fit for nothing but letter-press printing.... Once in the midst of this world of adventurers, who change their occupation as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did as the others. As mining did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for the town, where in succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, etc. In consequence of this finding out that I am fit for any sort of work, I feel less of a mollusk and more of a man.'" (A. Courbou, "De l'Enseignement Professional," 2eme ed. p. 50.) Cited by Karl Marx in "Capital", p. 493, edition Swan-Sonnenschein Co., London, 1896.
[185] Tolstoi's "The Significance of Science and Art."
[186] What may be made of a man under favorable circumstances is illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci, who was a distinguished painter, celebrated sculptor, favorite architect and engineer, excellent builder of fortifications, musician and improvisator. Benvenuto Cellini was a celebrated goldsmith, excellent molder, good sculptor, leading builder of fortifications, first-rate soldier and thorough musician. Abraham Lincoln was a splitter of rails, agriculturist, boatman, shop-assistant and lawyer, until he was placed in the Presidential chair of the United States. It may be said without exaggerating, most people are engaged in occupations that do not correspond with their faculties, simply because, not freedom of choice, but the force of necessity dictated their career. Many a bad professor would do good work as a shoemaker, and many a good shoemaker could be a good professor as well.
[187] It should always be kept in mind that production is then organized up to the highest point of technical perfection, and all the people are at work. It may thus happen that, under given circumstances, a three-hour day is rather longer, and not shorter, than necessary. Owen in his time—first quarter of the nineteenth century—considered two hours' work sufficient.
[188] "It is not necessary to go a round-about way in order to ascertain the amount of social labor crystallized in a given product. Daily experience shows directly the requisite average. Society can easily calculate how many hours are contained in a steam engine, in a hectoliter of last year's wheat, in a hundred square meters of cloth of a certain quality. Society will, therefore, never dream of re-expressing these units of work,—crystallized in the products and known to it directly and absolutely—by a merely relative, varying and insufficient measure, formerly used by it as a make-shift that it could not get along without; a measure, moreover, which itself is a third product, instead of by their natural, adequate and absolute measure—time.... Society will have to organize the plan of production according to the means of production, under which category labor-power especially belongs. The various utilities of the several articles of use, balanced with one another and with the amount of labor necessary for their production, will in the end determine the plan. People settle matters a good deal more simply without the intervention of the celebrated 'money value.'"—Fr. Engels' "Herr Eugene Duehring's Umwaelzung der Wissensehaft."
[189] Herr Eugene Richter is so astonished at the dropping away of money in Socialist society—abolished money will not be: with the abolition of the merchandise character from the products of labor, money drops away of itself—that he devotes to the subject a special chapter in his "Irrelehren." What is particularly hard for him to understand is the idea that it is immaterial whether the voucher for labor performance be a piece of paper, gold or tin. On this head he says: "With gold, the devil of the modern social order would re-enter the Social Democratic State"—that there could then be only a Socialist society, and not a Social Democratic State, Herr Richter stubbornly overlooks: he must, else a good portion of his polemic would fall through—"seeing that gold has an independent metal value, can be easily saved, and thus the possession of gold pieces would enable the heaping up of values wherewith to purchase escape from the obligation to work, and wherewith even to lay out money on interest."
Herr Richter must take his readers for great blockheads to dare dish up such trash to them on the subject of our gold. Herr Richter, who can not rid himself of the concept of capital, can, of course, not understand that where there is no capital, neither is there any merchandise, nor can there be any "money"; and where there is no "capital" and no "money", neither could there be any "interest." Herr Richter is nailed so fast to the concept of capital that he is unable to conceive a world without "capital." We should like to know how a member of a Socialist society could "save up" his gold certificates of labor, or even loan them out to others and thereby rake in interest, when all other members possess what that one is offering them and—on which he lives.
[190] "All people of average healthy build are born with almost equal intellectual powers, but education, laws and circumstances alter them relatively. The correctly understood interest of the individual is blended into one with the common or public interest."—Helvetius' "On Man and His Education." Helvetius is right with regard to the large majority of people; but that does not take away that the natural faculties of each are different for different occupations.
[191] "If, therefore, the choice were to be made between Communism with all its chances, and the present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices; if the institution of private property necessarily carried with it as a consequence, that the produce of labor should be apportioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labor—the largest portions to those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in a descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work grows harder and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labor cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the necessaries of life; if this or Communism, were the alternative, all the difficulties, great or small, of Communism would be but as dust in the balance."—John Stuart Mill, "Principles of Political Economy." Mill strove diligently to "reform" the bourgeois world, and to "bring it to reason." Of course, in vain. And so it came about that he, like all clear-sighted men, became a Socialist. He dared not, however, admit the fact in his life time, but ordered that, after his death, his auto-biography be published, containing his Socialist confession of faith. It happened to him as with Darwin, who cared not to be known in his life as an atheist. The bourgeoisie affects loyalty, religion and faith in authority because through the acceptance of these "virtues" by the masses its own rule is safeguarded; in its own sleeves, however, it laughs at them.
[192] "Scholarship is as often the hand-maid of ignorance as of progress."—Buckle's "History of Civilization in England."