Suppose that one fine day the old fisherman should thus address his companion: “You have neither boat, nor nets, nor any instrument to fish with, except your hands, and you are likely to make but a poor business of it. You have no stock of provisions, and it is poor work to fish with an empty stomach. Come along with me—it is your interest as well as mine. It is yours, for I will give you a share of the fish which we take, and, whatever the quantity be, it will at least be greater than the produce of your isolated exertions. It is my interest also, for the additional quantity caught with your assistance will be greater than the share I will have to give you. In short, the union of your labour with my labour and capital, as compared with their isolated action, will produce a surplus, and it is the division of this surplus which explains how association may be of advantage to both of us.”
They proceed in this way in the first instance; but afterwards the young fisher will prefer to receive every day a fixed quantity of fish. His uncertain and fluctuating profits are thus converted into wages, without the advantages of association being destroyed, and, by stronger reason, without the association itself being dissolved.
And it is in such circumstances as these that the pretended philanthropy of the Socialists comes to declaim against the tyranny of boats and nets, against the situation, naturally less uncertain, of him who possesses them, and who has come to possess them just because he has constructed them in order to obviate this uncertainty! It is in such circumstances that they endeavour to persuade the destitute young fisherman that he is the victim of his voluntary arrangement with the old fisherman, and that he ought instantly to return to his state of isolation!
To assert that the future of the capitalist is less uncertain than [p379] that of the workman, is just to assert that the man who already possesses is in a better situation than the man who does not yet possess. It is so, and it must be so, for it is for this very reason that men aspire to possess.
The tendency, then, is for men to cease being workmen in receipt of wages in order to become capitalists. This progress is in conformity with human nature. What workman does not desire to have tools of his own, a stock of his own, a warehouse, a workshop, a field, a dwelling-house, of his own? What workman but aspires to become an employer? Who is not delighted to command after having long obeyed? Do the great laws of the economic world, does the natural play of the social organs, favour or oppose this tendency? This is the last question which we shall examine in connexion with the subject of wages.
Can its solution be attended with any doubt?
Let us revert once more to the necessary evolution of production: gratuitous utility substituting itself incessantly for onerous utility; human efforts constantly diminishing in relation to each result, and, when rendered disposable, embarking in new enterprises; every hour’s labour corresponding to an always increasing amount of enjoyment. How, from these premises, can we fail to deduce a progressive increase of useful efforts to be distributed, consequently a sustained amelioration of the labourer’s condition, consequently, also, an endless increase and progression of that amelioration?
For here the effect having become a cause, we see progress not only advance, but become accelerated by its advance; vires acquirere eundo. In point of fact, from century to century accumulation becomes more easy, as the remuneration of labour becomes more ample. Then accumulation increases capital, increases the demand for labour, and causes an elevation of wages. This rise of wages, in its turn, facilitates accumulation and the transformation of the paid labourer into a capitalist. Between the remuneration of labour and the accumulation of capital, then, there is a constant action and reaction, which is always favourable to the labouring class, always tending to relieve that class from the yoke of urgent necessity.
It may be said, perhaps, that I have brought together here all that can dazzle the hopes of the working classes, and that I have concealed all that could cause them discouragement. If there are tendencies towards equality, it may be said, there are also tendencies towards inequality. Why do you not analyze the whole, in order to explain the true situation of the labouring classes, and [p380] thus bring science into accord with the melancholy facts to which it seems to shut its eyes? You show us gratuitous utility substituted for onerous utility, the gifts of God falling more and more into the domain of community, and, by that very fact, human labour obtaining a continually increasing recompense. From this increase of remuneration you deduce an increased facility of accumulation, and from this facility of accumulation a new increase of remuneration, leading to new and still more abundant accumulations, and so on ad infinitum. It may be that this system is as logical as it is optimist; it may be that we are not in a situation to oppose to it a scientific refutation. But where are the facts which confirm it? Where do we find realized this emancipation from paid labour? Is it in the great centres of manufactures? Is it among the agricultural labourers? And if your theoretical predictions are not accomplished, is not this the reason, that alongside the economic laws which you invoke, there are other laws which act in an opposite direction, and of which you say nothing. For instance, why do you tell us nothing of that competition which takes place among workmen, and which forces them to accept of lower wages; of that urgent want of the necessaries of life which presses upon the labourer, and obliges him to submit to the conditions of the capitalist, so that, in fact, it is the most destitute, famished, isolated, and consequently the most clamant and exacting workman who fixes the rate of wages for all? And if, in spite of so many obstacles, the condition of our unfortunate fellow-citizens comes to be improved, why do you not show us that law of population which steps in with its fatal action, multiplying the multitude, stirring up competition, increasing the supply of labour, deciding the controversy in favour of the capitalist, and reducing the workman to receive, for twelve or sixteen hours’ labour, only what is indispensable (that, forsooth, is the consecrated phrase) to the maintenance of life?
If I have not touched upon all these phases of the question, the reason is, that it is scarcely possible to include everything within the limits of a single chapter. I have already explained the general law of Competition, and we have seen that that law is far from furnishing any class, especially the poorer class, with serious reasons for discouragement. I shall, by-and-by, explain the law of Population, which will be found, I hope, in its general effects, not more severe. It is not my fault if each great solution—such, for example, as the future of a whole class of men—cannot be educed from one isolated economic law, and consequently from [p381] one chapter of this work, but must be educed from the aggregate of these laws, or from the work taken as a whole.