Socialism, Revolution and Internationalism

by Gabriel Pierre Deville

What is sold by him who has to labor in order to live, and who has not in his possession the means of labor, to the possessor of those means is simply labor in the potential state, that is the muscular or intellectual faculties that must be exerted in the production of useful things. In fact, on the one hand, before these faculties are brought into active exercise, labor does not exist and cannot be sold. Now, the contract is made between the buyer and the seller before any action takes place and has for its effective cause, so far as the seller is concerned, the fact that the seller is so situated that he can not by himself bring his capacity for labor into productive use. On the other hand, as soon as the action (labor) begins, as soon as labor manifests itself, it cannot be the property of the laborer, for it consists in nothing but the incorporation of a thing which the laborer has just alienated by sale—capacity to perform labor—with other things which are not his—the means of production.

To sum up, when the labor does not exist, the laborer can not sell that which he does not possess and which he has not the means of realizing; when the labor does exist, it can not be sold by the laborer to whom it does not belong. The only thing which the laborer can sell is his labor-power, a power distinct from its function, labor, just as the power of marching is distinct from a parade, just as any machine is distinct from its operations.

What is paid under the form of wages by the possessor of the means of labor, the purchaser of the labor-power to the possessor of that power, cannot, therefore, be, and is not, the price of the labor furnished, but is the price of the power made use of, a price that supply and demand cause to oscillate about and especially below its value determined, like the value of any other commodity, by the labor-time socially necessary for its production, or in other words, in this case by the sum which will normally enable the laborer to maintain and perpetuate his labor-power under the conditions necessary for the given kind and stage of production.

But, even when the laborer gets a value equal to the value of his power, he furnishes a value greater than that which he receives. The duration of labor required for a given wage, regularly exceeds the time necessarily occupied by the laborer in adding to the value of the means of production consumed, a value equal to that wage; and the labor thus furnished over and above that which represents the equivalent of what the laborer gets, constitutes surplus-labor. Surplus-labor then is unpaid labor.

And here let us be clearly understood. When we speak of unpaid labor, we are stating a simple fact, and do not at all intend to say that capitalists, in the existing state of things, are personally guilty of extracting from the laborers labor for which they do not pay them. We are not of the number of those who think that "the causes of the ills from which we suffer are to be found in men rather than institutions," as M. Glasson declared before the members of the Le Play School. We say exactly the contrary; for us the evil is due to institutions rather than to men and, in society as it is at present constituted, things cannot possibly take place in any other or different fashion.

On the side of the laborer, the thing sold, as I have proved, cannot be his labor. It is his labor-power. The sum paid cannot be the price of his labor. It is the price of his labor-power, a price which, in view of the number of applicants for work, can only very rarely be equal to its value; but, even in this case, he furnishes a greater value than he receives. If he does not, his remuneration is not, strictly speaking, wages, for the furnishing of surplus-labor by the worker is a condition sine qua non of wages. When his compensation is split up into wages and supplementary remuneration under the form of profit-sharing or under any other form, the workingman does not furnish less surplus-labor, less unpaid labor; quite the contrary, we may say, for it is clear that this supplementary remuneration, for the laborer, is a mere delusion, mere supplementary moon-shine. All that the workingman can hope to achieve, under, I repeat, the existing organization of society, is the curtailment of his surplus-labor, and that is the explanation and justification of the struggle for the reduction of the working-day, of the Eight Hours movement.

On the side of the capitalist, on account of the fierce war of competition with low prices as weapons which rages throughout the field of production, it is financial suicide for the employer to extract from his work-people less unpaid labor than his competitors do; and that is why it is necessary to strive to obtain the reduction of the day by legal enactment. I add that so long as the employer, so long as the capitalist keeps within the bounds of what may be called the normal conditions of exploitation, he cannot reasonably be held responsible for the economic structure which is so advantageous to him, but which the best of intentions on the part of individuals would be powerless to modify. On the other hand, if capitalists are personally powerless to ameliorate the state of affairs, it would be rash to rush to the conclusion that they are capitalists in the interest of the workers. We must avoid exaggeration in either direction.

Surplus-labor was not invented by the capitalists. Ever since human societies issued from the state of primitive communism, surplus-labor has always existed; and it is the method by which it is wrung from the immediate producers, which differentiates the different economic forms of society.

Before man was able to produce in excess of his needs, one portion of society could not live upon the fruits of the toil of another portion. How could a man work gratuitously for others when his entire time was barely sufficient to procure him his own necessary means of existence? When, in consequence of human progress, labor had acquired such a degree of productiveness that an individual was enabled to produce more than what was strictly necessary for his needs, it became possible for some to subsist upon the toil of others and slavery could be established.

That it was established by force is not doubtful; but it must be confessed that its establishment promoted human evolution. So long as the productiveness of labor, although sufficient to make surplus-labor possible, was not sufficient to render participation in directly useful labor compatible with other occupations or pursuits, the toilsome drudgery and exploitation of some was the necessary condition of the leisure of others, and, thereby, of the development of all. For, if none had had leisure, no progress could have been made in the sciences, the arts and all the branches of knowledge, the benefits of which we all enjoy in some degree. And the fact that the thinkers of antiquity and the greatest among them, Aristotle, excused slavery, is a proof that the mode of thought is determined by the exigencies of the economic organization of society. To reproach Aristotle, in particular, because he did not regard slavery and property as it is natural for us to regard them, is equivalent to reproaching him for not having applied the processes of our modern production to ancient industries.