His theory of history is that it is a development, and is shaped at each period by the economic life of the people, by the manner in which goods are produced and distributed. He takes, as his starting-point, the fact that men must eat, drink, wear clothes, and find shelter from rain, snow, and cold. Art, religion, and science come after the satisfaction of these elementary wants. The production of wealth by slaves gave form to the history of the classical world, while that of the Middle Ages is dominated by serfdom and its accessories. The governing idea of the present age is capitalistic production—that is to say, concentration of large masses in factories, running a race with immense machines, and systematically robbed by their employers. When we take the view that history is a growth governed by the necessities of production, past ages do not seem so inhuman as they otherwise do. It has hitherto been necessary that the vast majority should toil incessantly, while only few devoted themselves to the pursuit of the higher goods. The processes of production were so primitive and imperfect that it was physically impossible for the many to enjoy leisure for cultivating their minds and bodies. Hence it was that the ancients regarded slavery as necessary and natural. Plato and Aristotle both considered it a law of nature, just the same as it has hitherto been supposed that private property in land and capital was a law of nature; whereas, as already shown by Rodbertus, they are all only institutions of positive and changeable law. Private property in the instruments of production can be abolished, as private property in human beings has been. This abolition could not, however, take place until society had made such advance in the art of producing goods that all requisites for human existence and progress could be produced without requiring the unceasing toil of the vast majority. That time has come. It is now easy to produce all the requirements of civilization and at the same time to leave leisure to each one to make the most of himself. Aristotle, in defending slavery, uttered words which sound almost like a prophecy. In his “Politics” (i. 4) he uses this language: “Every servant is an instrument more valuable than any other instrument. For if every instrument at command, or from foreknowledge of its master’s will, could accomplish its special work—if the shuttle thus should weave and the lyre play of itself—then neither would the architect want servants nor the master require slaves.” These remarks seem to contain a dim foreboding of the marvellous invention of machinery which has taken place in this age, and has substituted iron and steel for bone and muscle.
A feudal aristocracy was once required to protect and guide industry and agriculture. The growth of the bourgeoisie in the cities finally rendered feudalism an antiquated institution, and it had to make way for the third estate, under whose guidance wealth has increased most marvellously and laborers have been gathered together and organized. But the bourgeoisie has fulfilled its mission. It is now but a hinderance and an obstacle. The repeated crises and the continual concentration of property in the hands of a few mammoth millionaires prove conclusively that they are not equal to the task of leadership. The time has arrived when the proletariat, the fourth estate, must take the reins into its own hands. It is now to play the grand rôle in the history of the world. “With the continually decreasing number of the magnates of capitalism, who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of the changed form of production, there is an accompanying increase in the mass of misery, of oppression, of bondage, of degradation, of exploitation; but there also arises a revolt of an increasing class of laborers, who have been schooled, united, and disciplined by the mechanism of the capitalistic processes of production. The monopoly of capital becomes a shackle to the method of production, under and with which it has grown up. The concentration of the means of production and the association of laborers reach a point where they are incompatible with their capitalistic shell. The shell is broken. The death-knell of capitalistic private property sounds. The expropriateurs are expropriated.”[175] Thus dawns a new and better era in the history of human development.
The key to Marx’s economic doctrines is his theory of value, with an exposition of which “Das Kapital” opens. It is based on Ricardo and Rodbertus, but is developed and defended in an original manner. He begins by separating value in use from value in exchange. Value in use is utility, arising from the adaptation of an article to satisfy some human need. Air, water, sunshine, wheat, potatoes, gold, and diamonds are examples. It does not necessarily imply exchange value. Many goods are very useful but not exchangeable, because they are free to all. Such is the case, usually, with water. On the other hand, no good can have value in exchange unless it is useful. Men will not give something for that which satisfies no want or need. Both value in use and value in exchange are utilities, but, as they differ, there must be some element in the one which the other does not per se contain. We find what that is by analyzing the constituent elements of different goods which possess exchange value. How can we compare them? Only because they contain some common element. But what is there in common between a horse and a house? You cannot say that this stick is longer than that sugar is sweet. Yet you say this house is worth ten times as much as that horse. Materials are not compared, nor stability with swiftness, nor color with color. The common element is found alone in human labor. You compare labor with labor. It requires ten times the amount of average social labor (gesellschaftliche Durchschnittsarbeitskraft) to secure such a house as it does to put one in possession of such a horse. Labor-time is the measure which we apply to different commodities in order to compare them. We mean thereby the ordinary average labor which is required at a given time in a given society. The average man is taken as a basis, together with the average advantages of machinery and the arts. This is average social labor-time. Complicated labor is simply a multiple of simple labor. One man’s labor, which has required long and careful training, may count for twice as much as ordinary, simple labor; but the simple labor is the unit.
This distinction between value in use and value in exchange enables us to understand how capitalists exploit their laborers. They pay for labor its exchange value, which depends upon the cost of labor or the standard of life of the laborer, as we have already seen in our examination of Rodbertus’s system. What it takes to support a laborer’s family is the exchange value of all the labor which can be got out of that family.
Let us suppose that a laborer requires each day goods whose value is denoted by A, each week in addition thereto goods denoted by B, besides quarterly needs which are satisfied by goods whose value is C. Then his support for each day will require the value of
| 365 A + 52 B + 4 C[176] |
| 365. |
Now, if it requires six hours to produce these goods, the laborer is producing surplus value if he labors more than that time. This the capitalist requires him to do, as he has hired his entire labor power. Under these circumstances, the laborer who works twelve hours a day for his employer is paid for six hours’ work, while he is robbed of the product of the other six hours’ labor. The capitalist is able to do this because he possesses the means of production. The laborer would gladly work without recourse to the capitalist, but he has not the means, the instruments with which to produce. He must accede to the terms of the capitalist or starve. The capitalist goes on the market and finds there the commodity, labor, for which he pays its value in exchange, as for any other commodity. But value in use does not depend upon value in exchange. The value in use of labor to the capitalist is all that he can squeeze out of it. The capitalist pockets the surplus value, and it becomes capital, enabling him to continue and enlarge his process of exploitation.
Let the line,
a——b——c,
represent the labor of twelve hours, b dividing it into two equal parts; a——b is necessary labor; b——c is unpaid labor productive of surplus value. It is the capitalist’s interest to extend b——c as much as possible, as that governs his accumulations. Hence, the efforts of employers to increase the length of a day’s labor; hence, the efforts of employees to shorten a————c, as they thereby diminish the amount of unpaid labor, of whose value they are robbed.