[1] Author’s Note. For the purposes of life, what is wanted in an explanation is not definitions drawn from theory, but ideas that give a picture of a real live process. As used in this sense, “commodity” denotes something that plays an actual part in man’s life and experience. Any other concept of it either omits or adds to this, and so fails to tally exactly with what really and truly goes on in life. [↑]
[2] Author’s note. It is quite possible in life for a transaction not only to be interpreted unreally, but also to take place unreally. Money and labour are not interchangeable values, but only money and the products of labour. Accordingly, if I give money for labour, I am doing something that is unreal. I am making a sham transaction. For in reality I can only give money for the product of labour. [↑]
[3] Author’s Note. The “rights of the matter” becomes the axiomatic basis for all economic activity under this relation of labour to the “rights” system; and the associations will have to accept these as a given premise in economic life. What this does, however, is to make economic organisation dependent upon man, instead of man being dependent upon the system of economics. [↑]
III.
Capitalism and Social Ideas
(Capital and Human Labour)
To form an opinion as to what the course of action is in the social field, which the facts of the day are so loudly demanding, is only possible, if one is willing to be guided in one’s opinion by an insight which goes below the surface, to the fundamental forces of the social organism. The following introductory remarks are the outcome of an effort to arrive at such an insight. Nothing profitable can be done in the present day with social measures based on opinions that are drawn from a restricted sphere of observation. The facts that have grown out of the social movement reveal disturbances at the foundations of the social order, not merely surface ones. And to cope with these facts one needs an insight that also goes to the root of things.
Capital and Capitalism, as talked of to-day, indicates something in which the working-class portion of mankind look for the cause of their grievances. But to come to any profitable conclusion as to the part played by capital within the social processes, whether for good or ill, one must first be perfectly clear as to the way in which capital is produced and consumed, through the agency of men’s individual abilities, of the “rights” system, and of the forces of economic life. Human labour one talks of, as the thing that, together with capital and the nature-basis of industry, goes to the creation of economic values, and through which the worker becomes conscious of his social position. To arrive however at any conclusion, as to the proper way of working human labour into the whole social organism without injuring the worker’s sense of self-respect as a human being, one needs to keep clearly in sight the relation that human labour bears, on the one hand to individual ability and its development, and on the other to the common sense of right, the “rights-consciousness.”
At the present moment people are very justly asking: What is the most immediate step to be taken in order to satisfy the claims that the social movement has brought to the front? But there is no taking even the most immediate step to good purpose, without first knowing how what one is trying to do is related to the fundamental principles of a healthy social order. And once one knows this, then, in whatever place one may find oneself, or whatever place one may select to work in, one will discover the particular task that requires doing under the circumstances. The obstacle to acquiring the kind of insight implied here, lies in that element of human will-power, which during the slow course of years has crystallised into social institutions. Men have so grown into these institutions, that the institutions themselves form the standpoint from which they view them and consider, what to change and what to leave. Their thoughts follow the lead of the facts, instead of mastering them.