A history of socialism

by Thomas Kirkup

This appropriation of surplus labour is a very old phenomenon in human society. In all the forms of society which depended on slave-labour, and under the feudal régime, the appropriation of the results of other men’s labour was open, undisguised, and compulsory. Under the capitalistic system it is disguised under the form of free contract. The effect is the same. For the workman who is unprovided with the instruments of labour, whose working power is useless without them, this compulsion is not less real because it is concealed under the forms of freedom. He must agree to this free contract or starve.

It is the surplus value thus obtained which the capitalist seeks to accumulate by all the methods available. These methods are described by Marx with great detail and elaboration through several hundred pages of his first volume. His account, supported at every step by long and copious citations from the best historical authorities and from the blue-books of the various parliamentary commissions, is a lurid and ghastly picture of the many abuses of English industrialism. It is the dark and gloomy reverse of the industrial glories of England. The fearful prolongation of the hours of labour, the merciless exploitation of women and of children from the age of infancy, the utter neglect of sanitary conditions—whatever could lessen the costs of production and swell the profits of the capitalist, though every law of man and nature were violated in the process; such are the historical facts which Marx emphasises and illustrates with an overwhelming force of evidence. They receive ample confirmation in the history of the English Factory Acts, imposed on greedy and unscrupulous capitalists after a severe struggle prolonged for half a century, and required to prevent the moral and physical ruin of the industrial population.

We must now consider the process of the development of capitalism rather more closely.[^[4]] Under the old system industry was carried on by the individual. There could be no doubt as to the ownership of the product, as he produced it by his own labour, with materials and tools that belonged to himself. Such was the normal method of production in those days.

It is very different in the existing system. The most conspicuous result of the capitalistic system is, that production is a social operation carried on by men organised and associated in factories; but the product is appropriated by individual capitalists: it is social production and capitalistic appropriation. Whereas the property of the preceding era rested on the individual’s own labour, property under the capitalistic system is the product of other men’s labour. This is the contradiction which runs through the entire history of capitalism. Here we have in germ all the antagonism and confusion of the present time. The incompatibility of social production and capitalistic appropriation must more and more declare itself as the supremacy of the system extends over the world.

The contradiction between social production and capitalistic appropriation naturally appears in the contrast between the human beings concerned in it. For the appropriators form the bourgeoisie, and the social workers constitute the proletariat, the two historic classes of the new era. Another conspicuous and important result is that, while we have this organisation in the factory, we have outside of it all the anarchy of competition. We have the capitalistic appropriators of the product of labour contending for the possession of the market, without systematic regard to the supply required by that market—each one filling the market only as dictated by his own interest, and trying to outdo his rivals by all the methods of adulteration, bribery, and intrigue; an economic war hurtful to the best interests of society. With the development of the capitalistic system machinery is more and more perfected, for to neglect improvement is to succumb in the struggle; the improved machinery renders labour superfluous, which is accordingly thrown idle and exposed to starvation; and this is entirely satisfactory to the capitalist class, whose interest it is to have a reserve army of labourers disposable for the times when industry is specially active, but cast out on the streets through the crash that must necessarily follow.

But as the technique improves the productive power of industry increases, and continually tends more and more to surpass the available needs of the market, wide as it is. This is all the more inevitable, because the consumption of the masses of the population is reduced to the minimum requisite merely to maintain them in life. It is another contradiction of the capitalistic system that on the one hand its inherent laws tend to restrict the market which on the other hand it is ready by all means fair and foul to extend. The consequence is, that the market tends to be overstocked even to absolute repletion; goods will not sell, and a commercial crisis is established, in which we have the remarkable phenomenon of widespread panic, misery, and starvation resulting from a superabundance of wealth—a “crise pléthorique,” as Fourier called it, a crisis due to a plethora of wealth.

These crises occur at periodic intervals, each one severer and more widespread than the preceding, until they now tend to become chronic and permanent, and the whole capitalistic world staggers under an atlantean weight of ill-distributed wealth. Thus the process goes on in obedience to its own inherent laws. Production is more and more concentrated in the hands of mammoth capitalists and colossal joint-stock companies, under which the proletariat are organised and drilled into vast industrial armies. But as crisis succeeds crisis, until panic, stagnation, and disorder are universal, it becomes clear that the bourgeoisie are no longer capable of controlling the industrial world. In fact, the productive forces rise in chronic rebellion against the forms imposed on them by capitalism.

The incompatibility between social production and anarchic distribution decidedly declares itself. A long course of hard experience has trained the modern democracy in the insight necessary for the appreciation of the conditions of its own existence. The social character of production is explicitly recognised. The proletariat seizes the political power, and through it at last takes complete control over the economic functions of society. It expropriates the private capitalist, and, appropriating the means of production, manages them in its own interest, which is the interest of society as a whole; society passes into the socialistic stage through a revolution determined by the natural laws of social evolution, and not by a merely arbitrary exercise of power. It is a result determined by the inherent laws of social evolution, independent of the will and purpose of individual men. All that the most powerful and clear-sighted intellect can do is to learn to divine the laws of the great movement of society, and to shorten and alleviate the birth-pangs of the new era. The efforts of reactionaries of every class to turn the wheel of history backwards are in vain. But an intelligent appreciation of its tendencies, and a willing co-operation with them, will make progress easier, smoother, and more rapid.

We need hardly return to the rôle which is played by surplus value in this vast historical process. The capitalist appropriates the product of labour because it contains surplus value. It is the part of the product that embodies surplus value and represents a clear gain which attracts him. Surplus value is the beginning, middle, and end of capitalism. It moves it alike in its origin and progress, decline and fall. It is the keynote of a great process of historic evolution continued for centuries; the secret of a vast development, which becomes more and more open as time goes on. And capitalism grows sick of the sustenance which formerly nourished it. It dies of over-repletion, of habitual excess in surplus value.

Let us now inquire how far the Marx school have thrown any light on the forms likely to be assumed by the new society after the downfall of capitalism. In his mature works as far as published Marx himself has said little to guide us. The clearest indication of his views is contained in the following passage:—‘Let us assume an association of free men, who work with common means of production and consciously put forth their many individual labour powers as a social labour power. The total product of the association is a social product. A part of this product serves again as means of production. It remains social property. But another part is as means of living consumed by the members of the association. It must therefore be distributed among them. The nature of this distribution will change according to the special nature of the organisation of production and the corresponding grade of historical development of the producers.’ And then he goes on to assume that the share of each producer in the means of living may be determined by his labour time. Labour time will at once serve as measure of the share of each producer in the common labour, and therefore also of his share in the portion of the common product which is devoted to consumption.[^[5]]