Criminality and economic conditions

by Willem Adriaan Bonger

In order to provide for his needs man has always been obliged to work, and this work has always depended upon the physical environment and especially upon the means of production. It is not our province to enquire how or why the means of production were developed. It is enough to show that because of their development the products which man had at his disposal were multiplied. Now when these products become too abundant for one group of producers, a surplus results, which may be exchanged for products of a different sort of which the first group of producers are deprived by reason of their circumstances. These products, which are not destined for personal use but for exchange are called commodities. Consequently it is its social qualities and not its natural qualities that make a commodity of any given product. That an exchange may be made, then, two conditions must be satisfied:

First, There must have been a division of labor; for there would be no point in the exchange of identical products. The objects to be exchanged are those which have no immediate usefulness for the person who possesses them, while they are useful to those who do not possess them.

Second, The persons who are exchanging must have full power to [[248]]dispose of their products—in other words, they must be the possessors of the product which they wish to exchange.

In the beginning the relative quantities of the products exchanged for each other must have varied greatly. But in course of time the exchange of commodities took place in a ratio fixed for any one place and time; ten hatchets, for example, being equivalent to five bows, etc. These commodities must have a common quality which makes a comparison possible; and it is this common quality which we call their value. The first problem to be solved, then, is this: “What constitutes the value of commodities?”

To become a commodity anything must provide for some need of man; it must have the value of usefulness. Without this value a product can never be a commodity. However, it is impossible that the quality which different commodities have in common, and on the basis of which they are compared, should be their usefulness, that is to say, their natural qualities. For it is just because of their difference in usefulness [to their possessors] that goods are exchanged.

“As regards their use-value goods are primarily of different quality; as regards their exchange-value they can only be of different quantity, without including a particle of use-value.”[2]

Since usefulness does not count in exchange there is only one quality of the commodity that remains, that of being the product of labor. And as we have withdrawn the consideration of usefulness in estimating exchange-value, we must do the same for different kinds of work, so that the only quality which remains to a commodity is that of being the product of the labor of man in general. Any commodity, then, derives its value only from the circumstance that it represents a certain amount of labor of man in general.

The value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labor it represents, measured by the time required. Naturally by “work” is to be understood here not individual work, but social work; or as Marx says: “It is … the quantity of work socially necessary, or the time socially necessary for the production of a commodity, which determines its value.”[3]

In measure as the division of labor is developed, production for personal use diminishes, and the production of commodities increases, until it finally becomes the universal form of production, and one commodity (money) is developed as a universal equivalent. As a [[249]]consequence of the development of the production of merchandise, the purchase and sale of goods becomes a special profession. The merchant buys for a different reason from that which influences his customers. While the latter buy for consumption, the former buys to sell again and make a profit out of the transaction. The commodity which serves for this purpose is called capital.

Consequently capital comes into existence at the moment when the production of commodities has attained a certain degree of development. Private property, the basis of the production of commodities, begins from that point to show its capitalistic character, at first in an imperceptible manner, which nevertheless becomes more and more developed. The income of the artisan depends primarily upon his personal qualities; that of the capitalist—as such—depends in the first place upon the amount of his capital. The working power and capacity of an individual are limited, so that the quantity that he can produce is also limited; while money can be heaped up without limit. The larger the sum of money anyone uses as capital, the more the money can produce. But the reverse of the medal is not so pretty. Side by side with the possibility of accumulating a fortune there is that of becoming poor. This fact was not prominent at the entrance of capitalism into the field, when poverty was not yet a general phenomenon, but it increased more and more, so that at present we live in a society in which the greater part of the population is poor.