Criminality and economic conditions

by Willem Adriaan Bonger

In the Middle Ages the trades were developed in Europe; the division of labor increased; tools were perfected; and commerce was developed, chiefly as a consequence of the improvement of the means of communication. The maritime route to India was discovered as well as the American continent. Enormous sums of money, acquired by means of commerce and pillage, flowed into Europe. With the discovery of these countries the outlets for trade correspondingly increased. The trades, however, not being in a position to furnish the great quantity of commodities required, the merchants determined themselves to undertake the wholesale production of articles intended exclusively for sale.

There was no lack of money to procure the raw materials and the tools, to establish workshops and to hire workmen. The only difficulty to be overcome was that of procuring these last. The workman who has in his own possession the means of production will not sell his labor. To attain their end the capitalists had to seek for persons who, having no means of production, were obliged to sell their productive energy or die of hunger. [[250]]

For certain reasons it was possible for the needs of the capitalists to be satisfied. On account of the development of the market in the cities the demand for food, and for raw materials of every kind, such as wood, wool, etc., increased, and agricultural production for the purpose of sale increased, so that the peasants began to have money. This latter fact complicated the relation between them and the feudal lords. So long as the rent was paid in kind the lord demanded only as much as he could consume; but from the day that the rent began to be paid in money the landowner began to press the peasant more and more, since money can always be used, and no one ever has enough. From this fact arose so severe an exploitation that many peasants left the country to take refuge in the towns.

The second reason why a large number of workmen were obtainable was that the lords themselves began to produce commodities for city markets, especially wool and wood. This took fewer laborers than agriculture, but required more land, so that many peasants were driven from their farms and, like the others, went to swell the population of the cities.

Thus there was no further obstacle to wholesale production, and from then on raw materials were purchased, workshops established, and the labor of the proletariat procured. Human labor thus has become a commodity, corresponding exactly to definition: first, it has no use-value for the possessor if he has not the means of production, and, on the other hand, has such a value for the person possessing these means; second, the possessor of labor has the free disposition of it.

The contract is made; the proletariat on the one side furnishes the commodity—labor—and the capitalist on the other gives the equivalent of it. Now how much must be given for this commodity? In other words what is the value of the labor delivered? The value of a commodity is determined by the labor-time socially necessary for its production, in this case necessary for the proletarian and his family to live; for the workman being mortal, and capital having need of new forces, the wage must be sufficient to raise a new generation of workers. The standard of the workman’s needs is subject to variation according to time and place (the causes of which variation we need not examine here), but it is fixed for a certain country, time, and category of workers.

Let us suppose now that the process of production has a normal course, that is to say, that it comes out as the capitalist wishes. He has begun with a sum, A, and ends by possessing A + a. We must [[251]]now explain this surplus a, which, in the terminology of capitalistic production, is called surplus-value. The surplus obtained from the labor of slaves is easily explained. The owner leaves the slaves a part of the product of their own labor to live on. The rest is his. His surplus springs from the labor of others. The relation of the serf and his lord is, if possible, even clearer. The serf works part of the week for himself and on the remaining days for his master. The explanation of the surplus produced by capital employed at usury or in primitive commerce (the most ancient forms under which capital was employed) no longer offer any great difficulties. The usurer appropriated to himself the possessions of the borrower little by little and so ruined him completely. The primitive merchant made himself a surplus by selling dear something that he had bought at a trivial price, a transaction which involved no increase in value. Now it is just this increase in value that is to be explained upon the basis of the law that things of equal value are exchanged, and not, as in the cases cited above, upon the exceptions to the law.

If we represent the transaction of one who buys, not to make a profit, but to exchange something which has no use-value for him for something which has such a value (the simple circulation of commodities), by the formula C—M—C, in which C stands for commodities and M for money, we can represent the transaction of the capitalist by M—C—(M + m). In this formula m stands for the surplus-value accruing to the capitalist at the end of a successful operation. The latter formula is composed of the factors M—C, the purchase of the commodity, and C—(M + m), the sale. According to the law of the circulation of commodities the value of M ought to be equal to C, but C in turn must be equal to M + m, a thing which is possible only if C is a commodity which, while it is being consumed, produces a value greater than what it has. However, there is no value without labor; consequently the formula cited can harmonize with reality only if labor is itself a commodity. And, as we have seen above, it is such from the moment that the economic development has reached a certain point.

What is now the course of the production of the surplus-value? The capitalist has fitted up a factory, has procured tools and raw material, has hired labor, and the process of production commences. Suppose that the necessaries of life for the workman and his family may be produced by six hours of work socially necessary; by making him work, then, six hours the capitalist will have a product equal to that of the raw material used, increased by that which is given it by [[252]]the tools and by the labor which the workman has put upon it. This value, however, has been entirely paid out by the capitalist; he has no surplus left; the transaction has failed. But ordinarily the process succeeds in procuring profits for the capitalist, since in the contract between him and the laborer it is not stipulated that the latter shall work only the number of hours necessary to produce enough for his own needs. On the contrary the workman is compelled to labor as long as his strength will permit. The value produced by the workman after the time necessary for the production of the equivalent of his needs falls to the capitalist, and this it is which constitutes the surplus-value, the value derived from work not paid for.

The aim of the capitalist is to procure for himself as large a surplus-value as possible. He can attain his end at once by forcing the laborer to work as long a time as it is possible for him to work. From this springs the irreconcilable conflict between the interests of the proletariat and those of capital, the combat over the length of the working-day. The day has its natural limits (it is necessary that certain hours be left to the workman for food and rest), its legal limits (decreed too late by the state, driven on one side by the workers themselves, and on the other by the plain certainty that without this protection the working class would become enfeebled), and finally its limits fixed by the pressure of the labor unions.