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http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002370181
ARM AND HAMMER SERIES
Edited by Lucien Sanial
WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
In every historical epoch, the prevailing
mode of economic production and exchange,
and the social organization necessarily fol-
lowing from it, form the basis upon which
is built up, and from which alone can be
explained, the political and intellectual his-
tory of that epoch. — Karl Marx.
Wage-Labor and Capital
BY
KARL MARX
IN
Author of "Capital," "Poverty of Philosophy,"
"Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,"
"Value, Price, and Profit," etc.
WITH PREFACE BY
FREDERICK ENGELS
TRANSLATED BY
HARRIET E. LOTHROP, M.D.
/VOLS
NEW YORK
NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY
1902
Copyright, 1902
By NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY
X .JSk .V. vX
PUBLISHER'S NQjfe^^j^
In this volume are presented two of the earlier writ-
ings of Karl Marx, with a special " Introduction " to
each by Frederick Engels.
The first, entitled Wage-Labor and Capital, was trans-
lated for us by Dr. Harriet E. Lothrop, of Boston,
from the standard German edition prepared by Engels
in 1891. This is the only complete English edition of
it that has yet appeared, and its accuracy was doubly se-
cured by a critical comparison of its every sentence with
the German text, made at the request of the translator
by Herman Simpson, of New York, who also added foot-
notes wherever comment seemed needful. In the perform-
ance of their respective task, both kept in mind the all-
important consideration, that in the works of Marx, as
in all works, truly scientific, the exact expression is an
essential factor and should not, therefore, be sacrificed
to " literary style " in its transfer from one language to
another.
To those who are already acquainted with Marx's
later essay on Value, Price, and Profit, this much earlier
one on Wage-Labor and Capital will no doubt seem
somewhat familiar. Still more familiar will both appear
to the industrious reader of Capital. And for obvious
reasons. In both are already promulgated, briefly yet
comprehensively, the fundamental economic truths de-
4 PUBLISHERS' NOTE
veloped exhaustively, together with their many corol-
laries and sequences, in the magistral work by which
Marx is now better known than by any of his previous
writings. It will be observed, however, that each of
these two essays has its particular merits, and that both
may be perused with benefit, even by the advanced
student of Capital. For instance in Value, Price, and
Profit, which was written in 1865 — or only four years
before Capital appeared in print — the subject more
specially considered is the " law of value," which Marx
had by that time worked out to the utmost limit of per-
fection ; whereas in Wage-Labor and Capital, which was
written in the early part of 1849, the general proposi-
tions are rather formulated than demonstrated, but are
in greater number and variety, thus showing already the
powerful framework of a vast structure, fully planned
out, but requiring twenty years of patient labor for its
completion.
Of the discourse on Free Trade, which forms the sec-
ond part of the present volume, the history is given by
Engels in the " Introduction " that precedes it. The
excellent translation of it that is presented here was
first published some years ago by Lee and Shepard, of
Boston. It is the work of Florence Kelley, who not only
authorized us to use it, together with the introduction
that Engels had written at her own request, but, most
kindly also, revised our proofs.
New. York Labor News Company.
CONTENTS
FAGH
Publishers' Notb 3
Introduction by Frederick Engels 7
CHAPTER
I. Preliminary 19
II. What Are Wages? 22
III. By What is the Price of a Commodity Deter-
mined ? - -' 27
IV. By What are Wages Determined? - - - - 33
V. The Nature and Growth of Capital - - - 36
VI Relation of Wage-Labor to Capital - - - 39
VII. The General Law that Determines the Rise and
Fall of Wages and Profits 45
VIII. The Interests of Capital and Wage-Labor are
Diametrically Opposed — Effect of Growth
of Productive Capital on Wages - - - 49
IX. Effect of Capitalist Competition on the Capi-
talist Class, the Middle Class, and the
Working Class 54
INTRODUCTION
This pamphlet first appeared in the form of a series of
leading articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, begin-
ning April 4, 1849. The text is made up from lectures
delivered by Marx before the German Workingmen's
Club of Brussels in 1847. The series was never com-
pleted. The promise " to be continued," at the end of
the editorial in Number 269 of the newspaper, remained
unfulfilled in consequence of the precipitous events of
that time : the invasion of Hungary by the Russians, and
the uprisings in Dresden, Iserlohn, Elberfeld, the Palati-
nate, and in Baden, which led to the suppression of the
paper on the nineteenth of May, 1849. And among the
papers left by Marx no manuscript of any continuation of
these articles has been found.
Wage-Labor and Capital has appeared as an inde-
pendent publication in several editions, the last of which
was issued by the Swiss Cooperative Printing Associa-
tion, in Hottingen-Zurich, in 1884. Hitherto, the several
editions have contained the exact wording of the original
articles. But since at least ten thousand copies of the
present edition are to be circulated as a propaganda tract,
the question necessarily forced itself upon me, Would
Marx himself, under these circumstances, have approved
of an unaltered literal reproduction of the original?
Marx, in the forties, had not yet completed his criticism
of political economy. This was not done until toward
8
INTRODUCTION
the end of the fifties. Consequently, such of his writings
as were published before the first instalment of his Critique
of Political Economy was finished, deviate in some points
from those written after 1859, and contain expressions
and whole sentences which, viewed from the standpoint
of his later writings, appear inexact, and even incorrect.
Now, it goes without saying, that in ordinary edi-
tions, intended for the public in general, this earlier
standpoint, as a part of the intellectual development of
the author, has its piace; that the author, as well as the
public, has an indisputable right to an unaltered reprint
of these older writings. In such a case, I would not
have dreamed of changing a single word in it. But it is
otherwise when the edition is destined almost exclusively
for the purpose of propaganda. In such a case, Marx
himself would unquestionably have brought the old work,
dating from 1849, i nto harmony with his new point of
view, and I feel sure that I am acting in his spirit when I
insert in this edition the few changes and additions which
are necessary in order to attain this object in all essential
points. Therefore I say to the reader at once: this
pamphlet is not as Marx wrote it in 1849, t> ut approxi-
mately as Marx would have written it in 1891. More-
over, so many copies of the original text are in circula-
tion, that these will suffice until I can publish' it again
unaltered in a complete edition of Marx's works, to ap-
pear at some future time.
My alterations center about one point. According
to the original reading, the worker sells his labor for
wages, which he receives from the capitalist; according
to the present text, he sells his labor-power. And for this
change, I must render an explanation: to the workers,
in order that they may understand that we are not dealing
here with a quibble and word- juggling, but with one of
INTRODUCTION 9
the most important points in the whole range of political
economy; to the bourgeois, in order that they may con-
vince themselves how greatly the uneducated workers,
who can be easily made to grasp the most difficult
economic analyses, excel our supercilious " cultured "
folk, for whom such ticklish problems remain insoluble
their whole life long.
Classical political economy 1 borrowed from the indus-
trial practice the current notion of the manufacturer, that
he buys and pays for the labor of his employees. This
conception had been quite serviceable for the business
purposes of the manufacturer, his bookkeeping and price
calculation. But naively carried over into political
economy, it there produced truly wonderful errors and
confusions.
Political economy finds it an established fact that the
prices of all commodities, among them the price of the
commodity which it calls "labor," continually change;
that they rise and fall in consequence of the most diverse
circumstances, which often have no connection whatso-
ever with the production of the commodities themselves,
so that prices appear to be determined, as a rule, by pure
chance. As soon, therefore, as political economy stepped
forth as a science, it was one of its first tasks to search
for the law that hid itself behind this chance, which ap-
parently determined the prices of commodities, and which
in reality controlled this very chance. Among the prices
1 " By classical political economy I understand that economy which, since the time
of W. Petty, has investigated the real relations of production in bourgeois society, in
contradistinction to vulgar economy, which deals with appearances only, ruminates
without ceasing on the materials long since provided by scientific economy, and there
seeks plausible explanations of the most obtrusive phenomena for bourgeois daily use,
but for the rest confines itself to systematizing in a pedantic way, and proclaiming for
everlasting truths, trite ideas held by the self-complacent bourgeoisie with regard to
their own world, to them the best of all possible worlds." (Karl Marx, Capital, p. S3.)
Classical bourgeois economy closes with David Ricardo, its greatest representative. —
Translator,
io INTRODUCTION
of commodities, fluctuating and oscillating, now upward,
now downward, the fixed central point was searched for
around which these fluctuations and oscillations were
taking place. In short : starting from the prices of com-
modities, political economy sought for the value of com-
modities as the regulating law, by means of which all
price fluctuations could be explained, and to which they
could all be reduced in the last resort.
And so classical political economy found that the value
of a commodity was determined by the labor incorporated
in it and requisite to its production. With this explana-
tion it was satisfied. And we too may for the present
stop at this point. But to avoid misconceptions, I will
remind the reader that to-day this explanation has be-
come wholly inadequate. Marx was the first to investi-
gate thoroughly into the value-forming quality of labor
and to discover that not all labor which is apparently,
or even really, necessary to the production of a com-
modity, imparts under all circumstances to this com-
modity a magnitude of value corresponding to the quan-
tity of labor used up. If, therefore, we say to-day in
short, with economists like Ricardo, that the value of a
commodity is determined by the labor necessary to its
production, we always imply the reservations and restric-
tions made by Marx. Thus much for our present pur-
pose; further information can be found in Marx's Cri-
tique of Political Economy, which appeared in 1859, and
in the first volume of Capital.
But so soon as the economists applied this determina-
tion of value by labor to the commodity " labor," they
fell from one contradiction into another. How is the
value of " labor " determined ? By the necessary labor
embodied in it. But how much labor is embodied in the
labor of a laborer for a day, a week, a month, a year?
INTRODUCTION "
The labor of a day, a week, a month, a year. If labor is
the measure of all values, we can express the " value
of labor " only in labor. But we know absolutely noth-
ing about the value of an hour's labor, if all that we
know about it is that it is equal to one hour's labor. So
thereby we have not advanced one hair's breadth nearer
our goal ; we are constantly turning about in a circle.
Classical economy, therefore, essayed another turn. It
said : the value of a commodity is equal to its cost of pro-
duction. But what is the cost of production of " labor " ?
In order to answer this question, the economists are
forced to strain logic just a little. Instead of investi-
gating the cost of production of labor itself, which un-
fortunately cannot be ascertained, they now investigate
the cost of production of the laborer. And this latter
can be ascertained. It changes according to time and cir-
cumstances, but for a given condition of society, in a
given locality, and in a given branch of production, it,
too, is given, at least within quite narrow limits. We live
to-day under the regime of capitalist production, under
which a large and steadily growing class of the popula-
tion can live only on the condition that it work for the
owners of the means of production — tools, machines, raw
materials, and means of subsistence — in return for wages.
On the basis of this mode of production, the laborer's
cost of production consists of the sum of the means of
subsistence (or their price in money) which on the aver-
age are requisite to enable him to work, to maintain in
him this capacity for work, and to replace him at his de-
parture, by reason of age, sickness, or death, with an-
other laborer — that is to say, to propagate the working
class in required numbers.
Let us assume that the money-price of these means
of subsistence averages 3 dollars a day. Our laborer
12 INTRODUCTION
gets therefore a daily wage of 3 dollars from his em-
ployer. For this, the capitalist lets him work, say twelve
hours a day. Our capitalist, moreover, calculates some-
what in the following fashion : Let us assume that our
laborer (a machinist) has to make a part of a machine
which he finishes in one day. The raw material (iron
and brass in the necessary prepared form) costs 20
dollars. The consumption of coal by the steam-engine,
the wear and tear of this engine itself, of the turning-
lathe, and of the other tools with which our laborer
works, represent for one day and one laborer a value of
1 dollar. The wages for one day are, according to our
assumption, 3 dollars. This makes a total of 24 dollars for
our piece of a machine.
But the capitalist calculates that on an average he will
receive for it a price of 27 dollars from his customers,
or 3 dollars over and above his outlay.
Whence do the 3 dollars pocketed by the capitalist
come? According to the assertion of classical political
economy, commodities are in the long run sold at their
values, that is, they are sold at prices which correspond
to the necessary quantities of labor contained in them.
The average price of our part of a machine — 27 dollars
— would therefore equal its value, i. e., equal the amount
of labor embodied in it. But of these 27 dollars, 21
dollars were values already existing before the machin-
ist began to work; 20 dollars were contained in the
raw material, 1 dollar in the fuel consumed during the
work and in the machines and tools used in the process
and reduced in their efficiency to the value of this
amount. There remain 6 dollars, which have been
added to the value of the raw material. But according
to the supposition of our economists themselves, these 6
dollars can arise only from the labor added to the raw
INTRODUCTION 13
material by the laborer. His twelve hours' labor has
created, according to this, a new value of 6 dollars.
Therefore, the value of his twelve hours' labor would be
equivalent to 6 dollars. So we have at last discovered
what the " value of labor " is.
" Hold on there ! " cries our machinist. " Six dollars ?
But I have received only 3 dollars! My capitalist
swears high and dry that the value of my twelve hours'
labor is no more than 3 dollars, and if I were to demand
six, he'd laugh at me. What kind of a story is that ? "
If before this we got with our value of labor into a
vicious circle, we now surely have driven straight into
an insoluble contradiction. We searched for the value
of labor, and we found more than we can use. For the
laborer the value of the twelve hours' labor is 3 dollars ;
for the capitalist it is 6 dollars, of which he pays the
workingman 3 dollars as wages, and pockets the remaining
3 dollars himself. According to this, labor has not one,
but two values, and, moreover, two very different values !
As soon as we reduce the values, now expressed in
money, to labor-time, the contradiction becomes even
more absurd. By the twelve hours' labor a new value
of 6 dollars is created. Therefore in six hours the new
value created equals 3 dollars — the amount which the
laborer receives for twelve hours' labor. For twelve
hours' labor the workingman receives, as an equivalent,
the product of six hours' labor. We are thus forced to
one of two conclusions : either labor has two values, one
of which is twice as large as the other, or twelve equals
six! In both cases we get pure absurdities. Turn and
twist as we may, we will not get out of this contradiction
as long as we speak of the buying and selling of " labor "
and of the " value of labor." And just so it happened to
the political economists. The last offshoot of classical
14 INTRODUCTION
political economy — the Ricardian school — was largely
wrecked on the insolubility of this contradiction. Classic
political economy had run itself into a blind alley. The
man who discovered the way out of this blind alley was
Karl Marx.
What the economists had considered as the cost of pro-
duction of " labor " was really the cost of production,
not of " labor," but of the living laborer himself. And
what this laborer sold to the capitalist was not his labor.
" So soon as his labor really begins," says Marx, " it
ceases to belong to him, and therefore can no longer be
sold by him." At the most, he could sell his future labor,
i. e., assume the obligation of executing a certain piece of
work at a certain time. But in this way he does not sell
labor (which would first have to be performed), but for
a stipulated payment he places his labor-power at the
disposal of the capitalist for a certain time (in case of
time-wages), or for the. performance of a certain task
(in case of piece-wages). He hires out or sells his
■ labor-power. But this labor-power has grown up with
his person and is inseparable from it. Its cost of pro-
duction therefore coincides with his own cost of produc-
tion ; what the economists called the cost of production of
labor is really the cost of production of the laborer, and
therewith of his labor-power. And thus we can also go
back from the cost of production of labor-power to the
value of labor-power, and determine the quantity of social
labor that is required for the production of a labor-power
of a given quality, as Marx has done in the chapter on
the " Buying and Selling of Labor-Power." 1
Now what takes place after the worker has sold his
labor-power, i. e., after he has placed his labor-power at
the disposal of the capitalist for stipulated wages —
1 Capital, vol. I, chapter vi.
INTRODUCTION 15
whether time-wages or piece- wages ? The capitalist takes
the laborer into his workshop or factory, where all the
articles required for the work can be found — raw mate-
rials, auxiliary materials (coal, dyestuffs, etc.), tools and
machines. Here the worker begins to toil. His daily
wages are, as above, 3 dollars, and it makes no differ-
ence whether he earns them as day-wages or piece-wages.
We again assume that in twelve hours the worker adds
by his labor a new value of 6 dollars to the value of
the raw materials consumed, which new value the cap-
italist realizes by the sale of the finished piece of work.
Out of this new value he pays the worker his 3 dollars,
and the remaining 3 dollars he keeps himself. If, now,
the laborer creates in twelve hours a value of 6 dollars,
in six hours he creates a value of 3 dollars. Conse-
quently, after working six hours for the capitalist the
laborer has returned to him the equivalent of the 3 dol-
lars received as wages. After six hours' work both are
quits, neither one owing a penny to the other.
" Hold on there ! " now cries out the capitalist. " I
have hired the laborer for a whole day, for twelve hours.
But six hours are only half a day. So work along lively
there until the other six hours are at an end — only then
will we be even." And, in fact, the laborer has to sub-
mit to the conditions of the contract upon which he en-
tered of " his own free will," and according to which he
bound himself to work twelve whole hours for a product
of labor which costs only six hours' labor.
Similarly with piece-wages. Let us suppose that in
twelve hours our worker makes twelve commodities.
Each of these costs 2 dollars in raw material and wear
and tear, and is sold for 2.y 2 dollars. On our former
assumption, the capitalist gives the laborer one-fourth of
a dollar for each piece, which makes a total of 3 dol-
16 INTRODUCTION
lars for the twelve pieces. To earn this, the worker re-
quires twelve hours. The capitalist receives 30 dollars
for the twelve pieces; deducting 24 dollars for raw ma-
terial and wear and tear, there remain 6 dollars, of
which he pays 3 dollars in wages and pockets the re-
maining 3. Just as before ! Here also the worker labors
six hours for himself, i. e., to replace his wages (half an
hour in each of the twelve hours), and six hours for the
capitalist.
The rock upon which the best economists were stranded
as long as they started out from the value of labor, van-
ishes as soon as we make our starting-point the value of
\a!aor-power. Labor-power is, in our present-day capi-
talist society, a commodity like every other commodity,
but yet a very peculiar commodity. It has, namely, the
peculiarity of being a value-creating force, the source of
value, and, moreover, when properly treated, the source
of more value than it possesses itself. In the present state
of production, human labor-power not only produces in a
day a greater value than it itself possesses and costs;
but with each new scientific discovery, with each new
technical invention, there also rises the surplus of its
daily production over its daily cost, while as a consequence
there diminishes that part of the working day in which the
laborer produces the equivalent of his day's wages, and, on
the other hand, lengthens that part of the working day in
which he must present labor gratis to the capitalist.
And this is the economic constitution of our entire
modern society: the working class alone produces all
values. For value is only another expression for labor,
that expression, namely, by which is designated, in our
capitalist society of to-day, the amount of socially neces-
sary labor embodied in a particular commodity. But these
values produced by the workers do not belong to the
INTRODUCTION 17
workers. They belong to the owners of the raw mate-
rials, machines, tools, and money, which enable them to
buy the labor-power of the working class. Hence, the
working class gets back only a part of the entire mass
of products produced by it. And as we have just seen,
the other portion, which the capitalist class retains, and
which it has to share, at most, only with the landlord
class, is increasing with every new discovery and inven-
tion, while the share which falls to the working class (per
capita) rises but little and very slowly, or not at all, and
under certain conditions it may even fall.
But these discoveries and inventions which supplant one
another with ever-increasing speed, this productiveness
of human labor which increases from day to day to un-
heard-of proportions, at last gives rise to a conflict, in
which present capitalistic economy must go to ruin. On
the one hand, immeasurable wealth and a superfluity of
products with which the buyers cannot cope. On the
other hand, the great mass of society proletarized, trans-
formed into wage-laborers, and thereby disabled from ap-
propriating to themselves that superfluity of products.
The splitting up of society into a small class, immoder-
ately rich, and a large class of wage-laborers devoid of
all property, brings it about that this society smothers in
its own superfluity, while the great majority of its mem-
bers are scarcely, or not at all, protected from extreme
want. This condition becomes every day more absurd
and more unnecessary. It must be got rid of; it can be
got rid of. A new social order is possible, in which the
class differences of to-day will have disappeared, and in
which — perhaps after a short transition period, which,
though somewhat deficient in other respects, will in any
case be very useful morally — there will be the means of
life, of the enjoyment of life, and of the development and
i8 INTRODUCTION
activity of all bodily and mental faculties, through the
systematic use and further development of the enormous
productive powers of society, which exists with us even
now, with equal obligation upon all to work. And that
the workers are growing ever more determined to achieve
this new social order will be proven on both sides of the
ocean on this dawning May Day, and on Sunday, the third
of May.
Frederick Engels.
London, April 30, 1891.
WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
CHAPTER I
PRELIMINARY
From various quarters we have been reproached for
neglecting to portray the economic conditions which form
the material basis of the present struggles between classes
and nations. With set purpose we have hitherto touched
upon these conditions only when they forced themselves
upon the surface of the political conflicts.
It was necessary, beyond everything else, to follow the
development of the class struggle in the history of our
own day, and to prove empirically, by the actual and
daily new-created historical material, that with the sub-
jugation of the working class, accomplished in the days
of February and March, the opponents of that class — the
bourgeois republicans in France, and the bourgeois and
peasant classes, who were fighting feudal absolutism
throughout the whole continent of Europe — were simul-
taneously conquered ; that the victory of the " moderate re-
public " in France sounded, at the same time, the fall of the
nations which had responded to the February revolution
with heroic wars of independence; and finally, that by
the victory over the revolutionary workingmen, Europe
fell back into its old double slavery, into the English-
Russian slavery. The June conflict in Paris, the fall of
Vienna, the tragi-comedy in Berlin in November, 1848,
2° WAGE LABOR AND CAPITAL
the desperate efforts of Poland, Italy, and Hungary, the
starvation of Ireland into submission — these were the
chief events in which the European class struggle between
bourgeoisie and working class was summed up, and from
which we proved that every revolutionary uprising, how-
ever remote from the class struggle its object might ap-
pear, must of necessity fail until the revolutionary work-
ing class will have conquered, that every social reform
must remain a Utopia until the proletarian revolution and
the feudalistic counter-revolution will have been pitted
against each other in a world-wide war. In our presenta-
tion, as in reality, Belgium and Switzerland were tragi-
comic caricaturish genre pictures in the great historic
tableau, the one the model State of the bourgeois mon-
archy, the other the model State of the bourgeois republic ;
both of them States that flatter themselves to be just as
free from the class struggle as from the European revo-
lution. 1
But now, after our readers have seen the class struggle
of the year 1848 develop into colossal political propor-
tions, -ir—js time to examine m pre cl osely the economic
£onditions themselves .upon which 1?. f ounded th ^^xjsj 1
enceoTTSie capitalist-class,,aiid s , its class rule, as well
as the slavery of the workers.
We shall present in three great divisions :
I. The relat ion o f wage -labor to capital, the slavery of
the worker, the sway of the capitalist'.
II. 'TWe'iwvtfal^Te^Tmn^f^TiFlmddle classes and the
so-called commons 2 under the present system.
1 It must be remembered that this was written over fifty years ago. To-day, the
class struggle in Switzerland, and especially in Belgium, has reached that degree of
development where it compels recognition from even the most superficial observers of
political and industrial life. — Translator.
2 Peculiar to Europe, and originating in the rank of the freeman or burgher of
feudal times j citoyen, common, and Burger are equivalent terms. — Translator,
PRELIMINARY 21
III. The commercial subjugation and exploitation of
the bourgeois classes of the various European nations by
the despot of the world market — England.*
We shall seek to portray this as simply and popularly
as possible, and shall not presuppose a knowledge of even
the most elementary notions of political economy. We
wish to be understood by the workers. And, moreover,
there prevails in Germany the most remarkable ignorance
and confusion of ideas in regard to the simplest economic
relations, from the patented defenders of existing con-
ditions, down to the socialistic wonder-workers and the
unrecognized political geniuses, in which divided Ger-
many is even richer than in duodecimo princelings. We
therefore proceed first to the consideration of the first
problem.
1 As stated by Engels in the Introduction, the series of articles on Wage-Labor and
Capital remained incomplete ; the pamphlet is confined almost exclusively to a con-
sideration of the first "great division": the relation of wage-labor to capital.—
Translator.
CHAPTER II
[WHAT ARE WAGES?
If several workmen were to be asked: "How much
wages do you get? " one would reply, " I get a dollar a
day from my employer " ; another, " I get two dollars a
day," and so on. According to the different branches of
industry in which they are employed, they would mention
different sums of money that they receive from their
respective employers for the completion of a certain task ;
for example, for weaving a yard of linen, or for setting
a page of type. Despite the variety of their statements,
they would all agree upon one point : that wages are the
amount of money which the capitalist pays for a cer-
tain period of work or for a certain amount of work.
Consequently it appears that the capitalist buys their
labor with money, and that for money they sell him their
labor. But this is merely an illusion. What they ac-
tually sell to the capitalist for money is their labor-power.
This labor-power the capitalist buys for a day, a week,
a month, etc. And after he has bought it, he uses it up
by letting the worker labor during the stipulated time.
With the same amount of money with which the capital-
ist has bought their labor-power, for example, with two
dollars, he could have bought a certain amount of sugar
or of any other commodity. The two dollars with which
he bought twenty pounds of sugar is the price of the
twenty pounds of sugar. The two dollars. with which
he bought twelve hours' use of the labor-power, is the
price of twelve hours' labor. Labor-power, then, is a
WHAT ARE WAGES? 23
commodity, no more, no less so than is the sugar. The
first is measured by the clock, the other by the scales.
Their commodity, labor-power, the workers exchange
for the commodity of the capitalist, for money, and, more-
over, this exchange takes place at a certain ratio. So much
money for so long a use of labor-power. For twelve hours'
weaving, two dollars. And these two dollars, do they
not represent all the other commodities which I can buy
for two dollars ? Therefore, actually, the worker has ex-
changed his commodity, labor-power, for commodities
of all kinds, and moreover at a certain ratio. By giving
him two dollars, the capitalist has given him so much
meat, so much clothing, so much wood, light, etc., in ex-
change for his day's work. The two dollars therefore
expresses the relation in which labor-power is exchanged
for other commodities, the exchange value of labor-
power. The exchange value of a commodity estimated in
money is called its price. Wages therefore are only a
special name for the price of labor-power, and are usually
called the price of work; it is the special name for the
price of this peculiar commodity, which has no other re-
pository than human flesh and blood.
Let us take any worker, for example, a weaver. The
capitalist supplies him with the loom and the yarn. The
weaver applies himself to work, and the yarn is turned
into cloth. The capitalist takes possession of the cloth
and sells it for twenty dollars, for example. Now are
the wages of the weaver a share of the cloth, of the twenty
dollars, of the product of his work? By no means.
Long before the cloth is sold, perhaps long before it is
fully woven, the weaver has received his wages. The
capitalist, then, does not pay his wages out of the money
which he will obtain from the cloth, but out of money
already on hand. Just as little as loom and yarn are the
24 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
product of the weaver to whom they are supplied by the
employer, just so little are the commodities which he re-
ceives in exchange for his commodity — labor-power —
his product. It is possible that the employer found no pur-
chasers at all for his cloth. It is possible that he did not
get even the amount of the wages by its sale. It is pos-
sible that he sells it very profitably in proportion to the
weaver's wages. But all that does not concern the
weaver. With a part of his existing wealth, of his cap-
ital, the capitalist buys the labor-power of the weaver in
exactly the same manner as, with another part of his
wealth, he has bought the raw material — the yarn — and
the instrument of work — the loom. After he has made
these purchases, and among them belongs the labor-power
necessary to the production of the cloth, he produces only
zvith raw materials and instruments of labor belonging
to him. For our good weaver, too, is one of the instru-
ments of labor, and being in this respect on a par with
the loom, he has no more share in the product (the cloth),
or in the price of the product, than the loom itself has.
Wages, therefore, are not a share of the worker in the
commodities produced by himself. Wages are that part
of already existing commodities with which the capital-
ist buys a certain amount of productive labor-power.
Consequently, labor-power is a commodity which its
possessor, the wage-worker, sells to the capitalist. Why
does he sell it? In order to live.
But the putting of labor-power into action, i. e., the
work, is the active expression of the laborer's own life.
And this life activity he sells to another person in order
to secure the necessary means of life. His life-activity,
therefore, is but a means of securing his own existence.
He works that he may keep alive. He does not count
the labor itself as a part of his life ; it is rather a sacri-
WHAT ARE WAGES? 2 5
fice of his life. It is a commodity that he has auctioned
off to another. The product of his activity, therefore,
is not the aim of his activity. . What he produces for him-
self is not the silk that he weaves, not the gold that he
draws up the mining shaft, not the palace that he builds.
What he produces for himself is the wages, and silk, gold,
and palace are resolved for him into a certain quantity
of necessaries of life, perhaps into a cotton jacket, into
copper coins, and into a basement dwelling. And the
laborer who for twelve hours long, weaves, spins, bores,
turns, builds, shovels, breaks stone, carries hods, and so
on — is this twelve hours' weaving, spinning, boring, turn-
ing, building, shoveling, stone-breaking, regarded by him
as a manifestation of his life, as life ? Quite the contrary.
Life for him begins where this activity ceases, at the
table, at the tavern seat, in bed. The twelve hours' work,
on the other hand, has no meaning for him as weaving,
spinning, boring, and so on, but only as earnings, which
enable him to sit down at a table, to take his seat in the
tavern, and to lie down in a bed.
If the silkworm's object in spinning were to prolong
its existence as caterpillar, it would be a perfect example
of a wage-worker. Labor-power was not always a
commodity (merchandise) . Labor was not always wage-
labor, i. e., free labor. The slave did not sell his labor-
power to the slave-owner, any more than the ox sells his
laboring force to the farmer. The slave, together with his
labor-power, was sold to his owner once for all. He is
a commodity that can pass from the hand of one owner
to that of another. He himself is a commodity, but his
labor-power is not his commodity. The serf sells 1 only a
1 " Sells " is not a very exact expression, for serfdom in its purity did not involve any
relations of buying and selling between the serf and the lord of the manor, the tributes
of the former to the latter consisting in labor and in kind. It is evident that Marx
uses here the word " sells " in the general sense of alienation. — Translator,
26 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
portion of his labor-power. It is not he who receives
wages from the owner of the land ; it is rather the owner
of the land who receives a tribute from him. The serf
belongs to the soil, and to the lord of the soil he brings
its fruit. The free laborer, on the other hand, sells his
very self, and that by fractions. He auctions off eight,
ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his life, one day like the
next, to the highest bidder, to the owner of raw mate-
rials, tools, and means of life, i. e., to the capitalist. The
laborer belongs neither to an owner nor to the soil, but
eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his daily life belong
to whomsoever buys them. The worker leaves the cap-
italist, to whom he has sold himself, as often as he chooses,
and the capitalist discharges him as often as he sees fit,
as soon as he no longer gets any use, or not the required
use, out of him. But the worker, whose only source of
income is the sale of his labor-power, cannot leave the
whole class of buyers, i. e., the capitalist class, unless he
gives up his own existence. He does not belong to this
or to that capitalist, but to the capitalist class; and it is for
him to find his man, i. e., to find a buyer in this capital-
ist class.
Before entering more closely upon the relation of cap-
ital to wage-labor, we shall present briefly the most gen-
eral conditions which come into consideration in the de-
termination of wages.
Wages, as we have seen, are the price of a certain com-
modity, labor-power. Wages, therefore, are determined
by the same laws that determine the price of every other
commodity. The question then is, How is the price of a
commodity determined?
CHAPTER III
BY WHAT IS THE PRICE OF A COMMODITY DETERMINED?
By what is the price of a commodity determined?
By the competition between buyers and sellers, by the
relation of the demand to the supply, of the call to the
offer. The competition by which the price of a commod-
ity is determined is three-fold.
The same commodity is offered for sale by various sell-
ers. Whoever sells commodities of the same quality most
cheaply, is sure to drive the other sellers from the field
and to secure the greatest market for himself. The sell-
ers therefore fight among themselves for the sales, for
the market. Each one of them wishes to sell, and to
sell as much as possible, and if possible to sell alone, to
the exclusion of all other sellers. Each one sells cheaper
than the other. Thus there takes place a competition
among the sellers which forces down the price of the
commodities offered by them.
But there is also a competition among the buyers; this
upon its side causes the price of the proffered commod-
ities to rise.
Finally, there is competition between the buyers and the
sellers; the ones wish to purchase as cheaply as possible,
the others to sell as dearly as possible. The result of
this competition between buyers and sellers will depend
upon the relation between the two above-mentioned camps
of competitors, i. e., upon whether the competition in the
army of buyers or the competition in the army of sellers is
28 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
stronger. Industry leads two great armies into the field
against each other, and each of these again is engaged in
a battle among its own troops in its own ranks. The
army among whose troops there is less fighting carries
off the victory over the opposing host.
Let us suppose that there are one hundred bales of
cotton in the market and at the same time purchasers for
one thousand bales of cotton. In this case the demand is
ten times greater than the supply. Competition among
the buyers, then, will be very strong; each of them tries
to get hold of one bale, if possible of the whole hundred
bales. This example is no arbitrary supposition. In the
history of commerce we have experienced periods of
scarcity of cotton, when some capitalists united together
and sought to buy up not one hundred bales, but the whole
cotton supply of the world. In the given case, then, one
buyer seeks to drive the others from the field by offering
a relatively higher price for the bales of cotton. The cot-
ton sellers, who perceive the troops of the enemy in the
most violent contention among themselves, and are there-
fore fully assured of the sale of their whole one hun-
dred bales, will beware of falling into one another's hair
in order to force down the price of cotton at the very
moment in which their opponents race with one another
to screw it up high. So, all of a sudden, peace reigns
in the army of sellers. They stand opposed to the buy-
ers like one man, fold their arms in philosophic content,
and their claims would find no limit, did not the offers of
even the most importunate of the buyers have their very
definite limit.
If, then, the supply of a commodity is less than the
demand for it, competition among the sellers is very slight,
or there may be none at all among them. In the same
proportion in which this competition decreases, the com-
THE PRICE OF A COMMODITY 29
petition among the buyers increases. Result : a more or
less considerable rise in the prices of commodities.
It is well known that the opposite case, with opposite
result, happens more frequently. Great excess of supply
over demand; desperate competition among the sellers,
and a lack of buyers; forced sales of commodities at
ridiculously low prices.
But what is a rise, and what a fall of prices ? What is
a high, and what a low price? A grain of sand is high
when examined through the microscope, and a tower is
low when compared with a mountain. And if the price
is determined by the relation of supply and demand,
by what is the relation of supply and demand deter-
mined ?
Let us turn to the first worthy citizen we meet. He
will not hesitate one moment, but, like another Alexander
the Great, will cut this metaphysical knot with his mul-
tiplication table. He will say to us : " If the production
of the commodities which I sell has cost me one hundred
dollars, and out of the sale of these goods I make one
hundred and ten dollars — within the year, you under-
stand — that's an honest, sound, reasonable profit. But if
in the exchange I receive one hundred and twenty or
one hundred and thirty dollars, that's a higher profit;
and if I should get as much as two hundred dollars, that
would be an extraordinary, an enormous profit." What
is it, then, that serves this citizen as the standard of his
profit ? The cost of the production of his commodities. If
in exchange for these goods he receives a quantity of other
goods whose production has cost less, he has lost. If
he receives in exchange for his goods, a quantity of other
goods whose production has cost more, he has gained.
And he reckons the falling or rising of the profit ac-
cording to the degree at which the exchange value of his
3° WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
goods stands, whether above or below his zero — the cost,
of production.
We have seen how the changing relation of supply and
demand causes now a rise, now a fall of prices ; now high,
now low prices. If the price of a commodity rises con-
siderably owing to a failing supply or a disproportionately
growing demand, then the price of some other commodity
must have fallen in proportion ; for of course the price of
a commodity only expresses in money the proportion in
which other commodities will be given in exchange for it.
If, for example, the price of a yard of silk rises from two
to three dollars, the price of silver has fallen in relation to
the silk, and in the same way the prices of all other com-
modities whose prices have remained stationary have fal-
len in relation to the price of silk. A larger quantity of
them must be given in exchange in order to obtain the
same amount of silk. Now, what will be the consequence
of a rise in the price of a particular commodity? A
mass of capital will be thrown into the prosperous branch
of industry, and this immigration of capital into the prov-
inces of the favored industry will continue until it yields
no more than the customary profits, or, rather, until the
price of its products, owing to overproduction, sinks
below the cost of production.
Conversely: if the price of a commodity falls below
its cost of production, then capital will be withdrawn
from the production of this commodity. Except in the
case of a branch of industry which has become obsolete
and is therefore doomed to disappear, the production of
such a commodity (that is, its supply), will, owing to
this flight of capital, continue to decrease until it cor-
responds to the demand, and the price of the commodity
rises again to the level of its cost of production; or,
rather, until the supply has fallen below the demand and
THE PRICE OF A COMMODITY 3 1
its price has again risen above its cost of production, for
the current price of a commodity is always either above
or below its cost of production.
We see how capital continually emigrates out of the
province of one industry and immigrates into that of an-
other. The high price produces an excessive immigra-
tion, and the low price an excessive emigration.
_ We could show, from another point of view, how not
only the supply, but also the demand, is determined by
the cost of production. But this would lead us too far
away from our subject.
We have just seen how the fluctuations of supply and
demand always bring the price of a commodity back to
its cost of production. The actual price of a commodity,
indeed, stands always above or below the cost of pro-
duction; but the rise and fall reciprocally balance each
other, so that, within a certain period of time, if the ebbs
and flows of the industry are reckoned up together, the
commodities will be exchanged for one another in ac-
cordance with their cost of production. Their price is
thus determined by their cost of production.
The determination of price by the cost of production
is not to be understood in the sense of the bourgeois
economists. The economists say that the average price
of commodities equals the cost of production : that this is
the law. The anarchic movement, in which the rise is
compensated for by a fall and the fall by a rise, they
regard as an accident. We might just as well consider
the fluctuations as the law, and the determination of the
price by cost of production as an accident — as is,
in fact, done by certain other economists. But it is
precisely these fluctuations which, viewed more closely,
carry the most frightful devastation in their train, and,
like an earthquake, cause bourgeois society to shake to
32 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
its very foundations — it is precisely these fluctuations that
force the price to conform to the cost of production.
In the totality of this disorderly movement is to be
found its order. In the total course of this industrial
anarchy, in this circular movement, competition balances,
as it were, the one extravagance by the other.
We thus see that the price of a commodity is indeed
determined by its cost of production, but in such wise
that the periods in which the price of these commodities
rises above the cost of production are balanced by the
periods in which it sinks below the cost of production,
and vice versa. Of course this does not hold good for a
single given product of an industry, but only for that
branch of industry. So also it does not hold good for an
individual manufacturer, but only for the whole class
of manufacturers.
The determination of price by cost of production is
tantamount to the determination of price by the labor-
time requisite to the production of a commodity, for
the cost of production consists, first, of raw materials
and wear and tear of tools, etc., i. e., of industrial
products whose production has cost a certain number
of work-days, which therefore represent a certain amount
of labor-time, and, secondly, of direct labor, which is
also measured by its duration.
CHAPTER IV
BY WHAT ARE WAGES DETERMINED?
Now, the same general laws which regulate the price
of commodities in general, naturally regulate wages, or
the price of labor-power. Wages will now rise, now
fall, according to the relation of supply and demand,
according as competition shapes itself between the buyers
of labor-power, the capitalists, and the sellers of labor-
power, the workers. The fluctuations of wages corre-
spond to the fluctuations in the price of commodities
in general. But within the limits of these fluctuations
the price of labor-power will be determined by the cost
of its production, by the labor-time necessary for the
production of this commodity: labor-power.
What, then, is the cost of production of labor-power?
It is the cost required for the maintenance of the
laborer as a laborer, and for his education and training
as a laborer.
Therefore, the shorter the time required for training
up to a particular sort of work, the smaller is the cost
of production of the worker, the lower is the price of
his labor-power, his wages. In . those branches of
industry in which hardly any period of apprenticeship
is necessary and the mere bodily existence of the
worker, is sufficient, the cost of his production is
limited almost exclusively to the commodities necessary
for keeping him in working condition. The price of his
work will therefore be determined by the price of the
necessary means of subsistence.
34 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
Here, however, there enters another consideration.
The manufacturer who calculates his cost of production
and, in accordance with it, the price of the product,
takes into account the wear and tear of the instruments
of labor. If a machine costs him, for example, one
thousand dollars, and this machine is used up in ten
years, he adds one hundred dollars annually to the
price of the commodities, in order to be able after ten
years to replace the worn-out machine with a new one.
In the same manner, the cost of production of simple
labor-power must include the cost of propagation, by
means of which the race of workers is enabled to
multiply itself and to replace worn-out workers with
new ones. The wear and tear of the worker, therefore,
is calculated in the same manner as the wear and tear
of the machine.
Thus, the cost of production of simple labor-power
amounts to the cost of the existence and propagation
of the worker. The price of this cost of existence and
propagation constitutes wages. The wages thus deter-
mined are called the minimum of wages. This minimum
wage, like the determination of the price of commodities
in general by cost of production, does not hold good
for the single individual, but only for the race. Indi-
vidual workers, indeed, millions of workers, do not
receive enough to be able to exist and to propagate
themselves; but the wages of the whole working class
adjust themselves, within the limits of their fluctuations,
to this minimum.
Now that we have come to an understanding in regard
to the most general laws which govern wages, as well
as the price of every other commodity, we can examine
our subject more particularly.
CHAPTER V
THE NATURE AND GROWTH OF CAPITAL".
Capital consists of raw materials, instruments of
labor, and means of subsistence of all kinds, which are
employed in producing new raw materials, new instru-
ments, and new means of subsistence. All these com-
ponents of capital are created by labor, products of
labor, accumulated labor. Accumulated labor that serves
as a means to new production is capital. So say the
economists. What is a negro slave? A man of the
black race. The one explanation is worthy of the
other.
A negro is a negro. Only under certain conditions
does he become a slave. A cotton-spinning machine is
a machine for spinning cotton. Only under certain
conditions does it become capital. Torn away from
these conditions, it is as little capital as gold by itself
is money, or as sugar is the price of sugar.
In the process of production, human beings work not
only upon nature, but also upon one another. They
produce only by working together in a specified manner
and reciprocally exchanging their activities. In order
to produce, they enter into definite connections and
relations to one another, and only within these social
connections and relations does their influence upon
nature operate, i. e., does production take place.
These social relations between the producers, and the
conditions under which they exchange their activities
and share in the total act of production, will naturally
3 6 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
vary according to the character of the means of pro-
duction. With the discovery of a new instrument of
warfare, the firearm, the whole internal organization
of the army was necessarily altered, the relations within
which individuals compose an army and can work as
an army were transformed, and the relation of different
armies to one another was likewise changed.
We thus see that the social relations within which
individuals produce, the social relations of production,
are altered, transformed, with the change and develop-
ment of the material means of production, of the forces
of production. The relations of production in their
totality constitute what is called the social relations,
society, and, moreover, a society at a definite stage of
historic development, a society with peculiar, distinctive
character. Ancient society, feudal society, bourgeois (or
capitalist) society, are such totalities of relations of
production, each of which denotes a particular stage of
development in the history of mankind.
Capital also is a social relation of production. It is
a bourgeois relation of production, a relation of pro-
duction of bourgeois society. The means of subsistence,
the instruments of labor, the raw materials, of which
capital consists — have they not been produced and
accumulated under given social conditions, within defi-
nite social relations? Are they not employed for new
production, under given social conditions, within definite
social relations? And does not just this definite social
character stamp the products which serve for new pro-
duction as capital?
Capital consists not only of means of subsistence,
instruments of labor, and raw materials, not only of
material products: it consists just as much of exchange
values. All products of which it consists are cam-
THE NATURE AND GROWTH OF CAPITAL 37
modifies. Capital, consequently, is not only a sum of
material products, it is a sum of commodities, of
exchange values, of social magnitudes. Capital remains
the same whether we put cotton in the place of wool,
rice in the place of wheat, steamships in the place of
railroads, provided only that the cotton, the rice, the
steamships — the body of capital — have the same ex-
change value, the same price, as the wool, the wheat, the
railroads, in which it was previously embodied. The
bodily form of capital may transform itself continually,
while capital does not suffer the least alteration.
But though every capital is a sum of commodities,
i. e., of exchange values, it does not follow that every
sum of commodities, of exchange values, is capital.
Every sum of exchange values is an exchange value.
Each particular exchange value is a sum of exchange
values. For example: a house worth one thousand
dollars is an exchange value of one thousand dollars;
a piece of paper worth one cent is a sum of exchange
values of one hundred one-hundredths of a cent.
Products which are exchangeable for others are com-
modities. The definite proportion in which they are
exchangeable forms their exchange value, or, expressed
in money, their price. The quantity of these products
can have no effect on their character as commodities,
as representing an exchange value, as having a certain
price. Whether a tree be large or small, it remains a
tree. Whether we exchange iron in pennyweights or
in hundred-weights for other products, does this alter
its character : its being a commodity, an exchange value ?
According to the quantity, it is a commodity of greater
or of lesser value, of higher or of lower price.
How, then, does a sum of commodities, of exchange
values, become capital?
3 8 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
Thereby, that as an independent social power, i. e., as
the power of a part of society, it preserves itself and
multiplies by exchange with direct, living labor-power.
The existence of a class which possesses nothing but
the ability to work is a necessary presupposition of
capital.
It is only the dominion of past, accumulated, mate-
rialised labor over immediate living labor that stamps
the accumulated labor with the character of capital.
Capital does not consist in the fact that accumulated
labor serves living labor as a means for new production.
It consists in the fact that living labor serves accumulated
labor as the means of preserving and multiplying its
exchange value.
CHAPTER VI
RELATION OF WAGE-LABOR TO CAPITAL!
What is it that takes place in the exchange between
capitalist and wage-laborer?
The laborer receives means of subsistence in exchange
for his labor-power; but the capitalist receives, in
exchange for his means of subsistence, labor, the pro-
ductive activity of the laborer, the creative force by
which- the worker not only replaces what he consumes,
but also gives to the accumulated labor a greater value
than it previously possessed. The laborer gets from
the capitalist a portion of the existing means of sub-
sistence. For what purpose do these means of subsist-
ence serve him? For immediate consumption. But as
soon as I consume means of subsistence, they are irrev-
ocably lost to me, unless I employ the time during
which these means sustain my life in producing new
means of subsistence, in creating by my labor new values
in place of the values lost in consumption. But it is
just this noble reproductive power that the laborer sur-
renders to the capitalist in exchange for means of
subsistence received. Consequently, he has lost it for
himself.
Let us take an example. For one dollar a laborer works
all day long in the fields of a farmer, to whom he thus
secures a return of two dollars. The farmer not only
receives the replaced value which he has given to the
day-laborer; he has doubled it. Therefore he has con-
4° WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
sumed the one dollar that he gave to the day-laborer
in a fruitful, productive manner. For the one dollar
he has bought the labor-power of the day-laborer, which
creates products of the soil of twice the value, and out
of one dollar makes two. The day-laborer, on the con-
trary, receives in the place of his productive force, whose
results he has just surrendered to the farmer, one dollar,
which he exchanges for means of subsistence, which
means of subsistence he consumes more or less quickly.
The one dollar has therefore been consumed in a double
manner — reproductively for the capitalist, for it has been
exchanged for labor-power, which brought forth two
dollars; unproductively for the worker, for it has been
exchanged for means of subsistence which are lost for-
ever, and whose value he can obtain again only by
repeating the same exchange with the farmer. Capital
therefore presupposes wage-labor ; wage-labor presup-
poses capital. They condition each other; each brings
the other into existence.
Does a worker in a cotton factory produce only cotton
goods? No. He produces capital. He produces values
which serve anew to command his work and to create
by means of it new values.
Capital can multiply itself only by exchanging itself
for labor-power, by calling wage-labor into life. The
labor-power of the wage-laborer can exchange itself for
capital only by increasing capital, by strengthening that
very power whose slave it is. Increase of capital, there-
fore, is increase of the proletariat, i. e., of the working
class.
And so, the bourgeoisie and its economists maintain
that the interest of the capitalist and of the laborer is
the same. And in fact, so they are! The worker
perishes if capital does not keep him busy. Capital
RELATION OF WAGE-LABOR TO CAPITAL 41
perishes if it does not exploit labor-power, which, in
order to exploit, it must buy. The more quickly the
capital destined for production — the productive capital
— increases, the more prosperous industry is, the more
the bourgeoisie enriches itself, the better business gets,
so many more workers does the capitalist need, so much
the dearer does the worker sell himself.
The fastest possible growth of productive capital is,
therefore, the indispensable condition for a tolerable life
to the laborer.
But what is growth of productive capital? Growth
of the power of accumulated labor over living labor;
growth of the rule of the bourgeoisie over the working
class. When wage-labor produces the alien wealth
dominating it, the power hostile to it, capital, there
flow back to it its means of employment, i. e., its
means of subsistence, under the condition that it again
become a part of capital, that it become again the lever
whereby capital is to be forced into an accelerated
expansive movement.
To say that the interests of capital and the interests
of the workers are identical, signifies only this, that
capital and wage-labor are two sides of one and the
same relation. The one conditions the other in the same
way that the usurer and the borrower condition each
other.
As long as the wage-laborer remains a wage-laborer,
his lot is dependent upon capital. That is what the
boasted community of interests between worker and
capitalists amounts to.
If capital grows, the mass of wage-labor grows, the
number of wage-workers increases ; in a word, the sway
of capital extends over a greater mass of individuals.
Let us suppose the most favorable case : if productive
42 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
capital grows, the demand for labor grows. It there-
fore increases the price of labor-power, wages.
A house may be large or small ; as long as the neigh-
boring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social
requirements for a residence. But let there arise next
to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks
into a hut. The little house now makes it clear that
its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or
but a very insignificant one; and however high it may
shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring
palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the
occupant of the relatively little house will always find
himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more
cramped within his four walls.
An appreciable rise in wages presupposes a rapid
growth of productive capital. Rapid growth of produc-
tive capital calls forth just as rapid a growth of wealth, of
luxury, of social needs and social pleasures. Therefore,
although the pleasures of the laborer have increased, the
social gratification which they afford has fallen in com-
parison with the increased pleasures of the capitalist,
which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with
the stage of development of society in general. Our
wants and pleasures have their origin in society; we
therefore measure them in relation to society; we do not
measure them in relation to the objects which serve for
their gratification. Since they are of a social nature, they
are of a relative nature.
But wages are not at all determined merely by the sum
of commodities for which they may be exchanged. Other
factors enter into the problem. What the workers di-
rectly receive for their labor-power is a certain sum of
money. Are wages determined merely by this money
price ?
RELATION OF WAGE-LABOR TO CAPITAL 43
In the sixteenth century the gold and silver circulation
in Europe increased in consequence of the discovery of
richer and more easily worked mines in America. The
value of gold and silver, therefore, fell in relation to other
commodities. The workers received the same amount of
coined silver for their labor-power as before. The money
price of their work remained the same, and yet their
wages had fallen, for in exchange for the same amount
of silver they obtained a smaller amount of other com-
modities. This was one of the circumstances which fur-
thered the growth of capital, the rise of the bourgeoisie,
in the eighteenth century.
Let us take another case. In the winter of 1847, in con-
sequence of bad harvests, the most indispensable means of
subsistence — grains, meat, butter, cheese, etc. — rose
greatly in price. Let us suppose that the workers still re-
ceived the same sum of money for their labor-power as
before. Did not their wages fall ? To be sure. For the
same money they received in exchange less bread, meat,
etc. Their wages fell, not because the value of silver
was less, but because the value of the means of subsistence
had increased.
Finally, let us suppose that the money price of labor-
power remained the same, while all agricultural and man-
ufactured commodities had fallen in price because of the
employment of new machines, of favorable seasons, etc.
For the same money the workers could now buy more
commodities of all kinds. Their wages have therefore
risen, just because their money value has not changed.
The money price of labor-power, the nominal wages, do
not therefore coincide with the actual or real wages, i. e.,
with the amount of commodities which are actually given
in exchange for the wages. If then we speak of a rise or
fall of wages, we have to keep in mind not only the money
44 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
price of labor-power, the nominal wages, but also the real
wages.
But neither the nominal wages, i. e., the amount of
money for which the laborer sells himself to the capitalist,
nor the real wages, i. e., the amount of commodities which
he can buy for this money, exhausts the relations which
are comprehended in the term wages.
Wages are determined above all by their relation to the
gain, the profit, of the capitalist. In other words, wages
are a proportionate, relative quantity.
Real wages express the price of labor-power in relation
to the price of other commodities ; relative wages, on the
other hand, express the share of immediate labor in the
value newly created by it, in relation to the share of it
which falls to accumulated labor, to capital.
CHAPTER VII
THE GENERAL LAW THAT DETERMINES THE RISE AND FALL
OF WAGES AND PROFITS
We have said : " Wages are not a share of the worker
in the commodities produced by him. Wages are that
part of already existing commodities with which the cap-
italist buys a certain amount of productive labor-power."
But the capitalist must replace these wages out of the
price for which he sells the product made by the worker ;
he must so replace it that, as a rule, there remains to him
a surplus above the cost of production expended by him,
that is, he must get a profit. The selling price of the
commodities produced by the worker is divided, from the
point of view of the capitalist, into three parts : First, the
replacement of the price of the raw materials advanced by
him, in addition to the replacement of the wear and tear
of the tools, machines, and other instruments of labor
likewise advanced by him ; second, the replacement of the
wages advanced; and third, the surplus left over, i. e.,
the profit of the capitalist. While the first part merely
replaces previously existing values, it is evident that
the replacement of the wages and the surplus (the
profit of capital) are as a whole taken out of the new
value, which is produced by the labor of the worker and
added to the raw materials. And in this sense we can
view wages as well as profit, for the purpose of compar-
ing them with each other, as shares in the product of the
worker.
4& WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
Real wages may remain the same, they may even rise,
nevertheless the relative wages may fall. Let us suppose,
for instance, that all means of subsistence have fallen two-
thirds in price, while the day's wages have fallen but one-
third ; for example, from three to two dollars. Although
the worker can now get a greater amount of commodi-
ties with these two dollars than he formerly did with
three dollars, yet his wages have decreased in proportion
to the gain of the capitalist. The profit of the capitalist
— the manufacturer's, for instance — has increased by
one dollar, which means that for a smaller amount of ex-
change values, which he pays to the worker, the latter
must produce a greater amount of exchange values
than before. The share of capital in proportion to the
share of labor has risen. The distribution of social
wealth between capital and labor has become still more
unequal. The capitalist commands a greater amount of
labor with the same capital. The power of the capital-
ist class over the working class has grown, the social posi-
tion of the worker has become worse, has been forced
down still another degree below that of the capitalist.
What, then, is the general law that determines the rise
and fall of wages and profit in their reciprocal relation?
They stand in inverse proportion to each other. The
share of capital {profit) increases in the same proportion
in which the share of labor (wages) falls, and vice versa.
Profit rises in the same degree in which wages fall; it
falls in the same degree in which wages rise.
It might perhaps be argued that the capitalist can gain
by an advantageous exchange of his products with other
capitalists, by a rise in the demand for his commodities,
whether in consequence of the opening up of new markets,
or in consequence of temporarily increased demands in
the old markets, and so on ; that the profit of the capital-
GENERAL LAW OF WAGES AND PROFITS 47
ist, therefore, may be multiplied by taking advantage of
other capitalists, independently of the rise and fall of
wages, of the exchange value of labor-power ; or that the
profit of the capitalist may also rise through improve-
ments in the instruments of labor, new applications of the
forces of nature, and so on.
But in the first place it must be admitted that the result
remains the same, although brought about in an opposite
manner. Profit, indeed, has not risen because wages
have fallen, but wages have fallen because profit has
risen. With the same amount of another man's labor the
capitalist has bought a larger amount of exchange values
without having paid more for the labor on that account,
i. e., the work is paid for less in proportion to the net
gain which it yields to the capitalist.
In the second place, it must be borne in mind that, de-
spite the fluctuations in the prices of commodities, the
average price of every commodity, the proportion in
which it exchanges for other commodities, is determined
by its cost of production. The acts of overreaching and
taking advantage of one another within the capitalist
ranks necessarily equalize themselves. The improve-
ments of machinery, the new applications of the forces
of nature in the service of production, make it possible to
produce in a given period of time, with the same amount
of labor and capital, a larger amount of products, but in
no wise a larger amount of exchange values. If by the
use of the spinning-machine I can furnish twice as much
yarn in an hour as before its invention — for instance, one
hundred pounds instead of fifty pounds — in the long run
I receive back, in exchange for this one hundred pounds,
no more commodities than I did before for fifty ; because
the cost of production has fallen by one-half, or because I
can furnish double the product at the same cost.
48 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
Finally, in whatsoever proportion the capitalist class,
whether of one country or of the entire world-market,
distribute the net revenue of production among them-
selves, the total amount of this net revenue always con-
sists exclusively of the amount by which accumulated
labor has been increased from the proceeds of direct labor.
This whole amount, therefore, grows in the same pro-
portion in which labor augments capital, i. e., in the same
proportion in which profit rises as compared with wages.
CHAPTER VIII
THE INTERESTS OF CAPITAL AND WAGE-LABOR ARE DIAMET-
RICALLY OPPOSED EFFECT OF GROWTH OF PRO-
DUCTIVE CAPITAL ON WAGES
We thus see that, even if we keep ourselves within the
relation of capital and wage-labor, the interests of capital
and the interests of zvage-labor are diametrically opposed
to each other.
A rapid growth of capital is synonymous with a rapid
growth of profits. Profits can grow rapidly only when
the price of labor — the relative wages — decrease just
as rapidly. Relative wages may fall, although the real
wages rise simultaneously with the nominal wages, with
the money value of labor, provided only that the real
wage does not rise in the same proportion as the profit.
If, for instance, in good business years wages rise five per
cent, while profits rise thirty per cent., the proportional,
the relative wage has not increased, but decreased.
If, therefore, the income of the worker increases with
the rapid growth of capital, there is at the same time a
widening of the social chasm that divides the worker from
the capitalist, an increase in the power of capital over
labor, a greater dependence of labor upon capital.
To say that " the worker has an interest in the rapid
growth of capital," means only this : that the more speed-
ily the worker augments the wealth of the capitalist, the
larger will be the crumbs which fall to him, the greater
5° WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
will be the number of workers that can be called into
existence, the more can the mass of slaves dependent upon
capital be increased.
We have thus seen that even the most favorable situa-
tion for the working class, namely, the most rapid growth
of capital, however much it may improve the material life
of the worker, does not abolish the antagonism between
his interests and the interests of the capitalist. Profit and
wages remain as before, in inverse proportion.
If capital grows rapidly, wages may rise, but the profit
of capital rises disproportionately faster. The material
position of the worker has improved, but at the cost of
his social position. The social chasm that separates him
from the capitalist has widened.
Finally, to say that " the most favorable condition for
wage-labor is the fastest possible growth of produc-
tive capital," is the same as to say : the quicker the work-
ing class multiplies and augments the power inimical to it
— the wealth of another which lords it over that class —
the more favorable will be the conditions under which it
will be permitted to toil anew at the multiplication of
bourgeois wealth, at the enlargement of the power of
capital, content thus to forge for itself the golden chains
by which the bourgeoisie drags it in its train.
Growth of productive capital and rise of wages, are
they really so indissolubly united as the bourgeois econo-
mists maintain? We must not believe their mere words.
We dare not believe them even when they claim that the
fatter capital is the more will its slave be pampered. The
bourgeoisie is too much enlightened, it keeps its accounts
much too carefully, to share the prejudices of the feudal
lord, who makes an ostentatious display of the magnifi-
cence of his retinue. The conditions of existence of the
bourgeoisie compel it to attend carefully to its bookkeep-
CAPITAL VERSUS WAGE-LABOR 5 1
ing. We must therefore examine more closely into the
following question : —
In what manner, does the growth of productive capital
affect wages?
If, as a whole, the productive capital of bourgeois so-
ciety grows, there takes place a more many-sided accu-
mulation of labor. The individual capitals increase in num-
ber and in magnitude. The multiplication of individual
capitals increases the competition among capitalists. The
increasing magnitude of individual capitals provides the
means for leading more powerful armies of workers with
more gigantic instruments of war upon the industrial
battlefield.
The one capitalist can drive the other from the field
and carry off his capital only by selling more cheaply.
In order to sell more cheaply without ruining himself,
he must produce more cheaply, i. e., increase the produc-
tive force of labor as much as possible. But the pro-
ductive force of labor is increased above all by a greater
division of labor and by a more general introduction and
constant improvement of machinery. The larger the
army of workers among whom the labor is subdivided,
the more gigantic the scale upon which machinery is in-
troduced, the more in proportion does the cost of produc-
tion decrease, the more fruitful is the labor. And so there
arises among the capitalists a universal rivalry for the
increase of the division of labor and of machinery and for
their exploitation upon the greatest possible scale. If,
now, by a greater division 'of labor, by the application and
improvement of new machines, by a more advantageous
exploitation of the forces of nature on a larger scale, a
capitalist has found the means of producing with the
same amount of labor (whether it be direct or accumu-
lated labor) a larger amount of products, of commodities,
5 2 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
than his competitors — if, for instance, he can produce a
whole yard of linen in the same labor-time in which his
competitors weave half a yard — how will this capitalist
act?
He could keep on selling half a yard of linen at the
old market price; but this would not have the effect of
driving his opponents from the field and enlarging his
own market. But his need of a market has increased in
the same measure in which his productive power has ex-
tended. The more powerful and costly means of produc-
tion that he has called into existence enable him, it is true,
to sell his wares more cheaply, but they compel him at
the same time to sell more wares, to get control of a very
much greater market for his commodities; consequently,
this capitalist will sell his half yard of linen more cheaply
than his competitors.
But the capitalist will not sell the whole yard so cheaply
as his competitors sell the half yard, although the produc-
tion of the whole yard costs no more to him than does that
of the half yard to the others. Otherwise he would make
no extra profit, and would get back in exchange only the
cost of production. He might obtain a greater income
from having set in motion a larger capital, but not from
having made a greater profit on his capital than the others.
Moreover, he attains the object he is aiming at if he prices
his goods only a small percentage lower than his com-
petitors. He drives them off the field, he wrests from
them at least a part of their market, by underselling them.
And finally, let us remember that the current price al-
ways stands either above or below the cost of production,
according as the sale of a commodity takes place in the
favorable or unfavorable period of the industry. Accord-
ing as the market price of the yard of linen stands above
or below its former cost of production, will the percentage
CAPITAL VERSUS WAGE-LABOR S3
vary at which the capitalist who has made use of the new
and more fruitful means of production sells above his real
cost of production.
But the privilege of our capitalist is not of long dura-
tion. Other competing capitalists introduce the same
machines, the same division of labor, and introduce them
upon the same or even upon a greater scale. And finally
this introduction becomes so universal that the price of the
linen is lowered not only below its old, but even below its
new cost of production.
The capitalists therefore find themselves, in their mu-
tual relations, in the same situation in which they were
before the introduction of the new means of production ;
and if they are by these means enabled to offer double the
product at the old price, they are now forced to furnish
double the product for less than the old price. Having
arrived at the new point, the new cost of production, the
battle for supremacy in the market has to be fought out
anew. Given more division of labor and more machinery,
and there results a greater scale upon which division of
labor and machinery are exploited. And competition
again brings the same reaction against this result.
CHAPTER IX
EFFECT OF CAPITALIST COMPETITION ON THE CAPITALIST
CLASS, THE MIDDLE CLASS, AND THE WORKING CLASS.
We thus see how the method of production and the
means of production are constantly enlarged, revolution-
ized, how division of labor necessarily draws after it
greater division of labor, the employment of machinery
greater employment of machinery, work upon a large
scale work upon a still greater scale. This is the law that
continually throws capitalist production out of its old
ruts and compels capital to strain ever more the productive
forces of labor for the very reason that it has already
strained them — the law that grants it no respite, and
constantly shouts in its ear : March ! march !
This is no other law than that which, within the period-
ical fluctuations of commerce, necessarily adjusts the
price of a commodity to its cost of production.
No matter how powerful the means of production
which a capitalist may bring into the field, competition
will make their adoption general; and from the moment
that they have been generally adopted, the sole result of
the greater productiveness of his capital will be that he
must furnish at the same price, ten, twenty, one hundred
times as much as before. But since he must find a mar-
ket for, perhaps, a thousand times as much, in order to
outweigh the lower selling price by the greater quantity
of the sales ; since now a more extensive sale is necessary
not only to gain a greater profit, but also in order to re-
place the cost of production (the instrument of produc-
EFFECT OF CAPITALIST COMPETITION 55
tion itself grows always more costly, as we have seen),
and since this more extensive sale has become a question
of life and death not only for him, but also for his rivals,
the old struggle must begin again, and it is all the more
violent the more powerful the means of production al-
ready invented are. The division of labor and the appli-
cation of machinery will therefore take a fresh start, and
upon an even greater scale.
Whatever be the power of the means of production
which are employed, competition seeks to rob capital of
the golden fruits of this power by reducing the price of
commodities to the cost of production ; in the same meas-
ure in which production is cheapened, i. e., in the same
measure in which more can be produced with the same
amount of labor, it compels by a law which is irresistible
a still greater cheapening of production, the sale of ever
greater masses of product for smaller prices. Thus the
capitalist will have gained nothing more by his efforts
than the obligation to furnish a greater product in the
same labor-time ; in a word, more difficult conditions for
the profitable employment of his capital. While com-
petition, therefore, constantly pursues him with its law of
the cost of production and turns against himself every
weapon that he forges against his rivals, the capitalist
continually seeks to get the best of competition by rest-
lessly introducing further subdivision of labor and new
machines, which, though more expensive, enable him to
produce more cheaply, instead of waiting until the new
machines shall have been rendered obsolete by compe-
tition.
If we now conceive this feverish agitation as it operates
in the market of the whole world, we shall be in a position
to comprehend how the growth, accumulation, and con-
centration of capital bring in their train an evermore de-
S 6 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
tailed subdivision of labor, an ever greater improvement
of old machines, and a constant application of new ma-
chines^ — a process which goes on uninterruptedly, with
feverish haste, and upon an evermore gigantic scale.
But what effect do these conditions, which are insepar-
able from the growth of productive capital, have upon the
determination of wages?
The greater division of labor enables one laborer to ac-
complish the work of five, ten, or twenty laborers; it
therefore increases competition among the laborers five-
fold, tenfold, or twentyfold. The laborers compete not
only by selling themselves one cheaper than the other,
but also by one doing the work of five, then ten, or
twenty ; and they are forced to compete in this manner by
the division of labor, which is introduced and steadily
improved by capital.
Furthermore, to the same degree in which the division
of labor increases, is the labor simplified. The special
skill of the laborer becomes worthless. He becomes trans-
formed into a simple monotonous force of production,
with neither physical nor mental elasticity. His work
becomes accessible to all; therefore competitors press
upon him from all sides. Moreover, it must be re-
membered that the more simple, the more easily learned
the work is, so much the less is its cost of production, the
expense of its acquisition, and so much the lower must the
wages sink — for, like the price of any other commodity,
they are determined by the cost of production. Therefore,
in the same measure in which labor becomes more unsatis-
factory, more repulsive, does competition increase and
wages decrease. The laborer seeks to maintain the total
of his wages for a given time by performing more labor,
either by working a greater number of hours, or by ac-
complishing more in the same number of hours. Thus,
EFFECT OF CAPITALIST COMPETITION 57
urged on by want, he himself multiplies the disastrous
effects of division of labor. The result is: the more he
works, the less wages he receives. And for this simple
reason : the more he works, the more he competes against
his fellow workmen, the more he compels them to compete
against him, and to offer themselves on the same wretched
conditions as he does; so that, in the last analysis, he
competes against himself as a member of the working class.
Machinery produces the same effects, but upon a much
larger scale. It supplants skilled laborers by unskilled,
men by women, adults by children; where newly intro-
duced, it throws the workers upon the streets in great
masses; and as it becomes more highly developed and
more productive it discards them in additional though
smaller numbers.
We have hastily sketched in broad outlines the indus-
trial war of capitalists among themselves. This war has
the peculiarity that the battles in it are won less by recruit-
ing than by discharging the army of workers. The gen-
erals (the capitalists) vie with one another as to who
can discharge the greatest number of industrial soldiers.
The economists tell us, to be sure, that those laborers
who have been rendered superfluous by machinery find
new avenues of employment. They dare not assert di-
rectly that the same laborers that have been discharged
find situations in new branches of labor. Facts cry out
too loudly against this lie. Strictly speaking, they only
maintain that new means of employment will be found
for other sections of the working class; for example, for
that portion of the young generation of laborers who were
about to enter upon that branch of industry which had
just been abolished. Of course, this is a great satisfac-
tion to the disabled laborers. There will be no lack of
fresh exploitable blood and muscle for the Messrs. Capi-
58 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
talists — the dead may bury their dead. This consola-
tion seems to be intended more for the comfort of the
capitalists themselves than of their laborers. If the whole
class of the wage-laborers were to be annihilated by ma-
chinery, how terrible that would be for capital, which,
without wage-labor, ceases to be capital!
But even if we assume that all who are directly forced
out of employment by machinery, as well as all of the ris-
ing generation who were waiting for a chance of employ-
ment in the same branch of industry, do actually find
some new employment : — are we to believe that this new
employment would pay as high wages as the one they
have lost? If it did, it would be in contradiction to all the
laws of political economy. We have seen how modern
industry always tends to the substitution of the simpler
and more subordinate employments for the higher and
more complex ones. How, then, could a mass of workers
thrown out of one branch of industry by machinery find
refuge in another branch, unless they were to be paid
more poorly?
An exception to the law has been adduced, namely, the
workers who are employed in the manufacture of machin-
ery itself. As soon as there is in industry a greater de-
mand for and a greater consumption of machinery, it is
said that the number of machines must necessarily in-
crease ; consequently, also, the manufacture of machines ;
consequently, also, the employment of workers in machine
manufacture ; — and the workers employed in this branch
of industry are skilled, even educated, workers.
Since the year 1840 this assertion, which even before
that date was only half true, has lost all semblance of
truth ; for the most diverse machines are now applied to
the manufacture of the machines themselves on quite as
extensive a scale as in the manufacture of cotton yarn,
EFFECT OF CAPITALIST COMPETITION 59
and the laborers employed in machine factories can but
play the role of very stupid machines alongside of the
highly ingenious machines.
But in place of the man who has been dismissed by the
machine, the factory may employ, perhaps, three children
and one woman! And must not the wages of the man
have previously sufficed for the three children and one
woman? Must not the minimum wages have sufficed for
the preservation and propagation of the race? What,
then, do these beloved bourgeois phrases prove? Noth-
ing more than that now four times as many workers'
lives are used up as there were previously, in order to
obtain the livelihood of one working family.
To sum up: the more productive capital grows, the
more it extends the division of labor and the application of
machinery; the more the division of labor and the applica-
tion of machinery extend, the more does competition ex-
tend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink
together.
In addition, the working class is also recruited from
the higher strata of society; a mass of small business
men and of people living upon the interest of their cap-
itals is precipitated into the ranks of the working class,
and they will have nothing else to do than to stretch out
their arms alongside of the arms of the workers. Thus
the forest of outstretched arms, begging for work, grows
ever thicker, while the arms themselves grow ever leaner.
It is evident that the small manufacturer cannot sur-
vive in a struggle in which the first condition of success
is production upon an ever greater scale. It is evident
that the small manufacturer cannot at the same time be
a big manufacturer.
That the interest on capital decreases in the same ratio
in which the mass and number of capitals increase, that
60 WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
it diminishes with the growth of capital, that therefore
the small capitalist can no longer live on his interest,
but must consequently throw himself upon industry by
joining the ranks of the small manufacturers and thereby
increasing the number of candidates for the proletariat —
all this requires no further elucidation.
Finally, in the same measure in which the capitalists are
compelled, by the movement described above, to exploit
the already existing gigantic means of production on an
ever-increasing scale, and for this purpose to set in mo-
tion all the mainsprings of credit, in the same measure do
they increase the industrial earthquakes, in the midst of
which the commercial world can preserve itself only by
sacrificing a portion of its wealth, its products, and even
its forces of production, to the gods of the lower world
— in short, the crises increase. They become more fre-
quent and more violent, if for no other reason, then for
this alone, that in the same measure in which the mass of
products grows, and therefore the needs for extensive
markets, in the same measure does the world market
shrink evermore, and ever fewer markets remain to be
exploited, since every previous crisis has subjected to the
commerce of the world a hitherto unconquered or but
superficially exploited market. But capital not alone lives
upon labor. Like a master, at once distinguished and bar-
barous, it drags with it into its grave the corpses of its
slaves, whole hecatombs of workers, who perish in the
crises. We thus see that if capital grows rapidly, competi-
tion among the workers grows with even greater rapidity,
i. e., the means of employment and subsistence for the
working class decrease in proportion even more rapidly;
but this notwithstanding, the rapid growth of capital is
the most favorable condition for wage-labor.
FREE TRADE
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE DEMOCRATIC
ASSOCIATION OF BRUSSELS, BELGIUM,
JANUARY 9, 1848.
BY
KARL MARX
TRANSLATED BY ^
FLORENCE KELLEY
WITH PREFACE BY
FREDERICK ENGELS
INTRODUCTION
Towards the end of 1847, a Free Trade Congress was
held at Brussels. It was a strategic move in the free
trade campaign then carried on by the English manu-
facturers. Victorious at home by the repeal of the Corn
Laws in 1846, they now invaded the Continent in order
to demand, in return for the free admission of continental
corn into England, the free admission of English manu-
factured goods to the continental markets. At this Con-
gress, Marx inscribed himself on the list of speakers ; but,
as might have been expected, things were so managed
that before his turn came on, the Congress was closed.
Thus, what Marx had to say on the free trade ques-
tion, he was compelled to say before the Democratic
Association of Brussels, an international body of which
he was one of the vice-presidents.
The question of free trade or protection being at
present on the order of the day in America, it has been
thought useful to publish an English translation of
Marx's speech, to which I have been asked to write an
introductory preface.
"The system of protection," says Marx, 1 "was an
artificial means of manufacturing manufacturers, of ex-
propriating independent laborers, of capitalizing the na-
tional means of production and subsistence, and of forci-
1 Karl Marx, Capital. London : Swan Sonnenschein Co., 1886 ; p. 782.
4 INTRODUCTION
bly abbreviating the transition from the medieval to the
modern mode of production." Such was protection at
its origin in the seventeenth century, such it remained
well into the nineteenth century. It was then held to be
the normal policy of every civilized state in western Eu-
rope. The only exceptions were the smaller states of
Germany and Switzerland — not from dislike of the sys-
tem, but from the impossibility of applying it to such
small territories.
It was under the fostering wing of protection that
the system of modern industry — production by steam-
moved machinery — was hatched and developed in Eng-
land during the last third of the eighteenth century.
And, as if tariff-protection were not sufficient, the wars
against the French Revolution helped to secure to Eng-
land the monopoly of the new industrial methods. For
more than twenty years English men-of-war cut off the
industrial rivals of England from their respective colonial
markets, while they forcibly opened these markets to
English commerce. The secession of the South Ameri-
can colonies from the rule of their European mother-
countries, the conquest by England of all French and
Dutch colonies worth having, the progressive subjuga-
tion of India, turned the people of all these immense ter-
ritories into customers for English goods. England thus
supplemented the protection she practised at home, by the
free trade she forced upon her possible customers
abroad; and, thanks to this happy mixture of both sys-
tems, at the end of the wars, in 1815, she found herself,
with regard to all important branches of industry in pos-
session of the virtual monopoly of the trade of the world.
This monopoly was further extended and strengthened
during the ensuing years of peace. The start which Eng-
land had obtained during the war, was increased from
INTRODUCTION 5
year to year; she seemed to distance more and more all
her possible rivals. The exports of manufactured goods
in ever growing quantities became indeed a question of
life and death to that country. And there seemed but
two obstacles in the way: the prohibitive or protective
legislation of other countries, and the taxes upon the
import of raw materials and articles of food in England.
Then the free trade doctrines of classical political
economy — of the French physiocrats and their English
successors, Adam Smith and Ricardo — became popular
in the land of John Bull. Protection at home was need-
less to manufacturers who beat all their foreign rivals,
and whose very existence was staked on the expansion of
their exports. Protection at home was of advantage to
none but the producers of articles of food and other raw
materials, to the agricultural interest, which, under then
existing circumstances in England, meant the receivers
of rent, the landed aristocracy. And this kind of pro-
tection was hurtful to the manufacturers. By taxing
raw materials it raised the price of the articles manu-
factured from them ; by taxing food, it raised the price of
labor; in both ways, it placed the British manufacturer
at a disadvantage as compared with his foreign compet-
itor. And, as all other countries sent to England chiefly
agricultural products, and drew from England chiefly
manufactured goods, repeal of the English protective
duties on corn and raw materials generally was at the
same time an appeal to foreign countries, to do away
with, or at least, to reduce, in return, the import duties
levied by them on English manufacturers.
After a long and violent struggle, the English indus-
trial capitalists, already in reality the leading class of
the nation, that class whose interests were then the chief
national interests, were victorious. The landed aris-
6 INTRODUCTION
tocraey had to give in. The duties on corn and other
raw materials were repealed. Free trade became the
watchword of the day. To convert all other countries
to the gospel of free trade, and thus to create a world
in which England was the great manufacturing center,
with all other countries for its dependent agricultural dis-
tricts, that was the next task before the English manu-
facturers and their mouthpieces, the political economists.
That was the time of the Brussels Congress, the time
when Marx prepared the speech in question. While
recognizing that protection may still, under certain cir-
stances, for instance, in the Germany of 1847, be °f
advantage to the manufacturing capitalists ; while proving
that free trade was not the panacea for all the evils
under which the working class suffered, and might even
aggravate them; he pronounces, ultimately and on prin-
ciple, in favor of free trade. To him, free trade is
the normal condition of modern capitalist production.
Only under free trade can the immense productive
powers of steam, of electricity, of machinery, be fully
developed ; and the quicker the pace of this development,
the sooner and the more fully will be realized its inevitable
results ; society splits up into two classes, capitalists here,
wage-laborers there; hereditary wealth on one side, he-
reditary poverty on the other.; supply outstripping de-
mand, the markets being unable to absorb the ever grow-
ing mass of the productions of industry ; an ever recurring
cycle of prosperity, glut, crisis, panic, chronic depression
and gradual revival of trade, the harbinger not of perma-
nent improvement but of renewed over-production and
crisis; in short, productive forces expanding to such a
degree that they rebel, as against unbearable fetters,
against the social institutions under which they are put
in motion ; the only possible solution : a social revolution,
INTRODUCTION 7
freeing the social productive forces from the fetters of
an antiquated social order, and the actual producers, the
great mass of the people, from wage-slavery. And because
free trade is the natural, the normal atmosphere for this
historical evolution, the economic medium in which the
conditions for the inevitable social revolution will be the
soonest created — for this reason, and for this alone, did
Marx declare in favor of free trade.
Anyhow, the years immediately following the victory
of free trade in England seemed to verify the most ex-
travagant expectations of prosperity founded upon that
event. British commerce rose to a fabulous amount;
the industrial monopoly of England on the market of
the world seemed more firmly established than ever ; new
iron works, new textile factories, arose by wholesale ; new
branches of industry grew up on every side. There
was, indeed, a severe crisis in 1857, but that was over-
come, and the onward movement in trade and manufac-
tures was soon again in full swing, until in 1866 a fresh
panic occurred, a panic, this time, which seems to mark
a new departure in the economic history of the world.
The unparalleled expansion of British manufactures
and commerce between 1848 and 1866 was no doubt
due, to a great extent, to the removal of the protective
duties on food and raw materials. But not entirely.
Other important changes took place simultaneously and
helped it on. The above years comprise the discovery
and working of the Californian and Australian gold fields
which increased so immensely the circulating medium of
the world; they mark the final victory of steam over all
other means of transport; on the ocean, steamers now
superseded sailing vessels; on land in all civilized coun-
tries, the railroad took the first place, the macadamized
road the second ; transport now became four times quicker
8 INTRODUCTION
and four times cheaper. No wonder that under such fa-
vorable circumstances British manufactures worked by
steam should extend their sway at the expense of foreign
domestic industries based upon manual labor. But were
the other countries to sit still and to submit in humility
to this change, which degraded them to be mere agricul-
tural appendages of England, the "workshop of the
world"?
The foreign countries did nothing of the kind.
France, for nearly two hundred years, had screened her
manufactures behind a perfect Chinese wall of protec-
tion and prohibition, and had attained in all articles of
luxury and of taste a supremacy which England did not
even pretend to dispute. Switzerland, under perfect free
trade, possessed relatively important manufactures which
English competition could not touch. Germany, with a
tariff far more liberal than that of any other large con-
tinental country, was developing its manufactures at a rate
relatively more rapid than even England. And America,
who was, by the civil war of 1861, all at once thrown
upon her own resources, had to find means to meet a sud-
den demand for manufactured goods of all sorts, and
could only do so by creating manufactures of her own at
home. The war demand ceased with the war; but the
new manufactures were there, and had to meet British
competition. And the war had ripened, in America, the
insight that a nation of thirty-five millions doubling its
numbers in forty years at most, with such immense re-
sources, and surrounded by neighbors that must be for
years to come chiefly agriculturalists, that such a nation
had the "manifest destiny" to be independent of foreign
manufactures for its chief articles of consumption, and
to be so in time of peace as well as in time of war. And
then America turned protectionist.
INTRODUCTION 9
It may now be fifteen years ago, I traveled in a rail-
way carriage with an intelligent Glasgow merchant, in-
terested, probably, in the iron trade. Talking about
America, he treated me to the old free trade lucubra-
tions: "Was it not inconceivable that a nation of sharp
business men like the Americans should pay tribute to
indigenous iron masters and manufacturers, when they
could buy the same, if not a better article, ever so much
cheaper in this country?" And then he gave me ex-
amples as to how much the Americans taxed themselves
in order to enrich a few greedy iron masters. "Well,"
I replied, "I think there is another side to the question.
You know that in coal, water-power, iron and other ores,
cheap food, home-grown cotton and other raw materials,
America has resources and advantages unequaled by any
European country; and that these resources cannot be
fully developed except by America becoming a manufac-
turing country. You will admit, too, that nowadays a
great nation like the Americans cannot exist on agricul-
ture alone; that that would be tantamount to a condem-
nation to permanent barbarism and inferiority ; no great
nation can live, in our age, without manufactures of her
own. Well, then, if America must become a manufac-
turing country, and if she has every chance of not only
succeeding, but even outstripping her rivals, there are
two ways open to her : either to carry on, for, let us say,
fifty years, under free trade an extremely expensive
competitive war against English manufacturers that have
got nearly a hundred years' start ; or else to shut out, by
protective duties, English manufacturers for, say, twen-
ty-five years, with the almost absolute certainty that at
the end of the twenty-five years she will be able to hold
her own in the open market of the world. Which of the
two will be the cheapest and the shortest ? That is the ques-
io INTRODUCTION
tion. If you want to go from Glasgow to London, you
can take the parliamentary train at a penny a mile and
travel at the rate of twelve miles an hour. But you do
not ; your time is too valuable, you take the express, pay
twopence a mile and do forty miles an hour. Very well,
the Americans prefer to pay express fare and to go ex-
press speed." My Scotch free trader had not a word
in reply.
Protection, being a means of artificially manufacturing
manufacturers, may, therefore, appear useful not only
to an incompletely developed capitalist class still strug-
gling with feudalism; it may also give a lift to the ris-
ing capitalist class of a country which, like America, has
never known feudalism, but which has arrived at that
stage of development where the passage from agricul-
ture to manufactures becomes a necessity. America,
placed in that situation, decided in favor of protection.
Since that decision was carried out, the five and twenty
years of which I spoke to my fellow-traveler have about
passed, and, if I was not wrong, protection ought to have
done its task for America, and ought to be now becom-
ing a nuisance.
That has been my opinion for some time. Nearly two
years ago, I said to an American protectionist : "I am con-
vinced that if America goes in for free trade she will
in ten years have beaten England in the market of the
world."
Protection is at best an endless screw, and you never
know when you have done with it. By protecting one
industry, you directly or indirectly hurt all others, and
have therefore to protect them, too. By so doing you
again damage the industry that you first protected, and
have to compensate it; but this compensation reacts, as
before, on all other trades, and entitles them to redress,
INTRODUCTION "
and so on ad infinitum. America, in this respect, offers us
a striking example of the best way to kill an important
industry by protection. In 1856, the total imports and
exports by sea of the United States amounted to $641,-
604,850. Of this amount, 75.2 per cent, were carried in
American, and only 24.8 per cent, in foreign vessels.
British ocean-steamers were already then encroaching
upon American sailing vessels; yet, in i860, of a total
sea-going trade of $762,288,550, American vessels still
carried 66.5 per cent. The civil war came on, and pro-
tection to American shipbuilding; and the latter plan
was so successful that it has nearly completely driven the
American flag from the high seas. In 1887 the total sea-
going trade of the United States amounted to $1,408,502,-
979; but of this total only 13.80 per cent, were carried in
American, and 86.20 per cent, in foreign bottoms. The
goods carried by American ships amounted, in 1856, to
$482,268,275 ; in i860 to $507,274,757. In 1887 they had
sunk to $I94,356,746. 1 Forty years ago, the American
flag was the most dangerous rival of the British flag,
and bade fair to outstrip it on the ocean ; now it is no-
where. Protection to shipbuilding has killed both ship-
ping and shipbuilding.
Another point. Improvements in the methods of pro-
duction nowadays follow each other so rapidly, and
change the character of entire branches of industry so
suddenly and so completely, that what may have been
yesterday a fairly balanced protective tariff is no longer
so to-day. Let us take another example from the Report
of the Secretary of the Treasury for 1887 :
"Improvement in recent years in the machinery em-
ployed in combing wool has so changed the character of
* Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, etc.- for the year 1887. Wash-
ington ; 1887 j pp. xxviii, xxix.
12 INTRODUCTION
what are commercially known as worsted cloths that the
latter have largely superseded woollen cloths for use as
men's wearing apparel. This change . . . has
operated to the serious injury of our domestic manufac-
turers of these (worsted) goods, because the duty on the
wool which they must use is the same as that upon wool
used in making woollen cloths, while the rates of duty
imposed upon the latter when valued at not ex-
ceeding 80 cents per pound are 35 cents per pound
and 35 per cent, ad valorem, whereas the duty on
worsted cloths valued at not exceeding 80 cents ranges
from 10 to 24 cents per pound and 35 per cent, ad
valorem. In some cases the duty on the wool used
in making worsted cloths exceeds the duty imposed on the
finished article." Thus what was protection to the home
industry yesterday, turns out to-day to be a premium
to the foreign importer ; and well may the Secretary of the
Treasury say : "There is much reason to believe that the
manufacture of worsted cloths must soon cease in this
country unless the tariff law in this regard is amended"
(p. xix). But to amend it, you will have to fight the
manufacturers of woollen cloths who profit by this state
of things; you will have to open a regular campaign to
bring the majority of both Houses of Congress, and
eventually the public opinion of the country, round to
your views, and the question is, Will that pay ?
But the worst of protection is, that when you once
have got it you cannot easily get rid of it. Difficult as
is the process of adjustment of an equitable tariff, the
return to free trade is immensely more difficult. The
circumstances which permitted England to accomplish
the change in a few years, will not occur again. And
even there the struggle dated from 1823 (Huskisson),
commenced to be successful in 1842 (Peel's tariff), and
INTRODUCTION 13
was continued for several years after the repeal of the
Corn Laws. Thus protection to the silk manufacture
(the only one which had still to fear foreign competition)
was prolonged for a series of years and then granted in
another, positively infamous form; while the other tex-
tile industries were subjected to the Factory Act, which
limited the hours of labor of women, young persons and
children, the silk trade was favored with considerable
exceptions to the general rule, enabling them to work
younger children, and to work the children and young
persons longer hours, than the other textile trades. The
monopoly that the hypocritical free traders repealed
with regard to the foreign competitors, that monopoly
they created anew at the expense of the health and lives
of English children.
But no country will again be able to pass from protec-
tion to free trade at a time when all, or nearly all
branches of its manufactures can defy foreign competi-
tion in the open market. The necessity of the change
will come long before such a happy state may be even
hoped for. That necessity will make itself evident in
different trades at different times; and from the con-
flicting interests of these trades, the most edifying
squabbles, lobby intrigues, and parliamentary conspiracies
will arise. The machinist, engineer, and shipbuilder may
find that the protection granted to the iron master raises
the price of his goods so much that his export trade is
thereby, and thereby alone, prevented; the cotton-cloth
manufacturer might see his way to driving English cloth
out of the Chinese and Indian markets, but for the high
price he has to pay for the yarn, on account of protection
to spinners ; and so forth. The moment a branch of na-
tional industry has completely conquered the home mar-
ket, that moment exportation becomes a necessity to it,
14 INTRODUCTION
Under capitalist conditions, an industry either expands
or wanes. A trade cannot remain stationary; stoppage
of expansion is incipient ruin ; the progress of mechanical
and chemical invention, by constantly superseding hu-
man labor, and ever more rapidly increasing and concen-
trating capital, creates in every stagnant industry a glut
both of workers and of capital, a glut which finds no
vent anywhere, because the same process is taking place
in all other industries. Thus the passage from a home
to an export trade becomes a question of life and death
for the industries concerned ; but they are met by the es-
tablished rights, the vested interests of others who as
yet find protection either safer or more profitable than
free trade. Then ensues a long and obstinate fight be-
tween free traders and protectionists; a fight where,
on both sides, the leadership soon passes out of the hands
of the people directly interested into those of professional
politicians, the wire-pullers of the traditional political
parties, whose interest is, not a settlement of the ques-
tion, but its being kept open forever; and the result of
an immense loss of time, energy, and money is a series of
compromises, favoring now one, now the other side, and
drifting slowly though not majestically in the direction
of free trade — unless protection manages, in the mean-
time, to make itself utterly insupportable to the nation,
which is just now likely to be the case in America.
There is, however, another kind of protection, the
worst of all, and that is exhibited in Germany. Ger-
many, too, began to feel, soon after 1815, the necessity
of a quicker development of her manufactures. But the
first condition of that was the creation of a home mar-
ket by the removal of the innumerable customs lines and
varieties of fiscal legislation formed by the small Ger-
man states, in other words, the formation of a German
INTRODUCTION 15
Customs Union or Zollverein. That could only be done
on the basis of a liberal tariff, calculated rather to raise
a common revenue than to protect home production. On
no other condition could the small states have been in-
duced to join. Thus the new German tariff, though
slightly protective to some trades, was at the time of its
introduction a model of free trade legislation; and it
remained so, although, ever since 1830, the majority of
German manufacturers kept clamoring for protection.
Yet, under this extremely liberal tariff, and in spite of
German household industries based on hand-labor being
mercilessly crushed out by the competition of English fac-
tories worked by steam, the transition from manual labor
to machinery was gradually accomplished in Germany too,
and is now nearly complete; the transformation of Ger-
many from an agricultural to a manufacturing country
went on at the same pace, and was, since 1866, assisted
by favorable political events: the establishment of a
strong central government, and federal legislature, in-
suring uniformity in the laws regulating trade, as well
as in currency, weights and measures, and, finally, the
flood of the French milliards. Thus, about 1874, Ger-
man trade on the market of the world ranked next to
that of Great Britain, 1 and Germany employed more
steam power in manufactures and locomotion than any
European Continental country. The proof has thus been
furnished that even nowadays, in spite of the enormous
start that English industry has got, a large country can
work its way up to successful competition, in the open
market, with England.
Then, all at once, a change of front was made: Ger-
1 General Trade of Exports and Imports added in 1874, in millions of dollars : Great
Britain — 3300; Germany — 2325; France — 1665; United States — 1245 millions of
dollars. (Kolb, Statistik, 7th edit. Leipsic : 1875 ; p. 790.)
16 INTRODUCTION
many turned protectionist, at a moment when more than
ever free trade seemed a necessity for her. The change
was no doubt absurd ; but it may be explained. While
Germany had been a corn-exporting country, the whole
agricultural interest, not less than the whole shipping
trade, had been ardent free traders. But in 1874, in-
stead of exporting, Germany required large supplies of
corn from abroad. About that time, America began to
flood Europe with enormous supplies of cheap corn;
wherever they went, they brought down the money reve-
nue yielded by the land, and consequently its rent; and
from that moment, the agricultural interest, all over
Europe, began to clamor for protection. At the same
time, manufacturers in Germany were suffering from the
effect of the reckless overtrading brought on by the
influx of the French milliards, while England, whose
trade, ever since the crisis of 1866, had been in a state
of chronic depression, inundated all accessible markets
with goods unsalable at home and offered abroad at
ruinously low prices. Thus it happened that German
manufacturers, though depending, above all, upon ex-
port, began to see in protection a means of securing to
themselves the exclusive supply of the home market.
And the government, entirely in the hands of the landed
aristocracy and squirearchy, was only too glad to profit
by this circumstance, in order to benefit the receivers of
the rent of land, by offering protective duties to both
landlords and manufacturers. In 1878, a highly protec-
tive tariff was enacted both for agricultural products and
for manufactured goods.
The consequence was that henceforth the exportation
of German manufactures was carried on at the direct
cost of the home consumers. Wherever possible, "rings"
or " trusts were formed to regulate the export trade and
INTRODUCTION *7
even production itself. The German iron trade is in
the hands of a few large firms, mostly joint stock com-
panies, who, betwixt them, can produce about four times
as much iron as the average consumption of the country
can absorb. To avoid unnecessary competition with one
another, these firms have formed a trust which divides
amongst them all foreign contracts, and determines in
each case the firm that is to make the real tender. This
"trust," some years ago, had even come to an agreement
with the English iron masters, but this no longer sub-
sists. Similarly, the Westphalian coal mines (producing
about thirty million tons annually) had formed a trust
to regulate production, tenders for contracts, and prices.
And, altogether, any German manufacturer will tell you
that the only thing the protective duties do for him is to
enable him to recoup himself in the home market for
the ruinous prices he has to take abroad. And this is
not all. This absurd system of protection to manufac-
turers is nothing but the sop thrown to industrial capi-
talists to induce them to support a still more outrageous
monopoly given to the landed interest. Not only is all
agricultural produce subjected to heavy import duties
which are increased from year to year, but certain rural
industries, carried on on large estates for account of
the proprietor, are positively endowed out of the public
purse. The beet-root sugar manufacture is not only pro-
tected, but receives enormous sums in the shape of export
premiums. One who ought to know is of opinion that if
the exported sugar were all thrown into the sea, the man-
ufacturer would still clear a profit out of the govern-
ment premium. Similarly, the potato-spirit distilleries
receive, in consequence of recent legislation, a present, out
of the pockets of the public, of about nine million dol-
lars a year. And as almost every large landowner in
1 8 INTRODUCTION
northeastern Germany is either a beet-root sugar man-
ufacturer or a potato-spirit distiller, or both, no wonder
the world is literally deluged with their productions.
This policy, ruinous under any circumstances, is
doubly so in a country whose manufactures keep up their
standing in neutral markets chiefly through the cheap-
ness of labor. Wages in Germany, kept near starva-
tion point at the best of times, through redundancy of
population (which increases rapidly, in spite of emigra-
tion), must rise in consequence of the rise in all neces-
saries caused by protection; the German manufacturer
will, then, no longer be able, as he too often is now, to
make up for a ruinous price of his articles by a deduc-
tion from the normal wages of his hands, and will be
driven out of the market. Protection, in Germany, is
killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
France, too, suffers from the consequences of protec-
tion. The system in that country has become, by its
two centuries of undisputed sway, almost part and parcel
of the life of the nation. Nevertheless, it is more and
more becoming an obstacle. Constant changes in the
methods of manufacture are the order of the day; but
protection bars the road. Silk velvets have their backs
nowadays made of fine cotton thread ; the French manu-
facturer has either to pay protection price for that, or to
submit to such interminable official chicanery as fully
makes up for the difference between that price and the
government drawback on exportation; and so the velvet
trade goes from Lyons to Crefeld, where the protection
price for fine cotton thread is considerably lower.
French exports, as said before, consist chiefly of articles
of luxury, where French taste cannot, as yet, be beaten ;
but the chief consumers, all over the world, of such arti-
cles are our modern upstart capitalists, who have no edu-
INTRODUCTION 19
cation and no taste, and who are suited quite as well by
cheap and clumsy German or English imitations, and
often have these foisted upon them for the real French
article at more than fancy prices. The market for those
specialties which cannot be made out of France is con-
stantly getting narrower, French exports of manufac-
tures are barely kept up, and must soon decline ; by what
new articles can France replace those whose export is
dying out ? If anything can help here, it is a bold meas-
ure of free trade, taking the French manufacturer out
of his accustomed hot-house atmosphere and placing him
once more in the open air of competition with foreign
rivals. Indeed, French general trade would have long
since begun shrinking, were it not for the slight and
vacillating step in the direction of free trade made by
the Cobden treaty of i860; but that has well-nigh ex-
hausted itself and a stronger dose of the same tonic is
wanted.
It is hardly worth while to speak of Russia. There, the
protective tariff — the duties having to be paid in gold, in-
stead of in the depreciated paper currency of the country
— serves above all things to supply the pauper govern-
ment with the hard cash indispensable for transactions
with foreign creditors; on the very day on which that
tariff fulfils its protective mission by totally excluding
foreign goods, on that day the Russian government is
bankrupt. And yet that same government amuses its
subjects by dangling before their eyes the prospect of
making Russia, by means of this tariff, an entirely self-
supplying country, requiring from the foreigner neither
food, nor raw material, nor manufactured articles, nor
works of art. The people who believe in this vision of a
Russian Empire, secluded and isolated from the rest of
the world, are on a level with the patriotic Prussian lieu-
30 INTRODUCTION
tenant who went into a shop and asked for a globe, not
a terrestrial or a celestial one, but a globe of Prussia.
To return to America. There are plenty of symp-
toms that protection has done all it can for the United
States, and that the sooner it receives notice to quit, the
better for all parties. One of these symptoms is the for-
mation of "rings" and "trusts" within the protected in-
dustries for the more thorough exploitation of the
monopoly granted to them. Now, "rings" and "trusts"
are truly American institutions, and, where they exploit
natural advantages, they are generally, though grum-
blingly, submitted to. The transformation of the Penn-
sylvanian oil supply into a monopoly by the Standard
Oil Company is a proceeding entirely in keeping with
the rules of capitalist production. But if the sugar re-
finers attempt to transform the protection granted them,
by the nation, against foreign competition, into a mo-
nopoly against the home consumer, that is to say, against
the same nation that granted the protection, that is quite
a different thing. Yet the large sugar refiners have
formed a "trust" which aims at nothing else. And the
sugar trust is not the only one of its kind. Now, the
formation of such trusts in protected industries is the
surest sign that protection has done its work, and is
changing its character; that it protects the manufacturer
no longer against the foreign importer, but against the
home consumer; that it has manufactured, at least in
the special branch concerned, quite enough, if not too
many manufacturers; that the money it puts into the
purse of these manufacturers is money thrown away, ex-
actly as in Germany.
In America, as elsewhere, protection is bolstered up
by the argument that free trade will only benefit Eng-
land. The best proof to the contrary is that in England
INTRODUCTION 21
not only the agriculturalists and landlords but even the
manufacturers are turning protectionists. In the home
of the "Manchester school" of free traders, on Novem-
ber 1, 1886, the Manchester chamber of commerce dis-
cussed a resolution "that, having waited in vain forty
years for other nations to follow the free trade example
of England, the chamber thinks the time has arrived to
reconsider that position." The resolution was indeed re-
jected, but by 22 votes against 21 ! And that happened
in the centre of the cotton manufacture, i. e., the only
branch of English manufacture whose superiority in the
open market seems still undisputed! But, then, even
in that special branch inventive genius has passed from
England to America. The latest improvements in ma-
chinery for spinning and weaving cotton have come, al-
most all, from America, and Manchester has to adopt
them. In industrial inventions of all kinds, America has
distinctly taken the lead, while Germany runs England
very close for second place. The consciousness is gain-
ing ground in England that that country's industrial
monopoly is irretrievably lost, that she is still relatively
losing ground, while her rivals are making progress, and
that she is drifting into a position where she will have
to be content with being one manufacturing nation among
many, instead of, as she once dreamt, "the workshop of
the world." It is to stave off this impending fate that
protection, scarcely disguised under the veil of "fair
trade" and retaliatory tariffs, is now invoked with such
fervor by the sons of the very men who, forty years ago,
knew no salvation but in free trade. And when Eng-
lish manufacturers begin to find that free trade is ruin-
ing them, and ask the government to protect them against
their foreign competitors, then, surely, the moment has
come for these competitors to retaliate by throwing over-
22 INTRODUCTION
board a protective system henceforth useless, to fight the
fading industrial monopoly of England with its own
weapon, free trade.
But, as I said before, you may easily introduce pro-
tection, but you cannot get rid of it again so easily.
The legislature, by adopting the protective plan, has
created vast interests, for which it is responsible. And
not every one of these interests — the various branches of
industry — is equally ready, at a given moment, to face
open competition. Some will be lagging behind, while
others have no longer need of protective nursing. This
difference of position will give rise to the usual lobby-
plotting, and is in itself a sure guarantee that the pro-
tected industries, if free trade is resolved upon, will
be let down very easy indeed, as was the silk manufac-
ture in England after 1846. That is unavoidable under
present circumstances, and will have to be submitted
to by the free trade party so long as the change is re-
solved upon in principle.
The question of free, trade or protection moves en-
tirely within the bounds of the present system of capi-
talist production, and has, therefore, no direct interest
for us socialists, who want to do away with that sys-
tem. Indirectly, however, it interests us, inasmuch as
we must desire the present system of production to de-
velop and expand as freely and as quickly as possible;
because along with it will develop also those economic
phenomena which are its necessary consequences, and
which must destroy the whole system, misery of the great
mass of the people, in consequence of overproduction;
this overproduction engendering either periodical gluts
and revulsions, accompanied by panic, or else a chronic
stagnation of trade ; division of society into a small class
of large capitalists, and a large one of practically hered-
INTRODUCTION 23
itary wage-slaves, proletarians, who, while their num-
bers increase constantly, are at the same time constantly
being superseded by new labor-saving machinery; in
short, society brought to a deadlock, out of which there is
no escaping but by a complete remodeling of the eco-
nomic structure which forms its basis. From this point
of View, forty years ago, Marx pronounced, in principle,
in favor of free trade as the more progressive plan, and,
therefore, the plan which would soonest bring capitalist
society to that deadlock. But if Marx declared in favor
of free trade on that ground, is that not a reason for
every supporter of the present order of society to declare
against free trade? If free trade is stated to be revo-
lutionary, must not all good citizens vote for protection
as a conservative plan?
If a country nowadays accept free trade, it will
certainly not do so to please the socialists. It will do
so because free trade has become a necessity for the in-
dustrial capitalists. But if it should reject free trade,
and stick to protection, in order to cheat the socialists
out of the expected social catastrophe, that will not hurt
the prospects of socialism in the least. Protection is a
plan for artificially manufacturing manufacturers, and
therefore also a plan for artificially manufacturing wage-
laborers. You cannot breed the one without breeding
the other. The wage-laborer everywhere follows in the
footsteps of the manufacturer; he is like the "gloomy
care" of Horace, that sits behind the rider, and that he
cannot shake off wherever he goes. You cannot escape
fate ; in other words, you cannot escape the necessary con-
sequences of your own actions. A system of production
based upon the exploitation of wage-labor, in which
wealth increases in proportion to the number of laborers
employed and exploited, such a system is bound to in-
24 INTRODUCTION
crease the class of wage-laborers, that is to say, the class
which is fated one day to destroy the system itself. In
the meantime, there is no help for it; you must go on
developing the capitalist system, you must accelerate the
production, accumulation, and centralization of capital-
ist wealth, and, along with it, the production of a revolu-
tionary class of laborers. Whether you try the protec-
tionist or the free trade plan will make no difference
in the end, and hardly any in the length of the respite
left to you until the day when that end will come. For
long before that day will protection have become an un-
bearable shackle to any country aspiring, with a chance
of success, to hold its own in the world market.
Frederick Engels.
FREE TRADE
Gentlemen: The Repeal of the Corn Laws in Eng-
land is the greatest triumph of free trade in the nine-
teenth century. In every country where manufacturers
discuss free trade, they have in mind chiefly free trade
in corn or raw material generally. To burden foreign
corn with protective duties is infamous, it is to speculate
on the hunger of the people.
Cheap food, high wages, for this alone the English
free traders have spent millions, and their enthusiasm
has already infected their continental brethren. And,
generally speaking, all those who advocate free trade do
so in the interests of the working class.
But, strange to say, the people for whom cheap food is
to be procured at all costs are very ungrateful. Cheap
food is as ill reputed in England as is cheap govern-
ment in France. The people see in these self-sacrificing
gentlemen, in Bowring, Bright & Co., their worst enemies
and the most shameless hypocrites.
Every one knows that in England the struggle between
Liberals and Democrats takes the name of the struggle
between Free Traders and Chartists. Let us see how
the English free traders have proved to the people the
good intentions that animate them.
This is what they said to the factory hands :
"The duty on corn is a tax upon wages; this tax
26 FREE TRADE
you pay to the landlords, those medieval aristocrats;
if your position is a wretched one, it is only on ac-
count of the high price of the most indispensable
articles of food."
The workers in turn asked of the manufacturers :
"How is it that in the course of the last thirty years,
while our commerce and manufacture has immensely in-
creased, our wages have fallen far more rapidly, in pro-
portion, than the price of corn has gone up ?
"The tax which you say we pay the landlords is about
three pence a week per worker. And yet the wages of
the hand-loom weaver fell, between 1815 and 1843, from
28s. per week to 5s., and the wages of the power-loom
weavers, between 1823 and 1843, from 20s. per week to
8s. And during the whole of the time that portion of
the tax which you say we pay the landlord has never ex-
ceeded three pence. And, then, in the year 1834, when
bread was very cheap and business lively, what did you
tell us? You said, 'If you are poor, it is only because
you have too many children, and your marriages are
more productive than your labor !'
"These are the very words you spoke to us, and you
set about making new Poor Laws, and building work-
houses, those Bastilles of the proletariat."
To this the manufacturers replied :
"You are right, worthy laborers ; it is not the price of
corn alone, but competition of the hands among them-
selves as well, which determines wages. But just bear in
mind the circumstance that our soil consists of rocks and
sandbanks only. You surely do not imagine that corn
can be grown in flower-pots ! If, instead of wasting our
labor and capital upon a thoroughly sterile soil, we were
to give up agriculture, and devote ourselves exclusively
to commerce and manufacture, all Europe would abandon
FREE TRADE 27
its factories, and England would form one huge factory
town, with the whole of the rest of Europe for its agri-
cultural districts."
While thus haranguing his own workingmen, the man-
ufacturer is interrogated by the small tradesmen, who
exclaim :
"If we repeal the Corn Laws, we shall indeed ruin
agriculture; but, for all that, we shall not compel other
nations to give up their own factories, and buy our goods.
What will the consequences be ? I lose my customers in
the country, and the home market is destroyed."
The manufacturer turns his back upon the working-
men and replies to the shopkeeper:
"As to that, you leave it to us ! Once rid of the duty
on corn, we shall import cheaper corn from abroad.
Then we shall reduce wages at the very time when
they are rising in the countries where we get our corn.
Thus in addition to the advantages which we already
enjoy we shall have lower wages and, with all these
advantages, we shall easily force the Continent to buy
of us."
But now the farmers and agricultural laborers join in
the discussion.
"And what, pray, is to become of us ? Are we to help
in passing a sentence of death upon agriculture, when we
get our living by it ? Are we to let the soil be torn from
beneath our feet?"
For all answer the Anti-Corn Law League contented
itself with offering prizes for the three best essays upon
the .wholesome influence of the repeal of the Corn Laws
on English agriculture.
These prizes were carried off by Messrs. Hope, Morse,
and Greg, whose essays were distributed broadcast
throughout the agricultural districts. One of the prize
28 FREE TRADE
essayists devotes himself to proving that neither the ten-
ant farmer nor the agricultural laborer would lose by
the repeal of the Corn Laws, and that the landlord alone
would lose.
"The English tenant farmer," he exclaims, "need not
fear repeal, because no other country can produce such
good corn so cheaply as England. Thus, even if the
price of corn fell, it would not hurt you, because this fall
would only affect rent, which would go down, while the
profit of capital and the wages of labor would remain
stationary."
The second prize essayist, Mr. Morse, maintains, on
the contrary, that the price of corn will rise in conse-
quence of repeal. He is at infinite pains to prove that
protective duties have never been able to secure a re-
munerative price for corn.
In support of his assertion he quotes the fact that,
wherever foreign corn has been imported, the price of
corn in England has gone up considerably, and that
when no corn has been imported the price has fallen ex-
tremely. This prize-winner forgets that the importation
was not the cause of the high price, but that the high
price was the cause of the importation. In direct contra-
diction of his colleague he asserts that every rise in the
price of corn is profitable to both the tenant farmer and
laborer, but does not benefit the landlord.
The third prize essayist, Mr. Greg, who is a large manu-
facturer and whose work is addressed to the large tenant
farmers, could not afford to echo such silly stuff. His
language is more scientific. He admits that the Corn
Laws can increase rent only by increasing the price of
corn, and that they can raise the price of corn only by
inducing the investment of capital upon land of inferior
quality, and this is explained quite simply.
FREE TRADE 29
In proportion as population increases, it inevitably fol-
lows, if foreign corn cannot be imported, that less fruitful
soil must be placed under cultivation. This involves
more expense and the product of this soil is consequently
dearer. There being a demand for all the corn thus pro-
duced, it will all be sold. The price for all of it will of
necessity be determined by the price of the product of the
inferior soil. The difference between this price and the
cost of production upon soil of better quality constitutes
the rent paid for the use of the better soil. If, therefore,
in consequence of the repeal of the Corn Laws, the price
of corn falls, and if, as a matter of course, rent falls along
with it, it is because inferior soil will no longer be culti-
vated. Thus the reduction of rent must inevitably ruin a
part of the tenant farmers.
These remarks were necessary in order to make Mr.
Greg's language comprehensible.
"The small farmers," he says, "who cannot support
themselves by agriculture must take refuge in manufac-
ture. As to the large tenant farmers, they cannot fail to
profit by the arrangement: either the landlord will be
obliged to sell them land very cheap, or leases will be
made out for very long periods. This will enable tenant
farmers to invest more capital in their farms, to use agri-
cultural machinery on a larger scale, and to save manual
labor, which will, moreover, be cheaper, on account of the
general fall in wages, the immediate consequence of the
repeal of the Corn Laws."
Dr. Bowring conferred upon all these arguments the
consecration of religion, by exclaiming at a public meet-
ing, "Jesus Christ is Free Trade, and Free Trade is
Jesus Christ."
It will be evident that all this cant was not calculated
to make cheap bread attractive to workingmen.
3° FREE TRADE
Besides, how should the workingmen understand the
sudden philanthropy of the manufacturers, the very men
still busy fighting against the Ten-Hours Bill, which
was to reduce the working day of the mill hands from
twelve hours to ten ?
To give you an idea of the philanthropy of these man-
ufacturers I would remind you of the factory regulations
in force in all their mills.
Every manufacturer has for his own private use a regu-
lar penal code by means of which fines are inflicted for
every voluntary or involuntary offence. For instance,
the hand pays so much when he has the misfortune to sit
down on a chair, or whisper, or speak, or laugh ; if he is
a few moments late; if any part of a machine breaks, or
he turns out work of an inferior quality, etc. The fines
are always greater than the damage really done by the
workman. And to give the workman every oppor-
tunity for incurring fines the factory clock is set forward,
and he is given bad material to make into good stuff. An
overseer unskilful in multiplying infractions of rules is
soon discharged.
You see, gentlemen, this private legislation is enacted
for the especial purpose of creating such infractions, and
infractions are manufactured for the purpose of making
money. Thus the manufacturer uses every means of
reducing the nominal wage, and even profiting by acci-
dents over which the workers have no control. And
these manufacturers are the same philanthropists who
have tried to persuade the workers that they were capable
of going to immense expense for the sole and express
purpose of improving the condition of these same work-
ingmen! On the one hand they nibble at the workers'
wages in the pettiest way, by means of factory regula-
tions, and, on the other, they are prepared to make the
FREE TRADE 3 1
greatest sacrifices to raise those wages by means of the
Anti-Corn Law League.
They build great palaces, at immense expense, in which
the league takes up its official residence. They send an
army of missionaries to all corners of England to preach
the gospel of free trade ; they print and distribute gratis
thousands of pamphlets to enlighten the workingman
upon his own interests. They spend enormous sums to
buy over the press to their side. They organize a vast
administrative system for the conduct of the free trade
movement, and bestow all the wealth of their eloquence
upon public meetings. It was at one of these meetings
that a workingman cried out:
"If "the landlords were to sell our bones, you manu-
facturers would be the first to buy them, and to put them
through the mill and make flour of them."
The English workingmen have appreciated to the full-
est extent the significance of the struggle between the
lords of the land and of capital. They know very well
that the price of bread was to be reduced in order to re-
duce wages, and that the profit of capital would rise by
as much as rent fell.
Ricardo, the apostle of the English free traders, the
leading economist of our century, entirely agrees with
the workers upon this point. In his celebrated work
upon Political Economy he says : "If instead of growing
our own corn ... we discover a new market from
which we can supply ourselves ... at a cheaper
price, wages will fall and profits rise.- The fall in the
price of agricultural produce reduces the wages, not only
of the laborer employed in cultivating the soil, but also of
all those employed in commerce or manufacture."
Do not believe, gentlemen, that it is a matter of indif-
ference to the workingman whether he receives only four
3 2 FREE TRADE
francs on account of corn being cheaper, when he had
been receiving five francs before.
Have not his wages always fallen in comparison with
profit? And is it not clear that his social position has
grown worse as compared with that of the capitalist?
Beside which he loses actually. So long as the price of
corn was higher and wages were also higher, a small
saving in the consumption of bread sufficed to procure
him other enjoyments. But as soon as bread is cheap,
and wages are therefore low, he can save almost nothing
on bread for the purchase of other articles.
The English workingmen have shown the English free
traders that they are not the dupes of their illusions or
of their lies; and if, in spite of this, the workers have
made common cause with the manufacturers against the
landlords, it is for the purpose of destroying the last
remnant of feudalism, that henceforth they may have only
one enemy to deal with. The workers have not miscalcu-
lated, for the landlords, in order to revenge themselves
upon the manufacturers, have made common cause with
the workers to carry the Ten Hours Bill, which the latter
had been vainly demanding for thirty years, and which
was passed immediately after the repeal of the Corn
Laws.
When Dr. Bowring, at the Congress of Economists,
drew from his pocket a long list to show how many head
of cattle, how much ham, bacon,, ppuhry, etc., is im-
ported into England, to be consumed — as he asserted — by
the workers, he forgot to state that at the same time the
workers of Manchester and other factory towns were
thrown out of work by the beginning of the crisis.
As a matter of principal in political economy, the fig-
ures of a single year must never be taken as the basis for
formulating general laws. We must always take the
FREE TRADE 33
average of from six to seven years, a period during which
modern industry passes through the successive phases of
prosperity, overproduction, crisis, thus completing the in-
evitable cycle.
Doubtless, if the price of all commodities falls — and
this is the necessary consequence of free trade — I can
buy far more for a franc than before. And the work-
ingman's franc is as good as any other man's. There-
fore, free trade must be advantageous to the working-
man. There is only one little difficulty in this, namely
that the workman, before he exchanges his franc for
other commodities, has first exchanged his labor for the
money of the capitalist. If in this exchange he always
received the said franc while the price of all other com-
modities fell, he would always be the gainer by such a
bargain. The difficulty does not lie in proving that, the
price of all commodities falling, more commodities can be
bought for the same sum of money.
Economists always take the price of labor at the mo-
ment of its exchange with other commodities, and alto-
gether ignore the moment at which labor accomplishes
its own exchange with capital. When it costs less to set
in motion the machinery which produces commodities,
then the things necessary for the maintenance of this
machine, called workman, will also cost less. If all
commodities are cheaper, labor, which is a commodity too,
will also fall in price, and we shall see later that this
commodity, labor, will fall far lower in proportion than
all other commodities. If the workingman still pins his
faith to the arguments of the economists, he will find, one
fine morning, that the franc has dwindled in his pocket,
and that he has only five sous left.
Thereupon the economists will tell you : —
"We admit that competition among the workers will
34 FREE TRADE
certainly not be lessened under free trade, and will very
soon bring wages into harmony with the low price of
commodities. But, on the other hand, the low price of
commodities will increase consumption, the larger con-
sumption will increase production, which will in turn
necessitate a larger demand for labor, and this larger de-
mand will be followed by a rise in wages.
"The whole line of argument amounts to this: Free
trade increases productive forces. When manufactures
keep advancing, when wealth, when the productive forces,
when, in a word, productive capital increases, the demand
for labor, the price of labor, and consequently the rate
of wages, rises also."
The most favorable condition for the workingman is
the growth of capital. This must be admitted: when
capital remains stationary, commerce and manufacture
are not merely stationary but decline, and in this case the
workman is the first victim. He goes to the wall before
the capitalist. And in the case of the growth of capital,
under the circumstances, which, as we have said, are
the best for the workingman, what will be his lot? He
will go to the wall just the same. The growth of capital
implies the accumulation and the concentration of capi-
tal. This centralization involves a greater division of
labor and a greater use of machinery. The greater
division of labor destroys the especial skill of the laborer ;
and by putting in the place of this skilled work labor
which any one can perform, it increases competition
among the workers.
This competition becomes more fierce as the division
of labor enables a single man to do the work of three.
Machinery accomplishes the same result on a much larger
scale. The accumulation of productive capital forces the
industrial capitalist to work with constantly increasing
FREE TRADE 35
means of production, ruins the small manufacturer, and
drives him into the proletariat. Then, the rate of interest
falling in proportion as capital accumulates, the little
rentiers and retired tradespeople, who can no longer live
upon their small incomes, are forced to look out for some
business again and ultimately to swell the number of
proletarians. Finally, the more productive capital grows,
the more it is compelled to produce for a market whose
requirements it does not know — the more supply tries to
force demand, and consequently crises increase in fre-
quency and in intensity. But every crisis in turn hastens
the concentration of capital, adds to the proletariat.
Thus, as productive capital grows, competition among
the workers grows too, and grows in a far greater pro-
portion. The reward of labor is less for all, and the bur-
den of labor is increased for some at least.
In 1829 there were, in Manchester, 1088 cotton spin-
ners employed in 36 factories. In 1841 there were but 448,
and they tended 53,353 more spindles than the 1088
spinners did in 1829. If manual labor had increased in
the same proportion as productive force, the number of
spinners ought to have risen to 1848 ; improved machinery
had, therefore, deprived 1100 workers of employment.
We know beforehand the reply of the economists — ■
the people thus thrown out of work will find other kinds
of employment. Dr. Bowring did not fail to reproduce
this argument at the Congress of Economists. But
neither did he fail to contradict himself. In 1833, Dr.
Bowring made a speech in the House of Commons upon
the 50,000 hand-loom weavers of London who had been
starving without being able to find that new kind of
employment which the free traders hold out to them in
the distance. Let us hear the most striking portion of
this speech of Mr. Bowring.
3 6 FREE TRADE
"The misery of the hand-loom weavers," he says, "is
the inevitable fate of all kinds of labor which are easily
acquired, and which may, at any moment, be replaced
by less costly means. As in these cases competition
amongst the work-people is very great, the slightest
falling-off in demand brings on a crisis. The hand-
loom weavers are, in a certain sense, placed on the bor-
ders of human existence. One step further, and that ex-
istence becomes impossible. The slightest shock is suf-
ficient to throw them on to the road to ruin. By more
and more superseding manual labor, the progress of me-
chanical science must bring on, during the period of
transition, a deal of temporary suffering. National well-
being cannot be bought except at the price of some indi-
vidual evils. The advance of industry is achieved at
the expense of those who lag behind, and of all discov-
eries that of the power-loom weighs most heavily upon
the hand-loom weavers. In a great many articles for-
merly made by hand, the weaver has been placed hors de
combat; and he is sure to be beaten in a good many more
fabrics that are now made by hand."
Further on he says : "I hold in my hand a correspond-
ence of the governor-general with the East India Com-
pany. This correspondence is concerning the weavers of
the Decca district. The governor says in his letter: 'A
few years ago the East India Company received from six
to eight million pieces of calico woven upon the looms of
the country. The demand fell off gradually and was
reduced to about a million pieces. At this moment it has
almost entirely ceased.' Moreover, in 1800, North Amer-
ica received from India nearly 800,000 pieces of cotton
goods. In 1830 it did not take even 4000. Finally, in
1800 a million of pieces were shipped for Portugal; in
1830 Portugal did not receive above 20,000.
FREE TRADE 37
"The reports on the distress of the Indian weavers are
terrible. And what is the origin of that distress? The
presence on the market of English manufactures, the pro-
duction of the same article by means of the power-loom.
A great number of the weavers died of starvation; the
remainder have gone over to other employment, and chiefly
to field labor. Not to be able to change employment
amounted to a sentence of death. And at this moment
the Decca district is crammed with English yarns and
calicoes. The Decca muslin, renowned all over the world
for its beauty and firm texture, has also been eclipsed by
the competition of English machinery. In the whole his-
tory of commerce, it would, perhaps, be difficult to find
suffering equal to what these whole classes in India had
to submit to."
Mr. Bowring's speech is the more remarkable because
the facts quoted by him are correct, and the phrases with
which he seeks to palliate them are characterized by the
hypocrisy common to all free trade discourses. He
represents the workers as means of production which
must be superseded by less expensive means of produc-
tion, pretends to see in the labor of which he speaks a
wholly exceptional kind of labor, and in the machine
which has crushed out the weavers an equally excep-
tional kind of machine. He forgets that there is no kind
of manual labor which may not any day share the fate
of the hand-loom weavers.
"The constant aim and tendency of every improve-
ment of mechanism is indeed to do entirely without the
labor of men, or to reduce its price, by superseding the
labor of the adult males by that of women and children,
or the work of the skilled by that of the unskilled work-
man. In most of the throstle mills, spinning is now en-
tirely done by girls of sixteen years and less. The in-
3& FREE TRADE
troduction of the self-acting mule has caused the dis-
charge of most of the (adult male) spinners, while the
children and young persons have been kept on."
The above words of the most enthusiastic of free
traders, Dr. Ure, are calculated to complement the con-
fessions of Dr. Bowring. Mr. Bowring speaks of cer-
tain individual evils, and, at the same time, says that
these individual evils destroy whole classes ; he speaks of
the temporary sufferings during a transition period, and
does not deny that these temporary evils have implied
for the majority the transition from life to death, and for
the rest a transition from a better to a worse condition.
When he asserts, farther on, that the sufferings of the
working class are inseparable from the progress of in-
dustry, and are necessary to the prosperity of the nation,
he simply says that the prosperity of the bourgeois class
presupposes as necessary the suffering of the laboring
class.
All the comfort which Mr. Bowring offers the workers
who perish, and, indeed, the whole doctrine of compen-
sation which the free traders propound, amounts to
this : —
You thousands of workers who are perishing, do not
despair! You can die with an easy conscience. Your
class will not perish. It will always be numerous enough
for the capitalist class to decimate it without fear of an-
nihilating it. Besides, how could capital be usefully ap-
plied if it did not take care to keep up its exploitable
material, i. e., the workingmen, to be exploited over and
over again?
But, then, why propound as a problem still to be solved
the question: What influence will the adoption of
free trade have upon the condition of the working
class? All the laws formulated by the political econo-
FREE TRADE 39
mists from Quesnay to Ricardo, have been based upon
the hypothesis that the trammels which still interfere
with commercial freedom have disappeared. These laws
are confirmed in proportion as free trade is adopted.
The first of these laws is that competition reduces the
price of every commodity to the minimum cost of pro-
duction. Thus the minimum of wages is the natural
price of labor. And what is the minimum of wages?
Just so much as is required for production of the ar-
ticles absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the
worker, for the continuation, by hook or by crook, of his
own existence and that of his class.
But do not imagine that the worker receives only this
minimum wage, and still less that he always receives it.
No, according to this law, the working class will some-
times be more fortunate, will sometimes receive some-
thing above the minimum, but this surplus will merely
make up for the deficit which they will have received
below the minimum in times of industrial depression.
That is to say that within a given time which recurs
periodically, in other words, in the cycle which com-
merce and industry describe while passing through the
successive phases of prosperity, overproduction, stagna-
tion, and crisis, when reckoning all that the working
class has had above and below mere necessaries, we shall
see that, after all, they have received neither more nor
less than the minimum ; i. e., the working class will have
maintained itself as a class after enduring any amount
of misery and misfortune, and after leaving many
corpses upon the industrial battle-field. But what of
that? The class will still exist; nay, more, it will have
increased.
But this is not all. The progress of industry creates
less and less expensive means of subsistence. Thus
4° FREE TRADE
spirits have taken the place of beer, cotton that of wool
and linen, and potatoes that of bread.
Thus, as means are constantly being found for the
maintenance of labor on cheaper and more wretched
food, the minimum of wages is constantly sinking. If
these wages began by letting the man work to live, they
end by forcing him to live the life of a machine. His
existence has no other value than that of a simple pro-
ductive force, and the capitalist treats him accordingly.
This law of the commodity labor, of the minimum of
wages, will be confirmed in proportion as the supposi-
tion of the economists, free trade, becomes an actual
fact. Thus, of two things one : either we must reject all
political economy based upon the assumption of free
trade, or we must admit that under this same free
trade the whole severity of the economic laws will fall
upon the workers.
To sum up, what is free trade under the present con-
dition of society ? Freedom of Capital. When you have
torn down the few national barriers which still restrict
the free development of capital, you will merely have
given it complete freedom of action. So long as you let
the relation of wage-labor to capital exist, no matter
how favorable the conditions under which you accom-
plish the exchange of commodities, there will always be
a class which exploits and a class which is exploited. It
is really difficult to understand the presumption of the
free traders who imagine that the more advantageous
application of capital will abolish the antagonism be-
tween industrial capitalists and wage-workers. On the
contrary. The only result will be that the antagonism of
these two classes will stand out more clearly.
Let us assume for a moment that there are no more
Corn Laws or national and municipal import duties {
FREE TRADE 41
that in a word all the accidental circumstances which
to-day the workingman may look upon as a cause of
his miserable condition have vanished, and we shall
have removed so many curtains that hide from his eyes
his true enemy.
He will see that capital released from all trammels
will make him no less a slave than capital trammelled
by import duties.
Gentlemen! Do not be deluded by the abstract word
Freedom! Whose freedom? Not the freedom of one
individual in relation to another, but freedom of Capi-
tal to crush the worker.
Why should you desire farther to sanction un-
limited competition with this idea of freedom, when
the idea of freedom itself is only the product of a social
condition based upon free competition ?
We have shown what sort of fraternity free trade
begets between the different classes of one and the
same nation. The fraternity which free trade would
establish between the nations of the earth would not
be more real. To call cosmopolitan exploitation univer-
sal brotherhood is an idea that could only be engen-
dered in the brain of the bourgeoisie. Every one of the
destructive phenomena which unlimited competition
gives rise to within any one nation is reproduced in
more gigantic proportions in the market of the world.
We need not pause any longer upon free trade
sophisms on this subject, which are worth just as much
as the arguments of our prize essayists Messrs. Hope,
Morse, and Greg.
For instance, we are told that free trade would
create an international division of labor, and thereby
give to each country those branches of production most
in harmony with its natural advantages.
42 FREE TRADE
You believe perhaps, gentlemen, that the production
of coffee and sugar is the natural destiny of the West
Indies. Two centuries ago, Nature, which does not
trouble herself about commerce, had planted neither
sugar-cane nor coffee trees there. And it may be that
in less than half a century you will find there neither
coffee nor sugar, for the East Indies, by means of cheaper
production, have already successfully broken down this
so-called natural destiny of the West Indies. And the
West Indies, with their natural wealth, are as heavy a
burden for England as the weavers of Decca, who also
were destined from the beginning of time to weave by
hand.
One other circumstance must not be forgotten, namely,
that, just as everything has become a monopoly, there are
also nowadays some branches of industry which prevail
over all others, and secure to the nations which espe-
cially foster them the command of the market of the
world. Thus in the commerce of the world cotton alone
has much greater commercial importance than all the
other raw materials used in the manufacture of clothing.
It is truly ridiculous for the free traders to refer to the
few specialties in each branch of industry, throwing
them into the balance against the product used in every-
day consumption, and produced most cheaply in those
countries in which manufacture is most highly devel-
oped.
If the free traders cannot understand how one nation
can grow rich at the expense of another, we need not
wonder, since these same gentlemen also refuse to under-
stand how in the same country one class can enrich itself
at the expense of another.
Do not imagine, gentlemen, that in criticizing freedom
of commerce we have the least intention of defining pro-
FREE TRADE 43
tection. One may be opposed to constitutionalism with-
out being in favor of absolutism.
Moreover, the protective system is nothing but a means
of establishing manufacture upon a large scale in any
given country, that is to say, of making it dependent upon
the market of the world ; and from the moment that de-
pendence upon the market of the world is established,
there is more or less dependence upon free trade too.
Besides this, the protective system helps to develop free
competition within a nation. Hence we see that in coun-
tries where the bourgeoisie is beginning to make itself felt
as a class, in Germany for example, it makes great efforts
to obtain protective duties. They serve the bourgeoisie
as weapons against feudalism and absolute monarchy, as
a means for the concentration of its own powers for the
realization of free trade within the country.
But, generally speaking, the protective system in these
days is conservative, while the free trade system works
destructively. It breaks up old nationalities and carries
antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie to the utter-
most point. In a word, the free trade system hastens
the Social Revolution. In this revolutionary sense alone,
gentlemen, I am in favor of free trade.
VALUE,
PRICE,
AND
PROFIT
From a Mechanical Standpoint
It Is the first one of Marx's works
published in America that can be
looked upon as a careful piece of
publishing. It Is to be hoped that
this excellent volume Is the fore-
runner of other volumes of Marx,
and that America will have the
honor of publishing an edition
that Is accurate as to text, thor-
ough in annotations, convenient
In size, and presentable In every
way. The present book will de-
light the lover of Marx, and every
Socialist will desire a copy of It.
— N. Y. Daily People.
By Kabl Marx. Edited by his daughter Eleanor Marx
Aveling. With an Introduction and Annotations by Lucien
Sanial.
THIS book is especially timely, like everything else that Marx
wrote. Written a couple of years before his "Capital"
appeared, it is an address to workingmen, and covers in
popular form many of the subjects later scientifically
expanded in "Capital."
Lucien Sanial says of it : "It is universally considered as the
best epitome we have of the first volume of 'Capital,' and as such,
is invaluable to the beginner in economics. It places him squarely
on his feet at the threshold of his inquiry; that is, in a position
where his perceptive faculties cannot be deceived and his reasoning
power vitiated by the very use of his eyesight ; whereas, by the
very nature of his capitalist surroundings, he now stands on his
head and sees all things inverted."
Special interest attaches to what Marx says relative to strikes.
Were the working Class thoroughly acquainted with the subject
matter of this little work, we should hear no more of the "common
ground" on which capital and labor might meet to settle their
differences.
The thousand and one schemes that are daily being flaunted in
the faces of the working class by the lieutenants of the capitalists
Show the necessity there is on the part of the working class for
a comprehensive understanding of the matter of wages, the relation
of the wage worker to the employer, the source of profits, and the
relation between profits and wages. These and other subjects are
here presented, and so clearly does Marx present them that all he
has to say can be understood by any person willing to pay close
attention to his words.
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The . . . .
SOCIALIST
ALMANAC.
The monographs on Italy and Spain
are especially instructive. They trace
to its origin the long and mortal strug-
gle between anarchism and social*
ism, the former of which, fathered by
the sophist Proudhon and brought
forth in agony by a middle class finan-
cially and morally bankrupt, had fas-
tened itself to the international pro-
letariat.— Introduction to "Socialist
Almanac."
A BOOK THAT EVERY WORKWOMAN SHOULD READ.
By Lucien Sanial, formerly editor of "The People," the
official organ of the Socialist Labor Party. A handbook
on the history and economics of Socialism. Prepared
under the direction of the National ExecutiveCommittee
of the Socialist Labor Party.
The Science of Modern Socialism Is based upon facts. To present this
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while he who would attempt to refute the Science must also be equipped with
those facts. With the object of making these facts easily accessible to friend
and foe alike, the National Convention of the Socialist Labor Party held in
1896 Instructed the National Executive Committee to have prepared a book
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"The Socialist Almanac," a stout volume of 230 pages.
The first part of "The Almanac" is historical, and gives a detailed
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down to the present day. The second part consists of instructive theoretical
and statistical articles on every subject connected with capitalism and the
working class. This second part is truly a mine of information for the
workingman. It contains a vast amount of valuable Information, which no
one could obtain but at an enormous expense of time and labor In tedious
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workingman and every student should have a copy of the Socialist Almanac.
It Is authority In all disputes, and will settle every argument.
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IftroceefrfnQg of tbe ♦ ♦ ♦ .
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This book Is a remarkably Interesting and Instructive contribution
to current literature on the Labor Movement. Realizing that the
Social Revolution can be brought about only by the use of political
power wielded by the class that seeks its own emancipation, the
Socialists are organized in a political party— the Socialist Labor
Party — in order that they may achieve the conquest of that po-
litical power. The national conventions of the party are held every
; four years. The convention held in 1900 was doubly interesting
owing to the reactionists who happened to get into- the party
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spiracy to sidetrack the party from the course prescribed for it by
the Class Struggle. The conflict was a fierce one for a while, and
ended in the utter rout of the "Kangaroos," as the conspirators
were called. The report of the National Executive Committee,
which makes up sixty pages of the Proceedings, details in an in-
teresting manner the progress of the party since the 1896 conven-
tion, and makes public a good deal of inside information relative to
13ie Kangaroo conspiracy.
For a week the representatives of the Socialist proletariat of the
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• THE •
Eighteenth Brumaire of Loisris Bonaparte
by KARL MARX.
Translated by DANIEL DB LEON for the Socialist Labor Party.
"The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" 1b one of Kjrt
Marx's most profound and briHiajit mon.oera.ph9. It may be consid-
ered the best work extant on the philosophy (if history, especially on
the history of the Movement of the ProdetWiat, together with the
bourgeois manifesatlons that accompany the same, and the tactics
thai such conditions dictate.
The recent Populist uprising, the more roexntt "Debs Movement,"
the thousand and one Utopian and chimerical lotions that are fl a r i ng
up, the capitalist manoeuvres, the hopeless, helpless grasping after
straws that characterizes the conduct of the bulk of the Working Class
—all of these, together with the empty-headed, ominous figures that
are springing into notoriety for a time, and have their day, mark the
present period of the Labor Movement in the United States a critical
one. The best information acquirable, and the beat mental training ob-
tainable, are requisite to steer through the existing chaos that the
death-tainted social system of to-day creates all around us. To aid In
this needed information and mental training, this Instructive work by
Marx is made accessible to English readers, and Is recommended to
the serious study of the serious.
For the assistance of those who are unfamiliar with the history of
France, end who mdght therefore be confused by some of the terms
used by Marx, the following explanations may prove timely:
On the 18th Brumaire, (November 9, 1799,) the development of af-
fairs in France enabled Napoleon Bonaparte to take the step that led
with Inevitable certainty to the imperial throne. The circumstances
that, fifty years later, aided his nephew, Louis Bonaparte, to take a
similar step with a similar result, gives the name to this work-r'The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte." . '
Upon the overthrow of the first Napoleon came the restoration of
the Bourbon throne— Louis XVIII., succeeded by Charles X. In July,
1830, an uprising of the upper tier of the capitalist class (the aristocracy
of finance) overthrew the Bourbon throne and set up the throne of
Orleans, a younger branch of the House of Bourbon, with Louis
Philippe as king. From the month in which this revolution occurred,
Louis Philippe's monarchy is called the "July Monarchy." In Febru-
ary, 1848, a revolt of the lower tier of the capitalist class (the "in-
dustrial bourgeoisie") against the aristocracy of finance dethroned
Louis Philippe. This affair, also named from the month In which it
took place, is called the "February Revolution." And the "Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" starts-with the "February Revolution."
Despite the hrapplieableness to America of the political names
and political leaderships described In the "Eighteenth Brumaire," both
these names and leaderships are to such an extent the product of an
economic-social development that has taken place in the United States
with even greater sharpness than in France, and have, likewise, their
real or threatened counterparts here so completely, that by this work
Of Marx we are best enabled to understand our own history, to know
whence we come, whither we are going, and how to conduct ourselves.
78 Pasbs. Thi Fbontispiece is a Pictusb or Marx.
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