What is slavery?

The centralisation of the control of property in a few hands is increasing threatening the existence of civilisation.

Some scornfully sneer at the Socialist Party because they say we are “idealists.” Some others claim that we are as a whole “pretty good fellows,” but utterly “impractical.” Now, what is socialism? One day in the near future the hungry millions will turn against the overfed few. In his historic work, The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels wrote in 1844:

“Both legally and actually, the worker is the slave of the possessing class, the bourgeoisie; so much so that he is sold in the market like a commodity whose price is subject to rise and fall like that of any other commodity. If there is an increased demand for workers, their price goes up; if there is a decreased demand, the price goes down; if the demand has so decreased that a certain number of workers find no buyer of their labour-power, as ‘surplus stock’, then they have to lie in reserve, and thus earning no livelihood, they perish from starvation. For, to speak in terms of political economy, the money spent on their maintenance will not ‘reproduce itself’, will be money wasted, and no capitalist will thus invest his money. The whole difference from the old, avowed slavery, consists in that the modern worker is seemingly free; because he is not sold once and for all time, but by instalments, by the day, by the week, or by the year, and also because he is not sold by one owner to another, but is forced to sell himself; for, he is not the slave of one man, but of the whole possessing class. This means no substantial difference to him, and while this illusory liberty should afford him some amount of real liberty, there is, on the other hand, the further handicap in his present position that no one guarantees him the means of subsistence, and the bourgeoisie may any day deprive him of his employment and doom him to starvation, should it have no use for his labour nor for his existence. On the other hand, to the bourgeoisie the present state of affairs is infinitely more advantageous than the old slavery. It may discharge its workpeople whenever it pleases, without losing thereby any capital investment for, generally, labour is now bought cheaper by the bourgeoisie than the cost of labour would be under the old slavery system, as it had been reassuringly calculated by Adam Smith”

Engels a few years later in his pamphlet, Principles of Communism, which constituted the first draft of the Communist Manifesto. He puts there the question, wherein do proletarians differ from slaves? And his answer is as follows:

“The slave is sold once and forever. The proletarian as to sell himself each day, and each hour. The slave is the property of his master, and already on account of the personal interest of the latter, enjoys an assured existence, however miserable. Each individual proletarian is, so to speak, the property of the whole bourgeois class. His labour is purchased only when required, and therefore, his existence is not assured. There is an assured existence only to the working class as a whole. The slave had no competition to contend with; the proletarian is subject to competition and price fluctuations. The slave is considered a thing, and not a member of bourgeois society. The proletarian is considered a person and a member of bourgeois society. The slave may live under better conditions than the proletarian, but the proletarian belongs to a society standing on a higher level of development, and is himself on a higher level than the slave. The slave may liberate himself by abolishing, among all the forms of private property, only that of slavery; whereas the proletarian can liberate himself only by abolishing private property in general”.

Many years later Marx, wrote the following on this subject: “Only the form in which surplus labour is squeezed out of the immediate producers – the workers – distinguishes the economic social formations; for instance, the society based on slavery from the society of hired labour”. (Capital, Vol.1)

Of course, the people who exploit the working class do not recognise the correctness of this state of wage slavery. The reformists cited two points supposed to prove that the proletariat was no longer in a state of slavery. 1) the growth of democracy and the extension of the political rights of the proletariat, and 2) that owing to the existence of the trade unions, owing to the political struggle of the proletariat, there was an improvement in the condition of the proletariat, wage increases, increased social insurance, and labour protection. After the war, the reformists added the growing participation of the proletariat in the management of industry, the introduction of the so-called “industrial democracy”. The reformists triumphantly point to the statement made by Engels that when labour power, as a commodity, becomes unsalable and is laid up in stock, the worker has to die of starvation. Well, they say, is it so to-day? And they tell us about the existence of unemployment benefits. Yes, in a number of countries the bourgeoisie was forced to introduce the welfare system for the unemployment. Such is the case in countries where the proletariat forms a majority of the population, where the bourgeoisie is afraid lest the unemployed, suffering the pangs of hunger, throw off the yoke of capitalism. Only in Western countries the bourgeoisie has paid a sort of ransom to the workers in the shape of paltry sums for the relief of the unemployed. In countries where the proletarian masses do not as yet reveal any revolutionary tendencies on a large scale, there is either no relief at all for unemployed workers or it amounts to a miserable pittance.

However, even in countries where the proletariat has won the benefits of social services against unemployment the bourgeoisie have inaugurated a furious attack upon this “luxury”. It asserts that it can no longer “maintain” the unemployed, that the insurance contributions are a heavy burden on accumulated capital and on the cost of production, thus diminishing the competitive ability of the manufacturers. The bourgeois press, all the bourgeois spokesman, including the most progressive amongst them, are screaming about the extravagant living of the proletariat, claiming that the paltry payment received, at best, by unemployed worker in the wealthiest capitalist countries constitutes an unheard of luxury which capitalism cannot afford. The proletarians of ancient society – says Marx – lived at the expense of that society, which relied on slave labour. Modern society lives at the expense of the hired labour of the proletarians. And this very society, which would not be able to live through a single day without exploiting the workers, turns around and says to the proletariat: “you will have to shift yourself, I can no longer afford to feed you”.

While Marx and Engels characterised the condition of the proletariat under capitalism as a form of exploitation that does not differ from slavery in substance, the condition of the proletariat in the period of moribund capitalism is daily becoming more and more identical with the condition of slaves. In the midst of untold wealth, millions upon millions of people are starving in the civilised capitalist countries, not to speak of the millions who literally die from hunger in the countries ruined by capitalism. The worker is tied to the machine which allows him not a single moment for thoughtful reflection, for human sentiments. He comes back from the factory, completely worn out and incapable of anything else than to stagger into the “movie” or the public-house. He is not individually owned as a slave, but as a class, he is collectively enmeshed in the huge capitalist machine, which ruthlessly crushes him and breaks his bones at the least attempt of resistance. The capitalist State becomes not merely the organ of domination over the working class, but it becomes the organ of civil war; because the worker does not want to remain the slave of the capitalists. Capitalism has placed upon the backs of the working class the whole burden of labour and has deprived it of all the joys of life; now the capitalist cannot imagine labour in any other way than under brutal compulsion. In the 19^th century an African native who had returned from England explained : “The English are the same slaves as ourselves. They are compelled to work by hunger; and we, by our masters”. The slave-owners took the same view of slave labour that the capitalists are taking today of “free” capitalist labour, which is, that no one will work unless driven by hunger. The greatest philosopher of the slave-driving world, Aristotle, wrote that “the trades are akin to slavery; a man of honour, a man of social standing, a good citizen, should learn no trade; for he will cease then to be a gentleman, and the slaves will cease to be slaves”. Even the management of slaves was considered by Aristotle to be an unworthy pursuit for a freeman: “It contains in itself nothing beautiful, and nothing to excite respect. Gentlemen who can dispense with such worries, shift them on to their managers. For themselves they choose the pursuit of politics and philosophy”.