A Socialist Lesson

The Socialist Party calls itself scientific for we substituted socialist principles for dreaming.  Long before Marx and Engels, workers struggles had begun. Dissatisfaction with existing conditions had arisen and schemes for a better society developed. These thinkers, among whom the Englishman, Robert Owen, and the Frenchmen, Saint Simon and Charles Fourier harshly criticized the existing system. They saw the root evil of existing society in private property. They understood that because wealth is in the hands of the capitalists, which gives them power to use the labour of other at low wages and under bad conditions, poverty and suffering prevailed among great numbers of the people. They regretted the evil and sought a better society where such misery would not exist. They wished for a society where the means of production would belong, not to the individual, but to the community. They eloquently preached such a society. But they never saw clearly the way a society without private property could be established. The preachers of the ideal society did not believe that the workers themselves could establish such a society. Marxists call such thinkers utopian, the same thing as a dreamer. They see with their mind's eyes a better system, but do not see the road which can lead to their promised land. A utopian can only hope and wish.

 Marx and Engels put the struggle of the workers on a scientific basis. They made a scientific analysis of existing society and saw that it was a society where capitalism rules, and is, therefore, a capitalist society. They studied the forces that operate in the capitalist society. They discovered the laws governing capitalist society. And they pointed out as clearly and accurately, as only science can do, that the laws of development of capitalist society inevitably lead to the workers’ revolution which will establish socialism. Marx and Engels showed the working class what they must do to liberate themselves and the world.  They taught the working class to know itself and become class conscious. They clearly understood and taught the workers that political democracy is not their final goal, that the workers interests is in abolishing exploitation altogether, which means abolishing capitalism. “What was new...was to prove the following: (1) that the existence of classes is connected only with- certain historical struggles which arise out of the development of production; (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship is itself only a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.” With Marx and Engels it is not a mere wish. It is the law of social development.

Modern society is divided into classes. By and large there are two great classes: the class of capitalists and the class of workers (proletarians). The class of capitalists owns most of the wealth of the nation. That wealth consists to a small extent of ready-made goods to be consumed. To a much greater extent it consists of buildings, tools, machinery and raw materials. The owners of wealth strive to increase their wealth by hiring workers whom they use to put the machines and materials into motion. Long before Marx and Engels, the utopians spoke of exploitation. But they could not explain the meaning and the driving force of exploitation. Engels and Marx discovered the importance of the law of surplus value.

Their theory reduces itself to these simple propositions. Wealth of modern times consists of commodities. Commodities are being exchanged in the market according to their value. The value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labour used up in producing the commodity. When we speak of labour in this sense we mean social-necessary labor, which is only another word for saying average labour used with the aid of average tools and with average speed. Socially necessary labour is that which determines the value of commodities. When a pair of shoes exchanges for twice as much as a shirt it is because the production of the pair of shoes has absorbed twice as much socially-necessary labour as the production of the shirt. Money is nothing but one of the commodities selected to facilitate the exchange of commodities. A chair worth $3.00 will exchange for $3.00 worth in gold or silver because that amount of gold and silver contains as much socially-necessary labour as the chair under consideration.

The activities of the manufacturer reduce themselves to buying in order to sell. He buys machinery, raw materials and labor power in order to produce commodities which he sells at a profit. His motive is profit. How does he come to get profit? He exchanges commodities according to their value, i.e., according to labor sunk in them. He may cheat here and there (no business without cheating) but on the whole the law of exchange is maintained. When he buys he pays the value of the goods he acquires. When he sells his products he receives according to their value. What then is the source of his profit? The source, say Marx and Engels, is labour which is producing surplus value.

Labour power is a commodity. Its owner is the worker. It is the only wealth he possesses. He is forced to sell it on the open market. He or she sells it to the manufacturer who applies it to the machines and raw materials. (Labour power, machines, raw materials together form the means of production.) When a merchant sells a commodity he does not have to be present while it is being consumed. When the worker sells his or her labour power they have to be present while the manufacturer consumes it, because the consumption of labour power is the process of work. The worker has to work.

What is the value of the commodity called labour power? The value of the labor power is the value of the worker’s upkeep. It is the value of all the commodities necessary to maintain the worker in tolerable health and to insure the existence of future workers through the raising of a family. For simplicity’s sake let us say that the value of one day’s labor power is equal to the value of the worker’s necessities during a day plus a little addition for his family. Expressed in money, let us say that the value of the labor power for one day is $5.00. Let us assume that these $5.00 can be produced in five hours. Five hours of socially-necessary labor will produce value equal to the value of the labour power for one day.

But once the labor power is sold, it is used by the manufacturer. The manufacturer will use it not five hours but, let us say, eight hours. In five hours the workers will merely reproduce the value of his or her labour power. In the remaining three hours he will produce surplus value. That value is unpaid for. The manufacturer is using it because he is in possession of the means of production and because the worker cannot live unless he sells his labor power. If the worker insisted on working only five hours, the manufacturer would not be willing to purchase his labor power. He purchases it just because he can force the worker to work more than five hours. How much more that depends upon the relation of forces. Here it is where the class struggle comes into play.

The worker is interested in diminishing the surplus value. The capitalist is interested in increasing the surplus value. The worker is interested in receiving for his labor not only necessities but also comforts, security for old age and the possibility of bringing up a family in decency, which means higher wages. The capitalist is interested in paying the worker below the value of his labour power, which means, to cause the worker to starve, to deteriorate physically, to have to send his wife and children to the factory, to have to resort to charity while still on the job. The worker is interested in cutting the hours of work so as to save his own health and to have a little free time for recreation and culture. The capitalist is interested in lengthening the labour hours so as to have more surplus value. The worker is interested in less speed, which means less labor power consumed per unit of time. The capitalist is interested in squeezing into one hour as much labor power as possible.

The capitalist sells his commodities in the market not according to the value produced in his own factory but according to prevailing prices. The prevailing price expresses the value of the commodities not of a single factory but of the average for all the factories at a given time. If one manufacturer can succeed in producing cheaper than the others he can secure a greater profit. He can do so by speeding up the workers, which means forcing them to spend more labour power per hour; he can do so also by introducing labour-saving machinery and improving the methods of production. This is why the entire history of capitalism has been the race to introduce labour-saving new technology for better methods of production. Why is labour-saving machinery useful? Because then the capitalist uses less labour power and naturally has to pay less to the producers. At the same time, however, he sells at the prevailing prices and garners an extra profit until the time when the other capitalists will also introduce the same labour-saving machinery and the same methods of production. But then there will begin a new race for still better machinery and still better means of production, while the workers will be continually pushed out of production into the ranks of the unemployed (they call it “technological unemployment” but it is an old story).

In this mad race, the bigger concern will defeat the smaller concern. The bigger concern will be able to use better machinery and better equipment and to save on labor much more than the small concern. The big fellow will, therefore, eat up the small fellow. Accumulation of means of production will take place at an accelerated pace. This accumulation will proceed in two ways. The individual capitalist will keep on increasing his own business, using part of his surplus value for expansion. In due time his business may grow to gigantic proportions and into a global corporation. This is called concentration of capital. The individual capitalist, on the other hand, may swallow up a number of other capitalists, or many capitalists may combine in partnerships or corporations or trusts. This is called centralisation of capital. Concentration and centralization of capital are the law of capitalist society. The capitalists boast of having introduced mass production which is a boon for the people. But in truth they never thought of the people. They thought of their profits. Profit-seeking is the basic driving force of capitalist production and distribution.

Engels and Marx pointed out that these forces are beyond the control of the individual capitalist or even of the capitalists combined. As long as they are capitalists they cannot help producing for profit. Else they would not be capitalists. As long as the profit motive is moving them they must try to produce cheaper and that means to exploit the workers more and more.

Let us look at the contradictions of capitalism.

Engels points out that the products which are produced in modern industrial establishments are produced socially. They are not like the shoes or the coats or the furniture produced in feudal times by the independent tailor or shoemaker or cabinet maker where the individual producer possessed the tools, the material and the ready-made product. At that time the individual producer could point a finger to his product and call it “his”. Today an automobile or a Grand Rapids table or a Haverhill pair of shoes is the product of hundreds and even thousands of workers combined, working with a division of labor. The mode of production is social. But the products belong to one man or to a group of men who appropriate them for their own private purposes. The mode of appropriation is individualistic. “This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production its capitalist character" says Engels, “contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonisms of today.”

The higher the development of capitalism, the more glaring is this contradiction, this incompatibility between socialized production and capitalist appropriation. The basic contradiction is that between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Why is this the basic contradiction? Because the proletarian sees his labor appropriated by the bourgeoisie. Because he sees that all of capitalist society is maintained on his surplus value, which is another name for unpaid labor. Because the whole structure is based on the exploitation of those who work by those who do not work. “The contradiction between socialised production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie,” says Engels.

The producer is entirely separated from the means of production. The owner of the means of production is entirely separated from production. He says he “manages”, but he does it through hired men: supervisors, technicians, accountants.

Production in the individual factory is socialised, which means it is run on the basis of a very detailed division of labour, which means, it is planned to the last man, the last rivet and the last ounce of work. But production as a whole is not organized. Each manufacturer, or each group of manufacturers, are producing according to their own lights, which means according to the expected profits. Nobody ever maps out a plan for the industry as a whole or for a branch of industry, for a year or for five years. In the capitalist world, there is anarchy, chaos. Production is haphazard. 

Socialism will come as the result of the class struggle leading to the socialist revolution, creating a class-free society. The Socialist revolution is the only way out of unemployment, misery, starvation, oppression, hopelessness, degradation, despair.