The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 10

And instead of taking account of this, instead of considering how this position can be improved, and how this cruel law, which constantly keeps you at the lowest verge of the necessities of life, can be changed, these people amuse themselves by changing the question under your nose without your perceiving it, and by entertaining you with very dubious historical retrospects as to the situation of the working class in previous periods—retrospects which are all the more questionable because manufactured products, becoming constantly cheaper, are far less consumed by the working class than the food products which are their chief articles of consumption, and are in no way subject to any similar tendency of constantly increasing cheapness! These are retrospects, finally, which could have value only if they undertook investigations from every point of view into the general position of workingmen at different ages—investigations of the most difficult nature and to be carried on only with the utmost circumspection, investigations for which those who talk to you about them have not even the material at hand, and which they, therefore, should all the more leave to special scholars.

(3) Let us now come back from this necessary digression to the question: What influence can the consumers' leagues have upon the situation of the working class according to the law of wages discussed under No. 2? The answer will be a very easy one.

As long as only particular groups of workingmen unite in consumers' leagues, general wages will not be affected thereby, and the consumers' leagues will accordingly furnish, through lower prices, to the workingmen who belong to them—as long as this condition lasts—that minor relief for the oppressed condition discussed and admitted under No. 1; but as soon as the consumers' leagues begin to take in more and more the whole working class, then, in consequence of the above-considered law, the inevitable result will follow that the wage, because sustenance has become cheaper through the consumers' leagues, will drop to just that extent.

The consumers' leagues can never, even in the slightest degree, help the whole working class, and they can furnish to the single groups of workingmen who compose them the above-considered aid only as long as the example of these workingmen has not been generally followed. Every day that the consumers' leagues extend and take in larger numbers of the working class, even this slight relief is lost more and more even for the workingmen who belong to them, until it drops to zero at the time when the consumers' leagues have been joined by the majority of the whole working class. Can anybody talk seriously of the working class turning its attention to a means which gives it no aid whatever as a class, and furnishes its individual members this inconsequential relief only until the time when the class as such has completely, or to a large extent, made use of it? If the German working class is willing to enter upon such a treadmill round, the time before the real improvement of its position will be long indeed.

I have now analyzed all the Schulze-Delitzsch organizations and shown that they do not and can not help you.

What then? Can not the principle of free individual associations of workingmen effect the improvement of the position of the workingmen?

Certainly it can, but only by its application and extension to the field of factory production. To make the working class their own employers—that is the means, the only means, by which, as you can see for yourself, this inexorable and cruel law which determines wages can be abolished. When the working class is its own employer, the distinction between wages and profits will disappear, and the total yield of the industry will take the place, as the reward of labor, of the bare living wage.

The abolition by this only possible means of that law which under present conditions assigns to the workingman his wages—that part of the product which is necessary for bare existence—and the whole remainder to the employer—this is the only real, non-visionary, just improvement in the position of the working class.

But how? Look at the railroads, machine shops, ship yards, cotton and woolen mills, etc., etc., and the millions required for these establishments; then look into your own empty pockets and ask yourself where you will ever get the enormous capital necessary for these establishments, and how therefore you can ever make possible the carrying on of wholesale production on your own account!

And surely there is no fact more true, more thoroughly established, than that you would never accomplish this if you were reduced exclusively and essentially to your own isolated efforts as individuals alone.

Just for this reason it is the business and the duty of the State to make it possible for you to take in hand the great cause of the free, individual association of the working class in such a way as to help its development, and make it its solemn duty to offer you the means and the opportunity for this association.

Now, do not allow yourselves to be deceived and misled by the cry of those who will tell you that any such intervention by the State destroys social incentive. It is not true that I hinder anybody from climbing a tower by his own strength if I hand him a ladder or a rope. It is not true that the State prevents children from educating themselves by their own powers if it provides them with teachers, schools and libraries. It is not true that I hinder anybody from plowing a field by his own strength if I give him a plow. It is not true that I hinder anyone from defeating a hostile enemy by his own strength if I put a weapon into his hand for the purpose.

Although it is true that now and then someone may have climbed a tower without a rope or a ladder; that individuals have acquired an education without teachers, schools, or public libraries; that the peasants in the Vendée in the wars of the Revolution now and then defeated an enemy even without weapons; yet all these exceptions do not vitiate the rule—they only prove it; and therefore, although it is true that under certain special conditions single groups of workingmen in England have been able to improve their condition, to a certain limited extent, in certain minor branches of wholesale production, by an association based chiefly upon their own exertions, nevertheless the law stands that the real improvement of the situation of the workingman, which he has a just right to demand, and to demand for the whole working class as such, can be accomplished only by this aid of the State. No more should you allow yourselves to be misled and deceived by the cry of those who talk about Socialism or Communism and try to oppose this demand of yours by such cheap phrases; but be firmly convinced regarding such people that they are only trying to deceive you, or else they themselves do not know what they are talking about. Nothing is further from so-called Socialism and Communism than this demand according to which, if realized, the working classes, just as they do today, would maintain their individual liberty, individual manner of living, and individual compensation for work, and would stand in no different relation to the State, except that the necessary capital, or credit, for their association would be provided for them by it. But that is exactly the office and the destiny of the State—to make easy and provide means for the great cultural progress of humanity. This is its ultimate purpose. For this it exists. It has always served this purpose and always must.

I will give you a single example among hundreds—the canals, highways, postoffices, steamboat lines, telegraph lines, banking institutions, agricultural improvements, the introduction of new branches of industry, etc., in all of which the intervention of the State was necessary—a single example, but one which is worth a hundred others, and one which is especially near at hand. When railroads were to be built, in all German as well as in all foreign states except in some few isolated lines, the State had to intervene in one way or another—chiefly by undertaking to guarantee at least the dividends on the stock, in many countries going much further than this.

The guarantee of dividends constitutes a one-sided contract of the rich stockholder with the State—namely, if the new enterprises are unprofitable, then the loss falls upon the State, and consequently upon all taxpayers, and, consequently again, especially upon you, Gentlemen, upon the great class of the propertyless. If, on the other hand, the new enterprises are profitable, then the profit, the large dividends, come to us, the rich stockholders, and this is not obviated by the fact that in many countries—for instance in Prussia—certain very uncertain advantages for the State in a very distant future are stipulated, advantages which would result much sooner and much more abundantly from an association of the working class.

Without this intervention of the State, of which, as I have said, the guarantee of dividends was the weakest form, we should perhaps have no railroads on the whole continent today.

The fact is also unquestionable that the State was obliged to take this step; that the guarantee of dividends was a most pronounced intervention of the State, that, furthermore, this intervention took place in favor of the rich and well-to-do class, which also controls all capital and all credit, and which therefore could dispense with the intervention of the State far more easily than you; and that this intervention was called for by the whole capitalist class.

Why then did not a cry arise at that time against the guarantee of dividends as an inadmissible intervention of the State? Why was it not then discovered that by this guarantee the social incentive of the rich managers of those stock companies was threatened? Why was this guarantee of the State not decried as Socialism and Communism?

But forsooth, this intervention of the State was in the interests of the rich and well-to-do classes of society, and in that case it is entirely admissible and always has been! It is only when there is any question of intervention in favor of the poverty-stricken classes, in favor of the infinite majority, then it is "pure Socialism and Communism."

Give this answer, therefore, to those who wish to raise a howl about the inadmissibility of State intervention and the social independence endangered by it, and the Socialism and Communism concealed in a demand which does not give the slightest occasion for such a howl; and add that since we have, after all, been living in a state of Socialism and Communism, as those guarantees of dividends on railroads and all the other above-mentioned examples show, we will continue right on in that state.

A further consideration is that, however great was the advance in civilization accomplished by the railroads, it drops to the vanishing point in contrast with that mighty advance which would be accomplished by the association of the working class. Of what avail are all the hoarded wealth and all the fruits of civilization if they exist for only a few, and if the majority of the human race always remains the Tantalus who reaches in vain for these fruits! Worse than Tantalus—for he at least had not produced the fruits for which his parched lips were condemned to pant in vain! This, the mightiest advance of culture which history could know, would justify the helpful intervention of the State if anything would. The State furthermore can furnish this possibility in the easiest manner through the banking institutions (a matter into which I cannot go at length here) without assuming any greater responsibility than it did by the guarantee of dividends to the railroads.

Finally, Gentlemen, what, after all, is the State? (Quotes statistics which may be summed up as follows: In 1851 the percentage of the population of Prussia having more than 1,000 thalers ($750) annual income for each family of five persons was less than 1/2 of 1 per cent.; of those having less than 100 thalers ($75) for such a family was 72-1/4 per cent; those having 100 to 200 thalers, 16-1/4 per cent.; and 200 to 400, 7-1/4 per cent.) The two lowest classes form, therefore, 89 per cent, of the population; and if you take also the 7% per cent, of the third class, who must still be considered in oppressive poverty, you have 96-1/4 per cent, of the population in a most needy, unfortunate situation. The State, therefore, belongs to you, Gentlemen, to the suffering classes—not to us, the upper classes; for it is you who compose it. "What is the State?" I ask; and you see now from a few figures, more vividly than from heavy volumes, the answer. The great association of the poorer classes—yourselves—that is the State.

And why should not your great association have a helpful and fruitful effect upon your smaller associated groups? This question you may also put to those who talk to you about the inadmissibility of State intervention and about Socialism and Communism in the demand for it.

If, finally, you desire a special instance of the impossibility of producing an improvement in the condition of the working class in any other way than by free association through this helpful intervention of the State, you may look to England, that country which is most frequently called in evidence to prove the possibility for an association of individual workingmen established purely and exclusively through their unassisted powers, to improve the condition of the whole class—England, which in fact must appear best suited, for various reasons based on its particular national conditions, to carry out this experiment, without, nevertheless, demonstrating thereby a similar possibility for other countries.

And this special instance comes directly from those English workingmen's associations which up to this time have usually been referred to as triumphant proof of such an assertion. I speak of the Pioneers of Rochdale. This coöperative society, organized in 1844, established in 1858 a spinning and weaving establishment with a capital of £5,500 sterling. According to the statutes of this association, the workmen employed in the factory, whether they were stockholders in the association or not, drew a profit, in addition to the usual wages, equal to that distributed as dividends to the stockholders—the arrangement having been made that the annual dividends should be reckoned and distributed both on wages and on capital stock. Now the number of stockholders of this factory is one thousand six hundred, while only five hundred workmen are employed there. Accordingly, there exists a large number of stockholders who are not also workmen in the factory; on the other hand, all the workmen are not at the same time stockholders. In consequence of this an agitation broke out in 1861 among the workingmen stockholders who did not work in the factory, and also among those who were both employees and stockholders, against the workmen who were not stockholders receiving a share of the profits. On the part of the workingmen stockholders the principle was laid down simply and frankly that, according to the usual custom in the whole industrial world, the claims of labor were satisfied with the wages and that wages were determined by supply and demand (we have seen above by what law). "This fact," relates Professor Huber in his report of this affair, "was considered valid without further question, as the natural condition, needing no further justification, in opposition to a quite exceptional, arbitrary innovation, even though it were according to the statutes." Bravely, but only with very dimly understood emotional reasons, this proposition for the changing of the statutes was opposed by the original founders and managers of the association. In fact, a majority of five-eighths of the workingmen stockholders voted for the change of the statutes, taking exactly the same position as the capitalist employers, and the change was defeated for the time being only because, according to the statutes, a majority of three-fourths of the votes was required. "But nobody," states Professor Huber, "is unaware that the matter is not thereby settled; it is more likely that still further serious internal dissensions are to be looked for by this association, the outcome of which, perhaps even next year, may well be a successful repetition of this attempt—all the more so since the opposition is determined to make its influence felt in the election of the officials of the association, an election at which the majority elects, and through which the controlling offices of the management may soon be in their hands."

Huber reports further in this matter that most of the associations producing on a factory scale have fallen in at the outset with the general custom, evidently without any further consideration or any consciousness of a principle. Only a few have adopted the coöperative principle in favor of labor, and Huber must further admit, although very unwillingly and with a heavy heart, for he is a partisan of coöperation depending upon individual workingmen alone: "There is no doubt that this question will very soon come to discussion and decision in all the producing associations where the opposition of capital and labor exists, and that the competition of the industrial macrocosm (i.e., the world's industry as a whole) is reproduced in the coöperative microcosm (the individual world represented by the workingmen's associations)."

You see, Gentlemen, if you reflect about these facts that great questions can be solved only in a large way, never in a small way. As long as the universal wage is determined by the above-considered law, the small associations will not be able to escape the prevailing influence of it; and what does the working class as a whole gain, or the workingman as such, whether he works for workingmen employers or for capitalist employers? Nothing! You have only scattered the employers to whose profit the result of your labor falls. But labor and the working class are not set free. What does it gain by this! It gains only depravation, only corruption, which now takes hold of it and sets workingman as an exploiting employer against workingman. The employers have changed in person; but labor, the only source of production, remains, as before, dependent upon the so-called wage—that is, the maintenance of existence. Under the influence of this law the perversion of conceptions is so great that, in our instance, even those workingmen stockholders not employed in the factory, instead of recognizing that they owe their dividends to the labor of the workmen who are employed, and accordingly that it is they who draw the profit from the labor of the latter, will, in defiance of this, not allow the latter even a share in the product of their own work, not even a share of what labor has a just claim to. Workingmen with workingmen's means and employers' hearts—that is the repulsive caricature into which those workingmen have been changed.

And now finally one more clear and decisive proof based on these facts. You have seen that in that factory of the Pioneers five hundred workmen were employed and sixteen hundred workingmen held the stock. This much must also be clear to you—that, unless we are willing to imagine the workmen as rich people (in which case all questions are solved—in imagination), the capital necessary for the establishment of a factory can never be raised from the pockets of the workmen employed in it. They will be obliged to take in a much greater number of other workingmen stockholders, who are not employed in their factory. In this respect the proportion in the case of that factory of the Pioneers—sixteen hundred stockholders to five hundred workingmen in the factory (say a proportion of only about three to one)—may be called astonishingly favorable and unusual—as small as is in any way possible, and to be accounted for partly by the especially fortunate situation of the Pioneers, who represent a great exception in the working class, partly by the fact that this branch of manufacturing is far from being one of those which require the heaviest capitalization, and partly because this factory is not large enough to count among the really large enterprises, for in these the proportion, even in this branch of industry, would be a very different one. And, finally, it may be added that through the development of industrialism itself, and through the progress of civilization, this proportion must increase daily. For the progress of civilization consists in the very fact that from day to day more natural mechanical power—more machinery—takes the place of human labor, and that accordingly the proportion of the amount of invested capital to the amount of human labor becomes larger; so then, if in that factory of the Pioneers sixteen hundred stockholders were necessary to raise the capital to employ five hundred workmen, a proportion of one to three, the proportion among other workmen in other branches and in larger establishments—and also in consideration of the daily advance of civilization—will be one to four, one to five, six, eight, ten, twenty, etc. However, let us keep this proportion of one to three. To establish a factory in which five hundred workmen find employment, I need sixteen hundred workingmen stockholders in order to have the necessary capital. Very well: as long as I try to establish one, two, three, etc., factories, there is no difficulty in theory (always in theory, Gentlemen—in imagination), I call to aid (always in theory) the three, four, etc., times the number of workingmen stockholders. But if I extend this association to the whole working class—and their cause, not that of individuals who wish to improve their position, is in question here—if in course of time I wish to establish factories enough to occupy the whole working class, where shall I get the three, five, ten, twenty-fold number of the whole working class who, as workingmen stockholders, must stand behind the workmen occupied in the factories in order to establish these factories?

You see then that it is a mathematical impossibility to free the working class in this way—by the exertions of its members as merely single individuals; that only very confused, uncritical imaginations can lend themselves to these illusions, and that the only way to this end, the only way for the abolition of that cruel law of wages to which the working class is bound as to a martyr's stake, is the encouragement and development of free, individual, coöperative associations of workingmen through the helping hand of the State. The movement for workingmen's associations founded upon the purely atomistic, isolated power of individual workingmen had only the value—and this, to be sure, is an enormous one—of showing definitely the practical way in which this liberation can take place, of giving brilliant, practical proofs for overcoming all real or assumed doubt of its practical feasibility, and, in just that way, of making it the urgent duty of the State to lend its supporting hand to those highest cultural interests of humanity. At the same time I have already proved that the State is essentially nothing else than the great association of the working class, and that therefore the help and fostering care through which the State made possible those smaller associations would be nothing else than the legitimate social initiative, absolutely natural and lawful, which the working classes put forth for themselves as a great association, for their members as single individuals. Once more then: free individual association of the workingmen, but such association made possible by the supporting and fostering hand of the State—that is the workingmen's only way out of the wilderness.

But how shall the State be enabled to make this intervention? The answer must be immediately evident to you all: it will be possible only through universal and direct suffrage. When the legislative bodies of Germany are based on universal and direct suffrage, then, and only then, will you be able to prevail upon the State to undertake this duty.

Then this demand will be brought forward in the legislative bodies; then the limits and the forms and the means of this intervention will be discussed by reason and science; and then—be assured of this!—those men who understand your situation and are devoted to your cause, armed with the glittering steel of science, will stand at your side and protect your interests; then you, the propertyless class of society, will have only yourselves and your own unwise choices to blame if the representatives of your class remain in a minority.