A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and EssaysBradlaugh, Charles
Religion
A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and Essays
Bradlaugh, Charles
Free thought
The intelligent capitalist makes the laws affecting master and servant,
which the uneducated laborer must obey, but has no effective voice to
alter. The capitalist forms the government of the country, which in
turn protects capital against labor; this government the laborer must
sustain, and dares not modify. The capitalist does combine, and
has combined, and the result of this combination has been an unfair
appropriation of the divisible fund. Why should not the laborer combine
also? The answer is truly that no combination of workmen can increase
the rate of wages, if at the same time the number of laborers increases
more rapidly than the capital out of which their wages must be paid.
But the men may combine to instruct one another in the laws of political
economy; they may combine to apply their knowledge of those laws to the
contracts between employer and employed. They may combine to compel the
repeal of unjust enactments under which an unfair distribution of the
labor fund is not only possible but certain. Organizations of laborers
are, therefore, wise and necessary; the object of such organizations
should be the permanent elevation and enfranchisement of the members. No
combination of workmen, which merely dictates a temporary cessation
from labor, can ultimately and permanently benefit the laborer; while it
certainly immediately injures him and deteriorates his condition,
making his home wretched, his family paupers. Nor can even co-operative
combination, praiseworthy as it certainly is, to procure for the laborer
a larger share of the profits of his labor permanently benefit him,
except in so far that temporarily alleviating his condition, and giving
him leisure for study, it enables him to educate himself; unless, at the
same time, the co-operator is conscious that the increase or reduction
in the amount of wages depends entirely on the ratio of relation
preserved between population and its means of subsistence, the former
always having a tendency to increase more rapidly than the latter. It
is with the problem of too many mouths for too little bread that the
laborer has really to deal: if he must pray, it should be for more bread
and for fewer mouths. The answer often given by the workman himself to
the advocate of Malthusian views is, that the world is wide enough for
all, that there are fields yet unplowed broad enough to bear more corn
than man at present could eat, and that there is neither too little
food nor are there too many mouths; that there is, in fact, none of that
over-population with which it is sought to affright the working man.
Over-population in the sense that the whole world is too full to contain
its habitants, or that it will ever become too full to contain them,
is certainly a fallacy, but overpopulation is a lamentable truth in
its relative sense. We find evidences of over-population in every old
country of the world. The pest of over-population is the existence of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account