commodities produced sink--again under the influence of the free
mobilisation of labour; so that the members of the association individually
profit as little by the employment of burdenless capital as they suffered
before by the liquidation of their burden. Profit and loss are always
distributed--still thanks to the mobilisation of labour--equally among all
the workers of Freeland.
Thus it is seen that, in consequence of this simple and infallibly
operative arrangement, productive capital is, strictly speaking, as
ownerless as the land; it belongs to everyone, and therefore to no one. The
community of producers supplies it and employs it, and it does both in
exact proportion to the amount of work contributed by each individual; and
payment for the expenditure is made by the community of consumers--again by
each one in exact proportion to the consumption of each individual.
That an absolute and universally uniform level of profits should result
from this absolutely free mobility of labour neither was expected, nor has
it been attained. Often the inequality is not discovered until the
balance-sheets are drawn up, and therefore cannot until then be removed by
the ebb and flow of labour. But, besides this, there is an important and
continuous difference of gains--a difference which it is impossible to
equalise, and which has its intrinsic foundation in the difference in the
amount of effort and inconvenience involved in engaging in the different
branches of labour. Certainly it is not the same in Freeland as in other
parts of the world, where only too often the burden of labour is in inverse
ratio to its profitableness; with us difficult, burdensome, unpleasant
kinds of labour must without exception obtain larger gains than the easier
and more agreeable--so far as the latter do not demand special
skill--otherwise everyone would at once forsake the former and apply
themselves to the latter. Moreover, the premium allowed to the older
members in section 3--which varies in different associations from one to
three per cent. for each year, and therefore, in cases of long-continued
labour, amounts to a very respectable sum, and is intended to attach the
proved veteran of labour to the undertaking--prevents an absolute
equalisation of gains even in associations of exactly similar constitution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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