For, as under the domination of exploitage the masses have no right to more
of what they produce than is necessary for their bare subsistence, demand
is cramped by limitations which are quite independent of the possible
amount of production. Things for which there is no demand are valueless,
and therefore will not be produced; consequently, under the exploiting
system, society does not produce that amount of wealth which the progress
of science and technical art has made possible, but only that infinitely
smaller amount which suffices for the bare subsistence of the masses and
the luxury of the few. Society wishes to employ the whole of the surplus of
the productive power in the creation of instruments of labour--that is, it
wishes to convert it into capital; but this is impossible, since the
quantity of utilisable capital is strictly dependent upon the quantity of
commodities to be produced by the aid of this capital. The utilisation of
all the proceeds of such highly productive labour is therefore dependent
upon the creation of a new social order which shall guarantee to every
worker the enjoyment of the full proceeds of his own work. And since
impartial investigation further shows that this new order is not merely
indispensable to further progress in civilisation, but is also thoroughly
in harmony with the natural and acquired characteristics of human society,
and consequently is met by no inherent and permanent obstacle, it is
evident that in the natural process of human evolution this new order must
necessarily come into being.
When I placed this conclusion before the public four years ago, I assumed,
as something self-evident, that I was announcing a doctrine which was not
by any means an isolated novelty; and I distinctly said so in the preface
to the 'Laws of Social Evolution.' I fully understood that there must be
some connecting bridge between the so-called classical economics and the
newly discovered truths; and I was convinced that in a not distant future
either others or myself would discover this bridge. But in expounding the
consequences springing from the above-mentioned general principles, I at
first allowed an error to escape my notice. That ground-rent and
undertaker's profit--that is, the payment which the landowner demands for
the use of his land, and the claim of the so-called work-giver to the
produce of the worker's labour--are incompatible with the claim of the
worker to the produce of his own labour, and that consequently in the
course of social evolution ground-rent and undertaker's profit must become
obsolete and must be given up--this I perceived; but with respect to the
interest of capital I adhered to the classical-orthodox view that this was
a postulate of progress which would survive all the phases of evolution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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