Socialism, Utopian and ScientificEngels, Friedrich
Philosophy
Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
Engels, Friedrich
Socialism
"The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus
population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of
accumulation, this law rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than
the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an
accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital.
Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time,
accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality,
mental degradation, at the opposite pole, _i.e._, on the side of the
class that produces _its own product in the form of capital_." (Marx'
"Capital" Vol. I [Kerr & Co.]. p. 709.) And to expect any other
division of the products from the capitalistic mode of production is
the same as expecting the electrodes of a battery not to decompose
acidulated water, not to liberate oxygen at the positive, hydrogen at
the negative pole, so long as they are connected with the battery.
We have seen that the ever-increasing perfectibility of modern
machinery is, by the anarchy of social production, turned into a
compulsory law that forces the individual industrial capitalist always
to improve his machinery always to increase its productive force. The
bare possibility of extending the field of production is transformed
for him into a similar compulsory law. The enormous expansive force of
modern industry, compared with which that of gases is mere child's
play, appears to us now as a _necessity_ for expansion, both
qualitative and quantitative, that laughs at all resistance. Such
resistance is offered by consumption, by sales, by the markets for
the products of modern industry. But the capacity for extension,
extensive and intensive, of the markets is primarily governed by quite
different laws, that work much less energetically. The extension of
the markets can not keep pace with the extension of production. The
collision becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any real
solution so long as it does not break in pieces the capitalist mode of
production, the collisions become periodic. Capitalist production has
begotten another "vicious circle."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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