Socialism, Utopian and ScientificEngels, Friedrich
Philosophy
Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
Engels, Friedrich
Socialism
The fact that the socialized organization of production within the
factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the
anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and
dominates it, is brought home to the capitalists themselves by the
violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, through
the ruin of many large, and a still greater number of small,
capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production
breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its own
creations. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of means of
production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason the
industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production,
means of subsistence, available laborers, all the elements of
production and of general wealth, are present in abundance. But
"abundance becomes the source of distress and want" (Fourier), because
it is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the means of
production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalistic society
the means of production can only function when they have undergone a
preliminary transformation into capital, into the means of exploiting
human labor-power. The necessity of this transformation into capital
of the means of production and subsistence stands like a ghost between
these and the workers. It alone prevents the coming together of the
material and personal levers of production; it alone forbids the means
of production to function, the workers to work and live. On the one
hand, therefore, the capitalistic mode of production stands convicted
of its own incapacity to further direct these productive forces. On
the other, these productive forces themselves, with increasing energy,
press forward to the removal of the existing contradiction, to the
abolition of their quality as capital, to the _practical recognition
of their character as social productive forces_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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