f) Bray ( J. F.), Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy etc., Leeds, 1839
Since human existence is determined by labour, and labour presupposes means of labour ... "the great field for all exertion and the raw material of all wealth — the earth — must be (1) the common property of all its inhabitants" (p. 28).
"Life is dependent upon food, food upon labour, those dependencies are absolute. Therefore, if labour be evaded by any individual, it can be thus evaded by individuals only on the condition of increased labour by the mass" (p. 31).
"All the wrongs and the woes which man has ever committed or endured, may be traced to the assumption of a right in the soil, by certain individuals and classes, to the exclusion of other individuals and classes.... The next step which man has ever taken, after having claimed property in land, has been to claim property in man..." (p. 34).
Bray declares that his purpose is:
"fighting them" (the political economists) "upon their own ground, and with their own weapons" (in order to prove that poverty need not be the lot of the workers under every social system). "Before the conclusions arrived at by such a course of proceeding can be overthrown, the economists must unsay or disprove those established truths and principles on which their arguments are founded" (p. 41).
"According to the economists themselves the production of wealth requires: 1) labour, 2) accumulation of previous labour, or capital, and 3) EXCHANGES..." These are, according to the economists themselves, the universal conditions of production.[3]
"They are applied to society at large, and, from their nature, cannot exempt any individual or any class from their operation" (p. 42).
"The ban—'Thou shalt labour'—rests alike on all created beings.... Man only can escape this law; and, from its nature, it can be evaded by one man only at the expense of another" (p. 43).
"From the very nature of labour and exchange, strict justice not only requires" //in this context, Bray refers to the economic definitions of the exchange value of commodities// "that all exchangers should be mutually, but that they should likewise be equally, benefited.... If a just system of exchanges were acted upon, the value of all articles would be determined by the entire cost of production; and equal values should always exchange for equal values. ... the workmen have given the capitalist the labour of a whole year, in exchange for the value of only half a year — and from this has arisen the inequality of wealth and power which at present exists around us. It is an inevitable consequence[13] of inequality of exchanges — of buying at one price and selling at another — that capitalists shall continue to be capitalists, and working men be working men — the one a class of tyrants and the other a class of slaves"(pp. 48-49).
"By the present system, exchanges are not only not mutually beneficial to all parties, as the political economists have asserted, but it is plain that there is, in most transactions between the capitalist and the producer, no exchange whatever ... what is it that the capitalist, whether he be manufacturer or landed proprietor, gives for the labour of the WORKING MAN? Labour? No, for he does not work — Capital? No, for his store of wealth is being perpetually augmented. ...the capitalist cannot make an exchange with anything that belongs to himself. The whole transaction, therefore, plainly shews that the capitalists and proprietors do no more than give the working man, for his labour of one week, a part of the wealth which they obtained from him the week before!—which just amounts to giving him nothing for something.... The wealth which the capitalist appears to give in exchange for the workman's labour was generated neither by the labour nor the riches of the capitalist, but it was originally obtained by the labour of the workman; and it is still daily taken from him, by a fraudulent system of unequal exchanges" ([p]p. 49[-50]). "The whole transaction between the producer and the capitalist, is a palpable deception, a mere farce" (p. 50).
"The law which says 'THERE SHALL BE ACCUMULATION', is only half fulfilled, and is made to subserve the interests of a particular class, to the detriment of all the rest of the COMMUNITY" (p. 50).
"Under the present social system, the whole of the working class are dependent upon the capitalists or EMPLOYERS OF THE MEANS OF LABOUR; and where one class, by its position in society, is thus dependent upon another class for the MEANS OF LABOUR, it is dependent, likewise, for the MEANS OF LIFE; and this is a condition so contrary to the very intention of society — so revolting to reason ... that it cannot for one moment be palliated or defended. It confers on man a power which ought to be vested in nothing mortal" (p. 52).
"Our daily experience teaches us, that if we take a slice from a loaf, the slice never grows on again: the loaf is but an accumulation of slices, and the more we eat of it, the less will there remain to be eaten. Such is the [X-442] case with the loaf of the working man; but that of the capitalist follows not this rule. His loaf continually increases instead of diminishing: with him, it is cut and come again, for ever. ...if EXCHANGES were equal, would the wealth of the present capitalists gradually go from them to the working classes: every shilling that the rich man spent, would leave him a shilling less rich" (p[p. 54-]55).
Bray also shows in his work that
"it is impossible that any capitalist can have derived even 1,000 pounds sterling from the actual hoarded labour of his WORKING-CLASS PROGENITORS" (I.e. [p. 55]).
It follows from the teachings of the political economists themselves that "there can be no EXCHANGES without ACCUMULATIONS — no ACCUMULATIONS without labour" (2) (I.e.).
"Under the present system, every working man gives to an EMPLOYER at least 6 days' labour for an equivalent worth only 4 or 5 days' labour, the gains of the last man are necessarily the losses of the first man" (p. 56).
"Thus, in whatever light" [the genesis of wealth is] "examined — whether as a gift, individual accumulation, exchange, inheritance — there is proof upon proof that there is a flaw in the rich man's title which takes away at once its very show of justice, and its value" (p. 56). "This wealth has all been derived from the bones and sinews of the working classes during successive ages, and it has been taken from them by the fraudulent and slavery-creating system of unequal EXCHANGES" (p. 57).
"If a working man under the present system would become wealthy, he instead of exchanging his own labour, must become a capitalist, or exchanger OF THE LABOUR OF OTHER PEOPLE; and thus, by plundering others in the same manner as he was plundered, through the MEDIUM OF UNEQUAL EXCHANGES, he will be enabled to acquire great gains FROM THE SMALL LOSSES OF OTHER PEOPLE" (p. 57).
"The political economists and capitalists have written and printed many books to impress upon the working man the fallacy that 'the gain of the capitalist is not the loss of the producer'. We are told that labour cannot move one step without capital — that capital is as a shovel to the man who digs — that capital is just as necessary to production as labour itself is. ...this mutual dependency between capital and labour has nothing to do with the relative position of the capitalist and the working man; nor does it show that the former should be maintained by the latter.... It is the capital, and not the capitalist, that is essential to the operations of the producer; and there is as much difference between the two, as there is between the actual cargo and the bill of lading" (p. 59).[97]
"From the relation which capital and labour bear to each other, it is evident that the more capital or accumulated produce there is in a country, the greater will be the facilities for production, and the less labour will it require to obtain a given (certain) result. Thus the people of Great Britain, with the aid of their present VAST accumulation of capital — their buildings, machinery, ships, canals and railways — can produce more manufactured wealth in one week, than their ancestors of a thousand years since could have created in half a century. It is not our superior physical FORCES,[3] but our capital, which enables us to do this; for, wherever there is a deficiency of capital, production will progress slowly and laboriously, and vice versa. From these considerations, then, it is apparent, that whatever is gained to capital, is likewise gained to labour — that every increase of the former tends to diminish the toil of the latter — and that, therefore, every loss to capital must also be a loss to labour. This truth, though long since observed by the political economists, has never yet been FAIRLY STATED by them."
//In fact, the fellows argue in the following way: Accumulated products of labour, i.e., products not consumed, lighten and FRUCTIFY LABOUR. AS a consequence, the fruits of this lightening, etc., must go not to labour itself but to accumulation. Consequently, it is not accumulation which must be the property of labour but labour must be the property of accumulation — of its own products. Consequently, the worker must not accumulate for himself but for someone else, and the accumulation must confront him as capital.
For the economists, the material element of capital is so integrated with its social formal determination as capital — with its antagonistic character as the product of labour dominating labour — that they cannot write a single sentence without contra-dicting themselves.//
" They have even identified capital with one class of the COMMUNITY, and labour with another class—although the two powers have naturally, and should have artificially, no such connection. The economists always attempt to make the prosperity, if not the very existence, of the working man dependent upon the condition of maintaining the capitalist in luxury and idleness. They would not have the working man to eat a meal until he has produced two — one for himself and the other for his MASTER — the latter receiving his portion indirectly, by unequal exchanges" (p[p. 59-]60).
"When the workman has produced a thing, it is his no longer — it belongs to the capitalist — it has been conveyed from the one to the other by the unseen magic of unequal exchanges" (p. 61).
"Under the present system, capital and labour — the shovel and the digger — are two separate and antagonistic powers" (p. 60).
[X-443] "But even if all the land and the houses and the machinery did belong to the capitalists, and the working class were not in being, the former would not thereby be enabled to evade the great condition 'THAT THERE SHALL BE LABOUR'. Their wealth would leave them in the choice only of dying or working.b They cannot eat the land and the houses; and the land will not yield sustenance, nor the machinery make clothing, without the application of human labour. Therefore, when the capitalists and proprietors say that the working class must SUPPORT them, they likewise say, in effect, that the producers belong to them as well as land and waterc do — that the working man was created only for the rich man's use!" (p. 68).
"The producer receives, in exchange for what he gives to the capitalist — not the labour nor the produce of the labour of the capitalist, but — work! Through the instrumentality of money, the working class are not only compelled to perform the labour which the preservation of existence naturally imposes upon them, but they are likewise saddled with the labour of other classes. It matters not whether the producers now receive gold, or silver, or other commodities from a non-producing class: it all amounts to this — that the working class perform their own labour, and support themselves, and likewise perform the labour of the capitalist, and maintain him INTO THE BARGAIN! Whatever may be the nominal RECEIPTS which the producers receive from the capitalists, their actual RECEIPTS are—the TRANSFER ofthat labour which ought to be rendered by the capitalists" (pp. 153-54).
"We will suppose the population of the UNITED KINGDOM to be 25,000,000 of human beings. We assume that their maintenance is,a on the average, at least £15 per head annually. This gives £375,000,000 as the yearly value of the maintenance of the whole people of the UNITED KINGDOM. We do not, however, employ ourselves merely in producing articles of subsistence, for our labour creates, likewise, many unconsumable articles. We every year add to our STOCK OF ACCUMULATIONS, OR CAPITAL, by increasing the number of our houses, ships, IMPLEMENTS, machines, roads, and other assistants to further production, beside making good all wear and tear. Thus, although our subsistence may be worth but three hundred and seventy-five millions sterling a year, the total annual value of the wealth created by the people will not be less than five hundred millions sterling" (p. 81).
"We cannot calculate upon having above V4 of our population, or about 6 millions of men — that is, those between the ages of 14 and 50 — as effective producers. Of this number scarcely 5 millions can be said, under the present arrangements, to assist in production;" (Bray writes later on that only 4 millions are directly employed in actual production) "for thousands of able-bodied men b
are compelled to stand idle while the work which they ought to do is being performed by women and children; and hundreds of thousands of men in Ireland can obtain no employment whatever. Thus 5 millionsc of men, assisted by a few thousands of women and children, have to create produce for 25 millions" (pp. 81-82).
"The present number of working men, if unassisted by machinery, could not support themselves and the present number of idlers and unprofitable labourers. The agricultural and manufacturing machinery of every kind which we bring to our aid in the business of productions, has been computed to perform the labour of about one hundred millions of effective men. ... this machinery — and its application under the present system, has generated the hundreds of thousands of idlers and livers on profit who now press the working class into the earth" (p. 82).
"The present constitution of society has been fertilised by machinery, and by machinery will it be destroyed" (p. 82). "The machinery itself is good — is indispensable; it is the application of it — the circumstance of its being possessed by individuals instead of by the nation — that is bad" (p. 83).
"Of the 5 million men who at present assist in production some work only 5 hours a day, others 15;d and when to this is added the time lost by the compulsory idleness of great numbers in times OF DEPRESSION in TRADE, it will be found that our annual production is created and distributed by less than V5 of the COMMUNITY, working, on the average, 10 hours a day" (p. 83).
"We suppose that the wealthy non-producers of every description-, with their families, and dependents, amount only to 2 millions of persons, yet this number alone would cost the working classes £30,000,000 annually, if their maintenance were averaged, like that of the latter, at £15 per head" (pp. 83, 84). "But upon the most moderate computation their maintenance will cost not less than £50 per head. This gives a total of £100,000,000 as the annual cost of the mere drones of society — the utterly unproductive" (p. 84).
"Add to this[2] the double and quadruple ALLOWANCE received by the various classes of small proprietors, manufacturers, and tradesmen, in the shape of [X-444] profit and interest. Upon the most moderate computation, the share of wealth enjoyed by this extensive portion of the COMMUNITY will amount to not less than £140,000,000 annually, above the average of what is received by an equal number of the best paid of the working class. Thus, along with their government, the 2 classes of idlers and livers on profit — comprising perhaps V4 of the entire population — absorb about £300,000,000 annually, or above one half of the entire wealth produced" (p[p. 84,] 85). "An average loss of above £50 per head to every working man in the empire! ... This leaves no more than an average of £11 per head per annum, to be divided amongst the remaining [3]/[4] of the nation. From calculations made in 1815, it appears that the annual income of the whole people of the UNITED KINGDOM amounted to about £430,000,000; of which the working class received £99,742,547, and the rent, pension, and profit class £330,778,825! The whole property of the country was at the same time calculated to be worth nearly three thousand millions of pounds sterling" (p. 85).
Cf. the list of King[98] etc.
1844: ENGLAND. POPULATION: NOBILITY AND GENTRY=1,181,000. TRADESMEN, FARMERS, etc. =4,221,000 (combined total — 5,402,000). LABOURERS, PAUPERS, etc. =9,567,000. Banfield (T.C.), The Organisation of Industry, 2nd ed., London, 1848 [pp. 22-23].
Endnotes
[13] By its substance the text in double oblique lines belongs not to p. VII — 300 but to p. VII — 299 of the manuscript of 1861-63 (see present edition, Vol. 30, pp. 450-51).—13
[97] Cf. the manuscript of 1857-58 (present edition, Vol. 28, p. 229), where Marx quoted socialists as saying, "we need capital, but not the capitalist".—247
[2] The entries below were made by Marx on the inside covers of notebooks VIII-XII of the manuscript of 1861-63. The table of contents of Notebook \ II is published in Volume 30, p. 347, and its text in Volume 30 and in this volume. The tables of contents had been corrected several times. Marx's original plan was to analyse Adam Smith's doctrine in notebooks VII and VIII and then to pass on to Necker and Ricardo. But later he rejected this scheme. He also proposed to examine Ricardo's views in Notebook X, first after the analysis of Linguet and then of Bray. In the contents of Notebook XI, point "g) Rodbertus" was originally followed by point "h) Ricardo". Later Marx inserted several other points preceding that on Ricardo, probably after the notebooks had been filled in. In Notebook XII, next to the line "5) Theories of Surplus Value", Marx wrote in pencil without the mark of insertion, "(CIRCULATING AND FIXED CAPITAL p. 643) in Ricardo". The last two points in the contents of this notebook were later crossed out in pencil and replaced with "Theories of COST PRICE". The inside cover of Notebook IX has a note "Mercantilists (408)" made in pencil later. Written on the inside cover of Notebook XI are a number of quotations (see this volume, pp. 579-80). Alongside the contents, the inside cover of Notebook XII contains Marx's notes and quotations (see this volume, p. 580).—6
[4] Marx gave an in-depth analysis of the problem of productive and unproductive labour on pp. XXI — 1317-1331 of the manuscript of 1861-63 (present edition, Vol. 34).—7
[98] Marx is referring to A Scheme of the Income and Expence of the Several Families of England, Calculated for the year, 1688 compiled by Gregory King, one of the first English statisticians, and included by Charles D'Avenant into his book An Essay upon the Probable Methods of Making a People Gainers in the Balance of Trade (London, 1699). See also this volume, pp. 32-33.—250
[3] This is in fact not the conclusion but only the continuation of the section on Smith. The conclusion of this section can be found in Notebook IX.—6