The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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Ä'AÄL MARX. 33 Of his land, and his profits, or the remuneration for his risks and ^ long before him. maintained ha the destitution of the lower classes proceeds from the fact that the labourer cannot purchase with his wages what he pro duces. The remark is true, but the fact cannot be otherwise unless the labourer, like the peasant proprietor, should work his own property, being at the same time owner of the land the machines, the provisions and the materials necessary for production. If he has to borrow these different agents he must deduct from what he produces the means of paying for them, for nobody will lend them to him for nothing. If it is the manufacturer who provides them, he must take from the total produce of the workman’s labour what will pay interest on Ijis advances. Who would accumulate capital or employ a single labourer, if he did not reap any profit thereby? Like Proudhon, Marx then arrives, but without admitting It, at the often refuted chimera of gratuitous credit The history of the social organizations of different periods proves that the deduction of a portion of the fruits of labour by those who have the indispensable requisites of productions at their disposal, has always taken place under one form or another. Under the system of slavery, the slave-owner received the entire produce of the labour, and, giving to the slave what was necessary for his support and to enable him to perpetuate his race, kept all the rest for himself. It was as though the slave worked part of the time for himself and the rest for his master. Under the régime of the conjé,, the peasant worked two or three days on the land of his lord and the rest of the Ume on his own. He was half enfranchised, but a part of what he produced was levied on behalf of the signorial demesne. With the méíaycr system, it was no longer the labour that was divided between master and labourer, but the products ot Ubour, which comes in the end to the same thing. Modern farming, in its turn, is only a transformation of the mé/ayer system, with this difference, that the farmer pays the land owner’s share in money. Still he works part of his time for ois own subsistence and the remainder for that of his landlord, o has given him the land. In the wage-earning classes the

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