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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3i6 SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. perfectly true, but it is misleading, to say the least, to affirm that machinery adds nothing to value. In the first place, wherever there is a monopoly—and quite apart from patents and combinations, the sagacious and enterprising employer, by always adopting the most improved machinery, will have advantages in the nature of a monopoly—machines do add to exchange-value ; and secondly, the important thing to consider is the use-value, the utilities created by the machines, to which, indeed, modern civilization owes most of its increased wealth. While it is true that manual labourers have not shared to the extent one would wish in the increased produce due to machinery, it is not true that they do not share in it at all. They benefit by the cheapening of articles of their consump tion, and it is not the case that wages are necessarily lowered in proportion. On the contrary, as we have seen, money- wages have largely increased in the last fifty years, while this cheapening process has been going on. It is unnecessary to criticise Mr. Hyndman’s theories further. M. de Laveleye has already dealt with them by anticipation. But, however false Mr. Hyndman’s analysis may be, however exaggerated his picture of the present, however incorrect his estimate of the future, after making all allowances the fact still remains that our present industrial system is far from perfect. There is a growing dissatisfaction, not confined to the poor and the Social Democrats alone, with the present distribution of wealth ; an increasing conviction that the manual labourers do not obtain the share to which they are justly entitled in the wealth which they help to produce ; an ever-deepening belief, not merely that the profits of the employer are sometimes inordinately high and the wages of the labourer often disgracefully low, but that the present system, which seems inevitably to breed antagonism between employer and employed, and which too often leaves the latter at the mercy of the former, is radically at fault. How to change this system for the better is really becoming a vital question. Let us see what answer the Social Democrats give. The objects of the Federation may be found most concisely stated in their manifesto, entitled “Socialism made Plain.”

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