The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume X Part 29

We are on the ground here of action and reaction. Each of these circ.u.mstances is a cause for the other, and the latter then reacts upon the former, and extends it and increases its scope.

It must be clear that the production of an article in enormous quant.i.ties--its production for the world-market--is, in general, possible only if the costs of production of the article are low and if also its transportation is cheap enough not to raise its price essentially. Production in enormous quant.i.ties demands a wholesale market, and a wholesale market for any commodity can be obtained only by its low price, which makes it available for a very large number of consumers; thus the low cost of production and transportation of any commodity brings about its production on a huge scale in enormous quant.i.ties. It must also be clear, on the other hand, that the production of a commodity in enormous quant.i.ties causes and increases its cheapness. A manufacturer, for instance, who turns out 200,000 pieces of cotton goods in a year, is able, because he procures his raw material more cheaply on a large scale and because the profit on his capital and the interest on his plant is distributed over so large a number of pieces, to market each piece, within certain limits, at a far lower price than the manufacturer who produces yearly only 5,000 such pieces. Greater cheapness of production leads accordingly to production on a large scale. This results, in turn, in greater cheapness; this in its own turn brings about production in still greater quant.i.ties, and this still greater cheapness, and so on.

The relations are also quite similar in the matter of division of labor, which is another necessary condition for production in large quant.i.ties and for cheapness, for without it neither cheapness of production nor large quant.i.ties would be possible.

The division of labor which splits up the production of an article into a great number of very simple and often purely mechanical operations requiring no thought on the part of the operative, and sets at each one of these single operations a single workman, would be entirely impossible without extensive production of this article. It is therefore established and extended only through such production. On the other hand, this division of the work into simple operations leads (1), to a constantly increasing cheapness; (2), to production in enormous and constantly increasing quant.i.ties--a production calculated not only for this or that neighboring market, but for the entire world-market; and (3), through this and through new divisions which can for this reason be applied to single operations, to still farther advances in the division of labor itself.

By this series of actions and reactions there had accordingly appeared a complete transformation in the manufacturing inst.i.tutions of the community and hence in all its relations of life. The best way to state this briefly is to reduce it to the following contrast:

In the early Middle Ages, since only a small number of very valuable products could stand the expense of transportation, production was calculated for the need of the immediate locality and a very limited neighboring market whose demand was, just for this reason, a well-known, steady, and unchanging one. The need or the demand preceded production and formed a well-known criterion for it; in other words, the production of the community had been chiefly artisan production. Now, in distinction from factory or wholesale production, the character of small or artisan production is this: Either the need is awaited before production--as, for example, a tailor waits for my order before he makes me a coat, a locksmith before he makes me a lock; or even if some goods are manufactured to be sold ready-made, on the whole this ready-made business is limited to a minimum of what is definitely known from experience to be the needs of the immediate locality and its nearest neighborhood--as, for instance, a tinsmith makes up a certain number of lamps, knowing that the local demand will soon dispose of them.

The characteristics of a community producing chiefly in this manner are poverty, or at least only a moderate prosperity, but, to offset this, a certain definiteness and steadiness of all relations.

Now, on the other hand, through the incessant and complete action and reaction which I have been describing to you, there had appeared in the community a totally different kind of work, and therefore of all relations of life. There had already appeared the germ of the same characteristic which today marks, in a differently developed but enormously extended manner, the production of the community. In the tremendous development which it has today this characteristic, in contrast to that previously described, can be indicated as follows: Whereas, formerly, need preceded production, made it a consequence of itself, determined it, and formed a criterion and well-known standard for it--production and supply now go in advance of the demand and try to develop it. Production is no longer for the locality, no longer for the well-known need of neighboring markets, but for the world-market.

Production goes on for remote regions and for a general market, for all continents, for an actually unknown and not definitely calculated need; and in order that the product may arouse need a weapon is supplied it--cheapness. Cheapness is the weapon of a product, with which, on the one hand, it obtains customers, and, on the other, drives from the field other goods of the same nature, which are likewise urged upon the consumers; so that under the system of free compet.i.tion any producer may hope, no matter what enormous quant.i.ties he may produce, to find a market for them all if he only succeeds, by making his goods exceedingly cheap, in keeping out of the market the goods of his compet.i.tors. The predominant character of such a society is vast and boundless wealth, but, on the other hand, a great instability of all relations, an almost continual, anxious insecurity in the position of each individual, together with a very unequal sharing of the returns of production among those taking part in it.

Thus great had been the changes brought about, unnoticed in the heart of society, by the revolutionary and all-pervading activity of industrialism, even before the end of the eighteenth century.

Though the men of the Peasant Wars had not ventured any other conception than that of founding the State upon land ownership, though they had not, even in thought, been able to free themselves from the view that land ownership is necessarily the element which holds sovereignty over the State and that partic.i.p.ation in that ownership is the condition for partic.i.p.ation in that sovereignty, yet the quiet, imperceptible, revolutionary progress of industrialism had brought about the condition that, long before the end of the eighteenth century, land ownership had become an element stripped entirely of its former importance, and had fallen to a subordinate position, in the face of the development of new methods of production, of the wealth which this development bore in its bosom and increased from day to day, and of the influence which it clearly had on all the people and their affairs--even upon the largely impoverished n.o.bility.

The revolution was therefore an accomplished fact in the actual relations of society long before it broke out in France; and it was only necessary to bring this reversal of conditions to outward recognition to give it legal sanction. This is always the case in all revolutions. You can never make a revolution. You can only give external legal recognition and logical embodiment in practice to a revolution which has already become an actuality in the essential relations of society. Trying to make a revolution is the folly of immature men who have no conception of the laws of history.

Precisely for this reason it is just as immature and childish to suppress a revolution already fully formed in the womb of society and to oppose its legal recognition, or to reproach those who a.s.sist at its birth with being revolutionary. If the revolution is at hand in the actual conditions of society, nothing can prevent its appearing and pa.s.sing into legislation.

How these things were related, and how far they had already gone in this direction in the period of which I speak, you will best see from another matter which I will mention.

I have already spoken about the division of labor, the development of which consists of separating all production into a series of entirely simple mechanical operations requiring no thought on the part of the operator. As this separation progresses farther and farther, the discovery is finally made that these single operations, because they are quite simple and call for no thought, can be accomplished just as well, and even better, by unthinking agents; and so in 1775, fourteen years before the French Revolution, Arkwright invented the first machine, his famous spinning-jenny.

We can see that the machine in itself was not the cause of the revolution. Too little time intervened between this invention, which furthermore was not immediately introduced into France, and the revolution; but it embodied in itself the actually incipient and fully ripe revolution. This machine, however innocent it seemed, was in fact the revolution personified. The reasons for this are simple. You, of course, have heard of the guild system, by which production in the Middle Ages was directed. The guild system of the Middle Ages was inseparably connected with other inst.i.tutions. The guilds lasted through the whole medieval period up to the French Revolution; but as early as 1672 the matter of their abolition was considered in the German parliament, though without result. Even in 1614, in the French _etats Generaux_, the abolition of the guilds was demanded by the middle cla.s.s, whose production the guilds everywhere restricted; but also without result. Indeed thirteen years before the Revolution, in 1776, a minister of the Reformed party in France, the famous Turgot, abolished the guilds, but the privileged world of medieval feudalism considered itself, and with perfect justice, in mortal danger if its vital principle of privilege did not extend to all cla.s.ses of society; and so, six months after the abolition of the guilds, the king was empowered to revoke this edict and to reestablish the guilds. Nothing but the Revolution could overthrow (and it did overthrow in one day, by the capture of the Bastille) that which in Germany had been vainly a.s.sailed since 1672 and in France since 1614--for almost two centuries--by legal means.

You see from this, Gentlemen, that however great the advantages of reformation by legal means are, such means have nevertheless in all the more important points one great disadvantage--that of being absolutely powerless for whole centuries; and, furthermore, that the revolutionary means, undeniable as its disadvantages are, has as a compensation the advantage of attaining quickly and effectively a practical result.

If you will now keep in mind that the guilds were connected in an inseparable manner with the whole social arrangement of the Middle Ages, you will see at once how the first machine, Arkwright's spinning-jenny, embodied a complete revolution in those social conditions.

For how could machine production be possible under the guild system, in which the number of journeymen and apprentices a master workman could employ was determined by law in each locality; or how, under the guild system, in which the different trades were distinguished by law from one another in the most exact manner, and each master could carry on only one of them--so that, for instance, the tailors and the nail-makers of Paris for centuries had lawsuits with the menders of clothes and the locksmiths, in order to draw lines between their respective trades--how, under such a guild system, could production be possible with a system of machines which requires the union of the most varied departments of work under the control of one and the same management?

It had come to the point, then, that production itself had called into being, by its constant and gradual development, instruments of production which must necessarily destroy the existing condition of things--instruments and methods of production which, under the guild system, could no longer find place and opportunity for development.

Thus considered, I call the first machine in itself a revolution; for it bore in its wheels and cogs, little as this could be seen on external observation, the germ of the new condition of things, based upon free compet.i.tion, which must necessarily develop from this germ with the power and irresistibility of life itself.

And so, if I am not greatly mistaken, it may be true today that there exist various phenomena which imply a new condition that must inevitably develop from them--phenomena which, at this time also, cannot be understood from external conditions; so that the authorities themselves, while persecuting insignificant agitators, not only overlook these phenomena, but even let them stand as necessary accompaniments of our civilization, hail them as the climax of prosperity, and, on occasion, make appreciative and approving speeches in their honor.

After all these discussions you will now understand the true meaning of the famous pamphlet published by Abbe Sieyes in 1788--and so before the French Revolution--which was summed up in these words: _"Qu'est-ce que c'est que le tiers etat? rien! qu' est qu'il doit etre? Tout!"

Tiers etat_, or third cla.s.s, is what the middle cla.s.s in France was called, because they formed, in contrast to the two privileged cla.s.ses, the n.o.bility and the clergy, a third cla.s.s, which meant all the people without privilege. This pamphlet brings together the two questions raised by Sieyes, and their answers: "What is the third cla.s.s? Nothing! What ought it to be? Everything." This is how Sieyes formulates these two questions and answers. But from all that has been said, the true meaning of these questions and answers would be more clearly and correctly expressed as follows: "What is the third cla.s.s _de facto_--in reality? Everything! But what is it _de jure_--legally?

Nothing!"

What was to be done, then, was to bring the legal position of the third cla.s.s into harmony with its actual meaning; to clothe its importance, already existing in fact, with legal sanction and recognition; and just this is the achievement and significance of the victorious revolution which broke out in France in 1789 and exerted its transforming influence on the other countries of Europe.

This question arises here: What was this third cla.s.s, or _bourgeoisie_, that through the French Revolution obtained victory over the privileged cla.s.ses and gained control of the State? Since this third cla.s.s stood in contrast to the privileged cla.s.ses of society with legal vested rights, it considered itself at that time as equivalent to the whole people, and its cause as the cause of all humanity. This explains the exalting and mighty enthusiasm which was general in that period. The rights of man were proclaimed; and it seemed as if, with the liberation and sovereignty of this third cla.s.s, all legal privileges in society were ended, and as if every legally privileged distinction had been replaced by its principle of the universal liberty of man.

At that time, however, in the very beginning of the movement, in April, 1789, on the occasion of the elections to a parliament which was summoned by the king under the condition that the third cla.s.s should this time send as many representatives as the n.o.bility and clergy together, a newspaper of a character anything but revolutionary writes as follows: "Who can tell us whether a despotism of the bourgeoisie will not follow the so-called aristocracy of the n.o.bles?"

But such cries at that time were drowned in the general enthusiasm.

Nevertheless we must come back to that question, we must put the question definitely: Was the cause of the third cla.s.s really the cause of all humanity; or did this third cla.s.s, the _bourgeoisie_, bear within it a fourth cla.s.s, from which it wished to distinguish itself clearly, and subject it to its sovereignty?

I must now, if I do not wish to run the risk of subjecting my presentation to great misunderstandings, explain my own conception of the word _bourgeoisie_, or upper _bourgeoisie_, as a term for a political party. The word _bourgeoisie_ may be translated into German by _Burgertum_ (body of citizens). In my opinion this is not what it means. We are all _Burger_ (citizens)--the working man, the _Kleinburger_ (lower middle cla.s.s), _Grossburger_ (upper middle cla.s.s), etc. But in the course of history the word _bourgeoisie_ has acquired the significance of a definite political tendency, which I will now explain.[47]

The whole cla.s.s of commoners outside the n.o.bility was divided, when the French Revolution began, and is still divided in general, into two subordinate cla.s.ses--first, those who get their living chiefly or entirely from their labor, and are supported in this by very little capital, or none at all, which might give them the possibility of actively engaging in production for the support of themselves and their families; to this cla.s.s, accordingly, belong the laborers, the lower middle cla.s.s, the artisans, and, in general, the peasants; second, those who control a large amount of property and capital, and on that basis engage in production or receive an income from it. These can be called the capitalists; but no capitalist is a _bourgeois_ merely because of his wealth.

No commoner has any objection to a n.o.bleman's rejoicing privately over his ancestry and his landed estates. But if the n.o.bleman tries to make these ancestors or these landed estates the condition of special influence and privilege in the government, of control over public policy, then the anger of the commoner rises against the n.o.bleman and he calls him a feudalist.

Conditions are the same with reference to the actual difference of property within the cla.s.s of commoners. If the capitalist rejoices in private over the great convenience and advantage which a large estate implies for the holder, nothing is more simple, more moral, and more lawful.

To whatever extent the laborer and the poorer citizen--in a word, all cla.s.ses outside the capitalists--are ent.i.tled to demand from the State that its whole thought and effort be directed toward improving the lamentable and poverty-stricken material condition of the working cla.s.ses and toward a.s.suring to them, through whose hands all the wealth is produced of which our civilization boasts, to whose hands all products owe their being, without whom society as a whole could not exist another day, a more abundant and less uncertain revenue, and thus the possibility of intellectual culture, and, in time, an existence really worthy of a human being--however much, I say, the working cla.s.ses are ent.i.tled to demand this from the State and to establish this as its true object, the workingmen must and will never forget that all property once lawfully acquired is completely inviolable and legitimate.

But if the capitalist, not satisfied with the actual advantages of large property, tries to establish the possession of capital as a condition for partic.i.p.ation in the control of the State and in the determination of public policy, then the capitalist becomes a _bourgeois_, then he makes the fact of possession the legal condition of political control, then he characterizes himself as a new privileged cla.s.s which attempts to put the controlling stamp of its privileges upon all social inst.i.tutions in as full a degree as the n.o.bility in the Middle Ages did with the privilege of landholding.

The question therefore which we must raise with reference to the French Revolution and the period of history inaugurated by it, is the following: Has the third cla.s.s, which came into control through the French Revolution, looked upon itself as a _bourgeoisie_ in this sense, and has it attempted successfully to subject the people to its privileged political control?

The answer is given by the great facts of history, and this answer is definitely in the affirmative. In the very first const.i.tution which followed the French Revolution--the one of September 3, 1791--the difference between _citoyen actif_ and _citoyen pa.s.sif_--the "active"

and "pa.s.sive" citizen--is set forth. Only the active citizens received the franchise, and the active citizen, according to this const.i.tution, is no other than one who pays a direct tax of a definitely stated amount.

This tax was at that time very moderate. It was only the value of three days' work: but what was more important was that all those were declared pa.s.sive citizens who were _serviteurs a gages_ (wage earners), a definition by which the working cla.s.s was expressly excluded from the franchise. After all, in such questions the essential point is not the extent, but the principle.

This meant the introduction of a property qualification, the establishment of a definite amount of property as the condition of the franchise--this first and most important of all political rights--and in the determination of public policy.

All those who paid no direct tax at all, or less than this fixed amount, and those who were wage earners, were excluded from control of the State and were made a subject body. The ownership of capital had become the condition for control over the State, as was n.o.bility, or ownership of land, in the Middle Ages.

This principle of property qualification remains (with the exception of a very short period during the French Republic of 1793, which perished from its own indefiniteness and from the whole state of society at the time, which I cannot here discuss further) the leading principle of all const.i.tutions which originated in the French Revolution.

In fact, with the consistency which all principles have, this one was soon forced to develop into a different quant.i.tative scope. In the const.i.tution of 1814, according to the cla.s.sified list promulgated by Louis XVIII., a direct tax of three hundred francs (eighty thalers) was established, in place of the value of three days' work, as a condition of the franchise. The July Revolution of 1830 broke out, and nevertheless, by the law of April 19, 1831, a direct tax of two hundred francs (about fifty-three thalers) was required as a condition of the franchise.

What under Louis Philippe and Guizot was called the _pays legal_--that is, the country as a legal ent.i.ty--consisted of 200,000 men; for there were not more than 200,000 electors in France who could meet the property requirement, and these exercised sovereignty over more than 30,000,000 inhabitants. It is here to be noted that it makes no difference whether the principle of property qualification, the exclusion of those without property from the franchise, appears, as in the const.i.tutions referred to, in direct and open form, or in a form in one way or another disguised. The effect is always the same.

So the second French Republic in 1850 could not possibly revoke the general direct franchise, once proclaimed, which we shall later consider, but adopted the expedient of granting the franchise (law of May 31,1850) only to such citizens as had been domiciled in a place without interruption for at least three years. For, because workingmen in France are frequently compelled by conditions to change their domicile and to look for work in another commune, it was hoped, and with good reason, that extremely large numbers of workingmen, who could not bring proof of three years uninterrupted residence in the same place, would be excluded from the franchise.

Here you have a property qualification in disguised form. It is still worse in our country, since the promulgation of the three-cla.s.s election law, under which, with variations according to locality, three, ten, thirty, or more voters without property, of the third cla.s.s of electors, have only the same franchise as one single capitalist who belongs to the first cla.s.s; so that, in fact, if the proportion were only one to ten, nine men out of every ten who had the franchise in 1848 have lost it through the three-cla.s.s election law of 1849, and exercise it only in appearance.[48]

But this is only the average situation. In reality, conditions vary greatly in different localities, and they are often still more unfavorable, most unfavorable in fact where the inequality of property is most developed; thus for instance, in Dusseldorf twenty-six voters of the third cla.s.s have no more power than one rich man.

If we return from this discussion to our main thought, we have shown, and shall continue to show, in what manner, since the time when, through the French Revolution, the capitalist element obtained sovereignty, its principle, the possession of capital, has now become the controlling principle of all social inst.i.tutions; how the capitalist cla.s.s, proceeding in just the same manner as the n.o.bility in the Middle Ages with land ownership, impresses now the controlling and exclusive stamp of its particular principle, the possession of capital, upon all inst.i.tutions of society. The parallel between the n.o.bility and the capitalist cla.s.s is, in this respect, complete. We have already seen this with regard to the most important fundamental point, the const.i.tution of the Empire. As in the Middle Ages landholding was the prevailing principle of representation in the German parliaments, so now, by a direct or disguised property qualification, the amount of tax, and therefore, since this is determined by the capital of an individual, the holding of capital, is what, in the last instance, determines the right of election to legislative bodies and therefore of partic.i.p.ation in the control of the State.

Just so in reference to all other inst.i.tutions in which I have demonstrated to you that land ownership was the controlling principle in the Middle Ages. I called your attention then to the exemption from taxation of the n.o.ble landholders of the Middle Ages, and told you that every privileged ruling cla.s.s tries to throw the burden for the maintenance of public welfare upon the oppressed propertyless cla.s.s.

Just so the capitalists. To be sure they cannot declare publicly that they wish to be exempt from taxation. Their expressed principle is rather the rule that everybody shall be taxed in proportion to income; but, on the other hand, they attain, at least fairly well, the same result in disguised form by the distinction between direct and indirect taxes.

Direct taxes are those which, like the cla.s.sified income tax, are collected, and therefore are determined, according to the amount of income and capital. Indirect taxes, however, are those which are laid upon any necessity--for instance, salt, grain, beer, meat, fuel; or on the necessity for legal protection--law costs, stamp taxes, etc., and which the individual very frequently pays in the price of the commodity without knowing or perceiving that he is being taxed, that the tax increases the price.