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THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM
by Michael Bakunin
First Full English Translation
This pamphlet is an excerpt from The Knouto-Germanic Empire
and the Social Revolution and included in The Complete Works of
Michael Bakunin under the title "Fragment." Parts of the text were
originally translated into English by G.P.Maximoff, with missing
paragraphs translated by Jeff Stein from the Spanish edition, Diego
Abad de Santillan, trans. (Buenos Aires 1926) vol. III, pp. 181-
196.
Published by the
Libertarian Labor Review
an anarcho-syndicalist journal
Box 2824, Champaign IL 61825
January, 1993
* * *
Is it necessary to repeat here the irrefutable arguments of
Socialism which no bourgeois economist has yet succeeded in
disproving? What is property, what is capital in their present form?
For the capitalist and the property owner they mean the power and
the right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working. And
since neither property nor capital produces anything when not
fertilized by labor - that means the power and the right to live by
exploiting the work of someone else, the right to exploit the work
of those who possess neither property nor capital and who thus are
forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners of both.
Note that I have left out of account altogether the following
question: In what way did property and capital ever fall into the
hands of their present owners? This is a question which, when
envisaged from the points of view of history, logic, and justice,
cannot be answered in any other way but one which would serve as an
indictment against the present owners. I shall therefore confine
myself here to the statement that property owners and capitalists,
inasmuch as they live not by their own productive labor but by
getting land rent, house rent, interest upon their capital, or by
speculation on land, buildings, and capital, or by the commercial
and industrial exploitation of the manual labor of the proletariat,
all live at the expense of the proletariat. (Speculation and
exploitation no doubt also constitute a sort of labor, but
altogether non-productive labor.)
I know only too well that this mode of life is highly esteemed
in all civilized countries, that it is expressly and tenderly
protected by all the States, and that the States, religions, and
all the juridical laws, both criminal and civil, and all the
political governments, monarchis and republican - with their
immense judicial and police apparatuses and their standing armies -
have no other mission but to consecrate and protect such practices.
In the presence of these powerful and respectable authorities I
cannot even permit myself to ask whether this mode of life is
legitimate from the point of view of human justice, liberty, human
equality, and fraternity. I simply ask myself: Under such
conditions, are fraternity and equality possible between the
exploiter and the exploited, are justice and freedom possible for
the exploited?
Let us even suppose, as it is being maintained by the
bourgeois economists and with them all the lawyers, all the
worshippers and believers in the jurudicial right, all the priests
of the civil and criminal code - let us suppose that this economic
relationship between the exploiter and the exploited is altogether
legitimate, that it is the inevitable consequence, the product of
an eternal, indestructible social law, yet still it will always be
true that exploitation precludes brotherhood and equality.
It goes without saying that it precludes economic equality.
Suppose I am your worker and you are my employer. If I offer my
labor at the lowest price, if I consent to have you live off my
labor, it is certainly not because of devotion or brotherly love
for you. And no bourgeois economist would dare to say that it was,
however idyllic and naive their reasoning becomes when they begin
to speak about reciprocal affections and mutual relations which
should exist between employers and employees. No, I do it because my
family and I would starve to death if I did not work for an
employer. Thus I am forced to sell you my labor at the lowest
possible price, and I am forced to do it by the threat of hunger.
But - the economists tell us - the property owners, the
capitalists, the employers, are likewise forced to seek out and
purchase the labor of the proletariat. Yes, it is true, they are
forced to do it, but not in the same measure. Had there been
equality between those who offer their labor and those who purchase
it, between the necessity of selling one's labor and the necessity
of buying it, the slavery and misery of the proletariat would not
exist. But then there would be neither capitalists, nor property
owners, nor the proletariat, nor rich, nor poor: there would only
be workers. It is precisely because such equality does not exist
that we have and are bound to have exploiters.
This equality does not exist because in modern society where
wealth is produced by the intervention of capital paying wages to
labor, the growth of the population outstrips the growth of
production, which results in the supply of labor necessarily
surpassing the demand and leading to a relative sinking of the
level of wages. Production thus constituted, monopolized, exploited
by bourgeois capital, is pushed on the one hand by the mutual
competition of the capitalists to concentrate evermore in the hands
of an ever diminishing number of powerful capitalists, or in the
hands of joint-stock companies which, owing to the merging of their
capital, are more powerful than the biggest isolated capitalists.
(And the small and medium-sized capitalists, not being able to
produce at the same price as the big capitalists, naturally succumb
in the deadly struggle.) On the other hand, all enterprises are
forced by the same competition to sell their products at the lowest
possible price. It [capitalist monopoly] can attain this two-fold
result only by forcing out an ever-growing number of small or
medium-sized capitalists, speculators, merchants, or
industrialists, from the world of exploiters into the world of the
exploited proletariat, and at the same time squeezing out ever
greater savings from the wages of the same proletariat.
On the other hand, the mass of the proletariat, growing as a
result of the general increase of the population - which, as we
know, not even poverty can stop effectively - and through the
increasing proletarianization of the petty-bourgeoisie, ex-owners,
capitalists, merchants, and industrialists - growing, as I have
said, at a much more rapid rate than the productive capacities of
an economy that is exploited by bourgeois capital - this growing
mass of the proletariat is placed in a condition wherein the
workers are forced into disasterous competition against one
another.
For since they possess no other means of existence but their
own manual labor, they are driven, by the fear of seeing themselves
replaced by others, to sell it at the lowest price. This tendency
of the workers, or rather the necessity to which they are condemned
by their own poverty, combined with the tendency of the employers
to sell the products of their workers, and consequently buy their
labor, at the lowest price, constantly reproduces and consolidates
the poverty of the proletariat. Since he finds himself in a state
of poverty, the worker is compelled to sell his labor for almost
nothing, and because he sells that product for almost nothing, he
sinks into ever greater poverty.
Yes, greater misery, indeed! For in this galley-slave labor
the productive force of the workers, abused, ruthlessly exploited,
excessively wasted and underfed, is rapidly used up. And once used
up, what can be its value on the market, of what worth is this sole
commodity which he possesses and upon the daily sale of which he
depends for a livelihood? Nothing! And then? The nothing is left
for the worker but to die.
What, in a given country, is the lowest possible wage? It is
the price of that which is considered by the proletarians of that
country as absolutely necessary to keep oneself alive. All the
bourgeois economists are in agreement on this point. Turgot, who
saw fit to call himself the 'virtuous minister' of Louis XVI, and
really was an honest man, said:
"The simple worker who owns nothing more than his hands, has
nothing else to sell than his labor. He sells it more or less
expensively; but its price whether high or low, does not depend on
him alone: it depends on an agreement with whoever will pay for his
labor. The employer pays as little as possible; when given the
choice between a great number of workers, the employer prefers the
one who works cheap. The workers are, then, forced to lower their
price in competition each against the other. In all types of labor,
it necessarily follows that the salary of the worker is limited to
what is necessary for survival." (Reflexions sur la formation et la
distribution des richesses)
J.B. Say, the true father of bourgeois economists in France
also said:
"Wages are much higher when more demand exists for labor and
less if offered, and are lowered accordingly when more labor is
offered and less demanded. It is the relation between supply and
demand which regulates the price of this merchandise called the
workers' labor, as are regulated all other public services. When
wages rise a little higher than the price necessary for the
workers' families to maintain themselves, their children multiply
and a larger supply soon develops in proportion with the greater
demand. When, on the contrary, the demand for workers is less than
the quantity of people offering to work, their gains decline back
to the price necessary for the class to maintain itself at the same
number. The families more burdened with children disappear; from
them forward the supply of labor declines, and with less labor
being offered, the price rises...In such a way it is difficult for
the wages of the laborer to rise above or fall below the price
neccessary to maintain the class (the workers, the proletariat) in
the number required." (Cours complet d' economie politique)
After citing Turgot and J.B. Say, Proudhon cries: "The price,
as compared to the value (in real social economy) is something
essentially mobile, consequently, essentially variable, and that in
its variations, it is not regulated more than by the concurrence,
concurrence, let us not forget, that as Turgot and Say agree, has
the necessary effect not to give to wages to the worker more than
enough to barely prevent death by starvation, and maintain the
class in the numbers needed."
The current price of primary necessities constitutes the
prevailing constant level above which workers' wages can never rise
for a very long time, but beneath which they drop very often, which
constantly results in inanition, sickness, and death, until a
sufficient number of workers disappear to equalize again the supply
of and demand for labor. What the economists call equalized suppy
and demand does not constitute real equality between those who
offer their labor for sale and those who purchase it. Suppose that
I, a manufacturer, need a hundred workers and that exactly a
hundred workers present themselves in the market - only one
hundred, for if more came, the supply would exceed demand,
resulting in lowered wages. But since only one hundred appear, and
since I, the manufacturer, need only that number - neither more nor
less - it would seem at first that complete equality was
established; that supply and demand being equal in number, they
should likewise be equal in other respects. Does it follow that the
workers can demand from me a wage and conditions of work assuring
them of a truly free, dignified, and human existence? Not at all!
If I grant them those conditions and those wages, I, the
capitalist, shall not gain thereby any more than they will. But
then, why should I have to plague myself and become ruined by
offering them the profits of my capital? If I want to work myself
as workers do, I will invest my capital somewhere else, wherever I
can get the highest interest, and will offer my labor for sale to
some capitalist just as my workers do.
If, profiting by the powerful initiative afforded me by my
capital, I ask those hundred workers to fertilize that capital with
their labor, it is not because of my sympathy for their sufferings,
nor because of a spirit of justice, nor because of love for
humanity. The capitalists are by no means philanthropists; they
would be ruined if they practiced philanthropy. It is because I
hope to draw from the labor of the workers sufficient profit to be
able to live comfortably, even richly, while at the same time
increasing my capital - and all that without having to work myself.
Of course I shall work too, but my work will be of an altogether
different kind and I will be remunerated at a much higher rate than
the workers. It will not be the work of production but that of
administration and exploitation.
But isn't administrative work also productive work? No doubt
it is, for lacking a good and and intelligent administration,
manual labor will not produce anything or it will produce very
little and very badly. But from the point of view of justice and
the needs of production itself, it is not at all necessary that
this work should be monopolized in my hands, nor, above all, that
I should be compensated at a rate so much higher than manual labor.
The co-operative associations already have proven that workers are
quite capable of administering industrial enterprises, that it can
be done by workers elected from their midst and who recieve the
same wage. Therefore if I concentrate in my hands the
administrative power, it is not because the interests of production
demand it, but in order to serve my own ends, the ends of
exploitation. As the absolute boss of my establishment I get for my
labor ten or twenty times more than my workers get for theirs, and
this is true despite the fact that my labor is incomparably less
painful than theirs.
But the capitalist, the business owner, runs risks, they say,
while the worker risks nothing. This is not true, because when seen
from his side, all the disadvantages are on the part of the worker.
The business owner can conduct his affairs poorly, he can be wiped
out in a bad deal, or be a victim of a commercial crisis, or by an
unforeseen catastrophe; in a word he can ruin himself. This is
true. But does ruin mean from the bourgeois point of view to be
reduced to the same level of misery as those who die of hunger, or
to be forced among the ranks of the common laborers? This so rarely
happens, that we might as well say never. Afterwards it is rare
that the capitalist does not retain something, despite the
appearance of ruin. Nowdays all bankruptcies are more or less
fraudulent. But if absolutely nothing is saved, there are always
family ties, and social relations, who, with help from the business
skills learned which they pass to their children, permit them to
get positions for themselves and their children in the higher ranks
of labor, in management; to be a state functionary, to be an
executive in a commercial or industrial business, to end up,
although dependent, with an income superior to what they paid their
former workers.
The risks of the worker are infinitely greater. After all, if
the establishment in which he is employed goes bankrupt, he must go
several days and sometimes several weeks without work, and for him
it is more than ruin, it is death; because he eats everyday what he
earns. The savings of workers are fairy tales invented by bourgeois
economists to lull their weak sentiment of justice, the remorse
that is awakened by chance in the bosom of their class. This
ridiculous and hateful myth will never soothe the anguish of the
worker. He knows the expense of satisfying the daily needs of his
large family. If he had savings, he would not send his poor
children, from the age of six, to whither away, to grow weak, to be
murdered physically and morally in the factories, where they are
forced to work night and day, a working day of twelve and fourteen
hours.
If it happens sometimes that the worker makes a small savings,
it is quickly consumed by the inevitable periods of unemployment
which often cruelly interrupt his work, as well as by the
unforeseen accidents and illnesses which befall his family. The
accidents and illnesses that can overtake him constitute a risk
that makes all the risks of the employer nothing in comparison:
because for the worker debilitating illness can destroy his
productive ability, his labor power. Over all, prolonged illness is
the most terrible bankruptcy, a bankruptcy that means for him and
his children, hunger and death.
I know full well that under these conditions that if I were a
capitalist, who needs a hundred workers to fertilize my capital,
that on employing these workers, all the advantages are for me, all
the disadvantages for them. I propose nothing more nor less than to
exploit them, and if you wish me to be sincere about it, and
promise to guard me well, I will tell them:
"Look, my children, I have some capital which by itself cannot
produce anything, because a dead thing cannot produce anything. I
have nothing productive without labor. As it goes, I cannot benefit
from consuming it unproductively, since having consumed it, I would
be left with nothing. But thanks to the social and political
institutions which rule over us and are all in my favor, in the
existing economy my capital is supposed to be a producer as well:
it earns me interest. From whom this interest must be taken --- and
it must be from someone, since in reality by itself it produces
absolutely nothing --- this does not concern you. It is enough for
you to know that it renders interest. Alone this interest is
insufficient to cover my expenses. I am not an ordinary man as you.
I cannot be, nor do I want to be, content with little. I want to
live, to inhabit a beautiful house, to eat and drink well, to ride
in a carriage, to maintain a good appearance, in short, to have all
the good things in life. I also want to give a good education to my
children, to make them into gentlemen, and send them away to study,
and afterwards, having become much more educated than you, they can
dominate you one day as I dominate you today. And as education
alone is not enough, I want to give them a grand inheritance, so
that divided between them they will be left almost as rich as I.
Consequently, besides all the good things in life I want to give
myself, I also want to increase my capital. How will I achieve this
goal? Armed with this capital I propose to exploit you, and I
propose that you permit me to exploit you. You will work and I will
collect and appropriate and sell for my own behalf the product of
your labor, without giving you more than a portion which is
absolutely necessary to keep you from dying of hunger today, so
that at the end of tommorrow you will still work for me in the same
conditions; and when you have been exhausted, I will throw you out,
and replace you with others. Know it well, I will pay you a salary
as small, and impose on you a working day as long, working
conditions as severe, as despotic, as harsh as possible; not from
wickedness, --- not from a motive of hatred towards you, nor an
intent to do you harm, --- but from the love of wealth and to get
rich quick; because the less I pay you and the more you work, the
more I will gain."
This is what is said implicitly by every capitalist, every
industrialist, every business owner, every employer who demands the
labor power of the workers they hire.
But since supply and demand are equal, why do the workers
accept the conditions laid down by the employer? If the capitalist
stands in just as great a need of employing the workers as the one
hundred workers do of being employed by him, does it not follow
that both sides are in an equal position? Do not both meet at the
market as two equal merchants --- from the juridical point of view
at least --- one bringing a commodity called a daily wage, to be
exchanged for the daily labor of the worker on the basis of so many
hours per day; and the other bringing his own labor as his
commodity to be exchanged for the wage offered by the capitalist?
Since, in our supposition, the demand is for a hundred workers and
the supply is likewise that of a hundred persons, it may seem that
both sides are in an equal position.
Of course nothing of the kind is true. What is it that brings
the capitalist to the market? It is the urge to get rich, to
increase his capital, to gratify his ambitions and social vanities,
to be able to indulge in all conceivable pleasures. And what brings
the worker to the market? Hunger, the necessity of eating today and
tommorrow. Thus, while being equal from the point of juridical
fiction, the capitalist and the worker are anything but equal from
the point of view of the economic situation, which is the real
situation. The capitalist is not threatened with hunger when he
comes to the market; he knows very well that if he does not find
today the workers for whom he is looking, he will still have enough
to eat for quite a long time, owing to the capital of which he is
the happy possessor. If the workers whom he meets in the market
present demands which seem excessive to him, because, far from
enabling him to increase his wealth and improve even more his
economic position, those proposals and conditions might, I do not
say equalize, but bring the economic position of the workers
somewhat close to his own --- what does he do in that case? He
turns down those proposals and waits. After all, he was not
impelled by an urgent necessity, but by a desire to improve his
position, which, compared to that of the workers, is already quite
comfortable, and so he can wait. And he will wait, for his business
experience has taught him that the resistance of workers who,
possessing neither capital, nor comfort, nor any savings to speak
of, are pressed by a relentless necessity, by hunger, that this
resistance cannot last very long, and that finally he will be able
to find the hundred workers for whom he is looking --- for they
will be forced to accept the conditions which he finds it
profitable to impose upon them. If they refuse, others will come
who will be only too happy to accept such conditions. That is how
things are done daily with the knowledge and in full view of
everyone.
If, as a consequence of the particular circumstances that
constantly influence the market, the branch of industry in which he
planned at first to employ his capital does not offer all the
advantages that he had hoped, then he will shift his capital
elsewhere; thus the bourgeois capitalist is not tied by nature to
any specific industry, but tends to invest (as it is called by the
economists --- exploit is what we say) indifferently in all
possible industries. Let's suppose, finally, that learning of some
industrial incapacity or misfortune, he decides not to invest in
any industry; well, he will buy stocks and annuities; and if the
interest and dividends seem insufficient, then he will engage in
some occupation, or shall we say, sell his labor for a time, but in
conditions much more lucrative than he had offered to his own
workers.
The capitalist then comes to the market in the capacity, if
not of an absolutely free agent, at least that of an infinitely
freer agent than the worker. What happens in the market is a
meeting between a drive for lucre and starvation, between master
and slave. Juridically they are both equal; but economically the
worker is the serf of the capitalist, even before the market
transaction has been concluded whereby the worker sells his person
and his liberty for a given time. The worker is in the position of
a serf because this terrible threat of starvation which daily hangs
over his head and over his family, will force him to accept any
conditions imposed by the gainful calculations of the capitalist,
the industrialist, the employer.
And once the contract has been negotiated, the serfdom of the
workers is doubly increased; or to put it better, before the
contract has been negotiated, goaded by hunger, he is only
potentially a serf; after it is negotiated he becomes a serf in
fact. Because what merchandise has he sold to his employer? It is
his labor, his personal services, the productive forces of his
body, mind, and spirit that are found in him and are inseperable
from his person, --- it is therefore himself. From then on, the
employer will watch over him, either directly or by means of
overseers; everyday during working hours and under controlled
conditions, the employer will be the owner of his actions and
movements. When he is told: "Do this" , the worker is obligated to
do it; or he is told: "Go there", he must go. Is this not what is
called a serf?
M. Karl Marx, the illustrious leader of German Communism,
justly observed in his magnificent work Das Kapital that if the
contract freely entered into by the vendors of money --- in the
form of wages --- and the vendors of their own labor --- that is,
between the employer and the workers --- were concluded not for a
definite and limited term only, but for one's whole life, it would
constitute real slavery. Concluded for a term only and reserving to
the worker the right to quit his employer, this contract
constitutes a sort of voluntary and transitory serfdom. Yes,
transitory and voluntary from the juridical point of view, but
nowise from the point of view of economic possiblity. The orker
always has the right to leave his employer, but has he the means to
do so? And if he does quit him, is it in order to lead a free
existence, in which he will have no master but himself? No, he does
it in order to sell himself to another employer. He is driven to it
by the same hunger which forced him to sell himself to the first
employer. Thus the worker's liberty, so much exalted by the
economists, jurists, and bourgeois republicans, is only a
theoretical freedom, lacking any means for its possible
realization, and consequently it is only a fictitious liberty, an
utter falsehood. The truth is that the whole life of the worker is
simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom --
- voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory in the
economic sense --- broken up by momentarily brief interludes of
freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real
slavery.
This slavery manifests itself daily in all kinds of ways.
Apart from the vexations and oppressive conditions of the contract
which turn the worker into a subordinate, a passive and obedient
servant, and the employer into a nearly absolute master --- apart
from all that, it is well known that there is hardly an industrial
enterprise wherein the owner, impelled on the one hand by the two-
fold instinct of an unappeasable lust for profits and absolute
power, and on the other hand, profiting by the economic dependence
of the worker, does not set aside the terms stipulated in the
contract and wring some additional concessions in his own favor.
Now he will demand more hours of work, that is, over and above
those stipulated in the contract; now he will cut down wages on
some pretext; now he will impose arbitrary fines, or he will treat
the workers harshly, rudely, and insolently.
But, one may say, in that case the worker can quit. Easier
said than done. At times the worker receives part of his wages in
advance, or his wife or children may be sick, or perhaps his work
is poorly paid throughout this particular industry. Other employers
may be paying even less than his own employer, and after quitting
this job he may not even be able to find another one. And to remain
without a job spells death for him and his family. In addition,
there is an understanding among all employers, and all of them
resemble one another. All are almost equally irritating, unjust,
and harsh.
Is this calumny? No, it is in the nature of things, and in the
logical necessity of the relationship existing between the
employers and their workers.
NOTES:
1: Not having to hand the works mentioned, I took these quotes from
la Histoire de la Revolution de 1848, by Louis Blanc. Mr. Blanc
continues with these words:
"We have been well alerted. Now we know, without room for
doubt, that according to all the doctrines of the old political
economy, wages cannot have any other basis than the regulation
between supply and demand, although the result is that the
remuneration of labor is reduced to what is strictly necessary to
not perish by starvation. Very well, and let us do no more than
repeat the words inadvertently spoken in sincerity by Adam Smith,
the head of this school: It is small consolation for individuals
who have no other means for existence than their labor."
(Bakunin)
2: Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, by Karl Marx;
Erster Band. This work will need to be translated into French,
because nothing, that I know of, contains an analysis so profound,
so luminous, so scientific, so decisive, and if I can express it
thus, so merciless an expose of the formation of bourgeois capital
and the systematic and cruel exploitation that capital continues
exercising over the work of the proletariat. The only defect of
this work... positivist in direction, based on a profound study of
economic works, without admitting any logic other than the logic of
the facts --- the only defect, say, is that it has been written, in
part, but only in part, in a style excessively metaphsical and
abstract...which makes it difficult to explain and nearly
unapproachable for the majority of workers, and it is principally
the workers who must read it nevertheless. The bourgeois will
never read it or, if they read it, they will never want to
comprehend it, and if they comprehend it they will never say
anything about it; this work being nothing other than a sentence of
death, scientifically motivated and irrevocably pronounced, not
against them as individuals, but against their class. (Bakunin)