The Revolutionary Proposition
We have seen that the present social system does not nor can be made to, fulfil its function of facilitating the satisfaction of the material needs of the people ; we have seen that a new social system, shaping itself from a basis of common, instead of private, ownership in the means of wealth production, is necessary to correct the faults of society so pregnant with misery for the only useful class in the social organism.
The evidence points to the desirability of such a change, at least from a working-class point of view, and those who agree will next ask if it is possible to carry the Revolutionary Proposition into effect, and further, how it is to be done.
Those who advance the Revolutionary Proposition claim that, much more than being possible, it is inevitable. It would be possible were it dependent upon, and within the powers of, human agency ; but it is inevitable because it is the work and product of forces superior to human direction, forces which make men mere instruments in their ceaseless operations. To show that the proposition is possible might still leave some doubt or argument resting upon the vanity of human wishes and the frailty of human endeavour. But to show that it is inevitable at once disposes of the question of possibility. It does more : it supplies the cold, strictly scientific reason for its consideration. A whole train of arguments may be raised upon any appeal to justice or humanity or other sentiment, but prove that it is inevitable and the only question left is how to forward or delay it.
We learned that the basis of society is the condition of ownership of the means and instruments of producing the necessaries of life, and we have reduced the Revolutionary Proposition to a proposal to change the present property condition for a certain other.
This property basis depends upon the stage of development of the means of producing wealth.
For instance, in a society in which the chase was the chief resource, and the bow and arrow and the spear the means of procuring sustenance, we find the land held in common by the whole community. The means of producing wealth being so crude and ill-requiting, there is no possibility of a surplus, or advantage arising from its monopoly. So it must await the development of the means of production—through domestication of animals and agriculture let us say—to a point of great fertility before land assumes the desirability which leads to private ownership.
On the other hand the very simplicity of the crude weapons of the chase places them within the reach of all, and while no barrier to private possession, would, in the last analysis, prevent their monopoly by a class. The means of producing wealth must wait until they reach a high state of development, until they become so costly as to be beyond the means of many, and so complicated as to require more than one pair of hands to operate them, before they pass out of the possession of those who use. them, and become a means of enslavement.
In this whirligig age no one can be unaware of the constant change and development of the means and methods of production and distribution. Invention follows invention in such hotfoot pursuit that one dares not give instances, because they are out of date almost before the ink is dry. Is it to be expected, then, that all this change in the productive forces of society is to be without effect upon that which has so far evolved with it ? To say so is to say that there exists complete harmony between the property relation and the productive forces.
This harmony can never become an accomplished and stable fact so long as classes remain, for while the development of the productive forces is outside human control, the property relation and the social structure which arises therefrom is the direct, conscious work of men. The class in power cling to old forms and old institutions, and uphold them with every force at their command, while the industrial evolution sweeps on, to raise up another class with opposing interests against them. The social edifice becomes out of harmony with the method of production, its institutions become bonds to industrial and social progress.
For instance, the feudal system, with the bulk of the people chained in serfage to the land, its guild restrictions in the towns and its hampering laws and customs and class privileges (for the wrong class, of course), fitting as it may have been when it first arose, was antagonistic to the rising system of capitalist production, which demands the absolute freedom of the workman to sell his labour-power as the first condition of its existence, and a plentiful supply of labour-power in the labour market, together with the free play of competition, as essentials of its development.
The discord exists at the present day. That inherent human hunger for material wealth which is the motive power of the development of the productive forces of society, has led the present ruling class to develope (in the sense of adopting improvements mainly thought out by their hirelings) industry beyond the capacity of their social system. The motive of production is profit. Profit (together with rent and interest) is that portion of the workers’ product which their wages do not suffice to buy back. With the improvement of machinery this surplus product which is filched from the workers increases, and its disposal becomes the real problem of the capitalist class. It must be sold—but where ? The bulk of the people are workers, and their purchasing power, relative to the total mass of the goods poured into the market, is steadily decreasing (because their output increases while their wages do not).
An increasing foreign market is an absolutely indispensable condition of the continuance of the capitalist system, whose very life depends on the disposal of its surplus products. But the foreign market has almost touched the limit of expansion. Every civilised country is entering the world-market with goods to dispose of—the surplus sweated out of their wage workers.
The day when the world market is incapable of further development must (at the latest) be the day of the downfall of the capitalist system. The unsold surplus is incompatible with further production. It must accumulate in the warehouses, glut the markets, and finally bring production to a stop.
This difference between the wage and the product is increasing by leaps and bounds, and it is helped by another factor. As the relative output compared with wages increases the number of workers compared with capitalists also increases. Competition leads to monopoly, and on the way indulges in the playful pastime of pitching the smaller capitalists out of the frying-pan into the fire. Particularly in times of industrial crisis the number who lose their seat at the capitalist table is very great. They are beaten down into the ranks of the workers, and with their children are compelled to sell their labour power in order to live. In this way control of industry is falling into fewer and fewer hands, while the number of those whose interests are served by the present system are becoming less in relation to those who would benefit by change.
Again, it is part of the work of the evolutionary process always to make the class which is next to attain power, conscious of the effort required, of it. This consciousness (since there has been class division and class interests in society) has been an essential condition of social change, because, while the development of the industrial means is beyond human control, the property relation upon which the social structure is raised, is the work of men governed by their material interests.
That they are not free agents in the matter is, of course, perfectly true, for each class has had to await a certain development of the industrial means before it could rise to dominance ; but the seizure of the means of living, upon which the successive classes have based their power, must always have been the work of men who understood that it served their interests to do so—men, therefore, who were conscious of their interests—and the safeguarding of their position by legal and other restrictions is a conscious endeavour to entrench themselves in power.
As each social system is dictated and upheld by certain interests, it requires the rise of opposing interests to overthrow it. These interests must be developed before they can be perceived. This development is the work of the evolution of the industrial process. For instance, the development of the means of production—the evolution of the tool into the machine—raised up by the side of the feudal nobility, a class of manufacturers, whose interests as such were in opposition to those of the landed aristocracy. As time went on the interests of the two parties became more divergent, more acutely antagonistic, and with this the rising class grew more conscious of their interests. In this way the industrial development made the class-conscious material which was to effect the social change.
Similarly to-day development of the means and instruments for producing wealth is making sharper the antagonism of interests between the two classes in society, and making clearer the workers’ perception of that antagonism. The old idea that “Capital and Labour are brothers” is incompatible with increasing wealth of the capitalists and the deepening poverty of those who labour. The growing barriers against members of the working class climbing into the class above ; the withdrawal of the capitalists from even the remotest contact with actual production and the substitution of managers and foremen in their stead : these things draw clearer the line between the classes and show the workers that they alone produce all the wealth of society, that they are the only useful members of society, and finally, that they are robbed.
Then the trend of industrial evolution reveals the underlying principles of social development—the whence and the whither is known—consciousness of the class position ripens into consciousness of the way to emancipation, and the worker becomes a Socialist, destined to be the instrument of a social revolution.
All this shows that a social change is inevitable, but how do we know that this change will take the lines of the Revolutionary Proposition ?
In the first place we know that the new social system must be based upon common ownership because the industrial development is not raising up a new class in society, but is bringing to consciousness the working class.
Previous to the last social revolution it was the capitalist class that came to consciousness and power, wresting control from the aristocracy. But now it is the working class—the last class—who are being prepared by the evolutionary process—and it could not be otherwise, since there is no other class left.
When the working class capture power, therefore, any form of exploitation becomes impossible for there is no class to exploit. The sole reason for private ownership has gone. Indeed, if it is granted that another class is to come into power, that class must be the only other existing class—the working class. And if the working class come into power, there is no other conceivable social basis they can adopt than that of the Revolutionary Proposition—common ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.
To sum up, the realisation of the proposition is inevitable for the reason that the present system cannot continue because it contains the ineradicable contradiction that its mainspring is the production of profit or surplus-value, which surplus-value, accumulating, must throttle production ; and because the projected scheme of things is the only possible alternative. And the evolutionary process—which makes the Socialist—is preparing the revolution.
A. E. JACOMB