In this essay, originally written around 1871, Bakunin explains how capitalism is by its very nature exploitative. By concentrating political power and economic capital in the hands of capitalists, capitalism guarantees that the workers of the world will always live in misery. The asymmetrical power relationship between bosses and laborers is the backbone of capitalism, and there can never be equality or freedom as long as capitalism exists.
The Capitalist System
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, monarchies
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 juridical 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 disastrous
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? Then 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
necessary 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.”[1]
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 supply 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 an 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 receive
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. Nowadays 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 wither 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 tomorrow 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 tomorrow. 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 inseparable 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[2]
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
possibility. The worker 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.
[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 metaphysical 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)
