Page:Alexander Jonas - Reporter and Socialist (1885).djvu/17

 We shall consider this question further on. At present you will please tell me whether or not at the time when everything was produced by hand, with cheap tools, and upon a small scale, the individual worker upon every field of industry could not make himself independent more easily than to-day ?

I admit that.

Does not production, at the present time, if it is expected to be successful, need large amounts of capital?

It does.

Then you admit that comparatively few people can become independent while the rest, the overwhelming majority of all men, must necessarily remain wage-workers, dependent upon somebody, for all their lifetime. Now then listen: this method of capitalistic production—I hope you now understand the term—we propose to abolish.

For pity's sake! So it is true then what they say about the socialists, that they want to destroy all machinery?

Don’t be too hasty in your conclusions, but do as Shakespeare says, and "Wipe away from the table of your memory all trivial fond records" of destroying machinery, dividing of wealth, etc., written upon it by the ignorant press and by our designing enemies with the evil intention of misrepresenting us. If I say that we propose to abolish the capitalistic mode of production, it does not follow that the machines must be destroyed.

But the invention of the steam-engine and all other machines have caused this "capitalistic" mode of production to develop itself, as you have stated quite correctly. How are you going to remove it without putting the machines out of the way?

The characteristics of capitalistic production are twofold. It is a production deserving of its name only when it employs large amounts of machinery, and factories, which to build requires a large amount of capital—as we have stated already. We desire not only to preserve this phase of capitalistic production because it saves human labor and pro-