Page:Friedrich Adolf Sorge - Socialism and The Worker (1876).djvu/12

 other, and by far the larger class, have only their physical or mental strength and skill for labor, hence the capital becomes a means for enslaving workers, forcing them to give up a part of what they have produced to him, who owns the capital. They themselves obtain hardly enough to support themselves and their families, while the capitalists enjoy life and get richer without working at all. This is the point. Dead property deprives living work of its fruits. Now since work should, by rights, own, what it produces, as its sole and legitimate earning, dead property becomes the bitter enemy of working life.

Hence the struggle of labor with capital.

Returning to the question: What is property? the answer given above appears unsatisfactory; we must add another question: to whom belongs properly, what the working part of the human race produces?

The answer to this question is of the greatest importance. Now it is the capital, which appropriates the greater part of it, leaving to the workers, who form by far the greater number, only so much of it, that they may keep alive; they are treated like bees, that are robbed of the honey they made. This class is excluded from enjoying the blessings of civilisation, the greater part of their product is taken by the capital.

What right has the owner of a beehive to rob the bees of the fruit of their industry and labor? They are his property, his is the might. What right has capital to rob the workingclass of part of the fruit of their industry and labor? Are the wages-laborers, the mechanics, the farmhands property of the capitalist? Are they his slaves?

As things stand to day—they are! Might is right and by the title of such right the slaveowner considers the fruit of the work of his slaves his property; by this right, in former times, the feudal landowner made his serfs work for his enjoyment and benefit. Slavery is injustice, serfdom is injustice, so the right which capital claims to the work of the worker is injustice. I would not like to be misunderstood here. As far as anything is the personal property of a person, he may enjoy it, as he chooses; nobody has a right to interfere. But as soon as he tries to use this property to enslave other people, he steps over his domain and must be checked. For, I think, it is acknowledged among civilized people, that nobody has a right of ownership over his fellowmen. Slavery has been abolished, serfdom has been abolished, so the power, capital exercises now, will be abolished; its place will be occupied by the natural and sacred right of the worker ts the proceeds of his work.

But—is not the capital as necessary as the labor? Can labor produce anything without capital? There must be raw material, there must be tools, there must be machines, there must be workshops, warehouses and so forth; there must be soil to be tilled etc. What can mere labor do without all these? True! Labor cannot exist without capital. But this is not the question. Is it