Page:Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris - A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (1884).djvu/36

 In the factory, that is to say, and to an ever increasing degree on the farm, the labourers work as a portion of an association; their labour is socialised in the highest degree. But both their products and the exchange of their products are at the disposal of individuals who compete with one another for gain above, as the workers compete against one another for bare subsistence below.

Here then are the two main features of our modern system of production for profit. First. The labourers on the average replace the value of their wages for the capitalist class in the first few hours of their day's work; the exchange value of the goods produced in the remaining hours of the day's work constitutes so much embodied labour which is unpaid; and this unpaid labour so embodied in articles of utility, the capitalist class, the factory owners, the farmers, the bankers, the brokers, the shopkeepers, and their hangers-on the landlords, divide among themselves in the shape of profits, interests, discounts, commissions, rent, &c. Second. The other feature is the antagonism between the socialised method of production and the individualised system of exchange. This brings about unmitigated anarchy in the shape of a world-wide crisis every ten years, which throws labourers out of work when they are as anxious to toil for subsistence as ever they were; and piles up quantities of goods which these very labourers are eager to buy, but which owing to the crisis they cannot earn the means of purchasing, because the capitalist class will not employ them unless. a profit is to be made, and this profit is rendered impossible by the very glut of the goods. Such crises