Page:Karl Kautsky - From Handicraft to Capitalism - tr. H. J. Neumann (1907).djvu/12

 were possessed of the financial means required to purchase in necessary quantities everything needed for production, raw material, tools, workshops, labour power. But whence was the latter obtained? Slaves that one could purchase no longer existed in Europe. A workman who possessed his own means of production or belonged to a family possessing the necessary means of production, would not sell his labour power. He preferred working for himself and his family so that the whole product of his labour should be his or that of his family. He sold the product of his labour, but not his labour power. Here it must be pointed out that one should beware of the expression "selling one's labour." Labour, an activity, cannot be sold. The word labour, however, is commonly not only used for the purpose of signifying an activity, but also for the purpose of designating the result of this activity, the labour product, and for describing labour power the expression of which is the activity in production. This application of the word labour enables all those economists who wish to leave the workers and the petty bourgeoisie in ignorance as to their condition, to mix up things and make them very much alike. This means that we have to watch these gentlemen very closely.

But let us return to the merchant whom we left in search of workers. The owners of petty industrial concerns and their families were of no use. The merchants had to l(X)k for workers who did not possess means of production, who possessed nothing but their labour power so that they were compelled to sell this in order to live. The development of the production of commodities and of private property had already brought into existence such men without property, as we have seen. There were, however, but few of them in the beginning, and most of them, unless they belonged to the family circle of a petty concern, were either unfit for work, cripples, invalids, old men, or men afraid of work, sharpers, and tramps. The number of workers without property and free to sell themselves was very small.

At that time, however, when there was a great demand for workers without property, kind Providence played its part by causing a large number of workers to be expropriated and turned into the streets, there to be readily picked up by the wealthy merchants. This was also the consequence of the development in the production of commodities. The extension of the markets for urban industry had a reflex upon agriculture. In the towns a demand for articles of food, raw material, timber, wool, flax, dye stuffs, etc., increased, hence agricultural production too became more and more production of commodities, production for the purpose of selling.

The peasant got money into his hands, but that proved his misfortune, for it roused the avarice of his exploiters, the landlords and rulers. So long as his surplus had consisted only of natural product they had not taken therefrom more than they needed for their own consumption. Money, however, they could always make use of, the more the better. The more the market extended for the peasant and the more money he obtained for his goods, the more he was skinned by his landlords and rulers and the higher rose his taxes and duties. Soon his masters were no longer satisfied with the surplus over and above the cost of the peasant's subsistence, they filched even his necessaries. No wonder that the peasants were seized with despair and that many of them, especially after all attempts at resistance in the Peasant Wars had been crushed, left hearth and home and sought refuge in the towns.

Then another circumstance often arose. As in the towns through