Page:Olive Malmberg Johnson - Woman and the Socialist Movement (1908).djvu/16

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The modern system of production differs essentially from previous modes of production. Formerly the production of goods, whether actual necessities of life or luxuries, was carried on for the immediate need of the producer himself, or of his economic master. Exchange of products was spasmodic and accidental and what was exchanged was the surplus only, that which was produced over and above what was needed at home. Commerce, therefore, was not a world-wide general institution but a branch by which the surplus articles of some were brought within reach of those whose wealth allowed them to consume more than they produced. The general contempt in which the early trading classes were held arose from the fact that they added no wealth to society but lived by buying cheap from the producer who had to sell and selling dear to the consumer who desired to buy.

Under modern capitalism it is different. No one consults his own needs in the production of wealth. A man may spend a lifetime in producing a single kind of goods. A man may never consume an iota of his own products. What is produced to-day is commodities that must go to the markets and be sold before they can be consumed.

In the handicraft period when the tools were hand tools end the actual process of labor was performed by the human agent, there could be no question to whom the products of labor belonged. The man who owned the tools was himself the worker, and as a matter of course the product was his. When he employed apprentices or journeymen they worked not ultimately to receive wages but to learn the trade and become masters themselves. If, therefore, they gave value to the master's product they received the other value of learning from him. Under capitalism this is altered. The tool has grown into a machine that very seldom can be operated by one man alone. Moreover, the division of labor has extended to the individual products. In the modern labor process one person