Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - Socialism; What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish - tr. Mary Wood Simons (1899).djvu/15

 be seized and torn out by the root. All wealth is the fruit of labor, teaches political economy—labor shall reap the fruit of labor, demands justice, demands socialism. The present inequality springs from this: That labor does not work for itself; that it must sell itself to the idle for wages and by them be exploited. In a word, it springs out of the system of wage labor. The present injustice is only to be abolished in this way, that labor cease to work for the idle and that instead it work for itself.

Individual labor is unproductive. Work, as we have seen, must according to its nature be communistic. Therefore we must have united labor for the advantage of every individual, united labor and united enjoyment of the fruits of labor. This it is which we would establish in place of the present system of exploitation. Socialistic co-operation in place of wage labor!

But what becomes of capital?

It remains where it belongs, with labor. There is no capital but through labor. There shall be no capital except for labor. It has been asserted by charlatans that capital creates value as well as labor—the test can be easily made. The worshiper of capital may sweep together in a heap his capital, he may gather all the capital of the earth, and after the space of a year there would not have grown a penny more of value from it, but indeed the worth of the idle mass would be considerably decreased. Capital is not merely the child of labor; it cannot grow or continue without it. Capital has in relation to labor no rights, while labor in relation to capital has the right of ownership.

The tyrannous manner of production has overturned the natural relation between capital and labor and made labor the slave of capital. Is our wage-labor not slavery? Is the modern wage-laborer, because he can