Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital
Or the Unproductiveness of Capital proved with Reference to the
Present Combinations amongst Journeymen

by Thomas Hodgskin
1825

NOTE

IN all the debates on the law passed during the late session of
Parliament, on account of the combinations of workmen, much
stress is laid on the necessity of protecting capital. What
capital performs is therefore a question of considerable
importance, which the author was, on this account, induced to
examine. As a result of this examination, it is his opinion that
all the benefits attributed to capital arise from co-existing and
skilled labour. He feels himself, on this account, called on to
deny that capital has any just claim to the large share of the
national produce now bestowed on it. This large share he has
endeavored to show is the cause of the poverty of the labourer;
and he ventures to assert that the condition of the labourer can
never be permanently improved till he can refute the theory, and
is determined to oppose the practice of giving nearly everything
to capital.


Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital

     Throughout this country at present there exists a serious
contest between capital and labour. The journeymen of almost
every trade have combined to obtain higher wages, and their
employers have appealed to the legislature for protection. The
contest is not only one of physical endurance, or who can stand
out longest, but of argument and reason. It is possible for the
workmen to force their masters into compliance, but they must
convince the public of the justice of their demands. The press
has, at present, a great influence over public questions; and by
far the greater and more influential part of it is engaged on the
side of the capitalist. Through it, however, and through public
opinion, must the journeymen find their way to the legislature.
They may possibly terrify their masters, but they can only obtain
the support of any influential persons by an appeal to reason. To
suggest some arguments in favour of labour against capital, is my
chief motive for publishing the present pamphlet.
     The labourers are very unfortunate, I conceive, in being
surrounded by nations in a worse political condition than we are,
and in some of which labour is still worse paid than here.
Labourers are still more unfortunate in being descended from
bondsmen and serfs. Personal slavery or villanage formerly
existed in Britain, and all the living labourers still suffer
from the bondage of their ancestors. Our claims are consequently
never tried by the principles of justice. The law-giver and the
capitalist always compare our wages with the wages of other
labourers; and without adverting to what we produce, which seems
the only criterion by which we ought to be paid, we are instantly
condemned as insolent and ungrateful if we ask for more than was
enjoyed by the slave of former times, and is now enjoyed by the
half-starved slave of other countries.
     By our increased skill and knowledge, labour is now probably
ten times more productive than it was two hundred years ago; and
we are, forsooth, to be contended with the same rewards which the
bondsmen then received. All the advantages of our improvements go
to the capitalist and the landlord. When, denied any share in our
increased produce, we combine to obtain it, we are instantly
threatened with summary punishment. New laws are fulminated
against us, and if these are found insufficient we are threatened
with laws still more severe.
     Combination is of itself no crime; on the contrary, it is
the principle on which societies are held together. When the
Government supposes its existence threatened, or the country in
danger, it calls on us all to combine for its protection.
"Combinations of workmen", however, it says through Mr Huskisson,
"must be put down." Frequently has it contracted alliances with
other governments or made combinations to carry on war and shed
blood; frequently has it called on the whole nation to combine
when the object has been to plunder and massacre the unoffending
subjects of some neighbouring state and frequently have such
combinations had heaped on them all the epithets of the
vocabulary of glory. No other combination seems unjust or
mischievous, in the view of Government, but our combinations to
obtain a proper reward for our labour. It is a heinous crime in
the eyes of a legislature, composed exclusively of capitalists
and landlords, and representing no other interests than their
own, for us to try, by any means, to obtain for ourselves and for
the comfortable subsistence of our families, a larger share of
our own produce than these our masters choose to allow us. All
the moral evils that ever plagued a society have been anticipated
by the ministers from our persevering in our claims. To put down
combinations they have departed from principles held sacred for
upwards of two hundred years. They have made also a law handing
us over to the magistrates like vagabonds and thieves, and we are
to be condemned almost unheard, and without the privilege and
formality of a public trial.
     All that we are compelled to suffer, all that we have had
inflicted on us, has been done for the advantage of capital.
"Capital", says Mr Huskisson, "will be terrified out of the
country, and the misguided workmen, unless they are stopped in
time, will bring ruin on themselves and on us." "Capital," says
the Marquis of Lansdowne, "must be protected. If its operations
be not left free, if they are to be controlled by bodies of
workmen, it will leave this for some more favoured country."
Capital, if we believe these politicians, has improved England,
and the want of capital is the cause of the poverty and
sufferings of Ireland. Under the influence of such notions, no
laws for the protection of capital are thought too severe, and
few or no persons, except the labourers, see either impropriety
or injustice in the fashionable mode of despising his claims, and
laughing at his distresses.
     In fact the legislature, the public at large, and especially
our employers, decide on our claims solely by a reference to the
former condition of the labourer, or to his condition in other
countries. We are told to be contented, because we are not quite
so badly off as the ragged Irish peasants who are suffering under
a more grievous system even than the one which afflicts us. By
them also we are destined to suffer; for they are imported here
in crowds, and beat down the wages of our labour. We can have no
hope, therefore, either of convincing the public or of calling
the blush of shame into the cheek of those who are opulent by our
toils, and who deride the poverty and sufferings they cause, by
referring to the customs of any other society, either in times
past or present. To obtain better treatment the labourers must
appeal from practice to principle. We must put out of view how
labour has been paid in times past, and how it is now paid in
other countries, and we must show how it ought to be paid. This,
I admit, is a difficult task, but the former condition of the
labourer in this country, and his condition at present in other
countries, leaving us no criterion to which we can or ought to
appeal, we must endeavour to perform it.
     The claims of capital, are, I am aware, sanctioned by almost
universal custom; and as long as the labourer did not feel
himself aggrieved by them, it was of no use opposing them with
arguments. But now, when the practice excites resistance, we are
bound, if possible, to overthrow the theory on which it is
founded and justified. It is accordingly against this theory that
my arguments will be directed. When we have settled the question,
however, as to the claims of capital or labour, we shall have
proceeded only one step towards ascertaining what ought now to be
the wages of labour. The other parts of the inquiry will, I
trust, be entered into by some of my fellow-labourers, and I
shall content myself at present with examining the claims of the
capitalists, as supported by the theories of political economy.
     I admit that the subject is somewhat abstruse, but there is
a necessity for the labourers to comprehend and be able to refute
the received notions of the nature and utility of capital. Wages
vary inversely as profits; or wages rise when profits fall, and
profits rise when wages fall; and it is therefore profits, or the
capitalist's share of the national produce, which is opposed to
wages, or the share of the labourer. The theory on which profits
are claimed, and which holds up capital, and accumulation of
capital to our administration as the mainspring of human
improvement, is that which I say the labourers must, in their own
interest, examine, and must, before they can have any hope of a
permanent improvement in their own conditions, be able to refute.
They, indeed, are so satisfied that by their exertions all the
wealth of society is produced that no doubt on the subject has
ever entered their minds. This is not, however, the case with
other people, and whenever the labourers claim larger wages, or
combine to do themselves justice, they hear, both from the
legislature and the Press, little or nothing about the necessity
of rewarding labour, but much about the necessity of protecting
capital. They must therefore be able to show the hollowness of
the theory on which the claims of capital, and on which all the
oppressive laws made for its protection are founded. This will, I
hope, be a motive with them for endeavouring to comprehend the
following observations, as it is my excuse for directing them,
not so much to show what labour ought, as to what capital ought
not to have.
      "The produce of the earth," says Mr Ricardo -- "All that is
derived from its surface by the united application of labour,
machinery and capital is divided among three classes of the
community; namely, the proprietor of the land, the owner of the
stock or capital necessary for its cultivation, and the labourers
by whose industry it is cultivated." (Principles of Political
Economy, Preface, p. 1, 2nd Ed.)
     "It is self-evident," says Mr M'Culloch, "that only three
classes, the labourers, the possessors of capital, and the
proprietors of land, are ever directly concerned in the
production of commodities. It is to them, therefore, that all
which is derived from the surface of the earth, or from its
bowels, by the united application of immediate labour, and of
capital, or accumulated labour, must primarily belong. The other
classes of society have no revenue except what they derive either
voluntarily or by compulsion from these three classes."
     The proportions in which the whole produce is divided among
these three classes is said to be as follows: -- "Land is of
different degrees of fertility." "When, in the progress of
society, land of the second quality (or an inferior degree of
fertility to land before cultivated) is taken into cultivation,
rent immediately commences on that of the first quality, and the
amount of that rent will depend on the difference in the quality,
and the amount of that rent will depend on the difference in the
quality of these two portions or land." [Principles of Political
Economy] Rent, therefore, or that quantity of the whole produce
of the country which goes to the landlords, is, in every stage of
society, that portion of this produce which is obtained from
every district belonging to a politically organized nation, more
than is obtained from the least fertile land cultivated by, or
belonging to, that nation. It is the greater produce of all the
land which is more fertile than the least fertile land
cultivated. To produce this surplus would not break the back, and
to give it up would not break the heart of the labourer. The
landlord's share, therefore, does not keep the labourer poor.
     The labourer's share of the produce of a country, according
to this theory, is the "necessaries and conveniences required for
the support of the labourer and his family; or that quantity
which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to
subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or
diminution." Whatever may be the truth of the theory in other
respects, there is no doubt of its correctness in this
particular. The labourers do only receive, and ever have only
received, as much as will subsist them, the landlords receive the
surplus produce of the more fertile soils, and all the rest of
the whole produce of labour in this and in every country goes to
the capitalist under the name of profit for the use of his
capital.
     Capital which thus engrosses the whole produce of a country,
except the bare subsistence of the labourer, and the surplus
produce of fertile land, is, "the produce of labour," "is
commodities," "is the food the labourer eats, and the machines he
uses": so that we are obliged to give that enormous portion of
the whole produce of the country which remains, after we have
been supplied with subsistence, and the rent of the landlord has
been paid, for the privilege of eating the food we have ourselves
produced, and of using our own skill in producing more. Capital,
the reader will suppose, must have some wonderful properties,
when the labourer pays so exorbitantly for it. In fact, its
claims are founded on its wonderful properties, and to them,
therefore, I mean especially to direct his attention.
     Several good and great men, whom we must all respect and
esteem, seeing that capital did obtain all the large share I have
mentioned, and being more willing, apparently, to defend and to
explain the present order of society than to ascertain whether it
could be improved, have endeavoured to point out the method in
which capital aids production. From their writings I shall
extract some passages explanatory of its effects. I must,
however, beg not to be understood as doing this invidiously. The
only motive I have for selecting these authors, as the
representatives of the political economists, is, that they are by
far the more efficient and eloquent supporters of the doctrine I
do not assent to.
      Mr M'Culloch says: "The accumulation and employment of both
fixed and circulating capital is indispensably necessary to
elevate any nation in the scale of civilization. And it is only
by their conjoined and powerful operation that wealth can be
largely produced and universally diffused." [Article "Political
Economy" in Supplement to Encyclopedia Britannica.]
     "The quantity of industry," he further says, "therefore not
only increases in every country with the increase of the stock or
capital which sets it in motion; but, in consequence of this
increase, the division of labour becomes extended, new and more
powerful implements and machines are invented, and the same
quantity of labour is thus made to produce an infinitely greater
quantity of commodities.
     "Besides its effect in enabling labour to be divided,
capital contributes to facilitate labour, and produce wealth in
the three following ways:--
     "First. -- It enables us to execute work that could not be
executed, or to produce commodities that could not be produced
without it.
     "Second. -- It saves labour in the production of almost
every species of commodities.
     "Third. -- It enables us to execute work better, as well as
more expeditiously."
     Mr Mill's account of these effects, though not so precise,
is still more astounding. "The labourer," he says, "has neither
raw materials nor tools. These are provided for him by the
capitalist. For making this provision the capitalist of course
expects a reward." According to this statement, the capitalist
provides for the labourer and only, therefore, expects a profit.
In other parts of his book it is not the capitalist who provides,
but the capital which works. He speaks of capital as an
instrument of production co-operating with labour, as an active
agent combining with labour to produce commodities, and thus he
satisfies himself, and endeavours to prove to the reader that
capital is entitled to all that large share of the produce it
actually receives. He also attributes to capital power of
accumulation. This power or tendency to accumulate, he adds, is
not so great as the tendency of population to augment -- and on
the difference between these two tendencies he and other authors
have erected a theory of society which places poor Mother Nature
in no favourable light.
     Without troubling myself to quote more passages from these
authors, or to transcribe the opinion of other writers, I shall
proceed to examine the effects of capital; and I shall begin with
circulating capital. Mr M'Culloch says, "without circulating
capital," meaning the food the labourer consumes, and the
clothing he wears, "the labourer never could engage in any
undertaking which did not yield an almost immediate return."
Afterwards he says, "that division of labour is a consequence of
previous accumulation of capital," and quotes the following
passage from Dr Smith, as a proper expression for his own
opinions:--
     "Before labour can be divided, 'a stock of goods of
different kinds must be stored up somewhere, sufficient to
maintain the labourer, and to supply him with tools for carrying
on his work. A weaver, for example, could not apply himself
entirely to his peculiar business, unless there was beforehand
stored up somewhere, either in his own possession, or in that of
some other person, a stock sufficient for his maintenance, and
for supplying him with the materials and implements required to
carry on his work, till he has not only completed, but sold his
web. This accumulation must evidently be previous to his applying
himself for so long a time to a peculiar business.'"
     The only advantage of circulating capital is that by it the
labourer is enabled, he being assured of his present subsistence,
to direct his power to the greatest advantage. He has time to
learn an art, and his labour is rendered more productive when
directed by skill. Being assured of immediate subsistence, he can
ascertain which, with his peculiar knowledge and acquirements,
and with reference to the wants of society, is the best method of
labouring, and he can labour in this manner. Unless there were
this assurance there could be no continuous thought, an
invention, and no knowledge but that which would be necessary for
the supply of our immediate animal wants. The weaver, I admit,
could not complete his web, nor would the shipwright begin to
build his ship, unless he knew that while he was engaged in this
labour he should be able to procure food. A merchant certainly
could not set out for South America or the East Indies unless he
were confident that during the period of his absence he and his
family could find subsistence, and that he would be able at the
end of his voyage to pay all the expenses he had incurred. It is
this assurance, this knowledge, this confidence of obtaining
subsistence and reward, which enables and induces men to
undertake long and complicated operations, and the question is,
do men derive this assurance from a stock of goods already
provided (saved from the produce of previous labour) and ready to
pay them, or from any other source?
     I SHALL ENDEAVOUR TO SHOW THAT THIS ASSURANCE ARISES FROM A
GENERAL PRINCIPLE IN THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN, AND THAT THE
EFFECTS ATTRIBUTED TO A STOCK OF COMMODITIES, UNDER THE NAME OF
CIRCULATING CAPITAL, ARE CAUSED BY CO-EXISTING LABOUR.
     The labourer, the real maker of any commodity, derives this
assurance from a knowledge he has that the person who set him to
work will pay him, and that with the money he will be able to buy
what he requires. He is not in possession of any stock of
commodities. Has the person who employs and pays him such a
stock? Clearly not. Only a very few capitalists possess any of
those commodities which the labourers they employ consume.
Farmers may have a stock of corn, and merchants and shipowners
may have a few weeks' or months' supply of provisions for their
seamen, according to the length of the voyage they are to
undertake; but, beyond this, no capitalist possesses ready
prepared the commodities which his labourers require. He
possesses money, he possesses credit with other capitalists, he
possesses, under the sanction of the law, a power over the labour
of the slave-descended labourer, but he does not possess food or
clothing. He pays the labourer his money wages, and the
expectation which other labourers have of receiving part of these
wages or other wages, induces them in the meantime to prepare the
clothing and food the labourer constantly requires. Not to deal,
however, in general terms and abstractions, doing which seems to
have led other writers astray, let us descend to particulars.
     A great cotton manufacturer, we suppose, for example, a Sir
Robert Peel, or any other of those leviathans who are so anxious
to retain their power over us, and who, as legislators, either in
their own persons or in the persons of their sons, make the laws
which both calumniate and oppress us, employs a thousand persons,
whom he pays weekly: does he possess the food and clothing ready
prepared which these persons purchase and consume daily? Does he
even know whether the food and clothing they receive are prepared
and created? In fact, are the food and clothing which his
labourers will consume prepared beforehand, or are other
labourers busily employed in preparing food and clothing while
his labourers are making cotton yarn? Do all the capitalists of
Europe possess at this moment one week's food and clothing for
all the labourers they employ?
     Let us first examine the question as to food. One portion of
the food of the people is BREAD, which is never prepared till
within a few hours of the time when it is eaten. The corn of
which the bread is made must, of course, have been grown, or one
part of the whole operation, and that the longest part -- that
between saving the seed and harvesting the ripe grain, which is
necessary to the complete preparation of the food, has been
performed; but the corn has afterward to be thrashed, ground,
sifted, brought to market and made into bread. For the
cotton-spinner to be able to attend only to his peculiar species
of industry, it is indispensable that other men should be
constantly engaged in completing this complicated process, every
part of it being as necessary as the part performed by the
agriculturist. The produce of several of the labourers
particularly of the baker, cannot be stored up. In no case can
the material of bread, whether it exist as corn or flour, be
preserved without continual labour. The employer of the working
cotton-spinner can have no bread stored up, for there is none
prepared; the labouring cotton-spinner himself knows nothing of
any stock of corn being in existence from which his bread can be
made; he knows that he has always been able to get bread when he
had wherewithal to buy it, and further he does not require to
know. But even if he did know of such a stock, he would probably
give up cotton-spinning and take to preparing food, if he did not
also know that while he is making cotton other labourers will
till the ground, and prepare him food, which he will be able to
procure by making cotton. His conviction that he will obtain
bread when he requires it, and his master's conviction that the
money he pays will enable him to obtain it, arise simply from the
fact that the bread has always been obtained when required.
     Another article of the labourer's food is milk, and milk is
manufactured, not to speak irreverently of the operations of
nature, twice a day. If it be said that the cattle to supply it
are already there -- why, the answer is, they require constant
attention and constant labour, and their food, through the
greater part of the year, is of daily growth. The fields in which
they pasture require the hand of man; and, though some herds be
drilled into the habits of obedience more perfect and certainly
more pleasing to see than the obedience of soldiers, yet even
they require perpetual attention, and their milk must be drawn
from them twice a day. The meat, also, which the labourer eats is
not ready, even for cooking, till it is on the shambles, and it
cannot be stored up, for it begins instantly to deteriorate after
it is brought to market. The cattle which are to be slaughtered
require the same sort of care and attention as cows; and not one
particle of meat could the cotton-spinner ever procure were not
the farmer, the grazier and the drover continually at work,
preparing meat while he is preparing cotton. But after the meat
is brought to market, it is not even then ready for consumption.
We are not cannibals; and either our wives, or some labourer who
makes this his business, completes the preparation of the meat
only a few hours, or even minutes, before it is eaten. Of the
drink of the labourer, that which is supplied by nature never
ceases to flow. His beer is prepared only so long before it is
drunk as is necessary to have it good, and, while the existing
stock is disposing of, the brewer is busy creating a fresh
supply. There may probably be as much tea imported at one time as
serves for a few months, and, while this stock is consuming,
ships are continually arriving with more.
     Now as to clothing. Some labourers buy ready-made clothes;
others order them to be made for them. There is, it may be
admitted, a small stock of clothing on hand; but considering what
enemies moths are to the materials of which it is made, only a
very small stock is ever prepared. The materials for women's
garments may be prepared a few weeks before they are made up, but
the garments are rarely formed till they are actually put on.
      Other examples might be brought from every branch of
industry, if it were necessary to examine each on in detail, for
in this respect every labourer is similarly situated. The farmer
knows he will be able to get clothes when he requires them, and
the tailor knows he will be able to get food; but the former
knows nothing of any stored-up stock of clothes, and the latter
nothing of any stored-up stock of provisions. The labourer knows
that when he is able to pay for bread, for meat and for drink he
can procure them, but he knows nothing further; and I have shown
that these are not prepared till he needs them. As far as food,
drink and clothing are concerned, it is quite plain, then, that
no species of labourer depends on any previously prepared stock,
for in fact no such stock exists; but every species of labourer
does constantly, and at all times, depend for his supplies on the
co-existing labour of some other labourers.
      To enable either the master manufacturer or the labourer to
devote himself to any particular occupation, it is only necessary
that he should possess -- not, as political economists say, a
stock of commodities, or circulating capital, but a conviction
that while he is labouring at his particular occupation the
things which he does not produce himself will be provided for
him, and that he will be able to procure them and pay for them by
the produce of his own labour. This conviction arises, in the
first instance, without any reflection from habit. As we expect
that the sun will rise tomorrow, so we also expect that men in
all time to come will be actuated by the same motives as they
have been in times past. If we push our inquiries still further,
all that we can learn is, that there are other men in existence
who are preparing those things we need, while we are preparing
those which they need. The conviction may, perhaps, ultimately be
traced them to our knowledge that other men exist and labour, but
never to any conviction or knowledge that there is a stored-up
stock of commodities. It is labour which produces all things as
they are wanted, and the only thing which can be said to be
stored up or previously prepared is the skill of the labourer. If
the skill of the baker, butcher, grazier, tailor, weaver, etc.,
was not previously created and stored up, the commodities which
each of them purchases could not be obtained; but where that
skill exists, these commodities may always be procured when
wanted.
     We may suppose that the operation of cotton-spinning is
completed, and the produce brought to market, so as to be
exchanged or sold within a year; but there are many operations
which are not completed within this period; and if it be true, as
I have endeavoured to show, that there is not stock of food and
clothing prepared, even for those labourers whose operations are
completed within the period of two successive harvests, how much
more evident must this truth be of those operations which are not
completed within a year? All the labourers engaged in them have
to rely on the baker, miller, butcher, etc., completing their
part of the social task; and they must rely on the farmer, and
that he will till his ground, and sow it, and reap the harvest of
the following year. Mr Mill says and says justly, "what is
annually produced is annually consumed." So that, in fact, to
enable men to carry on all those operations which extend beyond a
year there cannot be any stock of commodities stored up. Those
who undertake them must rely, therefore, not on any commodities
already created, but that other men will labour and produce what
they are to subsist on till their own products are completed.
Thus should the labourer admit that some accumulation of
circulating capital is necessary for operations terminated within
the year -- and I have show how very limited that admission ought
to be, if made at all -- it is plain that in all operations which
extend beyond a year the labourer does not, and he cannot, rely
on accumulated capital.
     The operations not terminated within the year are neither
few nor unimportant. The time necessary to acquire a knowledge of
any species of skilled labour, so as to practise it to advantage,
which includes almost every art, whether it create wealth or
merely contribute to amusement -- the time necessary to perform
all distant voyages, and construct most of the canals, roads,
harbours, docks, large steam-engines and ships, all of which are
afterward to be such powerful instruments in the hands of the
labourer, is considerably more than a year, and is, in many
cases, several years. All those who set about such undertakings
have a practical conviction, though it is seldom expressed, that
while they are teaching the rising generation skilled labour, and
instructing their children in the useful arts, while they are
making canals, roads, docks, ships, steam-engines, etc., that the
farmer will continue to grow corn and the miller to grind it,
that the baker will make it into bread, the grazier will fatten
his cattle and the butcher slaughter them as they are needed,
that the cotton and woollen manufacturers will go on preparing
cloth and the tailor be always ready to make it up for them into
clothes whenever it is ordered. Beyond this conviction they have
nothing; they possess no stock of circulating capital themselves,
nor do the persons who are afterwards to supply food and clothing
during the whole time such undertakings are in progress possess
any such stock at the moment when they are commenced.
     Of all the important operations which require more than a
year to complete them -- and that they all are important, as far
as the production of wealth is concerned, does not require to be
asserted -- by far the most important is the rearing of youth and
teaching them skilled labour, or some wealth-creating art. I am
particularly desirous of directing the reader's attention to this
productive operation, because, if the observations I have already
made be correct, all the effects usually attributed to
accumulation of circulating capital are derived from the
accumulation and storing up of skilled labour; and because this
most important operation is performed, as far as the great mass
of the labourers is concerned, without any circulating capital
whatever. The labour of the parents produces and purchases, with
what they receive as wages, all the food and the clothing which
the rising generation of labourers use while they are learning
those arts by means of which they will hereafter produce all the
wealth of society. For the rearing and educating all future
labourers (of course I do not mean book education, which is the
smallest and least useful part of all which they have to learn)
their parents have no stock stored up beyond their own practical
skill. Under the strong influence of natural affection and
parental love, they prepare by their toils, continued day after
day, and year after year, through all the long period of the
infancy and childhood of their offspring, those future labourers
who are to succeed to their toils and their hard fare, but who
will inherit their productive power, and be what they now are,
the main pillars of the social edifice.
     If we duly consider the number and importance of those
wealth-producing operations which are not completed within the
year, and the numberless products of daily labour, necessary to
subsistence, which are consumed as soon as produced, we shall, I
think, be sensible that the success and productive power of every
different species of labour is at all times more dependent on the
co-existing productive labour of other men than on any
accumulation of circulating capital. The labourer, having no
stock of commodities, undertakes to bring up his children, and
teach them a useful art, always relying on his own labour; and
various classes of persons undertake tasks the produce of which
is not completed for a long period, relying on the labour of
other men to procure them, in the meantime, what they require for
subsistence. All classes of men carry on their daily toils in the
full confidence that while each is engaged in his particular
occupation some others will prepare whatever he requires, both
for his immediate and future consumption and use. I have already
explained that this confidence arises from that law of our nature
by which we securely expect the sun will rise tomorrow, and that
our fellow men will labour on the morrow and during the next year
as they have laboured during the year and the day which have
passed. I hope I have also satisfied the reader that there is no
knowledge of any produce of previous labour stored up for use,
that the effects usually attributed to a stock of commodities are
caused by co-existing labour, and that it is by the command the
capitalist possesses over the labour of some men, not by his
possessing a stock of commodities, that he is enabled to support
and consequently employ other labourers.
     I come now to examine, secondly, the nature and effects of
fixed capital. Fixed capital consists of the tools and
instruments the labourer works with, the machinery he makes and
guides, and the buildings he uses either to facilitate his
exertions or to protect their produce. Unquestionably by using
these instruments man adds wonderfully to his power. Without a
hand saw, a portion of fixed capital, he could not cut a tree
into planks; with such an instrument he could, though it would
cost him many hours or days; but with a sawmill he could do it in
a few minutes. Every man must admit that by means of instruments
and machines the labourer can execute tasks he could not possibly
perform without them; that he can perform a greater quantity of
work in a given time, and that he can perform the work with
greater nicety and accuracy than he could possibly do had he no
instruments and machines. But the question then occurs, what
produces instruments and machines, and in what degree do they aid
production independent of the labourer, so that the owners of
them are entitled to by far the greater part of the whole produce
of the country? Are they, or are they not, the produce of labour?
Do they, or do they not, constitute an efficient means of
production, separate from labour? Are they, or are they not, so
much inert decaying and dead matter, of no utility whatever,
possessing no productive power whatever, but as they are guided,
directed and applied by skilful hands? The reader will be able
instantly to answer these questions, and I only add my answers
because they lead to some conclusions different from those
generally adopted.
     It is admitted by those who contend most strenuously for the
claims of capital that all instruments and machines are the
produce of labour. They add, however, that they are the produce
of previous labour, and are entitled to profit, on account of
having been saved or stored up. But the manufacture of
instruments and tools is quite as uninterrupted as the
manufacture of food and clothing. They are not all consumed or
used within a year, but they are brought into use as soon as
possible after they are made. Nobody who manufactures them stores
them up; nor does he make them for this purpose. As long as they
are merely the result of previous labour, and are not applied to
their respective uses by labourers, they do not repay the expense
of making them. It is only when they are so applied that they
bring any profit. They are made solely for the use of the
labourer, and directly they come into his hands they return or
repay the capitalist, the sum they cost him; and over and above
this the labourer must give him an additional sum corresponding
to the rate of profit in the country. It is plainly not the
previous creation of these things which entitles them to profit,
for most of them diminish in value from being kept. A man must
pay also as much profit for the use of an instrument in
proportion to the labour of making it, whether it be like sewing
needles, of which many are used and made in the course of a week,
or like a ship, or a steam engine, one of which lasts several
years. Fixed capital does not derive its utility from previous,
but present labour; and does not bring its owner a profit because
it has been stored up, but because it is a means of obtaining a
command over labour.
     The production of fixed capital cannot be attributed to
circulating capital, in the ordinary sense; but certainly those
who make instruments must be confident they will be able to
obtain food, or they would never think of making instruments. The
smith, while he is making or mending the farmer's ploughshare,
trusts to the farmer to do his part in procuring a supply of
food; and the farmer, while he tills his fields, trusts to the
smith to prepare for him the necessary instruments. These
instruments are not the produce of circulating capital and of
labour, but of labour alone, and of the labour of two or more
co-existing persons. All fixed capital, not only in the first
instance, as is generally admitted, but in every stage of
society, at every period in the history of man, is the creation
of labour and of skill, of different species of labour and skill
certainly, but of nothing more than labour and skill.
     After any instruments have been made, what do they effect?
Nothing. On the contrary, they begin to rust or decay unless used
or applied by labour. The most perfect instrument which the
cunning hand of man can make is not instinct with life, and it
constantly needs the directing hand of its creator, or of some
other labourer. An artist may indeed make an automaton, or a
timepiece, which will move for a certain period without further
labour, but the motion he gives it is, in this case, the final
object and aim of labour, and the instruments are not called
fixed capital, because they are not used for further production.
The automaton may be exhibited by its owner for money, and the
timepiece, if employed to determine the longitude of a ship, may
be a portion of fixed capital, useful in that production which is
occasioned by commerce. In this case, however, there is an
observer required, and it is by his labour and skill, he making
use of the timepiece, that the ship's place is ascertained.
Whether an instrument shall be regarded as productive capital or
not depends entirely on its being used, or not, by some
productive labourer.
     The most perfect instruments ever made by labour require, as
in the case of a timepiece, a peculiar skill to render them
productive. A ship, for example, is undoubtedly a noble
instrument, as admirable and useful a portion of fixed capital as
the hand of man ever created, or his skill ever employed. By it
the wealth of Great Britain has been and will be augmented. But
our navy would lie and rot unless care were taken to preserve it;
and the ships when turned adrift would be bruised by the waves,
the winds or the rocks unless they were guided by seamen. By the
skill acquired during many years' experience, and by much labour
guided by this skill, a ship is built. It would trouble me to
enumerate the various species of industry which are necessary to
prepare her for sea. There is the skill and labour of the
draughtsman, of the working shipwright, of the carpenter, the
mast maker, the sail maker, the cooper, the founder, the smith,
the coppersmith, the compass maker, etc., etc., but there is
nothing necessary more than the skill and labour of these
different persons. After she is made ready the same qualities
watch over her, check the first indications of decay, and repair
every little defect occasioned by accident and time. She is then,
however, of no use unless there are seamen to manage her. To
conduct her safely from port to port, and from hemisphere to
hemisphere, a great deal of knowledge of the winds and tides, of
the phenomena of the heavens, and of the laws which prevail on
the surface of the earth, is necessary; and only when this
knowledge is united with great skill, and carried into effect by
labour, can a ship be safely conducted through the multitudes of
dangers which beset her course. To have and to use this fixed
capital, knowledge, labour and skill are necessary. Without these
it could not be made, and when it would be less productive than
the clod from which its materials spring, or from which they are
fashioned by the hand of man.
     A road is made by a certain quantity of labour, and is then
called fixed capital; the constant repairs it needs, however, are
a continual making, and the expense incurred by them is called
circulating capital. But neither the circulating nor the fixed
capital return any profit to the road makers unless there are
persons to travel over the road or make a further use of their
labour. The road facilitates the progress of the traveller, and
just in proportion as people do travel over it, so does the
labour which has been employed on the road become productive and
useful. One easily comprehends why both these species of labour
should be paid -- why the road maker should receive some of the
benefits accruing only to the road user; but I do not comprehend
why all these benefits should go to the road itself and be
appropriated by a set of person who neither make nor use it,
under the name of profit for their capital. One is almost tempted
to believe that capital is a sort of cabalistic word, like Church
or State, or any other of those general terms which are invented
by those who fleece the rest of mankind to conceal the hand that
shears them. It is a sort of idol before which men are called
upon to prostrate themselves, while the cunning priest from
behind the altar, profaning the God whom he pretends to serve,
and mocking those sweet sentiments of devotion and gratitude, or
those terrible emotions of fear and resentment, one or the other
of which seems common to the whole human race, as they are
enlightened and wise, or ignorant and debased, puts forth his
hand to receive and appropriate the offerings which he calls for
in the name of religion.
     A steam engine also is a most complete instrument, but alas!
for the capitalist, it does not go of itself. A peculiar skill is
required to make it and put it up, and peculiar skill and labour
must afterwards direct and regulate its movements. What would it
produce without the engineer? To the stranger who did not possess
the engineer's skill, only misery, death and destruction. Its
vast utility does not depend on stored up iron and wood, but on
that practical and living knowledge of the powers of nature which
enables some men to construct, and others to guide it.
     If we descend to more minute instruments, and consider such
as are guided by the hand, the necessity of skill and labour, and
the utter worthlessness of capital by itself, will be still more
obvious. It has been asked, what could a carpenter effect without
his hatchet and his saw? I put the converse of the question, and
ask what the hatchet and saw could effect without the carpenter.
Rust and rottenness must be the answer. A plough or a scythe may
be made with the most cunning art, but to use either of them a
man must have a droit turn of the hand, or a peculiar species of
skill. The shoemaker who can thrust awls through leather with
singular dexterity and neatness cannot make any use of a
watchmaker's tools; and the most skilful and dexterous maker of
plane, saw and chisel blades would find it difficult to construct
with them any of that furniture which the cabinet maker forms
with so much dispatch and beautiful effect. Almost every species
of workman, however, from having acquired a certain dexterity in
the use of his hands, and from having frequently seen the
operations of other workmen, could learn the art of another man
much better than a person who had never practised any kind of
manual dexterity, and never seen it practised. But if a skilled
labourer could not direct any kind of instruments so well as the
man who has been constantly accustomed to use them, it is plain
that the whole productive power of such instruments must depend
altogether on the peculiar skill of the artisan and mechanic, who
has been trained to practise different arts. Fixed capital, of
whatever species, then, is only a costly production, costly to
make, and costly to preserve, without that particular species of
skill and labour which guides each instrument, and which, as I
have before shown, is nourished, instructed and maintained by
wages alone. The utility of the instruments the labourer uses can
in no wise be separated from his skill. Whoever may be the owner
of fixed capital -- and in the present state of society he who
makes it is not, and he who uses it is not -- it is the hand and
knowledge of the labourer which make it, preserve it from decay,
and which use it to any beneficial end.
     For a nation to have fixed capital, then, and to make a good
use of it, three things, and only three things, seem to me to be
requisite. First, knowledge and ingenuity for inventing machines.
No labourer would, I am sure, be disposed to deny to these their
reward. But no subject of complaint is more general or more just
than that the inventor of any machine does not reap the benefit
of it. Of all the immense number of persons who have acquired
large fortunes by the modern improvements in steam engines and
cotton mills, Mr Watt and Mr Arkwright are the only two, I
believe, who have been distinguished for their inventions, they
also acquired wealth less as inventors than as capitalists. Mr
Watt found a capitalist who appreciated his genius, and Mr
Arkwright saved and borrowed the means of profiting by his own
inventions. Thousands of capitalist have been enriched by
inventions and discoveries of which they were not the authors,
and capital, by robbing the inventor of his just reward, is
guilty of stifling genius. The second requisite for having fixed
capital is the manual skill and dexterity for carrying these
inventions into execution. The third requisite is the skill and
labour to use these instruments after they are made. Without
knowledge they could not be invented, without manual skill and
dexterity they could not be made, and without skill and labour
they could not be productively used. But there is nothing more
than the knowledge, skill and labour requisite on which the
capitalist can found a claim to any share of the produce.
     Naturally and individually man is one of the most feeble and
destitute of all created animals. His intelligence, however,
compensates for his physical inferiority. After he has inherited
the knowledge of several generations, and when he lives
congregated into great masses, he is enabled by his mental
faculties to complete, as it were, the work of nature, and add to
his intelligence the physical powers of the lower animals. He
directs his course on the waters, he floats in the air, he dives
into the bowels of the earth, and all which its surface bears he
makes tributary to his use. The gales which threaten at first to
blow him from the earth, grind his corn, and waft to him a share
in the treasures of the whole world. He creates at this pleasure
the devouring element of fire, and checks its progress, so that
it destroys only what he has no wish to preserve. He directs the
course of the stream, and he sets bounds to the ocean; in short,
he presses all the elements into his service, and makes Nature
herself the handmaid to his will. The instruments he uses to do
all this, which have been invented by his intelligence to aid his
feeble powers, and which are employed by his skill and his hands,
have been called fixed capital; and shutting out of view man
himself, in order to justify the existing order of society, which
is founded on property or possessions, and the existing
oppression of the labourer, who forms unhappily part of these
possessions -- all these glorious effects have been attributed,
with a more extraordinary perversion of thought, perhaps, than is
to be found in any other department of knowledge, to fixed and
circulating capital. The skill and the art of the labourer have
been overlooked, and he has been vilified; while the work of his
hands has been worshipped. 1

[1. In all errors which are generally adopted there is a
tolerable substratum of truth. In the present case the substratum
of truth is this: There was time in society when capital and
capitalists were of the most essential service to it. On the
establishment of towns in Europe, and on the introduction of
manufactures into them, they became the refuge of all the
oppressed and enslaved peasantry who could escape from their
feudal tyrants. The capitalists and manufacturers who inhabited
them were the skilled labourers, and really gave employment and
protection to the peasantry. They taught them useful arts, and
hence became invested with the character of benefactors, both to
the poor and the state. They were infinitely better than the
feudal barons with whom they were compared; and the character
they then acquired they now retain. The veneration men have for
capital and capitalists is founded on a sort of superstitious and
transmitted notion of their utility in former times. But they
have long since reduced the ancient tyrant of the soil to
comparative insignificance, while they have inherited his power
over all the labouring classes. It is, therefore, now time that
the reproaches so long cast on the feudal aristocracy should be
heaped on capital and capitalists; or on that still more
oppressive aristocracy which is founded on wealth, and which is
nourished by profit.]

     I have now show the reader that the effects attributed to
circulating capital result from co-existing labour, and the
assurance common to each labourer, that he will be able to
procure what he wants, or that while he is at work other men are
also at work. I have also shown that fixed capital is produce by
the skill of the labourer. Circulating capital, consisting of
food and clothes, is created only for consumption; while fixed
capital, consisting of instruments and tools, is made, not to be
consumed, but to aid the labourer in producing those things which
are to be consumed. There is no analogy between these two
descriptions of commodities, except that both are the produce of
labour, and both give the owner of them a profit.
     There is, however, a striking difference between them which
deserves to be noticed. It is usually stated that "the productive
industry of any country is in proportion to its capital, increase
when its capital increases, and declines when its capital
declines." This position is true only of circulating capital, but
not of fixed capital. The number of productive labourers depends
certainly on the quantity of food, clothing, etc., produced and
appropriated to their use; it is not, however, the quantity but
the quality of the fixed capital on which the productive industry
of a country depends. Instruments are productive, to use the
improper language of the political economists, not in proportion
as they multiplied, but as they are efficient. It is probable
that since Mr Watt's improvements on the steam engine one man can
perform as much work with these instruments as ten men did
before. As the efficiency of the fixed capital is increased by
men obtaining greater knowledge and greater skill, it is quite
possible, and is the case, that a greater quantity of
commodities, or a greater means of nourishing and supporting men,
is obtained with less capital. Although, therefore, the number of
labourers must at all times depend on the quantity of circulating
capital, or, as I should say, on the quantity of the products of
co-existing labour, which labourers are allowed to consume, the
quality of commodities they produce will depend on the efficiency
of their fixed capital. Circulating capital nourishes and
supports men as its quantity is increased; fixed capital as a
means of nourishing and supporting men depends for its efficiency
altogether on the skill of the labourer, and consequently the
productive industry of a country, as far as fixed capital is
concerned, is in proportion to the knowledge and skill of the
people.
     The warmest admirers of circulating capital will not pretend
that it adds in the same way as fixed capital to the productive
power of the labourer. The most extraordinary visionary who ever
wrote cannot suppose circulating capital adds anything to
productive power. The degree and nature of the utility of both
species of capital is perfectly different and distinct. The
labourer subsists on what is called circulating capital; he works
with fixed capital. But equal quantities or equal values of both
these species of capital bring their owner precisely the same
amount of profit. We may, from this single circumstance, be quite
sure that the share claimed by the capitalist for the use of
fixed capital is not derived from the instruments increasing the
efficiency of labour, or from the utility of these instruments;
and profit is derived in both cases from the power which the
capitalist has over the labourer who consumes the circulating,
and who uses the fixed, capital. How he obtained this power I
shall not now inquire, further than to state that it is derived
from the whole surface of the country, having been at one period
monopolised by a few persons; and the consequent state of slavery
in which the labourer formerly existed in this country, as well
as throughout Europe. As the profits of the capitalist on fixed
capital are not derived from the utility of these instruments, it
is useless to inquire what share ought to belong to the owner of
the wood and iron, and what share ought to belong to the person
who uses them. He who makes the instruments is entitled, in the
eye of justice, and in proportion to the labour he employs, to as
great a reward as he who uses them; but he is not entitled to a
greater; and he who neither makes nor uses them has no just claim
to any portion of the produce.
     Betwixt him who produces food and him who produces clothing,
betwixt him who makes instruments and him who uses them, in steps
the capitalist, who neither makes nor uses them, and appropriates
to himself the produce of both. With as niggard a hand as
possible he transfers to each a part of the produce of the other,
keeping to himself the large share. Gradually and successively
has he insinuated himself betwixt them, expanding in bulk as he
has been nourished by their increasingly productive labours, and
separating them so widely from each other that neither can see
whence that supply is drawn which each receives through the
capitalist. While he despoils both, so completely does he exclude
one from the view of the other that both believe they are
indebted him for subsistence. He is the middleman of all
labourers; and when we compare what the skilled labour of England
produces, with the produce of the untutored labour of the Irish
peasantry, the middlemen of England cannot be considered as
inferior in their exactions to the middlemen of Ireland. They
have been more fortunate, however, and while the latter are
stigmatised as oppressors, the former are honoured as
benefactors. Not only do they appropriate the produce of the
labourer; but they have succeeded in persuading him that they are
his benefactors and employers. At least such are the doctrines of
political economy; and capitalist may well be pleased with a
science which both justifies their claims and holds them up to
our admiration, as the great means of civilising and improving
the world.
     To show the labourer the effects which bestowing this
abundant reward on the supposed productive powers of food,
clothing and instruments have on his poverty or wealth, I must
observe that all political economists agree in saying that all
savings in society are usually made by capitalists. The labourer
cannot save; the landlord is not disposed to save; whatever is
saved is saved from profits and becomes the property of the
capitalists. Now let us suppose that a capitalist possesses, when
profit is at ten per cent per annum, 100 quarters of wheat and
100 steam engines; he must at the end of a year be paid for
allowing the labourer to eat this wheat and use these steam
engines with 110 quarters of wheat and 110 steam engines, all in
the same excellent condition as the 100 steam engines were at the
beginning. It being an admitted principle that, after a portion
of fixed capital is prepared, it must be paid for at a rate
sufficient to pay the ordinary rate of interest, and provide for
the repairs or the remaking of the instrument. Let us suppose
that 5 quarters of wheat and 5 steam engines, or the value of
this quantity, suffices for the owner's consumption, and that the
other 5 of his profit being added to this capital he has the next
year 105 quarters of wheat and 105 steam engines, which he allows
labourers to eat or use; for these the labourer must produce for
him, the following year, supposing the rate of profit to continue
the same, a sufficient sum to replace the whole of this capital,
with the interest, or 115 quarters 4 bushels of wheat and 155 ½
steam engines. Supposing that the value of the 5 quarters and of
5 steam engines suffices for the consumption of the capitalist,
he will have the next year 110 quarters 4 bushels, and 110 ½
steam engines, for the use of which he must be paid at the same
rate; or the labourer must produce and give him, the third year,
121 quarters and 1/20th of a quarter, and 121 steam engines and
1/20th of a steam engine. It is of no use calculating all these
fractions, or carrying the series further; it is enough to
observe that every atom of the capitalist's revenue, which he
puts out to use, or, as it is called, saves, which means given or
lent to labourers, goes on increasing at compound interest. Dr
Price has calculated that the sum of one penny put out to
compound interest at our Saviour's birth, at 5 per cent, would in
the year 1791 amount to a sum greater than could be contained in
three hundred millions of globes like this earth, all solid gold.
     Perhaps I can make the evil effects of capital more apparent
by another sort of example. The  real price of a coat or a pair
of shoes or a loaf of bread, all which nature demands from man in
order that he may have either of these very useful articles, is a
certain quantity of labour; how much it is almost impossible to
say, from the manufacture of a coat, a pair of shoes or a loaf of
bread being completed by many persons. But for the labourer to
have either of these articles he must give over and above the
quantity of labour nature demands from him, a still large
quantity to the capitalist. Before he can have a coat, he must
pay interest for the farmer's sheep, interest on the wool after
it has got into the hands of the wool merchant, interest for this
same wool as raw material, after it is in the hands of the
manufacturer, interest on all buildings and tools he uses, and
interest on all the wages he pays his men. Moreover, he must pay
interest or profit on the tailor's stock, both fixed and
circulating, and this rate of interest is increased in all these
instances by something more being always necessary to pay the
rent of all these different capitalists. In the same manner
before a labourer can have a loaf of bread he must give a
quantity of labour more than the loaf costs, by all that quantity
which pays the profit of the farmer, the corn dealer, the miller
and the baker, with profit on all the buildings they use; and he
must, moreover, pay with the produce of his labour the rent of
the landlord. How much more labour a labourer must give to have a
loaf of bread than that loaf costs, it is impossible for me to
say. I should probably underrate it were I to state it at six
times; or were I to say that the real cost of that loaf, for
which the labourer must give sixpence, is one penny. Of this,
however, I am quite certain, that the Corn Laws, execrable as
they are in principle, and mischievous as they are to the whole
community, do not impose anything like so heavy a tax on the
labourer as capital. Indeed, however injurious they may be to the
capitalist, it may be doubted whether they are so to the
labourer. They diminish the rate of profit, but they do not in
the end lower the wages of labour. Whether there are Corn Laws or
not, the capitalist must allow the labourer to subsist, and as
long as his claims are granted and acted on he will never allow
him to do more. In other words, the labourer will always have to
give much about the same quantity of labour to the capitalist for
a loaf, whether that loaf be the produce of one hour's or one
day's labour. Knowing the vast influence capitalists have in
society, one is not surprised at the anathemas which have of late
been hurled against the Corn Laws, nor at the silence which has
been preserved with respect to their more mighty and, to the
labourer, more mischievous exactions.
     What the capitalist really puts out to interest, however, is
not gold or money, but food, clothing and instruments; and his
demand is always to have more food, clothing and instruments
produced than he puts out. No productive power can answer this
demand, and both the capitalists and political economists find
fault with the wisdom of Nature, because she refuses to minister
to the avarice of the former, and does not exactly square in her
proceedings with the wishes of the latter.
     Of course the ultimate term to which compound interest tends
can never be reached. Its progress is gradually but perpetually
checked, and it is obliged to stop far short of the desired goal.
Accordingly, in most books on Political Economy, one or the other
of two causes is assigned for the constant falling off of profit
in the progress of society. The political economists either say,
with Adam Smith, that the accumulation of capital lowers profits,
or, with Mr Ricardo, that profits are lowered by the increasing
difficulty of procuring subsistence. Neither of them has assigned
it to the right cause, the impossibility of the labourer
answering the demands of the capitalist. A mere glance must
satisfy every mind that simple profit does not decrease but
increase in the progress of society -- that is, the same quantity
of labour which at any former period produced 100 quarters of
wheat and 100 steam engines will now produce somewhat more, or
the value of somewhat more, which the same thing: or where is the
utility of all our boasted improvements? In fact, also, we find
that a much greater number of persons now live in opulence on
profit in this country than formerly.
     It is clear, however, that no labour, no productive power,
no ingenuity and no art can answer the overwhelming demands of
compound interest. But all saving is made from the revenue of the
capitalist, so that actually these demands are constantly made,
and as constantly the productive power of labour refuse to
satisfy them. A sort of balance is, therefore, constantly struck.
The capitalists permit the labourers to have the means of
subsistence because they cannot do without labour, contenting
themselves very generously with taking every particle of produce
not necessary to this purpose. It is the overwhelming nature of
the demands of capital sanctioned by the laws of society,
sanctioned by the customs of men, enforced by the legislature,
and warmly defended by political economists, which keep, which
every have kept, and which ever will keep, as long as they are
allowed and acquiesced in, the labourer in poverty and misery.
     It is the overwhelming and all-engrossing nature of compound
interest, also, which gives to Mr Ricardo's theory and his
definitions, as I have already described them, though this
principle is nowhere brought sufficiently into view in his book,
their mathematical accuracy and truth. I refer to them, not as
caring much to illustrate the subtleties of that ingenious and
profound writer, but because his theory confirms the observations
I have just made -- viz. that the exactions of the capitalist
cause the poverty of the labourer. It is an admitted principle
that there cannot be two rates of profit in a country, and
therefore the capital of the man who cultivates the best soil of
a country procures of its owner no more than the capital of the
man who cultivates the worst soil. The superior produce of the
best soil is not, therefore, profit, and Mr Ricardo has called it
rent. It is a portion of produce over and above the average rate
of profit, and Mr Ricardo has assigned it to the landlords. The
labourer must, however, live, though the exorbitant claims of
capital allow him only a bare subsistence.  Mr Ricardo has also
been aware of this, and has therefore justly defined the price of
labour to be such a quantity of commodities as will enable the
labourers, one with another, to subsist, and to perpetuate their
race without either increase or diminution. Such is all which the
nature of profit or interest on capital will allow them to
receive, and such has ever been their reward. The capitalist must
give the labourers this sum, for it is the condition he must
fulfil in order to obtain labourers; it is the limit which nature
places to his claims, but he will never give, and never has
given, more. The capitalists, according to Mr Ricardo's theory,
allow the landlords to have just as much as keeps all the
capitalist on a level; the labourers they allow, in the same
theory, barely to subsist. Thus Mr Ricardo would admit that the
cause of the poverty of the labourer is the engrossing nature of
compound interest; this keeps him poor, and prevents him from
obeying the commands of his Creator, to increase and multiply.
     Though the defective nature of the claims of capital may now
be satisfactorily proved, the question as to the wages of labour
is by no means decided. Political economists, indeed, who have
insisted very strongly on the necessity of giving security to
property, and have ably demonstrated how much that security
promotes general happiness, will not hesitate to agree with me
when I say that whatever labour produces ought to belong to it.
They have always embraced the maxim of permitting those to "reap
who sow," and they have maintained that the labour of a man's
body and the work of his hands are to be considered as
exclusively his own. I take it for granted, therefore, that they
will henceforth maintain that the whole produce of labour ought
to belong to the labourer. But though this, as a general
proposition, is quite evident, and quite true, there is a
difficulty, in its practical application, which no individual can
surmount. There is no principle or rule, as far as I know, for
dividing the produce of joint labour among the different
individuals who concur in production, but the judgment of the
individuals themselves; that judgment depending on the value men
may set on different species of labour can never be known, nor
can any rule be given for its application by any single person.
As well might a man say what others shall hate or what they shall
like.
     Whatever division of labour exists, and the further it is
carried the more evident does this truth become, scarcely any
individual completes of himself any species of produce. Almost
any product of art and skill is the result of joint and combined
labour. So dependent is man on man, and so much does this
dependence increase as society advances, that hardly any labour
of any single individual, however much it may contribute to the
whole produce of society, is of the least value but as forming a
part of the great social task. In the manufacture of a piece of
cloth, the spinner, the weaver, the bleacher and the dyer are all
different persons. All of them except the first is dependent for
his supply of materials on him, and of what use would his thread
be unless the others took it from him, and each performed that
part of the task which is necessary to complete the cloth?
Wherever the spinner purchases the cotton or wool, the price
which he can obtain for his thread, over and above what he paid
for the raw material, is the reward of his labour. But it is
quite plain that the sum the weaver will be disposed to give for
the thread will depend on his view of its utility. Wherever the
division of labour is introduced, therefore, the judgment of
other men intervenes before the labourer can realise his
earnings, and there is no longer any thing which we can call the
natural reward of individual labour. Each labourer produces only
some part of a whole, and each part having no value or utility of
itself, there is nothing on which the labourer can seize, and
say: "This is my product, this will I keep to myself." Between
the commencement of any joint operation, such as that of making
cloth, and the division of its product among the different
persons whose combined exertions have produced it, the judgment
of men must intervene several times, and the question is, how
much of this joint product should go to each of the individuals
whose united labourers produce it?
     I know no way of deciding this but by leaving it to be
settled by the unfettered judgments of the labourers themselves.
If all kinds of labour were perfectly free, if no unfounded
prejudice invested some parts, and perhaps the least useful, of
the social task with great honour, while other parts are very
improperly branded with disgrace, there would be no difficulty on
this point, and the wages of individual labour would be justly
settled by what Dr Smith calls the "higgling of the market."
Unfortunately, labour is not, in general, free; and,
unfortunately there are a number of prejudices which decree very
different rewards to different species of labour from those which
each of them merits.
     Unfortunately, also, there is, I think, in general, a
disposition to restrict the term labour to the operation of the
hands. But if it should be said that the skill of the practised
labourer is a mere mechanical sort of thing, nobody will deny
that the labour by which he acquired that skill was a mental
exertion. The exercise of that skill also, as it seems to me,
requiring the constant application of judgment, depends much more
on a mental than on a bodily acquirement. Probably the mere
capacity of muscular exertion is as great, or greater, among a
tribe of Indians as among the most productive Europeans; and the
superior productive power of Europeans, and of one nation over
another, arise from the different nature of their fixed capital.
But I have shown that the greater efficacy of fixed capital
depends on the skill of the labourer; so that we come to the
conclusion that not mere labour, but mental skill, or the mode in
which labour is directed, determines its productive powers. I
therefore would caution my fellow labourers not to limit the term
labour to the operations of the hands.
     Before many of our most useful machines and instruments
could be invented, a vast deal of knowledge gathered in the
progress of the world by many generations was necessary. At
present also a great number of persons possessed of different
kinds of knowledge and skill must combine and cooperate, although
they have never entered into any express contract for this
purpose, before many of our most powerful machines can be
completed and before thy can be used. The labour of the
draughtsman is as necessary to construct a ship as the labour of
the man who fastens her planks together. The labour of the
engineer, who "in his mind's eye" sees the effect of every
contrivance, and who adapts the parts of a complicated machine to
each other, is as necessary to the completion of that machine as
the man who casts or fits any part of it, without being sensible
of the purpose for which the whole is to serve. In like manner
the labour and the knowledge of many different persons must be
combined before almost any product intended for consumption can
be brought to market. The knowledge and skill of the master
manufacturer, or of the man who plans and arranges a productive
operation, who must know the state of the markets and the
qualities of different materials, and who has some tact in buying
and selling, are just as necessary for the complete success of
any complicated operation as the skill of the workmen whose hands
actually alter the shape and fashion of these materials. Far be
it, therefore, from the manual labourer, while he claims the
reward due to his own productive powers, to deny its appropriate
reward to any other species of labour, whether it be of the head
or the hands. The labour and skill of the contriver, or of the
man who arranges an adapts a whole, are as necessary as the
labour and skill of him who executes only a part, and they must
be paid accordingly.
     I must, however, add that it is doubtful whether one species
of labour is more valuable than another; certainly it is not more
necessary. But because those who have been masters. Planners,
contrivers, etc., have in general also been capitalists, and have
also had a command over the labour of those who have worked with
their hands, their labour has been paid as much too high as
common labour has been under paid. The wages of the master,
employer or contriver has been blended with the profit of the
capitalists, and he may probably be still disposed to claim the
whole as only the proper reward of his exertions. On the other
hand, manual labourers, oppressed by the capitalist, have never
been paid high enough, and even now are more disposed to estimate
their own deserts rather by what they have hitherto received than
by what they produce. This sort of prejudice makes it, and will
long make it, difficult even for labourers themselves to
apportion with justice the social reward or wages of each
individual labourer. No statesman can accomplish this, nor ought
the labourers to allow any statesman to interfere in it. The
labour is theirs, the produce ought to be theirs, and they alone
ought to decide how much each deserves of the produce all. While
each labourer claims his own reward, let him cheerfully allow the
just claims of every other labourer; but let him never assent to
the strange doctrine that the food he eats and the instruments he
uses, which are the work of his own hands, become endowed, by
merely changing proprietors, with productive power greater than
his, and that the owner of them is entitled to a more abundant
reward than the labour, skill and knowledge which produce and use
them.
     Masters, it is evident, are labourers as well as their
journeymen. In this character their interest is precisely the
same as that of their men. But they are also either capitalist,
or the agents of the capitalist, and in this respect their
interest is decidedly opposed to the interest of their workmen.
As the contrivers and enterprising undertakers of new works, they
may be called employers as well as labourers, and they deserve
the respect of the labourer. As capitalist, and as the agents of
he capitalist, they are merely middlemen, oppressing the
labourer, and deserving of anything but his respect. The labourer
should know and bear this in mind. Other people should also
remember it, for it is indispensable to correct reasoning to
distinguish between these two characters of all masters. If by
combining the journeymen were to drive masters, who are a useful
class of labourers, out of the country, if they were to force
abroad the skill and ingenuity which contrive, severing them from
the hands which execute, they would do themselves and the
remaining inhabitants considerable mischief. If, on the contrary,
by combining they merely incapacitate the masters from obtaining
any profit on their capital, and merely prevent them from
completing the engagements they have contracted with the
capitalist, they will do themselves and the country incalculable
service. They may reduce or destroy altogether the profit of the
idle capitalist -- and from the manner in which capitalists have
treated labourers, even within our own recollection, they have no
claim on the gratitude of the labourer -- but they will augment
the wages and rewards of industry, and will give to genius and
skill their due share of the national produce. They will also
increase prodigiously the productive power of the country by
increasing the number of skilled labourers. The most successful
and widest spread possible combination to obtain an augmentation
of wages would have no other injurious effect than to reduce the
incomes of those who live on profit and interest, and who have no
just claim but custom to any share of the national produce.
     It has indeed been said by some sapient legislators, both
Lords and Commoners, that the journeymen will do themselves
incalculable mischief by driving capital out of the country; and
one of the reasons urged for the new law was that it would
prevent the journeymen injuring themselves. Whenever the devil
wants to do mischief he assumes the garb of holiness, and
whenever a certain class of persons wish to commit a more than
usually flagrant violation of justice it is always done in the
name of humanity. If the labourers are disposed blindly to injure
themselves I see no reason for the legislature interfering to
prevent them; except as a farmer watches over the health of his
cattle, or a West India planter looks after the negroes because
they are his property, and bring him a large profit. The
journeymen, however, know their own interest better than it is
known to the legislator; and they would be all the richer if
there were not an idle capitalist in the country. I shall not
enter into any investigation of the origin of this opinion that
the workmen will injure themselves by driving away capital; but
it would not be difficult to show that it springs from the false
theory I have opposed, and that it is based on a narrow
experience. Because there are a few instances of political and
religious persecution, driving both masters and journeymen, or a
large quantity of national stock of skilled labour, from
different countries, greatly, I admit, to the injury, and justly
so, of the remaining inhabitants who permitted or practised this
persecution, it has been asserted that this injury was caused by
the banishment, not of the men but of the capital; and it being,
therefore, now concluded that the proceedings of the workmen will
in like manner banish capital from this country it has been
affirmed that they will injure both themselves and the rest of
the inhabitants. But they carry on neither political nor
religious persecution, and it is somewhat preposterous in the
race of politicians, by way, perhaps, of throwing a veil over
their own crimes, to attribute to the actions of the workmen the
same consequences as have been produced by some of the absurd and
cruel proceedings of their own class. If the workmen do not
frighten away the skill of the contriver and the master -- and
where can that be put to so good a use as where there are plenty
of skilful hands -- and even if they should, the wide spread of
education among the mechanics and artisans will soon repair the
loss, they will frighten away no other part of the national
advantages. The merest tyro in political economy knows that the
capitalist cannot export any great quantity of food, clothing and
machines from this country, nor even the gold and silver which
forms the current coin of the realm, to any advantage; either he
must bring back an equivalent, which returns him a profit when
consumed here, or he must carry with him those skilled labourers
who have hitherto produced him his profit as they have consumed
his food and used his instruments and machines. There is not a
political injury on the one hand and both masters and workmen on
the other; but on the one side is the labourer and on the other
the capitalist, and however successful the workmen may be, the
smallest fraction of their produce which the capitalist can
scrape up he will assuredly stay to collect. The combination of
the workmen will not frighten away their own skill, nor unlearn
them what thy have learned. Their hand will not forget its
cunning, when its produce goes no longer into the pocket of the
capitalist. Capitalists, who can grow rich only where there is an
oppressed body of labourers, may probably carry off some of their
cloth, and their corn, and their machines to some country like
Prussia, where the poor people can learn nothing but what the
king and his schoolmasters please; or like France, where a
watchful police allows no man to utter a thought but such as
suits the views of a government and priesthood anxious to restore
despotism and superstition; but they cannot, unless the labourers
please, carry with them the mouths which consume, or the hands
which make their capital useful; and where these are there will
be the productive power. Our labourers already possess in an
eminent degree the skill to execute, and they are rapidly
acquiring also the skill to contrive. Never was there a more idle
threat uttered, therefore, than that the combinations of skilled
labourers to obtain greater rewards than they now possess will
drive skilled labour from the country.
     This analysis also of the operations of capital leads us at
once boldly to pronounce all those schemes of which we have of
late heard so much for improving countries, by sending capital to
them, to be mere nonsense. Of what use, for example, would the
butter and salt beef and pork and grain now exported from Ireland
be of in that country if they were to be left there, or if they
were to be sent back? All these articles form some of the most
valuable parts of circulating capital, and so far from there
being any want of them in Ireland, they are constantly exported
in great quantities. It is plain, therefore, that there is no
want of circulating capital in Ireland, if the capitalist would
allow the wretched producer of it to consume it. Of what use also
would steam engines or power looms or stocking frames or mining
tools be to the ragged peasantry of Ireland? Of none whatever.
If, indeed, masters and journeymen went over with these
instruments and tools, they might use them, and by consuming at
the same time the circulating capital now exported from Ireland
give the owner of it a large profit; and they might teach the
ignorant and helpless natives how to make use of the various
instruments I have mentioned. Those who talk of improving
Ireland, or any other country, by capital have a double meaning
in their words. They know the power of the capitalist over the
labourer, and that whenever the master goes or sends, there also
must the slave labourer go. But neither the lawmaker nor the
capitalist possesses any miraculous power of multiplying loaves
and fishes; or of commanding, like the enchanters of old,
broomsticks to do the work of men. They must have labourers,
skilled labourers, and without them it is nonsense to talk of
improving a country and a people by corn and cloth and hatchets
and saws.
     The wide spread of education among the journeyman mechanics
of this country diminishes daily the value of the labour and
skill of almost all masters and employers by increasing the
number of persons who possess their peculiar knowledge. At the
same time, masters and employers cannot hope that the labourers
who are not capitalists will remain long ignorant of the manner
in which masters who are both labourers and capitalist lend
themselves to the views of the capitalists who are not labourers.
They are daily acquiring this knowledge, and masters cannot
therefore rationally expect a termination to the present contest.
On the contrary, it must continue. Even if it should be stopped,
it will again and again occur. It is not possible that any large
body of men who are acquainted with their rights will tacitly
acquiesce in insult and injury. The profits of the masters, as
capitalist, must be diminished, whether the labourers succeed in
obtaining higher wages, or the combination continues, or it is
from time to time renewed. In the former case, the masters, as
skilled labourers, will share in the increased rewards of
industry; in either of the two latter, not only will their profit
be destroyed, but their wages will be diminished or altogether
annihilated. Without workmen their own skill and labour are of no
use, but they may live in comfort and opulence without the
capitalist. Masters and employers, therefore, would do well to
recollect that by supporting the claims of capital they diminish
their own wages, and they prolong a contest which, independent of
the ill temper and hatred it creates and perpetuates, is also
injurious to them as inventors, contrivers and skilled labourers,
and which must ultimately terminate to their disadvantage.
     The improved education of the labouring classes ought, in
the present question, to have great weight also with statesmen,
and with the community at large. The schools, which are
everywhere established, or are establishing, for their
instruction, make it impossible for the greatest visionary to
suppose that any class of men can much longer be kept in
ignorance of the principles on which societies are formed and
governed. Mechanics' institutions will teach men the moral as
well as the physical sciences. They excite a disposition to probe
all things to the bottom, and supply the means of carrying
research into every branch of knowledge. He must be a very blind
statesman who does not see in this indications of a more
extensive change in the frame of society than has ever yet been
made. This change will not be effected by violence, and cannot be
counteracted by force. Holy Alliance can put down the quiet
insurrection by which knowledge will subvert whatever is not
founded in justice and truth. The interest of the different
classes of labourers who are now first beginning to think and act
as a body, in opposition to the other classes among whom, with
themselves, the produce of the earth is distributed, and who are
now only for the first time beginning to acquire as extensive a
knowledge of the principles of government as those who rule, is
too deeply implicated by these principles to allow them to stop
short in their career of inquiry. They may care nothing about the
curious researches of the geologist or the elaborate
classification of the botanist, but they will assuredly ascertain
why they only of all classes of society have always been involved
in poverty and distress. They will not stop short of any ultimate
truth; and they have experienced too few of the advantages of
society to make them feel satisfied with the present order of
things. The mind is rather invigorated than enfeebled by the
labour of the hands; and they will carry forward their
investigations undelayed by the pedantry of learning, and
undiverted by the fastidiousness of taste. By casting aside the
prejudices which fetter the minds of those who have benefited by
their degradation, they have everything to hope. On the other
hand, they are the suffers by these prejudices, and have
everything to dread from their continuance. Having no reason to
love those institutions which limit the reward of labour,
whatever may be its produce, to a bare subsistence, they will not
spare them, whenever they see the hollowness of the claims made
on their respect. As the labourers acquire knowledge, the
foundations of the social edifice will be dug up from the deep
beds into which they were laid in times past, they will be
curiously handled and closely examined, and they will not be
restored unless they were originally laid in justice, and unless
justice commands their preservation.
     Without joining in any of the commonplace observations
against taking interest, and against usury, which, however,
support my view of capital, I have show that it has no just claim
to any share of the labourer's produce, and that what it actually
receives is the cause of the poverty of the labourer. It is
impossible that the labourer should long remain ignorant of these
facts, or acquiesce in this state of things.
     In truth, also, however the matter may be disguised, the
combinations among workmen to obtain higher wages, which are now
so general and so much complained of, are practical attacks on
the claims of capital. The weight of its chains are felt, though
the hand may not yet be clearly seen which imposes them.
Gradually as the resistance increases, as laws are multiplied for
the protection of capital, as claims for higher wages shall be
more strenuously and more violently repressed, the cause of this
oppression will be more distinctly seen. The contest now appears
to be between masters and journeymen, or between one species of
labour and another, but it will soon be displayed in its proper
characters; and will stand confessed a war of honest industry
against the idle profligacy which has so long ruled the affairs
of the political world with undisputed authority -- which has,
for its own security, added honour and political power to wealth,
and has conjoined exclusion and disgrace with the poverty it has
inflicted on the labourer. On the side of the labourers there is
physical strength, for they are more numerous than their
opponents. They are also fast losing that reverence for their
opponents which was and is the source of their power, and they
are daily acquiring a moral strength which results from a common
interest and a close and intimate union.
     The capitalist and labourers form the great majority of the
nation, so that there is not third power to intervene betwixt
them. The must and will decide the dispute of themselves. Final
success, I would fain hope, must be on the side of justice. I am
certain, however, that till the triumph of labour be complete;
till productive industry alone be opulent, and till idleness
alone be poor, till the admirable maxim that "he who sows shall
reap" be solidly established; till the right of property shall be
founded on principles of justice, and not on those of slavery;
till man shall be held more in honour than the clod be treads on,
or the machine he guides -- there cannot, and there ought not to
be either peace on earth or goodwill amongst men.
     Those who of late have shown themselves so ready to resist
the just claims of labour, who, under the influence of interest
and passion, have hurried into the arena with their penal laws,
and have come forward, brandishing their parchment statutes, as
if they, poor beings, could whip mankind into patience and
submission, when these weapons of theirs -- these penal laws and
parchment statutes -- derive all their power, whether for evil or
for good, from the sanctity with which we are pleased to invest
them, and as if they also did not know that they are as powerless
as the meanest individual whom they are so prompt to scourge,
except as we are pleased to submit and to honour them -- they may
thank themselves should their haste and their violence beget a
corresponding haste and violence in others; and, should the
labourers, who have hitherto shown themselves confiding and
submissive -- losing that reverence by which laws are invested
with power, and to which Government is indebted for its existence
-- turn their attention from combining for higher wages, to
amending the state, and to subverting a system which they must
now believe is intended only to support all the oppressive
exactions of capital. Ministers are undoubtedly, for the moment,
very popular, but it does not require any very enlarged view to
predict that by openly committing the Government during the last
session of Parliament, when the great mass of the community are
able both to scan the motives of their conduct and its
consequences, and zealous in doing it, to a contest between
capital and labour, taking the side of idleness against industry,
of weakness against strength, of oppression against justice, they
are preparing more future mischief than any ministry this country
has ever seen. They profess liberal principles -- and they make
laws to keep the labourer in thraldom. By their innovations they
encourage inquiry, and convince us the system is neither sacred
nor incapable of improvement. They have practically told the
labourer there is nothing deserving his reverence, and have
excited his hostility both by insult and oppression.
     I do not mean, on the present occasion, to point out all the
consequences which result from this view of capital, but there is
one so important in a theoretical point of view, and so well
calculated to relieve the wise system of the universe from the
opprobrium which has been cast upon it in these latter times,
that I cannot wholly pass it by. An elaborate theory has been
constructed to show that there is a natural tendency in
population to increase faster than capital, or than the means of
employing labour. In Mr Mill's Elements of Political Economy, a
work distinguished by its brevity, several sections and pages are
devoted merely to announce this truth. If my view of capital be
correct, this, as a theory of nature, falls at once baseless to
the ground. That the capitalist can control the existence and
number of labourers, that the whole number of the population
depends altogether on him, I will not deny. But put the
capitalist, the oppressive middleman, who eats up the produce of
labour and prevents the labourer from knowing on what natural
laws his existence and happiness depend, out of view -- put aside
those social regulations by which they who produce all are
allowed to own little or nothing -- and it is plain that capital,
or the power to employ labour, and co-exiting labour are one; and
that productive capital and skilled labour are also one;
consequently capital and a labouring population are precisely
synonymous.
     In the system of nature, mouths are united with hands and
with intelligence; they and not capital are the agents of
production; and, according other rule, however it may have been
thwarted by the pretended wisdom of law makers, wherever there is
a man there also are the means of creating or producing him
subsistence. If also, as I say, circulating capital is only
co-existing labour, and fixed capital only skill labour, it must
be plain that all those numerous advantages, those benefits to
civilisation, those vast improvements in the condition of the
human race, which have been in general attributed to capital, are
caused in fact by labour, and by knowledge and skill informing
and directing labour. Should it be said, then, as perhaps it may,
that unless there be profit, and unless there be interest, there
will be no motives for accumulation and improvement, I answer
that this is a false view, and arises from attributing to capital
and saving those effects which result from labour; and that the
best means of securing the progressive improvement, both of
individuals and of nations, is to do justice, and allow labour to
possess and enjoy the whole of its produce.
