Principles Of Political Economy

§ 3. The Socialists who appeal to state-help.

For general purposes, a clearer understanding of the various schemes may be gained by observing that (1) one class of socialists intend to include the state itself within their plan, and (2) another class aim to form separate communities inside the state, and under its protection.

Of this first system there are no present examples; but the object of most of the socialistic organizations in the United States and Europe is to strive for the assumption by the state of the production and distribution of wealth.[147] At present the most active Socialists are to be found in Germany. The origin of this influence, however, is to be traced to France.[148] Louis Blanc,[149] in his “Organisation du Travail,” considers property the great scourge of society. The Government, he asserts, should regulate production; raise money to be appropriated without interest for creating state workshops, in which the workmen should elect their own overseers, and all receive the same wages; and the sums needed should be raised from the abolition of collateral inheritance. The important practical part of his scheme was that the great state workshops, aided by the Government, would make private competition in those industries impossible, and thus bring about the change from the private to the socialistic system.

The founder of modern German socialism was Karl Marx,[150] and almost the only Socialist who pretended to economic knowledge. He aimed his attack on the present social system against the question of value, by asserting that the amount of labor necessary for the production of an article is the sole measure of its exchange value. It follows from this that the right of property in the article vests wholly in the laborer, while the capitalist, if he claims a share of the product, is nothing less than a robber. No just system, he avers, can properly exist so long as the rate of wages is fixed by free contract between the employer and laborer; therefore the only remedy is the nationalization of all the elements of production, land, tools, materials, and all existing appliances, which involves, of course, the destruction of the institution of private property. An obvious weakness in this scheme is the provision that the Government should determine what goods are to be produced, and that every one is bound to perform that work which is assigned by the state. In this there is no choice of work, and the tyranny of one master would be supplanted by the tyranny of a greater multiplex master in the officers of Government. Moreover, it can not be admitted that exchange value is determined by the quantity of labor alone. Every one knows that the result of ten days' labor of a skilled watch-maker does not exchange for the result of ten days' labor of an unskilled hodman. Of two men making shoes, one may produce a good the other a poor article, although both may work the same length of time; so that their exchange value ought not to be determined by the mere quantity of labor expended. Above all, Marx would extend the equality of wages for the same time to the manager and superintendent also. In other words, he proposes to take away all the incentives to the acquirement or exercise of superior and signal ability in every work of life, the result of which would inevitably lead to a deadening extension of mediocrity.