dogma was used by Bentham himself, as well as by Malthus, James Mill, M’Culloch, etc., for an apologetic purpose, and especially in order to represent one part of capital, namely, variable capital, or that part convertible into labour-power, as a fixed magnitude. The material of variable capital, i.e., the mass of the means of subsistence it represents for the labourer, or the so-called labour fund, was fabled as a separate part of social wealth, fixed by natural laws and unchangeable. To set in motion the part of social wealth which is to function as constant capital, or, to express it in a material form, as means of production, a definite mass of living labour is required. This mass is given technologically. But neither is the number of labourers required to render fluid this mass of Jabour-power given (it changes with the degree of exploitation of the individual labour-power), nor is the price of this labour-power given, but only its minimum limit, which is moreover very variable. The facts that lie at the bottom of this dogma are these: on the one hand, the labourer has no right to interfere in the division of social wealth into means of enjoyment for the non-labourer and means of production.[1] On the other hand, only in favourable and exceptional cases, has he the power to enlarge the so-called labour-fund at the expense of the “revenue” of the wealthy.
What silly tautology results from the attempt to represent the capitalistic limits of the labour-fund as its natural and social limits may be seen, e.g., in Professor Fawcett.[2] “The circulating capital of a country,” he says, “is its wage-fund. Hence, if we desire to calculate the average money wages received by each labourer, we have simply to divide the amount
- ↑ John Stuart Mill, in his “Principles of Political Economy,” says: “The really exhausting and the really repulsive labours instead of being better paid than others, are almost invariably paid the worst of all.… The more revolting the occupation, the more certain it is to receive the minimum of remuneration.… The hardships and the earnings, instead of being directly proportional, as in any just arrangements of society they would be, are generally in an inverse ratio to one another.” To avoid misunderstanding, let me say that although men like John Stuart Mill are to blame for the contradiction between their traditional economic dogmas and their modern tendencies, it would be very wrong to class them with the herd of vulgar economic apologists.
- ↑ H. Fawcett, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge. “The Economic Position of the British Labourer.” London, 1865, p. 120.
