Читать книгу British Socialism - J. Ellis Barker - Страница 28

Unemployment is largely caused by commercial crises, commercial crises are caused by over-production, over-production is caused by the fact that the national industries are divided and the industrial output is regulated not by the nation in accordance with the national demand but by irresponsible private individuals whose aim is profit, not the fulfilment of a national demand. "The causes of commercial depression lie in the non-consumption of the incomes of our millionaires."[207] Another Socialist writer asserts: "Our era is cursed with crises occurring far more frequently than plagues and causing as much misery. Economists say that these crises are caused by over-production. Private enterprise compels every producer to produce for himself, to sell for himself, to keep all his transactions to himself, without regard to anybody else in the wide world. Merchants have got no measure at hand by which they can, even approximately, either estimate the effective demand of their customers or ascertain the producing capacity of their rivals. Production by all these manufacturers is, and must necessarily be, absolutely planless. This planless production must end in the market being overstocked with commodities of one kind or another; that is, that it must end in 'over-production.' In the trade which has been thus overdone, prices fall and wages come down; or a great manufacturer fails and a smaller or greater number of workmen are discharged. Crises are therefore the direct result of private enterprise."[208] "Why are men—men that is who are able and willing, nay, eager and anxious, to work—unemployed? Because, it is said, there is nothing for them to do. Nothing for them to do? Is all the necessary work of the world, then, already finished, so that there is nothing more remaining for anyone to do? No; it is not because all the necessary and useful work is done that men are unemployed, it is because all the means of production—all the machines, tools, and implements of labour and all the raw material—are owned by a class, and may only be used by permission of that class, and when that class can make a profit out of their use."[209] "It is indisputable that modern poverty is artificial. It is neither the result of divine anger nor the niggardliness of Nature. It is the product of the private ownership of land and capital by which men are prevented from earning their living unless the proprietary class can make profit from their labour. The inevitable result of this system is that in all industries and at all times there are more men seeking employment than there is employment for.[210]" "Your system of private ownership, in conferring the possession and control of the nation's storehouse of wealth and of the instruments by which all further wealth must be obtained from it, upon your capitalist class, has reduced the nation at large into nothing more nor less than an elaborate machine which your capitalists use for extracting wealth from the earth for their own benefit. … It is not well that by a foolish and wicked system of government, one small class of the community should be enabled to organise its production in such a manner that the full stream of wealth is diverted into their own possession whilst the mass of the nation by whose labour it is obtained are defrauded of it, and brought into a state of subtle slavery worse both in kind and degree than could be possible under any system of direct and open slavery."[211] "Unemployment is an inevitable feature of capitalism, and is impossible of removal without at the same time abolishing the capitalist system that produces it. That is a fact known to any Socialist with the most elementary knowledge of the economics of capitalism. Unemployment is caused by the exactions of the capitalist class. The prime cause of unemployment is the robbery of the workers by which the capitalist class appropriate the whole of the wealth produced by the workers, returning to them just as much on the average as will keep them physically fit to continue working. The difference between the quantities produced and consumed by the working class (a difference continually increasing with every increase in the productivity of labour) represents a surplus which all the waste and all the luxury of its owners cannot absorb, with the result that the markets are glutted with an excess of commodities. Thus the 'over-production,' the crisis, and the slackening of production involving an increase of unemployment."[212]

Employers of labour profit directly from unemployment, and will therefore presumably do all they can to bring it about. "Employers and other well-to-do people have no interest in finding work for the workless. They benefit from the unemployment of the poor."[213] The foregoing statement is as malicious as it is absurd. Employers do not desire unemployment, partly from humanitarian reasons, partly because it is a loss to them. The father of English Socialism taught: "The labourer perishes if capital does not employ him. Capital perishes if it does not exploit labour."[214] In other words, unemployed labour means unemployed capital; besides, those business men who do not actually dismiss their workers suffer also through unemployment, because the unemployed are supported by the rates.

The doctrines that "the existing misery can be abolished, not by increased production but by altering the distribution of the wealth produced," and that the "capitalist system is responsible for want, poverty, and unemployment," are manifestly unsound. A larger consumption of food, clothing, &c., can be effected only by a larger production. Gluts and crises, with consequent unemployment, occur, not through general over-production, which would benefit all, but by ill-balanced production, as the following example will prove: Imagine an island off the African coast on which there are two villages, the inhabitants of which require only two commodities, loin-cloths and mealies. One village manufactures loin-cloths, the other raises mealies, and these are exchanged against each other. These villages fulfil the Socialistic ideal. There are no capitalists and no middlemen, and production is only "for use," not "for profit." Balanced over-production will result in this, that every native will have a superabundance of loin-cloths and food. But supposing that the agriculturists go in for loin-cloth making, finding that occupation more congenial, and that they abandon much agriculture; or supposing that inclement weather, or a plague of grasshoppers, should seriously curtail the harvest, then there will soon be a glut of loin-cloths and a crisis. The cry of over-production will arise among the loin-cloth makers, but that cry will be unjustified and absurd. The more the people make the more they will have, provided production is properly balanced. The doctrine that we suffer from over-production and that the capitalist system is at fault, that altered distribution rather than increased production will abolish misery, and that Socialism can prevent want and unemployment by a scientific organisation of production, is wrong.

Socialists may, of course, argue, "In the Socialist State production would be organised, and controlled, and properly balanced and harmonised," an argument which is irrelevant with regard to the over-production doctrine, and which besides is unsound, although it may be found in most Socialistic writings. As production is world-wide, the Socialists' control of production would also have to be world-wide. It would involve not only the control of all human energy throughout the world, but also the control of the seasons, of the weather, of insect plagues, of fashions, of appetite, &c.

The foregoing proves that "men can never become richer till the produce of their labour increases. The more they produce the richer they will be, provided there be a demand for the produce of their labour. If a shoemaker makes four pairs of shoes in a day he will be twice richer than he would be if he made only two pairs in a day, provided that an increased demand is co-existing. The question, therefore, 'How can we become richer?' is reduced to this one, 'How can we increase the produce of labour and at the same time maintain an equivalent demand for that produce?'"[215] The doctrines that want and unemployment are due to over-production and to the capitalist system are wrong.

We now come to the