Das Kapital — Kap. 25 · semantic zoom

K.25

Die moderne Kolonisationstheorie

The previous chapter closed Part Eight and the chapter "So-Called Primitive Accumulation" by naming its outcome the negation of the negation: capitalist private property is the first negation of individual, labour-based private property, and capitalist production begets its own negation in turn — the expropriators expropriated. This chapter, the volume's closing chapter, opens by testing that whole argument against a place where the expropriation it presupposes has not yet happened. Political economy's confusion of two opposed kinds of private property is comfortable in the West, where original accumulation is already more or less accomplished and the economist can dress capital's ready-made world in pre-capitalist legal notions without immediate contradiction (p2-p3). The colonies are where that comfort breaks down, because there the producer still owns his own conditions of labour and the capital relation has not yet been manufactured (p4) — Wakefield's own, involuntary discovery, and this chapter's whole occasion (p5).

²⁵³

What counts as a real colony

Note 253 (M-A [1], report-only, no local English-edition text): This concerns real colonies — virgin soil colonized by free immigrants. The United States, economically speaking, is still a colonial territory of Europe. Old plantations belong here too, wherever the abolition of slavery has completely overturned conditions.

Die politische Ökonomie verwechselt prinzipiell zwei sehr verschiedne Sorten Privateigentum, wovon das eine auf eigner Arbeit des Produzenten beruht, das andre auf der Ausbeutung fremder Arbeit. Sie vergißt, daß das letztre nicht nur den direkten Gegensatz des erstren bildet, sondern auch bloß auf seinem Grab wächst.

Two opposed kinds of private property

Political economy habitually confuses two very different kinds of private property: one resting on the producer's own labour, the other on the exploitation of another's labour. It forgets that the second is not merely the direct opposite of the first, but grows only on the grave of the first.

Im Westen von Europa, dem Heimatsland der politischen Ökonomie, ist der Prozeß der ursprünglichen Akkumulation mehr oder minder vollbracht. Das kapitalistische Regiment hat hier entweder die ganze nationale Produktion sich direkt unterworfen, oder, wo die Verhältnisse noch unentwickelter, kontrolliert es wenigstens indirekt die neben ihm fortexistierenden, verkommenen, der veralteten Produktionsweise angehörigen Gesellschaftsschichten. Auf diese fertige Welt des Kapitals wendet der politische Ökonom mit desto ängstlicherem Eifer und desto größerer Salbung die Rechts- und Eigentumsvorstellungen der vorkapitalistischen Welt an, je lauter die Tatsachen seiner Ideologie ins Gesicht schreien.

Political economy's finished capitalist world

In Western Europe, political economy's home ground, the process of original accumulation is more or less complete. Capitalist rule has here either subjected the whole of national production directly, or, where conditions are less developed, it at least indirectly controls the surviving, decaying strata of society that still belong to the older mode of production. Onto this ready-made world of capital, the political economist applies the legal and property notions of the pre-capitalist world — with all the more anxious zeal and unction the louder the facts cry out against his ideology.

Anders in den Kolonien. Das kapitalistische Regiment stößt dort überall auf das Hindernis des Produzenten, welcher als Besitzer seiner eignen Arbeitsbedingungen sich selbst durch seine Arbeit bereichert statt den Kapitalisten. Der Widerspruch dieser zwei diametral entgegengesetzten ökonomischen Systeme betätigt sich hier praktisch in ihrem Kampf. Wo der Kapitalist die Macht des Mutterlandes im Rücken hat, sucht er die auf eigner Arbeit beruhende Produktions- und Aneignungsweise gewaltsam aus dem Weg zu räumen. Dasselbe Interesse, welches den Sykophanten des Kapitals, den politischen Ökonomen, im Mutterland bestimmt, die kapitalistische Produktionsweise theoretisch für ihr eignes Gegenteil zu erklären, dasselbe Interesse treibt ihn hier "to make a clean breast of it" <"die Sache offen herauszusagen"> und den Gegensatz beider Produktionsweisen laut zu proklamieren. Zu diesem Behuf weist er nach, wie die Entwicklung der gesellschaftlichen Produktivkraft der Arbeit, Kooperation, Arbeitsteilung, Anwendung der Maschinerie im großen usw. unmöglich sind ohne die Expropriation der Arbeiter und die entsprechende Verwandlung ihrer Produktionsmittel in Kapital. Im Interesse des sog. Nationalreichtums sucht er nach Kunstmitteln zur Herstellung der Volksarmut. Sein apologetischer Panzer zerbröckelt hier Stück für Stück wie mürber Zunder.

In the colonies, the producer resists

It is otherwise in the colonies. There capitalist rule everywhere runs up against the obstacle of the producer who, as owner of his own conditions of labour, enriches himself by his own labour instead of enriching the capitalist. The contradiction between these two diametrically opposed economic systems here plays itself out practically, in struggle between them. Where the capitalist has the power of the mother country at his back, he tries to clear the labour-based mode of production and appropriation forcibly out of his way. The same interest that drives capital's sycophant, the political economist, to declare in the mother country that the capitalist mode of production is theoretically identical with its own opposite, drives him here "to make a clean breast of it" and loudly proclaim the antagonism between the two modes of production. To this end he shows how the development of labour's social productive power — cooperation, division of labour, large-scale machinery, and so on — is impossible without the expropriation of the workers and the corresponding conversion of their means of production into capital. In the interest of so-called national wealth, he hunts for artificial means of manufacturing popular poverty. His apologetic armour crumbles here, piece by piece, like rotten tinder.

Es ist das große Verdienst E. G. Wakefields, nicht irgend etwas Neues über die Kolonien²⁵⁴, aber in den Kolonien die Wahrheit über die kapitalistischen Verhältnisse des Mutterlands entdeckt zu haben. Wie das Protektionssystem in seinen Ursprüngen²⁵⁵ die Fabrikation von Kapitalisten im Mutterland, so erstrebt Wakefields Kolonisationstheorie, welche England eine Zeitlang gesetzlich ins Werk zu setzen suchte, die Fabrikation von Lohnarbeitern in den Kolonien. Das nennt er "systematic colonization" (systematische Kolonisation).

Wakefield's true discovery: systematic colonization

It is E. G. Wakefield's great merit to have discovered — not anything new about the colonies themselves, but the truth about the mother country's capitalist relations, discovered in the colonies. Just as the protection system in its origins strove to manufacture capitalists artificially in the mother country, so Wakefield's theory of colonization, which England tried for a time to put into legal effect, strives to manufacture wage-labourers in the colonies. This he calls "systematic colonization." Note 254/[2]: Wakefield's few flashes of insight into the nature of the colonies themselves are fully anticipated by Mirabeau père, the physiocrat, and, still earlier, by English economists. Note 255/[3]: It later becomes a temporary necessity in international competitive struggle. But whatever its motive, the consequences remain the same.

Zunächst entdeckte Wakefield in den Kolonien, daß das Eigentum an Geld, Lebensmitteln, Maschinen und andren Produktionsmitteln einen Menschen noch nicht zum Kapitalisten stempelt, wenn die Ergänzung fehlt, der Lohnarbeiter, der andre Mensch, der sich selbst freiwillig zu verkaufen gezwungen ist. Er entdeckte, daß das Kapital nicht eine Sache ist, sondern ein durch Sachen vermitteltes gesellschaftliches Verhältnis zwischen Personen.²⁵⁶ Herr Peel, jammert er uns vor, nahm Lebensmittel und Produktionsmittel zum Belauf von 50.000 Pfd. St. aus England nach dem Swan

Capital is a social relation, not things

Wakefield first discovered, in the colonies, that owning money, means of subsistence, machines, and other means of production does not yet stamp a person a capitalist if the complement is missing — the wage-labourer, the other person compelled to sell himself voluntarily. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons, mediated by things. Mr Peel, he complains to us, took means of subsistence and production worth £50,000 from England to the Swan Note 256 (M-A [4], report-only, no local English-edition text): "A Negro is a Negro. Only under certain relations does he become a slave. A cotton-spinning machine is a machine for spinning cotton. Only under certain relations does it become capital. Torn from these relations, it is capital as little as gold is money in and of itself, or sugar the price of sugar... Capital is a social relation of production. It is a historical relation of production." (Karl Marx, "Wage Labour and Capital," Neue Rheinische Zeitung, no. 266, 7 April 1849.)

River, Neuholland, mit. Herr Peel war so vorsichtig, außerdem 3.000 Personen der arbeitenden Klasse, Männer, Weiber und Kinder mitzubringen. Einmal am Bestimmungsplatz angelangt, "blieb Herr Peel, ohne einen Diener, sein Bett zu machen oder ihm Wasser aus dem Fluß zu schöpfen"²⁵⁷. Unglücklicher Herr Peel, der alles vorsah, nur nicht den Export der englischen Produktionsverhältnisse nach dem Swan River!

Peel's workers, minus English production relations

River, New Holland (Western Australia), along with him. Mr Peel was careful enough also to bring 3,000 persons of the working class — men, women, and children (the Moore–Aveling English edition gives 300). Once he had arrived at his destination, "Mr Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river." Unhappy Mr Peel, who provided for everything except the export of English relations of production to the Swan River! Note 257/[5]: E. G. Wakefield, England and America, vol. II, p. 33.

Zum Verständnis der folgenden Entdeckungen Wakefields zwei Vorbemerkungen. Man weiß: Produktions- und Lebensmittel, als Eigentum des unmittelbaren Produzenten, sind kein Kapital. Sie werden Kapital nur unter Bedingungen, worin sie zugleich als Exploitations- und Beherrschungsmittel des Arbeiters dienen. Diese ihre kapitalistische Seele ist aber im Kopfe des politischen Ökonomen so innig mit ihrer stofflichen Substanz vermählt, daß er sie unter allen Umständen Kapital tauft, auch wo sie das grade Gegenteil sind. So bei Wakefield. Ferner: die Zersplitterung der Produktionsmittel als individuelles Eigentum vieler voneinander unabhängigen, selbstwirtschaftenden Arbeiter nennt er gleiche Teilung des Kapitals. Es geht dem politischen Ökonomen wie dem feudalen Juristen. Letzterer klebte auch auf reine Geldverhältnisse seine feudalen Rechtsetiketten.

Means of production are not capital alone

Two preliminary remarks are needed to understand Wakefield's further discoveries. We know that means of production and subsistence, as the property of the immediate producer, are not capital. They become capital only under conditions in which they also serve as means of exploiting and dominating the worker. But in the political economist's head, this capitalist soul of theirs is so intimately wedded to their material substance that he baptizes them capital under all circumstances, even where they are its exact opposite. So it is with Wakefield. Further: he calls the splitting-up of the means of production into the individual property of many independent, self-working labourers an equal division of capital. The political economist behaves just like the feudal jurist, who likewise stuck his feudal legal labels onto purely monetary relations.

"Wäre", sagt Wakefield, "das Kapital unter alle Mitglieder der Gesellschaft in gleiche Portionen verteilt, so hätte kein Mensch ein Interesse, mehr Kapital zu akkumulieren, als er mit seinen eignen Händen anwenden kann. Dies ist in gewissem Grad der Fall in neuen amerikanischen Kolonien, wo die Leidenschaft für Grundeigentum die Existenz einer Klasse von Lohnarbeitern verhindert."²⁵⁸

Wakefield: equal capital removes wage-labour

"If," says Wakefield, "capital were distributed among all members of society in equal portions, no one would have an interest in accumulating more capital than he could employ with his own hands. This is, to some degree, the case in new American colonies, where the passion for landed property prevents the existence of a class of wage-labourers." Note 258/[6]: Wakefield, England and America, vol. I, p. 17.

Solange also der Arbeiter für sich selbst akkumulieren kann, und das kann er, solange er Eigentümer seiner Produktionsmittel bleibt, ist die kapitalistische Akkumulation und die kapitalistische Produktionsweise unmöglich. Die dazu unentbehrliche Klasse der Lohnarbeiter fehlt. Wie wurde nun im alten Europa die Expropriation des Arbeiters von seinen Arbeitsbedingungen, daher Kapital und Lehnarbeit, hergestellt? Durch einen contrat social <Gesellschaftsvertrag> ganz origineller Art.

No self-accumulating owner needs wage-labour

So long, then, as the worker can accumulate for himself — and he can, so long as he remains owner of his means of production — capitalist accumulation and the capitalist mode of production are impossible. The class of wage-labourers indispensable to them is missing. How, then, was the worker's expropriation from his conditions of labour — and hence capital and wage-labour — brought about in old Europe? Through a contrat social, a social contract, of a quite original kind.

"Die Menschheit ... adoptierte eine einfache Methode zur Förderung der Akkumulation des Kapitals", die ihr natürlich seit Adams Zeiten als letzter und einziger Zweck ihres Daseins vorschwebte; "sie teilte sich in Eigner von Kapital und Eigner von Arbeit ... diese Teilung war das Resultat freiwilliger Verständigung und Kombination."²⁵⁹

Humanity's simple method for accumulation

Wakefield writes: "Mankind... adopted a simple method for promoting the accumulation of capital" — which, naturally, had hovered before it since Adam's time as the last and only purpose of its existence — "they divided themselves into owners of capital and owners of labour... this division was the result of voluntary understanding and combination." Note 259/[7]: Wakefield, England and America, vol. I, p. 18.

Mit einem Wort: die Masse der Menschheit expropriierte sich selbst zu Ehren der "Akkumulation des Kapitals". Nun sollte man glauben, der Instinkt dieses selbstentsagenden Fanatismus müsse sich namentlich in Kolonien den Zügel frei schießen lassen, wo allein Menschen und Umstände existieren, welche einen contrat social aus dem Traumreich in das der Wirklichkeit übersetzen könnten. Aber wozu dann überhaupt die "systematische Kolonisation" im Gegensatz zur naturwüchsigen Kolonisation? Aber, aber:

Self-expropriation's irony fails even in colonies

In a word: the mass of humanity expropriated itself in honour of the "accumulation of capital." Now one would think the instinct of this self-denying fanaticism would give itself free rein above all in the colonies, where alone people and circumstances exist that could translate a contrat social out of dreamland into reality. But then what need was there at all for "systematic colonization," as against colonization that simply grows on its own? But, but —

"in den nördlichen Staaten der amerikanischen Union ist es zweifelhaft, ob ein Zehntel der Bevölkerung der Kategorie der Lohnarbeiter angehört ... In England ... besteht die große Volksmasse aus Lohnarbeitern."²⁶⁰

America's tenth versus England's mass of wage-labourers

Wakefield writes: "in the northern states of the American Union it is doubtful whether a tenth of the population belongs to the category of wage-labourers... In England... the great mass of the people consists of wage-labourers." Note 260/[8]: Wakefield, England and America, vol. I, pp. 42, 43, 44.

Ja, der Selbstexpropriationstrieb der arbeitenden Menschheit zu Ehren des Kapitals existiert so wenig, daß Sklaverei, selbst nach Wakefield, die einzige naturwüchsige Grundlage des Kolonialreichtums ist. Seine systematische Kolonisation ist ein bloßes pis aller <ein Notbehelf>, da er nun einmal mit Freien statt mit Sklaven zu tun hat.

Slavery, not self-expropriation, built colonial wealth

Indeed, the drive toward self-expropriation among labouring humanity, in honour of capital, exists so little that slavery, even by Wakefield's own account, is the sole naturally-grown basis of colonial wealth. His systematic colonization is a mere pis aller — a mere stopgap — since he happens to be dealing with free people instead of slaves.

"Die ersten spanischen Ansiedler in Santo Domingo erhielten keine Arbeiter aus Spanien. Aber ohne Arbeiter" (d.h. ohne Sklaverei) "wäre des Kapital kaputt gegangen oder wenigstens auf die kleinen Massen zusammengeschrumpft, worin jedes Individuum es mit seinen eignen Händen anwenden kann. Dies fand wirklich statt in der letzten von den Engländern gegründeten Kolonie, wo ein großes Kapital in Samen, Vieh und Instrumenten unterging am Mangel von Lohnarbeitern und wo kein Ansiedler viel mehr Kapital besitzt, als er mit seinen eignen Händen anwenden kann."²⁶¹

Without slaves, capital shrinks to hand-worked scale

Wakefield writes: "The first Spanish settlers in Santo Domingo obtained no labourers from Spain. But without labourers" (that is, without slavery) "capital would have perished, or at least shrunk down to the small quantities that each individual could employ with his own hands. This actually occurred in the last colony founded by the English, where a great capital in seed, cattle, and implements perished for want of wage-labourers, and where no settler possesses much more capital than he can employ with his own hands." Note 261 (M-A [9], report-only, no local English-edition text): Wakefield, England and America, vol. II, p. 5.

Man sah: die Expropriation der Volksmasse von Grund und Boden bildet die Grundlage der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise. Das Wesen einer freien Kolonie besteht umgekehrt darin, daß die Masse des Bodens noch Volkseigentum ist und jeder Ansiedler daher einen Teil davon in sein Privateigentum und individuelles Produktionsmittel verwandeln kann, ohne den spätren Ansiedler an derselben Operation zu verhindern.²⁶² Dies ist das Geheimnis sowohl der Blüte der Kolonien als ihres Krebsschadens - ihres Widerstands wider die Ansiedlung des Kapitals.

Free colonies keep land as common property

We have seen that the expropriation of the mass of the people from the soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production. The essence of a free colony consists, conversely, in this: that the bulk of the land is still common land, public property of the people, so that every settler can turn part of it into his own private property and individual means of production, without hindering later settlers from doing the same. This is the secret both of the colonies' flourishing and of their canker — their resistance to capital's settling in. Note 262/[10]: "Land, to become an element of colonization, must not only be uncultivated, but public property, capable of being converted into private property." (Wakefield, England and America, vol. II, p. 125.)

"Wo Land sehr wohlfeil ist und alle Menschen frei sind, wo jeder nach Wunsch ein Stück Land für sich selbst erhalten kann, ist Arbeit nicht nur sehr teuer, was den Anteil des Arbeiters an seinem Produkt angeht, sondern die Schwierigkeit ist, kombinierte Arbeit zu irgendeinem Preis zu erhalten."²⁶³

Cheap land makes combined labour scarce

Wakefield writes: "Where land is very cheap and all people are free, where anyone who wishes can readily obtain a plot of land for himself, labour is not only very dear, so far as the worker's share of the product goes, but the difficulty is to obtain combined labour at any price." Note 263/[11]: Wakefield, England and America, vol. I, p. 247.

Da in den Kolonien die Scheidung des Arbeiters von den Arbeitsbedingungen und ihrer Wurzel, dem Grund und Boden, noch nicht existiert oder nur sporadisch oder auf zu beschränktem Spielraum, existiert auch noch nicht die Losscheidung der Agrikultur von der Industrie, noch nicht die Vernichtung der ländlich häuslichen Industrie, und wo soll da der innere Markt für das Kapital herkommen?

No separation from land, no inner market

Since in the colonies the separation of the worker from the conditions of labour, and from their root, the land, does not yet exist — or only sporadically, on much too narrow a scale — neither does the separation of agriculture from industry yet exist, nor the destruction of rural domestic industry. So where is capital's internal market supposed to come from?

"Kein Teil der Bevölkerung Amerikas ist ausschließlich agrikol, mit Ausnahme der Sklaven und ihrer Anwender, die Kapital und Arbeit für große Werke kombinieren. Freie Amerikaner, die den Boden selbst bauen, treiben zugleich viele andre Beschäftigungen. Ein Teil der von ihnen gebrauchten Möbel und Werkzeuge wird gewöhnlich von ihnen selbst gemacht. Sie bauen häufig ihre eignen Häuser und bringen das Produkt ihrer eignen Industrie zu noch so fernem Markt. Sie sind Spinner und Weber, sie fabrizieren Seife und Kerzen, Schuhe und Kleider für ihren eignen Gebrauch. In Amerika bildet der Landbau oft das Nebengeschäft eines Grobschmieds, Müllers oder Krämers."²⁶⁴

Self-sufficient Americans spin, weave, and farm

Wakefield writes: "No part of the population of America is exclusively agricultural, except the slaves and their employers, who combine capital and labour for large-scale works. Free Americans who cultivate the land themselves pursue many other occupations at the same time. Some of the furniture and tools they use is usually made by themselves. They frequently build their own houses, and carry the product of their own industry to market however far off it may be. They are spinners and weavers; they make soap and candles, and often shoes and clothes, for their own use. In America, farming is often the secondary business of a blacksmith, a miller, or a shopkeeper." Note 264/[12]: Wakefield, England and America, pp. 21, 22.

Wo bleibt unter solchen Käuzen das "Entsagungsfeld" für den Kapitalisten?

No field of abstinence for the capitalist

Among such queer customers as these, where is left the capitalist's "field of abstinence"?

Die große Schönheit der kapitalistischen Produktion besteht darin, daß sie nicht nur beständig den Lohnarbeiter als Lohnarbeiter reproduziert, sondern im Verhältnis zur Akkumulation des Kapitals stets eine relative Übervölkerung von Lohnarbeitern produziert. So wird das Gesetz von Arbeitsnachfrage und Zufuhr in richtigem Gleis gehalten, die Lohnschwankung innerhalb der kapitalistischen Exploitation zusagende Schranken gebannt und endlich die so unentbehrliche soziale Abhängigkeit des Arbeiters vom Kapitalisten verbürgt, ein absolutes Abhängigkeitsverhältnis, das der politische Ökonom zu Haus, im Mutterland, breimäulig umlügen kann in ein freies Kontraktverhältnis von Käufer und Verkäufer, von gleich unabhängigen Warenbesitzern, Besitzern der Ware Kapital und der Ware Arbeit. Aber in den Kolonien reißt der schöne Wahn entzwei. Die absolute Bevölkerung wächst hier viel rascher als im Mutterland, indem viele Arbeiter erwachsen auf die Welt kommen, und dennoch ist der Arbeitsmarkt stets untervoll. Das Gesetz der Arbeitsnachfrage und Zufuhr gerät in die Brüche. Einerseits wirft die alte Welt fortwährend exploitationslustiges, entsagungebedürftiges Kapital ein; andrerseits stößt die regelmäßige Reproduktion der Lohnarbeiter als Lohnarbeiter auf die unartigsten und teilweis unüberwindliche Hindernisse. Und nun gar die Produktion von überzähligen Lohnarbeitern im Verhältnis zur Akkumulation des Kapitals! Der Lohnarbeiter von heute wird morgen unabhängiger, selbstwirtschaftender Bauer oder Handwerker. Er verschwindet vom Arbeitsmarkt, aber - nicht ins Workehouse. Diese beständige Verwandlung der Lohnarbeiter in unabhängige Produzenten, die statt für das Kapital, für sich selbst arbeiten, und statt den Herrn Kapitalisten sich selbst bereichern, wirkt ihrerseits durchaus schadhaft auf die Zustände des Arbeitsmarkts zurück. Nicht nur bleibt der Exploitationsgrad des Lohnarbeiters unanständig niedrig. Der letztre verliert obendrein mit dem Abhängigkeitsverhältnis auch das Abhängigkeitsgefühl vom entsagenden Kapitalisten. Daher alle Mißstände, die unser E. G. Wakefield so brav, so beredt und so rührend schildert.

The colonies tear the beautiful illusion apart

The great beauty of capitalist production lies in this: it not only constantly reproduces the wage-worker as wage-worker, but always produces, in proportion to the accumulation of capital, a relative surplus-population of wage-workers. In this way the law of supply and demand for labour is kept on the right track, wage-fluctuation is confined within limits satisfactory to capitalist exploitation, and finally the so indispensable social dependence of the worker on the capitalist is guaranteed — an absolute relation of dependence which the political economist at home, in the mother country, can smugly lie into a free contractual relation between buyer and seller, between equally independent owners of commodities, the owner of the commodity capital and the owner of the commodity labour. But in the colonies this pretty illusion is torn apart. The absolute population grows here much faster than in the mother country, since many workers come into the world already grown up, and yet the labour-market remains constantly understocked. The law of supply and demand for labour breaks down. On the one hand, the old world is constantly throwing in capital greedy for exploitation and needing to "abstain"; on the other hand, the regular reproduction of the wage-worker as wage-worker runs into the most unruly and, in part, insuperable obstacles. And then there is the production of wage-workers superfluous in proportion to the accumulation of capital! Today's wage-worker becomes tomorrow's independent, self-working farmer or artisan. He vanishes from the labour-market — but not into the workhouse. This constant transformation of wage-workers into independent producers, who work for themselves instead of for capital, and enrich themselves instead of their capitalist master, reacts in turn quite ruinously on conditions in the labour-market. Not only does the wage-worker's degree of exploitation remain indecently low; he also loses, along with the relation of dependence, the very feeling of dependence on the abstaining capitalist. Hence all the ills that our E. G. Wakefield describes so worthily, so eloquently, and so touchingly.

Die Zufuhr von Lohnarbeit, klagt er, ist weder beständig noch regelmäßig, noch genügend. Sie "ist stets nicht nur zu klein, sondern unsicher"²⁶⁵.

Wakefield complains labour supply is never enough

The supply of wage-labour, he complains, is neither constant, nor regular, nor sufficient. It "is always not only too small, but uncertain."

"Obgleich das zwischen Arbeiter und Kapitalist zu teilende Produkt groß ist, nimmt der Arbeiter einen so großen Teil, daß er rasch ein Kapitalist wird ... Dagegen können wenige, selbst wenn sie ungewöhnlich lang leben, große Reichtumsmassen akkumulieren. "²⁶⁶

Wakefield: workers turn capitalist too fast

"Although the product to be divided between worker and capitalist is large, the worker takes so large a share of it that he quickly becomes a capitalist himself... Few, on the other hand, even if they live unusually long, can accumulate great masses of wealth."

Die Arbeiter erlauben den Kapitalisten platterdings nicht, auf Zahlung des größten Teils ihrer Arbeit zu entsagen. Es hilft ihm nichts, wenn er so schlau ist, mit seinem eignen Kapital auch seine eignen Lohnarbeiter aus Europa zu importieren.

Workers refuse the capitalist his forbearance

The workers simply do not allow the capitalist to forgo payment for the greater part of their labour. It does him no good even if he is cunning enough to import, with his own capital, his own wage-workers from Europe.

"Sie hören bald auf, Lohnarbeiter zu sein, sie verwandeln sich bald in unabhängige Bauern oder gar in Konkurrenten ihrer alten Meister auf dem Lohnarbeitsmarkt selbst."²⁶⁷

Imported workers soon become the master's rivals

"They soon cease to be wage-workers; they soon turn into independent farmers, or even into competitors of their old masters in the very wage-labour market."

Man begreife den Greuel! Der brave Kapitalist hat seine eignen leibhaftigen Konkurrenten selbst aus Europa für sein eignes gutes Geld importiert! Da hört denn doch alles auf! Kein Wunder, wenn Wakefield klagt über mangelndes Abhängigkeitsverhältnis und Abhängigkeitsgefühl der Lohnarbeiter in den Kolonien. Wegen der hohen Löhne, sagt sein Schüler Merivale, existiert in den Kolonien der leidenschaftliche Drang nach wohlfeilerer und unterwürfigerer Arbeit, nach einer Klasse, welcher der Kapitalist die Bedingungen diktieren kann, statt sie von ihr diktiert zu erhalten ... In altzivilisierten Ländern ist der Arbeiter, obgleich frei, naturgesetzlich abhängig vom Kapitalisten, in Kolonien muß diese Abhängigkeit durch künstliche Mittel geschaffen werden.²⁶⁸

Wakefield's horror: he imported his own rivals

Just grasp the horror of it! The worthy capitalist has imported, with his own good money, his own flesh-and-blood competitors, straight from Europe! That really is the last straw! No wonder Wakefield complains of the colonial wage-worker's lacking relation of dependence, and lacking feeling of dependence. Because of high wages, says his disciple Merivale, there exists in the colonies a passionate longing for cheaper and more submissive labour — for a class to whom the capitalist can dictate terms, instead of having terms dictated to him... In long-civilised countries the worker, though free, is by a law of nature dependent on the capitalist; in colonies this dependence has to be created by artificial means.

Was ist nun, nach Wakefield, die Folge dieses Mißstands in den Kolonien? Ein "barbarisches System der Zerstreuung" der Produzenten und des Nationalvermögens.²⁶⁹ Die Zersplitterung der Produktionsmittel unter unzählige, selbstwirtschaftende Eigentümer vernichtet mit der Zentralisation des Kapitals alle Grundlage kombinierter Arbeit. Jedes langatmige Unternehmen, das sich über Jahre erstreckt und Auslage von fixem Kapital erheischt, stößt auf Hindernisse der Ausführung. In Europa zögert das Kapital keinen Augenblick, denn die Arbeiterklasse bildet sein lebendiges Zubehör, stets im Überfluß da, stets zur Verfügung. Aber in den Kolonialländern! Wakefield erzählt eine äußerst schmerzensreiche Anekdote. Er unterhielt sich mit einigen Kapitalisten von Kanada und dem Staat New York, wo zudem die Einwanderungswogen oft stocken und einen Bodensatz "überzähliger" Arbeiter niederschlagen.

Dispersed owners block combined, long-term capital

What, then, is the consequence of this unfortunate state of affairs in the colonies, according to Wakefield? A "barbarising system of dispersion" of the producers and of the national wealth. The splitting-up of the means of production among countless, self-working owners destroys, along with the centralisation of capital, every foundation for combined labour. Every long-drawn-out undertaking, stretching over years and requiring an outlay of fixed capital, meets with obstacles to its execution. In Europe capital hesitates not a moment, for the working class forms its living appendage, always there in excess, always at its disposal. But in the colonial countries! Wakefield tells an extremely painful anecdote. He had been talking with some capitalists of Canada and the state of New York, where, besides, the waves of immigration often stagnate and deposit a sediment of "supernumerary" workers.

"Unser Kapital", seufzt eine der Personen des Melodramas, "unser Kapital lag bereit für viele Operationen, die eine beträchtliche Zeitperiode zu ihrer Vollendung brauchen; aber konnten wir solche Operationen beginnen mit Arbeitern, welche, wir wußten es, uns bald den Rücken wenden würden? Wären wir sicher gewesen, die Arbeit solcher Einwandrer festhalten zu können, wir hätten sie mit Freude sofort engagiert und zu hohem Preis. Ja, trotz der Sicherheit ihres Verlustes würden wir sie dennoch engagiert haben, wären wir einer frischen Zufuhr je nach unsrem Bedürfnis sicher gewesen."²⁷⁰

A capitalist laments unreliable immigrant labour

"Our capital," sighs one of the characters in the melodrama, "our capital lay ready for many operations that need a considerable stretch of time to complete; but could we begin such operations with workers whom, we knew, would soon turn their backs on us? Had we been sure of being able to keep hold of such immigrants' labour, we would gladly have engaged them at once, and at a high price. Indeed, despite the certainty of losing them, we would still have engaged them, had we been sure of a fresh supply whenever we needed it."

Nachdem Wakefield die englische kapitalistische Agrikultur und ihre "kombinierte" Arbeit prunkvoll kontrastiert hat mit der zerstreuten amerikanischen Bauernwirtschaft, entschlüpft ihm auch die Kehrseite der Medaille. Er schildert die amerikanische Volksmasse als wohlhabend, unabhängig, unternehmend und relativ gebildet, während

Wakefield lets slip the medal's other side

After Wakefield has grandly contrasted English capitalist agriculture and its "combined" labour with the dispersed American farming economy, the other side of the medal also slips out from him. He depicts the mass of the American people as prosperous, independent, enterprising, and relatively educated, while —

"der englische Agrikulturarbeiter ein elender Lump (a miserable wretch) ist, ein Pauper ... In welchem Land außer Nordamerika und einigen neuen Kolonien übersteigen die Löhne der auf dem Land angewandten freien Arbeit nennenswert die unentbehrlichsten Subsistenzmittel des Arbeiters? ... Zweifelsohne, Ackerpferde in England, da sie ein wertvolles Eigentum sind, werden viel besser genährt als der englische Landbebauer."²⁷¹

English farm-hands fare worse than farm-horses

— "the English agricultural labourer is a miserable wretch, a pauper... In what country, except North America and some new colonies, do the wages of free labour employed on the land notably exceed the labourer's barest means of subsistence?... Beyond doubt, farm-horses in England, being valuable property, are much better fed than the English farm labourer."

Aber never mind <was soll's>, Nationalreichtum ist nun einmal von Natur identisch mit Volkselend.

National wealth equals popular misery, apparently

But never mind — national wealth is, by its very nature, simply identical with popular misery.

Wie nun den antikapitalistischen Krebsschaden der Kolonien heilen? Wollte man allen Grund und Boden mit einem Schlag aus Volkseigentum in Privateigentum verwandeln, so zerstörte man zwar die Wurzel des Übels, aber auch - die Kolonie. Die Kunst ist, zwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe zu schlagen. Man gebe von Regierungs wegen der jungfräulichen Erde einen vom Gesetz der Nachfrage und Zufuhr unabhängigen, einen künstlichen Preis, welcher den Einwandrer zwingt, längere Zeit zu lohnarbeiten, bis er genug Geld verdienen kann, um Grund und Boden zu kaufen²⁷² und sich in einen unabhängigen Bauern zu verwandeln. Den Fonds, der aus dem Verkauf der Ländereien zu einem für den Lohnarbeiter relativ prohibitorischen Preis fließt, also diesen aus dem Arbeitslohn durch Verletzung des heiligen Gesetzes von Nachfrage und Zufuhr erpreßten Geldfonds, verwende die Regierung andrerseits, um im selben Maß, wie er wächst, Habenichtse aus Europa in die Kolonien zu importieren und so dem Herrn Kapitalisten seinen Lohnarbeitsmarkt vollzuhalten. Unter diesen Umständen tout sera pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles <alles ist aufs beste bestellt in der besten aller Welten>. Dies ist das große Geheimnis der "systematischen Kolonisation".

The great secret of systematic colonisation

How, then, to cure the colonies' anti-capitalist canker? If one wanted to turn all land at a single stroke from public into private property, one would indeed destroy the root of the evil — but also the colony. The trick is to kill two birds with one stone. Let the government set on virgin soil, by law, a price independent of the law of supply and demand — an artificial price that compels the immigrant to work for wages for a longer time, until he can earn enough money to buy land and turn himself into an independent farmer. The fund that flows from selling the land at a price relatively prohibitive for the wage-worker — that is, this money fund extorted from wages by violating the sacred law of supply and demand — the government should then use, on the other hand, to import, in the same measure as it grows, have-nothings from Europe into the colonies, and so keep the wage-labour market full for the capitalist gentleman. Under these circumstances, tout sera pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles — all is arranged for the best in the best of all possible worlds. This is the great secret of "systematic colonization."

"Nach diesem Plan", ruft Wakefield triumphierend aus, "muß die Zufuhr von Arbeit konstant und regelmäßig sein; denn erstens, da kein Arbeiter fähig ist, sich Land zu verschaffen, bevor er für Geld gearbeitet hat, würden alle einwandernden Arbeiter dadurch, daß sie für Lohn kombiniert arbeiten, ihrem Anwender Kapital zur Anwendung von mehr Arbeit produzieren; zweitens jeder, der die Lohnarbeit an den Nagel hinge und Grundeigner würde, würde grade durch den Ankauf des Landes einen Fonds zur Herüberbringung frischer Arbeit nach den Kolonien sichern."²⁷³

Wakefield's plan promises a constant labour supply

"Under this plan," Wakefield cries out triumphantly, "the supply of labour must be constant and regular; for, first, since no worker is able to acquire land before he has worked for money, all immigrant workers, by working in combination for wages, would produce capital for their employer to set more labour to work; and second, everyone who hangs up wage-labour and becomes a landowner would, precisely by purchasing the land, secure a fund for bringing fresh labour over to the colonies."

Der von Staats wegen oktroyierte Bodenpreis muß natürlich "genügend" (sufficient price) sein, d.h. so hoch, "daß er die Arbeiter verhindert, unabhängige Bauern zu werden, bis andre da sind, um ihren Platz auf dem Lohnarbeitsmarkt einzunehmen"²⁷⁴. Dieser "genügende Bodenpreis" ist nichts als eine euphemistische Umschreibung des Lösegelds, welches der Arbeiter dem Kapitalisten zahlt für die Erlaubnis, sich vom Lohnarbeitsmarkt aufs Land zurückzuziehn. Erst muß er dem Herrn Kapitalisten "Kapital" schaffen, damit er mehr Arbeiter ausbeuten könne, und dann auf dem Arbeitsmarkt einen "Ersatzmann" stellen, den die Regierung auf seine Kosten seinem ehemaligen Herrn Kapitalisten über die See spediert.

The 'sufficient price' is really a ransom

The land price imposed by the state must of course be a "sufficient price" — that is, so high "as to prevent the workers from becoming independent farmers until others are there to take their place in the wage-labour market." This "sufficient land price" is nothing but a euphemistic paraphrase for the ransom that the worker pays the capitalist for permission to withdraw from the wage-labour market onto the land. First he must create "capital" for his capitalist master, so that the latter can exploit more workers, and then provide a "substitute" on the labour-market, whom the government ships overseas to his former capitalist master at the worker's own expense.

Es ist höchst charakteristisch, daß die englische Regierung diese von Herrn Wakefield eigens zum Gebrauch in Kolonialländern verschriebene Methode der "ursprünglichen Akkumulation" jahrelang ausgeführt hat. Das Fiasko war natürlich ebenso schmählich als das des Peelschen Bankakts. Der Emigrationsstrom wurde nur von den englischen Kolonien nach den Vereinigten Staaten abgelenkt. Unterdes hat der Fortschritt der kapitalistischen Produktion in Europa, begleitet von wachsendem Regierungsdruck, Wakefields Rezept überflüssig gemacht. Einerseits läßt der ungeheure und kontinuierliche Menschenstrom, jahraus, jahrein nach Amerika getrieben, stockende Niederschläge im Osten der Vereinigten Staaten zurück, indem die Emigrationswelle von Europa die Menschen rascher dorthin auf den Arbeitsmarkt wirft, als die Emigrationswelle nach dem Westen sie abspülen kann. Andrerseits hat der Amerikanische Bürgerkrieg eine kolossale Nationalschuld in seinem Gefolge gehabt und mit ihr Steuerdruck, Erzeugung der allergemeinsten Finanzaristokratie, Verschenkung eines ungeheuren Teils der öffentlichen Ländereien an Spekulanten-Gesellschaften zur Ausbeutung von Eisenbahnen, Bergwerken etc. - kurz die rascheste Zentralisation des Kapitals. Die große Republik hat also aufgehört, das gelobte Land für auswandernde Arbeiter zu sein. Die kapitalistische Produktion geht dort mit Riesenschritten voran, wenn auch Lohnsenkung und Abhängigkeit des Lohnarbeiters noch lange nicht auf das europäische Normalniveau heruntergebracht sind. Die von Wakefield selbst so laut denunzierte, schamlose Verschleuderung des unbebauten Kolonialbodens an Aristokraten und Kapitalisten seitens der englischen Regierung hat namentlich in Australien²⁷⁵, zusammen mit dem Menschenstrom, den die Gold-Diggings <Gold-Fundstätten> hinziehn, und der Konkurrenz, welche der Import englischer Waren selbst dem kleinsten Handwerker macht, eine hinreichende "relative Abeiterübervölkerung" erzeugt, so daß fast jedes Postdampfschiff die Hiobspost einer Überfüllung des australischen Arbeitsmarktes - "glut of the Australian labour-market" - bringt, und die Prostitution dort stellenweis so üppig gedeiht wie auf dem Haymarket von London.

Wakefield's fiasco, then Australia's own surplus

It is highly characteristic that the English government carried out, for years, this method of "primitive accumulation" that Mr Wakefield had prescribed expressly for use in colonial countries. The fiasco was, of course, just as disgraceful as that of Peel's Bank Act. The stream of emigration was merely diverted from the English colonies to the United States. Meanwhile, the advance of capitalist production in Europe, accompanied by growing government pressure, has made Wakefield's recipe superfluous. On the one hand, the huge and continuous stream of people driven, year in, year out, to America, leaves behind stagnant deposits in the eastern United States, since the wave of emigration from Europe throws people onto the labour-market there faster than the wave of emigration westward can wash them away. On the other hand, the American Civil War brought a colossal national debt in its train, and with it tax pressure, the breeding of the most vulgar financial aristocracy, and the giving-away of a huge part of the public lands to speculator-companies for the exploitation of railways, mines, and so on — in short, the most rapid centralisation of capital. The great republic has therefore ceased to be the promised land for emigrating workers. Capitalist production advances there with giant strides, even though the lowering of wages and the wage-worker's dependence are still far from having been brought down to the normal European level. The shameless squandering of uncultivated colonial land on aristocrats and capitalists by the English government, so loudly denounced by Wakefield himself, has, particularly in Australia, together with the stream of people the gold-diggings draw in, and the competition that the import of English goods creates even for the smallest artisan, produced a sufficient "relative surplus-population of workers" — so much so that almost every mail-steamer brings the bad news of a glut of the Australian labour-market, and prostitution there flourishes in places as luxuriantly as in London's Haymarket.

Jedoch beschäftigt uns hier nicht der Zustand der Kolonien. Was uns allein interessiert, ist das in der neuen Welt von der politischen Ökonomie der alten Welt entdeckte und laut proklamierte Geheimnis: kapitalistische Produktions- und Akkumulationsweise, also auch kapitalistisches Privateigentum, bedingen die Vernichtung des auf eigner Arbeit beruhenden Privateigentums, d.h. die Expropriation des Arbeiters.

The final secret: worker expropriation, not colonies

However, the condition of the colonies is not what concerns us here. What alone interests us is the secret, discovered in the New World and proclaimed aloud by the Old World's political economy: that the capitalist mode of production and accumulation, and hence also capitalist private property, require the annihilation of private property founded on one's own labour — that is, the expropriation of the worker.

K.25

The Modern Theory of Colonisation

Political economy confuses on principle two very different kinds of private property, of which one rests on the producers’ own labour, the other on the employment of the labour of others. It forgets that the latter not only is the direct antithesis of the former, but absolutely grows on its tomb only. In Western Europe, the home of Political Economy, the process of primitive accumulation is more of less accomplished. Here the capitalist regime has either directly conquered the whole domain of national production, or, where economic conditions are less developed, it, at least, indirectly controls those strata of society which, though belonging to the antiquated mode of production, continue to exist side by side with it in gradual decay. To this ready-made world of capital, the political economist applies the notions of law and of property inherited from a pre-capitalistic world with all the more anxious zeal and all the greater unction, the more loudly the facts cry out in the face of his ideology. It is otherwise in the colonies. There the capitalist regime everywhere comes into collision with the resistance of the producer, who, as owner of his own conditions of labour, employs that labour to enrich himself, instead of the capitalist. The contradiction of these two diametrically opposed economic systems, manifests itself here practically in a struggle between them. Where the capitalist has at his back the power of the mother-country, he tries to clear out of his way by force the modes of production and appropriation based on the independent labour of the producer. The same interest, which compels the sycophant of capital, the political economist, in the mother-country, to proclaim the theoretical identity of the capitalist mode of production with its contrary, that same interest compels him in the colonies to make a clean breast of it, and to proclaim aloud the antagonism of the two modes of production. To this end, he proves how the development of the social productive power of labour, co-operation, division of labour, use of machinery on a large scale, &c., are impossible without the expropriation of the labourers, and the corresponding transformation of their means of production into capital. In the interest of the so-called national wealth, he seeks for artificial means to ensure the poverty of the people. Here his apologetic armor crumbles off, bit by bit, like rotten touchwood. It is the great merit of E.G. Wakefield to have discovered, not anything new about the Colonies ², but to have discovered in the Colonies the truth as to the conditions of capitalist production in the mother country. As the system of protection at its origin ³ attempted to manufacture capitalists artificially in the mother-country, so Wakefield’s colonisation theory, which England tried for a time to enforce by Acts of Parliament, attempted to effect the manufacture of wage-workers in the Colonies. This he calls “systematic colonisation.”

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What counts as a real colony

Two opposed kinds of private property

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Political economy's finished capitalist world

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In the colonies, the producer resists

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Wakefield's true discovery: systematic colonization

First of all, Wakefield discovered that in the Colonies, property in money, means of subsistence, machines, and other means of production, does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if there be wanting the correlative — the wage-worker, the other man who is compelled to sell himself of his own free will. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things. Mr. Peel, he moans, took with him from England to Swan River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of production to the amount of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight to bring with him, besides, 300 persons of the working class, men, women, and children. Once arrived at his destination, “Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river.” ⁵ Unhappy Mr. Peel who provided for everything except the export of English modes of production to Swan River!

Capital is a social relation, not things

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Peel's workers, minus English production relations

For the understanding of the following discoveries of Wakefield, two preliminary remarks: We know that the means of production and subsistence, while they remain the property of the immediate producer, are not capital. They become capital only under circumstances in which they serve at the same time as means of exploitation and subjection of the labourer. But this capitalist soul of theirs is so intimately wedded, in the head of the political economist, to their material substance, that he christens them capital under all circumstances, even when they are its exact opposite. Thus is it with Wakefield. Further: the splitting up of the means of production into the individual property of many independent labourers, working on their own account, he calls equal division of capital. It is with the political economist as with the feudal jurist. The latter stuck on to pure monetary relations the labels supplied by feudal law.

Means of production are not capital alone

“If,” says Wakefield, “all members of the society are supposed to possess equal portions of capital... no man would have a motive for accumulating more capital than he could use with his own hands. This is to some extent the case in new American settlements, where a passion for owning land prevents the existence of a class of labourers for hire.” ⁶ So long, therefore, as the labourer can accumulate for himself — and this he can do so long as he remains possessor of his means of production — capitalist accumulation and the capitalistic mode of production are impossible. The class of wage labourers, essential to these, is wanting. How, then, in old Europe, was the expropriation of the labourer from his conditions of labour, i.e., the co-existence of capital and wage labour, brought about? By a social contract of a quite original kind. “Mankind have adopted a... simple contrivance for promoting the accumulation of capital,” which, of course, since the time of Adam, floated in their imagination, floated in their imagination as the sole and final end of their existence: “they have divided themselves into owners of capital and owners of labour.... The division was the result of concert and combination.” ⁷ In one word: the mass of mankind expropriated itself in honor of the “accumulation of capital.” Now, one would think that this instinct of self-denying fanaticism would give itself full fling especially in the Colonies, where alone exist the men and conditions that could turn a social contract from a dream to a reality. But why, then, should “systematic colonisation” be called in to replace its opposite, spontaneous, unregulated colonisation? But - but - “In the Northern States of the American Union; it may be doubted whether so many as a tenth of the people would fall under the description of hired labourers.... In England... the labouring class compose the bulk of the people.” ⁸ Nay, the impulse to self-expropriation on the part of labouring humanity for the glory of capital, exists so little that slavery, according to Wakefield himself, is the sole natural basis of Colonial wealth. His systematic colonisation is a mere pis aller, since he unfortunately has to do with free men, not with slaves. “The first Spanish settlers in Saint Domingo did not obtain labourers from Spain. But, without labourers, their capital must have perished, or at least, must soon have been diminished to that small amount which each individual could employ with his own hands. This has actually occurred in the last Colony founded by England — the Swan River Settlement — where a great mass of capital, of seeds, implements, and cattle, has perished for want of labourers to use it, and where no settler has preserved much more capital than he can employ with his own hands.”

Wakefield: equal capital removes wage-labour

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No self-accumulating owner needs wage-labour

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Humanity's simple method for accumulation

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Self-expropriation's irony fails even in colonies

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America's tenth versus England's mass of wage-labourers

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Slavery, not self-expropriation, built colonial wealth

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Without slaves, capital shrinks to hand-worked scale

We have seen that the expropriation of the mass of the people from the soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production. The essence of a free colony, on the contrary, consists in this — that the bulk of the soil is still public property, and every settler on it therefore can turn part of it into his private property and individual means of production, without hindering the later settlers in the same operation.¹⁰ This is the secret both of the prosperity of the colonies and of their inveterate vice — opposition to the establishment of capital. “Where land is very cheap and all men are free, where every one who so pleases can easily obtain a piece of land for himself, not only is labour very dear, as respects the labourer’s share of the produce, but the difficulty is to obtain combined labour at any price.” ¹¹

Free colonies keep land as common property

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Cheap land makes combined labour scarce

As in the colonies the separation of the labourer from the conditions of labour and their root, the soil, does not exist, or only sporadically, or on too limited a scale, so neither does the separation of agriculture from industry exist, nor the destruction of the household industry of the peasantry. Whence then is to come the internal market for capital? “No part of the population of America is exclusively agricultural, excepting slaves and their employers who combine capital and labour in particular works. Free Americans, who cultivate the soil, follow many other occupations. Some portion of the furniture and tools which they use is commonly made by themselves. They frequently build their own houses, and carry to market, at whatever distance, the produce of their own industry. They are spinners and weavers; they make soap and candles, as well as, in many cases, shoes and clothes for their own use. In America the cultivation of land is often the secondary pursuit of a blacksmith, a miller or a shopkeeper.” ¹² With such queer people as these, where is the “field of abstinence” for the capitalists?

No separation from land, no inner market

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Self-sufficient Americans spin, weave, and farm

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No field of abstinence for the capitalist

Among such queer customers as these, where is left the capitalist's "field of abstinence"?

The great beauty of capitalist production consists in this — that it not only constantly reproduces the wage-worker as wage-worker, but produces always, in proportion to the accumulation of capital, a relative surplus-population of wage-workers. Thus the law of supply and demand of labour is kept in the right rut, the oscillation of wages is penned within limits satisfactory to capitalist exploitation, and lastly, the social dependence of the labourer on the capitalist, that indispensable requisite, is secured; an unmistakable relation of dependence, which the smug political economist, at home, in the mother-country, can transmogrify into one of free contract between buyer and seller, between equally independent owners of commodities, the owner of the commodity capital and the owner of the commodity labour. But in the colonies, this pretty fancy is torn asunder. The absolute population here increases much more quickly than in the mother-country, because many labourers enter this world as ready-made adults, and yet the labour-market is always understocked. The law of supply and demand of labour falls to pieces. On the one hand, the old world constantly throws in capital, thirsting after exploitation and “abstinence”; on the other, the regular reproduction of the wage labourer as wage labourer comes into collision with impediments the most impertinent and in part invincible. What becomes of the production of wage-labourers, supernumerary in proportion to the accumulation of capital? The wage-worker of to-day is to-morrow an independent peasant, or artisan, working for himself. He vanishes from the labour-market, but not into the workhouse. This constant transformation of the wage-labourers into independent producers, who work for themselves instead of for capital, and enrich themselves instead of the capitalist gentry, reacts in its turn very perversely on the conditions of the labour-market. Not only does the degree of exploitation of the wage labourer remain indecently low. The wage labourer loses into the bargain, along with the relation of dependence, also the sentiment of dependence on the abstemious capitalist. Hence all the inconveniences that our E. G. Wakefield pictures so doughtily, so eloquently, so pathetically. The supply of wage labour, he complains, is neither constant, nor regular, nor sufficient. “The supply of labour is always not only small but uncertain.” ¹³ “Though the produce divided between the capitalist and the labourer be large, the labourer takes so great a share that he soon becomes a capitalist.... Few, even those whose lives are unusually long, can accumulate great masses of wealth.” ¹⁴ The labourers most distinctly decline to allow the capitalist to abstain from the payment of the greater part of their labour. It avails him nothing, if he is so cunning as to import from Europe, with his own capital, his own wage-workers. They soon “cease... to be labourers for hire; they... become independent landowners, if not competitors with their former masters in the labour-market.” ¹⁵ Think of the horror! The excellent capitalist has imported bodily from Europe, with his own good money, his own competitors! The end of the world has come! No wonder Wakefield laments the absence of all dependence and of all sentiment of dependence on the part of the wage-workers in the colonies. On account of the high wages, says his disciple, Merivale, there is in the colonies “the urgent desire for cheaper and more subservient labourers — for a class to whom the capitalist might dictate terms, instead of being dictated to by them.... In ancient civilised countries the labourer, though free, is by a law of Nature dependent on capitalists; in colonies this dependence must be created by artificial means.” ¹⁶

The colonies tear the beautiful illusion apart

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Wakefield complains labour supply is never enough

The supply of wage-labour, he complains, is neither constant, nor regular, nor sufficient. It "is always not only too small, but uncertain."

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Wakefield: workers turn capitalist too fast

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Workers refuse the capitalist his forbearance

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Imported workers soon become the master's rivals

"They soon cease to be wage-workers; they soon turn into independent farmers, or even into competitors of their old masters in the very wage-labour market."

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Wakefield's horror: he imported his own rivals

What is now, according to Wakefield, the consequence of this unfortunate state of things in the colonies? A “barbarising tendency of dispersion” of producers and national wealth.¹⁷ The parcelling-out of the means of production among innumerable owners, working on their own account, annihilates, along with the centralisation of capital, all the foundation of combined labour. Every long-winded undertaking, extending over several years and demanding outlay of fixed capital, is prevented from being carried out. In Europe, capital invests without hesitating a moment, for the working class constitutes its living appurtenance, always in excess, always at disposal. But in the colonies! Wakefield tells an extremely doleful anecdote. He was talking with some capitalists of Canada and the state of New York, where the immigrant wave often becomes stagnant and deposits a sediment of “supernumerary” labourers. “Our capital,” says one of the characters in the melodrama, "was ready for many operations which require a considerable period of time for their completion; but we could not begin such operations with labour which, we knew, would soon leave us. If we had been sure of retaining the labour of such emigrants, we should have been glad to have engaged it at once, and for a high price: and we should have engaged it, even though we had been sure it would leave us, provided we had been sure of a fresh supply whenever we might need it.”

Dispersed owners block combined, long-term capital

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A capitalist laments unreliable immigrant labour

After Wakefield has constructed the English capitalist agriculture and its “combined” labour with the scattered cultivation of American peasants, he unwittingly gives us a glimpse at the reverse of the medal. He depicts the mass of the American people as well-to-do, independent, enterprising, and comparatively cultured, whilst “the English agricultural labourer is miserable wretch, a pauper.... In what country, except North America and some new colonies, do the wages of free labour employed in agriculture much exceed a bare subsistence for the labourer? ... Undoubtedly , farm-horses in England, being a valuable property, are better fed than English peasants.” ¹⁹ But, never mind, national wealth is, once again, by its very nature, identical with misery of the people.

Wakefield lets slip the medal's other side

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English farm-hands fare worse than farm-horses

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National wealth equals popular misery, apparently

But never mind — national wealth is, by its very nature, simply identical with popular misery.

How, then, to heal the anti-capitalistic cancer of the colonies? If men were willing, at a blow, to turn all the soil from public into private property, they would destroy certainly the root of the evil, but also — the colonies. The trick is how to kill two birds with one stone. Let the Government put upon the virgin soil an artificial price, independent of the law of supply and demand, a price that compels the immigrant to work a long time for wages before he can earn enough money to buy land, and turn himself into an independent peasant.²⁰ The fund resulting from the sale of land at a price relatively prohibitory for the wage-workers, this fund of money extorted from the wages of labour by violation of the sacred law of supply and demand, the Government is to employ, on the other hand, in proportion as it grows; to import have-nothings from Europe into the colonies, and thus keep the wage labour market full for the capitalists. Under these circumstances, tout sera pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles. This is the great secret of “systematic colonisation.” By this plan, Wakefield cries in triumph, “the supply of labour must be constant and regular, because, first, as no labourer would be able to procure land until he had worked for money, all immigrant labourers, working for a time for wages and in combination, would produce capital for the employment of more labourers; secondly, because every labourer who left off working for wages and became a landowner would, by purchasing land, provide a fund for bringing fresh labour to the colony.” ²¹ The price of the soil imposed by the State must, of course, be a “sufficient price” — i.e., so high “as to prevent the labourers from becoming independent landowners until others had followed to take their place.” ²² This “sufficient price for the land” is nothing but a euphemistic circumlocution for the ransom which the labourer pays to the capitalist for leave to retire from the wage labour market to the land. First, he must create for the capitalist “capital,” with which the latter may be able to exploit more labourers; then he must place, at his own expense, a locum tenens [placeholder] on the labour market, whom the Government forwards across the sea for the benefit of his old master, the capitalist.

The great secret of systematic colonisation

M–A merges

Wakefield's plan promises a constant labour supply

M–A merges

The 'sufficient price' is really a ransom

It is very characteristic that the English Government for years practised this method of “primitive accumulation” prescribed by Mr. Wakefield expressly for the use of the colonies. The fiasco was, of course, as complete as that of Sir Robert Peel’s Bank Act. The stream of emigration was only diverted from the English colonies to the United States. Meanwhile, the advance of capitalistic production in Europe, accompanied by increasing Government pressure, has rendered Wakefield’s recipe superfluous. On the one hand, the enormous and ceaseless stream of men, year after year driven upon America, leaves behind a stationary sediment in the east of the United States, the wave of immigration from Europe throwing men on the labour-market there more rapidly than the wave of emigration westwards can wash them away. On the other hand, the American Civil War brought in its train a colossal national debt, and, with it, pressure of taxes, the rise of the vilest financial aristocracy, the squandering of a huge part of the public land on speculative companies for the exploitation of railways, mines, &c., in brief, the most rapid centralisation of capital. The great republic has, therefore, ceased to be the promised land for emigrant labourers. Capitalistic production advances there with giant strides, even though the lowering of wages and the dependence of the wage-worker are yet far from being brought down to the normal European level. The shameless lavishing of uncultivated colonial land on aristocrats and capitalists by the Government, so loudly denounced even by Wakefield, has produced, especially in Australia ²³, in conjunction with the stream of men that the gold diggings attract, and with the competition that the importation of English-commodities causes even to the smallest artisan, an ample “relative surplus labouring population,” so that almost every mail brings the Job’s news of a “glut of the Australia labour-market,” and the prostitution in some places flourishes as wantonly as in the London Haymarket.

Wakefield's fiasco, then Australia's own surplus

However, we are not concerned here with the conditions of the colonies. The only thing that interests us is the secret discovered in the new world by the Political Economy of the old world, and proclaimed on the housetops: that the capitalist mode of production and accumulation, and therefore capitalist private property, have for their fundamental condition the annihilation of self-earned private property; in other words, the expropriation of the labourer.

The final secret: worker expropriation, not colonies