Theories of Surplus Value, Marx 1861-3
[CHAPTER VII] Linguet
[Early Critique of the Bourgeois-Liberal View of the
“Freedom” of the Labourer]
||438| Linguet,
Théorie des lois civiles, etc.,
Londres, 1767.
In accordance with the plan of my work socialist and
communist writers are entirely excluded from the historical
reviews. These reviews are only intended to show on
the one hand in what form the political economists
criticised each other, and on the other hand the
historically determining forms in which the laws of
political economy were first stated and further
developed. In dealing with surplus-value I therefore
exclude such eighteenth-century writers as Brissot, Godwin
and the like, and likewise the nineteenth-century socialists
and communists. The few socialist writers whom I shall
come to speak of in this survey either themselves adopt the
standpoint of bourgeois economy or contest it from its own
standpoint.
Linguet however is not a socialist. His polemics
against the bourgeois-liberal ideals of the Enlighteners,
his contemporaries, against the dominion of the bourgeoisie
that was then beginning, are given—half-seriously,
half-ironically—a reactionary appearance. He
defends Asiatic despotism against the civilised European
forms of despotism; thus he defends slavery against
wage-labour.
Vol. I. The only statement directed against
Montesquieu: l’esprit des lois, c’est la
propriété,* shows the depth of his
outlook.
The only economists whom Linguet found to deal with were
the Physiocrats.
The rich have taken possession of all the conditions of
production; [hence] the alienation of the conditions of
production, which in their simplest form are the natural
elements themselves.
“In our civilised countries, all the
elements [of nature] are slaves” ([Linguet,
Théorie des lois civiles…, Londres,
1767], p. 188).
In order to get hold of some of this wealth appropriated
by the rich, it must be purchased with heavy labour, which
increases the wealth of these rich persons.
“Thus it is that all captive nature
has ceased to offer to these children resources of easy
access for the maintenance of their life. Its favours
must be paid for by assiduous toil, and its gifts by
stubborn labours” [p. 188].
(Here—in the gifts of nature—the Physiocratic
view is echoed.)
“The rich man, wino has arrogated
to himself the exclusive possession of it, only at this
price consents to restore even the smallest part of it to
the community. In order to be allowed to share in
its treasures, it is necessary to labour to increase
them” (p. 189). “One must, then,
renounce this chimera of liberty” (p. 190).
Laws exist in order to “sanctify a primary
usurpation” (of private property), “to prevent
new usurpations” (p. 192). “They are, as
it were, a conspiracy against the greater part of the human
race” [p. 195] (that is, against those who own no
property). “It is society which has produced the
laws, and not the laws which have produced society”
(p. 230). “Property existed before the
laws” (p. 236).
Society itself—the fact that man lives in society
and not as an independent, self-supporting
individual—is the root of property, of the laws based
on it and of the inevitable slavery.
On the one hand, there were peaceful and isolated
husband-men and shepherds. On the other hand—
“hunters accustomed to live by blood,
to gather together in bands the more easily to entrap and
fell the beasts on which they fed, and to concert together
on the division of the spoils” (p. 279).
“It is among the hunters that the first signs of
society must have appeared” (p. 278).
“Real society came into being at the expense of the
shepherds or husbandman, and was founded on their
subjection” by a band of hunters who had joined
hands (p. 289). All duties of society were resolved
into commanding and obeying “This degradation of a
part of the human race, after it had produced society, gave
birth to laws” (p. 294).
Stripped of the conditions of production, the labourers
are compelled by need to labour to increase the wealth of
others in order themselves to live.
“It is the impossibility of living by
any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the
soil whose fruits they will not eat, and our masons to
construct buildings in which they will not live. It is
want that drags them to those markets where they await
masters who will do them the kindness of buying them.
It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to
the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich
him” (p. 274).
“Violence, then, has been the first
cause of society, and force the first bond that held it
together” (p. 302). “Their” (men’s)
“first care was doubtless to provide themselves with
food… the second must have been to seek to provide
themselves with it without labour”
(pp. 307-08). “They could only achieve this by
appropriating to themselves the fruit of other men’s
labour” (p. 308). “The first
conquerors only made themselves despots so that they could
be idle with impunity, and kings, in order to have something
to live on: and this greatly narrows and
simplifies…the idea of domination” (p.
309). “Society is born of violence, and property
of usurpation” (p. 347). “As soon as there
were masters and slaves, society was formed”
(p. 343). “From the beginning, the two ||439| pillars of the civil union
were on the one hand the slavery of the greater part of the
men, and on the other, the slavery of all the
women… It was at the cost of three-fourths of
its members that society assured the happiness, the
opulence, the ease of the small number of property-owners
whom alone it had in view” (p. 365).
Vol. II: “The question, therefore, is
not to examine whether slavery is contrary to nature in
itself, but whether it is contrary to the nature of
society…it is inseparable from it”
(p. 256). “Society and civil servitude were
born together” (p. 257). “Permanent
slavery…the indestructible foundation of
societies” (p. 347).
“Men have only been reduced to depend
for their subsistence on the liberality of another man
when the latter by despoiling them has become rich
enough to be able to return a small portion to
them. His feigned generosity could be no more than a
restitution of some part of the fruits of their labours
which he had appropriated” (p. 242).
“Does not servitude consist in this obligation
to sow without reaping for oneself, to sacrifice one’s
well-being to that of another, to labour without hope?
And did not its real epoch begin from he moment when there
were men whom the whip and a few measures of oats when they
were brought to the stable could compel to
labour? It is only in a fully developed society that
food seems to the poor starveling a sufficient
equivalent for his liberty; but in n society in its
early stages free men would be struck with horror at this
unequal exchange. It could only be proposed for
captives. Only after they have been deprived of
the enjoyment of all their faculties can it” [the
exchange] “become a necessity for them”
(pp. 244-45).
“The essence of
society…consists in freeing the rich man from
labour, giving him new organs, untiring members, which
take upon themselves all the laborious operations the
fruits of which he is to appropriate. That is the
plan which slavery allows him to carry out without
embarrassment. He buys men who are to serve him”
(p. 461). “In suppressing slavery, no claim was
made that either wealth or its advantages were
suppressed… It was therefore necessary that
things should remain the same except in name, It has always
been necessary for the majority of men to continue to live
in the pay of and in dependence on the minority which has
appropriated to itself all wealth. Slavery has
therefore been perpetuated on the earth, but under a sweeter
name. Among us now it is adorned with the title of
service” (p. 462).
By these servants, Linguet says, he does not mean lackeys
and the like:
“The towns and the countryside are
peopled by another kind of servant, more widely spread, more
useful, more laborious, and known by the name of
journeymen, handicraftsmen, etc. They are not
dishonoured by the brilliant colours of luxury; they sigh
beneath the loathsome rags which are the livery of
penury. They never share in the abundance of which
their labour is the source. Wealth seems to grant
them a favour when it kindly accepts the presents that
they make to it. It is for them to he grateful for
the services which they render to it. It pours
on them the most outrageous contempt while they are clasping
its knees imploring permission to be useful to
it. It has to be pleaded with to grant this, and
in this peculiar exchange of real generosity for an
imaginary favour, arrogance and disdain are on the
side of the receiver, and servility, anxiety and
eagerness on the side of the giver. These are
the servants who have truly replaced the serfs among
us” (pp. 463-64).
“The point that has to he examined
is: what effective gain the suppression of slavery
has brought to them. I say with as much sorrow as
frankness: all that they have gained is to be every moment
tormented by the fear of death from hunger, a calamity that
at least never visited their predecessors in this lowest
rank of mankind” (p. 464). “He is free,
you say. Ah! That is his misfortune. He is
bound to no one; but also no one is bound to him. When
he is needed, he is hired at the cheapest price
possible. The meagre wage that he is promised
is hardly equal to the price of his subsistence for the
day which he gives in exchange. He is given
overlookers to compel him to fulfil his task
quickly; he is hard driven; he is goaded on, for fear
that a skilfully concealed and only too comprehensible
laziness may make him hold back half his strength; for fear
that the hope of remaining employed longer on the same
task may stay his hands and blunt his tools.
The sordid economy that keeps a restless watch on him
overwhelms him with reproaches at the slightest respite he
seems to allow himself, and claims to have been robbed
if he takes a moment’s rest. When he has finished he
is dismissed as be was taken on, with the coldest
indifference, and without any concern as to whether the
twenty or thirty sous that he has just earned for a hard
day’s labour ||440| will be
enough to keep him if he finds no work the following
day” (pp. 466-67).
“He is free! That is precisely
why I pity him. For that reason, he is much less cared
for in the labours in which be is used. His life is
much more readily hazarded. The slave was precious to
his master because of the money he had cost him. But
the handicraftsman costs nothing to the rich voluptuary who
employs him. Men’s blood had some p rice in the days
of slavery. They were worth at least as much as they
could be sold for in the market. Since they have no
longer been sold they have no real intrinsic value. A
pioneer is much less valued in an army than a pack-horse,
because the horse is very costly and a pioneer can be had
for nothing. The suppression of slavery brought these
military calculations into civil life; and since that
epoch there has been no prosperous bourgeois who does not
calculate in this way, as heroes do” (p. 467)
“The day-labourers are born, grow up
and are trained for” (are bred for) “the service
of wealth without causing it the slightest expense, like the
game that it massacres over its estates. It seems as
if it really has the secret of which the unfortunate Pompey
vainly boasted. Wealth has only to stamp on the
ground, and from it emerge legions of hard-working men who
contend among themselves for the honour of being at its
disposal: if one among this crowd of mercenaries putting up
its buildings or keeping its gardens straight disappears,
the place that he has left empty is an invisible point which
is immediately covered again without any intervention from
anyone. A drop of the water of a great river is lost
without regret, because new torrents incessantly succeed
it. It is the same with labourers; the ease with which
they can be replaced fosters the rich man’s”
(this is the form used by Linguet; not yet capitalist)
“hard-heartedness towards them” (p. 468).
“These men, it is said, have no
master…pure abuse of the word. What does it
mean? they have no master—they have one, and the
most terrible, the most imperious of masters, that is,
need. It is this that reduces them to the most
cruel dependence. It is not one man in particular
whose orders they must obey, but the orders of all in
general. It is not a single tyrant whose whims
they have to humour and whose benevolence they have to
court— which would set a limit to their servitude and
make it endurable. They become the valets of anyone
who has money, which gives their slavery an infinite
compass and severity. It is said that if they do not
get on well with one master they at least have the
consolation that they can tell him so and the power to make
a change: but the slaves have neither the one nor the
other. They are therefore all the more wretched.
What sophistry! For bear in mind that the number of
those who make others work is very small and the
number of labourers on the contrary is immense”
(pp. 470-71). “What is this apparent liberty
which you have bestowed on them reduced to for them?
They live only by hiring out their arms. They must
therefore find someone to hire them, or die of hunger.
Is that to be free?” (p. 472).
“What is most terrible is that the
very smallness of this pay is another reason for reducing
it. The more the day-labourer is driven by want, the
cheaper he sells himself. The greater the urgency of
his need, the less profitable is his labour. The
despots for the moment whom he beseeches with tears to
accept his services feel no shame in, as it were, feeling
his pulse, to assure themselves that he has enough strength
left; they fix the reward that they offer him by the degree
of his weakness. The nearer they think he is to death
from starvation, the more they deduct from what could keep
him from it; and what the savages that they are give him is
less to prolong his life than to delay his death”
(pp. 482-83). The “independence” (of the
day-labourer) “is one of the most baneful scourges
that the refinement of modern times has produced. It
augments the wealth of the rich and the poverty of the
poor. The one saves everything that the other
spends. What the latter is forced to economise is not
from his superfluity but from what is indispensable to
him” (p. 483).
“If today it is so easy to maintain
these prodigious armies which join with luxury in order to
bring about the extinction of the human race, it is only due
to the suppression of slavery… It is only since
there have no longer been slaves that debauchery and beggary
make heroes at five sous a day” (pp. 484-85).
“I find this” (Asiatic slavery)
“a hundred times more preferable than any other way of
existing, for men reduced to having to win their livelihood
by daily labour” (p. 496).
“Their” (the slaves’ and the
labourers’) “chains are made of the same material and
only differently coloured. Here they are black, and
seem heavy: there they look less gloomy and seem hollower:
but weigh them impartially and you will find no difference
between them; both are equally forged by necessity.
They have precisely the same weight, or rather, if they are
a few grains more in one case, it is in the one whose
external appearance proclaims that it is lighter”
(p. 510).
He calls to the men of the French Enlightenment, in
regard to the labourers:
“Do you not see that the subjection,
the annihilation—since it must he said—of this
large part of the flock creates the wealth of the
shepherds?… Believe me, in his interest” (the
shepherd’s), “in yours, and even in theirs, leave
them” (the sheep) “with the conviction that they
have that this cur who yelps at them is stronger by himself
than they are all together. Let them flee with stupid
fright at the mere sight of his shadow. Everyone
benefits from it. It will make it easier for you to
gather them in to fleece them for yourself. They are
more easily guarded from being devoured by wolves.
[441] It is true, only to he eaten by men. But anyway
that is their fate from the moment they have entered a
stable. Before talking of releasing them from there,
start by overthrowing the stable, that is to say,
society” (pp. 512-13). |X-441||
* The sprit of the
laws is property.—Ed.