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MALLAM AI 2

Wages themselves again take many forms, a fact not recognizable in the ordinary economic treatises which, exclusively interested in the material side of the question, neglect every difference of form. An exposition of all these forms however, belongs to the special study of wage labour, not therefore to this work. Still the two fundamental forms must be briefly worked out here. The sale of labour-power, as will be remembered, takes place for a definite period of time. The converted form under which the daily, weekly, &c., value of labour-power presents itself, is hence that of time-wages, therefore day-wages, &c. Next it is to be noted that the laws set forth, in the 17th chapter, on the changes in the relative magnitudes of price of labour-power and surplus-value, pass by a simple transformation of form, into laws of wages. Similarly the distinction between the exchange-value of labour power, and the sum of the necessaries of life into which this value is converted, now reappears as the distinction between nominal and real wages. It would be useless to repeat here, with regard to the phenomenal form, what has been already worked out in the substantial form. We limit ourselves therefore to a few points characteristic of time-wages. The sum of money which the labourer receives for his daily or weekly labour, forms the amount of his nominal wages, or of his wages estimated in value. But it is clear that according to the length of the working-day, that is, according to the amount of actual labour daily supplied, the same daily or weekly wage may represent very different prices of labour, i.e., very different sums of money for the same quantity of labour. We must, therefore, in considering time-wages, again distinguish between the sum-total of the daily or weekly wages, &c., and the price of labour. How then, to find this price, i.e., the money-value of a given quantity of labour? The average price of labour is found, when the average daily value of the labour-power is divided by the average number of hours in the working-day. If, e.g., the daily value of labour-power is 3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 working-hours, and if the working-day is 12 hours, the price of 1 working hour is 3/12 shillings = 3d. The price of the working-hour thus found serves as the unit measure for the price of labour. It follows therefore that the daily and weekly wages, &c., may remain the same, although the price of labour falls constantly. If, e.g., the habitual working-day is 10 hours and the daily value of the labour-power 3s., the price of the working-hour is 3 3/5d. It falls to 3d. as soon as the working-day rises to 12 hours, to 2 2/5d as soon as it rises to 15 hours. Daily or weekly wages remain, despite all this, unchanged. On the contrary, the daily or weekly wages may rise, although the price of labour remains constant or even falls. If, e.g., the working-day is 10 hours, and the daily value of labour-power 3 shillings, the price of one working-hour is 3 3/5d. If the labourer, in consequence of increase of trade, works 12 hours, the price of labour remaining the same, his daily wage now rises to 3 shillings 7 1/5 d. without any variation in the price of labour. The same result might follow if, instead of the extensive amount of labour, its intensive amount increased. The rise of the nominal daily or weekly wages may therefore be accompanied by a price of labour that remains stationary or falls. The same holds as to the income of the labourer s family, as soon as the quantity of labour expended by the head of the family is increased by the labour of the members of his family. There are, therefore, methods of lowering the price of labour independent of the reduction of the nominal daily or weekly wages. As a general law it follows that, given the amount of daily or weekly labour, &c., the daily or weekly wages depend on the price of labour which itself varies either with the value of labour-power, or with the difference between its price and its value. Given, on the other hand, the price of labour, the daily or weekly wages depend on the quantity of the daily or weekly labour. The unit-measure for time-wages, the price of the working-hour, is the quotient of the value of a day s labour-power, divided by the number of hours of the average working-day. Let the latter be 12 hours, and the daily value of labour-power 3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 hours of labour. Under these circumstances the price of a working hour is 3d.; the value produced in it is 6d. If the labourer is now employed less than 12 hours (or less than 6 days in the week), e.g., only 6 or 8 hours, he receives, with this price of labour, only 2s. or 1s. 6d. a day. As on our hypothesis he must work on the average 6 hours daily, in order to produce a day s wage corresponding merely to the value of his labour power, as according to the same hypothesis he works only half of every hour for himself, and half for the capitalist, it is clear that he cannot obtain for himself the value of the product of 6 hours if he is employed less than 12 hours. In previous chapters we saw the destructive consequences of over-work; here we find the sources of the sufferings that result to the labourer from his insufficient employment. If the hour s wage is fixed so that the capitalist does not bind himself to pay a day s or a week s wage, but only to pay wages for the hours during which he chooses to employ the labourer, he can employ him for a shorter time than that which is originally the basis of the calculation of the hour-wage, or the unit-measure of the price of labour. Since this unit is determined by the ratio daily value of labour-power working-day of a given number of hours With an increasing daily or weekly wage the price of labour may remain nominally constant, and yet may fall below its normal level. This occurs every time that, the price of labour (reckoned per working-hour) remaining constant, the working-day is prolonged beyond its customary length. If in the fraction: daily value of labour power working-day It is a fact generally known that, the longer the working-days, in any branch of industry, the lower are the wages. A. Redgrave, factory inspector, illustrates this by a comparative review of the 20 years from 1839-1859, according to which wages rose in the factories under the 10 Hours Law, whilst they fell in the factories in which the work lasted 14 to 15 hours daily. From the law, the price of labour being given, the daily or weekly wage depends on the quantity of labour expended, it follows, first of all, that the lower the price of labour, the greater must be the quantity of labour, or the longer must be the working-day for the labourer to secure even a miserable average wage. The lowness of the price of labour acts here as a stimulus to the extension of the labour-time. On the other hand, the extension of the working-time produces, in its turn, a fall in the price of labour, and with this a fall in the day s or week s wages. The determination of the price of labour by: daily value of labour power working day of a given number of hours This jeremiad is also interesting because it shows how the appearance only of the relations of production mirrors itself in the brain of the capitalist. The capitalist does not know that the normal price of labour also includes a definite quantity of unpaid labour, and that this very unpaid labour is the normal source of his gain. The category of surplus labour-time does not exist at all for him, since it is included in the normal working-day, which he thinks he has paid for in the day s wages. But over-time does exist for him, the prolongation of the working-day beyond the limits corresponding with the usual price of labour. Face to face with his underselling competitor, he even insists upon extra pay for this over-time. He again does not know that this extra pay includes unpaid labour, just as well as does the price of the customary hour of labour. For example, the price of one hour of the 12 hours working-day is 3d., say the value-product of half a working-hour, whilst the price of the over-time working-hour is 4d., or the value-product of 2/3 of a working hour. In the first case the capitalist appropriates to himself one-half, in the second, one-third of the working-hour without paying for it.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch20.htm

Wages by the piece are nothing else than a converted form of wages by time, just as wages by time are a converted form of the value or price of labour-power. In piece wages it seems at first sight as if the use-value bought from the labourer was, not the function of his labour-power, living labour, but labour already realized in the product, and as if the price of this labour was determined, not as with time-wages, by the fraction daily value of labour-power the working day of a given number of hours The confidence that trusts in this appearance ought to receive a first severe shock from the fact that both forms of wages exist side by side, simultaneously, in the same branches of industry; e.g., In the same saddlery shops of London, often for the same work, piece wages are paid to the French, time-wages to the English. In the regular factories in which throughout piece wages predominate, particular kinds of work are unsuitable to this form of wage, and are therefore paid by time. But it is, moreover, self-evident that the difference of form in the payment of wages alters in no way their essential nature, although the one form may be more favorable to the development of capitalist production than the other. Let the ordinary working-day contain 12 hours of which 6 are paid, 6 unpaid. Let its value-product be 6 shillings, that of one hour s labour therefore 6d. Let us suppose that, as the result of experience, a labourer who works with the average amount of intensity and skill, who, therefore, gives in fact only the time socially necessary to the production of an article, supplies in 12 hours 24 pieces, either distinct products or measurable parts of a continuous whole. Then the value of these 24 pieces, after. subtraction of the portion of constant capital contained in them, is 6 shillings, and the value of a single piece 3d. The labourer receives 1 d. per piece, and thus earns in 12 hours 3 shillings. Just as, with time-wages, it does not matter whether we assume that the labourer works 6 hours for himself and 6 hours for the capitalist, or half of every hour for himself, and the other half for the capitalist, so here it does not matter whether we say that each individual piece is half paid, and half unpaid for, or that the price of 12 pieces is the equivalent only of the value of the labour-power, whilst in the other 12 pieces surplus-value is incorporated. The form of piece wages is just as irrational as that of time-wages. Whilst in our example two pieces of a commodity, after subtraction of the value of the means of production consumed in them, are worth 6d. as being the product of one hour, the labourer receives for them a price of 3d. Piece wages do not, in fact, distinctly express any relation of value. It is not, therefore, a question of measuring the value of the piece by the working-time incorporated in it, but on the contrary, of measuring the working-time the labourer has expended by the number of pieces he has produced. In time-wages, the labour is measured by its immediate duration; in piece wages, by the quantity of products in which the labour has embodied itself during a given time. The price of labour time itself is finally determined by the equation: value of a day s labour = daily value of labour-power. Piece-wage is, therefore, only a modified form of time-wage. Let us now consider a little more closely the characteristic peculiarities of piece wages. The quality of the labour is here controlled by the work itself, which must be of average perfection if the piece-price is to be paid in full. Piece wages become, from this point of view, the most fruitful source of reductions of wages and capitalistic cheating. They furnish to the capitalist an exact measure for the intensity of labour. Only the working-time which is embodied in a quantum of commodities determined beforehand, and experimentally fixed, counts as socially necessary working-time, and is paid as such. In the larger workshops of the London tailors, therefore, a certain piece of work, a waistcoat, e.g., is called an hour, or half an hour, the hour at 6d. By practice it is known how much is the average product of one hour. With new fashions, repairs, &c., a contest arises between master and labourer as to whether a particular piece of work is one hour, and so on, until here also experience decides. Similarly in the London furniture workshops, &c. If the labourer does not possess the average capacity, if he cannot in consequence supply a certain minimum of work per day, he is dismissed. Since the quality and intensity of the work are here controlled by the form of wage itself, superintendence of labour becomes in great part superfluous. Piece wages therefore lay the foundation of the modern domestic labour, described above, as well as of a hierarchically organized system of exploitation and oppression. The latter has two fundamental forms. On the one hand, piece wages facilitate the interposition of parasites between the capitalist and the wage-labourer, the sub-letting of labour. The gain of these middlemen comes entirely from the difference between the labour-price which the capitalist pays, and the part of that price which they actually allow to reach the labourer. In England this system is characteristically called the sweating system. On the other hand, piece-wage allows the capitalist to make a contract for so much per piece with the head labourer in manufactures with the chief of some group, in mines with the extractor of the coal, in the factory with the actual machine-worker at a price for which the head labourer himself undertakes the enlisting and payment of his assistant work people. The exploitation of the labourer by capital is here effected through the exploitation of the labourer by the labourer. Given piece-wage, it is naturally the personal interest of the labourer to strain his labour-power as intensely as possible; this enables the capitalist to raise more easily the normal degree of intensity of labour. It is moreover now the personal interest of the labourer to lengthen the working-day, since with it his daily or weekly wages rise. This gradually brings on a reaction like that already described in time-wages, without reckoning that the prolongation of the working-day, even if the piece wage remains constant, includes of necessity a fall in the price of the labour. In time-wages, with few exceptions, the same wage holds for the same kind of work, whilst in piece wages, though the price of the working time is measured by a certain quantity of product, the day s or week s wage will vary with the individual differences of the labourers, of whom one supplies in a given time the minimum of product only, another the average, a third more than the average. With regard to actual receipts there is, therefore, great variety according to the different skill, strength, energy, staying-power, &c., of the individual labourers. Of course this does not alter the general relations between capital and wage-labour. First, the individual differences balance one another in the workshop as a whole, which thus supplies in a given working-time the average product, and the total wages paid will be the average wages of that particular branch of industry. Second, the proportion between wages and surplus-value remains unaltered, since the mass of surplus labour supplied by each particular labourer corresponds with the wage received by him. But the wider scope that piece-wage gives to individuality tends to develop on the one hand that individuality, and with it the sense of liberty, independence, and self-control of the labourers, and on the other, their competition one with another. Piece-work has, therefore, a tendency, while raising individual wages above the average, to lower this average itself. But where a particular rate of piece-wage has for a long time been fixed by tradition, and its lowering, therefore, presented especial difficulties, the masters, in such exceptional cases, sometimes had recourse to its compulsory transformation into time-wages. Hence, e.g., in 1860 a great strike among the ribbon-weavers of Coventry. Piece-wage is finally one of the chief supports of the hour-system described in the preceding chapter. From what has been shown so far, it follows that piece-wage is the form of wages most in harmony with the capitalist mode of production. Although by no means new it figures side by side with time-wages officially in the French and English labour statutes of the 14th century it only conquers a larger field for action during the period of manufacture, properly so-called. In the stormy youth of modern industry, especially from 1797 to 1815, it served as a lever for the lengthening of the working-day, and the lowering of wages. Very important materials for the fluctuation of wages during that period are to be found in the Blue books: Report and Evidence from the Select Committee on Petitions respecting the Corn Laws (Parliamentary Session of 1813-14), and Report from the Lords Committee, on the State of the Growth, Commerce, and Consumption of Grain, and all Laws relating thereto (Session of 1814-15). Here we find documentary evidence of the constant lowering of the price of labour from the beginning of the anti-Jacobin War. In the weaving industry, e.g., piece wages had fallen so low that, in spite of the very great lengthening of the working-day, the daily wages were then lower than before. How little the increased intensity and extension of labour through piece wages benefited the agricultural proletariat, the following passage borrowed from a work on the side of the landlords and farmers shows: Malthus at that time remarked with reference to the facts published by Parliament: In the workshops under the Factory Acts, piece wages become the general rule, because capital can there only increase the efficacy of the working-day by intensifying labour. With the changing productiveness of labour the same quantum of product represents a varying working-time. Therefore, piece-wage also varies, for it is the money expression of a determined working-time. In our example above, 24 pieces were produced in 12 hours, whilst the value of the product of the 12 hours was 6s., the daily value of the labour-power 3s., the price of the labour-hour 3d., and the wage for one piece d. In one piece half-an-hour s labour was absorbed. If the same working-day now supplies, in consequence of the doubled productiveness of labour, 48 pieces instead of 24, and all other circumstances remain unchanged, then the piece-wage falls from 1 d. to 3/4d., as every piece now only represents 1/4, instead of of a working-hour. 24 by 1 d. = 3s., and in like manner 48 by 3/4d. = 3s. In other words, piece-wage is lowered in the same proportion as the number of the pieces produced in the same time rises, and, therefore, as the working time spent on the same piece falls. This change in piece-wage, so far purely nominal, leads to constant battles between capitalist and labour. Either because the capitalist uses it as a pretext for actually lowering the price of labour, or because increased productive power of labour is accompanied by an increased intensity of the same. Or because the labourer takes seriously the appearance of piece wages (viz., that his product is paid for, and not his labour-power) and therefore revolts against a lowering of wages, unaccompanied by a lowering in the selling price of the commodity. The capitalist rightly knocks on the head such pretensions as gross errors as to the nature of wage-labour. He cries out against this usurping attempt to lay taxes on the advance of industry, and declares roundly that the productiveness of labour does not concern the labourer at all.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty-One

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch21.htm

In the 17th chapter we were occupied with the manifold combinations which may bring about a change in magnitude of the value of labour-power this magnitude being considered either absolutely or relatively, i.e., as compared with surplus-value; whilst on the other hand, the quantum of the means of subsistence in which the price of labour is realized might again undergo fluctuations independent of, or different from, the changes of this price. As has been already said, the simple translation of the value, or respectively of the price, of labour-power into the exoteric form of wages transforms all these laws into laws of the fluctuations of wages. That which appears in these fluctuations of wages within a single country as a series of varying combinations, may appear in different countries as contemporaneous difference of national wages. In the comparison of the wages in different nations, we must therefore take into account all the factors that determine changes in the amount of the value of labour-power; the price and the extent of the prime necessaries of life as naturally and historically developed, the cost of training the labourers, the part played by the labour of women and children, the productiveness of labour, its extensive and intensive magnitude. Even the most superficial comparison requires the reduction first of the average day-wage for the same trades, in different countries, to a uniform working-day. After this reduction to the same terms of the day-wages, time-wage must again be translated into piece-wage, as the latter only can be a measure both of the productivity and the intensity of labour. In every country there is a certain average intensity of labour below which the labour for the production of a commodity requires more than the socially necessary time, and therefore does not reckon as labour of normal quality. Only a degree of intensity above the national average affects, in a given country, the measure of value by the mere duration of the working-time. This is not the case on the universal market, whose integral parts are the individual countries. The average intensity of labour changes from country to country; here it is greater, there less. These national averages form a scale, whose unit of measure is the average unit of universal labour. The more intense national labour, therefore, as compared with the less intense, produces in the same time more value, which expresses itself in more money. But the law of value in its international application is yet more modified by the fact that on the world-market the more productive national labour reckons also as the more intense, so long as the more productive nation is not compelled by competition to lower the selling price of its commodities to the level of their value. In proportion as capitalist production is developed in a country, in the same proportion do the national intensity and productivity of labour there rise above the international level. The different quantities of commodities of the same kind, produced in different countries in the same working-time, have, therefore, unequal international values, which are expressed in different prices, i.e., in sums of money varying according to international values. The relative value of money will, therefore, be less in the nation with more developed capitalist mode of production than in the nation with less developed. It follows, then, that the nominal wages, the equivalent of labour-power expressed in money, will also be higher in the first nation than in the second; which does not at all prove that this holds also for the real wages, i.e., for the means of subsistence placed at the disposal of the labourer. But even apart from these relative differences of the value of money in different countries, it will be found, frequently, that the daily or weekly, &tc., wage in the first nation is higher than in the second, whilst the relative price of labour, i.e., the price of labour as compared both with surplus-value and with the value of the product, stands higher in the second than in the first. J. W. Cowell, member of the Factory Commission of 1833, after careful investigation of the spinning trade, came to the conclusion that The English Factory Inspector, Alexander Redgrave, in his report of Oct. 31st, 1866, proves by comparative statistics with continental states, that in spite of lower wages and much longer working-time, continental labour is, in proportion to the product, dearer than English. An English manager of a cotton factory in Oldenburg declares that the working time there lasted from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturdays included, and that the workpeople there, when under English overlookers, did not supply during this time quite so much product as the English in 10 hours, but under German overlookers much less. Wages are much lower than in England, in many cases 50%, but the number of hands in proportion to the machinery was much greater, in certain departments in the proportion of 5:3. Mr. Redgrave gives very full details as to the Russian cotton factories. The data were given him by an English manager until recently employed there. On this Russian soil, so fruitful of all infamies, the old horrors of the early days of English factories are in full swing. The managers are, of course, English, as the native Russian capitalist is of no use in factory business. Despite all over-work, continued day and night, despite the most shameful under-payment of the workpeople, Russian manufacture manages to vegetate only by prohibition of foreign competition. I give, in conclusion, a comparative table of Mr. Redgrave s, on the average number of spindles per factory and per spinner in the different countries of Europe. He himself remarks that he had collected these figures a few years ago, and that since that time the size of the factories and the number of spindles per labourer in England has increased. He supposes, however, an approximately equal progress in the continental countries mentioned, so that the numbers given would still have their value for purposes of comparison. It is well known that in Eastern Europe, as well as in Asia, English companies have undertaken the construction of railways, and have, in making them, employed side by side with the native labourers, a certain number of English working-men. Compelled by practical necessity, they thus have had to take into account the national difference in the intensity of labour, but this has brought them no loss. Their experience shows that even if the height of wages corresponds more or less with the average intensity of labour, the relative price of labour varies generally in the inverse direction. In an Essay on the Rate of Wages, one of his first economic writings, H. Carey tries to prove that the wages of the different nations are directly proportional to the degree of productiveness of the national working-days, in order to draw from this international relation the conclusion that wages everywhere rise and fall in proportion to the productiveness of labour. The whole of our analysis of the production of surplus-value shows the absurdity of this conclusion, even if Carey himself had proved his premises instead of, after his usual uncritical and superficial fashion, shuffling to and fro a confused mass of statistical materials. The best of it is that he does not assert that things actually are as they ought to be according to his theory. For State intervention has falsified the natural economic relations. The different national wages must be reckoned, therefore, as if that part of each that goes to the State in the form of taxes, came to the labourer himself. Ought not Mr. Carey to consider further whether those State expenses are not the natural fruits of capitalistic development? The reasoning is quite worthy of the man who first declared the relations of capitalist production to be eternal laws of nature and reason, whose free, harmonious working is only disturbed by the intervention of the State, in order afterwards to discover that the diabolical influence of England on the world market (an influence which, it appears, does not spring from the natural laws of capitalist production) necessitates State intervention, i.e., the protection of those laws of nature and reason by the State, alias the System of Protection. He discovered further that the theorems of Ricardo and others, in which existing social antagonisms and contradictions are formulated, are not the ideal product of the real economic movement, but on the contrary, that the real antagonisms of capitalist production in England and elsewhere are the result of the theories of Ricardo and others! Finally he discovered that it is, in the last resort, commerce that destroys the inborn beauties and harmonies of the capitalist mode of production. A step further and he will, perhaps, discover that the one evil in capitalist production is capital itself. Only a man with such atrocious want of the critical faculty and such spurious erudition deserved, in spite of his Protectionist heresy, to become the secret source of the harmonious wisdom of a Bastiat, and of all the other Free-trade optimists of today.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty-Two

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch22.htm

The conversion of a sum of money into means of production and labour-power, is the first step taken by the quantum of value that is going to function as capital. This conversion takes place in the market, within the sphere of circulation. The second step, the process of production, is complete so soon as the means of production have been converted into commodities whose value exceeds that of their component parts, and, therefore, contains the capital originally advanced, plus a surplus-value. These commodities must then be thrown into circulation. They must be sold, their value realised in money, this money afresh converted into capital, and so over and over again. This circular movement, in which the same phases are continually gone through in succession, forms the circulation of capital. The first condition of accumulation is that the capitalist must have contrived to sell his commodities, and to reconvert into capital the greater part of the money so received. In the following pages we shall assume that capital circulates in its normal way. The detailed analysis of the process will be found in Book II. The capitalist who produces surplus-value i.e., who extracts unpaid labour directly from the labourers, and fixes it in commodities, is, indeed, the first appropriator, but by no means the ultimate owner, of this surplus-value. He has to share it with capitalists, with landowners, &c., who fulfil other functions in the complex of social production. Surplus-value, therefore, splits up into various parts. Its fragments fall to various categories of persons, and take various forms, independent the one of the other, such as profit, interest, merchants profit, rent, &c. It is only in Book III. that we can take in hand these modified forms of surplus-value. On the one hand, then, we assume that the capitalist sells at their value the commodities he has produced, without concerning ourselves either about the new forms that capital assumes while in the sphere of circulation, or about the concrete conditions of reproduction hidden under these forms. On the other hand, we treat the capitalist producer as owner of the entire surplus-value, or, better perhaps, as the representative of all the sharers with him in the booty. We, therefore, first of all consider accumulation from an abstract point of view i.e., as a mere phase in the actual process of production. So far as accumulation takes place, the capitalist must have succeeded in selling his commodities, and in reconverting the sale-money into capital. Moreover, the breaking-up of surplus-value into fragments neither alters its nature nor the conditions under which it becomes an element of accumulation. Whatever be the proportion of surplus-value which the industrial capitalist retains for himself, or yields up to others, he is the one who, in the first instance, appropriates it. We, therefore, assume no more than what actually takes place. On the other hand, the simple fundamental form of the process of accumulation is obscured by the incident of the circulation which brings it about, and by the splitting up of surplus-value. An exact analysis of the process, therefore, demands that we should, for a time, disregard all phenomena that hide the play of its inner mechanism. Whatever the form of the process of production in a society, it must be a continuous process, must continue to go periodically through the same phases. A society can no more cease to produce than it can cease to consume. When viewed, therefore, as a connected whole, and as flowing on with incessant renewal, every social process of production is, at the same time, a process of reproduction. The conditions of production are also those of reproduction. No society can go on producing, in other words, no society can reproduce, unless it constantly reconverts a part of its products into means of production, or elements of fresh products. All other circumstances remaining the same, the only mode by which it can reproduce its wealth, and maintain it at one level, is by replacing the means of production i.e., the instruments of labour, the raw material, and the auxiliary substances consumed in the course of the year by an equal quantity of the same kind of articles; these must be separated from the mass of the yearly products, and thrown afresh into the process of production. Hence, a definite portion of each year s product belongs to the domain of production. Destined for productive consumption from the very first, this portion exists, for the most part, in the shape of articles totally unfitted for individual consumption. If production be capitalistic in form, so, too, will be reproduction. Just as in the former the labour process figures but as a means towards the self-expansion of capital, so in the latter it figures but as a means of reproducing as capital i.e., as self-expanding value the value advanced. It is only because his money constantly functions as capital that the economic guise of a capitalist attaches to a man. If, for instance, a sum of 100 has this year been converted into capital, and produced a surplus-value of 20, it must continue during next year, and subsequent years, to repeat the same operation. As a periodic increment of the capital advanced, or periodic fruit of capital in process, surplus-value acquires the form of a revenue flowing out of capital. If this revenue serve the capitalist only as a fund to provide for his consumption, and be spent as periodically as it is gained, then, caeteris paribus, simple reproduction will take place. And although this reproduction is a mere repetition of the process of production on the old scale, yet this mere repetition, or continuity, gives a new character to the process, or, rather, causes the disappearance of some apparent characteristics which it possessed as an isolated discontinuous process. The purchase of labour-power for a fixed period is the prelude to the process of production; and this prelude is constantly repeated when the stipulated term comes to an end, when a definite period of production, such as a week or a month, has elapsed. But the labourer is not paid until after he has expended his labour-power, and realised in commodities not only its value, but surplus-value. He has, therefore, produced not only surplus-value, which we for the present regard as a fund to meet the private consumption of the capitalist, but he has also produced, before it flows back to him in the shape of wages, the fund out of which he himself is paid, the variable capital; and his employment lasts only so long as he continues to reproduce this fund. Hence, that formula of the economists, referred to in Chapter XVIII, which represents wages as a share in the product itself. What flows back to the labourer in the shape of wages is a portion of the product that is continuously reproduced by him. The capitalist, it is true, pays him in money, but this money is merely the transmuted form of the product of his labour. While he is converting a portion of the means of production into products, a portion of his former product is being turned into money. It is his labour of last week, or of last year, that pays for his labour-power this week or this year. The illusion begotten by the intervention of money vanishes immediately, if, instead of taking a single capitalist and a single labourer, we take the class of capitalists and the class of labourers as a whole. The capitalist class is constantly giving to the labouring class order-notes, in the form of money, on a portion of the commodities produced by the latter and appropriated by the former. The labourers give these order-notes back just as constantly to the capitalist class, and in this way get their share of their own product. The transaction is veiled by the commodity form of the product and the money form of the commodity. Variable capital is therefore only a particular historical form of appearance of the fund for providing the necessaries of life, or the labour-fund which the labourer requires for the maintenance of himself and family, and which, whatever be the system of social production, he must himself produce and reproduce. If the labour-fund constantly flows to him in the form of money that pays for his labour, it is because the product he has created moves constantly away from him in the form of capital. But all this does not alter the fact, that it is the labourer s own labour, realised in a product, which is advanced to him by the capitalist. Let us take a peasant liable to do compulsory service for his lord. He works on his own land, with his own means of production, for, say, 3 days a week. The 3 other days he does forced work on the lord s domain. He constantly reproduces his own labour-fund, which never, in his case, takes the form of a money payment for his labour, advanced by another person. But in return, his unpaid forced labour for the lord, on its side, never acquires the character of voluntary paid labour. If one fine morning the lord appropriates to himself the land, the cattle, the seed, in a word, the, means of production of this peasant, the latter will thenceforth be obliged to sell his labour-power to the lord. He will, ceteris paribus, labour 6 days a week as before, 3 for himself, 3 for his lord, who thenceforth becomes a wages-paying capitalist. As before, he will use up the means of production as means of production, and transfer their value to the product. As before, a definite portion of the product will be devoted to reproduction. But from the moment that the forced labour is changed into wage labour, from that moment the labour-fund, which the peasant himself continues as before to produce and reproduce, takes the form of a capital advanced in the form of wages by the lord. The bourgeois economist whose narrow mind is unable to separate the form of appearance from the thing that appears, shuts his eyes to the fact, that it is but here and there on the face of the earth, that even nowadays the labour fund crops up in the form of capital. Variable capital, it is true, only then loses its character of a value advanced out of the capitalist s funds, when we view the process of capitalist production in the flow of its constant renewal. But that process must have had a beginning of some kind. From our present standpoint it therefore seems likely that the capitalist, once upon a time, became possessed of money, by some accumulation that took place independently of the unpaid labour of others, and that this was, therefore, how he was enabled to frequent the market as a buyer of labour-power. However this may be, the mere continuity of the process, the simple reproduction, brings about some other wonderful changes, which affect not only the variable, but the total capital. If a capital of 1,000 beget yearly a surplus-value of 200, and if this surplus-value be consumed every year, it is clear that at the end of 5 years the surplus-value consumed will amount to 5 200 or the 1,000 originally advanced. If only a part, say one half, were consumed, the same result would follow at the end of 10 years, since 10 100= 1,000. General Rule: The value of the capital advanced divided by the surplus-value annually consumed, gives the number of years, or reproduction periods, at the expiration of which the capital originally advanced has been consumed by the capitalist and has disappeared. The capitalist thinks, that he is consuming the produce of the unpaid labour of others, i.e., the surplus-value, and is keeping intact his original capital; but what he thinks cannot alter facts. After the lapse of a certain number of years, the capital value he then possesses is equal to the sum total of the surplus-value appropriated by him during those years, and the total value he has consumed is equal to that of his original capital. It is true, he has in hand a capital whose amount has not changed, and of which a part, viz., the buildings, machinery, &c., were already there when the work of his business began. But what we have to do with here, is not the material elements, but the value, of that capital. When a person gets through all his property, by taking upon himself debts equal to the value of that property, it is clear that his property represents nothing but the sum total of his debts. And so it is with the capitalist; when he has consumed the equivalent of his original capital, the value of his present capital represents nothing but the total amount of the surplus-value appropriated by him without payment. Not a single atom of the value of his old capital continues to exist. Apart then from all accumulation, the mere continuity of the process of production, in other words simple reproduction, sooner or later, and of necessity, converts every capital into accumulated capital, or capitalised surplus-value. Even if that capital was originally acquired by the personal labour of its employer, it sooner or later becomes value appropriated without an equivalent, the unpaid labour of others materialised either in money or in some other object. We saw in Chapt. IV.-VI. that in order to convert money into capital something more is required than the production and circulation of commodities. We saw that on the one side the possessor of value or money, on the other, the possessor of the value-creating substance; on the one side, the possessor of the means of production and subsistence, on the other, the possessor of nothing but labour-power, must confront one another as buyer and seller. The separation of labour from its product, of subjective labour-power from the objective conditions of labour, was therefore the real foundation in fact, and the starting-point of capitalist production. But that which at first was but a starting-point, becomes, by the mere continuity of the process, by simple reproduction, the peculiar result, constantly renewed and perpetuated, of capitalist production. On the one hand, the process of production incessantly converts material wealth into capital, into means of creating more wealth and means of enjoyment for the capitalist. On the other hand, the labourer, on quitting the process, is what he was on entering it, a source of wealth, but devoid of all means of making that wealth his own. Since, before entering on the process, his own labour has already been alienated from himself by the sale of his labour-power, has been appropriated by the capitalist and incorporated with capital, it must, during the process, be realised in a product that does not belong to him. Since the process of production is also the process by which the capitalist consumes labour-power, the product of the labourer is incessantly converted, not only into commodities, but into capital, into value that sucks up the value-creating power, into means of subsistence that buy the person of the labourer, into means of production that command the producers. The labourer therefore constantly produces material, objective wealth, but in the form of capital, of an alien power that dominates and exploits him; and the capitalist as constantly produces labour-power, but in the form of a subjective source of wealth, separated from the objects in and by which it can alone be realised; in short he produces the labourer, but as a wage labourer. This incessant reproduction, this perpetuation of the labourer, is the sine qu non of capitalist production. The labourer consumes in a two-fold way. While producing he consumes by his labour the means of production, and converts them into products with a higher value than that of the capital advanced. This is his productive consumption. It is at the same time consumption of his labour-power by the capitalist who bought it. On the other hand, the labourer turns the money paid to him for his labour-power, into means of subsistence: this is his individual consumption. The labourer s productive consumption, and his individual consumption, are therefore totally distinct. In the former, he acts as the motive power of capital, and belongs to the capitalist. In the latter, he belongs to himself, and performs his necessary vital functions outside the process of production. The result of the one is, that the capitalist lives; of the other, that the labourer lives. When treating of the working day, we saw that the labourer is often compelled to make his individual consumption a mere incident of production. In such a case, he supplies himself with necessaries in order to maintain his labour-power, just as coal and water are supplied to the steam-engine and oil to the wheel. His means of consumption, in that case, are the mere means of consumption required by a means of production; his individual consumption is directly productive consumption. This, however, appears to be an abuse not essentially appertaining to capitalist production. The matter takes quite another aspect, when we contemplate, not the single capitalist, and the single labourer, but the capitalist class and the labouring class, not an isolated process of production, but capitalist production in full swing, and on its actual social scale. By converting part of his capital into labour-power, the capitalist augments the value of his entire capital. He kills two birds with one stone. He profits, not only by what he receives from, but by what he gives to, the labourer. The capital given in exchange for labour-power is converted into necessaries, by the consumption of which the muscles, nerves, bones, and brains of existing labourers are reproduced, and new labourers are begotten. Within the limits of what is strictly necessary, the individual consumption of the working class is, therefore, the reconversion of the means of subsistence given by capital in exchange for labour-power, into fresh labour-power at the disposal of capital for exploitation. It is the production and reproduction of that means of production so indispensable to the capitalist: the labourer himself. The individual consumption of the labourer, whether it proceed within the workshop or outside it, whether it be part of the process of production or not, forms therefore a factor of the production and reproduction of capital; just as cleaning machinery does, whether it be done while the machinery is working or while it is standing. The fact that the labourer consumes his means of subsistence for his own purposes, and not to please the capitalist, has no bearing on the matter. The consumption of food by a beast of burden is none the less a necessary factor in the process of production, because the beast enjoys what it eats. The maintenance and reproduction of the working class is, and must ever be, a necessary condition to the reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may safely leave its fulfilment to the labourer s instincts of self-preservation and of propagation. All the capitalist cares for, is to reduce the labourer s individual consumption as far as possible to what is strictly necessary, and he is far away from imitating those brutal South Americans, who force their labourers to take the more substantial, rather than the less substantial, kind of food. Hence both the capitalist and his ideological representative, the political economist, consider that part alone of the labourer s individual consumption to be productive, which is requisite for the perpetuation of the class, and which therefore must take place in order that the capitalist may have labour-power to consume; what the labourer consumes for his own pleasure beyond that part, is unproductive consumption. If the accumulation of capital were to cause a rise of wages and an increase in the labourer s consumption, unaccompanied by increase in the consumption of labour-power by capital, the additional capital would be consumed unproductively. In reality, the individual consumption of the labourer is unproductive as regards himself, for it reproduces nothing but the needy individual; it is productive to the capitalist and to the State, since it is the production of the power that creates their wealth. From a social point of view, therefore, the working class, even when not directly engaged in the labour process, is just as much an appendage of capital as the ordinary instruments of labour. Even its individual consumption is, within certain limits, a mere factor in the process of production. That process, however, takes good care to prevent these self-conscious instruments from leaving it in the lurch, for it removes their product, as fast as it is made, from their pole to the opposite pole of capital. Individual consumption provides, on the one hand, the means for their maintenance and reproduction: on the other hand, it secures by the annihilation of the necessaries of life, the continued re-appearance of the workman in the labour-market. The Roman slave was held by fetters: the wage labourer is bound to his owner by invisible threads. The appearance of independence is kept up by means of a constant change of employers, and by the fictio juris of a contract. In former times, capital resorted to legislation, whenever necessary, to enforce its proprietary rights over the free labourer. For instance, down to 1815, the emigration of mechanics employed in machine making was, in England, forbidden, under grievous pains and penalties. The reproduction of the working class carries with it the accumulation of skill, that is handed down from one generation to another. To what extent the capitalist reckons the existence of such a skilled class among the factors of production that belong to him by right, and to what extent he actually regards it as the reality of his variable capital, is seen so soon as a crisis threatens him with its loss. In consequence of the civil war in the United States and of the accompanying cotton famine, the majority of the cotton operatives in Lancashire were, as is well known, thrown out of work. Both from the working class itself, and from other ranks of society, there arose a cry for State aid, or for voluntary national subscriptions, in order to enable the superfluous hands to emigrate to the colonies or to the United States. Thereupon, The Times published on the 24th March, 1863, a letter from Edmund Potter, a former president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. This letter was rightly called in the House of Commons, the manufacturers manifesto. We cull here a few characteristic passages, in which the proprietary rights of capital over labour-power are unblushingly asserted. Mr. Potter then shows how useful the cotton trade is, how the trade has undoubtedly drawn the surplus-population from Ireland and from the agricultural districts, how immense is its extent, how in the year 1860 it yielded 5/13 ths of the total English exports, how, after a few years, it will again expand by the extension of the market, particularly of the Indian market, and by calling forth a plentiful supply of cotton at 6d. per lb. He then continues: Potter, the chosen mouthpiece of the manufacturers, distinguishes two sorts of machinery, each of which belongs to the capitalist, and of which one stands in his factory, the other at night-time and on Sundays is housed outside the factory, in cottages. The one is inanimate, the other living. The inanimate machinery not only wears out and depreciates from day to day, but a great part of it becomes so quickly superannuated, by constant technical progress, that it can be replaced with advantage by new machinery after a few months. The living machinery, on the contrary gets better the longer it lasts, and in proportion as the skill, handed from one generation to another, accumulates. The Times answered the cotton lord as follows: The Times article was only a jeu d esprit. The great public opinion was, in fact, of Mr. Potter s opinion, that the factory operatives are part of the movable fittings of a factory. Their emigration was prevented. They were locked up in that moral workhouse, the cotton districts, and they form, as before, the strength of the cotton manufacturers of Lancashire. Capitalist production, therefore, of itself reproduces the separation between labour-power and the means of labour. It thereby reproduces and perpetuates the condition for exploiting the labourer. It incessantly forces him to sell his labour-power in order to live, and enables the capitalist to purchase labour-power in order that he may enrich himself. It is no longer a mere accident, that capitalist and labourer confront each other in the market as buyer and seller. It is the process itself that incessantly hurls back the labourer on to the market as a vendor of his labour-power, and that incessantly converts his own product into a means by which another man can purchase him. In reality, the labourer belongs to capital before he has sold himself to capital. His economic bondage is both brought about and concealed by the periodic sale of himself, by his change of masters, and by the oscillations in the market-price of labour-power. Capitalist production, therefore, under its aspect of a continuous connected process, of a process of reproduction, produces not only commodities, not only surplus-value, but it also produces and reproduces the capitalist relation; on the one side the capitalist, on the other the wage labourer.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty-Three

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch23.htm

Hitherto we have investigated how surplus-value emanates from capital; we have now to see how capital arises from surplus-value. Employing surplus-value as capital, reconverting it into capital, is called accumulation of capital. First let us consider this transaction from the standpoint of the individual capitalist. Suppose a spinner to have advanced a capital of 10,000, of which four-fifths ( 8,000) are laid out in cotton, machinery, &c., and one-fifth ( 2,000) in wages. Let him produce 240,000 lbs. of yarn annually, having a value of 12,000. The rate of surplus-value being 100%, the surplus-value lies in the surplus or net product of 40,000 lbs. of yarn, one-sixth of the gross product, with a value of 2,000 which will be realised by a sale. 2,000 is 2,000. We can neither see nor smell in this sum of money a trace of surplus-value. When we know that a given value is surplus-value, we know how its owner came by it; but that does not alter the nature either of value or of money. In order to convert this additional sum of 2,000 into capital, the master-spinner will, all circumstances remaining as before, advance four-fifths of it ( 1,600) in the purchase of cotton, &c., and one-fifth ( 400) in the purchase of additional spinners, who will find in the market the necessaries of life whose value the master has advanced to them. Then the new capital of 2,000 functions in the spinning mill, and brings in, in its turn, a surplus-value of 400. The capital value was originally advanced in the money form. The surplus-value on the contrary is, originally, the value of a definite portion of the gross product. If this gross product be sold, converted into money, the capital value regains its original form. From this moment the capital value and the surplus-value are both of them sums of money, and their reconversion into capital takes place in precisely the same way. The one, as well as the other, is laid out by the capitalist in the purchase of commodities that place him in a position to begin afresh the fabrication of his goods, and this time, on an extended scale. But in order to be able to buy those commodities, he must find them ready in the market. His own yarns circulate, only because he brings his annual product to market, as all other capitalists likewise do with their commodities. But these commodities, before coming to market, were part of the general annual product, part of the total mass of objects of every kind, into which the sum of the individual capitals, i.e., the total capital of society, had been converted in the course of the year, and of which each capitalist had in hand only an aliquot part. The transactions in the market effectuate only the interchange of the individual components of this annual product, transfer them from one hand to another, but can neither augment the total annual production, nor alter the nature of the objects produced. Hence the use that can be made of the total annual product, depends entirely upon its own composition, but in no way upon circulation. The annual production must in the first place furnish all those objects (use values) from which the material components of capital, used up in the course of the year, have to be replaced. Deducting these there remains the net or surplus-product, in which the surplus-value lies. And of what does this surplus-product consist? Only of things destined to satisfy the wants and desires of the capitalist class, things which, consequently, enter into the consumption fund of the capitalists? Were that the case, the cup of surplus-value would be drained to the very dregs, and nothing but simple reproduction would ever take place. To accumulate it is necessary to convert a portion of the surplus-product into capital. But we cannot, except by a miracle, convert into capital anything but such articles as can be employed in the labour process (i.e., means of production), and such further articles as are suitable for the sustenance of the labourer (i.e., means of subsistence). Consequently, a part of the annual surplus-labour must have been applied to the production of additional means of production and subsistence, over and above the quantity of these things required to replace the capital advanced. In one word, surplus-value is convertible into capital solely because the surplus-product, whose value it is, already comprises the material elements of new capital. Now in order to allow of these elements actually functioning as capital, the capitalist class requires additional labour. If the exploitation of the labourers already employed do not increase, either extensively or intensively, then additional labour-power must be found. For this the mechanism of capitalist production provides beforehand, by converting the working class into a class dependent on wages, a class whose ordinary wages suffice, not only for its maintenance, but for its increase. It is only necessary for capital to incorporate this additional labour-power, annually supplied by the working class in the shape of labourers of all ages, with the surplus means of production comprised in the annual produce, and the conversion of surplus-value into capital is complete. From a concrete point of view, accumulation resolves itself into the reproduction of capital on a progressively increasing scale. The circle in which simple reproduction moves, alters its form, and, to use Sismondi s expression, changes into a spiral. Let us now return to our illustration. It is the old story: Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, and so on. The original capital of 10,000 brings in a surplus-value of 2,000, which is capitalised. The new capital of 2,000 brings in a surplus-value of 400, and this, too, is capitalised, converted into a second additional capital, which, in its turn, produces a further surplus-value of 80. And so the ball rolls on. We here leave out of consideration the portion of the surplus-value consumed by the capitalist. Just as little does it concern us, for the moment, whether the additional capital is joined on to the original capital, or is separated from it to function independently; whether the same capitalist, who accumulated it, employs it, or whether he hands it over to another. This only we must not forget, that by the side of the newly-formed capital, the original capital continues to reproduce itself, and to produce surplus-value, and that this is also true of all accumulated capital, and the additional capital engendered by it. The original capital was formed by the advance of 10,000. How did the owner become possessed of it? By his own labour and that of his forefathers, answer unanimously the spokesmen of Political Economy. And, in fact, their supposition appears the only one consonant with the laws of the production of commodities. But it is quite otherwise with regard to the additional capital of 2,000. How that originated we know perfectly well. There is not one single atom of its value that does not owe its existence to unpaid labour. The means of production, with which the additional labour-power is incorporated, as well as the necessaries with which the labourers are sustained, are nothing but component parts of the surplus-product, of the tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capitalist class. Though the latter with a portion of that tribute purchases the additional labour-power even at its full price, so that equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, yet the transaction is for all that only the old dodge of every conqueror who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has robbed them of. If the additional capital employs the person who produced it, this producer must not only continue to augment the value of the original capital, but must buy back the fruits of his previous labour with more labour than they cost. When viewed as a transaction between the capitalist class and the working class, it makes no difference that additional labourers are employed by means of the unpaid labour of the previously employed labourers. The capitalist may even convert the additional capital into a machine that throws the producers of that capital out of work, and that replaces them by a few children. In every case the working class creates by the surplus-labour of one year the capital destined to employ additional labour in the following year. And this is what is called: creating capital out of capital. The accumulation of the first additional capital of 2,000 presupposes a value of 10,000 belonging to the capitalist by virtue of his primitive labour, and advanced by him. The second additional capital of 400 presupposes, on the contrary, only the previous accumulation of the 2,000, of which the 400 is the surplus-value capitalised. The ownership of past unpaid labour is thenceforth the sole condition for the appropriation of living unpaid labour on a constantly increasing scale. The more the capitalist has accumulated, the more is he able to accumulate. In so far as the surplus-value, of which the additional capital, No. 1, consists, is the result of the purchase of labour-power with part of the original capital, a purchase that conformed to the laws of the exchange of commodities, and that, from a legal standpoint, presupposes nothing beyond the free disposal, on the part of the labourer, of his own capacities, and on the part of the owner of money or commodities, of the values that belong to him; in so far as the additional capital, No. 2, &c., is the mere result of No. 1, and, therefore, a consequence of the above conditions; in so far as each single transaction invariably conforms to the laws of the exchange of commodities, the capitalist buying labour-power, the labourer selling it, and we will assume at its real value; in so far as all this is true, it is evident that the laws of appropriation or of private property, laws that are based on the production and circulation of commodities, become by their own inner and inexorable dialectic changed into their very opposite. The exchange of equivalents, the original operation with which we started, has now become turned round in such a way that there is only an apparent exchange. This is owing to the fact, first, that the capital which is exchanged for labour-power is itself but a portion of the product of others labour appropriated without an equivalent; and, secondly, that this capital must not only be replaced by its producer, but replaced together with an added surplus. The relation of exchange subsisting between capitalist and labourer becomes a mere semblance appertaining to the process of circulation, a mere form, foreign to the real nature of the transaction, and only mystifying it. The ever repeated purchase and sale of labour-power is now the mere form; what really takes place is this the capitalist again and again appropriates, without equivalent, a portion of the previously materialised labour of others, and exchanges it for a greater quantity of living labour. At first the rights of property seemed to us to be based on a man s own labour. At least, some such assumption was necessary since only commodity-owners with equal rights confronted each other, and the sole means by which a man could become possessed of the commodities of others, was by alienating his own commodities; and these could be replaced by labour alone. Now, however, property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or its product, and to be the impossibility, on the part of the labourer, of appropriating his own product. The separation of property from labour has become the necessary consequence of a law that apparently originated in their identity. Therefore, however much the capitalist mode of appropriation may seem to fly in the face of the original laws of commodity production, it nevertheless arises, not from a violation, but, on the contrary, from the application of these laws. Let us make this clear once more by briefly reviewing the consecutive phases of motion whose culminating point is capitalist accumulation. We saw, in the first place, that the original conversion of a sum of values into capital was achieved in complete accordance with the laws of exchange. One party to the contract sells his labour-power, the other buys it. The former receives the value of his commodity, whose use value labour is thereby alienated to the buyer. Means of production which already belong to the latter are then transformed by him, with the aid of labour equally belonging to him, into a new product which is likewise lawfully his. The value of this product includes: first, the value of the used-up means of production. Useful labour cannot consume these means of production without transferring their value to the new product, but, to be saleable, labour-power must be capable of supplying useful labour in the branch of industry in which it is to be employed. The value of the new product further includes: the equivalent of the value of the labour-power together with a surplus-value. This is so because the value of the labour-power sold for a definite length of time, say a day, a week, etc. is less than the value created by its use during that time. But the worker has received payment for the exchange-value of his labour-power and by so doing has alienated its use value this being the case in every sale and purchase. The fact that this particular commodity, labour-power, possesses the peculiar use value of supplying labour, and therefore of creating value, cannot affect the general law of commodity production. If, therefore, the magnitude of value advanced in wages is not merely found again in the product, but is found there augmented by a surplus-value, this is not because the seller has been defrauded, for he has really received the value of his commodity; it is due solely to the fact that this commodity has been used up by the buyer. The law of exchange requires equality only between the exchange-values of the commodities given in exchange for one another. From the very outset it presupposes even a difference between their use values and it has nothing whatever to do with their consumption, which only begins after the deal is closed and executed. Thus the original conversion of money into capital is achieved in the most exact accordance with the economic laws of commodity production and with the right of property derived from them. Nevertheless, its result is: Simple reproduction is only the periodical repetition of this first operation; each time money is converted afresh into capital. Thus the law is not broken; on the contrary, it is merely enabled to operate continuously. Several successive acts of exchange have only made the last represent the first (Sismondi, Nouveaux Principes, etc., p. 70). And yet we have seen that simple reproduction suffices to stamp this first operation, in so far as it is conceived as an isolated process, with a totally changed character. Of those who share the national income among themselves, the one side (the workers) acquire every year a fresh right to their share by fresh work; the others (the capitalists) have already acquired, by work done originally, a permanent right to their share (Sismondi, l. c., pp. 110, 111). It is indeed notorious that the sphere of labour is not the only one in which primogeniture works miracles. Nor does it matter if simple reproduction is replaced by reproduction on an extended scale, by accumulation. In the former case the capitalist squanders the whole surplus-value in dissipation, in the latter he demonstrates his bourgeois virtue by consuming only a portion of it and converting the rest into money. The surplus-value is his property; it has never belonged to anyone else. If he advances it for the purposes of production, the advances made come from his own funds, exactly as on the day when he first entered the market. The fact that on this occasion the funds are derived from the unpaid labour of his workers makes absolutely no difference. If worker B is paid out of the surplus-value which worker A produced, then, in the first place, A furnished that surplus-value without having the just price of his commodity cut by a half-penny, and, in the second place, the transaction is no concern of B s whatever. What B claims, and has a right to claim, is that the capitalist should pay him the value of his labour-power. Both were still gainers: the worker because he was advanced the fruits of his labour (should read: of the unpaid labour of other workers) before the work was done (should read: before his own labour had borne fruit); the employer (le ma tre), because the labour of this worker was worth more than his wages (should read: produced more value than the value of his wages). (Sismondi, l. c., p. 135.) To be sure, the matter looks quite different if we consider capitalist production in the uninterrupted flow of its renewal, and if, in place of the individual capitalist and the individual worker, we view in their totality, the capitalist class and the working class confronting each other. But in so doing we should be applying standards entirely foreign to commodity production. Only buyer and seller, mutually independent, face each other in commodity production. The relations between them cease on the day when the term stipulated in the contract they concluded expires. If the transaction is repeated, it is repeated as the result of a new agreement which has nothing to do with the previous one and which only by chance brings the same seller together again with the same buyer. If, therefore, commodity production, or one of its associated processes, is to be judged according to its own economic laws, we must consider each act of exchange by itself, apart from any connexion with the act of exchange preceding it and that following it. And since sales and purchases are negotiated solely between particular individuals, it is not admissible to seek here for relations between whole social classes. However long a series of periodical reproductions and preceding accumulations the capital functioning today may have passed through, it always preserves its original virginity. So long as the laws of exchange are observed in every single act of exchange the mode of appropriation can be completely revolutionised without in any way affecting the property rights which correspond to commodity production. These same rights remain in force both at the outset, when the product belongs to its producer, who, exchanging equivalent for equivalent, can enrich himself only by his own labour, and also in the period of capitalism, when social wealth becomes to an ever-increasing degree the property of those who are in a position to appropriate continually and ever afresh the unpaid labour of others. This result becomes inevitable from the moment there is a free sale, by the labourer himself, of labour-power as a commodity. But it is also only from then onwards that commodity production is generalised and becomes the typical form of production; it is only from then onwards that, from the first, every product is produced for sale and all wealth produced goes through the sphere of circulation. Only when and where wage labour is its basis does commodity production impose itself upon society as a whole; but only then and there also does it unfold all its hidden potentialities. To say that the supervention of wage labour adulterates commodity production is to say that commodity production must not develop if it is to remain unadulterated. To the extent that commodity production, in accordance with its own inherent laws, develops further, into capitalist production, the property laws of commodity production change into the laws of capitalist appropriation. We have seen that even in the case of simple reproduction, all capital, whatever its original source, becomes converted into accumulated capital, capitalised surplus-value. But in the flood of production all the capital originally advanced becomes a vanishing quantity (magnitudo evanescens, in the mathematical sense), compared with the directly accumulated capital, i.e., with the surplus-value or surplus-product that is reconverted into capital, whether it functions in the hands of its accumulator, or in those of others. Hence, Political Economy describes capital in general as accumulated wealth (converted surplus-value or revenue), that is employed over again in the production of surplus-value, and the capitalist as the owner of surplus-value. It is merely another way of expressing the same thing to say that all existing capital is accumulated or capitalised interest, for interest is a mere fragment of surplus-value. Before we further investigate accumulation or the reconversion of surplus-value into capital, we must brush on one side an ambiguity introduced by the classical economists. Just as little as the commodities that the capitalist buys with a part of the surplus-value for his own consumption, serve the purpose of production and of creation of value, so little is the labour that he buys for the satisfaction of his natural and social requirements, productive labour. Instead of converting surplus-value into capital, he, on the contrary, by the purchase of those commodities and that labour, consumes or expends it as revenue. In the face of the habitual mode of life of the old feudal nobility, which, as Hegel rightly says, consists in consuming what is in hand, and more especially displays itself in the luxury of personal retainers, it was extremely important for bourgeois economy to promulgate the doctrine that accumulation of capital is the first duty of every citizen, and to preach without ceasing, that a man cannot accumulate, if he eats up all his revenue, instead of spending a good part of it in the acquisition of additional productive labourers, who bring in more than they cost. On the other hand the economists had to contend against the popular prejudice, that confuses capitalist production with hoarding, and fancies that accumulated wealth is either wealth that is rescued from being destroyed in its existing form, i.e., from being consumed, or wealth that is withdrawn from circulation. Exclusion of money from circulation would also exclude absolutely its self-expansion as capital, while accumulation of a hoard in the shape of commodities would be sheer tomfoolery. The accumulation of commodities in great masses is the result either of over-production or of a stoppage of circulation. It is true that the popular mind is impressed by the sight, on the one hand, of the mass of goods that are stored up for gradual consumption by the rich, and on the other hand, by the formation of reserve stocks; the latter, a phenomenon that is common to all modes of production, and on which we shall dwell for a moment, when we come to analyse circulation. Classical economy is therefore quite right, when it maintains that the consumption of surplus-products by productive, instead of by unproductive labourers, is a characteristic feature of the process of accumulation. But at this point the mistakes also begin. Adam Smith has made it the fashion, to represent accumulation as nothing more than consumption of surplus products by productive labourers, which amounts to saying, that the capitalising of surplus-value consists in merely turning surplus-value into labour-power. Let us see what Ricardo, e.g., says: There can be no greater error than that which Ricardo and all subsequent economists repeat after A. Smith, viz., that According to this, all surplus-value that is changed into capital becomes variable capital. So far from this being the case, the surplus-value, like the original capital, divides itself into constant capital and variable capital, into means of production and labour-power. Labour-power is the form under which variable capital exists during the process of production. In this process the labour-power is itself consumed by the capitalist while the means of production are consumed by the labour-power in the exercise of its function, labour. At the same time, the money paid for the purchase of the labour-power, is converted into necessaries, that are consumed, not by productive labour, but by the productive labourer. Adam Smith, by a fundamentally perverted analysis, arrives at the absurd conclusion, that even though each individual capital is divided into a constant and a variable part, the capital of society resolves itself only into variable capital, i.e., is laid out exclusively in payment of wages. For instance, suppose a cloth manufacturer converts 2,000 into capital. One portion he lays out in buying weavers, the other in woollen yarn, machinery, &c. But the people, from whom he buys the yarn and the machinery, pay for labour with a part of the purchase money, and so on until the whole 2,000 are spent in the payment of wages, i.e., until the entire product represented by the 2,000 has been consumed by productive labourers. It is evident that the whole gist of this argument lies in the words and so on, which send us from pillar to post. In truth, Adam Smith breaks his investigation off, just where its difficulties begin. The annual process of reproduction is easily understood, so long as we keep in view merely the sum total of the year s production. But every single component of this product must be brought into the market as a commodity, and there the difficulty begins. The movements of the individual capitals, and of the personal revenues, cross and intermingle and are lost in the general change of places, in the circulation of the wealth of society; this dazes the sight, and propounds very complicated problems for solution. In the third part of Book II. I shall give the analysis of the real bearings of the facts. It is one of the great merits of the Physiocrats, that in their Tableau conomique they were the first to attempt to depict the annual production in the shape in which it is presented to us after passing through the process of circulation. For the rest, it is a matter of course, that Political Economy, acting in the interests of the capitalist class, has not failed to exploit the doctrine of Adam Smith, viz., that the whole of that part of the surplus-product which is converted into capital, is consumed by the working class. In the last preceding chapter, we treated surplus-value (or the surplus-product) solely as a fund for supplying the individual consumption of the capitalist. In this chapter we have, so far, treated it solely as a fund for accumulation. It is, however, neither the one nor the other, but is both together. One portion is consumed by the capitalist as revenue, the other is employed as capital, is accumulated. Given the mass of surplus-value, then, the larger the one of these parts, the smaller is the other. Caeteris paribus, the ratio of these parts determines the magnitude of the accumulation. But it is by the owner of the surplus-value, by the capitalist alone, that the division is made. It is his deliberate act. That part of the tribute exacted by him which he accumulates, is said to be saved by him, because he does not eat it, i.e., because he performs the function of a capitalist, and enriches himself. Except as personified capital, the capitalist has no historical value, and no right to that historical existence, which, to use an expression of the witty Lichnowsky, hasn t got no date. And so far only is the necessity for his own transitory existence implied in the transitory necessity for the capitalist mode of production. But, so far as he is personified capital, it is not values in use and the enjoyment of them, but exchange-value and its augmentation, that spur him into action. Fanatically bent on making value expand itself, he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production s sake; he thus forces the development of the productive powers of society, and creates those material conditions, which alone can form the real basis of a higher form of society, a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle. Only as personified capital is the capitalist respectable. As such, he shares with the miser the passion for wealth as wealth. But that which in the miser is a mere idiosyncrasy, is, in the capitalist, the effect of the social mechanism, of which he is but one of the wheels. Moreover, the development of capitalist production makes it constantly necessary to keep increasing the amount of the capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition makes the immanent laws of capitalist production to be felt by each individual capitalist, as external coercive laws. It compels him to keep constantly extending his capital, in order to preserve it, but extend it he cannot, except by means of progressive accumulation. So far, therefore, as his actions are a mere function of capital endowed as capital is, in his person, with consciousness and a will his own private consumption is a robbery perpetrated on accumulation, just as in book-keeping by double entry, the private expenditure of the capitalist is placed on the debtor side of his account against his capital. To accumulate, is to conquer the world of social wealth, to increase the mass of human beings exploited by him, and thus to extend both the direct and the indirect sway of the capitalist. But original sin is at work everywhere. As capitalist production, accumulation, and wealth, become developed, the capitalist ceases to be the mere incarnation of capital. He has a fellow-feeling for his own Adam, and his education gradually enables him to smile at the rage for asceticism, as a mere prejudice of the old-fashioned miser. While the capitalist of the classical type brands individual consumption as a sin against his function, and as abstinence from accumulating, the modernised capitalist is capable of looking upon accumulation as abstinence from pleasure. At the historical dawn of capitalist production, and every capitalist upstart has personally to go through this historical stage avarice, and desire to get rich, are the ruling passions. But the progress of capitalist production not only creates a world of delights; it lays open, in speculation and the credit system, a thousand sources of sudden enrichment. When a certain stage of development has been reached, a conventional degree of prodigality, which is also an exhibition of wealth, and consequently a source of credit, becomes a business necessity to the unfortunate capitalist. Luxury enters into capital s expenses of representation. Moreover, the capitalist gets rich, not like the miser, in proportion to his personal labour and restricted consumption, but at the same rate as he squeezes out the labour-power of others, and enforces on the labourer abstinence from all life s enjoyments. Although, therefore, the prodigality of the capitalist never possesses the bona fide character of the open-handed feudal lord s prodigality, but, on the contrary, has always lurking behind it the most sordid avarice and the most anxious calculation, yet his expenditure grows with his accumulation, without the one necessarily restricting the other. But along with this growth, there is at the same time developed in his breast, a Faustian conflict between the passion for accumulation, and the desire for enjoyment. Dr. Aikin says in a work published in 1795: They enriched themselves chiefly by robbing the parents, whose children were bound as apprentices to them; the parents paid a high premium, while the apprentices were starved. On the other hand, the average profits were low, and to accumulate, extreme parsimony was requisite. They lived like misers and were far from consuming even the interest on their capital. Even in the early part of the 18th century, a Manchester manufacturer, who placed a pint of foreign wine before his guests, exposed himself to the remarks and headshakings of all his neighbours. Before the rise of machinery, a manufacturer s evening expenditure at the public house where they all met, never exceeded sixpence for a glass of punch, and a penny for a screw of tobacco. It was not till 1758, and this marks an epoch, that a person actually engaged in business was seen with an equipage of his own. What would the good Dr. Aikin say if he could rise from his grave and see the Manchester of today? Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets! Industry furnishes the material which saving accumulates. Therefore, save, save, i.e., reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus-value, or surplus-product into capital! Accumulation for accumulation s sake, production for production s sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single instant deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth. But what avails lamentation in the face of historical necessity? If to classical economy, the proletarian is but a machine for the production of surplus-value; on the other hand, the capitalist is in its eyes only a machine for the conversion of this surplus-value into additional capital. Political Economy takes the historical function of the capitalist in bitter earnest. In order to charm out of his bosom the awful conflict between the desire for enjoyment and the chase after riches, Malthus, about the year 1820, advocated a division of labour, which assigns to the capitalist actually engaged in production, the business of accumulating, and to the other sharers in surplus-value, to the landlords, the place-men, the beneficed clergy, &c., the business of spending. It is of the highest importance, he says, The capitalists having long been good livers and men of the world, uttered loud cries. What, exclaimed one of their spokesmen, a disciple of Ricardo, Mr. Malthus preaches high rents, heavy taxes, &c., so that the pressure of the spur may constantly be kept on the industrious by unproductive consumers! By all means, production, production on a constantly increasing scale, runs the shibboleth; but Unfair as he finds it to spur on the industrial capitalist, by depriving his bread of its butter, yet he thinks it necessary to reduce the labourer s wages to a minimum "to keep him industrious. Nor does he for a moment conceal the fact, that the appropriation of unpaid labour is the secret of surplus-value. The learned disputation, how the booty pumped out of the labourer may be divided, with most advantage to accumulation, between the industrial capitalist and the rich idler, was hushed in face of the revolution of July. Shortly afterwards, the town proletariat at Lyons sounded the tocsin of revolution, and the country proletariat in England began to set fire to farm-yards and corn-stacks. On this side of the Channel Owenism began to spread; on the other side, St. Simonism and Fourierism. The hour of vulgar economy had struck. Exactly a year before Nassau W. Senior discovered at Manchester, that the profit (including interest) of capital is the product of the last hour of the twelve, he had announced to the world another discovery. An unparalleled sample this, of the discoveries of vulgar economy! It substitutes for an economic category, a sycophantic phrase voil tout. [that s all] This explains how and why, in the earlier states of society, the implements of labour were fabricated without abstinence on the part of the capitalist. Namely, from those who ply the industry of appropriating the fruits of others industry. All the conditions for carrying on the labour process are suddenly converted into so many acts of abstinence on the part of the capitalist. If the corn is not all eaten, but part of it also sown abstinence of the capitalist. If the wine gets time to mature abstinence of the capitalist. The capitalist robs his own self, whenever he lends (!) the instruments of production to the labourer, that is, whenever by incorporating labour-power with them, he uses them to extract surplus-value out of that labour-power, instead of eating them up, steam-engines, cotton, railways, manure, horses, and all; or as the vulgar economist childishly puts it, instead of dissipating their value in luxuries and other articles of consumption. How the capitalists as a class are to perform that feat, is a secret that vulgar economy has hitherto obstinately refused to divulge. Enough, that the world still jogs on, solely through the self-chastisement of this modern penitent of Vishnu, the capitalist. Not only accumulation, but the simple conservation of a capital requires a constant effort to resist the temptation of consuming it. The simple dictates of humanity therefore plainly enjoin the release of the capitalist from this martyrdom and temptation, in the same way that the Georgian slave-owner was lately delivered, by the abolition of slavery, from the painful dilemma, whether to squander the surplus-product, lashed out of his niggers, entirely in champagne, or whether to reconvert a part of it into more niggers and more land. In economic forms of society of the most different kinds, there occurs, not only simple reproduction, but, in varying degrees, reproduction on a progressively increasing scale. By degrees more is produced and more consumed, and consequently more products have to be converted into means of production. This process, however, does not present itself as accumulation of capital, nor as the function of a capitalist, so long as the labourer s means of production, and with them, his product and means of subsistence, do not confront him in the shape of capital. Richard Jones, who died a few years ago, and was the successor of Malthus in the chair of Political Economy at Haileybury College, discusses this point well in the light of two important facts. Since the great mass of the Hindu population are peasants cultivating their land themselves, their products, their instruments of labour and means of subsistence never take the shape of a fund saved from revenue, which fund has, therefore, gone through a previous process of accumulation. On the other hand, the non-agricultural labourers in those provinces where the English rule has least disturbed the old system, are directly employed by the magnates, to whom a portion of the agricultural surplus-product is rendered in the shape of tribute or rent. One portion of this product is consumed by the magnates in kind, another is converted, for their use, by the labourers, into articles of luxury and such like things, while the rest forms the wages of the labourers, who own their implements of labour. Here, production and reproduction on a progressively increasing scale, go on their way without any intervention from that queer saint, that knight of the woeful countenance, the capitalist abstainer. The proportion in which surplus-value breaks up into capital and revenue being given, the magnitude of the capital accumulated clearly depends on the absolute magnitude of the surplus-value. Suppose that 80 per cent. were capitalised and 20 per cent. eaten up, the accumulated capital will be 2,400 or 1,200, according as the total surplus-value has amounted to 3,000 or 1,500. Hence all the circumstances that determine the mass of surplus-value operate to determine the magnitude of the accumulation. We sum them up once again, but only in so far as they afford new points of view in regard to accumulation. It will be remembered that the rate of surplus-value depends, in the first place, on the degree of exploitation of labour-power. Political Economy values this fact so highly, that it occasionally identifies the acceleration of accumulation due to increased productiveness of labour, with its acceleration due to increased exploitation of the labourer. In the chapters on the production of surplus-value it was constantly presupposed that wages are at least equal to the value of labour-power. Forcible reduction of wages below this value plays, however, in practice too important a part, for us not to pause upon it for a moment. It, in fact, transforms, within certain limits, the labourer s necessary consumption fund into a fund for the accumulation of capital. But if the labourers could live on air they could not be bought at any price. The zero of their cost is therefore a limit in a mathematical sense, always beyond reach, although we can always approximate more and more nearly to it. The constant tendency of capital is to force the cost of labour back towards this zero. A writer of the 18th century, often quoted already, the author of the Essay on Trade and Commerce, only betrays the innermost secret soul of English capitalism, when he declares the historic mission of England to be the forcing down of English wages to the level of the French and the Dutch. With other things he says naively: He quotes the work of a Northamptonshire manufacturer, who, with eyes squinting heavenward moans: Twenty years later, an American humbug, the baronised Yankee, Benjamin Thompson (alias Count Rumford) followed the same line of philanthropy to the great satisfaction of God and man. His Essays are a cookery book with receipts of all kinds for replacing by some succedaneum the ordinary dear food of the labourer. The following is a particularly successful receipt of this wonderful philosopher: With the advance of capitalistic production, the adulteration of food rendered Thompson s ideal superfluous. At the end of the 18th and during the first ten years of the 19th century, the English farmers and landlords enforced the absolute minimum of wage, by paying the agricultural labourers less than the minimum in the form of wages, and the remainder in the shape of parochial relief. An example of the waggish way in which the English Dogberries acted in their legal fixing of a wages tariff: Before the Committee of Inquiry of the House of Lords, 1814, a certain A. Bennett, a large farmer, magistrate, poor-law guardian, and wage-regulator, was asked: The part played in our days by the direct robbery from the labourer s necessary consumption fund in the formation of surplus-value, and, therefore, of the accumulation fund of capital, the so-called domestic industry has served to show. (Ch. xv., sect. 8, c.) Further facts on this subject will be given later. Although in all branches of industry that part of the constant capital consisting of instruments of labour must be sufficient for a certain number of labourers (determined by the magnitude of the undertaking), it by no means always necessarily increases in the same proportion as the quantity of labour employed. In a factory, suppose that 100 labourers working 8 hours a day yield 800 working-hours. If the capitalist wishes to raise this sum by one half, he can employ 50 more workers; but then he must also advance more capital, not merely for wages, but for instruments of labour. But he might also let the 100 labourers work 12 hours instead of 8, and then the instruments of labour already to hand would be enough. These would then simply be more rapidly consumed. Thus additional labour, begotten of the greater tension of labour-power, can augment surplus-product and surplus-value (i.e., the subject-matter of accumulation), without corresponding augmentation in the constant part of capital. In the extractive industries, mines, &c., the raw materials form no part of the capital advanced. The subject of labour is in this case not a product of previous labour, but is furnished by Nature gratis, as in the case of metals, minerals, coal, stone, &c. In these cases the constant capital consists almost exclusively of instruments of labour, which can very well absorb an increased quantity of labour (day and night shifts of labourers, e.g.). All other things being equal, the mass and value of the product will rise in direct proportion to the labour expended. As on the first day of production, the original produce-formers, now turned into the creators of the material elements of capital man and Nature still work together. Thanks to the elasticity of labour-power, the domain of accumulation has extended without any previous enlargement of constant capital. In agriculture the land under cultivation cannot be increased without the advance of more seed and manure. But this advance once made, the purely mechanical working of the soil itself produces a marvellous effect on the amount of the product. A greater quantity of labour, done by the same number of labourers as before, thus increases the fertility, without requiring any new advance in the instruments of labour. It is once again the direct action of man on Nature which becomes an immediate source of greater accumulation, without the intervention of any new capital. Finally, in what is called manufacturing industry, every additional expenditure of labour presupposes a corresponding additional expenditure of raw materials, but not necessarily of instruments of labour. And as extractive industry and agriculture supply manufacturing industry with its raw materials and those of its instruments of labour, the additional product the former have created without additional advance of capital, tells also in favour of the latter. General result: by incorporating with itself the two primary creators of wealth, labour-power and the land, capital acquires a power of expansion that permits it to augment the elements of its accumulation beyond the limits apparently fixed by its own magnitude, or by the value and the mass of the means of production, already produced, in which it has its being. Another important factor in the accumulation of capital is the degree of productivity of social labour. With the productive power of labour increases the mass of the products, in which a certain value, and, therefore, a surplus-value of a given magnitude, is embodied. The rate of surplus-value remaining the same or even falling, so long as it only falls more slowly, than the productive power of labour rises, the mass of the surplus-product increases. The division of this product into revenue and additional capital remaining the same, the consumption of the capitalist may, therefore, increase without any decrease in the fund of accumulation. The relative magnitude of the accumulation fund may even increase at the expense of the consumption fund, whilst the cheapening of commodities places at the disposal of the capitalist as many means of enjoyment as formerly, or even more than formerly. But hand-in-hand with the increasing productivity of labour, goes, as we have seen, the cheapening of the labourer, therefore a higher rate of surplus-value, even when the real wages are rising. The latter never rise proportionally to the productive power of labour. The same value in variable capital therefore sets in movement more labour-power, and, therefore, more labour. The same value in constant capital is embodied in more means of production, i.e., in more instruments of labour, materials of labour and auxiliary materials; it therefore also supplies more elements for the production both of use value and of value, and with these more absorbers of labour. The value of the additional capital, therefore, remaining the same or even diminishing, accelerated accumulation still takes place. Not only does the scale of reproduction materially extend, but the production of surplus-value increases more rapidly than the value of the additional capital. The development of the productive power of labour reacts also on the original capital already engaged in the process of production. A part of the functioning constant capital consists of instruments of labour, such as machinery, &c., which are not consumed, and therefore not reproduced, or replaced by new ones of the same kind, until after long periods of time. But every year a part of these instruments of labour perishes or reaches the limit of its productive function. It reaches, therefore, in that year, the time for its periodical reproduction, for its replacement by new ones of the same kind. If the productiveness of labour has, during the using up of these instruments of labour, increased (and it develops continually with the uninterrupted advance of science and technology), more efficient and (considering their increased efficiency), cheaper machines, tools, apparatus, &c., replace the old. The old capital is reproduced in a more productive form, apart from the constant detail improvements in the instruments of labour already in use. The other part of the constant capital, raw material and auxiliary substances, is constantly reproduced in less than a year; those produced by agriculture, for the most part annually. Every introduction of improved methods, therefore, works almost simultaneously on the new capital and on that already in action. Every advance in Chemistry not only multiplies the number of useful materials and the useful applications of those already known, thus extending with the growth of capital its sphere of investment. It teaches at the same time how to throw the excrements of the processes of production and consumption back again into the circle of the process of reproduction, and thus, without any previous outlay of capital, creates new matter for capital. Like the increased exploitation of natural wealth by the mere increase in the tension of labour-power, science and technology give capital a power of expansion independent of the given magnitude of the capital actually functioning. They react at the same time on that part of the original capital which has entered upon its stage of renewal. This, in passing into its new shape, incorporates gratis the social advance made while its old shape was being used up. Of course, this development of productive power is accompanied by a partial depreciation of functioning capital. So far as this depreciation makes itself acutely felt in competition, the burden falls on the labourer, in the increased exploitation of whom the capitalist looks for his indemnification. Labour transmits to its product the value of the means of production consumed by it. On the other hand, the value and mass of the means of production set in motion by a given quantity of labour increase as the labour becomes more productive. Though the same quantity of labour adds always to its products only the same sum of new value, still the old capital value, transmitted by the labour to the products, increases with the growing productivity of labour. An English and a Chinese spinner, e.g., may work the same number of hours with the same intensity; then they will both in a week create equal values. But in spite of this equality, an immense difference will obtain between the value of the week s product of the Englishman, who works with a mighty automaton, and that of the Chinaman, who has but a spinning-wheel. In the same time as the Chinaman spins one pound of cotton, the Englishman spins several hundreds of pounds. A sum, many hundred times as great, of old values swells the value of his product, in which those re-appear in a new, useful form, and can thus function anew as capital. Labour embodied in the form of machinery of course did not directly force into life a single man, but it made it possible for a smaller number of labourers, with the addition of relatively less living labour, not only to consume the wool productively, and put into it new value, but to preserve in the form of yarn, &c., its old value. At the same time, it caused and stimulated increased reproduction of wool. It is the natural property of living labour, to transmit old value, whilst it creates new. Hence, with the increase in efficacy, extent and value of its means of production, consequently with the accumulation that accompanies the development of its productive power, labour keeps up and eternises an always increasing capital value in a form ever new. This natural power of labour takes the appearance of an intrinsic property of capital, in which it is incorporated, just as the productive forces of social labour take the appearance of inherent properties of capital, and as the constant appropriation of surplus-labour by the capitalists, takes that of a constant self-expansion of capital. With the increase of capital, the difference between the capital employed and the capital consumed increases. In other words, there is increase in the value and the material mass of the instruments of labour, such as buildings, machinery, drain-pipes, working-cattle, apparatus of every kind that function for a longer or shorter time in processes of production constantly repeated, or that serve for the attainment of particular useful effects, whilst they themselves only gradually wear out, therefore only lose their value piecemeal, therefore transfer that value to the product only bit by bit. In the same proportion as these instruments of labour serve as product-formers without adding value to the product, i.e., in the same proportion as they are wholly employed but only partly consumed, they perform, as we saw earlier, the same gratuitous service as the natural forces, water, steam, air, electricity, etc. This gratuitous service of past labour, when seized and filled with a soul by living labour, increases with the advancing stages of accumulation. Since past labour always disguises itself as capital, i.e., since the passive of the labour of A, B, C, etc., takes the form of the active of the non-labourer X, bourgeois and political economists are full of praises of the services of dead and gone labour, which, according to the Scotch genius MacCulloch, ought to receive a special remuneration in the shape of interest, profit, etc. The powerful and ever-increasing assistance given by past labour to the living labour process under the form of means of production is, therefore, attributed to that form of past labour in which it is alienated, as unpaid labour, from the worker himself, i.e., to its capitalistic form. The practical agents of capitalistic production and their pettifogging ideologists are as unable to think of the means of production as separate from the antagonistic social mask they wear today, as a slave-owner to think of the worker himself as distinct from his character as a slave. With a given degree of exploitation of labour-power, the mass of the surplus-value produced is determined by the number of workers simultaneously exploited; and this corresponds, although in varying proportions, with the magnitude of the capital. The more, therefore, capital increases by means of successive accumulations, the more does the sum of the value increase that is divided into consumption fund and accumulation fund. The capitalist can, therefore, live a more jolly life, and at the same time show more abstinence. And, finally, all the springs of production act with greater elasticity, the more its scale extends with the mass of the capital advanced. It has been shown in the course of this inquiry that capital is not a fixed magnitude, but is a part of social wealth, elastic and constantly fluctuating with the division of fresh surplus-value into revenue and additional capital. It has been seen further that, even with a given magnitude of functioning capital, the labour-power, the science, and the land (by which are to be understood, economically, all conditions of labour furnished by Nature independently of man), embodied in it, form elastic powers of capital, allowing it, within certain limits, a field of action independent of its own magnitude. In this inquiry we have neglected all effects of the process of circulation, effects which may produce very different degrees of efficiency in the same mass of capital. And as we presupposed the limits set by capitalist production, that is to say, presupposed the process of social production in a form developed by purely spontaneous growth, we neglected any more rational combination, directly and systematically practicable with the means of production, and the mass of labour-power at present disposable. Classical economy always loved to conceive social capital as a fixed magnitude of a fixed degree of efficiency. But this prejudice was first established as a dogma by the arch-Philistine, Jeremy Bentham, that insipid, pedantic, leather-tongued oracle of the ordinary bourgeois intelligence of the 19th century. Bentham is among philosophers what Martin Tupper is among poets. Both could only have been manufactured in England. In the light of his dogma the commonest phenomena of the process of production, as, e.g., its sudden expansions and contractions, nay, even accumulation itself, become perfectly inconceivable. The dogma was used by Bentham himself, as well as by Malthus, James Mill, MacCulloch, etc., for an apologetic purpose, and especially in order to represent one part of capital, namely, variable capital, or that part convertible into labour-power, as a fixed magnitude. The material of variable capital, i.e., the mass of the means of subsistence it represents for the labourer, or the so-called labour fund, was fabled as a separate part of social wealth, fixed by natural laws and unchangeable. To set in motion the part of social wealth which is to function as constant capital, or, to express it in a material form, as means of production, a definite mass of living labour is required. This mass is given technologically. But neither is the number of labourers required to render fluid this mass of labour-power given (it changes with the degree of exploitation of the individual labour-power), nor is the price of this labour-power given, but only its minimum limit, which is moreover very variable. The facts that lie at the bottom of this dogma are these: on the one hand, the labourer has no right to interfere in the division of social wealth into means of enjoyment for the non-labourer and means of production. On the other hand, only in favourable and exceptional cases, has he the power to enlarge the so-called labour fund at the expense of the revenue of the wealthy. What silly tautology results from the attempt to represent the capitalistic limits of the labour fund as its natural and social limits may be seen, e.g., in Professor Fawcett. That is to say, we first add together the individual wages actually paid, and then we affirm that the sum thus obtained, forms the total value of the labour fund determined and vouchsafed to us by God and Nature. Lastly, we divide the sum thus obtained by the number of labourers to find out again how much may come to each on the average. An uncommonly knowing dodge this. It did not prevent Mr. Fawcett saying in the same breath: The greater part of the yearly accruing surplus-product, embezzled, because abstracted without return of an equivalent, from the English labourer, is thus used as capital, not in England, but in foreign countries. But with the additional capital thus exported, a part of the labour fund invented by God and Bentham is also exported.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty-Four

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm

In this chapter we consider the influence of the growth of capital on the lot of the labouring class. The most important factor in this inquiry is the composition of capital and the changes it undergoes in the course of the process of accumulation. The composition of capital is to be understood in a two-fold sense. On the side of value, it is determined by the proportion in which it is divided into constant capital or value of the means of production, and variable capital or value of labour power, the sum total of wages. On the side of material, as it functions in the process of production, all capital is divided into means of production and living labour power. This latter composition is determined by the relation between the mass of the means of production employed, on the one hand, and the mass of labour necessary for their employment on the other. I call the former the value-composition, the latter the technical composition of capital. Between the two there is a strict correlation. To express this, I call the value composition of capital, in so far as it is determined by its technical composition and mirrors the changes of the latter, the organic composition of capital. Wherever I refer to the composition of capital, without further qualification, its organic composition is always understood. The many individual capitals invested in a particular branch of production have, one with another, more or less different compositions. The average of their individual compositions gives us the composition of the total capital in this branch of production. Lastly, the average of these averages, in all branches of production, gives us the composition of the total social capital of a country, and with this alone are we, in the last resort, concerned in the following investigation. Growth of capital involves growth of its variable constituent or of the part invested in labour power. A part of the surplus-value turned into additional capital must always be re-transformed into variable capital, or additional labour fund. If we suppose that, all other circumstances remaining the same, the composition of capital also remains constant (i.e., that a definite mass of means of production constantly needs the same mass of labour power to set it in motion), then the demand for labour and the subsistence-fund of the labourers clearly increase in the same proportion as the capital, and the more rapidly, the more rapidly the capital increases. Since the capital produces yearly a surplus-value, of which one part is yearly added to the original capital; since this increment itself grows yearly along with the augmentation of the capital already functioning; since lastly, under special stimulus to enrichment, such as the opening of new markets, or of new spheres for the outlay of capital in consequence of newly developed social wants, &c., the scale of accumulation may be suddenly extended, merely by a change in the division of the surplus-value or surplus-product into capital and revenue, the requirements of accumulating capital may exceed the increase of labour power or of the number of labourers; the demand for labourers may exceed the supply, and, therefore, wages may rise. This must, indeed, ultimately be the case if the conditions supposed above continue. For since in each year more labourers are employed than in its predecessor, sooner or later a point must be reached, at which the requirements of accumulation begin to surpass the customary supply of labour, and, therefore, a rise of wages takes place. A lamentation on this score was heard in England during the whole of the fifteenth, and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. The more or less favourable circumstances in which the wage working class supports and multiplies itself, in no way alter the fundamental character of capitalist production. As simple reproduction constantly reproduces the capital relation itself, i.e., the relation of capitalists on the one hand, and wage workers on the other, so reproduction on a progressive scale, i.e., accumulation, reproduces the capital relation on a progressive scale, more capitalists or larger capitalists at this pole, more wage workers at that. The reproduction of a mass of labour power, which must incessantly re-incorporate itself with capital for that capital s self-expansion; which cannot get free from capital, and whose enslavement to capital is only concealed by the variety of individual capitalists to whom it sells itself, this reproduction of labour power forms, in fact, an essential of the reproduction of capital itself. Accumulation of capital is, therefore, increase of the proletariat. Classical economy grasped this fact so thoroughly that Adam Smith, Ricardo, &c., as mentioned earlier, inaccurately identified accumulation with the consumption, by the productive labourers, of all the capitalised part of the surplus-product, or with its transformation into additional wage labourers. As early as 1696 John Bellers says: So also Bernard de Mandeville at the beginning of the eighteenth century: What Mandeville, an honest, clear-headed man, had not yet seen, is that the mechanism of the process of accumulation itself increases, along with the capital, the mass of labouring poor, i.e., the wage labourers, who turn their labour power into an increasing power of self-expansion of the growing capital, and even by doing so must eternise their dependent relation on their own product, as personified in the capitalists. In reference to this relation of dependence, Sir F. M. Eden in his The State of the Poor, an History of the Labouring Classes in England, says, Sir F. M. Eden, it may be remarked in passing, is the only disciple of Adam Smith during the eighteenth century that produced any work of importance. Under the conditions of accumulation supposed thus far, which conditions are those most favourable to the labourers, their relation of dependence upon capital takes on a form endurable or, as Eden says: easy and liberal. Instead of becoming more intensive with the growth of capital, this relation of dependence only becomes more extensive, i.e., the sphere of capital s exploitation and rule merely extends with its own dimensions and the number of its subjects. A larger part of their own surplus-product, always increasing and continually transformed into additional capital, comes back to them in the shape of means of payment, so that they can extend the circle of their enjoyments; can make some additions to their consumption-fund of clothes, furniture, &c., and can lay by small reserve funds of money. But just as little as better clothing, food, and treatment, and a larger peculium, do away with the exploitation of the slave, so little do they set aside that of the wage worker. A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of accumulation of capital, only means, in fact, that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage worker has already forged for himself, allow of a relaxation of the tension of it. In the controversies on this subject the chief fact has generally been overlooked, viz., the differentia specifica {defining characteristic} of capitalistic production. Labour power is sold today, not with a view of satisfying, by its service or by its product, the personal needs of the buyer. His aim is augmentation of his capital, production of commodities containing more labour than he pays for, containing therefore a portion of value that costs him nothing, and that is nevertheless realised when the commodities are sold. Production of surplus-value is the absolute law of this mode of production. Labour power is only saleable so far as it preserves the means of production in their capacity of capital, reproduces its own value as capital, and yields in unpaid labour a source of additional capital. The conditions of its sale, whether more or less favourable to the labourer, include therefore the necessity of its constant re-selling, and the constantly extended reproduction of all wealth in the shape of capital. Wages, as we have seen, by their very nature, always imply the performance of a certain quantity of unpaid labour on the part of the labourer. Altogether, irrespective of the case of a rise of wages with a falling price of labour, &c., such an increase only means at best a quantitative diminution of the unpaid labour that the worker has to supply. This diminution can never reach the point at which it would threaten the system itself. Apart from violent conflicts as to the rate of wages (and Adam Smith has already shown that in such a conflict, taken on the whole, the master is always master), a rise in the price of labour resulting from accumulation of capital implies the following alternative: Either the price of labour keeps on rising, because its rise does not interfere with the progress of accumulation. In this there is nothing wonderful, for, says Adam Smith, after these (profits) are diminished, stock may not only continue to increase, but to increase much faster than before.... A great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits. (l. c., ii, p. 189.) In this case it is evident that a diminution in the unpaid labour in no way interferes with the extension of the domain of capital. Or, on the other hand, accumulation slackens in consequence of the rise in the price of labour, because the stimulus of gain is blunted. The rate of accumulation lessens; but with its lessening, the primary cause of that lessening vanishes, i.e., the disproportion between capital and exploitable labour power. The mechanism of the process of capitalist production removes the very obstacles that it temporarily creates. The price of labour falls again to a level corresponding with the needs of the self-expansion of capital, whether the level be below, the same as, or above the one which was normal before the rise of wages took place. We see thus: In the first case, it is not the diminished rate either of the absolute, or of the proportional, increase in labour power, or labouring population, which causes capital to be in excess, but conversely the excess of capital that makes exploitable labour power insufficient. In the second case, it is not the increased rate either of the absolute, or of the proportional, increase in labour power, or labouring population, that makes capital insufficient; but, conversely, the relative diminution of capital that causes the exploitable labour power, or rather its price, to be in excess. It is these absolute movements of the accumulation of capital which are reflected as relative movements of the mass of exploitable labour power, and therefore seem produced by the latter s own independent movement. To put it mathematically: the rate of accumulation is the independent, not the dependent, variable; the rate of wages, the dependent, not the independent, variable. Thus, when the industrial cycle is in the phase of crisis, a general fall in the price of commodities is expressed as a rise in the value of money, and, in the phase of prosperity, a general rise in the price of commodities, as a fall in the value of money. The so-called currency school concludes from this that with high prices too much, with low prices too little money is in circulation. Their ignorance and complete misunderstanding of facts are worthily paralleled by the economists, who interpret the above phenomena of accumulation by saying that there are now too few, now too many wage labourers. The law of capitalist production, that is at the bottom of the pretended natural law of population, reduces itself simply to this: The correlation between accumulation of capital and rate of wages is nothing else than the correlation between the unpaid labour transformed into capital, and the additional paid labour necessary for the setting in motion of this additional capital. It is therefore in no way a relation between two magnitudes, independent one of the other: on the one hand, the magnitude of the capital; on the other, the number of the labouring population; it is rather, at bottom, only the relation between the unpaid and the paid labour of the same labouring population. If the quantity of unpaid labour supplied by the working class, and accumulated by the capitalist class, increases so rapidly that its conversion into capital requires an extraordinary addition of paid labour, then wages rise, and, all other circumstances remaining equal, the unpaid labour diminishes in proportion. But as soon as this diminution touches the point at which the surplus labour that nourishes capital is no longer supplied in normal quantity, a reaction sets in: a smaller part of revenue is capitalised, accumulation lags, and the movement of rise in wages receives a check. The rise of wages therefore is confined within limits that not only leave intact the foundations of the capitalistic system, but also secure its reproduction on a progressive scale. The law of capitalistic accumulation, metamorphosed by economists into pretended law of Nature, in reality merely states that the very nature of accumulation excludes every diminution in the degree of exploitation of labour, and every rise in the price of labour, which could seriously imperil the continual reproduction, on an ever-enlarging scale, of the capitalistic relation. It cannot be otherwise in a mode of production in which the labourer exists to satisfy the needs of self-expansion of existing values, instead of, on the contrary, material wealth existing to satisfy the needs of development on the part of the labourer. As, in religion, man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is governed by the products of his own hand. According to the economists themselves, it is neither the actual extent of social wealth, nor the magnitude of the capital already functioning, that lead to a rise of wages, but only the constant growth of accumulation and the degree of rapidity of that growth. (Adam Smith, Book I., chapter 8.) So far, we have only considered one special phase of this process, that in which the increase of capital occurs along with a constant technical composition of capital. But the process goes beyond this phase. Once given the general basis of the capitalistic system, then, in the course of accumulation, a point is reached at which the development of the productivity of social labour becomes the most powerful lever of accumulation. Apart from natural conditions, such as fertility of the soil, &c., and from the skill of independent and isolated producers (shown rather qualitatively in the goodness than quantitatively in the mass of their products), the degree of productivity of labour, in a given society, is expressed in the relative extent of the means of production that one labourer, during a given time, with the same tension of labour power, turns into products. The mass of the means of production which he thus transforms, increases with the productiveness of his labour. But those means of production play a double part. The increase of some is a consequence, that of the others a condition of the increasing productivity of labour. E.g., with the division of labour in manufacture, and with the use of machinery, more raw material is worked up in the same time, and, therefore, a greater mass of raw material and auxiliary substances enter into the labour process. That is the consequence of the increasing productivity of labour. On the other hand, the mass of machinery, beasts of burden, mineral manures, drain-pipes, &c., is a condition of the increasing productivity of labour. So also is it with the means of production concentrated in buildings, furnaces, means of transport, &c. But whether condition or consequence, the growing extent of the means of production, as compared with the labour power incorporated with them, is an expression of the growing productiveness of labour. The increase of the latter appears, therefore, in the diminution of the mass of labour in proportion to the mass of means of production moved by it, or in the diminution of the subjective factor of the labour process as compared with the objective factor. This change in the technical composition of capital, this growth in the mass of means of production, as compared with the mass of the labour power that vivifies them, is reflected again in its value composition, by the increase of the constant constituent of capital at the expense of its variable constituent. There may be, e.g., originally 50 per cent. of a capital laid out in means of production, and 50 per cent. in labour power; later on, with the development of the productivity of labour, 80 per cent. in means of production, 20 per cent. in labour power, and so on. This law of the progressive increase in constant capital, in proportion to the variable, is confirmed at every step (as already shown) by the comparative analysis of the prices of commodities, whether we compare different economic epochs or different nations in the same epoch. The relative magnitude of the element of price, which represents the value of the means of production only, or the constant part of capital consumed, is in direct, the relative magnitude of the other element of price that pays labour (the variable part of capital) is in inverse proportion to the advance of accumulation. This diminution in the variable part of capital as compared with the constant, or the altered value-composition of the capital, however, only shows approximately the change in the composition of its material constituents. If, e.g., the capital-value employed today in spinning is 7/8 constant and 1/8 variable, whilst at the beginning of the 18th century it was constant and variable, on the other hand, the mass of raw material, instruments of labour, &c., that a certain quantity of spinning labour consumes productively today, is many hundred times greater than at the beginning of the 18th century. The reason is simply that, with the increasing productivity of labour, not only does the mass of the means of production consumed by it increase, but their value compared with their mass diminishes. Their value therefore rises absolutely, but not in proportion to their mass. The increase of the difference between constant and variable capital, is, therefore, much less than that of the difference between the mass of the means of production into which the constant, and the mass of the labour power into which the variable, capital is converted. The former difference increases with the latter, but in a smaller degree. But, if the progress of accumulation lessens the relative magnitude of the variable part of capital, it by no means, in doing this, excludes the possibility of a rise in its absolute magnitude. Suppose that a capital-value at first is divided into 50 per cent. of constant and 50 per cent. of variable capital; later into 80 per cent. of constant and 20 per cent. of variable. If in the meantime the original capital, say 6,000, has increased to 18,000, its variable constituent has also increased. It was 3,000, it is now 3,600. But where as formerly an increase of capital by 20 per cent. would have sufficed to raise the demand for labour 20 per cent., now this latter rise requires a tripling of the original capital. In Part IV, it was shown, how the development of the productiveness of social labour presupposes co-operation on a large scale; how it is only upon this supposition that division and combination of labour can be organised, and the means of production economised by concentration on a vast scale; how instruments of labour which, from their very nature, are only fit for use in common, such as a system of machinery, can be called into being; how huge natural forces can be pressed into the service of production; and how the transformation can be effected of the process of production into a technological application of science. On the basis of the production of commodities, where the means of production are the property of private persons, and where the artisan therefore either produces commodities, isolated from and independent of others, or sells his labour power as a commodity, because he lacks the means for independent industry, co-operation on a large scale can realise itself only in the increase of individual capitals, only in proportion as the means of social production and the means of subsistence are transformed into the private property of capitalists. The basis of the production of commodities can admit of production on a large scale in the capitalistic form alone. A certain accumulation of capital, in the hands of individual producers of commodities, forms therefore the necessary preliminary of the specifically capitalistic mode of production. We had, therefore, to assume that this occurs during the transition from handicraft to capitalistic industry. It may be called primitive accumulation, because it is the historic basis, instead of the historic result of specifically capitalist production. How it itself originates, we need not here inquire as yet. It is enough that it forms the starting point. But all methods for raising the social productive power of labour that are developed on this basis, are at the same time methods for the increased production of surplus-value or surplus-product, which in its turn is the formative element of accumulation. They are, therefore, at the same time methods of the production of capital by capital, or methods of its accelerated accumulation. The continual re-transformation of surplus-value into capital now appears in the shape of the increasing magnitude of the capital that enters into the process of production. This in turn is the basis of an extended scale of production, of the methods for raising the productive power of labour that accompany it, and of accelerated production of surplus-value. If, therefore, a certain degree of accumulation of capital appears as a condition of the specifically capitalist mode of production, the latter causes conversely an accelerated accumulation of capital. With the accumulation of capital, therefore, the specifically capitalistic mode of production develops, and with the capitalist mode of production the accumulation of capital. Both these economic factors bring about, in the compound ratio of the impulses they reciprocally give one another, that change in the technical composition of capital by which the variable constituent becomes always smaller and smaller as compared with the constant. Every individual capital is a larger or smaller concentration of means of production, with a corresponding command over a larger or smaller labour-army. Every accumulation becomes the means of new accumulation. With the increasing mass of wealth which functions as capital, accumulation increases the concentration of that wealth in the hands of individual capitalists, and thereby widens the basis of production on a large scale and of the specific methods of capitalist production. The growth of social capital is effected by the growth of many individual capitals. All other circumstances remaining the same, individual capitals, and with them the concentration of the means of production, increase in such proportion as they form aliquot parts of the total social capital. At the same time portions of the original capitals disengage themselves and function as new independent capitals. Besides other causes, the division of property, within capitalist families, plays a great part in this. With the accumulation of capital, therefore, the number of capitalists grows to a greater or less extent. Two points characterise this kind of concentration which grows directly out of, or rather is identical with, accumulation. First: The increasing concentration of the social means of production in the hands of individual capitalists is, other things remaining equal, limited by the degree of increase of social wealth. Second: The part of social capital domiciled in each particular sphere of production is divided among many capitalists who face one another as independent commodity-producers competing with each other. Accumulation and the concentration accompanying it are, therefore, not only scattered over many points, but the increase of each functioning capital is thwarted by the formation of new and the sub-division of old capitals. Accumulation, therefore, presents itself on the one hand as increasing concentration of the means of production, and of the command over labour; on the other, as repulsion of many individual capitals one from another. This splitting-up of the total social capital into many individual capitals or the repulsion of its fractions one from another, is counteracted by their attraction. This last does not mean that simple concentration of the means of production and of the command over labour, which is identical with accumulation. It is concentration of capitals already formed, destruction of their individual independence, expropriation of capitalist by capitalist, transformation of many small into few large capitals. This process differs from the former in this, that it only presupposes a change in the distribution of capital already to hand, and functioning; its field of action is therefore not limited by the absolute growth of social wealth, by the absolute limits of accumulation. Capital grows in one place to a huge mass in a single hand, because it has in another place been lost by many. This is centralisation proper, as distinct from accumulation and concentration. The laws of this centralisation of capitals, or of the attraction of capital by capital, cannot be developed here. A brief hint at a few facts must suffice. The battle of competition is fought by cheapening of commodities. The cheapness of commodities demands, caeteris paribus, on the productiveness of labour, and this again on the scale of production. Therefore, the larger capitals beat the smaller. It will further be remembered that, with the development of the capitalist mode of production, there is an increase in the minimum amount of individual capital necessary to carry on a business under its normal conditions. The smaller capitals, therefore, crowd into spheres of production which Modern Industry has only sporadically or incompletely got hold of. Here competition rages in direct proportion to the number, and in inverse proportion to the magnitudes, of the antagonistic capitals. It always ends in the ruin of many small capitalists, whose capitals partly pass into the hands of their conquerors, partly vanish. Apart from this, with capitalist production an altogether new force comes into play the credit system, which in its first stages furtively creeps in as the humble assistant of accumulation, drawing into the hands of individual or associated capitalists, by invisible threads, the money resources which lie scattered, over the surface of society, in larger or smaller amounts; but it soon becomes a new and terrible weapon in the battle of competition and is finally transformed into an enormous social mechanism for the centralisation of capitals. Commensurately with the development of capitalist production and accumulation there develop the two most powerful levers of centralisation competition and credit. At the same time the progress of accumulation increases the material amenable to centralisation, i.e., the individual capitals, whilst the expansion of capitalist production creates, on the one hand, the social want, and, on the other, the technical means necessary for those immense industrial undertakings which require a previous centralisation of capital for their accomplishment. Today, therefore, the force of attraction, drawing together individual capitals, and the tendency to centralisation are stronger than ever before. But if the relative extension and energy of the movement towards centralisation is determined, in a certain degree, by the magnitude of capitalist wealth and superiority of economic mechanism already attained, progress in centralisation does not in any way depend upon a positive growth in the magnitude of social capital. And this is the specific difference between centralisation and concentration, the latter being only another name for reproduction on an extended scale. Centralisation may result from a mere change in the distribution of capitals already existing, from a simple alteration in the quantitative grouping of the component parts of social capital. Here capital can grow into powerful masses in a single hand because there it has been withdrawn from many individual hands. In any given branch of industry centralisation would reach its extreme limit if all the individual capitals invested in it were fused into a single capital. In a given society the limit would be reached only when the entire social capital was united in the hands of either a single capitalist or a single capitalist company. Centralisation completes the work of accumulation by enabling industrial capitalists to extend the scale of their operations. Whether this latter result is the consequence of accumulation or centralisation, whether centralisation is accomplished by the violent method of annexation when certain capitals become such preponderant centres of attraction for others that they shatter the individual cohesion of the latter and then draw the separate fragments to themselves or whether the fusion of a number of capitals already formed or in process of formation takes place by the smoother process of organising joint-stock companies the economic effect remains the same. Everywhere the increased scale of industrial establishments is the starting point for a more comprehensive organisation of the collective work of many, for a wider development of their material motive forces in other words, for the progressive transformation of isolated processes of production, carried on by customary methods, into processes of production socially combined and scientifically arranged. But accumulation, the gradual increase of capital by reproduction as it passes from the circular to the spiral form, is clearly a very slow procedure compared with centralisation, which has only to change the quantitative groupings of the constituent parts of social capital. The world would still be without railways if it had had to wait until accumulation had got a few individual capitals far enough to be adequate for the construction of a railway. Centralisation, on the contrary, accomplished this in the twinkling of an eye, by means of joint-stock companies. And whilst centralisation thus intensifies and accelerates the effects of accumulation, it simultaneously extends and speeds those revolutions in the technical composition of capital which raise its constant portion at the expense of its variable portion, thus diminishing the relative demand for labour. The masses of capital fused together overnight by centralisation reproduce and multiply as the others do, only more rapidly, thereby becoming new and powerful levers in social accumulation. Therefore, when we speak of the progress of social accumulation we tacitly include today the effects of centralisation. The additional capitals formed in the normal course of accumulation (see Chapter XXIV, Section 1) serve particularly as vehicles for the exploitation of new inventions and discoveries, and industrial improvements in general. But in time the old capital also reaches the moment of renewal from top to toe, when it sheds its skin and is reborn like the others in a perfected technical form, in which a smaller quantity of labour will suffice to set in motion a larger quantity of machinery and raw materials. The absolute reduction in the demand for labour which necessarily follows from this is obviously so much the greater the higher the degree in which the capitals undergoing this process of renewal are already massed together by virtue of the centralisation movement. On the one hand, therefore, the additional capital formed in the course of accumulation attracts fewer and fewer labourers in proportion to its magnitude. On the other hand, the old capital periodically reproduced with change of composition, repels more and more of the labourers formerly employed by it. The accumulation of capital, though originally appearing as its quantitative extension only, is effected, as we have seen, under a progressive qualitative change in its composition, under a constant increase of its constant, at the expense of its variable constituent. The specifically capitalist mode of production, the development of the productive power of labour corresponding to it, and the change thence resulting in the organic composition of capital, do not merely keep pace with the advance of accumulation, or with the growth of social wealth. They develop at a much quicker rate, because mere accumulation, the absolute increase of the total social capital, is accompanied by the centralisation of the individual capitals of which that total is made up; and because the change in the technological composition of the additional capital goes hand in hand with a similar change in the technological composition of the original capital. With the advance of accumulation, therefore, the proportion of constant to variable capital changes. If it was originally say 1:1, it now becomes successively 2:1, 3:1, 4:1, 5:1, 7:1, &c., so that, as the capital increases, instead of of its total value, only 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/8, &c., is transformed into labour-power, and, on the other hand, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, 5/6, 7/8 into means of production. Since the demand for labour is determined not by the amount of capital as a whole, but by its variable constituent alone, that demand falls progressively with the increase of the total capital, instead of, as previously assumed, rising in proportion to it. It falls relatively to the magnitude of the total capital, and at an accelerated rate, as this magnitude increases. With the growth of the total capital, its variable constituent or the labour incorporated in it, also does increase, but in a constantly diminishing proportion. The intermediate pauses are shortened, in which accumulation works as simple extension of production, on a given technical basis. It is not merely that an accelerated accumulation of total capital, accelerated in a constantly growing progression, is needed to absorb an additional number of labourers, or even, on account of the constant metamorphosis of old capital, to keep employed those already functioning. In its turn, this increasing accumulation and centralisation becomes a source of new changes in the composition of capital, of a more accelerated diminution of its variable, as compared with its constant constituent. This accelerated relative diminution of the variable constituent, that goes along with the accelerated increase of the total capital, and moves more rapidly than this increase, takes the inverse form, at the other pole, of an apparently absolute increase of the labouring population, an increase always moving more rapidly than that of the variable capital or the means of employment. But in fact, it is capitalistic accumulation itself that constantly produces, and produces in the direct ratio of its own energy and extent, a relatively redundant population of labourers, i.e., a population of greater extent than suffices for the average needs of the self-expansion of capital, and therefore a surplus population. Considering the social capital in its totality, the movement of its accumulation now causes periodical changes, affecting it more or less as a whole, now distributes its various phases simultaneously over the different spheres of production. In some spheres a change in the composition of capital occurs without increase of its absolute magnitude, as a consequence of simple centralisation; in others the absolute growth of capital is connected with absolute diminution of its variable constituent, or of the labour power absorbed by it; in others again, capital continues growing for a time on its given technical basis, and attracts additional labour power in proportion to its increase, while at other times it undergoes organic change, and lessens its variable constituent; in all spheres, the increase of the variable part of capital, and therefore of the number of labourers employed by it, is always connected with violent fluctuations and transitory production of surplus population, whether this takes the more striking form of the repulsion of labourers already employed, or the less evident but not less real form of the more difficult absorption of the additional labouring population through the usual channels. With the magnitude of social capital already functioning, and the degree of its increase, with the extension of the scale of production, and the mass of the labourers set in motion, with the development of the productiveness of their labour, with the greater breadth and fulness of all sources of wealth, there is also an extension of the scale on which greater attraction of labourers by capital is accompanied by their greater repulsion; the rapidity of the change in the organic composition of capital, and in its technical form increases, and an increasing number of spheres of production becomes involved in this change, now simultaneously, now alternately. The labouring population therefore produces, along with the accumulation of capital produced by it, the means by which it itself is made relatively superfluous, is turned into a relative surplus population; and it does this to an always increasing extent. This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of production; and in fact every special historic mode of production has its own special laws of population, historically valid within its limits and only in so far as man has not interfered with them. But if a surplus labouring population is a necessary product of accumulation or of the development of wealth on a capitalist basis, this surplus population becomes, conversely, the lever of capitalistic accumulation, nay, a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production. It forms a disposable industrial reserve army, that belongs to capital quite as absolutely as if the latter had bred it at its own cost. Independently of the limits of the actual increase of population, it creates, for the changing needs of the self-expansion of capital, a mass of human material always ready for exploitation. With accumulation, and the development of the productiveness of labour that accompanies it, the power of sudden expansion of capital grows also; it grows, not merely because the elasticity of the capital already functioning increases, not merely because the absolute wealth of society expands, of which capital only forms an elastic part, not merely because credit, under every special stimulus, at once places an unusual part of this wealth at the disposal of production in the form of additional capital; it grows, also, because the technical conditions of the process of production themselves machinery, means of transport, &c. now admit of the rapidest transformation of masses of surplus-product into additional means of production. The mass of social wealth, overflowing with the advance of accumulation, and transformable into additional capital, thrusts itself frantically into old branches of production, whose market suddenly expands, or into newly formed branches, such as railways, &c., the need for which grows out of the development of the old ones. In all such cases, there must be the possibility of throwing great masses of men suddenly on the decisive points without injury to the scale of production in other spheres. Overpopulation supplies these masses. The course characteristic of modern industry, viz., a decennial cycle (interrupted by smaller oscillations), of periods of average activity, production at high pressure, crisis and stagnation, depends on the constant formation, the greater or less absorption, and the re-formation of the industrial reserve army or surplus population. In their turn, the varying phases of the industrial cycle recruit the surplus population, and become one of the most energetic agents of its reproduction. This peculiar course of modern industry, which occurs in no earlier period of human history, was also impossible in the childhood of capitalist production. The composition of capital changed but very slowly. With its accumulation, therefore, there kept pace, on the whole, a corresponding growth in the demand for labour. Slow as was the advance of accumulation compared with that of more modern times, it found a check in the natural limits of the exploitable labouring population, limits which could only be got rid of by forcible means to be mentioned later. The expansion by fits and starts of the scale of production is the preliminary to its equally sudden contraction; the latter again evokes the former, but the former is impossible without disposable human material, without an increase, in the number of labourers independently of the absolute growth of the population. This increase is effected by the simple process that constantly sets free a part of the labourers; by methods which lessen the number of labourers employed in proportion to the increased production. The whole form of the movement of modern industry depends, therefore, upon the constant transformation of a part of the labouring population into unemployed or half-employed hands. The superficiality of Political Economy shows itself in the fact that it looks upon the expansion and contraction of credit, which is a mere symptom of the periodic changes of the industrial cycle, as their cause. As the heavenly bodies, once thrown into a certain definite motion, always repeat this, so is it with social production as soon as it is once thrown into this movement of alternate expansion and contraction. Effects, in their turn, become causes, and the varying accidents of the whole process, which always reproduces its own conditions, take on the form of periodicity. When this periodicity is once consolidated, even Political Economy then sees that the production of a relative surplus population i.e., surplus with regard to the average needs of the self-expansion of capital is a necessary condition of modern industry. Even Malthus recognises overpopulation as a necessity of modern industry, though, after his narrow fashion, he explains it by the absolute over-growth of the labouring population, not by their becoming relatively supernumerary. He says: After Political Economy has thus demonstrated the constant production of a relative surplus population of labourers to be a necessity of capitalistic accumulation, she very aptly, in the guise of an old maid, puts in the mouth of her beau ideal of a capitalist the following words addressed to those supernumeraries thrown on the streets by their own creation of additional capital: Capitalist production can by no means content itself with the quantity of disposable labour power which the natural increase of population yields. It requires for its free play an industrial reserve army independent of these natural limits. Up to this point it has been assumed that the increase or diminution of the variable capital corresponds rigidly with the increase or diminution of the number of labourers employed. The number of labourers commanded by capital may remain the same, or even fall, while the variable capital increases. This is the case if the individual labourer yields more labour, and therefore his wages increase, and this although the price of labour remains the same or even falls, only more slowly than the mass of labour rises. Increase of variable capital, in this case, becomes an index of more labour, but not of more labourers employed. It is the absolute interest of every capitalist to press a given quantity of labour out of a smaller, rather than a greater number of labourers, if the cost is about the same. In the latter case, the outlay of constant capital increases in proportion to the mass of labour set in action; in the former that increase is much smaller. The more extended the scale of production, the stronger this motive. Its force increases with the accumulation of capital. We have seen that the development of the capitalist mode of production and of the productive power of labour at once the cause and effect of accumulation enables the capitalist, with the same outlay of variable capital, to set in action more labour by greater exploitation (extensive or intensive) of each individual labour power. We have further seen that the capitalist buys with the same capital a greater mass of labour power, as he progressively replaces skilled labourers by less skilled, mature labour power by immature, male by female, that of adults by that of young persons or children. On the one hand, therefore, with the progress of accumulation, a larger variable capital sets more labour in action without enlisting more labourers; on the other, a variable capital of the same magnitude sets in action more labour with the same mass of labour power; and, finally, a greater number of inferior labour powers by displacement of higher. The production of a relative surplus population, or the setting free of labourers, goes on therefore yet more rapidly than the technical revolution of the process of production that accompanies, and is accelerated by, the advance of accumulation; and more rapidly than the corresponding diminution of the variable part of capital as compared with the constant. If the means of production, as they increase in extent and effective power, become to a less extent means of employment of labourers, this state of things is again modified by the fact that in proportion as the productiveness of labour increases, capital increases its supply of labour more quickly than its demand for labourers. The overwork of the employed part of the working class swells the ranks of the reserve, whilst conversely the greater pressure that the latter by its competition exerts on the former, forces these to submit to overwork and to subjugation under the dictates of capital. The condemnation of one part of the working class to enforced idleness by the overwork of the other part, and the converse, becomes a means of enriching the individual capitalists, and accelerates at the same time the production of the industrial reserve army on a scale corresponding with the advance of social accumulation. How important is this element in the formation of the relative surplus population, is shown by the example of England. Her technical means for saving labour are colossal. Nevertheless, if to-morrow morning labour generally were reduced to a rational amount, and proportioned to the different sections of the working class according to age and sex, the working population to hand would be absolutely insufficient for the carrying on of national production on its present scale. The great majority of the labourers now unproductive would have to be turned into productive ones. Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial reserve army, and these again correspond to the periodic changes of the industrial cycle. They are, therefore, not determined by the variations of the absolute number of the working population, but by the varying proportions in which the working class is divided into active and reserve army, by the increase or diminution in the relative amount of the surplus population, by the extent to which it is now absorbed, now set free. For Modern Industry with its decennial cycles and periodic phases, which, moreover, as accumulation advances, are complicated by irregular oscillations following each other more and more quickly, that would indeed be a beautiful law, which pretends to make the action of capital dependent on the absolute variation of the population, instead of regulating the demand and supply of labour by the alternate expansion and contraction of capital, the labour-market now appearing relatively under-full, because capital is expanding, now again over-full, because it is contracting. Yet this is the dogma of the economists. According to them, wages rise in consequence of accumulation of capital. The higher wages stimulate the working population to more rapid multiplication, and this goes on until the labour-market becomes too full, and therefore capital, relatively to the supply of labour, becomes insufficient. Wages fall, and now we have the reverse of the medal. The working population is little by little decimated as the result of the fall in wages, so that capital is again in excess relatively to them, or, as others explain it, falling wages and the corresponding increase in the exploitation of the labourer again accelerates accumulation, whilst, at the same time, the lower wages hold the increase of the working class in check. Then comes again the time, when the supply of labour is less than the demand, wages rise, and so on. A beautiful mode of motion this for developed capitalist production! Before, in consequence of the rise of wages, any positive increase of the population really fit for work could occur, the time would have been passed again and again, during which the industrial campaign must have been carried through, the battle fought and won. Between 1849 and 1859, a rise of wages practically insignificant, though accompanied by falling prices of corn, took place in the English agricultural districts. In Wiltshire, e.g., the weekly wages rose from 7s. to 8s.; in Dorsetshire from 7s. or 8s., to 9s., &c. This was the result of an unusual exodus of the agricultural surplus population caused by the demands of war, the vast extension of railroads, factories, mines, &c. The lower the wages, the higher is the proportion in which ever so insignificant a rise of them expresses itself. If the weekly wage, e.g., is 20s. and it rises to 22s., that is a rise of 10 per cent.; but if it is only 7s. and it rises to 9s., that is a rise of 28 4/7 per cent., which sounds very fine. Everywhere the farmers were howling, and the London Economist, with reference to these starvation-wages, prattled quite seriously of a general and substantial advance. What did the farmers do now? Did they wait until, in consequence of this brilliant remuneration, the agricultural labourers had so increased and multiplied that their wages must fall again, as prescribed by the dogmatic economic brain? They introduced more machinery, and in a moment the labourers were redundant again in a proportion satisfactory even to the farmers. There was now more capital laid out in agriculture than before, and in a more productive form. With this the demand for labour fell, not only relatively, but absolutely. The above economic fiction confuses the laws that regulate the general movement of wages, or the ratio between the working class i.e., the total labour power and the total social capital, with the laws that distribute the working population over the different spheres of production. If, e.g., in consequence of favourable circumstances, accumulation in a particular sphere of production becomes especially active, and profits in it, being greater than the average profits, attract additional capital, of course the demand for labour rises and wages also rise. The higher wages draw a larger part of the working population into the more favoured sphere, until it is glutted with labour power, and wages at length fall again to their average level or below it, if the pressure is too great. Then, not only does the immigration of labourers into the branch of industry in question cease; it gives place to their emigration. Here the political economist thinks he sees the why and wherefore of an absolute increase of workers accompanying an increase of wages, and of a diminution of wages accompanying an absolute increase of labourers. But he sees really only the local oscillation of the labour-market in a particular sphere of production he sees only the phenomena accompanying the distribution of the working population into the different spheres of outlay of capital, according to its varying needs. The industrial reserve army, during the periods of stagnation and average prosperity, weighs down the active labour-army; during the periods of over-production and paroxysm, it holds its pretensions in check. Relative surplus population is therefore the pivot upon which the law of demand and supply of labour works. It confines the field of action of this law within the limits absolutely convenient to the activity of exploitation and to the domination of capital. This is the place to return to one of the grand exploits of economic apologetics. It will be remembered that if through the introduction of new, or the extension of old, machinery, a portion of variable capital is transformed into constant, the economic apologist interprets this operation which fixes capital and by that very act sets labourers free, in exactly the opposite way, pretending that it sets free capital for the labourers. Only now can one fully understand the effrontery of these apologists. What are set free are not only the labourers immediately turned out by the machines, but also their future substitutes in the rising generation, and the additional contingent, that with the usual extension of trade on the old basis would be regularly absorbed. They are now all set free, and every new bit of capital looking out for employment can dispose of them. Whether it attracts them or others, the effect on the general labour demand will be nil, if this capital is just sufficient to take out of the market as many labourers as the machines threw upon it. If it employs a smaller number, that of the supernumeraries increases; if it employs a greater, the general demand for labour only increases to the extent of the excess of the employed over those set free. The impulse that additional capital, seeking an outlet, would otherwise have given to the general demand for labour, is therefore in every case neutralised to the extent of the labourers thrown out of employment by the machine. That is to say, the mechanism of capitalistic production so manages matters that the absolute increase of capital is accompanied by no corresponding rise in the general demand for labour. And this the apologist calls a compensation for the misery, the sufferings, the possible death of the displaced labourers during the transition period that banishes them into the industrial reserve army! The demand for labour is not identical with increase of capital, nor supply of labour with increase of the working class. It is not a case of two independent forces working on one another. Les d s sont pip s. Capital works on both sides at the same time. If its accumulation, on the one hand, increases the demand for labour, it increases on the other the supply of labourers by the setting free of them, whilst at the same time the pressure of the unemployed compels those that are employed to furnish more labour, and therefore makes the supply of labour, to a certain extent, independent of the supply of labourers. The action of the law of supply and demand of labour on this basis completes the despotism of capital. As soon, therefore, as the labourers learn the secret, how it comes to pass that in the same measure as they work more, as they produce more wealth for others, and as the productive power of their labour increases, so in the same measure even their function as a means of the self-expansion of capital becomes more and more precarious for them; as soon as they discover that the degree of intensity of the competition among themselves depends wholly on the pressure of the relative surplus population; as soon as, by Trades Unions, &c., they try to organise a regular co-operation between employed and unemployed in order to destroy or to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural law of capitalistic production on their class, so soon capital and its sycophant, Political Economy, cry out at the infringement of the eternal and so to say sacred law of supply and demand. Every combination of employed and unemployed disturbs the harmonious action of this law. But, on the other hand, as soon as (in the colonies, e.g.) adverse circumstances prevent the creation of an industrial reserve army and, with it, the absolute dependence of the working class upon the capitalist class, capital, along with its commonplace Sancho Panza, rebels against the sacred law of supply and demand, and tries to check its inconvenient action by forcible means and State interference. The relative surplus population exists in every possible form. Every labourer belongs to it during the time when he is only partially employed or wholly unemployed. Not taking into account the great periodically recurring forms that the changing phases of the industrial cycle impress on it, now an acute form during the crisis, then again a chronic form during dull times it has always three forms, the floating, the latent, the stagnant. In the centres of modern industry factories, manufactures, ironworks, mines, &c. the labourers are sometimes repelled, sometimes attracted again in greater masses, the number of those employed increasing on the whole, although in a constantly decreasing proportion to the scale of production. Here the surplus population exists in the floating form. In the automatic factories, as in all the great workshops, where machinery enters as a factor, or where only the modern division of labour is carried out, large numbers of boys are employed up to the age of maturity. When this term is once reached, only a very small number continue to find employment in the same branches of industry, whilst the majority are regularly discharged. This majority forms an element of the floating surplus population, growing with the extension of those branches of industry. Part of them emigrates, following in fact capital that has emigrated. One consequence is that the female population grows more rapidly than the male, teste England. That the natural increase of the number of labourers does not satisfy the requirements of the accumulation of capital, and yet all the time is in excess of them, is a contradiction inherent to the movement of capital itself. It wants larger numbers of youthful labourers, a smaller number of adults. The contradiction is not more glaring than that other one that there is a complaint of the want of hands, while at the same time many thousands are out of work, because the division of labour chains them to a particular branch of industry. The consumption of labour power by capital is, besides, so rapid that the labourer, half-way through his life, has already more or less completely lived himself out. He falls into the ranks of the supernumeraries, or is thrust down from a higher to a lower step in the scale. It is precisely among the work-people of modern industry that we meet with the shortest duration of life. Dr. Lee, Medical Officer of Health for Manchester, stated In order to conform to these circumstances, the absolute increase of this section of the proletariat must take place under conditions that shall swell their numbers, although the individual elements are used up rapidly. Hence, rapid renewal of the generations of labourers (this law does not hold for the other classes of the population). This social need is met by early marriages, a necessary consequence of the conditions in which the labourers of modern industry live, and by the premium that the exploitation of children sets on their production. As soon as capitalist production takes possession of agriculture, and in proportion to the extent to which it does so, the demand for an agricultural labouring population falls absolutely, while the accumulation of the capital employed in agriculture advances, without this repulsion being, as in non-agricultural industries, compensated by a greater attraction. Part of the agricultural population is therefore constantly on the point of passing over into an urban or manufacturing proletariat, and on the look-out for circumstances favourable to this transformation. (Manufacture is used here in the sense of all non-agricultural industries.) This source of relative surplus population is thus constantly flowing. But the constant flow towards the towns pre-supposes, in the country itself, a constant latent surplus population, the extent of which becomes evident only when its channels of outlet open to exceptional width. The agricultural labourer is therefore reduced to the minimum of wages, and always stands with one foot already in the swamp of pauperism. The third category of the relative surplus population, the stagnant, forms a part of the active labour army, but with extremely irregular employment. Hence it furnishes to capital an inexhaustible reservoir of disposable labour power. Its conditions of life sink below the average normal level of the working class; this makes it at once the broad basis of special branches of capitalist exploitation. It is characterised by maximum of working-time, and minimum of wages. We have learnt to know its chief form under the rubric of domestic industry. It recruits itself constantly from the supernumerary forces of modern industry and agriculture, and specially from those decaying branches of industry where handicraft is yielding to manufacture, manufacture to machinery. Its extent grows, as with the extent and energy of accumulation, the creation of a surplus population advances. But it forms at the same time a self-reproducing and self-perpetuating element of the working class, taking a proportionally greater part in the general increase of that class than the other elements. In fact, not only the number of births and deaths, but the absolute size of the families stand in inverse proportion to the height of wages, and therefore to the amount of means of subsistence of which the different categories of labourers dispose. This law of capitalistic society would sound absurd to savages, or even civilised colonists. It calls to mind the boundless reproduction of animals individually weak and constantly hunted down. The lowest sediment of the relative surplus population finally dwells in the sphere of pauperism. Exclusive of vagabonds, criminals, prostitutes, in a word, the dangerous classes, this layer of society consists of three categories. First, those able to work. One need only glance superficially at the statistics of English pauperism to find that the quantity of paupers increases with every crisis, and diminishes with every revival of trade. Second, orphans and pauper children. These are candidates for the industrial reserve army, and are, in times of great prosperity, as 1860, e.g., speedily and in large numbers enrolled in the active army of labourers. Third, the demoralised and ragged, and those unable to work, chiefly people who succumb to their incapacity for adaptation, due to the division of labour; people who have passed the normal age of the labourer; the victims of industry, whose number increases with the increase of dangerous machinery, of mines, chemical works, &c., the mutilated, the sickly, the widows, &c. Pauperism is the hospital of the active labour-army and the dead weight of the industrial reserve army. Its production is included in that of the relative surplus population, its necessity in theirs; along with the surplus population, pauperism forms a condition of capitalist production, and of the capitalist development of wealth. It enters into the faux frais of capitalist production; but capital knows how to throw these, for the most part, from its own shoulders on to those of the working class and the lower middle class. The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital, develop also the labour power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labour army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the lazarus layers of the working class, and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation. Like all other laws it is modified in its working by many circumstances, the analysis of which does not concern us here. The folly is now patent of the economic wisdom that preaches to the labourers the accommodation of their number to the requirements of capital. The mechanism of capitalist production and accumulation constantly effects this adjustment. The first word of this adaptation is the creation of a relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army. Its last word is the misery of constantly extending strata of the active army of labour, and the dead weight of pauperism. The law by which a constantly increasing quantity of means of production, thanks to the advance in the productiveness of social labour, may be set in movement by a progressively diminishing expenditure of human power, this law, in a capitalist society where the labourer does not employ the means of production, but the means of production employ the labourer undergoes a complete inversion and is expressed thus: the higher the productiveness of labour, the greater is the pressure of the labourers on the means of employment, the more precarious, therefore, becomes their condition of existence, viz., the sale of their own labour power for the increasing of another s wealth, or for the self-expansion of capital. The fact that the means of production, and the productiveness of labour, increase more rapidly than the productive population, expresses itself, therefore, capitalistically in the inverse form that the labouring population always increases more rapidly than the conditions under which capital can employ this increase for its own self-expansion. We saw in Part IV., when analysing the production of relative surplus-value: within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital. But all methods for the production of surplus-value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every extension of accumulation becomes again a means for the development of those methods. It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. The law, finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital. This antagonistic character of capitalistic accumulation is enunciated in various forms by political economists, although by them it is confounded with phenomena, certainly to some extent analogous, but nevertheless essentially distinct, and belonging to pre-capitalistic modes of production. The Venetian monk Ortes, one of the great economic writers of the 18th century, regards the antagonism of capitalist production as a general natural law of social wealth. In a thoroughly brutal way about 10 years after Ortes, the Church of England parson, Townsend, glorified misery as a necessary condition of wealth. Everything therefore depends upon making hunger permanent among the working class, and for this, according to Townsend, the principle of population, especially active among the poor, provides. Storch asks himself in what then really consists the progress of this capitalistic civilisation with its misery and its degradation of the masses, as compared with barbarism. He finds but one answer: security! Finally Destutt de Tracy, the fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire, blurts out brutally: No period of modern society is so favourable for the study of capitalist accumulation as the period of the last 20 years. It is as if this period had found Fortunatus purse. But of all countries England again furnishes the classical example, because it holds the foremost place in the world-market, because capitalist production is here alone completely developed, and lastly, because the introduction of the Free-trade millennium since 1846 has cut off the last retreat of vulgar economy. The titanic advance of production the latter half of the 20 years period again far surpassing the former has been already pointed out sufficiently in Part IV. Although the absolute increase of the English population in the last half century was very great, the relative increase or rate of growth fell constantly, as the following table borrowed from the census shows. Annual increase per cent. of the population of England and Wales in decimal numbers: Let us now, on the other hand, consider the increase of wealth. Here the movement of profit, rent of land, &c., that come under the income tax, furnishes the surest basis. The increase of profits liable to income tax (farmers and some other categories not included) in Great Britain from 1853 to 1864 amounted to 50.47% or 4.58% as the annual average, that of the population during the same period to about 12%. The augmentation of the rent of land subject to taxation (including houses, railways, mines, fisheries, &c.), amounted for 1853 to 1864 to 38% or 3 5/12% annually. Under this head the following categories show the greatest increase: If we compare the years from 1853 to 1864 in three sets of four consecutive years each, the rate of augmentation of the income increases constantly. It is, e.g., for that arising from profits between 1853 to 1857, 1.73% yearly; 1857-1861, 2.74%, and for 1861-64, 9.30% yearly. The sum of the incomes of the United Kingdom that come under the income tax was in 1856, 307,068,898; in 1859, 328,127,416; in 1862, 351,745,241; in 1863, 359,142,897; in 1864, 362,462,279; in 1865, 385,530,020. The accumulation of capital was attended at the same time by its concentration and centralisation. Although no official statistics of agriculture existed for England (they did for Ireland), they were voluntarily given in 10 counties. These statistics gave the result that from 1851 to 1861 the number of farms of less than 100 acres had fallen from 31,583 to 26,597, so that 5,016 had been thrown together into larger farms. From 1815 to 1825 no personal estate of more than 1,000,000 came under the succession duty; from 1825 to 1855, however, 8 did; and 4 from 1856 to June, 1859, i.e., in 4 years. The centralisation will, however, be best seen from a short analysis of the Income Tax Schedule D (profits, exclusive of farms, &c.), in the years 1864 and 1865. I note beforehand that incomes from this source pay income tax on everything over 60. These incomes liable to taxation in England, Wales and Scotland, amounted in 1864 to 95,844,222, in 1865 to 105,435,579. The number of persons taxed were in 1864, 308,416, out of a population of 23,891,009; in 1865, 332,431 out of a population of 24,127,003. The following table shows the distribution of these incomes in the two years: In 1855 there were produced in the United Kingdom 61,453,079 tons of coal, of value 16,113,167; in 1864, 92,787,873 tons, of value 23,197,968; in 1855, 3,218,154 tons of pig-iron, of value 8,045,385; 1864, 4,767,951 tons, of value 11,919,877. In 1854 the length of the railroads worked in the United Kingdom was 8,054 miles, with a paid-up capital of 286,068,794; in 1864 the length was 12,789 miles, with capital paid up of 425,719,613. In 1854 the total sum of the exports and imports of the United Kingdom was 268,210,145; in 1865, 489,923,285. The following table shows the movement of the exports: After these few examples one understands the cry of triumph of the Registrar-General of the British people: Let us turn now to the direct agents of this industry, or the producers of this wealth, to the working class. Thus spake this unctuous minister in the House of Commons of February 13th, 1843. On April 16th, 1863, 20 years later, in the speech in which he introduced his Budget: How lame an anti-climax! If the working class has remained poor, only less poor in proportion as it produces for the wealthy class an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, then it has remained relatively just as poor. If the extremes of poverty have not lessened, they have increased, because the extremes of wealth have. As to the cheapening of the means of subsistence, the official statistics, e.g., the accounts of the London Orphan Asylum, show an increase in price of 20% for the average of the three years 1860-1862, compared with 1851-1853. In the following three years, 1863-1865, there was a progressive rise in the price of meat, butter, milk, sugar, salt, coals, and a number of other necessary means of subsistence. Gladstone s next Budget speech of April 7th, 1864, is a Pindaric dithyrambus on the advance of surplus-value-making and the happiness of the people tempered by poverty. He speaks of masses on the border of pauperism, of branches of trade in which wages have not increased, and finally sums up the happiness of the working class in the words: Professor Fawcett, not bound like Gladstone by official considerations, declares roundly: In the chapters on the working-day and machinery, the reader has seen under what circumstances the British working class created an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power for the propertied classes. There we were chiefly concerned with the social functioning of the labourer. But for a full elucidation of the law of accumulation, his condition outside the workshop must also be looked at, his condition as to food and dwelling. The limits of this book compel us to concern ourselves chiefly with the worst paid part of the industrial proletariat, and with the agricultural labourers, who together form the majority of the working class. But first, one word on official pauperism, or on that part of the working class which has forfeited its condition of existence (the sale of labour power), and vegetates upon public alms. The official list of paupers numbered in England 851,369 persons; in 1856, 877,767; in 1865, 971,433. In consequence of the cotton famine, it grew in the years 1863 and 1864 to 1,079,382 and 1,014,978. The crisis of 1866, which fell most heavily on London, created in this centre of the world market, more populous than the kingdom of Scotland, an increase of pauperism for the year 1866 of 19.5% compared with 1865, and of 24.4% compared with 1864, and a still greater increase for the first months of 1867 as compared with 1866. From the analysis of the statistics of pauperism, two points are to be taken. On the one hand, the fluctuation up and down of the number of paupers, reflects the periodic changes of the industrial cycle. On the other, the official statistics become more and more misleading as to the actual extent of pauperism in proportion as, with the accumulation of capital, the class-struggle, and, therefore, the class consciousness of the working men, develop. E.g., the barbarity in the treatment of the paupers, at which the English Press (The Times, Pall Mall Gazette, etc.) have cried out so loudly during the last two years, is of ancient date. F. Engels showed in 1844 exactly the same horrors, exactly the same transient canting outcries of sensational literature. But frightful increase of deaths by starvation in London during the last ten years proves beyond doubt the growing horror in which the working-people hold the slavery of the workhouse, that place of punishment for misery. During the cotton famine of 1862, Dr. Smith was charged by the Privy Council with an inquiry into the conditions of nourishment of the distressed operatives in Lancashire and Cheshire. His observations during many preceding years had led him to the conclusion that to avert starvation diseases, the daily food of an average woman ought to contain at least 3,900 grains of carbon with 180 grains of nitrogen; the daily food of an average man, at least 4,300 grains of carbon with 200 grains of nitrogen; for women, about the same quantity of nutritive elements as are contained in 2 lbs. of good wheaten bread, for men 1/9 more; for the weekly average of adult men and women, at least 28,600 grains of carbon and 1,330 grains of nitrogen. His calculation was practically confirmed in a surprising manner by its agreement with the miserable quantity of nourishment to which want had forced down the consumption of the cotton operatives. This was, in December, 1862, 29,211 grains of carbon, and 1,295 grains of nitrogen weekly. In the year 1863, the Privy Council ordered an inquiry into the state of distress of the worst-nourished part of the English working class. Dr. Simon, medical officer to the Privy Council, chose for this work the above-mentioned Dr. Smith. His inquiry ranges on the one hand over the agricultural labourers, on the other, over silk-weavers, needlewomen, kid-glovers, stocking-weavers, glove-weavers, and shoemakers. The latter categories are, with the exception of the stocking-weavers, exclusively town-dwellers. It was made a rule in the inquiry to select in each category the most healthy families, and those comparatively in the best circumstances. As a general result it was found that Among the agricultural labourers, those of England, the wealthiest part of the United Kingdom, were the worst fed. The insufficiency of food among the agricultural labourers, fell, as a rule, chiefly on the women and children, for the man must eat to do his work. Still greater penury ravaged the town-workers examined. ( Privation of the capitalist all this! i.e., abstinence from paying for the means of subsistence absolutely necessary for the mere vegetation of his hands. ) The following table shows the conditions of nourishment of the above-named categories of purely town-dwelling work-people, as compared with the minimum assumed by Dr. Smith, and with the food-allowance of the cotton operatives during the time of their greatest distress: One half, or 60/125, of the industrial labour categories investigated, had absolutely no beer, 28% no milk. The weekly average of the liquid means of nourishment in the families varied from seven ounces in the needle-women to 24 ounces in the stocking-makers. The majority of those who did not obtain milk were needle-women in London. The quantity of bread-stuffs consumed weekly varied from 7 lbs. for the needle-women to 11 lbs. for the shoemakers, and gave a total average of 9.9 lbs. per adult weekly. Sugar (treacle, etc.) varied from 4 ounces weekly for the kid-glovers to 11 ounces for the stocking-makers; and the total average per week for all categories was 8 ounces per adult weekly. Total weekly average of butter (fat, etc.) 5 ounces per adult. The weekly average of meat (bacon, etc.) varied from 7 ounces for the silk-weavers, to 18 ounces for the kid-glovers; total average for the different categories 13.6 ounces. The weekly cost of food per adult, gave the following average figures; silk-weavers 2s. 2 d., needle-women 2s. 7d., kid-glovers 2s. 9 d., shoemakers 2s 7 d., stocking-weavers 2s. 6 d. For the silk-weavers of Macclesfield the average was only 1s. 8 d. The worst categories were the needle-women, silk-weavers and kid-glovers. Of these facts, Dr. Simon in his General Health Report says: The intimate connexion between the pangs of hunger of the most industrious layers of the working class, and the extravagant consumption, coarse or refined, of the rich, for which capitalist accumulation is the basis, reveals itself only when the economic laws are known. It is otherwise with the housing of the poor. Every unprejudiced observer sees that the greater the centralisation of the means of production, the greater is the corresponding heaping together of the labourers, within a given space; that therefore the swifter capitalistic accumulation, the more miserable are the dwellings of the working-people. Improvements of towns, accompanying the increase of wealth, by the demolition of badly built quarters, the erection of palaces for banks, warehouses, &c., the widening of streets for business traffic, for the carriages of luxury, and for the introduction of tramways, &c., drive away the poor into even worse and more crowded hiding places. On the other hand, every one knows that the dearness of dwellings is in inverse ratio to their excellence, and that the mines of misery are exploited by house speculators with more profit or less cost than ever were the mines of Potosi. The antagonistic character of capitalist accumulation, and therefore of the capitalistic relations of property generally, is here so evident, that even the official English reports on this subject teem with heterodox onslaughts on property and its rights. With the development of industry, with the accumulation of capital, with the growth and improvement of towns, the evil makes such progress that the mere fear of contagious diseases which do not spare even respectability, brought into existence from 1847 to 1864 no less than 10 Acts of Parliament on sanitation, and that the frightened bourgeois in some towns, as Liverpool, Glasgow, &c., took strenuous measures through their municipalities. Nevertheless Dr. Simon, in his report of 1865, says: By order of the Privy Council, in 1864, an inquiry was made into the conditions of the housing of the agricultural labourers, in 1865 of the poorer classes in the towns. The results of the admirable work of Dr. Julian Hunter are to be found in the seventh (1865) and eighth (1866) reports on Public Health. To the agricultural labourers, I shall come later. On the condition of town dwellings, I quote, as preliminary, a general remark of Dr. Simon. London takes the first place in over-crowded habitations, absolutely unfit for human beings. Further, the better-off part of the working class, together with the small shopkeepers and other elements of the lower middle class, falls in London more and more under the curse of these vile conditions of dwelling, in proportion as improvements, and with them the demolition of old streets and houses, advance, as factories and the afflux of human beings grow in the metropolis, and finally as house rents rise with the ground-rents. There is almost no house-property in London that is not overburdened with a number of middlemen. For the price of land in London is always very high in comparison with its yearly revenue, and therefore every buyer speculates on getting rid of it again at a jury price (the expropriation valuation fixed by jurymen), or on pocketing an extraordinary increase of value arising from the neighbourhood of some large establishment. As a consequence of this there is a regular trade in the purchase of fag-ends of leases. The rents are weekly, and these gentlemen run no risk. In consequence of the making of railroads in the City, The workhouses are already over-crowded, and the improvements already sanctioned by Parliament are only just begun. If labourers are driven away by the demolition of their old houses, they do not leave their old parish, or at most they settle down on its borders, as near as they can get to it. This same Strand, a main thoroughfare which gives strangers an imposing idea of the wealth of London, may serve as an example of the packing together of human beings in that town. In one of its parishes, the Officer of Health reckoned 581 persons per acre, although half the width of the Thames was reckoned in. It will be self-understood that every sanitary measure, which, as has been the case hitherto in London, hunts the labourers from one quarter, by demolishing uninhabitable houses, serves only to crowd them together yet more closely in another. Admire this capitalistic justice! The owner of land, of houses, the businessman, when expropriated by improvements such as railroads, the building of new streets, &c., not only receives full indemnity. He must, according to law, human and divine, be comforted for his enforced abstinence over and above this by a thumping profit. The labourer, with his wife and child and chattels, is thrown out into the street, and if he crowds in too large numbers towards quarters of the town where the vestries insist on decency, he is prosecuted in the name of sanitation! Except London, there was at the beginning of the 19th century no single town in England of 100,000 inhabitants. Only five had more than 50,000. Now there are 28 towns with more than 50,000 inhabitants. The more rapidly capital accumulates in an industrial or commercial town, the more rapidly flows the stream of exploitable human material, the more miserable are the improvised dwellings of the labourers. Newcastle-on-Tyne, as the centre of a coal and iron district of growing productiveness, takes the next place after London in the housing inferno. Not less than 34,000 persons live there in single rooms. Because of their absolute danger to the community, houses in great numbers have lately been destroyed by the authorities in Newcastle and Gateshead. The building of new houses progresses very slowly, business very quickly. The town was, therefore, in 1865, more full than ever. Scarcely a room was to let. Dr. Embleton, of the Newcastle Fever Hospital, says: The price per week of such lodgings ranges from 8d. to 3s. As a result of the ebbing and flowing of capital and labour, the state of the dwellings of an industrial town may today be bearable, tomorrow hideous. Or the aedileship of the town may have pulled itself together for the removal of the most shocking abuses. Tomorrow, like a swarm of locusts, come crowding in masses of ragged Irishmen or decayed English agricultural labourers. They are stowed away in cellars and lofts, or the hitherto respectable labourer s dwelling is transformed into a lodging house whose personnel changes as quickly as the billets in the 30 years war. Example: Bradford (Yorkshire). There the municipal philistine was just busied with urban improvements. Besides, there were still in Bradford, in 1861, 1,751 uninhabited houses. But now comes that revival of trade which the mildly liberal Mr. Forster, the negro s friend, recently crowed over with so much grace. With the revival of trade came of course an overflow from the waves of the ever fluctuating reserve army or relative surplus population. The frightful cellar habitations and rooms registered in the list, which Dr. Hunter obtained from the agent of an Insurance Company, were for the most part inhabited by well-paid labourers. They declared that they would willingly pay for better dwellings if they were to be had. Meanwhile, they become degraded, they fall ill, one and all, whilst the mildly liberal Forster, M. P., sheds tears over the blessings of Free Trade, and the profits of the eminent men of Bradford who deal in worsted. In the Report of September, 1865, Dr. Bell, one of the poor law doctors of Bradford, ascribes the frightful mortality of fever-patients in his district to the nature of their dwellings. Bristol takes the third place after London in the misery of its dwellings. We turn now to a class of people whose origin is agricultural, but whose occupation is in great part industrial. They are the light infantry of capital, thrown by it, according to its needs, now to this point, now to that. When they are not on the march, they camp. Nomad labour is used for various operations of building and draining, brick-making, lime-burning, railway-making, &c. A flying column of pestilence, it carries into the places in whose neighbourhood it pitches its camp, small-pox, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, &c. In undertakings that involve much capital outlay, such as railways, &c., the contractor himself generally provides his army with wooden huts and the like, thus improvising villages without any sanitary provisions, outside the control of the local boards, very profitable to the contractor, who exploits the labourers in two-fold fashion as soldiers of industry and as tenants. According as the wooden hut contains 1, 2, or 3 holes, its inhabitant, navvy, or whatever he may be, has to pay 1, 3, or 4 shillings weekly. One example will suffice. In September, 1864, Dr. Simon reports that the Chairman of the Nuisances Removal Committee of the parish of Sevenoaks sent the following denunciation to Sir George Grey, Home Secretary: The labourers in coal and other mines belong to the best paid categories of the British proletariat. The price at which they buy their wages was shown on an earlier page. Here I merely cast a hurried glance over the conditions of their dwellings. As a rule, the exploiter of a mine, whether its owner or his tenant, builds a number of cottages for his hands. They receive cottages and coal for firing for nothing i.e., these form part of their wages, paid in kind. Those who are not lodged in this way receive in compensation 4 per annum. The mining districts attract with rapidity a large population, made up of the miners themselves, and the artisans, shopkeepers, &c., that group themselves around them. The ground-rents are high, as they are generally where population is dense. The master tries, therefore, to run up, within the smallest space possible at the mouth of the pit, just so many cottages as are necessary to pack together his hands and their families. If new mines are opened in the neighbourhood, or old ones are again set working, the pressure increases. In the construction of the cottages, only one point of view is of moment, the abstinence of the capitalist from all expenditure that is not absolutely unavoidable. In conflict with public opinion, or even with the Officers of Health, capital makes no difficulty about justifying the conditions partly dangerous, partly degrading, to which it confines the working and domestic life of the labourer, on the ground that they are necessary for profit. It is the same thing when capital abstains from protective measures against dangerous machinery in the factory, from appliances for ventilation and for safety in mines, &c. It is the same here with the housing of the miners. Dr. Simon, medical officer of the Privy Council, in his official Report says: Before I turn to the regular agricultural labourers, I may be allowed to show, by one example, how industrial revulsions affect even the best-paid, the aristocracy, of the working class. It will be remembered that the year 1857 brought one of the great crises with which the industrial cycle periodically ends. The next termination of the cycle was due in 1866. Already discounted in the regular factory districts by the cotton famine, which threw much capital from its wonted sphere into the great centres of the money-market, the crisis assumed, at this time, an especially financial character. Its outbreak in 1866 was signalised by the failure of a gigantic London Bank, immediately followed by the collapse of countless swindling companies. One of the great London branches of industry involved in the catastrophe was iron shipbuilding. The magnates of this trade had not only over-produced beyond all measure during the overtrading time, but they had, besides, engaged in enormous contracts on the speculation that credit would be forthcoming to an equivalent extent. Now, a terrible reaction set in, that even at this hour (the end of March, 1867) continues in this and other London industries. To show the condition of the labourers, I quote the following from the circumstantial report of a correspondent of the Morning Star, who, at the end of 1866, and beginning of 1867, visited the chief centres of distress: On the after pains of the crisis of 1866, the following extract from a Tory newspaper. It must not be forgotten that the East-end of London, which is here dealt with, is not only the seat of the iron shipbuilding mentioned above, but also of a so-called home-industry always underpaid. As it is the fashion amongst English capitalists to quote Belgium as the Paradise of the labourer because freedom of labour, or what is the same thing, freedom of capital, is there limited neither by the despotism of Trades Unions, nor by Factory Acts, a word or two on the happiness of the Belgian labourer. Assuredly no one was more thoroughly initiated in the mysteries of this happiness than the late M. Ducp tiaux, inspector-general of Belgian prisons and charitable institutions, and member of the central commission of Belgian statistics. Let us take his work: Budgets conomiques des classes ouvri res de la Belgique, Bruxelles, 1855. Here we find among other matters, a normal Belgian labourer s family, whose yearly income and expenditure he calculates on very exact data, and whose conditions of nourishment are then compared with those of the soldier, sailor, and prisoner. The family consists of father, mother, and four children. Of these 6 persons four may be usefully employed the whole year through. It is assumed that there is no sick person nor one incapable of work, among them, nor are there expenses for religious, moral, and intellectual purposes, except a very small sum for church sittings, nor contributions to savings banks or benefit societies, nor expenses due to luxury or the result of improvidence. The father and eldest son, however, allow themselves the use of tobacco, and on Sundays go to the cabaret, for which a whole 86 centimes a week are reckoned. According to this the budget of the family is: The annual expenditure of the family would cause a deficit upon the hypothesis that the labourer has the food of: In fact, in this Paradise of capitalists there follows, on the smallest change in the price of the most essential means of subsistence, a change in the number of deaths and crimes! (See Manifesto of the Maatschappij: De Vlamingen Vooruit! Brussels, 1860, pp. 15, 16.) In all Belgium are 930,000 families, of whom, according to the official statistics, 90,000 are wealthy and on the list of voters = 450,000 persons; 390,000 families of the lower middle-class in towns and villages, the greater part of them constantly sinking into the proletariat, = 1,950,000 persons. Finally, 450,000 working class families = 2,250,000 persons, of whom the model ones enjoy the happiness depicted by Ducp tiaux. Of the 450,000 working class families, over 200,000 are on the pauper list. Nowhere does the antagonistic character of capitalistic production and accumulation assert itself more brutally than in the progress of English agriculture (including cattle-breeding) and the retrogression of the English agricultural labourer. Before I turn to his present situation, a rapid retrospect. Modern agriculture dates in England from the middle of the 18th century, although the revolution in landed property, from which the changed mode of production starts as a basis, has a much earlier date. If we take the statements of Arthur Young, a careful observer, though a superficial thinker, as to the agricultural labourer of 1771, the latter plays a very pitiable part compared with his predecessor of the end of the 14th century, It is then proved in detail that the real agricultural wages between 1737 and 1777 fell nearly or 25 per cent. Nevertheless, the position of the English agricultural labourer from 1770 to 1780, with regard to his food and dwelling, as well as to his self-respect, amusements, &c., is an ideal never attained again since that time. His average wage expressed in pints of wheat was from 1770 to 1771, 90 pints, in Eden s time (1797) only 65, in 1808 but 60. The state of the agricultural labourer at the end of the Anti-Jacobin War, during which landed proprietors, farmers, manufacturers, merchants, bankers, stockbrokers, army-contractors, &c., enriched themselves so extraordinarily, has been already indicated above. The nominal wages rose in consequence partly of the bank-note depreciation, partly of a rise in the price of the primary means of subsistence independent of this depreciation. But the actual wage-variation can be evidenced in a very simple way, without entering into details that are here unnecessary. The Poor Law and its administration were in 1795 and 1814 the same. It will be remembered how this law was carried out in the country districts: in the form of alms the parish made up the nominal wage to the nominal sum required for the simple vegetation of the labourer. The ratio between the wages paid by the farmer, and the wage-deficit made good by the parish, shows us two things. First, the falling of wages below their minimum; second, the degree in which the agricultural labourer was a compound of wage labourer and pauper, or the degree in which he had been turned into a serf of his parish. Let us take one county that represents the average condition of things in all counties. In Northamptonshire, in 1795, the average weekly wage was 7s. 6d.; the total yearly expenditure of a family of 6 persons, 36 12s. 5d.; their total income, 29 18s.; deficit made good by the parish, 6 14s. 5d. In 1814, in the same county, the weekly wage was 12s. 2d.; the total yearly expenditure of a family of 5 persons, 54 18s. 4d.; their total income, 36, 2s.; deficit made good by the parish, 18 6s. 4d. In 1795 the deficit was less than 1/4 the wage, in 1814, more than half. It is self-evident that, under these circumstances, the meagre comforts that Eden still found in the cottage of the agricultural labourer, had vanished by 1814. Of all the animals kept by the farmer, the labourer, the instrumentum vocale, was, thenceforth, the most oppressed, the worst nourished, the most brutally treated. The same state of things went on quietly until At this time, Sadler, in the House of Commons, christened the agricultural labourers white slaves, and a Bishop echoed the epithet in the Upper House. The most notable political economist of that period E. G. Wakefield says: The time just before the repeal of the Corn Laws threw new light on the condition of the agricultural labourers. On the one hand, it was to the interest of the middle-class agitators to prove how little the Corn Laws protected the actual producers of the corn. On the other hand, the industrial bourgeoisie foamed with sullen rage at the denunciations of the factory system by the landed aristocracy, at the pretended sympathy with the woes of the factory operatives, of those utterly corrupt, heartless, and genteel loafers, and at their diplomatic zeal for factory legislation. It is an old English proverb that when thieves fall out, honest men come by their own, and, in fact, the noisy, passionate quarrel between the two fractions of the ruling class about the question, which of the two exploited the labourers the more shamefully, was on each hand the midwife of the truth. Earl Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley, was commander-in-chief in the aristocratic, philanthropic, anti-factory campaign. He was, therefore, in 1845, a favourite subject in the revelations of the Morning Chronicle on the condition of the agricultural labourers. This journal, then the most important Liberal organ, sent special commissioners into the agricultural districts, who did not content themselves with mere general descriptions and statistics, but published the names both of the labouring families examined and of their landlords. The following list gives the wages paid in three villages in the neighbourhood of Blanford, Wimbourne, and Poole. The villages are the property of Mr. G. Bankes and of the Earl of Shaftesbury. It will be noted that, just like Bankes, this low church pope, this head of English pietists, pockets a great part of the miserable wages of the labourers under the pretext of house-rent: The repeal of the Corn Laws gave a marvellous impulse to English agriculture. Drainage on the most extensive scale, new methods of stall-feeding, and of the artificial cultivation of green crops, introduction of mechanical manuring apparatus, new treatment of clay soils, increased use of mineral manures, employment of the steam-engine, and of all kinds of new machinery, more intensive cultivation generally, characterised this epoch. Mr. Pusey, Chairman of the Royal Agricultural Society, declares that the (relative) expenses of farming have been reduced nearly one half by the introduction of new machinery. On the other hand, the actual return of the soil rose rapidly. Greater outlay of capital per acre, and, as a consequence, more rapid concentration of farms, were essential conditions of the new method. At the same time, the area under cultivation increased, from 1846 to 1856, by 464,119 acres, without reckoning the great area in the Eastern Counties which was transformed from rabbit warrens and poor pastures into magnificent corn-fields. It has already been seen that, at the same time, the total number of persons employed in agriculture fell. As far as the actual agricultural labourers of both sexes and of all ages are concerned, their number fell from 1,241,396, in 1851, to 1,163, 217 in 1861. If the English Registrar-General, therefore, rightly remarks: But Professor Rogers comes to the conclusion that the lot of the English agricultural labourer of today, not to speak of his predecessor in the last half of the 14th and in the 15th century, but only compared with his predecessor from 1770 to 1780, has changed for the worse to an extraordinary extent, that the peasant has again become a serf, and a serf worse fed and worse clothed. Dr. Julian Hunter, in his epochmaking report on the dwellings of the agricultural labourers, says: In the year 1863, an official inquiry took place into the conditions of nourishment and labour of the criminals condemned to transportation and penal servitude. The results are recorded in two voluminous Blue books. Among other things it is said: A few characteristic depositions of witnesses: John Smith, governor of the Edinburgh prison, deposes: From the tables appended to the first volume of the Report I have compiled the annexed comparative summary. The general result of the inquiry by the medical commission of 1863 on the food of the lowest fed classes, is already known to the reader. He will remember that the diet of a great part of the agricultural labourers families is below the minimum necessary to arrest starvation diseases. This is especially the case in all the purely rural districts of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Wilts, Stafford, Oxford, Berks, and Herts. The male and female servants living with the farmers themselves are sufficiently nourished. Their number fell from 288,277 in 1851, to 204,962 in 1861. One of the most remarkable results of the inquiry was that the agricultural labourer of England, as compared with other parts of the United Kingdom, is considerably the worst fed, as the appended table shows: Quantities of Carbon and Nitrogen weekly consumed by an average agricultural adult: Dr. Hunter investigated 5,375 cottages of agricultural labourers, not only in the purely agricultural districts, but in all counties of England. Of these, 2,195 had only one bedroom (often at the same time used as living-room), 2,930 only two, and 250, more than two. I will give a few specimens culled from a dozen counties. Wrestlingworth. Bedrooms about 12 feet long and 10 broad, although many are smaller than this. The small, one-storied cots are often divided by partitions into two bedrooms, one bed frequently in a kitchen, 5 feet 6 inches in height. Rent, 3 a year. The tenants have to make their own privies, the landlord only supplies a hole. As soon as one has made a privy, it is made use of by the whole neighbourhood. One house, belonging to a family called Richardson, was of quite unapproachable beauty. Its plaster walls bulged very like a lady s dress in a curtsey. One gable end was convex, the other concave, and on this last, unfortunately, stood the chimney, a curved tube of clay and wood like an elephant s trunk. A long stick served as prop to prevent the chimney from falling. The doorway and window were rhomboidal. Of 17 houses visited, only 4 had more than one bedroom, and those four overcrowded. The cots with one bedroom sheltered 3 adults and 3 children, a married couple with 6 children, &c. Dunton. High rents, from 4 to 5; weekly wages of the man, 10s. They hope to pay the rent by the straw-plaiting of the family. The higher the rent, the greater the number that must work together to pay it. Six adults, living with 4 children in one sleeping apartment, pay 3 10s. for it. The cheapest house in Dunton, 15 feet long externally, 10 broad, let for 3. Only one of the houses investigated had 2 bedrooms. A little outside the village, a house whose tenants dunged against the house-side, the lower 9 inches of the door eaten away through sheer rottenness; the doorway, a single opening closed at night by a few bricks, ingeniously pushed up after shutting and covered with some matting. Half a window, with glass and frame, had gone the way of all flesh. Here, without furniture, huddled together were 3 adults and 5 children. Dunton is not worse than the rest of Biggleswade Union. Beenham. In June, 1864, a man, his wife and 4 children lived in a cot (one-storied cottage). A daughter came home from service with scarlet fever. She died. One child sickened and died. The mother and one child were down with typhus when Dr. Hunter was called in. The father and one child slept outside, but the difficulty of securing isolation was seen here, for in the crowded market of the miserable village lay the linen of the fever-stricken household, waiting for the wash. The rent of H. s house, 1s. a-week; one bedroom for man, wife, and 6 children. One house let for 8d. a-week, 14 feet 6 inches long, 7 feet broad, kitchen, 6 feet high; the bedroom without window, fire-place, door, or opening, except into the lobby; no garden. A man lived here for a little while, with two grown-up daughters and one grown-up son; father and son slept on the bed, the girls in the passage. Each of the latter had a child while the family was living here, but one went to the workhouse for her confinement and then came home. 30 cottages on 1,000 acres of land contained here about 130-140 persons. The parish of Bradenham comprises 1,000 acres; it numbered, in 1851, 36 houses and a population of 84 males and 54 females. This inequality of the sexes was partly remedied in 1861, when they numbered 98 males and 87 females; increase in 10 years of 14 men and 33 women. Meanwhile, the number of houses was one less. Winslow. Great part of this newly built in good style; demand for houses appears very marked, since very miserable cots let at 1s. to 1s. 3d. per week. Water Eaton. Here the landlords, in view of the increasing population, have destroyed about 20 per cent. of the existing houses. A poor labourer, who had to go about 4 miles to his work, answered the question, whether he could not find a cot nearer: No; they know better than to take a man in with my large family. Tinker s End, near Winslow. A bedroom in which were 4 adults and 4 children; 11 feet long, 9 feet broad, 6 feet 5 inches high at its highest part; another 11 feet 3 inches by 9 feet, 5 feet 10 inches high, sheltered 6 persons. Each of these families had less space than is considered necessary for a convict. No house had more than one bedroom, not one of them a back-door; water very scarce; weekly rent from 1s. 4d. to 2s. In 16 of the houses visited, only 1 man that earned 10s. a-week. The quantity of air for each person under the circumstances just described corresponds to that which he would have if he were shut up in a box of 4 feet measuring each way, the whole night. But then, the ancient dens afforded a certain amount of unintentional ventilation. Gamblingay belongs to several landlords. It contains the wretchedest cots to be found anywhere. Much straw-plaiting. A deadly lassitude, a hopeless surrendering up to filth, reigns in Gamblingay. The neglect in its centre, becomes mortification at its extremities, north and south, where the houses are rotting to pieces. The absentee landlords bleed this poor rookery too freely. The rents are very high; 8 or 9 persons packed in one sleeping apartment, in 2 cases 6 adults, each with 1 or 2 children in one small bedroom. In this county, diminutions in the number of persons and of cottages go, in many parishes, hand in hand. In not less than 22 parishes, however, the destruction of houses has not prevented increase of population, or has not brought about that expulsion which, under the name migration to towns, generally occurs. In Fingringhoe, a parish of 3,443 acres, were in 1851, 145 houses; in 1861, only 110. But the people did not wish to go away, and managed even to increase under these circumstances. In 1851, 252 persons inhabited 61 houses, but in 1861, 262 persons were squeezed into 49 houses. In Basilden, in 1851, 157 persons lived on 1,827 acres, in 35 houses; at the end of ten years, 180 persons in 27 houses. In the parishes of Fingringhoe, South Fambridge, Widford, Basilden, and Ramsden Crags, in 1851, 1,392 persons were living on 8,449 acres in 316 houses; in 1861, on the same area, 1,473 persons in 249 houses. This little county has suffered more from the eviction-spirit than any other in England. At Nadby, overcrowded cottages generally, with only 2 bedrooms, belonging for the most part to the farmers. They easily let them for 3 or 4 a-year, and paid a weekly wage of 9s. Hartford had, in 1851, 87 houses; shortly after this, 19 cottages were destroyed in this small parish of 1,720 acres; population in 1831, 452; in 1852, 382; and in 1861, 341. 14 cottages, each with 1 bedroom, were visited. In one, a married couple, 3 grown-up sons, 1 grown-up daughter, 4 children in all 10 in another, 3 adults, 6 children. One of these rooms, in which 8 people slept, was 12 feet 10 inches long, 12 feet 2 inches broad, 6 feet 9 inches high: the average, without making any deduction for projections into the apartment, gave about 130 cubic feet per head. In the 14 sleeping rooms, 34 adults and 33 children. These cottages are seldom provided with gardens, but many of the inmates are able to farm small allotments at 10s. or 12s. per rood. These allotments are at a distance from the houses, which are without privies. The family must either go to the allotment to deposit their ordures, or, as happens in this place, saving your presence, use a closet with a trough set like a drawer in a chest of drawers, and drawn out weekly and conveyed to the allotment to be emptied where its contents were wanted. In Japan, the circle of life-conditions moves more decently than this. Langtoft. A man lives here, in Wright s house, with his wife, her mother, and 5 children; the house has a front kitchen, scullery, bedroom over the front kitchen; front kitchen and bedroom, 12 feet 2 inches by 9 feet 5 inches; the whole ground floor, 21 feet 2 inches by 9 feet 5 inches. The bedroom is a garret: the walls run together into the roof like a sugar-loaf, a dormer-window opening in front. Why did he live here? On account of the garden? No; it is very small. Rent? High, 1s. 3d. per week. Near his work? No; 6 miles away, so that he walks daily, to and fro, 12 miles. He lived there, because it was a tenantable cot, and because he wanted to have a cot for himself alone, anywhere, at any price, and in any conditions. The following are the statistics of 12 houses in Langtoft, with 12 bedrooms, 38 adults, and 36 children. Kennington, very seriously over-populated in 1859, when diphtheria appeared, and the parish doctor instituted a medical inquiry into the condition of the poorer classes. He found that in this locality, where much labour is employed, various cots had been destroyed and no new ones built. In one district stood four houses, named birdcages; each had 4 rooms of the following dimensions in feet and inches: Brinworth, Pickford and Floore: in these villages in the winter 20-30 men were lounging about the streets from want of work. The farmers do not always till sufficiently the corn and turnip lands, and the landlord has found it best to throw all his farms together into 2 or 3. Hence want of employment. Whilst on one side of the wall, the land calls for labour, on the other side the defrauded labourers are casting at it longing glances. Feverishly overworked in summer, and half-starved in winter, it is no wonder if they say in their peculiar dialect, the parson and gentlefolk seem frit to death at them. At Floore, instances, in one bedroom of the smallest size, of couples with 4, 5, 6 children; 3 adults with 5 children; a couple with grandfather and 6 children down with scarlet fever, &c.; in two houses with two bedrooms, two families of 8 and 9 adults respectively. Stratton. 31 houses visited, 8 with only one bedroom. Pentill, in the same parish: a cot let at Is. 3d. weekly with 4 adults and 4 children, had nothing good about it, except the walls, from the floor of rough-hewn pieces of stones to the roof of worn-out thatch. House-destruction here not quite so excessive; yet from 1851 to 1861, the number of inhabitants to each house on the average, has risen from 4.2 to 4.6. Badsey. Many cots and little gardens here. Some of the farmers declare that the cots are a great nuisance here, because they bring the poor. On the statement of one gentleman: (according to him the houses give birth to the inhabitants, who then by a law of Nature press on the means of housing ). Dr. Hunter remarks: The continual emigration to the towns, the continual formation of surplus population in the country through the concentration of farms, conversion of arable land into pasture, machinery, &c., and the continual eviction of the agricultural population by the destruction of their cottages, go hand in hand. The more empty the district is of men, the greater is its relative surplus population, the greater is their pressure on the means of employment, the greater is the absolute excess of the agricultural population over the means for housing it, the greater, therefore, in the villages is the local surplus population and the most pestilential packing together of human beings. The packing together of knots of men in scattered little villages and small country towns corresponds to the forcible draining of men from the surface of the land. The continuous superseding of the agricultural labourers, in spite of their diminishing number and the increasing mass of their products, gives birth to their pauperism. Their pauperism is ultimately a motive to their eviction and the chief source of their miserable housing which breaks down their last power of resistance, and makes them more slaves of the landed proprietors and the farmers. Thus the minimum of wages becomes a law of Nature to them. On the other hand, the land, in spite of its constant relative surplus population, is at the same time underpopulated. This is seen, not only locally at the points where the efflux of men to towns, mines, railroad-making, &c., is most marked. It is to be seen everywhere, in harvest-time as well as in spring and summer, at those frequently recurring times when English agriculture, so careful and intensive, wants extra hands. There are always too many agricultural labourers for the ordinary, and always too few for the exceptional or temporary needs of the cultivation of the soil. Hence we find in the official documents contradictory complaints from the same places of deficiency and excess of labour simultaneously. The temporary or local want of labour brings about no rise in wages, but a forcing of the women and children into the fields, and exploitation at an age constantly lowered. As soon as the exploitation of the women and children takes place on a larger scale, it becomes in turn a new means of making a surplus population of the male agricultural labourer and of keeping down his wage. In the east of England thrives a beautiful fruit of this vicious circle the so-called gang-system, to which I must briefly return here. The gang-system obtains almost exclusively in the counties of Lincoln, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Nottingham, here and there in the neighbouring counties of Northampton, Bedford, and Rutland. Lincolnshire will serve us as an example. A large part of this county is new land, marsh formerly, or even, as in others of the eastern counties just named, won lately from the sea. The steam-engine has worked wonders in the way of drainage. What were once fens and sandbanks, bear now a luxuriant sea of corn and the highest of rents. The same thing holds of the alluvial lands won by human endeavour, as in the island of Axholme and other parishes on the banks of the Trent. In proportion as the new farms arose, not only were no new cottages built: old ones were demolished, and the supply of labour had to come from open villages, miles away, by long roads that wound along the sides of the hills. There alone had the population formerly found shelter from the incessant floods of the winter-time. The labourers that dwell on the farms of 400-1,000 acres (they are called confined labourers ) are solely employed on such kinds of agricultural work as is permanent, difficult, and carried on by aid of horses. For every 100 acres there is, on an average, scarcely one cottage. A fen farmer, e.g., gave evidence before the Commission of Inquiry: The soil requires much light field labour, such as weeding, hoeing, certain processes of manuring, removing of stones, &c. This is done by the gangs, or organised bands that dwell in the open villages. The gang consists of 10 to 40 or 50 persons, women, young persons of both sexes (13-18 years of age, although the boys are for the most part eliminated at the age of 13), and children of both sexes (6-13 years of age). At the head is the gang-master, always an ordinary agricultural labourer, generally what is called a bad lot, a scapegrace, unsteady, drunken, but with a dash of enterprise and savoir-faire. He is the recruiting-sergeant for the gang, which works under him, not under the farmer. He generally arranges with the latter for piece-work, and his income, which on the average is not very much above that of an ordinary agricultural labourer, depends almost entirely upon the dexterity with which he manages to extract within the shortest time the greatest possible amount of labour from his gang. The farmers have discovered that women work steadily only under the direction of men, but that women and children, once set going, impetuously spend their life-force as Fourier knew while the adult male labourer is shrewd enough to economise his as much as he can. The gang-master goes from one farm to another, and thus employs his gang from 6 to 8 months in the year. Employment by him is, therefore, much more lucrative and more certain for the labouring families, than employment by the individual farmer, who only employs children occasionally. This circumstance so completely rivets his influence in the open villages that children are generally only to be hired through his instrumentality. The lending out of these individually, independently of the gang, is his second trade. The drawbacks of the system are the overwork of the children and young persons, the enormous marches that they make daily to and from the farms, 5, 6, and sometimes 7 miles distant, finally, the demoralisation of the gang. Although the gang-master, who, in some districts is called the driver, is armed with a long stick, he uses it but seldom, and complaints of brutal treatment are exceptional. He is a democratic emperor, or a kind of Pied Piper of Hamelin. He must therefore be popular with his subjects, and he binds them to himself by the charms of the gipsy life under his direction. Coarse freedom, a noisy jollity, and obscenest impudence give attractions to the gang. Generally the gangmaster pays up in a public house; then he returns home at the head of the procession reeling drunk, propped up right and left by a stalwart virago, while children and young persons bring up the rear, boisterous, and singing chaffing and bawdy songs. On the return journey what Fourier calls phanerogamie, is the order of the day. The getting with child of girls of 13 and 14 by their male companions of the same age, is common. The open villages which supply the contingent of the gang, become Sodoms and Gomorrahs, and have twice as high a rate of illegitimate births as the rest of the kingdom. The moral character of girls bred in these schools, when married women, was shown above. Their children, when opium does not give them the finishing stroke, are born recruits of the gang. The gang in its classical form just described, is called the public, common, or tramping gang. For there are also private gangs. These are made up in the same way as the common gang, but count fewer members, and work, not under a gang-master, but under some old farm servant, whom the farmer does not know how to employ in any better way. The gipsy fun has vanished here, but according to all witnesses, the payment and treatment of the children is worse. The gang-system, which during the last years has steadily increased, clearly does not exist for the sake of the gang-master. It exists for the enrichment of the large farmers, and indirectly of the landlords. For the farmer there is no more ingenious method of keeping his labourers well below the normal level, and yet of always having an extra hand ready for extra work, of extracting the greatest possible amount of labour with the least possible amount of money and of making adult male labour redundant. From the exposition already made, it will be understood why, on the one hand, a greater or less lack of employment for the agricultural labourer is admitted, while on the other, the gang-system is at the same time declared necessary on account of the want of adult male labour and its migration to the towns. The cleanly weeded land, and the uncleanly human weeds, of Lincolnshire, are pole and counterpole of capitalistic production. In concluding this section, we must travel for a moment to Ireland. First, the main facts of the case. The population of Ireland had, in 1841, reached 8,222,664; in 1851, it had dwindled to 6,623,985; in 1861, to 5,850,309; in 1866, to 5 millions, nearly to its level in 1801. The diminution began with the famine year, 1846, so that Ireland, in less than twenty years, lost more than 5/16 ths of its people. Its total emigration from May, 1851, to July, 1865, numbered 1,591,487: the emigration during the years 1861-1865 was more than half-a-million. The number of inhabited houses fell, from 1851-1861, by 52,990. From 1851-1861, the number of holdings of 15 to 30 acres increased 61,000, that of holdings over 30 acres, 109,000, whilst the total number of all farms fell 120,000, a fall, therefore, solely due to the suppression of farms under 15 acres i.e., to their centralisation. The decrease of the population was naturally accompanied by a decrease in the mass of products. For our purpose, it suffices to consider the 5 years from 1861-1865 during which over half-a-million emigrated, and the absolute number of people sank by more than 1/3 of a million. From the above table it results: Let us now turn to agriculture, which yields the means of subsistence for cattle and for men. In the following table is calculated the decrease or increase for each separate year, as compared with its immediate predecessor. The Cereal Crops include wheat, oats, barley, rye, beans, and peas; the Green Crops, potatoes, turnips, marigolds, beet-root, cabbages, carrots, parsnips, vetches, &c. In the year 1865, 127,470 additional acres came under the heading grass land, chiefly because the area under the heading of bog and waste unoccupied, decreased by 101,543 acres. If we compare 1865 with 1864, there is a decrease in cereals of 246,667 qrs., of which 48,999 were wheat, 160,605 oats, 29,892 barley, &c.: the decrease in potatoes was 446,398 tons, although the area of their cultivation increased in 1865. From the movement of population and the agricultural produce of Ireland, we pass to the movement in the purse of its landlords, larger farmers, and industrial capitalists. It is reflected in the rise and fall of the Income-tax. It may be remembered that Schedule D. (profits with the exception of those of farmers), includes also the so-called, professional profits i.e., the incomes of lawyers, doctors, &c.; and the Schedules C. and E., in which no special details are given, include the incomes of employees, officers, State sinecurists, State fundholders, &c. Under Schedule D., the average annual increase of income from 1853-1864 was only 0.93; whilst, in the same period, in Great Britain, it was 4.58. The following table shows the distribution of the profits (with the exception of those of farmers) for the years 1864 and 1865: England, a country with fully developed capitalist production, and pre-eminently industrial, would have bled to death with such a drain of population as Ireland has suffered. But Ireland is at present only an agricultural district of England, marked off by a wide channel from the country to which it yields corn, wool, cattle, industrial and military recruits. The depopulation of Ireland has thrown much of the land out of cultivation, has greatly diminished the produce of the soil, and, in spite of the greater area devoted to cattle breeding, has brought about, in some of its branches, an absolute diminution, in others, an advance scarcely worthy of mention, and constantly interrupted by retrogressions. Nevertheless, with the fall in numbers of the population, rents and farmers profits rose, although the latter not as steadily as the former. The reason of this is easily comprehensible. On the one hand, with the throwing of small holdings into large ones, and the change of arable into pasture land, a larger part of the whole produce was transformed into surplus-produce. The surplus-produce increased, although the total produce, of which it formed a fraction, decreased. On the other hand, the money value of this surplus-produce increased yet more rapidly than its mass, in consequence of the rise in the English market price of meat, wool, &c., during the last 20, and especially during the last 10, years. The scattered means of production that serve the producers themselves as means of employment and of subsistence, without expanding their own value by the incorporation of the labour of others, are no more capital than a product consumed by its own producer is a commodity. If, with the mass of the population, that of the means of production employed in agriculture also diminished, the mass of the capital employed in agriculture increased, because a part of the means of production that were formerly scattered, was concentrated and turned into capital. The total capital of Ireland outside agriculture, employed in industry and trade, accumulated during the last two decades slowly, and with great and constantly recurring fluctuations; so much the more rapidly did the concentration of its individual constituents develop. And, however small its absolute increase, in proportion to the dwindling population it had increased largely. Here, then, under our own eyes and on a large scale, a process is revealed, than which nothing more excellent could be wished for by orthodox economy for the support of its dogma: that misery springs from absolute surplus population, and that equilibrium is re-established by depopulation. This is a far more important experiment than was the plague in the middle of the 14th century so belauded of Malthusians. Note further: If only the na vet of the schoolmaster could apply, to the conditions of production and population of the nineteenth century, the standard of the 14th, this na vet , into the bargain, overlooked the fact that whilst, after the plague and the decimation that accompanied it, followed on this side of the Channel, in England, enfranchisement and enrichment of the agricultural population, on that side, in France, followed greater servitude and more misery. The Irish famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 people, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the country it did not the slightest damage. The exodus of the next 20 years, an exodus still constantly increasing, did not, as, e.g., the Thirty Years War, decimate, along with the human beings, their means of production. Irish genius discovered an altogether new way of spiriting a poor people thousands of miles away from the scene of its misery. The exiles transplanted to the United States, send home sums of money every year as travelling expenses for those left behind. Every troop that emigrates one year, draws another after it the next. Thus, instead of costing Ireland anything, emigration forms one of the most lucrative branches of its export trade. Finally, it is a systematic process, which does not simply make a passing gap in the population, but sucks out of it every year more people than are replaced by the births, so that the absolute level of the population falls year by year. What were the consequences for the Irish labourers left behind and freed from the surplus population? That the relative surplus population is today as great as before 1846; that wages are just as low, that the oppression of the labourers has increased, that misery is forcing the country towards a new crisis. The facts are simple. The revolution in agriculture has kept pace with emigration. The production of relative surplus population has more than kept pace with the absolute depopulation. A glance at table C. shows that the change of arable to pasture land must work yet more acutely in Ireland than in England. In England the cultivation of green crops increases with the breeding of cattle; in Ireland, it decreases. Whilst a large number of acres, that were formerly tilled, lie idle or are turned permanently into grass-land, a great part of the waste land and peat bogs that were unused formerly, become of service for the extension of cattle-breeding. The smaller and medium farmers I reckon among these all who do not cultivate more than 100 acres still make up about 8/10ths of the whole number. They are one after the other, and with a degree of force unknown before, crushed by the competition of an agriculture managed by capital, and therefore they continually furnish new recruits to the class of wage labourers. The one great industry of Ireland, linen-manufacture, requires relatively few adult men and only employs altogether, in spite of its expansion since the price of cotton rose in 1861-1866, a comparatively insignificant part of the population. Like all other great modern industries, it constantly produces, by incessant fluctuations, a relative surplus population within its own sphere, even with an absolute increase in the mass of human beings absorbed by it. The misery of the agricultural population forms the pedestal for gigantic shirt-factories, whose armies of labourers are, for the most part, scattered over the country. Here, we encounter again the system described above of domestic industry, which in underpayment and overwork, possesses its own systematic means for creating supernumerary labourers. Finally, although the depopulation has not such destructive consequences as would result in a country with fully developed capitalistic production, it does not go on without constant reaction upon the home-market. The gap which emigration causes here, limits not only the local demand for labour, but also the incomes of small shopkeepers, artisans, tradespeople generally. Hence the diminution in incomes between 60 and 100 in Table E. A clear statement of the condition of the agricultural labourers in Ireland is to be found in the Reports of the Irish Poor Law Inspectors (1870). Officials of a government which is maintained only by bayonets and by a state of siege, now open, now disguised, they have to observe all the precautions of language that their colleagues in England disdain. In spite of this, however, they do not let their government cradle itself in illusions. According to them the rate of wages in the country, still very low, has within the last 20 years risen 50-60 per cent., and stands now, on the average, at 6s. to 9s. per week. But behind this apparent rise, is hidden an actual fall in wages, for it does not correspond at all to the rise in price of the necessary means of subsistence that has taken place in the meantime. For proof, the following extract from the official accounts of an Irish workhouse. The price of the necessary means of subsistence is therefore fully twice, and that of clothing exactly twice, as much as they were 20 years before. Even apart from this disproportion, the mere comparison of the rate of wages expressed in gold would give a result far from accurate. Before the famine, the great mass of agricultural wages were paid in kind, only the smallest part in money; today, payment in money is the rule. From this it follows that, whatever the amount of the real wage, its money rate must rise. In fact, formerly, the agricultural labourers were but the smallest of the small farmers, and formed for the most part a kind of rear-guard of the medium and large farms on which they found employment. Only since the catastrophe of 1846 have they begun to form a fraction of the class of purely wage labourers, a special class, connected with its wage-masters only by monetary relations. We know what were the conditions of their dwellings in 1846. Since then they have grown yet worse. A part of the agricultural labourers, which, however, grows less day by day, dwells still on the holdings of the farmers in over-crowded huts, whose hideousness far surpasses the worst that the English agricultural labourers offered us in this way. And this holds generally with the exception of certain tracts of Ulster; in the south, in the counties of Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny, &c.; in the east, in Wicklow, Wexford, &c.; in the centre of Ireland, in King s and Queen s County, Dublin, &c.; in the west, in Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo, Galway, &c. In order to increase the attractions of these holes for the labourers, the pieces of land belonging thereto from time immemorial, are systematically confiscated. The first act of the agricultural revolution was to sweep away the huts situated on the field of labour. This was done on the largest scale, and as if in obedience to a command from on high. Thus many labourers were compelled to seek shelter in villages and towns. There they were thrown like refuse into garrets, holes, cellars and corners, in the worst back slums. Thousands of Irish families, who according to the testimony of the English, eaten up as these are with national prejudice, are notable for their rare attachment to the domestic hearth, for their gaiety and the purity of their home-life, found themselves suddenly transplanted into hotbeds of vice. The men are now obliged to seek work of the neighbouring farmers and are only hired by the day, and therefore under the most precarious form of wage. Hence These results of the agricultural revolution i.e., the change of arable into pasture land, the use of machinery, the most rigorous economy of labour, &c., are still further aggravated by the model landlords, who, instead of spending their rents in other countries, condescend to live in Ireland on their demesnes. In order that the law of supply and demand may not be broken, these gentlemen draw their The uncertainty and irregularity of employment, the constant return and long duration of gluts of labour, all these symptoms of a relative surplus population, figure therefore in the reports of the Poor Law administration, as so many hardships of the agricultural proletariat. It will be remembered that we met, in the English agricultural proletariat, with a similar spectacle. But the difference is that in England, an industrial country, the industrial reserve recruits itself from the country districts, whilst in Ireland, an agricultural country, the agricultural reserve recruits itself from the towns, the cities of refuge of the expelled agricultural labourers. In the former, the supernumeraries of agriculture are transformed into factory operatives; in the latter, those forced into the towns, whilst at the same time they press on the wages in towns, remain agricultural labourers, and are constantly sent back to the country districts in search of work. The official inspectors sum up the material condition of the agricultural labourer as follows: After this, it is no wonder that, according to the unanimous testimony of the inspectors, a sombre discontent runs through the ranks of this class, that they long for the return of the past, loathe the present, despair of the future, give themselves up to the evil influence of agitators, and have only one fixed idea, to emigrate to America. This is the land of Cockaigne, into which the great Malthusian panacea, depopulation, has transformed green Erin. What a happy life the Irish factory operative leads one example will show: Such are Irish wages, such is Irish life! In fact the misery of Ireland is again the topic of the day in England. At the end of 1866 and the beginning of 1867, one of the Irish land magnates, Lord Dufferin, set about its solution in The Times. Wie menschlich von solch grossem Herrn! From Table E. we saw that, during 1864, of 4,368,610 of total profits, three surplus-value makers pocketed only 262,819; that in 1865, however, out of 4,669,979 total profits, the same three virtuosi of abstinence pocketed 274,528; in 1864, 26 surplus-value makers reached to 646,377; in 1865, 28 surplus-value makers reached to 736,448; in 1864, 121 surplus-value makers, 1,076,912; in 1865, 150 surplus-value makers, 1,320,906; in 1864, 1,131 surplus-value makers 2,150,818, nearly half of the total annual profit; in 1865, 1,194 surplus-value makers, 2,418,833, more than half of the total annual profit. But the lion s share, which an inconceivably small number of land magnates in England, Scotland and Ireland swallow up of the yearly national rental, is so monstrous that the wisdom of the English State does not think fit to afford the same statistical materials about the distribution of rents as about the distribution of profits. Lord Dufferin is one of those land magnates. That rent-rolls and profits can ever be excessive, or that their plethora is in any way connected with plethora of the people s misery is, of course, an idea as disreputable as unsound. He keeps to facts. The fact is that, as the Irish population diminishes, the Irish rent-rolls swell; that depopulation benefits the landlords, therefore also benefits the soil, and, therefore, the people, that mere accessory of the soil. He declares, therefore, that Ireland is still over-populated, and the stream of emigration still flows too lazily. To be perfectly happy, Ireland must get rid of at least one-third of a million of labouring men. Let no man imagine that this lord, poetic into the bargain, is a physician of the school of Sangrado, who as often as he did not find his patient better, ordered phlebotomy and again phlebotomy, until the patient lost his sickness at the same time as his blood. Lord Dufferin demands a new blood-letting of one-third of a million only, instead of about two millions; in fact, without the getting rid of these, the millennium in Erin is not to be. The proof is easily given. Centralisation has from 1851 to 1861 destroyed principally farms of the first three categories, under 1 and not over 15 acres. These above all must disappear. This gives 307,058 supernumerary farmers, and reckoning the families the low average of 4 persons, 1,228,232 persons. On the extravagant supposition that, after the agricultural revolution is complete one-fourth of these are again absorbable, there remain for emigration 921,174 persons. Categories 4, 5, 6, of over 15 and not over 100 acres, are, as was known long since in England, too small for capitalistic cultivation of corn, and for sheep-breeding are almost vanishing quantities. On the same supposition as before, therefore, there are further 788,761 persons to emigrate; total, 1,709,532. And as l app tit vient en mangeant, Rentroll s eyes will soon discover that Ireland, with 3 millions, is still always miserable, and miserable because she is overpopulated. Therefore her depopulation must go yet further, that thus she may fulfil her true destiny, that of an English sheep-walk and cattle-pasture. Like all good things in this bad world, this profitable method has its drawbacks. With the accumulation of rents in Ireland, the accumulation of the Irish in America keeps pace. The Irishman, banished by sheep and ox, re-appears on the other side of the ocean as a Fenian, and face to face with the old queen of the seas rises, threatening and more threatening, the young giant Republic:

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty-Five

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm

This primitive accumulation plays in Political Economy about the same part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past. In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. The legend of theological original sin tells us certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow; but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to us in the defence of property. M. Thiers, e.g., had the assurance to repeat it with all the solemnity of a statesman to the French people, once so spirituel. But as soon as the question of property crops up, it becomes a sacred duty to proclaim the intellectual food of the infant as the one thing fit for all ages and for all stages of development. In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly force, play the great part. In the tender annals of Political Economy, the idyllic reigns from time immemorial. Right and labour were from all time the sole means of enrichment, the present year of course always excepted. As a matter of fact, the methods of primitive accumulation are anything but idyllic. In themselves money and commodities are no more capital than are the means of production and of subsistence. They want transforming into capital. But this transformation itself can only take place under certain circumstances that centre in this, viz., that two very different kinds of commodity-possessors must come face to face and into contact; on the one hand, the owners of money, means of production, means of subsistence, who are eager to increase the sum of values they possess, by buying other people s labour power; on the other hand, free labourers, the sellers of their own labour power, and therefore the sellers of labour. Free labourers, in the double sense that neither they themselves form part and parcel of the means of production, as in the case of slaves, bondsmen, &c., nor do the means of production belong to them, as in the case of peasant-proprietors; they are, therefore, free from, unencumbered by, any means of production of their own. With this polarization of the market for commodities, the fundamental conditions of capitalist production are given. The capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the labourers from all property in the means by which they can realize their labour. As soon as capitalist production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a continually extending scale. The process, therefore, that clears the way for the capitalist system, can be none other than the process which takes away from the labourer the possession of his means of production; a process that transforms, on the one hand, the social means of subsistence and of production into capital, on the other, the immediate producers into wage labourers. The so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as primitive, because it forms the prehistoric stage of capital and of the mode of production corresponding with it. The economic structure of capitalist society has grown out of the economic structure of feudal society. The dissolution of the latter set free the elements of the former. The immediate producer, the labourer, could only dispose of his own person after he had ceased to be attached to the soil and ceased to be the slave, serf, or bondsman of another. To become a free seller of labour power, who carries his commodity wherever he finds a market, he must further have escaped from the regime of the guilds, their rules for apprentices and journeymen, and the impediments of their labour regulations. Hence, the historical movement which changes the producers into wage-workers, appears, on the one hand, as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds, and this side alone exists for our bourgeois historians. But, on the other hand, these new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire. The industrial capitalists, these new potentates, had on their part not only to displace the guild masters of handicrafts, but also the feudal lords, the possessors of the sources of wealth. In this respect, their conquest of social power appears as the fruit of a victorious struggle both against feudal lordship and its revolting prerogatives, and against the guilds and the fetters they laid on the free development of production and the free exploitation of man by man. The chevaliers d industrie, however, only succeeded in supplanting the chevaliers of the sword by making use of events of which they themselves were wholly innocent. They have risen by means as vile as those by which the Roman freedman once on a time made himself the master of his patronus. The starting point of the development that gave rise to the wage labourer as well as to the capitalist, was the servitude of the labourer. The advance consisted in a change of form of this servitude, in the transformation of feudal exploitation into capitalist exploitation. To understand its march, we need not go back very far. Although we come across the first beginnings of capitalist production as early as the 14th or 15th century, sporadically, in certain towns of the Mediterranean, the capitalistic era dates from the 16th century. Wherever it appears, the abolition of serfdom has been long effected, and the highest development of the middle ages, the existence of sovereign towns, has been long on the wane. In the history of primitive accumulation, all revolutions are epoch-making that act as levers for the capital class in course of formation; but, above all, those moments when great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled as free and unattached proletarians on the labour-market. The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process. The history of this expropriation, in different countries, assumes different aspects, and runs through its various phases in different orders of succession, and at different periods. In England alone, which we take as our example, has it the classic form.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty-Six

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm

The prelude of the revolution that laid the foundation of the capitalist mode of production, was played in the last third of the 15th, and the first decade of the 16th century. A mass of free proletarians was hurled on the labour market by the breaking-up of the bands of feudal retainers, who, as Sir James Steuart well says, everywhere uselessly filled house and castle. Although the royal power, itself a product of bourgeois development, in its strife after absolute sovereignty forcibly hastened on the dissolution of these bands of retainers, it was by no means the sole cause of it. In insolent conflict with king and parliament, the great feudal lords created an incomparably larger proletariat by the forcible driving of the peasantry from the land, to which the latter had the same feudal right as the lord himself, and by the usurpation of the common lands. The rapid rise of the Flemish wool manufactures, and the corresponding rise in the price of wool in England, gave the direct impulse to these evictions. The old nobility had been devoured by the great feudal wars. The new nobility was the child of its time, for which money was the power of all powers. Transformation of arable land into sheep-walks was, therefore, its cry. Harrison, in his Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed s Chronicles, describes how the expropriation of small peasants is ruining the country. What care our great encroachers? The dwellings of the peasants and the cottages of the labourers were razed to the ground or doomed to decay. If, says Harrison, the old records of euerie manour be sought... it will soon appear that in some manour seventeene, eighteene, or twentie houses are shrunk... that England was neuer less furnished with people than at the present... Of cities and townes either utterly decaied or more than a quarter or half diminished, though some one be a little increased here or there; of townes pulled downe for sheepe-walks, and no more but the lordships now standing in them... I could saie somewhat. The complaints of these old chroniclers are always exaggerated, but they reflect faithfully the impression made on contemporaries by the revolution in the conditions of production. A comparison of the writings of Chancellor Fortescue and Thomas More reveals the gulf between the 15th and 16th century. As Thornton rightly has it, the English working class was precipitated without any transition from its golden into its iron age. Legislation was terrified at this revolution. It did not yet stand on that height of civilization where the wealth of the nation (i.e., the formation of capital, and the reckless exploitation and impoverishing of the mass of the people) figure as the ultima Thule of all state-craft. In his history of Henry VII., Bacon says: Inclosures at that time (1489) began to be more frequent, whereby arable land (which could not be manured without people and families) was turned into pasture, which was easily rid by a few herdsmen; and tenancies for years, lives, and at will (whereupon much of the yeomanry lived) were turned into demesnes. This bred a decay of people, and (by consequence) a decay of towns, churches, tithes, and the like... In remedying of this inconvenience the king s wisdom was admirable, and the parliament s at that time... they took a course to take away depopulating enclosures, and depopulating pasturage. An Act of Henry VII., 1489, cap. 19, forbad the destruction of all houses of husbandry to which at least 20 acres of land belonged. By an Act, 25 Henry VIII., the same law was renewed. It recites, among other things, that many farms and large flocks of cattle, especially of sheep, are concentrated in the hands of a few men, whereby the rent of land has much risen and tillage has fallen off, churches and houses have been pulled down, and marvellous numbers of people have been deprived of the means wherewith to maintain themselves and their families. The Act, therefore, ordains the rebuilding of the decayed farmsteads, and fixes a proportion between corn land and pasture land, &c. An Act of 1533 recites that some owners possess 24,000 sheep, and limits the number to be owned to 2,000. The cry of the people and the legislation directed, for 150 years after Henry VII., against the expropriation of the small farmers and peasants, were alike fruitless. The secret of their inefficiency Bacon, without knowing it, reveals to us. The device of King Henry VII., says Bacon, in his Essays, Civil and Moral, Essay 29, was profound and admirable, in making farms and houses of husbandry of a standard; that is, maintained with such a proportion of land unto them as may breed a subject to live in convenient plenty, and no servile condition, and to keep the plough in the hands of the owners and not mere hirelings. What the capitalist system demanded was, on the other hand, a degraded and almost servile condition of the mass of the people, the transformation of them into mercenaries, and of their means of labour into capital. During this transformation period, legislation also strove to retain the 4 acres of land by the cottage of the agricultural wage labourer, and forbad him to take lodgers into his cottage. In the reign of James I., 1627, Roger Crocker of Front Mill, was condemned for having built a cottage on the manor of Front Mill without 4 acres of land attached to the same in perpetuity. As late as Charles I. s reign, 1638, a royal commission was appointed to enforce the carrying out of the old laws, especially that referring to the 4 acres of land. Even in Cromwell s time, the building of a house within 4 miles of London was forbidden unless it was endowed with 4 acres of land. As late as the first half of the 18th century complaint is made if the cottage of the agricultural labourer has not an adjunct of one or two acres of land. Nowadays he is lucky if it is furnished with a little garden, or if he may rent, far away from his cottage, a few roods. Landlords and farmers, says Dr. Hunter, work here hand in hand. A few acres to the cottage would make the labourers too independent. The process of forcible expropriation of the people received in the 16th century a new and frightful impulse from the Reformation, and from the consequent colossal spoliation of the church property. The Catholic church was, at the time of the Reformation, feudal proprietor of a great part of the English land. The suppression of the monasteries, &c., hurled their inmates into the proletariat. The estates of the church were to a large extent given away to rapacious royal favourites, or sold at a nominal price to speculating farmers and citizens, who drove out, en masse, the hereditary sub-tenants and threw their holdings into one. The legally guaranteed property of the poorer folk in a part of the church s tithes was tacitly confiscated. Pauper ubique jacet, cried Queen Elizabeth, after a journey through England. In the 43rd year of her reign the nation was obliged to recognise pauperism officially by the introduction of a poor-rate. The authors of this law seem to have been ashamed to state the grounds of it, for [contrary to traditional usage] it has no preamble whatever. By the 16th of Charles I., ch. 4, it was declared perpetual, and in fact only in 1834 did it take a new and harsher form. These immediate results of the Reformation were not its most lasting ones. The property of the church formed the religious bulwark of the traditional conditions of landed property. With its fall these were no longer tenable. Even in the last decade of the 17th century, the yeomanry, the class of independent peasants, were more numerous than the class of farmers. They had formed the backbone of Cromwell s strength, and, even according to the confession of Macaulay, stood in favourable contrast to the drunken squires and to their servants, the country clergy, who had to marry their masters cast-off mistresses. About 1750, the yeomanry had disappeared, and so had, in the last decade of the 18th century, the last trace of the common land of the agricultural labourer. We leave on one side here the purely economic causes of the agricultural revolution. We deal only with the forcible means employed. After the restoration of the Stuarts, the landed proprietors carried, by legal means, an act of usurpation, effected everywhere on the Continent without any legal formality. They abolished the feudal tenure of land, i.e., they got rid of all its obligations to the State, indemnified the State by taxes on the peasantry and the rest of the mass of the people, vindicated for themselves the rights of modern private property in estates to which they had only a feudal title, and, finally, passed those laws of settlement, which, mutatis mutandis, had the same effect on the English agricultural labourer, as the edict of the Tartar Boris Godunof on the Russian peasantry. The glorious Revolution brought into power, along with William of Orange, the landlord and capitalist appropriators of surplus-value. They inaugurated the new era by practising on a colossal scale thefts of state lands, thefts that had been hitherto managed more modestly. These estates were given away, sold at a ridiculous figure, or even annexed to private estates by direct seizure. All this happened without the slightest observation of legal etiquette. The Crown lands thus fraudulently appropriated, together with the robbery of the Church estates, as far as these had not been lost again during the republican revolution, form the basis of the today princely domains of the English oligarchy. The bourgeois capitalists favoured the operation with the view, among others, to promoting free trade in land, to extending the domain of modern agriculture on the large farm-system, and to increasing their supply of the free agricultural proletarians ready to hand. Besides, the new landed aristocracy was the natural ally of the new bankocracy, of the newly-hatched haute finance, and of the large manufacturers, then depending on protective duties. The English bourgeoisie acted for its own interest quite as wisely as did the Swedish bourgeoisie who, reversing the process, hand in hand with their economic allies, the peasantry, helped the kings in the forcible resumption of the Crown lands from the oligarchy. This happened since 1604 under Charles X. and Charles XI. Communal property always distinct from the State property just dealt with was an old Teutonic institution which lived on under cover of feudalism. We have seen how the forcible usurpation of this, generally accompanied by the turning of arable into pasture land, begins at the end of the 15th and extends into the 16th century. But, at that time, the process was carried on by means of individual acts of violence against which legislation, for a hundred and fifty years, fought in vain. The advance made by the 18th century shows itself in this, that the law itself becomes now the instrument of the theft of the people s land, although the large farmers make use of their little independent methods as well. The parliamentary form of the robbery is that of Acts for enclosures of Commons, in other words, decrees by which the landlords grant themselves the people s land as private property, decrees of expropriation of the people. Sir F. M. Eden refutes his own crafty special pleading, in which he tries to represent communal property as the private property of the great landlords who have taken the place of the feudal lords, when he, himself, demands a general Act of Parliament for the enclosure of Commons (admitting thereby that a parliamentary coup d tat is necessary for its transformation into private property), and moreover calls on the legislature for the indemnification for the expropriated poor. Whilst the place of the independent yeoman was taken by tenants at will, small farmers on yearly leases, a servile rabble dependent on the pleasure of the landlords, the systematic robbery of the Communal lands helped especially, next to the theft of the State domains, to swell those large farms, that were called in the 18th century capital farms or merchant farms, and to set free the agricultural population as proletarians for manufacturing industry. The 18th century, however, did not yet recognise as fully as the 19th, the identity between national wealth and the poverty of the people. Hence the most vigorous polemic, in the economic literature of that time, on the enclosure of commons. From the mass of materials that lie before me, I give a few extracts that will throw a strong light on the circumstances of the time. In several parishes of Hertfordshire, writes one indignant person, 24 farms, numbering on the average 50-150 acres, have been melted up into three farms. In Northamptonshire and Leicestershire the enclosure of common lands has taken place on a very large scale, and most of the new lordships, resulting from the enclosure, have been turned into pasturage, in consequence of which many lordships have not now 50 acres ploughed yearly, in which 1,500 were ploughed formerly. The ruins of former dwelling-houses, barns, stables, &c., are the sole traces of the former inhabitants. An hundred houses and families have in some open-field villages dwindled to eight or ten.... The landholders in most parishes that have been enclosed only 15 or 20 years, are very few in comparison of the numbers who occupied them in their open-field state. It is no uncommon thing for 4 or 5 wealthy graziers to engross a large enclosed lordship which was before in the hands of 20 or 30 farmers, and as many smaller tenants and proprietors. All these are hereby thrown out of their livings with their families and many other families who were chiefly employed and supported by them. It was not only the land that lay waste, but often land cultivated either in common or held under a definite rent paid to the community, that was annexed by the neighbouring landlords under pretext of enclosure. I have here in view enclosures of open fields and lands already improved. It is acknowledged by even the writers in defence of enclosures that these diminished villages increase the monopolies of farms, raise the prices of provisions, and produce depopulation ... and even the enclosure of waste lands (as now carried on) bears hard on the poor, by depriving them of a part of their subsistence, and only goes towards increasing farms already too large. When, says Dr. Price, this land gets into the hands of a few great farmers, the consequence must be that the little farmers (earlier designated by him a multitude of little proprietors and tenants, who maintain themselves and families by the produce of the ground they occupy by sheep kept on a common, by poultry, hogs, &c., and who therefore have little occasion to purchase any of the means of subsistence ) will be converted into a body of men who earn their subsistence by working for others, and who will be under a necessity of going to market for all they want.... There will, perhaps, be more labour, because there will be more compulsion to it.... Towns and manufactures will increase, because more will be driven to them in quest of places and employment. This is the way in which the engrossing of farms naturally operates. And this is the way in which, for many years, it has been actually operating in this kingdom. He sums up the effect of the enclosures thus: Upon the whole, the circumstances of the lower ranks of men are altered in almost every respect for the worse. From little occupiers of land, they are reduced to the state of day-labourers and hirelings; and, at the same time, their subsistence in that state has become more difficult. In fact, usurpation of the common lands and the revolution in agriculture accompanying this, told so acutely on the agricultural labourers that, even according to Eden, between 1765 and 1780, their wages began to fall below the minimum, and to be supplemented by official poor-law relief. Their wages, he says, were not more than enough for the absolute necessaries of life. Let us hear for a moment a defender of enclosures and an opponent of Dr. Price. Not is it a consequence that there must be depopulation, because men are not seen wasting their labour in the open field.... If, by converting the little farmers into a body of men who must work for others, more labour is produced, it is an advantage which the nation (to which, of course, the converted ones do not belong) should wish for ... the produce being greater when their joint labours are employed on one farm, there will be a surplus for manufactures, and by this means manufactures, one of the mines of the nation, will increase, in proportion to the quantity of corn produced. The stoical peace of mind with which the political economist regards the most shameless violation of the sacred rights of property and the grossest acts of violence to persons, as soon as they are necessary to lay the foundations of the capitalistic mode of production, is shown by Sir F. M. Eden, philanthropist and tory to boot. The whole series of thefts, outrages, and popular misery, that accompanied the forcible expropriation of the people, from the last third of the 15th to the end of the 18th century, lead him merely to the comfortable conclusion: The due proportion between arable land and pasture had to be established. During the whole of the 14th and the greater part of the 15th century, there was one acre of pasture to 2, 3, and even 4 of arable land. About the middle of the 16th century the proportion was changed of 2 acres of pasture to 2, later on, of 2 acres of pasture to one of arable, until at last the just proportion of 3 acres of pasture to one of arable land was attained. In the 19th century, the very memory of the connexion between the agricultural labourer and the communal property had, of course, vanished. To say nothing of more recent times, have the agricultural population received a farthing of compensation for the 3,511,770 acres of common land which between 1801 and 1831 were stolen from them and by parliamentary devices presented to the landlords by the landlords? The last process of wholesale expropriation of the agricultural population from the soil is, finally, the so-called clearing of estates, i.e., the sweeping men off them. All the English methods hitherto considered culminated in clearing. As we saw in the picture of modern conditions given in a former chapter, where there are no more independent peasants to get rid of, the clearing of cottages begins; so that the agricultural labourers do not find on the soil cultivated by them even the spot necessary for their own housing. But what clearing of estates really and properly signifies, we learn only in the promised land of modern romance, the Highlands of Scotland. There the process is distinguished by its systematic character, by the magnitude of the scale on which it is carried out at one blow (in Ireland landlords have gone to the length of sweeping away several villages at once; in Scotland areas as large as German principalities are dealt with), finally by the peculiar form of property, under which the embezzled lands were held. The Highland Celts were organised in clans, each of which was the owner of the land on which it was settled. The representative of the clan, its chief or great man, was only the titular owner of this property, just as the Queen of England is the titular owner of all the national soil. When the English government succeeded in suppressing the intestine wars of these great men, and their constant incursions into the Lowland plains, the chiefs of the clans by no means gave up their time-honored trade as robbers; they only changed its form. On their own authority they transformed their nominal right into a right of private property, and as this brought them into collision with their clansmen, resolved to drive them out by open force. A king of England might as well claim to drive his subjects into the sea, says Professor Newman. This revolution, which began in Scotland after the last rising of the followers of the Pretender, can be followed through its first phases in the writings of Sir James Steuart and James Anderson. In the 18th century the hunted-out Gaels were forbidden to emigrate from the country, with a view to driving them by force to Glasgow and other manufacturing towns. As an example of the method obtaining in the 19th century, the clearing made by the Duchess of Sutherland will suffice here. This person, well instructed in economy, resolved, on entering upon her government, to effect a radical cure, and to turn the whole country, whose population had already been, by earlier processes of the like kind, reduced to 15,000, into a sheep-walk. From 1814 to 1820 these 15,000 inhabitants, about 3,000 families, were systematically hunted and rooted out. All their villages were destroyed and burnt, all their fields turned into pasturage. British soldiers enforced this eviction, and came to blows with the inhabitants. One old woman was burnt to death in the flames of the hut, which she refused to leave. Thus this fine lady appropriated 794,000 acres of land that had from time immemorial belonged to the clan. She assigned to the expelled inhabitants about 6,000 acres on the sea-shore 2 acres per family. The 6,000 acres had until this time lain waste, and brought in no income to their owners. The Duchess, in the nobility of her heart, actually went so far as to let these at an average rent of 2s. 6d. per acre to the clansmen, who for centuries had shed their blood for her family. The whole of the stolen clanland she divided into 29 great sheep farms, each inhabited by a single family, for the most part imported English farm-servants. In the year 1835 the 15,000 Gaels were already replaced by 131,000 sheep. The remnant of the aborigines flung on the sea-shore tried to live by catching fish. They became amphibious and lived, as an English author says, half on land and half on water, and withal only half on both. But the brave Gaels must expiate yet more bitterly their idolatry, romantic and of the mountains, for the great men of the clan. The smell of their fish rose to the noses of the great men. They scented some profit in it, and let the sea-shore to the great fishmongers of London. For the second time the Gaels were hunted out. But, finally, part of the sheep-walks are turned into deer preserves. Every one knows that there are no real forests in England. The deer in the parks of the great are demurely domestic cattle, fat as London aldermen. Scotland is therefore the last refuge of the noble passion. In the Highlands, says Somers in 1848, new forests are springing up like mushrooms. Here, on one side of Gaick, you have the new forest of Glenfeshie; and there on the other you have the new forest of Ardverikie. In the same line you have the Black Mount, an immense waste also recently erected. From east to west from the neighbourhood of Aberdeen to the crags of Oban you have now a continuous line of forests; while in other parts of the Highlands there are the new forests of Loch Archaig, Glengarry, Glenmoriston, &c. Sheep were introduced into glens which had been the seats of communities of small farmers; and the latter were driven to seek subsistence on coarser and more sterile tracks of soil. Now deer are supplanting sheep; and these are once more dispossessing the small tenants, who will necessarily be driven down upon still coarser land and to more grinding penury. Deer-forests and the people cannot co-exist. One or other of the two must yield. Let the forests be increased in number and extent during the next quarter of a century, as they have been in the last, and the Gaels will perish from their native soil... This movement among the Highland proprietors is with some a matter of ambition... with some love of sport... while others, of a more practical cast, follow the trade in deer with an eye solely to profit. For it is a fact, that a mountain range laid out in forest is, in many cases, more profitable to the proprietor than when let as a sheep-walk. ... The huntsman who wants a deer-forest limits his offers by no other calculation than the extent of his purse.... Sufferings have been inflicted in the Highlands scarcely less severe than those occasioned by the policy of the Norman kings. Deer have received extended ranges, while men have been hunted within a narrower and still narrower circle.... One after one the liberties of the people have been cloven down.... And the oppressions are daily on the increase.... The clearance and dispersion of the people is pursued by the proprietors as a settled principle, as an agricultural necessity, just as trees and brushwood are cleared from the wastes of America or Australia; and the operation goes on in a quiet, business-like way, &c. The spoliation of the church s property, the fraudulent alienation of the State domains, the robbery of the common lands, the usurpation of feudal and clan property, and its transformation into modern private property under circumstances of reckless terrorism, were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalistic agriculture, made the soil part and parcel of capital, and created for the town industries the necessary supply of a free and outlawed proletariat.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty-Seven

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch27.htm

In England this legislation began under Henry VII. Henry VIII. 1530: Beggars old and unable to work receive a beggar s licence. On the other hand, whipping and imprisonment for sturdy vagabonds. They are to be tied to the cart-tail and whipped until the blood streams from their bodies, then to swear an oath to go back to their birthplace or to where they have lived the last three years and to put themselves to labour. What grim irony! In 27 Henry VIII. the former statute is repeated, but strengthened with new clauses. For the second arrest for vagabondage the whipping is to be repeated and half the ear sliced off; but for the third relapse the offender is to be executed as a hardened criminal and enemy of the common weal. Edward VI.: A statute of the first year of his reign, 1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler. The master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chains. If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for life and is to be branded on forehead or back with the letter S; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle. If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with a red-hot iron with the letter V on the breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at some other labour. If the vagabond gives a false birthplace, he is then to become the slave for life of this place, of its inhabitants, or its corporation, and to be branded with an S. All persons have the right to take away the children of the vagabonds and to keep them as apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls until the 20th. If they run away, they are to become up to this age the slaves of their masters, who can put them in irons, whip them, &c., if they like. Every master may put an iron ring round the neck, arms or legs of his slave, by which to know him more easily and to be more certain of him. The last part of this statute provides, that certain poor people may be employed by a place or by persons, who are willing to give them food and drink and to find them work. This kind of parish slaves was kept up in England until far into the 19th century under the name of roundsmen. Elizabeth, 1572: Unlicensed beggars above 14 years of age are to be severely flogged and branded on the left ear unless some one will take them into service for two years; in case of a repetition of the offence, if they are over 18, they are to be executed, unless some one will take them into service for two years; but for the third offence they are to be executed without mercy as felons. Similar statutes: 18 Elizabeth, c. 13, and another of 1597. James 1: Any one wandering about and begging is declared a rogue and a vagabond. Justices of the peace in petty sessions are authorised to have them publicly whipped and for the first offence to imprison them for 6 months, for the second for 2 years. Whilst in prison they are to be whipped as much and as often as the justices of the peace think fit... Incorrigible and dangerous rogues are to be branded with an R on the left shoulder and set to hard labour, and if they are caught begging again, to be executed without mercy. These statutes, legally binding until the beginning of the 18th century, were only repealed by 12 Anne, c. 23. Similar laws in France, where by the middle of the 17th century a kingdom of vagabonds (truands) was established in Paris. Even at the beginning of Louis XVI. s reign (Ordinance of July 13th, 1777) every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and not practising a trade, is to be sent to the galleys. Of the same nature are the statute of Charles V. for the Netherlands (October, 1537), the first edict of the States and Towns of Holland (March 10, 1614), the Plakaat of the United Provinces (June 26, 1649), &c. Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system. It is not enough that the conditions of labour are concentrated in a mass, in the shape of capital, at the one pole of society, while at the other are grouped masses of men, who have nothing to sell but their labour-power. Neither is it enough that they are compelled to sell it voluntarily. The advance of capitalist production develops a working class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature. The organisation of the capitalist process of production, once fully developed, breaks down all resistance. The constant generation of a relative surplus-population keeps the law of supply and demand of labour, and therefore keeps wages, in a rut that corresponds with the wants of capital. The dull compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the capitalist. Direct force, outside economic conditions, is of course still used, but only exceptionally. In the ordinary run of things, the labourer can be left to the natural laws of production, i.e., to his dependence on capital, a dependence springing from, and guaranteed in perpetuity by, the conditions of production themselves. It is otherwise during the historic genesis of capitalist production. The bourgeoisie, at its rise, wants and uses the power of the state to regulate wages, i.e., to force them within the limits suitable for surplus-value making, to lengthen the working-day and to keep the labourer himself in the normal degree of dependence. This is an essential element of the so-called primitive accumulation. The class of wage labourers, which arose in the latter half of the 14th century, formed then and in the following century only a very small part of the population, well protected in its position by the independent peasant proprietary in the country and the guild-organisation in the town. In country and town master and workmen stood close together socially. The subordination of labour to capital was only formal i.e., the mode of production itself had as yet no specific capitalistic character. Variable capital preponderated greatly over constant. The demand for wage labour grew, therefore, rapidly with every accumulation of capital, whilst the supply of wage labour followed but slowly. A large part of the national product, changed later into a fund of capitalist accumulation, then still entered into the consumption-fund of the labourer. Legislation on wage labour (from the first, aimed at the exploitation of the labourer and, as it advanced, always equally hostile to him), is started in England by the Statute of Labourers, of Edward III., 1349. The ordinance of 1350 in France, issued in the name of King John, corresponds with it. English and French legislation run parallel and are identical in purport. So far as the labour-statutes aim at compulsory extension of the working-day, I do not return to them, as this point was treated earlier (Chap. X., Section 5). The Statute of Labourers was passed at the urgent instance of the House of Commons. A Tory says naively: A tariff of wages was fixed by law for town and country, for piece-work and day-work. The agricultural labourers were to hire themselves out by the year, the town ones in open market. It was forbidden, under pain of imprisonment, to pay higher wages than those fixed by the statute, but the taking of higher wages was more severely punished than the giving them. [So also in Sections 18 and 19 of the Statute of Apprentices of Elizabeth, ten days imprisonment is decreed for him that pays the higher wages, but twenty-one days for him that receives them.] A statute of 1360 increased the penalties and authorised the masters to extort labour at the legal rate of wages by corporal punishment. All combinations, contracts, oaths, &c., by which masons and carpenters reciprocally bound themselves, were declared null and void. Coalition of the labourers is treated as a heinous crime from the 14th century to 1825, the year of the repeal of the laws against Trades Unions. The spirit of the Statute of Labourers of 1349 and of its offshoots comes out clearly in the fact, that indeed a maximum of wages is dictated by the State, but on no account a minimum. In the 16th century, the condition of the labourers had, as we know, become much worse. The money wage rose, but not in proportion to the depreciation of money and the corresponding rise in the prices of commodities. Wages, therefore, in reality fell. Nevertheless, the laws for keeping them down remained in force, together with the ear-clipping and branding of those whom no one was willing to take into service. By the Statute of Apprentices 5 Elizabeth, c. 3, the justices of the peace were empowered to fix certain wages and to modify them according to the time of the year and the price of commodities. James I. extended these regulations of labour also to weavers, spinners, and all possible categories of workers. George II. extended the laws against coalitions of labourers to manufactures. In the manufacturing period par excellence, the capitalist mode of production had become sufficiently strong to render legal regulation of wages as impracticable as it was unnecessary; but the ruling classes were unwilling in case of necessity to be without the weapons of the old arsenal. Still, 8 George II. forbade a higher day s wage than 2s. 7 d. for journeymen tailors in and around London, except in cases of general mourning; still, 13 George III., c. 68, gave the regulation of the wages of silk-weavers to the justices of the peace; still, in 1706, it required two judgments of the higher courts to decide, whether the mandates of justices of the peace as to wages held good also for non-agricultural labourers; still, in 1799, an act of Parliament ordered that the wages of the Scotch miners should continue to be regulated by a statute of Elizabeth and two Scotch acts of 1661 and 1671. How completely in the meantime circumstances had changed, is proved by an occurrence unheard-of before in the English Lower House. In that place, where for more than 400 years laws had been made for the maximum, beyond which wages absolutely must not rise, Whitbread in 1796 proposed a legal minimum wage for agricultural labourers. Pitt opposed this, but confessed that the condition of the poor was cruel. Finally, in 1813, the laws for the regulation of wages were repealed. They were an absurd anomaly, since the capitalist regulated his factory by his private legislation, and could by the poor-rates make up the wage of the agricultural labourer to the indispensable minimum. The provisions of the labour statutes as to contracts between master and workman, as to giving notice and the like, which only allow of a civil action against the contract-breaking master, but on the contrary permit a criminal action against the contract-breaking workman, are to this hour (1873) in full force. The barbarous laws against Trades Unions fell in 1825 before the threatening bearing of the proletariat. Despite this, they fell only in part. Certain beautiful fragments of the old statute vanished only in 1859. Finally, the act of Parliament of June 29, 1871, made a pretence of removing the last traces of this class of legislation by legal recognition of Trades Unions. But an act of Parliament of the same date (an act to amend the criminal law relating to violence, threats, and molestation), re-established, in point of fact, the former state of things in a new shape. By this Parliamentary escamotage the means which the labourers could use in a strike or lock-out were withdrawn from the laws common to all citizens, and placed under exceptional penal legislation, the interpretation of which fell to the masters themselves in their capacity as justices of the peace. Two years earlier, the same House of Commons and the same Mr. Gladstone in the well-known straightforward fashion brought in a bill for the abolition of all exceptional penal legislation against the working class. But this was never allowed to go beyond the second reading, and the matter was thus protracted until at last the great Liberal party, by an alliance with the Tories, found courage to turn against the very proletariat that had carried it into power. Not content with this treachery, the great Liberal party allowed the English judges, ever complaisant in the service of the ruling classes, to dig up again the earlier laws against conspiracy, and to apply them to coalitions of labourers. We see that only against its will and under the pressure of the masses did the English Parliament give up the laws against Strikes and Trades Unions, after it had itself, for 500 years, held, with shameless egoism, the position of a permanent Trades Union of the capitalists against the labourers. During the very first storms of the revolution, the French bourgeoisie dared to take away from the workers the right of association but just acquired. By a decree of June 14, 1791, they declared all coalition of the workers as an attempt against liberty and the declaration of the rights of man, punishable by a fine of 500 livres, together with deprivation of the rights of an active citizen for one year. This law which, by means of State compulsion, confined the struggle between capital and labour within limits comfortable for capital, has outlived revolutions and changes of dynasties. Even the Reign of Terror left it untouched. It was but quite recently struck out of the Penal Code. Nothing is more characteristic than the pretext for this bourgeois coup d tat. Granting, says Chapelier, the reporter of the Select Committee on this law, that wages ought to be a little higher than they are, ... that they ought to be high enough for him that receives them, to be free from that state of absolute dependence due to the want of the necessaries of life, and which is almost that of slavery, yet the workers must not be allowed to come to any understanding about their own interests, nor to act in common and thereby lessen their absolute dependence, which is almost that of slavery; because, forsooth, in doing this they injure the freedom of their cidevant masters, the present entrepreneurs, and because a coalition against the despotism of the quondam masters of the corporations is guess what! is a restoration of the corporations abolished by the French constitution.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty-Eight

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch28.htm

Now that we have considered the forcible creation of a class of outlawed proletarians, the bloody discipline that turned them into wage labourers, the disgraceful action of the State which employed the police to accelerate the accumulation of capital by increasing the degree of exploitation of labour, the question remains: whence came the capitalists originally? For the expropriation of the agricultural population creates, directly, none but the greatest landed proprietors. As far, however, as concerns the genesis of the farmer, we can, so to say, put our hand on it, because it is a slow process evolving through many centuries. The serfs, as well as the free small proprietors, held land under very different tenures, and were therefore emancipated under very different economic conditions. In England the first form of the farmer is the bailiff, himself a serf. His position is similar to that of the old Roman villicus, only in a more limited sphere of action. During the second half of the 14th century he is replaced by a farmer, whom the landlord provided with seed, cattle and implements. His condition is not very different from that of the peasant. Only he exploits more wage labour. Soon he becomes a metayer, a half-farmer. He advances one part of the agricultural stock, the landlord the other. The two divide the total product in proportions determined by contract. This form quickly disappears in England, to give the place to the farmer proper, who makes his own capital breed by employing wage labourers, and pays a part of the surplus-product, in money or in kind, to the landlord as rent. So long, during the 15th century, as the independent peasant and the farm-labourer working for himself as well as for wages, enriched themselves by their own labour, the circumstances of the farmer, and his field of production, were equally mediocre. The agricultural revolution which commenced in the last third of the 15th century, and continued during almost the whole of the 16th (excepting, however, its last decade), enriched him just as speedily as it impoverished the mass of the agricultural people. The usurpation of the common lands allowed him to augment greatly his stock of cattle, almost without cost, whilst they yielded him a richer supply of manure for the tillage of the soil. To this was added in the 16th century a very important element. At that time the contracts for farms ran for a long time, often for 99 years. The progressive fall in the value of the precious metals, and therefore of money, brought the farmers golden fruit. Apart from all the other circumstances discussed above, it lowered wages. A portion of the latter was now added to the profits of the farm. The continuous rise in the price of corn, wool, meat, in a word of all agricultural produce, swelled the money capital of the farmer without any action on his part, whilst the rent he paid (being calculated on the old value of money) diminished in reality. Thus they grew rich at the expense both of their labourers and their landlords. No wonder, therefore, that England, at the end of the 16th century, had a class of capitalist farmers, rich, considering the circumstances of the time.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty-Nine

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch29.htm

The expropriation and expulsion of the agricultural population, intermittent but renewed again and again, supplied, as we saw, the town industries with a mass of proletarians entirely unconnected with the corporate guilds and unfettered by them; a fortunate circumstance that makes old A. Anderson (not to be confounded with James Anderson), in his History of Commerce, believe in the direct intervention of Providence. We must still pause a moment on this element of primitive accumulation. The thinning-out of the independent, self-supporting peasants not only brought about the crowding together of the industrial proletariat, in the way that Geoffrey Saint Hilaire explained the condensation of cosmical matter at one place, by its rarefaction at another. In spite of the smaller number of its cultivators, the soil brought forth as much or more produce, after as before, because the revolution in the conditions of landed property was accompanied by improved methods of culture, greater co-operation, concentration of the means of production, &c., and because not only were the agricultural wage labourers put on the strain more intensely , but the field of production on which they worked for themselves became more and more contracted. With the setting free of a part of the agricultural population, therefore, their former means of nourishment were also set free. They were now transformed into material elements of variable capital. The peasant, expropriated and cast adrift, must buy their value in the form of wages, from his new master, the industrial capitalist. That which holds good of the means of subsistence holds with the raw materials of industry dependent upon home agriculture. They were transformed into an element of constant capital. Suppose, e.g., a part of the Westphalian peasants, who, at the time of Frederick II, all span flax, forcibly expropriated and hunted from the soil; and the other part that remained, turned into day labourers of large farmers. At the same time arise large establishments for flax-spinning and weaving, in which the men set free now work for wages. The flax looks exactly as before. Not a fibre of it is changed, but a new social soul has popped into its body. It forms now a part of the constant capital of the master manufacturer. Formerly divided among a number of small producers, who cultivated it themselves and with their families spun it in retail fashion, it is now concentrated in the hand of one capitalist, who sets others to spin and weave it for him. The extra labour expended in flax-spinning realised itself formerly in extra income to numerous peasant families, or maybe, in Frederick II s time, in taxes pour le roi de Prusse. It realises itself now in profit for a few capitalists. The spindles and looms, formerly scattered over the face of the country, are now crowded together in a few great labour-barracks, together with the labourers and the raw material. And spindles, looms, raw material, are now transformed from means of independent existence for the spinners and weavers, into means for commanding them and sucking out of them unpaid labour. One does not perceive, when looking at the large manufactories and the large farms, that they have originated from the throwing into one of many small centres of production, and have been built up by the expropriation of many small independent producers. Nevertheless, the popular intuition was not at fault. In the time of Mirabeau, the lion of the Revolution, the great manufactories were still called manufactures r unies, workshops thrown into one, as we speak of fields thrown into one. Says Mirabeau: In fact, the events that transformed the small peasants into wage labourers, and their means of subsistence and of labour into material elements of capital, created, at the same time, a home-market for the latter. Formerly, the peasant family produced the means of subsistence and the raw materials, which they themselves, for the most part, consumed. These raw materials and means of subsistence have now become commodities; the large farmer sells them, he finds his market in manufactures. Yarn, linen, coarse woollen stuffs things whose raw materials had been within the reach of every peasant family, had been spun and woven by it for its own use were now transformed into articles of manufacture, to which the country districts at once served for markets. The many scattered customers, whom stray artisans until now had found in the numerous small producers working on their own account, concentrate themselves now into one great market provided for by industrial capital. Thus, hand in hand with the expropriation of the self-supporting peasants, with their separation from their means of production, goes the destruction of rural domestic industry, the process of separation between manufacture and agriculture. And only the destruction of rural domestic industry can give the internal market of a country that extension and consistence which the capitalist mode of production requires. Still the manufacturing period, properly so called, does not succeed in carrying out this transformation radically and completely. It will be remembered that manufacture, properly so called, conquers but partially the domain of national production, and always rests on the handicrafts of the town and the domestic industry of the rural districts as its ultimate basis. If it destroys these in one form, in particular branches, at certain points, it calls them up again elsewhere, because it needs them for the preparation of raw material up to a certain point. It produces, therefore, a new class of small villagers who, while following the cultivation of the soil as an accessary calling, find their chief occupation in industrial labour, the products of which they sell to the manufacturers directly, or through the medium of merchants. This is one, though not the chief, cause of a phenomenon which, at first, puzzles the student of English history. From the last third of the 15th century he finds continually complaints, only interrupted at certain intervals, about the encroachment of capitalist farming in the country districts, and the progressive destruction of the peasantry. On the other hand, he always finds this peasantry turning up again, although in diminished number, and always under worse conditions. The chief reason is: England is at one time chiefly a cultivator of corn, at another chiefly a breeder of cattle, in alternate periods, and with these the extent of peasant cultivation fluctuates. Modern Industry alone, and finally, supplies, in machinery, the lasting basis of capitalistic agriculture, expropriates radically the enormous majority of the agricultural population, and completes the separation between agriculture and rural domestic industry, whose roots spinning and weaving it tears up. It therefore also, for the first time, conquers for industrial capital the entire home market.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Thirty

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The genesis of the industrial * capitalist did not proceed in such a gradual way as that of the farmer. Doubtless many small guild-masters, and yet more independent small artisans, or even wage labourers, transformed themselves into small capitalists, and (by gradually extending exploitation of wage labour and corresponding accumulation) into full-blown capitalists. In the infancy of capitalist production, things often happened as in the infancy of medieval towns, where the question, which of the escaped serfs should be master and which servant, was in great part decided by the earlier or later date of their flight. The snail s pace of this method corresponded in no wise with the commercial requirements of the new world market that the great discoveries of the end of the 15th century created. But the middle ages had handed down two distinct forms of capital, which mature in the most different economic social formations, and which before the era of the capitalist mode of production, are considered as capital quand m me [all the same] usurer s capital and merchant s capital. The author should have remembered that revolutions are not made by laws. The money capital formed by means of usury and commerce was prevented from turning into industrial capital, in the country by the feudal constitution, in the towns by the guild organisation. These fetters vanished with the dissolution of feudal society, with the expropriation and partial eviction of the country population. The new manufactures were established at sea-ports, or at inland points beyond the control of the old municipalities and their guilds. Hence in England an embittered struggle of the corporate towns against these new industrial nurseries. The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England s Anti-Jacobin War, and is still going on in the opium wars against China, &c. The different momenta of primitive accumulation distribute themselves now, more or less in chronological order, particularly over Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England. In England at the end of the 17th century, they arrive at a systematical combination, embracing the colonies, the national debt, the modern mode of taxation, and the protectionist system. These methods depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial system. But, they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power. Of the Christian colonial system, W. Howitt, a man who makes a speciality of Christianity, says: The history of the colonial administration of Holland and Holland was the head capitalistic nation of the 17th century Nothing is more characteristic than their system of stealing men, to get slaves for Java. The men stealers were trained for this purpose. The thief, the interpreter, and the seller, were the chief agents in this trade, native princes the chief sellers. The young people stolen, were thrown into the secret dungeons of Celebes, until they were ready for sending to the slave-ships. An official report says: To secure Malacca, the Dutch corrupted the Portuguese governor. He let them into the town in 1641. They hurried at once to his house and assassinated him, to abstain from the payment of 21,875, the price of his treason. Wherever they set foot, devastation and depopulation followed. Banjuwangi, a province of Java, in 1750 numbered over 80,000 inhabitants, in 1811 only 18,000. Sweet commerce! The English East India Company, as is well known, obtained, besides the political rule in India, the exclusive monopoly of the tea-trade, as well as of the Chinese trade in general, and of the transport of goods to and from Europe. But the coasting trade of India and between the islands, as well as the internal trade of India, were the monopoly of the higher employ s of the company. The monopolies of salt, opium, betel and other commodities, were inexhaustible mines of wealth. The employ s themselves fixed the price and plundered at will the unhappy Hindus. The Governor-General took part in this private traffic. His favourites received contracts under conditions whereby they, cleverer than the alchemists, made gold out of nothing. Great fortunes sprang up like mushrooms in a day; primitive accumulation went on without the advance of a shilling. The trial of Warren Hastings swarms with such cases. Here is an instance. A contract for opium was given to a certain Sullivan at the moment of his departure on an official mission to a part of India far removed from the opium district. Sullivan sold his contract to one Binn for 40,000; Binn sold it the same day for 60,000, and the ultimate purchaser who carried out the contract declared that after all he realised an enormous gain. According to one of the lists laid before Parliament, the Company and its employ s from 1757-1766 got 6,000,000 from the Indians as gifts. Between 1769 and 1770, the English manufactured a famine by buying up all the rice and refusing to sell it again, except at fabulous prices. The treatment of the aborigines was, naturally, most frightful in plantation-colonies destined for export trade only, such as the West Indies, and in rich and well-populated countries, such as Mexico and India, that were given over to plunder. But even in the colonies properly so called, the Christian character of primitive accumulation did not belie itself. Those sober virtuosi of Protestantism, the Puritans of New England, in 1703, by decrees of their assembly set a premium of 40 on every Indian scalp and every captured red-skin: in 1720 a premium of 100 on every scalp; in 1744, after Massachusetts-Bay had proclaimed a certain tribe as rebels, the following prices: for a male scalp of 12 years and upwards 100 (new currency), for a male prisoner 105, for women and children prisoners 50, for scalps of women and children 50. Some decades later, the colonial system took its revenge on the descendants of the pious pilgrim fathers, who had grown seditious in the meantime. At English instigation and for English pay they were tomahawked by red-skins. The British Parliament proclaimed bloodhounds and scalping as means that God and Nature had given into its hand. The colonial system ripened, like a hot-house, trade and navigation. The societies Monopolia of Luther were powerful levers for concentration of capital. The colonies secured a market for the budding manufactures, and, through the monopoly of the market, an increased accumulation. The treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslavement, and murder, floated back to the mother-country and were there turned into capital. Holland, which first fully developed the colonial system, in 1648 stood already in the acme of its commercial greatness. It was Today industrial supremacy implies commercial supremacy. In the period of manufacture properly so called, it is, on the other hand, the commercial supremacy that gives industrial predominance. Hence the preponderant r le that the colonial system plays at that time. It was the strange God who perched himself on the altar cheek by jowl with the old Gods of Europe, and one fine day with a shove and a kick chucked them all of a heap. It proclaimed surplus-value making as the sole end and aim of humanity. The system of public credit, i.e., of national debts, whose origin we discover in Genoa and Venice as early as the Middle Ages, took possession of Europe generally during the manufacturing period. The colonial system with its maritime trade and commercial wars served as a forcing-house for it. Thus it first took root in Holland. National debts, i.e., the alienation of the state whether despotic, constitutional or republican marked with its stamp the capitalistic era. The only part of the so-called national wealth that actually enters into the collective possessions of modern peoples is their national debt. Hence, as a necessary consequence, the modern doctrine that a nation becomes the richer the more deeply it is in debt. Public credit becomes the credo of capital. And with the rise of national debt-making, want of faith in the national debt takes the place of the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which may not be forgiven. The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of primitive accumulation. As with the stroke of an enchanter s wand, it endows barren money with the power of breeding and thus turns it into capital, without the necessity of its exposing itself to the troubles and risks inseparable from its employment in industry or even in usury. The state creditors actually give nothing away, for the sum lent is transformed into public bonds, easily negotiable, which go on functioning in their hands just as so much hard cash would. But further, apart from the class of lazy annuitants thus created, and from the improvised wealth of the financiers, middlemen between the government and the nation as also apart from the tax-farmers, merchants, private manufacturers, to whom a good part of every national loan renders the service of a capital fallen from heaven the national debt has given rise to joint-stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy. At their birth the great banks, decorated with national titles, were only associations of private speculators, who placed themselves by the side of governments, and, thanks to the privileges they received, were in a position to advance money to the State. Hence the accumulation of the national debt has no more infallible measure than the successive rise in the stock of these banks, whose full development dates from the founding of the Bank of England in 1694. The Bank of England began with lending its money to the Government at 8%; at the same time it was empowered by Parliament to coin money out of the same capital, by lending it again to the public in the form of banknotes. It was allowed to use these notes for discounting bills, making advances on commodities, and for buying the precious metals. It was not long ere this credit-money, made by the bank itself, became. The coin in which the Bank of England made its loans to the State, and paid, on account of the State, the interest on the public debt. It was not enough that the bank gave with one hand and took back more with the other; it remained, even whilst receiving, the eternal creditor of the nation down to the last shilling advanced. Gradually it became inevitably the receptacle of the metallic hoard of the country, and the centre of gravity of all commercial credit. What effect was produced on their contemporaries by the sudden uprising of this brood of bankocrats, financiers, rentiers, brokers, stock-jobbers, &c., is proved by the writings of that time, e.g., by Bolingbroke s. With the national debt arose an international credit system, which often conceals one of the sources of primitive accumulation in this or that people. Thus the villainies of the Venetian thieving system formed one of the secret bases of the capital-wealth of Holland to whom Venice in her decadence lent large sums of money. So also was it with Holland and England. By the beginning of the 18th century the Dutch manufactures were far outstripped. Holland had ceased to be the nation preponderant in commerce and industry. One of its main lines of business, therefore, from 1701-1776, is the lending out of enormous amounts of capital, especially to its great rival England. The same thing is going on today between England and the United States. A great deal of capital, which appears today in the United States without any certificate of birth, was yesterday, in England, the capitalised blood of children. As the national debt finds its support in the public revenue, which must cover the yearly payments for interest, &c., the modern system of taxation was the necessary complement of the system of national loans. The loans enable the government to meet extraordinary expenses, without the tax-payers feeling it immediately, but they necessitate, as a consequence, increased taxes. On the other hand, the raising of taxation caused by the accumulation of debts contracted one after another, compels the government always to have recourse to new loans for new extraordinary expenses. Modern fiscality, whose pivot is formed by taxes on the most necessary means of subsistence (thereby increasing their price), thus contains within itself the germ of automatic progression. Overtaxation is not an incident, but rather a principle. In Holland, therefore, where this system was first inaugurated, the great patriot, DeWitt, has in his Maxims extolled it as the best system for making the wage labourer submissive, frugal, industrious, and overburdened with labour. The destructive influence that it exercises on the condition of the wage labourer concerns us less however, here, than the forcible expropriation, resulting from it, of peasants, artisans, and in a word, all elements of the lower middle class. On this there are not two opinions, even among the bourgeois economists. Its expropriating efficacy is still further heightened by the system of protection, which forms one of its integral parts. The great part that the public debt, and the fiscal system corresponding with it, has played in the capitalisation of wealth and the expropriation of the masses, has led many writers, like Cobbett, Doubleday and others, to seek in this, incorrectly, the fundamental cause of the misery of the modern peoples. The system of protection was an artificial means of manufacturing manufacturers, of expropriating independent labourers, of capitalising the national means of production and subsistence, of forcibly abbreviating the transition from the medieval to the modern mode of production. The European states tore one another to pieces about the patent of this invention, and, once entered into the service of the surplus-value makers, did not merely lay under contribution in the pursuit of this purpose their own people, indirectly through protective duties, directly through export premiums. They also forcibly rooted out, in their dependent countries, all industry, as, e.g., England did. with the Irish woollen manufacture. On the continent of Europe, after Colbert s example, the process was much simplified. The primitive industrial capital, here, came in part directly out of the state treasury. Why, cries Mirabeau, why go so far to seek the cause of the manufacturing glory of Saxony before the war? 180,000,000 of debts contracted by the sovereigns! Colonial system, public debts, heavy taxes, protection, commercial wars, &c., these children of the true manufacturing period, increase gigantically during the infancy of Modem Industry. The birth of the latter is heralded by a great slaughter of the innocents. Like the royal navy, the factories were recruited by means of the press-gang. Blas as Sir F. M. Eden is as to the horrors of the expropriation of the agricultural population from the soil, from the last third of the 15th century to his own time; with all the self-satisfaction with which he rejoices in this process, essential for establishing capitalistic agriculture and the due proportion between arable and pasture land he does not show, however, the same economic insight in respect to the necessity of child-stealing and child-slavery for the transformation of manufacturing exploitation into factory exploitation, and the establishment of the true relation between capital and labour-power. He says: With the development of capitalist production during the manufacturing period, the public opinion of Europe had lost the last remnant of shame and conscience. The nations bragged cynically of every infamy that served them as a means to capitalistic accumulation. Read, e.g., the na ve Annals of Commerce of the worthy A. Anderson. Here it is trumpeted forth as a triumph of English statecraft that at the Peace of Utrecht, England extorted from the Spaniards by the Asiento Treaty the privilege of being allowed to ply the negro trade, until then only carried on between Africa and the English West Indies, between Africa and Spanish America as well. England thereby acquired the right of supplying Spanish America until 1743 with 4,800 negroes yearly. This threw, at the same time, an official cloak over British smuggling. Liverpool waxed fat on the slave trade. This was its method of primitive accumulation. And, even to the present day, Liverpool respectability is the Pindar of the slave trade which compare the work of Aikin already quoted has coincided with that spirit of bold adventure which has characterised the trade of Liverpool and rapidly carried it to its present state of prosperity; has occasioned vast employment for shipping and sailors, and greatly augmented the demand for the manufactures of the country (p. 339). Liverpool employed in the slave-trade, in 1730, 15 ships; in 1751, 53; in 1760, 74; in 1770, 96; and in 1792, 132. Whilst the cotton industry introduced child-slavery in England, it gave in the United States a stimulus to the transformation of the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery, into a system of commercial exploitation. In fact, the veiled slavery of the wage workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the new world. Tantae molis erat, to establish the eternal laws of Nature of the capitalist mode of production, to complete the process of separation between labourers and conditions of labour, to transform, at one pole, the social means of production and subsistence into capital, at the opposite pole, the mass of the population into wage labourers, into free labouring poor, that artificial product of modern society. If money, according to Augier, comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Thirty-One

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm

What does the primitive accumulation of capital, i.e., its historical genesis, resolve itself into? In so far as it is not immediate transformation of slaves and serfs into wage labourers, and therefore a mere change of form, it only means the expropriation of the immediate producers, i.e., the dissolution of private property based on the labour of its owner. Private property, as the antithesis to social, collective property, exists only where the means of labour and the external conditions of labour belong to private individuals. But according as these private individuals are labourers or not labourers, private property has a different character. The numberless shades, that it at first sight presents, correspond to the intermediate stages lying between these two extremes. The private property of the labourer in his means of production is the foundation of petty industry, whether agricultural, manufacturing, or both; petty industry, again, is an essential condition for the development of social production and of the free individuality of the labourer himself. Of course, this petty mode of production exists also under slavery, serfdom, and other states of dependence. But it flourishes, it lets loose its whole energy, it attains its adequate classical form, only where the labourer is the private owner of his own means of labour set in action by himself: the peasant of the land which he cultivates, the artisan of the tool which he handles as a virtuoso. This mode of production presupposes parcelling of the soil and scattering of the other means of production. As it excludes the concentration of these means of production, so also it excludes cooperation, division of labour within each separate process of production, the control over, and the productive application of the forces of Nature by society, and the free development of the social productive powers. It is compatible only with a system of production, and a society, moving within narrow and more or less primitive bounds. To perpetuate it would be, as Pecqueur rightly says, to decree universal mediocrity". At a certain stage of development, it brings forth the material agencies for its own dissolution. From that moment new forces and new passions spring up in the bosom of society; but the old social organisation fetters them and keeps them down. It must be annihilated; it is annihilated. Its annihilation, the transformation of the individualised and scattered means of production into socially concentrated ones, of the pigmy property of the many into the huge property of the few, the expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil, from the means of subsistence, and from the means of labour, this fearful and painful expropriation of the mass of the people forms the prelude to the history of capital. It comprises a series of forcible methods, of which we have passed in review only those that have been epoch-making as methods of the primitive accumulation of capital. The expropriation of the immediate producers was accomplished with merciless Vandalism, and under the stimulus of passions the most infamous, the most sordid, the pettiest, the most meanly odious. Self-earned private property, that is based, so to say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent labouring individual with the conditions of his labour, is supplanted by capitalistic private property, which rests on exploitation of the nominally free labour of others, i.e., on wage labour. As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralisation of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralisation, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economising of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialised labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production. The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property. In the former case, we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Thirty Two

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

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 , 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 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. 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. Unhappy Mr. Peel who provided for everything except the export of English modes of production to Swan River! 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. With such queer people as these, where is the field of abstinence for the capitalists? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. But, never mind, national wealth is, once again, by its very nature, identical with misery of the people. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 , 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. 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.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Thirty-Three

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch33.htm

The wealth of societies in which a capitalistic mode of production prevails, appears as a gigantic collection of commodities and the singular commodity appears as the elementary form of wealth. Our investigation begins accordingly with the analysis of the commodity. The commodity is first an external object, a thing which satisfies through its qualities human needs of one kind or another. The nature of these needs is irrelevant, e.g., whether their origin is in the stomach or in the fancy. We are also not concerned here with the manner in which the entity satisfies human need; whether in an immediate way as food that is, as object of enjoyment or by a detour as means of production. Each useful thing (iron, paper, etc.) is to be considered from a double point of view, in accordance with quality and quantity. Each such thing is a totality of many properties and is therefore able to be useful in different respects. The discovery of these different respects and hence of the manifold modes of utility of things is an historical act. Of such a kind is the invention of social measurement for the quantity of useful things. The diversity of the commodity-measurements arises partly from the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, and partly from convention. It is the utility of a thing for human life that turns it into a use-value. By way of abbreviation let us term the useful thing itself (or commodity-body, as iron, wheat, diamond, etc.) use-value, good, article. In the consideration of use-values, quantitative determination is always presupposed (as a dozen watches, yard of linen, ton of iron, etc.). The use-values of commodities provide the material for a study of their own, the science of commodities. Use-value realizes itself only in use or in consumption; use-values form the substantial content of wealth, whatever its social form may be. In the form of society which we are going to examine, they form the substantial bearers at the very same time of exchange-value. Exchange-value appears first of all as quantitative relationship, the proportion in which use-values of one kind are exchanged for use-values of another kind, a relationship which constantly changes in accordance with time and place. That is the reason why exchange-value appears to be something accidental and a purely relative thing, and therefore the reason why the formula of an exchange-value internal and immanent to the commodity (valeur intrinsique) appears to be a contradictio in adjecto (contradiction in terms). Let us examine the matter more closely. A single commodity (e.g., a quarter of wheat) is exchanged with other articles in the most varied proportions. Nevertheless its exchange-value remains unchanged regardless of whether it is expressed in x bootblacking, y soap, z gold, etc. It must therefore be distinguishable from these, its various manners of expression. Now let us consider two commodities: e.g., wheat and iron. Whatever their exchange relationship may be, it is always representable in an equation in which a given quantum of wheat is equated with some particular quantum of iron; e.g., one quarter of wheat = a cwt of iron. What does this equation say? That the same value exists in two different things, in one quarter of wheat and likewise in a cwt of iron. Both are equal, therefore, to a third entity, which in and for itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of the two, insofar as it is an exchange-value, must therefore be reducible to this third entity, independent of the other. Consider a simple geometrical example. In order to determine and compare the areas of all rectilinear figures, one reduces them to triangles. One reduces the triangle itself to an expression which is entirely different from its visible figure half the product of its base by its altitude. Likewise, the exchange-values of commodities can be reduced to a common-entity, of which they represent a greater or lesser amount. The fact that the substance of the exchange-value is something utterly different from and independent of the physical-sensual existence of the commodity or its reality as a use-value is revealed immediately by its exchange relationship. For this is characterized precisely by the abstraction from the use-value. As far as the exchange-value is concerned, one commodity is, after all, quite as good as every other, provided it is present in the correct proportion. Hence, commodities are first of all simply to be considered as values, independent of their exchange-relationship or from the form, in which they appear as exchange-values. Commodities as objects of use or goods are corporeally different things. Their reality as values forms, on the other hand, their unity. This unity does not arise out of nature but out of society. The common social substance which merely manifests itself differently in different use-values, is labour. Commodities as values are nothing but crystallized labour. The unit of measurement of labour itself is the simple average-labour, the character of which varies admittedly in different lands and cultural epochs, but is given for a particular society. More complex labour counts merely as simple labour to an exponent or rather to a multiple, so that a smaller quantum of complex labour is equal to a larger quantum of simple labour, for example. Precisely how this reduction is to be controlled is not relevant here. That this reduction is constantly occurring is revealed by experience. A commodity may be the product of the most complex labour. Its value equates it to the product of simple labour and therefore represents on its own merely a definite quantum of simple labour. A use-value or good only has a value because labour is objectified or materialized in it. But now how are we to measure the quantity of its value? By the quantum of the `value-forming substance (i.e., labour) which is contained in it. The quantity of labour itself is measured by its temporal duration and the labour-time in turn possesses a measuring rod for particular segments of time, like hour, day, etc. It might seem that, if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantum of labour expended during its production, the more lazy- and incompetent a man the more valuable his commodity is, because he needs all the more labour-time for its completion. But only the socially necessary labour-time is labour-time required for the constitution of some particular use-value, with the available socially-normal conditions of production and the social average-level of competence and intensity of labour. After the introduction of the steam-driven loom in England, for example, perhaps half as much labour as before was sufficient to change a given quantum of yarn into cloth. The English hand-weaver needed in order to accomplish this change the same labour-time as before, to be sure, but the product of his individual labour-hour now represented only one half a social labour-hour, and sank accordingly to half its earlier value. So it is only the quantum of socially necessary labour, or that labour-time which is socially necessary for the constitution of a use-value which determines the quantity of the value. The single commodity counts here in general as average sample of its own kind. Commodities in which equally large labour-quanta are contained, or which can be produced within the same labour-time for that reason have the same quantity of value. The value of a commodity is related to the value of every other commodity, as the labour-time necessary for the production of the one is related to the labour-time necessary for the production of the other. All commodities, as values, are only particular masses of coagulated labour-time. The quantity of value of a commodity accordingly would remain constant if the labour-time required for its production were constant. The latter, however, changes with each change in the productive power of labour. The productive power of labour is determined by manifold conditions, among others by the average grade of competence of the workers, the level of development of science and its technological applicability, the social combination of the process of production, the scope and the efficacy of the means of production, and by natural relationships. The same quantum of labour manifests itself after propitious weather in 8 bushels of wheat, but after impropitious weather, in only 4, for example. The very same quantum of labour provides more metals in richly laden mines than in poor ones, etc. Diamonds are rare on the surface of the earth, and their discovery therefore costs on the average much labour-time. Consequently, they represent much labour in a small volume of space. Jacob doubts that gold has ever paid its complete value. This holds true even more for diamonds. According to Eschwege, by 1823 the complete yield of the eight-year old Brazilian diamond-diggings had not yet amounted to the value of the 1 year average product of the Brazilian sugar or coffee plantations. Given more richly laden diggings the same quantum of labour would be represented by more diamonds and their value would sink. If one succeeds in converting coal into diamonds with little labour, then the value of diamonds would sink beneath that of paving stones. In general: the greater the productive power of labour the smaller is the amount of labour-time required for the production of an article, and the smaller the mass of labour crystallized in it, the smaller is its value. And on the contrary, the smaller the productive power of labour, the greater is the labour-time necessary for the-production of an article, and the greater its value is. The quantity of value of a commodity varies directly as the quantum, and inversely as the productive power of the labour embodying itself in the commodity. Now we know the substance of value. It is labour. We know its unit of measurement. It is labour-time. We have yet to analyse its form, which precisely stamps the value as an exchange-value. Before we do that we must develop the determinations which have already been discovered in somewhat greater detail. A thing can be a use-value without being an exchange-value. This is the case wherever the human relevance of the thing is not mediated by labour. So air, virgin land, brush in a wild. state, wood growing in wild conditions, etc. A thing can be useful and be the product of human labour without being a commodity. A man who satisfies his own need through his product creates use-value, to be sure, but not a commodity. In order to produce a commodity, he must produce not merely use-value, but use-value for others social use-value. Finally, no entity can be a value without being an object of use. If it is useless, then the labour contained in it is also useless, does not count as labour and, hence, does not form a value. Originally, the commodity appeared to us as a two-sided entity, use-value and exchange-value. As we consider the matter more closely it will appear that the labour which is contained in the commodity is two-sided, also. This aspect, which I am the first to have developed in a critical way, is the starting point upon which comprehension of political economy depends. Let us consider two commodities, a coat and 10 yards of linen, perhaps. Let the first have twice the value of the second, so that if 10 yards of linen = w, the coat = 2w. The coat is a use-value which satisfies a particular need. In order to produce it, a particular kind of purposeful productive activity is required. This is determined in accordance with purpose, manner of operation, object, means and result. The labour whose usefulness is represented in the use-value of its product or in the product in such wise that its product is a use-value, let such labour here be called for simplicity s sake simply useful labour. From this viewpoint it is constantly under consideration with respect to the utility, production of which is the intent of the labour. Just as coat and linen are qualitatively different use-values, so the deployments of labour which mediate their realities are qualitatively different tailoring and weaving. If those things were not qualitatively different use-values and hence products of qualitatively different useful deployments of labour, then they would never be able to confront each other as commodities at all. A coat is not exchanged for a coat. One use-value is not exchanged for the very same use-value. In the totality of various use-values or commodity-incarnations, there appears a totality of varying deployments of useful labour just as manifold and differing in genus, species, family, subspecies, variety: a social division of labour. This is the precondition for the existence of commodity production, and it is not the case that commodity production is the precondition for the existence of the social division of labour. In the community of ancient India, labour is socially divided without the products becoming commodities. Or a more immediate example, in every factory labour is systematically divided, but this division is not thereby mediated by the fact that the workers exchange their individual products. Only products of those deployments of private labour which are self-sufficient and independent of one another confront one another as commodities. So we have observed the following that a particular purposefully productive activity or useful labour lurks in the use-value of every commodity. Use-values cannot confront one another as commodities unless deployments of qualitatively different useful labour lurk in them. In a society whose products generally assume the form of commodity (i.e., in a society of commodity producers) this qualitative difference in the deployments of useful labour which are carried on independently of one another as the private businesses of self-sufficient producers develops into a multi-faceted system to a social division of labour. It is a matter of indifference, in any case, to the coat whether it is worn by the tailor or one of his customers. In both cases it acts as a use-value. Just as little, is the relationship between the coat and the labour which produced it changed in and for itself by virtue of the fact that tailoring is a profession in itself an independent member of the social division of labour. Where a need for clothing compelled him, man plied the activity of tailor for whole millenia before he became a tailor instead of a man. But the reality of coat, linen, and every element of material wealth which is not given by nature in all cases had to be mediated by a special, purposely productive activity which assimilates particular natural entities to human needs. As the former of use-values, as useful labour, labour is thereby the precondition of existence for man independent of all social forms and an eternal necessity of nature for the sake of mediating the material interchange between man and nature (i.e., human life). The use-values coat, linen, etc. in brief, the commodity-bodies are connections of two elements, natural matter and labour. If one subtracts the total sum of all different instances of useful labour which lurk inside the coat, linen, etc., there always remains a material substrate left over which is present naturally without the interference of man. Man can only proceed in his producing like nature does herself; i.e., only change the forms of material. And what is more, in this labour of formation itself he is constantly supported by natural forces. Labour is not, therefore, the only source of those use-values which are produced by it material wealth. Labour is its father, as William Petty says, and the earth is its mother. Now let us pass from the consideration of the commodity insofar as it is a use-object to that of commodity-value (i.e., exchange-value). According to our assumption the coat has double the value of linen. This, however, is only a quantitative difference, which is not yet of immediate interest to us. We recall, therefore, that if the value of a coat is twice as great as that of 10 yards of linen, then 20 yards of linen have the same amount of value as a coat. As values, a coat and linen are things of equal substance, objective expressions of similar labour. But tailoring and weaving are qualitatively different kinds of labour. Conditions of society, however, are found, wherein the very same person alternately tailors and weaves; and both these modes of labouring are therefore merely modifications of the labour of one and the same individual, and are not yet specific definite functions of different individuals: just as the coat which our tailor makes today, and the trousers which he is to make tomorrow only presuppose variations of the same individual labour. Appearance itself teaches, moreover, that in our capitalistic society a given portion of human labour is adduced alternately in the form of tailoring or in the form of weaving on each occasion in accordance with the shifting direction of the demand for labour. This changing of form which labour endures may occur not without friction but it must occur. If one disregards the determinacy of productive activity and therefore disregards the useful character of labour, it remains true about it that it is an expenditure of human labour power. The labour of a tailor and weaving, although they are qualitatively different productive activities, are both productive expenditure of human brain, muscle, nerve, hand, etc., and are both in this sense human labour. They are merely two different forms of expending human labour power. Admittedly, human labour itself has to be more or less developed in order to be expended in this or that form. The value of the commodities, however, represents human labour in the simplest form, the expenditure of human labour power in general. Now just as a general or a banker plays a big role in bourgeois society but the simple human being, on the other hand, plays a very shabby role, that is the way things stand here also in the case of human labour. It is the expenditure of simple labour power, which every normal human being possesses in his bodily organism, quite apart from any special elaboration. [Take the labour-power of a farm labourer, for example, for simple labour-power, and take the expenditure of that labour-power consequently for simple labour or human labour without further adornment; but take the labour of tailoring, on the other hand, for the expenditure of more highly-developed labour-power. While the working-day of the farm labourer is represented consequently by the value expression w (say), the working-day of the tailor is represented by the value expression w. This difference, however, is merely quantitative. If the coat is the product of one working-day of the tailor, it has the same value as the product of two working-days of the farm labourer. In this way, however, the tailor s work counts only on each occasion as multiplied farm-labourer s work.] The various proportions wherein differing species of labour are reduced to simple labour as their unit of measurement are established by a social process behind the back of the producers, and appear to them consequently as given by tradition. For purposes of simplification, every species of labour-power counts for us in the following immediately as simple labour-power, whereby we are only sparing ourselves the effort involved in the reduction to it. Therefore, just as one is abstracting, in the case of the values of coat and linen, from the difference between their use-values, just so, in the case of the labour which these values represent, is one abstracting from the difference between the useful forms, wherein labour is on the one band tailoring-labour and on the other hand weaving. Just as the use-values coat and linen are connections of purposeful productive activities with cloth and yarn, whereas the values, coat and linen, on the other hand, are mere labour-precipitates of a similar species, just so does also the labour contained in these values count not on account of its productive relationship to cloth and yarn but only as expenditure of human labour-power. Tailoring and weaving are formative elements of the use-values coat and linen precisely by virtue of their different qualities; but they are only the substance of coat-value and linen-value insofar as there is an abstracting from their specific quality and both possess the same quality, the quality of human labour. Coat and linen, however, are not only values in general, but are values of definite magnitude and in accordance with our assumption the coat is worth twice as much as 10 yards of linen. What is the origin of this difference in their magnitudes of value? It is the fact that linen contains only half as much labour as the coat, so that labour power has to be expended for a period of twice the time taken for the production of the latter as for the production of the former. If, therefore, with respect to the use-value, the labour contained in the commodity counts only qualitatively, with respect to the magnitude of exchange-value it counts only quantitatively, after being already reduced to human labour without further quality. In the former case, what is at issue is the how and what of labour; and in the latter case, what matters is its how much, its temporal duration. Since the quantity of exchange-value of a commodity measures only the quantum of the labour contained in it, hence commodities within a certain proportion to one another must always be equally large exchange-values. If the productive power of (say) all the useful deployments of labour required for the production of a coat remains unchanged, then the magnitude of value of the coats rises along with their own quantity. If one coat represents x days of labour, then two coats represent 2x days of labour, etc. But now assume that the labour-time necessary for the production of a coat rises to twice as much, or falls to half as much. In the first instance, a coat has as much value as two coats had previously; and in the latter case, two coats have only just so much value as previously one had, although in both cases a coat performs the same tasks as before and the useful labour contained in it remains of the same beneficence as before. But the labour-quantum expended in its production has changed. A larger quantum of use-value in and for itself forms larger material wealth, two coats being more than one. With two coats two human beings can be clad, and with one coat only one human being, etc. Nevertheless, a fall in the magnitude of value of material wealth may correspond contemporaneously to a rise in its mass. This contrary motion is produced by the two-sided specification of labour. Productive power is naturally always productive power of useful, concrete labour. Actually, it only expresses the level of efficacy of purposeful activity in a given extension of time. Useful labour becomes, therefore, a richer or poorer source of products in direct relationship to the rising or falling of its productive power. A change in the productive power, on the other hand, has in and for itself no effect whatsoever upon the labour represented in the value. Since the productive power belongs to the concrete, useful form of labour, it can naturally no longer influence labour, as soon as there is an abstracting from its concrete useful form. The very same labour, therefore, when it is represented in the same extensions of time, is also on all occasions represented in the same magnitude of value however much the productive power may change. But it yields differing quanta of use values, within the same extension of time: more whenever the productive power rises; less, whenever it sinks. In the first case, it can happen that two coats contain less labour than one did previously. The very same change in productive power, which increases the fruitfulness of labour and hence the mass of use-values yielded by it, can therefore diminish the magnitude of value even of the increased total mass namely whenever it shortens the labour-time necessary for its production. And vice versa. It follows from the preceding not that there are two differing kinds of labour lurking in the commodity, but rather that the same labour is specified in differing and even contradictory manner in accordance with whether it is related to the use-value of the commodity as labour s product or related to the commodity-value as its merely objective expression. Just as the commodity must be above all else an object of use in order to be a value, just so does labour have to be before all else useful labour purposeful, productive activity in order to count as expenditure of human labour-power and hence as simple human labour. Since up to now it has only been the substance of value and the magnitude of value which have been specified, let us now direct our attention to the analysis of the form of value. First let us turn back to the first form of appearance of the value of the commodity. We take two quanta of commodities which cost the same amount of labour-time for their production (and hence are equal magnitudes of value), and we have: 40 yards of linen are worth two coats. We observe that the value of the linen is expressed in a specific quantum of coats. The value of a commodity is called its relative value, if it is represented in the use-value of another commodity in this fashion. The relative value of a commodity can change, although its value remains constant. And, going the other way, its relative value can remain constant, although its value changes. The equation: 40 yards of linen = 2 coats presupposes after all that both commodities cost equally much labour. With every change in the productive power of the deployments of labour which produce them there is a change in the labour-time necessary for their production. Let us consider the influence of such changes upon relative value. If one compares the different cases sub I and II, what emerges is that one and the same change of relative value can be initiated from completely opposite causes. The equation: 40 yards of linen = 2 coats becomes 1) the equation: 40 yards of linen = 4 coats, either because the value of linen doubles or the value of the coat falls by half, and 2) the equation: 40 yards of linen = 1 coat, either because the value of linen sinks by half or the value of the coat rises to twice as much. What we have investigated is how far change in the relative magnitude of value of a commodity (linen) reflects a change in its own magnitude of value and we have in general investigated relative value only in accordance with its quantitative side. We now turn to its form. If relative value is the form wherein value manifests itself, then the expression for the equivalence of two commodities (e.g., x of commodity A = y of commodity B, or 20 yards of linen = one coat) is the simple form of relative value. Linen makes its earthly appearance in the shape of a use-value or useful thing. Its stiff-as-linen corporeality or natural form is consequently not its form of value, but its direct opposite. It reveals its own reality as value immediately by relating itself to another commodity (the coat) as equal to itself. If it were not itself value, then it could not relate itself to coat (as value) as its own sort of thing. It posits itself as qualitatively equal to the coat, by relating itself to it as objectification of human labour of the same species, i.e., of its own value-substance; and it posits itself as equal to only one coat instead of x coats, because it is not just value in general, but value of a specific magnitude and a coat, however, contains precisely just so much labour as 20 yards of linen. By this relationship to the coat, linen swats different flies with one stroke. By equating the other commodity to itself as value, it relates itself to itself as value. By relating itself to itself as value, it distinguishes itself from itself as use-value, at the same time. By expressing its magnitude of value in the coat (and magnitude of value is both things: value in general, and quantitatively measured value), it endows its reality as value with a form of value which differs from its immediate existence. By revealing itself in this manner as a thing which is differentiated within itself, it reveals itself for the first time really as a commodity a useful thing which is at the same time value. Insofar as linen is use-value, it is an independent thing. Its value appears, on the other hand only in relationship to another commodity (e.g., the coat), which a coat is, is qualitatively equated to it (the linen), and consequently in some specific quantity counts as equivalent to it, replaces it and is exchangeable for it. Hence, value only acquires an individual form which is different from use-value only through its manifestation as exchange-value. The expression of the value of linen in the coat impresses a new form upon the coat itself. After all, what is the meaning of the value-form of linen? Evidently that the coat is exchangeable for it. Whatever else may happen to it, in its mundane reality it possesses in its natural form (coat) now the form of immediate exchangeability with another commodity, the form of an exchangeable use-value, or Equivalent. The specification of the Equivalent contains not only the fact that a commodity is value at all, but the fact that it in its corporeal shape (its use-value) counts as value for another commodity and consequently is immediately at hand as exchange-value for the other commodity. As value, linen is composed exclusively of labour, and forms a transparently crystallized precipitate of labour. In reality this crystal is very murky, however. In so far as labour is detectable in it (and not every embodiment of commodity reveals the trace of labour), it is not some undifferentiated human labour, but rather: weaving, spinning, etc. which, in addition, are by no means the only components of its substance but of course are leavened with matter derived from nature. In order to retain linen as a merely corporeal expression of human labour one has to abstract from all that which makes it to be really a thing. Any objectivity of human labour which is itself abstract (i.e., without any additional quality and content) is necessarily an abstract objectivity a thing of thought. In that fashion, a web of flax turns into a chimera. But commodities are objects. They have to be what they are in an object-like way or else reveal it in their own object-like relationships. In the production of linen, a particular quantum of human labour exists in having been expended. The linen s value is the merely objective reflection of the labour so expended, but it is not reflected in the body of the linen. It reveals itself (i.e., acquires a sensual expression) by its value-relationship to the coat. By the linen s equating the coat to itself as value while at the same time distinguishing itself from the coat as object of use what happens is that the coat becomes the form of appearance of linen-value as opposed to linen-body: its value-form as distinguished from its natural form. In the expression of relative value: 20 yards of linen = 1 coat (or, x linen is worth y of coat), one must admit that the coat counts only as value or coagulation of labour, but it is precisely through that fact that the coagulation of labour counts as coat, and coat as the form into which human labour flows in order to congeal. The use-value coat only becomes the form of appearance of linen-value because linen relates itself to the material of the coat as to an immediate materialization of abstract human labour, and thus to labour which is of the same kind as that which is objectified within the linen itself. The object, coat, counts for it as a sensually palpable objectification of human labour of the same kind, and consequently as value in natural form. Since it is, as value, of the same essence as the coat, the natural form coat thereby becomes the form of appearance of its own value. But the labour represented in the use-value, coat, is not simply human labour, but is rather a particular useful labour: tailoring. Simple human labour (expenditure of human labour-power) is capable of receiving each and every determination, it is true, but is undetermined just in and for itself. It can only realize and objectify itself as soon as human labour-power is expended in a determined form, as determined and specified labour; because it is only determined and specified labour which can be confronted by some natural entity an external material in which labour objectifies itself. It is only the concept in Hegel s sense that manages to objectify itself without external material. Time cannot be related to the coat as value or incarnated human labour, without being related to tailoring-labour as the immediate manifestation-form of human labour. The aspect of the use value, coat, however, which is of interest to the linen is neither its woollen comfort, nor its buttoned-up essence nor any other useful quality which marks it out as a use-value. The coat is of service to the linen only in order to represent the linen s value-objectivity as distinguished from its starchy use-objectivity. It could have attained the same purpose if it had expressed its value in assa foetida or cosmetics, or shoe polish. The tailoring labour, too, has value for the linen, consequently, not insofar as it is purposeful productive labour, but only insofar as it exists as determinate labour, form of realization, manner of objectification of human labour in general. If linen expressed its value in shoe polish rather than in the coat, then polish-making would count for it as the immediate form of realization of abstract human labour instead of tailoring. So a use-value or commodity-body only becomes a form of appearance of value or an Equivalent by another commodity s relating itself to the concrete, useful species of labour contained in it, as the immediate form of realization of abstract human labour. We stand here at the jumping-off point of all difficulties which hinder the understanding of value-form. It is relatively easy to distinguish the value of the commodity from its use-value, or the labour which forms the use-value from that same labour insofar as it is merely reckoned as the expenditure of human labour power in the commodity-value. If one considers commodity or labour in the one form, then one fails to consider it in the other, and vice versa. These abstract opposites fall apart on their own, and hence are easy to keep separate. It is different with the value-form which exists only in the relationship of commodity to commodity. The use-value or commodity-body is here playing a new role. It is turning into the form of appearance of the commodity-value, thus of its own opposite. Similarly, the concrete, useful labour contained in the use-value turns into its own opposite, to the mere form of realization of abstract human labour. Instead of falling apart, the opposing determinations of the commodity are reflected against one another. However incomprehensible this seems at first sight, it reveals itself upon further consideration to be necessary. The commodity is right from the start a dual thing, use-value and value, product of useful labour and abstract coagulate of labour. In order to manifest itself as what it is, it must therefore double its form. It possesses right from nature the form of a use-value. That is its natural form. It only earns a value form for itself for the first time in circulation with other commodities. But its value-form has then to be itself an objective form. The only objective forms of commodities are their use forms, their natural forms. Now since the natural form of a commodity (e.g., linen) is the exact opposite of its value-form, it has to turn another natural form the natural form of another commodity into its commodity form. A thing that it cannot do immediately for itself it can do immediately for another commodity, and therefore by a detour for itself. It cannot express its value in its own body or in its own use-value, but it can relate itself to another use-value or commodity-body as an immediately existent value. It can relate itself not to the concrete labour contained in itself, but doubtless to that contained in another species of commodity as a mere form of realization of abstract human labour. For that, it only needs to equate the other commodity to itself as an Equivalent. The use-value of a commodity only exists at all for another commodity insofar as it serves in this fashion for the form of appearance of its value. If one considers only the quantitative relationship in the simple, relative value-expression: x commodity A = y commodity B, then one finds also only the laws developed above concerning the motion of relative value, which all rest upon the fact that the amount of value of commodities is determined by the labour-time required for their production. But if one considers the value relation of both commodities in their qualitative aspect, then one discovers in that simple expression of value the mystery of value form, and hence, in nuce of money. Our analysis has revealed that the relative value-expression of a commodity includes two different value forms. The linen expresses its value and its determinate amount of value in the coat. It manifests its value in the value-relation to another commodity, and hence as exchange-value. On the other hand, the other commodity, the coat in which it expresses its value in a relative way, obtains precisely in that way the form of a use-value as an equivalent which is immediately exchangeable with it. Both forms, the relative value-form of the one commodity, equivalent form of the other, are forms of exchange-value. Both are actually only vectors determinations conditioned reciprocally by each other of the same relative value-expression, but divided like poles between the two commodity-extremes which have been set equal. Quantitative determinacy is not included in the equivalent-form of a commodity. The determinate relationship (e.g., in which coat is the equivalent of linen) does not flow from its equivalent-form, the form of its immediate exchangeability with linen, but from the determination of the amount of value by labour-time. The linen is only able to represent its own value in coats, by relating itself to a determinate coat-quantum as a given quantum of crystallized human labour. If the coat-value changes, then this relationship also changes. But in order that relative value of linen may change, it has to be present, and it can only be formed upon given coat-value. Now, whether the linen represents its own value in 1, 2 or x coats depends (under this presupposition) completely upon the amount of value of a yard of linen and the number of yards whose value is supposed to be manifested in the form of coats. The amount of value of a commodity can only express it in the use-value of another commodity as relative value. A commodity only obtains the form of an immediately exchangeable use-value (which is what is meant by equivalent ) on the other hand, only as the material in which the value of another commodity is expressed. This distinction is obscured by a characteristic peculiarity of the relative value-expression in its simple or first form. The equation: 20 yards of linen = 1 coat (or 20 yards of linen are worth a coat) includes, after all, precisely the identical equation: 1 coat = 20 yards of linen (or one coat is worth 20 yards of linen). The relative value-expression of the linen, in which the coat figures as Equivalent, thus contains from the reverse the relative value-expression of the coat, in which the linen figures as Equivalent. Although both determinations of the value form or both modes of manifestation of the commodity-value as exchange-value are only relative, they do not both appear relative to the same degree. In the relative value of the linen (20 yards of linen = 1 coat), the exchange-value of linen is expressly manifested as its relationship to another commodity. As far as the coat is concerned, it is admittedly an Equivalent insofar as linen is related to the coat as form of appearance of its own value, and hence as something immediately exchangeable with itself (the linen). Only within this relationship is the coat an Equivalent. But it conducts itself passively. It seizes no kind of initiative. It finds itself in relationship because things relate themselves to it. The character which is constituted for it out of its relationship with the linen thus does not appear as the result of its own relating, but as present without any additional activity of its own. In addition, the specific mode and manner in which the linen relates to the coat is exactly appropriate to the end of doing it to the coat, however modest it be and however far from being the product of a tailor run mad with pride . The linen, after all, relates itself to the coat as the sensually existing materialization of human labour in abstracto and hence as present value-body. It is this only because and insofar as the linen relates itself to the coat in this specific manner. Its status as an Equivalent is (so to speak) only a reflection-determinationof linen. But the situation seems just the reverse. On the one hand, the coat does not take the trouble to relate itself to anything. On the other hand, the linen relates itself to the coat, not in order to make it into something, but because it is something quite apart from anything the linen might do. The resultant product of the linen s relating to the coat (its Equivalent-form, its determinacy as an immediately exchangeable use-value) appears to belong to the coat in a corporeal way even outside the relating to the linen, in just the same way as its property of being able to keep people warm (for example). In the first or simple form of relative value (20 yards of linen one coat), this false seeming is not yet established, because this form expresses in an immediate way also the opposite, that the coat is an Equivalent of the linen, and that each of the two commodities only possesses this determination because and insofar as the other makes it into its own relative value-expression. In the simple form of relative value or the expression of the equivalence of two commodities, the development of the form of value is correspondent for both commodities, although in each case in the opposite direction. The relative value-expression is in addition identical with reference to each of both commodities, for the linen manifests its value in only one commodity (the coat) and vice versa, but this value expression is double for both commodities, different for each of the same. Finally, each of both commodities is only an Equivalent for the single other species of commodity, and thus only a single Equivalent. Such an equation as 20 yards of linen = 1 coat (or twenty yards of linen are worth one coat) evidently expresses the value of the commodity in only a very limited and one-sided way. If I compare the linen, for example, with other commodities instead of coats, then I also obtain other relative value-expressions, other equations (like 20 yards of linen = u coffee; 20 yards of linen = v tea, etc.). The linen has just as many different relative value-expressions as there exist commodities different from it, and the number of its relative value-expressions constantly increases with the number of kinds of commodities which newly enter into existence. The first form (20 yards of linen = 1 coat) yielded two relative expressions for the value of two commodities. This second form yields the most variegated mosaic of relative expressions for the value of the same commodity. In addition, there seems to be nothing gained either for the expression of the amount of value (for the amount of value of linen which obviously remains the same in every expression is just as exhaustively expressed in 20 yards of linen = 1 coat as in 20 yards of linen = u coffee, etc. ), the coffee and the etcetera are only single Equivalents, just as the coat was. Nevertheless, this second form contains within itself an essential development of form. For latent in it is, after all, not only the fact that linen happens to express its value at one time in coats, and at another in coffee, etc., but the fact that it expresses its value as much in coats as in coffee, etc.: either in this commodity or that or the third, etc. The continuing determination is revealed as soon as this second or developed form of the relative value-expression is manifested in its connection. We obtain then: The first thing is obviously that the first form constitutes the basic element of the second, for the latter consists of many simple relative value-expressions, as 20 yards of linen = one coat , 20 yards of linen u coffee , etc. In the first form (20 yards of linen = I coat) it may appear like an accidental fact that these two commodities are exchangeable in this specific quantitative relationship. In the second form, however, a background which is essentially different from and determinant of the accidental appearance immediately shines through. The value of the linen remains equally large, whether expressed in coat, or coffee, or iron, etc., in innumerably different commodities belonging to the most different possessors. The accidental relationship of two individual possessors of commodities falls away. It becomes clear that it is not the exchange which regulates the amount of value of the commodity, but in the opposite way the amount of value of the commodity which regulates its relationships of exchange. In the expression 20 yards of linen = 1 coat , the coat counted as the form of appearance of the work objectified in the linen. In that way the labour contained in the linen was equated to the labour contained in the coat, and was thereby determined as comparable human labour. This determination did not, however, reveal itself expressly. At the level of immediacy, the first form equates the labour contained in the linen only to the labour of tailoring. Otherwise with the second form. In the indefinite, constantly extendable series of its relative value-expressions, the linen relates itself to all possible commodity-bodies as mere form of appearance of the labour which is contained in itself. Consequently it is at this point that the linen value is for the first time really manifested as value, i.e., or crystal of human labour in general. The second form consists of a sum of the familiar equations of the first form. Each of these equations (like 20 yards of linen = 1 coat ,) contains also the reciprocal 1 coat 20 yards of linen , in which case the coat manifests its value in the linen and precisely thereby manifests the linen as an Equivalent. Now, since this holds of each of the innumerable relative value-expressions of linen, we obtain: The relative value-expression returns at this point to its original form: 1 coat = 20 yards of linen. Now, however, this simple equation is further developed. Originally it only contained the fact that the value of the coat obtains through its expression in another commodity a form which is different from and independent of the exchange-value coat or even the body of the coat. Now the very same form manifests the coat with respect to all other commodities whatsoever as value. Not only the coat, but also coffee, iron, wheat, in a word, all other commodities express their value in the material, linen. In this way, all manifest themselves to one another as the same materialization of human labour. They are henceforward only quantitatively different, which is the reason why one coat, u coffee, x iron, etc. i.e., different quanta of these different things equal 20 yards of linen (equal to the same quantum of objectified human labour). It is through their common value-expression in the material, linen, therefore, that all commodities differ as exchange-values from their own use-values and relate at the same time to one another as amounts of value, equate themselves qualitatively to one another, and compare themselves quantitatively. Only in this unified relative value-expression do they all appear for the first time as values for one another, and their value consequently obtains for the first time its corresponding form of appearance as exchange-value. As opposed to the developed form of relative value (form II) which manifests the value of a commodity in the environment of all other commodities, we call this unified value-expression the universal relative form of value. In form II (20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = u coffee, or v tea or x iron, etc.), the form in which the linen develops its relative value-expression, it relates itself to each individual commodity (coat, coffee, etc.) as a specific Equivalent, and to all of them together as to the environment of its specific forms of the Equivalent. No individual species of commodity counts any longer with respect to the linen as simple Equivalent, as in the particular Equivalent, but only as specific Equivalent whereby the one Equivalent excludes the other. In form III (which is the reciprocal second form, and is therefore contained in it), the linen appears on the other hand as the general form of the Equivalent for all other commodities. It is as if alongside and external to lions, tigers, rabbits, and all other actual animals, which form when grouped together the various kinds, species, subspecies, families etc. of the animal kingdom, there existed also in addition the animal, the individual incarnation of the entire animal kingdom. Such a particular which contains within itself all really present species of the same entity is a universal (like animal, god, etc.). Just as linen consequently became an individual Equivalent by the fact that one other commodity related itself to it as form of appearance of value, that is the way linen becomes as the form of appearance of value common to all commodities the universal Equivalent universal value-body, universal materialization of abstract human labour. The specific labour materialized in it now thereby counts as universal form of realization of human labour, as universal labour. During the process in which the value of commodity A is displayed in commodity B (whereby commodity B becomes a single Equivalent), it was indifferent of what specific type commodity B happened to be. The corporeality of commodity B only had to be of a different species than that of commodity A, and therefore had also to be a product of other useful labour. By the coat s displaying its value in linen, it related itself to linen as the realized human labour, and precisely thereby related itself to linen-weaving as the realization-form of human labour, but the specific determinacy which distinguishes linen-weaving from other kinds of labour was completely indifferent. It only had to be of another kind than tailoring and in any case had to be a specific kind of labour. It is otherwise as soon as linen becomes a universal Equivalent. This use-value in its special determinacy through which it is linen as opposed to all other kinds of commodities (coffee, iron, etc.) now becomes the universal form of value of all other commodities and hence a universal Equivalent. The particular useful kind of labour manifested in it therefore now counts as universal form of realization of human labour, as universal labour precisely insofar as it is labour of particular determinacy: linen weaving as opposed, not only to tailoring, but to coffee growing, mining, and all other kinds of labour. On the other hand, all other kinds of labour count (in the relative value-expression of linen the universal Equivalent: form II), henceforth only as particular forms of realization of human labour. As values the commodities are expressions of the same unity, of abstract human labour. In the form of exchange value they appear to one another as values and relate themselves to one another as values. They thereby relate themselves at the same time to abstract human labour as their common social substance. Their social relationship consists exclusively in counting with respect to one another as expressions of this social substance of theirs which differs only quantitatively, but which is qualitatively equal and hence replaceable and interchangeable with one another. As a useful thing, a commodity possesses social determinacy insofar as it is use-value for people other than its possessor, and hence satisfies social needs. But it is indifferent just whose needs the commodity s useful properties relate it to. The commodity nevertheless can only become through these properties in all cases only an object related to human needs, but not a commodity for other commodities. It is only the kind of thing that can turn mere objects of use into commodities and hence set into social rapport. But this is just what value is. The form in which the commodities count to one another as values as coagulations of human labour is consequently their social form. Social form of the commodity and value-form or form of exchangeability are thus one and the same thing. If the natural form of a commodity is at the same time its value-form, then the commodity possesses the form of immediate exchangeability with other commodities and consequently an immediately social form. The simple relative value form (form I) One coat = 20 yards of linen , differs from the universal relative value-form, One coat = 20 yards linen only by the fact that this equation now forms a member in the series: In actuality, it differs thus only in the fact that the linen has continued its development from a singular to a universal Equivalent. Thus if in the simple relative expression of value it is not that commodity which expresses its amount of value, but rather that commodity in which the amount of value is expressed which is the one that obtains the form of immediate exchangeability (equivalent form: hence, immediately social form), the same thing holds true for the universal relative value expression. But in the simple relative form of value this distinction is merely formal and evanescent. If the coat expresses its value in a relative way (that is, in linen) in the equation One coat = 20 yards of linen , and the linen acquires thereby the form of Equivalent, then the very same equation includes immediately the reciprocity 20 yards of linen one coat , in which it is the coat that acquires the form of Equivalent and the value of the linen is expressed in a relative way. This constant and correlative development of the value-form of both commodities as relative value and as Equivalent no longer takes place. If the universal relative value-form, One coat = 20 yards of linen , (where the linen is universal Equivalent) is turned around into 20 yards of linen = one coat , the coat does not thereby become universal Equivalent for all other commodities, but only a particular Equivalent of the linen. The relative value-form of the coat is only universal because it is the relative value-form of all other commodities at the same time. What holds true of the coat, holds true of coffee, etc. It follows, therefore, that the universal relative value-form of commodities excludes these very commodities from the universal form of Equivalent. On the other hand, a commodity like linen is excluded from the universal relative value-form as soon as it possesses the universal form of Equivalent. The universal relative value form of linen, unified with the other commodities, would be 20 yards of linen = 20 yards of linen . But this is a tautology which does not express the amount of value of this commodity, which is situated in a universal form of Equivalent and thereby in perpetually exchangeable form. Rather, it is the developed relative value-form (20 yards of linen = one coat or u coffee or = v tea or = etc.) that now becomes the specific relative value-expression of the universal Equivalent. Every commodity (coat, coffee, tea, etc.) possesses in the universal relative value-expression of commodities a value-form which is different from its natural form namely, the form: linen. And it is precisely in this form that they relate themselves to one another as exchangeables and exchangeables in relationships which are quantitatively determined, since, if one coat = 20 yards of linen, u coffee = 20 yards of linen, etc., then it is also true that one coat = u coffee, etc. All commodities by mirroring themselves in one and the same commodity as quantities of value, reflect themselves reciprocally as quantities of value. But the natural forms which they possess as objects of use count for them reciprocally as forms of appearance of value only over this detour, and consequently not in an immediate way. They are not for that reason immediately exchangeable just because of the way they immediately are. Thus they do not possess the form of immediate exchangeability for one another; i.e., their socially valid form is a mediated one. It is the other way around. It is through the fact that all other commodities relate themselves to linen as form of appearance of value, that the natural form of linen becomes the form of its immediate exchangeability with all commodities and consequently its universal social form in an immediate way. A commodity only acquires the universal Equivalent-form because and insofar as it serves all other commodities in the manifesting of their universal relative (and hence not immediate) value-form. Commodities, however, have to endow themselves with relative value-form in general, because their natural-forms are only their forms of use-value, and they have to endow themselves with unified (and hence universal) relative value-forms in order for all of them to relate to one another as values, as homogeneous coagulations of human labour. A single commodity, therefore, only finds itself in the form of immediate exchangeability with all other commodities, and therefore in immediately social form, because and insofar as all other commodities do not find themselves therein, or because the commodity by its very nature does not in general find itself in an immediately exchangeable or social form, by virtue of the fact that its immediate form is the form of its use-value, not of its value. One does not by any means actually detect in the form of universal immediate exchangeability that it is a contradictory form of commodity: just as inseparable from the form of not immediate exchangeability as the positivity of one pole of a magnet is from the negativity of the other. Consequently, one can imagine that one could impress the mark of immediate exchangeability on all commodities at the same time, just as one can also imagine that one could make all workers into capitalists. Actually, however, universal relative value-form and universal Equivalent-form are the contradictory, reciprocally-presupposing and reciprocally repelling poles of the very same social form of commodities. As immediate social materialization of labour, linen is (as the universal Equivalent) materialization of immediately social labour, while other bodies of commodities, which represent their value in linen, are materializations of not-immediately social labours. Actually, all use-values are only commodities because they are products of private labours which are independent of one another private labours which, however, depend materially upon one another as particular members (even though rendered self-sufficient) of the primordial system of division of labour. In this fashion, they hang together socially precisely through their differentiation, their particular usefulness. That is exactly the reason why they produce qualitatively differing use-values. If they did not, then these use-values would not become commodities for one another. On the other hand, this differing useful quality does not yet make products into commodities. If a peasant family produces coat, linen and wheat for its own consumption, then these things confront the family as differing products of their family labour, but do not confront one another reciprocally as commodities. If the commodity were immediately social (i.e., common) labour, then the products would acquire the immediately social character of a common product for its producers, but not the character of commodities for one another. Nevertheless, we do not have far to seek, in this case, for that in which the social form of the private labours consists, which are contained in the commodities and are independent of one another. It already yielded itself out of the analysis of the commodity. The commodities social form is their relationship to one another as equal labour; hence since the equality of toto coelo [utterly] different labours can only consist in an abstraction from their inequality their relationship to one another as human labour in general: expenditures of human labour-power, which is what all human labours whatever their content and their mode of operation actually are. In each social form of labour, the labours of different individuals are related to one another as human labours too, but in this case this relating itself counts as the specifically social form of the labours. Now none of these private labours in its natural form possesses this specifically social form of abstract human labour, just as little as the commodity in its natural form possesses the social form of mere coagulation of labour, or value. However, through the fact that the natural form of a commodity (linen, in this case) becomes a universal Equivalent-form because all other commodities relate themselves to this natural form as the appearance-form of their own value, hence linen-weaving also turns into a universal form of realization of abstract human labour or into labour of immediately social form. The standard of socialness must be borrowed from the nature of those relationships which are proper to each mode of production, and not from conceptions which are foreign to it. Just as we demonstrated earlier that the commodity naturally excludes the immediate form of universal exchange-ability and that the universal Equivalent-form consequently can only develop in a contradictory way, so the same thing holds for the private labours lurking in the commodities. Since they are not-immediately social labour, in the first place the social form is a form which differs from the natural forms of the real, useful labours and is foreign to them and abstract; and in the second place, all kinds of private labour obtain their social character only In a contradictory way, by all being equated to one exclusive kind of private labour (linen-weaving, in this case). This latter thereby becomes the immediate and universal form of appearance of abstract human labour and thereby labour in immediately social form. It manifests itself consequently also in a product which is socially valid and universally exchangeable. The illusion as if the equivalent-form of a commodity resulted from its own corporeal nature instead of being a mere reflex of the relationships of other commodities: this illusion strengthens itself with the continuing development of the singular Equivalent to the universal, because the contradictory vectors of the value-form no longer develop equally for the commodities which are related to one another, because the universal Equivalent-form separates a commodity off as something totally secluded from all other commodities, and finally because this (the commodity s form) is actually no longer the product of the relationship of any singular commodity. From our present standpoint the universal Equivalent has not yet by any means ossified, however. What was the way in which linen was metamorphosed into the universal Equivalent, actually? By the fact that it displayed its value, first in one single commodity (form I), then in all other commodities in order in a relative way (form II), and thereby all other commodities reflexively displayed their values in it in a relative way (form III). The simple relative value-expression was the seed out of which the universal Equivalent-form of linen developed. It changes its role within this development. It begins by displaying its amount of value in one other commodity and ends by serving as material for the value-expression of all other commodities. What holds for linen holds for every commodity. In its developed relative value-expression (form II) which only consists of its many, simple value-expressions the linen does not yet figure as universal Equivalent. Rather, every other commodity-body forms in this case linen s Equivalent , is thereby immediately exchangeable with it and is therefore able to change places with it. So we obtain finally: But each of these equations reflexively yields coat, coffee, tea, etc. as universal Equivalent and consequently yields value-expression in coat, coffee, tea, etc. as universal relative value-form of all other commodities. It is only in its opposition to other commodities that a commodity turns into the universal Equivalent-form; but every commodity turns into the universal Equivalent-form in its opposition to all other commodities. If every commodity confronts all other commodities with its own natural form as universal Equivalent-form, the result is that all commodities exclude themselves from the socially valid displaying of their amounts of value. Obviously, the analysis of the commodity yields all essential determinations of the value-form and the value-form itself in its contradictory vectors, yields the universal relative value-form, the universal Equivalent-form, and finally the never-ending sequence of simple relative value-expressions which sequence forms at first a transitional phase in the development of the value-form, in order finally to suddenly shift into the specifically relative value-form of the universal Equivalent. But the analysis of the commodity yielded these forms as commodity-forms in general (which thus also apply to each and every commodity) in a contradictory manner, so that if commodity A finds itself to be in one of the contradictory form-determinations, then commodities B, C, etc. adopt the other in opposition to it. What was decisively important, however, was to discover the inner, necessary connection between value-form, value-substance, and value-amount; i.e., expressed conceptually, to prove that the value form arises out of the value-concept. A commodity seems at first glance to be a self-evident, trivial thing. The analysis of it yields the insight that it is a very vexatious thing, full of metaphysical subtlety and theological perversities. As mere use-value, it is a sensual thing in which there is nothing portentous, whether I happen to consider it from the viewpoint that its attributes satisfy human needs or that it obtains these attributes only as product of human labour. There is absolutely nothing of a riddle in the fact that man changes by his activity the forms of natural matter in a way which is useful to him. The form of wood, for example, is changed if one makes a table out of it. Nevertheless, the table remains wood, an ordinary, sensual thing. But as soon as it steps out as commodity, it metamorphoses itself into a sensually supersensual thing. It does not only stand with its feet on the ground, but it confronts all other commodities on its head, and develops out of its wooden head caprices which are much more wondrous than if it all of a sudden began to dance. The mystical character of the commodity thus does not arise in its use-value. It arises just as little out of the value-determinations, considered in themselves. For in the first place, however different the useful labours or productive activities may be, it is a physiological truth that they are functions of a specifically human organism as distinguished from other organisms, and that every such function, whatever its content and its form, is essentially expenditure of human brain, nerve, muscle, organ of perception, etc. In the second place, if we consider that which lies at the basis of the determination of the amount of value (the duration of time of that expenditure, or the quantity of labour), it is clear that the quantity is distinguishable from the quality of labour in a way which is even perceptible with the naked eye. In all conditions, it was the time of labour which the production of necessities costs that had to be of concern to man, although not to the same degree at different levels of development. Finally, as soon as men work for one another in any manner, their labour acquires in addition a social form. Let us take Robinson Crusoe on his island. Modest as he naturally is, nevertheless he has various needs to satisfy and must therefore perform useful labours of various sorts, make tools, build furniture, tame llamas, fish, hunt etc. We do not refer at this time to praying and other such activities, since our Robinson derives enjoyment from them and regards such activity as recreation. Despite the variety of his productive functions, he knows that they are only various forms of activity of one and the same Robinson, and thus are only different modes of human labour. Necessity itself compels him to divide his time exactly between his various functions. Whether the one takes more space and the other takes less in the totality of his activity depends upon the greater or lesser difficulty which must be overcome for the attainment of the intended useful effect. Experience teaches him that much, and our Robinson who saved watch, diary, ink and pen from the shipwreck begins to keep a set of books about himself like a good Englishman. His inventory contains a list of the objects of use which he possesses, of the various operations which are required for their production, and finally of the labour-time which particular quanta of these various products cost him on the average. All relationships between Robinson and the things which form his self-made wealth are here so simple and transparent that even Mr. Wirth can understand them without particular mental exertion. And nevertheless all essential determinations of value are contained therein. If we now put an organization of free men in Robinson s place, who work with common means of production and expend their many individual labour-powers consciously as one social labour-power, all the determinations of Robinson s labour are repeated: but in a social rather than an individual way. Nevertheless, an essential difference emerges. All Robinson s products were his exclusively personal pro- duct, and were thereby immediately objects of use for him. The total product of the organization is a social product. One part of this product serves again as means of production. It remains social. But another part is used up by the members of the organization as necessities. This part must be divided up among them. The manner of this division will change with the particular manner of the social production-organism itself and the comparable historical level of development of the producers. Only for the sake of the parallel with commodity-production do we presuppose that each producer s share of necessities of life is determined by his labour-time. In such a case, the labour-time would play a dual role. Its socially planned distribution controls the correct proportion of the various labour-functions to the various needs. On the other hand, the labour-time serves at the same time as the measure of the individual share of the producer in the common labour, and thereby also in the part of the common product which can be used up by individuals. The social relationships of men to their labour and their products of labour remained transparently simple in this case, in production as well as in distribution. Whence comes the puzzling character of the labour-product as soon as it assumes the form of commodity? If men relate their products to one another as values insofar as these objects count as merely objectified husks of homogeneous human labour, there lies at the same time in that relationship the reverse, that their various labours only count as homogeneous human labour when under objectified husk. They relate their various labours to one another as human labour by relating their products to one another as values. The personal relationship is concealed by the objectified form. So just what a value is does not stand written on its forehead. In order to relate their products to one another as commodities, men are compelled to equate their various labours to abstract human labour. They do not know it, but they do it, by reducing the material thing to the abstraction, value. This is a primordial and hence unconsciously instinctive operation of their brain, which necessarily grows out of the particular manner of their material production and the relationships into which this production sets them. First their relationship exists in a practical mode. Second, however, their relationship exists as relationship for them. The way in which it exists for them or is reflected in their brain arises from the very nature of the relationship. Later, they attempt to get behind the mystery of their own social product by the aid of science, for the determination of a thing as value is their product, just as much as speech. Now as far as concerns the amount of value, we note that the private labours which are plied independently of one another (but because they are members of the primordial division of labour are dependent upon one another) on all sides are constantly reduced to their socially proportional measure by the fact that in the accidental and perpetually shifting exchange relationships of their products the labour-time which is socially necessary for their production forcibly obtrudes itself as a regulating natural-law, just as the law of gravity does, for example, when the house falls down on one s head. The determination of the amount of value by the labour-time is consequently the mystery lurking under the apparent motions of the relative commodity-values. The producers own social movement possesses for them the form of a motion of objects under the control of which the producers lie instead of controlling the motion. As far as concerns the value-form finally, we note that it is just exactly this form which objectively veils the social relationships of private workers and consequently the social determinations of private labours, instead of laying them bare. If I say that coat, boots, etc. relate themselves to linen as universal materialization of abstract human labour, the insanity in such a way of putting things leaps into view. But if the producers of coat, boots, etc. relate these commodities to linen as universal Equivalent, then the social relatedness of their private labours appears to them in exactly this insane form. Such forms as these constitute precisely the categories of bourgeois economy. They are the socially valid thus objective forms of thought, for relationships of production of this particular historically determined social mode of production. The private producers only enter into social contact for the first time through their private products: objects. The social relationships of their labours are and appear consequently not as immediately social relationships of persons in their labours, but as objectified relationships of persons, or social relationships of objects. The first and most universal manifestation of the object as a social thing, however, is the metamorphosis of the product of labour into a commodity. The mysticism of the commodity arises, therefore, from the fact that the social determinations of the private labours of the private producers appear to them as social natural determinations of products of labour; from the fact, that is, that the social relationships of production of persons appear as social relationships of objects to one another and to the persons involved. The relationships of the private workers to the totality of social labour objectify themselves over against them and exist, consequently, for them in the forms of objects. To a society of commodity producers whose universally social relationship of production consists in their behaving toward their products as commodities (hence as values) and their relating their private labours to one another in this objective form as equal human labour, it is Christianity that is the most appropriate form of religion, with its cult of the abstract man especially in its bourgeois development, Protestantism, Deism, etc. In the ancient Asian, antique, etc. modes of production, the metamorphosis of the product into a commodity and accordingly the existence of man as commodity-producer plays a subordinate role, which, however, becomes greater the more the communities enter upon the stage of their decline. Genuine commercial people only exist in the interstices of the ancient world, like the gods of Epicurus or like the Jews in the pores of Polish society. Those ancient social organisms of production are extraordinarily much more simple and transparent than the bourgeois organism, but they are based either on the immaturity of the individual man who has not yet torn himself free of the umbilicus of the natural species-connection with other men or are based upon immediate master and slave relationships. They are conditioned by a low level of development of the productive powers of labour by correspondingly restricted relationships of men within their material process of the constitution of life, and consequently to one another and to nature. This actual restrictedness reflects itself in an idealist mode in the ancient natural and popular religions. The religious reflection of the real world can only disappear as soon as the relationships of practical work-a-day life represent for men daily transparently reasonable relationships to one another and to nature. But relationships can only represent themselves as what they are. The form of the social process of life (i.e., of the material process of production) will only cast off its mystic veil of fog once it stands as a product of freely socialized men under their conscious, planned control. For that to happen, however, a material basis of society is demanded or a row of material conditions of existence which are themselves again the primordial product of a long and painful history of development. Political economy has by now, to be sure, analysed value and amount of value, even if incompletely. It has never even so much as posed the question: Why does labour manifest itself in value and the measure of labour by its temporal duration manifest itself in amount of value? Forms upon whose foreheads it is written that they belong to a social formation wherein the process of production masters men but not yet does man master the process of production such forms count for their bourgeois consciousness as just such a self-evident natural necessity as productive labour itself. Pre-bourgeois forms of the social productive organism are accordingly treated by Political Economy roughly like pre-Christian religions are treated by the Fathers of the Church. Just how drastically a section of the economists is deceived by the fetishism which sticks to the world of commodities (or by the objective illusion of the social determinations of labour) is proved among other things by the tediously pointless contention about the role of nature in the formation of exchange-value. Since exchange-value is a determinate social style of expressing the labour which has been applied to a thing, it can no more contain natural matter than the rate of exchange, for example. The commodity form was still relatively easy to see through as the most universal and most undeveloped form of bourgeois production, which for that reason appears even in earlier periods of production, although not in the same prevailing (and hence characteristic) way. But as for more concrete forms like Capital, for example? The fetishism of classical economics here becomes palpable. In order not to anticipate, however, let another example concerning the commodity-form itself suffice. It has been observed that in the relationship of commodity to commodity (e.g., of shoe to shoe-shine boy) the use-value of the shoe-shine boy (i.e., the utility of his real, material properties) is completely irrelevant to the shoe. The shoeshine boy is of interest to the commodity, shoe, only as form of appearance of its own value. So if commodities could speak, they would say: Our use-value may be of interest to a man. But it does not inhere in us insofar as we are things. It is our exchange-value that inheres in us as things. Our own circulation as commodity-things proves that. It is only as exchange-values that we relate ourselves to one another. Now just listen to how the economists speak forth from the very soul of the commodity: Value (exchange-value) is a property of things, riches (use-value) of man. Value, in this sense, necessarily implies exchanges, riches do not. (Anonymous, 1821) Riches (use-value) are the attribute of man; value is the attribute of commodities. A man or a community is rich; a pearl or a diamond is valuable . . . A pearl or a diamond is valuable as a pearl or diamond . (S. Bailey) Up to now, no chemist has discovered exchange-value in pearl or diamond. Our authors, who lay claim to special critical depth find, nevertheless, that use-value inheres in objects independently of their material properties, but their exchange-value on the other hand inheres in them as objects. The remarkable circumstance that the use-value of things realizes itself for men without exchange (thus, in the immediate relationship between thing and man), but their value on the other hand realizes itself only in exchange (that is, in a social process) is what strengthens them in their belief. Who is not reminded here of that excellent Dogberry who teaches the night-watchman Seacoal, To be a well-favoured man is the gift of Fortune, but to write and read comes by Nature. (Much Ado About Nothing, Act III, Scene 3.) The commodity is immediate unity of use-value and exchange-value, thus of two opposed entities. Thus it is an immediate contradiction. This contradiction must enter upon a development just as soon as it is no longer considered as hitherto in an analytic manner (at one time from the viewpoint of use-value and at another from the viewpoint of exchange-value) but is really related to other commodities as a totality. The real relating of commodities to one another, however, is their process of exchange.

The Commodity by Marx 1867

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htm

An observant reader has noticed an error in extant English language versions of Karl Marx s Das Kapital volume 1, chapter XVII subsection IV part (1), which is titled Diminishing productiveness of labour with a simultaneous lengthening of the working-day . The reader asked whether this had been noticed but ignored by convention in faith with the original or whether it had hitherto been undetected. Is it indeed an error? How did the error arise? Who is responsible for it? Does it exist in all editions and translations of the great work? The road to truth is arduous, and none is capable of travelling it successfully alone. Try as I might I cannot get to an ultimate bedrock explanation. However, I am convinced of two things. First there is such an explanation. Second that the explanation matters. This then is a contribution to the task, and it is also a plea for social production of new knowledge. We need the combined efforts of many minds. The truth of what happened is no mere interpretive language game, though its form is language and its mediation is interpretation. Something happened in and out of translation. Someone, singly or working in concert with others, gave the bourgeoisie and extra three shillings (3/-)? Why and how? Who, in the late 1920s got it back again (and why and how?), and who was subsequently responsible for snatching it again on behalf of a gluttonous bourgeoisie already stuffed, pate goose overfull, on surplus-value? These facts are clear. By the end of the first war, if not earlier, the 3/- had gone. The Charles H. Kerr Chicago edition of Capital I, published in 1918, contains the following sentences in Chapter XVII section IV part (1): The offending passage is ...the surplus-labour remains at 6 hours, the surplus-value at 6 shillings ... The reader is right. There is an error. The passage should clearly read ...the surplus-labour remains at 6 hours, the surplus-value at 3 shillings ... The capitalists, ex gratia, have pocketed an additional three shillings. Swine that they are they have kept it to themselves all these years. Who is responsible for the error? Prima facie the following are possibilities: (1) Marx himself, who may have written 6 when he meant 3 in the original German manuscript(s); (2) the translators, namely Samuel Moore, Marx s friend, and Edward Aveling, Marx s son in law, who used the third German edition as their source; (3) Frederick Engels, who edited the Moore-Aveling translation and attended to the proofs of the fourth German edition; and or (4) Ernest Untermann, of Orlando Florida, who revised and amplified the translation in 1906 according to the fourth German edition. I must confess that, in the current context, the word amplified worries me. However, to his credit, Untermann does provide a paper trail: Untermann then refers readers to Marx s and Engels s prefaces for all further information concerning the technical particulars of the work (p. 10). This is where we now head, with particular reference to Engels s editorial commentaries. First Engels identifies which of the Moore-Aveling duo translated the passages with which we are concerned. It was Moore. Second it transpires from checking Untermann s and Engels s prefaces that Engels s editorial work on the third German edition did not affect the offending section of the text. The list of possible miscreants is thereby narrowed by one, Dr Aveling, but it is still possible that the following are responsible (assuming that compositors are free of burden because such burden rests with the readers of proofs): Marx (original German editions); Marx (French edition of 1873); Moore (translation of third German edition); Engels (fourth German edition only); and Untermann ('revised and amplified edition of the Moore-Aveling translation in the light of the fourth German edition). There, of course, may be multiple responsibilities. For example, Engels may have erred in proof reading the fourth German edition, which may have occurred due to compositors or Marx, which might make he alone or he and Marx jointly culpable. Untermann s claim that the Swan Sonnenschein edition has been compared page for page with this improved German edition may in turn make he and Engels jointly culpable, in the case of a compositor s error on the German edition, or himself alone regarding a compositor s error on the English translation in the US from the fourth German edition. I am assuming, too, that a translator bears no culpability unless she or he translates incorrectly. At this point we are none the wiser. Subsequent translations might, however, offer some insight. There are more than these, and I would welcome the collective zeal of fellow bibliophiles deployed to the task, but I will offer five only here. The first is the International Publishers, New York, 1967 100th anniversary edition, based on the Moore-Aveling translation of the third German edition edited by Engels. However, the publisher s note states: Three points can be made arising from this note: (1) no indication is given that a change occurred from the third to the fourth German edition; (2) the Progress Publishers corrections failed to detect the error; because (3) the passage is identical to that in the Kerr edition: The second is the Marx Engels Internet Archive version ((marxists.org) 1995, 1999). This, too, is based on the first English edition of 1887, with the fourth German edition changes included as indicated. Progress Publishers, Moscow, is cited as the publisher, Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling as translators and Frederick Engels as the editor. The translation used is identical to that in the Kerr and the International Publishers/ Progress Publishers versions. The third version is different. This is the 1976 Penguin, Harmondsworth UK, and New Left Review version, translated by Ben Fowkes. Fowkes renders the relevant sentences thus: This is clearly different from the preceding translations. I assume Fowkes used the fourth German edition. Note, significantly, the numerical error is repeated though the words are different: ... the surplus labour will remain at 6 hours, the surplus-value will remain at 6 shillings ... Now it is possible that Fowkes had the Moore-Aveling translation as edited by Engels (Progress Publishers) next to him as he translated, and I incline to the view that this would be likely. However, were there a difference between the two versions, the fourth German edition and the existing English translation based on it, then it might be expected to stand out. Why? The answer is because Fowkes is using different words. The burden begins to shift, I think, towards the fourth German edition and away from Moore and Untermann. That is, the scales tip towards Marx and Engels themselves. The fourth edition and translation is different in a number of respects. This is the 1930 Everyman s (sic) Library edition (number 849) of Volume 2 of Capital in two volumes , published by J.M. Dent, London. This is not the second volume of Capital, as we know it, but the second of two volumes formed by splitting the first volume in two. It contains no notes on translation nor ancestry. I assume such remarks are in the first of the two parts of the divided Capital I, which I do not have. However, the singular reference to Capital, as if there were no other volumes, raises suspicions that it derives from the original Swan-Sonnenschein translation. Recall what Untermann told us: However, the possibility that this version used the original Swan-Sonnenschein Moore-Aveling translation turns out to be a false lead. Though I do not have the first of the Everyman volumes, and the second does not recognise translators, it has been possible to trace publication details. These are Capital. Translated from the 4th German ed. by Eden and Cedar Paul. Introduction by G.D.H. Cole. Two volumes paged continuously [848 & 849]. 1930. J.M. Dent & Sons, London. Clearly enough the 1890 fourth German edition had been used. The most fascinating thing about this odd version is not its pedigree but its translation. Eden and Cedar Paul s translation is correct on the expropriation of the three shillings. In 1930 they gave it back! In fact I suspect they gave it back in 1928, because a fifth version was also translated by the Pauls. It is the 1928 Allen and Unwin version. At any rate Eden and Cedar Paul rendered the key sentences in 1930 thus: Eden and Cedar Paul pronounce themselves excellent translators by this rendition, if we are to judge by clear meaning. Also pronounced is that the translation is significantly different from that of the translations issuing from the fourth German edition of 1990. Moreover the rendition is true to intention: ... the surplus labour will then be 6 hours, just as it was under the conditions considered at the outset of the paragraph, and the surplus-value will still be 3s. Super-exploitation (unequal exchange!) had been eliminated, at least for a brief time in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Taken together with the evidence of the error manifesting itself again like Banquo s ghost in the Fowkes Penguin translation of 1976, the Paul translation s extensive reformulation and rendering in plainer English leads me to tilt towards this conclusion: the Pauls found an error in the fourth German edition and corrected it. Perhaps, on the balance of probabilities but not beyond reasonable doubt, this is what occurred. I could be wrong. It would mean that Marx and Engels were the real culprits, either singly or in concert. I incline to think, again on the balance of probabilities, that Marx himself was responsible in the original German versions. Why? Well Engels s editorial work did not focus on this section of the text. His responsibility would remain, however, to the extent that he did not correct the error as editor and reader of the proofs of the fourth German and both original English editions. Of course, I was prepared to be proved wrong. The truth was out there, somewhere, pirouetting on the German translations. Thus I sent out a plea for someone to check the German originals, in the hope that a prompt reply would ensue. Sure enough, it did. I have to admit that I was indeed wrong, again. Of course, I could still have pretended that my tilting and leaning in the last paragraph - the sort overbalancing of which Marx might have been guilty after a night on the beer with his old mate Wilhelm Liebknecht - did not occur. That is, I could have edited the text, made it appear that I had not tilted and leaned at all and headed triumphantly to the conclusion that the German editions did not contain the error and that Marx was off the hook! I could have done that, but there were too many people in the loop by this time. The truth is, as provided by Andy Blunden: ... Wird der Arbeitstag um 2 Stunden verl ngert, also von 12 auf 14 Stunden, so bleibt die Mehrarbeit 6 Stunden, der Mehrwert 3 sh. ... All you need to do is to look at the numbers: die Mehrarbeit 6 Stunden, der Mehrwert 3 sh.... This quotation is from the German section of the Marx internet archive. What is more, as the intrepid Andy Blunden has also detected, the 1932 German version published by Karl Korsch, which uses the 1872 German text, is also error free. So the German bourgeoisie did not steal the three shillings after all. It was the British ruling class all along. They always have been cunning and ruthless bastards, concealing super exploitation under a treacle topping of civility. Samuel bloody Moore, what have you done? Engels was clearly too trusting. At any rate he, too, missed the error, it seems. As for Fowkes, well all I have to say is this: Ben, you should have looked at the German numbers and averted your eyes from the English editions on the desk next to you! As for the Pauls? Well perhaps they were merely good translators and not more. This then is my interpretation of the three shilling mystery. Of course, I could be wrong ...

A three shilling mystery by James Doughney

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/guide/3smystery.htm

The work, the first volume of which I now submit to the public, forms the continuation of my Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie (A Contribution to the Criticism of Political Economy) published in 1859. The long pause between the first part and the continuation is due to an illness of many years duration that again and again interrupted my work. The substance of that earlier work is summarised in the first three chapters of this volume. This is done not merely for the sake of connexion and completeness. The presentation of the subject matter is improved. As far as circumstances in any way permit, many points only hinted at in the earlier book are here worked out more fully, whilst, conversely, points worked out fully there are only touched upon in this volume. The sections on the history of the theories of value and of money are now, of course, left out altogether. The reader of the earlier work will find, however, in the notes to the first chapter additional sources of reference relative to the history of those theories. Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of value, I have, as much as it was possible, popularised. The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour or value-form of the commodity is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy. With the exception of the section on value-form, therefore, this volume cannot stand accused on the score of difficulty. I presuppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself. The physicist either observes physical phenomena where they occur in their most typical form and most free from disturbing influence, or, wherever possible, he makes experiments under conditions that assure the occurrence of the phenomenon in its normality. In this work I have to examine the capitalist mode of production, and the conditions of production and exchange corresponding to that mode. Up to the present time, their classic ground is England. That is the reason why England is used as the chief illustration in the development of my theoretical ideas. If, however, the German reader shrugs his shoulders at the condition of the English industrial and agricultural labourers, or in optimist fashion comforts himself with the thought that in Germany things are not nearly so bad; I must plainly tell him, De te fabula narratur! [It is of you that the story is told. Horace] Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results. The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future. But apart from this. Where capitalist production is fully naturalised among the Germans (for instance, in the factories proper) the condition of things is much worse than in England, because the counterpoise of the Factory Acts is wanting. In all other spheres, we, like all the rest of Continental Western Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development. Alongside the modern evils, a whole series of inherited evils oppress us, arising from the passive survival of antiquated modes of production, with their inevitable train of social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif! [The dead holds the living in his grasp. formula of French common law] The social statistics of Germany and the rest of Continental Western Europe are, in comparison with those of England, wretchedly compiled. But they raise the veil just enough to let us catch a glimpse of the Medusa head behind it. We should be appalled at the state of things at home, if, as in England, our governments and parliaments appointed periodically commissions of inquiry into economic conditions; if these commissions were armed with the same plenary powers to get at the truth; if it was possible to find for this purpose men as competent, as free from partisanship and respect of persons as are the English factory-inspectors, her medical reporters on public health, her commissioners of inquiry into the exploitation of women and children, into housing and food. Perseus wore a magic cap down over his eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters. Let us not deceive ourselves on this. As in the 18th century, the American war of independence sounded the tocsin for the European middle class, so that in the 19th century, the American Civil War sounded it for the European working class. In England the process of social disintegration is palpable. When it has reached a certain point, it must react on the Continent. There it will take a form more brutal or more humane, according to the degree of development of the working class itself. Apart from higher motives, therefore, their own most important interests dictate to the classes that are for the nonce the ruling ones, the removal of all legally removable hindrances to the free development of the working class. For this reason, as well as others, I have given so large a space in this volume to the history, the details, and the results of English factory legislation. One nation can and should learn from others. And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement and it is the ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs. To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose [i.e., seen through rose-tinted glasses]. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class-interests. My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them. In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the materials it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest. The English Established Church, e.g., will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income. Now-a-days atheism is culpa levis [a relatively slight sin, c.f. mortal sin], as compared with criticism of existing property relations. Nevertheless, there is an unmistakable advance. I refer, e.g., to the Blue book published within the last few weeks: Correspondence with Her Majesty s Missions Abroad, regarding Industrial Questions and Trades Unions. The representatives of the English Crown in foreign countries there declare in so many words that in Germany, in France, to be brief, in all the civilised states of the European Continent, radical change in the existing relations between capital and labour is as evident and inevitable as in England. At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Wade, vice-president of the United States, declared in public meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of the relations of capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the day. These are signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple mantles or black cassocks. They do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will happen. They show that, within the ruling classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing. The second volume of this book will treat of the process of the circulation of capital (Book II.), and of the varied forms assumed by capital in the course of its development (Book III.), the third and last volume (Book IV.), the history of the theory. Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome. As to prejudices of so-called public opinion, to which I have never made concessions, now as aforetime the maxim of the great Florentine is mine:

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - 1867 Preface

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p1.htm

To the citizen Maurice Lach tre Dear Citizen, I applaud your idea of publishing the translation of Das Kapital as a serial. In this form the book will be more accessible to the working class, a consideration which to me outweighs everything else. That is the good side of your suggestion, but here is the reverse of the medal: the method of analysis which I have employed, and which had not previously been applied to economic subjects, makes the reading of the first chapters rather arduous, and it is to be feared that the French public, always impatient to come to a conclusion, eager to know the connexion between general principles and the immediate questions that have aroused their passions, may be disheartened because they will be unable to move on at once. That is a disadvantage I am powerless to overcome, unless it be by forewarning and forearming those readers who zealously seek the truth. There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - 1872 Preface

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p2.htm

I must start by informing the readers of the first edition about the alterations made in the second edition. One is struck at once by the clearer arrangement of the book. Additional notes are everywhere marked as notes to the second edition. The following are the most important points with regard to the text itself: In Chapter I, Section 1, the derivation of value from an analysis of the equations by which every exchange-value is expressed has been carried out with greater scientific strictness; likewise the connexion between the substance of value and the determination of the magnitude of value by socially necessary labour-time, which was only alluded to in the first edition, is now expressly emphasised. Chapter I, Section 3 (the Form of Value), has been completely revised, a task which was made necessary by the double exposition in the first edition, if nothing else. Let me remark, in passing, that that double exposition had been occasioned by my friend, Dr. L. Kugelmann in Hanover. I was visiting him in the spring of 1867 when the first proof-sheets arrived from Hamburg, and he convinced me that most readers needed a supplementary, more didactic explanation of the form of value. The last section of the first chapter, The Fetishism of Commodities, etc., has largely been altered. Chapter III, Section 1 (The Measure of Value), has been carefully revised, because in the first edition this section had been treated negligently, the reader having been referred to the explanation already given in Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie, Berlin 1859. Chapter VII, particularly Part 2 [Eng. ed., Chapter IX, Section 2], has been re-written to a great extent. It would be a waste of time to go into all the partial textual changes, which were often purely stylistic. They occur throughout the book. Nevertheless I find now, on revising the French translation appearing in Paris, that several parts of the German original stand in need of rather thorough remoulding, other parts require rather heavy stylistic editing, and still others painstaking elimination of occasional slips. But there was no time for that. For I had been informed only in the autumn of 1871, when in the midst of other urgent work, that the book was sold out and that the printing of the second edition was to begin in January of 1872. The appreciation which Das Kapital rapidly gained in wide circles of the German working class is the best reward of my labours. Herr Mayer, a Vienna manufacturer, who in economic matters represents the bourgeois point of view, in a pamphlet published during the Franco-German War aptly expounded the idea that the great capacity for theory, which used to be considered a hereditary German possession, had almost completely disappeared amongst the so-called educated classes in Germany, but that amongst its working class, on the contrary, that capacity was celebrating its revival. To the present moment Political Economy, in Germany, is a foreign science. Gustav von G lich in his Historical description of Commerce, Industry, &c., especially in the two first volumes published in 1830, has examined at length the historical circumstances that prevented, in Germany, the development of the capitalist mode of production, and consequently the development, in that country, of modern bourgeois society. Thus the soil whence Political Economy springs was wanting. This science had to be imported from England and France as a ready-made article; its German professors remained schoolboys. The theoretical expression of a foreign reality was turned, in their hands, into a collection of dogmas, interpreted by them in terms of the petty trading world around them, and therefore misinterpreted. The feeling of scientific impotence, a feeling not wholly to be repressed, and the uneasy consciousness of having to touch a subject in reality foreign to them, was but imperfectly concealed, either under a parade of literary and historical erudition, or by an admixture of extraneous material, borrowed from the so-called Kameral sciences, a medley of smatterings, through whose purgatory the hopeful candidate for the German bureaucracy has to pass. Since 1848 capitalist production has developed rapidly in Germany, and at the present time it is in the full bloom of speculation and swindling. But fate is still unpropitious to our professional economists. At the time when they were able to deal with Political Economy in a straightforward fashion, modern economic conditions did not actually exist in Germany. And as soon as these conditions did come into existence, they did so under circumstances that no longer allowed of their being really and impartially investigated within the bounds of the bourgeois horizon. In so far as Political Economy remains within that horizon, in so far, i.e., as the capitalist r gime is looked upon as the absolutely final form of social production, instead of as a passing historical phase of its evolution, Political Economy can remain a science only so long as the class struggle is latent or manifests itself only in isolated and sporadic phenomena. Let us take England. Its Political Economy belongs to the period in which the class struggle was as yet undeveloped. Its last great representative, Ricardo, in the end, consciously makes the antagonism of class interests, of wages and profits, of profits and rent, the starting point of his investigations, na vely taking this antagonism for a social law of Nature. But by this start the science of bourgeois economy had reached the limits beyond which it could not pass. Already in the lifetime of Ricardo, and in opposition to him, it was met by criticism, in the person of Sismondi. The succeeding period, from 1820 to 1830, was notable in England for scientific activity in the domain of Political Economy. It was the time as well of the vulgarising and extending of Ricardo s theory, as of the contest of that theory with the old school. Splendid tournaments were held. What was done then, is little known to the Continent generally, because the polemic is for the most part scattered through articles in reviews, occasional literature and pamphlets. The unprejudiced character of this polemic although the theory of Ricardo already serves, in exceptional cases, as a weapon of attack upon bourgeois economy is explained by the circumstances of the time. On the one hand, modern industry itself was only just emerging from the age of childhood, as is shown by the fact that with the crisis of 1825 it for the first time opens the periodic cycle of its modern life. On the other hand, the class struggle between capital and labour is forced into the background, politically by the discord between the governments and the feudal aristocracy gathered around the Holy Alliance on the one hand, and the popular masses, led by the bourgeoisie, on the other; economically by the quarrel between industrial capital and aristocratic landed property a quarrel that in France was concealed by the opposition between small and large landed property, and that in England broke out openly after the Corn Laws. The literature of Political Economy in England at this time calls to mind the stormy forward movement in France after Dr. Quesnay s death, but only as a Saint Martin s summer reminds us of spring. With the year 1830 came the decisive crisis. In France and in England the bourgeoisie had conquered political power. Thenceforth, the class struggle, practically as well as theoretically, took on more and more outspoken and threatening forms. It sounded the knell of scientific bourgeois economy. It was thenceforth no longer a question, whether this theorem or that was true, but whether it was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, politically dangerous or not. In place of disinterested inquirers, there were hired prize fighters; in place of genuine scientific research, the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic. Still, even the obtrusive pamphlets with which the Anti-Corn Law League, led by the manufacturers Cobden and Bright, deluged the world, have a historic interest, if no scientific one, on account of their polemic against the landed aristocracy. But since then the Free Trade legislation, inaugurated by Sir Robert Peel, has deprived vulgar economy of this its last sting. The Continental revolution of 1848 9 also had its reaction in England. Men who still claimed some scientific standing and aspired to be something more than mere sophists and sycophants of the ruling classes, tried to harmonise the Political Economy of capital with the claims, no longer to be ignored, of the proletariat. Hence a shallow syncretism, of which John Stuart Mill is the best representative. It is a declaration of bankruptcy by bourgeois economy, an event on which the great Russian scholar and critic, N. Tschernyschewsky, has thrown the light of a master mind in his Outlines of Political Economy according to Mill. In Germany, therefore, the capitalist mode of production came to a head, after its antagonistic character had already, in France and England, shown itself in a fierce strife of classes. And meanwhile, moreover, the German proletariat had attained a much more clear class-consciousness than the German bourgeoisie. Thus, at the very moment when a bourgeois science of Political Economy seemed at last possible in Germany, it had in reality again become impossible. Under these circumstances its professors fell into two groups. The one set, prudent, practical business folk, flocked to the banner of Bastiat, the most superficial and therefore the most adequate representative of the apologetic of vulgar economy; the other, proud of the professorial dignity of their science, followed John Stuart Mill in his attempt to reconcile irreconcilables. Just as in the classical time of bourgeois economy, so also in the time of its decline, the Germans remained mere schoolboys, imitators and followers, petty retailers and hawkers in the service of the great foreign wholesale concern. The peculiar historical development of German society therefore forbids, in that country, all original work in bourgeois economy; but not the criticism of that economy. So far as such criticism represents a class, it can only represent the class whose vocation in history is the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production and the final abolition of all classes the proletariat. The learned and unlearned spokesmen of the German bourgeoisie tried at first to kill Das Kapital by silence, as they had managed to do with my earlier writings. As soon as they found that these tactics no longer fitted in with the conditions of the time, they wrote, under pretence of criticising my book, prescriptions for the tranquillisation of the bourgeois mind. But they found in the workers press see, e.g., Joseph Dietzgen s articles in the Volksstaat antagonists stronger than themselves, to whom (down to this very day) they owe a reply. An excellent Russian translation of Das Kapital appeared in the spring of 1872. The edition of 3,000 copies is already nearly exhausted. As early as 1871, N. Sieber, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Kiev, in his work David Ricardo s Theory of Value and of Capital, referred to my theory of value, of money and of capital, as in its fundamentals a necessary sequel to the teaching of Smith and Ricardo. That which astonishes the Western European in the reading of this excellent work, is the author s consistent and firm grasp of the purely theoretical position. That the method employed in Das Kapital has been little understood, is shown by the various conceptions, contradictory one to another, that have been formed of it. Thus the Paris Revue Positiviste reproaches me in that, on the one hand, I treat economics metaphysically, and on the other hand imagine! confine myself to the mere critical analysis of actual facts, instead of writing receipts (Comtist ones?) for the cook-shops of the future. In answer to the reproach in re metaphysics, Professor Sieber has it: M. Block Les Th oriciens du Socialisme en Allemagne. Extrait du Journal des Economistes, Juillet et Ao t 1872 makes the discovery that my method is analytic and says: Par cet ouvrage M. Marx se classe parmi les esprits analytiques les plus minents. [By this work, Mr. Marx ranks among the most eminent analytical minds.] German reviews, of course, shriek out at Hegelian sophistics. The European Messenger of St. Petersburg in an article dealing exclusively with the method of Das Kapital (May number, 1872, pp. 427 436), finds my method of inquiry severely realistic, but my method of presentation, unfortunately, German-dialectical. It says: I cannot answer the writer better than by aid of a few extracts from his own criticism, which may interest some of my readers to whom the Russian original is inaccessible. After a quotation from the preface to my Criticism of Political Economy, Berlin, 1859, pp. IV VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on: Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method? Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction. My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of the Idea, he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of the Idea. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought. The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of Das Kapital, it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre [Epigones B chner, D hring and others] who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing s time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a dead dog. I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell. In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary. The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - 1873 Afterword

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Mr. J. Roy set himself the task of producing a version that would be as exact and even literal as possible, and has scrupulously fulfilled it. But his very scrupulosity has compelled me to modify his text, with a view to rendering it more intelligible to the reader. These alterations, introduced from day to day, as the book was published in parts, were not made with equal care and were bound to result in a lack of harmony in style. Having once undertaken this work of revision, I was led to apply it also to the basic original text (the second German edition), to simplify some arguments, to complete others, to give additional historical or statistical material, to add critical suggestions, etc. Hence, whatever the literary defects of this French edition may be, it possesses a scientific value independent of the original and should be consulted even by readers familiar with German. Below I give the passages in the Afterword to the second German edition which treat of the development of Political Economy in Germany and the method employed in the present work.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - 1875 Afterword

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p4.htm

Marx was not destined to get this, the third, edition ready for press himself. The powerful thinker, to whose greatness even his opponents now make obeisance, died on March 14, 1883. Upon me who in Marx lost the best, the truest friend I had and had for forty years the friend to whom I am more indebted than can be expressed in words upon me now devolved the duty of attending to the publication of this third edition, as well as of the second volume, which Marx had left behind in manuscript. I must now account here to the reader for the way in which I discharged the first part of my duty. It was Marx's original intention to re-write a great part of the text of Volume I, to formulate many theoretical points more exactly, insert new ones and bring historical and statistical materials up to date. But his ailing condition and the urgent need to do the final editing of Volume II induced him to give up this scheme. Only the most necessary alterations were to be made, only the insertions which the French edition ( Le Capital. Par Karl Marx. Paris, Lach tre 1873) already contained, were to be put in. Among the books left by Marx there was a German copy which he himself had corrected here and there and provided with references to the French edition; also a French copy in which he had indicated the exact passages to be used. These alterations and additions are confined, with few exceptions, to the last [Engl. ed.: second last] part of the book: The Accumulation of Capital. Here the previous text followed the original draft more closely than elsewhere, while the preceding sections had been gone over more thoroughly. The style was therefore more vivacious, more of a single cast, but also more careless, studded with Anglicisms and in parts unclear; there were gaps here and there in the presentation of arguments, some important particulars being merely alluded to. With regard to the style, Marx had himself thoroughly revised several sub-sections and thereby had indicated to me here, as well as in numerous oral suggestions, the length to which I could go in eliminating English technical terms and other Anglicisms. Marx would in any event have gone over the additions and supplemental texts and have replaced the smooth French with his own terse German; I had to be satisfied, when transferring them, with bringing them into maximum harmony with the original text. Thus not a single word was changed in this third edition without my firm conviction that the author would have altered it himself. It would never occur to me to introduce into Das Kapital the current jargon in which German economists are wont to express themselves that gibberish in which, for instance, one who for cash has others give him their labour is called a labour-giver (Arbeitgeber) and one whose labour is taken away from him for wages is called a labour-taker (Arbeitnehmer). In French, too, the word travail is used in every-day life in the sense of occupation. But the French would rightly consider any economist crazy should he call the capitalist a donneur de travail (a labour-giver) or the worker a receveur de travail (a labour-taker). Nor have I taken the liberty to convert the English coins and moneys, measures and weights used throughout the text to their new-German equivalents. When the first edition appeared there were as many kinds of measures and weights in Germany as there are days in the year. Besides there were two kinds of marks (the Reichsmark existed at the time only in the imagination of Soetbeer, who had invented it in the late thirties), two kinds of gulden and at least three kinds of taler, including one called neues Zweidrittel. In the natural sciences the metric system prevailed, in the world market English measures and weights. Under such circumstances English units of measure were quite natural for a book which had to take its factual proofs almost exclusively from British industrial relations. The last-named reason is decisive even to-day, especially because the corresponding relations in the world market have hardly changed and English weights and measures almost completely control precisely the key industries, iron and cotton. In conclusion a few words on Marx's art of quotation, which is so little understood. When they are pure statements of fact or descriptions, the quotations, from the English Blue books, for example, serve of course as simple documentary proof. But this is not so when the theoretical views of other economists are cited. Here the quotation is intended merely to state where, when and by whom an economic idea conceived in the course of development was first clearly enunciated. Here the only consideration is that the economic conception in question must be of some significance to the history of science, that it is the more or less adequate theoretical expression of the economic situation of its time. But whether this conception still possesses any absolute or relative validity from the standpoint of the author or whether it already has become wholly past history is quite immaterial. Hence these quotations are only a running commentary to the text, a commentary borrowed from the history of economic science, and establish the dates and originators of certain of the more important advances in economic theory. And that was a very necessary thing in a science whose historians have so far distinguished themselves only by tendentious ignorance characteristic of careerists. It will now be understandable why Marx, in consonance with the Afterword to the second edition, only in very exceptional cases had occasion to quote German economists. There is hope that the second volume will appear in the course of 1884.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - 1883 Preface

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p5.htm

The publication of an English version of Das Kapital needs no apology. On the contrary, an explanation might be expected why this English version has been delayed until now, seeing that for some years past the theories advocated in this book have been constantly referred to, attacked and defended, interpreted and misinterpreted, in the periodical press and the current literature of both England and America. When, soon after the author's death in 1883, it became evident that an English edition of the work was really required, Mr. Samuel Moore, for many years a friend of Marx and of the present writer, and than whom, perhaps, no one is more conversant with the book itself, consented to undertake the translation which the literary executors of Marx were anxious to lay before the public. It was understood that I should compare the MS. with the original work, and suggest such alterations as I might deem advisable. When, by and by, it was found that Mr. Moore's professional occupations prevented him from finishing the translation as quickly as we all desired, we gladly accepted Dr. Aveling's offer to undertake a portion of the work; at the same time Mrs. Aveling, Marx's youngest daughter, offered to check the quotations and to restore the original text of the numerous passages taken from English authors and Blue books and translated by Marx into German. This has been done throughout, with but a few unavoidable exceptions. The following portions of the book have been translated by Dr. Aveling: (I) Chapters X. (The Working-Day), and XI. (Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value); (2) Part VI. (Wages, comprising Chapters XIX. to XXII.); (3) from Chapter XXIV., Section 4 (Circumstances that &c.) to the end of the book, comprising the latter part of Chapter XXIV.,. Chapter XXV., and the whole of Part VIII. (Chapters XXVI. to XXXIII); (4) the two Author's prefaces. All the rest of the book has been done by Mr. Moore. While, thus, each of the translators is responsible for his share of the work only, I bear a joint responsibility for the whole. The third German edition, which has been made the basis of our work throughout, was prepared by me, in 1883, with the assistance of notes left by the author, indicating the passages of the second edition to be replaced by designated passages, from the French text published in 1873. The alterations thus effected in the text of the second edition generally coincided with changes prescribed by Marx in a set of MS. instructions for an English translation that was planned, about ten years ago, in America, but abandoned chiefly for want of a fit and proper translator. This MS. was placed at our disposal by our old friend Mr. F. A. Sorge of Hoboken N. J. It designates some further interpolations from the French edition; but, being so many years older than the final instructions for the third edition, I did not consider myself at liberty to make use of it otherwise than sparingly, and chiefly in cases where it helped us over difficulties. In the same way, the French text has been referred to in most of the difficult passages, as an indicator of what the author himself was prepared to sacrifice wherever something of the full import of the original had to be sacrificed in the rendering. There is, however, one difficulty we could not spare the reader: the use of certain terms in a sense different from what they have, not only in common life, but in ordinary Political Economy. But this was unavoidable. Every new aspect of a science involves a revolution in the technical terms of that science. This is best shown by chemistry, where the whole of the terminology is radically changed about once in twenty years, and where you will hardly find a single organic compound that has not gone through a whole series of different names. Political Economy has generally been content to take, just as they were, the terms of commercial and industrial life, and to operate with them, entirely failing to see that by so doing, it confined itself within the narrow circle of ideas expressed by those terms. Thus, though perfectly aware that both profits and rent are but sub-divisions, fragments of that unpaid part of the product which the labourer has to supply to his employer (its first appropriator, though not its ultimate exclusive owner), yet even classical Political Economy never went beyond the received notions of profits and rents, never examined this unpaid part of the product (called by Marx surplus-product) in its integrity as a whole, and therefore never arrived at a clear comprehension, either of its origin and nature, or of the laws that regulate the subsequent distribution of its value. Similarly all industry, not agricultural or handicraft, is indiscriminately comprised in the term of manufacture, and thereby the distinction is obliterated between two great and essentially different periods of economic history: the period of manufacture proper, based on the division of manual labour, and the period of modern industry based on machinery. It is, however, self- evident that a theory which views modern capitalist production as a mere passing stage in the economic history of mankind, must make use of terms different from those habitual to writers who look upon that form of production as imperishable and final. A word respecting the author's method of quoting may not be out of place. In the majority of cases, the quotations serve, in the usual way, as documentary evidence in support of assertions made in the text. But in many instances, passages from economic writers are quoted in order to indicate when, where, and by whom a certain proposition was for the first time clearly enunciated. This is done in cases where the proposition quoted is of importance as being a more or less adequate expression of the conditions of social production and exchange prevalent at the time, and quite irrespective of Marx's recognition, or otherwise, of its general validity. These quotations, therefore, supplement the text by a running commentary taken from the history of the science. Our translation comprises the first book of the work only. But this first book is in a great measure a whole in itself, and has for twenty years ranked as an independent work. The second book, edited in German by me, in 1885, is decidedly incomplete without the third, which cannot be published before the end of 1887. When Book III. has been brought out in the original German, it will then be soon enough to think about preparing an English edition of both. Das Kapital is often called, on the Continent, the Bible of the working class. That the conclusions arrived at in this work are daily more and more becoming the fundamental principles of the great working- class movement, not only in Germany and Switzerland, but in France, in Holland and Belgium, in America, and even in Italy and Spain, that everywhere the working class more and more recognises, in these conclusions, the most adequate expression of its condition and of its aspirations, nobody acquainted with that movement will deny. And in England, too, the theories of Marx, even at this moment, exercise a powerful influence upon the socialist movement which is spreading in the ranks of cultured people no less than in those of the working class. But that is not all. The time is rapidly approaching when a thorough examination of England's economic position will impose itself as an irresistible national necessity. The working of the industrial system of this country, impossible without a constant and rapid extension of production, and therefore of markets, is coming to a dead stop. Free Trade has exhausted its resources; even Manchester doubts this its quondam economic gospel. Foreign industry, rapidly developing, stares English production in the face everywhere, not only in protected, but also in neutral markets, and even on this side of the Channel. While the productive power increases in a geometric, the extension of markets proceeds at best in an arithmetic ratio. The decennial cycle of stagnation, prosperity, over-production and crisis, ever recurrent from 1825 to 1867, seems indeed to have run its course; but only to land us in the slough of despond of a permanent and chronic depression. The sighed for period of prosperity will not come; as often as we seem to perceive its heralding symptoms, so often do they again vanish into air. Meanwhile, each succeeding winter brings up afresh the great question, what to do with the unemployed"; but while the number of the unemployed keeps swelling from year to year, there is nobody to answer that question; and we can almost calculate the moment when the unemployed losing patience will take their own fate into their own hands. Surely, at such a moment, the voice ought to be heard of a man whose whole theory is the result of a lifelong study of the economic history and condition of England, and whom that study led to the conclusion that, at least in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly expected the English ruling classes to submit, without a pro-slavery rebellion, to this peaceful and legal revolution.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - 1886 Preface

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p6.htm

The fourth edition required that I should establish in final form, as nearly as possible, both text and footnotes. The following brief explanation will show how I have fulfilled this task. After again comparing the French edition and Marx s manuscript remarks I have made some further additions to the German text from that translation. They will be found on p. 80 (3rd edition, p. 88) [present edition, pp. 117-18], pp. 458-60 (3rd edition, pp. 509-10) [present edition, pp. 462-65], pp. 547-51 (3rd edition, p. 600) [present edition, pp. 548-51], pp. 591-93 (3rd edition, p. 644) [present edition, 587-89] and p. 596 (3rd edition, p. 648) [present edition, p. 591] in Note 1. I have also followed the example of the French and English editions by putting the long footnote on the miners into the text (3rd edition, pp.509-15; 4th edition, pp. 461-67) [present edition, pp. 465-71]. Other small alterations are of a purely technical nature. Further, I have added a few more explanatory notes, especially where changed historical conditions seemed to demand this. All these additional notes are enclosed in square brackets and marked either with my initials or D. H. Meanwhile a complete revision of the numerous quotations had been made necessary by the publication of the English edition. For this edition Marx s youngest daughter, Eleanor, undertook to compare all the quotations with their originals, so that those taken from English sources, which constitute the vast majority, are given there not as re-translations from the German but in the original English form. In preparing the fourth edition it was therefore incumbent upon me to consult this text. The comparison revealed various small inaccuracies. Page numbers wrongly indicated, due partly to mistakes in copying from notebooks, and partly to the accumulated misprints of three editions; misplaced quotation or omission marks, which cannot be avoided when a mass of quotations is copied from note-book extracts; here and there some rather unhappy translation of a word; particular passages quoted from the old Paris notebooks of 1843-45, when Marx did not know English and was reading English economists in French translations, so that the double translation yielded a slightly different shade of meaning, e.g., in the case of Steuart, Ure, etc., where the English text had now to be used and other similar instances of trifling inaccuracy or negligence. But anyone who compares the fourth edition with the previous ones can convince himself that all this laborious process of emendation has not produced the smallest change in the book worth speaking of. There was only one quotation which could not be traced the one from Richard Jones (4th edition, p. 562, note 47). Marx probably slipped up when writing down the title of the book. All the other quotations retain their cogency in full, or have enhanced it due to their present exact form. Here, however, I am obliged to revert to an old story. I know of only one case in which the accuracy of a quotation given by Marx has been called in question. But as the issue dragged beyond his lifetime I cannot well ignore it here. On March 7, 1872, there appeared in the Berlin Concordia, organ of the German Manufacturers Association, an anonymous article entitled: How Karl Marx Quotes. It was here asserted, with an effervescence of moral indignation and unparliamentary language, that the quotation from Gladstone s Budget Speech of April 16, 1863 (in the Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen s Association, 1864, and repeated in Capital, Vol. I, p. 617, 4th edition; p. 671, 3rd edition) [present edition, p. 610], had been falsified; that not a single word of the sentence: this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power ... is ... entirely confined to classes of property was to be found in the (semi-official) stenographic report in Hansard. But this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone s speech. Exactly the opposite is stated there. (In bold type): This sentence, both in form and substance, is a lie inserted by Marx." Marx, to whom the number of Concordia was sent the following May, answered the anonymous author in the Volksstaat of June 1st. As he could not recall which newspaper report he had used for the quotation, he limited himself to citing, first the equivalent quotation from two English publications, and then the report in The Times, according to which Gladstone says: That is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country. I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it were my belief that it was confined to classes who are in easy circumstances. This takes no cognisance at all of the condition of the labouring population. The augmentation I have described and which is founded, I think, upon accurate returns, is an augmentation entirely confined to classes possessed of property. Thus Gladstone says here that he would be sorry if it were so, but it is so: this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property. And as to the semi-official Hansard, Marx goes on to say: In the version which he afterwards manipulated [zurechtgest mpert], Mr. Gladstone was astute enough to obliterate [wegzupfuschen] this passage, which, coming from an English Chancellor of the Exchequer, was certainly compromising. This, by the way, is a traditional usage in the English parliament and not an invention gotten up by little Lasker against Bebel. The anonymous writer gets angrier and angrier. In his answer in Concordia, July 4th, he sweeps aside second-hand sources and demurely suggests that it is the custom to quote parliamentary speeches from the stenographic report; adding, however, that The Times report (which includes the falsified sentence) and the Hansard report (which omits it) are substantially in complete agreement, while The Times report likewise contains the exact opposite to that notorious passage in the Inaugural Address. This fellow carefully conceals the fact that The Times report explicitly includes that self-same notorious passage, alongside of its alleged opposite. Despite all this, however, the anonymous one feels that he is stuck fast and that only some new dodge can save him. Thus, whilst his article bristles, as we have just shown, with impudent mendacity and is interlarded with such edifying terms of abuse as bad faith, dishonesty, lying allegation, that spurious quotation, impudent mendacity, a quotation entirely falsified, this falsification, simply infamous, etc., he finds it necessary to divert the issue to another domain and therefore promises to explain in a second article the meaning which we (the non-mendacious anonymous one) attribute to the content of Gladstone s words. As if his particular opinion, of no decisive value as it is, had anything whatever to do with the matter. This second article was printed in Concordia on July 11th. Marx replied again in the Volksstaat of August 7th now giving also the reports of the passage in question from the Morning Star and the Morning Advertiser of April 17, 1863. According to both reports Gladstone said that he would look with apprehension, etc., upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power if he believed it to be confined to classes in easy circumstances. But this augmentation was in fact entirely confined to classes possessed of property. So these reports too reproduced word for word the sentence alleged to have been lyingly inserted. Marx further established once more, by a comparison of The Times and the Hansard texts, that this sentence, which three newspaper reports of identical content, appearing independently of one another the next morning, proved to have been really uttered, was missing from the Hansard report, revised according to the familiar custom, and that Gladstone, to use Marx s words, had afterwards conjured it away. In conclusion Marx stated that he had no time for further intercourse with the anonymous one. The latter also seems to have had enough, at any rate Marx received no further issues of Concordia. With this the matter appeared to be dead and buried. True, once or twice later on there reached us, from persons in touch with the University of Cambridge, mysterious rumours of an unspeakable literary crime which Marx was supposed to have committed in Capital, but despite all investigation nothing more definite could be learned. Then, on November 29, 1883, eight months after Marx s death, there appeared in The Times a letter headed Trinity College, Cambridge, and signed Sedley Taylor, in which this little man, who dabbles in the mildest sort of co-operative affairs, seizing upon some chance pretext or other, at last enlightened us, not only concerning those vague Cambridge rumours, but also the anonymous one in Concordia. What appears extremely singular, says the little man from Trinity College, is that it was reserved for Professor Brentano (then of the University of Breslau, now of that of Strassburg) to expose... the bad faith which had manifestly dictated the citation made from Mr. Gladstone s speech in the [Inaugural] Address. Herr Karl Marx, who... attempted to defend the citation, had the hardihood, in the deadly shifts to which Brentano s masterly conduct of the attack speedily reduced him, to assert that Mr. Gladstone had manipulated the report of his speech in The Times of April 17, 1863, before it appeared in Hansard, in order to obliterate a passage which was certainly compromising for an English Chancellor of the Exchequer. On Brentano s showing, by a detailed comparison of texts, that the reports of The Times and of Hansard agreed in utterly excluding the meaning which craftily isolated quotation had put upon Mr. Gladstone s words, Marx withdrew from further controversy under the plea of want of time. So that was at the bottom of the whole business! And thus was the anonymous campaign of Herr Brentano in Concordia gloriously reflected in the productively co-operating imagination of Cambridge. Thus he stood, sword in hand, and thus he battled, in his masterly conduct of the attack, this St. George of the German Manufacturers Association, whilst the infernal dragon Marx, in deadly shifts, speedily breathed his last at his feet. All this Ariostian battle scene, however, only serves to conceal the dodges of our St. George. Here there is no longer talk of lying insertion or falsification, but of craftily isolated quotation. The whole issue was shifted, and St. George and his Cambridge squire very well knew why. Eleanor Marx replied in the monthly journal To-day (February 1884), as The Times refused to publish her letter. She once more focussed the debate on the sole question at issue: had Marx lyingly inserted that sentence or not? To this Mr. Sedley Taylor answered that the question whether a particular sentence did or did not occur in Mr. Gladstone s speech had been, in his opinion, of very subordinate importance in the Brentano-Marx controversy, compared to the issue whether the quotation in dispute was made with the intention of conveying, or of perverting Mr. Gladstone s meaning. He then admits that The Times report contains a verbal contrariety"; but, if the context is rightly interpreted, i.e., in the Gladstonian Liberal sense, it shows what Mr. Gladstone meant to say. (To-day, March, 1884.) The most comic point here is that our little Cambridge man now insists upon quoting the speech not from Hansard, as, according to the anonymous Brentano, it is customary to do, but from The Times report, which the same Brentano had characterised as necessarily bungling. Naturally so, for in Hansard the vexatious sentence is missing. Eleanor Marx had no difficulty (in the same issue of To-day) in dissolving all this argumentation into thin air. Either Mr. Taylor had read the controversy of 1872, in which case he was now making not only lying insertions but also lying suppressions; or he had not read it and ought to remain silent. In either case it was certain that he did not dare to maintain for a moment the accusation of his friend Brentano that Marx had made a lying addition. On the contrary, Marx, it now seems, had not lyingly added but suppressed an important sentence. But this same sentence is quoted on page 5 of the Inaugural Address, a few lines before the alleged lying insertion. And as to the contrariety in Gladstone s speech, is it not Marx himself, who in Capital, p. 618 (3rd edition, p. 672), note 105 [present edition, p. 611, Note 1], refers to the continual crying contradictions in Gladstone s Budget speeches of 1863 and 1864"? Only he does not presume la Mr. Sedley Taylor to resolve them into complacent Liberal sentiments. Eleanor Marx, in concluding her reply, finally sums up as follows: Marx has not suppressed anything worth quoting, neither has he lyingly added anything. But he has restored, rescued from oblivion, a particular sentence of one of Mr. Gladstone s speeches, a sentence which had indubitably been pronounced, but which somehow or other had found its way out of Hansard. With that Mr. Sedley Taylor too had had enough, and the result of this whole professorial cobweb, spun out over two decades and two great countries, is that nobody has since dared to cast any other aspersion upon Marx s literary honesty; whilst Mr. Sedley Taylor, no doubt, will hereafter put as little confidence in the literary war bulletins of Herr Brentano as Herr Brentano will in the papal infallibility of Hansard.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - 1890 Preface

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p7.htm

With regard to D hring. It is a great deal from this man that he almost positively receives the section on Primitive Accumulation. He is still young. As a follower of Carey, he is in direct opposition to the free-traders. Added to this he is a university lecturer and therefore not grieved that Professor Roscher, who blocks the way for all of them, should get some kicks. One thing in his appraisal has struck me very much. Namely, so long as the determination of value by working time is left vague , as it is with Ricardo, it does not make people shaky. But as soon as it is brought into exact connection with the working day and its variations, a very unpleasant new light dawns upon them. I believe that an additional reason for D hring to review my book at all was malice against Roscher. His fear of being treated like Roscher is certainly very easily perceptible. It is strange that the fellow does not sense the three fundamentally new elements of the book: 1) That in contrast to all former political economy, which from the very outset treats the different fragments of surplus value with their fixed forms of rent, profit, and interest as already given, I first deal with the general form of surplus value, in which all these fragments are still undifferentiated in solution, as it were. 2) That the economists, without exception, have missed the simple point that if the commodity has a double character use value and exchange value then the labour represented by the commodity must also have a two-fold character, while the mere analysis of labour as such, as in Smith, Ricardo, etc, is bound to come up everywhere against inexplicable problems. This is, in fact, the whole secret of the critical conception. 3) That for the first time wages are presented as an irrational manifestation of a relation concealed behind them, and that this is scrupulously demonstrated with regard to the two forms of wages time rates and piece rates. (It was a help to me that similar formulae are often found in higher mathematics.) And as for D hring s modest objections to the determination of value, he will be astonished to see in Volume 2 how little the determination of value directly counts in bourgeois society. Indeed, no form of society can prevent the working time at the disposal of society from regulating production one way or another. So long, however, as this regulation is accomplished not by the direct and conscious control of society over its working time which is possible only with common ownership but by the movement of commodity prices, things remain as you have already quite aptly described them in the Deutsch-Franz sische Jahrb cher...

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

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D'abord my best happy new years to your wife, Fr nzchen and yourself. And then my best thanks for the Jupiter and for the interest you display in doing propaganda and fooling the German press. As our friend Weerth, too early dead, used to sing: With all due respect to your medical authority, you have too low an opinion of the English, German and French doctors, whom I have consulted and still consult here, if you think that they cannot distinguish anthrax (carbuncles) from furuncles, particularly here in England the land of carbuncles, which is actually a proletarian illness. And even if the doctors could not distinguish between the two, the patient who knows both sorts of horrors, as I do, could do so; for the subjective impression they make is quite different, although, as far as I know, no doctor has as yet succeeded in making an exact theoretical diagnosis of the two. It is only in the last few years that I have been persecuted with the thing. Before that it was a complete stranger to me. At the moment of writing to you I am not quite better and not yet able to work. Again several weeks lost and not even pour le roi de Prusse! The thing that appears most clearly in Herr D hring s criticism is fear. I should be very glad if you could get for me D hring s book Gegen die Verkleinerer Carey s and von Th nen s Der isolierte Staat mit Bezug auf die Landwirtschaft or something like that (together with a note of the price). Such orders from here take too long. Finally I would ask you to be good enough to send me about 12 copies of my photograph (only the full-faced one). About a dozen friends are plaguing me for them. Enclosed, for Mrs Kugelmann, the photographs of my eldest daughter Jenny and of Eleanor, who sends her best greetings to Fr nzchen. Ad vocem Liebknecht: Let him play le petit grand homme. for a little while. All that will turn out for the best in the best of all possible worlds. I had all sorts of personal anecdotes to relate, but shall save them for the next time, when the writing position no longer troubles me. One of my friends here, who dabbles a lot in phrenology, said yesterday when looking at the photograph of your wife: A great deal of wit! So you see, phrenology is not the baseless art which Hegel imagined.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

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Cut, lanced, etc, in short treated in every respect secundum legem artis. In spite of that the thing is continually breaking out again so that, with the exception of two or three days, I have been lying quite fallow for eight weeks. Last Saturday I went out again for the first time Monday another relapse. I hope that it will finish this week, but who will guarantee me against new eruptions? It is extremely disagreeable. Moreover it attacks my head. My friend, Dr Gumpert in Manchester, urges me to use arsenic. What do you think of it? Your Koppel is not yet here. Kertbeny is a German-Hungarian whose real name, between ourselves, is Benkert. The German-Hungarians love to Magyarise their names. I do not know him personally. Since he had a quarrel with Vogt about 1860, I asked him for some notes but received nothing of any use. (My Hungarian material was obtained partly from Szemere, partly from my own experience in London.) Later he applied to me in a quarrel he had with Kossuth. As far as I have been able to learn, there is nothing politically suspicious against him. He seems to be a literary busybody. His heresies with regard to Bonaparte are held by many otherwise honest eastern barbarians in any case watch him. I also consider it more diplomatic not to show any mistrust of him (and for that reason I am enclosing the biographical notice which he requested). Nevertheless, as soon as the writing position no longer troubles me, I shall order information about him from other sources. You guessed rightly about Plagiarismus. I was intentionally uncivil and hair-raising in order to make Hofstetten suspect Liebknecht and to conceal my authorship. This between ourselves. You probably know that Engels and Siebel have got articles about my book published in the Barmen-Zeitung, Elberfelder Zeitung, Frankfurt B rsen-Zeitung and to the great grief of Heinrich B rgers in the D sseldorf-Zeitung. Siebel was the man in Barmen whose acquaintance I wanted you to make. He is now in Madeira for his health. Last week the Saturday Review the blood and culture paper had a notice about my book in a review of recent German books. I have come off pretty well, as you will see from the following passage: Ouff! My best greetings to your dear wife and Fr nzchen. You will get other photographs from here, for we have now discovered that the water colours which looked good the first day dissolved in patches immediately after. Write to me as often as your time permits. During my illness and the many occasions for vexation, letters from friends are very welcome.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1866

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I can now understand the curiously embarrassed tone of Herr D hring's criticism. He is ordinarily a most bumptious, cheeky boy, who sets up as a revolutionary in political economy. He has done two things. He has published, firstly, (proceeding from Carey) a Critical Foundation of Political Economy (about 500 pages) and, secondly, a new Natural Dialectic (against the Hegelian). My book has buried him from both sides. He gave it notice because of his hatred for Roscher, etc. For the rest, half intentionally, and half from lack of insight, he commits deceptions. He knows very well that my method of development is not Hegelian, since I am a materialist and Hegel is an idealist. Hegel's dialectic is the basic form of all dialectic, but only after it has been stripped of its mystical form, and it is precisely this which distinguishes my method. As for Ricardo, it really hurt Herr D hring that in my treatment of Ricardo the weak points in him, which Carey and a hundred others before him pointed out, do not even exist. Consequently he attempts, in mauvaise foi [bad faith], to burden me with all Ricardo's limitations. But never mind. I must be grateful to the man, since he is the first expert who has said anything at all. In the second volume (which will certainly never appear if my health does not improve) property in land will be one of the subjects dealt with, competition only in so far as it is required for the treatment of the other themes. During my illness (which I hope will soon cease altogether) I was unable to write, but I got down an enormous amount of "stuff," statistical and otherwise, which in itself would have been enough to make people sick who are not used to that sort of fodder and do not possess stomachs accustomed to digesting it rapidly. My circumstances are very harassing, as I have been unable to do any additional work which would bring in money, and yet certain' appearances must be maintained for the children's sake. If I did not have these two damned volumes to produce (and in addition to look for an English publisher) which can be done only in London, I would go to Geneva, where I could live very well with the means at my disposal.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

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Your letter affected me both unpleasantly and pleasantly (you see, I always move in dialectical contradictions). Unpleasantly, because I know your circumstances and it would be rotten of me if I were to accept such presents at the expense of your family. I therefore regard these 15 as a loan, which I shall in time repay. Pleasantly, not only as a mark of your great friendship (and in the bustle of the world friendship is the only personal thing that matters), but also because you have helped me out of a very difficult position in regard to the forthcoming marriage. Apart from medicines and doctors, I have spent so much money in the last four months on blue books, enquiries and Yankee reports, etc, on banks, that I really had nothing left for my daughter. You may be sure that I have often discussed leaving London for Geneva, not only with myself and my family, but also with Engels. Here I have to spend from 400 to 500 annually; in Geneva I could live on 200. But considered all in all, it is for the time being impossible. I can finish my work only in London. And only here can I hope to draw at least a comparatively decent monetary profit from this work. But to do that I must stay here for a time. Apart from the fact that, if I were to leave here at this critical time, the whole labour movement, which I influence from behind the scenes, would fall into very bad hands and go the wrong way. So, for the time being, all drawbacks notwithstanding, fate ties me to London. Quant Koppel, you do him wrong. Had I not been ill, he would have amused me and such a diversion never hurts the family. Engels and I have not written for Liebknecht s paper hitherto. (Engels has now sent him two articles on my book.) Eccarius is the usual London correspondent. Borkheim wrote an article against Herzen and company. M s letter gave me great pleasure. But he has to some extent misunderstood my development of the subject. Otherwise he would have seen that I described large-scale industry not only as the mother of the antagonism, but also as the producer of the material and spiritual conditions for resolving that antagonism, although it is true the solution cannot proceed along pleasant lines. With regard to Factory Acts as the primary condition for giving the working class elbow-room for development and movement I demand them from the state, as a compulsory law, not only against the manufacturers, but against the workers themselves (on page 542, note 52, I refer to the resistance offered by working women to a limitation of the working day). If Herr M develops the same energy as Owen, he can break that resistance. That the individual manufacturer (apart from the extent to which he tries to affect legislation) can do little in the matter, I also say on page 243: But looking at things as a whole, all this does not, indeed, depend on the good or ill will of the individual capitalist [etc]. See also note 114 (p 260). That, nevertheless, the individual can do something has been clearly demonstrated by such manufacturers as Fielden, Owen, etc. Their main effectiveness must of course be of a public nature. As for the Dolfuses in Alsace, they are humbugs, who have managed, by the conditions enumerated in their contracts, to establish a comfortable serf-relationship to their workers which is at the same time very profitable to them. They have been thoroughly exposed in the Paris press and for that very reason one of the Dolfuses, a short time ago, introduced and got carried in the corps l gislatif one of the most infamous paragraphs of the press law that la vie priv e doit etre mur e . With warmest greetings to your dear wife. propos: Have you seen that my personal enemy, Schweitzer, has heaped eulogies on my head in six numbers of the Sozialdemokrat because of my book? Very painful for that old harlot Hatzfeld.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

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Human history is like paleontology. Owing to a certain judicial blindness even the best intelligences absolutely fail to see the things which lie in front of their noses. Later, when the moment has arrived, we are surprised to find traces everywhere of what we failed to see. The first reaction against the French Revolution and the period of Enlightenment bound up with it was naturally to see everything as mediaeval and romantic, even people like Grimm are not free from this. The second reaction is to look beyond the Middle Ages into the primitive age of each nation, and that corresponds to the socialist tendency, although these learned men have no idea that the two have any connection. They are therefore surprised to find what is newest in what is oldest--even equalitarians, to a degree which would have made Proudhon shudder. To show how much we are all implicated in this judicial blindness:--right in my own neighbourhood, on the Hunsr cken, the old Germanic system survived up till the last few years, I now remember my father talking to me about it from a lawyer's point of view. Another proof: Just as the geologists, even the best, like Cuvier, have expounded certain facts in a completely distorted way, so philologists of the force of a Grimm mistranslated the simplest Latin sentences because they were under the influence of M ser etc., (who, I remember, was enchanted that "liberty" never existed among the Germans but that "Luft macht eigen" [the air makes the serf]) and others. E.g., the well-known passage in Tacitus: "arva per annos mutant et superest ager," which means, "they exchange the fields, arva (by lot, hence also sortes [lot] in all the later law codes of the barbarians) and the common land remains over" (ager as public land contrasted with arva)--is translated by Grimm, etc. "they cultivate fresh fields every year and still there is always (uncultivated) land over!" So too the passage: "Colunt discreti ac diversi" [their tillage is separate and scattered] is supposed to prove that from time immemorial the Germans carried on cultivation on individual farms like Westphalian junkers. But the same passage continues: "Vicos locant non in nostrum morem connexis et cohaerantibus aedificiis: suum quisque locum spatio circumdat;" [they do not lay out their villages with buildings connected and joined together after our fashion: each surrounds his dwelling with a strip of land]; and primitive Germanic villages still exist here and there in Denmark in the form described. Obviously Scandinavia must become as important for German jurisprudence and economics as for German mythology. And only by starting from there shall we: be able to decipher our past again. For the rest even Grimm, etc., find in Caesar that the Germans always settled as Geschlechtsgenossenschaften and not as individuals: "gentibus cognationibusque qui uno coiereant" [according to clans and kindreds, who settled together]. But what would old Hegel say in the next world if he heard that the general [Allgemeine] in German and Norse means nothing but the common land [Gemeinland], and the particular, Sundre, Besondere, nothing but the separate property divided off from the common land? Here are the logical categories coming damn well out of "our intercourse" after all. Climate and the Vegetable World throughout the Ages, a History of Both, by Fraas (1847) is very interesting, especially as proving that climate and flora have changed in historic times. He is a Darwinist before Darwin and makes even the species arise in historic times. But he is also an agricultural expert. He maintains that as a result of cultivation and in proportion to its degree, the "damp" so much beloved by the peasant is lost (hence too plants emigrate from south to north) and eventually the formation of steppes begins. The first effects of cultivation are useful, later devastating owing to deforestation, etc. This man is both a thoroughly learned philologist (he has written books in Greek) and a chemist, agricultural expert, etc. The whole conclusion is that cultivation when it progresses in a primitive way and is not consciously controlled (as a bourgeois of course he does not arrive at this), leaves deserts behind it, Persia, Mesopotamia, etc., Greece. Here again another unconscious socialist tendency! This Fraas is also interesting from a German point of view. First Dr. Med., then inspector and teacher of chemistry and technology. Now head of the Bavarian veterinary organisation, university professor, head of government experimental agriculture, etc. In his last things one notices his advanced age, but he is still a gay lad. Has knocked around a lot in Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt! His history of agriculture is important too. He calls Fourier "this pious and humanistic socialist." Of the Albanians, etc.: "every kind of abominable lewdness and rape." It is necessary to look carefully at the new and newest things on agriculture. The physical school is opposed to the chemical school.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

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I was prevented by all sorts of incidents from writing to you. Even now only a few lines. My eldest and youngest daughters have both got scarlatina. I remember that in Hanover you spoke to me of the treatment required once the crisis was passed and the scaling-off process begins. Will you be so kind as to write me about it at once. With best greetings to your dear wife and Fr nzchen. Liebknecht is growing more and more imbecile in his South-German stupidity. He is not enough of a dialectician to criticise both sides at the same time.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

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Best thanks for your letter. The children are getting on well, although they are not yet well enough to go out (today is the ninth day). As for my book, I received five copies of the Elberfelder-Zeitung yesterday, containing a very benevolent review by Dr Schnake (I know the name from 1848, but do not know him personally). There is a good deal of confusion in his presentation of the matter. On the other hand, I am informed from Berlin that clown Faucher makes merry over my book in the June number of his journal. It is good that the gentlemen at last give vent to their annoyance. I do not yet know if and when I am coming to Germany. I am at last free of carbuncles. Engels is certainly going over in August or September. Salut! And my compliments to Mrs Kugelmann and the little one.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

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Every child knows a nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish. Every child knows, too, that the masses of products corresponding to the different needs required different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labor of society. That this necessity of the distribution of social labor in definite proportions cannot possibly be done away with by a particular form of social production but can only change the mode of its appearance , is self-evident. No natural laws can be done away with. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws assert themselves. And the form in which this proportional distribution of labor asserts itself, in the state of society where the interconnection of social labor is manifested in the private exchange of the individual products of labor, is precisely the exchange value of these products. Science consists precisely in demonstrating how the law of value asserts itself. So that if one wanted at the very beginning to "explain" all the phenomenon which seemingly contradict that law, one would have to present science before science. It is precisely Ricardo's mistake that in his first chapter on value [ On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation , Page 479] he takes as given all possible and still to be developed categories in order to prove their conformity with the law of value. On the other hand, as you correctly assumed, the history of the theory certainly shows that the concept of the value relation has always been the same more or less clear, hedged more or less with illusions or scientifically more or less definite. Since the thought process itself grows out of conditions, is itself a natural process, thinking that really comprehends must always be the same, and can vary only gradually, according to maturity of development, including the development of the organ by which the thinking is done. Everything else is drivel. The vulgar economist has not the faintest idea that the actual everyday exchange relations can not be directly identical with the magnitudes of value. The essence of bourgeois society consists precisely in this, that a priori there is no conscious social regulation of production. The rational and naturally necessary asserts itself only as a blindly working average. And then the vulgar economist thinks he has made a great discovery when, as against the revelation of the inner interconnection, he proudly claims that in appearance things look different. In fact, he boasts that he holds fast to appearance, and takes it for the ultimate. Why, then, have any science at all? But the matter has also another background. Once the interconnection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions collapses before their collapse in practice. Here, therefore, it is absolutely in the interest of the ruling classes to perpetuate a senseless confusion. And for what other purpose are the sycophantic babblers paid, who have no other scientific trump to play save that in political economy one should not think at all? But satis superque [enough and to spare]. In any case it shows what these priests of the bourgeoisie have come down to, when workers and even manufacturers and merchants understand my book [Capital] and find their way about in it, while these "learned scribes" (!) complain that I make excessive demands on their understanding....

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

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On receiving your letter I did what I could, but in vain. At the moment it is impossible to get money for foreign strikes from the unions here. I find the variety of information about the Lindon factory contained in the Hanoverian papers finally sent to me very interesting. My family is at present at the seaside which was the more necessary as both the girls were very weak after their illness. Lafargue, after having passed his surgery examinations here in London, will perform operations in a hospital as assistant surgeon for a few weeks and then move to Paris, where he still has to take the French medical examinations. At the moment I am more concerned with private than with public economy. Engels has offered to guarantee a loan of 100 150 for me at five per cent interest, the first half to be paid in January, the second in July. Up to the present, however, I have not been able to find the lender. I hope very much that the state of my work will permit me to leave London for good and go to the Continent next year, at the end of September. I shall break away as soon as I can dispense with the Museum here. The dearness of living here is becoming more and more burdensome as time goes on. It is true that the pettiness of conditions over there is not much to my taste. However, Ruhe ist die erste B rgerpflicht and it is the only way of attaining peace. There are all sorts of scandals here concerning the so-called French branch of the International Working-Men s Association, about which I shall report in my next letter. I am now solus and it seems strange to be without all the noise of the children.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

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Your obstinate silence is quite incomprehensible to me. Did I give cause for it in some way in my last letter? I hope not. In any case it was unintentional. I need not tell you explicitly, you know that you are my most intimate friend in Germany and I do not see that, inter amicos, it is necessary to keep such a sharp watch on one another for any trifle. Least of all have you this right in regard to me, because you know how much I am obliged to you. You have done more apart from everything personal for my book than all Germany put together. But, perhaps, you are so energetically silent in order to show me that you are not like the crowd of so-called friends who are silent when things go badly and speak when they go well. But there was no need for such a demonstration on your part. When I speak of a good state of affairs I mean, firstly, the propaganda which my book has been doing and the recognition which it has found among the German workers, since you wrote me last. And, secondly, there is the wonderful progress which the International Working-Men s Association has made, especially in England. A few days ago a Petersburg publisher surprised me with the news that a Russian translation of Das Kapital is now being printed. He asked for my photograph for the title page and I could not deny this trifle to my good friends , the Russians. It is an irony of fate that the Russians, whom I have fought for twenty-five years, and not only in German, but in French and English, have always been my patrons . In Paris in 1843 and 1844 the Russian aristocrats there treated me most tenderly. My book against Proudhon (1847) and the one published by Duncker (1859) have had a greater sale in Russia than anywhere else. And the first foreign nation to translate Kapital is the Russian. But too much should not be made of all this. The Russian aristocracy is, in its youth, educated at German universities and in Paris. They always run after the most extreme that the West can offer. It is pure gourmandise, such as a part of the French aristocracy practised during the eighteenth century. Ce n'est pas pour les tailleurs et les bottiers, Voltaire said of his own enlightenment. This does not prevent the same Russians, once they enter state service, from becoming rascals. I am having a good deal of bother just now in Germany in connection with the quarrels of the leaders, as you can see from the enclosed letters, which you will please return. On the one side, Schweitzer, who has nominated me Pope in partibus infidelium, so that I can proclaim him the workers emperor of Germany. On the other side, Liebknecht, who forgets that Schweitzer, in point of fact, forced him to remember that there is a proletarian movement apart from the petty-bourgeois democratic movement. I hope that you and your family are well. And I hope that I have not fallen into disfavour with your dear wife. propos: the International Women s Association, duce Frau G gg (read Geck), has sent an epistle to the Brussels Congress, enquiring whether ladies may join. The answer, of course, was a courteous affirmative. Should you therefore persist in your silence, I shall send your wife a mandate as correspondent of the General Council. I have suffered a good deal from the heat, because of my liver, but am at the moment well. PS 1: The Spanish revolution came like a deus ex machina to prevent the otherwise inevitable and disastrous Franco-Prussian war. PS 2: You wrote me once that I am to receive a book by B chner. When and how?

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

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With Buchez' state aid for associations he combined the Chartist cry of universal suffrage. He overlooked the fact that conditions in Germany and England were different. He overlooked the lessons of the Second Empire with regard to universal suffrage. Moreover from the outset, like everyone who declares that he has a panacea for the sufferings of the masses in his pocket, he gave his agitation a religious and sectarian character. Every sect is in fact religious. Further, just because he was the founder of a sect, he denied all natural connection with the earlier movement both in Germany and outside. He fell into the same mistake as Proudhon, and instead of looking among the genuine elements of the class movement for the real basis of his agitation, he tried to prescribe their course to these elements according to a certain dogmatic recipe. Most of what I am now saying after the event I foretold to Lassalle in 1862, when he came to London and invited me to place myself with him at the head of the new movement. You yourself have experienced in your own person the opposition between the movement of a sect and the movement of a class. The sect sees the justification for its existence and its "point of honour"--not in what it has in common with the class movement but in the particular shibboleth which distinguishes it from it. Therefore when at Hamburg you proposed the congress for the formation of trade unions you were only able to defeat the opposition of the sect by threatening to resign from the office of president. In addition, you were obliged to double yourself and to announce that in one case you were acting as the head of the sect and in the other as the organ of the class movement. The dissolution of the General Association of German Workers gave you the historic opportunity to accomplish a great step forward and to declare, to prove if necessary, that a new stage of development had now been reached, and that moment was ripe for the sectarian movement to merge into the class movement and make an end of all dependence. Where the true content of the sect was concerned it would, as with all previous working-class sects, be carried on into the general movement as an element which enriched it. Instead of this you actually demanded of the class movement that it should subordinate itself to the movement of a particular sect. Those who are not your friends have concluded from this that whatever happens you want to preserve your "own workers' movement."

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

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Since at this moment, when your letter arrives, I am plagued with a visit, I shall write just these few lines. Kertbeny s address: No I/III (what the III means I do not know; perhaps, third floor) Behrenstrasse. Now permit me a word. Since you and Engels were of the opinion that it would be useful, I gave way to having this advertisement in the Gartenlaube. I was decisively opposed to it. And now I ask you urgently, to give up this joke definitely. It leads to nothing except that fellows like Keil and Daheim believe that one belongs to the pack of great literary and other men, and needs or desires their protection. I think it is more harmful than useful and beneath the dignity of a scientific man. For example, Meyer s Konversationslexikon wrote asking me for a biography a long time ago. Not only did I not send one, but I did not even answer their letter. Everybody must reach salvation in his own way. As for Kertbeny, he is a confused, boastful, importunate literary idler and the less one has to do with him, the better.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1866

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As I said, the repetitions are the result partly of the deficient terminology and partly of unfamiliarity with the discipline of logic. It will be very hard to get them all out. If the man absolutely insists on having his things printed I am not sure that to limit him to two printer's sheets would be the best for him in any case it would give him the devil's own job as he is not conscious of his repetitions, and then I am not sure either whether two sheets would get any attention paid them at all. More likely six to eight. And he will never get it into a periodical.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

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I regard Dietzgen's development, in so far as Feuerbach, etc.--in short, his sources--are not obvious, as entirely his own independent achievement. For the rest, I agree with everything you say. I will say something to him about the repetitions. It is bad luck for him that it is precisely Hegel that he has not studied.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

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Here the electors have increased from 24,000 to not quite 48,000, while the Tories have increased their voters from 6,000 to 14,000--15,000. The Liberals threw away a lot and Mr. Henry did a lot of harm, but it cannot be denied that the increase of working-class voters has brought the Tories more than their mere additional percentage and has improved their relative position. On the whole this is to the good. It looks at present as if Gladstone will get a narrow majority and so be compelled to keep the ball rolling and reform the Reform Act; with a big majority he would have left it all to God as usual. But it remains a hopeless certificate of destitution for the English proletariat, all the same. The parson has shown unexpected power and so has the cringing to respectability. Not a single working-class candidate had a ghost of a chance, but my Lord Tomnoddy or any parvenu snob could have the workers' votes with pleasure.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_11_18-abs.htm

Tell your wife I never suspected her of being one of Generaless Geck's subordinates. My question was only intended as a joke. In any case ladies cannot complain of the International, for it has elected a lady, Madame Law, to be a member of the General Council. Joking aside, great progress was evident in the last Congress of the American "Labour Union" in that among other things, it treated working women with complete equality. While in this respect the English, and still more the gallant French, are burdened with a spirit of narrow-mindedness. Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex (the ugly ones included).

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_12_12-abs.htm

The delay in this letter is due to two circumstances. Firstly, the damned foggy weather here nothing but mist gave me an extraordinarily severe grippe, which lasted nearly four weeks. Secondly, the enclosed photographs were taken at least seven weeks ago, but only just recently could copies be made from the plate, because of the same weather and the atmospheric darkness. The enclosed letter from A R ge was given to my friend Strohn in Bradford by one of his business friends. R ge obviously could not resist the negation of negation . You must send the letter back to me at once, because Strohn has to return it to the addressee. The treasurer of our General Council, Cowell-Stepney a very rich and distinguished man, but wholly, if in somewhat foolish fashion, devoted to the workers cause enquired of a friend in Bonn about literature (German) dealing with the labour question and socialism. The friend sent him en r ponse a list made out by Dr Held, Professor of Political Economy at Bonn. His comments show the terrible limitations of these learned mandarins. He (Held) writes about me and Engels: Fine company to be in! A reader in political economy at a German university writes me that I have quite convinced him, but but his position compels him, like other colleagues , not to express his convictions. This cowardice of the experts, on the one side, and the conspiracy of silence of the bourgeois and reactionary press, on the other, is doing me great harm. Meissner writes that the accounts for the autumn quarter turned out badly. He is still 200 thalers below the cost of production. He adds: If in a few large places such as Berlin, etc, half as much had been done, as Kugelmann has done in Hanover, we should already have had a second edition. I became a grandfather on 1 January; the new year present was a little boy. Lafargue has at last managed to get excused from three examinations and now has only two to take in France. With best greetings to your dear wife and Fr nzchen. The cross which my eldest daughter, Jenny, is wearing In the photograph is a Polish insurrection cross of 1864.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_02_11.htm

The Parisians are making a regular study of their recent revolutionary past, in order to prepare themselves for the business of the impending new revolution. First the origin of the Empire--then the coup d'etat of December. This has been completely forgotten, just as the reaction in Germany succeeded in stamping out the memory of 1848-49. That is why T not's books on the coup d'etat attracted such enormous attention in Paris and the provinces that in a short time they went through ten impressions. They were followed by dozens of other books on the same period. It was all the rage and therefore soon became a speculative business for the publishers. These books were written by the opposition--T not, for example is one of the Si cle [Century] men (I mean the liberal bourgeois paper, not our "century"). All the liberal and illiberal scoundrels who belong to the official opposition patronise this movement. Also the republican democrats, people like, for example, Delescluze, formerly Ledru Rollin's adjutant, and now, as a republican patriarch, editor of the Paris R veil. Up to the present everybody has been revelling in these posthumous disclosures or rather reminiscences, everybody who is not Bonapartist. But then came the other side of the medal. First of all the French government itself got the renegade Hippolyte Castille to publish Les Massacres de Juin 1848 [The Massacres of June 1848.] This was a blow for Thiers, Falloux, Marie, Jules Favre, Jules Simon, Pelletan, etc., in short, for the chiefs of what is called in France l' Union Liberale, who want to wangle the next elections, the infamous old dogs! Then, however, came the Socialist Party, which "exposed" the opposition--and the republican democrats of the old style. Among others, Vermorel: Les Hommes de 1848 and l'Opposition. [The Men of 1848 and The Opposition]. Vermorel is a Proudhonist. Finally came the Blanquists, for example G. Tridon: Gironde et Girondins. And so the whole historic witches' cauldron is bubbling. When shall we be so far!

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_03_03-abs.htm

As a matter of fact we would rather they had kept their "innumerable legions" in France, Spain and Italy for themselves. Bakunin thinks to himself: if we approve his "radical programme" he can make a big noise about this and compromise us tant soit peu (just a little bit). If we declare ourselves against it we shall be decried as counter-revolutionaries. Moreover: if we admit them he will see to it that he is supported by some riff-raff at the Congress in Basle. I think the answer should be on the following lines: According to Paragraph I of the Statutes every workers' association "aiming at the same end, viz, the protection, advancement and complete emancipation of the working classes" shall be admitted. As the stage of development reached by different sections of workers in the same country and by the working class in different countries necessarily varies very much, the actual movement necessarily expresses itself in very various theoretical forms. The community of action which the International Workingmen's Association called into being, the exchange of ideas by means of the different organs of the sections in all countries, and, finally, the direct discussions at the General Congresses, will by degrees create for the general workers' movement its common theoretical programme also. With regard to the programme of the "Alliance," therefore, it is not necessary for the General Council to submit it to a critical examination. The Council has not to examine whether it is an adequate, scientific expression of the working-class movement. It has only to ask if the general tendency of the programme is in opposition to the general tendency of the International Workingmen's Association--the complete emancipation of the working classes. This reproach could only apply to one phrase in the programme, par. 2: "above all things it desires the political, economic and social equalisation of the classes." "The equalisation of the classes," literally interpreted, is nothing but another expression for the "harmony of capital and labour" preached by the bourgeois socialists. Not the logically impossible "equalisation of classes" but the historically necessary "abolition of classes" constitutes the final aim of the International Workingmen's Association. But from the context in which this phrase occurs in the programme it would appear that it is only a slip of the pen. The less, therefore, does the General Council doubt that this phrase, which might lead to serious misunderstanding, will be removed from the programme. This being assumed, it is in accordance with the principle of the International Workingmen's Association to leave to each section the responsibility for its own programme. There is therefore nothing to prevent the transformation of the sections of the Alliance into Sections of the Workingmen's Association. As soon as this has taken place, an enumeration of the newly joined sections according to country, locality and number must be sent to the General Council in accordance with the regulations. This last point--the census of their legions--will especially tickle the gentlemen. Tell me everything you want altered in this draft of the reply when you return the letter. A notification from the Geneva Russia section of the Bakunin "Alliance" of their desire to affiliate with the International.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_03_05-abs.htm

More amusing than Hegel's commentary is that of Mr. Jules Janin, from which you will find extracts in the appendix to the little volume. This cardinal de la mer [sea-cardinal] feels the lack of a moral in Diderot's Rameau and has therefore set the thing right by the discovery that all Rameau's contrariness arises from his vexation at not being a " born gentleman." The Kotzebue-ish rubbish which he has piled up on this cornerstone is being performed as a melodrama in London. From Diderot to Jules Janin is no doubt what the physiologists call regressive metamorphosis. The French intellect as it was before the revolution and under Louis Philippe!... Le Neveu de Rameau [Rameau's Nephew], a satirical dialogue by Diderot (1713-1784), one of the leading French materialist philosophers of the 18th century, editor of the Encyclop die and a brilliant man of letters. The passage from Hegel quoted here by Marx is from the Ph nomonolgie des Geistes (Phenomenology of Mind), [Ed. Eng. ed.] Janin, Jules (1804-74) French bourgeois author and literary critic with a popular reputation in bourgeois circles.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_04_15-abs.htm

You must forgive my protracted silence. Firstly I have for several weeks been suffering from my liver complaint, which always afflicts me in the spring months and is the more troublesome in that it makes me almost entirely unfit for intellectual work. Secondly, however, I have been waiting from one day to the next for the photograph that you want and that Herr Fahnenbach, a German sleepyhead, has not delivered to this day. My wife and youngest daughter are at the moment visiting the Lafargues in Paris, so that we are very lonely here. With the best will in the world, I could not find any Palmerston pamphlets (mine) for you. The Urquhart publications against Russia and Palmerston, although containing a good deal that is correct, spoil everything through the crotchets of the great David . Your article sent to Engels. It will be difficult for us, in our complete isolation from the respectable press, to do anything for you in this field, but we shall try. About the end of August I intend visiting you with my daughter and spending till the end of September with you in Germany, wherever you like, even at the risk of neglecting to finish my manuscript. I cannot, of course, stay any longer than that. I read your letter to Borkheim. You say quite rightly that the St Bartholomew nonsense about the Belgian massacres will not do. But you in your turn overlook the importance and the peculiar meaning of these events. Belgium, you must know, is the only country, where, year in, year out, swords and muskets have the last word to say in strikes. In an address of the General Council here, which I wrote in English and French, the situation is made clear. By tomorrow the English address will be ready. I will send it to you immediately. I have also just written an English address for the General Council of the International Association to the National Labour Union in the United States, in reference to the war with England, which the bourgeois republicans are just now wanting to stage. Herr Meissner has had the (printed and corrected) manuscript of the 18 Brumaire since the end of January, but has constantly delayed printing it. That s pleasant too! He waits until the time when it would be effective is past, from stupid booksellers business reasons. With best greetings to your dear wife and Fr nzchen.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_05_11.htm

Thus Stern pinched it from La Rochefoucauld! Very nice, too:

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_06_26.htm

Another fine idea of Wilhelm's, that one must neither accept nor even force concessions to the workers from the "present state." This will get him the hell of a long way with the workers.... [In Tridon's pamphlet--Gironde et Girondins (1869)--there is] the comic idea that the dictatorship of Paris over France, which was the reason why the first revolution went to pieces, could be carried out in just the same sort of way to-day but with a successful result.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_07_06-abs.htm

Your letter of 2 June came while I was in Manchester. They forgot to send it on to me and later forgot its existence completely. I have only just found it, my attention having been called to it by your letter of 6 July. I only got this second letter yesterday because, as my Laura was ill, I have spent eight days incognito in Paris where, by the by, the growing movement is palpable. Otherwise I should have hastened to write to you while you were ill. As for the 18 Brumaire, Meissner s assurances are sheer evasions. He has had the thing since the end of January. Naturally, he did not get the preface, because he had not sent the last two proof-sheets. I got those at last on 23 June and sent them back corrected the same day, together with the preface. So more than three weeks have passed again, until we are really landed in the dull season of the book trade. I shall not come to Germany till September. I shall make the journey mainly because of my daughter. But in any case I would come to visit you in Heligoland (I am travelling through Hanover). As to the biography by Engels, please send it back to me. He must rewrite it, as it is intended for a different public. With cordial greetings to your dear wife and Fr nzchen.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_07_15.htm

I had an abscess (carbunculous) for about 12 days (not yet quite healed) on my left arm, like the one that I had under the left armpit while I was staying with Engels in Manchester. But that is not the reason why I have delayed until today my answer to your letter of 17 inst. Since I would be most unwilling to cut across your plans, and was also personally interested in enjoying your company, I tried several ways of arranging the affair to fit in with your intentions. But it is absolutely impossible. At the end of August I must be in Holland with my relatives, where I have many affairs to settle that are of great interest and importance to me. My suggestion, to postpone the rendezvous to another time, was emphatically turned down because the people I am to meet are all tied to their business and can only meet me in Brussels at that particular time. So I shall leave London about the end of August. You must let me know when you will be back in Hanover. I shall see how far I can regulate my further progress to fit in. With best greetings to your dear wife and Fr nzchen. In all haste, as Tussychen and Engels have just arrived. You see from these lines that we arrived safely in England, yesterday. We had a few sea adventures, and others, about which Jennychen will write you. Meanwhile, our heartiest greetings to the whole house. Special greetings to Madame la Comtesse and K uzchen. Ditto greetings from Engels, Lafargue, Mrs Marx, etc. The little one is better again.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_07_30a.htm

The cow [Liebknecht] believes in the future "Staat DER Demokratie" [democratic state]. Privately this means at one moment constitutional England, at another the bourgeois United States, and at the next the wretched Switzerland. "It" has not the faintest idea of revolutionary politics. This is what he gives as a proof--according to Schwabenmayer--of democratic energy: the railway to California was built by the bourgeoisie presenting themselves, through Congress, with an enormous mass of "national land"; that is to say, therefore, they expropriated the workers from it by importing a mob of Chinese to force down wages and finally formed a new branch of themselves, the "financial aristocracy."

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_08_10-abs.htm

We returned safely from Ireland on Thursday, a week ago; were in Dublin, the Wicklow Mountains, Killarney and Cork. Had quite a good time but both women came back even hiberniores than they had been before they left. Weather fine on the whole. According to the papers you are having even worse weather there than we are here. Learned from Trench s Realities of Irish Life why Ireland is so overpopulated. That worthy gentleman proves by examples that on the average the land is cultivated so well by the Irish peasants that an outlay of 10-15 per acre, which is completely recouped in 1-4 years, raises its rental value from 1 to 20 and from 4 to 25-30 shillings per acre. This profit is to be pocketed by the landlords. Mr. Trench is in turn nicely checked by his own statements to Senior, which the latter has had published. Trench tells the liberal Senior that if he were an Irish peasant he would be a Ribbonman too!... Ireland s trade has grown enormously in the past 14 years. The port of Dublin was unrecognisable. On Queenstown Quay I heard a lot of Italian, also Serbian, French and Danish or Norwegian spoken. There are indeed a good many Italians in Cork, as the comedy has it. The country itself, however, seems downright depopulated, and one is immediately led to think that there are far too few people. The state of war is also noticeable everywhere. There are squads of Royal Irish all over the place, with sheath-knives, and occasionally a revolver at their side and a police baton in their hand; in Dublin a horse-drawn battery drove right through the centre of town, a thing I have never seen in England, and there are soldiers literally everywhere. The worst about the Irish is that they become corruptible as soon as they stop being peasants and turn bourgeois. True, this is the case with most peasant nations. But in Ireland it is particularly bad. That is also why the press is so terribly lousy.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_09_27.htm

The best joke of the Irish is to propose O'Donovan Rossa as candidate for Tipperary. If this succeeds, Gladstone will find himself in a fine fix. And now another amnesty in Italy! I hope to read the details about the debates, etc., in the International next Sunday in the Bee-Hive. Should there be any documents, please send them on to me. Last Sunday the Bee-Hive had nothing about the International although it did report on the wedding of the Duke of Abercorn s daughters. You would therefore greatly oblige me by ordering it immediately at a second-hand bookseller s. Butt s Irish People: none in London. Other Irish pamphlets, for example, those of Lords Rosse and Lifford: cannot find. Such are the answers my bookseller received from his London agent, and he told me at the same time that in general the English book trade cannot take it upon itself to obtain publications appearing in Ireland, since it is not the custom to have a correspondent in Dublin, but only in London. I'll write directly to Duffy in Dublin. I've found some very useful things about Ireland here: Wolfe Tone s Memoirs, etc., in the catalogue. Whenever I ask for these things in the library, they are not to be found, like Wakefield. Some old fellow must have had all the stuff together and returned it en masse, so that the whole lot is hidden away somewhere. But in any case these things must be found. Goldwin Smith of Irish History and Irish Character is a wise bourgeois thinker. Ireland was intended by providence as a grazing land, the prophet L once de Lavergne foretold it, ergo pereat, the Irish people!

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_11_17.htm

The whole question at issue does not seem to me to have any direct connection with economics proper. Ricardo says, rent is the surplus yield of the more fertile pieces of land over that of the less fertile. Carey says just the same. ... They are therefore agreed on what rent is. The dispute is only about how rent arises. Now Ricardo's description of the process by which rent originates (Carey, p. 104) is just as unhistorical as all the similar detailed stories of the economists and as Carey's own great Robinson-Crusoeade about Adam and Eve (p. 96 seq.). In the older economists, including Ricardo, this is still excusable to a certain extent; they do not want any historical knowledge, they are just as unhistorical in their whole conception as the other apostles of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, with whom such alleged historical digressions are nothing more than a manner of speech enabling them to represent the origin of this, that or the other to themselves in a rational way, and in which primitive man always thinks and behaves exactly as if he were an apostle of eighteenth-century Enlightenment. But when Carey, who wants to develop his own historical theory, proceeds to introduce Adam and Eve to us as Yankee backwoodsmen, he cannot expect us to believe him, he has not the same excuse. There would be no dispute at all if Ricardo had not been naive enough to call the more productive land simply "fertile." The most fertile and most favourably situated land "is, according to Ricardo, the first cultivated. Just the way a thoughtful bourgeois in a land that has been cultivated for centuries would be bound to represent the thing to himself. Now Carey fastens on to the "fertile," foists on to Ricardo the assertion that the lands most capable of productivity in themselves are those taken into cultivation, and says: No, on the contrary, the most naturally fertile lands (the valley of the Amazon, the Ganges delta, tropical Africa, Borneo and New Guinea, etc.) are not cultivated even yet; the first settlers, because they cannot help themselves, start cultivation on land which drains itself, namely, strips lying on hills and slopes, but these are by nature poorer land. And when Ricardo says: fertile and the most favourably situated, he is saying the same thing, without noticing that he is expressing himself loosely and that a contradiction can be introduced between these two qualifications connected by "and." But when Carey inserts a sketch on page 138 and declares that Ricardo puts his first settlers in the valley while Carey puts them on the hills (on bare crags and impracticable declivities of 45 degrees, in the sketch) he is simply lying about Ricardo. Carey's historical illustrations, in so far as they refer to America, are the only useful thing in the book. As a Yankee he was able to live through the process of settlement himself and could follow it from the beginning: here, therefore, he knows all about it. Nevertheless there is no doubt a lot of uncritical stuff here as well, which would have first to be sifted out. But when he gets to Europe he begins inventing and making himself ridiculous. And that he is not unprejudiced even in America is indicated by the eagerness with which he attempts to prove the worthlessness, indeed the negative quality, of the value of the uncultivated land (that in some respects it is worth minus 10 dollars an acre) and praises the self-sacrifice of the societies which, to their own certain ruin, make waste land serviceable for mankind. Related of the country of colossal land jobbery, this produces a humorous effect. Moreover, he never mentions the prairie land here and it is very lightly touched upon elsewhere. The whole story of the negative value of the waste land and all the calculation he gives to prove it are after all best contradicted by America itself. If the story were true, America would not only be the poorest of countries, but would be becoming relatively poorer every year, because more and more labour would be thrown away on this worthless land. Now as to his definition of rent: "The amount received as rent is interest upon the value of labour expended, minus the difference between the productive power (the rent-paying land) and that of the newer soils which can be brought into activity by the application of the same labour that has been there given to the work"--pp. 165-6. This may, within certain limits, have a certain amount of truth here and there, especially in America. But rent is in any case such a complicated thing, to which so many other circumstances contribute, that even in those cases, this definition could apply only if other things were equal, only to two pieces of land lying side by side. That "interest for the value of labour expended" is also contained in rent, Ricardo knew as well as he. If Carey declares the land as such to be worse than worthless then rent is bound of course to be either "interest upon the value of labour expended," or, as it is called on p. 39, theft. But he has still to show us the transition from theft to interest. The origin of rent in different countries and even in one and the same country seems to me to be by no means such a simple process as both Ricardo and Carey imagine. In Ricardo, as I said, this is excusable; it is the story of the fishers and hunters in the sphere of agriculture. It is not in fact an economic dogma, but Carey wants to make a dogma out of his theory and prove it to the world--for which indeed historical studies of a very different sort from Mr. Carey's are necessary. There 'may even have been places where rent originated in Ricardo's way and others where it originated in Carey's way, and still others where its origin was entirely different. One might also remark to Carey that where fever has to be reckoned with, and above all tropical fever, economics pretty well cease to hold. Unless his theory of population means that with the increase of inhabitants the surplus population is obliged to begin work on the most fertile, i.e., the most unhealthy pieces of land, an attempt in which they either succeed or perish. If so, he has successfully established a harmony between himself and Malthus. In Northern Europe, rent originated neither in Ricardo's nor in Carey's way, but simply from the feudal burdens which were later reduced to their right economic level by free competition. In Italy different again, see Rome. To calculate how much of the rent in the old civilised countries is really original rent and how much is interest for labour invested is impossible, because every case is different. Moreover it has no importance at all once it has been proved that rent can also increase where no labour is put into the land. The grandfather of Sir Humphrey de Trafford, in Old Trafford near Manchester, was so laden with debt that he did not know what to do. His grandson, after paying off all the debts, has an income of 40,000 a year. If we subtract about 10,000 of this, which comes from building land, 30,000 remains as the yearly value of the agricultural estate, which eighty years ago brought;n perhaps 2,000. Further, if 3,000 is taken as interest on invested labour and capital, which is a lot, there remains an increase of 25,000, or five times the former value, including the improvements. And all this, not because labour was put into it, but because labour was put into something else near by--because the estate lies close to a city like Manchester, where milk, butter and garden produce get a good price. It is just the same on a larger scale. From the moment England became a corn and cattle importing country, and even earlier, the density of population became a factor in the determination of rent, and particularly of rent-increases, quite independently of the labour invested in the land of England as a whole. Ricardo, with his "most favourably situated lands" includes the consideration of connection with the market as well, Carey ignores it. And if he were then to say that land itself only has a negative, but situation a positive value, he would have nevertheless admitted, what he denies, that land, just because it can be monopolised, has, or can have, a value independent of the labour invested in it. But on this point Carey is as quiet as a mouse. It is equally indifferent whether the labour invested in the land in civilised countries pays regularly or not. More than 20 years ago I made the assertion that in our present society no instrument of production exists which can last from 60 to 100 years, no factory, no building, etc., which by the end of its existence has covered the cost of its production. I still think that one way and another this is perfectly true. And if Carey and I are both right, that proves nothing about the rate of profit or the origin of rent, it only proves that bourgeois production, even measured by its own standards, is rotten. With these random comments on Carey you will no doubt have enough. They are very mixed because I made no extracts. As for the historical-materialistic-scientific trimming, its whole value = that of the two trees, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, which he has planted in his Paradisical work, not indeed for Adam and Eve, who have to slave in the backwoods, but for their descendants. This wretched ignorant stuff can only be compared with the shamelessness which allows him to unburden himself of such nonsense.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_11_19-abs.htm

Upon this I remark, among other things: With regard to the progress of cultivation in the United States themselves, Mr. Carey ignores even the most familiar facts. The English agricultural chemist, Johnstone, for instance, shows in his Notes on the United States that the settlers who left New England for the State of New York left worse for better land (better not in Carey's sense, that the land has first to be made, but in the chemical and at the same time economic sense). The settlers from the State of New York who established themselves at first beyond the Great Lakes, say in Michigan, left better for worse land, etc. The settlers in Virginia exploited the land suited both in situation and fertility to their chief product, tobacco, so abominably that they had to move on to Ohio, where the land was less good for this product (though not for wheat, etc.). The nationality of the immigrants also asserted itself in their settlements. The people from Norway and from our high forest lands sought out the rough northern forest land of Wisconsin; the Yankees in the same province kept to the prairies, etc. Prairies, both in the United States and Australia, are, in fact, a thorn in Carey's flesh. According to him land which is not absolutely overgrown with forests is infertile by nature-including, therefore, all natural pasture land. The best of it is that Carey's two great final conclusions (relating to the United States) stand in direct contradiction to his dogma. First, owing to the diabolical influence of England, the inhabitants, instead of socially cultivating the good model lands of New England, are disseminated over the poorer(!) lands of the West. Progress therefore from better land to worse. (Carey's "dissemination," in opposition to "association," by the by, is all copied out of Wakefield). Second, in the south of the United States there is the unfortunate fact that the slaveowners (whom Mr. Carey, as a harmonist, has hitherto defended in all his previous works) take the better land into cultivation too soon and leave out the worst. In fact just what ought not to be: starting with the better land! If Carey had convinced himself by this instance that the real cultivators, in this case the slaves, were decided in this course neither by economic nor any other reason of their own, but by external force, it would have been obvious to him that this condition also exists in other lands. According to his theory, cultivation in Europe should have started from the mountains of Norway and continued to the Mediterranean countries instead of proceeding in the reverse direction. Carey tries, by a highly absurd and fantastic theory of money, to conjure away the awkward economic fact that, unlike all other improved machinery, the earth-machine, which according to him is always a better one, increases--(periodically at least)--the cost of its products instead of cheapening them. (This was one of the points which influenced Ricardo; he could see no further than his nose, namely, the history of corn prices in England from about 1780 to 1815). As a harmonist, Carey first proved that there was no antagonism between capitalist and wage-labourer. The second step was to prove the harmony between landowner and capitalist, and this is done by taking landownership where it is still in an undeveloped state and representing this as normal. The great and decisive difference between the colonies and the old civilised countries, that in the latter the mass of the population is excluded from land and soil--whether fertile or unfertile, cultivated or uncultivated--by the system of landed property, while in the colony land can, relatively speaking, still be appropriated by the cultivator himself--this fact must not be mentioned whatever happens. It must have absolutely nothing to do with the rapid development of the colonies. The disagreeable "question of property" in its most disagreeable form, would indeed knock harmony off its feet. As for the deliberate distortion that, because in a country with developed production the natural fertility of the soil is an important condition for the production of surplus value (or, as Ricardo says, affects the rate of profit), therefore the converse must also follow that the richest and most developed production will be found in the most naturally fertile lands, so that it must stand higher, e.g., in Mexico than in New England, I have already answered this in Capital, p. 502 et seq." Carey's only merit is that he is just as one-sided in asserting the progress from worse to better lands as Ricardo is in asserting the opposite. In reality, different kinds of land, unequal in their degrees of fertility, are always cultivated simultaneously, and therefore the Germans, the Slavs and the Celts took this into account and made a very careful division of the strips of land of different kinds among the members of the community; it was this which later made the breaking up of the common lands so difficult. As to the progress of cultivation throughout the course of history, however, this, influenced by a mass of circumstances, sometimes takes place in both directions at once, sometimes one tendency prevails for a period and sometimes the other. Interest on the capital embodied in the land becomes a part of the differential rent just because of the fact that the landowner gets this interest from capital which not he but the tenant-farmer has put into the land. This fact, known throughout Europe, is supposed to have no economic existence because the tenant system is not yet developed in the United States. But there the thing takes place in another form. The land jobber and not the farmer gets paid in the end, in the price of the land, for the capital invested by the latter. Indeed the history of the pioneers and land jobbers in the United States often reminds one of the worst horrors taking place, e.g., in Ireland.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_11_26-abs.htm

You will probably have seen in the Volksstaat the resolutions against Gladstone proposed by me on the question of the Irish amnesty. I have now attacked Gladstone and it has attracted attention here just as I had formerly attacked Palmerston. The demagogic refugees here love to fall upon the Continental despots from a safe distance. That sort of thing attracts me only when it is done vultu instantis tyranni. [b] Nevertheless, both my utterance on this Irish amnesty question and my further proposal in the General Council to discuss the attitude of the English working class to Ireland and to pass resolutions on it have of course other objects besides that of speaking out loudly and decidedly for the oppressed Irish against their oppressors. I have become more and more convinced and it is only a question of driving this conviction home to the English working class that it can never do anything decisive here in England until it separates its policy with regard to Ireland most definitely from the policy of the ruling classes, until it not only makes common cause with the Irish but even takes the initiative in dissolving the Union established in 1801 and replacing it by a free federal relationship. And this must be done, not as a matter of sympathy with Ireland but as a demand made in the interests of the English proletariat. If not, the English people will remain tied to the leading-strings of the ruling classes, because it will have to join with them in a common front against Ireland. Every one of its movements in England itself is crippled by the strife with the Irish, who form a very important section of the working class in England. The primary condition of emancipation here the overthrow of the English landed oligarchy remains impossible because its position here cannot be stormed so long as it maintains its strongly entrenched outposts in Ireland. But, once affairs are in the hands of the Irish people itself, once it is made its own legislator and ruler, once it becomes autonomous, the abolition there of the landed aristocracy (to a large extent the same persons as the English landlords) will be infinitely easier than here, because in Ireland it is not merely a simple economic question but at the same time a national question, for the landlords there are not, like those in England, the traditional dignitaries and representatives of the nation, but its mortally hated oppressors. And not only does England s internal social development remain crippled by her present relations with Ireland; but also her foreign policy, and in particular her policy with regard to Russia and the United States of America. But since the English working class undoubtedly throws the decisive weight into the scale of social emancipation generally, the lever has to be applied here. As a matter of fact, the English republic under Cromwell met shipwreck in Ireland. Non bis in idem![c] The Irish have played a capital joke on the English government by electing the convict felon O Donovan Rossa to Parliament. The government papers are already threatening a renewed suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, a renewed system of terror. In fact England never has and never can so long as the present relations last rule Ireland otherwise than by the most abominable reign of terror and the most reprehensible corruption...

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_11_29-abs.htm

But you really ought to look at the Times now. Three leaders in eight days in which either it is demanded of the Government or the Government itself demands that an end be put to the excesses of the Irish Nationalist press. I am very eager to hear about your debate to-morrow evening and its result, about which there can be no doubt. It would be very fine to get Odger into a hole. I hope Bradlaugh will stand for Southwark as well as he, and it would be much better if Bradlaugh were elected. For the rest, if the English workers cannot take an example from the peasants of Tipperary they are in a bad way.... Last week I waded through the tracts by old Sir John Davies (Attorney-General for Ireland under James). I do not know if you have read them, they are the main source; at any rate you have seen them quoted a hundred times. It is a real shame that one cannot have the original sources for everything; one can see infinitely more from them than from the second-hand versions which reduce everything that is clear and simple in the original to confusion and complexity. From these tracts it is clear that communal property in land still existed in full force in Ireland in the year 1600, and this was brought forward by Mr. Davies in the pleas regarding the confiscation of the alienated lands in Ulster, as a proof that the land did not belong to the individual owners (peasants) and therefore either belonged to the lord, who had forfeited it, or from the beginning to the Crown. I have never read anything finer than this plea. The division took place afresh every two to three years. In another pamphlet he gives an exact description of the income, etc., of the chief of the clan. These things I have never seen quoted and if you can use them I will send them you in detail. At the same time I have nicely caught Monsieur Goldwin smith. This person has never read Davies and so puts up the most absurd assertions in extenuation of the English. But I shall get the fellow.....

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_11_29a-abs.htm

I have read a lot of Davies in extracts. The book itself I had only glanced through superficially in the Museum. So you would do me a service if you would copy out the passages relating to common property. You must get Curran's Speeches edited by Davies, (London, James Duffy, 22 Paternoster Row.) I meant to have given it you when you were in London. It is now circulating among the English members of the Central Council and God knows when I shall see it again. For the period 1779-80 (Union) it is of decisive importance, not only because of Curran's speeches (especially the legal ones; I consider Curran the only great advocate people's advocate of the eighteenth century and the noblest nature, while Grattan was a parliamentary rogue) but because you will find quoted there all the sources for the United Irishmen. This period is of the highest interest, scientifically and dramatically. Firstly, the foul doings of the English in 1588-89 repeated (and perhaps even intensified) in 1788-89. Secondly, it can be easily proved that there was a class movement in the Irish movement itself. Thirdly, the infamous policy of Pitt. Fourthly, which will annoy the English gentlemen very much, the proof that Ireland came to grief because, in fact, from a revolutionary standpoint, the Irish were too far advanced for the English Church and King mob, while on the other hand the English reaction in England had its roots (as in Cromwell's time) in the subjugation of Ireland. This period must be described in at least one chapter. John Bull in the pillory!... As to the present Irish movement, there are three important factors: (1) opposition to lawyers and trading politicians and blarney ; (2) opposition to the dictates of the priests, who (the superior ones) are traitors, as in O'Connell's time, from 1789-1800; (3) the agricultural labouring class beginning to come out against the farming class at the last meetings. (A similar phenomenon in 1795-1800.) The rise of the Irishman was only due to the suppression of the Fenian press. For a long time it had been in opposition to Fenianism. Luby, etc., of the Irish People, etc., were educated men who treated religion as a bagatelle. The government put them in prison and then came the Pigotts and Co. The Irishman will only be anything until those people come out of prison again. It is aware of this although it is making political capital now by declaiming for the "felon-convicts."

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_12_10-abs.htm

Our Irish resolutions have been sent to all trade unions that maintain ties with us. Only one has protested, a small branch of the curriers, saying they are political and not within the Council s sphere of action. We are sending a deputation to enlighten them. Mr. Odger now understands how useful it was for him that he voted for the resolutions despite all sorts of diplomatic objections. As a result the 3,000-4,000 Irish electors in Southwark have promised him their votes.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_12_17.htm

It is principally due to his constant efforts that the Trades Unions have rallied around us. But this work itself made him plenty of implacable foes. The English Trades Unions, all of local origin, all primitively founded with the exclusive purpose of maintaining wages, etc., were completely more or less afflicted by the narrowness that characterised the medieval workshop. There was a little conservative party that wanted at all cost to preserve the basic framework of unionism. But since the International s inception, Shaw made it his life s aim to break these voluntary chains and transform the unions into organised centres of the proletarian revolution.

Works of Karl Marx 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/01/08.htm

Mulcahy, sub-editor of the newspaper The Irish People, sentenced for taking part in the Fenian conspiracy, was harnessed to a cart loaded with stones with a metal band round his neck at Dartmoor. O'Donovan Rossa, owner of The Irish People, was shut up for 35 days in a pitch-black dungeon with his hands tied behind his back day and night. They were not even untied to allow him to eat the miserable slops which were left for him on the earthen floor. Kickham, one of the editors of The Irish People, although he was unable to use his right arm because of an abscess, was forced to sit with his fellow prisoners on a heap of rubble in the November cold and fog and break up stones and bricks with his left hand. He returned to his cell at night and had nothing to eat but 6 ounces of bread and a pint of hot water. O'Leary, an old man of sixty or seventy who was sent to prison, was put on bread and water for three weeks because he would not renounce paganism (this, apparently, is what a jailer called free thinking) and become either Papist, Protestant, Presbyterian or even Quaker, or take up one of the many religions which the prison governor offered to the heathen Irish. Martin H. Carey is incarcerated in a lunatic asylum at Millbank. The silence and the other bad treatment which he has received have made him lose his reason. Colonel Richard Burke is in no better condition. One of his friends writes that his mind is affected, he has lost his memory and his behaviour, manners and speech are those of a madman. The political prisoners are dragged from one prison to the next as if they were wild animals. They are forced to keep company with the vilest knaves; they are obliged to clean the pans used by these wretches, to wear the shirts and flannels which have previously been worn by these criminals, many of whom are suffering from the foulest diseases, and to wash in the same water. Before the arrival of the Fenians at Portland all the criminals were allowed to talk with their visitors. A visiting cage was installed for the Fenian prisoners. It consists of three compartments divided by partitions of thick iron bars; the jailer occupies the central compartment and the prisoner and his friends can only see each other through this double row of bars. In the docks you can find prisoners who eat all sorts of slugs, and frogs are considered dainties at Chatham. General Thomas Burke said he was not surprised to find a dead mouse floating in the soup. The convicts say that it was a bad day for them when the Fenians were sent to the prisons. (The prison regime has become much more severe.) I should like to add a few words to these extracts. Last year Mr. Bruce, the Home Secretary, a great liberal, great policeman and great mine owner in Wales who cruelly exploits his workers, was questioned on the bad treatment of Fenian prisoners and O'Donovan Rossa in particular. At first he denied everything, but was later compelled to confess. Following this Mr. Moore, an Irish member in the House of Commons, demanded an enquiry into the facts. This was flatly refused by the radical ministry of which the head is that demigod Mr. Gladstone (he has been compared to Jesus Christ publicly) and that old bourgeois demagogue, John Bright, is one of the most influential members. The recent wave of reports concerning the bad treatment of the Fenians led several members of Parliament to request Mr. Bruce for permission to visit the prisoners in order to be able to verify the falseness of these rumours. Mr. Bruce refused this permission on the grounds that the prison governors were afraid that the prisoners would be too excited by visits of this kind. Last week the Home Secretary was again submitted to questioning. He was asked whether it was true that O'Donovan Rossa received corporal punishment (i.e., whipping) after his election to Parliament as the member for Tipperary. The Minister confirmed that he had not received such treatment since 1868 (which is tantamount to saying that the political prisoner had been given the whip over a period of two to three years). I am also sending you extracts (which we are going to publish in our next issue) concerning the case of Michael Terbert, a Fenian sentenced as such to forced labour, who was serving his sentence at Spike Island Convict Prison in the county of Cork, Ireland. You will see that the coroner himself attributes this man s death to the torture which was inflicted on him. This investigation was held last week. In the course of two years more than twenty Fenian workers have died or gone insane thanks to the philanthropic natures of these honest bourgeois souls, backed by the honest landlords. You are probably aware that the English press professes a chaste distaste for the dreadful general security laws which grace 'la belle France. With the exception of a few short intervals, it is security laws which formed the Irish Charter. Since 1793 the English Government has taken advantage of any pretext to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act (which guarantees the liberty of the individual) regularly and periodically, in fact all laws, except that of brute force. In this way thousands of people have been arrested in Ireland on being suspected of Fenianism without ever having been tried, brought before a judge or court, or even charged. Not content with depriving them of their liberty, the English Government has had them tortured in the most savage way imaginable. The following is but one example. One of the prisons where persons suspected of being Fenians were buried alive is Mountjoy Prison in Dublin. The prison inspector, Murray, is a despicable brute who maltreated the prisoners so cruelly that some of them went mad. The prison doctor, an excellent man called M'Donnell (who also played a creditable part in the enquiry into Michael Terbert s death), spent several months writing letters of protest which he addressed in the first instance to Murray himself. When Murray did not reply he sent accusing letters to higher authorities, but being an expert jailer Murray intercepted these letters. Finally M'Donnell wrote directly to Lord Mayo who was then Viceroy of Ireland. This was during the period when the Tories were in power (Derby and Disraeli). What effect did his actions have? The documents relating to the case were published by order of Parliament and ... Dr. M'Donnell was dismissed from his post!!! Whereas Murray retained his. Then the so-called radical government of Gladstone came to power, the warm-hearted, unctuous, magnanimous Gladstone who had wept so passionately and so sincerely before the eyes of the whole of Europe over the fate of Poerio and other members of the bourgeoisie who were badly treated by King Bomba. What did this idol of the progressive bourgeoisie do? While insulting the Irish by his insolent replies to their demands for an amnesty, he not only confirmed the monster Murray in his post, but endowed the position of chief jailer with a nice fat sinecure as a token of his personal satisfaction! There s the apostle of the philanthropic bourgeoisie for you! But something had to be done to pull the wool over the eyes of the public. It was essential to appear to be doing something for Ireland, and the Irish Land Bill was proclaimed with a great song and dance. All this is nothing but a pose with the ultimate aim of deceiving Europe, winning over the Irish judges and advocates with the prospect of endless disputes between landlords and farmers, conciliating the landlords with the promise of financial aid from the state and deluding the more prosperous farmers with a few mild concessions. In the long introduction to his grandiloquent and confused speech Gladstone admits that even the benevolent laws which liberal England bestowed on Ireland over the last hundred years have always led to the country s further decline. And after this naive confession the same man persists in torturing those who want to put an end to this harmful and stupid legislation. The following is an account taken from an English newspaper of the results of an enquiry into the death of Michael Terbert, a Fenian prisoner who died at Spike Island Prison due to the bad treatment which he had received.

Karl Marx in L'Internationale 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/02/21.htm

In the meantime, B. joined the Branche Romande [Romanish Branch] of the International (in Geneva). It took him years before he decided on this step. But it was only a few days before Herr Bakunin decided to overthrow the International and transform it into his instrument. Behind the back of the London General Council which was informed only after everything was seemingly ready he established the so-called Alliance des Democrates Socialistes. The program of this Alliance was none other than the one B. had proposed at the Bern Peace [League] Congress. Thus, from the outset, the Alliance showed itself to be a propaganda organization of specifically Bakuninist private mysticism, and B. himself, one of the most ignorant of men in the field of social theory, suddenly figures here as a sect founder. However, the theoretical program of this Alliance was pure farce. Its serious side lay in its practical organization. For this Alliance was to be an international one, with its central committee in Geneva, that is, under Bakunin s personal direction. At the same time it was to be an integral part of the International Working Men s Association. Its branches were to be represented at the next Congress" of the International (in Basel) on the one hand, and to have its own separate sessions alongside the former on the other hand, etc., etc. The human material chiefly at Bakunin s disposal consisted of the then-majority of the Federal Romanish Committee of he International in Geneva. J. Ph. Becker, whose propaganda zeal occassionally runs away with his head, was pushed forward. In Italy and Spain, Bakunin had some allies. The General Council in London had been thoroughly informed. But it quietly let Bakunin go on until the moment when he was forced by J. Ph. Becker to submit the statutes (and program) of the Alliance of Socialist Democracy to the General Council for approval. Thereupon followed a far-reaching decision entirely judicial and objective, yet in its basic considerations full of irony which concluded as follows: This came as an unexpected blow. Bakunin had already transformed L galite, the central organ of the French-speaking members of the International in Switzerland, into his organ; in addition, he founded in Locle a little private journal Progres. Progres still plays that role under the editorship of fanatical Bakunin follower, Guillaume. After several weeks of reflection.the Central Committee of the Alliance under the signature of Perron, a Genevan finally sent a reply to the General Council. In it, the Alliance, out of zeal for the cause, offered to sacrifice its independent organization, but only on one condition, namely, a declaration by the General Council that it recognizes the Alliance s radical principles. The General Council replied: Bakunin then sought to achieve his aim to transform the International into his private instrument by other means. Through the Geneva Romanish Committee of the General Council he proposed that the question of inheritance" be put on the agenda of the Basel Congress. The General Council agreed, in order to be able to hit Bakunin on the head directly. Bakunin s plan was this: When the Basel Congress accepts the principles (?) he proposed in Bern, he will show the world that he has not gone over to the International, but the International has gone over to him. The simple consequence: The London General Council (whose opposition to the rehashing of the St.-Simonist vieillerie [rubbish] was known to Bakunin) must resign and the Basel Congress would move the General Council to Geneva; that is, the International would fall under the dictatorship of Bakunin. Bakunin put his full conspiracy into motion, in order to assure himself of a majority in the Basel Congress. Even fake mandates were not lacking, such as those of Herr Guillaume for Locle, etc. Bakunin himself importuned mandates from Naples and Lyon. All sorts of calumnies against the General Council were spread. Some were told that it was dominated by the element bourgeois and others that it was the seat of communisme autoritaire. The result of the Basel Congress is known. Bakunin s proposal did not go through, and the General Council remained in London. The anger of this defeat Bakunin had perhaps tied up a hoped-for success with private speculations in his heart s spirit and feeling was aired in irritated utterances in L galit and Progres. These papers in the meantime assumed more and more the form of official oracles. Now one and now the other of the Swiss sections [of the International] was put under excommunication because, despite Bakunin s express instructions, it participated in political movements, etc. Finally the long restrained fury against the General Council broke into the open. Progres and L galit sneered, attacked, declared that the General Council did not fulfill its duties, for example, in connection with the quarterly bulletins; the General Council must rid itself of direct control over England and establish a separate central committee to occupy itself with English affairs; the resolutions of the General Council in regard to the Fenian prisoners were an infringement of its functions, since it is not supposed to concern itself with the local political questions. Furthermore, Progres and L galit took the side of Schweitzer, and the General Council was categorically challenged to declare itself officially and publicly on the Liebknecht-Schweitzer question. The journal Le Travail (in Paris), into which Schweitzer s Paris friends smuggled articles favorably to him, was praised for this by Progress and L galit , the latter demanding that Le Travail make common cause against the General Council. Hence the time has come for taking decisive steps. The enclosed is an exact copy of the General Council s circular to the Romanish Central Committee in Geneva. The document [written in French] is too long to translate into German. The copy for Geneva (because the secretary for Switzerland, Jung, was very busy) has been somewhat delayed. hence it crossed an official statement which Perret, the secretary of the Geneva Romanish Central Committee, sent to the General Council. For the crisis broke out in Geneva before the arrival of our letter there. Some of the editors of L galit rebelled against the Bakuninist-dictated direction. Bakunin and his followers (among them six Egalite editors) wanted to force the Geneva Committee to dismiss the recalcitrants. But the Geneva Committee had long been tired of Bakunin s despotism and was reluctant to be dragged in against the General Council, in opposition to the German Swiss Committee. Hence it endorsed the Egalite editors who had displeased Bakunin. Whereupon the six other editors submitted their resignation from the editorial board, hoping thereby to bring the paper to a standstill. In reply to our communication the Geneva Central Committee stated that Egalite s attack took place against its wishes, that is had never approved the policy it preached, that the paper would henceforth be edited under strict supervision, etc. Thereupon Bakunin withdrew from Geneva to Tessin. Now he has control at least as afar as Switzerland is concerned only over Progres (Locle). Soon thereafter, Herzen died. Bakunin, who from the time when he began to pose as the leader of the European labor movement slandered his old friend and patron Herzen, upon the latter s death immediately began to trumpet his eulogies. Why? Because Herzen, despite his personal wealth, received from the pseudo socialist Pan-Slavic party, which was friendly to him, 25,000 francs annually for propaganda. Through his loud eulogies, Bakunin managed to have this money directed to him and thereby entered into Herzen s inheritance malgre sa haine de l heritage [despite his hatred of the right of inheritance] pecuniarily and morally sine beneficio inventarii [without legal permission of the estate]. At the same time, a young Russian refugee colony settled in Geneva, consisting of students, who were really honest and who showed their honesty by adopting opposition to Pan-Slavism as the main point of their program. They are publishing a journal, La Voix du Peuple, in Geneva. About two weeks ago they applied to London, sending in their program and asking approval for the establishment of a Russian branch. The approval was granted. In a separate letter to Marx, they requested him to represent them provisionally in the General Council. This, too, was accepted. At the same time they indicated and seemed thereby to want to apologize to Marx that their next step must be to tear off Bakunin s mask publicly, because that man speaks two entirely different languages, one in Russia and another in Europe. Thus the game of this highly dangerous intrigant at least on the terrain of the International will soon be played out.

The International Workingmen's Association, Confidential Communication on Bakunin

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/03/28.htm

Scarcely a shot has been fired so far, and yet a the war has passed away, ending in disappointment to the Emperor. A few observations on the political and military situation will render this evident. It is now admitted on all hands that Louis Napoleon expected to be able to isolate the North German Confederation from the Southern States, and to take advantage of the disaffection existing in the newly annexed Prussian provinces. A rapid dash upon the Rhine with as large a force as could be collected, a passage of that river somewhere between Germersheim and Mayence, an advance in the direction of Frankfort and W rzburg, might promise to effect this. The French would find themselves masters of the communications between North and South, and would compel Prussia to bring down to the Main, in hot haste, all available troops, whether ready or not, for a campaign. The whole process of mobilization in Prussia would be disturbed, and all the chances would be in favour of the invaders being able to defeat the Prussians in detail as they arrived from the various parts of the country. Not only political but also military reasons were in favour of such an attempt. The French cadre system admits of a far quicker concentration of say 120,000 to 150,000 men than the Prussian landwehr system. The French peace footing differs from the war footing merely by the number of men on furlough, and by the non-existence of dep ts, which are formed on the eve of marching out. But the Prussian peace footing includes less than one-third of the men who compose the war footing; and moreover, not only the men, but the officers also of these remaining two-thirds are in time of peace civilians. The mobilization of these immense numbers of men takes time; it is, moreover, a complicated process, which would be thrown into complete disorder by the sudden irruption of a hostile army. This is the reason why the war was so much brusqu by the Emperor. Unless he intended some such unexpected surprise, the hot language of Gramont, and the precipitate declaration of war would have been absurd. But the sudden, violent outburst of German feeling put an end to any such plan. Louis Napoleon found himself face to face, not with King William Annexander, but with the German nation. And, in that case, a dash across the Rhine, even with 120,000 to 150,000 men, was not to be thought of. Instead of a surprise, a regular campaign with all available forces had to be undertaken. The Guards, the armies of Paris and Lyons, and the corps of the camp at Ch lons, which might have sufficed for the first purpose, were now barely sufficient to form the mere nucleus of the great army of invasion. And thus began the second phase of the war that of preparation for a great campaign; and from that day the chances of ultimate success for the Emperor began to decline. Let us now compare the forces that are being got ready for mutual destruction; and to simplify matters, we will take the infantry only. The infantry is the arm which decides battles; any trifling balance of strength in cavalry and artillery, including mitrailleurs and other miracle-working engines, will not count for much on either side. France has 376 battalions of infantry (38 battalions of Guards, 20 Chasseurs, 300 line, 9 Zouaves, 9 Turcos, &c.) of eight companies each in time of peace. Each of the 300 line battalions, in time of war, leaves two companies behind to form a dep t, and marches out with six companies only. In the present instance, four of the six dep t companies of each line regiment (of three battalions) are intended to expand into a fourth battalion by being filled up with men on furlough and with reserves. The remaining two companies appear to be intended as a dep t, and may hereafter be formed into fifth battalions. But it will be certainly some time, at least six weeks, before these, fourth battalions will be so far organized as to be fit for the field; for the present they and the Garde Mobile can be counted as garrison troops only. Thus, for the first decisive battles, France has nothing available but the above 376 battalions. Of these, the army of the Rhine, according to all we hear, comprises, in the six army corps No. 1 to 6 and the Guards, 299 battalions. Including the Seventh Corps (General Montauban), which is supposed to be intended for the Baltic, the figure is given as high as 340 battalions, which would leave but 36 battalions to guard Algiers, the colonies, and the interior of France. From this it appears that France has sent every available battalion against Germany, and cannot increase her force by new formations fit for the field before the beginning of September at the very earliest. Now for the other side. The North German army consists of thirteen army corps, composed of 368 battalions of infantry, or, in round numbers, twenty-eight battalions per corps. Each battalion counts, on the peace footing, about 540, and on the war footing 1,000 men. On the order for the mobilization of the army being received, a few officers are told off in each regiment of three battalions for the formation of the fourth battalion. The reserve men are at once called in. They are men who have served two to three years in the regiment, and remain liable to be called out until they are twenty-seven years of age. There are plenty of them to fill up the three field battalions and furnish a good stock towards the fourth battalion, which is completed by men from the landwehr. Thus the field battalions are ready to march in a few days, and the fourth battalions can follow in four or five weeks afterwards. At the same time, for every line regiment a landwehr regiment of two battalions is formed out of the men between twenty-eight and thirty-six years of age, and as soon as they are ready the formation of the third landwehr battalions is taken in hand. The time required for all this, including the mobilization of cavalry and artillery, is exactly thirteen days; and the first day of mobilization having been fixed for the 16th, everything is or should be ready to-day. At this moment, probably, North Germany has in the field 358 battalions of the line, and in garrison 198 battalions of the landwehr; to be reinforced, certainly not later than the second half of August, by 114 fourth battalions of the line and 93 third battalions of the landwehr. In all these troops there will scarcely be a man who has not passed through his regular time of service in the army. To these we must add the troops of Hesse-Darmstadt, Baden, W rttemberg, and Bavaria, 104 battalions of the line in all; but as the landwehr system in these States has not yet had time to fully develop itself. there may be riot more than seventy or eighty battalions available for the field. The landwehr are principally intended for garrison duty, but in the war of 1866 a large portion marched out as a reserve army for the field. This will no doubt be done again. Of the thirteen North German army corps ten are now on the Rhine, forming a total of 280 battalions; then the South Germans, say 70 battalions, grand total, 350 battalions. There remain available on the coast or as a reserve three army corps or 84 battalions, One corps, together with the landwehr, will be ample for the defence of the coast. The two remaining corps may be, for aught on the road to the Rhine too. These troops can be reinforced by the 20th of August by at least 100 fourth battalions and 40 to 50 landwehr battalions, men superior to the fourth battalions and Gardes Mobiles of the French, which mostly are composed of almost undrilled men. The fact is. France has not more than about drilled men at ber disposal, North Germany alone has 950,000. And this is in advantage for Germany, which tell more and more the longer decisive fighting is delayed. until it will reach its culminating point towards the end of September. Under these circumstances, we reed not be astonished at the news from Berlin that the German commanders hope to save German soil from the sufferings of war; in other words, that unless they are attacked soon they will attack themselves. How that attack, unless anticipated by Louis Napoleon, will he conducted is another question

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/07/29.htm

On the morning of Friday, the 29th of July, the forward movement of the French army will have commenced. In which direction? A glance at the map will show it. The valley of the Rhine, on the left bank, is closed in to the west by the mountain chain of the Vosges from Belfort to Kaiserslautern. North of this latter town the hills become more undulating, until they gradually merge in the plain near Mayence. The valley of the Moselle in Rhenish Prussia forms a deep and winding clough, which the river has worked out for itself through a plateau, which rises to the south of the valley into a considerable range called the Hochwald. As this range approaches the Rhine the plateau character becomes more predominant, until the last outlying hills meet the farthest spurs of the Vosges. Neither the Vosges nor the Hochwald are absolutely impracticable for an army; both are crossed by several good high-roads, but neither are of that class of ground where armies of from 200,000 to 300,000 men could operate with advantage. The country between the two, however, forms a kind of broad gap, twenty-five to thirty miles in width, undulated ground, traversed by numerous roads in all directions, and offering every facility to the movements of large armies. Moreover, the road from Metz to Mayence goes through this gap, and Mayence is the first important point on which the French will probably move. Here, then, we have the line of operations prescribed by nature. In case of a German invasion of France, both armies being prepared, the first great encounter must take place in the corner of Lorraine east of the Moselle and north of the railway from Nancy to Strasbourg; so, with a French army advancing from the positions where it concentrated last week, the first important action will take place somewhere in this gap, or beyond it, under the walls of Mayence. The French army was thus concentrated: Three corps (the 3rd, 4th, and 5th) in a first line at Thionville, St. Avold, and Bitche; two corps (the 1st and 2nd) in second line at Strasbourg and Metz; and as a reserve, the Guards at Nancy and the 6th Corps at Ch lons. During the last few days the second line was brought forward into the intervals of the first, the Guard was moved to Metz, Strasbourg was abandoned to the Mobile Guard. Thus the whole body of the French forces was concentrated between Thionville and Bitche, that is, facing the entrance of the gap between the mountains. The natural conclusion from these premisses is that they intend marching into it. Thus, the invasion will have commenced by occupying the passages of the Saar and the Blies; the next day s proceedings will probably be to occupy the line from Tholey to Homburg; then the line from Birkenfeld to Landstuhl or Oberstein to Kaiserslautern, and so forth that is to say, unless they are interrupted by an advance of the Germans. There will be, no doubt, flanking corps of both parties in the hills, and they, too, will come to blows; but for the real battle we must look to the ground just described. Of the positions of the Germans we know nothing. We suppose, however, that their ground of concentration, if they intend to meet the enemy on the left bank of the Rhine, will be immediately in front of Mayence, that is, at the other end of the gap. If not, they will remain on the right bank, from Bingen to Mannheim, concentrating either above or below Mayence as circumstances may require. As to Mayence, which in its old shape was open to bombardment by rifled artillery, the erection of a new line of detached forts, 4,000 to 5,000 yards from the ramparts of the town, seems to have made it pretty secure. Everything points to the supposition that the Germans will be ready and willing to advance not more than two or three days later than the French. In that case it will be a battle like Solferino two armies deployed on their full front, marching to meet each other. Much learned and over-skilful manoeuvring is not to be expected. With armies of such magnitude there is trouble enough to make them move simply to the front according to the preconcerted plan. Whichever side attempts dangerous manoeuvres may find itself crushed by the plain forward movement of the masses of the enemy long before these manoeuvres can be developed. A military work on the Rhine fortresses, by Herr von Widdern, is much talked of just now at Berlin. The author says that the Rhine from B le to the Murg is not fortified at all, and that the only defence of South Germany and Austria against a French attack in that direction is the strong fortress of Ulm, occupied since 1866 by a mixed force of Bavarians and W rttembergers, amounting to 10,000 men. This force could in case of war be augmented to 25,000 men, and 25,000 more could be stationed in an entrenched camp within the walls of the fortress. Rastatt, which, it is expected, will present a formidable obstacle to the French advance, lies in a valley through which runs the river Murg. The defences of the town consist of three large forts, which command the surrounding country, and are united by walls. The southern and western forts, called Leopold and Frederick, are on the left bank of the Murg; the northern fort, called Louis, on the right bank, where there is also an entrenched camp capable of holding 25,000 men. Rastatt is four miles from the Rhine, and the intervening country is covered with woods, so that the fortress could not prevent an army from crossing at that point. The next fortress is Landau, which formerly consisted of three forts one to the south, one to the east, and one to the north-west, separated from the town by marshes on the banks of the little river Queich. The southern and eastern forts have been recently abandoned, and the only one kept in a state of defence is now the north-western. The most important and the best situated fortress in this district is Germersheim, on the banks of the Rhine. It commands a considerable stretch of the river on both sides, and practically closes it to an enemy as far as Mayence and Coblenz. It would greatly facilitate the advance of troops into the Rhine Palatinate, as two or three bridges might be thrown across the river, besides the floating bridge which already exists there, under cover of its guns. It would also form a basis of operations for the left wing of an army posted on the line of the River Queich. Mayence, one of the most important of the Rhine fortresses, is commanded by some of the adjoining hills; this has rendered it necessary to multiply the fortifications in the town, and there is, in consequence, hardly room enough for a large garrison. The whole of the country between Mayence and Bingen is now strongly fortified, and between it and the mouth of the Main (on the opposite bank of the Rhine) there are three large entrenched camps. As to Coblenz, Herr von Widdern says that it would require a force six times as large as the garrison to besiege it with any prospect of success. An enemy would probably begin the attack by opening fire on Fort Alexander from the hill known as the Kuhkopf, where his troops would be sheltered by the woods. The author also describes the fortifications of Cologne and Wesel, but adds nothing to what is already known on the subject.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/01.htm

At last the plan of campaign of the Prussians begins to emerge from the dark. It will be recollected that, although immense transports of troops have taken place on the right bank of the Rhine, from the east towards the west and south-west, very little was heard of concentrations in the immediate vicinity of the menaced frontier. The fortresses received strong reinforcements from the nearest troops. At Saarbr cken, 500 men of the 40th Infantry and three squadrons of the 7th Lancers (both 8th Corps) skirmished with the enemy; Bavarian Chasseurs and Baden dragoons continued the line of outposts to the Rhine. But no large masses of troops appear to have been placed immediately in rear of this curtain formed by a few light troops. Artillery had never been mentioned in any of the skirmishes. Tr ves was quite empty of troops. On the other hand, we heard of large masses on the Belgian frontier; of 30,000 cavalry about Cologne (where the whole country on the left bank of the Rhine, to near Aix-la-Chapelle, abounds in forage); of 70,000 men before Mayence. All this seemed strange; it looked like an almost culpable distribution of troops, contrasted with the close concentration of the French within a couple of hours march of the frontier. All at once, a few indications drop in from different quarters which seem to dispel the mystery. The correspondent of the Temps, who had ventured as far as Tr ves, witnessed on the 25th and 26th the passage of a large body of troops of all arms through that city towards the line of the Saar. The weak garrison of Saarbr cken was considerably reinforced about the same time, probably from Coblenz, the head-quarters of the 8th Corps. The troops passing through Tr ves must have belonged to some other corps, coming from the north across the Eifel. Finally, from a private source we learn that the 7th Army Corps on the 27th was on its march from Aix-la-Chapelle, by Tr ves, to the frontier. Here, then, we have at least three army corps, or about 100,000 men, thrown on the line of the Saar. Two of these are the 7th and 8th, both forming part of the Army of the North under General Steinmetz (7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th corps). We may pretty safely assume that the whole of this army is by this time concentrated between Sarrebourg and Saarbr cken. If the 30,000 cavalry (more or less) were really in the neighbourhood of Cologne, they too must have marched across the Eifel and the Moselle towards the Saar. The whole of these dispositions would indicate that the main attack of the Germans will be made with their right wing, through the space between Metz and Saarlouis, towards the upper Nied valley. If the reserve cavalry has gone that way, this becomes a certainty. This plan presupposes the concentration of the whole German army between the Vosges and the Moselle. The Army of the Centre (Prince Frederick Charles, with the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 12th corps) would have to take up a position either adjoining the left flank of Steinmetz or behind him as a reserve. The Army of the South (the Crown Prince, with the 5th Corps, the Guards, and the South Germans) would form the left wing, somewhere about Zweibr cken. As to where all these troops are, and how they are to be transported to their positions, we know nothing. We only know that the 3rd Army Corps began passing through Cologne southwards by the railway on the left bank of the Rhine. But we may assume that the same hand which traced the dispositions by which from 100,000 to 150,000 men were rapidly concentrated on the Saar from distant and apparently divergent points, will also have traced similar converging lines of march for the rest of the army. This is, indeed, a bold plan, and is likely to prove as effective as any that could be devised. It is intended for a battle in which the German left, from Zweibr cken to near Saarlouis, maintain a purely defensive fight; while their right, advancing from Saarlouis and west of it, supported by the full reserves, attack the enemy in force and cut his communications with Metz by a flank movement of the whole of the reserve cavalry. If this plan succeeds, and the first great battle is won by the Germans, the French army risks not only being cut off from its nearest base Metz and the Moselle but also being driven to a position where the Germans will be between it and Paris. The Germans, having their communication with Coblenz and Cologne perfectly safe, can afford to risk a defeat in this position; such a defeat would not be nearly so disastrous in its consequences to them. Still it is a daring plan. It would be extremely difficult to get a defeated army, especially the right wing, safe across the defiles of the Moselle and its tributaries. Many prisoners and a great portion of the artillery would undoubtedly be lost, and the reforming of the army under shelter of the Rhine fortresses would take a long time. It would be folly to adopt such a plan unless General Moltke were perfectly certain to have such overwhelming strength at his command that victory was almost undoubted, and, moreover, unless he knew that the French were not in a position to fall upon his troops while still converging from all sides to the position selected for the first battle. Whether this is really the case we shall probably know very soon perhaps to-morrow, even. In the meantime it is well to remember that these strategic plans can never be relied upon for the full effect of what is expected from them. There always occurs a hitch here and a hitch there; corps do not arrive at the exact moment when they are wanted; the enemy makes unexpected moves, or has taken unexpected precautions; and finally, hard, stubborn fighting, or the good sense of a general, often extricates the defeated army from the worst consequences a defeat can have the loss of communications with its base.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/02.htm

On the 28th of July the Emperor reached Metz, and from the following morning he assumed the command of the Army of the Rhine. According to Napoleonic traditions, that date ought to have marked the beginning of active operations; but a week has passed, and we have not yet heard that the Army of the Rhine, as a body, has moved. On the 30th the small Prussian force at Saarbr cken was enabled to repel a French reconnaissance. On the 2nd of August the second division (General Bataille) of the 2nd Army Corps (General Frossard) took the heights south of Saarbr cken and shelled the enemy out of the town, but without attempting to pass the river and to storm the heights which on its northern bank command the town. Thus the line of the Saar had not been forced by this attack. Since then no further news of a French advance has been received, and so far the advantage gained by the affair of the 2nd is almost nil. Now it can scarcely be doubted that when the Emperor left Paris for Metz his intention was to advance across the frontier at once. Had he done so he would have been able to disturb the enemy s arrangements very materially. On the 29th and 30th of July the German armies were still very far from being concentrated. The South Germans were still converging by rail and march towards the bridges of the Rhine. The Prussian reserve cavalry was passing in endless files through Coblenz and Ehrenbreitstein, marching southwards. The 7th Corps was between Aix-la-Chapelle and Tr ves, far away from all railways. The 10th Corps was leaving Hanover, and the Guards were leaving Berlin by rail. A resolute advance at that time could scarcely have failed to bring the French up to the outlying forts of Mayence, and to ensure them considerable advantages over the retiring columns of the Germans; perhaps even it might have enabled them to throw a bridge over the Rhine, and protect it by a bridgehead on the right bank. At all events, the war would have been carried into the enemy s country, and the moral effect upon the French troops must have been excellent. Why, then, has no such forward movement taken place? For this good reason, that, if the French soldiers were ready, their commissariat was not. We need not go by any of the rumours coming from the German side; we have the evidence of Captain Jeannerod, an old French officer, now correspondent of the Temps with the army. He distinctly states that the distribution of provisions for a campaign began on the 1st of August only; that the troops were short of field flasks, cooking tins, and other camping utensils; that the meat was putrid and the bread often musty. It will be said, we fear, that so far the army of the Second Empire has been beaten by the Second Empire itself. Under a r gime which has to yield bounties to its supporters by all the old regular established means of jobbery, it cannot be expected that the system will stop at the intendance of the army. This war, according to M. Rouher s confession, was prepared long ago; the laying in of stores, especially equipments, was evidently one of the least conspicuous parts of the preparation; and yet at this very point such irregularities occur as to cause nearly a week s delay at the most critical period of the campaign. Now, this week s delay made all the difference to the Germans. It gave them time to bring their troops to the front and to mass them in the positions selected for them. Our readers are aware that we suppose the whole of the German forces to be by this time concentrated on the left bank of the Rhine, more or less facing the French army. All public and private reports received since Tuesday, when we supplied The Times with all the opinion it ever had on the subject, and which this morning it swears is its own, tend to confirm this view. The three armies of Steinmetz, Prince Frederick Charles, and the Crown Prince represent a grand total of thirteen army corps, or at least 430,000 to 450,000 men. The total forces opposed to them cannot much exceed, at a very liberal estimate, 330,000 to 350,000 drilled soldiers. If they are stronger, the excess must consist of undrilled and recently formed battalions. But the German forces are far from representing the total strength of Germany. Of field troops alone there are three army corps (the 1st, 6th, and 11th) not included in the above estimate. Where they may be we do not know. We know that they have left their garrisons, and we have traced regiments of the 11th Corps to the left bank of the Rhine and the Bavarian Palatinate. We also know for certain that there are now in Hanover, Bremen, and neighbourhood no troops but landwehr. This would lead to the conclusion that the greater part at least of these three corps had also been forwarded to the front, and in that case the numerical superiority of the Germans would be increased by from some forty to sixty thousand men. We should not he surprised if even a couple of landwehr divisions had been sent to take the field on the Saar; there are 210,000 men of the landwehr now quite ready, and 180,000 men in the fourth battalions, &c., of the line nearly ready, and some of these might be spared for the first decisive blow. Let no one suppose that these men exist, to any extent, on paper only. The mobilization of 1866 is there to prove that the thing has been done, and the present mobilization has again proved that there are more drilled men ready to march out than are wanted. The numbers look incredible; but even they do not exhaust the military strength of Germany. Thus, at the end of the present week, the Emperor a finds himself face to face with a numerically superior force. And if he was willing but unable to move forward last week, he may be both unable and unwilling to advance now. That he is not unaware of the strength of his opponents is hinted at by the report from Paris that 250,000 Prussians are massed between Saarlouis and Neuenkirchen. What there is between Neuenkirchen and Kaiserslautern the Parisian telleth not. It is therefore possible that the inactivity of the French army up to Thursday has been partly caused by a change in the plan of campaign; that instead of attacking, the French intend to remain on the defensive, and to take advantage of the greatly increased strength which breech-loaders and rifled artillery give to an army awaiting an attack in an entrenched position. But if this be resolved upon, it will be a very disappointing commencement of the campaign for the French. To sacrifice half Lorraine and Alsace without a pitched battle and we doubt that any good position for such a large army can be found nearer the frontier than about Metz is a serious undertaking for the Emperor. Against such a move of the French the Germans would develop the plan explained before. They would attempt to entangle their opponents into a great battle before Metz could be reached; they would push forward between Saarlouis and Metz. They would try in all cases to outflank the French entrenched position, and to interrupt its communications towards the rear. An army of 300,000 men requires a great deal of feeding, and could not afford to have its lines of supply interrupted even for a few days. Thus it might be forced to come out and fight in the open, and then the advantage of position would be lost. Whatever may be done, we may be certain that something must be done soon. Three-quarters of a million of men cannot long remain concentrated on a space of fifty miles square. The impossibility of feeding such bodies of men will compel either one side or the other to move. To conclude. We repeat that we start from the supposition that both French and Germans have brought up every available man to the front to take part in the first great battle. In that case, our opinion still is that the Germans will have a numerical superiority sufficient to ensure them the victory-barring great mistakes on their part. We are confirmed in this supposition by all reports, public and private. But it is manifest that all this does not amount to absolute certainty. We have to infer from indications which may be deceptive. We do not know what dispositions may be taken even while we are writing; and it is impossible to forecast what blunders or what strokes of genius may be displayed by the commanders on either side. Our last observations to-day shall be upon the storming of the lines of Wissembourg in Alsace by the Germans. The troops engaged on their side belonged to the Prussian 5th and 11th, and Bavarian 2nd corps. We have thus direct confirmation not only of the 11th Corps but of all the main forces of the Crown Prince being in the Palatinate. The regiment mentioned in the report as the King s Grenadier Guards is the 7th or 2nd West Prussian regiment of grenadiers, which, as well as the 58th regiment, belongs to the 5th Corps. The Prussian system is always to engage the whole of an army corps before troops from another corps are brought up. Now, here, troops from three corps, Prussians and Bavarians, are employed for a piece of work which one corps, at most, could have performed. This looks as if the presence of three corps menacing Alsace was to be impressed upon the French. Moreover, an attack up the valley of the Rhine would be stopped by Strasbourg, and a flank march through the Vosges would find the passes blocked by Bitche, Phalsbourg, Petite Pierre, little fortresses sufficient to stop the high roads. We expect that while three or four brigades of the three German corps attacked Wissembourg, the mass of these corps would be marching by Landau and Pirmasens to Zweibr cken, while, if the first were successful, a couple of MacMahon s divisions would be marching in the opposite direction towards the Rhine. There they would be perfectly harmless, as any invasion of the Palatinate, in the plain, would be arrested by Landau and Germersheim. This affair at Wissembourg was evidently conducted with such a superiority of numbers as made success almost certain. Its moral effect, as the first serious engagement of the war, must necessarily be great, especially as the storming of an entrenched position is always considered a difficult matter. That the Germans should have driven the French out of entrenched lines, at the point of the bayonet, in spite of rifled artillery, mitrailleurs, and Chassepots, will tell on both armies. It is undoubtedly the first instance where the bayonet has been successful against the breech-loader, and on this account the action will remain memorable. For this very reason it will derange Napoleon s plans. This is a piece of news which cannot be given to the French army even in a highly diluted form, unless accompanied by reports of success in other quarters. And it cannot be kept secret for more than twelve hours at most. We may expect, therefore, the Emperor will set his columns in motion to look out for this success, and it will be wonderful if we do not soon have some account of French victories. But at the same time, probably, the Germans will move, and we shall have the heads of the opposite columns coming into contact at more places than one. To-day, or at latest to-morrow, ought to bring on the first general engagement.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/06.htm

The rapid action of the German Third Army throws more and more light upon Moltke s plans. The concentration of this army in the Palatinate must have taken place by the bridges of Mannheim and Germersheim, and perhaps by intermediate military pontoon bridges. Before entering upon the roads across the Hardt from Landau and Neustadt westwards, the troops massed in the Rhine valley were available for an attack on the French right wing. Such an attack, with the superior forces in hand, and with Landau close to the rear, was perfectly safe, and might lead to great results. If it succeeded in drawing a considerable body of French troops away from their main body into the Rhine valley, in defeating it and driving it up the valley towards Strasbourg, these forces would be out of the way for the general battle, while the German Third Army would still be in a position to take part in it, being so much nearer to the main body of the French. At any rate, an attack upon the French right would mislead them if the chief German attack, as we still believe, in spite of the contrary opinion of a host of military and unmilitary quidnuncs, were intended to be made on the French left. The sudden and successful attack upon Wissembourg shows that the Germans possessed information as to the positions of the French which encouraged such a manoeuvre. The French, in their haste for a revanche, ran headlong into the trap. Marshal MacMahon immediately concentrated his corps towards Wissembourg, and to complete this manoeuvre he is reported to have required two days. But the Crown Prince was not likely to give him that time. He followed up his advantage at once, and attacked him on Saturday near Woerth on the Sauer, about fifteen miles south-west of Wissembourg. MacMahon s position is described by himself as a strong one. Nevertheless, by five o'clock in the afternoon he was driven out of it, and was supposed by the Crown Prince to be in full retreat upon Bitche. By this means he would have saved himself from being driven excentrically upon Strasbourg, and maintained his communications with the mass of the army. By later French telegrams, however, it appears that he has really retreated towards Nancy, and that his head-quarters are now at Saverne. The two French corps sent to resist this German advance consisted of seven divisions of infantry, of whom we suppose at least five to have been engaged. It is possible that the whole of them may have come up successively during the fight, but were no more able to restore the balance than the successive Austrian brigades as they appeared on the battle-field of Magenta? At any rate, we may safely assume that from one-fifth to one-fourth of the total strength of the French was here defeated. The troops on the other side were probably the same whose advanced guard had won Wissembourg the Second Bavarian, the Fifth and Eleventh North German corps. Of these, the fifth consists of two Posen, five Silesian and one Westphalian regiments, the Eleventh of one Pomeranian, four Hesse-Cassel and Nassau, and three Thuringian regiments, so that troops of the most varied parts of Germany were engaged. What surprises us most in these passages of arms is the strategical and tactical part played by each army. It is the very reverse of what, from tradition, might have been expected. The Germans attack; the French defend themselves. The Germans act rapidly and in large masses, and they handle them with ease; the French own to having their troops, after a fortnight s concentration, in such a dispersed state that they require two days to bring together two army corps. Consequently they are beaten in detail. They might be Austrians, to judge from the way they move their troops. How is this to be accounted for? Simply by the necessities of the Second Empire. The sting of Wissembourg was enough to arouse all Paris, and, no doubt, to disturb the equanimity of the army too. A revanche must be had: MacMahon is sent off at once with two corps to effect it; the movement is palpably false, but, no matter, it must be made, and it is made with what effect we have seen. If Marshal MacMahon cannot be strengthened so as to face the Crown Prince again, the latter, by a march of some fifteen miles to the southward, may seize the rail from Strasbourg to Nancy and push on to Nancy, turning by this move any line the French could hope to hold in advance of Metz. It is the dread of this, no doubt, that leads the French to abandon the Sarre district. Or, leaving the pursuit of MacMahon to his advanced guard, he may file off to his right by the hills at once towards Pirmasens and Zweibr cken, to effect a formal junction with the left of Prince Frederick Charles, who has all the while been somewhere between Mayence and Saarbr cken, while the French persisted in sending him to Tr ves. How the defeat of General Frossard s corps at Forbach, followed, as it seems, by the advance of the Prussians to St. Avold yesterday, will affect his course we cannot determine. If the Second Empire absolutely required a victory after Wissembourg, it now requires one, in a much higher degree, after Woerth and Forbach. If Wissembourg was enough to disarrange all previous plans with regard to the right wing, the battles of Saturday necessarily upset all arrangements made for the whole army. The French army has lost all initiative. Its movements are dictated less by military considerations than by political necessities. Here are 300,000 men almost within sight of the enemy. If their movements are to be ruled, not by what is done in the enemy s camp, but by what happens or may happen in Paris, they are half beaten already. Nobody, of course, can foretell with certainty the result of the general battle which is now impending if not going on; but this much we may say, that another week of such strategy as Napoleon III has shown since Thursday is alone sufficient to destroy the best and largest army in the world. The impression gained from the Prussian accounts of these battles will only be deepened by the telegrams from the Emperor Napoleon. At midnight on Saturday he sent off the bare facts: Three hours later came the news that his communications with Marshal MacMahon were interrupted a At six on Sunday morning the serious meaning of General Frossard s defeat was virtually acknowledged by the confession that it was sustained as far west of Saarbr cken as Forbach, and the impossibility of immediately arresting the Prussian advance was further conceded in the announcement the troops, which had found themselves divided, are concentrated on Metz. The next telegram is hard to interpret. What retreat? Not Marshal MacMahon s, for the communications with him were still interrupted. Not General Frossard s, for the Emperor goes on to say, There is no news from General Frossard. And if at 8.25 A.M. the Emperor could only speak in the future tense of a retreat to be effected by troops of whose position he knew nothing, what value must be assigned to the telegram of eight hours earlier, in which he says, in the present tense, the retreat is being effected in good order. All these later messages prolong the note struck in the Tout peut se r tablir, of the first. The victories of the Prussians were too serious to allow of a resort to the tactics which the Emperor would naturally have adopted. He could not venture to conceal the truth in the prospect of being able to efface the effect of it by a contemporaneous account of a later battle with a different result. It was impossible to spare the pride of the French people by disguising from them that two of their armies had been worsted, and therefore the only resource left was to throw himself on the passionate desire to retrieve their losses which the news of similar disasters has before now generated in French hearts. Private telegrams no doubt sketched out for the Empress and the Ministers the line their public utterances were to take, or more probably the actual text of their respective proclamations was supplied to them from Metz. From both these we gather that whatever may be the temper of the French people, every one in authority, from the Emperor downward, is deeply dispirited, than which of itself nothing could be more significant. Paris has been declared in a state of siege an indisputable indication of what may follow upon another Prussian victory, and the Ministerial proclamation ends, Saved, Frenchmen may perhaps ask themselves, from what? From an invasion undertaken by the Prussians in order to avert a French invasion of Germany. If the Prussians had been defeated and a similar exhortation had come from Berlin, its meaning would have been clear, since every fresh victory of French arms would have meant a fresh annexation of German territory to France. But if the Prussian Government are well advised a French defeat will only mean that the attempt to prevent Prussia from pursuing her German policy undisturbed has failed, and we can hardly believe that the levy en masse, upon which the French Ministers are said to be deliberating, will be available for the renewal of an offensive war.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/08.htm

Saturday, the 6th of August, was the critical day for the first phase of the campaign. The first despatches from the German side, by their extreme modesty, rather hid than exposed the importance of the results gained on that day. It is only through the later and fuller accounts, and by some rather awkward admissions in the French reports, that we are enabled to judge of the total change in the military situation accomplished on Saturday. While MacMahon was defeated on the eastern slope of the Vosges, Frossard s three divisions, and at least one regiment of Bazaine s corps, the 69th, in all forty-two battalions, were driven from the heights south of Saarbr cken and on beyond Forbach, by Kameke s division of the 7th (Westphalian), and the two divisions of Barnekow and St lpnagel, of the 8th (Rhenish) Corps, in all thirty-seven battalions. As the German battalions are stronger, the numbers engaged appear to have been pretty equal, but the French had the advantage of position. There were to the left of Frossard the seven infantry divisions of Bazaine and Ladmirault, and to his rear the two divisions of the Guards. With the exception of one regiment, as above stated, not a man of all these came up to support the unlucky Frossard. He had to fall back after a smart defeat, and is now in full retreat upon Metz; and so are Bazaine, Ladmirault, and the Guards. The Germans are in pursuit and were on Sunday in St. Avold, with all Lorraine open to them as far as Metz. MacMahon, De Failly, and Canrobert, in the meantime, are retreating, not upon Bitche, as was at first stated, but upon Nancy; and MacMahon s headquarters were on Sunday at Saverne. These three corps, therefore, are not only defeated, but also driven back in a direction divergent from the line of retreat of the rest of the army. The strategical advantage aimed at in the attack of the Crown Prince, and explained by us yesterday, appears thus to have been attained, at least partially. While the Emperor retires due west, MacMahon goes much more towards the south, and will scarcely have reached Lun ville at the time the other four corps will be massed under the shelter of Metz. But from Sarreguemines to Lun ville is only a few miles farther than from Saverne to Lun ville. And it is not to be expected that, while Steinmetz follows up the Emperor and the Crown Prince tries to hold fast MacMahon in the defiles of the Vosges, Prince Frederick Charles, who was on Sunday at Blieskastel, with his advanced guard somewhere near Sarreguemines, should look on quietly. The whole of Northern Lorraine is a splendid cavalry country, and Lun ville in time of peace was always the head-quarters of a large portion of the French cavalry quartered in that neighbourhood. With the great superiority, both as to quantity and quality, in cavalry on the side of the Germans, it is difficult to suppose that they will not at once launch large masses of that arm towards Lun ville, intending to intercept the communications between MacMahon and the Emperor, destroy the railway bridges on the Strasbourg-Nancy line, and, if possible, the bridges of the Meurthe. It is even possible that they may succeed in interposing a body of infantry between the two separated bodies of the French army, compel MacMahon to retreat still farther south, and to take a still more circuitous route to restore his connection with the rest of the army. That something of that sort has already been done seems clear from the Emperor s admission that on Saturday his communications with MacMahon were interrupted; and the fear of more serious consequences is ominously expressed in the report of a removal of the French head-quarters to Ch lons being contemplated. Four of the eight corps of the French army have thus been more or less completely defeated, and always in detail, while of one of them, the Seventh (F lix Douay), the whereabouts is quite unknown. The strategy which rendered possible such blunders is worthy of the Austrians in their most helpless times. It is not Napoleon, it is Beaulieu, Mack, Gyulay, and the like of them, we are reminded of. Imagine Frossard having to fight at Forbach all day, while to his left, and not more than ten miles or so from the line of the Saar, seven divisions were looking on! This would be unaccountable, unless we suppose that there were facing them German forces sufficient to prevent them from either supporting Frossard or assisting him by an independent attack. And this, the only possible exculpation, is admissible only if, as we have always said, the decisive attack of the Germans was intended to be made by their extreme right. The hasty retreat upon Metz again confirms this view; it looks uncommonly like a timely attempt to withdraw from a position where the communications with Metz were already threatened. What German troops there may have been facing, and perhaps outflanking, Ladmirault and Bazaine, we do not know; but we must not forget that of Steinmetz s seven or more divisions only three have been engaged. In the meantime another North German corps has turned up the Sixth or Upper Silesian. It passed through Cologne last Thursday, and will now be either with Steinmetz or Frederick Charles, whom The Times persists in placing on the extreme right, at Tr ves, in the same number which contains the telegram that he has moved from Homburg to Blieskastel. The superiority of the Germans, both as to numbers, morale, and strategical position, must now be such that, for a time, they may with impunity do almost anything they like. If the Emperor intends to keep his four army corps in the entrenched camp at Metz and he has but the choice between that and an uninterrupted retreat upon Paris that need not stop the advance of the Germans any more than the attempt of Benedek, in 1866, to reassemble his army under shelter of Olmutz arrested the Prussian advance upon Vienna. Benedek! What a comparison for the conqueror of Magenta and Solferino! And yet it is more to the point than any other. Like Benedek, the Emperor had his troops massed in a position from which he could move in any direction, and that a full fortnight before the enemy was concentrated. Like Benedek, Louis Napoleon managed to have corps after corps beaten in detail by superior numbers or superior generalship. But here, we are afraid, the likeness ceases. Benedek had, after a week of daily defeats, strength enough left him for the supreme effort of Sadowa. To all appearances Napoleon has his troops separated, almost hopelessly, after two days engagements, and cannot even afford to try a general action. There will now, we suppose, be an end to the intended expedition of troops to the Baltic, if that was ever more than a feint. Every battalion will be wanted on the eastern frontier. Out of the 376 battalions of the French army, 300 were in the six corps of the line and one of Guards which we know stood between Metz and Strasbourg. The seventh corps of the line (Douay) might have been sent either to the Baltic or to join the main army, which accounts for forty more. The rest, thirty-six battalions, can hardly have been sufficient for Algeria and various other duties in the interior. What resources has the Emperor to draw upon for reinforcements? The 100 fourth battalions now in formation and the Garde Mobile. But both of these consist, the first mostly, the second altogether, of raw recruits. By what time the fourth battalions may be ready to march we do not know; they will have to march whether ready or not. What the Garde Mobile is at present we saw last week in the camp of Ch lons. Both are good material for soldiers, no doubt, but not soldiers yet; not yet troops to withstand the shock of men who are becoming used to the taking of mitrailleurs. On the other hand, in about ten days, the Germans will have 190,000 to 200,000 of the fourth battalions, &c., to draw upon the flower of their army, besides at least an equal number of landwehr, all fit for duty in the field.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/09.htm

There is no doubt now that scarcely ever was there a war undertaken with such an utter disregard of the ordinary rules of prudence as the Napoleonic military promenade to Berlin. A war for the Rhine was Napoleon s last and most telling card; but at the same time its failure implied the downfall of the Second Empire. This was well understood in Germany. The constant expectation of a French war was one of the chief considerations which made very many Germans acquiesce in the changes effected in 1866. If Germany had been dismembered in one sense, it had been strengthened in another; the military organization of North Germany gave a far greater guarantee of safety than that of the larger but sleepy old Confederation. This new military organization was calculated to place under arms, in organized battalions, squadrons, and batteries, in eleven days, 552,000 men of the line and 205,000 of the landwehr; and in a fortnight or three weeks more another 187,000 men of the reserve (Ersatztruppen) fully fit to take the field. There was no mystery about this. The whole plan, showing the distribution of this force in the various corps, the districts from which each battalion, &c., was to be raised, had often been published. Moreover, the mobilization of 1866 had shown that this was not an organization existing on paper only. Every man was duly registered; and it was well known that in the office of every district commander of the landwehr the orders for calling out each man were ready, and awaited but the filling up of the date. For the French Emperor, however, these enormous forces existed on paper only. The whole force he brought together to open the campaign with were, at the outside, 360,000 men of the Army of the Rhine, and 30,000 to 40,000 more for the Baltic expedition, say 400,000 men in all. With such a disproportion of numbers, and with the long time it takes to get the French new formations (fourth battalions) ready for the field, his only hope of success was a sudden attack, while the Germans were still in the midst of their mobilization. We have seen how this opportunity slipped away; how even the second chance, that of a push forward to the Rhine, was neglected; and we shall now point out another blunder. The disposition of the French about the time of the declaration of war was excellent. It was evidently part and parcel of a long-considered plan of campaign. Three corps at Thionville, St. Avold, and Bitche in the first line, immediately on the frontier; two corps at Metz and Strasbourg, in a second line; two corps in reserve about Nancy, and an eighth corps at Belfort. With the aid of the railways, all these troops could be massed in a few days for an attack either across the Saar from Lorraine, or across the Rhine from Alsace striking either north or east as might be required. But this disposition was essentially one for attack. For defence it was absolutely faulty. The very first condition of a disposition of an army of defence is this: to have your advanced troops so far in front of your main body that you receive the news of the enemy s attack in time to concentrate your troops before he arrives upon you. Suppose it takes you one day s march to get your wings to close on your centre, then your advanced guard should be at least one day s march in front of your centre. Now, here, the three corps of Ladmirault, Frossard, and De Failly, and afterwards a portion of MacMahon s too, were close upon the frontier, and yet spread upon a line from Wissembourg to Sierck at least ninety miles. To draw in the wings on the centre would have required fully two days march; and yet, even when the Germans were known to be within a few miles in front, no steps were taken either to shorten the length of front, or to push forward advanced guards to such a distance as would secure timely advice of an impending attack. Is it to be wondered at that the several corps were defeated by piecemeal? Then came the blunder of posting one division of MacMahon s east of the Vosges, at Wissembourg, in a position inviting an attack with superior forces. Douay s defeat brought on MacMahon s next blunder in trying to retrieve the fight east of the Vosges, thereby separating the right wing still more from the centre, and laying open his line of communications with it. While the right wing (MacMahon s, and portions at least of Failly s and Canrobert s corps) was crushed at Woerth, the centre (Frossard, and two divisions of Bazaine, as it now appears) were severely beaten before Saarbr cken. The rest of the troops were too far away to come up to assistance. Ladmirault was still near Bouzonville, the rest of Bazaine s men and the Guards were about Boulay, the mass of Canrobert s troops turned up at Nancy, part of De Failly s were lost sight of completely, and F Iix Douay, we now find, on the 1st of August was at Altkirch, in the extreme south of Alsace, nearly 120 miles from the battle-field of Woerth, and probably with but imperfect means of railway conveyance. The whole arrangement indicates nothing but hesitation, indecision, vacillation, and that in the most decisive moment of the campaign. And what idea were the soldiers allowed to have of their opponents? It was all very well for the Emperor at the last moment to tell his men that they would have to face one of the best armies of Europe; but that went for nothing after the lessons of contempt for the Prussians which had been driven into them for years. We cannot show this better than by the evidence of Captain Jeannerod, of the Temps, whom we have quoted before, and who left the army but three years ago. He was taken prisoner by the Prussians at the baptism of fire affair, and spent two days among them, during which time he saw the greater portion of their Eighth Army Corps. He was astounded to find such a difference between his idea of them and the reality. This is his first impression on being brought to their camp: On the German side it was quite different. The military qualities of the French were certainly not underrated. The concentration of German troops took place rapidly but cautiously. Every available man was brought to the front; and now, the First North German Army Corps having turned up at Saarbr cken in Prince Frederick Charles s army, it is certain that every man, horse, and gun of the 550,000 troops of the line has been brought to the front, there to be joined by the South Germans. And the effect of such an enormous numerical superiority has been, so far, increased by superior generalship.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/11.htm

The public have been waiting all this week for that great battle before Metz which a French bulletin described as impending; and yet not one of our military critics has thought fit to explain that this impending battle was nothing but a tub thrown out to that unruly whale, the people of Paris, to play with. A battle before Metz! Why should the French desire it? They have collected under shelter of that fortress four corps; they are trying to draw towards it some of Canrobert s four divisions; they may hope soon to learn that the remaining three corps, of MacMahon, De Failly, and Douay, have reached the Moselle at Nancy and found shelter behind it. Why should they court a pitched battle before all their army is united again, when the forts of Metz protect them from an attack? And why should the Germans break their heads in an unprepared assault against these forts? If the whole French army was united under the ramparts of Metz, then the French might be expected to sally forth east of the Moselle and offer battle in front of their stronghold, but not till then. But that has yet to be accomplished, and it is still doubtful whether it ever will be. On Sunday lastc MacMahon was compelled to leave Saverne, which was occupied the same night by the Germans. He had with him the remnants of his own corps, of one division (Conseil-Dumesnil s) of Douay s corps, and, besides, one division of De Failly s, which had covered his retreat. On the same evening the German First and Second armies were in advance of Forbach and nearly in St. Avold. Both these places are nearer to Nancy than Saverne: they are considerably nearer than Saverne to Pont- -Mousson and Dieulouard, places on the Moselle between Nancy and Metz. Now, when the Germans must, as soon as possible, secure or construct a passage across that river, and that above Metz (for various pretty evident reasons); when they are nearer to the river than MacMahon, and thus by hurrying on may prevent his reunion with Bazaine; when they have troops enough and to spare is it not almost evident that they will attempt something of the sort? Their cavalry, as we predicted it would, is already scouring the whole of Northern Lorraine, and must have ere now come into contact with MacMahon s right; it had passed, on Wednesday, Gros-Tenquin, which is only about twenty-five miles from the direct road between Saverne and Nancy. They will, therefore, know perfectly where he is and operate accordingly, and we shall soon learn at what point between Nancy (or, rather, Frouard) and Metz they have struck the Moselle. This is the reason why we have not heard of any fights since last Saturday s. The soldiers legs are doing all the work just now; it is a race between MacMahon and Frederick Charles, which of them shall first get across the river. And if Frederick Charles should win this race, then we may expect the French to issue from Metz, not to offer battle in sight of its ramparts, but to defend the passage of the Moselle; which, indeed, may be done by an attack either on the right or the left bank. The two pontoon trains captured at Forbach may have to do duty very soon. Of De Failly we hear nothing definite. It is, indeed, stated in a Metz bulletin that he has rejoined the army. But which? Bazaine s or MacMahon s? Evidently the latter, if there be any truth in the whole report; for between Bazaine and him were the heads of the German columns ever since he got lost. Douay s remaining two divisions he was still on the Swiss frontier, near Basel, on the 4th of August must, by the German advance upon Strasbourg, be cut off from the rest of the army for the present; they can only rejoin it by Vesoul. Of Canrobert s troops we find, all at once, at least one division (Martimprey s) in Paris, facing, not the Germans, but the Republicans. The 25th, 26th, and 28th regiments, which belong to it, are mentioned as having been employed on Tuesday among the troops protecting the Corps L gislatif. The rest should now be in Metz, raising the army there to fifteen divisions (infantry), three of which, however, are completely shattered by their defeat at Spicheren. As to Spicheren, it is wrong to say that the French were in that engagement crushed by superior numbers. We have now a tolerably full report of Generals Steinmetz a and Alvensleben which shows pretty clearly what troops were engaged on the German side. The attack was made by the 14th division, supported by our old friends, the 40th regiment in all fifteen battalions. They alone, of infantry, fought for six hours against the three divisions, or thirty-nine battalions, which Frossard brought up successively. When they were nearly crushed, but still held the heights of Spicheren, which they had stormed in the beginning of the fight, the 5th division of the 3rd or Brandenburg Corps came up, and at least three out of its four regiments took part in the fight all in all, either twenty-four or twenty-seven battalions of Germans. They drove the French from their position, and it was only after the retreat had commenced that the head of the 13th division, which had turned the French right by the valley of the Rossel, reached the field of battle, fell upon Forbach, and turned an orderly retreat into a rout by cutting off the direct road to Metz. The Germans at the close of the fight had another division (the 6th) ready to engage, and, indeed, slightly engaged; but at the same time two French divisions, Montaudon s and Castagny s (both of Bazaine s), had come up, and the 69th regiment, which forms part of the latter, had suffered severely. Thus, if at Wissembourg and Woerth the French were crushed by superior masses, they were beaten by inferior numbers at Spicheren. As to their common report that they were outnumbered, it is not to be forgotten that individual soldiers in a battle cannot possibly judge of numbers, and that it is the common assertion of all beaten armies. Besides, it should not be forgotten that the solid qualities of the German army are only now beginning to be recognized. We have it officially from the French head-quarters that the German fire is much superior in steadiness and precision to the French, and MacMahon insists that the French have no chance against the Germans in woods, because these latter know so much better how to take advantage of shelter. As to the cavalry, here is what Jeannerod says in Thursday s Temps: He also praises the great knowledge the officers have of the ground, not only in their own country, but also in France. But no wonder. Every lieutenant is provided with excellent copies of the French ordnance maps, while the French officers are supplied only with a ridiculous map (une carte d risoire) of the seat of war. And so forth. It would have been good for the French army if only one such sincere reporter had been sent to Germany before the war.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/13.htm

Where is MacMahon? The German horse, in their raid up to the gates of Lun ville and Nancy, appear not to have met with him; otherwise we should have heard of encounters. On the other hand, if he had arrived in safety at Nancy, and thus restored his communications with the army at Metz, such a consoling fact would certainly have been announced at once from the French head-quarters. The only conclusion we can draw from this absolute silence regarding him is this, that he has thought it too dangerous to follow the direct road from Saverne to Lun ville and Nancy; and that, in order not to expose his right flank to the enemy, he has taken a more circuitous route, farther south, passing the Moselle at Bayon or even higher up. If this surmise be correct, there would be very little chance of his ever reaching Metz; and, in that case, it must have been a question for the Emperor or whoever commands at Metz, whether the army had not better at once retreat to Ch lons-sur-Marne, the nearest point where a ]unction with MacMahon may be effected. We are therefore disposed to accept the report of a general retreat of the French line in that direction. In the meantime, we hear of tremendous reinforcements for the French army. The new Minister of War assures the Chamber that in four days two army corps, 35,000 men each, are to be sent to the front. Where are they? We know that the eight corps of the Army of the Rhine, and the troops intended for the Baltic, with the garrison of Algeria, fully accounted for every battalion of the French army, including the marines. We know that 40,000 men, from Canrobert s corps and from the Baltic expedition, are in Paris. We know from General Dejean s speech in the Chamber that the fourth battalions, so far from being ready, required filling up, and that this was to be done by drafting into them men from the Garde Mobile. Where, then, are these 70,000 men to come from? especially if, as is but likely, General Montauban de Palikao will not part with the 40,000 men in Paris as long as he can help it. Yet, if there is any meaning in what he said, these two corps must mean the troops at Paris and Canrobert s corps, which hitherto has always been counted as part of the Army of the Rhine; and in that case, the only real reinforcement being the garrison of Paris, the grand total in the field will be raised from twenty-five to twenty-eight divisions, seven at least of which have suffered severely. Then we hear that General Trochu is named chief of the 12th Corps forming at Paris, and General Vendez (?) chief of the 13th Corps forming at Lyons. The army consisted hitherto of the Guards, and corps Nos. 1 to 7. Of Nos. 8, 9, 10, and 11 we have never heard; now we are suddenly treated to Nos. 12 and 13. We have seen that there are no troops existing out of which any of these corps could be formed; always excepting No. 12, if that means the garrison of Paris. It seems a poor trick to raise public confidence by creating on paper imaginary armies; yet there is no other interpretation than this to be put on the alleged establishment of five army corps, four of which have been hitherto non-existent. No doubt attempts are being made to organize a fresh army; but what materials are there for it? There is, firstly, the gendarmerie, out of which a regiment of horse and one of foot can be formed; excellent troops, but they will not exceed 3,000 men, and will have to be brought together from all parts of France. So will the douaniers, who are expected to furnish the stuff for four-and-twenty battalions; we doubt whether they will complete half that number. Then come the old soldiers of the classes of 1858 to 1863, the unmarried men amongst whom have been called out again by special law. These may furnish a contingent of 200,000 men, and will form the most valuable addition to the army. With less than one half of these the fourth battalions may be filled up, and the rest formed into new battalions. But here begins the difficulty where are the officers to come from? They will have to be taken from the fighting army, and although this may be effected by a considerable promotion of sergeants to sub-lieutenants, it must weaken the corps from which they are taken. The whole of these three classes will give, at most, an. increase of 220,000 to 230,000 men, and it will take under favourable circumstances at least fourteen to twenty days before even a portion of them can be ready to join the active army. But, unfortunately for them, circumstances are not favourable. It is now admitted that not merely the commissariat, but the whole of the French army administration was utterly ineffective, even to supply the army on the frontier. What, then, will be the state of forwardness of accoutrements and equipments for these reserves which nobody ever expected to be wanted in the field? It is very doubtful, indeed, whether, beyond the fourth battalions, any new formations will be ready before a couple of months. Then it is not to be forgotten that not one of these men ever handled a breech-loader, and that they are, all of them, totally ignorant of the new tactics inaugurated by that arm. And if the present French line, as is now admitted by themselves, fire hastily and at random, and squander their ammunition, what will these newly formed battalions do in the presence of an enemy whose steadiness and precision of fire appear to be very little affected by the din of battle? There remain the Garde Mobile, the levy of all unmarried men up to thirty years, and the sedentary National Guard. As to the Garde Mobile, what little of it ever had any formal organization appears to have broken down as soon as it was sent to Ch lons. Discipline. there was none, and the officers, most of them totally unacquainted with their duties, seem to have lost in authority every day; there were not even arms for the men, and now the whole thing appears to be in complete dissolution. General Dejean indirectly acknowledged this by the proposal to fill up the ranks of the fourth battalions from the Garde Mobile. And if this, the apparently organized portion of the levy en masse be utterly useless, what is to become of the rest of it? Even if there were officers, accoutrements, and arms for them, how long would it take to make them into soldiers? But there is nothing provided for the emergency. Every officer fit for his post is already employed; the French have not that almost inexhaustible reserve of officers furnished by the one year s volunteers, about 7,000 of whom enter the German armies every year, and almost every one of whom leaves the service quite fit to undertake an officer s duties. Accoutrements and arms appear to be equally absent; it is even said that the old flint-locks will have to be brought out of store. And under these circumstances, what are these 200,000 of men worth to France? It is all very well for the French to point to the Convention, to Carnot, with his frontier armies created out of nothing, and so forth. But while we are far from saying that France is irretrievably beaten, let us not forget that in the successes of the Convention the allied armies bore a significant part. At that time the armies which attacked France numbered on an average 40,000 men each; there were three or four of them, each acting out of reach of the other, the one on the Schelde, the other on the Moselle, the third in Alsace, &c. To each of these small armies the Convention opposed immense numbers of more or less raw levies which, by acting upon the flanks and rear of the enemy, then entirely dependent upon his magazines, compelled him upon the whole to keep pretty close to the frontier; and, having been formed into real soldiers by five years campaigning, finally succeeded in driving him across the Rhine. But is it for a moment to be supposed that similar tactics will avail against the present immense army of invasion, which, though formed in three distinct bodies, has always managed to keep together within supporting distance, or that this army will leave the French time to develop their now dormant resources? And to develop them to any extent is possible only in case the French are prepared to do what they never have done before, to abandon Paris and its garrison to their fate, and to continue the struggle with the line of the Loire for their base of operations. It may never come to that, but unless France is prepared to face it, she had better not talk about a levy en masse.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/15.htm

Such was the version of the Emperor s despatch which Mr. Reuter furnished on Monday night. It contained, however, an important error, the Emperor having expressly stated that the reconnoitring parties did not announce the presence of the enemy, though he was near at hand and in force. Apart from this, however, nothing apparently could be more straightforward and businesslike than this bulletin. You have the whole thing distinctly before your eyes; the French, busily engaged in that risky operation, the crossing of a river; the wily Prussians, who always know how to take their opponents at a disadvantage, falling upon them as soon as one-half of them has got to the other side; then the gallant defence of the French, crowning its superhuman efforts, finally, by a dashing advance, which repels the enemy with considerable losses. It is quite graphic, and there is only one thing wanting the name of the place where all this occurred. From the bulletin we cannot but suppose that this passage of the river, and this attempt to interrupt it which was so victoriously defeated, took place in the open country. But how could this be, when the French had all the bridges inside Metz to cross by bridges perfectly safe from any hostile interference? when there was, besides, plenty of room for more pontoon bridges to be constructed, in equally safe places, on the five or six miles of river which are covered by the forts round Metz? Surely the French staff do not mean us to imply that they wantonly disregarded all these advantages, led the army outside of Metz, constructed their bridges in the open, and passed the river within sight and reach of the enemy, merely to bring on that battle before Metz which had been promised us for a whole week? And if the passage of the Moselle took place by bridges inside the works of Metz, how could the Prussians attack the French troops still on the right bank so long as these kept, as they might have done, inside the line of detached forts? The artillery of these forts would soon have made the place too hot for any attacking troops. The whole thing seems impossible. The least the French staff could have done would have been to give the name of the locality, that we might have traced the different phases of this glorious battle on the map. But that name they will not give. Fortunately for us, the Prussians are not so mysterious; they say the fight a occurred near Pange, on the road to Metz. We look at the map, and the whole thing is clear. Pange is not on the Moselle, but eight miles away from it, on the Nied, about four miles outside the detached forts of Metz. If the French were crossing the Moselle, and had one-half of their troops over already, they had, in a military sense, no business whatever to keep strong forces at or near Pange. If they went there, it was for reasons not military. Napoleon, once compelled to abandon Metz and the line of the Moselle, could not very well without a fight, and, if possible, a real or sham victory, enter upon a retreat which must be continued at least as far as Ch lons. The opportunity was favourable. While one-half of his troops crossed, the other would debouch from between the forts east of Metz, push back the Prussian advanced troops, bring on as much of a general engagement as appeared convenient, draw on the enemy until within reach of the guns of the forts, and then, with a showy advance of the whole front, drive them back to a safe distance from the works. Such a plan could not entirely fail; it must lead to something which could be made to look like a victory; it would restore confidence in the army, perhaps even in Paris, and make the retreat to Ch lons look less humiliating. This view explains that apparently simple, but in reality absurd, bulletin from Metz. Every word of that bulletin is correct in a certain sense, while the whole context at the first glance is calculated to evoke a totally false impression. This view equally explains how both parties could claim the victory. The Prussians drove back the French till under the shelter of their forts, but having advanced too close to these forts had to retire in their turn. So much for the celebrated battle before Metz, which might as well not have been fought at all, for its influence upon the course of the campaign will be zero. It will be observed that the Count of Palikao, speaking in the Chamber, was much more cautious. The Marshal s last assurance seems to have been only momentarily true, for the retreating body of the French has certainly been severely harassed by the Prussians at Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte. It was, indeed, high time that Napoleon and his army left Metz. While they were tarrying about the Moselle, the German cavalry passed the Meuse at Commercy and destroyed the railway thence to Bar-le-Duc; they also appeared at Vigneulles, threatening the flank of the columns retreating from Metz to Verdun. What these horsemen dare risk we see from the way in which a squadron of them entered Nancy, levied 50,000 francs, and compelled the townspeople to destroy the railway. Where are the French cavalry? where are the forty-three regiments attached to the eight army corps, and the twelve regiments of reserve cavalry which figure on the tat of the Army of the Rhine? The only obstacle in the way of the Germans now is the fortress of Toul, and this would not be of any importance whatever if it did not command the railway. The Germans are sure to want the railway, and therefore they no doubt will take the shortest means to reduce Toul, which, being an old-fashioned fortress without detached forts, is perfectly open to bombardment. We shall probably soon hear that it has surrendered after being bombarded by field guns for something like twelve hours, perhaps less. If it be true, as French papers say, that MacMahon, having left his army, was in Nancy two days after the battle of Woerth, we may assume that his corps is totally disorganized, and that the infection has caught the troops of De Failly too. The Germans are now marching on to the Marne, almost on an equal front line with the two French armies, and having one of them on each flank. Bazaine s line of march is from Metz by Verdun and St. M nehould to Ch lons; that of the Germans from Nancy, by Commercy and Bar-le-Duc, to Vitry; that of MacMahon s troops (for even if the Marshal himself has joined the Emperor at Ch lons, it must be without his army) somewhere to the south, but, no doubt, also directed towards Vitry. The reunion of the two French armies thus becomes more doubtful every day; and unless Douay s troops have been ordered from Belfort by Vesoul and Chaumont to Vitry in time, they may have to rejoin the army by way of Troyes and Paris, for Vitry will now soon be impassable by train for French soldiers.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/18.htm

Undoubtedly, if General Moltke be old, his plans have all the energy of youth. Not satisfied with having once already pushed his compact army between one wing of the French and the rest of their troops, he now repeats the same manoeuvre over again, and apparently with equal success. Had he continued his straight march on to the Marne, and merely harassed the right flank and rear of the French during their parallel march towards the same goal, he would, in the opinion of most military critics, have done quite enough. But it was hardly to be expected that he would have used the legs of his soldiers with such terrible vigour as he now appears to have done. What we took for mere attacks of detached corps upon the exposed flanks and rear of that long marching column which moved from Metz towards Verdun appears now to have been the reconnaissances preceding an attack in force upon it. Three or four German army corps had marched in a semicircle round on the southern side of Metz; their advanced troops reached the French line of march on Tuesday morning, and at once fell upon it. The French army began its retreat from Metz on Sunday; the engagements between Pange and Fort Bellecroix on the evening of that day may have retarded that movement, still it was continued on Monday and had not been completed on Tuesday. It took place at least by two different columns, following the two roads which separate, five miles west of Metz, at Gravelotte; the northernmost of these roads passes Doncourt and Etain, the southernmost Vionville, Mars-la-Tour, and Fresnes, and both unite again at Verdun. It was near Mars-la-Tour that the German attack took place; the fight lasted all day, and ended, according to the German account, in the defeat of the French, who lost two eagles, seven cannon, and 2,000 prisoners, and were driven back to Metz. On the other hand, Bazaine too claims the victory. He says his troops repelled the Germans, and passed the night on the position won. But there are two very ominous statements in his telegram of Wednesday evening. There he says he fought all day on Tuesday between Doncourt and Vionville; that is to say, he fought with his front extending from Doncourt to Vionville, facing west, the Germans barring the way to Verdun on both roads. Whatever success he claims, he does not pretend to say that he cleared the roads to Verdun, or only one of them. Had he done so, his evident duty would have been to continue his retreat during the night as fast as he could, as the enemy would almost certainly be reinforced in the morning. But he stops and passes the night on the position won, whatever that may mean. Not satisfied with that, he stays there till four o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, and even then announces, not his intention of moving, but of delaying his further movements for a few hours longer, in order to largely increase his ammunition. Thus we may be certain that the night to Thursday was also passed at the same spot; and as the only place whence he could increase his ammunition was Metz, we shall be fully entitled to conclude that the positions conquered were positions to the rear, that the retreat to Verdun was and remained cut off, and that by this time Marshal Bazaine will have either gone back to Metz, or attempted to escape by a route farther north. If this view be correct and we do not see how the evidence before us can be made to justify any other a portion of the French army is again cut off from the rest. We do not know what troops may have passed towards Verdun on Monday, and on Tuesday morning before the Germans came up. But the portion driven back to Metz is evidently considerable, and whatever its importance may be, by so much will be reduced the great army which it was attempted to concentrate at Ch lons. There is, indeed, a loophole left by which Bazaine might try to escape. A railway runs, close to the Belgian frontier, from Thionville to Longuyon, Montm dy, and M zier s, where it meets a cross line to Reims and Ch lons; but any troops using this border line, or merely marching towards it, might be driven by a pursuing enemy up to the frontier, and compelled either to surrender or to cross it and be disarmed by the Belgians. Moreover, it is not likely that there will be rolling stock enough on this out-of-the-way line to take up a considerable body of troops; and, lastly, we have reports from Verdun that Prussians, who must have passed the Moselle between Metz and Thionville, were on Wednesday at Briey, on the direct road from Metz towards the available portion of that railway. Should Bazaine attempt to save his beaten troops in that direction he would, in the best of cases, have the whole of them reduced to utter dissolution. A long retreat, with the enemy on the direct line of communication of the beaten troops, is a most disastrous proceeding. Witness MacMahon s troops, some driblets of which have continued to arrive by train at Ch lons. On the 12th some 5,000 dropped in; in what state let the Si cle tell. They consisted of men of all arms and regiments mixed up, without arms, without cartridges, without knapsacks; the cavalry had no horses, the gunners no guns; a motley, disorganized, demoralized crew whom it would take weeks to form into battalions, squadrons, and batteries again. It is enough that correspondents decline to describe the state of the troops of the line at Ch lons for fear to divulge matters which might be useful to the enemy. That grand army which was destined to concentrate at Ch lons may never meet there. After Canrobert s troops had been drawn, partly to Paris and partly to Metz, there remained but the eighteen battalions of Mobiles there; not worth mentioning in a war like this. Since then some marine infantry from Paris has been sent to Ch lons; Douay s two remaining divisions, if there is any common sense left in Bazaine s dispositions, will have arrived by this time; perhaps a few fourth battalions, certainly not many. The newly formed regiments of gendarmes and douaniers may, some of them, arrive in the course of a few days. A few small bodies of francs-tireurs may also come in; but, leaving all raw levies out of account, the chief portion of that grand army which can be concentrated there before the Germans arrive would, under all circumstances, consist of the troops retiring from Metz. And what these now may be, after Tuesday s fights, we shall have to learn. The nomination of General Trochu to the command of the army destined to defend Paris, so closely following upon his appointment to the command of the 12th Corps forming at Paris, proves that it is not intended to send the mass of the troops now in Paris to the front. Paris must be kept down. And yet, who will be able to keep it down when the truth about last Tuesday s battle becomes known there?

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/19.htm

The Emperor has left the army, but his evil genius has remained with it that evil genius which hurried on, in hot impatience, the declaration of war and that accomplished was henceforth unable to make up its mind to anything. The army was to be ready to march by the 20th of July at latest. The 20th of July came and nothing had been done. On the 29th Napoleon III took the supreme command at Metz, there was still time for an almost unresisted advance up to the Rhine: yet the army did not stir. Hesitation even appears to have gone so far that the Emperor could not determine whether to attack at all, or to take up a position for defence. The heads of the German columns were already converging from all directions towards the Palatinate, and every day they might be expected to attack. Yet the French remained in their positions on the frontier-positions designed for an attack which was never made, and altogether unfit for the defence which was so soon to be their only choice. The hesitation which lasted from the 29th of July to the 5th of August has been characteristic of the whole campaign. The French army, being placed close to the frontier, was without advanced guards at the proper distances in front of the main body, and there were but two ways in which this defect could have been remedied. The advanced guards might have been pushed forward into the enemy s territory; or they might have been left in their actual positions on the border, and the main bodies drawn nearer together a day s march to the rear. But the first plan would have brought on collisions with the enemy under circumstances beyond the control of the Emperor; while the second would have involved the political impossibility of a retreat before the first battle. Thus, hesitation continued, and nothing at all was done; as if the enemy would be caught by the infection, and equally refrain from moving. But the enemy did move. The very day before the whole of his troops had arrived at the front, on the 4th of August, it was resolved to take advantage of the faulty disposition of the French. The battle of Wissembourg drew the whole of MacMahon s and Failly s corps still more away from the centre of the French position; and on the 6th, the Germans being now fully ready, their Third Army defeated MacMahon s six divisions at Woerth, and drove him, along with De Failly s remaining two divisions, by Saverne towards Lun ville, while the advanced bodies of their First and Second armies beat Frossard s and part of Bazaine s troops at Spicheren, and drove the whole centre and left of the French back upon Metz. Thus, all Lorraine lay between the two retreating French armies, and into this wide gap poured the German cavalry and, behind it, the infantry, in order to make the most of the advantage gained. The Crown Prince has been blamed for not having followed up MacMahon s beaten army to and beyond Saverne. But after Woerth the pursuit was carried out in the most correct manner. As soon as the beaten troops were driven. so far south that they could regain the rest of the French army only by a circuitous route, the pursuers, marching straight on towards Nancy, kept continually between the two; and that this mode of pursuit (the same as Napoleon s after Jena is at least as telling as a direct march in the rear of the fugitives is now shown by the results. Whatever there is still in existence of these eight divisions is either cut off from the main body or has joined it in a state of total disorganization. Thus much for the consequences of the hesitation which marked the beginning of the campaign. It might surely have been expected that the same mistake would not again have been committed. The Emperor had resigned his command into the hands of Marshal Bazaine, and Marshal Bazaine might certainly have known that, whether he did or did not, the enemy would not allow the grass to grow under his feet. The distance from Forbach to Metz is not quite fifty miles. Most of the corps had less than thirty miles to march. Three days would have brought all of them safely under shelter at Metz; and on the fourth the retreat towards Verdun and Ch lons might have been begun. For there could no longer be any doubt as to the necessity of that retreat. Marshal MacMahon s eight divisions and General Douay s remaining two divisions more than one-third of the army could not possibly rejoin Bazaine at any nearer point than Ch lons. Bazaine had twelve divisions, including the Imperial Guard; so that even after he had been joined by three of Canrobert s divisions, he cannot have had, with cavalry and artillery, above 180,000 men a force quite insufficient to meet his opponents in the field. Unless, therefore, he intended to abandon the whole of France to the invaders, and to allow himself to be shut up in a place where famine would soon compel him to surrender or to fight on terms dictated by the enemy, it seems as though he could not have had a moment s doubt about retreating from Metz at once. Yet he does not stir. On the 1 1th, the German cavalry is at Lun ville; still he gives no sign of moving. On the 12th they are across the Moselle, they make requisitions in Nancy, they tear up the railway between Metz and Frouard, they show themselves in Pont- -Mousson. On the 13th their infantry occupy Pont- -Mousson, and are thenceforth masters of both banks of the Moselle. At last, on Sunday, the 14th, Bazaine begins moving his men to the left bank of the river; the engagement at Pange is drawn on, by which the retreat is confessedly again retarded; and we may suppose that on Monday the actual retreat towards Ch lons was commenced by sending off the heavy trains and artillery. But on that Monday the German cavalry were across the Meuse at Commercy, and within ten miles of the French line of retreat at Vigneulles. How many troops got away on Monday and early on Tuesday morning we cannot tell, but it appears certain that the main body was still behind when the German Third Corps and the reserve cavalry attacked the marching columns near Mars-la-Tour about nine in the morning on Tuesday, the 16th of August. The result is known: Bazaine s retreat was effectually stopped; on the 17th, his own telegrams show that he had at the most only maintained the position it was his one desire to leave behind him. On Wednesday, the 17th, the two armies seem to have taken breath, but on Thursday any hopes that Bazaine might still have entertained of making good his retreat were fatally stricken down. The Prussians attacked him on that morning, and after nine hours fighting On that evening or on the following day the Army of the Rhine must have re-entered the fortress it had left at the beginning of the week. Once cooped up there it will be easy for the Germans to cut off all supplies; the more so, as the country is already thoroughly drained of everything by the prolonged presence of the troops, and as the investing army is sure to require for its own use everything that can be got together. Thus, famine must soon compel Bazaine to move; but in what direction it is difficult to tell. A move to the west is sure to be resisted by overwhelming forces; one to the north is extremely dangerous; one to the south-east might perhaps partially succeed, but it would be wholly barren of immediate results. Even if he reached Belfort or Besan on with a disorganized army, he could not exercise any appreciable influence upon the fate of the campaign. This is the situation to which hesitation in the second phase of the campaign has brought the French army. No doubt it is accurately known to the Government in Paris. The recall of the Mobile Guard from Ch lons to Paris proves it. From the moment Bazaine s main forces are cut off, the position of Ch lons, which was a mere place of rendezvous, and nothing else, has lost all importance. The nearest place of rendezvous now for all forces is Paris, and thither everything must now move. There is no force whatever which could oppose in the field the Third German Army, now probably moving upon the capital. Before long the French will find out, by a practical trial, whether or not the fortifications of Paris are worth their cost. Though this crowning catastrophe has been impending for days, it is hardly possible as yet to realize that it has actually come to pass. No expectations went the length of this reality. A fortnight ago Englishmen were speculating on the possible consequences of the French army winning the first great battle. The danger to which their fears most pointed was that Napoleon III might make such an initial success the occasion of a hasty peace at the expense of Belgium. Upon this point they were speedily reassured. The battles of Woerth and Forbach showed that no theatrical-triumph was in store for the French arms. The demonstration that Germany had nothing to fear from France seemed to promise well for the speedy ending of the war. The time must soon come, it was thought, when the French would acknowledge that the attempt to control the consolidation of Germany under Prussia had failed, and that, consequently, they had nothing left to fight for, while the Germans would hardly care to go on waging a chequered and doubtful war, when the admission it was designed to extort had been already conceded. The first five days of this week have again changed the whole face of affairs. The military power of France has to all appearance been utterly overthrown, and for the time being there seems to be no limit to German ambition except the doubtful barrier of German moderation. We cannot attempt as yet to estimate the political results of this tremendous reverse. We can only look on in wonder at its magnitude and its suddenness, and in admiration at the manner in which it has been sustained by the French troops. That after four days of almost constant fighting under the most discouraging conditions possible they should on the fifth have resisted the attack of greatly superior numbers for nine hours reflects infinite credit upon their courage and resolution. Never in its most triumphant campaigns has the French army won more real glory than in its disastrous retreat from Metz.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/20.htm

Although still without full details of the three terrible battles fought last week around Metz, we have learned enough about them to be able now to give an intelligible account of what actually occurred. The battle of Sunday, the 14th of August, was commenced by the Germans, with the intention of delaying the retreat of the French towards Verdun. The remnant of Frossard s corps was observed to cross the Moselle towards Longeville on Sunday afternoon; signs of moving were visible among the troops encamped cast of Metz. The First (East Prussian) and Seventh (Westphalian and Hanoverian) army corps were ordered to attack. They drove the French in until they themselves got within range of the forts; but the French, foreseeing such a movement, had massed large bodies in sheltered positions in the valley of the Moselle, and in a narrow clough, through which a brook runs east and west, joining the main river to the north of Metz. These masses suddenly fell upon the right flank of the Germans, already suffering from the fire of the forts, and are said to have driven them back in confusion; after which the French must have retired again, for it is certain that the Germans remained in possession of that part of the battle-field which is out of range of the forts, and that they retired to their former bivouacs after daybreak only. We know this both from private letters written by men engaged in the battle, and from a correspondent s letter from Metz in Monday s Manchester Guardian, who visited the battle-field on Monday morning, and found it in the occupation of the Prussians, by whom the French wounded, then still remaining there, were being attended to. Both parties, in a certain sense, may claim to have attained the object for which the contest was engaged: the French enticed the Germans into a trap and made them suffer severely; the Germans delayed the French retreat until Prince Frederick Charles could gain the line by which this retreat was to be effected. On the German side there were two corps, or four divisions, engaged; on the French side, Decaen s and Ladmirault s corps, and part of the Guards, or above seven divisions. The French in this battle were thus in a great numerical superiority. Their position is also said to have been greatly strengthened by rifle pits and trenches, from which they fired with more coolness than usual. The retreat of the Army of the Rhine towards Verdun was not commenced in force before Tuesday, the 16th. At that time the heads of Prince Frederick Charles s columns the 3rd Army Corps (Brandenburgers) were just reaching the neighbourhood of Mars-la-Tour. They attacked at once, and for six hours held the French army at bay. Reinforced later on by the 10th Army Corps (Hanoverians and Westphalians), and portions of the 8th (Rhinelanders) and 9th (Schleswig-Holsteiners and Mecklenburgers), they not only maintained their position, but drove back the enemy, took two eagles, seven cannon, and above 2,000 prisoners. The forces against them consisted of Decaen s, Ladmirault s, Frossard s, and part at least of Canrobert s corps (they had reached Metz from Ch lons during the last days the railway vi Frouard was still open), and the Guards, or, in all, from fourteen to fifteen divisions. The eight German divisions were thus again faced by superior numbers, even if, as is likely, not all Bazaine s troops were engaged. It is well to keep this in mind, while the French accounts continue to explain all reverses by their being constantly outnumbered. That the French were effectively stop ped in their retrograde movement is clear from the fact that they themselves speak of rearguard engagements having taken place on the 17th near Gravelotte, more than five miles to the rear of their own position of the 16th. At the same time, the fact that only four German corps could be brought up on Tuesday shows that the success they obtained was incomplete. Captain Jeannerod, who came on the 17th from Briey to Conflans, found there two cavalry regiments of the French Guard much cut up and taking flight at the bare cry, The Prussians are coming! This proves that though the road by Etain, on the evening of the 16th, might not be actually in the possession of the Germans, they were so near as to render impossible any retreat by it without another battle. Bazaine, however, seems to have given up all thought of that, for he entrenched himself in a very strong position near Gravelotte, and there awaited the attack of the Germans, which took place on the 18th. The plateau, over which runs the road from Mars-la-Tour by Gravelotte to Metz, is intersected by a series of deep ravines, formed by brooks running from north to south towards the Moselle. There is one of these ravines immediately in front (west) of Gravelotte; two others run, in parallel lines, to the rear of the first. Each of these forms a strong defensive position, which had been reinforced by earthworks, and by the barricading and loopholing of such farmyards and villages as occupied places of tactical importance. To receive in this strong entrenched position the enemy, to let them break their heads against it, to hurl them back finally by a mighty retour offensif, and thus clear the road to Verdun this was evidently the only hope left to Bazaine. But the attack was made with such forces and with such energy that position after position was taken, and the Army of the Rhine driven back close under the guns of Metz. Against fourteen or fifteen French divisions twelve German divisions were actually engaged, and four more in reserve. The numbers engaged on both sides would be not far from equal; on the whole somewhat in favour of the Germans, four of their six corps having been nearly intact; but this slight numerical superiority would by no means make up for the strength of the French position. French opinion still hesitates to accept the full reality of the position created for Bazaine and his army, a position the counterpart of that into which General Bonaparte drove Wurmser at Mantua, 1796, and Mack at Ulm, 1805. That the brilliant Army of the Rhine, the hope and strength of France, should after fourteen days campaigning be reduced to the choice either to attempt to force its passage through the enemy under disastrous circumstances, or to capitulate, is more than the French can bring themselves to believe. They look for all possible explanations. One theory is that Bazaine is, so to say, sacrificing himself in order to gain time for MacMahon and Paris. While Bazaine retains two of the three German armies before Metz, Paris can organize her defences, and MacMahon will have time to create a fresh army. Bazaine thus remains at Metz, not because he cannot help it, but because it is in the interest of France he should be there. But where, it may be asked, are the elements of MacMahon s new army? His own corps, now numbering at most 15,000 men; De Failly s remaining troops, disorganized and scattered by a long circuitous retreat he is said to have arrived at Vitry-le-Francois with but 7,000 or 8,000 men; perhaps one division of Canrobert s; the two divisions of F Iix Douay s, the whereabouts of which nobody seems to know: about 40,000 men, including the marines of the intended Baltic expedition. These include every battalion and squadron which is left to France of its old army outside of Metz. To these would come the fourth battalions. They appear now to be arriving in Paris in pretty good numbers, but filled up to a great extent with recruits. The whole of these troops may r ach something like 130,000 to 150,000 men; but this new army is not to be compared in quality to the old Army of the Rhine. The old regiments in it cannot but have suffered greatly from demoralization. The new battalions have been formed in a hurry, contain many recruits, and cannot be as well officered as the old army. The proportion of cavalry and artillery must be very small indeed; the mass of the cavalry is in Metz, and the stores necessary for the equipment of new batteries, harness, &c., appear in some instances to exist on paper only. Jeannerod quotes an example in Sunday s Temps. As to the Mobile Guard, after having been brought back from Ch lons to Saint Maur, near Paris, it appears to have dispersed altogether, for want of provisions. And it is to gain time for forces like these that the whole of the best army which France possesses should be sacrificed. And sacrificed it is, if it is true that it is shut up in Metz. If Bazaine had got his army into its present position advisedly, he would have committed a blunder compared to which all previous blunders of the war would sink into nothing. In regard to Bazaine s rumoured retreat from Metz and junction with MacMahon at Montm dy, the refutation of the story to which The Standard yesterday gave circulation has been sufficiently accomplished by the writer of the military review in the same journal this morning. Even if any detachments of Bazaine s force have escaped to. the north after or in the course of the recent engagements round Mars-la-Tour, the bulk of his army is still locked up in Metz.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/24.htm

The two latest facts of the war are these that the Crown Prince is pushing on beyond Ch lons, and that MacMahon has moved his whole army from Reims, whither is not exactly known. MacMahon, according to French reports, finds the war getting on too slowly; in order to hasten its decision he is now said to be marching from Reims to the relief of Bazaine. This would indeed be hurrying on matters to an almost final crisis. In our Wednesday s publication we estimated MacMahon s force at from 130,000 to 150,000 men on the assumption that all the troops from Paris had joined him. We were right in supposing that he had at Ch lons the remnants of his own and of De Failly s troops; also that Douay s two divisions were at Ch lons, whither we know now they went by a circuitous railway journey vi Paris; also that the marines and other portions of the Baltic corps were there. But we now learn that there are still troops of the line in the forts round Paris; that a portion of MacMahon s and Frossard s men, especially cavalry, have gone back to Paris to be reorganized, and that MacMahon has only about 80,000 regular troops in camp. We may, therefore, reduce our estimate by fully 25,000 men, and set down 110,000 to 120,000 men as the maximum of MacMahon s forces, one-third of which would consist of raw levies. And with this army he is said to have set out to relieve Bazaine at Metz. Now, MacMahon s next and more immediate opponent is the army of the Crown Prince. It occupied on the 24th with its outposts the former camp of Ch lons, which fact is telegraphed to us from Bar-le-Duc. From this we may conclude that at that town were then the head-quarters. MacMahon s nearest road to Metz is by Verdun. From Reims to Verdun by an almost straight country road there is fully seventy miles; by the high road, vi St. M nehould, it is above eighty miles. This latter road, moreover, leads through the camp of Ch lons that is to say, through the German lines. From Bar-le-Duc to Verdun the distance is less than forty miles. Thus not only can the army of the Crown Prince fall upon the flank of MacMahon s march if he use either of the above roads to Verdun, but it can get behind the Meuse and join the remaining two German armies between Verdun and Metz, long before MacMahon can debouch from Verdun on the right bank of the Meuse. And all this would remain unaltered, even if the Crown Prince had advanced as far as Vitry-le-Fran ois, or required an extra day to concentrate his troops from their extended front of march; so great is the difference of distance in his favour. Under these circumstances it may be doubted whether MacMahon will use either of the roads indicated; whether he will not at once withdraw from the immediate sphere of action of the Crown Prince, and choose the road from Reims by Vouziers, Grandpr , and Varennes, to Verdun, or by Vouziers to Stenay, where he would pass the Meuse, and then march south-east upon Metz. But that would only be to secure a momentary advantage in order to make final defeat doubly certain. Both these routes are still more circuitous, and would allow still more time to the Crown Prince to unite his forces with those before Metz, and thus to oppose to both MacMahon and Bazaine a crushing superiority of numbers. Thus, whichever way MacMahon chooses to get near Metz, he cannot shake off the Crown Prince, who, moreover, cannot be denied the choice of fighting him either singly or in conjunction with the other German armies. From this it is evident that MacMahon s move to the relief of Bazaine would be a gross mistake, so long as he has not completely disposed of the Crown Prince. To get to Metz, his shortest, quickest, and safest road is right across the Third German Army. If he were to march straight upon it, attack it wherever he finds it, defeat it, and drive it for a few days in a south-easterly direction, so as to interpose his victorious army like a wedge between it and the other two German armies in the same way as the Crown Prince has shown him how to do it then, and not till then, would he have a chance to get to Metz and set Bazaine free. But if he felt himself strong enough to do this, we may be sure he would have done it at once. Thus, the withdrawal from Reims assumes a different aspect. It is not so much a move towards the relief of Bazaine from Steinmetz and Frederick Charles as a move for the relief of MacMahon from the Crown Prince. And from this point of view it is the worst that could be made. It abandons all direct communications with Paris to the mercy of the enemy. It draws off the last available forces of France away from the centre towards the periphery, and places them intentionally farther away from the centre than the enemy is already. Such a move might be excusable if undertaken with largely superior numbers; but here it is undertaken with hopelessly inferior numbers and in the face of the almost certainty of defeat. And what will that defeat bring? Wherever it occurs it will push the remnants of the beaten army away from Paris towards the northern frontier, where they may be driven upon neutral ground or forced to capitulate. MacMahon, if he really has undertaken the move in question, is deliberately placing his army in exactly the same position in which Napoleon s flank march round the southern end of the Thuringian forest in 1806 placed the Prussian army at Jena. A numerically and morally weaker army is deliberately placed in a position where, after a defeat, its only line of retreat is through a narrow strip of territory leading towards neutral territory or the sea. Napoleon forced the Prussians to capitulate by reaching Stettin before them. MacMahon s troops may have to surrender in that little strip of French territory jutting out into Belgium between M zier s and Charlemont-Givet. In the very best of cases they may escape to the northern fortresses Lille, &c., where, at all events, they will be harmless. And then France will be at the mercy of the invader. The whole plan seems so wild that it can only be explained as having arisen from political necessities. It looks more like a coup de d sespoir than anything else. It looks as if anything must be done, anything risked, before Paris be allowed fully to understand the actual situation. It is the plan not of a strategist, but of an Alg rien, used to fight irregulars; the plan not of a soldier, but of a political and military adventurer, such as have had it all their own way in France these last nineteen years. The language ascribed to MacMahon in justifying this resolve is quite in keeping with this. What would they say if he did not march to the aid of Bazaine? Yes, but what would they say if he got himself into a worse position than Bazaine has got himself into? It is the Second Empire all over. To keep up appearances, to hide defeat, is the thing most required. Napoleon staked all upon one card, and lost it; and now MacMahon is again going to play va banque, when the odds are ten to one against him. The sooner France is freed from these men the better for her. It is her only hope.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/26.htm

Yesterday a piece of news was telegraphed which caused great sensation among our contemporaries. It came from Berlin, and was to this effect, that the King s head-quarters had been moved to Bar-le-Duc, that corps of the First and Second Armies remained facing Bazaine s army, and that the remainder of the German forces had resolutely entered upon their march to Paris. Hitherto the movements of the German armies have been kept secret during their execution. It was only when the move had been completed, when the blow had been struck, that we learned whither the troops had been going. It seems strange that this system should be reversed all at once; that taciturn Moltke should, without any visible occasion for it, all of a sudden proclaim to the world that he is marching upon Paris, and resolutely too. At the same time we hear that the advanced troops of the Crown Prince are pushed nearer and nearer to Paris, and that his cavalry spread more and more towards the south. Even in Ch teau-Thierry, almost half way between Ch lons and Paris, the dreaded Uhlans are said to have been seen. Might there not be a special reason, not quite evident at the first glance, why this announcement of the intentions of the King of Prussia should be made just now, and why, at the same time, the German cavalry should redouble their activity? Let us compare dates. On the evening of Monday, the 22nd, MacMahon commenced his movements through Reims on the road to Rethel, and for more than fourteen hours the columns passed continually through the town. By the evening of Wednesday, if not before, the news of this march might have reached the German head-quarters. There could be but one meaning in it: the intention to set free Bazaine from the trap in which he is shut up. The more MacMahon advanced in the direction he had taken the more would he endanger his communications with Paris and his line of retreat, the more would he place himself between the German army and the Belgian frontier. Let him once get beyond the Meuse, which he is said to intend passing at Laneuville, opposite Stenay, and his retreat may easily be cut off. Now, what could more encourage MacMahon to persist in his dangerous manoeuvre than the news that, while he was hurrying to the relief of Bazaine, the Germans had left only a comparatively small portion of their forces before Metz, and were marching resolutely upon Paris with the great body of their troops? Thus on Wednesday night this same piece of news is telegraphed from Pont- -Mousson to Berlin, from Berlin to London, from London to Paris and Reims, whence no doubt MacMahon has at once been favoured with the information; and while he marches on towards Stenay, Longuyon, and Briey, the army of the Crown Prince, leaving a corps or two in Champagne, where now nothing opposes them, would draw off the rest towards St. Mihiel, pass the Meuse there, and try to gain by Fresnes a position threatening the communications of MacMahon s army with the Meuse, and yet within supporting distance of the German troops before Metz. If this were to succeed, and if MacMahon were to be defeated under these circumstances, his army would have either to pass into neutral territory or to surrender to the Germans. There can be no doubt that MacMahon s movements are perfectly well known at the German head-quarters. From the moment the battle of Rezonville (or Gravelotte, as it is to be officially called) had settled the fact that Bazaine was shut up in Metz, from that moment MacMahon s army was the next object, not only of the army of the Crown Prince, but also of all other troops which could be spared from before Metz. In 1814, indeed, the Allies, after the junction of Bl cher and Schwarzenberg between Arcis-sur-Aube and Ch lons, marched upon Paris, entirely disregarding Napoleon s march towards the Rhine and this march decided the campaign. But at that time Napoleon had been defeated at Arcis and was unable to stand against the allied army; there was no French army shut up by allied troops in a border fortress which he might relieve; and, above all things, Paris was not fortified. Now, on the contrary, whatever may be the military value, numerically and morally, represented by MacMahon s army, there is no doubt that it is quite sufficient to raise the investment of Metz, if that investment be carried out by no more troops than are necessary to hold Bazaine in check. And, on the other hand, whatever may be thought of the fortifications of Paris, nobody will be foolhardy enough to expect that they will fall like the walls of Jericho, before the first trumpet blast of the invaders. They will at least compel either a lengthy investment to starve out the defence, or a beginning, if not more, of a regular siege. Thus, while the Germans were resolutely arriving before Paris, and brought to a dead stop by the forts, MacMahon would defeat the German troops before Metz, unite with Bazaine, and then France would have an army upon the communications and lines of supply of the Germans strong enough to compel them to retreat more resolutely than they had advanced. If MacMahon s army, then, be too strong to be neglected by the Germans under the circumstances, we must come to the conclusion that the intelligence of the resolute march of King William to Paris, which most of our contemporaries consider of the highest importance, either is a piece of false news thrown out intentionally to mislead the enemy, or, if it be really an indiscreet publication of correct news, represents a resolution come to before MacMahon s latest move was known, in which case it will be speedily reversed. In either case, a corps or two may continue to advance towards Paris, but the mass of all available troops will be marched north-east to reap to the full those advantages which MacMahon almost throws at their feet.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/27.htm

The Germans have again been too quick for MacMahon. The Fourth Army, under the Crown Prince Albert of Saxony, comprising at least two corps (the Prussian Guards and the 12th or Royal Saxon Corps), if not more, have pushed at once up to the Meuse, secured passages somewhere between Stenay and Verdun, and sent their cavalry across. The defiles of the Argonnes are in their power. At St. M nehould last Thursday they took 800 Gardes Mobiles prisoners, and at Buzancy on Saturday they defeated a French cavalry brigade. On their road they pushed a strong reconnaissance against Verdun last Thursday, but, finding the place in condition to receive them, they did not persist in an attack by main force. MacMahon, who in the meantime had left Reims on the 22nd and 23rd with an army, according to French reports, of 150,000 men, well equipped, well provided with artillery, ammunition, and provisions, had not, on the evening of the 25th, got farther than Rethel, about twenty-three miles beyond Reims. How long he continued there, and when he left it, we do not know for certain. But the cavalry engagement at Buzancy, which is on the road to Stenay, some twenty miles farther on, proves that even on Saturday his infantry had not yet arrived there. This slowness of movement contrasts vividly with the activity of the Germans. No doubt, to a great extent it is caused by the composition of his army, which contains either more or less demoralized troops, or new formations in which young recruits are predominating; some of them are even mere volunteer corps with numbers of non-professional officers. It is evident that this army can neither have the discipline nor the cohesion of the old Army of the Rhine, and that it will be almost impossible to move from 120,000 to 150,000 men of this sort both rapidly and with order. Then there are the trains. The great mass of the heavy trains of the Army of the Rhine did certainly escape from Metz on the 14th and 15th, but it may be imagined that they were not in the very best of conditions; it may be assumed that their supply of ammunition and the state of their horses are not all that is to be desired. And finally, we may take it for granted that the French Intendance has not mended since the beginning of the war, and that consequently the provisioning of a large army in an extremely poor country will be no easy matter. But even if we allow very liberally for all these obstacles, we shall still be compelled to see besides in MacMahon s dilatoriness a distinct symptom of indecision. His nearest way to the relief of Bazaine, the direct road by Verdun once given up, was that by Stenay, and in that direction he struck. But before he got farther than Rethel he must have known that the Germans had seized upon the passages of the Meuse, and that the right flank of his columns on the road to Stenay was not safe. This rapidity of the German advance appears to have disconcerted his plans. We are told that on Friday he was still at Rethel, where he received fresh reinforcements from Paris, and that he intended to move to M zier s next day. As we have had no authentic news of important engagements, this appears very probable. It would imply an almost complete abandonment of his plan to relieve Bazaine; for a movement through the narrow strip of French territory on the right bank of the Meuse, between M zier s and Stenay, would have its great difficulties and dangers, cause fresh delay, and give his opponents ample time to envelop him from all sides. For there can be no doubt now that quite sufficient forces have been sent northwards for this purpose from the army of the Crown Prince. Whatever we hear of the whereabouts of the Third Army points to a northward movement by the three great routes most handy for the purpose Epernay, Reims, Rethel; Ch lons, Vouziers; and Bar-le-Duc, Varennes, Grandpr . The fact of the engagement at Saint M nehould being telegraphed from Bar-le-duc renders it even possible that it was part of the Third Army which there defeated the Mobiles and occupied the town. But what can be MacMahon s intention if he really moves upon M zier s? We doubt whether he has any very clear idea himself of what he intends doing. We now know that his march northwards was, to a certain extent at least, forced upon him by the insubordination of his men, who grumbled at the retreat from the camp of Ch lons to Reims, and rather strongly demanded to be led against the enemy. The march to relieve Bazaine was then entered upon. By the end of the week MacMahon may have been pretty well convinced that his army had not the mobility necessary for a direct march upon Stenay, and that he had better take the, for the moment, safer road by M zier s. This would certainly postpone and might render impracticable the intended relief of Bazaine; but had MacMahon ever any very decided faith in his ability to effect that? We doubt it. And then the move on M zier s would, at all events, delay the enemy s march upon Paris, give the Parisians more time to complete their defence, gain time for the organization of the armies of reserve behind the Loire and at Lyons; and in case of need might he not retire along the northern frontier upon the threefold belt of fortresses, and try whether there was not some quadrilateral among them? Some such more or less indefinite ideas may have induced MacMahon, who certainly does not seem to be anything of a strategist, to make a second false move after once having entangled himself in a first one; and thus we see the last army which France has, and probably will have, in the field during this war march deliberately to its ruin, from which only the grossest blunders of the enemy can save it; and that enemy has not made one mistake yet. We say the last army which France probably will have in the field during this war. Bazaine has to be given up, unless MacMahon can relieve him, and that is more than doubtful. MacMahon s army, in the best of cases, will get scattered among the fortresses on the northern frontier. where it will be harmless. The reserve armies that are now spoken about will be raw levies, mingled with a certain number of old soldiers, and unavoidably commanded by chiefly unprofessional officers; they will be armed with all sorts of arms; they will be totally unused to the breech-loaders. which is tantamount to saying that their ammunition will be spent before it is really wanted in one word, they will be unfit for the field, fit for nothing but the defence of fortifications. While the Germans have not only brought their battalions and squadrons to their full complement again, but keep sending division after division of landwehr to France, the French fourth battalions are not complete yet. Only sixty-six of them have been formed into r giments de marche and sent either to Paris or to MacMahon; the remaining thirty-four were not ready to march out a few days ago. The army organization fails everywhere; and a noble and gallant nation finds all its efforts for self-defence unavailing, because it has for twenty years suffered its destinies to be guided by a set of adventurers who turned administration, government, army, navy in fact, all France into a source of pecuniary profit to themselves.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/08/31.htm

On the 26th of August, when the whole of our contemporaries, with scarcely one exception, were far too busy descanting upon the immense importance of the Crown Prince s resolute march upon Paris to have any time left for MacMahon, we ventured to point out that the really important movement of the day was that which the latter general was reported to be making for the relief of Metz. We said that in case of defeat MacMahon s troops may have to surrender in that little strip of French territory jutting out into Belgium between M zier s and Charlemont-Givet. What we presumed then is now almost accomplished. MacMahon has with him the 1st (his own), 5th (formerly De Failly s. now Wimpffen s), 7th (Douay s), and 12th (Lebrun s) corps, with such troops as could be spared from Paris up to the 29th, including even those rebellious Mobiles of Saint Maur; and, besides, the cavalry of Canrobert s corps, which was left at Ch lons. The whole force will represent, perhaps, 150,000 men, barely one half of which are troops of the old army; the rest, fourth battalions and Mobiles, in about equal proportions. It is said to be well provided with artillery, but of this a great portion must consist of newly-formed batteries, and it is notoriously very weak in cavalry. Even if this army should be numerically stronger than we estimate it, this excess must consist of new levies, and will not add to its strength, which we can scarcely deem to be equivalent to a force of 100,000 good soldiers. MacMahon left Reims for Rethel and the Meuse on the evening of the 22nd, but the 13th Corps was despatched from Paris on the 28th and 29th only; and as by that time the direct railway to Rethel, vi Reims, was menaced by the enemy, these troops had to be sent round by the Northern of France Railway, by St. Quentin, Avesnes, and Hirson. They could not complete their journey before the 30th or 31st, and then fighting had already begun in earnest; so that the troops for which MacMahon had waited were not there after all when wanted. For, while he kept losing time between Rethel, M zier s, and Stenay, the Germans came marching on from all sides. On the 27th a brigade of his advanced cavalry was defeated at Buzancy. On the 28th, Vouziers, an important crossing of roads in the Argonnes, was in German hands, and two of their squadrons charged and took Vrizy, a village occupied by infantry, who had to surrender a feat, by-the-by, of which there is but one previous example the taking of Dembe Wielkie by Polish cavalry, from Russian infantry and cavalry, in 1831. On the 29th no engagements are reported from any trustworthy source. But on the 30th (Tuesday) the Germans, having concentrated sufficient forces, fell upon MacMahon and defeated him. The German accounts speak of a battle near Beaumont, and of an engagement near Nouart (on the road from Stenay to Buzancy) but Belgian reports refer to fighting on the right bank of the Meuse, between Mouzon and Carignan. The two can be easily reconciled, and supposing the Belgian telegrams to be substantially correct, the German Fourth Army (4th, 12th, and Guards corps) appear to have had the 4th and 12th corps on the left bank of the Moselle, where they were joined by the First Bavarian Corps, the first instalment of the Third Army arriving from the South. They met MacMahon s main forces at Beaumont, marching evidently in the direction of M zier s to Stenay; they attacked them, a portion, probably the Bavarians, falling upon and overlapping their right flank, and pushing them away from their direct line of retreat towards the Meuse at Mouzon, where the difficulty and delay of the passage over the bridge would account for their great losses of prisoners, artillery, and stores. While this was going on, the advanced guard of the 12th German Corps, which appears to have been sent off in a different direction, met the 5th French Corps (Wimpffen s) marching, to all appearances, by way of Le Chene Populeux, the valley of the Bar, and Buzancy, towards the flank of the Germans. The encounter took place at Nouart, about seven miles south of Beaumont, and was successful for the Germans; that is to say, they succeeded in stopping Wimpffen s flank movement while the fighting was going on at Beaumont. A third portion of MacMahon s forces, according to the Belgian reports, must have advanced on the right bank of the Meuse, where it is said to have encamped the previous night at Vaux, between Carignan and Mouzon; but this corps, too, was attacked by the Germans (probably the Guards) and completely defeated, with the loss, as is alleged, of four mitrailleurs. The ensemble of these three engagements (always supposing the Belgian accounts to be substantially correct) would constitute that complete defeat of MacMahon which we have repeatedly predicted. The four corps opposed to him would now number about 100,000 men, but it is questionable whether they were all engaged. MacMahon s troops, as we have said, would be equivalent to about that number of good soldiers. That their resistance was nothing like that of the old Army of the Rhine is implied in the remark of a German official telegram, that out losses are moderate, and the number of prisoners taken. It is too early yet to attempt to criticise MacMahon s tactical arrangements for and during this battle, as we know scarcely anything about them. But his strategy cannot be too strongly condemned. He has thrown away every fair chance of escape. His position between Rethel and M zier s rendered it possible for him to fight so as to have his retreat open to Laon and Soissons, and thereby the means of again reaching Paris or western France. Instead of this, lie fought as if his only line of retreat was to M zier s, and as if Belgium belonged to him. He is said to be at Sedan, the victorious Germans will by this time have lined the left bank of the Meuse, not only before that fortress, but also before M zier s, whence their left will, in another day or so, extend to the Belgian frontier near Rocroi, and then MacMahon will be shut up in that little strip of territory upon which we placed our finger six days ago. Once there, he has but little choice left to him. He has four fortresses around him Sedan, M zier s, Rocroi, and Charlemont; but upon twelve square miles of territory, with an overpowering army in front, and a neutral country in the rear, he cannot play at quadrilaterals. He will be starved out or fought out; he will be compelled to surrender either to the Prussians or to the Belgians. But there is one other course open to him. We said just now he had acted as if Belgium belonged to him. What if he really thought so? What if the whole mystery at the bottom of this inexplicable strategy was a settled determination to use Belgian territory as if it belonged to France? From Charlemont there is a straight road through Belgium, by Philippeville, to French territory, near Maubeuge. This road is but one half of the distance from M zier s to Maubeuge through French territory. What if MacMahon intended to use that road for escape, in case he was reduced to the last extremity? The Belgians, he may think, will not be in a condition to effectually resist an army as strong as his; and if the Germans, as is very likely, follow MacMahon into Belgian territory, in case the Belgians cannot stop him, why, then there arise new political complications which may better, but cannot render much worse, the present situation of France. Moreover, if MacMahon should succeed in driving but one Gerinan patrol upon Belgian ground, the breach of neutrality would be established, and form an excuse for his subsequent violation of Belgium. Such ideas may have passed through the head of this old Algerian; they are in keeping with African warfare, and, indeed, they are almost the only ones by which such strategy as he has shown can be excused. But even that chance may be cut off from him; if the Crown Prince acts with his usual quickness, he may possibly reach Montherm and the junction of the rivers Semois and Meuse before MacMahon, and then MacMahon would be pent up between Semois and Sedan on about as much ground as his men require for a camp, and without any hope of a short cut through neutral ground.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/09/02.htm

A large army, when driven into a corner, dies hard. It took first of all three battles to teach Bazaine s troops that they were really shut up in Metz, and then thirty-six hours desperate fighting through day and night on Wednesday and Thursday last to convince them if even then convinced that there was no opening for escape through the toils in which the Prussians had caught them. Nor was the battle of Tuesday enough to compel MacMahon to give in. A fresh battle apparently the greatest and most bloody of all the series had to be fought on Thursday, and he himself wounded, before he was brought to a sense of his real position. The first account of the fighting near Beaumont and Carignanc appears to have been substantially correct, with this exception, that the line of retreat of the French corps engaged at Beaumont, which ran on the left bank of the Meuse to Sedan, was not cut off entirely. Some portion of these troops seem to have escaped on the left bank to Sedan at least there was fighting again on that same bank on Thursday. Then there appears to be some doubt as to the date of the engagement of Nouart, which the staff in Berlin are disposed to think took place on Monday. This would certainly make the German telegrams agree better, and, if so, the turning movement which was ascribed to the French Fifth Corps would equally fall to the ground. The result of the fighting on Tuesday was disastrous to the French corps engaged. Above twenty cannon, eleven mitrailleurs, and 7,000 prisoners are results almost equivalent to those of Woerth, but conquered much more easily, and with much smaller sacrifices. The French were driven back on both banks of the Meuse to the immediate neighbourhood of Sedan. On the left bank their position after the battle appears to have been defined to the west by the River Bar and the Canal des Ardennes, both of which run along the same valley, and enter the Meuse at Villers, between Sedan and M zier s; on the east, by the ravine and brook running from Raucourt to the Meuse at Remilly. Having thus both flanks secured, their main body would occupy the intervening plateau, ready to meet an attack from any side. On the right bank, the river Chiers, which Joins the Meuse about four miles above Sedan, opposite Remilly, must have been crossed by the French after Tuesday s battle. There are three parallel ravines, running north and south from the Belgian frontier, the first and second towards the Chiers, the third and largest immediately in front of Sedan, towards the Meuse. On the second of these, near its highest point, is the village of Cernay; on the third, above, where it is crossed by the road to Bouillon in Belgium, Givonne; and lower down, where the road to Stenay and Montm dy crosses the ravine, is Bazeilles. These three ravines in Thursday s battle must have formed as many successive defensive positions for the French, who naturally would hold the last and strongest with the greatest tenacity. This part of the battle-field is something like that of Gravelotte; but, while there the ravines could be and actually were turned by the plateau whence they sprang, here the proximity of the Belgian frontier rendered an attempt at turning them very risky, and almost compelled a direct front attack. While the French established themselves in this position, and drew towards them such troops as had not taken part in Tuesday s battle (among others, probably, the 12th Corps, including the Mobiles from Paris), the Germans had a day s time to concentrate their army; and when they attacked on Thursday they had on the spot the whole of the Fourth Army (Guards, 4th and 12th corps) and three corps (5th, 11th, and one Bavarian) of the Third; a force morally if not numerically superior to that of MacMahon. The fighting began at half-past seven in the morning, and at a quarter past four, when the King of Prussia telegraphed, it was still going on, the Germans gaining ground on all sides. According to the Belgian reports, the villages of Bazeilles, Remilly, Villers, and Cernay were in flames, and the chapel of Givonne was in the hands of the Germans. This would indicate that on the left bank of the Meuse the two villages which supported, in case of a retreat, the French wings had been either taken or rendered untenable; while on the right bank the first and second lines of defence had been conquered, and the third, between Bazeilles and Givonne, was at least on the point of being abandoned by the French. Under these circumstances there can be no doubt that nightfall would see the Germans victorious and the French driven back to Sedan. This, indeed, is confirmed by telegrams from Belgium announcing the fact that MacMahon was completely hemmed in, and that thousands of French troops were crossing the frontier and being disarmed. Under these circumstances there. were only two alternatives open to MacMahon capitulation or a dash across Belgian territory. The defeated army, shut up in and about Sedan that is, in a district not larger, at best, than it would require for its encampment could not possibly maintain itself; and even if it had been able to keep open its communication with M zier s, which is about ten miles to the west, it would still be hemmed in in a very confined strip of territory, and unable to hold out. Thus MacMahon, unable to fray a road through his enemies, must either pass on Belgian territory or surrender. As it happened, MacMahon, disabled by his wounds, was spared the pain of a decision. It fell to General De Wimpffen to announce the surrender of the French army. This conclusion can hardly fail to have been hastened by the news, supposing news could reach them, of Bazaine s decisive repulse in his efforts to get away from Metz. The Germans had foreseen his intention, and were prepared to meet him at all points. Not only Steinmetz but Prince Frederick Charles (as appears from the corps mentioned, 1st and 9th ), were on the watch, and careful entrenchments further strengthened the barrier encircling Metz.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/09/03.htm

The capitulation of Sedan settles the fate of the last French army in the field. It settles at the same time the fate of Metz and Bazaine s army; relief being now out of the question, they will have to capitulate too, perhaps this week, almost certainly not later than next week. There remains the colossal entrenched camp of Paris, the last hope of France. The fortifications of Paris form the hugest complex of military engineering works ever constructed; they have never yet been put to the test, and consequently opinions as to their value are not only divided, but absolutely contradictory. By examining the actual facts of the case, we shall gain a safe basis upon which to found our conclusions. Montalembert, a French cavalry officer, but a military engineer of uncommon and, perhaps, unparalleled genius, was the first to propose and work out during the latter half of the eighteenth century the plan of surrounding fortresses by detached forts at such a distance as to shelter the place Itself from bombardment. Before him the outworks citadels, lunettes, &c. were more or less attached to the enceinte or rampart of the place, scarcely ever farther distant from it than the foot of the glacis. He proposed forts large and strong enough to hold out a separate siege, and distant from the ramparts of the town from six hundred to twelve hundred yards, and even more. The new theory was for years treated with contempt in France, while it found willing pupils in Germany when, after 1815, the line of the Rhine had to be fortified. Cologne, Coblenz, Mayence, and later on Ulm, Rastatt, and Germersheim, were surrounded with detached forts; the proposals of Montalembert were modified by Aster and others, and a new system of fortifications thus arose, known under the name of the German school. By-and-by the French began to see the utility of detached forts, and, when Paris was fortified, it was at once evident that the immense line of ramparts round that city would not be worth constructing unless covered by detached forts, otherwise a breach effected in one place of the rampart would bring on the fall of the whole. Modern warfare has shown in more than one instance the value of such entrenched camps, formed by a circle of detached forts, with the main fortress for its nucleus. Mantua, by its position, was an entrenched camp, so was Dantzic, more or less, in 1807, and these two were the only fortresses which ever arrested Napoleon I. Again, in 1813, Dantzic was enabled by its detached forts field works for the most part to offer a prolonged resistance. The whole of Radetzky s campaign in 1849 in Lombardy hinged on the entrenched camp of Verona, itself the nucleus of the celebrated Quadrilateral, so did the whole of the Crimean war depend on the fate of the entrenched camp of Sebastopol, which held out so long merely because the Allies were unable to invest it on all sides, and cut off supplies and reinforcements from the besieged. The case of Sebastopol is, for our purpose, most in point, because the extent of the fortified place was larger than in any previous instance. But Paris is much larger even than Sebastopol. The circuit of the forts measures about twenty-four miles. Will the strength of the place be increased in proportion? The works of themselves are models of their kind. They are of the utmost simplicity; a plain enceinte of bastions, without even a single demi-lune before the curtains, the forts, mostly bastioned quadrangles or pentagons, without any demi-lunes or other outworks; here and there a horn-work or crown-work to cover an outlying space of high ground. They are constructed not so much for passive as for active defence. The garrison of Paris is expected to come out into the open, to use the forts as supporting points for its flanks, and by constant sallies on a large scale to render impossible a regular siege of any two or three forts. Thus, whilst the forts protect the garrison of the town from a too near approach of the enemy, the garrison will have to protect the forts from siege batteries; it will have constantly to destroy the besiegers works. Let us add that the distance of the forts from the ramparts precludes the possibility of an effective bombardment of the town until two or three at least of the forts shall have been taken. Let us further add that the position, at the junction of the Seine and Marne, both with extremely winding courses, and with a strong range of hills on the most exposed, the north-eastern front, offers great natural advantages, which have been made the best of in the planning of the works. If these conditions can be fulfilled, and the two million people inside can be regularly fed, Paris is undoubtedly an extremely strong place. To procure provisions for the inhabitants is not a very difficult matter, if taken in hand in time, and carried out systematically. Whether that has been done in the present instance is very doubtful. What has been done by the late Government looks like spasmodic and even thoughtless work. The accumulation of live cattle without provender for them was a perfect piece of absurdity. We may presume that, if the Germans act with their usual decision, they will find Paris but poorly provisioned for a long siege. But how about that chief condition, the active defence, the garrison which goes out to attack the enemy, instead of striking behind the ramparts? To show the full strength of Its works, and to prevent the enemy from taking advantage of its weakness, the absence of protecting outworks in the main ditches, Paris requires to count among its defenders a regular army. And that was the fundamental idea with the men who planned the works; that a defeated French army, its inability to hold the field being once established, should fall back upon Paris, and participate in the defence of the capital; either directly, as a garrison strong enough to prevent, by constant attacks, a regular siege and even a complete investment, or indirectly, by taking up a position behind the Loire, there recruiting its strength, and then falling, as opportunities might offer, upon such weak points as the besiegers, in their immense investing line, could not avoid presenting. Now, the whole conduct of the French commanders in this war has contributed to deprive Paris of this one essential condition of its defence. There are of all the French army but the troops which remained in Paris and the corps of General Vinoy (the 13th, originally Trochu s); together, perhaps, 50,000 men, almost all, if not indeed all of them, fourth battalions and Mobile Guards. To these may be added perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 men more of fourth battalions, and an indefinite number of Mobile Guards of the provinces, raw levies totally unfit for the field. We have seen at Sedan what little use such troops are in a battle. They, no doubt, will be more trustworthy when they have forts to fall back upon, and a few weeks drill, discipline, and fighting will certainly improve them. But the active defence of a large place like Paris implies movements of large masses in the open, regular battles at a distance in front of the sheltering forts, attempts to break through the line of investment or to prevent its completion. And for that, for attacks on a superior enemy, where surprise and dash are required, and where the troops must be kept perfectly in hand for that purpose, the present garrison of Paris will be scarcely available. We suppose the united Third and Fourth German armies, fully 180,000 strong, will appear before Paris in the course of next week, surround it with flying columns of cavalry, destroy the railway communications, and thereby all chance of extensive supplies, and prepare the regular investment, which will be completed on the arrival of the First and Second armies after the fall of Metz, leaving plenty of men to be sent beyond the Loire to scour the country, and prevent any attempt at the formation of a new French army. Should Paris not surrender, then the regular siege will have to begin, and, in the absence of an active defence, must proceed comparatively rapidly. This would be the regular course of things if there were none but military considerations; but affairs have now come to a point when these may be set aside by political events, to prognosticate which does not belong to our province here.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/09/07.htm

The time it will take the German armies to march to Paris and there open a new phase of the war gives us leisure to look back upon what has been going on behind the front of the troops in the field, before the fortresses. Leaving out of the question Sedan, which was included as a corollary in the capitulation of MacMahon s army, the Germans have taken four fortresses La Petite Pierre and Vitry, without a blow; Lichtenberg and Marsal, after a short bombardment. They have merely blockaded Bitche; they are besieging Strasbourg; they have bombarded, so far without result, Phalsbourg, Toul, Montm dy; and they intend to begin in a few days the regular sieges of Toul and Metz. With the exception of Metz, which is protected by detached forts far in advance of the town, all other fortresses which resisted have been subjected to bombardment. This proceeding has, at all times, formed a part of the operations of a regular siege; at first, it was principally intended to destroy the stores of provisions and ammunition of the besieged, but since it has become the custom to secure these in bomb-proof vaults, constructed for the purpose, the bombardment has more and more been used to set fire to and destroy as many buildings as possible inside the fortress. The destruction of the property and provisions of the inhabitants of the place became a means of pressure upon them, and, through them, upon the garrison and commander. In cases where the garrison was weak, ill-disciplined, and demoralized, and where the commander was without energy, a bombardment alone often effected the surrender of a fortress. This was the case especially in 1815 after Waterloo, when a whole series of fortresses, garrisoned chiefly by National Guards, surrendered to a short bombardment without awaiting a regular siege. Avesnes, Guise, Maubeuge, Landrecies, Marienbourg, Philippeville, &c., all fell after a few hours , at best a few days , shelling. It was no doubt the recollection of these successes, and the knowledge that most of the frontier places were garrisoned chiefly by Mobile and sedentary National Guards, which induced the Germans to try the same plan again. Moreover, the introduction of rifled artillery having made shells the almost exclusive projectiles even of field artillery, it is now comparatively easy to bombard a place and set fire to its buildings with the ordinary field guns of an army corps, without awaiting, as formerly, the arrival of mortars and heavy siege howitzers. Although recognized in modern warfare, it is not to be forgotten that the bombardment of the private houses in a fortress is always a very harsh and cruel measure, which ought not to be had recourse to without at least a reasonable hope of compelling surrender, and without a certain degree of necessity. If places like Phalsbourg, Lichtenberg, and Toul are bombarded, this may be justified on the ground that they stop mountain passes and railways, the immediate possession of which is of the greatest importance to the invader, and might reasonably be expected to follow as the result of a few days shelling. If two of these places have so far held out, this redounds so much more to the credit of the garrison and the inhabitants. But as to the bombardment of Strasbourg, which preceded the regular siege, the case is quite different. Strasbourg, a city of above 80,000 inhabitants, surrounded by fortifications in the antiquated manner of the sixteenth century, was strengthened by Vauban, who built a citadel outside the town, nearer the Rhine, and connected it with the ramparts of the town by the continuous lines of what was then called an entrenched camp. The citadel commanding the town, and being capable of independent defence after the town has capitulated, the simplest way to take both would be to attack the citadel at once, so as not to have to go through two successive sieges; but then, the works of the citadel are so much stronger, and its situation in the swampy lowlands near the Rhine renders the throwing up of trenches so much more difficult, that circumstances may, and generally will, advise a previous attack on the town, with the fall of which a further defence of the citadel alone would, in the eyes of a weak commander, lose much of its purpose; except in so far as it might secure better conditions of surrender. But, at all events, I the town alone be taken, the citadel remains to be reduced, and an obstinate commander may continue to hold out, and keep the town and the besieger s establishments in it under fire. Under these circumstances what could be the use of a bombardment of the town? If all went well, the inhabitants might demoralize the greater part of the garrison, and compel the commander to abandon the town and throw himself, with the lite of his soldiers, 3,000 to 5,000 men, into the citadel, and there continue the defence and hold the town under his fire. And the character of General Uhrich (for that, and not Ulrich, is the name of the gallant old soldier) was known well enough to prevent anybody from supposing that he would allow himself to be intimidated into a surrender, both of town and citadel, by any amount of shells thrown into them. To bombard a place which has an independent citadel commanding it is in itself an absurdity and a useless cruelty. Certainly, stray shells or the slow shelling of a siege will always do damage in a besieged town; but that is nothing compared to the destruction and sacrifice of civilian life during a regular, systematic six days bombardment such as has been inflicted upon the unfortunate city. The Germans say they must have the town soon, for political reasons. They intend to keep it at the peace. If that be so, the bombardment, the severity of which is unparalleled, was not only a crime, it was also a blunder. An excellent way, indeed, to obtain the sympathies of a town which is doomed to annexation, by setting it on fire and killing numbers of the inhabitants by exploding shells! And has the bombardment advanced the surrender by one single day? Not that we can see. If the Germans want to annex the town and break the French sympathies of the inhabitants, their plan would have been to take the town by as short a regular siege as possible, then besiege the citadel, and place the commander on the horns of the dilemma, either to neglect some of the means of defence at his disposal or to fire on the town. As it is, the immense quantities of shell thrown into Strasbourg have not superseded the necessity for a regular siege. On the 29th of August the first parallel had to be opened on the north-western side of the fortress, near Schiltigheim, running at a distance of from 500 to 650 yards from the works. On the 3rd of September the second parallel (some correspondents call it by mistake the third) was opened at 330 yards; the useless bombardment has been stopped by order of the King of Prussia, and it may take till about the 17th or 20th before a practicable breach can be made in the ramparts. But all estimates in this case are hazardous. It is the first instance of a siege in which the percussion shells of modern rifled artillery are used against masonry. In their trials during the dismantling of J lich the Prussians obtained extraordinary results; masonry was breached and blockhouses were demolished at great distances, and by indirect fire (that is, from batteries where the object fired at could not be seen); but this was merely a peace experiment and will have to be confirmed in actual war. Strasbourg will serve to give us a pretty good idea of the effect of the modern heavy rifled artillery in siege operations, and on this account its siege deserves to be watched with peculiar interest.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/09/09.htm

When Louis Napoleon founded the Empire which was peace, on the votes of the peasants and on the bayonets of their sons, the soldiers of the army, that army did not occupy a particularly prominent rank in Europe, except, perhaps, by tradition. There had been peace since 1815 peace interrupted, for some armies, by the events of 1848 and 1849. The Austrians had gone through a successful campaign in Italy and a disastrous one in Hungary; neither Russia in Hungary nor Prussia in South Germany had gathered any laurels worth speaking of; Russia had her permanent war in the Caucasus and France in Algeria. But none of the great armies had met another on the field of battle since 1815. Louis Philippe had left the French army in a condition of anything but efficiency; the Algerian troops, and especially the pet corps founded more or less for African warfare Chasseurs- -Pied, Zouaves, Turcos, Chasseurs d'Afrique were indeed the objects of much attention; but the mass of the infantry, the cavalry, and the Mat riel in France were much neglected. The Republic did not improve the state of the army. But the Empire came which was peace, and si vis pacem, para bellum to it the army at once became the chief object of attention. At that time France possessed a great many comparatively young officers who had served, in high positions, in Africa at the time when there was still some serious fighting there. She possessed, in the Algerian special corps, troops who undoubtedly were superior to any others in Europe. She had, in the numerous substitutes, a greater number of professional soldiers who had seen service, real veterans, than any other continental Power. The one thing necessary was to elevate as much as possible the mass of the troops to the level of the special corps. This was done to a great extent. The pas gymnastique (the double of the English), hitherto practised by the special corps only, was extended to the whole infantry, and thus a rapidity of manoeuvring was obtained previously unknown to armies. The cavalry was mounted, as far as possible, with better horses; the Mat riel of the whole army was looked to and completed; and, finally, the Crimean war was commenced. The organization of the French army showed to great advantage beside that of the English; the numerical proportions of the Allied armies naturally gave the principal part of the glory whatever there was of it to the French; the character of the war, circling entirely round one grand siege, brought out to the best advantage the peculiarly mathematical genius of the French as applied by their engineers; and altogether the Crimean war again elevated the French army to the rank of the first army in Europe. Then came the period of the rifle and the rifled gun. The incomparable superiority of the fire of the rifled over the smooth-bore musket led to the abolition, or in some cases to the general rifling, of the latter. Prussia had her old muskets converted into rifles in less than one year; England gradually gave the Enfield, Austria an excellent small-bore rifle (Lorentz), to the whole infantry. France alone retained the old smooth-bore musket, the rifle being confined, as before, to the special corps alone. But while the mass of her artillery retained the short twelve-pounder, a pet invention of the Emperor, but of inferior efficiency to the old artillery on account of the reduced charge a number of rifled four-pounder batteries were equipped and held in readiness for a war. Their construction was faulty, being the first rifled guns made since the fifteenth century; but their efficiency was much superior to that of any smooth-bore field gun in existence. Under these circumstances the Italian war broke out. The Austrian army had rather easy-going ways; extraordinary efforts had seldom been its forte; in fact, it was respectable, and nothing more. Its commanders counted some of the best and a great many of the worst generals of the age. Court influence brought the mass of the latter into high command. The blunders of the Austrian generals, the greater ambition of the French soldiers, gave the French army a rather hard-fought victory. Magenta brought no trophies at all; Solferino only a few; and politics dropped the curtain before the real difficulty of the war, the contest for the Quadrilateral, could come off. After this campaign the French was the model army of Europe. If after the Crimean war the French Chasseur-a-Pied had already become the beau id al of a foot soldier, this admiration was now extended to the whole of the French army. Its institutions were studied; its camps became instructing schools for officers of all nations. The invincibility of the French became almost a European article of faith. In the meantime France rifled all her old muskets, and armed all her artillery with rifled cannon. But the same campaign which elevated the French army to the first rank in Europe gave rise to efforts which ended in procuring for it, first a rival, then a conqueror. The Prussian army from 1815 to 1850 had undergone the same process of rusting as all other European hosts. But for Prussia this rust of peace became a greater clog in her fighting machinery than anywhere else. The Prussian system at that time united a line and a landwehr regiment in every brigade, so that one half of the field troops had to be formed anew on mobilization. The material for the line and landwehr had become utterly deficient; there was a great deal of petty pilfering among the responsible men. Altogether, when the conflict of 1850 with Austria compelled a mobilization, the whole thing broke down miserably, and Prussia had to pass through the Caudine Forks. The Mat riel was immediately replaced at great cost, and the whole organization revised, but in its details only. When the Italian war of 1859 compelled another mobilization, the Mat riel was in better order, but not even then complete; and the spirit of the landwehr, excellent for a national war, showed itself completely unmanageable during a military demonstration which might lead to a war with either one or the other of the belligerents. The reorganization of the army was resolved upon. This reorganization, carried out behind the back of the Parliament, kept the whole of the thirty-two landwehr regiments of infantry under arms, gradually filling up the ranks by an increased levy of recruits, and finally forming them into line regiments, increasing their number from forty to seventy-two. The artillery was increased in the same proportion, the cavalry in a much smaller one. This increase of the army was about proportional to that of the population of Prussia from 1815 to 1860, from 10 1/2 to 18 1/2 millions. In spite of the opposition of the Second Chamber, it remained practically in force. The army was, besides, made more efficient in every respect. It had been the first to supply the whole of the infantry with rifles. Now the needle-gun breech-loader, which had hitherto been supplied to a fraction of the infantry only, was given to all, and a reserve stock prepared. The experiments with rifled artillery, carried on for some years, were brought to a close, and the adopted models gradually replaced the smooth-bores. The excessive parade drill, inherited from stiff old Frederick William III, made room more and more for a better system of training, in which outpost duty and skirmishing were chiefly practised, and the models in both branches were to a great extent the Algerian French. For the detached battalions the company column was adopted as the chief fighting formation. Target-shooting was paid great attention to, and capital results were obtained. The cavalry was likewise much improved. The breed of horses, especially in East Prussia, the great horse-breeding country, had been attended to for years, much Arab blood having been introduced, and the fruits now began to become available. The East Prussian horse, inferior in size and speed to the English trooper, is a far superior war horse, and will stand five times as much campaigning. The professional education of the officers, which had been much neglected for a long time, was again screwed up to the prescribed very high level, and altogether the Prussian army was undergoing a complete change. The Danish war 14 was sufficient to show to any one who would see that this was the case; but people would not see. Then came the thunderclap of 1866, and people could not help seeing. Next, there was an extension of the Prussian system to the North German army, and in its fundamental essentials to the South German armies too; and how easily it can be introduced the result has shown. And then came 1870. But in 1870 the French army was no longer that of 1859. The peculation, jobbery, and general misuse of public duty for private interest which formed the essential base of the system of the Second Empire, had seized the army. If Haussmann and his crew made millions out of the immense Paris job, if the whole Department of Public Works, if every Government contract, every civil office, was shamelessly and openly turned into a means of robbing the public, was the army alone to remain virtuous the army to which Louis Napoleon owed everything the army, commanded by men who were quite as fond of wealth as the more fortunate civilian hangers-on of the Court? And when it came to be known that the Government was in the habit of receiving the money for substitutes without providing these substitutes a thing necessarily known to every regimental officer; when those other peculations in stores &c., commenced which were to supply the funds secretly paid over to the Emperor by the Ministry of War; when the highest places had to be held by men who were in the secret and could not be dismissed whatever they did or neglected then the demoralization spread to the regimental officers. We are far from saying that peculation at the public expense became common among them; but contempt for their superiors, neglect of duty, and decay of discipline were the necessary consequences. If the chiefs had commanded respect, would the officers have dared, as was the rule, to drive in coaches on the march? The whole thing had become rotten; the atmosphere of corruption in which the Second Empire lived had at last taken effect upon the main prop of that Empire, the army; in the hour of trial, there was nothing but the glorious traditions of the service and the innate bravery of the soldiers to oppose the enemy, and these are not alone sufficient to keep an army in the foremost rank.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/09/10.htm

There still appears to exist great misapprehension with regard to the siege operations now going on in France. Some of our contemporaries, The Times for instance, incline towards the opinion that the Germans, excellent though they be in the field, do not understand how to carry on a siege; others suppose that the siege of Strasbourg is carried on for the purpose not so much of getting hold of the town as of making experiments and exercising the German engineers and artillerists. And all this because neither Strasbourg, nor Toul, nor Metz, nor PhaIsbourg has as yet surrendered. It appears to be completely forgotten that the last siege carried on previous to this war, that of Sebastopol, required eleven months of open trenches before the place was reduced. To rectify such crude notions, which could not be put forth but by people unacquainted with military matters, it will be necessary to recall to them what sort of a proceeding a siege really is. The rampart of most fortresses is bastioned that is to say, it has at its angles pentagonal projections called bastions, which protect by their fire both the space in front of the works and the ditch lying immediately at their foot. In this ditch, between every two bastions, there is a detached triangular work called the demi-lune, which covers part of the bastions, and the curtain that is, the portion of rampart between them; the ditch extends round this demi-lune. Outside this main ditch there is the covered way, a broad road protected by the edge of the glacis, an elevation of ground about seven feet high, and gently sloping down externally. In many cases there are other works added to complicate the difficulties of the attack. The ramparts of all these works are lined at the bottom with masonry or protected by water in the ditches, so as to render an assault on the intact works impossible; and the works are so arranged that the outer ones are always commanded that is, looked down upon by the inner ones, while they themselves command the field by the height of their ramparts. To attack such a fortress the method perfected by Vauban is still the one made use of, although the rifled artillery of the besieged may compel variations if the ground before the fortress be perfectly level to a great distance. But as almost all these fortresses were constructed under the reign of smooth-bore artillery, the ground beyond 800 yards from the works is generally left out of the calculation, and in almost every case will give the besiegers a sheltered approach up to that distance without regular trenches. The first thing, then, is to invest the place, drive in its outposts and other detachments, reconnoitre the works, get the siege guns, ammunition, and other stores to the front, and organize the dep ts. In the present war a first bombardment by field guns also belonged to this preliminary period, which may last a considerable time. Strasbourg was loosely invested on the 10th of August, closely about the 20th, bombarded from the 23rd to the 28th, and yet the regular siege began on the 29th only. This regular siege dates from the opening of the first parallel, a trench with the earth thrown up on the side towards the fortress, so as to hide and shelter the men passing through it. This first parallel generally encircles the works at a distance of from 600 to 700 yards. In it are established the enfilading batteries; they are placed in the prolongation of all the faces that is, those lines of rampart whose fire commands the field; and this is done upon all that part of the fortress which is subjected to attack. Their object is to fire along these faces, and thus to destroy the guns and kill the gunners placed upon them. There must be at least twenty such batteries, with from two to three guns each; say fifty heavy guns in all. There were also usually placed in the first parallel a number of mortars to bombard the town or the bombproof magazines of the garrison; they will, with our present artillery, be required only for the latter purpose, rifled guns being now sufficient for the former. From the first parallel, trenches are pushed in advance in lines, the prolongation of which does not touch the works of the fortress, so that none of the works can enfilade them; they advance in zigzag until they arrive within about 350 yards from the works, where the second parallel is then traced a trench similar to the first, but shorter in length. This is generally done the fourth or fifth night after the opening of the trenches. In the second parallel are established the counter-batteries, one against each of the attacked faces, and nearly parallel to them; they are to demolish the guns and ramparts face to face, and cross their fire with the enfilading batteries. They will contain in all about sixty guns of heavy calibre. Then, again, the besiegers advance by new zigzags, which become shorter and closer together the nearer they come to the fortress. At about 150 yards from the works the half-parallel is dug out for mortar batteries, and at the foot of the glacis, about sixty yards from the works, the third parallel is placed, which again contains mortar batteries. This may be completed on the ninth or tenth night of open trenches. In this proximity to the works the real difficulty begins. The artillery fire of the besieged, as far as it commands the open, will by this time have been pretty nearly silenced, but the musketry from the ramparts is now more effective than ever, and will retard the work in the trenches very much. The approaches now have to be made with much greater caution and upon a different plan, which we cannot explain here in detail. The eleventh night may bring the besieger to the salient angles of the covered way, in front of the salient points of the bastions and demi-lunes; and by the sixteenth night he may have completed the crowning of the glacis that is to say, carried along his trenches behind the crest of the glacis parallel to the covered way. Then only will he be in a position to establish batteries in order to break the masonry of the ramparts so as to effect a passage across the ditch into the fortress, and to silence the guns on the bastion flanks, which fire along the ditch and forbid its passage. These flanks and their guns may be destroyed and the breach effected on the seventeenth day. On the following night the descent into the ditch and a covered way across it to protect the storming party against flanking fire may be completed and the assault given. We have in this sketch attempted to give an account of the course of siege operations against one of the weakest and simplest classes of fortress (a Vauban s hexagon), and to fix the time necessary for the various stages of the siege if undisturbed by successful sallies on the supposition that the defence does not display extraordinary activity, courage, or resources. Yet, even under these favourable circumstances, we see it will take at least seventeen days before the main ramparts can be breached, and thereby the place opened to an assault. If the garrison be sufficient in number and well supplied, there is no military reason whatever why they should surrender before; from a merely military point of view it is nothing but their duty that they should hold out at least so long. And then people complain that Strasbourg, which has been subjected to but fourteen days of open trenches, and which possesses outworks on the front of attack, enabling it to hold out at least five days longer than the average that Strasbourg has not yet been taken. They complain that Metz, Toul, PhaIsbourg have not yet surrendered. But we do not yet know whether a single trench has been opened against Toul, and of the other fortresses we know that they are not yet regularly besieged at all. As to Metz, there seems at present no intention to besiege it regularly; the starving out of Bazaine s army appears the most effective way of taking it. These impatient writers ought to know that there are but very few commanders of fortresses who will surrender to a patrol of four Lancers, or even to a bombardment, if they have anything like sufficient garrisons and stores at their command. If Stettin surrendered in 1807 to a regiment of cavalry, if the French border fortresses in 1815 capitulated under the effect, or even the fear, of a short bombardment, we must not forget that Woerth and Spicheren 14 together amounted neither to a Jena 35 nor to a Waterloo 56; and, moreover, it would be preposterous to doubt that there are plenty of officers in the French army who can hold out a regular siege even with a garrison of Gardes Mobiles.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/09/15.htm

After the Italian war of 1859, when the French military power was at its height, Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia, the same who is now investing Bazaine s army in Metz, wrote a pamphlet, How to Fight the French. At the present day, when the immense military strength of Germany, organized upon the Prussian system, is carrying everything before it, people begin to ask themselves who is in future, and how, to fight the Prussians. And when a war in which Germany, at the beginning, merely defended her own against French chauvinisme appears to be changing gradually, but surely, into a war in the interests of a new German chauvinisme, it is worth while to consider that question. Providence always is on the side of the big battalions was a favourite way of the Napoleon s to explain how battles were won and lost. It is upon this principle that Prussia has acted. She took care to have the big battalions. When, in 1807, Napoleon forbade her to have an army of more than 40,000 men, she dismissed her recruits after six months drill, and put fresh men in their places; and in 1813 she was able to bring into the field 250,000 soldiers out of a population of four-and-a-half millions. Afterwards, this same principle of short service with the regiment and long liability for service in the reserve was more fully developed, and, besides, brought into harmony with the necessities of an absolute monarchy. The men were kept from two to three years with the regiments, so as not only to drill them well, but also to break them in completely to habits of unconditional obedience. Now, here is the weak point in the Prussian system. It has to reconcile two different and finally incompatible objects. On the one hand, it pretends to make every able-bodied man a soldier; to have a standing army for no other object than to be a school in which the citizens learn the use of arms, and a nucleus round which they rally in time of attack from abroad. So far the system is purely defensive. But, on the other hand, this same army is to be the armed support, the mainstay, of a quasi-absolute Government; and for this purpose the school of arms for the citizens has to be changed into a school of absolute obedience to superiors, and of royalist sentiments. This can he done by length of service only. Here the incompatibility comes out. Foreign defensive policy requires the drilling of many men for a short period, so as to have in the reserve large numbers in case of foreign attack; and home policy requires the breaking in of a limited number of men for a longer period, so as to have a trustworthy army in case of internal revolt. The quasi-absolute monarchy chose an intermediate way. It kept the men full three years under arms, and limited the number of recruits according to its financial means. The boasted universal liability to military service does not in reality exist. It is changed into a conscription distinguished from that of other countries merely by being more oppressive. It costs more money, it takes more men, and it extends their liability to be called out to a far longer period than is the case anywhere else. And, at the same time, what originally was a people armed for their own defence now becomes changed into a ready and handy army of attack, into an instrument of Cabinet policy. In 1861 Prussia had a population of rather more than eighteen millions, and every year 227,000 young men became liable to military service by attaining the age of twenty. Out of these, fully one-half were bodily fit for service if not there and then, at least a couple of years afterwards. Well, instead of 114,000 recruits, not more than 63,000 were annually placed in the ranks; so that very near one-half of the able-bodied male population were excluded from instruction in the use of arms. Whoever has been in Prussia during a war must have been struck by the enormous number of strong hearty fellows between twenty and thirty-two who remained quietly at home. The state of suspended animation which special correspondents have noticed in Prussia during the war exists in their own imagination only. Since 1866 the number of annual recruits in the North-German Confederation has not exceeded 93,000, on a population of 30,000,000. If the full complement of able-bodied young men even after the strictest medical scrutiny were taken, it would amount to at least 170,000. Dynastic necessities on the one side, financial necessities on the other, determined this limitation of the number of recruits. The army remained a handy instrument for absolutist purposes at home, for Cabinet wars abroad; but as to the full strength of the nation for defence, that was not nearly made available. Still this system maintained an immense superiority over the old-fashioned cadre system of the other great continental armies. As compared to them, Prussia drew twice the number of soldiers from the same number of population. And she has managed to make them good soldiers too, thanks to a system which exhausted her resources, and which would never have been endured by the people had it not been for Louis Napoleon s constant feelers for the Rhine frontier, and for the aspirations towards German unity of which this army was instinctively felt to be the necessary instrument. The Rhine and the unity of Germany once secure, that army system must become intolerable. Here we have the answer to the question, How to fight the Prussians. If a nation equally populous, equally intelligent, equally brave, equally civilized were to carry out in reality that which in Prussia is done on paper only, to make a soldier of every able-bodied citizen; if that nation limited the actual time of service in peace and for drill to what is really required for the purpose and no more; if it kept up the organization for the war establishment in the same effective way as Prussia has lately done then, we say, that nation would possess the same immense advantage over Prussianized Germany that Prussianized Germany has proved herself to possess over France in this present war. According to first-rate Prussian authorities (including General von Roon, the Minister of War) two years service is quite sufficient to turn a lout into a good soldier. With the permission of her Majesty s martinets, we should even be inclined to say that for the mass of the recruits eighteen months two summers and one winter would suffice. But the exact length of service is a secondary question. The Prussians, as we have seen, obtained excellent results after six months service, and with men who had but just ceased to be serfs. The main point is, that the principle of universal liability to service be really carried out. And if the war be continued to that bitter end for which the German Philistines are now shouting, the dismemberment of France, we may depend upon it that the French will adopt that principle. They have been so far a warlike but not a military nation. They have hated service in that army of theirs which was established on the cadre system, with long service and few drilled reserves. They will be quite willing to serve in an army with short service and long liability on the reserve, and they will do even more, if that will enable them to wipe out the insult and restore the integrity of France. And then, the big battalions will be on the side of France, and the effect they produce will be the same as in this war, unless Germany adopt the same system. But there will be this difference. As the Prussian landwehr system was progress compared with the French cadre system, because it reduced the time of service and increased the number of men capable to defend their country, so will this new system of really universal liability to serve be an advance upon the Prussian system. Armaments for war will become more colossal, but peace armies will become smaller; the citizens of a country will, every one of them, have to fight out the quarrels of their rulers in person and no longer by substitute; defence will become stronger, and attack will become more difficult; and the very extension of armies will finally turn out to be a reduction of expense and a guarantee of peace.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/09/17.htm

The fortifications of Paris have shown their value already. To them alone it is owing that the Germans have not been in possession of the town for more than a week. In 1814 half a day s fighting about the heights of Montmartre compelled the city to capitulate. In 1815, a range of earthworks, constructed from the beginning of the campaign, created some delay; but their resistance would have been very short had it not been for the absolute certainty on the part of the Allies that the city would be handed over to them without fighting. In this present war, whatever the Germans may have expected from diplomacy has not been allowed to interfere with their military action. And this same military action, short, sharp, and decisive up to the middle of September, became slow, hesitating, tatonnante from the day the German columns got within the sphere of operation of that immense fortified camp, Paris. And naturally so. The mere investment of such a vast place requires time and caution, even if you approach it with 200,000 or 250,000 men. A force so large as that will be hardly sufficient to invest it properly on all sides, though, as in this present case, the town contains no army fit to take the field and to fight pitched battles. That there is no such army in Paris the pitiable results of General Ducrot s sally near Meudon have most decisively proved. Here the troops of the line behaved positively worse than the Garde Mobile; they, actually bolted, the renowned Zouaves leading the way. The thing is easily explained. The old soldiers mostly men of MacMahon s, De Failly s, and F Iix Douay s corps, who had fought at Woerth were completely demoralized by two disastrous retreats and six weeks of constant ill-success; and it is but natural that such causes will tell most severely upon mercenaries, for the Zouaves, consisting mostly of substitutes, deserve no other name. And these were the men who were expected to steady the raw recruits with which the thinned battalions of the line had been filled up. After this affair there may be small raids, successful here and there, but there will scarcely be any more battles in the open. Another point: The Germans say that Paris is commanded by their guns from the heights near Sceaux; but this assertion is to be taken with a considerable grain of salt. The nearest heights on which they can have placed any batteries above Fontenay-aux-Roses, about 1,500 metres from the fort of Vanves, are fully 8,000 metres, or 8,700 yards, from the centre of the town. The Germans have no heavier field artillery than the so-called rifled 6-pounder (weight of projectile about 15lb.), but even if they had rifled 12-pounders, with projectiles of 32lb., ready to hand, the extreme range of these guns, at the angles of elevation for which their limbers are constructed, would not exceed 4,500 or 5,000 metres. Thus this boast need not frighten the Parisians. Unless two more forts are taken, Paris need not fear a bombardment; and even then the shells would spread themselves so much over the enormous surface that the damage must be comparatively small and the moral effect almost nothing. Look at the enormous mass of artillery brought to bear upon Strasbourg: how much more will be required for reducing Paris, even if we keep in mind that the regular attack by parallels will naturally be confined to a small portion of the works! And until the Germans can bring together under the walls of Paris all this artillery, with ammunition and all other appliances, Paris is safe. From the moment the siege Mat riel is ready, from that moment alone does the real danger begin. We see now clearly what great Intrinsic strength there is in the fortifications of Paris. If to this passive strength, this mere power of resistance, were added the active strength, the power of attack of a real army, the value of the former would be immediately increased. While the investing force is unavoidably divided, by the rivers Seine and Marne, into at least three separate portions, which cannot communicate with each other except by bridges constructed to the rear of their fighting positions that is to say, by roundabout roads and with loss of time only the great mass of the army in Paris could attack with superior forces any one of these three portions at its choice, inflict losses upon it, destroy any works commenced, and retire under shelter of the forts before the besiegers supports had time to come up. In case this army in Paris were not too weak compared with the besiegers forces, it might render the complete investment of the place impossible, or break through it at any time. And how necessary it is to completely invest a besieged place so long as reinforcements from without are not completely out of the question has been shown in the case of Sebastopol, where the siege was protracted entirely by the constant arrival of Russian reinforcements in the northern half of the fortress, access to which could be cut off at the very last moment only. The more events will develop themselves before Paris, the more evident will become the perfect absurdity of the Imperialist generalship during this war, by which two armies were sacrificed and Paris left without its chief arm of defence, the power of retaliating attack for attack. As to the provisioning such a large town, the difficulties appear to us even less than in the case of a smaller place. A capital like Paris is not only provided with a perfect commercial organization for provisioning itself at all times; it is at the same time the chief market and storehouse where the agricultural produce of an extensive district is collected and exchanged. An active Government could easily take measures to provide, by using these facilities, ample stores for the duration of an average siege. Whether this has been done we have no means of judging; but why it might not have been done, and rapidly too. we cannot see. Anyhow, if the fighting goes on to the bitter end, as we now hear it will, resistance will probably not be very long from the day the trenches are opened. The masonry of the scarps is rather exposed, and the absence of demi-lunes before the curtains favours the advance of the besieger and the breaching of the walls. The confined space of the forts admits of a limited number of defenders only; their resistance to an assault, unless seconded by an advance of troops through the intervals of the forts, cannot be serious. But if the trenches can be carried up the glacis of the forts without being destroyed by such sallies of the army in Paris, this very fact proves that that army is too weak in numbers, organization, or morale to sally forth with a chance of success on the night of the assault. A couple of forts once taken, it is to be hoped the town will desist from a hopeless struggle. If not, the operation of a siege will have to be repeated, a couple of breaches effected, and the town again summoned to surrender. And if that be again rejected, then may come the equally chanceless struggle on the barricades. Let us hope that such useless sacrifices will be spared.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/09/27.htm

The story we laid before our readers yesterday according to the version of M. Jules Favre we have no difficulty in accepting as correct; always excepting little errors, such as when Bismarck is said to intend the annexation of Metz, Ch teau-Salins, and Soissons. M. Favre evidently is ignorant of the geographical whereabouts of Soissons. The Count said Sarrebourg, which town has long been singled out as falling within the new strategical border line, while Soissons is as much outside of it as Paris or Troyes. In his rendering of the terms of the conversation M. Favre may not be quite exact; but where he asserts facts contested by the officious Prussian press, neutral Europe will be generally disposed to go by his statement. Thus, If at Berlin what M. Favre says about the surrender of Mont Val rien being proposed at one time is disputed, there will be few to believe that M. Favre either invented this or totally misunderstood Count Bismarck s meaning. His own report shows but too clearly how little M. Favre understood the actual situation, or how confused and indistinct was his view of it. He came to treat about an armistice which was to lead to peace. His supposition that France still has the power of compelling her opponents to abandon all claim to territorial cession we readily excuse; but on what terms he expected to obtain a cessation of hostilities it is hard to say. The points finally insisted upon were the surrender of Strasbourg, Toul, and Verdun their garrisons to become prisoners of war. Toul and Verdun appear to have been more or less conceded. But Strasbourg? The demand was taken by M. Favre simply as an insult and as nothing else. In this reply we find little consideration of the facts of the case nothing but an outburst of patriotic sentiment. Since this sentiment operated very powerfully in Paris, it was not, of course, to be set aside at such a moment; but it might have been as well to have pondered the facts of the case too. Strasbourg had been regularly besieged long enough to make its early fall a matter of positive certainty. A fortress regularly besieged can resist a given time; it may even prolong its defence for a few days by extraordinary efforts; but, unless there arrive an army to relieve it, it is mathematically certain that fall it must. Trochu and the engineering staff in Paris are perfectly aware of this; they know that there is no army anywhere to come to the relief of Strasbourg; and yet Trochu s colleague in the Government, Jules Favre, appears to have put all this out of his reckoning. The only thing he saw in the demand to surrender Strasbourg was an insult to himself, to the garrison of Strasbourg, to the French nation. But the chief parties interested, General Uhrich and his garrison, had certainly done enough for their own honour. To spare them the last few days of a perfectly hopeless struggle, if thereby the feeble chances of salvation for France could be improved, would not have been an insult to them, but a well-merited reward. General Uhrich must necessarily have preferred to surrender to an order from the Government, and for an equivalent, rather than to the threat of an assault and for no return whatsoever. In the meantime, Toul and Strasbourg have fallen, and Verdun, so long as Metz holds out, is of no earthly military use to the Germans, who thus have got, without conceding the armistice, almost everything Bismarck was bargaining for with Jules Favre. It would, then, appear that never was there an armistice offered on cheaper and more generous terms by the conqueror; never one more foolishly refused by the vanquished. Jules Favre s intelligence certainly does not shine in the transaction, though his instincts were probably right enough; whereas Bismarck appears in the new character of the generous conqueror. The offer, as M. Favre understood it, was uncommonly cheap; and, had it been only what he thought, it was one to be accepted at once. But then the proposal was something more than he perceived it to be. Between two armies in the field an armistice is a matter easily settled. A line of demarcation perhaps a belt of neutral country between the two belligerents is established, and the thing is arranged. But here there is only one army in the field; the other, as far as it still exists, is shut up in fortresses more or less invested. What is to become of all these places? What is to be their status during the armistice? Bismarck takes care not to say a word about all this. If the fortnight s armistice be concluded, and nothing said therein relating to these towns, the status quo is maintained as a matter of course, except as regards actual hostilities against the garrisons and works. Thus Bitche, Metz, Phalsbourg, Paris, and we know not how many other fortified places, would remain invested and cut off from all supplies and communications; the people inside them would eat up their provisions just as if there was no armistice; and thus the armistice would do for the besiegers almost as much as continued fighting would have done. Nay, it might even occur that in the midst of the armistice one or more of these places would completely exhaust their stores, and might have to surrender to the blockaders there and then, in order to avoid absolute starvation. From this it appears that Count Bismarck, astute as ever, saw his way to making the armistice reduce the enemy s fortresses. Of course, if the negotiations had continued far enough to lead to a draft agreement, the French staff would have found this out, and would necessarily have made such demands, relatively to the invested towns, that the whole thing probably would have fallen through. But it was M. Jules Favre s business to probe Bismarck s proposals to the bottom, and to draw out what the latter had an interest to hide. If he had inquired what was to be the status of the blockaded towns during the armistice, he would not have given Count Bismarck the opportunity of displaying before the world an apparent magnanimity, which was too deep for M. Favre though it was but skin deep. Instead of that, he fires up at the demand for Strasbourg, with its garrison as prisoners of war, in a way which makes it clear to all the world that even after the severe lessons of the last two months, the spokesman of the French Government was incapable of appreciating the actual facts of the situation because he was still sous la domination de la phrase.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/10/01.htm

It is a surprising fact, even after the inconceivable blunders which have led to the practical annihilation of the French armies, that France should be virtually at the mercy of a conqueror who holds possession of barely one-eighth of her territory. The country actually occupied by the Germans is bounded by a line drawn from Strasbourg to Versailles, and another from Versailles to Sedan. Within this narrow strip the French still hold the fortresses of Paris, Metz, Montm dy, Verdun, Thionville, Bitche, and Phalsbourg. The observation, blockade, or siege of these fortresses employ nearly all the forces that have so far been sent into France. There may be plenty of cavalry left to scour the country round Paris as far as Orl ans, Rouen, and Amiens, and even farther; but a serious occupation of any extensive district is not to be thought of at present. There is certainly a force of some 40,000 or 50,000 landwehr now in Alsace south of Strasbourg, and this army may be raised to double its strength by the greater portion of the besieging corps from Strasbourg. These troops are intended, it appears, for an excursion towards the southern portions of France: it is stated that they are to march upon Belfort, Besan on, and Lyons. Now, every one of these three fortresses is a large entrenched camp, with detached forts at a fair distance from the main rampart; and a siege, or even a serious blockade, of all these three places at once would take more than the forces of this army. We take it therefore for granted that this assertion is a mere blind, and that the new German army will take no more notice of these fortresses than it can help; that it will march into and eat up the valley of the Sa ne, the richest part of Burgundy, and then advance towards the Loire, to open communications with the army round Paris, and to be employed according to circumstances. But even this strong body of troops, while it has no direct communications with the army before Paris, so as to enable it to dispense with direct and independent communications with the Rhine, even this strong body of troops is employed on a mere raid, and unable to hold in subjection an extensive territory. Thus its operations for a couple of weeks to come will not increase the actual hold the Germans have upon French soil, which remains limited to barely one-eighth of the whole extent of France; and yet France, though she will not own to it, is virtually conquered. How is this possible? The main cause is the excessive centralization of all administration in France, and especially of military administration. Up to a very recent time France was divided, for military purposes, into twenty-three districts, each containing, as much as possible, the garrisons composing one division of infantry, along with cavalry and artillery. Between the commanders of these divisions and the Ministry of War there was no intermediate link. These divisions, moreover, were merely administrative, not military organizations. The regiments composing them were not expected to be brigaded in war; they were merely in time of peace under the disciplinary control of the same general. As soon as a war was imminent they might be sent to quite different army corps, divisions, or brigades. As to a divisional staff other than administrative, or personally attached to the general in command, such a thing did not exist. Under Louis Napoleon, these twenty-three divisions were united in six army corps, each under a marshal of France. But these army corps were no more permanent organizations for war than the divisions. They were organized for political, not for military ends. They had no regular staff. They were the very reverse of the Prussian army corps, each of which is permanently organized for war, with its quota of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineers, with its military, medical, judicial, and administrative staff ready for a campaign. In France the administrative portion of the army (Intendance and so forth) received their orders, not from the marshal or general in command, but from Paris direct. If under these circumstances Paris becomes paralyzed, if communication with it be cut off, there is no nucleus of organization left in the provinces; they are equally paralyzed, and even more so, inasmuch as the time-honoured dependency of the provinces on Paris and its initiative has by long habit become part and parcel of the national creed, to rebel against which is not merely a crime but a sacrilege. Next to this chief cause, however, there is another, a secondary one but scarcely less important in this case; which is that, in consequence of the internal historical development of France, her centre is placed in dangerous proximity to her north-eastern frontier. This was the case to a far greater extent three hundred years ago. Paris then lay at one extremity of the country. To cover Paris by a greater extent of conquered territory towards the east and north-east was the aim of the almost uninterrupted series of wars against Germany and Spain while the latter possessed Belgium. From the time Henry II seized upon the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun (1552) to the Revolution, Artois, parts of Flanders and Hainaut, Lorraine, Alsace, and Montb liard were thus conquered and annexed to France to serve as buffers to receive the first shock of invasion against Paris. We must admit that nearly all these provinces were predestined by race, language, and habits to become part and parcel of France, and that France has understood principally by the revolution of 1789-98 how to thoroughly assimilate the rest. But even now Paris is dangerously exposed. From Bayonne to Perpignan, from Antibes to Geneva, the land frontiers of the country are at a great distance from Paris. From Geneva by Bale to Lauterbourg in Alsace the distance remains the same; it forms an arc described from the centre, Paris, with one and the same radius of 250 miles. But at Lauterbourg the frontier leaves the arc, and forms a chord inside it, which at one point is but 120 miles from Paris. L o le Rhin nous quitte, le danger commence, said Lavall e in his chauvinistic work on the frontiers of France. But if we continue the arc from Lauterbourg in a northerly direction, we shall find that it follows almost exactly the course of the Rhine to the sea. Here, then, we have the real cause of the French clamour for the whole of the left bank of that Rhine. It is after the acquisition of that boundary alone that Paris is covered, on its most exposed side, by equidistant frontiers, and with a river for the boundary line into the bargain. And if the military safety of Paris were the leading principle of European politics France would certainly be entitled to have it. Fortunately, that is not the case; and if France chooses to have Paris for a capital she must put up with the drawbacks attached to Paris as well as with the advantages, one of which drawbacks is that an occupation of a small portion of France, including Paris, will paralyze her national action. But if this be the case; if France acquire no right to the Rhine by the accident of having her capital in an exposed situation, Germany ought to remember that military considerations of a similar sort give her no better claim upon French territory.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/10/03.htm

If we are to believe the reports sent by balloon from Paris, that city is defended by forces innumerable. There are between one and two hundred thousand Gardes Mobiles from the provinces; there are 250 battalions of Parisian National Guards, numbering 1,500, some say 1,800 or 1,900 men each that is, at the most moderate computation, 375,000 men; there are at least 50,000 troops of the line, besides marine infantry, sailors, francs-tireurs, and so forth. And so runs the latest information if these be all disabled, there are still 500,000 citizens behind them fit to bear arms, ready in case of need to take their places. Outside Paris there is a German army composed of six North German Army Corps (4th, 5th, 6th, 11th, 12th, and Guards), two Bavarian corps, and the W rttemberg division; in all, eight corps and a half, numbering somewhere between 200,000 and 230,000 men certainly not more. Yet this German army, although extended on a line of investment of at least eighty miles, notoriously keeps in check that innumerable force inside the town, cuts off its supplies, guards all roads and pathways leading outwards from Paris, and so far has victoriously repulsed all sallies made by the garrison. How is this possible? First, there can be little doubt that the accounts given of the immense number of armed men in Paris are fanciful. If the 600,000 men under arms of whom we hear so much be reduced to 350,000 or 400,000, we shall be nearer the truth. Still it cannot be denied that there are far more armed men in Paris to defend it than outside to attack it. Secondly, the quality of the defenders of Paris is of the most motley kind. Among the whole of them, we should consider none as really trustworthy troops but the marines and sailors who now man the outer forts. The line the dregs of MacMahon s army reinforced by reserve men, most of them raw recruits have shown in the affair of the 19th of September, near Meudon, that they are demoralized. The Mobiles, good material in themselves, are but just now passing through recruit-drill; they are badly officered, and armed with three different kinds of rifle the Chassepot, the converted Mini , and the unconverted Mini . No efforts, no amount of skirmishing with the enemy, can give them, in the short time allowed, that steadiness which alone will enable them to do that which is most required to meet and defeat the enemy in the open field. It is the original fault of their organization, the want of trained teachers, officers and sergeants, which prevents them from becoming good soldiers. Still, they appear the best element in the defence of Paris; they are at least likely to submit to discipline. The sedentary National Guard is a very mixed body. The battalions from the faubourgs, consisting of working men, are willing and determined enough to fight; they will be obedient, and show a kind of instinctive discipline if led by men possessing personally and politically their confidence; towards all other leaders they will be rebellious. Moreover, they are undrilled and without trained officers; and unless there be actually a final struggle behind barricades, their best fighting qualities will not be put to the test. But the mass of the National Guards, those armed by Palikao, consist of the bourgeoisie, especially the small shopkeeping class, and these men object to fighting on principle. Their business under arms is to guard their shops and their houses; and if these are attacked by the shells of an enemy firing from a distance their martial enthusiasm will probably dwindle away. They are, moreover, a force organized less against a foreign than against a domestic enemy. All their traditions point that way, and nine out of every ten of them are convinced that such a domestic enemy is, at this very moment, lurking in the very heart of Paris, and only waiting his opportunity to fall upon them. They are mostly married men, unused to hardship and exposure, and indeed, they are grumbling already at the severity of the duty which makes them spend one night out of three in the open air on the ramparts of the city. Among such a body you may find companies and even battalions which, under peculiar circumstances, will behave gallantly; but, as a body, and especially for a regular and tiresome course of duty, they cannot be relied on. With such a force inside Paris it is no wonder that the far less numerous and widely dispersed Germans outside feel tranquil as to any attacks from that quarter. Indeed, all engagements that have so far taken place show the Army of Paris (if we may call it so) to be incompetent to act in the field. The first great attack on the blockading troops, on the 19th, was characteristic enough. General Ducrot s corps of some 30,000 or 40,000 men was arrested for an hour and a half by two Prussian regiments (the 7th and 47th), until two Bavarian regiments came to their assistance, and another Bavarian brigade fell upon the flank of the French; when the latter retreated in confusion, leaving in the hands of the enemy a redoubt armed with eight guns, and numerous prisoners. The number of the Germans engaged on this occasion could not exceed 15,000. Since then, the sorties of the French have been conducted quite differently. They have given up all intention of delivering pitched battles; they send out smaller parties to surprise outposts and other small detachments; and if a brigade, a division, or more advance beyond the line of the forts, they are satisfied with a mere demonstration. These fights aim less at the infliction of damage upon the enemy than at the breaking-in of the French levies to the practice of warfare. They will, no doubt, improve them gradually, but only a small proportion of the unwieldy mass of men in Paris can benefit by practice on such a small scale. That General Trochu, after the fight of the 19th, was perfectly aware of the character of the force under his command his proclamation of the 30th of September clearly shows. He certainly lays the blame almost exclusively on the line, and rather pats the Mobiles on the back; but this merely proves that he considers these (and rightly so) as the best portion of the men under him. Both the proclamation and the change of tactics adopted since prove distinctly that he is under no delusion as to the unfitness of his men for operations in the open field. And he must, moreover, know that whatever other forces may remain to France under the name of Army of Lyons, Army of the Loire, and so forth, are of exactly the same composition as his own men; and that therefore he need not expect to have the blockade or siege of Paris raised by relieving army. It is therefore remarkable that we should receive report according to which Trochu had opposed, in a council of Ministers, the proposal to treat for peace. The report certainly comes from Berlin, not a good quarter for impartial information as to what is going on inside Paris. Be that as it may, we cannot believe that Trochu is hopeful of success. His views of army organization in 1867 were strongly in favour of fully four years service with the regiment and three years liability in the reserve, such as had been the rule under Louis Philippe; he even considered the time of service of the Prussians two or three years totally inadequate to form good soldiers. The irony of history now places him in a position where he carries on a war with completely raw almost undrilled and undisciplined men against these very same Prussians, whom he but yesterday qualified as but half-formed soldiers; and that after these Prussians have disposed in a month of the whole regular army of France.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/10/06.htm

A few weeks ago we pointed out that the Prussian system of recruiting the army was anything but perfect. It professes to make every citizen a soldier. The army is, in the official Prussian words, nothing but the school in which the whole nation is educated for war, and yet a very small percentage only of the population passes through that school. We now return to this subject, in order to illustrate it by a few exact figures. According to the tables of the Prussian Statistical Bureau, there were actually levied for the army on the average of the years 1831 to 1854, 9.84 per cent. per annum of the young men liable to service; there remained available every year 8.28 per cent.; there were totally unfit for service from bodily infirmities 6.40 per cent.; there were temporarily unfit, to be re-examined in a future year, 53.28 per cent.; the rest were absent, or comprised under headings too insignificant to be here noticed. Thus, during these four-and-twenty years, not one-tenth of the young citizens were admitted into the national war-school; and that is called a nation in arms. In 1861 the figures were as follows: Young men of twenty, class 1861, 217,438; young men of previous classes, still to be disposed of, 348,364; total, 565,802. Of these there were absent 148,946, or 26.32 per cent.; totally unfit, 17,727, or 3.05 per cent.; placed in the Ersatz Reserve that is to say, liberated from service in time of peace, with liability to be called on in time of war 76,590, or 13.50 per cent.; sent home for future reexamination on account of temporary unfitness, 230,236 or 40.79 per cent.; disposed of on other grounds, 22,369, or 3.98 per cent.; remained available for the army, 69,934 men, or 12.36 per cent.; and of these, 59,459 only, or 10.50 per cent., were actually placed in the ranks. No doubt since 1866 the percentage of recruits draughted annually has been larger, but it cannot have been so to any considerable extent; and if at present 12 or 13 per cent. of the North German male population pass through the army, it will be much. This certainly does strongly contrast with the fervid descriptions of special correspondents during the mobilization in Germany. Every able-bodied man, according to them, then donned his uniform and shouldered his rifle, or bestrode his horse; all kind of business was at a standstill: factories were closed, shops shut up, crops left on the fields uncut; all production was stopped, all commerce abandoned in fact, it was a case of suspended animation, a tremendous national effort, but which, if prolonged only a few months, must end in complete national exhaustion. The transformation of civilians into soldiers did certainly go on at a rate of which people out of Germany had no idea; but if the same writers will look at Germany now, after the withdrawal of above a million men from civil life, they will find the factories working, the crops housed, the shops and counting-houses open. Production, if stopped at all, is stopped for want of orders, not for want of hands; and there are plenty of stout fellows to be seen about the streets quite as fit to shoulder a rifle as those who have gone off to France. The above figures explain all this. The men who have passed through the army do certainly not exceed 12 per cent. of the whole adult male population. More than 12 per cent. of them cannot, therefore, be called out on a mobilization, and there remains fully 88 per cent. of them at home; a portion of whom, of course, is called out as the war progresses to fill up the gaps caused by battles and disease. These may amount to two or three per cent. more in the course of half a year; but still the immense majority of the men is never called upon. The nation in arms is altogether a sham. The cause of this we have before pointed out. It is the necessity under which the Prussian dynasty and Government are, as long as their hereditary policy is insisted upon, to have an army which is an obedient instrument of that policy. According to Prussian experience, three years service in the ranks is indispensable to break in the average civilian for that class of work. It has never been seriously maintained, even by the most obstinate martinets in Prussia, that an infantry soldier and they constitute the vast mass of the army cannot learn all his military duties in two years; but, as was said in the debates in the Chamber from 1861 to 1866, the true military spirit, the habit of unconditional obedience, is learned in the third year only. Now, with a given amount of money for the war budget, the longer the men serve, the fewer recruits can be turned into soldiers. At present, with three years service, 90,000 recruits annually enter the army; with two years, 135,000; with eighteen months, 180,000 men might be draughted into it and drilled every year. That there are plenty of able-bodied men to be had for the purpose is evident from the figures we have given, and shall be made more evident by-and-by. Thus we see that the phrase of the nation in arms hides the creation of a large army for purposes of Cabinet policy abroad and reaction at home. A nation in arms would not be the best instrument for Bismarck to work with. The population of the North German Confederation is a trifle below 30,000,000. The war establishment of its army is in round numbers 1 men, or barely 3.17 per cent. of the population. The number of young men attaining the age of twenty is about 1.23 per cent. of the population in every year, say 360,000. Out of these, according to the experience of the secondary German States, fully one-half are either there and then, or within two years afterwards fit for service in the field; this would give 180.000 men. Of the rest, a goodly proportion is fit for garrison duty; but these we may leave out of the account for the present. The Prussian statistics seem to differ from this, but in Prussia these statistics must, for obvious reasons, be grouped in such a way as to make the result appear compatible with the delusion of the nation in arms. Still the truth leaks out there too. In 1861 we had, besides the 69,934 men available for the army, 76,590 men place in the Ersatz reserve, raising the total of men fit for service to 146,524, out of which but 59,459, or 40 per cent., were draughted into the ranks. At all events, we shall be perfectly safe in reckoning one-half of the young men as fit for the army. In that case, 180,000 recruits might enter the line every year, with twelve years liability to be called out, as at present. This would give a force of 2,160,000 drilled men more than double the present establishment, even after ample allowance is made for all reductions by deaths and other casualties; and if the other half of the young men were again looked to when twenty-five years of age, there would be found the material for another 500,000 or 600,000 good garrison troops, or more. Six to eight per cent. of the population ready drilled and disciplined, to be called out in case of attack, the cadres for the whole of them being kept up in time of peace, as is now done that would really be a nation in arms; but that would not be an army to be used for Cabinet wars, for conquest, or for a policy of reaction at home. Still this would be merely the Prussian phrase turned into a reality. If the semblance of a nation in arms has had such a power, what would the reality be? And we may depend upon it if Prussia, by insisting on conquest, compels France to it, France will turn that semblance into reality either in one form or another. She will organize herself into a nation of soldiers, and a few years hence may astonish Prussia as much by the crushing numbers of her soldiers as Prussia has astonished the world this summer. But cannot Prussia do the same? Certainly, but then she will cease to be the Prussia of to-day. She gains in power of defence, while she loses in power of attack; she will have more men, but not quite so handy for invasion in the beginning of a war; she will have to give up all idea of conquest, and as to her present home policy, that would be seriously jeopardized.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/10/08.htm

In one of our preceding Notes we called attention to the fact that even now, after the fall of Strasbourg, nearly the whole of the immense German army in France is fully employed, although not one-sixth of the territory of the country is held by the invaders. The subject is so very significant that we feel justified in returning to it. Metz, with Bazaine s army enclosed within its line of forts, finds occupation for eight army corps (the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, the division of Hessians, and General Kummer s division of landwehr), in all sixteen divisions of infantry. Paris engages seventeen divisions of infantry (the Guards, 4th, 5th, 6th, 1 1th, 12th North German, 1st and 2nd Bavarian corps, and the W rttemberg division). The newly-formed 13th and 14th corps, mostly landwehr, and some detachments from the corps already named, occupy the conquered country, and observe, blockade, or besiege the places which, within it, still belong to the French. The 15th Corps (the Baden division and at least one division of landwehr), set free by the capitulation of Strasbourg, is alone disposable for active operations. Fresh landwehr troops are to be joined to it, and then it is to undertake some operations, the character of which is still very indefinitely known, in a more southerly direction. Now these forces comprise almost all the organized troops of which Germany disposes, with the very important exception of the fourth battalions of the line. Contrary to what was done in the Austrian war, when they were sent out against the enemy, these 114 battalions have this time been kept at home; in accordance with their original purpose, they serve as cadres for the drill and organization of the men intended to fill up the gaps which battles and disease may have caused in the ranks of their respective regiments. As soon as the thousand men forming the battalion are sufficiently broken in to do duty before the enemy, they are sent off to join the three field battalions of the regiment; this was done on a large scale after the severe fighting before Metz in the middle of September. But the officers and non-commissioned officers of the battalion remain at home, ready to receive and prepare for the field a fresh batch of 1,000 men, taken from the Ersatz Reserve or from the recruits called out in due. course. This measure was absolutely necessary in a war as bloody as the present one, and the end of which is not to be foreseen with certainty; but it deprives the Germans of the active services for the time being of 114 battalions, and a corresponding force of cavalry and artillery, representing in all fully 200,000 men. With the exception of these, the occupation of scarcely one-sixth of France and the reduction of the two large fortresses in this territory Metz and Paris keeps the whole of the German forces so fully employed that they have barely 60,000 men to spare for further operations beyond the territory already conquered. And this, while there is not anywhere a French army in the field to oppose serious resistance. If ever there was needed a proof of the immense importance, in modern warfare, of large entrenched camps with a fortress for their nucleus, here that proof is furnished. The two entrenched camps in question have not at all been made use of to the best advantage, as we may show on some other occasion. Metz has for a garrison too many troops for its size and importance, and Paris has of real troops fit for the field scarcely any at all. Still, the first of these places at present holds at least 240,000, the second 250,000 enemies in check; and if France had only 200,000 real soldiers behind the Loire, the siege of Paris would be an impossibility. Unfortunately for France, these 200,000 men she does not possess; nor is there any probability of their ever being brought together, organized and disciplined in useful time. So that the reduction of the two great centres of defence is a mere question of weeks. The army in Metz has so far kept up its discipline and fighting qualities wonderfully well, but the constant repulses it has sustained must at length break down every hope of escape. French soldiers are capital defenders of fortresses, and can stand defeat during a siege far better than in the field; but if demoralization once begins among them, it spreads rapidly and irresistibly. As to Paris, we will not take M. Gambetta s 400,000 National Guards, 100,000 Mobiles, and 60,000 troops of the line too literally, any more than the countless cannons and mitrailleurs that are being manufactured in Paris, or the great strength of the barricades. But there is no doubt that there are elements enough in Paris for a very respectable defence; though that defence, by being, from the character of the garrison, necessarily passive, will lack its strongest element powerful attacks on the besiegers. Anyhow, it must be evident that if there was a real national enthusiasm alive among the French, everything might still be gained. While the whole forces of the invader, all but 60,000 men and the cavalry which can raid but not subdue, are laid fast in the conquered territory, the remaining five-sixths of France might raise armed bands enough to harass the Germans on every point, to intercept their communications, destroy bridges and railways, provisions and ammunition in their rear, and compel them to detach from their two great armies such numbers of troops that Bazaine might find means to break out of Metz, and that the investment of Paris would become illusory. Already at present the movement of the armed bands is a source of great trouble, though not as yet of danger, to the Germans, and this will increase as the country round Paris becomes exhausted in food and other supplies, and as more distant districts have to be placed under requisition. The new German army now forming in Alsace will probably soon be called away from any expedition towards the South by the necessity of securing the German communications and of subjecting a greater tract of country round Paris. But what would be the fate of the Germans if the French people had been stirred up by the same national fanaticism as were the Spaniards in 1808 if every town and almost every village had been turned into a fortress, every peasant and citizen into a combatant? Even the 200,000 men of the fourth battalion would not suffice to hold down such a people. But such national fanaticism is not nowadays within the habits of civilized nations. It may be found among Mexicans and Turks; its sources have dried up in the moneymaking West of Europe, and the twenty years during which the incubus of the Second Empire has weighed upon France have anything but steeled the national character. Thus we see a great deal of talking and a minimum of work; a deal of show and an almost total neglect of organization; very little non-official resistance and a good deal of submission to the enemy; very few real soldiers and an immense number of francs-tireurs.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/10/11.htm

The Prussian staff officers in Berlin seem to be getting impatient. Through the Times and Daily News correspondents in Berlin they inform us that the siege material has now been for some days ready before Paris, and that the siege will begin presently. We have our doubts about this readiness. Firstly, we know that several tunnels on the only available line of railway have been blown up by the retreating French near La Fert -sous-Jouarre, and that they are not yet in working order; secondly, we also know that the Mat riel for a regular and effective siege of such a vast place as Paris is so colossal that it will take a long time to get it together, even had the railway been always open; and thirdly, five or six days after this announcement from Berlin had been made, we have not yet heard of the opening of a first parallel. We must therefore conclude that by readiness to open the siege, or regular attack, we are to understand the readiness to open the irregular attack, the bombardment. Still, a bombardment of Paris, with any chance of compelling a surrender, would require far more guns than a regular siege. In the latter you may confine your attack to one or two points of the line of defence; in the former, you must constantly scatter such a number of shells over the entire vast area of the town that more fires are made to break out everywhere than the population can extinguish, and that the very operation of extinguishing them becomes too dangerous to be attempted. Now we have seen that even Strasbourg, with 85,000 inhabitants, was perfectly able to hold out under a bombardment of almost unparalleled severity; that, with the exception of a few solitary and pretty well-defined districts, which had to be sacrificed, the fires could be well kept down. The cause of this is the comparatively great extent of the town. It is easy to shell a small place of five or ten thousand inhabitants into submission, unless there be plenty of bombproof shelter inside it; but a city of from 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants can stand a great deal of shelling, especially if built, as most French towns are, of freestone, or with thick brick walls. Paris, within the fortifications, measures twelve kilometres by ten; within the old barrieres, which comprise the closely-built part of the town, nine kilometres by seven; that is to say, this part of the town comprises an area of about fifty millions of square metres or nearly sixty millions of square yards. To throw on an average one shell per hour into every one thousand square yards of that surface would require 60,000 shells per hour, or a million and a half of shells for every twenty-four hours, which would presuppose the employment of at least 2,000 heavy guns for the purpose. Yet one shell per hour for a space nearly one hundred feet long by one hundred feet broad would be a weak bombardment. Of course the fire might be concentrated temporarily upon one or more quarters until these were thoroughly destroyed, and then transferred to the neighbouring quarters; but this proceeding, to be effective, would last almost as long as or longer than a regular siege, while it would be necessarily less certain to compel the surrender of the place. Moreover, Paris, while the forts are not reduced, is in fact out of reach of effective bombardment. The nearest heights outside the town now in the hands of the besiegers, those near Ch tillon, are fully 8,000 metres=8,700 yards, or five miles from the Palais de Justice, which pretty nearly represents the centre of the town. On the whole of the southern side, this distance will be about the same. On the north-east, the line of forts is as far as 10,000 metres, or about 11,000 yards, from the centre of the town, so that any bombarding batteries in that quarter would have to be placed 2,000 yards farther off, or from seven to eight miles from the Palace of Justice. On the north-west, the bends of the Seine and Fort Mont Val rien protect the town so well that bombarding batteries could be erected in closed redoubts or regular parallels only; that is to say, not before the regular siege had begun, to which we here suppose the bombardment to be a preliminary. Now there is no doubt that the Prussian heavy rifled guns, of calibres of five, six, seven, eight, and nine inches, throwing shells from twenty-five to above three hundred pounds weight, might be made to cover a distance of five miles. In 1864 the rifled twenty-four pounders on Gammelmark bombarded Sonderburg at a distance of 5,700 paces = 4,750 yards, or nearly three miles, although these guns were old bronze ones, and could not stand more than a 4lb. or 5lb. charge of powder to a shell weighing 68lb. The elevation was necessarily considerable, and had to be obtained by a peculiar adaptation of the gun-carriages, which would have broken down if stronger charges had been used. The present Prussian cast-steel guns can stand charges far heavier in proportion to the weights of their shells; but, to obtain a range of five miles, the elevation must still be very considerable, and the gun-carriages would have to be altered accordingly; and, being put to uses they were not constructed for, would soon be smashed. Nothing knocks up a gun-carriage sooner than firing at elevations even as low as five and six degrees with full charges; but in this case, the elevation would average at least fifteen degrees, and the gun-carriages would be knocked to pieces as fast as the houses in Paris. Leaving, however, this difficulty out of consideration, the bombardment of Paris by batteries five miles distant from the centre of the town, could be at best but a partial affair. There would be enough of destruction to exasperate, but not enough to terrify. The shells, at such ranges, could not be directed with sufficient certainty to any particular part of the town. Hospitals, museums, libraries, though ever so conspicuous from the heights where the batteries might be, could hardly be spared even if directions were given to avoid particular districts. Military buildings, arsenals, magazines, storehouses, even if visible to the besieger, could not be singled out for destruction with any surety; so that the common excuse for a bombardment that it aimed at the destruction of the means of defence of the besieged would fail. All this is said on the supposition that the besiegers have the means at hand for a really serious bombardment that is to say, some two thousand rifled guns and mortars of heavy calibre. But if, as we suppose is the case, the German siege-park is composed of some four or five hundred guns, this will not suffice to produce any such impression on the city as to make its surrender probable. The bombardment of a fortress, though still considered as a step permitted by the laws of war, yet is a measure implying such an amount of suffering to non-combatants that history will blame any one nowadays attempting it without reasonable chance of thereby extorting the surrender of the place. We smile at the chauvinisme of a Victor Hugo, who considers Paris a holy city very holy! and every attempt to attack it a sacrilege. We look upon Paris as upon any other fortified town, which, if it chooses to defend itself, must run all the risks of fair attack, of open trenches, siege batteries, and stray shots hitting non-military buildings. But if the mere bombardment of Paris cannot force the city into surrender, and if, nevertheless, such a bombardment should take place, it will be a military blunder such as few people would lay to the charge of Moltke s staff. It will be said that Paris was bombarded not for military but for political reasons.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/10/13.htm

If we are to believe the news from Berlin, the Prussian staff seem to anticipate that Paris will be conquered before Metz. But this opinion is evidently founded quite as much on political as on military reasoning. The troubles within Paris for which Count Bismarck has been waiting have not yet begun; but discord and civil war are expected to break out without fail as soon as the big. guns of the besiegers shall commence booming over the city. So far, the Parisians have, belied the opinion held of them in the German headquarters, and they may do so to the end. If so, the notion that Paris will be taken by the end of this month will almost certainly prove illusory, and Metz may have to surrender before Paris. Metz, as a mere fortress, is infinitely stronger than Paris. The latter city is fortified on the supposition that the whole or at least the greater portion of the beaten French army will retire upon it and conduct the defence by constant attacks on the enemy, whose attempts to invest the place necessarily weaken him on every point of the long line he has to take up. The defensive strength of the works therefore is not very great, and very properly so. To provide for a case such as has now occurred by the blunders of Bonapartist strategy would have raised the cost of the fortifications to an immense sum; and the time by which the defence could thereby be prolonged would scarcely amount to a fortnight. Moreover, earthworks erected during or before the siege can be made to strengthen the works considerably. With Metz the case is very different. Metz was handed down to the present generation by Cormontaigne and other great engineers of the last century as a very strong fortress strong in its defensive works. The Second Empire has added to these a circle of seven very large detached forts at distances of from two-and-a-half to three miles from the centre of the town, so as to secure it from bombardment even with rifled guns, and to transform the whole into a large entrenched camp second to Paris only. A siege of Metz, therefore, would be a very lengthy operation even if the town held but its normal war garrison. But a siege in the face of the 100,000 men who are now sheltered under its forts would be almost impossible. The sphere in which the French are still masters extends to fully two miles beyond the line of forts; to drive them back to the line of forts, so as to conquer the ground where the trenches would have to be dug, would necessitate a series of hand-to-hand fighting such as was only seen before Sebastopol; and supposing the garrison not to be demoralized by their constant fights or the besiegers not to be tired of such a sacrifice of life, the struggle might last many a month. The Germans have therefore never attempted a regular siege, but are trying to starve the place out. An army of 100,000 men, added to a population of nearly 60,000 and to the numbers of country people who have sought shelter behind the forts, must sooner or later exhaust the stock of provisions if the blockade be strictly enforced; and, even before this shall have taken place, the chances are that demoralization among the garrison will compel surrender. When once an army finds itself completely shut up, all attempts to break through the investing circle fruitless, all hope of relief from without cut off, even the best army will gradually lose its discipline and cohesion under sufferings, privations, labours, and dangers which do not appear to serve any other purpose but to uphold the honour of the flag. For symptoms of this demoralization we have been watching for some time in vain. The stock of provisions inside the town has been much more considerable than was supposed, and thus the army of Metz has had a pretty good time of it. But the stores, if plentiful, must have been ill assorted; which is quite natural, as they were stray supplies for the army, accidentally left in the town and never intended for the purpose they have now to serve. The consequence is that the diet of the soldiers in the long run becomes not only different from what they are accustomed to, but positively abnormal, and produces sicknesses of various kinds and of daily increasing severity, the causes of this sickness operating stronger and stronger every day. This phase of the blockade appears to have now been reached. Among the articles of which Metz is short are bread, the chief ordinary food of the French peasantry, and salt. The latter is absolutely indispensable to maintain health; and, as bread is almost the only form in which the French partake of starch for fat-producing food, the same may in this case be said of the former. The necessity of feeding the men and inhabitants on meat principally has, it is said, produced dysentery and scurvy. Without trusting too much to reports from deserters, who generally say what they think will please their captors, we may still believe such to be the case, as it is just what must occur under the circumstances. That the chances of demoralization must thereby increase rapidly is a matter of course. The very capable correspondent of The Daily News before Metz states, in his description of Bazaine s sortie of the 7th of October, that after the French had established themselves in the villages to the north of Fort Saint-Eloy (north of Metz, in the valley of the Moselle) a mass of at least 30,000 of them was formed more to their right, close to the river, and advanced against the Germans. This column, or group of columns, was evidently intended to break through the circle of investment. This task required the utmost determination. They would have to march straight into a semicircle of troops and batteries concentrating their fire upon them; the severity of this fire would increase up to the point of actual contact with the enemy s masses, when, if they succeeded in routing them, it would at once considerably diminish, while, if they had to retreat, they would have to undergo the same cross-fire a second time. This the men must have known; and, moreover, Bazaine would use for this supreme effort his very best troops. Yet we are told that they never even got within the rifle-fire of the German masses. Before they reached the critical point, the fire of the artillery and of the line of skirmishers had dissolved their cohesion: the dense columns first staggered and then broke. This is the first time in this war that we hear such things of the men who could face cold steel and hot fire well enough at Vionville, Gravelotte, and the latter sorties. This inability even to attempt thoroughly the task which they were put to seems to show that the army of Metz is no longer what it was. It seems to indicate, not as yet demoralization, but discouragement and hopelessness the feeling that it is no use trying. From that to positive demoralization there are not many steps, especially with French soldiers. And though it would be premature to predict from these indications the speedy fall of Metz, yet it will be surprising if we do not soon discover more symptoms announcing that the defence is on the wane. The surrender of Metz would have a far less moral, but a far greater material influence upon the course of the war than the fall of Paris. If Paris be taken, France may give in, but she need not any more than now. For by far the greater portion of the troops now investing Paris would be required to hold the town and its environs, and it is more than doubtful whether men enough could be spared to advance as far as Bordeaux. But, if Metz capitulated, more than 200,000 Germans would be set at liberty, and such an army, in the present state of the French forces in the field, would be amply sufficient to go where it liked in the open country, and to do there what it liked. The progress of occupation, arrested by the two great entrenched camps, would at once commence again, and any attempts at guerrilla warfare, which now might be very effective, would then soon be crushed.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/10/17.htm

The investment of Paris has now lasted exactly one month. During this time two points relating to it have been practically settled in accordance with our predictions. The first is that Paris cannot hope to be relieved, in useful time, by any French army from without. The Army of the Loire is utterly deficient in cavalry and field artillery, while its infantry, with very trifling exceptions, consists of either young or demoralized old troops, badly officered and entirely wanting that cohesion which alone could render them fit to meet in the open old soldiers flushed with constant success such as von der Tann leads against them. Even were the Army of the Loire raised to 100,000 or 120,000 men, which it may be before Paris falls, it would not be able to raise the investment. By their great superiority in cavalry and field artillery, both of which can be spared to a great extent before Paris as soon as the siege train with its gunners has arrived, and by the superiority of their infantry, soldier for soldier, the Germans are enabled to meet such a force with one of inferior numbers without fear of the results. Besides, the troops now scouring the country east and north of Paris to distances of fifty and sixty miles could, in such a case, be sent temporarily to reinforce von der Tann, as well as a division or two from the investing army. As to the Army of Lyons, whatever of that possesses any tangible existence will find plenty of work with General Werder s Fourteenth North German Corps, now in Epinal and Vesoul, and the Fifteenth Corps following in his rear or on his right flank. The Army of the North, with Bourbaki for commander, has as yet to be formed. From all we hear, the Mobiles about Normandy and Picardy are extremely deficient in officers and drill; and the sedentary National Guards, if not most of the Mobiles too, will be required to garrison the twenty-five or more fortresses encumbering the country between M zier s and Havre. Thus efficient relief from this quarter is not very likely, and Paris will have to rely upon itself. The second point settled is that the garrison of Paris is unfit to act on the offensive on a large scale. It consists of the same elements as the troops outside Paris, and it is equally deficient in cavalry and field artillery. The three sorties of the 19th and 30th of September and of the 13th of October have fully proved their inability to make any serious impression upon the investing forces. As these latter said, They never were able to break through even our first line. Although General Trochu states in public that his disinclination to attack the enemy in the field is caused by the deficiency in field artillery, and that he will not go out again until that is supplied he cannot help knowing that no field artillery in the world could prevent his first sortie en masse from ending in an utter rout. And by the time his field artillery can be ready, if that be more than a mere pretext, the fire of the German batteries against the forts and the closing in of their lines of investment, will have rendered its use in the open impossible. Trochu and his staff appear to be perfectly aware of this. All their measures point to a mere passive defence, without any more great sorties than may be necessary to satisfy the clamour of an undisciplined garrison. The ramparts of the forts cannot long withstand the projectiles of the heavy German guns, of which more anon. It may be, as the staff in Berlin hopes, that two or three days will suffice to demolish the guns on the ramparts of the southern forts, to breach, from a distance and by indirect fire, the masonry revetment of their escarps in one or two places, and then to storm them while the fire of the batteries from the commanding heights prevents any efficient succour from the works to the rear. There is nothing in the construction of the forts nor in the configuration of the ground to prevent this. In all the forts round Paris, the escarp that is, the inner side of the ditch, or the outer face of the rampart is covered with masonry to the height of the horizon merely, which is generally considered insufficient to secure the work from escalade. This deviation from the general rule was justified on the supposition that Paris would always be actively defended by an army. In the present case it will even be an advantage inasmuch as this low masonry will be difficult to hit by indirect fire from batteries from which it cannot be seen. The breaching from a distance will thus be rendered more tiresome, unless the heights on which these batteries are constructed will admit of a really plunging fire; and this cannot be judged of except on the ground. Under any circumstances, the resistance of these southern forts, commanded as they are by heights within the most effective range of heavy rifled artillery, need not be expected to be a long one. But immediately behind them, between the forts and the enceinte, the activity of the garrison has been chiefly displayed. Numerous earthworks have been everywhere constructed; and though, as a matter of course, we are kept in ignorance of all details, we may be sure that they will have been planned and executed with all that care, foresight, and science which have placed for more than two centuries the French engineering staff in the foremost rank. Here, then, evidently is the fighting ground chosen by the defence; a ground where ravines and hill-slopes, factories and villages, mostly built of stone, facilitate the work of the engineer and favour the resistance of young and but half-disciplined troops. Here, we expect, the Germans will find the toughest work cut out for them. We are, indeed, informed by The Daily News, from Berlin, that they will be satisfied with the conquest of some of the forts, and leave hunger to do the rest. But we presume that this choice will not be left to them, unless, indeed, they blow up the forts and retire again to their present mere investing positions; and if they do that the French can gradually by counter approaches recover the lost ground. We presume therefore that the Germans intend to keep whatever forts they may take, as efficient bombarding positions to frighten the inhabitants by occasional shells, or to use them for as complete a bombardment as they can carry out with the means at their command. And in that case they cannot decline the combat offered to them by the defence on the ground chosen and prepared for the purpose, for the forts will be under the close and effective fire of the new works. Here we shall perhaps witness the last struggle in this war offering any scientific interest; may be, the most interesting of all to military science. Here the defence will be enabled to act on the offensive again, though upon a smaller scale, and, thus restoring to a certain extent the balance of the contending forces, may prolong resistance until famine compels surrender. For we must keep in mind that of the stores of food provided for Paris one month s stock has already been consumed, and nobody outside the town knows whether it is provisioned for more than another month. There appears to be great confusion of ideas among special correspondents as to the German siege guns; and there may well be, considering that the nomenclature of the various calibres among German artillerists is founded upon principles at least as absurd and contradictory as those adopted in England. It may be worthwhile to clear this matter up a little now that these big guns may begin to speak any day. Of old-fashioned siege guns there were in use before Strasbourg, and have now been forwarded to Paris, twenty-five-pounder and fifty-pounder mortars called so from the weight of a marble ball fitting their bore. Their calibres are about 8 to 8 inches respectively, and the real weight of the spherical shells they throw is, for the first 64lb., and for the second 125lb. Then there was a rifled mortar, calibre 21 centimetres, or 8 inches, throwing an elongated shell of 20 inches in length and rather above 200lb. weight. These mortars have a tremendous effect, not only because the rifling gives their shells greater accuracy, but chiefly because the elongated percussion shell, always falling upon its heavy point, where the percussion fuze protrudes, secures the explosion of the charge at the very moment of penetration, thus combining in one and the same moment the effects of impact with that of explosion. Of rifled shell guns there were 12lb. and 24lb. guns, so called from the weight of the spherical solid iron ball they used to fire before being rifled. Their respective calibres are about four-and-a-half and five-and-a-half inches, and the weights of their shells 33lb. and 64lb. Besides these, there have been sent to Paris some of the heavy rifled guns intended for ironclad ships and for coast defence against such ships. The exact details of their construction have never been published, but their calibres are of about 7, 8 and 9 inches, and the corresponding shells of the weights of about 120, 200, and 300lb. respectively. The heaviest guns used either in or before Sebastopol were the English naval 68-pounder, the 8- and 10-inch shell guns, and the French 8 and 12-inch shell guns, the heaviest projectile of which, the 12-inch spherical shell, weighed about 180lb. Thus the siege of Paris will as much surpass Sebastopol as Sebastopol surpassed all former sieges by the weight and mass of the projectiles used. The German siege park, we may add, will contain the number of guns we guessed it would namely, about four hundred.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/10/21.htm

To form an appropriate idea of such a colossal operation as the siege and defence of Paris, we shall do well to look out, in military history, for some previous siege on a large scale to serve, at least in some degree, as an example of what we may expect to witness. Sebastopol would be a case in point if the defence of Paris took place under normal conditions; that is to say, if there were an army in the field to come to the relief of Paris or to reinforce its garrison, such as was the case with Sebastopol. But Paris defends itself under quite abnormal conditions: it has neither a garrison fit for an active defence, for fighting in the open, nor any reasonable hope of relief from without. Thus the greatest siege on record, that of Sebastopol, inferior only to the one we are about to see opened, offers no correct image of what will be done before Paris; and it will be at later stages of the siege only, and principally by contrast, that the events of the Crimean war will come in for comparison. Nor will the sieges of the American war 81 offer better examples. They occurred during a period of the struggle when not only the Southern army, but also, following in its wake, the troops of the North, had lost the character of raw levies and had come under the description of regular troops. In all these sieges the defence was extremely active. At Vicksburg as well as at Richmond there were long preliminary struggles for the mastery of the ground on which alone the siege batteries could be erected; and, with the exception of Grant s last siege of Richmond, there were always attempts at relief too. But here, in Paris, we have a garrison of new levies feebly supported by scattered new levies outside the town, and attacked by a regular army with all the appliances of modern warfare. To find a case in point, we shall have to go back to the last war in which an armed people had to fight against a regular army, and actually did fight on a large scale the Peninsular war. And here we find a celebrated example, which we shall see is in point in more than one respect: Saragossa. Saragossa had but one-third of the diameter and one-ninth of the surface of Paris; but its fortifications, though erected in a hurry and without detached forts, would resemble those of Paris in their general defensive strength. The town was occupied by 25,000 Spanish soldiers, refugees from the defeat of Tudela, among them not more than 10,000 real soldiers of the line, the rest young levies; there were besides armed peasants and inhabitants, raising the garrison to 40,000 men. There were 160 guns in the town. Outside, a force of some 30,000 men had been raised in the neighbouring provinces to come to its succour. On the other hand, the French Marshal Suchet had no more than 26,000 men wherewith to invest the fortress on both sides of the river Ebro, and, besides, 9,000 men covering the siege at Calatayud. Thus, the numerical proportion of the forces was about the same as that of the armies now respectively in and before Paris: the besieged nearly twice as numerous as the besiegers. Yet the Saragossans could no more afford to go out and meet the besiegers in the open than the Parisians can now. Nor could the Spaniards outside at any time seriously interfere with the siege. The investment of the town was completed on the 19th of December 1808; the first parallel could be opened as early as the 29th, only 350 yards from the main rampart. On the 2nd of January, 1809, the second parallel is opened 100 yards from the works; on the 11th the breaches are practicable and the whole of the attacked front is taken by assault. But here, where the resistance of an ordinary fortress garrisoned by regular troops would have ceased, the strength of a popular defence only commenced. The portion of the rampart which the French had stormed had been cut off from the rest of the town by new defences. Earthworks, defended by artillery, had been thrown up across all the streets leading to it, and were repeated at appropriate distances to the rear. The houses, built in the massive style of hot Southern Europe, with immensely thick walls, were loopholed and held in force by infantry. The bombardment by the French was incessant; but, as they were badly provided with heavy mortars, its effects were not decisive against the town. Still it was continued for forty-one days without intermission. To reduce the town, to take house after house, the French had to use the slowest process of all, that of mining. At last, after one-third of the buildings of the town had been destroyed, and the rest rendered uninhabitable, Saragossa surrendered on the 20th of February. Out of 100,000 human beings present in the town at the beginning of the siege 54,000 had perished. This defence is classical of its kind, and well merits the celebrity it has gained. But, after all, the town resisted only sixty-three days, all told. The investment took ten days; the siege of the fortress fourteen; the siege of the inner defences and the struggle for the houses thirty-nine. The sacrifices were out of all proportion to the length of the defence and the positive result obtained. Had Saragossa been defended by 20,000 good enterprising soldiers, Suchet, with his force, could not have carried on the siege in the face of their sallies, and the place might have remained in the hands of the Spaniards until after the Austrian war of 1809. Now we certainly do not expect Paris to prove a second Saragossa. The houses in Paris, strong though they be, cannot bear any comparison as to massiveness with those of the Spanish city; nor have we any authority for supposing that the population will display the fanaticism of the Spaniards of 1809, or that one half of the inhabitants will patiently submit to be killed by fighting and disease. Still that phase of the struggle which came off in Saragossa after the storming of the rampart, in the streets, houses, and convents of the town, might to a certain extent repeat itself in the fortified villages and earthworks between the forts of Paris and the enceinte. There, as we said yesterday in our twenty-fourth batch of Notes on the War. appears to us to lie the centre of gravity of the defence. There the young Mobiles may meet their opponents, even in offensive movements, upon something like equal terms, and compel them to proceed in a more systematical way than the staff in Berlin seemed to imagine when, a short time ago, it expected to reduce the town in twelve or fourteen days from the opening of the siege batteries. There, too, the defence may cut out so much work for the mortars and shell-guns of the attack that even a partial bombardment of the town, at least upon a large scale, may be for the time being out of the question. The villages outside the enceinte will under all circumstances have to be sacrificed wherever they may happen to lie between the German front of attack and the French front of defence; and if therefore by sacrificing them the town can be spared so much the better for the defence. How long this defence of the ground outside the enceinte can be made to last we cannot even guess at. It will depend upon the strength of the works themselves, upon the spirit with which the defence is conducted, upon the mode of attack. If the resistance become serious, the Germans will rely upon the fire of their artillery chiefly, in order to spare their troops. Anyhow, with the enormous artillery fire they will be able to concentrate upon any given point, it is not likely that it will take them more than a fortnight or three weeks before they arrive at the enceinte. To break and carry that will be the work of a few days. Even then there will be no absolute necessity to give up resistance; but it will be better to defer considering these eventualities until there shall be a greater probability of their actually occurring. Until then, too, we may be allowed to say nothing about the merits and demerits of M. Rochefort s barricades. Upon the whole, we are of opinion that if the new works between the forts and the enceinte offer a really serious resistance, the attack will confine itself as much as possible how far depends in a great measure upon the energy of the defence to artillery fire, vertical and horizontal, and to the starving out of Paris.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/10/22.htm

While the negotiations for an armistice are pending, it will be as well to make out the positions of the different corps of the German armies, which do not appear to be generally understood. We say the German armies, for of the French there is very little to be said. What is not shut up in Metz consists almost exclusively of new levies, the organization of which has never been made public, and cannot but vary from day to day. Moreover, the character of these troops, who prove themselves in a engagements more or less unfit for the field, takes away a most all interest in either their organization or their numbers. As to the Germans, we know that they marched out with thirteen army corps of North Germany (including the Guards), one division of Hessians, one of Badeners, one of W rttembergers, and two army corps of Bavarians. The 17th division of the 9th North German Corps (one brigade of which consists of Mecklenburgers) remained on the coast while the French fleet was in the Baltic. In its stead the 25th, or Hessian division, was attached to the 9th Corps, and remains so up to the present day. There remained at home, with the 17th division, nine divisions of landwehr (one of the Guards, and one for each of the eight old provinces of Prussia 86; the time elapsed since 1866, when the Prussian system was introduced all over North Germany, having been barely sufficient to form the necessary number of reserve men, but not as yet any landwehr). When the recall of the French fleet and the completion of the fourth battalions of the line rendered these forces disposable, fresh army corps were formed out of them and sent to France. We shall scarcely know, before the end of the war, the details of formation of all these corps, but what has leaked out in the meantime gives us a pretty clear insight into the general character of the plan. Before Metz we have, under Prince Frederick Charles, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th corps, of which the 9th consists, for the time being, of the 18th and 25th divisions, besides two divisions of landwehr, one, the first (East Prussian), under General Kummer; the number of the other is not known in all sixteen divisions of infantry. Before Paris there are, under the Crown Prince, the 5th, 6th, and 11th North German, the two Bavarian corps, and the division of landwelir of the Guards; under the Crown Prince of Saxony, the 4th and 12th North German corps, and the Prussian Guards; under the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, the 13th Corps and the W rttemberg division. The 13th Corps is formed of the 17th division mentioned above, and of one division of landwelir. Of these troops, forming in all twenty divisions, there are four divisions sent on detached duty. Firstly, von der Tann with two Bavarian divisions and the 22nd North German division (of the 11th Corps) to the south and west, holding with the Bavarians Orleans and the line of the Loire; while the 22nd division (General Wittich s) successively occupied Ch teaudun and Chartres. Secondly, the 17th division is detached towards the north-east of Paris; it has occupied Laon, Soissons, Beauvais, St. Quentin, &c., while other troops probably flying columns, chiefly composed of cavalry have advanced almost to the gates of Rouen. If we set down these as equal to another division, we have in all five divisions detached from the army before Paris to scour the country, to collect cattle and provisions, to prevent the formation of armed bands, and to keep at a distance any new bodies of troops which the Government of Tours may be able to send up. This would leave for the actual investment fifteen divisions of infantry, or seven army corps and a half. Besides the 13th Corps, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg commands the whole of the detached troops in Champagne and the other occupied districts west of Lorraine, the garrisons of Sedan, Reims, Epernay, Ch lons, Vitry, and the troops besieging Verdun. These consist of landwelir, principally of the 8th landwelir division. The garrisons in Alsace and Lorraine, almost all landwehr, are under the command of the respective military governors of these provinces. Moreover, there are the troops echeloned along the line of railway and the main roads whose exclusive duty it is to keep these in working order and open for army transport; these, formed by detachments of the various corps of the line, and amounting at least to the strength of a division, are under the Etappen-Commandant. The Baden division and another landwehr division have been combined into the 14th Corps, which is now, under General von Werder, advancing upon Besan on, while General Schmeling, with the fourth reserve division, has just successfully besieged Schelestadt, and is now taking in hand Neu Breisach. Here for the first time we find the mention of a reserve division, which, in Prussian military language, is something essentially different from a landwehr division. In fact, we have so far accounted for six out of the nine landwehr divisions, and it may well be supposed that the garrisoning of Alsace and Lorraine, and in part of the Rhine fortresses, will account for the other three. The application of the term reserve division proves that the fourth battalions of the line regiments are now gradually arriving on French soil. There will be nine of them, or, in some cases, ten, to every army corps; these have been formed in as many reserve divisions, and probably bear the same number as the army corps to which they belong. Thus the fourth reserve division would be the one formed out of the fourth battalions of the Fourth Army Corps recruited in Prussian Saxony. This division forms part of the new 15th Army Corps. What the other division is we do not know probably one of the three with which General Lowenfeld has just started from Silesia for Strasbourg; the other two would then form the 16th Corps. This would account for four but of thirteen reserve divisions, leaving nine still disposable in the interior of North Germany. As to the numerical strength of these bodies of troops, the North German battalions before Paris have certainly been brought up again to a full average of 750 men; the Bavarians are reported to be weaker. The cavalry will scarcely average more than 100 sabres to the squadron instead of 150; and, upon the whole, an army corps before Paris will average 25,000 men, so that the whole army actually there will be nearly 190,000 men. The battalions before Metz must be weaker, on account of the greater amount of sickness, and will hardly average 700 men. Those of the landwehr will scarcely number 500. The Polish press has lately begun to claim a rather large share in the glory of the Prussian arms. The truth of the matter is this: the whole number of the Polish-speaking population in Prussia is about two millions, or one-fifteenth of the whole North German population; in these we include both the Water-Polacks of Upper Silesia and the Masures of East Prussia, who would both be very much surprised to hear themselves called Poles. The 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 6th corps have an admixture of Polish soldiers, but the Polish element actually predominates in one division only of the 5th, and perhaps in one brigade of the 6th Corps. It has been the policy of the Prussian Government as much as possible to scatter the Polish element in the army over a great number of corps. Thus, the Poles of West Prussia are divided between the 1st and 2nd corps, and those of Posen between the 2nd and 5th, while in every case care has been taken that the majority of the men in each corps should be Germans. The reduction of Verdun is now being energetically pushed on. The town and citadel are not very strongly fortified, but have deep wet ditches. On the 11th and 12th of October the garrison was driven from the villages surrounding the place, and the investment made close; on the 13th a bombardment was opened with forty-eight guns and mortars (French ones taken in Sedan), placed between 700 and 1,300 yards from the works. On the 14th some old French 24-pounders arrived from Sedan. and on the following day some of the new Prussian rifled 24-pounders which had reduced Toul. They were in full activity on the 18th. The town appeared to suffer severely, being very closely built.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/10/27.htm

The present war is a war of capitulations, each one of which seems to be destined to surpass its predecessors in magnitude. First came the 84,000 men laying down their arms at Sedan, an event the like of which, or even anything approaching to which, had not been witnessed in any previous war, not even in those of Austria. Now comes the surrender of 170,000 men, together with the fortress of Metz, surpassing Sedan as much as Sedan surpassed all previous capitulations. Is Metz, in its turn, to be surpassed by Paris? If the war be continued there can be little doubt it will. The three radical blunders which brought Napoleon from the 2nd of August to the 2nd of September, from Saarbr cken to Sedan, and which virtually deprived France of the whole of her armies, were first, the receiving of the enemy s attack in a position which allowed the victorious Germans to push in between the scattered corps of the French army, and thus to divide it into two distinct bodies, neither of which could rejoin or even act in concert with the other; second, the delay of Bazaine s army at Metz, by which it got hopelessly shut up there; and third, the march to the relief of Bazaine with forces and by a route which positively invited the enemy to take the whole of the relieving army prisoners. The effects of the first blunder were conspicuous throughout the campaign. Those of the third were brought to a close at Sedan; those of the second we have just witnessed at Metz. The whole of that Army of the Rhine, to which Napoleon promised an arduous campaign in a country full of fortresses, is now in, or on the road to, these very same fortresses as prisoners of war, and France is not only virtually, but positively, deprived of nearly all of her regular troops. The loss of the men themselves, and of the Mat riel surrendered along with Metz, which must be enormous, is a blow hard enough. But it is not the hardest. The worst for France is that, with these men and this mat6riel, she is deprived of that military organization of which she is more in need than of anything else. Of men there are plenty; even of drilled men between twenty-five and thirty-five there must be at least 300,000. Mat riel can be replaced from stores and factories at home and by commerce from abroad. Under circumstances like these all good breech-loaders are useful, no matter on what model they are constructed, or whether the ammunition of the one will suit the other models. Anything serviceable being welcome, with a proper use of telegraphs and steamers, there might be more arms and cartridges now at the disposal of the Government than could be used. Even field artillery might have been supplied by this time. But what is most wanted is that solid organization which can make an army out of all these armed men. This organization is personified in the officers and non-commissioned officers of the regular army, and finally ceases to be available with their surrender. The number of officers withdrawn from the active service of France, by losses on the battle-field and by capitulations, cannot now be less than from ten to twelve thousand, that of non-commissioned officers being nearly three times as great. With such organizing forces all at once withdrawn from the national defence, it becomes extremely difficult to turn crowds of men into companies and battalions of soldiers. Whoever has seen popular levies on the drill-ground or under fire be they Baden Freischaaren, Bull-Run Yankees, French Mobiles, or British Volunteers will have perceived at once that the chief cause of the helplessness and unsteadiness of these troops lies in the fact of the officers not knowing their duty; and in this present case in France who is there to teach them their duty? The few old half-pay or invalided officers are not sufficiently numerous to do it; they cannot be everywhere; the teaching has to be not theoretical only, but practical too; not by word of mouth only, but by act and example. A few young officers or newly-promoted sergeants in a battalion will very soon settle down to their work by the constant observation of what the old officers do; but what is to be done when the officers are almost all new, and not even many old sergeants to be had to be commissioned? The same men who now prove themselves in almost every encounter unfit to act in masses in the open would have soon learned how to fight if it had been possible to embody them in Bazaine s old battalions; nay, if they had merely had the chance of being commanded by Bazaine s officers and sergeants. And in this final loss for this campaign of almost the last vestige of her military organization, France suffers most by the capitulation of Metz. It will be time to form a decided opinion upon the conduct of the defence when we shall have heard what the defenders have to say for themselves. But if it be a fact that 170,000 men capable of bearing arms have surrendered, then the presumption is that the defence has not been up to the mark. At no time since the end of August has the investing army been double the strength of the invested. It must have varied between 200,000 and 230,000 men, spread out on a circle of at least twenty-seven miles periphery, in the first line only; which means to say that the circle occupied by the masses must at least have been thirty-six to forty miles in periphery. This circle was moreover cut in two by the river Moselle, impassable except by bridges at some distance to the rear of the first line. If an army of 170,000 men could not manage to be in superior strength at any one point of this circle, and break through it before sufficient reinforcements could be brought up, we must conclude either that the arrangements of the investing troops were beyond all praise, or that the attempts to get through them were never made as they ought to have been done. We shall probably learn that here, as throughout this war, political considerations have lamed military action. Unless peace be now concluded, the consequences of this fresh disaster will soon be brought home to France. We suppose that the two landwehr divisions will be left to garrison Metz. The 2nd Corps is already on the road to Paris, which does not absolutely imply that it is intended to take part in the investment of the capital. But supposing that to be the case, there would remain six corps, or at least 130,000 to 140,000 men, whom Moltke can send where he likes. The communications of the army with Germany were kept up without much participation of Prince Frederick Charles s troops; for this purpose he will have to detach few men, if any at all. The rest is disposable for the invasion of the west and south of France. There will be no necessity to keep the whole of them together. They will probably be divided into two or three bodies, forming, with von der Tann s corps, together at least 150,000, and will be ordered to advance into the parts of France hitherto unoccupied by the Germans. One corps will almost certainly occupy the rich provinces of Normandy and Le Maine as far as the Loire, with Le Mans, where five railways meet, for a centre. Another will push forward in the direction of Bordeaux, after having cleared the line of the Loire from Tours to Nevers, and occupied or destroyed the arsenals and military factories of Bourges. This corps might march from Metz by Chaumont and Auxerre, where the country has not yet been eaten up by requisitions. A third corps might go straight to the south, to open communications with General Werder. The interior of France being almost entirely divested of fortresses deserving of the name, there will be no resistance except the evanescent one of the new levies, and the more passive but also more stubborn one of the populations. Whether, with such armies set free all at once, Moltke will attempt the siege of any more fortresses, or even the reduction of a fortified naval port such as Cherbourg, remains to be seen; he need reduce no more fortresses now, except PhaIsbourg and Belfort, which block main lines of railway, and, of course, Paris.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/10/29.htm

There can be no longer any reasonable doubt that the army which surrendered at Metz actually numbered 173,000 men, 140,000 of which were fit to bear arms, while rather more than 30,000 were sick and wounded. The Daily News gives us, in a telegram from Berlin, what professes to be full particulars of these troops: 67 infantry regiments, 13 battalions of Chasseurs- -Pied, 18 fourth and dep t battalions; 36 cavalry regiments viz. 10 Cuirassiers, 1 Guides, 11 Dragoons, 2 Lancers, 3 Hussars, 6 Chasseurs- -Cheval, and 3 Chasseurs d'Afrique, besides 6 dep t squadrons. We must suppose that this statement comes from the Prussian Staff in Berlin, and contains an abstract either of what they had made out from previous and indirect sources to be the composition of the French forces in Metz, or else of the French returns handed over to the captors on surrender. The latter appears most likely. We know there were within Metz, of infantry, the Guards (8 regiments=30 battalions, and 1 battalion Chasseurs), the Second Corps (Frossard, 3 divisions), the Third (Decaen, late Bazaine, 4 divisions), the Fourth (Ladmirault, 3 divisions), the Sixth (Canrobert, 3 divisions), and 1 division of the Fifth Corps (De Failly s), in all 14 divisions of the line, each containing 1 battalion of Chasseurs and 4 regiments or 12 battalions of the line, excepting 2 divisions of Canrobert s which had no Chasseurs. This would give 12 battalions of Chasseurs and 168 battalions of the line, or, with the Guards, a grand total of 13 battalions Chasseurs and 198 of infantry, and, with the 18 dep t battalions, in all 229 battalions, which is rather more than the 221 given as the total number in The Daily News. On the other hand, this list would give but 64 regiments of infantry, while our contemporary has 67. We must therefore conclude that the three missing regiments formed the garrison of Metz, and for that reason do not figure in the status of the Army of the Rhine. As to the discrepancy in the number of battalions, that is easily accounted for. The losses of many regiments during the battles in August, and the sorties of September and October, as well as by sickness, must have been such that the three battalions had to be formed into two, perhaps even one. That such a force, as large as Napoleon s army at Leipzig, should be compelled to surrender at all, is a fact unheard of in the history of warfare, and almost incredible even now after it has happened. But it becomes more inconceivable still if we compare the strength of this army with that of the captors. On the 18th of August Bazaine was thrown back, from the heights of Gravelotte, under the guns of the forts of Metz; in a few days after, the investment of the place was completed. But of the army which had fought at Gravelotte, 3 corps, or 75 battalions, were detached under the Crown Prince of Saxony on the 24th of August, at latest; for three days afterwards their cavalry defeated MacMahon s Chasseurs- -Cheval at Buzancy. There remained before Metz 7 corps, or 175 battalions, and 12 landwehr battalions, in all 187 battalions, to invest an army of at least 221 battalions! At that time Bazaine must have had at his disposal 160,000 combatants, if not more. The Prussians certainly had taken every step to send up fresh men from their reserve troops to make up for the losses of the late battles; but it will be impossible to suppose that their battalions were brought up again to the full complement of 1,000 men. Even supposing this to have been the case, with the exception of the landwehr, which forms battalions of five or six-hundred only, this will give the Prussians a force of not more than 182,000, or with cavalry and artillery about 240,000 men; that is to say, merely one-half more than the army shut up in Metz. And these 240,000 men were spread out on a front of twenty-seven miles in length, and there was an unfordable river to divide them into two distinct bodies. Under these circumstances, it is impossible to doubt that Bazaine, had he really attempted to break through the investing circle with the mass of his troops, could have done so unless indeed we suppose that the French, after Gravelotte, were no longer the men they had been before; and for that there is no reason. That Bazaine, after the proclamation of the Republic, should have refrained from breaking out of Metz through political motives appears to the writer of these Notes quite certain. It is equally certain that every day of delay decreased his chances of success for doing so; still the Prussians themselves appear to think now that, had they been in the same position, they could have performed the feat. But what remains inexplicable is the inaction, or at least the Indecision, of Bazaine during the last days of August and the first days of September. On the 31st of August he attempts an attack towards the north-east, and continues it throughout the night and the following morning; yet three Prussian divisions are sufficient to drive him back under the guns of the forts. The attempt must have been extremely feeble, considering the enormous strength with which he might have made it. A general who has sixteen divisions of splendid infantry under him, to be repelled by three divisions of the enemy! It is too bad. As to the political motives which are said to have caused Bazaine s inactivity after the revolution of the 4th of September, and the political intrigues in which he engaged, with the connivance of the enemy, during the latter part of the investment, they are thoroughly in keeping with the Second Empire, which, in one form or another, they were intended to restore. It shows to what an extent that Second Empire had lost every comprehension of French character if the general in command of the only regular army France then possessed could think of restoring the fallen dynasty with the help of the invader of his country. Bazaine s previous military career was none of the brightest. His Mexican campaign merely proved that he cared more for reward than for glory or the credit of his country. His nomination to the command-in-chief of the Army of the Rhine was due to accidental circumstances; he got it, not because he was the most eligible but the least ineligible of the possible candidates; and the deciding considerations were anything but strictly military. He will be immortalized as the man who committed the most disgraceful act in French military history who prevented 160,000 Frenchmen from breaking through the investing army of, under the circumstances, positively inferior strength, and surrendered them as prisoners of war when there was nothing more to eat.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/11/04.htm

Like other great men in bad luck, Louis Napoleon appears aware that he owes the public an explanation of the causes which led him, much against his will, from Saarbr cken to Sedan; and consequently we have now been put in possession of what professes to be this explanation of his. As there is no evidence, either external or internal, to fix any suspicion of spuriousness upon the document, but rather to the contrary, we take it, for the present, to be genuine. Indeed, we are almost bound to do so, out of mere compliment; for if ever there was a document confirming, both generally and in detail, the view taken of the war by The Pall Mall Gazette, it is this Imperial self-justification. Louis Napoleon informs us that he was perfectly aware of the great numerical superiority of the Germans; that he hoped to counteract it by a rapid invasion of Southern Germany in order to compel that country to remain neutral, and to secure, by a first success, the alliance of Austria and Italy. For this purpose 150,000 men were to be concentrated at Metz, 100,000 at Strasbourg, and 50,000 at Ch lons. With the first two rapidly concentrated, the Rhine was to be passed near Karlsruhe, while the 50,000 men from Ch lons advanced on Metz to oppose any hostile movement on the flank and rear of the advancing forces. But this plan evaporated as soon as the Emperor came to Metz. He found there only 100,000 men, at Strasbourg there were only 40,000, while Canrobert s reserves were anywhere and everywhere except at Ch lons, where they ought to have been. Then the troops were unprovided with the first necessaries for a campaign, knapsacks, tents, camp-kettles, and cooking-tins. Moreover, nothing was known of the enemy s whereabouts. In fact, the bold, dashing offensive was from the very beginning turned into a very modest defensive. There will be scarcely anything new in all this to the readers of The Pall Mall Gazette. Our Notes on the War sketched out the above plan of attack as the most rational the French could pursue, and traced the causes why it had to be abandoned. But there is one fact, which was the proximate cause of his first defeats, for which the Emperor does not account: why he left his several corps in the faulty position of attack close to the frontier, when the intention of attack had been long given up. As to his figures, we shall criticize them by-and-by. The causes of the breakdown of the French military administration the Emperor finds in But surely this was not the first time that this organization was put upon its trial. It had answered well enough during the Crimean war. It produced brilliant results at the outset of the Italian war, when it was held up in England, not less than in Germany, as the very model of army organization. No doubt it was shown to have many shortcomings even then. But there is this difference between then and now: then it did work, and now it does not. And the Emperor does not profess to account for this difference, which was the very thing to be accounted for but, at the same time, the most tender point of the Second Empire, which had clogged the wheels of this organization by all manner of corruption and jobbery. When Metz was reached by the retreating army, This statement, compared with the numbers who have just laid down their arms at Metz, compels us to look a little more closely into the Imperial figures. The army of Strasbourg was to be composed of MacMahon s, De Failly s, and Douay s corps, in all ten divisions, and should number 100,000 men; but it is now said not to have exceeded 40,000. Leaving Douay s three divisions entirely out of the question, although one of them came to MacMahon s assistance at or after Woerth, this would give less than 6,000 men per division (13 battalions), or barely 430 men per battalion, even if we do not count one single man for cavalry or artillery. Now, with all the credit we are inclined to give the Second Empire in the matter of jobbery and dilapidation, we cannot bring ourselves to believe that there should have been ninety battalions in the army the effective strength of which, twenty days after the calling out of the reserves and men on furlough, averaged 430 men instead of 900. As to the army of Metz it comprised, in the Guards and ten divisions of the line, 161 battalions; and if we take the 100,000 men given in the pamphlet as consisting of infantry only, without allowing anything for cavalry or artillery, that would still give not more than 620 men per battalion, which is undoubtedly below the reality. More wonderful still, after the retreat to Metz, this army was raised to 140,000 men by the arrival of two divisions of Canrobert and the reserves. The new additions thus consisted of 40,000 men. Now, as the reserves arriving at Metz after Spicheren could consist of cavalry and artillery only, the Guards having arrived there long before, they cannot be set down at more than 20,000 men, leaving another 20,000 for Canrobert s two divisions, which, for twenty-five battalions, would give 800 men per battalion; that is to say, Canrobert s battalions, which were the most unready of all, are made by this account to be far stronger than those which had been concentrated and got ready long before. But, if the army of Metz, before the battles of the 14th, 16th, and 18th of August, counted but 140,000 men, how comes it that after the losses of these three days certainly not less than 50,000 men after the losses of the later sorties, and the deaths from sickness, Bazaine could still hand over 173,000 prisoners to the Prussians? We have entered into these figures merely to show that they contradict each other and all the known facts of the campaign. They can be dismissed at once as totally incorrect. Besides the army organization, there were other circumstances hampering the Imperial eagle s flight towards victory. There was, firstly, the bad weather; then the encumbrance of baggage; and finally, Three very untoward circumstances indeed. But the bad weather was there for both parties, for in all his devout references to Providence King William has not once mentioned the fact that the sun shone on the German positions while rain fell on those of the French. Nor were the Germans unencumbered with baggage. As to the ignorance of the whereabouts of the enemy, there exists a letter of Napoleon s to his brother Joseph, who complained in Spain of the same hardship, and which is anything but complimentary to generals making such complaints. It says that if generals are ignorant of the whereabouts of the enemy it is their own fault, and proves that they do not understand their business. One sometimes doubts, in reading these excuses for bad generalship, whether this pamphlet is really written for grown-up people. The account given of the part played by Louis Napoleon himself will not please his friends very much. After the battles of Woerth and Spicheren he resolved immediately to lead back the army to the camp of Ch lons. But this plan, though first approved by the Council of Ministers, two days afterwards was considered likely to produce a deplorable effect on the public mind; and, on the reception of a letter from M. E. Ollivier (!) to that effect, the Emperor abandoned it. He leads the army to the left bank of the Moselle, and then not foreseeing a general battle, and only looking for partial engagements leaves it for Ch lons. Scarcely is he gone when the battles of the 16th and 18th of August take place, and shut up in Metz Bazaine and his army. In the meantime, the Empress and the Ministry, exceeding their powers, and behind the Emperor s back, convoke the Chamber; and, with the meeting of that eminently powerful body, the Corps L gislatif of Arcadians, the fate of the Empire was scaled. The Opposition there were twenty-five of them, you know became all-powerful, and paralyzed the patriotism of the majority and the progress of the Government which Government, we all recollect, was not that of mealy-mouthed Ollivier but of rough Palikao. In fact, he was made to see that he was virtually deposed, that he had become impossible. Most people with some self-respect, under the circumstances, would have abdicated. But no; his irresolution, to use the mildest possible expression, continues, and he follows MacMahon s army, a mere clog, powerless to do good, but not to prevent its being done. The Government in Paris insist upon MacMahon making a move to relieve Bazaine. MacMahon refuses, as this would be tantamount to running his army into the jaws of perdition; Palikao insists. We admire the meekness of the man who for twenty years had maintained that submission to his own individual will was the only road to salvation for France, and who now, when a plan of campaign is imposed from Paris, contrary to the most elementary principles of the art of war, makes no opposition, because it could never enter into his views to oppose the advice of the Empress Regent, who had, &c. &c.! The description of the state of the army with which this fatal march was undertaken is an exact confirmation in every particular of our estimate of it at the time. There is only one redeeming feature in it. De Failly s corps, during its retreat by forced marches, had at least managed to lose, without a fight, almost all its baggage; but the corps does not appear to have appreciated this advantage. The army had gone to Reims on the 21st of August. On the 23rd it advanced as far as the river Suippe, at B theniville, on the direct road to Verdun and Metz. But commissariat difficulties compelled MacMahon to return without delay to a line of railway; consequently, on the 24th, a movement to the left is made and Rethel is reached. Here the whole of the 25th is spent in distributing provisions to the troops. On the 26th, head-quarters go to Tourteron, twelve miles further eastward; on the 27th, to Le Chene Populeux, another six miles. Here MacMahon, finding out that eight German army corps were closing in around him, gave orders to retreat again towards the west; but during the night positive orders from Paris arrived that he was to march to Metz. This virtuous resignation compelled MacMahon to obey; and so he reached Stonne, six miles further east, on the 28th. But these orders and counter-orders occasioned delays in the movements. In the meantime Then came the battles of the 30th, 31st, and 1st of September, and the catastrophe, which is narrated very fully, but without giving any new particulars. And then comes the moral to be drawn from it: It is the fate of the Second Empire and everything connected with it to fall without being pitied. The commiseration which is the least that falls to the lot of great misfortunes does not, somehow or other, appear to be extended to it. Even the honneur au courage malheureux which you cannot nowadays use in French without a certain irony, seems to be denied to it. We doubt whether, under the circumstances, Napoleon will derive much benefit from a document according to which his eminent strategical insight is in every case set at nought by absurd orders, dictated by political motives, from the Government at Paris, while his power to cancel these absurd orders is again set at nought by his unlimited respect for the Regency of the Empress. The best that can be said of this uncommonly lame pamphlet is, that it does acknowledge how necessarily things must go wrong in war if military operations be unceasingly subordinated to political considerations.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/11/05.htm

During the first six weeks of the war, while German victories followed each other rapidly, while the expanding force of the invaders was as yet but incompletely spent, and while there were still French armies in the field to oppose them, the contest, generally speaking, remained one of armies. The population of the invaded districts took but little part in the fighting. True, there were a dozen or so of Alsatian peasants court-martialed and shot for participating in battles or for maiming the wounded; but a tragedy like that of Bazeilles was quite the exception. This is proved by nothing better than by the immense impression it made, and by the eager controversy carried on in the press as to the degree in which the treatment of that village was justifiable or otherwise. If it were advisable to reopen that controversy, we could prove, from the testimony of unimpeachable eye-witnesses, that inhabitants of Bazeilles did fall upon the Bavarian wounded, ill-treated them, and threw them into the flames of houses fired by shells; and that in consequence of this, General von der Tann gave the stupid and barbarous order to destroy the whole place stupid and barbarous chiefly because it meant setting fire to houses in which his own wounded were lying by the hundred. But anyhow, Bazeilles was destroyed in the heat of battle, and in a contest the most exasperating that of house and street fighting, where reports must be acted upon and decisions taken at once, and where people have no time to sift evidence and to hear counsel on both sides. During the last six weeks the character of the war has undergone a remarkable change. The regular armies of France have disappeared; the contest is carried on by levies whose very rawness renders them more or less irregular. Wherever they attempt to come out in masses in the open, they are easily defeated; wherever they fight under shelter of barricaded and loopholed villages and towns, they find they can offer a serious resistance. They are encouraged in this kind of fighting, in night surprises, and other coups of petty warfare, by proclamations and orders of the Government, who also command the people of the district in which they operate to support them in every way. This resistance would be easily put down if the enemy disposed of forces sufficient for the occupation of the whole country. But this he did not up to the surrender of Metz. The force of the invaders was spent before Amiens, Rouen, Le Mans, Blois, Tours, and Bourges could be reached on the one hand, and Besan on and Lyons on the other. And that this force became spent so soon is in no small degree owing to this greater condensation of the resisting medium. The eternal four Uhlans, cannot now ride into a village or a town far outside their own lines and command absolute submission to their orders without risk of being caught or killed. Requisition columns have to be accompanied by an imposing force, and single companies or squadrons have to guard themselves well from night surprises when quartered in a village, and from ambushes when on the march. There is a belt of disputed ground all around the German positions, and it is just there that popular resistance is most severely felt. And to put down this popular resistance the Germans are having recourse to a code of warfare as antiquated as it is barbarous. They are acting upon the rule that every town or village where one or more of the inhabitants take part in the defence, fire upon their troops, or generally assist the French, is to be burned down; that every man taken in arms who is not, according to their notion, a regular soldier, is to be shot at once; and that where there is reason to believe that any considerable portion of the population of a town have been guilty of some such offence, all able-bodied men are to be massacred at once. This system has now been ruthlessly carried out for nearly six weeks, and is still in full force. You cannot open a German newspaper without stumbling over half a dozen reports of such military executions, which there pass quite as a matter of course, as simple proceedings of military justice carried out with wholesome severity by honest soldiers against cowardly assassins and brigands. There is no disorder of any kind, no promiscuous plunder, no violation of women, no irregularity. Nothing of the kind. It is all done systematically and by order; the doomed village is surrounded, the inhabitants turned out, the provisions secured, and the houses set fire to, while the real or suspected culprits are brought before a court-martial, when a short shrift and half a dozen bullets await them with unerring certainty. In Ablis, a village of 900 inhabitants, on the road to Chartres, a squadron of the 16th (Sleswig-Holstein) Hussars were surprised at night by French irregulars, and lost one half of their men; to punish this piece of insolence, the whole brigade of cavalry marched to Ablis and burned down the whole place; and two different reports, both from actors in the drama, assert that all able-bodied men were taken out from the inhabitants and shot down, or hacked to pieces without exception. This is but one out of very many cases. A Bavarian officer in the neighbourhood of Orl ans writes that his detachment had burned down five villages in twelve days'; and it is no exaggeration to say that wherever the German flying columns are passing in the centre of France, their road but too often remains traced by fire and by blood. Now it will scarcely suffice in 1870 to say that this is legitimate warfare, and that the interference of civilians or of anybody not properly recognized as a soldier is tantamount to brigandage, and may be put down by fire and sword. All this might apply in the time of Louis XIV and Frederick II, when there were no other contests but those of armies. But from the American war of independence down to the American war of secession, in Europe as well as in America, the participation of the populations in war has become not the exception but the rule. Wherever a people allowed itself to be subdued merely because its armies had become incapable of resistance it has been held up to universal contempt as a nation of cowards; and wherever a people did energetically carry out this irregular resistance, the invaders very soon found it impossible to carry out the old-fashioned code of blood and fire. The English in America, the French under Napoleon in Spain, the Austrians, 1848, in Italy and Hungary, were very soon compelled to treat popular resistance as perfectly legitimate, from fear of reprisals on their own prisoners. Not even the Prussians in Baden, 1849, or the Pope after Mentana, had the courage to shoot down indiscriminately their prisoners of war, irregulars and rebels though they were. There exist only two modern examples of the ruthless application of this antiquated code of stamping out: the suppression of the Sepoy mutiny by the English in India, and the proceedings of Bazaine and his French in Mexico. Of all armies in the world, the very last that ought to renew such practices is the Prussian. In 1806 Prussia collapsed merely because there was not anywhere in the country a trace of that spirit of national resistance. After 1807, the reorganizers of the administration and of the army did everything in their power to revive it. At that time Spain showed the glorious example how a nation can resist an invading army. The whole of the military leaders of Prussia pointed out this example to their countrymen as the one to be followed. Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Clausewitz were all of one mind in this respect; Gneisenau even went to Spain himself to fight against Napoleon. The whole of the new military system then inaugurated in Prussia was an attempt to organize popular resistance to the enemy, at least as far as this was possible in an absolute monarchy. Not only was every able-bodied man to pass through the army and to serve in the landwehr up to his fortieth year; the lads between seventeen and twenty and the men between forty and sixty were to form part of the landsturm or levee en masse, which was to rise in the rear and on the flanks of the enemy, harass his movements, intercept his supplies and couriers, use whatever arms it could find, employ indiscriminately whatever means were at hand to annoy the invader the more effective these means the better and, above all, The whole of this Landsturm Ordnung, as the law of 1813 regarding it is called, is drawn up and its author is no other than Scharnhorst, the organizer of the Prussian army in this spirit of uncompromising national resistance, to which all means are justifiable and the most effective are the best. But then all this was to be done by the Prussians against the French, and if the French act in the same way towards the Prussians that is quite a different thing. What was patriotism in the one case becomes brigandage and cowardly assassination in the other. The fact is, the present Prussian Government are ashamed of that old, half-revolutionary Landsturm Ordnung, and try to make it forgotten by their proceedings in France. But every act of wanton cruelty they get committed in France will more and more call it to memory; and the justifications made for such an ignoble mode of warfare will but tend to prove that If the Prussian army has immensely improved since Jena, the Prussian Government are rapidly ripening that same state of things which rendered Jena possible.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/11/11.htm

Those who believed, with M. Gambetta, that the skilful and well-combined movements by which the Army of the Loire manoeuvred von der Tann s Bavarians out of Orl ans would be followed up at once by an advance on Paris have been doomed to disappointment. The engagement of Coulmiers, or whatever else it may hereafter be called, took place on the 9th, and up to the evening of the 13th the Bavarian outposts appear to have remained unmolested in front of Toury, only twenty-five miles from Orl ans. It redounds greatly to the credit of General d'Aurelle de Paladines that after his first success he not only had the sense, but also the moral strength, to stop in time. With M. Gambetta behind him, proclaiming to his men that they are on the road to Paris, that Paris awaits them and must be freed from the barbarians, it cannot have been an easy matter to keep back these young and half-disciplined troops, who are but too ready to cry trahison unless they are at once led against the enemy, and to run away when they are made seriously to feel that enemy s presence. That d'Aurelle has made them stop on the road to Paris shows that his efforts to discipline them have not been unsuccessful, and that his first success has gained him their confidence. His dispositions for this first French victory were everything they should have been. Von der Tann cannot have had more than 25,000 men in the neighbourhood of Orl ans, which exposed position he was allowed to continue to hold, in the consciousness that his seasoned troops would, under any circumstances, be able to fray themselves a road through no matter what number of the new levies opposed to them. D'Aurelle could operate against the Bavarians with at least fourfold their numbers, and he did what is usual in such a case: he turned their flanks and displayed, especially on their right rear, such a strength that von der Tann was at once compelled to fall back towards his supports. These Joined him at Toury on the 11th, or at latest the 12th; and they consisted of Wittich s 21st division of North German infantry, Prince Albrecht s division of cavalry, and the 13th Corps (17th North German division and W rttemberg division). Thus a force of from 65,000 to 70,000 men at least is concentrated under the command of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg at Toury, and General d'Aurelle may well look at them twice before he ventures upon an attack on them, though they are commanded by a very common-place chief indeed. But there are other motives besides this which must compel General d'Aurelle to pause before making any fresh movement. If his intention really be to come to the relief of Paris, he must know perfectly well that his own forces are not sufficient to effect this object unless at the same time a vigorous effort is made, from within, to second him. We know that General Trochu has picked out the most disciplined and best organized portion of his troops and formed of them what may be called the active army of Paris. Under the command of General Ducrot, they appeal to be intended for those grand sorties without which the defence of a place like Paris is like a soldier fighting with his right arm tied up. It is not perhaps a matter of accident that this reorganization of the Army of Paris coincides, in point of time, with the advance of the Army of the Loire. General Trochu and General d'Aurelle doubtless have attempted, by means of balloons and carrier pigeons, to arrange a combined movement, to be made at a time agreed upon beforehand; and, unless the Germans previously attack the Army of the Loire, we may expect a sortie on a large scale from Paris on or about the same time that d'Aurelle makes his next forward movement. That sortie would probably be made with at least the whole of Ducrot s three corps, on the south side of the town, where communication with the Army of the Loire might, in case of success, be established, while on the north-east and north-west sides Trochu s Third Army would make simulated attacks and diversions, supported by the fire of the forts, to prevent the investing army from sending reinforcements to the south. We may be sure, on the other hand, that all this is taken into account by General Moltke, and that he will not be caught napping. In spite of the great numerical superiority which the French will be able to bring into the field, we are decidedly of opinion that the difference in the quality of the troops and in the generalship will more than make up for this. This attempt to free Paris from the grasp of the barbarians will have to be made very soon if it is to have any chance at all. Besides the five divisions of infantry which are opposed to the Army of the Loire, there are now before Paris sixteen divisions of infantry (the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 12th corps, the Guards, the 1st Bavarian Corps, the 21st division, and the division of landwehr of the Guards). This force must be, in Moltke s eyes, quite sufficient to keep Paris effectively blockaded; otherwise he would have drawn towards Paris more troops than the 2nd Corps, out of those that became free by the surrender of Metz. And considering that its positions, facing Paris, are everywhere strongly entrenched, and will shortly be under the protection of tremendous siege batteries, such will no doubt be the case. But we are now beginning to receive news from Prince Frederick Charles, who after the capitulation of Metz had become invisible with three army corps (the 3rd, 9th, and 10th). The first glimpse we since then have had of his troops was the short piece of news that the 9th regiment had had a brush with the Mobiles just outside Chaumont, in the Haute-Marne, on the 7th of November. The 9th belongs to the seventh brigade (of the Second) Corps which had already arrived before Paris, and the whole story became thereby unintelligible. Since then, it has been established that the telegram, by mistake, gave the ninth regiment instead of the ninth brigade, and this clears up the matter. The ninth brigade is the first of the Third Army Corps, and belongs therefore to the army of Prince Frederick Charles. The locality of the engagement, combined with the report generally accredited in military circles in Berlin that the Prince had been marching upon Troyes, which city he was said to have reached on the 7th or 8th, left but little doubt that he had taken the route we supposed the main body of his troops would take, viz. to march from Metz by Chaumont and Auxerre, and to push forward in the direction of Bordeaux after having cleared the line of the Loire from Tours to Nevers. We now learn that this army has occupied the line of the Yonne at Sens, about fifty miles from Gien on the Loire, and but thirty from Montargis, whence any French position to the north of Orl ans could be taken in flank by one good day s march. The detachments reported at Malesherbes and Nemours may have been sent by Prince Frederick Charles to feel for von der Tann s left, or they may be flanking parties on the extreme left of the line of march of the 13th Corps. At any rate, we may now expect that the Prince will very soon establish his communications by flying columns with von der Tann at Toury, on the one hand, and Werder at Dijon on the other. If the Army of the Loire delays its attack until Prince Frederick Charles arrives within reach, it will have, besides the 70,000 men in its front, another 75,000 men on its right flank and rear, and all idea of relieving Paris will have to be abandoned. It will have enough to do to look after its own safety, and will have to recede, hopelessly, before that broad flood-wave of invasion which will then cover central France on a front extending from Chartres to Dijon.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/11/16.htm