I. Part I: Labour, Its Proceeds, and Distribution

First part of the paragraph: “Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture.”

Labour is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use-values (and surely material wealth consists of these!) as labour, which is itself only the expression of a force of nature, human labour-power. That phrase is to be found in every children’s primer, and it is correct in so far as it is assumed that labour is carried on with the objects and instruments that go with it. But a socialist programme must not let such bourgeois turns of phrase pass over in silence the conditions that alone give them any meaning. Only in so far as man from the outset relates to nature, the primary source of all instruments and objects of labour, as an owner, and treats it as belonging to him, does his labour become a source of use-values, and therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very good reasons for ascribing supernatural creative power to labour; for it follows precisely from labour’s dependence on nature that the man who owns no property other than his labour-power must, in every condition of society and culture, be the slave of the other men who have made themselves owners of the material conditions of labour. He can work only with their permission, and hence live only with their permission.

Let us now leave the sentence as it stands, or rather limps. What would one have expected as the conclusion? Obviously this:

“Since labour is the source of all wealth, no one in society can appropriate wealth except as the product of labour. If, therefore, he does not work himself, he lives on the labour of others, and he also acquires his culture at the expense of the labour of others.”

Instead, a second sentence is screwed on with the words “and since”, so as to draw a conclusion from it and not from the first.

Second part of the paragraph: “Useful labour is possible only in society and through society.”

According to the first sentence, labour was the source of all wealth and all culture, so that no society was possible without labour either. Now we learn, the other way round, that no “useful” labour is possible without society.

One might just as well have said that only in society can useless and even socially harmful labour become a way of earning a living, that only in society can one live by idleness, and so on and so forth — in short, one might have copied out the whole of Rousseau.

And what is “useful” labour? Simply the labour that produces the intended useful effect. A savage — and man is a savage after he has ceased to be an ape — who kills an animal with a stone, who gathers fruit, etc., performs “useful” labour.

Third: the conclusion: “And since useful labour is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labour belong undiminished, by equal right, to all members of society.”

A fine conclusion! If useful labour is possible only in society and through society, then the proceeds of labour belong to society — and the individual worker gets of them only as much as is not needed to maintain the “condition” of labour, society.

In fact this proposition has been put forward at all times by the champions of whatever state of society happened to exist. First come the claims of the government and everything that clings to it, for it is the social organ for maintaining the social order; then come the claims of the various kinds of private property, for the various kinds of private property are the foundations of society, etc. One sees that such hollow phrases can be twisted and turned however one likes.

The first and second parts of the paragraph have any intelligible connection only if worded thus:

“Labour becomes the source of wealth and culture only as social labour”, or, what comes to the same thing, “in and through society”.

This proposition is indisputably correct, for although isolated labour (its material conditions being presupposed) can create use-values, it can create neither wealth nor culture.

But just as indisputable is this other proposition:

“In the measure that labour develops socially and so becomes a source of wealth and culture, poverty and neglect develop on the side of the worker, wealth and culture on the side of the non-worker.”

This is the law of all history up to now. What had to be done here, then, instead of producing general phrases about “labour” and “society”, was to show specifically how in present-day capitalist society the material and other conditions have at last been created that enable and compel the workers to lift this social curse.

In fact, however, the whole paragraph, botched in style and content alike, is there only so as to write the Lassallean catchword of the “undiminished proceeds of labour” at the top of the party’s banner as its watchword. I shall come back later to the “proceeds of labour”, “equal right”, etc., since the same thing recurs in a somewhat different form.

This sentence, borrowed from the Rules of the International, is wrong in this “improved” edition.

In present-day society the instruments of labour are the monopoly of the landowners (the monopoly of landed property is indeed the basis of the monopoly of capital) and of the capitalists. In the passage concerned, the Rules of the International name neither the one class of monopolists nor the other. They speak of the “⟨monopolizer⟩ of the means of labour, that is, of the sources of life”. The addition “sources of life” shows clearly enough that land is included among the instruments of labour.

The improvement was made because Lassalle, for reasons now generally known, attacked only the capitalist class, not the landowners. In England the capitalist is usually not even the owner of the land on which his factory stands.

“Raising of the instruments of labour to common property” presumably means their “conversion into common property”; but this only in passing.

What are the “proceeds of labour”? The product of labour, or its value? And in the latter case, the total value of the product, or only the part of its value that labour has newly added to the value of the means of production used up?

“Proceeds of labour” is a loose notion that Lassalle has put in place of definite economic concepts.

What is “just distribution”?

Do not the bourgeois maintain that present-day distribution is “just”? And is it not in fact the only “just” distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production? Are economic relations regulated by concepts of right, or do not, on the contrary, relations of right arise from economic ones? Do not the socialist sectarians, too, hold the most varied notions of “just” distribution?

To know what is to be understood here by the phrase “just distribution”, we must take the first paragraph together with this one. The latter presupposes a society in which “the instruments of labour are common property and the total labour is co-operatively regulated”, and from the first paragraph we learn that “the proceeds of labour belong undiminished, by equal right, to all members of society”.

“To all members of society”? To those who do not work as well? What then becomes of the “undiminished proceeds of labour”? Only to the members of society who work? What then becomes of the “equal right” of all members of society?

But “all members of society” and “equal right” are obviously mere phrases. The heart of the matter is that in this communist society every worker is to receive the “undiminished” Lassallean “proceeds of labour”.

If we first take the words “proceeds of labour” in the sense of the product of labour, then the co-operative proceeds of labour are the total social product.

From this there must now be deducted:

First: cover for replacing the means of production used up.

Second: an additional portion for expanding production.

Third: a reserve or insurance fund against accidents, disruptions caused by natural events, etc.

These deductions from the “undiminished proceeds of labour” are an economic necessity, and their size is to be determined according to the means and forces available, partly by the calculus of probabilities; but they can in no way be calculated from justice.

There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption.

Before it comes to division among individuals, there is again deducted from this:

First: the general costs of administration not belonging to production.

From the outset this part will be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops.

Second: what is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc.

From the outset this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it increases in proportion as the new society develops.

Third: funds for those unable to work, etc.; in short, for what today falls under so-called official poor relief.

Only now do we come to the “distribution” which the programme, under Lassallean influence, narrow-mindedly has exclusively in view, namely to that part of the means of consumption which is divided among the individual producers of the co-operative society.

The “undiminished proceeds of labour” have already quietly turned into “diminished” proceeds, although what the producer is deprived of in his capacity as a private individual benefits him, directly or indirectly, in his capacity as a member of society.

Just as the phrase of the “undiminished proceeds of labour” has vanished, the phrase of the “proceeds of labour” now vanishes altogether.

Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour spent on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material property possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labours exist as component parts of the total labour no longer by a roundabout way but directly. The phrase “proceeds of labour”, objectionable even today because of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; a society which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it comes. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society — after the deductions — exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labour. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labour-time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives from society a certificate that he has furnished such and such an amount of labour (after deduction of his labour for the common funds), and with this certificate he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as costs the same amount of labour. The same quantity of labour that he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here obviously the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, in so far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the changed circumstances no one can give anything except his labour, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass into the ownership of individuals except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labour in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labour in another form.

Equal right here is therefore still, in principle, bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, whereas in the exchange of commodities the exchange of equivalents exists only on the average, not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still always burdened with a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labour they supply; the equality consists in measuring by an equal standard, labour.

But one person is physically or mentally superior to another, and so supplies more labour in the same time, or can work for a longer time; and labour, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or its intensity, otherwise it would cease to be a standard. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labour. It recognises no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognises unequal individual endowment, and hence productive capacity, as natural privileges. In its content, therefore, it is a right of inequality, like all right. By its very nature, right can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) can be measured by an equal standard only in so far as they are brought under an equal point of view and taken from one particular side only — in the present case, for instance, regarded only as workers, with nothing more seen in them and everything else disregarded. Further: one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on. With an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will therefore in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right would have to be unequal rather than equal.

But these defects are unavoidable in the first phase of communist society, as it has just emerged, after long birth pangs, from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and the cultural development conditioned by it.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of individuals to the division of labour, and with it also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but itself life’s prime need; after the productive forces have also grown with the all-round development of individuals, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly — only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety, and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!

I have dealt at greater length with the “undiminished proceeds of labour” on the one hand, and with “equal right” and “just distribution” on the other, in order to show how grave an offence it is, on the one hand, to try to force on our party again as dogmas ideas which had a meaning at a certain time but have now become outdated verbal rubbish, and, on the other, to distort the realistic outlook, instilled into the party with so much effort but now rooted in it, with ideological nonsense about right and other trash so familiar to the democrats and the French socialists.

Quite apart from what has been set out so far, it was in any case a mistake to make a fuss about so-called distribution and to put the main emphasis on it.

The distribution of the means of consumption at any time is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. This latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are allotted to non-workers in the form of property in capital and property in land, while the mass of the people are owners only of the personal condition of production, labour-power. If the elements of production are distributed in this way, the present-day distribution of the means of consumption follows of itself. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the habit of considering and treating distribution as independent of the mode of production, and hence of presenting socialism as turning mainly on distribution. After the real relation has long since been made clear, why go backwards again?

The first strophe comes from the opening words of the Rules of the International, but “improved”. There it says: “The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the workers themselves”; here, on the other hand, “the working class” has to emancipate — what? “Labour.” Let him understand who can.

By way of compensation, the antistrophe is a Lassallean quotation of the purest water: “in relation to which (the working class) all other classes form only one reactionary mass.”

In the Communist Manifesto it says: “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and go under with large-scale industry; the proletariat is its most characteristic product.”

The bourgeoisie is here conceived as a revolutionary class — as the bearer of large-scale industry — in relation to the feudal lords and the middle strata, who want to hold on to all the social positions that are the creation of obsolete modes of production. They do not, therefore, form only one reactionary mass together with the bourgeoisie.

On the other hand, the proletariat is revolutionary in relation to the bourgeoisie because, having itself grown up on the ground of large-scale industry, it strives to strip production of the capitalist character that the bourgeoisie seeks to perpetuate. But the Manifesto adds that the “middle strata . . . become revolutionary in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat”.

From this point of view, then, it is once again nonsense that they, together with the bourgeoisie and the feudal lords into the bargain, “form only one reactionary mass” in relation to the working class.

At the last elections, did anyone shout to the artisans, small manufacturers, etc., and the peasants: in relation to us you, together with the bourgeois and the feudal lords, form only one reactionary mass?

Lassalle knew the Communist Manifesto by heart, as his faithful know the sacred writings he composed. If he falsified it so grossly, then, it was only to gloss over his alliance with absolutist and feudal opponents against the bourgeoisie.

In the paragraph above, moreover, his oracular saying is dragged in by the hair, without any connection with the botched quotation from the Rules of the International. So it is simply an impertinence here, and indeed one by no means displeasing to Herr Bismarck, one of those cheap pieces of rudeness in which the Berlin Marat deals.

Lassalle, in contrast to the Communist Manifesto and to all earlier socialism, had conceived the workers’ movement from the narrowest national standpoint. He is followed in this — and that after the work of the International!

It is altogether self-evident that, to be able to fight at all, the working class must organise itself at home as a class, and that its own country is the immediate arena of its struggle. To that extent its class struggle is national, not in content but, as the Communist Manifesto says, “in form”. But the “framework of the present-day national state”, for instance the German Empire, itself stands in turn economically “within the framework” of the world market and politically “within the framework” of the system of states. Any merchant knows that German trade is at the same time foreign trade, and the greatness of Herr Bismarck consists precisely in a kind of international policy.

And to what does the German workers’ party reduce its internationalism? To the consciousness that the result of its efforts “will be the international brotherhood of peoples” — a phrase borrowed from the bourgeois League of Peace and Freedom, which is meant to pass as an equivalent for the international brotherhood of the working classes in their common struggle against the ruling classes and their governments. Not a word, then, about the international functions of the German working class! And this is how it is to take on its own bourgeoisie, which is already linked in brotherhood against it with the bourgeois of all other countries, and Herr Bismarck’s international policy of conspiracy!

In fact the programme’s profession of internationalism stands infinitely below even that of the free-trade party. That party too asserts that the result of its efforts will be “the international brotherhood of peoples”. But it also does something to make trade international, and by no means contents itself with the consciousness that all peoples carry on trade at home.

The international activity of the working classes does not in any way depend on the existence of the “International Working Men’s Association”. That was only the first attempt to create a central organ for this activity; an attempt which, through the impulse it gave, was of lasting success, but which in its first historical form was no longer practicable after the fall of the Paris Commune.

Bismarck’s Norddeutsche was entirely right when, to its master’s satisfaction, it announced that the German workers’ party had forsworn internationalism in the new programme.