Note 6 — Chapter V · CONCLUSION.

Always and everywhere have men been inclined to burden their fellow-men with heavy and disagreeable work rather than perform it themselves; and the strong have succeeded in imposing this work on the weak. Among some savage tribes it is the weaker sex who perform the drudgery; but in the course of progress the work that has to be done soon becomes too much for the women to manage. Then subjection of males arises, which presents itself in various forms, as subjugation of conquered tribes, or of the common people by the king and nobility, but often also as slavery or serfdom. Finally, when indispensable resources have been appropriated, the meanest labour is imposed upon those who are destitute of land and capital. There is now no longer a personal, but an impersonal compulsion. Lange remarks: “In former times the marauding minority of mankind, by means of physical violence, compelled the working majority to render feudal services, or reduced them to a state of slavery or serfdom, or at least made them pay a tribute. Nowadays the dependence of the working classes is secured in a less direct but equally efficacious manner, viz. by means of the superior power of capital; the labourer being forced, in order to get his subsistence, to place his labour power entirely at the disposal of the capitalist. So there is a semblance of liberty; but in reality the labourer is exploited and subjected, because, all the land having been appropriated, he cannot procure his subsistence directly from nature, and, goods being produced for the market and not for the producer’s own use, he cannot subsist without capital. Wages will rise above what is wanted for the necessaries of life, where the labourer is able to earn his subsistence on free land, which has not yet become private property. But wherever, in an old and totally occupied country, a body of labouring poor is employed in manufactures, the same law, which we see at work in the struggle for life throughout the organized world, will keep wages at the absolute minimum”6.