Note 2 — II. How Actual Life Requires that We Should Set about Solving Social Needs and Problems

When one considers the work that a man does for the body social by means of his physical labour-power, it is plain that the above reflections are grounded in the actual life of men. The position which labour has come to occupy in the social order under the capitalistic form of economy, is such, that is purchased by the employer from the employed as a commodity. An exchange is effected between money (as representing commodities) and labour. But in reality no such exchange can take place; it only appears to do so.2 What really happens is, that the employer receives in return from the worker commodities that cannot exist, unless the worker devotes his labour-power to creating them. The worker receives one part, the employer the other part of the commodity so created. The production of the commodity is the result of a co-operation between employer and employed. The product of their joint action is that which first passes into the circuit of economic life. For the product to come into existence, there must be a “relation in right” between worker and “enterpriser”; but the capitalist type of economy is able to convert this “rights” relation into one determined by the employer’s superiority in economic power over the employed. In a healthy social order, it will be obvious that labour cannot be paid for, that one cannot set an economic value upon it comparable to the value of a commodity. The commodity produced by this labour first acquires an economic value by comparison with other commodities. The kind of work a man must do for the maintenance of the body social, how he does it, and the amount, must be settled according to his abilities and the conditions of a decent human existence. And this is only possible when such questions are settled by the political state, quite independently of the provisions and regulations made in the economic life.