Now let us listen to the foremen of Bolton. According to them manufacturers have no command over wages because they have no command over the price of products, and they have no command over the price of products because they have no command over the world market. For this reason, they wish it to be understood that combinations should not be formed to extort an increase in wages from the masters. M. Proudhon, on the contrary, forbids combinations for fear they should be followed by a rise in wages which would bring with it a general dearth. We have no need to say that on one point there is an entente cordiale between the foremen and M. Proudhon:
that a rise in wages is equivalent to a rise in the price of products.
But is the fear of a dearth the true cause of M. Proudhon's rancour?
No. Quite simple, he is annoyed with the Bolton foremen because they determine value by supply and demand and hardly take any account of constituted value , of value which has passed into the state of constitution, of the constitution of value, including permanent exchangeability and all the other proportionalities of relations and relations of proportionality, with Providence at their side.
"A workers' strikes is illegal, and it is not only the Penal Code that says so, it is the economic system, the necessity of the established order....
"That each worker individually should dispose freely over his person and his hands, this can be tolerated, but that workers should undertake by combination to do violence to monopoly, is something society cannot permit."(Vol.I, pp.334 and 335)
M. Proudhon wants to pass off an article of the Penal Code as a necessary and general result of bourgeois relations of production.
In England, combination is authorized by an Act of Parliament, and it is the economic system which has forced Parliament to grant this legal authorization. In 1825, when, under the Minister Huskisson, Parliament had to modify the law in order to bring it more and more into line with the conditions resulting from free competition, it had of necessity to abolish all laws forbidding combinations of workers. The more modern industry and competition develop, the more elements there are which call forth and strength combination, and as soon as combination becomes an economic fact, daily gaining in solidity, it is bound before long to become a legal fact.
Thus the article of the Penal Code proves at the most that modern industry and competition were not yet well developed under the Constituent Assembly and under the Empire. [Note: The laws in operation at that time in France -- the so-called Le Chapelier law adopted in 1791 during the bourgeois revolution by the Constituent Assembly and the criminal code elaborated under the Napoleonic Empire -- forbade the workers to form labor unions of to go on strike on pain of severe punishment. The prohibition of trade unions was abolished in France as late as 1884.]
Economists and Socialists [that is, the Socialists of that time:
the Fourierists in France, the Owenites in England -- Engels, 1885] are in agreement on one point: the condemnation of combination . Only they have different motives for their act of condemnation.
The economists say to workers:
Do not combine. By combination you hinder the regular progress of industry, you prevent manufacturers from carrying out their orders, you disturb trade and you precipitate the invasion of machines which, by rendering your labor in part useless, force you to accept a still lower wage. Besides, whatever you do, your wages will always be determined by the relation of hands demanded to hands supplied, and it is an effort as ridiculous as it is dangerous for you to revolt against the eternal laws of political economy.
The Socialists say to the workers:
Do not combine, because what will you gain by it anyway? A rise in wages? The economists will prove to you quite clearly that the few ha'pence you may gain by it for a few moments if you succeed will be followed by a permanent fall. Skilled calculators will prove to you that it would take you years merely to recover, through the increase in your wages, the expenses incurred for the organization and upkeep of the combinations.
And we, as Socialists, tell you that, apart from the money question, you will continue nonetheless to be workers, and the masters will still continue to be the masters, just as before. So no combination! No politics!
For is not entering into combination engaging in politics?
The economists want the workers to remain in society as it is constituted and as it has been signed and sealed by them in their manuals.
The Socialists want the workers to leave the old society alone, the better to be able to enter the new society which they have prepared for them with so much foresight.
In spite of both of them, in spite of manuals and utopias, combination has not yet ceased for an instant to go forward and grow with the development and growth of modern industry. It has now reached such a stage, that the degree to which combination has developed in any country clearly marks the rank it occupies in the hierarchy of the world market. England, whose industry has attained the highest degree of development, has the biggest and best organized combinations.
In England, they have not stopped at partial combinations which have no other objective than a passing strike, and which disappear with it. Permanent combinations have been formed, trades unions , which serve as ramparts for the workers in their struggles with the employers.
