of Study for Socialism

TENCE OF SOCIETY
t Is Socialism?

: ‘Merchant - Piracy

and Capital —

& ae ae ‘bring all the merchandise which these
“jse-in trading « with the Savages; that is to say; the-
_xets, nighteaps, hats, shirts, sheets, hatchets, iron
! bodkins, ‘swords,. picks to break the ice in “Winter,

tes, prunes; “Palsins, Indian
“iB ‘and tobacco; and what is *

7; “peasy crackers or*
ecessary for the sus-

‘ithe’ French. in-this country . besides. dn exchange
fey. garry back hides of the moose, “lynx, fox, otter,

eing- encountered occasionally,
oH but. they deal “principally in Beavers, in which.

miartens, badgers,

Toppsy

“nein, “greatest . profit. s}awas*told that during’ one

arried: ‘back as many as 22,000 at:
— (Jésuit™ ‘Relations,

rold seoin werth about $4). :

Bt doing badly.”

tilly at all!

e- pistole each,
August 1626.

x

semen of the’ Company of One Hundred: ‘Agsocintes,
=> Indians along the St. Lawrence, were ‘accumulating

tal—in France.

‘tlemen Adventurers Trading into Hudson’s Bay’- —
22 English nobles and merchants, organized in 1670
idly either.. In 1676 they shipped home furs to the
2)00, exchanged for gcods worth only £650 Twenty
he Company was founded,--they had trebled their
‘al, while at the same time paying dividends as
preent. They were accumulating merchant capital—

seiety, the main
ealth was landed
as the exchange
‘s grew, and with
“money, there grew
ff merchants and
*, And with _the
-w, middle class, a
. change began to
‘an upsurge of in-
_ scientific ‘advance
(printing, gun-
compass) was
wed by the great
scovery; the -:push-
orizons. The world
into ?being; and

, the race for the
Asia and America,
ade, the colonial

period of the birth
apital.
simple commodity
money serves as
aen whereby com-
exchanged for one
Ww money becomes
f acquiring goods,
which can bring
. Money put in mo-
purpose—for profit
mt or usurer, is the
n which capital ap-
e stage of history.
capital arises on
an expanding com-
not yet industrial
, with enough of a
> of the forces of
if.can be the pre-

emen who amassed

pital did so-large-

methods of out-bar-

i cheating — and

acy.

nt. capital in. jts
everywhere

a system of .rob- ..

_its development,

IVOCATE — PAGE

ROR

among the trading nations of
old and new times, is always
connected with plundering,
piracy, snatching of slaves,
conquest of colonies.’ (Cap-
ital, 111, p. 389-90).

In these words Marx has, in
fact, described the birth-pangs
of Canada.

accumulated merchant

capital to become transform-
ed into a means of extracting
wealth from industrial produc-
tion, there were needed not
only new means of production,
but “free” laborers. The feudal
peasants and artisans had to be
separated from the land ~-and
from their means of employ-
ment, and turned into proper-
tyless “chands.”’

Forcible eviction of the
peasants from the land, turning
peasants farms and _ villages
into sheep-walks—this was the
classical form the process took,
spurred by the profits to be got
in the wool trade. “Your sheep”
wrote Thomas More in _ his
Utopia, “that were wont to be
so meek and tame and so small
eaters, now, as I hear say, be
come so great devourers and so
wild that they eat up and
swallow down the very men
themselves.”

This process of pitiless evic-
tion and dispossession went on
for four hundred years. (Early
in the 19th century the Duchess
of Sutherland called in the
soldiery to drive 15,000 village-
folk off 794,000 acres, and then

divided the stolen land into 29°

sheepfarms).

@ Piracy and looting, ac-
cumulation. of. money-capital

in the hands of the merchant .

class;

il

Conducted by.
National Educational Director

STANLEY

1 ky is

The accompanying outlines prepared by LPP Nationale!
Educational Director are designed both for individual and
group study. A growing number of ‘People in British Co-
lumbia are eager to understand the Marxist approach to
social questions and will welcome the outlines as a regu-
lar feature of the paper. Simply written and rich jin.illus-
tration, the outlines are prepared specially for individuals.
who are seeking their first introduction to the~science: of
Marxism. Questions and comments will be welcomed and °
supplementary materials will -be Sere ore. on i fequest:
Please address all enquiries to:

sii te aS” O92 YINERVA COOPER, eect Bock aed,

Bes Provincial Educational’ Dikeerox.
oe. BSP ae 209° Shelly Building, - ‘Vancouver, ‘B. ce

sik ae aye wee

_ from their means of Died ae:
- tion:

itive accumulation” of capital.

' from head to foot, from .every. =3-

@ Freeing of Seaeant and. READING” need ae
artisan® from feudal ties and _ Capital, Vol. I, “Ch. XXXII
fetters—and, at the same time, inclusiye:...pp... 784. -to - 834 -

(Kerr edition). Excerpts: from
these, sections are -in .Burns’
Such is the process: of “prim- Handbook of. Marxism.

dian: ‘Wealth,<Ch. T.and.-1IT..

QUESTIONS: | ;

1. Hoy .did. the. workd mar-
ket come into, being?

2. Discuss “the difference be-
tween - money in a simple
;,commodity -economy..and its
-role:;as merchant’s. capital
What was the “primitive
accumulation” of capital?

The bres k-up_ ‘of. feudal so-
ciety sets free. ‘the. ‘elements of
the society. that. “succeeds it:
capitalism.

“If money”, coneludes “Marx,.
““egmes into the world with - B
congential blood-stain- on one,
cheek’, capital comes dripping

with blood and dirt.”

a

pore,
V. The Factory
“The employment of children and young persons in mills
and factories is extensive, and largely on the increase . We
are sorry to report that in very many instances the children,
having no education whatever, could not tell their ages; this
applies more particularly to those from: twelve years down-
wards ...some being found as young as‘eight and nine years
The appearance and condition of the children in the after
part of the day, such as may be witnessed in the months of

July and August, was anything but inviting or desirable... .”
The Date: 1882. _The Place: Toronto

@
munity..of yeomen and habitant

farmers had in half a century
been transformed: the factory-
hells of-capitalist industry now
were going full blast: “free en-
terprise” was here!

What<<was it that impelled
the new captains of industry
to match the-horrors-of Vic-

HE above is taken from a
Royal Commission report.
Six years later another Com-
mission added to the picture:
“The darkest pages in the
testimony which follows are
these recording -the beating
and imprisonment of children

employed in factories . . . the torian' Manchester: and ~° Bir-
lash and the dungeon are ac- mingham, in Montreal and
companiments of manufac- Toronto?

turing industry in Canada”.
“At one place in Ontario
children certainly less than-
eleven years of age, were
employed. around dangerous
machinery. Some of them
worked from six o’clock in
the morning till six in the
evening, with less than am
hour for dinner, others work-
ed from-seven in the evening
till six in the morning.”
From Montreal it was re-
ported thot the judge of the
Recorder’s Court “on. being ex-
amined, stated that he had
authorized employers to chas-

The royal, commissioners of
1888 provide a hint:

“To obtain a very large
percentage of work with the
smallest possible outlay of
wages appears to be the one
fixed and dominant. idea .. .
To arrive at the greatest re-
sults for the smallest expen-
diture the mills and factories
are filled with’ women and
chiJdrem. . .”

For “greatest results”.
maximum profit.
Trade.for profit had opened
up the Americas. Now produc-
tion for- profit held sway “in

read:

tise their. operatives at their Western Europe and North
discretion, so long as no per- America. The merchant, from a
manent injury was inflicted, “middleman” . had b ecome
and this evidence was given in transformed. into a manufac-

G., Myers, History. of. Cana. >

~ forthe “owners of that capital.

the year of Our Lord one thous-
and eight hundred and eighty-
eight.” The report deals with
“sweating” in

hours a week for 80 cents”.
The colonial pioneer com-
<

Montreal:
_“Young girls who work sixty

turer. How had this happened?

The scattered artisans and
peasant-producers, freed. simul-
taneously from. feudal _depen~
dence and from ‘their means of
production,

into “hands”, forced to sell the

-had= been ‘turned

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1945

B. RYERSON

only thine that was left - “to
‘them “to: sell—their labor power.

And with their accumulated
money-capital, the merchants,
seeking new sources ‘of profit,
built “factories” and spurred on
the invention of machines to
“replace the scatteréd tools of
handicraft production. Indivi-
*dual, dwarfish, small-scale la-
bor: gave way to the collective
labor of - associated working:
people—social labor, But the
taking over of the fruits! of
labor remained a Stricdly in-
hese affairs A

=The labor‘of men, earings tor
gether in’ England. and” ‘in
Canada, .in ‘factories; and pane
builtup, «Canada’s capital:
manufacturing fom! “$78 mail.
lion: 'in:°1870 to $4 billions:‘in
1940." Production “per: \-worker
mulled ‘in’ tet ‘same. Beno

grew and: ‘wealth aéeuniuleted;:
the - great’ mass © of * working:
people remained poor; ‘working
all their’ lives for’ a: bare living!

All that piled:up wealth Tis‘
private capital. Expanding pro-
duction has’ gone ‘to provide *a
swelling “volume of~* “income”

The workers get a pittance to
keep “them * going—and not al-
ways ‘that; but the fruits of
their labor, ‘the surplus over
and above the “return” for
their labor, isn’t for them. The
peasant ‘vassal had turned over
all“his ‘surplus product to the
feudal lord, as a fixed obliga-
tion of the feudal tenure: Under
the new system of industrial
eapitalism, what becomes of
the surplus, now no longer
fixed but, with vastly increas-
ing productivity, remerkably
elastic? It takes the form of
surplus value, which the cap-—
italist pockets as his lawful,
capitalist profit.

How is this profit extracted,
under “free enterprise’?

By virtue of the fact that
labor-power is a commodity;
which, on being put to use,
creates more value that it costs.

THE capitalist buys labor-
power; the value of this com-
modity is determined by the
value of the bare necessaries of
life required, for the upkeep of
the average worker; and _ its
price is expressed. in wases:
Now, with modern machine-.
production the worker can pro- _
duce a value equal to ‘his day’s _
wages in, say, four hours; but
he ‘has “been ‘hired for eight,
nine, ten’ hours. “According to
his contract, he has sold his _
-“labor” for ‘that, period; the ,
contract, “freely entered upon”
does not. recognize any dif-—
ference between. “labor” and
‘Jabor-power”?! ~~
The rewerds of labor and
quantity (of ‘labor are by no.
means the same. “The value of
labor power -and the value
which that labor creatés in the
labor process are two entirely
differ magnitudes”. - (Marx).
Hence the worker, for part of
each day, labors for the cap-
italist - without. remuneration,

(Continued on Next Page) a
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