The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 | Page 6

in work. And so in all other large towns--abstraction
made of the privileged minority of the workers; and so in the smaller
towns and in the agricultural districts. The law which reduces the value
of labour-power to the value of the necessary means of subsistence, and
the other law which reduces its average price, as a rule, to the
minimum of those means of subsistence, these laws act upon them with
the irresistible force of an automatic engine, which crushes them
between its wheels.
"This, then, was the position created by the Free Trade policy of 1847,
and by twenty years of the rule of the manufacturing capitalists. But,
then, a change came. The crash of 1866 was, indeed, followed by a
slight and short revival about 1873; but that did not last. We did not,
indeed, pass through the full crisis at the time it was due, in 1877 or
1878; but we have had, ever since 1876, a chronic state of stagnation in
all dominant branches of industry. Neither will the full crash come; nor
will the period of longed-for prosperity to which we used to be entitled
before and after it. A dull depression, a chronic glut of all markets for
all trades, that is what we have been living in for nearly ten years. How
is this?

"The Free Trade theory was based upon one assumption: that England
was to be the one great manufacturing centre of an agricultural world.
And the actual fact is that this assumption has turned out to be a pure
delusion. The conditions of modern industry, steam-power and
machinery, can be established wherever there is fuel, especially coals.
And other countries beside England,--France, Belgium, Germany,
America, even Russia,--have coals. And the people over there did not
see the advantage of being turned into Irish pauper farmers merely for
the greater wealth and glory of English capitalists. They set resolutely
about manufacturing, not only for themselves, but for the rest of the
world; and the consequence is, that the manufacturing monopoly
enjoyed by England for nearly a century is irretrievably broken up.
"But the manufacturing monopoly of England is the pivot of the present
social system of England. Even while that monopoly lasted, the
markets could not keep pace with the increasing productivity of English
manufacturers; the decennial crises were the consequence. And new
markets are getting scarcer every day, so much so that even the negroes
of the Congo are now to be forced into the civilisation attendant upon
Manchester calicos, Staffordshire pottery, and Birmingham hardware.
How will it be when Continental, and especially American, goods flow
in in ever-increasing quantities--when the predominating share, still
held by British manufacturers, will become reduced from year to year?
Answer, Free Trade, thou universal panacea.
"I am not the first to point this out. Already, in 1883, at the Southport
meeting of the British Association, Mr. Inglis Palgrave, the President of
the Economic section, stated plainly that 'the days of great trade profits
in England were over, and there was a pause in the progress of several
great branches of industrial labour. _The country might almost be said
to be entering the non-progressive state_.'
"But what is to be the consequence? Capitalist production cannot stop.
It must go on increasing and expanding, or it must die. Even now, the
mere reduction of England's lion's share in the supply of the world's
markets means stagnation, distress, excess of capital here, excess of
unemployed workpeople there. What will it be when the increase of

yearly production is brought to a complete stop?
"Here is the vulnerable place, the heel of Achilles, for capitalistic
production. Its very basis is the necessity of constant expansion, and
this constant expansion now becomes impossible. It ends in a deadlock.
Every year England is brought nearer face to face with the question:
either the country must go to pieces, or capitalist production must.
Which is it to be?
"And the working-class? If even under the unparalleled commercial
and industrial expansion, from 1848 to 1866, they have had to undergo
such misery; if even then the great bulk of them experienced at best but
a temporary improvement of their condition, while only a small,
privileged, 'protected' minority was permanently benefited, what will it
be when this dazzling period is brought finally to a close; when the
present dreary stagnation shall not only become intensified, but this, its
intensified condition, shall become the permanent and normal state of
English trade?
"The truth is this: during the period of England's industrial monopoly
the English working-class have, to a certain extent, shared in the
benefits of the monopoly. These benefits were very unequally parcelled
out amongst them; the privileged minority pocketed most, but even the
great mass had, at least, a temporary share now and then. And