Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
Semanticate
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
  • Loading branch information
acabal committed Jan 3, 2024
1 parent 2f34092 commit dda8c06
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Showing 8 changed files with 15 additions and 15 deletions.
6 changes: 3 additions & 3 deletions src/epub/text/chapter-1.xhtml
Expand Up @@ -46,10 +46,10 @@
<p>In all the great countries of the Continent, except Russia, a revolution followed quickly on the publication of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.pamphlet">Communist Manifesto</i>, but the revolution was not economic or international, except at first in France. Everywhere else it was inspired by the ideas of nationalism. Accordingly, the rulers of the world, momentarily terrified, were able to recover power by fomenting the enmities inherent in the nationalist idea, and everywhere, after a very brief triumph, the revolution ended in war and reaction. The ideas of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.pamphlet">Communist Manifesto</i> appeared before the world was ready for them, but its authors lived to see the beginnings of the growth of that Socialist movement in every country, which has pressed on with increasing force, influencing Governments more and more, dominating the Russian Revolution, and perhaps capable of achieving at no very distant date that international triumph to which the last sentences of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.pamphlet">Manifesto</i> summon the wage-earners of the world.</p>
<p>Marx’s magnum opus, <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Capital</i>, added bulk and substance to the theses of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.pamphlet">Communist Manifesto</i>. It contributed the theory of surplus value, which professed to explain the actual mechanism of capitalist exploitation. This doctrine is very complicated and is scarcely tenable as a contribution to pure theory. It is rather to be viewed as a translation into abstract terms of the hatred with which Marx regarded the system that coins wealth out of human lives, and it is in this spirit, rather than in that of disinterested analysis, that it has been read by its admirers. A critical examination of the theory of surplus value would require much difficult and abstract discussion of pure economic theory without having much bearing upon the practical truth or falsehood of Socialism; it has therefore seemed impossible within the limits of the present volume. To my mind the best parts of the book are those which deal with economic facts, of which Marx’s knowledge was encyclopaedic. It was by these facts that he hoped to instil into his disciples that firm and undying hatred that should make them soldiers to the death in the class war. The facts which he accumulates are such as are practically unknown to the vast majority of those who live comfortable lives. They are very terrible facts, and the economic system which generates them must be acknowledged to be a very terrible system. A few examples of his choice of facts will serve to explain the bitterness of many Socialists:⁠—</p>
<blockquote>
<p><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared, as chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms, Nottingham, on the 14th January, 1860, “that there was an amount of privation and suffering among that portion of the population connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts of the kingdom, indeed, in the civilized world.⁠ ⁠… Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o’clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate.”<a href="endnotes.xhtml#note-4" id="noteref-4" epub:type="noteref">4</a></p>
<p><abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared, as chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms, Nottingham, on the 14th January, 1860, “that there was an amount of privation and suffering among that portion of the population connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts of the kingdom, indeed, in the civilized world.⁠ ⁠… Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o’clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate.”<a href="endnotes.xhtml#note-4" id="noteref-4" epub:type="noteref">4</a></p>
<p>Three railway men are standing before a London coroner’s jury⁠—a guard, an engine-driver, a signalman. A tremendous railway accident has hurried hundreds of passengers into another world. The negligence of the employees is the cause of the misfortune. They declare with one voice before the jury that ten or twelve years before, their labor only lasted eight hours a day. During the last five or six years it had been screwed up to 14, 18, and 20 hours, and under a specially severe pressure of holidaymakers, at times of excursion trains, it often lasted 40 or 50 hours without a break. They were ordinary men, not Cyclops. At a certain point their labor-power failed. Torpor seized them. Their brain ceased to think, their eyes to see. The thoroughly “respectable” British jurymen answered by a verdict that sent them to the next assizes on a charge of manslaughter, and, in a gentle “rider” to their verdict, expressed the pious hope that the capitalistic magnates of the railways would, in future, be more extravagant in the purchase of a sufficient quantity of labor-power, and more “abstemious,” more “self-denying,” more “thrifty,” in the draining of paid labor-power.<a href="endnotes.xhtml#note-5" id="noteref-5" epub:type="noteref">5</a></p>
<p>In the last week of June, 1863, all the London daily papers published a paragraph with the “sensational” heading, “Death from simple overwork.” It dealt with the death of the milliner, Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years of age, employed in a highly respectable dressmaking establishment, exploited by a lady with the pleasant name of Elise. The old, often-told story was once more recounted. This girl worked, on an average, 16½ hours, during the season often 30 hours, without a break, whilst her failing labor-power was revived by occasional supplies of sherry, port, or coffee. It was just now the height of the season. It was necessary to conjure up in the twinkling of an eye the gorgeous dresses for the noble ladies bidden to the ball in honor of the newly-imported Princess of Wales. Mary Anne Walkley had worked without intermission for 26½ hours, with 60 other girls, 30 in one room, that only afforded ⅓ of the cubic feet of air required for them. At night, they slept in pairs in one of the stifling holes into which the bedroom was divided by partitions of board. And this was one of the best millinery establishments in London. Mary Anne Walkley fell ill on the Friday, died on Sunday, without, to the astonishment of Madame Elise, having previously completed the work in hand. The doctor, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Keys, called too late to the death bed, duly bore witness before the coroner’s jury that “Mary Anne Walkley had died from long hours of work in an overcrowded workroom, and a too small and badly ventilated bedroom.” In order to give the doctor a lesson in good manners, the coroner’s jury thereupon brought in a verdict that “the deceased had died of apoplexy, but there was reason to fear that her death had been accelerated by overwork in an overcrowded workroom, etc.” “Our white slaves,” cried the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Morning Star</i>, the organ of the free-traders, Cobden and Bright, “our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine and die.”<a href="endnotes.xhtml#note-6" id="noteref-6" epub:type="noteref">6</a></p>
<p>Edward <span epub:type="z3998:roman">VI</span>: A statue of the first year of his reign, 1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler. The master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chains. If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for life and is to be branded on forehead or back with the letter <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">S</i>; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle. If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with a redhot iron with the letter <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">V</i> on the breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at some other labor. If the vagabond gives a false birthplace, he is then to become the slave for life of this place, of its inhabitants, or its corporation, and to be branded with an <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">S</i>. All persons have the right to take away the children of the vagabonds and to keep them as apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls until the 20th. If they run away, they are to become up to this age the slaves of their masters, who can put them in irons, whip them, etc., if they like. Every master may put an iron ring around the neck, arms or legs of his slave, by which to know him more easily and to be more certain of him. The last part of this statute provides that certain poor people may be employed by a place or by persons, who are willing to give them food and drink and to find them work. This kind of parish-slaves was kept up in England until far into the 19th century under the name of “roundsmen.”<a href="endnotes.xhtml#note-7" id="noteref-7" epub:type="noteref">7</a></p>
<p>In the last week of June, 1863, all the London daily papers published a paragraph with the “sensational” heading, “Death from simple overwork.” It dealt with the death of the milliner, Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years of age, employed in a highly respectable dressmaking establishment, exploited by a lady with the pleasant name of Elise. The old, often-told story was once more recounted. This girl worked, on an average, 16½ hours, during the season often 30 hours, without a break, whilst her failing labor-power was revived by occasional supplies of sherry, port, or coffee. It was just now the height of the season. It was necessary to conjure up in the twinkling of an eye the gorgeous dresses for the noble ladies bidden to the ball in honor of the newly-imported Princess of Wales. Mary Anne Walkley had worked without intermission for 26½ hours, with 60 other girls, 30 in one room, that only afforded ⅓ of the cubic feet of air required for them. At night, they slept in pairs in one of the stifling holes into which the bedroom was divided by partitions of board. And this was one of the best millinery establishments in London. Mary Anne Walkley fell ill on the Friday, died on Sunday, without, to the astonishment of Madame Elise, having previously completed the work in hand. The doctor, <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Keys, called too late to the death bed, duly bore witness before the coroner’s jury that “Mary Anne Walkley had died from long hours of work in an overcrowded workroom, and a too small and badly ventilated bedroom.” In order to give the doctor a lesson in good manners, the coroner’s jury thereupon brought in a verdict that “the deceased had died of apoplexy, but there was reason to fear that her death had been accelerated by overwork in an overcrowded workroom, <abbr class="eoc">etc.</abbr>” “Our white slaves,” cried the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Morning Star</i>, the organ of the free-traders, Cobden and Bright, “our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine and die.”<a href="endnotes.xhtml#note-6" id="noteref-6" epub:type="noteref">6</a></p>
<p>Edward <span epub:type="z3998:roman">VI</span>: A statue of the first year of his reign, 1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler. The master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chains. If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for life and is to be branded on forehead or back with the letter <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">S</i>; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle. If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with a redhot iron with the letter <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">V</i> on the breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at some other labor. If the vagabond gives a false birthplace, he is then to become the slave for life of this place, of its inhabitants, or its corporation, and to be branded with an <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">S</i>. All persons have the right to take away the children of the vagabonds and to keep them as apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls until the 20th. If they run away, they are to become up to this age the slaves of their masters, who can put them in irons, whip them, <abbr>etc.</abbr>, if they like. Every master may put an iron ring around the neck, arms or legs of his slave, by which to know him more easily and to be more certain of him. The last part of this statute provides that certain poor people may be employed by a place or by persons, who are willing to give them food and drink and to find them work. This kind of parish-slaves was kept up in England until far into the 19th century under the name of “roundsmen.”<a href="endnotes.xhtml#note-7" id="noteref-7" epub:type="noteref">7</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Page after page and chapter after chapter of facts of this nature, each brought up to illustrate some fatalistic theory which Marx professes to have proved by exact reasoning, cannot but stir into fury any passionate working-class reader, and into unbearable shame any possessor of capital in whom generosity and justice are not wholly extinct.</p>
<p>Almost at the end of the volume, in a very brief chapter, called “Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation,” Marx allows one moment’s glimpse of the hope that lies beyond the present horror:⁠—</p>
Expand Down

0 comments on commit dda8c06

Please sign in to comment.