CHAPTER I: Marx' Theory and the Concentration of Industries - Yves Guyot, Socialistic Fallacies [1910]
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Socialistic Fallacies (London: Cope and Fenwick, 1910).
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CHAPTER I
Marx' Theory and the Concentration of Industries
karl marx and Engels said, in the “Communist Manifesto” of 1847, which Socialists acclaim as the beginning of a new era, “the whole of society increasingly divides itself into two hostile camps, into two directly opposed classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.”
§18. The middle classes of former times, small employers, business people, and persons of independent means, artisans and peasants—all fall into the ranks of the proletariat. Their small capital succumbs when brought into contact with the great capitalists.
§25. The progress of industry throws considerable sections of the dominant class into the ranks of the proletariat, and at least threatens their existence.
§31. The modern workman, instead of raising himself by the progress of industry, sinks more and more below the level of his own class.
In short, industry and capital become increasingly concentrated in a few hands, while the numbers of the proletariat continually increase, wages decrease, and the hours of labour grow longer. The last assertion has already been refuted; I now proceed to examine whether the phenomenon of the concentration of industry and of capital announced by the “Communist Manifesto” manifests itself in the United States, in France and in Belgium. I have already cited the figures for Germany given by Bernstein according to the industrial census of 1895.
If three establishments, each of them employing one hundred workmen, only form one establishment at the expiration of ten years, we have a concentration, but if each of them continues to exist and to employ a third or a fourth as many workmen again while doing twice the amount of business, this is not concentration but development and expansion of industry.
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