The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface to the American Edition, By H. G. Wilshire
• Preface to the English Edition, By G. B. Shaw
• The Basis of Socialism
• Historic By Sidney Webb Ll.b., Barrister At Law, Lecturer On Political Economy At the City of London College.
• The Development of the Democratic Ideal.
• The Disintegration of the Old Synthesis.
• The Period of Anarchy.
• The Intellectual and Moral Revolt, and Its Political Outcome.
• Revision of Taxation.
• Extension of Factory Acts.
• Educational Reform.
• Re-organization of Poor Law Administration.
• Extension of Municipal Activity.
• Amendment of Political Machinery.
• The New Synthesis.
• Industrial. By William Clarke M.A. Cambridge.
• Moral76 By Sidney Olivier B.a., Oxford.
• Economic By G. Bernard Shaw
• Rent.
• The County Family.
• The Proletariat.
• Exchange Value.
• Wages.
• Capitalism
• \"over-population.\"
• \"illth.\"
• The Organization of Society
• Property Under Socialism By Graham Wallas, M.A., Oxford
• Industry Under Socialism By Annie Besant
• The Transition to Social Democracy
• Transition21 By G. Bernard Shaw
• The Outlook By Hubert Bland

Wages.

I now ask you to pick up the dropped subject of the spread of cultivation. We had got as far as the appearance in the market of a new commodity—of the proletarian man compelled to live by the sale of himself! In order to realize at once the latent horror of this, you have only to apply our investigation of value, with its inevitable law that only by restricting the supply of a commodity can its value be kept from descending finally to zero. The commodity which the proletarian sells is one over the production of which he has practically no control. He is himself driven to produce it by an irresistible impulse. It was the increase of population that spread cultivation and civilization from the center to the snowline, and at last forced men to sell themselves to the lords of the soil: it is the same force that continues to multiply men so that their exchange value falls slowly and surely until it disappears altogether—until even black chattel slaves are released as not worth keeping in a land where men of all colors are to be had for nothing. This is the condition of our English laborers to-day: they are no longer even dirt cheap: they are valueless, and can be had for nothing. The proof is the existence of the unemployed, who can find no purchasers. By the law of indifference, nobody will buy men at a price when he can obtain equally serviceable men for nothing. What then is the explanation of the wages given to those who are in employment, and who certainly do not work for nothing? The matter is deplorably simple. Suppose that horses multiplied in England in such quantities that they were to be had for the asking, like kittens condemned to the bucket. You would still have to feed your horse—feed him and lodge him well if you used him as a smart hunter—feed him and lodge him wretchedly if you used him only as a drudge. But the cost of keeping would not mean that the horse had an exchange value. If you got him for nothing in the first instance—if no one would give you anything for him when you were done with him, he would be worth nothing, in spite of the cost of his keep. That is just the case of every member of the proletariat who could be replaced by one of the unemployed to-day. Their wage is not the price of themselves; for they are worth nothing: it is only their keep. For bare subsistence wages you can get as much common labor as you want, and do what you please with it within the limits of a criminal code which is sure to be interpreted by a proprietary-class judge in your favor. If you have to give your footman a better allowance than your wretched hewer of match-wood, it is for the same reason that you have to give your hunter beans and a clean stall instead of chopped straw and a sty.95

[95.]When one of the conditions of earning a wage is the keeping up of a certain state, subsistence wages may reach a figure to which the term seems ludicrously inappropriate. For example, a fashionable physician in London cannot save out of £1,000 a year; and the post of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland can only be filled by a man who brings considerable private means to the aid of his official salary of £20,000.