Germinal - Emile Zola [8]
So much for ‘labour’ and the have-nots. What of ‘capital’? The haves are represented by three types: the shareholder, the independent entrepreneur and the company executive. Léon Grégoire has inherited shares in the Mining Company which, in today’s terms, bring him in an annual income of £125,000–£150,000 or around $200,000. Though the capital value of his shares recently topped the £3 million mark, he was never tempted to sell and does not regret the fact that a falling stock market has now reduced this value by nearly a half. Income is income. ‘Capital’ is the God he worships, a sacred treasure to be left buried in the ground and dug up little by little (in his case literally) by those fine fellows who’ve been digging it up for him and his ancestors for over a hundred years. This is the kind of ownership that Proudhon described as ‘theft’, but Grégoire’s defence is that (a) his great-grandfather took enormous risks in creating the Mining Company, and (b) that he and his family live soberly, without extravagance or luxury, and distribute alms to the poor (albeit in kind, for money would merely encourage them to drink). And his parasitic caution proves sadly well founded. Deneulin, his cousin, has sold his shares and invested the money in setting up as a mine-owner himself, beneficially exploiting the natural resources of his country and creating new employment in the region. But his small privately owned company is no match for the competitive muscle of the big public corporations; and when the combination of falling demand and rising costs is exacerbated by worker unrest, he goes under, losing all his capital and reduced to being a mere employee in the company of which he once owned part. ‘Theft’, it seems, pays better than enterprise. And better than subservience. Hennebeau, the manager of the Company’s mines, is the paid lackey, rewarded with a free house and a salary that earns the contempt of his heiress wife. A company executive perhaps, with servants and an entrée to the Grégoires’ drawing-room, but a servant none the less, beholden to a Board of Directors whose grace and favour he must earn with sleepless nights. Emasculated by his adulterous wife, he is also the emasculated representative of a higher power, a mouthpiece for capitalism (we employers take the financial risks; we are subject to market forces and can only pay what we can pay; we are not a charity) while envying the workers what he perceives to be their glorious sexual freedom.
In illustrating ‘the struggle between capital and labour’, Zola is careful above all to nuance his effects and to avoid a crass polarization of goodies and baddies. On the side of ‘labour’, Maheu and his wife may be the models of decency and good sense, but their neighbours the Levaques are their feckless, hot-headed opposites. Chaval is a wife-beater (like Levaque), even if his ‘wife’ is only a girl in her mid teens who has not yet reached puberty. He is without principle, a violent, jealous man, a trimmer ready to call the comrades out to impress his girl and no less ready to send them back to work again at the first hint of promotion. The Pierrons are collaborators, selfish enough to lock their daughter in the cellar and send her grandmother on a fool’s errand while they stuff themselves on rabbit and drink wine before a roaring fire. On the side of ‘capital’, the Grégoires are doting parents and benevolent employers. It is, of course, easy to be both these things when you have the money, but Deneulin manages it in straitened circumstances, and his daughters are no less resourceful in their penny-pinching than the beleaguered La Maheude. Mme Hennebeau is the model of the blithe bourgeoise, oblivious to the reality of the miners’ suffering, but her husband is intended to evoke sympathy as the victim of a sexless and unhappy marriage; and the current