Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital [20]
workmen will not frighten away their own skill, nor unlearn them what thy have learned. Their hand will not forget its cunning, when its produce goes no longer into the pocket of the capitalist. Capitalists, who can grow rich only where there is an oppressed body of labourers, may probably carry off some of their cloth, and their corn, and their machines to some country like Prussia, where the poor people can learn nothing but what the king and his schoolmasters please; or like France, where a watchful police allows no man to utter a thought but such as suits the views of a government and priesthood anxious to restore despotism and superstition; but they cannot, unless the labourers please, carry with them the mouths which consume, or the hands which make their capital useful; and where these are there will be the productive power. Our labourers already possess in an eminent degree the skill to execute, and they are rapidly acquiring also the skill to contrive. Never was there a more idle threat uttered, therefore, than that the combinations of skilled labourers to obtain greater rewards than they now possess will drive skilled labour from the country. This analysis also of the operations of capital leads us at once boldly to pronounce all those schemes of which we have of late heard so much for improving countries, by sending capital to them, to be mere nonsense. Of what use, for example, would the butter and salt beef and pork and grain now exported from Ireland be of in that country if they were to be left there, or if they were to be sent back? All these articles form some of the most valuable parts of circulating capital, and so far from there being any want of them in Ireland, they are constantly exported in great quantities. It is plain, therefore, that there is no want of circulating capital in Ireland, if the capitalist would allow the wretched producer of it to consume it. Of what use also would steam engines or power looms or stocking frames or mining tools be to the ragged peasantry of Ireland? Of none whatever. If, indeed, masters and journeymen went over with these instruments and tools, they might use them, and by consuming at the same time the circulating capital now exported from Ireland give the owner of it a large profit; and they might teach the ignorant and helpless natives how to make use of the various instruments I have mentioned. Those who talk of improving Ireland, or any other country, by capital have a double meaning in their words. They know the power of the capitalist over the labourer, and that whenever the master goes or sends, there also must the slave labourer go. But neither the lawmaker nor the capitalist possesses any miraculous power of multiplying loaves and fishes; or of commanding, like the enchanters of old, broomsticks to do the work of men. They must have labourers, skilled labourers, and without them it is nonsense to talk of improving a country and a people by corn and cloth and hatchets and saws. The wide spread of education among the journeyman mechanics of this country diminishes daily the value of the labour and skill of almost all masters and employers by increasing the number of persons who possess their peculiar knowledge. At the same time, masters and employers cannot hope that the labourers who are not capitalists will remain long ignorant of the manner in which masters who are both labourers and capitalist lend themselves to the views of the capitalists who are not labourers. They are daily acquiring this knowledge, and masters cannot therefore rationally expect a termination to the present contest. On the contrary, it must continue. Even if it should be stopped, it will again and again occur. It is not possible that any large body of men who are acquainted with their rights will tacitly acquiesce in insult and injury. The profits of the masters, as capitalist, must be diminished, whether the labourers succeed in obtaining higher wages, or the combination continues, or it is from time to time renewed. In the former case, the masters, as skilled labourers,