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result of bourgeois relations of production.
In England, combination is authorized by an Act of Parliament, and it is the economic
system which has forced Parliament to grant this legal authorization. In 1825, when,
under the Minister Huskisson, Parliament had to modify the law in order to bring it more
and more into line with the conditions resulting from free competition, it had of necessity
to abolish all laws forbidding combinations of workers. The more modern industry and
competition develop, the more elements there are which call forth and strength
combination, and as soon as combination becomes an economic fact, daily gaining in
solidity, it is bound before long to become a legal fact.
Thus the article of the Penal Code proves at the most that modern industry and
competition were not yet well developed under the Constituent Assembly and under the
Empire. [1]
Economists and Socialists [*1] are in agreement on one point: the condemnation of
combination. Only they have different motives for their act of condemnation.
The economists say to workers:
Do not combine. By combination you hinder the regular progress of industry, you prevent
manufacturers from carrying out their orders, you disturb trade and you precipitate the
invasion of machines which, by rendering your labor in part useless, force you to accept a
still lower wage. Besides, whatever you do, your wages will always be determined by the
relation of hands demanded to hands supplied, and it is an effort as ridiculous as it is
dangerous for you to revolt against the eternal laws of political economy.
The Socialists say to the workers:
Do not combine, because what will you gain by it anyway? A rise in wages? The
economists will prove to you quite clearly that the few ha'pence you may gain by it for a
few moments if you succeed will be followed by a permanent fall. Skilled calculators will
prove to you that it would take you years merely to recover, through the increase in your
wages, the expenses incurred for the organization and upkeep of the combinations.
And we, as Socialists, tell you that, apart from the money question, you will continue
nonetheless to be workers, and the masters will still continue to be the masters, just as
before. So no combination! No politics! For is not entering into combination engaging in
politics?
The economists want the workers to remain in society as it is constituted and as it has
been signed and sealed by them in their manuals.
The Socialists want the workers to leave the old society alone, the better to be able to
enter the new society which they have prepared for them with so much foresight.
In spite of both of them, in spite of manuals and utopias, combination has not yet ceased
for an instant to go forward and grow with the development and growth of modern
industry. It has now reached such a stage, that the degree to which combination has
developed in any country clearly marks the rank it occupies in the hierarchy of the world
market. England, whose industry has attained the highest degree of development, has the
biggest and best organized combinations.
In England, they have not stopped at partial combinations which have no other objective
than a passing strike, and which disappear with it. Permanent combinations have been
formed, trades unions, which serve as ramparts for the workers in their struggles with the
employers. And at the present time all these local trades unions find a rallying point in
the National Association of United Trades, the central committee of which is in London,
and which already numbers 80,000 members. The organization of these strikes,
combinations, and trades unions went on simultaneously with the political struggles of
the workers, who now constitute a large political party, under the name of Chartists.
The first attempt of workers to associate among themselves always takes place in the
form of combinations.
Large-scale industry concentrates in one place a crowd of people unknown to one
another. Competition divides their interests. But the maintenance of wages, this common
interest which they have against their boss, unites them in a common thought of
resistance  combination. Thus combination always has a double aim, that of stopping
competition among the workers, so that they can carry on general competition with the
capitalist. If the first aim of resistance was merely the maintenance of wages,
combinations, at first isolated, constitute themselves into groups as the capitalists in their
turn unite for the purpose of repression, and in the face of always united capital, the
maintenance of the association becomes more necessary to them than that of wages. This
is so true that English economists are amazed to see the workers sacrifice a good part of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]