The Competitive System

Maoriland Worker, Volume 1, Issue 4, 15 December 1910, Page 10

The Competitive System

Put a million men on an island. What must they do ? All work or starve. By shrewd scheming some men accumulate a part of what others earn. They then become capitalists. Others invent machines and these the capitalists buy. By the use of these machines one man can produce as much as ten could before. The one man gets pay for this labour. The machine gets pay for nine men's labour. Nine men are thrown out of employment. They can't buy the products of the machine. The wage of the one man who operates it is not sufficient to buy all the machine's products. What is the result ? The nine men buy on a credit and pawn their future labour—sell themselves to the capitalist. That's the competitive system in a nutshell. It means industrial slavery. If he does not buy on a credit, which in a majority of cases he can't, then he must starve, as he should do. The question is plain ; the machine having increased the power of production tenfold, shall the human race have the benefit of the invention in hours of reduction of labour., or shall a few men who have accumulated money and who are enabled thereby to own the machinery have all the profits of the invention and deprive millions of the opportunity for honourable employment ? Whatever may have been the principles which governed the economy of production and distribution before the advent of the machine, any sensible man ought to know that they will not apply now. These truths are self-evident: shall the few who don't operate the machines have the profits, or shall the many who do operate the machines have the profits ? Socialism means that the machines, the tools of production and distribution, shall be owned by all the people, operated at cost., and the wealth divided equitably among those who created it, and "the hours of labour shortened.