794 THE INDUSTRIAL GROUP 



ism, another novelty of our age. But also, by the time he finds 

 work its power of yielding satisfaction has for the most part been 

 lost. This is, perhaps, the most significant consequence of modern 

 civilization. Labor as the sanction of life, as the director of energy , 

 has ceased to round out the worker into the complete man and hence 

 to make him peaceful and contented. The reason for this lies in the 

 peculiarity of modern technique as well as the organization of modern 

 business, for the modern factory labor is in large measure destructive 

 of health, above all because it calls for too intense an exertion, and 

 because of that disregard for the limits of human endurance which 

 characterizes the modern technical development. 



Moreover, labor has frequently become a disagreeable, repulsive 

 act, in the depths of the earth and amid the noise, dust, and heat 

 of many modern factories. Labor has become more and more mono- 

 tonous and unrhythmical, mere piece-work of unvarying nature in 

 the modern great industries built up by division of labor and consoli- 

 dation. The laborer is now separated from his work, he creates no 

 longer, he fashions no longer, he brings nothing to completion, nothing 

 appears as his work, nothing in which his labor is embodied. He is 

 no more than a secondary wheel in a gigantic mechanism. 



The labor of the modern industrial wage-worker has thus lost all 

 concreteness, all qualitative significance, and so has for him only an 

 abstract and hence purely quantitative significance. And so it 

 becomes a burden of which he seeks to be relieved as much as possible. 

 (If we realize this we come to comprehend the endeavors for shorten- 

 ing the hours of labor, which give the characteristic impress to the 

 modern labor movement.) And so also it comes to be measured 

 in the terms of the money for which it is exchanged. Thus it was 

 that the wage-earner was involved in the circle of ideas of the capi- 

 talistic world. The mechanism which accomplished his inclusion 

 was the piece-wage system, after the pure money-wage had already 

 accustomed him to value all labor power in terms of money. This 

 valuation in money is imbued in him from early youth, for he enters 

 " service " early, at a period of life when hitherto a youth lived 

 without responsibility as a dependent member of a family. 



Here lie the roots of all class strife between proletariat and entre- 

 preneurs, who are now at odds regarding their respective shares in the 

 joint product. ""The right to the whole produce of labor!" The 

 foregoing sketch of the peculiarities of proletarian life explains 

 what we mean by the modern " social movement," wherein the 

 proletariat struggles against the position into which capitalism has 

 brought it. 



When we observe the proletariat setting forth to emancipate itself 

 from its position, and see how the movement is carried on with the 

 passions of hatred and envy, the conviction forces itself upon us that 



