poor article, although both may work the same length of time; so that their exchange value ought not to be determined by the mere quantity of labor expended. Above all, Marx would extend the equality of wages for the same time to the manager and superintendent also. In other words, he proposes to take away all the incentives to the acquirement or exercise of superior and signal ability in every work of life, the result of which would inevitably lead to a deadening extension of mediocrity.
This system gained an undue attention because it was made the instrument of a socialist propaganda under the leadership of Ferdinand Lassalle.151 This active leader, in 1863, founded the German “Workingmen's Union,” a year earlier than the “International152 Association.” In 1869 Liebknecht and his friends established the “Social Democratic Workingmen's Party,” which after some difficulties absorbed the followers of Lassalle in a congress at Gotha in 1875, and form the [pg 163] present Socialist party in Germany. Their programme,153 as announced at Gotha, is as follows:
I. Labor is the source of all riches and of all culture. As general profitable labor can only be done by the human society, the whole product of labor belongs to society—i.e., to all its members—who have the same duties and the same right to work, each according to his reasonable wants.
In the present society the means of work are the monopoly of the class of capitalists. The class of workingmen thus become dependent on them, and consequently are given over to all degrees of misery and servitude.
In order to emancipate labor it is requisite that the means of work be transformed into the common property of society, that all production be regulated by associations, and that the entire product of labor be turned over to society and justly distributed for the benefit of all.
None but the working-class itself can emancipate labor, as in relation to it all other classes are only