In capitalist society, as better and better machinery is invented, as larger and larger factories are built, and as the quantity of commodities increases, there is a concomitant increase in capitalist oppression, the industrial reserve army becomes more degraded and impoverished, and the working class grows more dependent upon its exploiters.
If private ownership did not exist, if everything were cooperatively owned, a very different state of affairs would prevail. Then people would shorten the working day, would husband their strength, economise toil, enjoy ample leisure. When the capitalist introduces machinery, his concern is for profit; he does not think of reducing the working day, for he would only lose by this. The capitalist does not use machinery to emancipate people, but to enslave them. As capitalism develops, an ever-increasing proportion of capital is devoted to machinery, enormous buildings, huge furnaces, and so on. On the other hand, the proportion of capital expended upon the wages of labour grows continually smaller. In earlier days, when hand labour still prevailed, the expenditure upon looms and other gear was trifling; nearly all the expenditure of capital was upon the wages of labour. Now, conversely, much the larger portion is devoted to buildings and machinery. The result is that the demand for working hands does not keep pace with the increase in the number of proletarians, does not suffice to absorb the influx of those who are ruined by capitalism. The more vigorous the advance of technique under capitalism, the more cruelly does capital oppress the working class; for it grows ever harder to find work, more and more difficult to live.
16. The Anarchy of Production; Competition; Crises.
The miseries of the working class continually increase concomitantly with the progress of manufacturing technique. Under capitalism this progress, instead of bringing advantages to all, brings increased profit to capital, but unemployment and ruin to many workers. There are, however, additional causes for the increasing misery.