Single Branches of Industry

his master not only that, but the right of every night. The serf could acquire no property; everything that he gained, his master could take from him; the free workingman has no property, can gain none by reason of the pressure of competition, and what even the Norman baron did not do, the modern manufacturer does. Through the truck system, he assumes every day the administration in detail of the things which the worker requires for his immediate necessities. The relation of the lord of the soil to the serf was regulated by the prevailing customs and bylaws which were obeyed, because they corresponded to them. The free workingman’s relation to his master is regulated by laws which are not obeyed, because they correspond neither with the interests of the employer nor with the prevailing customs. The lord of the soil could not separate the serf from the land, nor sell him apart from it, and since almost all the land was fief and there was no capital, practically could not sell him at all. The modern bourgeois forces the workingman to sell himself. The serf was the slave of the piece of land on which he was born, the workingman is the slave of his own necessaries of life and of the money with which he has to buy them⁠—both are slaves of a thing . The serf had a guarantee for the means of subsistence in the feudal order of society in which every member had his own place. The free workingman has no guarantee whatsoever, because he has a place in society only when the bourgeoisie can make use of him; in all other cases he is ignored, treated as nonexistent. The serf sacrificed himself for his master in war, the factory operative in peace. The lord of the serf was a barbarian who regarded his villain as a head of cattle; the employer of operatives is civilised and regards his “hand” as a machine. In short, the position of the two is not far from equal, and if either is at a disadvantage, it is the free workingman. Slaves they both are, with the single difference that the slavery of the one is undissembled, open, honest; that of the other cunning, sly, disguised, deceitfully concealed from himself and everyone else, a hypocritical servitude worse than the old. The philanthropic Tories were right when they gave the operatives the name white slaves.