[ Eugene Buret, De la misere des classes laborieuses en Angleterre et en France, 2 vols., Paris, 1840, Vol. I, pp. 36-7 ] Political economy regards labor abstractly, as a thing; labor is a commodity; if the price is high, the commodity is much in demand; if it is low, then it is much in supply; "the price of labor as a commodity must fall lower and lower".
[ ibid., p. 43 ] This is brought about partly by the competition among the workers themselves.
"... the working population, seller of labor, is forced to accept the smallest part of the product... Is the theory of labor as a commodity anything other than a disguised theory of slavery?"
"Why then was labor regarded as nothing more than an exchange value?"
[ Eugene Buret, p. 43 ] The big workshops prefer to buy the labor of women and children, because it costs less than that of men.
"Vis-a-vis his employer, the worker is not at all in the position of a free seller.... The capitalist is always free to employ labor, and the worker is always forced to sell it. The value of labor is completely destroyed if it is not sold at every instant.
Unlike genuine commodities, labor can be neither accumulated nor saved.
"Labor is life, and if life is not exchanged every day for food, it suffers and soon perishes. If human life is to be regarded as a commodity, we are forced to admit slavery."
[ Eugene Buret, p. 49-50 ] So, if labor is a commodity, it is a commodity with the most unfortunate characteristics. But, even according to economic principles, it is not one, for it is not the "free product of a free market". [ ibid., p. 50 ] The present economic regime "reduces at the same time both the price and the remuneration of labor; it perfects the worker and degrades the man." [ ibid., p. 52-3 ] "Industry has become a war, commerce a game."
[ ibid., p. 62 ]
"The machines for spinning cotton (in England) alone represent 84,000,000 handworkers."
[ Eugene Buret, p. 193 ] Up to now, industry has been in the situation of a war of conquest:
"it has squandered the lives of the men who composed its army with as much indifference as the great conquerors. Its goal was the possession of riches, and not human happiness." "These interests ( i.e., economic interests), left to their own free development, ... cannot help coming into conflict; war is their only arbiter, and the decisions of war assign defeat and death to some and victory to others.... It is in the conflict of opposing forces that science looks for order and equilibrium; perpetual was, in the view of science, is the only means of achieving peace; this war is called competition."
[ Eugene Buret, pp. 20,23 ]
"The industrial war, if it is to be waged successfully, needs large armies which it can concentrate at one point and decimate at will.
And neither devotion nor duty moves the soldiers of this army to bear the burden placed upon them; what moves them is the need to escape the harshness of starvation. They feel neither affection nor gratitude for their bosses, who are not bound in their subordinates by any feeling of goodwill and who regard them not as human beings but as instruments of production which bring in as much and cost as little as possible. These groups of workers, who are more and more crowded together, cannot even be sure they they will always be employed; the industry which has summoned them together allows them to live only because it needs them; as soon as it can get rid of them, it abandons them without the slightest hesitation; and the workers are forced to offer their persons and their labor for whatever is the going price. The longer, more distressing and loathsome the work which is given them, the less they are paid; one can see workers who toil their way non-stop through a 16-hour day and who scarcely manage to buy the right not to die."
[ Eugene Buret, pp. 68-9 ]
"We are convinced... as are the commissioners appointed to look into the conditions of the handloom weavers, that the large industrial towns would quickly lose their population of workers if they did not all the time receive a continual stream of healthy people and fresh blood from the surrounding country areas."
[ Eugene Buret, pp. 362 ]
