Whence comes this surplus supply of free laborers?
The explanation of the “bourgeois” theory, according to which this surplus supply is caused by the overproduction of children by proletarian parents, is based on a logical fallacy, and is contradicted by all known facts?[144]
The explanation of the proletarian theory according to which the capitalistic process of production itself produces the “free laborers,” by setting up again and again new labor-saving machines, is also based on a logical fallacy and is likewise contradicted by all known facts.[145]
The evidence of all facts shows rather, and the conclusion may be deduced without fear of contradiction, _that the oversupply of “free laborers” is descended from the right of holding landed property in large estates_; and that emigration into towns and oversea from these landed properties are the causes of the capitalistic distribution.
Doubtless there is a growing tendency in economic development whereby the ruin of vast landed estates will be accomplished. The system is their bleeding to death, without hope of salvation, caused by the freedom of the former serfs--the necessary consequence of the development of the cities. As soon as the peasants had obtained the right of moving about without their landlords’ passport (German _Freizuegigkeit_), there developed the chance of escape from the countries which formerly oppressed them. The system of emigration created “the competition from oversea,” together with the fall, on the Continent, of prices for farm products, and made necessary perpetually rising wages. By these two factors ground rent is reduced from two sides, and must gradually sink to the zero point, since here too no counterforce is to be recognized whereby the process might be diverted.[146] Thus the system of vast territorial estates falls apart. When, however, it has disappeared, there can be no oversupply of “free laborers.” On the contrary “two masters will run after one laborer and must raise the price on themselves.” There will be no “surplus value” for the capitalist class, because the laborer himself can form capital and himself become an employer. By this the last remaining vestige of the political means will have been destroyed, and economic means alone will exercise sway. The _content_ of such a society is the “pure economics”[147] of the equivalent exchange of commodities against commodities, or of labor force against commodities, and the political _form_ of this society will be the “freemen’s citizenship.”