Edward VI: A statue of the first year of his reign, 1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler.The master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit.He has the right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chains.If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for life and is to be branded on forehead or back with the letter S; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as a felon.The master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle.If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, theyare also to be executed.Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt the rascals down.If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with a redhot iron with the letter V on the breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at some other labor.If the vagabond gives a false birthplace, he is then to become the slave for life of this place, of its inhabitants, or its corporation, and to be branded with an S.All persons have the right to take away the children of the vagabonds and to keep them as apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls until the 20th.If they run away, they are to become up to this age the slaves of their masters, who can put them in irons, whip them, &c., if they like.Every master may put an iron ring around the neck, arms or legs of his slave, by which to know him more easily and to be more certain of him.The last part of this statute provides that certain poor people may be employed by a place or by persons, who are willing to give them food and drink and to find them work.This kind of parish-slaves was kept up in England until far into the 19th century under the name of ``roundsmen.''[7]
[7] Vol.i, pp.758, 759.
Page after page and chapter after chapter of facts of this nature, each brought up to illustrate some fatalistic theory which Marx professes to have proved by exact reasoning, cannot but stir into fury any passionate working-class reader, and into unbearable shame any possessor of capital in whom generosity and justice are not wholly extinct.
Almost at the end of the volume, in a very brief chapter, called``Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation,'' Marx allows one moment's glimpse of the hope that lies beyond the present horror:--As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are turned into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialization of labor and further transformation of the land and other means of production into so- cially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form.That which is now to be expropriated is nolonger the laborer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers.This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of capital.One capitalist always kills many, and in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever extending scale, the co-operative form of the labor-process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as the means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime.Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this, too, grows the revolt of the working- class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself.The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it.Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument.This integument is burst asunder.The knell of capitalist private property sounds.The expropriators are expropriated,[8]
[8] Vol.i pp.788, 789.
That is all.Hardly another word from beginning to end is allowed to relieve the gloom, and in this relentless pressure upon the mind of the reader lies a great part of the power which this book has acquired.
