working class which does find employment reduces the price of that labor-power which is employed without thereby gaining any employment for itself. While the value of labor-power is determined by the amount of labor necessary for its re-production, that is, the amount of necessaries consumed by the workingmen, this amount is by no means a fixed quantity. It depends on the standard of life of the working class as it has developed in the course of its historical existence in a given country. But this standard, being a product of historical forces, may be raised or lowered. The existence of the "reserve" army, the process of the accumulation of capital which produced it, tends to lower this standard and it needs hard fighting to keep it up, not to speak of raising it. Besides, making, as it does, the workingman the sport of every turn of the fortunes of capitalistic production, absolutely insecure in whatever livelihood he does get by reason of the fierce competition of his fellow-workers, and therefore dependent on the whim and caprice of his capitalist employer, it tends to degrade his morale, break in him all manifestations of the spirit of independence, and to make of him a servile tool of his capitalistic master.
But right here in its influence on its first requisite, a free working-class, we encounter the contradictory nature of capitalistic development. The very processes which tend to reduce the workingman's wages, and to lower and degrade him, bring into life those conditions which enable him to forge the weapons by which he can not only successfully withstand the hurtful tendencies of capitalistic development, but which are destined to work the wonders of his salvation from wage-slavery,—the economic and political organization of the working class. The introduction of those very new machines which threw so many workingmen out of employment and so largely increased the "reserve" army, has laid the physical foundation for the organization of the working class by bringing great masses of workingmen together and by rubbing off all differences between
