since sophists have endeavoured to give a false idea of it.
(1) Marx speaks of society as if it were divided into two fundamentally antagonistic groups; observation, it has often been urged, does not justify this division, and it is true that a certain effort of will is necessary before we can find it verified in the phenomena of everyday life.
The organisation of a capitalistic workshop furnishes a first approximation, and piece-work plays an essential part in the formation of the class idea; in fact, it throws into relief the very clear opposition of interests about the price of commodities;[1] the workers feel themselves under the thumb of the employers in the same way that peasants feel themselves in the power of the merchants and the money-lenders of the towns; history shows that no economic opposition has been more clearly felt than the latter; since civilisation has existed, country and town have formed two hostile camps.[2] Piece-work also shows that in the wage-earning world there is a group of men somewhat analogous to the retail shopkeepers, possessing the confidence of the employer, and not belonging to the proletariat class.
The strike throws a new light on all this; it separates the interests and the different ways of thinking of the two groups of wage-earners—the foremen clerks, engineers, etc., as contrasted with the workmen who alone go on strike—much better than the daily circumstances of life do; it then becomes clear that the administrative group has a natural tendency to become a little aristocracy;
- ↑ I do not know whether the learned (economists and other people who make inquiries on social conditions) have always quite understood the function of piece-work. It is evident that the well-known formula, "the producer should be able to buy back his product," arose from reflections on the subject of piece-work.
- ↑ "It may be said that the economic history of society turns on this antithesis,"—of town and country (Capital, vol. i. p. 152, col. 1).
