or, what amounts to the same thing,
upon the surplus of the means over the minimum amount of such
necessities. An increased minimum of the absolute necessities of life
brings also sufferings and deprivations which former times never
knew. What deprivation is it to the Hottentot that he cannot buy soap?
What deprivation is it to the cannibal if he cannot wear a decent
coat? What deprivation was it to the workingman, if before the
discovery of America, he had no tobacco to smoke, or if, before the
invention of printing, he could not get a useful book? All human
suffering and deprivation depend only on the proportion of the means
of satisfaction to the needs and customs of living at a given time.
All human suffering and deprivation, and all human satisfactions,
accordingly every human condition, is, therefore, to be measured only
by comparison with the situation of other men of the same period and
their customary necessities of life. The condition of any class is,
therefore, to be measured only by its relation to the condition of
other classes at the same period.

If it were ever so well established, then, that the standard of the
necessaries of life has risen through different periods, that
satisfactions previously unknown have become daily necessities, and
for this reason deprivations and sufferings not before known have
appeared, your social situation has remained at these different
periods always the same, always this--that you are standing on the
verge of the usual minimum necessities of life, sometimes a little
above it, sometimes a little below. Your social position, therefore,
has remained the same, for this social position is reckoned not by its
relation to the position of the beast in primeval forests, or negroes
in Africa, or of the serf in the Middle Ages, or the workingmen of
eighty years ago, but only by the relation of this position to the
position of your fellowmen--to the position of other classes in the
same time.

And instead of taking account of this, instead of considering how this
position can be improved, and how this cruel law, which constantly
keeps you at the lowest verge of the necessities of life, can be
changed, these people amuse themselves by changing the question under
your nose without your perceiving it, and by entertaining you with
very dubious historical retrospects as to the situation of the working
class in previous periods--retrospects which are all the more
questionable because ma