principle that wagedom began, to
end in the glaring inequalities and all the abominations of present
society; because, from the moment work done began to be appraised in
currency, or in any other form of wage, the day it was agreed upon that
man would only receive the wage he should be able to secure to himself,
the whole history of a State-aided Capitalist Society was as good as
written; it was contained in germ in this principle.

Shall we, then, return to our starting-point, and go through the same
evolution again? Our theorists desire it, but fortunately it is
impossible. The Revolution, we maintain, must be communist; if not, it
will be drowned in blood, and have to be begun over again.

Services rendered to society, be they work in factory or field, or
mental services, _cannot be_ valued in money. There can be no exact
measure of value (of what has been wrongly termed exchange value), nor
of use value, in terms of production. If two individuals work for the
community five hours a day, year in year out, at different work which is
equally agreeable to them, we may say that on the whole their labour is
approximately equivalent. But we cannot divide their work, and say that
the result of any particular day, hour, or minute of work of the one is
worth the result of one day, one hour, or one minute of the other.

We may roughly say that the man, who during his lifetime has deprived
himself of leisure during ten hours a day has given far more to society
than the one who has only deprived himself of leisure during five hours
a day, or who has not deprived himself at all. But we cannot take what
he has done during two hours, and say that the yield of his two hours'
work is worth twice as much as the yield of another individual, who has
worked only one hour, and remunerate the two in proportion. It would be
disregarding all that is complex in industry, in agriculture, in the
whole life of present society; it would be ignoring to what extent all
individual work is the result of the past and the present labour of
society as a whole. It would mean believing ourselves to be living in
the Stone Age, whereas we are living in an age of steel.

If you enter a modern coal-mine you will see a man in charge of a huge
machine that raises and lowers a cage. In his hand he holds a lever that
stops and reverses the course of the machine; he lowers it and the cage
reverses its course in the twinkling of an eye; he sends it upwards or
do