these
manufacturers is, and must necessarily be, absolutely planless. This
planless production must end in the market being overstocked with
commodities of one kind or another; that is, that it must end in
'over-production.' In the trade which has been thus overdone, prices
fall and wages come down; or a great manufacturer fails and a smaller
or greater number of workmen are discharged. Crises are therefore the
direct result of private enterprise."[208] "Why are men--men that is
who are able and willing, nay, eager and anxious, to work--unemployed?
Because, it is said, there is nothing for them to do. Nothing for them
to do? Is all the necessary work of the world, then, already finished,
so that there is nothing more remaining for anyone to do? No; it is
not because all the necessary and useful work is done that men are
unemployed, it is because all the means of production--all the
machines, tools, and implements of labour and all the raw
material--are owned by a class, and may only be used by permission of
that class, and when that class can make a profit out of their
use."[209] "It is indisputable that modern poverty is artificial. It
is neither the result of divine anger nor the niggardliness of Nature.
It is the product of the private ownership of land and capital by
which men are prevented from earning their living unless the
proprietary class can make profit from their labour. The inevitable
result of this system is that in all industries and at all times there
are more men seeking employment than there is employment for.[210]"
"Your system of private ownership, in conferring the possession and
control of the nation's storehouse of wealth and of the instruments by
which all further wealth must be obtained from it, upon your
capitalist class, has reduced the nation at large into nothing more
nor less than an elaborate machine which your capitalists use for
extracting wealth from the earth for their own benefit.... It is not
well that by a foolish and wicked system of government, one small
class of the community should be enabled to organise its production in
such a manner that the full stream of wealth is diverted into their
own possession whilst the mass of the nation by whose labour it is
obtained are defrauded of it, and brought into a state of subtle
slavery worse both in kind and degree than could be possible under any
system of direct and open slavery."[211] "Unemployment is an
inevitable feature of capitali