United States or Oman ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But the amount of capital and labor that can be profitably applied to a given area of land, the intensity of farming, increases very rapidly. The former self-employing farmer, everywhere encouraged by governments, soon comes to employ steadily one or more laborers.
The general rise in wages will destroy the profits of many farmer employers, and it will offer to the smallest self-employing farmers the possibility of an income as wage earners so much larger, and conditions so much better, than anything they can hope for as independent producers that they will cease to prefer self-employment.
Indeed, the "progressive" capitalists everywhere favor either small self-employing farmers or national ownership and leases for long terms and in small allotments, and as "State Socialism" advances it will unquestionably lean towards the latter system.
For such Socialists would not be satisfied merely to demand the abolition of private landlordism and unemployment as the Appeal does in this instance, since both of these "institutions" are already marked for destruction by "State capitalism," but would plan public employment at wages so high as to make private employment unprofitable and all but impossible, so high that the self-employing farmer even would more and more frequently prefer to quit his farm and go to work on a municipal, State, or county farm.
Not only would there be no need of coercive legislative measures, but the automatic pressure would be, not that of misery or bankruptcy pressing the self-employing farmer from behind, but of a larger income and better conditions drawing the majority forward to more developed and social forms of production.
Socialists also favor the nationalization of the land, but without the expropriation of self-employing farmers, as these are felt to be more sinned against than sinning. "The proletarian governmental power would have absolutely no inclination to take over such little businesses.
The capital owned is so small that it may be compared in value with the skilled worker's trade education, especially when we consider the small return it brings in, allowing for wages for the farmer and his family. Two widely different policies are for these reasons adopted by all reformers when dealing with large agricultural estates and small self-employing farmers.
In the United States the Party has definitely decided by a large majority, in a referendum vote, that it does not intend to try to disturb the self-employing farmer in any way in his occupation and use of the land.
All agricultural reforms may be viewed not only in their relation to existing small farmers, but as to their effect on the increase or decrease of the relative proportions of small self-employing farmers, of employing farmers, and of agricultural laborers.
First, the labor unions represent manual wage earners almost exclusively not by intention, but as a matter of fact. They include only an infinitesimal proportion of small employers, self-employing artisans, or salaried employees. Second, the unions by no means include all the manual wage earners, and only in a few industries do they include a majority.
Word Of The Day