(3) Let us now come back from this necessary digression to the question:  What influence can the consumers’ leagues have upon the situation of the working class according to the law of wages discussed under No. 2?  The answer will be a very easy one.

As long as only particular groups of workingmen unite in consumers’ leagues, general wages will not be affected thereby, and the consumers’ leagues will accordingly furnish, through lower prices, to the workingmen who belong to them—­as long as this condition lasts—­that minor relief for the oppressed condition discussed and admitted under No. 1; but as soon as the consumers’ leagues begin to take in more and more the whole working class, then, in consequence of the above-considered law, the inevitable result will follow that the wage, because sustenance has become cheaper through the consumers’ leagues, will drop to just that extent.

The consumers’ leagues can never, even in the slightest degree, help the whole working class, and they can furnish to the single groups of workingmen who compose them the above-considered aid only as long as the example of these workingmen has not been generally followed.  Every day that the consumers’ leagues extend and take in larger numbers of the working class, even this slight relief is lost more and more even for the workingmen who belong to them, until it drops to zero at the time when the consumers’ leagues have been joined by the majority of the whole working class.  Can anybody talk seriously of the working class turning its attention to a means which gives it no aid whatever as a class, and furnishes its individual members this inconsequential relief only until the time when the class as such has completely, or to a large extent, made use of it?  If the German working class is willing to enter upon such a treadmill round, the time before the real improvement of its position will be long indeed.

I have now analyzed all the Schulze-Delitzsch organizations and shown that they do not and can not help you.

What then?  Can not the principle of free individual associations of workingmen effect the improvement of the position of the workingmen?

Certainly it can, but only by its application and extension to the field of factory production.  To make the working class their own employers—­that is the means, the only means, by which, as you can see for yourself, this inexorable and cruel law which determines wages can be abolished.  When the working class is its own employer, the distinction between wages and profits will disappear, and the total yield of the industry will take the place, as the reward of labor, of the bare living wage.

The abolition by this only possible means of that law which under present conditions assigns to the workingman his wages—­that part of the product which is necessary for bare existence—­and the whole remainder to the employer—­this is the only real, non-visionary, just improvement in the position of the working class.