VI. The Future of Capital and Human Labor

In earlier lectures, I have already pointed out what the main point is. One could say that two main points of socialism as a whole lie in two demands, to which a third then arises as a matter of course, as a self-evident consequence. They lie, firstly, in the demand, which has already been discussed today in the context of capital, in the demand that in the future the capital invested in the means of production should no longer be property. Capital is divested of its property character. Secondly, in the future, labor must no longer be a commodity. That is to say, in the future socialist or social society, in the healthy social organism, the wage relationship will cease to exist. Labor or labor power must no longer be a commodity. The person who does manual labor produces as a partner with the intellectual worker in the way that has already been characterized. There is no labor contract, there is only a contract for the division of services. This can only be achieved if the worker faces the supervisor as a completely free human being, that is, if he is able to determine the extent, time, and type of his labor on a completely different basis than that of the economic order, if he is free to dispose of himself as a whole person before entering into a contractual relationship.