Read "The Conquest of Bread" by Peter Kropotkin online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The most prominent characteristic of our present capitalism is the wage system, which in brief amounts to this: --
A man, or a group of men, possessing the necessary capital, starts some industrial enterprise; he undertakes to supply the factory or workshops with raw material, to organize production, to pay the employees a fixed wage, and lastly, to pocket the surplus value or profits, under pretext of recouping himself for managing the concern, for running the risks it may involve, and for the fluctuations of price in the market value of the wares.