skilful the laborer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because but value more time would be required in its production. The labor,

is measured however,

only by the that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labor, amount of expenditure of one uniform labor power. The total labor-power of labor which

is socially society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all com- necessary to modities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous

produce the

commodity mass of human labor-power, composed though it be of innumerable in question. individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labor-power of society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity no more time than is needed on an average, no more than is socially necessary.

The labor-time socially necessary is that required to produce an An example. article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. The introduction of power looms into England probably reduced by onehalf the labor required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of their labor represented after the change only half an hour's social labor, and consequently fell to one-half its former value.

We see then that that which determines the magnitude of the Conclusion. value of any article is the amount of labor socially necessary, or the labor-time socially necessary, for its production. . . . Commodities, therefore, in which equal quantities of labor are embodied, or which can be produced in the same time, have the same value. ...

74. The laborer creates all value 1

Marx built a complex system of socialist philosophy upon the Significance principle stated in the foregoing selection. Omitting the complexities of the prin

ciple stated and qualifications which accompany his further statement of this above. principle, he believed commodities to have value in proportion as socially necessary labor has been expended upon them. This conclusion arrived at, Marx next asserted that it is the laborer, and the

amount in

laborer alone, who is responsible for the value of commodities. This

second point he developed in the following language: Suppose a Now suppose that the average amount of the daily necessaries of laborer

a laboring man require six hours of average labor for their production. needs three shillings to Suppose, moreover, six hours of average labor to be also realized support himself for

in a quantity of gold equal to three shillings. Then three shillings a single would be the price, or the monetary expression of the daily value day, and

of that man's laboring power. If he worked daily six hours he would that he can earn this

daily produce a value sufficient to buy the average amount of his

daily necessaries, or to maintain himself as a laboring man. six hours.

But our man is a wages laborer. He must, therefore, sell his He sells his laboring laboring power to a capitalist. If he sells it at three shillings daily, power to the capital

or eighteen shillings weekly, he sells it at its value. Suppose him to ist for three be a spinner. If he works six hours daily he will add to the cotton shillings.

a value of three shillings daily. This value, daily added by him, would be an exact equivalent for the wages, or the price of his laboring power, received daily. But in that case no surplus value or surplus produce whatever would go to the capitalist. Here, then, we come

to the rub. But the In buying the laboring power of the workmen, and paying its latter makes value, the capitalist, like every other purchaser, has acquired the the laborer work more right to consume or use the commodity bought. You consume or than three

use the laboring power of a man by making him work, as you consume shillings' worth, i.e. or use a machine by making it run. By buying the daily or weekly more than

value of the laboring power of the workman, the capitalist has, theresix hours.

fore, acquired the right to use or make that laboring power work during the whole day or week. . .

[Now] the value of the laboring power is determined by the quantity of labor necessary to maintain or reproduce it, but the use of that laboring power is only limited by the active energies and physical strength of the laborer. The daily or weekly value of the laboring power is quite distinct from the daily or weekly exercise of that power, the same as the food a horse wants and the time it can carry the horseman are quite distinct. The quantity of labor by which the value of the workman's laboring power is limited forms by no means a limit to the quantity of labor which his laboring power is apt to perform.

Take the example of our spinner. We have seen that, to repro

his wages

duce daily his laboring power, he must daily reproduce a value of The laborer three shillings, which he will do by working six hours daily. But may earn this does not disable him from working ten or twelve or more hours in six hours a day. But by paying the daily or weekly value of the spinner's and yet be

obliged to laboring power the pitalist has acquired the right of using that to work, say,

another six laboring power during the whole day or week. He will, therefore,

hours to make him work say, daily, twelve hours. Over and above the six hours create a

surplus prodrequired to replace his wages, or the value of his laboring power,

uct for the he will, therefore, have to work six other hours, which surplus labor capitalist. will realize itself in a surplus value and a surplus produce.

If our spinner, for example, by his daily labor of six hours, added By this three shillings' value to the cotton, a value forming an exact equiva- capitalist

process the lent to his wages, he will, in twelve hours, add six shillings' worth to the cotton, and produce a proportional surplus of yarn. As he has sold his laboring power to the capitalist, the whole value or produce created by him belongs to the capitalist, the owner ... of his laboring power. By advancing three shillings, the capitalist will, therefore, realize a value of six shillings, because, advancing a value in which six hours of labor are crystallized, he will receive in return a value in which twelve hours of labor are crystallized.

By repeating this same process daily, the capitalist will daily ad- lives on the vance three shillings and daily pocket six shillings, one-half of which produce

which the will go to pay wages anew, and the other half of which will form laborer surplus value, for which the capitalist pays no equivalent. It is this alone sort of exchange between capital and labor upon which capitalistic production, or the wages system, is founded. ...

creates.

76. The capitalist exploits the laborer1 In the above selection Marx .claims that although both laborers The capi

talist a and capitalists are intimately connected with the productive process,

parasite. the value of the commodities produced is due entirely to the activities of the laborers. The capitalist is a parasite who has fastened himself upon the laborers and lives by exploiting them. In the celebrated Communist Manifesto, published in 1848 by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, this view is developed as follows:

Capitalism means low wages.

.

The laborer is a slave.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to the division of labor, the work of the proletarians 1 has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted almost entirely to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labor, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.

Modern industry has converted the little work-shop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State, they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. ...

No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer so far at an end that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The lower strata of the middle class - the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants -- all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, [and] .partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population. ...

The modern laborer, . . . instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence

i Socialists make extended use of the terms “proletariat” and “bourgeoisie.” By proletariat Marx meant the class of modern wage-laborers, who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live. By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, the owners of the means of production, and the employers of wage-earners.

of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops The bour

geoisie as more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes

unfit evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class rulers of

“slaves." in society and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie; in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society. .

1

76. The doctrine of class struggle It is clear, from the foregoing selection, that Marx and Engels The doc

trine of considered the interests of the working classes to be in opposition

class to those of the group which they call capitalistic. Indeed, they struggle

and its went further, and declared that all history is the record of struggles

inevitable between various classes. This tendency to class struggle they at- result. tempted to trace historically, and to connect with the present-day antagonism between the "wage-slave" and the capitalist. In the following selection, Marx and Engels develop the idea of class struggle, and conclude that it must inevitably result in the forcible overthrow of capitalism by the working classes: The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class Universality

of class struggles.

struggle. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. . . .

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeois, possesses, however, this Class distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society struggle as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, italism, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat. .