OUR HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

The Socialist Party works for a society in which the workers will commonly own their collective products, without parasites leeching off their toil.

 The key to understanding how the working class is robbed is to recognize that wages do not reflect the value of the workers' product. Wages are the price of workers' labor power, or ability to work. Under capitalism, workers, in order to make a living, must sell their labour power, as a commodity, on a labour market, in which the capitalists are the buyers. Under capitalism, there are certain economic laws -- principally, the law of value -- that govern the price of commodities. Like other commodities, labour power has a definite exchange value, around which the price (wages) will tend to gravitate, despite the fluctuations of supply and demand.

Basically, the economic laws of capitalism operate such that workers, on average, receive a "living wage." There are variations for different kinds of labor power, of course -- an engineer will tend to command a higher wage than a farmworker. But on the whole, workers, when employed, receive just enough to support themselves and raise a new generation of workers. However, the value of workers' labour power and the value of workers' product are two different things. Under capitalism, workers create much more value than they receive in the form of wages.

Typically, in an 8-hour workday, the value of the products that workers create in about the first 1-1/2 to 2 hours of work will equal their wages. For the other 6 to 6-1/2 hours, workers are creating surplus value -- value, in the form of real wealth, which goes to the capitalist class, not for working, but for "owning." That is what socialists mean when they say that the capitalist class exploits the working class.

It is out of this surplus value that the capitalists make their profits, after they pay off any other capitalists owed rent, interest, advertising fees, etc., and pay the taxes needed to support the government. Remember: The real battle facing the working class has nothing to do with taxes. The real battle is to put an end to the robbery of the working class by the capitalist class so that workers can collectively take possession of the full value of their labour.

Everyone is a consumer, but only the workers are producers, and the workers are robbed by the capitalists who buy their labour power for wages and who appropriate the product of their labour. Wages are determined by the price that labour power fetches as a commodity in the market, and this price fluctuates according to supply and demand. The workers ARE robbed as producers. Apart from a few exceptional instances of cheating, they are NOT robbed as consumers. Workers who take a dollar to the grocery store normally get a dollar's worth of groceries in exchange. They get the same amount of groceries for their dollar that the capitalists, who are also consumers, get for theirs. In long run, however, the price of labour power (wages) coincides with its value -- and its value is equal to the amount of labour (measured in labour hours and minutes) that is embodied in what workers consume to keep themselves in working condition. In everyday language, the worker normally gets a living wage. This is the key to the robbery that goes on under capitalism. And it is precisely for this reason that The Socialist Party focuses attention on the worker's wage-slave status and the need to alter this status. When, under socialism, the workers cease to be robbed of the major portion of their product they will be enabled to consume in proportion to what they produce, but not until then.

On the whole, workers are not cheated as buyers of merchandise. They are cheated as producers of merchandise. Marxian science demonstrates that when the workers sell their labor power to the capitalists they receive a wage that amounts to only a fraction of the value of the new wealth their labor creates. The cheating, the legal robbing of the workers, consists of the capitalists' appropriating the workers' products and paying them only a fraction of the value of these products in wages. The fact is that the workers are robbed at the point of production. The robbery of the working class by the capitalist class is a class act. As a class (exclusive of all other layers in society) the workers are robbed as wealth producers. As a class, they must organise on class lines to abolish the robber system, capitalism. It is important for the workers to understand that they have no interests in common with the capitalist class and its various reformers. Yet, if the workers were robbed as consumers, they would have interests in common with everyone, since everyone is obviously a consumer. If the workers are deluded into thinking they are robbed as consumers they inevitably become victims of reforms and reformers, and the real robbery -- the robbery at the point of production -- goes on unabated. On the other hand, when the workers understand how and where they are robbed, the solution is clearly indicated. It is not reform, but revolution, the complete abolition of capitalism with its wage system and exploitation.