Why we are angry

In a socialist society, there will be no wage system where the workers receive in wages only a fraction of the value of the goods they produce.  We shall produce for use, rather than for sale with a view to profit for private capitalists. We shall produce the things we want and need rather than the things for which a market exists in which the goods we produce are sold for the profit of the private owners.

Socialism is the story of a robbery so colossal that it defies measurement. Compared with it the prizes, loot, and spoils taken by all the pirates, buccaneers and freebooters of history are a mere bagatelle. The robbery is confined neither by time nor space. It is continuous, unremitting. It proceeds wherever society is divided into classes, wherever one class owns the instruments of production to which another class, owning no tools of its own, must have access in order to live. There is nothing illegal about this robbery. Under the capitalist system, it is considered the normal "way of life." But it is robbery nonetheless. For the capitalist class uses its ownership and control of the factories, land, railroads, etc., in the same way that a highwayman uses his gun -- to extract a tribute from its victims. It is an insidious form of robbery.

It abounds in illusions. For example, there is the illusion that conceals the real source of wages and makes the capitalist exploiter appear to be a sort of benign philanthropist. The worker goes into the factory on Monday morning empty-handed, but, when he or she comes out on payday, lo and behold, he or she has a paycheck in his hands! If he or she meets a socialist and hears the socialist attack the capitalist system, he or she might say: "Don't attack my boss. I'm getting little enough as it is. I wouldn't get anything if he were put out of business." see, this worker is under the illusion that the capitalist supports him or her, whereas, as we shall demonstrate, it is we who supports the capitalist.

Why is the worker the victim of this illusion? What goes on inside the factory that conceals from him the true state of affairs? What goes on is simply this: In the first hour or two that he is on the job the worker produces in the form of new values as much as he is paid in wages for the entire working day. Of course, the worker has no way of knowing this. When the serf of feudal times was forced to yield part of what he produced to the feudal lord, he knew he was being robbed. But capitalist robbery is more subtle. The worker may perform but one-minute operation in the production of a commodity requiring thousands of operations. Nevertheless, the labour has created new value equal to a day's wages in the first hour or two on the job. and this new value -- together with the value added by fellow workers -- is embodied in the finished product.

 Marx called the part of the working day in which the worker reproduces wages “necessary labour time”. During the rest of the working day the worker produces values not paid. This part of the working day Marx called “surplus labour time”. For purposes of simplification, take the case of a worker who sells his labor power -- to be expended in eight hours -- for the price of $15. The first two hours of his working day are necessary labor time. In these two hours, he or she produces as much as the boss pays him for eight hours of labour. During the remaining six hours -- surplus labour time -- he produces three times as much or $45 worth of new values. In the science of political economy we call the wealth that the worker produces, but of which he is robbed - surplus value.

What is the degree of robbery, or exploitation? It varies as conditions vary in the different countries. In a country, where more advanced techniques and methods of production are applied (such as the UK, USA or the EU), the degree of exploitation is greater than it is in less advanced countries. At first, this may seem contradictory. Why you may ask, should workers who are more productive receive less proportionately of what they produce than workers who are not so productive? The answer is simply that wages are not determined by what the worker produces. Leaving aside their temporary rise and fall due to fluctuations of supply and demand in the labour market, wages are determined by what it costs the worker to live and raise a new crop of wage slaves to take his place when he dies or is thrown on the scrap heap. Everyone is familiar with the expression a "living wage." Our grandfathers got a "living wage"; our fathers got a "living wage": and. normally, we get a "living wage." Thus, in terms of food, clothing, shelter, etc., we receive substantially what our grandfathers did. Yet we produce vastly more than our grandfathers and considerably more than our fathers. Why, then, haven't we advanced beyond the "living wage" concept? The answer is that we cannot advance beyond this concept, no matter how much our productivity increases, as long as capitalism lasts. And the reason is that, under capitalism, labour power is a commodity, an article of merchandise, whose price is governed by the same economic laws that govern the price of any other commodity.

Price may fluctuate according to the supply of a commodity and the demand for it in the market. Just as a pendulum swings back and forth, but is always drawn toward the center by gravitation, the price may go up or down -- but always it oscillates around its value in accord with the economic law of value. In other words, price, in the long run, coincides with value. And the value of any commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour time required to produce it. In the case of the commodity labour power this means that its value is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour time required to produce the food, clothing, shelter, etc., needed to keep the worker in working condition. He or she gets a 'living wage."

But, note: The more highly developed a nation is industrial, the less labor time is required to produce the workers' necessities. Hence, instead of the workers' share of their product increasing proportionately as their productivity rises, it is the other way around. As new methods and techniques -- such as automation -- are introduced, the articles workers consume are cheapened and wages fall accordingly. Thus the workers' relative wages (what they receive in relation to what they produce) tend to fall as productivity rises. In other words, as labour productivity rises, the necessary labour time grows shorter, thus lengthening that part of the working day when the worker produces surplus value. Apologists for capitalism sometimes try to refute socialist charges of high-degree exploitation by pointing to the net profits of corporations. But socialists have never contended that the corporations pocket all the surplus value their workers produce. On the contrary, socialists point out that before a capitalist can count his net profits he must pay off the landlord, government tax collector, the bankers' interest, advertising capitalist, insurance and all the other parasites on parasites. By the time taxes, interest, rent, etc., are deducted, net profits of the immediate capitalist exploiter may be only a fraction of the surplus value of which workers are robbed. But this in no way disputes the fact that the working class is robbed by the capitalist class of wealth so vast that it defies measurement.

Exploitation is not the act of any individual capitalist or set of capitalists, perpetrated upon any individual worker or set of workers. Exploitation is a class act -- the act of the whole capitalist class-perpetrated upon a class -- the whole working class.