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| Emblem of the SLP of America |
This leaflet was distributed in the 1960s by the Socialist Labor Party of America which is
worth re-posting despite certain flaws in the text.
The Exploitation of
Wage-Labor
This 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.
CAPITALIST ECONOMIC
ILLUSIONS
It is an insidious form of robbery, this capitalist
exploitation. 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 comes out on pay day, lo and behold, he has
a pay check in his hands! If he meets a Socialist and hears the Socialist
attack the capitalist system, he 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."
You see, this worker labors under the illusion that the
capitalist supports him, whereas, as we shall demonstrate, he supports the
capitalist. In this respect he is like the farmer who has not yet learned that
you can raise potatoes without potato bugs.
CAPITALIST
EXPLOITATION SUBTLE
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 ia more subtle. The
worker may perform but one minute operation in the production of a commodity
requiring thousands of operations. Nevertheless, his labor has created new
value equal to his day's wages in the first hour or two on the job and this new
value -- together with the value added by his fellow workers -- is embodied in
the finished product.
UNPAID LABOR
Karl Marx, the great champion of the working class, gave a
name to the part of the working day in which the worker reproduces his wages.
He called it necessary labor time. During the rest of the working day the
worker produces values for which he is not paid, or -- let us call a spade a
spade -- values of which he is robbed! This part of the working day Marx called
surplus labor 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 produces as much as the boss pays him for eight hours of labor.
During the remaining six hours -- surplus labor 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.
EXPLOITATION AND
WAGES
What in the degree of robbery, or exploitation? It varies as
conditions vary in the different countries. In a countrv where more advanced
techniques and methods of production are applied (such as the United States),
the degree of exploitation is greater than it is in less advanced countries. At
first blush 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 labor 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, labor 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.
COMMODITY STATUS OF
LABOR
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, 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 labor time required to produce it. In the case of the commodity labor
power this means that its value is determined by the amount of socially
necessary labor time required to produce the food, clothing, shelter, etc.,
needed to keep the worker in working condition. He gets a 'living wage."
THE TREND:
INTENSIFIED EXPLOITATION
But, note this: The more highly developed a nation is
industrially, 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 labor productivity rises, the
necessary labor time grows shorter, thus lengthening that part of the working
day when the worker produces surplus value.
How the Capitalists Divide the Loot For purposes of
simplification we have used a single worker as an example. Actually, as Daniel
De Leon, the great American Marxist, pointed out, exploitation "is not the
act of any individual capitalist, or set of capitalists, perpetrated upon any
individual workingman or set of workingmen. Exploitation is a class act -- the
act of the whole capitalist class-perpetrated upon a class -- the whole working
class."
Apologists for capitalism sometimes try to refute Socialist
charges of high-degree exploitation in America 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, tax collector, banker, advertising capitalist, insurance company,
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.
CAPITALIST HEADACHE:
DISPOSING OF THE LOOT
Now, let us examine this thievery from another angle. We
measure surplus value in dollars. But the workers do not produce dollars, they
produce commodities -- and a commodity, Marx tells us, is an article that will
satisfy some human want and that is produced for sale. Hence, before the
capitalists can enjov their plunder, they must first find buyers for it. If
they don't get rid of their commodity loot, it accumulates hi the warehouses
and production stagnates.
In wartime the solution is simple. In wartime the surplus steel
goes into tanks, ships and guns. the surplus textiles into uniforms, tents and
bandages, the surplus lumber into training camps, barracks and caskets, and so
on down the line of commodities.
But between capitalist wars -- in the intervening periods of
"peace" -- the capitalists do not have this ready outlet for their
wares. In peacetime they must find other means of disposing of their loot. How
do they do it?
First of all, it is self-evident that the workers do not
consume more than they can buy with their wages. And, as we have shown, this is
just a fraction of what they produce. What happens to the remainder of labor's
vast product?
A part is consumed by the capitalists in prodigal living.
Some capitalists -- the plutocracy -- live in opulence surpassing that of
kings, and often maintain not one palace, but many. In every city the
capitalists form a community of super-consumers. They are the patrons of the
night clubs, the purchasers of costly luxuries, the members of expensive clubs.
Yet despite their prodigality, the capitalists can use up in personal
consumption only a fraction of the immense wealth created by labor and
appropriated by their exploiters.
Another part of this wealth -- a much larger part -- is used
up in running a huge, bureaucratic, capitalist political State. The cost of
running the political State -- including city, county, state and federal
governments -- was somewhat more than $20 billion in 1939. Today the cost of
running the federal government alone runs to more than $65 billion.
Still another part of labor's surplus product goes into
expansion of industry. But while this tends temporarily to relieve the glut,
its ultimate effect is to increase the capacity to produce commodities, hence
to produce surpluses.
CAPITALISM NEEDS
WASTE
Waste is another outlet for the wealth labor produces but
cannot buy back. Some of the waste is incidental to the operation of
capitalism. Take real estate transactions, for example. From the standpoint of
economy these are pure waste. So is insurance. And advertising. None of these
activities creates a penny's worth of value. Then there is the wanton
destruction of surplus crops, and the fantastic waste involved in building
hydrogen bombs and other weapons. And the waste of economic anarchy and duplication
of effort.
Indeed, capitalism thrives best when waste is greatest.
Floods, tornadoes, droughts, hurricanes and other natural disasters may ruin
individual capitalists, but they are a veritable tonic to the capitalist
system, for they help to use up surpluses.
COMPETITION FOR WORLD
TRADE
However, such is the tremendous productivity of the modern
working class that, despite prodigious consumption and waste, surpluses tend to
accumulate, glutting the home market. The only outlet for this surplus is --
the world market.
Foreign markets are to capitalism what a safety valve is to
a steam boiler. Continue to pump steam into a steam boiler that has no safety
valve to release the excess pressure and, sooner or later, something will
break. Similarly with capitalist production. Under a system of production for
sale and profit, the foreign markets must drain off the surplus or it will pile
up, cause economic stagnation at home, and, ultimately result in capitalist
collapse.
All industrial countries, Communist as well as capitalist,
are competing for a world market that, instead of growing larger, tends to
shrink as economically backward countries industrialize and establish their own
systems of exploitation. Inevitably the rivals in this economic war encroach
upon each other's markets and sources of raw materials, creating international
friction and hatred. For a time the weapons of trade -- tariffs, barter deals,
import quotas, etc. -- are invoked. But ultimately such weapons are inadequate.
The struggle that begins in commerce ends in -- WAR!
SOCIALIST SANITY
Capitalist rulers have no ears for the voice of Socialist
sanity. For Socialism -- not the phony "Socialism" of Soviet Russia,
which is really a system of bureaucratic despotism, but real Socialism -- would
not only put an end to the periodic wars for capitalist survival -- it would
also put an end to capitalist robbery of the working class. By raising the worker out of his commodity
status to that of a free human being with a voice and vote in the administration
of industry, by guaranteeing to every producer the full social value of the
product, in abort, by replacing capitalist anarchy and exploitation with
Socialist cooperation and harmony, the world could be made into a veritable
paradise of peace and plenty.
But capitalist rulers, blinded by their class and material
interests, reject this. Whatever betides, they choose capitalism with its
inevitable struggle for world trade and raw material sources, with its
inevitable war. Not even the hydrogen bomb with its threat of human
annihilation can prevent this ultimate outcome if capitalism is allowed to
remain the ruling principle of society.
What the capitalist rulers and Communist bureaucrats are
incapable of learning, the toilers of the world must learn --
There can be no peace without Socialism!
The capitalist system is the first in which a surplus of
useful things is looked upon, not as a blessing, but as a curse. Below are
depicted the various methods whereby the capitalists dispose of the fantastic
volume of commodities the modern wage-slave class produces. It is impossible,
of course, to determine accurately the proportion of labor's product used up in
waste, or through expensive living by the capitalists, or in other ways, and
the drawing is intended to convey this only in general terms. It should also be
noted that the workers are many, the capitalists few,, and, though the working
class may consume more in living, its per capita consumption is but a fraction
of that of its exploiters than one and one-half per cent of all families had
incomes of $15,000 and over. More than 8,300,000 families received under
$2,000. Another 5,000,000 got from $2,000 to $3,000. At least half the U.S.
population is near the ragged edge.
The capitalist class, as a class, robs the working class, as
a class. The individual capitalist exploiter does not pocket the whole loot
taken from the workers. Out of the wealth the workers produce come rent,
interest, fees for insurance, advertising, etc., taxes and the "pay-off"
for corrupt politicians, criminals and other hangers-on of capitalism who in
one way or another serve capitalist interests. When workers read of the net
profits of corporations, small or large, they should always bear in mind that
these represent only a fraction of the total plunder. The "pie" above
is suggestive and does not pretend to convey the real proportions in which
labor's product is divided.
