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and yet be obliged to to work, say,

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 his wages 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 laboring power the capitalist has acquired the right of using that laboring power during the whole day or week. He will, therefore, make him work say, daily, twelve hours. Over and above the six hours required to replace his wages, or the value of his laboring power, 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 three shillings' value to the cotton, a value forming an exact equivalent 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 labor

ing 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.

another six hours to

create a

surplus product for the

By this

process the

capitalist

lives on the produce

which the

By repeating this same process daily, the capitalist will daily advance three shillings and daily pocket six shillings, one-half of which 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. . .

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75. The capitalist exploits the laborer1

creates.

talist a

parasite.

In the above selection Marx claims that although both laborers The capiand capitalists are intimately connected with the productive process, 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:

1 From Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto. London,

Capitalism means low wages.

The laborer is a slave.

The lower strata of the middle

class tend

to sink into

the proletariat.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to the division of labor, the work of the proletarians1 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.

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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

1 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.

geoisie as unfit

rulers of "slaves."

of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops The bourmore rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class 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. . . .

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...

trine of class

and its inevitable

result.

It is clear, from the foregoing selection, that Marx and Engels The docconsidered the interests of the working classes to be in opposition to those of the group which they call capitalistic. Indeed, they struggle went further, and declared that all history is the record of struggles between various classes. This tendency to class struggle they attempted 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 struggles.

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. .

of class struggle.

under cap

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.

1 From Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto. London,

and the part played

therein by the bourgeoisie.

The proletariat destined to destroy the bourgeoisie.

Early stages of the struggle.

The struggle becomes national.

Function of the Communists.

The call for revolution.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, callous, "cash payment." . . . It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom free trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons the modern working class—the proletarians.

...

The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual laborers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. . . . At this stage the laborers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition.

...

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies not in the immediate result but in the ever improved means of communication that are created in modern industry and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes.

...

In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? . . .` The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat. . . .

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They

openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling class tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Workingmen of all countries unite!

77. Immediate aims of American socialism 1

among the various

socialist

Since the days of Marx socialism has broken up into a large num- Fundamental ber of groups, known under widely varying names, and professing unity of principles which show considerable diversity. And yet the teachpurpose ings of these various organizations are fundamentally the same. In every case the doctrines of Karl Marx constitute the basis of these teachings, and in every case the immediate aim is the same as that expressed by Marx: the abolition of society as it exists to-day. The following preamble to the constitution of the Socialist Party of America may be taken as typical of the immediate aims of American socialism:

groups.

[This organization] is the political expression of the interests of Preamble to the workers in this country, and is part of the international workingclass movement.

the constitution of

the Social

America:

The economic basis of present-day society is the private ownership ist Party of and control of the socially necessary means of production, and the exploitation of the workers who operate these means of production for the profit of those who own them.

of class struggle.

The interests of these classes are diametrically opposed. It is the The basis interest of the capitalist class to maintain the present system and to obtain for themselves the largest possible share of the product of labor. It is the interest of the working class to improve their conditions of life and get the largest possible share of their own product so long as the present system prevails, and to end this system as quickly as they can.

In so far as the members of the opposing classes become conscious of these facts, each strives to advance its own interest as against the other. It is this active conflict which we describe as class struggle. The capitalist class, by controlling the old political parties, con1 From the Socialist Party of America, Preamble to the National Constitution.

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