HOW THE “ROBBING” IS DONE
My dear Mr. Smith,
After asserting that labor produces all value, and “showing” that
the laborer receives but a very small portion of the value which he
produces, Marx tells us that this unpaid-for labor--the labor-strength
and time of which the worker is robbed--is used by the Capitalist Class
(Marx’s term for the employer) in the further robbery of the worker.
This unpaid-for labor Marx calls “surplus value,” and he includes
under this term everything that the worker does not get in his own
pay-envelope--dividends, interest, rents and profits of all kinds.
Of course, nobody will deny that “surplus value”--or, more correctly,
profit--may exist in industry. If the employer could not reap more from
the industry than the mere equivalent of wages paid, it would not be to
his interest to keep on paying wages. But the “surplus value” to which
I refer, and the thing that Marx means when he talks about “surplus
value,” are entirely different.
To admit that Marx is right in his definition of surplus value, we
must first come to the conclusion that the worker is entitled to all
the value that is produced, and, as we have already seen, this is not
so. If it is not so, what has become of Marx’s surplus-value theory?
There may be industrial injustices; there are many instances in which
employers fail to pay those who work for them a just wage. I am willing
to admit that there are numerous cases of this kind. If I thought it
would add to the strength of my argument to particularize, I could
name many unjust employers. But it would do no good. Between the
abuses committed by individual capitalists and the “awful crimes of
capitalism” which Socialism depicts, there is a difference as great as
the distance from pole to pole.
According to Marx’s theory, if a laborer can produce something equal to
the amount of his wage in six hours of work, the value of the product
which he turns out during the other six hours in his work-day is stolen
from him. “The extra six hours,” says Marx, “I shall call _surplus
labor_, which realizes itself in a _surplus product_ having a _surplus
value_” (“Capital,” p. 178).
Have I made this clear, John? Do you see what Marx is driving at--that,
when you are helping your employer to pay his rent, the interest on the
money he has borrowed that he might keep you at work, the dividends to
his stockholders, or the profit to himself, you are helping him to rob
you--actually contributing to the robbery of yourself?
The soap-box orator will talk to you by the hour about surplus value.
He will tell you that it makes no difference how much money there is
in your pay-envelope. So long as it does not contain every cent of
your employer’s profit, you are being “robbed.” “No wage can ever be
fair compensation for a day’s work!” he shouts. “Before there can be
justice on earth, the making of goods for profit must come to an end,
for this is the ‘tap-root’ from which all the evils of Society develop.
No dividends! No Interest! No Rents! No Profits! In a word, no Surplus
Value!”
Marx, like the soap-boxer on the corner, includes all profits in the
category of robbery and exploitation. He admits that labor can do
nothing without capital, but he contends that capital itself is the
product of past labor and, therefore, ought rightfully to belong to the
laborers of the present day. “Capital,” he says, “is dead labor, that,
vampire-like, lives by sucking living labor” (“Capital,” p. 134).
In this we have the assumption that all labor is performed by
“laborers” of the propertyless class, and that all capital is owned by
“capitalists.”
This, as you know, is not true.
There are plenty of laborers who have a respectable little store of
capital laid by for the proverbial rainy day, and many of them own
stock in the very concern that employs them. Not every man who lives
by the labor of his hands is existing on the verge of starvation, as
Socialists would have you believe, nor is it true that all labor is
performed by the “laboring class.” Many so-called “capitalists” are
truly sons of toil, the performers of manual labor and the producers of
wealth, even as Marx would define a “producer.”
But, let us stop generalizing, and get down to cases.
Marx says that all profit is robbery and exploitation. As an example of
the utter absurdity of this theory, let me cite an illustration which
Mr. G. W. de Tunzelmann once used in a debate with a prominent English
Socialist.
He took the case of a man who buys a diamond for $498,000. The man pays
$2,000 to the diamond-cutter for cutting the stone, and, finally, sells
it for $550,000, making a 10 per cent. profit upon his outlay. If Marx
argues rightly, this sum of $50,000 was obtained by robbery, but--who
was robbed? Was it the diamond-cutter who was defrauded of a portion of
his wages? Should the entire $52,000 have gone to him for his part in
the transaction, while the capitalist got nothing?
The Socialist who was debating with Mr. de Tunzelmann found it
impossible to answer this question intelligibly. “If the $50,000 did
not come from the diamond-cutter’s wages, where did it come from?” was
all he could say, and, John, it is all that any Socialist can say!
Then, here is an illustration from my own experience:
I have a friend who bought a painting from a young artist, paying
$300 for it. This was a very fair price to pay for the picture. The
artist was well satisfied with his bargain and my friend felt that the
work of art was well worth $300 to him. Several years passed, and the
comparatively obscure artist became a famous artist--so famous that
there were lots of people who wanted to buy his pictures, and my friend
found that he could sell his painting and get $2,000 for it.
May we again ask: Who was robbed? The man who painted the picture
received its full value at the time; the man who bought the picture
from my friend was satisfied that he got good value for his money. If
Marx is right, my friend robbed somebody to the extent of $1,700. But
whom did he rob?
As we have already seen, the value of an article is chiefly a
matter of utility as adfected (raised or lowered) by difficulty of
attainment--not the worker’s “difficulty of attainment,” not the
time and effort he had to expend to produce this article, but your
“difficulty of attainment,” or the effort you must make to secure it.
The part that the worker plays in the production of a commodity is of
minor importance when compared with the other factors which operate
in determining its value. It is the employer, and not the worker,
who assumes all the risk. It is the directing genius, and not the
mere physical force used in operating the industry, that determines
whether it shall succeed or fail. If this were not true, every business
enterprise would be a success, for it would be nothing more than the
proposition of getting money and men together and setting them to work.
But you know that this is not what happens in real life.
Mr. Hyndman, the celebrated English Socialist, attempts to say that
such a thing is possible. In his manual of Socialism he asks us to
believe that a man who has $50,000 would find it a very simple matter
to live permanently by robbing other men of part of the products
of their labor. This man, he tells us, merely buys a mill of some
kind--_doesn’t it matter what kind of a mill he buys?_--employs a
manager and the necessary number of operatives, and then sits down and
lets the wheels go round. Don’t smile, John, for this is precisely what
Mr. Hyndman tells us the man does. “He has nothing to do but sit still
and watch the mill go,” he asserts, naively (see Mallock’s “Socialism,”
p. 13).
Do you believe this? Socialists do. As a practical man, do you imagine
that any one method of employing capital will be just as successful
as any other? If the laborer produces all value, and an article is
valuable simply because of the labor there is in it, Mr. Hyndman and
his master, Karl Marx, and the soap-box orator, who is telling you how
to solve all of life’s problems by voting for the candidates on the
Socialist ticket, are right. If this is not true, they are wrong, and
you can’t get away from this conclusion. One might as well argue that
an engine is sufficient unto itself and needs neither working capital
in the form of fuel nor the directing hand of the engineer.
There is another class of “capitalists” who receive comparatively
little attention from the Socialists. These are the employers who make
no profits upon their investment, who purchase material and pay their
workers’ wages and who do not earn enough to reimburse themselves for
their outlay. The commercial agencies which report business conditions
have records of many such cases. Men go into business and fail; people
put their money into stock companies and never receive dividends. The
work is done; the labor is performed; but there is no surplus value of
which the worker may be “robbed.” In this case are we to assume that
the unfortunate investors are robbed by their workmen?
Marx maintains that all capitalists are robbers. Are we therefore
to believe that all capitalists are successful? We cannot deny that
capital, and even the product of labor, may be transferred by the
process of robbery. Before there can be any robbery, however, the
capital or the value of the product must exist, and it is beyond the
power of labor to call either _capital_ or _value_ into being.