Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/92

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AMERICAN SYNDICALISM

words, which I put in italics, appear in large capital letters in his pamphlet. The other labor master on that occasion is more explicit.

In his Industrial Socialism, Mr. Haywood writes:

Long before the coming of the modern Socialist Movement it was understood by the economists that all wealth is produced by labor. How then, it was questioned, can profits be accounted for? If labor produces all wealth why do not the laborers receive their full product? The answer to this question was not known until it came from Karl Marx. Wages, said Marx, are not the full product of labor. Nor are wages any definite part of the product. Wages are simply the selling price of the worker in the market. This selling price, on the average, is just enough to keep the worker in good condition to do his work and produce some one to take his place. For instance, if the worker toils ten hours and produces $10.00 worth of wealth, he does not receive $10.00, nor $5.00. If $2.00 will support him he receives $2.00, and no more. These $2.00 are his wages and the remaining $8.00 are the profits of the capitalist. If the hours of the worker be increased, and better machines introduced, the workers' product is increased, let us say, to $15.00. Do the workers' wages go up? No. They are now but $1.50. The profits, or surplus-value, are now $13.50.

The theory of surplus value is the beginning of all Socialist knowledge. It shows the capitalist in his true light, that of an idler and parasite. It proves to the workers that capitalists should no longer be permitted to take any of their product.

The current publications of this body are full of statements of this same nature, more immature and drastic still. Not alone the capitalist proper, as receiver of interest, is stigmatized as parasite, but employer and "boss" are lumped with the robber class. A mine owner in Cripple Creek, pointing to the words on the union card, said to me: "You see now why they are stealing hundreds of thousands from us every