Page:Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris - A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (1884).djvu/35

 political economists, themselves. The one object of production being production for profit, the capitalist of course buys the labour-force which the needy worker is driven to sell at the lowest possible price in wages. This price, it is now agreed, corresponds on the average to the social needs represented by the standard of life in the class to which the seller of the labour-force belongs. At times the wages may, and do, fall far below this level of necessary subsistence, at other times combination among the workers, or a period of exceptionally prosperous trade, may temporarily raise them above this level. But the tendency is always as stated; nor does the existence of an aristocracy of labour modify the truth of the proposition. But when the capitalist, whether a farmer or a factory-lord, has bought the destitute worker's labour-force on the market, he does so with the intention of applying it to the growing of his crops, or to the manufacture of the raw materials which he has purchased at their market value. Labour-force embodied in commodities, the cost of production or re-production, that is, of articles reckoned useful in the social conditions of the time, is the basis and measure of their average exchange-value when brought forward for exchange. In the first two or three hours of the day's work, however, the labouring class whose labour-force is thus purchased, refund to the employing class the full value of the wages which they receive in return for the whole day's work. But the entire product of the day's work, or the week's work, or the month's work, or the year's work, is at the control of the capitalist who thus appropriates two-thirds or three quarters of the labourers' work without paying for it.