Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. Harriet E. Lothrop (1902).djvu/22

 lars for the twelve pieces. To earn this, the worker requires twelve hours. The capitalist receives 30 dollars for the twelve pieces; deducting 24 dollars for raw material and wear and tear, there remain 6 dollars, of which he pays 3 dollars in wages and pockets the remaining 3. Just as before! Here also the worker labors six-hours for himself, i.e., to replace his wages (half an hour in each of the twelve hours), and six hours for the capitalist.

The rock upon which the best economists were stranded as long as they started out from the value of labor, vanishes as soon as we make our starting-point the value of labor-power. Labor-power is, in our present-day capitalist society, a commodity like every other commodity, but yet a very peculiar commodity. It has, namely, the peculiarity of being a value-creating force, the source of value, and, moreover, when properly treated, the source of more value than it possesses itself. In the present state of production, human labor-power not only produces in a day a greater value than it itself possesses and costs; but with each new scientific discovery, with each new technical invention, there also rises the surplus of its daily production over its daily cost, while as a consequence there diminishes that part of the working day in which the laborer produces the equivalent of his day’s wages, and, on the other hand, lengthens that part of the working day in which he must present labor gratis to the capitalist.

And this is the economic constitution of our entire modern society: the working class alone produces all values. For value is only another expression for labor, that expression, namely, by which is designated, in our capitalist society of to-day, the amount of socially necessary labor embodied in a particular commodity. But these values produced by the workers do not belong to the