Page:Onward Sweep of the Machine Process (ca 1917).pdf/12

10 quote the following extract from an article on the subject in the Sydney "Morning Herald" of June 19:

After pointing out that in "an ideal state of things the savings effected would be distributed between all three," capitalist, wage-worker, and consumer, the writer lets the cat out of the bag, so far as the capitalist system being "an ideal State" is concerned, by informing us that: "At the Bethlehem Steel Works wages were increased 60 per cent in this way. The new system of work here raised the output of iron per man from 16 to 59 tons, and the aggregate wages bill, despite the increase in the rate, was cut down by about $80,000 per annum. The net result, as Hobson points out, was in this case all in favor of the employers."

Whoever "Hobson" may be, it was scarcely necessary for him to point out such a very obvious fact. As we are not given the value of the total wages, or the value of the aggregate output, it is impossible in this case to determine the rate of surplus value (the proportion of profits to wages) realized by the employers; but, nevertheless, it is clear that if the rate of wages increased by 60 per cent (which, by the way, may be taken with the proverbial grain of salt), and the aggregate wages decreased by $80,000, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 per cent of the workers formerly employed went to swell the "capitalist reserve army," the unemployed.

This is, as a matter of fact, how every scheme for intensifying exploitation, whether it be euphoniously called "scientific management" or any other name, must eventually, by the natural laws of capitalist production, work out.

Let us assume that the total social capital advanced in wages for a given period be equal to 100. If, in the process of production, values equal to 200 are produced we have a rate of surplus value equal to 100 per cent. (We leave aside the consideration of the value of the raw material, etc., as such value is always incorporated