Page:Onward Sweep of the Machine Process (ca 1917).pdf/14

12 thirdly, a surplus over and above the value of the capital advanced by the capitalist for the aforementioned requisites. Unless these conditions are fulfilled, we have not the capitalist system of production, but some other; consequently, when we hear reformers, politicians and Labor leaders wailing for "industrial efficiency first, and then a more equitable distribution of wealth," the cry arises either from ignorance of the economic laws underlying capitalism, or from a desire on the part of those who know better to lead the workers into economic quagmires.

It must be obvious at once that any method for increasing surplus value by increased efficiency, longer hours of labor, new inventions, etc., must be welcome to the capitalist; but what is not so apparent, and what the economic apologists of the capitalist system like to conceal, is that such increases have no internal relation whatever to the laws governing wages.

Labor-power being a commodity, its value, like all other commodities, is determined by its cost of production, and, being somewhat inseparable from the laborer, its value, therefore, is based on the minimum of the physical means of subsistence. It may rise above this minimum, according to the standard of social development, the degree of organized resistance to exploitation, or it may fall below, as in times of industrial depression, when unemployment is rife, and when, as frequently happens, the workers starve, not because of "decreased efficiency," but for the very opposite reason, that the markets are glutted with the products of their labor. What must be borne in mind is, and it is fully confirmed by the industrial history of capitalism, that the means of subsistence is the determining factor, the starting point from which all fluctuations in wages must be explained, and not as our "Industrial Efficiency" experts would have us believe, from the total product of the laborer.

Here it might be expedient to ask these advocates of efficiency a pertinent question or two.

If it is a fact that wages are determined by the