The Common Sense of Socialism Part 8

Now, Karl Marx has been dead twenty-five years, Jonathan. His great work was done a generation ago. Being just a human being, like the rest of us, it is not to be supposed that he was infallible. There are some things in his writings which cannot be accepted without modification. But what does that matter, so long as the essential principles are sound and true? When we think of a great man like Lincoln we do not trouble about the little things--the trivial mistakes he made; we consider only the big things, the n.o.ble things, the true things, he said and did.

But there are lots of little-minded, little-souled people in the world who have eyes only for the little flaws and none at all for the big, strong and enduring things in a man's work. I never think of these critics of Marx without calling to mind an incident I witnessed two or three years ago at an art exhibition in New York. There was placed on exhibition a famous Greek marble, a statue of Aphrodite. Many people went to see it and on several occasions when I saw it I observed that some people had been enough stirred to place little bunches of flowers at the feet of the statue as a tender tribute to its beauty. But one day I was greatly annoyed by the presence of a critical woman who had discovered a little flaw in the statue, where a bit had been broken off. She chattered about it like an excited magpie. Poor soul, she had no eyes for the beauty of the thing, the mystery which shrouded its past stirred no emotions in her breast. _She was only just big enough in mind and soul to see the flaw._ I pitied her, Jonathan, as I pity many of the critics who write learned books to prove that the economic principles of Socialism are wrong. I cannot read such a book but a vision rises before my mind's eye of that woman and the statue.

I believe that the great fundamental principles laid down by Karl Marx cannot be refuted, because they are true. But it is just as well to bear in mind that Socialism does not depend upon Karl Marx. If all his works could be destroyed and his name forgotten there would still be a Socialist movement to contend with. The question is: Are the economic principles of Socialism as it is taught to-day true or false?

_The first principle is that wealth in modern society consists in an abundance of things which can be sold for profit._

So far as I know, there is no economist of note who makes any objection to that statement. I know that sometimes political economists confuse their readers and themselves by a loose use of the term wealth, including in it many things which have nothing at all to do with economics. Good health and cheerful spirits, for example, are often spoken of as wealth and there is a certain primal sense in which that word is rightly applied to them. You remember the poem by Charles Mackay--

Cleon hath a million acres, ne'er a one have I; Cleon dwelleth in a palace, in a cottage I; Cleon hath a dozen fortunes, not a penny I; Yet the poorer of the twain is Cleon, and not I.

In a great moral sense that is all true, Jonathan, but from the point of view of political economy, Cleon of the million acres, the palace and the dozen fortunes must be regarded as the richer of the two.

_The second principle is that wealth is produced by labor applied to natural resources._

The only objections to this, the only attempts ever made to deny its truth, have been based upon a misunderstanding of the meaning of the word "labor." If a man came to you in the mill one day, and said: "See that great machine with all its levers and springs and wheels working in such beautiful harmony. It was made entirely by manual workers, such as moulders, blacksmiths and machinists; no brain workers had anything to do with it," you would suspect that man of being a fool, Jonathan. You know, even though you are no economist, that the labor of the inventor and of the men who drew the plans of the various parts was just as necessary as the labor of the manual workers. I have already shown you, when discussing the case of Mr. Mallock, that Socialists have never claimed that wealth was produced by manual labor alone, and that brain labor is always unproductive. All the great political economists have included both mental and manual labor in their use of the term, that being, indeed, the only sensible use of the word known to our language.

It is very easy work, my friend, for a clever juggler of words to erect a straw man, label the dummy "Socialism" and then pull it to pieces. But it is not very useful work, nor is it an honest intellectual occupation. I say to you, friend Jonathan, that when writers like Mr. Mallock contend that "ability," as distinguished from labor, must be considered as a princ.i.p.al factor in production, they must be regarded as being either mentally weak or deliberate perverters of the truth. You know, and every man of fair sense knows, that ability in the abstract never could produce anything at all.

Take Mr. Edison, for example. He is a man of wonderful ability--one of the greatest men of this or any other age. Suppose Mr. Edison were to say: "I know I have a great deal of _ability_; I think that I will just sit down with folded hands and depend upon the mere possession of my ability to make a living for me"--what do you think would happen?

If Mr. Edison were to go to some lonely spot, without tools or food, making up his mind that he need not work; that he could safely depend upon his ability to produce food for him while he sat idle or slept, he would starve. Ability is like a machine, Jonathan. If you have the finest machine in the world and keep it in a garret it will produce nothing at all. You might as well have a pile of stones there as the machine.

But connect the machine with the motor and place a competent man in charge of it, and the machine at once becomes a means of production.

Ability is likewise useless and impotent unless it is expressed in the form of either manual or mental labor. And when it is so embodied in labor, it is quite useless and foolish to talk of ability as separate from the labor in which it is embodied.

_The third principle of Socialist economics is that the value of things produced for sale is, under normal conditions, determined by the amount of labor socially necessary, on an average, for their production. This is called the labor theory of value._

Many people have attacked this theory, Jonathan, and it has been "refuted," "upset," "smashed" and "destroyed" by nearly every hack writer on economics living. But, for some reason, the number of people who accept it is constantly increasing in spite of the number of times it has been "exposed" and "refuted." It is worth our while to consider it briefly.

You will observe that I have made two important qualifications in the above statement of the theory: first, that the law applies only to things produced for sale, and second, that it is only under normal conditions that it holds true. Many very clever men try to prove this law of value wrong by citing the fact that articles are sometimes sold for enormous prices, out of all proportion to the amount of labor it took to produce them in the first instance. For example, it took Shakespeare only a few minutes to write a letter, we may suppose, but if a genuine letter in the poet's handwriting were offered for sale in one of the auction rooms where such things are sold it would fetch an enormous price; perhaps more than the yearly salary of the President of the United States.

The value of the letter would not be due to the amount of labor Shakespeare devoted to the writing of it, but to its _rarity_. It would have what the economists call a "scarcity value." The same is true of a great many other things, such as historical relics, great works of art, and so on. These things are in a cla.s.s by themselves.

But they const.i.tute no important part of the business of modern society. We are not concerned with them, but with the ordinary, every day production of goods for sale. The truth of this law of value is not to be determined by considering these special objects of rarity, but the great ma.s.s of things produced in our workshops and factories.

Now, note the second qualification. I say that the value of things produced for sale _under normal conditions_ is determined by the amount of labor _socially necessary_, on an average, for their production. Some of the clever, learnedly-ignorant writers on Socialism think that they have completely destroyed this theory of value when they have only misrepresented it and crushed the image of their own creating.

It does not mean that if a quick, efficient workman, with good tools, takes a day to make a coat, while another workman, who is slow, clumsy and inefficient, and has only poor tools, takes six days to make a table that the table will be worth six coats upon the market. That would be a foolish proposition, Jonathan. It would mean that if one workman made a coat in one day, while another workman took two days to make exactly the same kind of coat, that the one made by the slow, inefficient workman would bring twice as much as the other, even though they were so much alike that they could not be distinguished one from the other.

Only an ignoramus could believe that. No Socialist writer ever made such a foolish claim, yet all the attacks upon the economic principles of Socialism are based upon that idea!

Now that I have told you what it does _not_ mean, let me try to make plain just what it _does_ mean. I shall use a very simple ill.u.s.tration which you can readily apply to the whole of industry for yourself. If it ordinarily takes a day to make a coat, if that is the average time taken, and it also takes on an average a day to make a table, then, also on an average, one coat will be worth just as much as one table.

But I must explain that it is not possible to bring the production of coats and tables down to the simple measurement. When the tailor takes the piece of cloth to cut out the coat, he has in that material something that already embodies human labor. Somebody had to weave that cloth upon a loom. Before that somebody had to make the loom.

And before that loom could make cloth somebody had to raise sheep and shear them to get the wool. And before the carpenter could make the table, somebody had to go into the forest and fell a tree, after which somebody had to bring that tree, cut up into planks or logs, to the carpenter. And before he could use the lumber somebody had to make the tools with which he worked.

I think you will understand now why I placed emphasis on the words "socially necessary." It is not possible for the individual buyer to ascertain just how much social labor is contained in a coat or a table, but their values are fixed by the compet.i.tion and higgling which is the law of capitalism. "It jest works out so," as an old negro preacher said to me once.

I have said that compet.i.tion is the law of capitalism. All political economists recognize that as true. But we have, as I have explained in a former letter, come to a point where capitalism has broken away from compet.i.tion in many industries. We have a state of affairs under which the economic laws of compet.i.tive society do not apply. Monopoly prices have always been regarded as exceptions to economic law.

If this technical economic discussion seems a little bit difficult, I beg you nevertheless to try and master it, Jonathan. It will do you good to think out these questions. Perhaps I can explain more clearly what is meant by monopoly conditions being exceptional. All through the Middle Ages it was the custom for governments to grant monopolies to favored subjects, or to sell them in order to raise ready money.

Queen Elizabeth, for instance, granted and sold many such monopolies.

A man who had a monopoly of something which nearly everybody had to use could fix his own price, the only limit being the people's patience or their ability to pay. The same thing is true of patented articles and of monopolies granted to public service corporations.

Generally, it is true, in the franchises of these corporations, nowadays, there is a price limit fixed beyond which they must not go, but it is still true that the normal compet.i.tive economic law has been set aside by the creation of monopoly.

When a trust is formed, or when there is a price agreement, or what is politely called "an understanding among gentlemen" to that effect, a similar thing happens. We have monopoly prices.

This is an important thing for the working cla.s.s, though it is sometimes forgotten. How much your wages will secure in the way of necessities is just as important to you as the amount of wages you get. In other words, the amount you can get in comforts and commodities for use is just as important as the amount you can get in dollars and cents. Sometimes money wages increase while real wages decrease. I could fill a book with statistics to show this, but I will only quote one example. Professor Rauschenbusch cites it in his excellent book, _Christianity and the Social Crisis_, a book I should like you to read, Jonathan. He quotes _Dun's Review_, a standard financial authority, to the effect that what $724 would buy in 1897 it took $1013 to buy in 1901.

I know that I could make your wife see the importance of this, my friend. She would tell you that when from time to time you have announced that your wages were to be increased five or ten per cent.

she has made plans for spending the money upon little home improvements, or perhaps for laying it aside for the dreaded "rainy day." Perhaps she thought of getting a new rug, or a new sideboard for the dining-room; or perhaps it was a piano for your daughter, who is musical, she had set her heart on getting. The ten per cent. increase seemed to make it all so easy and certain! But after a little while she found that somehow the ten per cent. did not bring the coveted things; that, although she was just as careful as could be, she couldn't save, nor get the things she hoped to get.

Often you and I have heard the cry of trouble: "I don't know how or why it is, but though I get ten per cent. more wages I am no better off than before."

The Socialist theory of value is all right, my friend, and has not been disturbed by the a.s.saults made upon it by a host of little critics. But Socialists have always known that the laws of compet.i.tive society do not apply to monopoly, and that the monopolist has an increased power to exploit and oppress the worker. That is one of the chief reasons why we demand that the great monopolies be transformed into common, or social, property.

_The fourth principle of Socialist economics is that the wages of the workers represent only a part of the value of their labor product. The remainder is divided among the non-producers in rent, interest and profit. The fortunes of the rich idlers come from the unpaid-for labor of the working cla.s.s. This is the great theory of "surplus value,"

which economists are so fond of attacking._

I am not going to say much about the controversy concerning this theory, Jonathan. In the first place, you are not an economist, and there is a great deal in the discussion which is wholly irrelevant and unprofitable; and, in the second place, you can study the question for yourself. There are excellent chapters upon the subject in _Vail's Principles of Scientific Socialism_, Boudin's _The Theoretical System of Karl Marx_, and Hyndman's _Economics of Socialism_. You will also find a simple exposition of the subject in my _Socialism, A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles_. It will also be well to read _Wage-Labor and Capital_, a five cent booklet by Karl Marx.

But you do not need to be an economist to understand the essential principles of this theory of surplus value and to judge of its truth.

I have never flattered you, Jonathan, as you know; I am in earnest when I say that I am content to leave the matter to your own judgment.

I attach more importance to your decision, based upon a plain, matter-of-fact observation of actual life, than to the opinion of many a very learned economist cloistered away from the real world in a musty atmosphere of books and mental abstractions. So think it out for yourself, my friend.

You know that when a man takes a job as a wage-worker, he enters into a contract to give something in return for a certain amount of money.

What is it that he thus sells? Not his actual labor, but his power and will to labor. In other words, he undertakes to exert himself in a manner desired by the capitalist who employs him for so much an hour, so much a day, or so much a week as the case may be.

Now, how are the wages fixed? What determines the amount a man gets for his labor? There are several factors. Let us consider them one by one:

First, the man must have enough to keep himself alive and able to work. If he does not get that much he will die, or be unfit to work.

Second, in order that the race may be maintained, and that there may be a constant supply of labor, it is necessary that men as a rule should have families. So, as we saw in a quotation from Adam Smith in an earlier letter, the wages must, on an average, be enough to keep, not only the man himself but those dependent upon him. These are the bottom requirements of wages.

Now, the tendency is for wages to keep somewhere near this bottom level. If nothing else interfered they would always tend to that level. First of all, there is no scientific organization of the labor force of the world. Sometimes the demand for labor in a particular trade exceeds the supply, and then wages rise. Sometimes the supply is greater than the demand, and then wages drop toward the bottom level.

If the man looking for a job is so fortunate as to know that there are many places open to him, he will not accept low wages; on the other hand, if the employer knows that there are ten men for every job, he will not pay high wages. So, as with the prices of things in general, supply and demand enter into the question of the price of labor in any given time or place.

Then, also, by combination workingmen can sometimes raise their wages.

They can bring about a sort of monopoly-price for their labor-power.

It is not an absolute monopoly-price, however, for the reason that, almost invariably, there are men outside of the unions, whose compet.i.tion has to be withstood. Also, the means of production and the acc.u.mulated surplus belong to the capitalists so that they can generally starve the workers into submission, or at least compromise, in any struggle aiming at the establishment of monopoly-prices for labor-power.

But there is one thing the workers can never do, except by destroying capitalism: _they cannot get wages equal to the full value of their product_. That would destroy the capitalist system, which is based upon profit-making. All the luxury and wealth of the non-producers is wrung from the labor of the producers. You can see that for yourself, Jonathan, and I need not argue it further.

I do not care very much whether you call the part of the wealth which goes to the non-producers "surplus value," or whether you call it something else. The _name_ is not of great importance to us. We care only for the reality. But I do want you to get firm hold of the simple fact that when an idler gets a dollar he has not earned, some worker must get a dollar less than he has earned.

Don't be buncoed by the word-jugglers who tell you that the profits of the capitalists are the "fruits of abstinence," or the "reward of managing ability," sometimes also called the "wages of superintendence."

These and other attempted explanations of capitalists' profits are simply old wives' fables, Jonathan. Let us look for a minute at the first of these absurd attempts to explain away the fact that profit is only another name for unpaid-for labor. You know very well that abstinence never yet produced anything. If I have a dollar in my pocket and I say to myself, "I will not spend this dollar: I will abstain from using it," the dollar does not increase in any way. It remains just a dollar and no more. If I have a loaf of bread or a bottle of wine and say to myself, "I will not use this bread, or this wine, but will keep it in the cup-board," you know very well that I shall not get any increase as a result of my abstinence. I do not get anything more than I actually save.

Now, I am perfectly willing that any man shall have all that he can save out of his own earnings. If no man had more there would be no need of talking about "legislation to limit fortunes," no need of protest against "swollen fortunes."