the value of labor-power. We know a young girl in this city who works in a department store for $5.00 a week. She cannot buy food, clothing and shelter for $5.00. Her brother receives $18.00 a week. He can live on less than that sum. He helps his sister pay her expenses. Thus both receive the value of their labor-power.
Men cannot work long upon less wages than the value of their labor-power. They must have help from without. Fortunate members of families help those who do not earn enough to live on. Thousands of families receive intermittent aid from charity organizations, so that the working class, in general, receives just about the value of its labor-power. In other words, the army, of workers receive enough to produce more workers for tomorrow and twenty years from now. It is the unemployed fighting for jobs who force wages down almost to the bare cost of living.
We see how an increase in the value of A means a consequent increase in the value of labor-power. We must not, therefore, berate the grocer, the butcher or landlord when our employers fail to pay us the value of our labor-power. We will be forced to demand higher wages in order to live.
But High Prices do not necessarily mean that food, clothing, etc., have increased in value. It may mean that gold–or the medium of exchange–has decreased in value.
The tendency of almost all commodities is to decrease in value, as modern production lessens the necessary labor contained in them. Gold may decrease in value faster than the value of meat, shoes, bread and clothing has decreased.
A is shrinking, but B (wages) are shrinking faster in value. Since gold (or wages) is outdecreasing the necessities of life, in value, it exchanges for fewer of them. One dollar buys less meat today than it bought five years ago.
Reformers are crying for Low Prices, but revolutionists are demanding Higher Wages (the value of their labor-power) in all the gold standard countries today. They are also working for the abolition of wage-slavery tomorrow. Everywhere we see wages slowly rising to meet the increased cost of living.
We have bewailed the High Prices, while prices are only nominally higher than they were five years ago. Gold (or wages) has decreased in value considerably and as commodities tend to exchange at their values, gold buys fewer commodities.
We may still be receiving the same number of dollars each week, but the value of these dollars has decreased. Actually our wages have been reduced. Unless they enable us to buy the necessities of life we are not receiving the value of our labor-power from our employers.
1. An increase in the prices of the necessities of life may come from an increase in the value of commodities. We shall have to receive an equal rise in wages if we are to get the value of our labor-power.
2. Wages (or gold) may decrease in value until they no longer will purchase A. Unless we receive more wages accordingly we will be receiving less than the value of our labor-power.
Now all through the preceding chapters I could hear, in imagination, the reformers crying, "But what about monopoly prices?"
In the first place, there never was an absolute, permanent monopoly. There are steel mills in China, Japan, Mexico, England and Germany which will supply the American market if they can undersell the home product. China is now shipping steel rails into California at a lower price than the American mills supply them.
There are still many independent oil companies in many lands. Automobile service, electric car lines, aeroplanes, water courses, chutes and flumes all infringe upon the railroads. Whenever the railway charges become more than the traffic will bear the manufacturer removes to another city.
Men may hope to gain permanent complete monopolies, but there is always the danger of somebody coming forth with a substitute. Some one is always providing substitutes.
No man was ever able to raise the general price of a commodity at will, and get that price. If any man ever held such power, he would have charged an unlimited price for his commodity and immediately assu