hours of labor, he will produce coal valuing $8.00, all of which the capitalist retains for himself.
Since the miner sold his laboring-power to the capitalist, the coal, or value the miner produces, belongs to the capitalist.
Thus the capitalist spends $2.00 a day in wages (or two hours of labor) and acquires coal, or other commodities, equal to $10.00 (err ten hours of labor). Thus come profits.
Year after year the capitalists buy labor-power, paying for it at its value (in the case of the miner at $2.00 a day). The capitalists own the products of the workers–equalling ten hours of labor. They exchange a commodity (gold, or money), containing two hours of labor for labor-power (containing two hours of necessary labor-represented by the necessities of life). But when the miner goes home at night the capitalists find themselves owners of the coal he has dug, which contains ten hours of labor.
Coal (representing ten hours of labor) will exchange for gold (or money) containing ten hours of labor; in this case for $10.00. The miner has produced $10.00 worth of coal. He received $2.00.
The eight hours of value, or $8.00 worth of coal, which the capitalists appropriate, is surplus value, for which they give no equivalent.
"It is this sort of exchange between capital and labor upon which capitalistic production, or the wages system, is founded, and which must constantly result in reproducing the workingman as workingman and the capitalist as a capitalist.
"The rate of surplus value, all other circumstances remaining the same, will depend on the proportion between that part of the working day necessary to reproduce the value of the laboring-power and the surplus time or surplus labor performed for the capitalist. It will, therefore, depend on the ratio in which the working day is prolonged over and above that extent, by working which the working man would only reproduce the value of his laboring-power or replace his wages." (Page 81, Value, Price and Profit, by Karl Marx.)
The capitalist owns the product of his wage-worker. When he sells this product he disposes of commodities a part of which have cost him absolutely nothing, although they have cost his workman labor.
It is easy to see how the miner received the value of his laboring-power; $2.00 gold contain two hours of labor, $2.00 exchange for–or will buy–the necessaries of life (produced by two hours of labor) which will enable the miner to produce more labor-power for the next day's work.
In this case the miner's product, the coal he digs in one day, contains five times the quantity of labor needed to produce the necessaries of life, which produce, in him, more strength or more labor-power.
For the things he gets for his labor-power contain only two hours of labor, while the things he produces, and which are claimed by the capitalist, contain ten hours of labor.
The miner sells his labor-power and, naturally, the capitalist desires to use it as profitably (for himself) as possible. If the wage-worker demanded commodities in exchange for his products, containing an equal quantity of labor, he would no longer be a wage-worker, for capitalists mould no longer employ him. There would be nothing–no surplus value–left for the capitalists.
But men and women who have nothing to sell but their labor-power have no choice in the matter. They are compelled to sell their strength or labor-power in order to get wages to live. Capitalists, on the other hand, employ them for the sole purpose of taking profits. Capitalists are forced to give the working class enough to live and work on, but they try by every means at their command to prolong the working day into ten, or even twelve hours, in order that more surplus products, or surplus value, may remain for themselves.
But intelligent workmen and women are not content with selling their laboring-power at its value. They are coming more and more to demand the value of their products. We are growing weary of being mere commodities, compelled to sell ourselves, for wages at the regular "market price." We are weary of receiving a product of tw