and.
To repeat: Modern machinery is throwing more and more men and women into the Army of the Unemployed. Shorter hours will employ more men and women, and will maintain and even increase wages, to say nothing of the tremendous development of the fighting spirit, the solidarity and class consciousness of the workers.
Flood the nations with your ballots, workingmen and women of the world. Elect your shop mates, your companions of the mines, your mill hand friends, to every possible office. Put yourselves or your co-workers into every government position as fast as possible to render your court decisions, to hold in readiness your army; to control your arsenals and to protect you with your constabulary, to make your laws and to serve your fellow workers, whenever and wherever and however possible.
And organize industrially. With your government at your backs, ready to ward off Capitalism, ready at all times to throw itself into battle for you, you can gather the workers of the world into your industrial organization and sign the death warrant of Wage Slavery!
Which is the most benefit to the working class, a rise in wages or shorter hours? What is the greatest hindrance to the workers securing higher wages? Or better conditions of any kind?
What would be the effect of a general shortening of the hours of labor in one nation? Do shorter hours tend to increase or decrease wages? Why?
If the general workday were suddenly to be lengthened three hours a day, what would be the effect upon unemployment? Would this tend to reduce or increase wages? Explain why shorter hours tend to increase wages.
When you seek a job you meet your boss as the seller of a commodity. What is the commodity? What determines the price (or wages) you will get for your labor power? What determines the value of this commodity?
What determines the price of any commodity? What determines the VALUE of a commodity. Do supply and demand affect the value of a commodity? Do they affect the PRICE of a commodity?
Suppose it takes ten men twenty hours to make 100 pairs of shoes in one factory and ten men one hundred hours to make 100 pairs of shoes in another factory. What would determine the value of a pair of shoes? The labor contained in the shoes produced in the first mentioned factory or in the second factory? Or the AVERAGE labor time necessary to produce a pair of shoes?
The working class generally receives the value of its labor power. But it does not receive the value of its PRODUCT. Explain the difference between these two.
Where do the profits come from? What is surplus value? Who appropriates it? Can an employer of labor pay his workmen the value of their labor power and sell their product at its value, and still make a profit? Would it ever be possible for him to pay the laborers MORE than the value of their labor power and to sell their products at LESS than their value, and still make a profit? Explain why this would be possible.
Are the workers any better off where the cost of living is low than where the cost of living is high? Are they able to save any more in the countries of low prices? Do low prices benefit the working class? Do we find wages high or low where the cost of living is high? Where the cost of living is low? Does a low cost of living benefit the capitalists? Why?
Do your butcher and your baker and your landlord exploit you? Suppose all three classes of men were suddenly able to double prices in America, would you pay the additional bills or WOULD THE EMPLOYING CAPITALISTS pay them? Would wages rise?
Suppose wages did NOT rise, would you then be getting the value of your labor power? If you failed to get higher wages, would this mean that the landlord and butcher and baker exploit you, or would it mean that you had to have more wages, if you were to continue to receive the value of your labor power?
What is the great aim of Socialism?