) represent two hours of necessary labor. The labor-power is equal in value to the value of the $2.00 in gold. The workman has sold his labor-power at its value.
The workman receives enough ($2.00) in wages to eat, drink, to rest and clothe himself–enough to produce more labor-power. He receives the value of his labor-power.
But wage laborers sell their laboring-power to the bosses by the day or by the week, at so many hours a day. The capitalist buys the commodity (labor-power), paying for it at its value. If the wage worker is a miner, in two hours he will dig coal equal in value to his wage of $2.00 a day. The coal he digs will contain two hours of labor just as the two dollars in gold contain two hours of labor and as the necessaries for which he exchanges his two dollars, contain two hours of labor.
In other words, in two hours (of necessary labor) the miner would have produced value in coal equal to the value of his wages (or his laboring-power). But he sells his labor-power by the day or week and the boss prolongs the hours of work as far as possible.
In two hours, however, the miner has produced enough value to pay his own wages, but the boss, having bought the laboring-power by the day, may be able to make the wage-worker work ten hours daily. The miner needs only to work two hours to produce a value of $2.00 to reproduce his labor-power. As Marx would say:
He must daily reproduce a value of $2.00 (which he will do in two hours), to daily reproduce his labor-power.
But when he sells his laboring-power to the boss the boss acquires the right to use his labor-power the entire day–as many hours as the worker's physical endurance will permit.
If he forces the miner to work ten hours daily, the workingman will be laboring eight hours beyond the time necessary to pay his own wages (or value of his labor-power). These eight hours of surplus labor are embodied in a surplus value or a surplus product.
In two hours the miner produces in coal value sufficient to pay for his labor-power, but in the eight succeeding 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-work