 exchange at their values, we cannot explain them at all.)
Our next lesson will take up Surplus Value, which explains how capitalists make profits even though all commodities exchange at their values.
Remember that we do not sell our labor. We sell our strength to work or our laboring power, our labor power. Labor is the expenditure of labor-power. See Value, Price and Profit, pages 71, 72 and 73. When we apply for a job, we do not offer to sell our WORK, but our strength to WORK. The commodities we make are crystallizations of our work or of our LABOR, but it is our strength to labor, or laboring power–our labor power which we sell to the boss.
Many of us have been accustomed to think that profits are made from graft, from special privileges or from monopoly. We have talked so much of the thieving among capitalists that we have altogether overlooked the great, main method of profit taking.
As Marx says, if you cannot explain profits on the supposition that commodities exchange at their values, you cannot explain them at all.
And so we shall assume (as in truth they generally do) that commodities on the average, exchange at their value.
Suppose that it takes two hours of necessary labor to produce the necessaries of life for a workingman–or, in other words, two hours of labor a day to produce laboring-power.
Suppose too (as is very likely the case), that $2.00 in gold represents two hours of labor.
Now the value of labor-power (which the workingman sells) is determined (as the value of all commodities are determined), by the social labor contained in it. It is represented by the necessities of life, produced by two hours of necessary labor a day.
If the workman sells his labor-power at its value, he will receive in return a commodity containing two hours of necessary social labor. In the case we mention above, he would receive $2.00 a day.
In other words, a day's labor-power represents two hours of labor, embodied in the food, clothing and shelter that produce it, just as the two dollars in gold (or an equivalent) 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 