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can live only by working for wages for the owners of the means of production—the tools, the machines, the raw materials and the means of subsistence. Given such a mode of production the cost of the laborer is made up of that sum-total of means of subsistence—or their price in terms of money—which is normally required, to make and keep him fit to work, and replace him, in case of old age, disease or death by a new laborer, in a word, the sum required for the propagation of the working class in its required strength. Suppose for argument’s sake the average money—price of the means of subsistence to be two dollars a day.
Our workman will then receive from his capitalist-employer a daily wage of two dollars. For this the capitalist makes him work, say 12 hours a day, and he calculates in about the following manner:
Suppose the workman, say an engineer, has to manufacture a piece of machinery, which he completes in one day. The raw material—iron and brass in the shape required—to cost 5 dollars. The consumption of coal by the steam engine, the wear and tear of this engine, that of the lathe and other instruments, used by our workman, calculated per day and head—to represent one more dollar. The daily wage we have assumed to be two dollars. The total cost then of the piece of machinery would be 8 dollars. The capitalist however calculates that the average price which he receives from his customer is 10 dollars i.e. 2 dollars above the cost advanced.
Whence do these 2 dollars come, which the capitalist pockets? According to what Classical Political Economy says commodities are sold normally at their values i.e. at prices, which correspond to the quantities of necessary labor, embodied in them. The average price of the piece of machinery—10 dollars—would thus equal its value, or the amount of labor embodied in it. But out of these 10 dollars, 6 dollars were values already in existence, before our engineer began to work. Five dollars were contained
