Montana news. [volume] (Lewistown, Mont.) 1904-191?, 1905-03-08
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labor saving devices throwing men
out of work in every industry, labor
power tends to always keep at its
lowest price, j. e., wages tend TO
keep at the point of subsistence for
the laborer.
The wages of the laborer are
fixed by the value of what he puts
into the business his labor power,
which, like every other comodity,
is determined by the cost of pro-
duction, !. e., by the amount of
labor socially necessary, under the
existing condition, for its produc-
tion-in this case for the produc-
ton of the necessaries of life to
maintain the laborer and reproduce
the race of laborers. As it takes the
laborer only one-fifth of a day to
produce value equal to the cost of
the means of subsistence, he there
fore receives the value of only one
fifth of the product Of his labor in
wages, for, as we have seen, the law
of supply and demand and demand
keeps his wages at the lowest notch.
The employer gets the other four
ffths. Now, attention! The value
of days product is five times as
much as the value of the labor power
expended to produce it, because it
takes only one-ffth as much labor
to produce that labor power as that
labor power set in motion for whole
day is able to produce. This is why
the capitalist invests in labor power;
because it is able to produce more
value that it has itself, and thereby
he is able to expand his capital-to
make something out of nothing by
taking the something the laborer has
produced. 1t is by virtue of the
capitalists ownership of the means
of production that the laborer is
compelled to give four-ffths of his
product to the capitalist in order to
buy the use of these means to pro-
duce the necessaries of life for him
self
Now here is just where the ire
pressible conflict between the capi-
talist class and the working class
comes in: 1t is to the interest of
the working class to get as much of
the value of what they produce as
possible, Q might here interject
that in justice it all belongs to them
and it is to the interest of the capi-
talist class to get as much of the
value of this product as possible,
therefore there can be no possible
identity of interests between them.
Every scale of wages is but a truce
patched up between the opposing
classes and must, sooner or later,
end to give place to renewed and in
creased hostilities.
1t is to the interest of the capital
lists to get as much as possible for
these products when they sell them,
and it is to the interest of the labor
ers to pay as little as possible when
they buy; again there can be no
possible identity of interests and
again the irrepressible conflict. The
laborers are always opposed to the
capitalists, either as sellers of labor
power OF as buyers of products.
The only thing that can end this
conflict is for the producing class to
become the owning class so that pro-
duction and ownership of the pro-
duction shall be in the same hands.
From the foregoing it is clear that
there is an irrepressible conflict and
that it must continue till one or the
other of the classes is complely an
initiated. This cannot be the work
ing class, for this would mean the
destruction of the human race.
Should the present working class be
annihilated, the capitalists would
have to go to work OF starve and,
unless the system were changed,
there would still be two classes; but
on the other hand, if the workers
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