The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-05-20
Reviewed BIZ PETER BoLM

Reviewed by PETER BOLM
This simple pamphlet on economics
is now issued in a revised translation
at cheap price, and as an attractive
booklet, well printed.
"Wage-Labor and Capital is made
up from lectures given by Marx to
the German Workingmen's Club at
Brussels in 1847. Marx was never
tired of repeating that, though bour-
geois professors" and middle class
people generally, often had great diff
f1culty in understanding his books,
the workers usually found his argu-
ments easy to understand, and con-
vincing. Engels, in the introduction
to this pamphlet, makes reference to
how greatly the uneducated workers,
who can easily be made to grasp the
most difficult economic analyses, excel
our supercilious cultured folk, for
whom such ticklish problems remain
inSoluble their whole life long" The
explanation for this is simple. Marx
writes about the problems Of the
worker, and writes from the class
point Of view Of the worker. He ex-
plains in this short book the means
by which, under capitalism, the work
er Is robbed Of the greater part of
his product, and how this surplus
value" is taken away by the capital
lists.
Worker Sells Labor-Power
Tt is with this question that Engel's
preface deals. He takes the question
up in the form Of a riddle-value Is
determined by labor-power, so how is
the value Of labor determined? This
was the riddle that the bourgeois
economists were never able to answer.
Marx answered 1t by making clear
the distinction between what the
worker produces in the shape Of
goods, and what the worker gets in
the shape Of wages. The labor time
he spends in making things is the
measure of their value. But the
wages that he gets are merely the
price Of the labor-power that he
brings to sell in the market; and this
labor power is treated by the capital
list system as just one more commodity
to be bought and sold. The difference
between what he produces and what
he gets in return, the difference be-
tween the value he creates and the
wages he receives, is the surplus value
appropriated by the capitalists who
employ him.
Engels carries the argument on
from here to the theory Of crises As
the bourgeoisie absorbs surplus value
and the working class gets only a
small fraction Of the value 1t pro-
duces back in the form Of wages
purchasing power, series OF con-
tinual crises of relative over-produc-
ton sets in, which, to quote Engels,
brings 1t about that society smothers
in its own superiority, while the great
majority of its members are scarcely,
or not at all, protected from extreme
want" Today in the United States
we have starvation on a scale never
before experienced. We have the
largest army of unemployed in our
history. The Department OF Agri-
culture advises the farmers to destroy
large ptICellUdBt VI IllciI CiOEho'
Wheat has been burned, coffee thrown
into the sea, vegetables left to rot in
the fields, machinery deliberately and
Systematically broken up. Capitalism
is truly being "sinothered in its own
superiority"
Soviet Union Abolished Exploitation
Marx begins this pamphlet with q
definition of wages. He then goes on
to discuss prices generally. This fine
third chapter, by What Is the Price
of a Commodity Determined" gives
in five pages complete and pene-
trating analysis Of the pricing process,
and is a short masterpiece in itself.
Chapter v explains what is meant
by Capital. Accumulated labor that
serves as the means Of new production
is capital. So say the economists.
What Is Negro slave? A man of the
black race. The one explanation is
worthy Of the other. A Negro is a
Negro. Only under certain conditions
does he become slave. A cotton
spinning machine is q cotton-sp spinning
machine. Only under certain condi-1
lions does it become capital"