Proletarec. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1906-19??, 1946-09-25
THE WALL Street SKID

Not being "in the market" most workers will have only
an academic interest in the recent drop in stock values that has
thrown the New York Stock Exchange into a violent tailspin
Nevertheless, it should interest working people everywhere to
know what topnotch spokesman for the capitalist system think
about the latest slump in security" values.
From the Wall Street Journal" conservative organ of the
investing and Safeguarding fraternity, we get word that ICON
sumner buying" is an important factor in the Wall Street flop
The journal" reports that people everywhere are saying: prices
are too high This, it comments, means, among other things
Id ne cs il HVng is stramlng the family budget. 1t also
says that consumer buying is the key to what lies ahead and
interprets the recent breaks in stock values as rejecting a fear
OF a sharp cut in consumer buying.
If our readers think we have used the words CONSUMER
buying" to excess, we must reply that we did so far a purpose
What we want to emphasize is that at least one prop of the
capitalist economy is woefully weak.
What the private-profit economy needs-and cannot exist
Wlthout-are two in number. One is workers who can be induced
to produce more value than they receive, thus creating a surplus
for owners. The second requirement is markets in which to dis
pose Of the surpluses which workers create but never get.
In times of an expanding economy the surplus takers can
supply their own market by building new plants and enlarging
their holdLngS. But the days OF economic expansion are over
so far as the internal American economy is concerned. From
now on out the people who own the machinery of industry and
collect the SURPRISES must seek investments and customers
throughout the entire world. And unless they succeed in finding
an outlet for their SURPRISES, securities" become less secure.
When workers consider where this nation NAV be taken by
the surplus-takers' search for customers they may come to the
conclusion that their interest in Wall Streets decline is more real
and personal than they had imagined. For it is that need for
customers which develops the industrial and commercial rivalries
whichc the late President Woodrow Wilson correctly described
as the field in which the "seeds of war are planted. And in
will be the working people who will do most of the dying.
Our reason for discussing capitalisn's weakness and in point
ing to the almost-certain consequences of it is to suggest that
the stock market slump should give the American people an
added reason for establishing a new and different economy.
Socialists offer an economy under which workers would not
have to depend upon the ability of owners to sell sl1rpluses
Under Socialism workers would produce primarily for use and
foreign trade would be based upon the desire of the people to
get what they lack instead of upon the pressing necessity of
owners to get rid of what they do not need.
When we Americans produce wealth for no other purpose
than to elevate our standard of living we'll not have to worry
about getting customers. Well BE the customers as well as the
producers. And when we have produced as much as we need
or want well-stop!-Reading Labor Advocate.