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is not paid. "The value of a commodity is determined by the total quantity of labor contained in it. But part of that quantity of labor is realized in a value for which an equivalent has been paid in the form of wages; part of it is realized in a value for which no equivalent has been paid. Part of the labor contained in the commodity is paid labor; part is unpaid labor.„l

"Rent,

The capitalist appropriates this unpaid labor. Interest, and Industrial Profit are only different names for different parts of the surplus value of the commodity, or the unpaid labor enclosed in it, and they are equally derived

from this source, and from this source alone."2 Trades Unions

should, therefore, use their organized forces "as a lever for the ultimate abolition of the wages system."

3

Such, in outline, are the two theories associated with the name of Karl Marx. In studying the constructive side of industrial unionism, we find its most pronounced advocates continually weaving their philosophy on the scarlet warp of Marxian ideas.

First, as to the labor theory of value, two illustrations will suffice.

The Brewery Workers say in their constitution:

"It is

to the interest of the propertied class to buy labor at the cheapest possible price; to produce as much as can be produced, and to heap up wealth. The few hundreds of thousands who compose the propertied class take from the workers the greater part of the wealth they have created. Of all the product of

1. Ibid, 87. 2. Ibid, 90. 3. Ibid, 128.

their toil the millions of workers receive only just as much as enables them to eke out a miserable existence.....It is organized labor that will finally succeed.... in introducing a condition of things in which each shall enjoy the full product of 1 his toil."

Daniel De Leon and his followers in the American Socialist Labor Party and the Workers' International Industrial Union (W. I. I. U.) likewise made the Marxian theory of value their starting point. "The profits that the capitalist pockets,"

said De Leon, in an address to strikers in New Bedford, "represent wealth that the wage workers produced, and that the capitalist.....steals from them; and the American Socialist Labor

2

We

Party echoes his thought: "The Socialists say that the present system is robbery, daily, hourly, robbery. We say, and we prove, that all wealth is produced by labor - mental and physical. say that the present tools of production and all social wealth are the result of the labor of all ages, past and present; that private ownership in the means of production became a social wrong as soon as these means of production had outgrown the

possibility of private operation."3

"Wages," they say, "are kept small due to the competition among the workers themselves. Owing to this fact, the employer is continually looking for the cheapest labor consistent with the production of lots of value. We are familiar with the fact that the manufacturer gets profits, that the banker gets interest, and that the landlord gets rent. The value we produce pays all this.... The workers' need to eat,

1. Constitution of United Brewery and Soft Drink Workers, Preamble.

2. Daniel De Leon, "What Means this Strike?"

3. "The Amer. Socialist Labor Party," - official pamphlet.

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