Surplus—fascinating surplus.
Surplus—for “our very best people.”
“... As soon [in the evolution of human industry] as the amount produced began at all to exceed the immediate requirements of life, the struggle commenced for the possession of the surplus. The methods employed were as varied as the human mind was fertile.”[[20]]
Not alone chattel slaves and serfs, but wage-slaves also, are used simply, only, always, as domesticated human animals to produce a surplus for their masters.
Slavery was a surplus game.
Serfdom was a surplus game.
Capitalism is also a surplus game.
By pinching, repressing, restricting the wage-earner’s life the capitalist employer skims off a surplus. By belittling the wage-earner’s life the employer increases his own life—with the surplus legally filched from the life of the wage-earner.
The wage-worker, under capitalism, is forced by the lash of threatening starvation, forced by the fear of the bayonet, forced by the threat of the injunction court—is forced to produce a surplus.
Besides producing the equivalent of his wages and all other necessary expenses of production the worker is compelled to toil on for weary hours producing for his capitalist employer THIS SURPLUS. (See Note, end of present Chapter.)