Your pay envelope

by John Richard Meader

If you stop at the street corner to listen to a soap-boxer, there are two things that he is pretty certain to tell you: first, that you are a “wage slave,” and, second, that you are being “robbed” every day you work.

With a flood of words, carefully prepared to appeal to men in your position, and with stories that are supposed to illustrate the points he wants to make, the man on the street-corner will try to persuade you that labor is the sole factor in wealth production—that the workers produce all the wealth of the world—and that this wealth belongs rightfully to those who made it.

The agitator will tell you—what you already know—that there is a part of the product of your toil that goes to your employer. This should not surprise you. When you consented to work for three dollars a day, it was with a clear understanding that you would do enough more than three dollars’ worth of work a day to give your employer a fair return upon his investment. I’ll wager, you never suspected that he had no right to this share, but, instead, was stealing it from you, until the soap-box orator began to tell you that you were being “robbed.”

If you question the speaker as to the extent of this “robbery,” you will get little satisfaction. Socialists all agree that the worker is “robbed,” but they disagree very materially as to the amount of which he is “robbed.” One Socialist (I. L. P. pamphlet, “Simple Division”) tells you that the worker receives only one-seventh of what he produces. Another (Hazell, “A Summary of Marx’s ‘Capital’”) asserts that labor obtains one-fifth of its product. Still another (Victor Grayson, Speech, June 4, 1908) announces that the worker takes one-quarter of what he really earns. Another English Socialist (author of “The Basis and Policy of Socialism”) proves by statistics that one-third of the total product goes to the man who ought to have it all. A more reasonable individual (Chiozza-Money, “Riches and Poverty”) estimates the worker’s share as a “trifle more than one-half,” while Suthers, who makes a specialty of answering objections to Socialism, figures that the returns to labor represent two-thirds of the amount that the worker ought to receive (“Common Objections to Socialism Answered”).

You see what a hazy idea the Socialists have upon this question, how chaotic and self-contradictory their statements are; yet it is upon such “facts,” that the contentions or claims of Socialism depend.

The soap-box man’s statements about the “robbery” of the worker are based upon a principle that is taken from Karl Marx’s book, “Capital,” which is the Bible of all real Socialists. Karl Marx said that “labor is the source of all value,” and it is upon the truth of this statement that the whole economic structure of Socialism rests. If it is true that labor is the source of all value, it is possible to argue that the laborer is entitled to all he produces. If labor is not the sole source of value, the laborer is not entitled to all he produces and it is nonsense to say that he is. Thus, the whole question of the fairness of the principle upon which the modern wage system is based stands or falls with this “law” of value.

I suppose it is safe for me to assume that you have never read “Capital.” I suppose it is just as safe to assume that you never will read the three bulky tomes in which Marx has expounded the economic system that we call “Socialism.” You needn’t be ashamed to admit this fact. There are lots of others like you. Even the soap-boxer, who quotes Marx so fluently and who upholds his theories so energetically, has no advantage over you in this respect. It is a safe hundred to one shot that he also has never read—and never will read—“Capital.”

The German poet Heine tells us that when Hegel, the well-known philosopher, lay on his death-bed, he declared: “Only one has understood me.” But, immediately after, he added, irritably: “And he did not understand me, either.”

If this story had been told of Marx instead of Hegel, I should be quite as ready to believe that it is true. If the soap-box orator should attempt to explain the Marxian theory of value, he would have no audience in five minutes. It is because he explains the effects of this “law,” and not the principles supposed to underlie it, that he finds so many people willing to listen to him. Nobody wants to be “robbed,” and, when the Socialist orator asserts that all workers are constantly being “robbed” of the larger portion of their earnings, we are interested at once.

So, if I am to make you understand the reason that this theory of the Socialists is false, if I am to prove to you that you are not “robbed” (at least not in the way the Socialists say you are), I must avoid the technical words and often unintelligible expressions that have made Marx’s “law of value” so difficult to comprehend. I must appeal strictly to your common sense. Then, if you want to go more deeply into the intricate detail in which Marx has framed his economic theories, there are several books that will give you all the information you can possibly digest. One of these is “Socialism: A Critical Analysis,” by Professor Oscar D. Skelton of Queens University, Canada; another is “Socialism” by Cathrein-Gettelmann. You will find them in any good library.