‘How the Farmer Is Exploited’ by Mary E. Marcy from International Socialist Review. Vol. 16 No. 9. March, 1916.

Some of us who have studied only the first part of Volume I of Marx’s Capital, forget that when this greatest of all economists wrote Volumes II and III he elaborated on his theory of value.

Because we have been students of only a portion of the writings of Marx; some of us have claimed that the man who owned a farm and worked it himself and sold his product to some warehouse company, or to some speculator, sold his commodities at their value and was, therefore, not exploited in any way. But we were wrong.

As a rule, said Marx, commodities on the average exchange at their value. But by this he did not, by any means, mean that when a farmer sells a thousand bushels of wheat to one man, who in turn sells to a customer, who re-sells to some one else, who finally sells out to a third or fourth buyer—Marx did not mean that all these perfectly useless individuals added any value to that wheat. But they sell it at a profit.

Now since these speculating purchasers have not added any value to the farmer’s wheat, either the first purchaser bought the wheat from the farmer below its value or the final purchaser paid for it at more than its value.

The man who originally bought the wheat from the farmer added no value to the wheat, nor did his customer, nor his customer’s customer, etc., etc., add any value to the wheat. But the wheat may have sold finally at fifty cents a bushel more than the original purchaser paid for it, because when it was finally sold there was a greater demand for wheat. On the other hand, wheat occasionally sells below the price paid to the farmer for it, because of the sudden termination of war, etc., etc., or a decrease in the demand for wheat. Supply and demand, we know, affect price, but not value, so that in war time, for example, the farmer may receive a price that is more than the value of his product.

Marx explains in Volumes II and III of Capital that brokers, middlemen and merchant capitalists, etc., being, on the whole, unnecessary, produce neither commodities nor any value.

On the average, he says, commodities exchange at their value—that is the consumer usually buys commodities at their value. He nearly always receives the value he pays for; he gives gold, or its equivalent, representing so many hours of necessary social labor, in exchange for commodities representing an equal amount of necessary social labor.

Commodities usually sell to the consumer at their value. Wheat brokers and wheat and other grain speculators get their profits out of value either produced by the farmer who works his farm, or from value produced by farm tenants or farm laborers, because these products are sold to these speculators below their value.

One speculator buys corn from a group of farmers at 40 cents and re-sells it to another speculator at 46 cents, who disposes of it to a third for 50 cents, who finally sells it to the mill men (who use it as raw material from which, say, corn flakes are manufactured) at 55 cents.

On the average these mill men buy the corn at its value; the various speculators have never seen the corn, never moved the corn, added not one particle of value to the corn. The first speculator in this case, bought the corn from the producing farmers at something like 15 cents a bushel below its value. This 15 cents of which the producing farmers were exploited, is divided among the three speculators. Nobody is robbed or exploited but the actual producers of the corn.

Among capitalist farmers the same conditions prevail as in other fields of investment. Unless the capitalist is able to make his capital bring him the average rate of profits, he seeks other fields in which to put his money.

Capitalist farmers hire farm superintendents, overseers, farm laborers to work their lands or let their farms to farm tenants at a cash rental or for a portion of the tenants’ products. Like the capitalist who, for instance, invests his money in a packing house, a mine or a woolen mill, these capitalist farmers have to divide the value appropriated from the labor of the workers, with the middleman. The capitalist farmer pays his workers the value of their labor power, but far less than the value of their products. On the average, these products are sold to the final buyer at their value. The capitalist farmer divides the surplus value, produced by the farm tenants or laborers, with the broker, the speculator, the storage companies.

The small farm owner, who works in the fields beside his hired “hands” is an exploiting capitalist as far as he pays his workers wages and appropriates their products. The surplus value or profits he is able to extract are represented by the difference between what he pays for the labor, and cost of machinery maintenance, repairs, taxes, etc., and the price he gets for the products of his laborers.

Occasionally buyers’ associations grow so powerful that they demand so great a share of the surplus value produced by the farm workers that the farm owner, or fruit grower, or truck gardener, is unable to appropriate any of this surplus value produced by his laborers and he ceases to use his land in raising that particular product. This has been true in the case of many small capitalist fruit raisers. Apples rot upon the ground in Michigan and in many other states because the commission houses are so organized that the fruit farmers have no other market, and the price they offer for apples or peaches is so low that after the farm owner has paid the laborers to pick and pack the fruit, there is no surplus value left for himself.

Farmers in Different Classes.

Farmers cannot be lumped into one industrial class as politicians are so fond of doing in this country. To speak of the “farmer” means nothing definite today. We read about the brother of ex-president Taft being a “farmer.” But we are informed that this wealthy gentleman does not even superintend the work on his great capitalistic farm. Mr. Taft is an exploiting capitalist who appropriates the surplus value produced by his laborers and tenants.

As the industrial capitalist who employs workers to produce furniture, cloth, machinery, is compelled to divide this surplus value with the wholesale merchant, the jobber and the retailer, so even the millionaire capitalist farmer, Mr. Taft, sells many of the farm products, expropriated from his farm laborers below their value. Both classes of industrial capitalists have to divide the surplus value with other groups of capitalists.

Socialists are not in the least concerned with helping the industrial capitalists, neither the mighty Tafts nor the town farmer who hires two or three men who run his farm by the aid of additional men in harvest time. This small town farmer also sells the product of the farm workers below its value. We do not grieve to see the expropriator expropriated—the robber robbed. We are concerned only with seeing to it that the working class receives the value of its products.

The small farmer who owns or is paying on a farm, who works his farm himself ought to be interested in the revolutionary movement. He exploits no one and sells his products below their value.

On the other hand, we hear a great deal from the farm owner who works a little and hires two or three men. His complaints fill the country newspapers from Maine to California. It is true, that he sells the products of his farm below their value. But his only concern is to secure higher prices for these products, not the payment to his laborers of the value of the things they produce, the wheat they grow, or the fruit they raise. He desires to make more money from the labor of others: If the workers received the value of their social products, the question of land ownership would become a minor one. Ownership would not then mean opportunity for exploitation and nobody would care to own land so long as he possessed an opportunity to produce and to exchange his products at their value.

In an industrial democracy it need not be a matter of serious moment that one group of workers finds it necessary to labor upon inferior land. We cannot all sow and reap of the best. Men and women will be recompensed according to the necessary number of hours they work and not upon the amount of wheat they raise upon a certain piece of land. For the same labor will produce twice the crop of wheat on rich land as upon poor land.

Every group will, of course, be advised by national experts as to the best crops to plant, the fertilizer needed, and on the thousand and one questions that are- constantly increasing as farming is being reduced to a scientific basis.

If a group spends a certain amount of necessary labor on a piece of land according to advice of expert agronomists and the crop is entirely lost because of frost, floods or drought, this farming group will not be forced to beg for a living the remainder of the year. The local loss will be borne by the whole nation and every bushel of wheat will represent a little more social labor than it would have meant without the failure of local crops.

The whole wheat product will represent all the necessary social labor expended in producing it. Every year there will be failures of farm crops for one unavoidable cause or another, but the hours spent in farm work by the group of workers whose labors have proved fruitless will, without doubt, be included in the total number of hours spent in farm production by all the workers. Because the labor of all will represent the socially necessary labor embodied in the wheat crop, potato crop or corn crop.

In this way the farmer who works poor land will receive the same payment, per hour of labor, as the man who works the most fertile land. The total product will represent the total number of hours necessarily expended in the production of a commodity, and men will be paid according to their labors.

In this way groups of farmers will be practically insured against crop failures. Modern machinery will abolish all farm drudgery. The income of farm workers will be assured, as will be the income of all other necessary workers. Equal necessary effort, equal labor will mean a like recompense in every branch of industry. Exchange will be based upon labor for labor; service for service.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

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