Always looking for the opportunity to bring labor and surplus value into everyday conversation of workers, Marcy with another of her short, popular lessons on Marxist economy.

‘What is Capital?’ by Mary E. Marcy from Truth (Duluth). Vol. 2 No. 43. October 18, 1918.

Last week Secretary of Labor Wilson is reported to have said: “Every one agrees that the worker should have the full value of what he creates.” But, he added that commodities are the joint) product of capital and labor. While strongly advocating, improved conditions for the working class he did not forget to put in a plea for “rewards of CAPITAL.”

There is a great deal of confusion today on the subject of Capital. As long as we do not know what Capital is and where it comes from, we cannot refute the claims of the bourgeois economists who demand the lion’s share of labor’s product for the capitalist class.

…Capital is simply the SURPLUS VALUE produced by the workers over and above their wages and the necessary expenses of circulating commodities. It is the difference between these wages and expenses, and the price their products bring on the market.

In referring to the source of capital, Marx asks in Wage, Labor and Capital: “Does an operator in a cotton factory produce merely cotton goods? No, he also produces CAPITAL.”

The owner of a cotton mill may pay his “hands” $2 a day. The “hands” work throughout the day at the owner’s machines and secure for his employer an ADDED price to the cost of the raw cotton of $4. The mill owner does not receive merely the $2 he paid in wages, but TWICE that much–or $4. The mill hand has produced–over and above his wages–$2 additional CAPITAL for his employer.

At the end of the year the mill owner may discover that he has cleaned up $50,000 (made up of the surplus value produced by his mill hands). He calls this additional CAPITAL. And he re-invests this money in another cotton mill. And the next year he hires more mill hands whom he pays $2 a day and again he sells their products at $4 above the cost of raw material. Again he cleans up $2 a day off the labor of his “hands,” once more he adds to his own CAPITAL.

Often we say the worker produce commodities and profits for the boss. But these profits are MORE CAPITAL, which the owners invest in other industries for the further exploitation of the wage slaves. As Marx says:

“The worker not only produces commodities. He produces CAPITAL. He produces values which give the employers fresh command over his labor, and which, by such command, create fresh values.

“Capital is the joint product of it is exchanged for LABOR– when it calls wage labor into existence. Wage labor can only be exchanged for capital by AUG- MENTING CAPITAL…and strengthening the power whose slave it is.”

In other words, when you get a job for wages you increase the power of your employers because you get only a small portion of your products. You create more CAPITAL or profits for the boss…ALL commodities are produced by the workers…Every useful and beautiful thing in the world is the creation of the men and women who work.

And CAPITAL is also the product of LABOR. No employer hires men to give them a job. He hires you in order to make profits out of your labor. And PROFITS ARE CAPITAL.

So we do not agree with the editorial writers about the share of the capitalist class. We don’t think the capitalist ought to have any share in the products of labor merely because he has APPROPRIATED THE CAPITAL PRODUCED BY LABOR.

We do not believe in allowing a mill owner to share in the VALUE PRODUCED BY LABOR today, merely because he TOOK MOST OF THAT VALUE LAST YEAR.

…Capital is the joint product of the workers. To reward the capitalist for the use of this capital means REWARDING THE NON-PRODUCER FOR STEALING FROM YOU AND ME. For, the capital the boss uses today is the value produced by the workers (and taken away from them) last month or last year. This is why the Socialist Party demands the full value of their products for the workers who produce it.

Truth emerged from the The Duluth Labor Leader, a weekly English language publication of the Scandinavian local of the Socialist Party in Duluth, Minnesota and began on May Day, 1917 as a Left Wing alternative to the Duluth Labor World. The paper was aligned to both the SP and the IWW leading to the paper being closed down in the first big anti-IWW raids in September, 1917. The paper was reborn as Truth, with the Duluth Scandinavian Socialists joining the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. Shortly after the editor, Jack Carney, was arrested and convicted of espionage in 1920. Truth continued to publish with a new editor JO Bentall until 1923 as an unofficial paper of the CP.

Access to full issue: https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/lccn/sn89081142/1918-10-18/ed-1/seq-2