The pamphlet continues,
““… if capital does not decrease in value as it increases in amount, the capitalists will exact from the labourers the produce of every hour’s labour beyond what it is possible for the labourer to subsist on: and however horrid and disgusting it may seem, the capitalist may eventually speculate on the food that requires the least labour to produce it, and eventually say to the labourers, ‘You sha’n’t eat bread, because barley meal is cheaper; you sha’n’t eat meat, because it is possible to subsist on beetroot and potatoes’. And to this point have we come!” (loc. cit., pp. 23-24).
“… if the labourer can be brought to feed on potatoes instead of bread, it is indisputably true that more can be exacted from his labour; that is to say, if when he fed on bread he was obliged to retain for the maintenance of himself and family the labour of Monday and Tuesday, he will, on potatoes, require only the half of Monday; and the remaining half of Monday and the whole of Tuesday are available either for the service of the state or the capitalist” (loc. cit., p. 26).” (p 239)
The lack of a clear understanding of wages is manifest in this quote, however, which follows through into a belief that wages must be continually driven down to this bare subsistence level. It is the foundation of the Lassallean Iron Law of Wages, which itself has echoes in the writing of Daniel De Leon. Where the author of the pamphlet does advance, however, is in the recognition that all surplus value, whether it takes the form of profit, interest, rent or taxes, is merely derived from this surplus labour undertaken by the worker. By making that distinction, and thereby illustrating that surplus value – and so profit, interest, rent and taxes – are not some arbitrary amounts, the author also is in advance of today's conservative social-democrats, and their ideologists, who, over the last thirty years, have proceeded on the basis that capital produces interest, in the same way that a pear tree produces pears. They have, thereby, come to believe that as capital, in the form of assets (bonds, shares, land/property) rises in price, the yield (interest, rent) produced by this capital simply increases in proportion with it. And, as this interest accrues each year, so it results in a further accumulation of capital and rise in those asset prices, in a magical process of accumulation via compound interest. The consequence is actually the serial asset price bubbles that central banks, for the last ten years, have been frantically trying to keep inflated.
The underlying delusion is the same as that put forward by Dr. Price, and swallowed by Pitt, analysed by Marx in Capital III. The author of the pamphlet, by recognising the nature and source of surplus value, is able to expose that nonsense by writing,
““… if it were possible to continue to increase capital and keep up the value of capital, which is proved by the interest of money continuing the same, the interest to be paid for capital would soon exceed the whole produce of labour… capital tends in more than arithmetical progression to increase capital. It is admitted that the interest paid to the capitalists, whether in the nature of rents, interests of money, or profits of trade, is paid out of the labour of others. If then capital go on accumulating […] the labour to be given for the use of capital must go on increasing, interest paid for capital continuing the same, till all the labour of all the labourers of the society is engrossed by the capitalist. […] that it is […] impossible to happen; for whatever may be due to the capitalist, he can only receive the surplus labour of the labourer; for the labourer must live…” (loc. cit., p. 23).” (p 240-1)
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