Also labour of greater skill counts proportionately more than labour of less skill.

All property incomes and all wages and salaries are derived in the last resort from the sale of goods that possess values proportionate to the amount of socially necessary labour required in their production.

The next point to notice is that there is one commodity which has two peculiar features. This commodity is the “labour-power”, the (physical and mental) energies of the worker. Its first peculiar feature is that it is possessed by the working-class who, apart from this, have no commodities to sell. Not having any other commodity to sell, the worker has to obtain his livelihood by selling his “labour-power” to the capitalist, for the hour, day, week or month as the case may be. Like other commodities it has a value, which is proportionate to the amount of labour required for its production ; which means the amount of labour required on an average to produce the food, clothing, shelter, etc., of the worker and his dependants. Under the different climatic conditions of different countries and the different conditions of different occupations the worker requires differing amounts of means of subsistence, but this is a qualification which need not detain us in considering the simple elements of the position.

The second peculiar feature possessed by the commodity “labour-power” is that it has the quality of being able to produce a value greater than its own. When the worker expends his labour-power by working on the employer’s raw materials he is capable of adding a value greater than the wage he is paid, or in other words a value greater than the value of the food, clothing, etc., that he consumes. In a working week of six days, for example, the worker may be working, say, three days producing value equal to the value of his means of subsistence (his wages), but in the remaining three days he will continue to work producing value which is retained by the capitalist. This “surplus value” is the source from which all forms of property income, all profit, rent and interest are derived.

This, then, is the answer to our question. The property income of the capitalists (like the income of slave owners in former times) is derived from the exploitation of the workers. The workers are carrying on their backs the whole of the propertied class.

Though most workers instinctively feel that somehow or other they are the victims of what has been called “the great money trick”, and feel that though they receive the “fair market value” when they sell their labour-power, they are in some way or other being swindled, it is nevertheless true that this fact of exploitation is not generally understood. What hides it from sight and understanding is the apparently free nature of the contract that the workers or their trade unions enter into with the employers. This surface appearance makes it seem that the contract between workers and employers is just like any other bargain entered into voluntarily, as, for example, the contracts between capitalists when they buy and sell commodities. The wage contract however only seems to be free, in truth it is forced. The capitalists, because they are the owners of property and their ownership is endorsed by law and backed up by the State and its police and armed forces, can impose more or less their own terms when they bargain with the propertyless working-class. They are able to do so for the reason that the workers are always only a short distance from destitution. The workers must accept more or less the terms that are offered because otherwise they face unemployment and have not the means to hold back for more than a short time. The workers’ bargaining position is helped but necessarily to a limited extent only, by trade union organisation.

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