314 
SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. 
talist, therefore, in the competition of the market, is enabled to 
buy the labour-force for a starvation wage, a wage just sufficient 
to enable the labourer to subsist and perpetuate his race. But 
the labourer in three or four hours’ work replaces the labour- 
value represented by his wages, and the produce of the remain 
ing six or seven hours’ labour constitutes the surplus value 
which “ makes capital breed,” pays the capitalist, the landlord, 
the banker, the broker, the shopkeeper, the merchant, and 
in short enables “ idle ” people to live on the produce of unpaid 
labour. Thus, capital is not the result of saving or abstinence, 
as the orthodox Economists “ do vainly talk,” but arises from 
the produce of unpaid labour. “ To the carnal eye,” says Mr. 
Belfort Bax, who, as far as he goes, is a much clearer exponent 
of the ideas of Karl Marx than Mr. Hyndman, “ the abstinence 
of a Nathaniel Rothschild is below the minimum visible." 
Certainly it is no great merit on his part, but whatever the 
millionnaire accumulates he abstains from spending unproduc- 
tively. 
What is true in this theory of surplus value is no new reve 
lation. Every one knows that the labourer does not get the 
whole value of the product in his wages. As long as land and 
capital are owned by some individuals, and not by all, nay, as 
long as special business abilities are the property of a few, so 
long will labourers, who are without these requisites of produc 
tion, have to pay for their use. It is unnecessary for me to 
discuss the “ iron law ” of wages which is summoned in aid of 
the surplus value theory. M. de Laveleye has shown what a 
small element of truth there is in it. There is only one point I 
need notice. Mr. Hyndman says,“ The higher wages which some 
workers get than others do not vitiate this (the bare-subsistence 
theory). Complex labour is at most a multiple of simple 
labour.” It would seem, therefore, that the “ complex 
labourer,” who earns thirty shillings a week, requires three 
times as many loaves to keep him in working order as the 
“ simple labourer,” who, for the same number of hours’ work, 
gets only ten shillings a week. And again, as the value of 
commodities depends on the quantity of labour-force, measured 
by time, “ socially necessary ” to produce them, the product of