Your pay envelope

My dear John,

When the Socialists promise to see that you get the full product of your labor, there are a few minor details which they overlook. Not the least of these is the detail as to how they are going to do it.

If you should ask your friend, the soap-box man, where he gets the figures which he reels off so glibly when he is talking to you about the way you are robbed, he may find it difficult to answer; but the difficulty he encounters when confronted with such a question is nothing in comparison to that which he will experience if you ask him to inform you how the Socialist bosses are going to figure out your labor value in a way to assure you against robbery. It is easy for him to say that under Socialism you will get all you produce, but don’t let him get away with the idea that he can make such statements without being called upon to prove them.

It is a beautiful promise, this assurance of Socialism that every worker in the Co-operative Commonwealth will get every penny that is represented in his labor. It is a beautiful promise; but lots of people have made beautiful promises and haven’t kept them. Can it be possible that the bright little promiser who talks to you at the street corner is one of the “four-flushers,” too?

Ask him the next time he invites questions. Tell him that you are a practical man, and that you want more definite details.

Do you know what he will tell you? He will use a lot of words rounded out into more or less eloquent periods, but, when you attempt to analyze what he has said, you will find that all his wisdom could have been expressed in a single sentence. In plain English, he tells you that your request for details is nothing more or less than “a mark of ignorance.” He wants you to believe that Socialism’s plan will be all right for everybody, because, as the old negro said, “it jes’ works out so.”

Well, perhaps it will! Let us see.

To test the truth of this theory, we must tackle one of the most difficult problems that we shall be called upon to consider. But I think, if we are patient, we shall be able to get to the bottom of Marx’s complicated methods of reasoning, and so show that even the promise to ascertain the full value of the worker’s labor—to say nothing of the detail of giving it to him afterwards—is one of the most glaring absurdities in the whole Socialist scheme.

Marx tells us that value is determined by labor.

What does he mean?

He means that the value of a commodity is fixed by the labor that is put into it. This is all right as far as this statement goes, but it does not help us very much in determining the value of a particular commodity. Before we can know what a commodity is worth, we must know (according to Marx) what it cost to produce the mental and physical energy that was used in making it. To do this, we must first know the total cost of all the commodities which the worker consumed during the period when he was performing this particular task.

You know the old problem of the hen and the egg—which was first? The Socialist’s labor-value puzzle is much more perplexing, because, in addition to a lot of other things, you are called upon to find out which was first, the worker or the commodity which he consumed—the clothes he wore, the food he ate, the bed in which he slept while acquiring the strength for the work that produced this commodity.

If you were called upon to answer this question, to fix the value of even a single article, you would find the task anything but an easy one. Can you imagine what will happen when the government functionaries sit down to figure out this problem for every kind of article that is sold—anywhere in the world?

But, don’t imagine that their task ends here. When they have once succeeded in getting this puzzle solved, they will next be called upon to find out how many persons have contributed their labor toward the production of each and all of the commodities that have entered into the transaction.

Benedict Elder, in exposing this particular absurdity of Socialism in The Common Cause (September, 1912), illustrated his argument by showing the difficulties that the Socialist statisticians will face when they are called upon to find the value of the labor necessary in producing an ordinary pin. As it is difficult to obtain a more striking example, we may well follow Mr. Elder’s calculations.

To find the value of the labor of making a pin, it is necessary to begin by getting the exact time expended by every person who has contributed a necessary part towards the production of the pin. This includes the time of the man who sells the pin to you over the counter—for, of course, there will have to be salesmen under Socialism—the time spent by the miner who dug the metal from the earth and by every other individual who has had anything to do in handling it. Talk about tracing your ancestry back to the days of William the Conqueror—that would be a “cinch” compared to this kind of mental gymnastics!

Yet our Socialist statisticians are not finished with their work, even yet! Before they can tell the cashier how much to pay the worker so as to give him the full value of his labor in producing the pin, they must also determine how much labor-power each man spent in doing his part of this work and how many commodities, and how much of each, the man consumed to produce the labor-power necessary to complete the task assigned to him.

“Here,” says Mr. Elder, “we have indeed a monumental undertaking, one that staggers the mind to contemplate, one that challenges a combination of figures to express. Yet we are not fairly started at our task.... We have taken but one commodity where the number of commodities is practically infinite. We cannot follow the Socialists many steps; their range becomes so vast, their intricacies so bewildering, their complications so overwhelming, the throne of reason would be threatened by the stupendous scale of thought demanded almost at the outset. It is said that a German scientist once undertook to figure out the number of possible moves on a chess-board. He reached a point where the combination of figures required could no longer be expressed in any known language, and then his mind unhinged. On the chess-board there are just thirty-two pieces to be moved on sixty-four spots.”

The Socialist program may seem very plausible and extremely attractive when the Socialist propagandist is describing it in broad generalities and you do not examine its details too critically; but, when you get down to cases, John, and begin to try to find out how all these magnificent promises are to be kept, you will begin to feel that you are in danger of joining the German scientist whose “mind unhinged.”

Just for the sake of argument, let us admit that the Socialist functionaries have finally succeeded in performing the apparently impossible task of ascertaining exactly how much your labor-time has been worth to the community. This fact equitably determined, the worker would probably be given labor checks, for which he could secure other things of equal value with his labor. For example, if it required 1,000,000 days’ labor to provide this year’s shoes for the community and 2,000,000 pairs of shoes were made in that time, we can imagine that a check for one day’s labor might exchange for two pairs of shoes.

It is easy to see that it would require no small amount of book-keeping to keep even this matter of detail adjusted fairly, especially when we remember what intricate calculations are necessary to find out how many persons contributed to the production of these shoes, and how the value of the time of each worker must be figured. But the same difficulty would present itself with every kind of commodity in any way dependent upon the labor-power of man.

If the labor checks that each worker receives are to be of real value, they must be exchangeable for articles which the worker himself needs or thinks he needs. In other words, our Socialist officials are also to be called upon to ascertain what the public may be expected to demand. This does not mean merely the articles that are necessary to life—food, clothing, fuel, etc.—but everything that must be placed at the disposal of a man if he is to enjoy unrestricted freedom of choice as to the character of the articles which he purchases. Even the smallest thing must be considered—the boy’s jumping-Jack and the button-boots for the doll baby; for it is not admitted that any wants of man—however small or great—are to be prohibited by the government.

The ordinary playthings of the child represent a demand upon raw material, and each of these demands must be considered in calculating the total production for which arrangements must be made in advance.

To accomplish this result the statistical expert will be compelled to ascertain the actual needs of every family—indeed, of every individual from one end of the country to the other, if not throughout the entire world, since, of course, there would still be an interchange of products between the various lands. A statistical estimate based upon present conditions would be of little avail. To overcome the difficulty, an accurate schedule of every article that will be needed to meet the demands of the purchaser must be made.

The taking of a census is a long and laborious task, and to its completion years are devoted. Yet the census which the United States government takes is mere child’s play compared with the schedules which will have to be filled out, arranged and digested, if all the small commodities which people want to buy, and which they buy to-day, are to be ascertained and tabulated in preparation for production.

As Cathrein points out (“Socialism,” p. 270), it will be necessary to consider “the numerous articles of food which are required even in the humblest family, the supplying of the kitchen with fuel and cooking utensils, the fitting up of the drawing-room and bedrooms with furniture and ornamentation, the lighting and heating, the stocking of the pantry, etc., besides the necessary repairs. There must be included the mending of clothes, furniture, etc.... The authorities will have to supply needle and thread to replace the missing shirt-button. All these items must be tabulated for the determination of the demand upon which the great system of production is to be based. And all this would have to be done not for one family alone, but for the millions of families which constitute a modern State and for everyone of their members.... Even a cursory glance at the immense department stores of our large cities with their thousands of different articles, will convince anyone of the great variety of modern requirements.

“Moreover, the social demand is not at all constant; it varies from month to month, from week to week, even from day to day. Many requirements cannot be foreseen in the least; suddenly and unexpectedly they make their presence felt. Weekly or even daily inquiries would become necessary, or at least there would be needed numerous offices where lists of requirements could be filed.

“However, it would not suffice to provide for single families. The needs of society at large, all the public requirements, would also have to be satisfied. In the first place would come the arrangements for transportation: streets and roads, bridges, railways, canals, vehicles of all kinds. The care of all this would be incumbent on the paternal State. What an amount of daily exertion to supply a large city with meat, milk, fruit, vegetables, etc. Private hotels would also be abolished. It would become the functions of public officials to provide shelter, food, and service for every comer, unless travelling is to be forbidden in the Socialist commonwealth. Then, again, the whole of the building business will be in the hands of the State. Public and private edifices, dwellings, schools, hospitals, insane asylums, storehouses, theatres, museums, public halls, post and telegraph offices, railroad stations, would have to be erected and kept in repair, or enlarged as necessity required. And these buildings could not be handed over to contractors as is generally done nowadays; the State alone could take care of drawing up the plans and specifications, of gathering the necessary materials and workmen, of directing and supervising the erection. If the State is supposed to do all this systematically, without squandering an immense amount of labor and materials, the extent and quality of the requirements in the entire commonwealth must be ascertained long beforehand by some responsible authority.

“What the different cities and town administrations are doing now, and as a rule through private contractors, in the matter of streets, public health, water supply, lighting, baths, etc., would fall to the care of the State. Physicians, surgeons, druggists, nurses, midwives, would have to be appointed, and it would be incumbent upon the State to provide for the professional education of a sufficient number of people for all these offices. The State would have to find ways and means to take care of education, of the press, literature, arts, theatres, museums, etc.... To this would have to be added the management of the farms, vineyards, vegetable gardens, cattle and stock raising, the forests and fisheries, mining, smelting, and other industrial processes. In all these departments, the requirements would have to be accurately ascertained before there would be any question of a systematic regulation of production.”

There are several important items that have been omitted, but it does not seem necessary to enumerate them. Enough has been shown to demonstrate that, to perform all this work and to compile such an overwhelming amount of statistical labor alone, a huge army of public officials will be required, and they must be public officials of such capability and integrity as not to be subject to the human weaknesses that are responsible for so many of the blunders in work of this kind—blunders that might prove fatal to the entire system of production and even threaten the very existence of the nation.

Do you think that human intelligence is equal to such a task? The soap-box orator may call your attention to the fact that this work is being done to-day. Yes, it is being done, but, as the Socialist so very often asserts, many of our worst evils are due to the fact that the work is being done so badly.

The Socialist also assures us that he will remedy all these evils, which means that Socialism will do the work much better than it is being performed at the present time. Do you think that this is possible? Do you believe that so gigantic a system of State machinery can be organized and made to operate without a hitch? Is it possible that a system of collective government composed of human units, all subject to human frailties, can perform what private enterprise, with its vast resources and its boundless ambition, has never been able to accomplish, especially when no hope of extra recompense stimulates these human units in the performance of their appointed tasks?