Wages cannot possibly rise so high as to absorb
all the new value which the men gave to the
goods by putting their work into them. If they
did, the employer would have to sell the goods
for what they cost him. He would get no
profit. He could not subsist, and production
would stop.
Such is the essential injustice of the capitalistic
system. It is to be noted that Marx's complaint
is not that the system gives the labourer too
little. In this many would have agreed with
him. Many besides Marx have believed that
the labourer gets too small a share of the value



CHAP, i] WHAT IT IS 15

which he at least helps to produce. Marx's
complaint is that the capitalist system does not
allow him to have the whole— i.e., the whole
difFerence between the value of the material as
it comes into his hands and its value when it
leaves.
VII

The real importance of the Law of Value can The essence
now be pointed out. It is not important because charge* ^
it supports Marx's economic system, although it against the
does this. It is important because it gives him system is
his moral case. Slwlf"

In Marx's view something called capital exists ^^^'i®-
as distinct from something else called labour.
His moral case, to put it bluntly, is that capital
robs labour and ought not to. Capital abstracts
something which labour has put into the article.
What labour puts into the article is its value.
Capital abstracts part of that and calls it its
profit. Capital did not always know, of course,
that it was doing this. But it knows now, since
Marx has spoken. And to its credit be it said,
it has had rather an uneasy conscience since.
