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shall not share in all the progress of the past by voting all the great powers of producing wealth into the hands of a millionaire capitalist class. All the inventions, achievements, progress and historical advance are by you given to a few in every election, and you then work like galley slaves to win an animal existence like that of the Roman captives during the time of the Caesars.
Labor Power a Commodity.
The labor power the workers sell to the employing capitalists is a commodity. It is something that you sell by the day and restore during the night. The workers generally end life where they started in early boyhood—by selling their labor power. It cannot be sold separately from the body; when sold the man goes with the sale. The difference between the slave and the wage worker is that the first was sold by the master, while the latter must hunt the master and effect his own sale. The slave was sold for life; the wage worker is also sold for life, but the transaction is broken up into numerous sales to different masters and frequent periods of idleness.
The worker must sell his labor power frequently. He cannot hold it off the market and wait for a rise in its price. On its sale depends the life of himself and family. This makes it a forced sale, and the man who is forced to sell anything cannot force the buyer to meet his terms. The worker cannot send samples of his labor power to the buyer. He must sell it by the day, week or month, as he can.
As one writer says: "The laborer must sell to-day; the employer need not buy till to-morrow. To the master it is only a question of profits; to the laborer it is a question of LIFE." The sale of labor power is not a voluntary act, for his wants act as a lash to drive him on to find a buyer. Worker is pitted against worker in a glutted labor market, offering themselves for sale. The strong, muscular man is pitted against the weak. The consumptive girl and the child is also in the pit, offering their labor power to capitalist buyers. It is a world of human merchandise on the auction block, each one offering his or her labor power for such terms as they can get.
