plus values then in 1860 this would be eighty million dollars less than the sum of the wages. In 1891 the amount of surplus values exceeded the sum of wages by the significant sum of not less than four hundred million dollars.
This certainly signifies a considerable increase in exploitation. The rate of surplus value, that is to say, the rate of exploitation of the laborer, has accordingly risen during this time from 96 per cent to 112 per cent. Actually, even according to Bowley's figures, exploitation has at least grown very fast among the best organized laborers. The exploitation of the masses of unorganized must have reached a much higher degree.
We do not lay any great stress upon these figures. But as far as they show anything, they speak for, not against, the claim of the increasing exploitation of labor power, that Marx has proven in another way, by examination of the laws of movements, the capitalist system of production, and which has not yet been disproved. To be sure, one can say: Granted that exploitation increases, but wages increase also, even if not to the same degree as surplus values. How then shall the laborer discover this increasing exploitation if it is not plainly evident, but is only to be discovered by painstaking investigation? The mass of the laborers do not study statistics or think about theories of value and profit.
This may be granted. But there is a way in
