the very phrases
"surplus produce" and "surplus labor" are used. You will find that Marx
refers to this letter in a note on page 369 (Humboldt edition, 644 Kerr
edition) of the American edition of Capital. The Russian writer,
Slepzoff, quotes several passages from this letter in an article in the
December, 1899, number of _La Revue Socialiste_, and it is amazing to
see how near to Marx's conclusions this unknown writer had come eighty
years ago, but the conditions were not ripe and his letter would to-day
be forgotten if Marx had not embalmed it in a footnote. I confess I was
surprised to learn that this was not a purely original discovery of
Marx's, but the fact that it is not is one more signal confirmation of
the theory I have given in this lecture of the double or multiple
discovery of great ideas.

But let us resume the discussion of Surplus Value and see just what it
really is.

No matter where you, my workingman hearer or reader may work, the person
or corporation or trust for whom or which you work gets back more out of
your labor, than he or it pays you in wages. If this is not so, your
employer is either running a charitable institution or he is in business
for his health. You may have employers of that kind here on the East
Side of New York, but I have never met any of them elsewhere. It is
impossible to conceive of a man going on day after day, week after week,
year after year, paying you wages, unless he receives more for the
product of your labor than he pays you in wages. Now, this difference
between what you get and what he gets is what we call surplus-value.

This surplus-value is the key to the whole present economic organization
of society. The end and object of bourgeois society is the formation and
accumulation of surplus-value, or in other words, the systematic robbery
of the producing class. Now when we say robbery, we do not mean to
accuse employers of conscious dishonesty. They are the creatures of a
system just as the workers are, but it is a system which makes their
interests diametrically opposed to the interests of their employees. The
only way the capitalists can increase their relative share of the
product of their employees' labor is by decreasing the relative share of
the latter.

Now, if out of the total product of his labor the workingman only
receives a part, then it is true to say that he works part of the day
for himself and part of the day gratuitously for the capitalist. Let u