the creation of a surplus is
impossible if, according to our hypothesis the workers consume as much
as they produce. And since the capitalists produce no value it is
impossible to see how they can live. And if such a surplus of
production over consumption does exist, if such a production and
reserve fund exists in the hands of the capitalists there is no other
explanation possible than that the working class uses only enough
values for its own maintenance and turns over the rest of the goods
which it produces to the capitalist.

On the other hand, if this production and reserve fund actually exists
in the hands of the capitalist class, if it has really come into
existence through the piling up of profits, (we will leave rent out of
the question for the present); it necessarily comes from the
accumulated profits of the capitalist class taken from the working
class over and above the sums paid by the capitalist class to the
working class in the form of wages. Value therefore does not depend
upon wages, but upon amount of labor. The working class renders to the
capitalist class a greater amount of value than it receives in wages
and thus the profit of capital as of all other forms of the
appropriation of unpaid for products of labor is to be explained on
the simple ground of the surplus value discovered by Marx.

_VI. Simple and Compound Labor._

(The argument of Duehring against which Engels here directs his
efforts may be best summed up in Duehring's concluding words "Marx in
his utterances on value cannot escape the lurking ghost of highly
skilled labor. The prevalent notion of the intellectual classes has
been a hindrance to him in this matter, for according to this idea it
is an enormity to reckon the labor time of a barrow pusher and an
architect as economic equivalents.")

Engels thereupon says "the passage in the works of Marx which caused
this outbreak on the part of Duehring is very short." Marx is
examining the question as to the basis of the value of commodities and
answers it by the statement that it is the amount of human labor
contained in them. "This" he goes on "is the expression of that simple
labor force which belongs to the average human being without any
special development. Skilled labor is a power or rather a multiple of
simple labor, so that a small amount of skilled labor is equivalent to
a larger amount of unskilled labor. Practice shows that this reduction
to the terms of unskilled labor