Does Capitalism Inevitably Produce Inequalities?

[The Magistrate]

130. Why Not, Ma'am?

Mr. Smith in 'Wealth of Nations' states quite frankly that employers tend to depress wages to the level of subsistence, to that amount which simply enables the worker to live and to reproduce, with everything the employee produces above this minimum being left in the hands of the employer. It is built in to the system that a great deal of the value a worker produces ends up in the pockets of the employer. That this condition is maintained by violence has been made clear on numerous occasions when workers have struck for higher pay, and been met by violence from agents of the state ( police or soldiers ) or violence by agents of the employer ( Pinkertons or other private armed bodies, to whose violence the state turns a blind eye ), with the result that strike was broken and the wage rate remained as the employer wished. So it is certainly a supportable argument to state that much of what a worker produces is stolen by the employer, and further, is stolen by violence. The situation is analogous to, say, a robber who, after taking a man's wallet at gun-point, rifles through it and hand him back his identification and ten-spot so he can at least get a meal or two still, before departing with the rest of his week's pay....