that the division of the joint product that took place there was similar to the division that took place in the sum total of all industrial processes. We found that labor could buy back with its wages only so much of the product, and that capital did not consume all of the remainder of the product. We found that when labor had consumed to the full extent of its wages, and when capital had consumed all it wanted, there was still left an unconsumed surplus. We agreed that this surplus could only be disposed of abroad. We agreed, also, that the effect of unloading this surplus on another country would be to develop the resources of that country, and that in a short time that country would have an unconsumed surplus. We extended this process to all the countries on the planet, till every country was producing every year, and every day, an unconsumed surplus, which it could dispose of to no other country. And now I ask you again, what are we going to do with those surpluses?”
Still no one answered.
“Mr. Calvin?” Ernest queried.
“It beats me,” Mr. Calvin confessed.
“I never dreamed of such a thing,” Mr. Asmunsen said. “And yet it does seem clear as print.”
It was the first time I had ever heard Karl Marx’s61 doctrine of surplus value elaborated, and Ernest had done it so simply that I, too, sat puzzled and dumbfounded.
“I’ll tell you a way to get rid of the surplus,” Ernest said. “Throw it into the sea. Throw every year hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of shoes and wheat and clothing and all the commodities of commerce into the sea. Won’t that fix it?”