Maggie's Farm

And as for getting the full product of his labor — man's owning all the things he makes -- what man ever got the full product of his labor except Robinson Crusoe? In a savage condition a man owns the game he kills, the flint he sharpens and the bow he makes. But the moment you come to any civilization, no man can touch his hand upon a thing, still less make a thing, that a thousand other men have not helped to make -- have not wrought upon, or mined, or planted, or fed, or carried, before! And how are those men to be paid if the last workman get it all? Take a pair of shoes. The grain that fed the ox and the bark that tans the hide, and the ship that carried it here from Australia, and the iron for the nails and the machinery, and the machines that made the ship and the nails and the shoe machinery itself — these are all capital, but were made by labor, and must not that be paid? And how, if the people in the shoe shop are to get the " full product of their labor " — that is, the full price of the shoes? And this is the great truth that socialists lose sight of — Capital is nothing but old labor. Capital is nothing but the fruits of the earth which have been already gathered, preserved, or transformed; that is, manufactured by past labor.

“Socialism; a speech delivered in Faneuil hall, February 7th, 1903, by Frederic J. Stimson