The capitalist buys the commodity labor (_l_), for money (_m_), and sells its product for more money (_m_+). The formula of capitalistic production is therefore _m_-_l_-_m_+. In the socialistic state, the +, surplus value, vanishes. The entire product belongs to the producer. If he exchanges it for other products by means of money which must be based on labor-time—labor-time money—the formula will be _c_-_m_-_c_. Money becomes simply a medium of exchanging commodities (_c_) of equal value. The only source, then, of obtaining the fruits of labor will be—labor, physical or mental, but always labor of some kind or another. Idlers will disappear from the earth. The race of parasites will become extinct. One of Marx’s most important doctrines is his theory of crises. During prosperous times manufacturers employ all the men, women, and children who will work. The laboring classes prosper, marriage is encouraged, and population increases. Suddenly there comes a commercial crisis. The greater part of the laborers are thrown out of employment, and are maintained by society at large; that is, the general public has to bear the burden of keeping the laborers—the manufacturer’s tools—for their employer until he may need them again. These laborers without work constitute an army of reserve forces for the manufacturer. When times begin to improve, he again gradually resumes business, and becomes more prosperous. The laborer’s wages have previously been reduced on account of hard times, and the manufacturer is not obliged to raise them, as there is a whole army in waiting, glad to take work at any price. “If a surplus labor population is a necessary result of the accumulation or the development of wealth on a capitalistic basis, this surplus population is in turn a lever of capitalistic accumulation. It forms an always ready, industrial reserve army which belongs as absolutely to capital as if it had been at the expense of raising it.... Surplus capital presses forward with frenzy into all established branches of production, whose market suddenly widens, and into new ones, as railroads, etc., the need of which springs from this development. In all such cases must large masses of men suddenly, and without loss to the leaders of production in other places, be ready to be employed at the important point. These masses are furnished by the surplus population.”[178] CHAPTER XI. THE INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN’S ASSOCIATION. The International Workingmen’s Association (_Internationale Arbeiterassociation_) is a society based on social democratic principles, and intended to embrace all the laborers of Christendom. The Internationalists believe that working-men, having nothing to hope from the higher classes, must fight out their own emancipation. They hold, also, that the interests of labor throughout the civilized world are so vitally connected, that it is necessary for all lands to march together. They are thoroughgoing cosmopolitans.