This is, anyhow, a very simple way of
explaining
the why and the wherefore of things.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
As soon as his labour actually begins, it has already ceased to belong to him; it can therefore no longer be sold by him.
Labour is the substance, and the immanent measure of value, but has itself no value.
5
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In the expression --value of labour,? the idea of value is not only completely obliterated, but actually reversed. It is an expression as imaginary as the value of the earth. These imaginary expressions, arise, however, from the relations of production themselves. They are categories for the phenomenal forms of essential relations. That in their appearance things often represent themselves in inverted form is pretty well known in every science except Political Economy. 6
Classical Political Economy borrowed from every-day life the category --price of labour? without further criticism, and then simply asked the question, how is this price determined? It soon recognized that the change in the relations of demand and supply explained in regard to the price of labour, as of all other commodities, nothing except its changes i. e. , the oscillations of the market-price above or below a certain mean. If demand and supply balance, the oscillation of prices ceases, all other conditions remaining the same. But then demand and supply also cease to explain anything. The price of labour, at the moment when demand and supply are in equilibrium, is its natural price, determined independently of the relation of demand and supply. And how this price is determined is just the question. Or a larger period of oscillations in the market-price is taken, e. g. , a year, and they are found to cancel one the other, leaving a mean average quantity, a relatively constant magnitude. This had naturally to be determined otherwise than by its own compensating variations. This price which always finally predominates over the accidental market-prices of labour and regulates them, this --necessary price? (Physiocrats) or --natural price? of labour (Adam Smith) can, as with all other commodities, be nothing else than its value expressed in money. In this way Political Economy expected to penetrate athwart the accidental prices of labour, to the value of labour. As with other commodities, this value was determined by the cost of production. But what is the cost of production-of the labourer, i. e. , the cost of producing or reproducing the labourer himself? This question unconsciously substituted itself in Political Economy for the original one; for the search after the cost of production of labour as such turned in a circle and never left the spot. What economists therefore call value of labour, is in fact the value of labour-power, as it exists in the personality of the labourer, which is as different from its function, labour, as a machine is from the work it performs. Occupied with the difference between the market-price of labour and its so-called value, with the relation of this value to the rate of profit, and to the values of the commodities produced by means of labour, &c. , they never discovered that the course of the analysis had led not only from the market-prices of labour to its presumed value, but had led to the resolution of this value of labour itself into the value of labour-power. Classical economy never arrived at a consciousness of the results of its own analysis; it accepted uncritically the categories --value of labour,? --natural price of labour,? &c. ,. as final and as adequate expressions for the value-relation under consideration, and was thus led, as will be seen later, into inextricable confusion and contradiction, while it offered to the vulgar economists a secure basis of operations for their shallowness, which on principle worships appearances only.
Let us next see how value (and price) of labour-power, present themselves in this transformed condition as wages.
We know that the daily value of labour-power is calculated upon a certain length of the labourer's life, to which, again, corresponds a certain length of working day. Assume the habitual working day as 12 hours, the daily value of labour-power as 3s. , the expression in money of a value that embodies 6 hours of labour. If the labourer receives 3s. , then he receives the value of his labour- power functioning through 12 hours. If, now, this value of a day's labour-power is expressed as the value of a day's labour itself, we have the formula: Twelve hours' labour has a value of 3s. The value of labour-power thus determines the value of labour, or, expressed in money, its
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necessary price. If, on the other hand, the price of labour-power differs from its value, in like manner the price of labour differs from its so-called value.
As the value of labour is only an irrational expression for the value of labour-power, it follows, of course, that the value of labour must always be less than the value it produces, for the capitalist always makes labour-power work longer than is necessary for the reproduction of its own value. In the above example, the value of the labour-power that functions through 12 hours is 3s. , a value for the reproduction of which 6 hours are required. The value which the labour-power produces is, on the other hand, 6s. , because it, in fact, functions during 12 hours, and the value it produces depends, not on its own value, but on the length of time it is in action. Thus, we have a result absurd at first sight that labour which creates a value of 6s. possesses a value of 3s. 7
We see, further: The value of 3s. by which a part only of the working day - i. e. , 6 hours' labour-is paid for, appears as the value or price of the whole working day of 12 hours, which thus includes 6 hours unpaid for. The wage form thus extinguishes every trace of the division of the working day into necessary labour and surplus labour, into paid and unpaid labour. All labour appears as paid labour. In the corve? e, the labour of the worker for himself, and his compulsory labour for his lord, differ in space and time in the clearest possible way. In slave labour, even that part of the working day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave's labour appears as unpaid labour. 8 In wage labour, on the contrary, even surplus labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage labourer.
Hence, we may understand the decisive importance of the transformation of value and price of labour-power into the form of wages, or into the value and price of labour itself. This phenomenal form, which makes the actual relation invisible, and, indeed, shows the direct opposite of that relation, forms the basis of all the juridical notions of both labourer and capitalist, of all the mystifications of the capitalistic mode of production, of all its illusions as to liberty, of all the apologetic shifts of the vulgar economists.
If history took a long time to get at the bottom of the mystery of wages, nothing, on the other hand, is more easy to understand than the necessity, the raison d'etre, of this phenomenon.
The exchange between capital and labour at first presents itself to the mind in the same guise as the buying and selling of all other commodities. The buyer gives a certain sum of money, the seller an article of a nature different from money. The jurist's consciousness recognizes in this, at most, a material difference, expressed in the juridically equivalent formula: --Do ut des, do ut facias, facio ut des, facio ut facias. ? 9
Furthermore, exchange-value and use-value, being intrinsically incommensurable magnitudes, the expressions --value of labour,? --price of labour,? do not seem more irrational than the expressions --value of cotton,? --price of cotton. ? Moreover, the labourer is paid after he has given his labour. In its function of means of payment, money realizes subsequently the value or price of the article supplied - i. e. , in this particular case, the value or price of the labour supplied. Finally, the use- value supplied by the labourer to the capitalist is not, in fact, his labour-power, but its function, some definite useful labour, the work of tailoring, shoemaking, spinning, &c. That this same labour is, on the other hand, the universal value-creating element, and thus possesses a property by which it differs from all other commodities, is beyond the cognizance of the ordinary mind.
Let us put ourselves in the place of the labourer who receives for 12 hours' labour, say the value produced by 6 hours' labour, say 3s. For him, in fact, his 12 hours' labour is the means of buying the 3s. The value of his labour-power may vary, with the value of his usual means of subsistence,
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from 3 to 4 shillings, or from 3 to 2 shillings; or, if the value of his labour-power remains constant, its price may, in consequence of changing relations of demand and supply, rise to 4s. or fall to 2s. He always gives 12 hours of labour. Every change in the amount of the equivalent that he receives appears to him, therefore, necessarily as a change in the value or price of his 12 hours' work. This circumstance misled Adam Smith, who treated the working day as a constant quantity,10 to the assertion that the value of labour is constant, although the value of the means of subsistence may vary, and the same working day, therefore, may represent itself in more or less money for the labourer.
Let us consider, on the other hand, the capitalist. He wishes to receive as much labour as possible for as little money as possible. Practically, therefore, the only thing that interests him is the difference between the price of labour-power and the value which its function creates. But, then, he tries to buy all commodities as cheaply as possible, and always accounts for his profit by simple cheating, by buying under, and selling over the value. Hence, he never comes to see that, if such a thing as the value of labour really existed, and he really paid this value, no capital would exist, his money would not be turned into capital.
Moreover, the actual movement of wages presents phenomena which seem to prove that not the value of labour-power is paid, but the value of its function, of labour itself. We may reduce these phenomena to two great classes: 1. ) Change of wages with the changing length of the working day. One might as well conclude that not the value of a machine is paid, but that of its working, because it costs more to hire a machine for a week than for a day. 2. ) The individual difference in the wages of different labourers who do the same kind of work. We find this individual difference, but are not deceived by it, in the system of slavery, where, frankly and openly, without any circumlocution, labour-power itself is sold. Only, in the slave system, the advantage of a labour-power above the average, and the disadvantage of a labour-power below the average, affects the slave-owner; in the wage-labour system, it affects the labourer himself, because his labour-power is, in the one case, sold by himself, in the other, by a third person.
For the rest, in respect to the phenomenal form, --value and price of labour,? or --wages,? as contrasted with the essential relation manifested therein, viz. , the value and price of labour- power, the same difference holds that holds in respect to all phenomena and their hidden substratum. The former appear directly and spontaneously as current modes of thought; the latter must first be discovered by science. Classical Political Economy nearly touches the true relation of things, without, however, consciously formulating it. This it cannot, so long as it sticks in its bourgeois skin.
1 --Mr. Ricardo ingeniously enough avoids a difficulty which, on a first view, threatens to encumber his doctrine -- that value depends on the quantity of labour employed in production. If this principle is rigidly adhered to, it follows that the value of labour depends on the quantity of labour employed in producing it -- which is evidently absurd. By a dexterous turn, therefore, Mr. Ricardo makes the value of labour depend on the quantity of labour required to produce wages; or, to give him the benefit of his own language, he maintains, that the value of labour is to be estimated by the quantity of labour required to produce wages; by which he means the quantity of labour required to produce the money or commodities given to the labourer. This is similar to saying, that the value of cloth is estimated, not by the quantity of labour bestowed on its production, but by the quantity of labour bestowed on the production of the silver, for which the cloth is exchanged. ? -- --A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, &c. , of Value,? pp. 50, 51.
2 --If you call labour a commodity, it is not like a commodity which is first produced in order to exchange, and then brought to market where it must exchange with other commodities according to
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the respective quantities of each which there may be in the market at the time; labour is created the moment it is brought to market; nay, it is brought to market before it is created. ? -- --Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes,? &c. , pp. 75, 76.
3 --Treating labour as a commodity, and capital, the produce of labour, as another, then, if the values of these two commodities were regulated by equal quantities of labour, a given amount of labour would . . . exchange for that quantity of capital which had been produced by the same amount of labour; antecedent labour would . . . exchange for the same amount as present labour. But the value of labour in relation to other commodities . . . is determined not by equal quantities of labour. ? -- E. G. Wakefield in his edition of Adam Smith's --Wealth of Nations,? Vol. I. , London, 1836, p. 231, note.
4 --There has to be a new agreement? (a new edition of the social contract! ) --that whenever there is an exchange of work done for work to be done, the latter? (the capitalist) --is to receive a higher value than the former? (the worker). -- Simonde (de Sismondi), --De la Richesse Commerciale,? Geneva, 1803, Vol I, p. 37.
5 --Labour the exclusive standard of value . . . the creator of all wealth, no commodity. ? Thomas Hodgskin, --Popul. Polit. Econ. ,? p. 186.
6 On the other hand, the attempt to explain such expressions as merely poetic license only shows the impotence of the analysis. Hence, in answer to Proudhon's phrase; --Labour is called value, not as being a commodity itself, but in view of the values supposed to be potentially embodied in it. The value of labour is a figurative expression,? &c. I have remarked: --In labour, commodity, which is a frightful reality, he (Proudhon) sees nothing but a grammatical ellipsis. The whole of existing society, then, based upon labour commodity, is henceforth based upon a poetic license, on a figurative expression. Does society desire to eliminate all the inconveniences which trouble it, it has only to eliminate all the ill-sounding terms. Let it change the language, and for that it has only to address itself to the Academy and ask it for a new edition of its dictionary. ? (Karl Marx, --Mise`re de la Philosophie,? pp. 34, 35. ) It is naturally still more convenient to understand by value nothing at all. Then one can without difficulty subsume everything under this category. Thus, e. g. , J. B. Say: --What is value? ? Answer: --That which a thing is worth"; and what is --price"? Answer: --The value of a thing expressed in money. ? And why has agriculture a value? Answer: --Because one sets a price on it. ? Therefore value is what a thing is worth, and the land has its --value,? because its value is --expressed in money. ?
This is, anyhow, a very simple way of explaining the why and the wherefore of things.
7 Cf. --Zur Kritik &c. ,? p. 40, where I state that, in the portion of that work that deals with Capital, this problem will be solved: --How does production, on the basis of exchange-value determined simply by labour-time, lead to the result that the exchange-value of labour is less than the exchange-value of its product? ?
8 The --Morning Star,? a London Free-trade organ, naif to silliness, protested again and again during the American Civil War, with all the moral indignation of which man is capable, that the Negro in the --Confederate States? worked absolutely for nothing. It should have compared the daily cost of such a Negro with that of the free workman in the East-end of London.
9 I give in order that you may give; I give in order that you may produce; I produce so that you may give; I produce so that you may produce.
10 Adam Smith only accidentally alludes to the variation of the working day when he is referring to piece-wages.
? ? Chapter 20: Time-Wages
Wages themselves again take many forms, a fact not recognizable in the ordinary economic treatises which, exclusively interested in the material side of the question, neglect every difference of form. An exposition of all these forms however, belongs to the special study of wage labour, not therefore to this work. Still the two fundamental forms must be briefly worked out here.
The sale of labour-power, as will be remembered, takes place for a definite period of time. The converted form under which the daily, weekly, &c. , value of labour-power presents itself, is hence that of time wages, therefore day-wages, &c.
Next it is to be noted that the laws set forth, in the 17th chapter, on the changes in the relative magnitudes of price of labour-power and surplus value, pass by a simple transformation of form, into laws of wages. Similarly the distinction between the exchange-value of labour power, and the sum of the necessaries of life into which this value is converted, now reappears as the distinction between nominal and real wages. It would be useless to repeat here, with regard to the phenomenal form, what has been already worked out in the substantial form. We limit ourselves therefore to a few points characteristic of time-wages.
The sum of money1 which the labourer receives for his daily or weekly labour, forms the amount of his nominal wages, or of his wages estimated in value. But it is clear that according to the length of the working day, that is, according to the amount of actual labour daily supplied, the same daily or weekly wage may represent very different prices of labour, i. e. , very different sums of money for the same quantity of labour. 2 We must, therefore, in considering time-wages, again distinguish between the sum-total of the daily or weekly wages, &c. , and the price of labour. How then, to find this price, i. e. , the money-value of a given quantity of labour? The average price of labour is found, when the average daily value of the labour-power is divided by the average number of hours in the working day. If, e. g. , the daily value of labour-power is 3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 working-hours, and if the working day is 12 hours, the price of 1 working hour is 3/12 shillings = 3d. The price of the working-hour thus found serves as the unit measure for the price of labour.
It follows therefore that the daily and weekly wages, &c. , may remain the same, although the price of labour falls constantly. If, e. g. , the habitual working day is 10 hours and the daily value of the labour-power 3s. , the price of the working-hour is 3 3/5d. It falls to 3s. as soon as the working day rises to 12 hours, to 2 2/5d as soon as it rises to 15 hours. Daily or weekly wages remain, despite all this, unchanged. On the contrary, the daily or weekly wages may rise, although the price of labour remains constant or even falls. If, e. g. , the working day is 10 hours, and the daily value of labour-power 3 shillings, the price of one working-hour is 3 3/5d. If the labourer, in consequence of increase of trade, works 12 hours, the price of labour remaining the same, his daily wage now rises to 3 shillings 7 1/5 d. without any variation in the price of labour. The same result might follow if, instead of the extensive amount of labour, its intensive amount increased. 3The rise of the nominal daily or weekly wages may therefore be accompanied by a price of labour that remains stationary or falls. The same holds as to the income of the labourer's family, as soon as the quantity of labour expended by the head of the family is increased by the labour of the members of his family. There are, therefore, methods of lowering the price of labour independent of the reduction of the nominal daily or weekly wages. 4
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As a general law it follows that, given the amount of daily or weekly labour, &c. , the daily or weekly wages depend on the price of labour which itself varies either with the value of labour- power, or with the difference between its price and its value. Given, on the other hand, the price of labour, the daily or weekly wages depend on the quantity of the daily or weekly labour.
The unit-measure for time-wages, the price of the working-hour, is the quotient of the value of a day's labour-power, divided by the number of hours of the average working day. Let the latter be 12 hours, and the daily value of labour-power 3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 hours of labour. Under these circumstances the price of a working hour is 3d. ; the value produced in it is 6d. If the labourer is now employed less than 12 hours (or less than 6 days in the week), e. g. , only 6 or 8 hours, he receives, with this price of labour, only 2s. or 1s. 6d. a day. 5 As on our hypothesis he must work on the average 6 hours daily, in order to produce a day's wage corresponding merely to the value of his labour power, as according to the same hypothesis he works only half of every hour for himself, and half for the capitalist, it is clear that he cannot obtain for himself the value of the product of 6 hours if he is employed less than 12 hours. In previous chapters we saw the destructive consequences of over-work; here we find the sources of the sufferings that result to the labourer from his insufficient employment.
If the hour's wage is fixed so that the capitalist does not bind himself to pay a day's or a week's wage, but only to pay wages for the hours during which he chooses to employ the labourer, he can employ him for a shorter time than that which is originally the basis of the calculation of the hour-wage, or the unit-measure of the price of labour. Since this unit is determined by the ratio
daily value of labour-power working day of a given number of hours'
it, of course, loses all meaning as soon as the working day ceases to contain a definite number of hours. The connection between the paid and the unpaid labour is destroyed. The capitalist can now wring from the labour a certain quantity of surplus labour without allowing him the labour- time necessary for his own subsistence. He can annihilate all regularity of employment, and according to his own convenience, caprice, and the interest of the moment, make the most enormous overwork alternate with relative or absolute cessation of work. He can, under the pretense of paying --the normal price of labour,? abnormally lengthen the working day without any corresponding compensation to the labourer. Hence the perfectly rational revolt in 1860 of the London labourers, employed in the building trades, against the attempt of the capitalists to impose on them this sort of wage by the hour. The legal limitation of the working day puts an end to such mischief, although not, of course, to the diminution of employment caused by the competition of machinery, by changes in the quality of the labourers employed, and by crises partial or general.
With an increasing daily or weekly wage the price of labour may remain nominally constant, and yet may fall below its normal level. This occurs every time that, the price of labour (reckoned per working-hour) remaining constant, the working day is prolonged beyond its customary length. If in the fraction:
daily value of labour power working day
the denominator increases, the numerator increases yet more rapidly. The value of labour-power, as dependent on its wear and tear, increases with the duration of its functioning, and in more rapid proportion than the increase of that duration. In many branches of industry where time-wage is the general rule without legal limits to the working-time, the habit has, therefore, spontaneously grown up of regarding the working day as normal only up to a certain point, e. g. , up to the
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expiration of the tenth hour (--normal working day,? --the day's work,? --the regular hours of work? ). Beyond this limit the working-time is over-time, and is, taking the hour as unit-measure, paid better (--extra pay? ), although often in a proportion ridiculously small. 6 The normal working day exists here as a fraction of the actual working day, and the latter, often during the whole year, lasts longer than the former. 7 The increase in the price of labour with the extension of the working day beyond a certain normal limit, takes such a shape in various British industries that the low price of labour during the so-called normal time compels the labourer to work during the better paid over-time, if he wishes to obtain a sufficient wage at all. 8 Legal limitation of the working day puts an end to these amenities. 9
It is a fact generally known that, the longer the working days, in any branch of industry, the lower are the wages. 10 A. Redgrave, factory inspector, illustrates this by a comparative review of the 20 years from 1839-1859, according to which wages rose in the factories under the 10 Hours Law, whilst they fell in the factories in which the work lasted 14 to 15 hours daily. 11
From the law, --the price of labour being given, the daily or weekly wage depends on the quantity of labour expended,? it follows, first of all, that the lower the price of labour, the greater must be the quantity of labour, or the longer must be the working day for the labourer to secure even a miserable average wage. The lowness of the price of labour acts here as a stimulus to the extension of the labour-time. 12
On the other hand, the extension of the working-time produces, in its turn, a fall in the price of labour, and with this a fall in the day's or week's wages.
The determination of the price of labour by:
daily value of labour power working day of a given number of hours
shows that a mere prolongation of the working day lowers the price of labour, if no compensation steps in. But the same circumstances which allow the capitalist in the long run to prolong the working day, also allow him first, and compel him finally, to nominally lower the price of labour until the total price of the increased number of hours is lowered, and, therefore, the daily or weekly wage. Reference to two circumstances is sufficient here. If one man does the work of 11/2 or 2 men, the supply of labour increases, although the supply of labour-power on the market remains constant. The competition thus created between the labourers allows the capitalist to beat down the price of labour, whilst the falling price of labour allows him, on the other hand, to screw up still further the working-time. 13 Soon, however, this command over abnormal quantities of unpaid labour, i. e. , quantities in excess of the average social amount, becomes a source of competition amongst the capitalists themselves. A part of the price of the commodity consists of the price of labour. The unpaid part of the labour-price need not be reckoned in the price of the commodity. It may be presented to the buyer. This is the first step to which competition leads. The second step to which it drives is to exclude also from the selling price of the commodity at least a part of the abnormal surplus value created by the extension of the working day. In this way, an abnormally low selling price of the commodity arises, at first sporadically, and becomes fixed by degrees; a lower selling price which henceforward becomes the constant basis of a miserable wage for an excessive working-time, as originally it was the product of these very circumstances. This movement is simply indicated here, as the analysis of competition does not belong to this part of our subject. Nevertheless, the capitalist may, for a moment, speak for himself. --In Birmingham there is so much competition of masters one against another that many are obliged to do things as employers that they would otherwise be ashamed of; and yet no more money is made, but only the public gets the benefit. ? 14 The reader will remember the two sorts of
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London bakers, of whom one sold the bread at its full price (the --full-priced? bakers), the other below its normal price (--the under-priced,? --the undersellers? ). The --full-priced? denounced their rivals before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry: --They only exist now by first defrauding the public, and next getting 18 hours' work out of their men for 12 hours' wages. . . . The unpaid labour of the men was made . . . the source whereby the competition was carried on, and continues so to this day. . . . The competition among the master bakers is the cause of the difficulty in getting rid of night-work. An underseller, who sells his bread below the cost-price according to the price of flour, must make it up by getting more out of the labour of the men. . . . If I got only 12 hours' work out of my men, and my neighbor got 18 or 20, he must beat me in the selling price. If the men could insist on payment for over-work, this would be set right. . . . A large number of those employed by the undersellers are foreigners and youths, who are obliged to accept almost any wages they can obtain. ? 15
This jeremiad is also interesting because it shows how the appearance only of the relations of production mirrors itself in the brain of the capitalist. The capitalist does not know that the normal price of labour also includes a definite quantity of unpaid labour, and that this very unpaid labour is the normal source of his gain. The category of surplus labour-time does not exist at all for him, since it is included in the normal working day, which he thinks he has paid for in the day's wages. But over-time does exist for him, the prolongation of the working day beyond the limits corresponding with the usual price of labour. Face to face with his underselling competitor, he even insists upon extra pay for this over-time. He again does not know that this extra pay includes unpaid labour, just as well as does the price of the customary hour of labour. For example, the price of one hour of the 12 hours' working day is 3d. , say the value-product of half a working-hour, whilst the price of the over-time working-hour is 4d. , or the value-product of 2/3 of a working hour. In the first case the capitalist appropriates to himself one-half, in the second, one-third of the working-hour without paying for it.
1 The value of money itself is here always supposed constant.
2 --The price of labour is the sum paid for a given quantity of labour. ? (Sir Edward West, --Price of Corn and Wages of Labour,? London, 1836, p. 67. ) West is the author of the anonymous --Essay on the Application of Capital to Land. ? by a Fellow of the University College of Oxford, London, 1815. An epoch-making work in the history of Political Economy.
3 --The wages of labour depend upon the price of labour and the quantity of labour performed. . . . An increase in the wages of labour does not necessarily imply an enhancement of the price of labour. From fuller employment, and greater exertions, the wages of labour may be considerably increased, while the price of labour may continue the same. ? (West, op. cit. , pp. 67, 68, 112. ) The main question: --How is the price of labour determined? ? West, however, dismisses with mere banalities.
4 This is perceived by the fanatical representative of the industrial bourgeoisie of the 18th century, the author of the --Essay on Trade and Commerce? often quoted by us, although he puts the matter in a confused way: --It is the quantity of labour and not the price of it? (he means by this the nominal daily or weekly wages) --that is determined by the price of provisions and other necessaries: reduce the price of necessaries very low, and of course you reduce the quantity of labour in proportion. Master manufacturers know that there are various ways of raising and felling the price of labour, besides that of altering its nominal amount. ? (op. cit. , pp. 48, 61. ) In his --Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages,? London, 1830, in which N.
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In the expression --value of labour,? the idea of value is not only completely obliterated, but actually reversed. It is an expression as imaginary as the value of the earth. These imaginary expressions, arise, however, from the relations of production themselves. They are categories for the phenomenal forms of essential relations. That in their appearance things often represent themselves in inverted form is pretty well known in every science except Political Economy. 6
Classical Political Economy borrowed from every-day life the category --price of labour? without further criticism, and then simply asked the question, how is this price determined? It soon recognized that the change in the relations of demand and supply explained in regard to the price of labour, as of all other commodities, nothing except its changes i. e. , the oscillations of the market-price above or below a certain mean. If demand and supply balance, the oscillation of prices ceases, all other conditions remaining the same. But then demand and supply also cease to explain anything. The price of labour, at the moment when demand and supply are in equilibrium, is its natural price, determined independently of the relation of demand and supply. And how this price is determined is just the question. Or a larger period of oscillations in the market-price is taken, e. g. , a year, and they are found to cancel one the other, leaving a mean average quantity, a relatively constant magnitude. This had naturally to be determined otherwise than by its own compensating variations. This price which always finally predominates over the accidental market-prices of labour and regulates them, this --necessary price? (Physiocrats) or --natural price? of labour (Adam Smith) can, as with all other commodities, be nothing else than its value expressed in money. In this way Political Economy expected to penetrate athwart the accidental prices of labour, to the value of labour. As with other commodities, this value was determined by the cost of production. But what is the cost of production-of the labourer, i. e. , the cost of producing or reproducing the labourer himself? This question unconsciously substituted itself in Political Economy for the original one; for the search after the cost of production of labour as such turned in a circle and never left the spot. What economists therefore call value of labour, is in fact the value of labour-power, as it exists in the personality of the labourer, which is as different from its function, labour, as a machine is from the work it performs. Occupied with the difference between the market-price of labour and its so-called value, with the relation of this value to the rate of profit, and to the values of the commodities produced by means of labour, &c. , they never discovered that the course of the analysis had led not only from the market-prices of labour to its presumed value, but had led to the resolution of this value of labour itself into the value of labour-power. Classical economy never arrived at a consciousness of the results of its own analysis; it accepted uncritically the categories --value of labour,? --natural price of labour,? &c. ,. as final and as adequate expressions for the value-relation under consideration, and was thus led, as will be seen later, into inextricable confusion and contradiction, while it offered to the vulgar economists a secure basis of operations for their shallowness, which on principle worships appearances only.
Let us next see how value (and price) of labour-power, present themselves in this transformed condition as wages.
We know that the daily value of labour-power is calculated upon a certain length of the labourer's life, to which, again, corresponds a certain length of working day. Assume the habitual working day as 12 hours, the daily value of labour-power as 3s. , the expression in money of a value that embodies 6 hours of labour. If the labourer receives 3s. , then he receives the value of his labour- power functioning through 12 hours. If, now, this value of a day's labour-power is expressed as the value of a day's labour itself, we have the formula: Twelve hours' labour has a value of 3s. The value of labour-power thus determines the value of labour, or, expressed in money, its
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necessary price. If, on the other hand, the price of labour-power differs from its value, in like manner the price of labour differs from its so-called value.
As the value of labour is only an irrational expression for the value of labour-power, it follows, of course, that the value of labour must always be less than the value it produces, for the capitalist always makes labour-power work longer than is necessary for the reproduction of its own value. In the above example, the value of the labour-power that functions through 12 hours is 3s. , a value for the reproduction of which 6 hours are required. The value which the labour-power produces is, on the other hand, 6s. , because it, in fact, functions during 12 hours, and the value it produces depends, not on its own value, but on the length of time it is in action. Thus, we have a result absurd at first sight that labour which creates a value of 6s. possesses a value of 3s. 7
We see, further: The value of 3s. by which a part only of the working day - i. e. , 6 hours' labour-is paid for, appears as the value or price of the whole working day of 12 hours, which thus includes 6 hours unpaid for. The wage form thus extinguishes every trace of the division of the working day into necessary labour and surplus labour, into paid and unpaid labour. All labour appears as paid labour. In the corve? e, the labour of the worker for himself, and his compulsory labour for his lord, differ in space and time in the clearest possible way. In slave labour, even that part of the working day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave's labour appears as unpaid labour. 8 In wage labour, on the contrary, even surplus labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage labourer.
Hence, we may understand the decisive importance of the transformation of value and price of labour-power into the form of wages, or into the value and price of labour itself. This phenomenal form, which makes the actual relation invisible, and, indeed, shows the direct opposite of that relation, forms the basis of all the juridical notions of both labourer and capitalist, of all the mystifications of the capitalistic mode of production, of all its illusions as to liberty, of all the apologetic shifts of the vulgar economists.
If history took a long time to get at the bottom of the mystery of wages, nothing, on the other hand, is more easy to understand than the necessity, the raison d'etre, of this phenomenon.
The exchange between capital and labour at first presents itself to the mind in the same guise as the buying and selling of all other commodities. The buyer gives a certain sum of money, the seller an article of a nature different from money. The jurist's consciousness recognizes in this, at most, a material difference, expressed in the juridically equivalent formula: --Do ut des, do ut facias, facio ut des, facio ut facias. ? 9
Furthermore, exchange-value and use-value, being intrinsically incommensurable magnitudes, the expressions --value of labour,? --price of labour,? do not seem more irrational than the expressions --value of cotton,? --price of cotton. ? Moreover, the labourer is paid after he has given his labour. In its function of means of payment, money realizes subsequently the value or price of the article supplied - i. e. , in this particular case, the value or price of the labour supplied. Finally, the use- value supplied by the labourer to the capitalist is not, in fact, his labour-power, but its function, some definite useful labour, the work of tailoring, shoemaking, spinning, &c. That this same labour is, on the other hand, the universal value-creating element, and thus possesses a property by which it differs from all other commodities, is beyond the cognizance of the ordinary mind.
Let us put ourselves in the place of the labourer who receives for 12 hours' labour, say the value produced by 6 hours' labour, say 3s. For him, in fact, his 12 hours' labour is the means of buying the 3s. The value of his labour-power may vary, with the value of his usual means of subsistence,
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from 3 to 4 shillings, or from 3 to 2 shillings; or, if the value of his labour-power remains constant, its price may, in consequence of changing relations of demand and supply, rise to 4s. or fall to 2s. He always gives 12 hours of labour. Every change in the amount of the equivalent that he receives appears to him, therefore, necessarily as a change in the value or price of his 12 hours' work. This circumstance misled Adam Smith, who treated the working day as a constant quantity,10 to the assertion that the value of labour is constant, although the value of the means of subsistence may vary, and the same working day, therefore, may represent itself in more or less money for the labourer.
Let us consider, on the other hand, the capitalist. He wishes to receive as much labour as possible for as little money as possible. Practically, therefore, the only thing that interests him is the difference between the price of labour-power and the value which its function creates. But, then, he tries to buy all commodities as cheaply as possible, and always accounts for his profit by simple cheating, by buying under, and selling over the value. Hence, he never comes to see that, if such a thing as the value of labour really existed, and he really paid this value, no capital would exist, his money would not be turned into capital.
Moreover, the actual movement of wages presents phenomena which seem to prove that not the value of labour-power is paid, but the value of its function, of labour itself. We may reduce these phenomena to two great classes: 1. ) Change of wages with the changing length of the working day. One might as well conclude that not the value of a machine is paid, but that of its working, because it costs more to hire a machine for a week than for a day. 2. ) The individual difference in the wages of different labourers who do the same kind of work. We find this individual difference, but are not deceived by it, in the system of slavery, where, frankly and openly, without any circumlocution, labour-power itself is sold. Only, in the slave system, the advantage of a labour-power above the average, and the disadvantage of a labour-power below the average, affects the slave-owner; in the wage-labour system, it affects the labourer himself, because his labour-power is, in the one case, sold by himself, in the other, by a third person.
For the rest, in respect to the phenomenal form, --value and price of labour,? or --wages,? as contrasted with the essential relation manifested therein, viz. , the value and price of labour- power, the same difference holds that holds in respect to all phenomena and their hidden substratum. The former appear directly and spontaneously as current modes of thought; the latter must first be discovered by science. Classical Political Economy nearly touches the true relation of things, without, however, consciously formulating it. This it cannot, so long as it sticks in its bourgeois skin.
1 --Mr. Ricardo ingeniously enough avoids a difficulty which, on a first view, threatens to encumber his doctrine -- that value depends on the quantity of labour employed in production. If this principle is rigidly adhered to, it follows that the value of labour depends on the quantity of labour employed in producing it -- which is evidently absurd. By a dexterous turn, therefore, Mr. Ricardo makes the value of labour depend on the quantity of labour required to produce wages; or, to give him the benefit of his own language, he maintains, that the value of labour is to be estimated by the quantity of labour required to produce wages; by which he means the quantity of labour required to produce the money or commodities given to the labourer. This is similar to saying, that the value of cloth is estimated, not by the quantity of labour bestowed on its production, but by the quantity of labour bestowed on the production of the silver, for which the cloth is exchanged. ? -- --A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, &c. , of Value,? pp. 50, 51.
2 --If you call labour a commodity, it is not like a commodity which is first produced in order to exchange, and then brought to market where it must exchange with other commodities according to
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the respective quantities of each which there may be in the market at the time; labour is created the moment it is brought to market; nay, it is brought to market before it is created. ? -- --Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes,? &c. , pp. 75, 76.
3 --Treating labour as a commodity, and capital, the produce of labour, as another, then, if the values of these two commodities were regulated by equal quantities of labour, a given amount of labour would . . . exchange for that quantity of capital which had been produced by the same amount of labour; antecedent labour would . . . exchange for the same amount as present labour. But the value of labour in relation to other commodities . . . is determined not by equal quantities of labour. ? -- E. G. Wakefield in his edition of Adam Smith's --Wealth of Nations,? Vol. I. , London, 1836, p. 231, note.
4 --There has to be a new agreement? (a new edition of the social contract! ) --that whenever there is an exchange of work done for work to be done, the latter? (the capitalist) --is to receive a higher value than the former? (the worker). -- Simonde (de Sismondi), --De la Richesse Commerciale,? Geneva, 1803, Vol I, p. 37.
5 --Labour the exclusive standard of value . . . the creator of all wealth, no commodity. ? Thomas Hodgskin, --Popul. Polit. Econ. ,? p. 186.
6 On the other hand, the attempt to explain such expressions as merely poetic license only shows the impotence of the analysis. Hence, in answer to Proudhon's phrase; --Labour is called value, not as being a commodity itself, but in view of the values supposed to be potentially embodied in it. The value of labour is a figurative expression,? &c. I have remarked: --In labour, commodity, which is a frightful reality, he (Proudhon) sees nothing but a grammatical ellipsis. The whole of existing society, then, based upon labour commodity, is henceforth based upon a poetic license, on a figurative expression. Does society desire to eliminate all the inconveniences which trouble it, it has only to eliminate all the ill-sounding terms. Let it change the language, and for that it has only to address itself to the Academy and ask it for a new edition of its dictionary. ? (Karl Marx, --Mise`re de la Philosophie,? pp. 34, 35. ) It is naturally still more convenient to understand by value nothing at all. Then one can without difficulty subsume everything under this category. Thus, e. g. , J. B. Say: --What is value? ? Answer: --That which a thing is worth"; and what is --price"? Answer: --The value of a thing expressed in money. ? And why has agriculture a value? Answer: --Because one sets a price on it. ? Therefore value is what a thing is worth, and the land has its --value,? because its value is --expressed in money. ?
This is, anyhow, a very simple way of explaining the why and the wherefore of things.
7 Cf. --Zur Kritik &c. ,? p. 40, where I state that, in the portion of that work that deals with Capital, this problem will be solved: --How does production, on the basis of exchange-value determined simply by labour-time, lead to the result that the exchange-value of labour is less than the exchange-value of its product? ?
8 The --Morning Star,? a London Free-trade organ, naif to silliness, protested again and again during the American Civil War, with all the moral indignation of which man is capable, that the Negro in the --Confederate States? worked absolutely for nothing. It should have compared the daily cost of such a Negro with that of the free workman in the East-end of London.
9 I give in order that you may give; I give in order that you may produce; I produce so that you may give; I produce so that you may produce.
10 Adam Smith only accidentally alludes to the variation of the working day when he is referring to piece-wages.
? ? Chapter 20: Time-Wages
Wages themselves again take many forms, a fact not recognizable in the ordinary economic treatises which, exclusively interested in the material side of the question, neglect every difference of form. An exposition of all these forms however, belongs to the special study of wage labour, not therefore to this work. Still the two fundamental forms must be briefly worked out here.
The sale of labour-power, as will be remembered, takes place for a definite period of time. The converted form under which the daily, weekly, &c. , value of labour-power presents itself, is hence that of time wages, therefore day-wages, &c.
Next it is to be noted that the laws set forth, in the 17th chapter, on the changes in the relative magnitudes of price of labour-power and surplus value, pass by a simple transformation of form, into laws of wages. Similarly the distinction between the exchange-value of labour power, and the sum of the necessaries of life into which this value is converted, now reappears as the distinction between nominal and real wages. It would be useless to repeat here, with regard to the phenomenal form, what has been already worked out in the substantial form. We limit ourselves therefore to a few points characteristic of time-wages.
The sum of money1 which the labourer receives for his daily or weekly labour, forms the amount of his nominal wages, or of his wages estimated in value. But it is clear that according to the length of the working day, that is, according to the amount of actual labour daily supplied, the same daily or weekly wage may represent very different prices of labour, i. e. , very different sums of money for the same quantity of labour. 2 We must, therefore, in considering time-wages, again distinguish between the sum-total of the daily or weekly wages, &c. , and the price of labour. How then, to find this price, i. e. , the money-value of a given quantity of labour? The average price of labour is found, when the average daily value of the labour-power is divided by the average number of hours in the working day. If, e. g. , the daily value of labour-power is 3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 working-hours, and if the working day is 12 hours, the price of 1 working hour is 3/12 shillings = 3d. The price of the working-hour thus found serves as the unit measure for the price of labour.
It follows therefore that the daily and weekly wages, &c. , may remain the same, although the price of labour falls constantly. If, e. g. , the habitual working day is 10 hours and the daily value of the labour-power 3s. , the price of the working-hour is 3 3/5d. It falls to 3s. as soon as the working day rises to 12 hours, to 2 2/5d as soon as it rises to 15 hours. Daily or weekly wages remain, despite all this, unchanged. On the contrary, the daily or weekly wages may rise, although the price of labour remains constant or even falls. If, e. g. , the working day is 10 hours, and the daily value of labour-power 3 shillings, the price of one working-hour is 3 3/5d. If the labourer, in consequence of increase of trade, works 12 hours, the price of labour remaining the same, his daily wage now rises to 3 shillings 7 1/5 d. without any variation in the price of labour. The same result might follow if, instead of the extensive amount of labour, its intensive amount increased. 3The rise of the nominal daily or weekly wages may therefore be accompanied by a price of labour that remains stationary or falls. The same holds as to the income of the labourer's family, as soon as the quantity of labour expended by the head of the family is increased by the labour of the members of his family. There are, therefore, methods of lowering the price of labour independent of the reduction of the nominal daily or weekly wages. 4
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As a general law it follows that, given the amount of daily or weekly labour, &c. , the daily or weekly wages depend on the price of labour which itself varies either with the value of labour- power, or with the difference between its price and its value. Given, on the other hand, the price of labour, the daily or weekly wages depend on the quantity of the daily or weekly labour.
The unit-measure for time-wages, the price of the working-hour, is the quotient of the value of a day's labour-power, divided by the number of hours of the average working day. Let the latter be 12 hours, and the daily value of labour-power 3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 hours of labour. Under these circumstances the price of a working hour is 3d. ; the value produced in it is 6d. If the labourer is now employed less than 12 hours (or less than 6 days in the week), e. g. , only 6 or 8 hours, he receives, with this price of labour, only 2s. or 1s. 6d. a day. 5 As on our hypothesis he must work on the average 6 hours daily, in order to produce a day's wage corresponding merely to the value of his labour power, as according to the same hypothesis he works only half of every hour for himself, and half for the capitalist, it is clear that he cannot obtain for himself the value of the product of 6 hours if he is employed less than 12 hours. In previous chapters we saw the destructive consequences of over-work; here we find the sources of the sufferings that result to the labourer from his insufficient employment.
If the hour's wage is fixed so that the capitalist does not bind himself to pay a day's or a week's wage, but only to pay wages for the hours during which he chooses to employ the labourer, he can employ him for a shorter time than that which is originally the basis of the calculation of the hour-wage, or the unit-measure of the price of labour. Since this unit is determined by the ratio
daily value of labour-power working day of a given number of hours'
it, of course, loses all meaning as soon as the working day ceases to contain a definite number of hours. The connection between the paid and the unpaid labour is destroyed. The capitalist can now wring from the labour a certain quantity of surplus labour without allowing him the labour- time necessary for his own subsistence. He can annihilate all regularity of employment, and according to his own convenience, caprice, and the interest of the moment, make the most enormous overwork alternate with relative or absolute cessation of work. He can, under the pretense of paying --the normal price of labour,? abnormally lengthen the working day without any corresponding compensation to the labourer. Hence the perfectly rational revolt in 1860 of the London labourers, employed in the building trades, against the attempt of the capitalists to impose on them this sort of wage by the hour. The legal limitation of the working day puts an end to such mischief, although not, of course, to the diminution of employment caused by the competition of machinery, by changes in the quality of the labourers employed, and by crises partial or general.
With an increasing daily or weekly wage the price of labour may remain nominally constant, and yet may fall below its normal level. This occurs every time that, the price of labour (reckoned per working-hour) remaining constant, the working day is prolonged beyond its customary length. If in the fraction:
daily value of labour power working day
the denominator increases, the numerator increases yet more rapidly. The value of labour-power, as dependent on its wear and tear, increases with the duration of its functioning, and in more rapid proportion than the increase of that duration. In many branches of industry where time-wage is the general rule without legal limits to the working-time, the habit has, therefore, spontaneously grown up of regarding the working day as normal only up to a certain point, e. g. , up to the
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expiration of the tenth hour (--normal working day,? --the day's work,? --the regular hours of work? ). Beyond this limit the working-time is over-time, and is, taking the hour as unit-measure, paid better (--extra pay? ), although often in a proportion ridiculously small. 6 The normal working day exists here as a fraction of the actual working day, and the latter, often during the whole year, lasts longer than the former. 7 The increase in the price of labour with the extension of the working day beyond a certain normal limit, takes such a shape in various British industries that the low price of labour during the so-called normal time compels the labourer to work during the better paid over-time, if he wishes to obtain a sufficient wage at all. 8 Legal limitation of the working day puts an end to these amenities. 9
It is a fact generally known that, the longer the working days, in any branch of industry, the lower are the wages. 10 A. Redgrave, factory inspector, illustrates this by a comparative review of the 20 years from 1839-1859, according to which wages rose in the factories under the 10 Hours Law, whilst they fell in the factories in which the work lasted 14 to 15 hours daily. 11
From the law, --the price of labour being given, the daily or weekly wage depends on the quantity of labour expended,? it follows, first of all, that the lower the price of labour, the greater must be the quantity of labour, or the longer must be the working day for the labourer to secure even a miserable average wage. The lowness of the price of labour acts here as a stimulus to the extension of the labour-time. 12
On the other hand, the extension of the working-time produces, in its turn, a fall in the price of labour, and with this a fall in the day's or week's wages.
The determination of the price of labour by:
daily value of labour power working day of a given number of hours
shows that a mere prolongation of the working day lowers the price of labour, if no compensation steps in. But the same circumstances which allow the capitalist in the long run to prolong the working day, also allow him first, and compel him finally, to nominally lower the price of labour until the total price of the increased number of hours is lowered, and, therefore, the daily or weekly wage. Reference to two circumstances is sufficient here. If one man does the work of 11/2 or 2 men, the supply of labour increases, although the supply of labour-power on the market remains constant. The competition thus created between the labourers allows the capitalist to beat down the price of labour, whilst the falling price of labour allows him, on the other hand, to screw up still further the working-time. 13 Soon, however, this command over abnormal quantities of unpaid labour, i. e. , quantities in excess of the average social amount, becomes a source of competition amongst the capitalists themselves. A part of the price of the commodity consists of the price of labour. The unpaid part of the labour-price need not be reckoned in the price of the commodity. It may be presented to the buyer. This is the first step to which competition leads. The second step to which it drives is to exclude also from the selling price of the commodity at least a part of the abnormal surplus value created by the extension of the working day. In this way, an abnormally low selling price of the commodity arises, at first sporadically, and becomes fixed by degrees; a lower selling price which henceforward becomes the constant basis of a miserable wage for an excessive working-time, as originally it was the product of these very circumstances. This movement is simply indicated here, as the analysis of competition does not belong to this part of our subject. Nevertheless, the capitalist may, for a moment, speak for himself. --In Birmingham there is so much competition of masters one against another that many are obliged to do things as employers that they would otherwise be ashamed of; and yet no more money is made, but only the public gets the benefit. ? 14 The reader will remember the two sorts of
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London bakers, of whom one sold the bread at its full price (the --full-priced? bakers), the other below its normal price (--the under-priced,? --the undersellers? ). The --full-priced? denounced their rivals before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry: --They only exist now by first defrauding the public, and next getting 18 hours' work out of their men for 12 hours' wages. . . . The unpaid labour of the men was made . . . the source whereby the competition was carried on, and continues so to this day. . . . The competition among the master bakers is the cause of the difficulty in getting rid of night-work. An underseller, who sells his bread below the cost-price according to the price of flour, must make it up by getting more out of the labour of the men. . . . If I got only 12 hours' work out of my men, and my neighbor got 18 or 20, he must beat me in the selling price. If the men could insist on payment for over-work, this would be set right. . . . A large number of those employed by the undersellers are foreigners and youths, who are obliged to accept almost any wages they can obtain. ? 15
This jeremiad is also interesting because it shows how the appearance only of the relations of production mirrors itself in the brain of the capitalist. The capitalist does not know that the normal price of labour also includes a definite quantity of unpaid labour, and that this very unpaid labour is the normal source of his gain. The category of surplus labour-time does not exist at all for him, since it is included in the normal working day, which he thinks he has paid for in the day's wages. But over-time does exist for him, the prolongation of the working day beyond the limits corresponding with the usual price of labour. Face to face with his underselling competitor, he even insists upon extra pay for this over-time. He again does not know that this extra pay includes unpaid labour, just as well as does the price of the customary hour of labour. For example, the price of one hour of the 12 hours' working day is 3d. , say the value-product of half a working-hour, whilst the price of the over-time working-hour is 4d. , or the value-product of 2/3 of a working hour. In the first case the capitalist appropriates to himself one-half, in the second, one-third of the working-hour without paying for it.
1 The value of money itself is here always supposed constant.
2 --The price of labour is the sum paid for a given quantity of labour. ? (Sir Edward West, --Price of Corn and Wages of Labour,? London, 1836, p. 67. ) West is the author of the anonymous --Essay on the Application of Capital to Land. ? by a Fellow of the University College of Oxford, London, 1815. An epoch-making work in the history of Political Economy.
3 --The wages of labour depend upon the price of labour and the quantity of labour performed. . . . An increase in the wages of labour does not necessarily imply an enhancement of the price of labour. From fuller employment, and greater exertions, the wages of labour may be considerably increased, while the price of labour may continue the same. ? (West, op. cit. , pp. 67, 68, 112. ) The main question: --How is the price of labour determined? ? West, however, dismisses with mere banalities.
4 This is perceived by the fanatical representative of the industrial bourgeoisie of the 18th century, the author of the --Essay on Trade and Commerce? often quoted by us, although he puts the matter in a confused way: --It is the quantity of labour and not the price of it? (he means by this the nominal daily or weekly wages) --that is determined by the price of provisions and other necessaries: reduce the price of necessaries very low, and of course you reduce the quantity of labour in proportion. Master manufacturers know that there are various ways of raising and felling the price of labour, besides that of altering its nominal amount. ? (op. cit. , pp. 48, 61. ) In his --Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages,? London, 1830, in which N.
