Karl Marx
Wage Labour and Capital
Introduction to
Karl Marx’s
Wage Labor and Capital
by Frederick Engels
This pamphlet first appeared in the form of a
series of leading articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, beginning
on April 4th, 1849. The text is made up of from lectures delivered by Marx
before the German Workingmen’s Club of Brussels in 1847. The series was
never completed. The promise “to be continued,” at the end of the editorial
in Number 269 of the newspaper, remained unfulfilled in consequence of
the precipitous events of that time: the invasion of Hungary by the Russians [Tsarist troops invaded Hungary in 1849 to keep the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty in power], and the uprisings in Dresden, Iserlohn, Elberfeld, the Palatinate, and in
Baden [Spontaneous uprisings in Germany in May-July 1849, supporting the Imperial Constitution which were crushed in mid-July], which led to the suppression of the paper on May 19th, 1849. And
among the papers left by Marx no manuscript of any continuation of these
articles has been found.
“Wage-Labor and Capital” has appeared as an independent publication
in several editions, the last of which was issued by the Swiss Co-operative
Printing Association, in Hottingen-Zurich, in 1884. Hitherto, the several
editions have contained the exact wording of the original articles. But
since at least 10,000 copies of the present edition are to be circulated
as a propaganda tract, the question necessarily forced itself upon me,
would Marx himself, under these circumstance, have approved of an unaltered
literal reproduction of the original?
Marx, in the ’40s, had not yet completed his criticism of political
economy. This was not done until toward the end of the fifties. Consequently,
such of his writings as were published before the first installment of his
Critique of Political Economy was finished, deviate in some points
from those written after 1859, and contain expressions and whole sentences
which, viewed from the standpoint of his later writings, appear inexact,
and even incorrect. Now, it goes without saying that in ordinary editions,
intended for the public in general, this earlier standpoint, as a part
of the intellectual development of the author, has its place; that the
author as well as the public, has an indisputable right to an unaltered
reprint of these older writings. In such a case, I would not have dreamed
of changing a single word in it. But it is otherwise when the edition is
destined almost exclusively for the purpose of propaganda. In such a case,
Marx himself would unquestionably have brought the old work, dating from
1849, into harmony with his new point of view, and I feel sure that I am
acting in his spirit when I insert in this edition the few changes and
additions which are necessary in order to attain this object in all essential
point.
Therefore, I say to the reader at once: this pamphlet is not as
Marx wrote it in 1849, but approximately as Marx would have written it
in 1891. Moreover, so many copies of the original text are in circulation,
that these will suffice until I can publish it again unaltered in a complete
edition of Marx’s works, to appear at some future time.
My alterations centre about one point. According to the original
reading, the worker sells his labor for wages, which he receives
from the capitalist; according to the present text, he sells his labor-power.
And for this change, I must render an explanation: to the workers, in order
that they may understand that we are not quibbling or word-juggling, but
are dealing here with one of the most important points in the whole range
of political economy; to the bourgeois, in order that they may convince
themselves how greatly the uneducated workers, who can be easily made to
grasp the most difficult economic analyses, excel our supercilious “cultured"
folk, for whom such ticklish problems remain insoluble their whole life
long.
Classical political economy [1] borrowed from
the industrial practice the current notion of the manufacturer, that he
buys and pays for the labor of his employees. This conception had been
quite serviceable for the business purposes of the manufacturer, his bookkeeping
and price calculation. But naively carried over into political economy,
it there produced truly wonderful errors and confusions.
Political economy finds it an established fact that the prices
of all commodities, among them the price of the commodity which it calls
“labor,” continually change; that they rise and fall in consequence of
the most diverse circumstances, which often have no connection whatsoever
with the production of the commodities themselves, so that prices appear
to be determined, as a rule, by pure chance. As soon, therefore, as political
economy stepped forth as a science, it was one of its first tasks to search
for the law that hid itself behind this chance, which apparently determined
the prices of commodities, and which in reality controlled this very chance.
Among the prices of commodities, fluctuating and oscillating, now upward,
now downward, the fixed central point was searched for around which these
fluctuations and oscillations were taking place. In short, starting from
the price of commodities, political economy sought for the value of commodities
as the regulating law, by means of which all price fluctuations could be
explained, and to which they could all be reduced in the last resort.
And so, classical political economy found that the value of a
commodity was determined by the labor incorporated in it and requisite
to its production. With this explanation, it was satisfied. And we, too,
may, for the present, stop at this point. But, to avoid misconceptions,
I will remind the reader that today this explanation has become wholly
inadequate. Marx was the first to investigate thoroughly into the value-forming
quality of labor and to discover that not all labor which is apparently,
or even really, necessary to the production of a commodity, imparts under
all circumstances to this commodity a magnitude of value corresponding
to the quantity of labor used up. If, therefore, we say today in short,
with economists like Ricardo, that the value of a commodity is determined
by the labor necessary to its production, we always imply the reservations
and restrictions made by Marx. Thus much for our present purpose; further
information can be found in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy,
which appeared in 1859, and in the first volume of Capital.
But, as soon as the economists applied this determination of value
by labor to the commodity “labor", they fell from one contradiction into
another. How is the value of “labor” determined? By the necessary labor
embodied in it. But how much labor is embodied in the labor of a laborer
of a day a week, a month, a year. If labor is the measure of all values,
we can express the “value of labor” only in labor. But we know absolutely
nothing about the value of an hour’s labor, if all that we know about it
is that it is equal to one hour’s labor. So, thereby, we have not advanced
one hair’s breadth nearer our goal; we are constantly turning about in
a circle.
Classical economics, therefore, essayed another turn. It said:
the value of a commodity is equal to its cost of production. But, what
is the cost of production of “labor"? In order to answer this question,
the economists are forced to strain logic just a little. Instead of investigating
the cost of production of labor itself, which, unfortunately, cannot be
ascertained, they now investigate the cost of production of the laborer.
And this latter can be ascertained. It changes according to time and circumstances,
but for a given condition of society, in a given locality, and in a given
branch of production, it, too, is given, at least within quite narrow limits.
We live today under the regime of capitalist production, under which a
large and steadily growing class of the population can live only on the
condition that it works for the owners of the means of production – tools,
machines, raw materials, and means of subsistence – in return for wages.
On the basis of this mode of production, the laborer’s cost of production
consists of the sum of the means of subsistence (or their price in money)
which on the average are requisite to enable him to work, to maintain in
him this capacity for work, and to replace him at his departure, by reason
of age, sickness, or death, with another laborer – that is to say, to
propagate the working class in required numbers.
Let us assume that the money price of these means of subsistence
averages 3 shillings a day. Our laborer gets, therefore, a daily wage of
3 shillings from his employer. For this, the capitalist lets him work,
say, 12 hours a day. Our capitalist, moreover, calculates somewhat in the
following fashion: Let us assume that our laborer (a machinist) has to
make a part of a machine which he finishes in one day. The raw material
(iron and brass in the necessary prepared form) costs 20 shillings. The
consumption of coal by the steam-engine, the wear-and-tear of this engine
itself, of the turning-lathe, and of the other tools with which our laborer
works, represent, for one day and one laborer, a value of 1 shilling. The
wages for one day are, according to our assumption, 3 shillings. This makes
a total of 24 shillings for our piece of a machine.
But, the capitalist calculates that, on an average, he will receive
for it a price of 27 shillings from his customers, or 3 shillings over
and above his outlay.
Whence do they 3 shillings pocketed by the capitalist come? According
to the assertion of classical political economy, commodities are in the
long run sold at their values, that is, they are sold at prices which correspond
to the necessary quantities of labor contained in them. The average price
of our part of a machine – 27 shillings – would therefore equal its value,
i.e., equal the amount of labor embodied in it. But, of these 27 shillings,
21 shillings were values were values already existing before the machinist
began to work; 20 shillings were contained in the raw material, 1 shilling
in the fuel consumed during the work and in the machines and tools used
in the process and reduced in their efficiency to the value of this amount.
There remains 6 shillings, which have been added to the value of the raw
material. But, according to the supposition of our economists, themselves,
these 6 shillings can arise only from the labor added to the raw material
by the laborer. His 12 hours’ labor has created, according to this, a new
value of 6 shillings. Therefore, the value of his 12 hours’ labor would
be equivalent to 6 shillings. So we have at last discovered what the “value
of labor” is.
“Hold on there!” cries our machinist. “Six shillings? But I have
received only 3 shillings! My capitalist swears high and day that the value
of my 12 hours’ labor is no more than 3 shillings, and if I were to demand
6, he’d laugh at me. What kind of a story is that?"
If before this we got with our value of labor into a vicious circle,
we now surely have driven straight into an insoluble contradiction. We
searched for the value of labor, and we found more than we can use. For
the laborer, the value of the 12 hours’ labor is 3 shillings; for the capitalist,
it is 6 shillings, of which he pays the workingman 3 shillings as wages,
and pockets the remaining 3 shilling himself. According to this, labor
has not one but two values, and, moreover, two very different values!
As soon as we reduce the values, now expressed in money, to labor-time,
the contradiction becomes even more absurd. By the 12 hours’ labor, a new
value of 6 shillings is created. Therefore, in 6 hours, the new value created
equals 3 shilling – the amount which the laborer receives for 12 hours’
labor. For 12 hours’ labor, the workingman receives, as an equivalent,
the product of 6 hours’ labor. We are, thus, forced to one of two conclusions:
either labor has two values, one of which is twice as large as the other,
or 12 equals 6! In both cases, we get pure absurdities. Turn and twist
as we may, we will not get out of this contradiction as long as we speak
of the buying and selling of “labor” and of the “value of labor.” And just
so it happened to the political economists. The last offshoot of classical
political economy – the Ricardian school – was largely wrecked on the
insolubility of this contradiction. Classical political economy had run
itself into a blind alley. The man who discovered the way out of this blind
alley was Karl Marx.
What the economists had considered as the cost of production of
“labor” was really the cost of production, not of “labor,” but of the living laborer himself. And what this laborer sold to the capitalist was not his
labor.
“So soon as his labor really begins,” says Marx, “it ceases to belong
to him, and therefore can no longer be sold by him.”
At the most, he could sell his future labor – i.e., assume the
obligation of executing a certain piece of work in a certain time. But,
in this way, he does not sell labor (which would first have to be performed),
but not for a stipulated payment he places his labor-power at the disposal
of the capitalist for a certain time (in case of time-wages), or for the
performance of a certain task (in case of piece-wages). He hires out or
sells his labor-power. But this labor-power has grown up with his
person and is inseparable from it. Its cost of production, therefore, coincides
with his own cost of production; what the economist called the cost of
production of labor is really the cost of production of the laborer, and
therewith of his labor-power. And, thus, we can also go back from the cost
of production of labor-power to the value of labor-power, and determine
the quantity of social labor that is required for the production of a labor-power
of a given quantity, as Marx has done in the chapter on “The Buying and
Selling of Labor Power.” [Capital, Vol.I]
Now what takes place after the worker has sold his labor-power,
i.e., after he has placed his labor-power at the disposal of the capitalist
for stipulated-wages – whether time-wages or piece-wages? The capitalist
takes the laborer into his workshop or factory, where all the articles
required for the work can be found – raw materials, auxiliary materials
(coal, dyestuffs, etc.), tools, and machines. Here, the worker begins to
work. His daily wages are, as above, 3 shillings, and it makes no difference
whether he earns them as day-wages or piece-wages. We again assume that
in 12 hours the worker adds by his labor a new value of 6 shillings to
the value of the raw materials consumed, which new value the capitalist
realizes by the sale of the finished piece of work. Out of this new value,
he pays the worker his 3 shillings, and the remaining 3 shillings he keeps
for himself. If, now, the laborer creates in 12 hours a value of 6 shilling,
in 6 hours he creates a value of 3 shillings. Consequently, after working
6 hours for the capitalist, the laborer has returned to him the equivalent
of the 3 shillings received as wages. After 6 hours’ work, both are quits,
neither one owing a penny to the other.
“Hold on there!” now cries out the capitalist. “I have hired the
laborer for a whole day, for 12 hours. But 6 hours are only half-a-day.
So work along lively there until the other 6 hours are at an end – only
then will we be even.” And, in fact, the laborer has to submit to the conditions
of the contract upon which he entered of “his own free will", and according
to which he bound himself to work 12 whole hours for a product of labor
which cost only 6 hours’ labor.
Similarly with piece-wages. Let us suppose that in 12 hours our
worker makes 12 commodities. Each of these costs a shilling in raw materials
and wear-and-tear, and is sold for 2.5 shillings. On our former assumption,
the capitalist gives the laborer .25 of a shilling for each piece, which
makes a total of 3 shillings for 12 pieces. To earn this, the worker requires
12 hours. The capitalist receives 30 shillings for the 12 pieces; deducting
24 shillings for raw materials and wear-and-tear, there remains 6 shillings,
of which he pays 3 shillings in wages and pockets the remaining 3. Just
as before! Here, also, the worker labors 6 hours for himself – i.e., to
replace his wages (half-an-hour in each of the 12 hours), and 6 hours for
the capitalist.
The rock upon which the best economists were stranded, as long as they
started out from the value of labor, vanishes as soon as we make our starting-point
the value of labor-power. Labor-power is, in our present-day capitalist
society, a commodity like every other commodity, but yet a very peculiar
commodity. It has, namely, the peculiarity of being a value-creating force,
the source of value, and, moreover, when properly treated, the source of
more value than it possesses itself. In the present state of production,
human labor-power not only produces in a day a greater value than it itself
possesses and costs; but with each new scientific discovery, with each
new technical invention, there also rises the surplus of its daily production
over its daily cost, while as a consequence there diminishes that part
of the working-day in which the laborer produces the equivalent of his
day’s wages, and, on the other hand, lengthens that part of the working-day
in which he must present labor gratis to the capitalist.
And this is the economic constitution of our entire modern society:
the working class alone produces all values. For value is only another
expression for labor, that expression, namely, by which is designated,
in our capitalist society of today, the amount of socially necessary labor
embodied in a particular commodity. But, these values produced by the workers
do not belong to the workers. They belong to the owners of the raw materials,
machines, tools, and money, which enable them to buy the labor-power of
the working class. Hence, the working class gets back only a part of the
entire mass of products produced by it. And, as we have just seen, the
other portion, which the capitalist class retains, and which it has to
share, at most, only with the landlord class, is increasing with every
new discovery and invention, while the share which falls to the working
class (per capita) rises but little and very slowly, or not at all, and
under certain conditions it may even fall.
But, these discoveries and inventions which supplant one another
with ever-increasing speed, this productiveness of human labor which increases
from day to day to unheard-of proportions, at last gives rise to a conflict,
in which present capitalistic economy must go to ruin. On the one hand,
immeasurable wealth and a superfluidity of products with which the buyers
cannot cope. On the other hand, the great mass of society proletarianized,
transformed into wage-laborers, and thereby disabled from appropriating
to themselves that superfluidity of products. The splitting up of society
into a small class, immoderately rich, and a large class of wage-laborers
devoid of all property, brings it about that this society smothers in its
own superfluidity, while the great majority of its members are scarcely,
or not at all, protected from extreme want.
This condition becomes every day more absurd and more unnecessary.
It must be gotten rid of; it can be gotten rid of. A new social
order is possible, in which the class differences of today will have disappeared,
and in which – perhaps after a short transition period, which, though
somewhat deficient in other respects, will in any case be very useful morally
– there will be the means of life, of the enjoyment of life, and of the
development and activity of all bodily and mental faculties, through the
systematic use and further development of the enormous productive powers
of society, which exists with us even now, with equal obligation upon all
to work. And that the workers are growing ever more determined to achieve
this new social order will be proven on both sides of the ocean on this
dawning May Day, and on Sunday, May 3rd. [Engels is refering to the May Day celebrations of 1891]
FREDERICK ENGELS
London, April 30, 1891.
Footnotes
1.
“By classical political economy, I understand
that economy which, since the time of W. Petty, has investigated the real
relations of production in bourgeois society, in contradistinction to vulgar
economy, which deals with appearances only, ruminates without ceasing on
the materials long since provided by scientific economy, and there seeks
plausible explanations of the most obtrusive phenomena for bourgeois daily
use, but for the rest confines itself to systematizing in a pedantic way,
and proclaiming for everlasting truths, trite ideas held by the self-complacent
bourgeoisie with regard to their own world, to them the best of all possible
worlds.”
(Karl Marx, Capital, Vol.I, p.93f.)