Confused about capitalist exchange

[Questionable]

I've been reading more and more Marx, but there's still something that's been bugging me since I first started studying.

The capitalists are always decreasing the proletarians' wages, right? The division of labor is making our wages smaller and smaller, right?

If that's the case, who does the bourgeois expect to buy their commodities if they keep cutting wages?

Let's say a worker gets his 10 dollar paycheck, leaves, then spends the 10 dollars on food that goes back to the capitalist. How has the capitalist made any money if it was his to begin with? Is he relying on proletarians other than the ones he has employed to buy his stuff?

[roy]

The capitalist makes money by extracting surplus value from the labour of the proletariat. The proletariat is not paid the amount his labour is worth and the capitalist pays him as little as he can, which is a continually smaller amount. You assume here that the worker has used the $10 he earnt and bought something that was produced by his workplace. Even if this is the case, the $10 he was paid is still less than the value of his labour, and the capitalist still keeps the surplus. It's also likely that the worker paid more than the product was worth, such is the nature of capitalism.

Anyway, your first point is what we mean when we talk about the internal contradictions of capitalism. This is why it's such a volatile system and is destined to undergo an economic cataclysm.

[MajorGeneralPineapple]

You are right that it becomes increasingly harder to sell products to people who can't afford them. I think that's where globalization comes in. As you see in the US, where there still is some labor protection, the minimum wage continues to rise. And it has to--- appeasing the proletariat is absolutely necessary to safeguard the capitalist order. The only way for the capitalists to continue making record profits is through the global market, and that's why so many of our biggest companies now produce nearly all of their commodities in free trade zones around the world, where they pay contracted workers with pocket change, and pay even less in taxes.