TheGodlessUtopian
23rd October 2012, 15:48
The following study guide is a companion to Karl Marx’s text Wage Labour and Capital (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm). All of the answers and questions, unless otherwise noted, have been provided by myself. If any mistakes within the body of the guide are found please comment below. This guide is for fair use and may be freely reproduced.
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What are Wages? How are they Determined?
Q1: What is labor?
A1: In the broad meaning of the term labor is a concept applied to the working class to denote their need to work. It is above all wage labor or labor-power; that which the worker sells to secure his existence.
Q2: What is labor-power?
A2: Labor-power is a commodity which the worker sells to a capitalist in exchange for the means of subsistence (Money). As Marx says, “The two [credits] therefore express the relation in which labour-power is exchanged for other commodities, the exchange-value of labour-power.” This Thereby allows him to survive.
Q3: What is the difference between wage-labor and labor-power?[1] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn1)
A3: The difference: While wage-labor is what the worker sells (his power to produce) labor-power is the act of working to produce (thereby making the process of working a commodity in itself) in turn. The terms are used to denote different stages of the production process where the capitalist actively searches and then, via exploitation, is “able” to produce a commodity which he then sells.
Q4: What is the Price of Labor?
A4: Simply said it is another term for wages when “The exchange value of a commodity estimated in money is called its price.” Though this is a special name, one which obscures class relations, its fundamental nature remains the same.
Q5: Once the product of the worker’s labor-power is completed and the capitalist takes the product to be sold does the laborer get a share of the profits?
A5: No, “Long before the [item] is sold… the weaver has received his wages. The capitalist, then, does not pay his wages out of the money which he will obtain from the [item], but out of money already on hand.” It is possible the capitalist never was able to sell the item. Therefore wages are ingrained in the capitalist’s already existing commodities.
Q6: Why does the laborer sell his labor-power?
A6: In order to survive. Under capitalist society, where everything must be paid for in currency, the worker has no other option than to sell his labor-power if he expects to eat and sleep under a roof.
By what is the price of a commodity determined?
Q7: What are the means which determine a commodity’s rise in price?
A7: When the supply of the commodity is less than that of the demand, and all the sellers stand to make a hearty profit thereby ceasing internal conflict with one another, the price will rise in accordance with what the sellers would be able to reap from the buyers.
Q8: What are the means which determine a commodity’s drop in price?
A8: Much like the aforementioned question’s answer this is the exact opposite of previous contentions. Much like how the price of a commodity will rise when the supply is below the demand, the price of a commodity will subsequently drop when the supply exceeds that of the demand and the competition among the sellers is high.
Q9: In what sense does Marx deny that prices are determined by the balance of supply and demand?[2] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn2)
A9: In a way Marx does follow the balance of supply and demand but he makes it clear that such factors are not the only forces which determine a commodity’s price. He also speaks of the periodical ebbs and flow of capital; how it moves from industry to industry in relation to a commodity’s price. More to the point, he says that “…the fluctuation of supply and demand always bring the price of a commodity back to its cost of production. The actual price of a commodity, indeed, stands always above or below the cost of production; but the rise and fall reciprocally balance each other, so that, within a certain period of time, if the ebbs and flows of the industry are reckoned up together, the commodities will be exchanged for one another in accordance with their cost of production. Their price is thus determined by their cost of production.” Thus absolution that the price of a commodity is determined by the cost of production is rejected and the analysis that it is, in fact, determined by its periods of natural increases and decreases in price balancing each other out.
By what are wages determined?
Q10: What law regulates the rise and fall of wages?
A10: The same law which regulates the rise and fall of prices: the fluctuations of the costs of production and labor power.
Q11: What is the cost of the production of labor-power?
A11: The necessary upkeep for the maintenance of the worker. “It is the cost required for the maintenance of the labourer as a labourer, and for his education and training as a labourer.
Therefore, the shorter the time required for training up to a particular sort of work, the smaller is the cost of production of the worker, the lower is the price of his labour-power, his wages.”
In fields where all is required of the worker is his body his labor-power would be determined by the necessary means of subsistence.
Q12: How does the costs of the upkeep of the machines and the replacement of workers factor into wage determination?
A12: The manufacturer has already taken this into account: “The manufacturer who calculates his cost of production and… the price of the product, takes into account the wear and tear of the instruments of labour…” Marx continues “In the same manner, the cost of production of simple labour-power must include the cost of propagation, by means of which the race of workers is enabled to multiply itself, and to replace worn-out workers with new ones. The wear and tear of the worker, therefore, is calculated in the same manner as the wear and tear of the machine.”
Hence we see that wages are the minimum necessary amount for the cost of worker propagation.
The Nature and Growth of Capital
Q13: What are social relations?
A13: Social relations are what connection an individual has to the Means of Production and commodities in general.
Q14: How is capital a social relation of production?
A14: To quote Marx “The means of subsistence, the instruments of labour, the raw materials, of which capital consists – have… been produced and accumulated under given social conditions, within definite special relations… which serve for new production as capital[.]” Such a reaction (Capital) could only have developed as part of a capitalistic system.
Q15: Capital is the sum of commodities; how does this show itself in exchange values?
A15: By allowing all commodities to be exchangeable for one another in varying quantities. Marx illustrated that...
“Capital remains the same whether we put cotton in the place of wool, rice in the place of wheat, steamships in the place of railroads, provided only that the cotton, the rice, the steamships – the body of capital – have the same exchange value, the same price, as the wool, the wheat, the railroads, in which it was previously embodied. The bodily form of capital may transform itself continually, while capital does not suffer the least alteration.”
This does not mean, however, that follow that every sum of commodities is exchange value.
Q16: How does a sum of commodities become capital?
A16: When an independent social-power is reliant on commodity production and possesses nothing but its ability to work the domination of past, accumulated labor materializes and imprints on the present society the characteristics of capital which, “…consists in the fact that living labour serves accumulated labour as the means of preserving and multiplying its exchange value.” This process ends in with the ushering in of the age of capital.
Relation of wage-labor to capital
Q17: What takes place between the capitalist and worker?
A17: To answer as simply as possible…
“The labourer receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labour-power; the capitalist receives, in exchange for his means of subsistence, labour, the productive activity of the labourer, the creative force by which the worker not only replaces what he consumes, but also gives to the accumulated labour a greater value than it previously possessed.”
This is the beginning of economic exploitation where the worker is given less than he makes and the capitalist takes more than is his.
Q18: Generally speaking, what does a worker produce?
A18: Contrary to popular belief the worker does not produce commodities but instead produces capital; the worker, by working in agreement by wages, has entered into a contract where the only manner in which he can receive his means of subsistence (wages) is to keep capital alive and expand its influence. This ultimately means that with the expansion of the working class comes the expansion of capital (and vice versa with their respective decline).
Q19: What does it mean when wages rise/fall and what does it mean when the price of commodities do the same?
A19: In relation to the rise of wages this “…presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. Rapid growth of productive capital calls forth just as rapid a growth of wealth, of luxury, of social needs and social pleasures.” Likewise when the price of commodities increases without wages exterior labels falling this means that though they are paid the same amount the value of the means of subsistence have increased. Indirectly this means that in reality their wages did indeed fall. This relationship remains fundamentally the same when applied in reverse and when taken with consideration with the application of new technologies.
Q20: How are wages determined?
A20: As Marx says “Wages are determined above all by their relations to the gain, the profit, of the capitalist. In other words, wages are a proportionate, relative quantity.
Real wages express the price of labour-power in relation to the price of commodities; relative wages, on the other hand, express the share of immediate labour in the value newly created by it, in relation to the share of it which falls to accumulated labour, to capital.”
All of these concepts are interconnected and cannot be taken in isolation if one wishes to understand the complex theories of understanding capitalist production.
The general law that determines the rise and fall of wages and profits
Q21: Marx says that the selling price of a commodity is divided into three parts, what are these parts?
A21: 1) Price of replacing worn and unusable materials, 2) The replacement of wages. 3) The surplus value leftovers.
Q22: What law determines the relation between the rise and fall of wages?
A22: Workers wages and capitalists profit “…stand in inverse proportion to each other. The share of (profit) increases in the same proportion in which the share of labour (wages) falls, and vice versa. Profit rises in the same degree in which wages fall; it falls in the same degree in which wages rise.” One cannot rise or fall without the other doing so as well.
The Interests of Capital and Wage-Labor are diametrically opposed Effect of growth of productive Capital on Wages.
Q23: When a worker’s wages rise what does this mean socially?
A23: This simply means that a slightly larger portion of “the crumbs” is trickling down to him. In actuality though he may be given a higher wage and a nominally better material condition his social standing in relation to the capitalist has greatly widened. Understanding this gap means understanding that the working class has no interest in the rapid expansion of capital.
In what manner does the growth of productive capital affect wages?
Q24: If a capitalist wishes to drive a competitor from “the field” what must he do?
A24: He must undersell them. This means increasing the productive forces of labor which will enable him to produce more of his commodity with the same amount of actual labor. Once this is done he may market his products more cheaply and thus hope to garner a higher market share.
Q25: What is the result of increasing the productive forces of labor?
A25: In short, continuing struggle:
“Other competing capitalists introduce the same machines, the same division of labour, and introduce them upon the same or even upon a greater scale. And finally this introduction becomes so universal that the price of the linen is lowered not only below its old, but even below its new cost of production.”
Which results in…
“The capitalists therefore find[ing] themselves, in their mutual relations, in the same situation in which they were before the introduction of the new means of production; and if they are by these means enabled to offer double the product at the old price, they are now forced to furnish double the product for less than the old price. Having arrived at the new point, the new cost of production, the battle for supremacy in the market has to be fought out anew. Given more division of labour and more machinery, and there results a greater scale upon which division of labour and machinery are exploited. And competition again brings the same reaction against this result.”
With this result also comes the further domination of the capitalist class over the working class.
Effects of Capitalist Competition on the Capitalist Class the Middle Class and the Working Class
Q26: What is the effect of increasing the division of labor in relation to the working class?
A26: As comrade Marx explains, “The greater division of labour enables one labourer to accomplish the work of five, 10, or 20 labourers; it therefore increases competition among the labourers fivefold, tenfold, or twentyfold. The labourers compete not only by selling themselves one cheaper than the other, but also by one doing the work of five, 10, or 20; and they are forced to compete in this manner by the division of labour, which is introduced and steadily improved by capital.” In this manner the capitalist benefits from hiring labor at prices which save him money. This happens on top of the workers labor becoming more simplified thereby increasing his competition even more. The end result of this ultimately is that the more he works the fewer wages he receives as he is in more ardent competition with his fellow workers which, in turn, only props up the division of labor.
Q27: What is the effect of the process the division of labor has on the capitalist class?
A27: Strictly speaking it only serves their interests but this is only in the short run. When we look at the long run we see that this process hastens the expanse of capital to every part of the globe to the extent where there will one day no longer be any new markets to conquer. This creates crises opportunities for the working class to rise up and combat their class foes one day ending in their complete victory.
----------------
[1] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref1) This question was produced by the Marxists Internet Archive (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/guide.htm). The answer was provided by me.
[2] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref2) This question has been provided by the Marxists Internet Archive.
~ ~ ~
What are Wages? How are they Determined?
Q1: What is labor?
A1: In the broad meaning of the term labor is a concept applied to the working class to denote their need to work. It is above all wage labor or labor-power; that which the worker sells to secure his existence.
Q2: What is labor-power?
A2: Labor-power is a commodity which the worker sells to a capitalist in exchange for the means of subsistence (Money). As Marx says, “The two [credits] therefore express the relation in which labour-power is exchanged for other commodities, the exchange-value of labour-power.” This Thereby allows him to survive.
Q3: What is the difference between wage-labor and labor-power?[1] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn1)
A3: The difference: While wage-labor is what the worker sells (his power to produce) labor-power is the act of working to produce (thereby making the process of working a commodity in itself) in turn. The terms are used to denote different stages of the production process where the capitalist actively searches and then, via exploitation, is “able” to produce a commodity which he then sells.
Q4: What is the Price of Labor?
A4: Simply said it is another term for wages when “The exchange value of a commodity estimated in money is called its price.” Though this is a special name, one which obscures class relations, its fundamental nature remains the same.
Q5: Once the product of the worker’s labor-power is completed and the capitalist takes the product to be sold does the laborer get a share of the profits?
A5: No, “Long before the [item] is sold… the weaver has received his wages. The capitalist, then, does not pay his wages out of the money which he will obtain from the [item], but out of money already on hand.” It is possible the capitalist never was able to sell the item. Therefore wages are ingrained in the capitalist’s already existing commodities.
Q6: Why does the laborer sell his labor-power?
A6: In order to survive. Under capitalist society, where everything must be paid for in currency, the worker has no other option than to sell his labor-power if he expects to eat and sleep under a roof.
By what is the price of a commodity determined?
Q7: What are the means which determine a commodity’s rise in price?
A7: When the supply of the commodity is less than that of the demand, and all the sellers stand to make a hearty profit thereby ceasing internal conflict with one another, the price will rise in accordance with what the sellers would be able to reap from the buyers.
Q8: What are the means which determine a commodity’s drop in price?
A8: Much like the aforementioned question’s answer this is the exact opposite of previous contentions. Much like how the price of a commodity will rise when the supply is below the demand, the price of a commodity will subsequently drop when the supply exceeds that of the demand and the competition among the sellers is high.
Q9: In what sense does Marx deny that prices are determined by the balance of supply and demand?[2] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn2)
A9: In a way Marx does follow the balance of supply and demand but he makes it clear that such factors are not the only forces which determine a commodity’s price. He also speaks of the periodical ebbs and flow of capital; how it moves from industry to industry in relation to a commodity’s price. More to the point, he says that “…the fluctuation of supply and demand always bring the price of a commodity back to its cost of production. The actual price of a commodity, indeed, stands always above or below the cost of production; but the rise and fall reciprocally balance each other, so that, within a certain period of time, if the ebbs and flows of the industry are reckoned up together, the commodities will be exchanged for one another in accordance with their cost of production. Their price is thus determined by their cost of production.” Thus absolution that the price of a commodity is determined by the cost of production is rejected and the analysis that it is, in fact, determined by its periods of natural increases and decreases in price balancing each other out.
By what are wages determined?
Q10: What law regulates the rise and fall of wages?
A10: The same law which regulates the rise and fall of prices: the fluctuations of the costs of production and labor power.
Q11: What is the cost of the production of labor-power?
A11: The necessary upkeep for the maintenance of the worker. “It is the cost required for the maintenance of the labourer as a labourer, and for his education and training as a labourer.
Therefore, the shorter the time required for training up to a particular sort of work, the smaller is the cost of production of the worker, the lower is the price of his labour-power, his wages.”
In fields where all is required of the worker is his body his labor-power would be determined by the necessary means of subsistence.
Q12: How does the costs of the upkeep of the machines and the replacement of workers factor into wage determination?
A12: The manufacturer has already taken this into account: “The manufacturer who calculates his cost of production and… the price of the product, takes into account the wear and tear of the instruments of labour…” Marx continues “In the same manner, the cost of production of simple labour-power must include the cost of propagation, by means of which the race of workers is enabled to multiply itself, and to replace worn-out workers with new ones. The wear and tear of the worker, therefore, is calculated in the same manner as the wear and tear of the machine.”
Hence we see that wages are the minimum necessary amount for the cost of worker propagation.
The Nature and Growth of Capital
Q13: What are social relations?
A13: Social relations are what connection an individual has to the Means of Production and commodities in general.
Q14: How is capital a social relation of production?
A14: To quote Marx “The means of subsistence, the instruments of labour, the raw materials, of which capital consists – have… been produced and accumulated under given social conditions, within definite special relations… which serve for new production as capital[.]” Such a reaction (Capital) could only have developed as part of a capitalistic system.
Q15: Capital is the sum of commodities; how does this show itself in exchange values?
A15: By allowing all commodities to be exchangeable for one another in varying quantities. Marx illustrated that...
“Capital remains the same whether we put cotton in the place of wool, rice in the place of wheat, steamships in the place of railroads, provided only that the cotton, the rice, the steamships – the body of capital – have the same exchange value, the same price, as the wool, the wheat, the railroads, in which it was previously embodied. The bodily form of capital may transform itself continually, while capital does not suffer the least alteration.”
This does not mean, however, that follow that every sum of commodities is exchange value.
Q16: How does a sum of commodities become capital?
A16: When an independent social-power is reliant on commodity production and possesses nothing but its ability to work the domination of past, accumulated labor materializes and imprints on the present society the characteristics of capital which, “…consists in the fact that living labour serves accumulated labour as the means of preserving and multiplying its exchange value.” This process ends in with the ushering in of the age of capital.
Relation of wage-labor to capital
Q17: What takes place between the capitalist and worker?
A17: To answer as simply as possible…
“The labourer receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labour-power; the capitalist receives, in exchange for his means of subsistence, labour, the productive activity of the labourer, the creative force by which the worker not only replaces what he consumes, but also gives to the accumulated labour a greater value than it previously possessed.”
This is the beginning of economic exploitation where the worker is given less than he makes and the capitalist takes more than is his.
Q18: Generally speaking, what does a worker produce?
A18: Contrary to popular belief the worker does not produce commodities but instead produces capital; the worker, by working in agreement by wages, has entered into a contract where the only manner in which he can receive his means of subsistence (wages) is to keep capital alive and expand its influence. This ultimately means that with the expansion of the working class comes the expansion of capital (and vice versa with their respective decline).
Q19: What does it mean when wages rise/fall and what does it mean when the price of commodities do the same?
A19: In relation to the rise of wages this “…presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. Rapid growth of productive capital calls forth just as rapid a growth of wealth, of luxury, of social needs and social pleasures.” Likewise when the price of commodities increases without wages exterior labels falling this means that though they are paid the same amount the value of the means of subsistence have increased. Indirectly this means that in reality their wages did indeed fall. This relationship remains fundamentally the same when applied in reverse and when taken with consideration with the application of new technologies.
Q20: How are wages determined?
A20: As Marx says “Wages are determined above all by their relations to the gain, the profit, of the capitalist. In other words, wages are a proportionate, relative quantity.
Real wages express the price of labour-power in relation to the price of commodities; relative wages, on the other hand, express the share of immediate labour in the value newly created by it, in relation to the share of it which falls to accumulated labour, to capital.”
All of these concepts are interconnected and cannot be taken in isolation if one wishes to understand the complex theories of understanding capitalist production.
The general law that determines the rise and fall of wages and profits
Q21: Marx says that the selling price of a commodity is divided into three parts, what are these parts?
A21: 1) Price of replacing worn and unusable materials, 2) The replacement of wages. 3) The surplus value leftovers.
Q22: What law determines the relation between the rise and fall of wages?
A22: Workers wages and capitalists profit “…stand in inverse proportion to each other. The share of (profit) increases in the same proportion in which the share of labour (wages) falls, and vice versa. Profit rises in the same degree in which wages fall; it falls in the same degree in which wages rise.” One cannot rise or fall without the other doing so as well.
The Interests of Capital and Wage-Labor are diametrically opposed Effect of growth of productive Capital on Wages.
Q23: When a worker’s wages rise what does this mean socially?
A23: This simply means that a slightly larger portion of “the crumbs” is trickling down to him. In actuality though he may be given a higher wage and a nominally better material condition his social standing in relation to the capitalist has greatly widened. Understanding this gap means understanding that the working class has no interest in the rapid expansion of capital.
In what manner does the growth of productive capital affect wages?
Q24: If a capitalist wishes to drive a competitor from “the field” what must he do?
A24: He must undersell them. This means increasing the productive forces of labor which will enable him to produce more of his commodity with the same amount of actual labor. Once this is done he may market his products more cheaply and thus hope to garner a higher market share.
Q25: What is the result of increasing the productive forces of labor?
A25: In short, continuing struggle:
“Other competing capitalists introduce the same machines, the same division of labour, and introduce them upon the same or even upon a greater scale. And finally this introduction becomes so universal that the price of the linen is lowered not only below its old, but even below its new cost of production.”
Which results in…
“The capitalists therefore find[ing] themselves, in their mutual relations, in the same situation in which they were before the introduction of the new means of production; and if they are by these means enabled to offer double the product at the old price, they are now forced to furnish double the product for less than the old price. Having arrived at the new point, the new cost of production, the battle for supremacy in the market has to be fought out anew. Given more division of labour and more machinery, and there results a greater scale upon which division of labour and machinery are exploited. And competition again brings the same reaction against this result.”
With this result also comes the further domination of the capitalist class over the working class.
Effects of Capitalist Competition on the Capitalist Class the Middle Class and the Working Class
Q26: What is the effect of increasing the division of labor in relation to the working class?
A26: As comrade Marx explains, “The greater division of labour enables one labourer to accomplish the work of five, 10, or 20 labourers; it therefore increases competition among the labourers fivefold, tenfold, or twentyfold. The labourers compete not only by selling themselves one cheaper than the other, but also by one doing the work of five, 10, or 20; and they are forced to compete in this manner by the division of labour, which is introduced and steadily improved by capital.” In this manner the capitalist benefits from hiring labor at prices which save him money. This happens on top of the workers labor becoming more simplified thereby increasing his competition even more. The end result of this ultimately is that the more he works the fewer wages he receives as he is in more ardent competition with his fellow workers which, in turn, only props up the division of labor.
Q27: What is the effect of the process the division of labor has on the capitalist class?
A27: Strictly speaking it only serves their interests but this is only in the short run. When we look at the long run we see that this process hastens the expanse of capital to every part of the globe to the extent where there will one day no longer be any new markets to conquer. This creates crises opportunities for the working class to rise up and combat their class foes one day ending in their complete victory.
----------------
[1] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref1) This question was produced by the Marxists Internet Archive (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/guide.htm). The answer was provided by me.
[2] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref2) This question has been provided by the Marxists Internet Archive.