political economy—the Ricardian school—was largely wrecked on the insolubility of this contradiction. Classic 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 at a certain time. But in this way he does not sell labor (which would first have to be performed), but 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 economists 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 quality, as Marx has done in the chapter on the “Buying and Selling of Labor-Power.”[1]
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—
- ↑ Capital, vol. I, chapter vi.
