Chapter VIII
The interests of Capital and Wage-labor are Diametrically Opposed—Effect of Growth of Productive Capital on Wages
We thus see that, even if we keep ourselves within the relation of capital and wage-labor, the interests of capital and the interests of wage-labor are diametrically opposed to each other.
A rapid growth of capital is synonymous with a rapid growth of profits. Profits can grow rapidly only when the price of labor—the relative wages—decrease just as rapidly. Relative wages may fall, although the real wages rise simultaneously with the nominal wages, with the money value of labor, provided only that the real wage does not rise in the same proportion as the profit. If, for instance, in good business years wages rise five per cent. while profits rise thirty per cent., the proportional, the relative wage has not increased, but decreased.
If, therefore, the income of the worker increases with the rapid growth of capital, there is at the same time a widening of the social chasm that divides the worker from the capitalist, an increase in the power of capital over labor, a greater dependence of labor upon capital.
To say that “the worker has an interest in the rapid growth of capital,” means only this: that the more speedily the worker augments the wealth of the capitalist, the larger will be the crumbs which fall to him, the greater
