WAGE-LABOUR AND CAPITAL.
What are wages, and how are they determined?
F we were to ask the labourers, “How much wages do you get?” one would reply, “I get a couple of shillings a day from my employer;” another, “I get half-a-crown,” and so on. According to the differen trades to which they belong, they would name different sums of money which they receive from their particular employers, either for working for a certain length of time, or for performing a certain piece of work; for example, either for weaving an ell of cloth, or for setting up a certain amount of type, But in spite of this difference in their statements there is one point in which they would all agree: their wages are the amount of money which their employer pays them either for working a certain length of time, or for a certain amount of work done.
Thus their employer buys their work for money. For money they sell their work to him. With the same sum for which the employer has bought their work, as for instance, with a couple of shillings, he might have bought four pounds of sugar, or a proportionate amount of any other wares, The two shillings with which he buys the four pounds of sugar, is the price of four pounds of sugar. The two shillings with which he buys labour for twelve hours, is the price of twelve hours’ work. Work is therefore as much a commodity as sugar, neither more nor less, only they measure the former by the clock, the latter by the scales.
The labourers exchange their own commodity with their employers’—work for money; and this exchange takes place according to a fixed proportion. So much money for so much work. For twelve hours’ weaving, two shillings. And do not these two shillings represent two shillings’ worth of all other commodities? Thus the labourer has, in fact, exchanged his own commodity—work, with all kinds of other commodities, and that in a fixed proportion. His employer in giving him two shillings, has given him so much meat, so much clothing, so much fuel, light, and so on, in exchange for his day’s work. The two shillings, therefore, express the proportion in which his work is exchanged with other commodities—the exchange-value of his work; and the exchange-value of any commodity expressed in money is called its price. Wage is, therefore, only another name for the price of work—for the price of this peculiar piece of property which can have no local habitation at all except in human flesh and blood.
Take the case of any workman, a weaver for instance. The employer supplies him with thread and loom. The weaver sets to work, and the thread is turned into cloth. The employer takes possession of the cloth and sells it, say for twenty shillings. Does the weaver receive as wages a share in the cloth—in the twenty shillings—in the product of his labour? By no means. The weaver receives his wages long before the product is sold. The employer does not, therefore, pay his wages with the money he will get for the cloth, but with money previously provided. Loom and thread are not the weaver’s produce, since they are supplied by the employer, and no more are the commodities which he receives in exchange fer his own commodity, or in other words, for his work, It is possible that the employer finds no purchaser for his cloth. It may be that by its sale he does not recover even the wages he has paid. It may be that in comparison with the weaver’s wages he made a great bargain by its sale. But all this has nothing whatever to do with the weaver. The employer purchases the weaver's labour with a part of his available property—of his capital—in exactly the same way as he has with another part of his property bought the raw material—the thread— and the instrument of labour—the loom. As soon as he has made these purchases—and he reckons among them the purchase of the labour necessary to the
