Wage-Labor and Capital (Lothrop)/Wage-Labor and Capital/Chapter 2
Chapter II
What are wages?
If several workmen were to be asked: “How much wages do you get?” one would reply, “I get a dollar a day from my employer”; another, “I get two dollars a day,” and so on. According to the different branches of industry in which they are employed, they would mention different sums of money that they receive from their respective employers for the completion of a certain task; for example, for weaving a yard of linen, or for setting a page of type. Despite the variety of their statements, they would all agree upon one point: that wages are the amount of money which the capitalist pays for a certain period of work or for a certain amount of work.
Consequently it appears that the capitalist buys their labor with money, and that for money they sell him their labor. But this is merely an illusion. What they actually sell to the capitalist for money is their labor-power. This labor-power the capitalist buys for a day, a week, a month, etc. And after he has bought it, he uses it up by letting the worker labor during the stipulated time. With the same amount of money with which the capitalist has bought their labor-power, for example, with two dollars, he could have bought a certain amount of sugar or of any other commodity. The two dollars with which he bought twenty pounds of sugar is the price of the twenty pounds of sugar. The two dollars. with which he bought twelve hours’ use of the labor-power, is the price of twelve hours’ labor. Labor-power, then, is a commodity, no more, no less so than is the sugar. The first is measured by the clock, the other by the scales.
Their commodity, labor-power, the workers exchange for the commodity of the capitalist, for money, and, moreover, this exchange takes place at a certain ratio. So much money for so long a use of labor-power. For twelve hours’ weaving, two dollars. And these two dollars, do they not represent all the other commodities which I can buy for two dollars? Therefore, actually, the worker has exchanged his commodity, labor-power, for commodities of all kinds, and moreover at a certain ratio. By giving him two dollars, the capitalist has given him so much meat, so much clothing, so much wood, light, etc., in exchange for his day’s work. The two dollars therefore expresses the relation in which labor-power is exchanged for other commodities, the exchange value of labor-power. The exchange value of a commodity estimated in money is called its price. Wages therefore are only a special name for the price of labor-power, and are usually called the price of work; it is the special name for the price of this peculiar commodity, which has no other repository than human flesh and blood.
Let us take any worker, for example, a weaver. The capitalist supplies him with the loom and the yarn. The weaver applies himself to work, and the yarn is turned into cloth. The capitalist takes possession of the cloth and sells it for twenty dollars, for example. Now are the wages of the weaver a share of the cloth, of the twenty dollars, of the product of his work? By no means. Long before the cloth is sold, perhaps long before it is fully woven, the weaver has received his wages. The capitalist, then, does not pay his wages out of the money which he will obtain from the cloth, but out of money already on hand. Just as little as loom and yarn are the product of the weaver to whom they are supplied by the employer, just so little are the commodities which he receives in exchange for his commodity—labor-power— his product. It is possible that the employer found no purchasers at all for his cloth. It is possible that he did not get even the amount of the wages by its sale. It is possible that he sells it very profitably in proportion to the weaver’s wages. But all that does not concern the weaver. With a part of his existing wealth, of his capital, the capitalist buys the labor-power of the weaver in exactly the same manner as, with another part of his wealth, he has bought the raw material—the yarn—and the instrument of work—the loom. After he has made these purchases, and among them belongs the labor-power necessary to the production of the cloth, he produces only with raw materials and instruments of labor belonging to him. For our good weaver, too, is one of the instruments of labor, and being in this respect on a par with the loom, he has no more share in the product (the cloth), or in the price of the product, than the loom itself has.
Wages, therefore, are not a share of the worker in the commodities produced by himself. Wages are that part of already existing commodities with which the capitalist buys a certain amount of productive labor-power.
Consequently, labor-power is a commodity which its possessor, the wage-worker, sells to the capitalist. Why does he sell it? In order to live.
But the putting of labor-power into action, i.e., the work, is the active expression of the laborer’s own life. And this life activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of life. His life-activity, therefore, is but a means of securing his own existence. He works that he may keep alive. He does not count the labor itself as a part of his life; it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity that he has auctioned off to another. The product of his activity, therefore, is not the aim of his activity. What he produces for himself is not the silk that he weaves, not the gold that he draws up the mining shaft, not the palace that he builds. What he produces for himself is the wages, and silk, gold, and palace are resolved for him into a certain quantity of necessaries of life, perhaps into a cotton jacket, into copper coins, and into a basement dwelling. And the laborer who for twelve hours long, weaves, spins, bores, turns, builds, shovels, breaks stone, carries hods, and so on—is this twelve hours’ weaving, spinning, boring, turning, building, shoveling, stone-breaking, regarded by him as a manifestation of his life, as life? Quite the contrary. Life for him begins where this activity ceases, at the table, at the tavern seat, in bed. The twelve hours’ work, on the other hand, has no meaning for him as weaving, spinning, boring, and so on, but only as earnings, which enable him to sit down at a table, to take his seat in the tavern, and to lie down in a bed.
If the silkworm’s object in spinning were to prolong its existence as caterpillar, it would be a perfect example of a wage-worker. Labor-power was not always a commodity (merchandise). Labor was not always wage-labor, i.e., free labor. The slave did not sell his labor-power to the slave-owner, any more than the ox sells his laboring force to the farmer. The slave, together with his labor-power, was sold to his owner once for all. He is a commodity that can pass from the hand of one owner to that of another. He himself is a commodity, but his labor-power is not his commodity. The serf sells[1] only a portion of his labor-power. It is not he who receives wages from the owner of the land; it is rather the owner of the land who receives a tribute from him. The serf belongs to the soil, and to the lord of the soil he brings its fruit. The free laborer, on the other hand, sells his very self, and that by fractions. He auctions off eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his life, one day like the next, to the highest bidder, to the owner of raw materials, tools, and means of life, i.e., to the capitalist. The laborer belongs neither to an owner nor to the soil, but eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his daily life belong to whomsoever buys them. The worker leaves the capitalist, to whom he has sold himself, as often as he chooses, and the capitalist discharges him as often as he sees fit, as soon as he no longer gets any use, or not the required use, out of him. But the worker, whose only source of income is the sale of his labor-power, cannot leave the whole class of buyers, i. e., the capitalist class, unless he gives up his own existence. He does not belong to this or to that capitalist, but to the capitalist class; and it is for him to find his man, i.e., to find a buyer in this capitalist class.
Before entering more closely upon the relation of capital to wage-labor, we shall present briefly the most general conditions which come into consideration in the determination of wages.
Wages, as we have seen, are the price of a certain commodity, labor-power. Wages, therefore, are determined by the same laws that determine the price of every other commodity. The question then is, How is the price of a commodity determined?
- ↑ “Sells” is not a very exact expression, for serfdom in its purity did not involve any relations of buying and selling between the serf and the lord of the manor, the tributes of the former to the latter consisting in labor and in kind. It is evident that Marx uses here the word “sells” in the general sense of alienation.—Translator.