Karl Marx's
ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL MANUSCRIPTS
First Manuscript
WAGES OF LABOR
Wages are determined by the fierce struggle between capitalist and worker. The
capitalist inevitably wins. The capitalist can live longer without the worker
than the worker can live without him. Combination among capitalists is habitual
and effective, while combination among the workers is forbidden and has painful
consequences for them. In addition to that, the landowner and the capitalist can
increase their revenues with the profits of industry, while the worker can
supplement his income from industry with neither ground rent nor interest on
capital. This is the reason for the intensity of competition among the workers.
It is, therefore, only for the worker that the separation of capital, landed
property, and labor, is a necessary, essential, and pernicious separation.
Capital and landed property need not remain constant in this abstraction, as
must the labor of the workers.
So, for the worker, the separation of capital, ground rent, and labor, is
fatal.
For wages, the lowest and the only necessary rate is that required for the
subsistence of the worker during work and enough extra to support a family and
prevent the race of workers from dying out. According to [economist Adam] Smith,
the normal wage is the lowest which is compatible with common humanity -- i.e.,
with a bestial existence. [See Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 2 vols., Everyman
edition, Vol. I, p. 61.]
The demand for men necessarily regulates the production of men, as of every
other commodity. If the supply greatly exceeds the demand, then one section of
the workers sinks into beggary or starvation. The existence of the worker is,
therefore, reduced to the same condition as the existence of every other
commodity. The worker has become a commodity, and he is lucky if he can find a
buyer. And the demand on which the worker's life depends is regulated by the
whims of the wealthy and the capitalists. If supply exceeds demand, one of the
elements which go to make up the price -- profit, ground rent, wages -- will be
paid below its price. A part of these elements is, therefore, withdrawn from
this application, with the result that the market price gravitates towards the
natural price as the central point. But 1. it is very difficult for the worker
to direct his labor elsewhere where there is a marked division of labor; and 2.
because of his subordinate relationship to the capitalist, he is the first to
suffer.
So the worker is sure to lose and to lose most from the gravitation of the
market price towards the natural price. And it is precisely the ability of the
capitalist to direct his capital elsewhere which either drives the worker, who
is restricted to one particular branch of employment, into starvation or forces
him to submit to all the capitalist's demands.
The sudden chance fluctuations in market price hit ground rent less than that
part of the price which constitutes profit and wages, but they hit profit less
than wages. For every wage which rises, there is generally one which remains
stationary and another which falls.
The worker does not necessarily gain when the capitalist gains, but he
necessarily loses with him. For example, the worker does not gain if the
capitalist keeps the market price above the natural price by means of a
manufacturing or trade secret, a monopoly or a favorably placed property.
Moreover, the prices of labor are much more constant than the prices of
provisions. They are often in inverse proportion. In a dear year, wages drop
because of a drop in demand and rise because of an increase in the price of
provisions. They, therefore, balance. In any case, some workers are left without
bread. In cheap years, wages rise on account of the rise in demand, and fall on
account of the fall in the price of provisions. So they balance. [Smith, I, pp.
76-7.]
Another disadvantage for the worker:
The price of the labor of different kinds of workers varies much more than the
profits of the various branches in which capital is put to use. In the case of
labor, all the natural, spiritual, and social variations in individual activity
are manifested and variously rewarded, were as dead capital behaves in a uniform
way and is indifferent to real individual activity.
In general, we should note that where worker and capitalist both suffer, the
worker suffers in his very existence while the capitalist suffers in the profit
on his dead mammon.
The worker has not only to struggle for his physical means of subsistence; he
must also struggle for work -- i.e., for the possibility and the means of
realizing his activity. Let us consider the three main conditions which can
occur in society and their effect on the worker.
(1) If the wealth of society is decreasing, the worker suffers most, although
the working class cannot gain as much as the property owners when society is
prospering, none suffers more cruelly from its decline than the working class.
[Smith, I, p. 230.]
(2) Let us now consider a society in which wealth is increasing. This condition
is the only one favorable to the worker. Here, competition takes place among the
capitalists. The demand for workers outstrips supply. But:
In the first place, the rise of wages leads to overwork among the workers. The
more they want to earn the more they must sacrifice their time and freedom and
work like slaves in the service of avarice. In doing so, they shorten their
lives. But this is all to the good of the working class as a whole, since it
creates a renewed demand. This class must always sacrifice a part of itself if
it is to avoid total destruction.
Furthermore, when is a society in a condition of increasing prosperity? When
the capitals and revenues of a country are growing. But this is only possible
(a) as a result of the accumulation of a large quantity of labor, for capital
is accumulated labor; that is to say, when more and more of the workers'
products are being taken from him, when his own labor increasingly confronts him
as alien property and the means of his existence and of his activity are
increasingly concentrated in the hands of the capitalist.
(b) The accumulation of capital increases the division of labor, and the
division of labor increases the number of workers; conversely, the growth in the
number of workers increases the division of labor, just as the growth in the
division of labor increases the accumulation of capital. As a consequence of
this division of labor, on the one hand, and the accumulation of capitals, on
the other, the worker becomes more and more uniformly dependent on labor, and on
a particular, very one-sided and machine-like type of labor. Just as he is
depressed, therefore, both intellectually and physically to the level of a
machine, and from being a man becomes an abstract activity and a stomach, so he
also becomes more and more dependent on every fluctuation in the market price,
in the investment of capital and in the whims of the wealthy. Equally, the
increase in that class of men who do nothing but work increases the competition
among the workers and therefore lowers their price. In the factory system,
conditions such as these reach their climax.
(c) In a society which is becoming increasingly prosperous, only the very
richest can continue to live from the interest on money. All the rest must run a
business with their capital, or put it on the market. As a result, the
competition among the capitalists increases, there is a growing concentration of
capital, the big capitalists ruin the small ones, and a section of the former
capitalists sinks into the class of the workers -- which, because of this
increase in numbers, suffers a further depression of wages and becomes even more
dependent on the handful of big capitalists. Because the number of capitalists
has fallen, competition for workers has increased, the competition among them
has become all the more considerable, unnatural and violent. Hence, a section of
the working class is reduced to beggary or starvation with the same necessity as
a section of the middle capitalists ends up in the working class.
So, even in the state of society most favorable to him, the inevitable
consequence for the worker and early death, reduction to a machine, enslavement
to capital which piles up in threatening opposition to him, fresh competition
and starvation or beggary for a section of the workers.
An increase in wages arouses in the worker the same desire to get rich as in
the capitalist, but he can only satisfy this desire by sacrificing his mind and
body. An increase in wages presupposes, and brings about, the accumulation of
capital, and thus opposes the product of labor to the worker as something
increasingly alien to him. Similarly, the division of labor makes ...
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