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| Title | Wage labour and capital |
| Creator (LCNAF) |
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| Contributor (LCNAF) |
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| Publisher | International Publishers |
| Place of Creation (TGN) |
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| Date | 1932 |
| Subject.Topical (LCSH) |
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| Language | English |
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| Original Item Extent | 48 pages; 20 cm |
| Original Item Location | HB301.M3813 1932 |
| Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b8302360~S11 |
| Original Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
| Digital Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
| Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/scpamp |
| Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
| Repository URL | http://libraries.uh.edu/branches/special-collections |
| Use and Reproduction | In Copyright: This item is protected by copyright. Copyright to this resource is held by the creator or current rights holder, and the resource is provided here for educational purposes. It may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without permission of the copyright owner. Users assume full responsibility for any infringement of copyright or related rights. |
| Note | Translation of Lohnarbeit und Kapital. |
| File Name | index.cpd |
| Title | Image 10 |
| Format (IMT) |
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| File Name | uhlib_2981922_009.jpg |
| Transcript | 8 WAGE-LABOUR AND CAPITAL a month, a year? The labour of a day, a week, a month, a year. If labour is the measure of all values, we can express the " value of labour " only in labour. But we know absolutely nothing about the value of an hour's labour, if all that we know about it is that it is equal to one hour's labour. So thereby we have not advanced one hair's breadth nearer our goal; we are constantly turning about in a circle. Classical economics, therefore, essayed another turn. It said: the value of a commodity is equal to its cost of production. But what is the cost of production of " labour " ? In order to answer this question, the economists are forced to strain logic just a little. Instead of investigating the cost of production of labour itself, which, unfortunately, cannot be ascertained, they now investigate the cost of production of the labourer. And this latter can be ascertained. It changes according to time and circumstances, but for a given condition of society, in a given locality, and in a given branch of production, it, too, is given, at least within quite narrow limits. We live to-day under the regime of capitalist production, under which a large and steadily growing class of the population can live only on the condition that it works for the owners of the means of production—tools, machines, raw materials, and means of subsistence—in return for wages. On the basis of this mode of production, the labourer's cost of production consists of the sum of the means of subsistence (or their price in money) which on the average are requisite to enable him to work, to maintain in him this capacity for work, and to replace him at his departure, by reason of age, sickness, or death, with another labourer—that is to say, to propagate the working class in required numbers. Let us assume that the money price of these means of subsistence averages 3 shillings a day. Our labourer gets therefore a daily wage of 3 shillings from his employer. For this, the capitalist lets him work, say, twelve hours a day. Our capitalist, moreover, calculates somewhat in the following fashion: Let us assume that our labourer (a machinist) has to make a part of a machine which he finishes in one day. The raw material (iron and brass in the necessary prepared form) costs 20 shillings. The consumption of coal by the steam-engine, the wear and tear of this engine itself, of the turning-lathe, and of the other tools with which our labourer works, represent for one day and one labourer |