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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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| Genre (AAT) |
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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 26 |
| Format (IMT) |
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| File Name | uhlib_2981922_025.jpg |
| Transcript | 24 WAGE-LABOUR AND CAPITAL to the level of its cost of production; or, rather, until the supply has fallen below the demand and its price has again risen above its cost of production, for the current price of a commodity is always either above or below its cost of production. We see how capital continually emigrates out of the province of one industry and immigrates into that of another. The high price produces an excessive immigration, and the low price an excessive emigration. We could show, from another point of view, how not only the supply, but also the demand, is determined by the cost of production. But this would lead us too far away from our subject. We have just seen how the fluctuations of supply and demand always bring the price of a commodity back to its cost of production. The actual price of a commodity, indeed, stands always above or below the cost of production; but the rise and fall reciprocally balance each other, so that, within a certain period of time, if the ebbs and flows of the industry are reckoned up together, the commodities will be exchanged for one another in accordance with their cost of production. Their price is thus determined by their cost of production. The determination of price by the cost of production is not to be understood in the sense of the bourgeois economists. The economists say that the average price of commodities equals the cost of production: that this is the law. The anarchic movement, in which the rise is compensated for by a fall and the fall by a rise, they regard as an accident. We might just as well consider the fluctuations as the law, and the determination of the price by cost of production as an accident—as is, in fact, done by certain other economists. But it is precisely these fluctuations which, viewed more closely, carry the most frightful devastation in their train, and, like an earthquake, cause bourgeois society to shake to its very foundations—it is precisely these fluctuations that force the price to conform to the cost of production. In the totality of this disorderly movement is to be found its order. In the total course of this industrial anarchy, in this circular movement, competition balances, as it were, the one extravagance by the other. We thus see that the price of a commodity is indeed determined by its cost of production, but in such wise that the periods in which the price of these commodities rises above the cost of |