DYFI-CUC organised the thirteenth study circle of this year yesterday. We read the first five chapters of ‘Wage Labour and Capital’ (WLC) by Karl Marx — a pamphlet introducing some basic concepts in Marx’s critique of classical political economy.

It consists of lectures delivered by Marx before the German Workingmen’s Club of Brussels in 1847, and was first published in 1849 as an (incomplete) series of articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, the German newspaper published by Marx between 1848-49. 

WLC (as retrospectively edited by Engels after Marx’s death to conform to Marx’s ideas as they had changed and crystallised in later decades) begins by explaining what wages are. It is commonly assumed that wages are what the capitalist employer pays a worker in return for a certain amount of labour for a certain amount of time (time-wages) or for a certain task (piece-wage). In other words, classical political economy assumes that the capitalist buys the labour of the worker and pays wages in return. 

However, the text clarifies that what the capitalist buys is not labour, but the labour-power of the worker. It goes on to explain that labour-power is a commodity — just like any other commodity that is produced for the purpose of exchange and thus has an exchange-value. This exchange value estimated in money is called its price. 

Wages, therefore, are simply the price of labour-power.

Next, Marx talks about the factors determining the price of any commodity — competition between sellers, competition between buyers, competition between buyers and sellers, and the laws of supply and demand under capitalism. However, the text makes it clear that a price can be said to have ‘fallen’ or ‘risen’ only in relation to the cost of production of the commodity — supply and demand merely cause the price to fluctuate either above (rise) or below (fall) this cost of production.  The price of a commodity expresses (in the form of money) the ratio or proportion in which one commodity can be exchanged for another commodity. If the price of a one commodity rises, then the price of some other commodity can be understood to have fallen in proportion to the rise in price of the first commodity. 

The cost of production of commodity is determined by raw materials, wear and tear, etc. as well as the labour-time necessary for the manufacture of the commodity.

Just like the price of any other commodity, the price of labour-power — or wages — is determined by the cost of production of the labour-power. 
This cost of the production of labour-power consists of the minimum necessary costs for the maintenance of the worker (social reproduction) so that the worker can continue to sell her labour-power, besides the cost of training the worker, if there is any.

Next, Marx talks about the nature and growth of capital. Capital, he says, consists of the raw materials, the instruments of labour and the means of subsistence that are used in production of new raw materials, new instruments and new means of subsistence. However, all of these components of capital are products of labour over periods of time in the past — or ‘accumulated labour’. 

But this accumulated labour becomes capital only when worked upon by ‘living’ labour (that is, when the exchange of labour-power takes place), which preserves and multiplies the exchange value of this accumulated labour, producing yet more capital.

Next week, we shall continue reading Wage Labour and Capital, and finish the remaining four chapters.

Revolutionary Greetings,

Central Unit Committee,

Democratic Youth Federation of India – Delhi