Das Kapital

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE VALUE OF LABOUR-POWER INTO WAGES

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Nineteen
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Part VI: Wages
Chapter Nineteen: The Transformation of the Value (and Respective Price) of Labour-Power into Wages
On the surface of bourgeois society the wage of the
labourer appears as the price of labour, a certain quantity of money that
is paid for a certain quantity of labour. Thus people speak of the value
of labour and call its expression in money its necessary or natural price.
On the other hand they speak of the market-prices of labour, i.e., prices
oscillating above or below its natural price.
But what is the value of a commodity? The objective form of the
social labour expended in its production. And how do we measure the quantity
of this value? By the quantity of the labour contained in it. How then
is the value, e.g., of a 12 hour working-day to be determined? By the
12 working-hours contained in a working-day of 12 hours, which is an absurd
tautology.
In order to be sold as a commodity in the market, labour must
at all events exist before it is sold. But, could the labourer give it
an independent objective existence, he would sell a commodity and not labour.

Apart from these contradictions, a direct exchange of money, i.e.,
of realized labour, with living labour would either do away with the law
of value which only begins to develop itself freely on the basis of capitalist
production, or do away with capitalist production itself, which rests directly
on wage-labour. The working-day of 12 hours embodies itself, e.g., in a
money-value of 6s. Either equivalents are exchanged, and then the labourer
receives 6s, for 12 hours’ labour; the price of his labour would be equal
to the price of his product. In this case he produces no surplus-value
for the buyer of his labour, the 6s. are not transformed into capital,
the basis of capitalist production vanishes. But it is on this very basis
that he sells his labour and that his labour is wage-labour. Or else he
receives for 12 hours’ labour less than 6s., i.e., less than 12 hours’
labour. Twelve hours’ labour are exchanged against 10, 6, &c., hours’
labour. This equalization of unequal quantities not merely does away with
the determination of value. Such a self-destructive contradiction cannot
be in any way even enunciated or formulated as a law.
It is of no avail to deduce the exchange of more labour against
less, from their difference of form, the one being realized, the other
living. This is the more absurd as the value of a
commodity is determined not by the quantity of labour actually realized
in it, but by the quantity of living labour necessary for its production.
A commodity represents, say, 6 working-hours. If an invention is made by
which it can be produced in 3 hours, the value, even of the commodity already
produced, falls by half. It represents now 3 hours of social labour instead
of the 6 formerly necessary. It is the quantity of labour required for
its production, not the realized form of that labour, by which the amount
of the value of a commodity is determined.
That which comes directly face to face with the possessor of money
on the market, is in fact not labour, but the labourer. What the latter
sells is his labour-power. As soon as his labour actually begins, it has
already ceased to belong to him; it can therefore no longer be sold by
him. Labour is the substance, and the immanent measure of value, but has
itself no value.
In the expression “value of labour,” the idea of value is not
only completely obliterated, but actually reversed. It is an expression
as imaginary as the value of the earth. These imaginary expressions, arise,
however, from the relations of production themselves. They are categories
for the phenomenal forms of essential relations. That in their appearance
things often represent themselves in inverted form is pretty well known
in every science except Political Economy.
Classical Political Economy borrowed from every-day life the category
“price of labour” without further criticism, and then simply asked the
question, how is this price determined? It soon recognized that the change
in the relations of demand and supply explained in regard to the price
of labour, as of all other commodities, nothing except its changes i.e.,
the oscillations of the market-price above or below a certain mean. If
demand and supply balance, the oscillation of prices ceases, all other
conditions remaining the same. But then demand and supply also cease to
explain anything. The price of labour, at the moment when demand and supply
are in equilibrium, is its natural price, determined independently of the
relation of demand and supply. And how this price is determined is just
the question. Or a larger period of oscillations in the market-price is
taken, e.g., a year, and they are found to cancel one the other, leaving
a mean average quantity, a relatively constant magnitude. This had naturally
to be determined otherwise than by its own compensating variations. This
price which always finally predominates over the accidental market-prices
of labour and regulates them, this “necessary price” (Physiocrats) or “natural
price” of labour (Adam Smith) can, as with all other commodities, be nothing
else than its value expressed in money. In this way Political Economy expected
to penetrate athwart the accidental prices of labour, to the value of labour.
As with other commodities, this value was determined by the cost of production.
But what is the cost of production – of the labourer, i.e., the cost of producing
or reproducing the labourer himself? This question unconsciously substituted
itself in Political Economy for the original one; for the search after
the cost of production of labour as such turned in a circle and never left
the spot. What economists therefore call value of labour, is in fact the
value of labour-power, as it exists in the personality of the labourer,
which is as different from its function, labour, as a machine is from the
work it performs. Occupied with the difference between the market-price
of labour and its so-called value, with the relation of this value to the
rate of profit, and to the values of the commodities produced by means
of labour, &c., they never discovered that the course of the analysis
had led not only from the market-prices of labour to its presumed value,
but had led to the resolution of this value of labour itself into the value
of labour-power. Classical economy never arrived at a consciousness of
the results of its own analysis; it accepted uncritically the categories
“value of labour,” “natural price of labour,” &c., as final and as
adequate expressions for the value-relation under consideration, and was
thus led, as will be seen later, into inextricable confusion and contradiction,
while it offered to the vulgar economists a secure basis of operations
for their shallowness, which on principle worships appearances only.
Let us next see how value (and price) of labour-power, present
themselves in this transformed condition as wages.
We know that the daily value of labour-power is calculated upon
a certain length of the labourer’s life, to which, again, corresponds a
certain length of working-day. Assume the habitual working-day as 12 hours,
the daily value of labour-power as 3s., the expression in money of a value
that embodies 6 hours of labour. If the labourer receives 3s., then he
receives the value of his labour-power functioning through 12 hours. If,
now, this value of a day’s labour-power is expressed as the value of a
day’s labour itself, we have the formula: Twelve hours’ labour has a value
of 3s. The value of labour-power thus determines the value of labour, or,
expressed in money, its necessary price. If, on the other hand, the price
of labour-power differs from its value, in like manner the price of labour
differs from its so-called value.
As the value of labour is only an irrational expression for the
value of labour-power, it follows, of course, that the value of labour
must always be less than the value it produces, for the capitalist always
makes labour-power work longer than is necessary for the reproduction of
its own value. In the above example, the value of the labour-power that
functions through 12 hours is 3s., a value for the reproduction of which
6 hours are required. The value which the labour-power produces is, on
the other hand, 6s., because it, in fact, functions during 12 hours, and
the value it produces depends, not on its own value, but on the length
of time it is in action. Thus, we have a result absurd at first sight that
labour which creates a value of 6s. possesses a value of 3s.
We see, further: The value of 3s. by which a part only of the
working-day – i.e., 6 hours’ labour-is paid for, appears as the value or
price of the whole working-day of 12 hours, which thus includes 6 hours
unpaid for. The wage form thus extinguishes every trace of the division
of the working-day into necessary labour and surplus-labour, into paid
and unpaid labour. All labour appears as paid labour. In the corvée,
the labour of the worker for himself, and his compulsory labour for his
lord, differ in space and time in the clearest possible way. In slave labour,
even that part of the working-day in which the slave is only replacing
the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact,
he works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave’s
labour appears as unpaid labour. In wage labour,
on the contrary, even surplus-labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid.
There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself;
here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage labourer.
Hence, we may understand the decisive importance of the transformation
of value and price of labour-power into the form of wages, or into the
value and price of labour itself. This phenomenal form, which makes the
actual relation invisible, and, indeed, shows the direct opposite of that
relation, forms the basis of all the juridical notions of both labourer
and capitalist, of all the mystifications of the capitalistic mode of production,
of all its illusions as to liberty, of all the apologetic shifts of the
vulgar economists.
If history took a long time to get at the bottom of the mystery
of wages, nothing, on the other hand, is more easy to understand than the
necessity, the raison d’etre, of this phenomenon.
The exchange between capital and labour at first presents itself
to the mind in the same guise as the buying and selling of all other commodities.
The buyer gives a certain sum of money, the seller an article of a nature
different from money. The jurist’s consciousness recognizes in this, at
most, a material difference, expressed in the juridically equivalent formula:
“Do ut des, do ut facias, facio ut des, facio ut facias.”
Furthermore, exchange-value and use-value, being intrinsically
incommensurable magnitudes, the expressions “value of labour,” “price of
labour,” do not seem more irrational than the expressions “value of cotton,”
“price of cotton.” Moreover, the labourer is paid after he has given his
labour. In its function of means of payment, money realizes subsequently
the value or price of the article supplied – i.e., in this particular case,
the value or price of the labour supplied. Finally, the use-value supplied
by the labourer to the capitalist is not, in fact, his labour-power, but
its function, some definite useful labour, the work of tailoring, shoemaking,
spinning, &c. That this same labour is, on the other hand, the universal
value-creating element, and thus possesses a property by which it differs
from all other commodities, is beyond the cognizance of the ordinary mind.
Let us put ourselves in the place of the labourer who receives
for 12 hours’ labour, say the value produced by 6 hours’ labour, say 3s.
For him, in fact, his 12 hours’ labour is the means of buying the 3s. The
value of his labour-power may vary, with the value of his usual means of
subsistence, from 3 to 4 shillings, or from 3 to 2 shillings; or, if the
value of his labour-power remains constant, its price may, in consequence
of changing relations of demand and supply, rise to 4s. or fall to 2s.
He always gives 12 hours of labour. Every change in the amount of the equivalent
that he receives appears to him, therefore, necessarily as a change in
the value or price of his 12 hours’ work. This circumstance misled Adam
Smith, who treated the working-day as a constant quantity, to the assertion that the value of labour is constant, although the value of the means of subsistence may vary, and the same working-day, therefore,
may represent itself in more or less money for the labourer.
Let us consider, on the other hand, the capitalist. He wishes
to receive as much labour as possible for as little money as possible.
Practically, therefore, the only thing that interests him is the difference
between the price of labour-power and the value which its function creates.
But, then, he tries to buy all commodities as cheaply as possible, and
always accounts for his profit by simple cheating, by buying under, and
selling over the value. Hence, he never comes to see that, if such a thing
as the value of labour really existed, and he really paid this value, no
capital would exist, his money would not be turned into capital.
Moreover, the actual movement of wages presents phenomena which
seem to prove that not the value of labour-power is paid, but the value
of its function, of labour itself. We may reduce these phenomena to two
great classes: 1.) Change of wages with the changing length of the working-day.
One might as well conclude that not the value of a machine is paid, but
that of its working, because it costs more to hire a machine for a week
than for a day. 2.) The individual difference in the wages of different
labourers who do the same kind of work. We find this individual difference,
but are not deceived by it, in the system of slavery, where, frankly and
openly, without any circumlocution, labour-power itself is sold. Only,
in the slave system, the advantage of a labour-power above the average,
and the disadvantage of a labour-power below the average, affects the slave-owner;
in the wage-labour system, it affects the labourer himself, because his
labour-power is, in the one case, sold by himself, in the other, by a third
person.
For the rest, in respect to the phenomenal form, “value and price
of labour,” or “wages,” as contrasted with the essential relation manifested
therein, viz., the value and price of labour-power, the same difference
holds that holds in respect to all phenomena and their hidden substratum.
The former appear directly and spontaneously as current modes of thought;
the latter must first be discovered by science. Classical Political Economy
nearly touches the true relation of things, without, however, consciously
formulating it. This it cannot, so long as it sticks in its bourgeois skin.
Footnotes
1. “Mr.Ricardo ingeniously enough avoids a difficulty which, on a first view, threatens to encumber his doctrine —
that value depends on the quantity of labour employed in production. If
this principle is rigidly adhered to, it follows that the value of labour
depends on the quantity of labour employed in producing it — which is
evidently absurd. By a dexterous turn, therefore, Mr. Ricardo makes the
value of labour depend on the quantity of labour required to produce wages;
or, to give him the benefit of his own language, he maintains, that the
value of labour is to be estimated by the quantity of labour required to
produce wages; by which he means the quantity of labour required to produce
the money or commodities given to the labourer. This is similar to saying,
that the value of cloth is estimated, not by the quantity of labour bestowed
on its production, but by the quantity of labour bestowed on the production
of the silver, for which the cloth is exchanged.” — “A Critical Dissertation
on the Nature, &c., of Value,” pp. 50, 51.
2. “If you call labour a commodity, it is not like a commodity which is first produced in order to exchange, and
then brought to market where it must exchange with other commodities according
to the respective quantities of each which there may be in the market at
the time; labour is created the moment it is brought to market; nay, it
is brought to market before it is created.” — “Observations on Certain
Verbal Disputes,” &c., pp. 75, 76.
3. “Treating labour as a commodity, and capital, the produce of labour, as another, then, if the values of these
two commodities were regulated by equal quantities of labour, a given amount
of labour would ... exchange for that quantity of capital which had been
produced by the same amount of labour; antecedent labour would ... exchange
for the same amount as present labour. But the value of labour in relation
to other commodities ... is determined not by equal quantities of labour.”
— E. G. Wakefield in his edition of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,”
Vol. I., London, 1836, p. 231, note.
4. “There has to be a new agreement” (a new edition of the social contract!) “that whenever there is an exchange
of work done for work to be done, the latter” (the capitalist) “is to receive
a higher value than the former” (the worker). — Simonde (de Sismondi),
“De la Richesse Commerciale,” Geneva, 1803, Vol I, p. 37.
5. “Labour the exclusive standard of value ... the creator of all wealth, no commodity.” Thomas Hodgskin, “Popul. Polit. Econ.,” p. 186.
6. On the other hand, the attempt to explain such expressions as merely poetic license only shows the impotence
of the analysis. Hence, in answer to Proudhon’s phrase; “Labour is called
value, not as being a commodity itself, but in view of the values supposed
to be potentially embodied in it. The value of labour is a figurative expression,”
&c. I have remarked: “In labour, commodity, which is a frightful reality,
he (Proudhon) sees nothing but a grammatical ellipsis. The whole of existing
society, then, based upon labour commodity, is henceforth based upon a
poetic license, on a figurative expression. Does society desire to eliminate
all the inconveniences which trouble it, it has only to eliminate all the
ill-sounding terms. Let it change the language, and for that it has only
to address itself to the Academy and ask it for a new edition of its dictionary.”
(Karl Marx, “Misère de la Philosophie,” pp. 34, 35.) It is naturally still
more convenient to understand by value nothing at all. Then one can without
difficulty subsume everything under this category. Thus, e.g., J. B. Say:
“What is value?” Answer: “That which a thing is worth"; and what is “price"?
Answer: “The value of a thing expressed in money.” And why has agriculture
a value? Answer: “Because one sets a price on it.” Therefore value is what
a thing is worth, and the land has its “value,” because its value is “expressed
in money.” This is, anyhow, a very simple way of explaining the why and
the wherefore of things.
7. Cf. “Zur Kritik &c.,” p. 40, where I state that, in the portion of that work that deals with Capital,
this problem will be solved: “How does production, on the basis of exchange-value
determined simply by labour-time, lead to the result that the exchange-value
of labour is less than the exchange-value of its product?”
8. The “Morning Star,” a London Free-trade organ, naif to silliness, protested again and again during the American
Civil War, with all the moral indignation of which man is capable, that
the Negro in the “Confederate States” worked absolutely for nothing. It
should have compared the daily cost of such a Negro with that of the free
workman in the East-end of London.
9. I give in order that you may give; I give in order that you may produce; I produce so that you may give; I produce so that you may produce.
10. Adam Smith only accidentally alludes to the variation of the working-day when he is referring to piece-wages.
Transcribed by Bill McDorman
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Capital Volume One- Index