"Wage Labour and Capital" (German: ''Lohnarbeit und Kapital'') was an 1847 lecture by the critic of political economy and

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

, first published as articles in the ''

Neue Rheinische Zeitung The ''Neue Rheinische Zeitung: Organ der Demokratie'' ("New Rhenish Newspaper: Organ of Democracy") was a German daily newspaper, published by Karl Marx in Cologne between 1 June 1848 and 19 May 1849. It is recognised by historians as one of t ...

'' in April 1849. It is widely considered the precursor to Marx’s influential

treatise A treatise is a formal and systematic written discourse on some subject, generally longer and treating it in greater depth than an essay, and more concerned with investigating or exposing the principles of the subject and its conclusions." Tre ...

Das Kapital ''Das Kapital'', also known as ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' or sometimes simply ''Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, link=no, ; 1867–1883), is a foundational theoretical text in materialist phi ...

''. It is commonly paired with Marx's 1865 speech '' Value, Price and Profit''. In 1883, a Russian translation was published as a book and included an excerpt from ''Capital'' volume 1 in the appendix, chapter 23 on ''Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation''. In 1885, a pamphlet version was first published as an English translation. An 1885 pamphlet based on the newspaper articles was published in Hottingen-Zürich without Marx's knowledge and with a brief introduction by Engels. The German edition was revised by Friedrich Engels in 1891 and published by

Vorwärts ''Vorwärts'' (, "Forward") is a newspaper published by the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Founded in 1876, it was the central organ of the SPD for many decades. Following the party's Halle Congress (1891), it was published daily as ...

after the

Anti-Socialist Laws The Anti-Socialist Laws or Socialist Laws (german: Sozialistengesetze; officially , approximately "Law against the public danger of Social Democratic endeavours") were a series of acts of the parliament of the German Empire, the first of which was ...

had lapsed the previous year. In 1893, an updated English translation from the 1891 German edition was published in London.

Description

The lecture and newspaper articles were meant to be a "popular" presentation of the economic relations under capitalism and the

material Material is a substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical and chemical properties, or on their geolo ...

basis for class struggle. It would suggest that class rule of the

bourgeoisie The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. Th ...

in capitalist society rests on the

wage slavery Wage slavery or slave wages refers to a person's dependence on wages (or a salary) for their livelihood, especially when wages are low, treatment and conditions are poor, and there are few chances of upward mobility. The term is often us ...

of the workers. The theory of

surplus value In Marxian economics, surplus value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to the owner of that product to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cos ...

explained the poverty experienced by the working class. The work also represents the depth to which Marx had developed his theories by the late 1840s. It is an early theoretical formulation of Marxism, but did suggest

alienated labor Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the estrangement (German: ''Entfremdung'') of people from aspects of Marx's theory of human nature, their human nature (''Gattungswesen'', 'species-essence') as a consequence of the division of labor and ...

as a condition of accumulating labor in to capital through the capitalist mode of production. Marx suggested capitalism was a transitional historical period that would eventually lead to the

proletarian revolution A proletarian revolution or proletariat revolution is a social revolution in which the working class attempts to overthrow the bourgeoisie and change the previous political system. Proletarian revolutions are generally advocated by socialists, ...

. Main topics examined in the essay include

labour power Labour power (in german: Arbeitskraft; in french: force de travail) is a key concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. Marx distinguished between the capacity to do work, labour power, from the physical act of w ...

, labour, and how labour power becomes a

commodity In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a co ...

. The

labour theory of value The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian ...

is introduced, which distinguishes between labour and labour power. The essay defines the term

and explores how the economic principles of

supply and demand In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a Market (economics), market. It postulates that, Ceteris paribus, holding all else equal, in a perfect competition, competitive market, the unit price for a ...

affect the pricing of certain commodities. Beyond that, the essay explores how

capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used fo ...

and

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...

do not service any purpose other than to gain more of it, which Marx presents as an illogical method of living one's life. Thus, "Wage-Labor and Capital" is considered by

Marxists Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...

as an "in-depth economic and scientific observation on how ''capitalist economy'' works, why it was exploitative, and ultimately why it would eventually implode from within".

References

External links

*
Wage Labour and Capital
' at the

Marxists Internet Archive Marxists Internet Archive (also known as MIA or Marxists.org) is a non-profit online encyclopedia that hosts a multilingual library (created in 1990) of the works of communist, anarchist, and socialist writers, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich En ...

* {{authority control Books by Karl Marx 1849 books 1849 in economics 1849 essays