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Wage Labour and Capital and Value, Price, and Profit
Since their first appearance as separate brochures Wage-Labour and Capital and Value, Price and Profit have served as popular introductions to the study of political economy, each complementing the other. The first is based on lectures delivered by Marx before the German Workingmen's Club of Brussels in 1847, the second is an address by Marx before two sessions of the General Council of the First International in London in 1865. Both classics are included in this volume.
125 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 11, 1849
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About the author
Karl Marx
3,251 books6,546 followersWith the help of Friedrich Engels, German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx wrote
The Communist Manifesto
(1848) and
Das Kapital
(1867-1894), works, which explain historical development in terms of the interaction of contradictory economic forces, form many regimes, and profoundly influenced the social sciences.
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 226 reviews
March 5, 2024
1st Part - Wage-Labour and Capital
Capital, therefore, presupposes wage labor. Wage labor presupposes capital: they are the condition of each other; they create each other.
Does the worker in a cotton factory produce only cotton fabrics?
2nd Part - Value, Price & Profit
Profit is realized when a commodity has sold at its value.
Capital, therefore, presupposes wage labor. Wage labor presupposes capital: they are the condition of each other; they create each other.
Does the worker in a cotton factory produce only cotton fabrics?
2nd Part - Value, Price & Profit
Profit is realized when a commodity has sold at its value.
June 26, 2007
In my view this is perhaps the best economic work Marx ever undertook, at least as far as its well written, easy to understand, and a perfect introduction to Marxian economics. My advice to anyone looking to tackle Marx's main work in Das Kapital would be to start with this gem first.
February 24, 2011
"But capital not only lives upon labour. Like a master, at once distinguished and barbarous, it drags with it into its grave the corpses of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers, who perish in the crises."
Marx's description of the boom bust cycle. Fucking beautiful. Why couldn't my college macro-economics of been so fiery?
Marx's description of the boom bust cycle. Fucking beautiful. Why couldn't my college macro-economics of been so fiery?
October 24, 2020
Labour = Good
Bourgeois = Bad
Bourgeois = Bad
November 10, 2020
I'd highly recommend this as an introduction to Marx's critique of political economy. You will never look at your job the same way after reading these pamphlets.
Read
November 28, 2025El tribunal de mi oposición: Tema 22. La retribución del trabajador: El salario. Concepto y naturaleza jurídica.
Yo: El salario no es la parte del obrero en la mercancía por él producida. El salario es la parte de la mercancía ya existente, con la que el capitalista compra una determinada cantidad de fuerza de trabajo productiva ✊
Yo: El salario no es la parte del obrero en la mercancía por él producida. El salario es la parte de la mercancía ya existente, con la que el capitalista compra una determinada cantidad de fuerza de trabajo productiva ✊
October 24, 2020
A no bull shit introduction to the essentials of a Marxist understanding of labor power as a commodity like any other, the relation between value (so called natural price) and price, the relation between the value of labor and profit (the latter which is realized by selling commodities at precisely their price, not above or below their price) and finally the origin of profit aka surplus value
Reading these two phamplets actually gets me excited about tackling Capital next
Reading these two phamplets actually gets me excited about tackling Capital next
September 1, 2022
ambos textos breves y chulos a parte la introducción y las pocas modificaciones que hace engels a trabajo asalariado y capital son super importantes
November 9, 2025
i think i know now what happens in the body of a gluten- and lactose-intolerant person when they eat a piece of cake with extra cream and a glass of raw milk.
it’s not the content (that’s where all the stars went), it’s the form. it’s written in a way that i simply cannot read without having a physical recoil. i guess aesthetics matter.
i was mostly intrigued and equally saddened by marx’s interpretation of time as extraction, as theft, as a measure of how much of your life you are permitted to keep after capitalism digests it into profit.
(5 stars for the content + 0 for the form) / (2 * the fact that i’m finishing it on a foggy sunday in which i could have read ocean vuong or emil cioran instead) = 2 stars
it’s not the content (that’s where all the stars went), it’s the form. it’s written in a way that i simply cannot read without having a physical recoil. i guess aesthetics matter.
i was mostly intrigued and equally saddened by marx’s interpretation of time as extraction, as theft, as a measure of how much of your life you are permitted to keep after capitalism digests it into profit.
(5 stars for the content + 0 for the form) / (2 * the fact that i’m finishing it on a foggy sunday in which i could have read ocean vuong or emil cioran instead) = 2 stars
June 7, 2013
A very basic, understandable explanation as to what determines a wage, what determines the price of a commodity, and other specific aspects of capitalist economics explained from the point of view of working-class Marxism. Sometimes a bit of a challenge to comprehend because of the overall complex subject matter, but none the less it is an essential read for any wage slave living in capitalist society (all yall).
August 19, 2020
I read VPP, then Bohm-Bawerk's critique, then WLC, and it only hit me after reading B-B why VPP felt so strange to read. It's a densely theoretical work, assuming relatively extensive prior knowledge and with abstract, intellectual goals. What's strange about it is that it makes almost no effort to be persuasive to people with an active curiosity about the questions it discusses. All of this despite the fact that it is quite literally addressed as a rebuttal to another member of the group who has already advanced a counter-proposal with quite tangible political implications. It's not quite an appeal to authority, but it certainly feels like Marx assumes his audience is ready to believe whatever he tells them. He uses "Citizen Weston" as a convenient straw opponent, someone whose ideas are so patently absurd that they don't need to be debunked, but do serve as a convenient frame for advancing the correct theory.
The "correct" theory Marx advances here is that labor is the origin of all economic value, that the price of all goods including is set (by the competitive interaction of supply and demand) at exactly their value (ie the amount of labor required to create them), with the key exception of labor, for which capitalists pay its value but acquire more. It is so narrow in its scope that it excludes a substantial number of important aspects of its own argument. Why, first and most importantly, is labor the only thing all commodities have in common? Why do they need to be reducible to any one thing in the first place? Why should we think this is a productive way to start thinking about the economy at all?
The one that really hung me up, though, was the assumption that capitalists could make a kind of transaction with laborers that he considered impossible in any other part of the economy. The blitheness with which Marx asserts this was stunning for me. The price of labor is set by the labor required to reproduce it, but the quantity of labor is set by a completely distinct process! It's a bizarre way of looking at things, and he gives absolutely no explanation of the discrepancy. It's just something he assumes his readers can take for granted: the length of the working day is set by the capitalist. Because the price of labor set by the market is per day, the price of an hour of labor (unlike the price of any other commodity) can vary independent of the value required to create it. It makes no sense, even by the lights of his own theory. It’s no different from saying that the price per bushel of wheat is set by the amount of labor required to produce it, but that the extent to which the bushel is full of wheat can vary.
There are, of course, obvious potential answers to the actual economic questions raised here. But Marx makes no mention of any of them. He doesn't make a case about the class interest of capitalists colluding to lower labor costs, or using violence to control the means of production, or anything like that. He just says that this expropriation of surplus value happens and acts as if it requires no further explanation. The concepts of monopoly, collusion, and rent-seeking crop up throughout these works, but surplus value is not treated as a special case of any of these more general economic principles. It’s asserted as a foundational economic fact, something that *must* happen for the economy as Marx and his contemporaries knew it to exist.
Which leads to another remarkable observation: Marx makes no judgment about the extraction of surplus value here. He treats it as inevitable and morally neutral, something which simply must be understood in order for labor organizers to chart the course that best furthers the interests of the working class. Their goal is to minimize this extraction but the idea that it could (or should) be eliminated entirely is never broached.
The central weakness of the LTV is obviously the headline point here, but I was also bothered by the way Marx even at this early stage sneaks in so many preemptive excuses for why the LTV doesn’t seem true at all. At first, the idea that the value of capital is transferred in fractions to its product led me to think value would persist indefinitely over time as it was passed from object to object. Therefore, as productive technology accumulated, the volume of goods produced would increase and the value added by living laborers would remain the same, so the value per unit of commodity would remain the same. This still seems like an at least equally plausible way to pursue this premise but it isn’t the way Marx has in mind so it gets no mention. Instead, Marx puts in a kind of automatic adjustment device that lets him define away all these specific questions. Value is defined in terms of the “average socially necessary labor time.” So instead of accumulating value over time, we now roll the value produced by past labor into a gradually rising baseline, the scale of which has no effect on the calculation of value in any given moment. And because this filter also affects things like laziness, ability, risk, etc, it becomes a very convenient way to subsume potential inconsistencies.
WLC is a different sort of thing. In the introduction, Engels refers to it as a piece of “propaganda,” and while it’s still quite dense and abstract and seems like it wouldn’t be very effective, you can tell they’re trying. There are far more references to historical and political developments in Europe, far more references to social classes and the conflict between them, and far more openly propagandistic rhetoric (“golden chains”). As a theoretical tract, though, the tendency noted in VPP has gotten even worse. The pretence that Marx is trying to convince intellectual equals who are merely predisposed to think he’s right, is gone. Now, it feels like he is, at best, delivering carefully crafted rhetoric to people who already trust that he’s right. He is answering anticipated doubts and questions, not developing a scientific theory. So while most of the text is similarly boring and didactic, and the claims he makes are broadly the same, they are both more ambitious and less rigorously defended. Where VPP focuses narrowly on the LTV and surplus value, WLC seems to anticipate the arguments of Capital more broadly, and it’s obvious that the length of this pamphlet is inadequate to defend them. Most of them are simply asserted.
It struck me in both VPP and WLC that Marx relies heavily on equilibrium assumptions about the market. He invokes competition and supply and demand constantly, to explain why he can assume certain things will always be the case. He is quite a lot more emphatic about it than modern mainstream economists are, in fact. I don't know how much to make of that--I have the impression Capital offers some more specific theories about these forces that diverge more intentionally from neoclassical theory--but it was interesting. His argument about value in particular rests on the very neoclassical and very Malthusian assumption that labor will always be overproduced, such that the scarcity of labor will be determined by the minimum cost to rear a laborer. He walks through the causal mechanisms that guarantee this for other commodities and we’re left to assume that the same mechanisms apply to labor: capital flows to the production of whichever commodity is scarcer than its costs of production dictate. Does he think the same is true of labor, even outside of slavery? If so, that’s quite an interesting claim! Who are the capitalists in this context?
The fact that labor has in fact become much, much more scarce than the costs of its production would dictate since Marx is only half of why his final prediction--that division of labor will lead to a fall in wages for unskilled workers--was wildly mistaken. The other half is just that it seems incomprehensible through his version of the LTV. As long as division of labor is automatically adjusted for by the changing baseline of “socially necessary labor time,” it can’t really have any effect on anything, can it? Not to mention that of course the LTV is just wrong in general and the whole phenomenon is better understood through other theories.
The "correct" theory Marx advances here is that labor is the origin of all economic value, that the price of all goods including is set (by the competitive interaction of supply and demand) at exactly their value (ie the amount of labor required to create them), with the key exception of labor, for which capitalists pay its value but acquire more. It is so narrow in its scope that it excludes a substantial number of important aspects of its own argument. Why, first and most importantly, is labor the only thing all commodities have in common? Why do they need to be reducible to any one thing in the first place? Why should we think this is a productive way to start thinking about the economy at all?
The one that really hung me up, though, was the assumption that capitalists could make a kind of transaction with laborers that he considered impossible in any other part of the economy. The blitheness with which Marx asserts this was stunning for me. The price of labor is set by the labor required to reproduce it, but the quantity of labor is set by a completely distinct process! It's a bizarre way of looking at things, and he gives absolutely no explanation of the discrepancy. It's just something he assumes his readers can take for granted: the length of the working day is set by the capitalist. Because the price of labor set by the market is per day, the price of an hour of labor (unlike the price of any other commodity) can vary independent of the value required to create it. It makes no sense, even by the lights of his own theory. It’s no different from saying that the price per bushel of wheat is set by the amount of labor required to produce it, but that the extent to which the bushel is full of wheat can vary.
There are, of course, obvious potential answers to the actual economic questions raised here. But Marx makes no mention of any of them. He doesn't make a case about the class interest of capitalists colluding to lower labor costs, or using violence to control the means of production, or anything like that. He just says that this expropriation of surplus value happens and acts as if it requires no further explanation. The concepts of monopoly, collusion, and rent-seeking crop up throughout these works, but surplus value is not treated as a special case of any of these more general economic principles. It’s asserted as a foundational economic fact, something that *must* happen for the economy as Marx and his contemporaries knew it to exist.
Which leads to another remarkable observation: Marx makes no judgment about the extraction of surplus value here. He treats it as inevitable and morally neutral, something which simply must be understood in order for labor organizers to chart the course that best furthers the interests of the working class. Their goal is to minimize this extraction but the idea that it could (or should) be eliminated entirely is never broached.
The central weakness of the LTV is obviously the headline point here, but I was also bothered by the way Marx even at this early stage sneaks in so many preemptive excuses for why the LTV doesn’t seem true at all. At first, the idea that the value of capital is transferred in fractions to its product led me to think value would persist indefinitely over time as it was passed from object to object. Therefore, as productive technology accumulated, the volume of goods produced would increase and the value added by living laborers would remain the same, so the value per unit of commodity would remain the same. This still seems like an at least equally plausible way to pursue this premise but it isn’t the way Marx has in mind so it gets no mention. Instead, Marx puts in a kind of automatic adjustment device that lets him define away all these specific questions. Value is defined in terms of the “average socially necessary labor time.” So instead of accumulating value over time, we now roll the value produced by past labor into a gradually rising baseline, the scale of which has no effect on the calculation of value in any given moment. And because this filter also affects things like laziness, ability, risk, etc, it becomes a very convenient way to subsume potential inconsistencies.
WLC is a different sort of thing. In the introduction, Engels refers to it as a piece of “propaganda,” and while it’s still quite dense and abstract and seems like it wouldn’t be very effective, you can tell they’re trying. There are far more references to historical and political developments in Europe, far more references to social classes and the conflict between them, and far more openly propagandistic rhetoric (“golden chains”). As a theoretical tract, though, the tendency noted in VPP has gotten even worse. The pretence that Marx is trying to convince intellectual equals who are merely predisposed to think he’s right, is gone. Now, it feels like he is, at best, delivering carefully crafted rhetoric to people who already trust that he’s right. He is answering anticipated doubts and questions, not developing a scientific theory. So while most of the text is similarly boring and didactic, and the claims he makes are broadly the same, they are both more ambitious and less rigorously defended. Where VPP focuses narrowly on the LTV and surplus value, WLC seems to anticipate the arguments of Capital more broadly, and it’s obvious that the length of this pamphlet is inadequate to defend them. Most of them are simply asserted.
It struck me in both VPP and WLC that Marx relies heavily on equilibrium assumptions about the market. He invokes competition and supply and demand constantly, to explain why he can assume certain things will always be the case. He is quite a lot more emphatic about it than modern mainstream economists are, in fact. I don't know how much to make of that--I have the impression Capital offers some more specific theories about these forces that diverge more intentionally from neoclassical theory--but it was interesting. His argument about value in particular rests on the very neoclassical and very Malthusian assumption that labor will always be overproduced, such that the scarcity of labor will be determined by the minimum cost to rear a laborer. He walks through the causal mechanisms that guarantee this for other commodities and we’re left to assume that the same mechanisms apply to labor: capital flows to the production of whichever commodity is scarcer than its costs of production dictate. Does he think the same is true of labor, even outside of slavery? If so, that’s quite an interesting claim! Who are the capitalists in this context?
The fact that labor has in fact become much, much more scarce than the costs of its production would dictate since Marx is only half of why his final prediction--that division of labor will lead to a fall in wages for unskilled workers--was wildly mistaken. The other half is just that it seems incomprehensible through his version of the LTV. As long as division of labor is automatically adjusted for by the changing baseline of “socially necessary labor time,” it can’t really have any effect on anything, can it? Not to mention that of course the LTV is just wrong in general and the whole phenomenon is better understood through other theories.
June 1, 2023
Salario, precio y ganancia es la transcripción de una serie de conferencias que dio Marx en 1865, donde resume con muchísima voluntad pedagógica las principales tesis del primer volumen de El Capital.
En esta obra Marx expone la teoría de valor-trabajo, explicando de dónde viene el valor de las mercancías (y cómo estas son trabajo social cristalizado), de dónde proviene el valor del trabajo, qué es la ganancia (y cómo es trabajo no retribuido), de dónde viene la plusvalía, qué es la configuración del capital (dividida en capital fijo y salario) y detallando por qué los capitalistas siempre buscarán reducir los salarios, incrementando la plusvalía e intentando no decrecer su ganancia, que tiende a reducirse en momentos pre-crisis.
También se argumenta, una vez mostrada la relación entre trabajo social necesario (trabajo ejercido en horas por el trabajador para producir una mercancía) y el salario (que es siempre menor a la riqueza producida por el trabajador y lo más cercana posible por debajo a lo necesario para que el trabajador pueda vivir y seguir trabajando), cómo varía la ganancia del capitalista y cómo suelen perder los trabajadores en periodos tanto de bonanza económica como sobre todo en la inflación, así como en la manipulación artificial de precios por una inyección económica al sistema.
En última instancia, Marx expone claramente cómo una petición de aumento del salario por parte de los obreros sólo es un parche momentáneo a una tendencia sistémica que es la explotación:
" (el obrero) No debe olvidar que lucha contra los efectos, pero no contra la causa de estos efectos; que lo que hace es contener el movimiento descendente, pero no cambiar su direccion,; que aplica paliativos, pero no cura la enfermedad. [...]
En vez del lema conservador de: "¡Un salario justo por una jornada de trabajo justa!" deberá inscribir en su bandera esta consigna revolucionaria: "¡Abolicion del sistema de trabajo asalariado!"
Este texto es una introducción estupenda a las tesis marxistas y, espero, una buena y suficiente introducción antes de empezar El Capital.
En esta obra Marx expone la teoría de valor-trabajo, explicando de dónde viene el valor de las mercancías (y cómo estas son trabajo social cristalizado), de dónde proviene el valor del trabajo, qué es la ganancia (y cómo es trabajo no retribuido), de dónde viene la plusvalía, qué es la configuración del capital (dividida en capital fijo y salario) y detallando por qué los capitalistas siempre buscarán reducir los salarios, incrementando la plusvalía e intentando no decrecer su ganancia, que tiende a reducirse en momentos pre-crisis.
También se argumenta, una vez mostrada la relación entre trabajo social necesario (trabajo ejercido en horas por el trabajador para producir una mercancía) y el salario (que es siempre menor a la riqueza producida por el trabajador y lo más cercana posible por debajo a lo necesario para que el trabajador pueda vivir y seguir trabajando), cómo varía la ganancia del capitalista y cómo suelen perder los trabajadores en periodos tanto de bonanza económica como sobre todo en la inflación, así como en la manipulación artificial de precios por una inyección económica al sistema.
En última instancia, Marx expone claramente cómo una petición de aumento del salario por parte de los obreros sólo es un parche momentáneo a una tendencia sistémica que es la explotación:
" (el obrero) No debe olvidar que lucha contra los efectos, pero no contra la causa de estos efectos; que lo que hace es contener el movimiento descendente, pero no cambiar su direccion,; que aplica paliativos, pero no cura la enfermedad. [...]
En vez del lema conservador de: "¡Un salario justo por una jornada de trabajo justa!" deberá inscribir en su bandera esta consigna revolucionaria: "¡Abolicion del sistema de trabajo asalariado!"
Este texto es una introducción estupenda a las tesis marxistas y, espero, una buena y suficiente introducción antes de empezar El Capital.
March 2, 2013
The more you produce, the more impoverished you are in conflict. When you are working and trying to get out of poverty, you work harder. Yet, that leads you deeper into poverty, feeling as a commodity. This is a symptom of an industrial system that produces wealth for a few and alienation for many.” Labor becomes an object and lives outside of the subject. Before exploitation, when you make something, you learn who you are. Through your work, you learn about yourself, about capacities and limitations. Marx stats that in capitalism, when you make something, it is not yours. By working, we lose ourselves.
Marx says that when the workers realizes that he is oppressed and has to control his own labor, he liberates himself and everyone. Shows everyone that the work we do should be our own. We see ourselves in the things we produce. The working class is the vehicle for the resolution of historical contradictions. From alienation to emancipation.
“On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown that the workers sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker in in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production.”
Marx says that when the workers realizes that he is oppressed and has to control his own labor, he liberates himself and everyone. Shows everyone that the work we do should be our own. We see ourselves in the things we produce. The working class is the vehicle for the resolution of historical contradictions. From alienation to emancipation.
“On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown that the workers sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker in in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production.”
May 16, 2022
I struggle to see how this isn't the most obvious beginner text for Marx. It isn't the slim rhetorical exercise of the Manifesto, nor the dense theoretical brick of Capital. It's not incomplete like the 1944 Manuscripts, and unlike other texts it does not involve a background in thinkers and economists you may never read. It's just a clear, introductory but substantive exposition of the concepts listed on the tin.
September 5, 2024
Essentially, you could say this is Capital Vol. 1 for people that don’t want to… erm, read 950 pages of Marx. Here the general concepts of that are presented more in their infancy, consolidated down to only 100 pages. The general point makes itself very clear early on, being that while slaves are tied to a master, and serfs are tied to land, wage workers are tied to the entire capitalist class. True, one has the freedom to move from job to job, but they’re selling their time on earth as a commodity if labor power for survival to a class of those who own but do not work, being entirely at the mercy of not one man but one class. There’s further detail around value’s relation to labor power and price, as to the contradictions it faces with wage, but I won’t get into that here. The first part of this, the Wage-Labor and Capital side was flawless, and nailed down every point so clearly by Marx’s standards. The second half, Value Price and Profit had just a little too much meandering at times for a book of this type, but its overall messages made sense.
I read Capital vol. 1 a year and a half ago, and plan to do vol. 2 this winter, so this was a nice little brush up. Like I said, if you want a general breakdown of the concepts in that but don’t want to read that, read this instead. Like the demo the comes before the album.
I read Capital vol. 1 a year and a half ago, and plan to do vol. 2 this winter, so this was a nice little brush up. Like I said, if you want a general breakdown of the concepts in that but don’t want to read that, read this instead. Like the demo the comes before the album.
July 13, 2017
Marx's criticism of capitalism is still relevant today and so his work is a must-read for those interested in economics, philosophy, politics and society in general. Makes you think... This was very easy to listen to as an audiobook and was short and concise. I felt that this book was discussing present day circumstances.
Read
December 14, 2024Cramming for my exam....... @----@@@@@@@
March 22, 2025
WE ARE SOOOOO BACK (am scapat din inchisoarea neurologiei)
December 7, 2025
3,25/5- Exakt diese Version war damals mein erster Kontakt zu Marx und ich war geflashed. Zum Start meines Marx‘ Reread 2026, wollte ich dieses Werk gerne zu Anfang lesen.
Lohnarbeit und Kapital kann man mMn liegen lassen. Die Ausführungen sind teils noch nicht so ausgearbeitet wie sie es zur KdpÖ und danach sind und das merkt man, gerade in den Erklärungen zu Arbeit.
Lohn, Arbeit und Profit hingegen ist ziemlich in Ordnung. Die Ausführungen sind natürlich knapp - ist ja auch die Absicht bei dem Werk -, dadurch bleibt nur leider hier und da einiges liegen. Ganz fehlen tut der Unterschied zwischen Ware und Preisen, die keine Ware sind, die gerade in modernen Diskussion über die Werttheorie essenziell zu wissen sind.
Außerdem wird des Öfteren von einem Vorwissen ausgegangen, welches nun mal existent sein muss. Auch das ist natürlich Absicht in diesem Zusammenhang, daher wirkt es sich nicht groß auf meine Bewertung aus, ich wollte es jedoch erwähnen, falls Leute überlegen mit Marx zu beginnen, ist dieses Werk trotz - oder gerade wegen - der kurzen Erklärungen nicht klug.
Lohnarbeit und Kapital kann man mMn liegen lassen. Die Ausführungen sind teils noch nicht so ausgearbeitet wie sie es zur KdpÖ und danach sind und das merkt man, gerade in den Erklärungen zu Arbeit.
Lohn, Arbeit und Profit hingegen ist ziemlich in Ordnung. Die Ausführungen sind natürlich knapp - ist ja auch die Absicht bei dem Werk -, dadurch bleibt nur leider hier und da einiges liegen. Ganz fehlen tut der Unterschied zwischen Ware und Preisen, die keine Ware sind, die gerade in modernen Diskussion über die Werttheorie essenziell zu wissen sind.
Außerdem wird des Öfteren von einem Vorwissen ausgegangen, welches nun mal existent sein muss. Auch das ist natürlich Absicht in diesem Zusammenhang, daher wirkt es sich nicht groß auf meine Bewertung aus, ich wollte es jedoch erwähnen, falls Leute überlegen mit Marx zu beginnen, ist dieses Werk trotz - oder gerade wegen - der kurzen Erklärungen nicht klug.
May 30, 2021
Review of Wage-Labour and Capital: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Review of Value, Price and Profit: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Review of Value, Price and Profit: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
November 22, 2025
its a foreplay for Das Kapital.
Currently reading
December 12, 2013The two essays Wage-Labour and Capital and Value, Price and Profit are succinct summations of Marx's economic observations that of course go nowhere near the depth and examination of the 900 pages of Capital. Nonetheless, read correctly, they provide one with a fair view of just how the exploitation of workers and the production of commodities take place under capitalism.
Marx was writing the first pamphlet in the period directly following the defeat of the 1948 revolutions that rocked Europe. He and many other revolutionaries concluded that these revolutions didn't disprove but affirmed the central historical role of the proletariat as the universal and revolutionary class. Ergo, the need to understand the terms of the proletariat's exploitation was much greater. This is a succinct and schematic pamphlet, easily divided up into short chapters.
What Are Wages? On the surface, it seems that workers receive wages in exchange for their labor. However, Marx asserts that this is an illusion, and that workers are actually selling their labor-power. What is the difference? The labor is, well, the actual labor performed. If a worker were to be fairly compensated for his labor then s/he would be paid the actual value of that labor (whatever added value the labor creates for the commodity), but we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. The distinction is that labor-power is a commodity for all intents and purposes like any other. The labor power is used up during the time frame stipulated (weekly wages for one week of labor power).
Whatever wages are paid to the worker are, of course, in the form of money, an expression of how many other commodities might be bought with said money. They are also not taken out of the profits made from the commodities s/he made. Marx states that if a bolt of cloth woven by weaver is sold by the owner of the textile mill for twenty shillings, the weaver isn't then given the twenty shillings. The weaver has already been paid because his/her labor-power has been bought, much how the loom and the yarn were bought: as commodities.
Wages then aren't a share of profits but are that specific part of what a capitalist spends on already existing commodities in order to make a finished product. The only distinction is the commodity that it is spent on: labor-power. Consequently, this labor has no importance to the worker past the wages is earns for him or her. How much a capitalist pays for wages is determined by the price of labor as a commodity on the market.
By what is the price of a commodity determined? Supply and demand certainly exists, though with differences from how capitalism often explains it. If there is overall demand among buyers for a thousand bales of cotton and only one hundred bales available from sellers, then the price remains strong and competition among sellers is at a minimum. But the opposite case with an opposite result is much more frequent: more commodities than there is demand for, resulting in a competition to sell for cheap.
How then, is the price determined in the midst of this? What is the standard or benchmark over which a seller must exchange their product in order to make a profit? That benchmark is determined by how much has been spent to make that product. The price spent on commodities -- raw materials, machinery, labor-power -- in order to make the finished commodity. If a shortage of some kind causes the price of a commodity to go up, then more capital will be poured into the manufacture of that commodity in order to maximize profit until things equalize. Same if a glut causes the price to go below the cost of production: capital will flee the manufacture of said product. But at any given time, it is not just one commodity whose price is fluctuating due to higher or lower supply in relation to demand. The price of this commodity may hinge on another product whose cost of production goes up or down, thereby impacting the cost of the former commodity.
By what are wages determined? If labor-power is a commodity then therefore it follows that the amount spent to produce it. Labor-power is "produced" by paying enough to get the worker through the door the next morning. "Thus," writes Marx, "the cost of production of simple labour-power amounts to the cost of the existence and propagation of the worker." Plenty receive less, however, insofar as capital is able to get away with it viz a viz lower expectations from workers themselves. And if there is a surplus of available labor-power on the market (say through a high unemployment rate)then employers are able to demand they pay less. The average of the minimum it takes to get workers through the door next day declines.
The nature and growth of capital: Marx insists that capital is a sum of commodities, of exchange values and of social magnitudes. If a similar commodity can be switched out for another with the same exchange value, then the nature of capital itself has not changed. Any product that can be exchanged for another is by its nature a commodity, and therefore any commodity is itself a sum of the smaller component commodities which had to exchange their way toward the total now being exchanged, with exchange values and their increase following in lock-step. Marx uses the example of a sheet of paper worth one penny, which is worth a hundred hundredths of a penny in terms of exchange value.
The adding up of these commodities, their transformation from component parts into a whole and therefore of a greater exchange value, is reliant upon labor. The assemblage of commodities and therefore multiplication of exchange value depends upon some living labor working on it and transforming it.
Relation of wage labour to capital: When the worker sells his labor-power, he gets wages that procure his means of subsistence. The capitalist in return for what he pays the worker gets that labor-power for a certain amount of time. But while the fruits of this labor-power serve to reproduce capital itself, the means of subsistence that the worker receives are lost as soon as they are consumed. An employer who pays his worker one shilling and gets two shillings back for the value produced by the worker has fruitfully reproduced the one shilling he spent. Meanwhile the worker spends the shilling and after has consumed what he buys for it has lost the value of the shilling forever. He cannot get another shilling unless he spends more time selling his labor-power. Capital, therefore, can only reproduce and multiply itself through the exertion of labor-power.
Marx illustrates the symbiotic nature of this relationship. If capital grows then so does the demand for labor-power; the price of wages goes up. But the amount that this new increase in labor-power produces itself continues to grow by a faster rate because of the differential laid out above. Therefore, even if the ability to buy more goods has increased for the worker, that of the capitalist has increased proportionately much more. Society as a whole has become richer, but the capitalist takes much more of this increase than does the worker. Further chaos could ensue in that there may be a glut of one or another commodity on the market, making the buying power of the worker's wages decline. Real wages are what a worker procures in terms of commodities with his wages; relative wages are determined in comparison to the overall wealth produced by his labor. It is a tendency in capitalism for the worker's relative wages to decline over time.
The general law that determines the rise and fall of wages and profits: If labor-power is one of the many commodities that goes into the assembly of a larger commodity, and if the payment for it comes out of what the employer pays for all those earlier commodities, and if the employer must sell the commodity at a rate that exploits the labor-power in order to profit, what is the relationship between wage and profit?
Marx puts forth that they operate in inverse proportion to one another. If the price of subsistence falls but and wages fall but not as much, the worker is gaining more for his lowered wages in proportion, but the capitalist is gaining even more. Mostly because he is now paying less on more than one front. Provided there isn't a glut of whatever commodity he is selling on the market, he is turning a larger profit. Profit increases as wages fall, and vice versa.
There are other ways to increase profit, for example bringing in more efficient machinery that enable a capitalist to meet demand at a faster pace and therefore profit more. But this too requires the labor of others, and though the worker's absolute wages haven't fallen, he isn't sharing in the higher profits. His relative wages have fallen.
It must be pointed out, however, that improvements to production, because they also decrease the cost of production, ultimately decrease the exchange value of the commodities. This is an odd kind of equalization that takes place in the ranks of capitalists, but take place it does. This describes the tendency for the rate of profit to decline.
The interests of capital and wage-labour are diametrically opposed -- effect of growth of productive capital on labor: Keeping the above in mind, it must also be remembered that capital's drive is perpetually toward growth. When a new piece of machinery enters into an industry that makes it possible to manufacture more and more of the same product for the same price, every competitor then is compelled to revolutionize their production in a similar way. This is yet another supporting fact toward the argument that workers' relative wages tend to drop.
Again, because the drive is toward constant growth, the subsequent reproduction and growth of the working class means only the reproduction and growth of its on exploitation. Capitalists, in order to drive competitors "off the field," must sell cheaper and cheaper (hoping that sheer volume makes up for lower prices) and therefore must cheapen and streamline the process of production. The contradiction is that even as they've introduced a new machine that streamlines production, that new machine itself requires a further division of labor, more workers. There is both more efficiency and less at the same time.
Effect of capitalist competition on the capitalist class, the middle class, and the working class: This section essentially serves as a recap. Because capitalists are forced to always be innovating their means of production, these innovations inevitably become the new normal in any sector of industry. In turn, labor is further divided and redivided, the process of production simultaneously becomes more complex and more efficient. Yet even as this happens and even as the overall wealth of society grows, the relative wage of the worker -- that which is spent to buy the worker's labor-power -- declines, even if their absolute wage grows. Given that it is the larger producer who is able to get more out onto the market quicker, the middle class (smaller businesses in particular) is constantly squeezed, thrust into the ranks of the working class if they can't compete on the scale of large capital.
Marx was writing the first pamphlet in the period directly following the defeat of the 1948 revolutions that rocked Europe. He and many other revolutionaries concluded that these revolutions didn't disprove but affirmed the central historical role of the proletariat as the universal and revolutionary class. Ergo, the need to understand the terms of the proletariat's exploitation was much greater. This is a succinct and schematic pamphlet, easily divided up into short chapters.
What Are Wages? On the surface, it seems that workers receive wages in exchange for their labor. However, Marx asserts that this is an illusion, and that workers are actually selling their labor-power. What is the difference? The labor is, well, the actual labor performed. If a worker were to be fairly compensated for his labor then s/he would be paid the actual value of that labor (whatever added value the labor creates for the commodity), but we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. The distinction is that labor-power is a commodity for all intents and purposes like any other. The labor power is used up during the time frame stipulated (weekly wages for one week of labor power).
Whatever wages are paid to the worker are, of course, in the form of money, an expression of how many other commodities might be bought with said money. They are also not taken out of the profits made from the commodities s/he made. Marx states that if a bolt of cloth woven by weaver is sold by the owner of the textile mill for twenty shillings, the weaver isn't then given the twenty shillings. The weaver has already been paid because his/her labor-power has been bought, much how the loom and the yarn were bought: as commodities.
Wages then aren't a share of profits but are that specific part of what a capitalist spends on already existing commodities in order to make a finished product. The only distinction is the commodity that it is spent on: labor-power. Consequently, this labor has no importance to the worker past the wages is earns for him or her. How much a capitalist pays for wages is determined by the price of labor as a commodity on the market.
By what is the price of a commodity determined? Supply and demand certainly exists, though with differences from how capitalism often explains it. If there is overall demand among buyers for a thousand bales of cotton and only one hundred bales available from sellers, then the price remains strong and competition among sellers is at a minimum. But the opposite case with an opposite result is much more frequent: more commodities than there is demand for, resulting in a competition to sell for cheap.
How then, is the price determined in the midst of this? What is the standard or benchmark over which a seller must exchange their product in order to make a profit? That benchmark is determined by how much has been spent to make that product. The price spent on commodities -- raw materials, machinery, labor-power -- in order to make the finished commodity. If a shortage of some kind causes the price of a commodity to go up, then more capital will be poured into the manufacture of that commodity in order to maximize profit until things equalize. Same if a glut causes the price to go below the cost of production: capital will flee the manufacture of said product. But at any given time, it is not just one commodity whose price is fluctuating due to higher or lower supply in relation to demand. The price of this commodity may hinge on another product whose cost of production goes up or down, thereby impacting the cost of the former commodity.
By what are wages determined? If labor-power is a commodity then therefore it follows that the amount spent to produce it. Labor-power is "produced" by paying enough to get the worker through the door the next morning. "Thus," writes Marx, "the cost of production of simple labour-power amounts to the cost of the existence and propagation of the worker." Plenty receive less, however, insofar as capital is able to get away with it viz a viz lower expectations from workers themselves. And if there is a surplus of available labor-power on the market (say through a high unemployment rate)then employers are able to demand they pay less. The average of the minimum it takes to get workers through the door next day declines.
The nature and growth of capital: Marx insists that capital is a sum of commodities, of exchange values and of social magnitudes. If a similar commodity can be switched out for another with the same exchange value, then the nature of capital itself has not changed. Any product that can be exchanged for another is by its nature a commodity, and therefore any commodity is itself a sum of the smaller component commodities which had to exchange their way toward the total now being exchanged, with exchange values and their increase following in lock-step. Marx uses the example of a sheet of paper worth one penny, which is worth a hundred hundredths of a penny in terms of exchange value.
The adding up of these commodities, their transformation from component parts into a whole and therefore of a greater exchange value, is reliant upon labor. The assemblage of commodities and therefore multiplication of exchange value depends upon some living labor working on it and transforming it.
Relation of wage labour to capital: When the worker sells his labor-power, he gets wages that procure his means of subsistence. The capitalist in return for what he pays the worker gets that labor-power for a certain amount of time. But while the fruits of this labor-power serve to reproduce capital itself, the means of subsistence that the worker receives are lost as soon as they are consumed. An employer who pays his worker one shilling and gets two shillings back for the value produced by the worker has fruitfully reproduced the one shilling he spent. Meanwhile the worker spends the shilling and after has consumed what he buys for it has lost the value of the shilling forever. He cannot get another shilling unless he spends more time selling his labor-power. Capital, therefore, can only reproduce and multiply itself through the exertion of labor-power.
Marx illustrates the symbiotic nature of this relationship. If capital grows then so does the demand for labor-power; the price of wages goes up. But the amount that this new increase in labor-power produces itself continues to grow by a faster rate because of the differential laid out above. Therefore, even if the ability to buy more goods has increased for the worker, that of the capitalist has increased proportionately much more. Society as a whole has become richer, but the capitalist takes much more of this increase than does the worker. Further chaos could ensue in that there may be a glut of one or another commodity on the market, making the buying power of the worker's wages decline. Real wages are what a worker procures in terms of commodities with his wages; relative wages are determined in comparison to the overall wealth produced by his labor. It is a tendency in capitalism for the worker's relative wages to decline over time.
The general law that determines the rise and fall of wages and profits: If labor-power is one of the many commodities that goes into the assembly of a larger commodity, and if the payment for it comes out of what the employer pays for all those earlier commodities, and if the employer must sell the commodity at a rate that exploits the labor-power in order to profit, what is the relationship between wage and profit?
Marx puts forth that they operate in inverse proportion to one another. If the price of subsistence falls but and wages fall but not as much, the worker is gaining more for his lowered wages in proportion, but the capitalist is gaining even more. Mostly because he is now paying less on more than one front. Provided there isn't a glut of whatever commodity he is selling on the market, he is turning a larger profit. Profit increases as wages fall, and vice versa.
There are other ways to increase profit, for example bringing in more efficient machinery that enable a capitalist to meet demand at a faster pace and therefore profit more. But this too requires the labor of others, and though the worker's absolute wages haven't fallen, he isn't sharing in the higher profits. His relative wages have fallen.
It must be pointed out, however, that improvements to production, because they also decrease the cost of production, ultimately decrease the exchange value of the commodities. This is an odd kind of equalization that takes place in the ranks of capitalists, but take place it does. This describes the tendency for the rate of profit to decline.
The interests of capital and wage-labour are diametrically opposed -- effect of growth of productive capital on labor: Keeping the above in mind, it must also be remembered that capital's drive is perpetually toward growth. When a new piece of machinery enters into an industry that makes it possible to manufacture more and more of the same product for the same price, every competitor then is compelled to revolutionize their production in a similar way. This is yet another supporting fact toward the argument that workers' relative wages tend to drop.
Again, because the drive is toward constant growth, the subsequent reproduction and growth of the working class means only the reproduction and growth of its on exploitation. Capitalists, in order to drive competitors "off the field," must sell cheaper and cheaper (hoping that sheer volume makes up for lower prices) and therefore must cheapen and streamline the process of production. The contradiction is that even as they've introduced a new machine that streamlines production, that new machine itself requires a further division of labor, more workers. There is both more efficiency and less at the same time.
Effect of capitalist competition on the capitalist class, the middle class, and the working class: This section essentially serves as a recap. Because capitalists are forced to always be innovating their means of production, these innovations inevitably become the new normal in any sector of industry. In turn, labor is further divided and redivided, the process of production simultaneously becomes more complex and more efficient. Yet even as this happens and even as the overall wealth of society grows, the relative wage of the worker -- that which is spent to buy the worker's labor-power -- declines, even if their absolute wage grows. Given that it is the larger producer who is able to get more out onto the market quicker, the middle class (smaller businesses in particular) is constantly squeezed, thrust into the ranks of the working class if they can't compete on the scale of large capital.
December 7, 2025
4.8/5 stars overall.
Wage-Labour and Capital: A very interesting introduction to the concept of wage-labor and the basic relationships that are inherent to a capitalist society. Marx introduces the concept that labor itself is a commodity to be bought and sold, establishing that labor is susceptible to the same laws of supply and demand that goods are. He also delves into the economics of this relationship, showcasing that the natural tendencies of capitalism are towards recession and that these recessions will naturally worsen and pit workers against themselves as they compete for a scarce number of lower paying jobs.
There were a multitude of astounding quotes here. I come away from this section of the book with a new perspective of how the economy works and a better understanding of the relationship between labor-power and capital. I recommend this section, even though there are some parts which are technical and difficult to understand.
Value, Price, and Profit: A bit more technical. I had a tough time understanding and conceptualizing everything at first, but once it clicked it really clicked. It made a lot of sense as to why it is paired with the former pamphlet to make up this book.
Here, Marx lays out the premise behind the labor theory of value, stating that a commodity is given value based on the amount of labor required to produce it. He also explains that the owners will underpay workers in order to generate a surplus value, effectively causing the worker to work part of their shift unpaid. If this wasn’t true, the owner would not generate a profit, and in essence proves that all wage labor is exploitative. He also proves that increasing wages doesn’t increase the cost of goods, but rather reduces the profits of the owner.
Overall these pamphlets combined to create a narrative that surely is groundbreaking for the average person. To think of the world in this way is a complete shift from intuition, as is the case with most scientific knowledge. Should be required reading for the working class.
Wage-Labour and Capital: A very interesting introduction to the concept of wage-labor and the basic relationships that are inherent to a capitalist society. Marx introduces the concept that labor itself is a commodity to be bought and sold, establishing that labor is susceptible to the same laws of supply and demand that goods are. He also delves into the economics of this relationship, showcasing that the natural tendencies of capitalism are towards recession and that these recessions will naturally worsen and pit workers against themselves as they compete for a scarce number of lower paying jobs.
There were a multitude of astounding quotes here. I come away from this section of the book with a new perspective of how the economy works and a better understanding of the relationship between labor-power and capital. I recommend this section, even though there are some parts which are technical and difficult to understand.
Value, Price, and Profit: A bit more technical. I had a tough time understanding and conceptualizing everything at first, but once it clicked it really clicked. It made a lot of sense as to why it is paired with the former pamphlet to make up this book.
Here, Marx lays out the premise behind the labor theory of value, stating that a commodity is given value based on the amount of labor required to produce it. He also explains that the owners will underpay workers in order to generate a surplus value, effectively causing the worker to work part of their shift unpaid. If this wasn’t true, the owner would not generate a profit, and in essence proves that all wage labor is exploitative. He also proves that increasing wages doesn’t increase the cost of goods, but rather reduces the profits of the owner.
Overall these pamphlets combined to create a narrative that surely is groundbreaking for the average person. To think of the world in this way is a complete shift from intuition, as is the case with most scientific knowledge. Should be required reading for the working class.
June 28, 2024
“Time is the room of human development. A man who has no free time to dispose of, whose whole lifetime, apart from the mere physical interruptions by sleep, meals, and so forth, is absorbed by his labour for the capitalist, is less than a beast of burden. He is a mere machine for producing Foreign Wealth, broken in body and brutalized in mind. Yet the whole history of modern industry shows that capital, if not checked, will recklessly and ruthlessly work to cast down the whole working class to this utmost state of degradation.”
I’m a fair bit too dumb for a lot of this, and found it a difficult read (which is why it took so damn long to get through a relatively short text). But the core arguments here are important and illuminating. I can’t really speak to the accuracy of the economic principles put forward here, and I’m sure it’s been debated and is still being debated, but the illustration of the relationship dynamics between workers and capitalists, and how they are beholden to the mechanics of value hold true through any strike or wage dispute I’ve ever observed, into recent times. I also find the description of the cycles of crisis inherent in the capitalist system fascinating, but that’s not exclusive to this text. Honestly, I feel like most people (including me) would probably be better off listening to a lecture that explains this lecture, before actually reading it.
Part of me wants to be like “yeah I’m just gonna take your word for it” when it comes to the actual economic workings of the world but I also recognize that I need to understand it. I’m essentially doing homework ahead of reading Capital just so I’m a bit more familiar with stuff like the labor theory of value, surplus value, exploitation etc, as defined by Marx.
I’m a fair bit too dumb for a lot of this, and found it a difficult read (which is why it took so damn long to get through a relatively short text). But the core arguments here are important and illuminating. I can’t really speak to the accuracy of the economic principles put forward here, and I’m sure it’s been debated and is still being debated, but the illustration of the relationship dynamics between workers and capitalists, and how they are beholden to the mechanics of value hold true through any strike or wage dispute I’ve ever observed, into recent times. I also find the description of the cycles of crisis inherent in the capitalist system fascinating, but that’s not exclusive to this text. Honestly, I feel like most people (including me) would probably be better off listening to a lecture that explains this lecture, before actually reading it.
Part of me wants to be like “yeah I’m just gonna take your word for it” when it comes to the actual economic workings of the world but I also recognize that I need to understand it. I’m essentially doing homework ahead of reading Capital just so I’m a bit more familiar with stuff like the labor theory of value, surplus value, exploitation etc, as defined by Marx.
June 1, 2020
Marx was really eager to notice tensions in the world (i.e. capitalist system): worker vs capitalist, buyer vs seller, buyer vs buyer, seller vs seller.
Those tensions are real, and the author's initial conclussion is justified: the system doesn't appear to be in equilibrium.
Having no insight into the future, he couldn't have foreseen that there will be ways to address lots of these issue (like laws an the posibility to enforce them, for instance). Maybe in Marx's time, the states were a lot weaker.
Anyway, the formation of the proletariat is kind of a real phenomenon, but probably to a large extent also by choice (choice influenced by propaganda, of course, but still technically "choice" - meaning for instance that people prefer to pay rent for appartments rather than to buy them, and that people prefer to spend rather than save money, even those that can save. I know this is slightly controversial, because if people thought that saving is safe and beneficial, they'd do it). However even so, according to Piketty, there is now a global middle class, that perhaps didn't exist in the time of Marx (owners of real-estate). Capitalism seems to work however, even though it seems to favour the rich a lot more.
This book is from a different time, when the problems were different than what we have now. It's a good read, because even though the global economy behaves now differently than it did in the time of Marx, the mechanisms he described are very much still present, and still affect our world.
Those tensions are real, and the author's initial conclussion is justified: the system doesn't appear to be in equilibrium.
Having no insight into the future, he couldn't have foreseen that there will be ways to address lots of these issue (like laws an the posibility to enforce them, for instance). Maybe in Marx's time, the states were a lot weaker.
Anyway, the formation of the proletariat is kind of a real phenomenon, but probably to a large extent also by choice (choice influenced by propaganda, of course, but still technically "choice" - meaning for instance that people prefer to pay rent for appartments rather than to buy them, and that people prefer to spend rather than save money, even those that can save. I know this is slightly controversial, because if people thought that saving is safe and beneficial, they'd do it). However even so, according to Piketty, there is now a global middle class, that perhaps didn't exist in the time of Marx (owners of real-estate). Capitalism seems to work however, even though it seems to favour the rich a lot more.
This book is from a different time, when the problems were different than what we have now. It's a good read, because even though the global economy behaves now differently than it did in the time of Marx, the mechanisms he described are very much still present, and still affect our world.
December 20, 2022
A historically important contribution to political economics.
-----
Wage-Labour and Capital:
"We this see that if capital grows rapidly, competition among the workers grows with even greater rapidity, i.e., the means of employment and subsistence for the working class decrease in proportion even more rapidly; but, this notwithstanding, the rapid growth of capital is the most favorable condition for wage-labour."
Value, Price and Profit:
"Firstly. A general rise in the rate of wages would result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but, broadly speaking, not affect the prices of commodities. Secondly. The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages. Thirdly. Trade Unions work well as centers of resistance agains the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a level for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system."
-----
Wage-Labour and Capital:
"We this see that if capital grows rapidly, competition among the workers grows with even greater rapidity, i.e., the means of employment and subsistence for the working class decrease in proportion even more rapidly; but, this notwithstanding, the rapid growth of capital is the most favorable condition for wage-labour."
Value, Price and Profit:
"Firstly. A general rise in the rate of wages would result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but, broadly speaking, not affect the prices of commodities. Secondly. The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages. Thirdly. Trade Unions work well as centers of resistance agains the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a level for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system."
August 7, 2025
I don't see the demonstration by Marx on how the values (based on labor) can be systematically transformed into prices of production.
What constitutes the "socially necessary labor time"? What of the labor of a more educated worker; does that hold the same value of a less educated worker for the same amount of time? Marx oversimplifies the complex nature of many aspects of human society, mainly individual agency.
Many unanswered questions of a practically unapplicable theory on economics. Capitalism has not yet collapsed, the working class is better off today than when these pamphlets were written (strongly due to Capitalism), and society has not polarized into the opposing bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
What constitutes the "socially necessary labor time"? What of the labor of a more educated worker; does that hold the same value of a less educated worker for the same amount of time? Marx oversimplifies the complex nature of many aspects of human society, mainly individual agency.
Many unanswered questions of a practically unapplicable theory on economics. Capitalism has not yet collapsed, the working class is better off today than when these pamphlets were written (strongly due to Capitalism), and society has not polarized into the opposing bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
December 12, 2017
I skimmed the second pamphlet, Value Price & Profite, since much of it was a reiteration of the first, Wage-Labour and Capital. I firmly believe that anyone who is a worker, which is pretty nearly everyone, should read a little Karl Marx. You have rights too, you know, and it is important to be aware of them and to be able to protect yourself and your industry.
June 22, 2022
. It definitely helped me understand the system and how it functions , Value and Labour etc. Productive capital grows , causing increased in competition between other Capitalists , a battle of who can make the most profit .
this book does a great job making it easier to
understand that stuff .
⭐️
this book does a great job making it easier to
understand that stuff .
⭐️
February 25, 2024
it's a banger, lads
Great if you're daunted by jumping straight into capital.
Despite the shorter length these pieces feel like they have a whole universe of possible consequential analyses branching off from them, with the centuries of further historical development we can now apply their observations to.
Great if you're daunted by jumping straight into capital.
Despite the shorter length these pieces feel like they have a whole universe of possible consequential analyses branching off from them, with the centuries of further historical development we can now apply their observations to.
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