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Wage Labour and Capital" (German: Lohnarbeit und Kapital) was an 1847 lecture by the critic of political economy and philosopher Karl Marx, first published as articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in April 1849. [1] It is widely considered the precursor to Marx's influential treatise Das Kapital. [2]
Marx concludes that as value is determined by labour, and as profit is the appropriated surplus value remaining after paying wages, that the maximum profit is set by the minimum wage necessary to sustain labour, but is in turn adjusted by the overall productive powers of labour using given tools and machines, the length of the workday, the ...
Marx argued that capital existed incipiently on a small scale for centuries in the form of merchant, renting and lending activities and occasionally also as small-scale industry with some wage labour (Marx was also well aware that wage labour existed for centuries on a modest scale before the advent of capitalist industry).
This increase in real wages could nevertheless be accompanied by decrease in the labor share, and an increase in the power of the capitalist class. A Marx had recognized as early as Wage Labour and Capital (1847): "If capital grows rapidly, wages may rise, but the profit of capital rises disproportionately faster. The material position of the ...
Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I: The Process of Production of Capital (German: Das Kapital.Kritik der politischen Ökonomie Erster Band. Buch I: Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals) is the first of three treatises that make up Das Kapital, a critique of political economy by the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx.
Capital is a central concept in Marxian critique of political economy, and in Marxian thought more generally. Marxists view capital as a social relation reproduced by the continuous expenditure of wage labour. Labour and capital are viewed as historically specific [clarification needed] forms of social relations. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Adam Smith's account of primitive-original accumulation depicted a peaceful process in which some workers laboured more diligently than others and gradually built up wealth, eventually leaving the less diligent workers to accept living wages for their labour. [3] Karl Marx rejected such accounts as 'insipid childishness' for their omission of ...
[12] That this objection is fundamental follows immediately from Marx's conclusion that wage labour is the very foundation of capitalism: "Without a class dependent on wages, the moment individuals confront each other as free persons, there can be no production of surplus value; without the production of surplus-value there can be no capitalist ...