This pamphlet first appeared in the form of a series of leading articles in
the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung, beginning on April 4th, 1849. The text is made up of
from lectures delivered by Marx before the German Workingmen’s Club of
Brussels in 1847. The series was never completed. The promise “to be
continued,” at the end of the editorial in Number 269 of the newspaper,
remained unfulfilled in consequence of the precipitous events of that time: the
invasion of Hungary by the Russians [Tsarist troops
invaded Hungary in 1849 to keep the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty in power],
and the uprisings in Dresden, Iserlohn, Elberfeld, the Palatinate, and in Baden
[Spontaneous uprisings in Germany in May-July 1849,
supporting the Imperial Constitution which were crushed in mid-July],
which led to the suppression of the paper on May 19th, 1849. And among the
papers left by Marx no manuscript of any continuation of these articles has
been found.

“Wage-labour and Capital” has appeared as an independent
publication in several editions, the last of which was issued by the Swiss
Co-operative Printing Association, in Hottingen-Zurich, in 1884. Hitherto, the
several editions have contained the exact wording of the original articles. But
since at least 10,000 copies of the present edition are to be circulated as a
propaganda tract, the question necessarily forced itself upon me, would Marx
himself, under these circumstance, have approved of an unaltered literal
reproduction of the original?

Marx, in the ’40s, had not yet completed his criticism of political
economy. This was not done until toward the end of the fifties. Consequently,
such of his writings as were published before the first installment of his Critique of Political
Economy was finished, deviate in some points from those written after 1859,
and contain expressions and whole sentences which, viewed from the standpoint
of his later writings, appear inexact, and even incorrect. Now, it goes without
saying that in ordinary editions, intended for the public in general, this
earlier standpoint, as a part of the intellectual development of the author,
has its place; that the author as well as the public, has an indisputable right
to an unaltered reprint of these older writings. In such a case, I would not
have dreamed of changing a single word in it. But it is otherwise when the
edition is destined almost exclusively for the purpose of propaganda. In such a
case, Marx himself would unquestionably have brought the old work, dating from
1849, into harmony with his new point of view, and I feel sure that I am acting
in his spirit when I insert in this edition the few changes and additions which
are necessary in order to attain this object in all essential point.

Therefore, I say to the reader at once: this pamphlet is not as Marx wrote
it in 1849, but approximately as Marx would have written it in 1891. Moreover,
so many copies of the original text are in circulation, that these will suffice
until I can publish it again unaltered in a complete edition of Marx’s
works, to appear at some future time.

My alterations centre about one point. According to the original reading,
the worker sells his labour for wages, which he receives from the
capitalist; according to the present text, he sells his labour-power.
And for this change, I must render an explanation: to the workers, in order
that they may understand that we are not quibbling or word-juggling, but are
dealing here with one of the most important points in the whole range of
political economy; to the bourgeois, in order that they may convince themselves
how greatly the uneducated workers, who can be easily made to grasp the most
difficult economic analyses, excel our supercilious “cultured" folk, for
whom such ticklish problems remain insoluble their whole life long.

Classical political economy[1]
borrowed from the industrial practice the current notion of the manufacturer,
that he buys and pays for the labour of his employees. This conception had been
quite serviceable for the business purposes of the manufacturer, his
bookkeeping and price calculation. But naively carried over into political
economy, it there produced truly wonderful errors and confusions.

Political economy finds it an established fact that the prices of all
commodities, among them the price of the commodity which it calls
“labour,” continually change; that they rise and fall in
consequence of the most diverse circumstances, which often have no connection
whatsoever with the production of the commodities themselves, so that prices
appear to be determined, as a rule, by pure chance. As soon, therefore, as
political economy stepped forth as a science, it was one of its first tasks to
search for the law that hid itself behind this chance, which apparently
determined the prices of commodities, and which in reality controlled this very
chance. Among the prices of commodities, fluctuating and oscillating, now
upward, now downward, the fixed central point was searched for around which
these fluctuations and oscillations were taking place. In short, starting from
the price of commodities, political economy sought for the value of commodities
as the regulating law, by means of which all price fluctuations could be
explained, and to which they could all be reduced in the last resort.

And so, classical political economy found that the value of a commodity was
determined by the labour incorporated in it and requisite to its production.
With this explanation, it was satisfied. And we, too, may, for the present,
stop at this point. But, to avoid misconceptions, I will remind the reader that
today this explanation has become wholly inadequate. Marx was the first to
investigate thoroughly into the value-forming quality of labour and to discover
that not all labour which is apparently, or even really, necessary to the
production of a commodity, imparts under all circumstances to this commodity a
magnitude of value corresponding to the quantity of labour used up. If,
therefore, we say today in short, with economists like Ricardo, that the value
of a commodity is determined by the labour necessary to its production, we
always imply the reservations and restrictions made by Marx. Thus much for our
present purpose; further information can be found in Marx’s Critique
of Political Economy, which appeared in 1859, and in the first volume of
Capital.

But, as soon as the economists applied this determination of value by labour
to the commodity “labour", they fell from one contradiction into another.
How is the value of “labour” determined? By the necessary labour
embodied in it. But how much labour is embodied in the labour of a labourer of
a day a week, a month, a year. If labour is the measure of all values, we can
express the “value of labour” only in labour. But we know
absolutely nothing about the value of an hour’s labour, if all that we
know about it is that it is equal to one hour’s labour. So, thereby, we
have not advanced one hair’s breadth nearer our goal; we are constantly
turning about in a circle.

Classical economics, therefore, essayed another turn. It said: the value of
a commodity is equal to its cost of production. But, what is the cost of
production of “labour"? In order to answer this question, the economists
are forced to strain logic just a little. Instead of investigating the cost of
production of labour itself, which, unfortunately, cannot be ascertained, they
now investigate the cost of production of the labourer. And this
latter can be ascertained. It changes according to time and circumstances, but
for a given condition of society, in a given locality, and in a given branch of
production, it, too, is given, at least within quite narrow limits. We live
today under the regime of capitalist production, under which a large and
steadily growing class of the population can live only on the condition that it
works for the owners of the means of production – tools, machines, raw
materials, and means of subsistence – in return for wages. On the basis
of this mode of production, the labourer’s cost of production consists of
the sum of the means of subsistence (or their price in money) which on the
average are requisite to enable him to work, to maintain in him this capacity
for work, and to replace him at his departure, by reason of age, sickness, or
death, with another labourer – that is to say, to propagate the working
class in required numbers.

Let us assume that the money price of these means of subsistence averages 3
shillings a day. Our labourer gets, therefore, a daily wage of 3 shillings from
his employer. For this, the capitalist lets him work, say, 12 hours a day. Our
capitalist, moreover, calculates somewhat in the following fashion: Let us
assume that our labourer (a machinist) has to make a part of a machine which he
finishes in one day. The raw material (iron and brass in the necessary prepared
form) costs 20 shillings. The consumption of coal by the steam-engine, the
wear-and-tear of this engine itself, of the turning-lathe, and of the other
tools with which our labourer works, represent, for one day and one labourer, a
value of 1 shilling. The wages for one day are, according to our assumption, 3
shillings. This makes a total of 24 shillings for our piece of a machine.

But, the capitalist calculates that, on an average, he will receive for it a
price of 27 shillings from his customers, or 3 shillings over and above his
outlay.

Whence do they 3 shillings pocketed by the capitalist come? According to the
assertion of classical political economy, commodities are in the long run sold
at their values, that is, they are sold at prices which correspond to the
necessary quantities of labour contained in them. The average price of our part
of a machine – 27 shillings – would therefore equal its value,
i.e., equal the amount of labour embodied in it. But, of these 27 shillings, 21
shillings were values were values already existing before the machinist began
to work; 20 shillings were contained in the raw material, 1 shilling in the
fuel consumed during the work and in the machines and tools used in the process
and reduced in their efficiency to the value of this amount. There remains 6
shillings, which have been added to the value of the raw material. But,
according to the supposition of our economists, themselves, these 6 shillings
can arise only from the labour added to the raw material by the labourer. His
12 hours’ labour has created, according to this, a new value of 6
shillings. Therefore, the value of his 12 hours’ labour would be
equivalent to 6 shillings. So we have at last discovered what the “value
of labour” is.

“Hold on there!” cries our machinist. “Six shillings? But
I have received only 3 shillings! My capitalist swears high and day that the
value of my 12 hours’ labour is no more than 3 shillings, and if I were
to demand 6, he’d laugh at me. What kind of a story is that?"

If before this we got with our value of labour into a vicious circle, we now
surely have driven straight into an insoluble contradiction. We searched for
the value of labour, and we found more than we can use. For the labourer, the
value of the 12 hours’ labour is 3 shillings; for the capitalist, it is 6
shillings, of which he pays the workingman 3 shillings as wages, and pockets
the remaining 3 shilling himself. According to this, labour has not one but two
values, and, moreover, two very different values!

As soon as we reduce the values, now expressed in money, to labour-time, the
contradiction becomes even more absurd. By the 12 hours’ labour, a new
value of 6 shillings is created. Therefore, in 6 hours, the new value created
equals 3 shillings – the amount which the labourer receives for 12
hours’ labour. For 12 hours’ labour, the workingman receives, as an
equivalent, the product of 6 hours’ labour. We are, thus, forced to one
of two conclusions: either labour has two values, one of which is twice as
large as the other, or 12 equals 6! In both cases, we get pure absurdities.
Turn and twist as we may, we will not get out of this contradiction as long as
we speak of the buying and selling of “labour” and of the
“value of labour.” And just so it happened to the political
economists. The last offshoot of classical political economy – the
Ricardian school – was largely wrecked on the insolubility of this
contradiction. Classical political economy had run itself into a blind alley.
The man who discovered the way out of this blind alley was Karl Marx.

What the economists had considered as the cost of production of
“labour” was really the cost of production, not of
“labour,” but of the living labourer himself. And what this
labourer sold to the capitalist was not his labour.

“So soon as his labour really begins,” says
Marx, “it ceases to belong to him, and therefore can no longer be sold by
him.”

At the most, he could sell his future labour – i.e., assume
the obligation of executing a certain piece of work in a certain time. But, in
this way, he does not sell labour (which would first have to be performed), but
not for a stipulated payment he places his labour-power at the disposal of the
capitalist for a certain time (in case of time-wages), or for the performance
of a certain task (in case of piece-wages). He hires out or sells his
labour-power. But this labour-power has grown up with his person and
is inseparable from it. Its cost of production, therefore, coincides with his
own cost of production; what the economist called the cost of production of
labour is really the cost of production of the labourer, and therewith of his
labour-power. And, thus, we can also go back from the cost of production of
labour-power to the value of labour-power, and determine the quantity of social
labour that is required for the production of a labour-power of a given
quantity, as Marx has done in the chapter on “The Buying and Selling of
labour Power.” [Capital, Vol.I]

Now what takes place after the worker has sold his labour-power, i.e., after
he has placed his labour-power at the disposal of the capitalist for
stipulated-wages – whether time-wages or piece-wages? The capitalist
takes the labourer into his workshop or factory, where all the articles
required for the work can be found – raw materials, auxiliary materials
(coal, dyestuffs, etc.), tools, and machines. Here, the worker begins to work.
His daily wages are, as above, 3 shillings, and it makes no difference whether
he earns them as day-wages or piece-wages. We again assume that in 12 hours the
worker adds by his labour a new value of 6 shillings to the value of the raw
materials consumed, which new value the capitalist realizes by the sale of the
finished piece of work. Out of this new value, he pays the worker his 3
shillings, and the remaining 3 shillings he keeps for himself. If, now, the
labourer creates in 12 hours a value of 6 shillings, in 6 hours he creates a
value of 3 shillings. Consequently, after working 6 hours for the capitalist,
the labourer has returned to him the equivalent of the 3 shillings received as
wages. After 6 hours’ work, both are quits, neither one owing a penny to
the other.

“Hold on there!” now cries out the capitalist. “I have
hired the labourer for a whole day, for 12 hours. But 6 hours are only
half-a-day. So work along lively there until the other 6 hours are at an end
– only then will we be even.” And, in fact, the labourer has to
submit to the conditions of the contract upon which he entered of “his
own free will", and according to which he bound himself to work 12 whole hours
for a product of labour which cost only 6 hours’ labour.

Similarly with piece-wages. Let us suppose that in 12 hours our worker makes
12 commodities. Each of these costs a shilling in raw materials and
wear-and-tear, and is sold for 2.5 shillings. On our former assumption, the
capitalist gives the labourer .25 of a shilling for each piece, which makes a
total of 3 shillings for 12 pieces. To earn this, the worker requires 12 hours.
The capitalist receives 30 shillings for the 12 pieces; deducting 24 shillings
for raw materials and wear-and-tear, there remains 6 shillings, of which he
pays 3 shillings in wages and pockets the remaining 3. Just as before! Here,
also, the worker labours 6 hours for himself – i.e., to replace his wages
(half-an-hour in each of the 12 hours), and 6 hours for the capitalist.

The rock upon which the best economists were stranded, as long as they
started out from the value of labour, vanishes as soon as we make our
starting-point the value of labour-power. Labour-power is, in our
present-day capitalist society, a commodity like every other commodity, but yet
a very peculiar commodity. It has, namely, the peculiarity of being a
value-creating force, the source of value, and, moreover, when properly
treated, the source of more value than it possesses itself. In the present
state of production, human labour-power not only produces in a day a greater
value than it itself possesses and costs; but with each new scientific
discovery, with each new technical invention, there also rises the surplus of
its daily production over its daily cost, while as a consequence there
diminishes that part of the working-day in which the labourer produces the
equivalent of his day’s wages, and, on the other hand, lengthens that
part of the working-day in which he must present labour gratis to the
capitalist.

And this is the economic constitution of our entire modern society: the
working class alone produces all values. For value is only another expression
for labour, that expression, namely, by which is designated, in our capitalist
society of today, the amount of socially necessary labour embodied in a
particular commodity. But, these values produced by the workers do not belong
to the workers. They belong to the owners of the raw materials, machines,
tools, and money, which enable them to buy the labour-power of the working
class. Hence, the working class gets back only a part of the entire mass of
products produced by it. And, as we have just seen, the other portion, which
the capitalist class retains, and which it has to share, at most, only with the
landlord class, is increasing with every new discovery and invention, while the
share which falls to the working class (per capita) rises but little and very
slowly, or not at all, and under certain conditions it may even fall.

But, these discoveries and inventions which supplant one another with
ever-increasing speed, this productiveness of human labour which increases from
day to day to unheard-of proportions, at last gives rise to a conflict, in
which present capitalistic economy must go to ruin. On the one hand,
immeasurable wealth and a superfluidity of products with which the buyers
cannot cope. On the other hand, the great mass of society proletarianized,
transformed into wage-labourers, and thereby disabled from appropriating to
themselves that superfluidity of products. The splitting up of society into a
small class, immoderately rich, and a large class of wage-labourers devoid of
all property, brings it about that this society smothers in its own
superfluidity, while the great majority of its members are scarcely, or not at
all, protected from extreme want.

This condition becomes every day more absurd and more unnecessary. It
must be gotten rid of; it can be gotten rid of. A new social order is
possible, in which the class differences of today will have disappeared, and in
which – perhaps after a short transition period, which, though somewhat
deficient in other respects, will in any case be very useful morally –
there will be the means of life, of the enjoyment of life, and of the
development and activity of all bodily and mental faculties, through the
systematic use and further development of the enormous productive powers of
society, which exists with us even now, with equal obligation upon all to work.
And that the workers are growing ever more determined to achieve this new
social order will be proven on both sides of the ocean on this dawning May Day,
and on Sunday, May 3rd. [Engels is referring to the May
Day celebrations of 1891]

FREDERICK ENGELS

London, April 30, 1891.