a) the workers will limit their spending, or, to increase their 
productivity, they will either work longer hours or produce more in 
the same hour. But since their wages have been reduced because the 
demand for their product has slackened, they increase the unfa- 
vourable proportion of the supply to the demand, and then the 
bourgeois says: if the people would only work. Their wages drop still 
lower through their overexertion. 

8) In times of crisis: 

Complete unemployment. Reduction in wages. No change in 
wages and reduction of the working days.?** 

Y) In all crises the following circular movement relates to the 
workers: 

The employer cannot employ the workers because he cannot sell 
his product. He cannot sell his product because he has no buyers. He 
has no buyers because the workers have nothing to offer in exchange 


* Marx uses the English term.— Ed. 


Wages 425 


but their labour, and precisely for that reason they cannot exchange 
their labour. 

8) When it is a question of a rise in wages, it is to be noted that one 
must always have in mind the world market and the fact that the 
rise in wages is ineffectual since workers in other countries are put 
out of work.