VIII. POSITIVE ASPECT OF WAGE LABOUR 

Before we conclude, let us draw attention to the positive aspect of 
wage labour. 

a) If one says “positive aspect of wage labour” one says “positive 
aspect of capital’, of large-scale industry, of free competition, of the 
world market, and I do not need to explain to you in detail how 
without these production relations neither the means of produc- 
tion—the material means for the emancipation of the proletariat and 
the foundation of a new society—would have been created, nor 
would the proletariat itself have taken to the unification and develop- 
ment through which it is really capable of revolutionising the old 
society and itself. Equalisation of wages. 

8) Let us take wages themselves in the essence of their evil, that 
my activity becomes a commodity, that I become utterly and abso- 
lutely for sale. 

Firstly: thereby everything patriarchal falls away, since haggling, 
purchase and sale remain the only connection, and the money 
relationship the sole relationship between employer and workers. 

Secondly: the halo of sanctity is entirely gone from all relationships 
of the old society, since they have dissolved into pure money 
relationships. 

Likewise, all so-called higher kinds of labour, intellectual, artistic, 
etc., have been turned into articles of commerce and have thereby 
lost their old sanctity. What a great advance it was that the entire 
regiment of clerics, doctors, lawyers, etc., hence religion, law, etc., 
ceased to be judged by anything but their commercial value.’ 

(Thirdly: since labour has become a commodity and as such subject 
to free competition, one seeks to produce it as cheaply as possible, 
i.e., at the lowest possible production cost. All physical labour has 

* Here the manuscript has an insertion: “National, class, property relations.” — Ed. 

Wages 437 

thereby become infinitely easy and simple for the future organisa- 
tion of society.— To be put in general form.) 

Thirdly: as the workers realised through the general saleability that 
everything was separable, dissoluble from itself, they first became 
free of their subjection to a given relationship. The advantage both 
over payment in kind and over the way of life prescribed purely by 
the (feudal) estate is that the worker can do what he likes with his 
money.