1) A general rise in the rate of wages will, broadly speaking, 
produce a general fall in the rate of profits, leaving the values of 
commodities unaltered. 

2) Under very exceptional circumstances, only a general rise of 
wages could be realised. If obtained, it could only [be] lost under 
very exceptional circumstances. The general tendency of produc- 
tion, upon its present basis, is not to raise, but to lower wages. 
Even if a general rise in the rate of wages should obtain for any 
longer period, it would not abolish but only mitigate the slavery of 
the wages’ labourer, that is, of the mass of the people. 

3) Trades’ Unions work well as far as they counteract, if even 
temporarily, the tendency to a fall in the general rate of wages, 
and as far as they tend to shorten and regulate the time of labour, 
in other words, the extent of the working day. They work well as 
far as they are a means of organising the working class as a class. 
They fail accidentally, by an injudicious use of their power, and 
they fail generally by accepting the present relations of capital and 
labour as permanent instead of working for their abolition.