Wage Labour and Capital #2

Hello everyone, welcome to Theory Thursday! This is a community led project, the point of these posts is to read about 30 minutes of theory every Thursday. Then we discuss with fellow comrades the contents of the reading. This week’s topic we are covering Karl Marx’s Wage Labour and Capital. Chapter 2, what are wages, through chapter 5, the nature and growth of capital.

Discussion #1: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1134970

The Reading: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm

The Study Guide: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/guide.htm

Study Guide questions:

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What are wages?

  1. What is the difference between “Labour” and “Labour Power”?
  2. Describe some circumstances from your personal experiences where on the one hand, labour is purchased, and on the other labour-power is purchased. Can you find examples where in both cases the seller is a manual worker and the buyer is a capitalist?

By what is the price of a commodity determined?

  1. In what sense does Marx deny that prices are determined by the balance of supply and demand?
  2. What will cause a commodity in short supply to fall in price?
  3. What factors discussed in this chapter may cause wages to fall?

By what are wages determined?

  1. What additional factors discussed in this chapter do you see which will cause wages to be higher or lower for one or another trade or vary over the years?
  2. What do you think the effect of introducing free public education would have on wages?
  3. Discuss other factors: increased immigration, cheap public housing, introduction of new technology, anti-union laws, … (no simple answers!)

The nature and growth of capital

  1. What does Marx mean when he introduces this point about a (antiquated word for black person) being a slave? What is he saying about Capital?
  2. What does Marx mean by saying “Capital is a social relation”?
  3. In today’s capitalist society, in what circumstances are useful, valuable things not capital?
  4. In what sense do we see the dead dominating the living in capitalist society?

Feel free to discus below your thoughts or insight into this reading.

Next week we will finish the reading, from chapter 6 (relation of wage labor to capital) onward.

Check out the sidebar for additional resources, including comrade CriticalResist8’s ProleWiki study guide, also check out comrade GrainEater’s Matrix study group if you’d like to study additional theory. Have a good week comrades, until next time!

Study Guide Questions for next time:

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Relation of wage-labor to capital

  1. Can we think of even more factors governing the rise and fall of real wages?
  2. What does “standard of living” mean? Has it increased over the past 100 years in your country (or not)? Why?
  3. What is the effect on profits of a situation where people work long hours every day of the week (other things being equal)? And on the other hand, of people only having a few hours work a week?

The general law that determines the rise and fall of wages and profit

  1. Marx says that the gap between rich and poor was getting wider in his day. Is this true today? Has it always been true throughout the past hundred years in your country? And what about differences within the working class? Are these getting bigger or smaller?
  2. Where does profit come from? If commodities are paid for at their value, how can a buyer or seller consistently make a profit and get rich? – Does your answer cover how bankers, landlords, stock-brokers and so on get rich?

The interests of capital and wage-labor are diametrically opposed

  1. Discuss an example you know about of a new technique of production being introduced and the effects this had on prices, wages, etc.
  2. Discuss the contrast between “labour intensive” and “capital intensive” industries. What parts of the economy are becoming more capital intensive, and which are not?

Effect of capitalist competition on the capitalist, middle and working class

  1. Discuss the prospects for wages in your country at the moment and what tactics could be used to improve wages.
  2. What is your answer to someone who says that an increase in wages will only cause inflation or cause capital to be withdrawn from the country.
  3. Why is the fight for better wages anything to do with the fight for socialism? What would you say to someone who said that fighting for higher wages is just being greedy like the capitalists?
  4. Many workers are not paid wages, but work on contracts, or on piece-work. How does this effect what Marx has been saying about the value of Labour Power, and so on.?

FAQ

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Why are we only doing 30 minutes worth of reading?

  1. I’m a very busy person and don’t have time to do more
  2. This format is specifically designed for people with busy schedules to participate
  3. It is proven that the best way to digest information is a little bit at a time

Still not satisfied? I recommend starting your own study session, reading at your own pace, or joining an additional study group.

I’m open to constructive criticism, key word there being constructive. Just keep in mind I’m a flawed human being who’s volunteering my limited time and energy to do this.

  • Anarcho-Bolshevik@lemmygrad.mlMEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago
    1. Labor is work put into something, whereas labor power is how much and what kind of work somebody can do. For example, employées at the Mauser factory at Oberndorf put labor into a weapon by testing its sight alignment, and a Kar 98k in the July of 1944 required, it seems, sixteen hours of (unskilled but machine‐assisted) labor power.
    2. If you’ll allow me, I would prefer to use another example from history: Silesian peasants in the Weimar Republic labored by milking cows and vending the milk—the labor—directly to customers for twenty‐two pfennigs a liter, but then had to vend his labor power to a Fascist monopoly organization for fourteen pfennigs or fewer.
    3. He said that the fluctuations are what force the price to conform to the production’s cost. When the Allies bombed the Kingdom of Romania’s oil fields, oil’s production cost increased and thus so did the price.
    4. A decrease in demand is likely to make the scarce commodity decrease in price. Modern art in the Third Reich decreased in price during the 1930s because the demand decreased, and I’m assuming that individual works had far fewer copies back then.
    5. The cost of production falling causes wages to fall, because now it is easier to produce a commodity. A trained marksman (expensive) was required to test sight alignments, but the joint Mauser/Zeiss shooting machine allowed unskilled workers (cheap) to do that instead.
    6. The ease in training a worker reduces her wage. It was easy to train somebody to use the Mauser/Zeiss shooting machine, so she must have had a low wage. This must have decreased demand for the trained marksman, lowering his wage, too.
    7. Introducing free public education would make training workers (slightly) easier and therefore reduce wages. Giovanni Gentile strived to inculcate Italian youth with fascism and to select and promote only the élite so as not to overload the market for intellectual labor.
    8. The introduction of Jewish neoslaves into Axis‐occupied Poland, who had to live in very cheap, substandard conditions, most likely reduced the demand for the labor power of unenslaved Polish gentiles, whose standard of living was less awful and thus more costly. The disposal of humans must have been inexpensive because the inventions of carbon monoxide and other poisons were cheaper and more efficient for deployment than the firearms, which presumably reduced the Wehrmacht’s wages somewhat. Erstwhile, eliminating the socialist unions was necessary for Fascism’s mastery over the lower classes; as Daniel Guerin said, ‘To paralyze working class resistance will henceforth be the role of the fascist “unions,” which have become organs for “political discipline.”’
    9. Slavery and capital are merely social constructs. Capital needs instruments and other resources in order to exist, otherwise it is meaningless. Fascist capital in particular needed oil, ball bearings, wolframite, tungsten, iron ore, and elsewhat to wage war, but they did not need capital to exist, nor did they constitute capital (when left alone).
    10. Saying that capital is a social relation acknowledges the human interaction that it requires for its production. Gustav Krupp’s laborers had to agree to toil for his business with the capital that other laborers elsewhere agreed to produce. Capital needs social interaction to be meaningful.
    11. Useful, valuable things are not capital when there is no labor power to convert them into capital. The Polish forests were—I am presuming—mostly unmade through labor power, so they were not capital, and since the Fascists wanted to keep them as hunting grounds, they went unused as capital.
    12. The prefascist generations made the materials that were crucial to the Fascist empires—factories, tools, machines, farms—which they used to preserve and multiply their exchange value.

    I have a feeling that my answers are either inaccurate or lackluster, but I hope that this is at least better than nothing.

    • TT17@lemmygrad.mlOP
      3·
      1 year ago

      Wow! Are you a history major? That was an impressive display of knowledge on fascism and Europe. That was a very interesting and cool approach to answering these questions.

      • Anarcho-Bolshevik@lemmygrad.mlMEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        I’ve never majored in anything. I study Fascism a lot in my spare time, partly because I feel like we need a better understanding of the subject, and partly because I admittedly have a rather morbid fascination with the phenomenon. Reapplying Marx’s analysis to capitalism in decay helps me remember his analysis better.

        I don’t have much experience accepting compliments, but…I thank you. I appreciate it. It reminded me of the time when my therapist skimmed my page debunking the ‘Nazism was socialism’ myth and he called it a ‘master’s level thesis’.