Wage-Labor

Also known as “wage-system”. The labor performed by the workers employed by capitalists under the capitalist system to produce commodities and yield surplus-value is in essence the labor of workers who sell their labor-power as a commodity to capitalists and provide surplus-labor.

Marx held that, as a historical form of labor and a mode of connection of labor-power with the means of production, there are many presuppositions for the emergence of wage-labor, such as the capitalist relations of production, that the worker is rid of everything and that the labor-power becomes a commodity and so on. As Marx pointed out in Capital, the second essential condition which allows the money-owner [referring to the capitalist–quotation note] to find labor-power in the market as a commodity is this, that the owner of labor-power, instead of being able to sell commodities in which his labor has been objectified, must rather be compelled to offer for sale as a commodity that very labor-power which exists only in his living body. Marx held that to reveal the essence of wage-labor, it is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of the capitalist labor-capital relationship and the process of capitalist production. In the process of capitalist production, the worker and the means of production are both separate and must be combined. Once labor-power is sold as a commodity, the right to use belongs to the capitalist and the results of labor are enjoyed by the capitalist. The core concept of wage-labor is the wage. The wage paid by the capitalist to the worker is entirely restricted to the cost of the means of life that the worker requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. In the capitalist system, the worker’s wage is the transmuted form of the value or price of labor-power. The use-value of the commodity labor-power refers to the use of labor-power, i.e., labor. The particularity of the use-value of the commodity labor-power lies in being a source not only of value, but of more value than it has itself, i.e., surplus-value. Once the capitalist pays the worker a wage, he has bought the worker’s labor, which consists of necessary labor and surplus-labor. The value created by the worker in necessary labor compensates the wage paid by the capitalist to the worker, and the surplus-value created by the worker in surplus-labor is appropriated by the capitalist without compensation. It is the essence of wage-labor that the utilization of labor-power can create surplus-value for its purchase. The capitalist, by virtue of his appropriation of the means of production, employs workers to perform labor under the guise of the principle of exchange of equal values, and appropriates the entire surplus-value of the wage-laborer. Except for a portion of it which he keeps for his own subsistence consumption, the rest is transformed into capital. The condition for the formation of capital is wage-labor. Marx pointed out that capital presupposes wage-labor, and wage-labor presupposes capital. One is necessary condition to the existence of the other; they mutually call each other into existence. Capital and wage-labor are two aspects of the one and same relation. The system of wage-labor arose based on the exchange between capital and labor, and has the nature of slavery. Therefore, the wage-labor is in the last instance estranged labor. As Marx pointed out, the essence of capitalist production or, if you like, of wage-labor, of labor alienated from itself, which stands confronted by the wealth it has created as alien wealth of others, by its own productive power as the productive power of its product, by its enrichment as its own pauperization and by its social power as the power of society. Wage-labor, is capital-positing, capital-producing labor, i.e., living labor which produces both the objective conditions of its realization as an activity, as well as the objective moments of its being as labor-capacity, and produces them as alien powers opposite itself, as values for-themselves, independent of it.

Wage-labor is a product of a certain historical stage. Wage-labor is a phenomenon that appeared before capitalist society, and there are certain features of wage-labor when there is exploitation. But it is only in capitalist society that the essence of wage-labor is fully and completely embodied. Summarizing the history of the development of human labor, especially on the basis of a deep anatomy of the essence of capitalist wage-labor, Marx held that wage-labor has a process of continuous development and sublation, and will eventually be abolished. He pointed out that the proletariat “ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economic reconstruction of society.” Therefore, the proletariat “ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: ‘Abolition of the wages system!’” Marx held that in the ideal future society, free and collective labor will replace capitalist wage-labor. Like slave labor and serf labor, wage-labor is only a temporary and low-level form. It is destined to give way to the collective labor performed voluntarily with excitement and pleasure.

Marx’s category of wage-labor has scientifically distinguished labor and labor-power, pointed out that workers, under capitalist economic conditions, sell not labor but labor-power, and explained that the utilization of labor-power, is the creation not only of value, but of more value than it has itself. Moreover, it has revealed the secret of the emergence of surplus-value and the augmentation of capital, proposed the categories of wages and capital under capitalist economic conditions, and revealed the basic relations of capitalism and their laws of operation. This category is not only of great significance in the history of Marxist political economy, but has also greatly enriched the materialist conception of history.