RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WAGE LABOUR AND CAPITAL

Marx in his essay wage labour and capital tries to establish a relation between
the wage labour and capital in his essay Wage labour and Capital. He starts by
trying to draw parallels between the existing socio-economic struggles and
various stages of the historical materialism put forward by him. He cites the
example of February revolution of 1848 and how the European working class
fall again into the slavey of the bourgeoise class.
Marx says that wages are not the sum paid by the capitalist to buy a particular
labour time from the workers instead it is the labour power of the worker which
is bought by the capitalist class. The capitalist buys the labour power using
wages for a stipulated amount of time. Thus, here we can see that the labour
power has been converted as a commodity like sugar or any other commodity.
The only difference being while the former is calculated by clock the latter ids
calculated by scales.
Marx establishes that wage is the exchange value of a worker’s labour power.
Wages are the price of labour power. The worker doesn’t have any share in the
commodity produced by him. Wages becomes the part of the already existing
commodity with which the capitalist buys for himself a definite amount of
productive labour power. Therefore, labour power becomes a commodity which
the capitalist buys from the worker using wages. The worker sells the labour
power in order to maintain his/her livelihood.
Thus the life activity of the worker becomes the means of his living, He has to
work in order to live. He gets alienated from the product of his labour power.
The commodity produced by him is no the goal he seeks from his labour power.
Hus labour power is auctioned off for the wages using which he buys other
commodities for his subsistence.
The labour power was not always the commodity. earlier the labourer itself was
the commodity. The slave owners owned the labour power of the labourers.
Marx began by examining the exchange relationship between those who own
the means of the production, the capitalist, and those who sell only their labour
in the market, the proletariat. He argued that one of the chief characteristics of
capitalism was the separation of labour from the ownership of means of
production. Under capitalism labour no longer, labour no longer owns its tools
or the raw materials of the production process. Capitalism is therefore
essentially a society of two classes, and one of the most important aspects of
this society is the exchange, the wage bargains that takes place between the
proletariat and capitalist.
According to Marx, the prices of commodities in a capitalist system represent
two different sets of relationships
(1) Quantitative relationships between commodities
(2) Social or qualitative relationship between the capitalist and proletariat.
Marx was interested in the prices primarily insofar as they disclose these
social relationships; he was only secondarily interested in the prices as
they reflect a quantitative relationship between commodities

In developing a theory of all relative prices or the quantitative relationships

between things and commodities, Marx essentially used Ricardo’s theory of
value. Commodities manifest in their prices certain quantitative relationships
and this means according to Marx that all commodities must contain one
element in common that must exist in certain measurable quantities. Marx
considered use value, or utility as common element but rejected this
possibility. He then turned to labour as the common element and concluded
that it is the amount of labour necessary to produce commodities that
governs their relative prices
Under the capitalist mode of production, workers are separated from the means
of production, gaining access to them by selling their labour power, workers are
free of legal constraints that push them to depose of their labour power in a
particular fashion, and the purpose of the employment of the worker becomes
the expansion of a unit of capital belonging to the employer, who is thus
functioning as a capitalist. Historically, most of the population in the world has
been self-employed or employed under legally constrained modes of production
(which still might imply self-employment), with a rapid change being observed
since the beginning of the 20th century.
This shift away from self-employment has occurred due to the worker’s
inability to earn a livelihood otherwise. The capitalist, controlling a unit of
capital is able to convert some of it as wages in order to produce a product with
the ultimate goal of increasing his own stock of capital. Thus clearly, in the
capitalist system, the labour process is dominated by the urge to accumulate
capital.
In exercising their labour power under the control of the capitalist, the wage-
labourers turn raw materials into commodities and, in this way, they add extra
value to those raw materials; as Marx puts it, the wage-labourer ‘gives to the
accumulated labour a greater value than it previously possessed.’ If the
capitalists sell the commodity at a price which exceeds the cost of its
production, they get back, not only the value of the raw materials and labour
power consumed, and the depreciation of the instruments of labour, but also a
profit. In this way, capitalists increase the amount of capital at their disposal. By
contrast, all the wage-labourers can do is to consume the means of subsistence
that they receive from the capitalist. They must do this if they are to survive; but
they must also replace the commodities which they have consumed by working
for the capitalist once again.
It means that the relationship between the capitalist and wage labourers are
dependent. the capitalist cannot make profit unless there is a class of people
who are ready to sell their labour power and the workers cannot maintain their
livelihood unless there are people who are willing to buy their labour power in
exchange for subsistence.
In the words of Marx:

Capital therefore presupposes wage-labour; wage-labour presupposes capital.

They condition each other; each brings the other into existence.

The existential interdependence of capitalist and wage-labourer, Marx tells us,

is the basis for the claim, which bourgeois economists make, that the material
interests of capitalists and wage-labourers are the same. However, bourgeois
economists overlook the fact that it is the capitalists, not the wage-labourers,
who enrich themselves, when they exploit labour power, and that, because
wage-labourers have been deprived of ownership of the means of production,
they do not own, and therefore do not control, the wealth that they produce.