Wage Labour and Capital
by Karl Marx · first published 2011
75% recommend25% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Short, accessible pamphlet explaining Marx's view of wage labour, capital, and the two-class relationship between workers and owners; recommended as a first primary source before tackling longer economic works.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…two-class society of the proletariat and bourgeois, maximising exchange value over use value and the biggest teller of them all, private ownership of the means of production. Recommended reading is Marx's 'Wage Labour and Capital', and I'm making my way through 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' by Robert Tressell if you want to get to the nitty gritty of what Capitalism was like and how it still persists in its exploitative…
on “Trump’s F.C.C. Pick Quickly Targets Net Neutrality Rules” ↗I would also recommend Wage Labour and Capital by Marx, and the classical political economists like Smith and Ricardo. A good introduction to contending schools of economics is Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian by…
on ““Evicted”, an ethnographic study of tenants in low-income housing (2016)” ↗Marx's "Wage Labour and Capital" is also a rather short and easily readable work on the Marxian perspective of the labour market.
on “Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?” ↗…that back then such parties were actually intending to implement socialism after reaching said goals. To have a bare minimum of an idea of what was Marx talking about, I'd recommend reading at least "Wage Labour and Capital". Judging from how many strawmans of Marx's take on Labour Theory of Value are out there, I'm fairly sure it can't be guessed from context.
on “The Artificial Intelligence of the Public Intellectual” ↗…Manifesto. It was designed as an agitation pamphlet rather than an as a complete exposition of his thinking, and it is almost entirely devoid of his economic thought. As other commenters here have said, Wage Labour and Capital is a good read. You may also benefit from a companion guide if you want the full picture. Capitalism: A Companion to Marx's Economy Critique by Johan Fornas is a very high quality book, and relatively…
on “Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’” ↗> Anybody wrote a book on trickle-up economy yet? Yep it's called 'The Communist Manifesto' by Karl Marx. [1] Further: 'Socialism: Utopian and Scientific' by Friedrich Engels [2] and 'Wage Labour and Capital' by Karl Marx [3] [1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m... [2] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/in... [3] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour...
on “Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes” ↗…George's wikipedia page: "Upon Marx's death, George admitted he has not read any of his works, which were untranslated into English at the time," For anyone interested in reading more from Marx's side, Wage Labour And Capital by Marx is a pamphlet meant for mass distribution and not a difficult read. I've heard A People's Guide To Capitalism recommended as a high quality modernized version of the same ideas.
on “Nvidia Insists It Can Keep Printing Money to Fund the AI Boom” ↗…are reading him rather than eg NYT columnists. But I think people who find this sort of thing interesting would find marxism's analysis of the economy much more interesting and convincing. Start with Wage Labour And Capital then try either Value Price And Profit or Capital itself.
on “A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”” ↗…determining the exact price of a commodity at a given time under given market conditions. second: I mean this in good faith. you have expressed the same misconception a couple times now. Please read Wage Labour And Capital, it’s a short pamphlet written for 19th century working class people. It’s very readable and if after reading it, you still think LTV is invalid, you might be able to express why more clearly. However…
on “A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”” ↗…alternative explanation. LTV doesn't explain it (as you have admitted). Market forces do. > second: I mean this in good faith. you have expressed the same misconception a couple times now. Please read Wage Labour And Capital, it’s a short pamphlet written for 19th century working class people. It’s very readable and if after reading it, you still think LTV is invalid, you might be able to express why more clearly. However…
on “A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”” ↗…Century socialists who coined the term "capitalism" were criticizing. See, inter alia, Karl Marx. "Effect of Capitalist Competition on the Capitalist Class[,] the Middle Class[,] and the Working Class", in Wage Labour and Capital at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/...
on “This Isn't Capitalism, It's Growthism, and It's Bad for Us” ↗…usually stipulated the products which the employee produces, and in fact employers frequently talk of "on company time", and working for the working day, rather than going home when the work is done. In Wage Labour and Capital, Marx writes: Consequently, it appears that the capitalist buys their labour with money, and that for money they sell him their labour. But this is merely an illusion. What they actually sell to the…
in 1847, Marx wrote Wage Labour and Capital, an accessible pamphlet that made the prediction that over time, the middle classes will be squeezed out of prosperity and the majority of people's wages will trend downwards, until they hit a fundamental…
on “Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two” ↗…creation of many workers' rights laws), which serves to counter-act the tendency, and a greater rate of exploitation (rather than a lower wage) is one of them. The biggest clue against your reading of Wage Labour and Capital is that Marx believed that a rise in productivity tends to a rise in wages. Marx only identifies the introduction of machinery lowering the wage rate on the idea that with such machinery, workers are…
…course the amount he pays for is also related to the quality. Just as he may pay for poor or good quality sugar, he will pay for poor or good quality labour-time. What are wages? Marx defines them in Wage Labour and Capital as follows: "The exchange value of a commodity estimated in money is called its price. Wages therefore are only a special name for the price of labour-time, and are usually called the price of labour;…
on “Friedrich Hayek and the Collective Brain” ↗