§ 8 Wage Labour

The vast numbers who were left without any property were transformed into the wage labourers of capital. What indeed was left for the impoverished peasant or artisan to do? Either take service as agricultural labourer under the capitalist landowner, or else go to the town and there seek employment in factory or workshop. There was no other way out. Such was the origin of wage labour, the third characteristic of the capitalist system.

What is wage labour? In earlier days, when there were serfs or slaves, every serf or slave could be bought and sold. Persons with skin, hair, arms, and legs were the private property of their lord. The lord would flog one of his serfs to death in the stable as lightly as, in a drunken fit, he would break a stool or a chair. The serf or slave was merely a chattel. Among the ancient Romans, a master's property, all that was necessary for production, was classified as 'dumb tools' (things), 'half-speaking tools' (beasts of burden, sheep, cows, oxen, etc. - in a word, inarticulate animals), and 'speaking tools' (slaves, human beings). A spade, an ox, a slave, were for the master all alike tools or utensils, which he could buy, sell, misuse, or destroy, at pleasure.

The wage labourer can be neither bought nor sold. What can be bought and sold is his labour power; not the man or woman, but the capacity for labour. The wage labourer is personally free; the factory owner cannot flog him in the stable, or sell him to a neighbour, or exchange him for a wolf-hound puppy, though all these things could be done when serfdom prevailed. The wage worker can merely be hired. To all appearance the capitalist and the wage worker are equals. 'Don't work if you don't want to; there is no compulsion,' says the factory owner. The employer actually declares that he feeds the worker, gives work to the employee.

As a matter of fact, however, the conditions are far from being the same for wage earner and capitalist. The workers are enchained by hunger. Hunger compels them to hire themselves out, that is, to sell their labour power. There is no other solution for the worker; he has no choice. With his hands alone he cannot produce 'his' product. Just try without tools and machinery to found steel, to weave, to build railway carriages. Under capitalism, the very land is all in private hands; there remains no spot unowned where an enterprise can be carried on. The freedom of the worker to sell his labour power, the freedom of the capitalist to buy it, the 'equality' of the capitalist and the wage earner - all these are but hunger's chain which compels the labourer to work for the capitalist.

In this manner, the essence of wage labour consists in the sale of labour power, or in the transformation of labour power into a commodity. In the simple commodity economy which was described in §6, there were to be found in the market: milk, bread, cloth, boots, etc.; but not labour power. Labour power was not for sale. Its possessor, the independent artisan, had in addition his own little dwelling and his tools. He worked for himself, conducted his own enterprise, applied his own labour power to the carrying of it on.

Very different is it under capitalism. The worker no longer owns the means of production; he cannot make use of his labour power for the conduct of his own enterprise; if he would save himself from starvation, he must sell his labour power to the capitalist. Side by side with the markets where cotton, cheese, and machines are sold, there also comes into existence the labour market where proletarians, that is to say wage workers, sell their labour power.

WE SEE, THEN, THAT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CAPITALIST ECONOMY AND THE SIMPLE COMMODITY ECONOMY CONSISTS IN THIS, THAT IN THE CAPITALIST ECONOMY LABOUR POWER ITSELF BECOMES A COMMODITY. THUS, THE THIRD CHARACTERISTIC OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS THE EXISTENCE OF WAGE LABOUR.