“ Wages do not contribute, along with labour, to the production of commodities, no more than the price of tools contributes along with the tools themselves. ”
Karl Marx, Das Kapital (1867). copy citation
| Author | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Source | Das Kapital |
| Topic | price commodity |
| Date | 1867 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling |
| Weblink | https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-... |
Context
“It, in fact, transforms, within certain limits, the labourer’s necessary consumption fund into a fund for the accumulation of capital.
“Wages,” says John Stuart Mill, “have no productive power; they are the price of a productive power. Wages do not contribute, along with labour, to the production of commodities, no more than the price of tools contributes along with the tools themselves. If labour could be had without purchase, wages might be dispensed with.”36
But if the labourers could live on air they could not be bought at any price. The zero of their cost is therefore a limit in a mathematical sense, always beyond reach, although we can always approximate more and more nearly to it.”
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