Wage Labour and Capital

"Wage Labour and Capital" (German: Lohnarbeit und Kapital) was an 1847 lecture by the critic of political economy and philosopher Karl Marx, first published as articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in April 1849. It is widely considered the precursor to Marx’s influential treatise Das Kapital. It is commonly paired with Marx's 1865 lecture Value, Price and Profit. Previously, Marx had been studying political economy evidence of his unpublished Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and Marx publishing The Poverty of Philosophy in France in 1847.

In 1883, a Russian translation was published as a book and included an excerpt from Capital volume 1 in the appendix, chapter 23 on Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation. In 1885, a pamphlet version was first published as an English translation. An 1885 pamphlet based on the newspaper articles was published in Hottingen-Zürich without Marx's knowledge and with a brief introduction by Friedrich Engels. The German edition was revised by Engels in 1891 and published by Vorwärts after the Anti-Socialist Laws had lapsed the previous year. In 1893, an updated English translation from the 1891 German edition was published in London.

Summary
The lecture and newspaper articles were meant to be a "popular" presentation of the economic relations under capitalism and the material basis for class struggle. It would suggest that class rule of the bourgeoisie in capitalist society rests on the wage slavery of the workers. The theory of surplus value explained the poverty experienced by the working class. The work also represents the depth to which Marx had developed his theories by the late 1840s. It is an early theoretical formulation of Marxism, but did suggest alienated labor as a condition of accumulating labor in to capital through the capitalist mode of production. Marx suggested capitalism was a transitional historical period that would eventually lead to the proletarian revolution.

The essay defines the prices of commodities based on the economic principles of supply and demand. Marx also introduces the labour theory of value, where labour power is a commodity within capitalism. This labour power produces value greater than what the workers exchange with the capitalist for wages. This is the source of relative pauperisation of the proletariat, and wages harm the growth of productive capital.