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"Value
Price and Profit" was a lecture in 1865 in which Marx announced his
economic theory to some of his partners before he put his theory in
writing. The lecture was later published in the form of a pamphlet. After
finishing his long discussion of the laws of economics, he ended it by
talking about what he figured it all means to the labor union movement,
or how we should interpret the purpose of the labor union movement.
Copied below are Marx's final paragraphs:
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These few hints will suffice to show that the very
development of
modern industry must progressively turn the scale
in favour of the
capitalist against the working man, and that
consequently the
general tendency of capitalistic production is not
to raise, but to
sink the average standard of wages, or to push the
VALUE OF LABOUR
more or less to its MINIMUM LIMIT. Such being the
tendency of
THINGS in this system, is this saying that the
working class ought
to renounce their resistance against the
encroachments of capital,
and abandon their attempts at making the best of
the occasional
chances for their temporary improvement? If they
did, they would be
degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past
salvation. I
think I have shown that their struggles for the
standard of wages
are incidents inseparable from the whole wages
system, that in 99
cases out of 100 their efforts at raising wages are
only efforts at
maintaining the given value of labour, and that the
necessity of
debating their price with the capitalist is
inherent to their
condition of having to sell themselves as
commodities. By cowardly
giving way in their everyday conflict with capital,
they would
certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating
of any larger
movement.
At the same time, and quite apart form the general
servitude
involved in the wages system, the working class
ought not to
exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of
these everyday
struggles. They ought not to forget that they are
fighting with
effects, but not with the causes of those effects;
that they are
retarding the downward movement, but not changing
its direction;
that they are applying palliatives, not curing the
malady. They
ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in
these
unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing
up from the never
ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the
market. They
ought to understand that, with all the miseries it
imposes upon
them, the present system simultaneously engenders
the MATERIAL
CONDITIONS and the SOCIAL FORMS necessary for an
economical
reconstruction of society. Instead of the
CONSERVATIVE motto, "A
FAIR DAY'S WAGE FOR A FAIR DAY'S WORK!" they
ought to inscribe on
their banner the REVOLUTIONARY watchword,
"ABOLITION OF THE WAGES
SYSTEM!"
After this very long and, I fear, tedious
exposition, which I was
obliged to enter into to do some justice to the
subject matter, I
shall conclude by proposing the following resolutions:
Firstly. A general rise in the rate of wages would
result in a fall
of the general rate of profit, but, broadly
speaking, not affect the
prices of commodities.
Secondly. The general tendency of capitalist
production is not to
raise, but to sink the average standard of wages.
Thirdly. Trades Unions work well as centers of
resistance against
the encroachments of capital. They fail partially
from an
injudicious use of their power. The faily generally
from limiting
themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of
the existing
system, instead of simultaneously trying to change
it, instead of
using their organized forces as a lever for the
final emancipation
of the working class that is to say the ultimate
abolition of the
wages system.
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