Wages

Reading Capital: The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power

The seventh entry in a section-by-section reading of Marx’s Capital, and the climax of Part Two. Five chapters of demolition have left only one possibility standing: somewhere on the market there must be a commodity whose use creates more value than it costs. Chapter Six names it — labour-power, the human capacity to work — sets out the strange double freedom of the worker who sells it, works out its price, and then leads buyer and seller off the bright street of exchange and down into the hidden abode of production. The objections this time run from rising wages to the freedom of contract.