Wages!

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 41, 15 December 1911, Page 6

Wages!

By MARY E. MARCY.

Titer© (are several vraya whereby wage-workers may try to improve their condition to-day. In Lesson V. we discussed Low Prices and their effect upon the condition of working-class life. We discovered that as tKe prices on the necessities of life fall, wages fall proportionately because of the competition among wage-workers for jobs. It would be impossible for an employer to arbitrarily lower wages, just as it is impossible for capitalists to arbitrarily raise the prices on commodities. The conditions must be favorable to such a rise or fall in prices. It is the Army of Unemployed men and women that force wages (or the price of labor power) down, when the cost of living falls. We were unable to find where low prices would benefit the working-class. In dsicussing prices in the last two lessons, we have not said much about wages, or the price of labor-power. Labor-power is a commodity just _as t stoves, coats or flour are commodities. And the value and. price of labor-power are determined exactly as the price and value of all other commodities are determined. Wage-workers are always trying; to get higher wages, or a better price for their labor-power. It is easy to understand that the gold, miner who secures a raise in, wages from 2 dols. to 3 dols. a day, leaves less surplus value l for the mineowiiei. , He receives back more of his product. And the aim of Socialists or revolutionary workmen and women, is to become owners of their entire product. . Confused economistsi huve repeatedly claimed that a rise in wages was of no benefit to the proletariat. They insisted that the capitalists would raise prices on the necessities of life, so that the workers would be just where they were before. But in Value, Price, and Puofit, chapter 2,, page 17, Marx says: "How could that rise of wages affect the . nrices of commodities? Only by affecting the actual proportion between the demand for, and the supply of, these commodities. ''It is perfectly true that, considered as a whole, the working-class spends, and must spend, its income upon necessaries. A general rise in the rate of wages would, -therefore, produce a rise in the demand for, and consequently (temporarily) •in the market prices of, necessaries. "The capitalists who produce these necessaries would be compen sated for the risen wages by the rising market prices of the commodities." Note, Marx says that temporarily the prices on necessaries would probably rise, owing to the increased demand for food, clothing better •' houses; not because the capitalists decided to raise prices. And then note what begins to follow immediately : "What would be the position of those capitalists who do not produce necessaries? For the fall in the rate of profit, consequent upon the general rise in the price of wages, they could not compen Vr a ?- IS o rr -ice of their commodities, because the demand for their commodities would not have been increased. "Consequent upon this diminished

From " Shop Talks on Economics."

demand, the prices of their eommodioies would fall. In these branches of ndustry, therefore, the rate of profit would fall. "What would be the consequence of this difference in the rates of profit for capitals employed in . the different branches of industry? Why, the consequences that generally obtains whenr ever, from whatever reason, the average nate of profit comes to differ in the different spheres of production. "Capital and labor would be transferred from the less remunerative to the more remunerative branches ; and this process of transfer would go on until the supply in the one department of industry would have risen proportionately to th/ 3 increased demand, and would have sunk in the other'departments according to the decreased demand. "This change effected, the general rate of profit would again be equalised in the different brandies. As the whole derangement originally arose from a mere change in the proportion of the demand for, and supply of, different the cause ceasing, the effect would ceas© and prices would return to their former level and equilibrium. "The general rise in the ' rate of wages would, therefore, after a temporary disturbance of market prices, only result in a general fall in the rate of profit, without any permanent change in the prices of commodities." We will use a concrete illustration ■y explain Marx's point. In a mining camp the miners secured -a gam of wages of from 2 dols. to 3 dols. a day. The man who ran tlie only restaurant i the camp thought he could raise the price of board from 4 dols. to 5 dols. a week. For a week ortw© the miners paid the advanced price, «but the third week a new restaurant was opened by a man who heard of the "prosperity" in this particular camp, and inside of two months there wer« four restaurants competing for trade in Golden Gulch. This . competition among the restaurant keepers forced board down to 3 dols. a week. Some of them moved away until board fell to the average rate "of board in that State. ' •' , . As long as prices were better there new investors came to Golden Gulch, and when they fell below the average price for board investors went away. Marx says that when workmen ana women got higher wages, they spend this increase in better food, better homes, and better clothing. This stimulates the- demand for food, clothing and houses. More capitalists begin to invest in food production, in houses, and in the manufacture of clothing. The competition ■ among capitalists often brings the prices of these things below tlie rates charged before the workers received their increase, until these capitalists fuid they can make, more money in oilier fields, when they invest in other . industres and prices fall to what they were before the rise in wages. ~ On the very last page of Value, Price and Profit, Marx again says: — "A o-eneral rise in the rate of wages would result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but, broadly speaking, uot affect the prices of commodities."