Wages

The monetary expression of the value, or the price, of labor-power, but which appears in the form of the “price of labor.” Wages (time-wages, piecework-wages, bonuses, etc.) seem to be payment for the entire labor of the worker; hence, capitalist exploitation, i.e., the appropriation of surplus value, is concealed. “The value of labor-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labor-time necessary for its production, and, consequently also the reproduction of this special article… in other words, the value of labor-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the laborer” (Marx). Wages “are not a share of the worker in the commodities produced by himself. Wages are that part of already existing commodities with which the capitalist buys a certain amount of productive labor-power” (Marx). Unlike other commodities, the determination of the value of labor-power includes an historical or social element. In every country it is “determined by a traditional standard of life. It is not mere physical life, but it is the satisfaction of certain wants springing from social conditions in which people are placed and reared” (Marx). The tendency in capitalism is always towards the reduction of the standard of living of the workers to an extremely low level.