Wage Labour and Capital & Value, Price and Profit

“Consequently, it appears that the capitalist buys their labour with money, and that for money they sell him their labour. But this is merely an illusion.”

The idea of illusion comes up frequently throughout these two essays and is central to Karl Marx’s broader project. This is because he is attempting to combat The Nature of Bourgeois Ideology—which is responsible for and upholds these illusions—and to educate the working class about the true nature of their relationship to capital.

“But the putting of labour-power into action—i.e., the work—is the active expression of the labourer’s own life. And this life activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of life. His life-activity, therefore, is but a means of securing his own existence. He works that he may keep alive. He does not count the labour itself as a part of his life; it is rather a sacrifice of his life.”

The phrase “life activity” reveals that, for Marx, labor is a fundamentally human endeavor and central to life. However, under capitalist relations, labor is no longer the fulfilling activity it should be, leading to The Experience of Worker Alienation. Instead, work becomes a sacrifice laborers are forced to make to survive, and their “real life” only begins outside of the workplace.

“Industry leads two great armies into the field against each other, and each of these again is engaged in a battle among its own troops in its own ranks. The army among whose troops there is less fighting, carries off the victory over the opposing host.”

Marx uses a lot of metaphors and analogies to help explicate his arguments. This has the dual benefit of making complex ideas more accessible, while also making his prose less dry and boring—both equally important, given his aim to reach a wide, popular audience.