Abstract
What is this thing we have called wage-labour, about which we have theorised? Clearly, it is that which stands opposite to capital within capitalism. Wage-labour is the necessary mediator for capital in capital’s thrust to grow. The reproduction of capital requires the reproduction of a body of wage-labourers, a mass of human instruments of production who must enter into a relation in which they perform surplus labour for capital. Thus, wage-labour is a necessary moment within the reproduction of capital.
Since capital as such is indifferent to every particularity of its substance, and exists not only as the totality of the same but also as the abstraction from all its particularities, the labour which confronts it likewise subjectively has the same totality and abstraction in itself.
Marx 1
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© 1992 Michael A. Lebowitz
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Lebowitz, M.A. (1992). The One-Sidedness of Wage-Labour. In: Beyond Capital. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21831-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21831-8_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-52051-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-21831-8
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