Karl’s Quotes

- Marx is often criticized for his statements re. the deepening poverty of
the working class. In the industrialized world, at least, workers enjoy a
higher standard of living than previously. (We are probably witnessing a
reversal of that trend). However, in relation to the surplus-value
produced, our the workers’ share is indeed diminishing. Marx wrote,

“Labour-power with a certain rate of payment may be more or less severely
exploited, both extensively and intensively. If the amount of money capital increases with severer exploitation, i.e. if wages rise, they still do not rise in relation to the degree of exploitation, i.e. not at all proportionately.” (Capital, Volume II, page 431, Penguin edition).
It goes without saying that it is the nature of capitalism that exploitation
is ever severer.

I couldn’t resist this gem of wry humour from Marx, “Carey (Henry Charles Carey, described by Marx as a ‘vulgar economist’ and champion of "harmony of interests’ between the classes) reckons that the landowner never receives his due rent, since he is not paid for all the capital and labour that has been put into the soil from time immemorial to give it its present productive capacity. (There is no mention, of course, of the productive capacity that is taken out of the soil.) According to this conception, the individual worker should be paid according to the work that it cost the entire human race to build him up from a savage into a modern engineer.”
John Ayres .Socialist Party of Canada