An increase in wages arouses in the worker the same desire to get rich as in the capitalist, but he can only satisfy this desire by sacrificing his mind and body. An increase in wages presupposes, and brings about, the accumulation of capital, and thus opposes the product of labor to the worker as something increasingly alien* to him. Similarly, the division of labor makes him more and more one-sided and dependent, introducing competition from machines as well as from men. Since the worker has been reduced to a machine, the machine can confront him as a competitor. Finally, just as the accumulation of capital increases the quantity of industry and, therefore, the number of workers, so it enables the same quantity of industry to produce a greater quantity of products. This leads to overproduction and ends up either by putting a large number of workers out of work or by reducing their wages to a pittance.
Marx in the "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts" of 1844. http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1844-EPM/1st.htm#s1 ************************************************************************ * I think that the word "alien" can be confusing. What Marx is getting at primarily is alienation in the sense of the separation of ownership and control of the social product of labour which the wage-slave suffers. Wages CAN grow, but the product of labour, which is always greater, cannot be controlled nor owned by the producer, the worker, except by using the money gotten from her/his wages to buy a portion of it back in the form of commodities. Thus, the social product of labour in a wages system becomes an alien political-economic power OVER him/her. In a word, it becomes Capital. BTW, the equality of wages was something being planned and implemented in the old USSR. For example, wages on collective farms were being raised by greater percentages than wages in the more urbanized, more intellectual sectors in the sixties and seventies. Regards, Mike B) ===== "Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny — and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do)." — Stephen Jay Gould http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online by April 15th http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
