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Wage A4

In Karl Marx piece on Wage Labor and Capital, he uses the weaver as an example to talk about the relationship of labor activity to a commodity. He was showing the relationship between supply and demand. He shows the chain of events in which the capitalist supplies the raw materials for the worker to make a product then that finish product is returned to the capitalist to be sold for x amount of money but none of that money belongs to the worker that makes that product. He is paid a set price for his work and none of the profits from the finish product belongs to the worker.  There is no true or intimate connection between that worker and the merchandise in which they produce because they are not producing it for themselves they were hired by a corporation to produce a certain number of goods at a specific time at a set price. So the love and attention that they would normally put into it if that product represents them is not there.

For example, Footlocker they are just the means in which the shoes are distributed but they have factories where they hire workers to make these shoes for cheap then bring them to America and sells them for hundreds of dollars but the workers in the factory already have a set price for their wage that they are being paid none of the money that they make off the shoes sold in the stores belong to these workers.  The worker only receives the amount of money he or she agreed to work for upon hire. As we can see today some products that are made in China are worth staying in china due to the way they were made they weren’t built to last long.

According to Marx labour power is the commodity that the worker sells to the boss and the reason is to make a living so the relationship he’s trying to make between commodity and wage labor is that the worker himself sells his commodity for a price so wages are a part of the commodity which means that wages create commodities. Marx said that wages are the already existing part of commodities. He gave an example where he spoke about slavery and how those workers did not sell their labor to the capitalist but they were already sold for a price. This shows that labour did not always a commodity and it was not always paid for it was also free.