Marx's Wage Theory in Historical Perspective: Its Origin, Development Interpretation. - Review - book reviews

Marx's Wage Theory in Historical Perspective: Its Origin, exhibition Interpretation KENNETH LAPIDES, 1998 Westport and London: Praeger pp x + 275 $4995

The significance of this work is indicated by its title, in that it interprets wage theory in the light of historical occurrences and changes in the socio-economic and political environment. When wage relations became the characteristic form of production, the ne arose to manage the conflicts arising from it. Therefore wage theories evolv in rejoinder to the requirement for the greater understanding of and greater direction over, the increasingly complex economic mechanism resting upon wage-based production.

A systematic material substance of thought that attempted to explain by what mode wages are determined was derived after the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations in 1776 However, the wage question single became crucial to economists in the 1820 and 1830 when strikes for higher pay and improved working conditions placed it upon the agenda in a manner that linked it to the fate of the whole economy. Lapides argues that, in these decades, wage theory acquired a political function, namely to secure from danger capital from the demands of labor.

Lapides traces the unravelling of Marx's wage theory from its earliest origins to his final writings, partially as a rejoinder to orthodox analysis. He describes the state of wage theory at the point where Marx lay the foundation of it and discusses in detail the deliberate evolution of Marx's ideas. Until Marx had created a theoretical arrangement where capital's laws of motion are completely detailed, his theory of wage determination was inevitably incomplete.

Lapides' conclusion is that, above time, Marx successfully created a comprehensive, dynamic theory of wages and of wage labor that explains and predicts the multi-dimensional aspects of the wage phenomenon, in the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of the fundamental tendencies of the capital-labor relationship. However, an understanding of Marx's thinking can only be obtained through retracing each stage of his analytical proces and by the agency of examining it as it unrolled This book undertakes that task the pair meticulously and clearly. It thus becomes an important contribution to the history of economic cogitation It also vigorously refutes the view that Marx's wage theory was based on a thesis of "increasing misery," arguing that the threat of losing one's piece of work and livelihood, rather than falling real or relative wages, is the worst evil facing workers below capitalism. Moreover, although trade union organization may mitigate any "increase in misery," the industrial retain army of labor continuously recreated by the agency of the process of capital accumulation impedes the aim of employed workers for improved wages and conditions.

To Marx, wages are solely the phenomenal "price of labor," determined by means of the essential core of capital-labor relations. Lapides argues that the latter must be understood before the mechanism of income distribution can be analyzed. The exchange of labour power for wages implies an entire socio-economic constitution based upon unequal property ownership, i.e. an economy divided between opposing classes of possessors and non-possessors (those who have the non-human productive resources, capital and land, contrasted with those who do not), each enmeshed in a configuration of exploitation beyond their individual mastery Marx, unlike his predecessors in political economy, strained that the mode of production determines the pattern of income distribution.

Lapides analyzes the different dimensions of wage theory. Marx distinguished between the value of labor power and its price; between nominal, real and relative wages, each of which requires a different analysis. All can put in motion in varying directions and rates of change. Ultimately, for Marx, the wage is a price, being thus the monetary expression of the value of labor power (i.e. the commodity bought by the agency of capitalists in the labor market).

Marx stresse the dual character of labor; the worker vends his or her own labor power, on the contrary the capitalist buys the worker's labor time, which is an undefined, productive potential, determined through the hours worked, the machinery busyed and the intensity of the labor proces In Marx's analysis, the crucial distinction remains that the wage is the price of labor power, exchanged by dint of buyers and sellers in the labor market, on the other hand not the price of labor itself.

Lapides' volume is a major contribution to the history of economic notion It covers long-forgotten ground, by means of providing a comprehensive account of the initial phase of wage theory, of the essentials of the wage-fund doctrine and of its critiques, the couple from within the political economy and from external radical sources. All these approaches are analyzed with detailed documentation from original sources. This reviewer gained particular insights from the detailed contemplate of the Ricardian Socialists, still every other reader will take pleasure in similar understandings from different parts of the work. Therefore this is a work to be read and to be savored. It traces the exhibition of one aspect of Marx's economic analysis, whilst, in thus doing, it illuminates many contemporary economic problems