Labor in developed capitalist countries is often cheaper for the capitalist despite being more expensive for the worker (higher wages), due to higher productivity and intensity.

By Karl Marx, from Le Capital : Critique de l'économie politique

Key Arguments

  • The relative price of labor (compared to the product's value) is often lower in high-wage countries
  • Workers in developed nations produce significantly more product in less time than those in less developed nations
  • Continental labor is dearer in proportion to the product despite lower wages and longer hours

Source Quotes

It follows then that nominal wages, the equivalent of labour-power expressed in money, will also be higher in the first nation than in the second; but this by no means proves that the same can be said of real wages, i.e. the means of subsistence placed at the disposal of the worker. But even apart from these relative differences in the value of money in different countries, it will frequently be found that the daily or weekly wage in the first nation is higher than in the second while the relative price of labour, i.e. the price of labour as compared both with surplus-value and with the value of the product, stands higher in the second than in the first. J.
W. Cowell, a member of the Factory Commission of 1833, came to the conclusion, after careful investigation of the spinning trade, that ‘in England wages are virtually lower to the capitalist, though higher to the operative than on the Continent of Europe’ (Ure, p. 314).
314). The English factory inspector Alexander Redgrave, in his Report of 31 October 1866, proves, by comparing the statistics of Continental states, that in spite of lower wages and much longer hours of work, Continental labour is, in proportion to the product, dearer than English. The English manager of a cotton factory in Oldenburg declared that the working hours there were from 5.30 a.m. to 8 p.m.,

Key Concepts

  • daily or weekly wage in the first nation is higher than in the second while the relative price of labour
  • stands higher in the second than in the first
  • wages are virtually lower to the capitalist, though higher to the operative
  • Continental labour is, in proportion to the product, dearer than English

Context

Marx citing factory inspectors and reports to demonstrate that high wages can coexist with high rates of exploitation and low unit costs