‘Value and price of labour’ or ‘wages’ are merely forms of appearance that conceal the essential rel… — Karl Marx

‘Value and price of labour’ or ‘wages’ are merely forms of appearance that conceal the essential relation, which is the value and price of labour-power, and this distinction between appearance and essence holds here just as in other economic phenomena.

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

Key Arguments

Marx explicitly sets up the contrast between appearance and essence: 'the form of appearance “value and price of labour”, or “wages”, as contrasted with the essential relation manifested in it, namely the value and price of labour-power.'
He asserts that what is said generally about forms of appearance vs hidden background applies here too: 'For the rest, what is true of all forms of appearance and their hidden background is also true of the form of appearance “value and price of labour”, or “wages”...'
By calling the 'value and price of labour' only a form of appearance, he implies that taking wages as the price of 'labour' is conceptually mistaken and obscures the real commodity, labour-power.

Source Quotes

Only, in the slave system, the advantage of a labour-power above the average, and the disadvantage of a labour-power below the average, affects the slave-owner; whereas in the system of wage-labour it affects the worker himself, because his labour-power is, in the one case, sold by himself, in the other, by a third person. For the rest, what is true of all forms of appearance and their hidden background is also true of the form of appearance ‘value and price of labour’, or ‘wages’, as contrasted with the essential relation manifested in it, namely the value and price of labour-power. The forms of appearance are reproduced directly and spontaneously, as current and usual modes of thought; the essential relation must first be discovered by science.

Key Concepts

For the rest, what is true of all forms of appearance and their hidden background is also true of the form of appearance ‘value and price of labour’, or ‘wages’, as contrasted with the essential relation manifested in it, namely the value and price of labour-power.

Context

In Chapter 19, after analyzing how wages mystify the sale of labour-power, Marx generalizes his method of distinguishing essence from appearance to the wage-form specifically.