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Mystifications of the wage form I

Mystifications of the wage form I. The wage presents itself as the value or price of labour : It appears that labour is paid, not labour power. The wage presents itself as payment of the entire working day.

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Mystifications of the wage form I

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  1. Mystifications of the wage form I • The wage presents itself as the value or price of labour: It appears that labour is paid, not labour power. • The wage presents itself as payment of the entire working day. • Payment of labour is an «imaginary expression»(p. 677) that arises from the relations of production.

  2. Mystifications of the wage form II The wage-form thus extinguishes every trace of the division of the working day into necessary labour and surplus labour, into paid labour and unpaid labour. All labour appears as paid labour. […] All the notions of justice held by both the worker and the capitalist, all the mystifications of the capitalist mode of production, all capitalism’s illusions about freedom, all the apologetic tricks of vulgar economics, have as their basis the form of appearance discussed above, which makes the actual relation invisible, and indeed presents to the eye the precise opposite of that relation. (p. 680)

  3. Time wages and piece wages Time wages:The worker is paid per unit of time. Piece wages: The worker is paid per product. daily value of the commodity LP daily value of the commodity LP working day of a given number of hours average number of products made during a working day However, it is in itself obvious that the difference of form in the payment of wages in no way alters their essential nature. (p. 693)

  4. Peculiarities of piece wages • The quality of the labour is controlled by the enterprise itself. • The piece wage offers a measure for the intensity of labour. • The capitalists can simply raise the intensity of labour. • Piece wages facilitate the interposition of «parasites» between capitalists and wage labourers: «the subletting of labour».(p. 695) • Individuality has more room for maneuver. • Competition between workers increases.

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