Yuan Jiaxi: Marx’s Critique of the Issue of Capitalist Wages
Within the system of Marxist political economy, the question of capitalist wages serves as a critical pivot for revealing the essence of capitalist exploitation. As a programmatic document of scientific communism, the Critique of the Gotha Programme not only carried out a thorough liquidation of the opportunist tendencies within the draft program of the Workers' Party of Germany but also, through a profound analysis of the nature of capitalist wages, revealed the secret of capitalist exploitation and the path to proletarian liberation.
The thorough critique of Lassalle's "Iron Law of Wages." The "Iron Law of Wages" proposed by Ferdinand Lassalle was one of the deeply influential yet erroneous theories within the 19th-century workers' movement. He argued that "the average wages of labor always remain reduced to the necessary subsistence which, according to the custom of a nation, is required for the maintenance of existence and for reproduction," with wage levels fluctuating around a certain standard like a physical phenomenon governed by natural laws. Lassalle claimed that if wages rose above the level of necessary subsistence, the worker population would increase due to improved conditions, leading to an oversupply of labor and causing wages to fall back to the average; if wages fell below this level, the worker population would decrease due to poverty, and the resulting labor shortage would cause wages to rise again. This view, which attributed wage movements to natural fluctuations in population, was upheld by Lassalle and his followers as an unshakeable "iron law." [1]
Marx pointed out in the Critique of the Gotha Programme that Lassalle’s "Iron Law of Wages" originated from the Malthusian theory of population, which fundamentally distorts the essence of wages. Malthus blamed the poverty of capitalist society on a natural law wherein population growth outpaces the growth of the means of subsistence, while deliberately avoiding the root cause: the private ownership of the means of production. Marx noted that if Malthusian theory were correct, "the law could not be abolished even if you abolished wage labor a hundred times," which clearly contradicts the actual conditions of capitalist wage fluctuations. In the reality of capitalist life, wage levels are not determined by abstract natural laws of population, but are the result of the combined action of various factors, such as the balance of power between capital and labor, the degree of development of labor productivity, and the specific conditions of class struggle. As Marx argued in detail in Capital, "the general laws of wages are very complicated... according to circumstances, now one law predominates and now another... they are by no means iron but on the contrary very elastic."
Lassalle’s erroneous understanding of wage laws essentially confused the boundary between "labor" and "labor-power." In his studies of political economy, Marx had long ago revealed that the essence of wages is a "disguised form of the value or price of labor-power." As a commodity, the value of labor-power is determined by the value of the means of subsistence necessary to maintain the laborer and their family, whereas labor—as the process of using labor-power—is capable of creating value that exceeds its own value, namely: surplus value. The wages a capitalist pays a worker are equal only to the value of labor-power, while the surplus value created by the worker during surplus labor time is appropriated by the capitalist without compensation; this is the secret of capitalist exploitation. Lassalle’s "Iron Law of Wages" precisely concealed this exploitative essence, distorting a specific historical phenomenon of capitalism into an eternal natural law.
The revelation of the essence of capitalist wages. Building upon his critique of Lassalle’s erroneous theories, Marx profoundly exposed the exploitative nature of capitalist wages and their systemic contradictions. Under the capitalist system, laborers are separated from the means of production and possess nothing but their own labor-power, which they are forced to sell as a commodity to capitalists in exchange for the means of subsistence; this determines the exploitative nature of the wage relationship.
The occult nature of the wage form is a significant characteristic of capitalist exploitation. Marx emphasized in the Critique of the Gotha Programme that wages appear as the "value or price of labor," an appearance that conceals the true relationship between capital and labor. It seems as though the capitalist pays wages for the worker's entire labor time, but in reality, the worker's labor time is divided into two parts: necessary labor time and surplus labor time. Behind this appearance of an exchange of equivalents lies the capitalist's uncompensated appropriation of the worker's surplus labor. As Marx pointed out: "the system of wage labor is a system of slavery... the worker only receives permission to work for his own life, i.e., to live, so long as he works for a certain time gratis for the capitalist (and hence also for the latter's co-consumers of surplus value)."
The contradiction between the wage system and capital accumulation is a major root of capitalist crises. As labor productivity increases, the value of labor-power shows a downward trend, while capitalists continuously increase the rate of surplus value by extending the working day, increasing labor intensity, and adopting mechanized production. This leads to the fundamental contradiction of capitalist society: on one hand, capital accumulation requires the continuous expansion of the scale of production to obtain more surplus value; on the other hand, the wage levels of the working class are restricted within the limits of the value of labor-power, resulting in relatively insufficient consumption capacity, which eventually triggers crises of overproduction. Marx's wage theory reveals that the capitalist wage system is not only a means of exploitation but also a significant factor that intensifies social contradictions and leads to periodic crises.
The phrasing in the draft program of the Workers' Party of Germany regarding the "abolition of the wage system together with the iron law of wages" was, in Marx’s view, logically confused. He pointed out that if the system of wage labor were truly abolished, the "iron law of wages" would naturally vanish with it, making its separate mention unnecessary. Placing the two side-by-side in the draft program precisely exposed a misunderstanding of the nature of wages—specifically, a failure to recognize the internal unity between the wage system and the system of wage labor. Marx emphasized that wages, as the expression of the value of labor-power as a commodity, are an inevitable product of capitalist relations of production. Only by thoroughly abolishing the private ownership of the means of production and eliminating the system of wage labor can the exploitative relationship embodied in wages be fundamentally eradicated.
The transformation of relations of production is the fundamental way out. Although Marx's wage theory reveals the exploitative essence of capitalism, the exploitative nature of the capitalist wage system is not an eternal natural law but a product of the private ownership of the means of production and the system of wage labor. The transformation of the mode of distribution depends on the fundamental transformation of the mode of production. Any distribution of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves; the distribution of the conditions of production, in turn, manifests the character of the mode of production itself.
Marx pointed out that although the principle of "distribution according to work" is still implemented in the first stage of communism [2], while this distribution method still uses labor as the measure, its foundation is the public ownership of the means of production—meaning the laborer no longer creates surplus value for a capitalist. "The individual producer receives back from society—after the deductions have been made—exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor." Marx envisioned that in a higher stage of communism, "after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly," society will implement the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." This mode of distribution will use actual human needs as the basis for distribution, marking humanity’s leap from the "realm of necessity" to the "realm of freedom." [3]
Marx's reflection on and critique of capitalist wages is a major component of his political economy. Through his thorough critique of Lassalle’s "Iron Law of Wages," Marx scientifically revealed that the essence of wages is the value or price of labor-power, elucidating the exploitative nature of the capitalist wage system. This theory not only provided a theoretical weapon for the Workers' Party of Germany to correct its errors and adhere to the correct revolutionary direction at the time but also provides eternal theoretical guidance for future generations of the proletariat to understand the capitalist system and carry out the struggle for liberation.
(The author is an Associate Professor at the School of Marxism, Heilongjiang University) Source: Guangming Daily (March 3, 2026) Editor: Huihui