The Interests of Capital and Wage-Labour are Diametrically opposed Effect of growth of productive Capital on Wages We thus see that, even if we keep ourselves within the relation of capital and wage-labor, the interests of capitals and the interests of wage-labor are diameterically opposed to each other.
A rapid growth of capital is synonymous with a rapid growth of profits.
Profits can grow rapidly only when the price of labor -- the relative wages -- decrease just as rapidly.Relative wages may fall, although real wages rise simultaneously with nominal wages, with the money value of labor, provided only that the real wage does not rise in the same proportion as the profit.If, for instance, in good business years wages rise 5 per cent, while profits rise 30 per cent, the proportional, the relative wage has not increased, but decreased.
If, therefore, the income of the worker increased with the rapid growth of capital, there is at the same time a widening of the social chasm that divides the worker from the capitalist, and increase in the power of capital over labor, a greater dependence of labor upon capital.
To say that "the worker has an interest in the rapid growth of capital", means only this: that the more speedily the worker augments the wealth of the capitalist, the larger will be the crumbs which fall to him, the greater will be the number of workers than can be called into existence, the more can the mass of slaves dependent upon capital be increased.
We have thus seen that even the most favorable situation for the working class, namely, the most rapid growth of capital, however much it may improve the material life of the worker, does not abolish the antagonism between his interests and the interests of the capitalist.Profit and wages remain as before, in inverse proportion.
If capital grows rapidly, wages may rise, but the profit of capital rises disproportionately faster.The material position of the worker has improved, but at the cost of his social position.The social chasm that separates him from the capitalist has widened.
Finally, to say that "the most favorable condition for wage-labor is the fastest possible growth of productive capital", is the same as to say:
the quicker the working class multiplies and augments the power inimical to it -- the wealth of another which lords over that class -- the more favorable will be the conditions under which it will be permitted to toil anew at the multiplication of bourgeois wealth, at the enlargement of the power of capital, content thus to forge for itself the golden chains by which the bourgeoisie drags it in its train.
Growth of productive capital and rise of wages, are they really so indissolubly united as the bourgeois economists maintain? We must not believe their mere words.We dare not believe them even when they claim that the fatter capital is the more will its slave be pampered.The bourgeoisie is too much enlightened, it keeps its accounts much too carefully, to share the prejudices of the feudal lord, who makes an ostentatious display of the magnificence of his retinue..The conditions of existence of the bourgeoisie compel it to attend carefully to its bookkeeping.We must therefore examine more closely into the following question:
In what manner does the growth of productive capital affect wages?
If as a whole, the productive capital of bourgeois society grows, there takes place a more many-sided accumulation of labor.The individual capitals increase in number and in magnitude.The multiplications of individual capitals increases the competition among capitalists.The increasing magnitude of increasing capitals provides the means of leading more powerful armies of workers with more gigantic instruments of war upon the industrial battlefield.