this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
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This text was written by Marx and published in 1865. Much like Wage Labour and Capital, the text overlaps with parts of Capital. You can read the text here.

You can post questions or share your thoughts at any time, even after we've moved on to a new text.

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  5. Decolonization is not a metaphor
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  9. Wage Labour and Capital
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[–] Vanilla987654321@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Is there any particular reason that Marx did not mention potential reasons for the capitalist in the USA paying greater average wages compared to the British capitalist? Such as gathering labor aristocrat allies against the labor underclasses[slaves and certain foreigners]? Especially since this was published in 1865.

[–] deathtoreddit@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 1 week ago

You might be in luck. While I can't say why Marx didn't mention the reasons why he didn't do that,

He did mention why U.S wage laborer earned relative higher, compared to their British and European counterparts, in Chapter 33 of Capital

We have seen that the expropriation of the mass of the people from the soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production. The essence of a free {settler} colony, on the contrary, consists in this — that the bulk of the {indigenous}soil is still public property, and every settler on it therefore can turn part of it into his private property and individual means of production, without hindering the later settlers in the same operation.[10] This is the secret both of the prosperity of the colonies and of their inveterate vice — opposition to the establishment of capital. “Where land is very cheap and all men are free, where every one who so pleases can easily obtain a piece of land for himself, not only is labour very dear, as respects the labourer’s share of the produce, but the difficulty is to obtain combined labour at any price.” [11]

In other words, in a world of Euro-Amerikan petty bourgeoisie settler proprietors, why be a wage laborer? Hence, to attract more wage laborers, a transitional above-average wage was put into place, by necessity.

Only when

the expropriation of the mass of the people from the soil

by growing Capital is in major process, will Capital thus reduce and later equalize the wage of wage laborers to what it is in Europe

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I don't remember them talking about the US condition but they did talk about the bourgeoisification of the english working class in correspondence.

After that affair one might almost believe that the English proletarian movement in its old traditional Chartist form must perish utterly before it can evolve in a new and viable form. And yet it is not possible to foresee what the new form will look like. It seems to me, by the way, that there is in fact a connection between Jones’ new move, seen in conjunction with previous more or less successful attempts at such an alliance, and the fact that the English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that the ultimate aim of this most bourgeois of all nations would appear to be the possession, alongside the bourgeoisie, of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat.

[–] Vanilla987654321@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's why I thought it was odd that he did not talk about capitalism and its relationship to colonialism. Since Marx stated in his letters to Engels that the English working class would never achieve liberation without decoupling itself from Irish exploitation.

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 week ago

This text along "wage labour and capital" were written as agitprop pieces so its ok that it doesnt have as much depth.