Progress and Poverty · Concept
Wages and Labor
Challenges the classical theory that wages are drawn from capital, asserting instead that wages are produced by labor, and that competition for land forces wages to a subsistence minimum.
Challenges the classical theory that wages are drawn from capital, asserting instead that wages are produced by labor, and that competition for land forces wages to a subsistence minimum.
The chapter directly addresses the nature of wages, arguing they are produced by labor rather than drawn from capital, challenging classical views.
The chapter directly challenges the classical theory that wages are determined by the ratio of labor to capital, arguing instead that wages come from the product of labor.
Wealth is defined as labor impressed upon matter, and capital as wealth aiding production, linking labor to the creation of tangible wealth.
The chapter directly addresses the nature of wages, arguing they are produced by labor rather than drawn from capital.
Characters
Chapters
- Book I: Wages and Capital
- I: The Current Doctrine of Wages—Its Insufficiency
- II: The Meaning of the Terms
- III: Wages Not Drawn from Capital, but Produced by the Labor
- The Maintenance of Laborers Not Drawn from Capital
- V: The Real Functions of Capital
- IV: Disproof of the Malthusian Theory
- I: The Inquiry Narrowed to the Laws of Distribution—The Necessary Relation of These Laws