Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. Harriet E. Lothrop (1902).djvu/50

 price of labor-power, the nominal wages, but also the real wages.

But neither the nominal wages, i.e., the amount of money for which the laborer sells himself to the capitalist, nor the real wages, i.e., the amount of commodities which he can buy for this money, exhausts the relations which are comprehended in the term wages.

Wages are determined above all by their relation to the gain, the profit, of the capitalist. In other words, wages are a proportionate, relative quantity.

Real wages express the price of labor-power in relation to the price of other commodities; relative wages, on the other hand, express the share of immediate labor in the value newly created by it, in relation to the share of it which falls to accumulated labor, to capital.