Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. J. L. Joynes (1900).pdf/41

 to the price of other commodities; the relative wage, on the contrary expresses, the proportionate share which living labor gets of the new values created by it as compared to that, which is appropriated by stored-up labor capital. We said above, on page 17: “Wages are not the worker’s share of the commodities, which he has produced. Wages are the share of commodities previously produced with which the employer purchases a certain amount of productive labor-power.” But the amount of these wages the capitalist has to take out from the price, which he realizes for the product created by the workman, and as a rule, there remains yet for him a profit that is an excess over and above the cost of production, advanced by him. For the capitalist then the selling price of the commodity, produced by the workman, becomes divided into three parts: the 1st, to make up for the price of the advanced raw material and also for the wear and tear of the tools, machinery and other instruments of labor also advanced by him; the 2d2nd [sic], to make up for the wages advanced by him; the 3rd, the excess over and above these two parts, constitutes the profit of the capitalist. Whereas the first part merely replaces values, which had a previous existence, that part, which goes to replace wages as well as the excess, which constitutes profits, are, as a rule, clearly.taken out of , and added to the raw material. And in this sense, we may regard both wages and profits for the sake of comparison as shares of the product of the workman.

Real wages may remain the same, or they may even