Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. J. L. Joynes (1900).pdf/52

 or twenty times. The laborers do not only compete when one sells himself cheaper than another, they also compete when one does the work of five, ten, or twenty; and the division of labor which capital introduces and continually increases, compels the laborers to enter into this kind of competition with one another.

Further in the same proportion in which the division of labor is increased the labor itself is simplified. The special skill of the laborer becomes worthless. It is changed into a monotonous and uniform power of production, which gives play neither to bodily nor to intellectual elasticity. His labor becomes accessible to everybody. Competitors, therefore, crowd around him from all sides; and besides, we must remember that the more simple and easily learnt the labor is, and the less it costs a man to make himself master of it, so much the lower must its wages sink, since they are determined, like the price of every other commodity, by its coat of production.

Therefore, The laborer does his best to maintain the rate of wages by performing more labor, whether by working for a greater number of hours, or by working harder in the same time. Thus, driven by necessity, he himself increases the evil consequences of the subdivision of labor. So the result is this: and that for the simple reason—that he competes