Wage Labour and Capital & Value, Price and Profit

Friedrich Engels, born on November 28, 1820, in Barmen, Germany, stands alongside Karl Marx as one of the most significant figures in the history of socialist thought and political activism. Engels’s early life was marked by his family’s involvement in the textile industry, providing him with firsthand exposure to the harsh realities of industrial capitalism. This experience ignited his passion for social justice and laid the groundwork for his later collaboration with Marx.

Engels first encountered Marx in 1842 while working at his family’s factory in Manchester, England. Their meeting sparked a deep and enduring friendship founded on shared political ideals and a common vision for social transformation. Most importantly, Engels’s financial support also enabled Marx to dedicate himself fully to his revolutionary work. Together, Engels and Marx co-authored several influential works, including The German Manifesto in 1846, The Communist Manifesto in 1848, and Volume One of Das KapitaI in 1867.

Engels’s own contributions to socialist theory were substantial, particularly his influential work The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), which exposed the difficult living and working conditions of industrial workers. His writings on dialectical materialism and the role of class struggle in historical development further enriched Marxist theory and laid the groundwork for future socialist movements.

After Marx’s death in 1883, Engels dedicated himself to preserving and promoting Marx’s ideas, editing and publishing the remaining volumes of Das Kapital and serving as a mentor to successive generations of socialist leaders. His influence can also be felt in the 1891 edition of “Wage Labour and Capital,” as he updated some of the terminology to more accurately reflect Marx’s thought as it developed later in his life. The most notable example of this is changing any instance that claimed a worker exchanges their labor for wages to say that they exchange their labor-power.

John Weston was a member of the General Council of the First International and an Owenite—a follower of Robert Owen, whose apolitical utopian philosophy is sometimes considered a forerunner for the cooperative movement. Weston addressed the General Council on April 4, 1865, and proposed they discuss whether the social and material prospects of the working class can be improved by wage increases and if trade union efforts to increase wages have a harmful effect on industry. A month later he argued that wage increases do not have a positive impact on the material conditions of the working class, and that trade unions are harming the working class because of the negative impact they have on industry.

Marx felt the necessity of refuting these claims for several reasons: He believed they would make the General Council look foolish and have a negative impact on its relationship with trade unions and ongoing strike efforts; he asserted that these arguments are based on the theory of a wage fund that Marx understood as both false and bourgeois ideology; and if accepted, the conclusion of Weston’s premise is that the working class should accept its position and be subservient to the bourgeoisie. Marx’s decision to publicly refute Weston illustrates that not all leftists were aligned in their thinking or their goals. By addressing the General Council in the way he does throughout “Value, Price and Profit,” Marx reveals how important he thinks it is that the leadership on the left is both theoretically well-informed and on the same page.