The Relationship of Wages to the Value of Labour-Power in Marx's Labour Market

Francis Green

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1991, vol. 15, issue 2, 199-213

Abstract: Having explicitly rejected Malthus' law of population, Marx asserted in his early writings that it was competition that would keep wages fluctuating the value of labor-power, even though he did not consider the production of labor-power to be a capitalist process. This paper notes the inconsistency in this approach and then proposes that, implicit in Marx's mature works, there is a consistent mechanism through which wages gravitate toward the value of labor-power: this uses both the flexible "historical and moral" element of the value of labor-power and the reserve army hypothesis. This combination explains why wages follow a relatively even path over time. A model of the labor market is developed which appears to be consistent with Marx's mature writing. Copyright 1991 by Oxford University Press.

Date: 1991
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:cambje:v:15:y:1991:i:2:p:199-213

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Cambridge Journal of Economics is currently edited by Jacqui Lagrue

More articles in Cambridge Journal of Economics from Cambridge Political Economy Society Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().