Marx’s Critique of the Capitalist Wage Question

In the system of Marxist political economy, the question of capitalist wages is the key hinge for revealing the exploitative nature of capitalism. The *Critique of the Gotha Programme*, as a programmatic document of scientific communism, not only thoroughly settles accounts with the opportunist tendencies in the draft programme of the German Workers’ Party, but also, through a profound analysis of the essence of capitalist wages, reveals the secret of capitalist exploitation and the path to the liberation of the proletariat.

在马克思主义政治经济学体系中，资本主义工资问题是揭示资本主义剥削本质的关键枢纽。《哥达纲领批判》作为科学共产主义的纲领性文献，不仅对德国工人党纲领草案中的机会主义倾向进行了彻底清算，更通过对资本主义工资本质进行深刻剖析，揭示了资本主义剥削的秘密与无产阶级解放的路径。

A thorough critique of Lassalle’s “iron law of wages.” The “iron law of wages” proposed by Lassalle is one of the erroneous theories that had a far-reaching influence in the nineteenth-century workers’ movement. He argued that “the average wage always remains at the necessary level of subsistence required by a people, according to custom, to maintain existence and reproduce,” and that the wage level, like a physical phenomenon governed by natural laws, fluctuates around a certain standard. Lassalle claimed that if wages rise above the necessary level of subsistence, the worker population will increase due to improved living conditions, leading to an oversupply of labor and a fall in wages back to the average; if wages fall below this level, the worker population will decrease due to poverty, and the shortage of labor supply will cause wages to rise again. This view, which attributes wage movements to natural population changes, was regarded by Lassalle and his followers as an unshakable “iron law.”

对拉萨尔“铁的工资规律”的彻底批判。拉萨尔提出的“铁的工资规律”，是19世纪工人运动中影响深远的错误理论之一。他认为，“平均工资始终停留在一国人民为维持生存和繁殖后代按照习惯所要求的必要的生活水平上”，工资水平如同受自然法则支配的物理现象，围绕某一标准上下波动。拉萨尔声称，若工资高于必要生活水平，工人人口会因生活改善而增加，导致劳动力供给过剩，工资回落到平均数；若工资低于这一水平，工人人口会因贫困减少，劳动力供给短缺又会使工资回升。这种将工资运动归因于人口自然变动的观点，被拉萨尔及其追随者奉为不可动摇的“铁律”。

In the *Critique of the Gotha Programme*, Marx pointed out that Lassalle’s “iron law of wages” originates from Malthusian population theory, and that this theory fundamentally distorts the essence of wages. Malthus attributed the poverty of capitalist society to the natural law that population growth exceeds the growth of means of subsistence, yet deliberately evaded the fundamental cause: private ownership of the means of production. Marx noted that if Malthusian theory were valid, “even if the wage-labour system were abolished a hundred times, this law would still not be abolished,” which clearly contradicts the actual situation of wage fluctuations under capitalism. In the real life of capitalism, the wage level is not determined by an abstract natural law of population, but is the result of the combined action of multiple factors, such as the balance of power between capital and labor, the degree of development of labor productivity, and the specific conditions of class struggle. Marx also demonstrated in detail in *Capital* that “the various laws regulating wages are very complex, and depending on the circumstances, sometimes one law predominates and sometimes another; so they are absolutely not iron, but rather very elastic.”

马克思在《哥达纲领批判》中指出，拉萨尔这种“铁的工资规律”源于马尔萨斯人口论，而这一理论从根本上就歪曲了工资的本质。马尔萨斯将资本主义社会的贫困归咎于人口增长超过生活资料增长的自然规律，却刻意回避了生产资料私有制这一根本原因。马克思指出，若马尔萨斯理论成立，“即使把雇佣劳动废除一百次，也还废除不了这个规律”，这显然与资本主义工资变动的实际状况相悖。在资本主义现实生活中，工资水平并非由抽象的人口自然规律所决定，而是由资本与劳动的力量对比、劳动生产率的发展程度以及阶级斗争的具体状况等多种因素共同作用的结果。马克思在《资本论》中也详细地论证了，“调节工资的各种规律非常复杂，根据不同的情况，时而这个规律占优势，时而那个规律占优势，所以它们绝对不是铁的，反而是很有弹性的”。

Lassalle’s erroneous understanding of the law of wages essentially confuses the boundary between labor and labor power. Marx had already revealed in his study of political economy that the essence of wages is “the disguised form of the value or price of labor power.” Labor power, as a commodity, has its value determined by the value of the means of subsistence necessary to maintain the existence of the worker and his family, while labor, as the process of using labor power, can create a value exceeding its own value, i.e., surplus value. The wages paid by the capitalist to the worker correspond only to the value of labor power, while the surplus value created by the worker during surplus labor time is appropriated by the capitalist without compensation—this is the secret of capitalist exploitation. Lassalle’s “iron law of wages” precisely conceals this exploitative essence, distorting a specific historical phenomenon of capitalism into an eternal natural law.

拉萨尔对工资规律的错误认知，本质上是混淆了劳动与劳动力的界限。马克思在政治经济学研究中早已揭示，工资的本质是“劳动力的价值或价格的隐蔽形式”。劳动力作为商品，其价值取决于维持劳动者自身及其家庭生存所必需的生活资料的价值，而劳动作为劳动力的使用过程，能够创造出超过自身价值的价值，即剩余价值。资本家支付给工人的工资，仅相当于劳动力价值，而工人在剩余劳动时间创造的剩余价值则被资本家无偿占有，这才是资本主义剥削的秘密所在。拉萨尔的“铁的工资规律”恰恰掩盖了这一剥削本质，将资本主义的特定历史现象歪曲为永恒的自然规律。

The revelation of the essence of capitalist wages. On the basis of his critique of Lassalle’s erroneous theory, Marx profoundly exposed the exploitative essence of capitalist wages and their institutional contradictions. Under the capitalist system, workers are separated from the means of production, possessing nothing but their own labor power, and are compelled to sell labor power as a commodity to the capitalist in exchange for the means of subsistence. This determines the exploitative nature of the wage relationship.

对资本主义工资本质的揭示。马克思在批判拉萨尔错误理论的基础上，深刻揭露了资本主义工资的剥削本质与其制度性的矛盾。在资本主义制度下，劳动者与生产资料相分离，除了自身的劳动力外一无所有，不得不将劳动力作为商品出卖给资本家以换取生存资料，这就决定了工资关系的剥削性质。

The concealed form of wages is an important feature of capitalist exploitation. In the *Critique of the Gotha Programme*, Marx emphasized that wages appear as “the value or price of labor,” and this appearance conceals the real relationship between capital and labor. The capitalist’s payment of wages seems to be remuneration for all of the worker’s labor time, but in reality, the worker’s labor time is divided into two parts: necessary labor time and surplus labor time. Behind this appearance of equivalent exchange lies the capitalist’s uncompensated appropriation of the worker’s surplus labor. As Marx pointed out, “the wage-worker is permitted to work for his own subsistence, that is, to live, only insofar as he works for a certain time gratis for the capitalist (and hence for the latter’s co-sharers in the surplus value).”

工资形式的隐蔽性是资本主义剥削的重要特征。马克思在《哥达纲领批判》中强调，工资表现为“劳动的价值或价格”，这一表象掩盖了资本与劳动之间的真实关系。资本家支付工资似乎是对工人全部劳动时间的报酬，而实际上，工人的劳动时间被划分为必要劳动时间与剩余劳动时间两部分。这种等价交换的表象背后是资本家对工人剩余劳动的无偿占有，正如马克思所指出的，“雇佣工人只有为资本家（因而也为同资本家一起分享剩余价值的人）白白地劳动一定的时间，才被允许为维持自己的生活而劳动，就是说，才被允许生存”。

The contradiction between the wage system and capital accumulation is an important root of capitalist crises. As labor productivity increases, the value of labor power tends to decline, while the capitalist, by extending the working day, intensifying labor, and introducing machinery, continuously raises the rate of surplus value. This leads to the fundamental contradiction of capitalist society: on the one hand, capital accumulation requires the continuous expansion of the scale of production to extract more surplus value; on the other hand, the wage level of the working class is confined within the limits of the value of labor power, so that consumption capacity is relatively insufficient, ultimately triggering crises of overproduction. Marx’s theory of wages reveals that the capitalist wage system is not only a means of exploitation but also an important factor that intensifies social contradictions and leads to periodic crises.

工资制度与资本积累的矛盾是资本主义危机的重要根源。随着劳动生产率的提高，劳动力价值呈现下降趋势，而资本家通过延长工作日、提高劳动强度、采用机器生产等手段，不断提高剩余价值率。这导致了资本主义社会的基本矛盾：一方面，资本积累要求不断扩大生产规模以获取更多剩余价值；另一方面，工人阶级的工资水平被限制在劳动力价值范围内，消费能力相对不足，最终引发生产过剩的危机。马克思的工资理论揭示了，资本主义工资制度不仅是剥削的手段，更是加剧社会矛盾、导致周期性危机的重要因素。

The expression in the draft programme of the German Workers’ Party, “the abolition of the wage system together with the iron law of wages,” was, in Marx’s view, logically confused. He pointed out that if the wage-labor system were truly abolished, the “iron law of wages” would naturally disappear along with it, and there would be no need to mention it separately. The draft programme’s juxtaposition of the two precisely exposes a misunderstanding of the essence of wages, namely, a failure to recognize the inner unity of the wage system and the wage-labor system. Marx emphasized that wages, as the value expression of the commodity labor power, are the inevitable product of capitalist relations of production. Only by thoroughly abolishing private ownership of the means of production and eliminating the wage-labor system can the exploitative relations embodied in wages be fundamentally eradicated.

德国工人党纲领草案中“废除工资制度连同铁的工资规律”的表述，在马克思看来是逻辑混乱的。他指出，若真正废除了雇佣劳动制度，“铁的工资规律”自然会随之消亡，无需单独提出。纲领草案将二者并列，恰恰暴露了对工资本质的误解，即没有认识到工资制度与雇佣劳动制度的内在统一性。马克思强调，工资作为劳动力商品的价值表现，是资本主义生产关系的必然产物，只有彻底废除生产资料私有制、消灭雇佣劳动制度，才能从根本上消除工资所体现的剥削关系。

The transformation of relations of production is the fundamental way out. Although Marx’s theory of wages reveals the exploitative nature of capitalism, the exploitative character of the capitalist wage system is not an eternal natural law but a product of private ownership of the means of production and the wage-labor system. Changes in the mode of distribution depend on fundamental changes in the mode of production. Any distribution of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves; and the distribution of the conditions of production expresses the nature of the mode of production itself.

生产关系变革是根本出路。马克思的工资理论虽然揭示了资本主义的剥削本质，但是资本主义工资制度的剥削性并非永恒自然规律，而是生产资料私有制与雇佣劳动制度的产物。分配方式的变革取决于生产方式的根本变革。消费资料的任何一种分配，都不过是生产条件本身分配的结果；而生产条件的分配，则表现生产方式本身的性质。

Marx pointed out that although the principle of distribution according to labor is still implemented in the first phase of communism, this mode of distribution, while still taking labor as its measure, is based on public ownership of the means of production, meaning that workers no longer create surplus value for the capitalist. “The individual producer receives back from society—after the deductions have been made—exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor.” Marx envisioned that in the higher phase of communism, “after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and thereby also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly,” society will implement the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This mode of distribution will take people’s actual needs as the basis for distribution, marking the leap of human society from the “realm of necessity” to the “realm of freedom.”

马克思指出，虽然在共产主义第一阶段仍然实行按劳分配原则，这种分配方式虽然仍以劳动为尺度，但其基础是生产资料公有制，也就是劳动者不再为资本家创造剩余价值。“每一个生产者，在作了各项扣除以后，从社会领回的，正好是他给予社会的。他给予社会的，就是他个人的劳动量。”马克思设想，在共产主义高级阶段，“迫使个人奴隶般地服从分工的情形已经消失，从而脑力劳动和体力劳动的对立也随之消失之后；在劳动已经不仅仅是谋生的手段，而且本身成了生活的第一需要之后；在随着个人的全面发展，他们的生产力也增长起来，而集体财富的一切源泉都充分涌流之后”，社会将实行“各尽所能，按需分配”的原则。这一分配方式将以人的实际需要为分配依据，标志着人类社会从“必然王国”向“自由王国”飞跃。

Marx’s reflection on and critique of capitalist wages is one of the important components of his political economy. Through a thorough critique of Lassalle’s “iron law of wages,” Marx scientifically revealed that the essence of wages is the value or price of labor power, and elucidated the exploitative nature of the capitalist wage system. This theory not only provided the German Workers’ Party with a theoretical weapon to correct errors and adhere to the correct revolutionary direction at the time, but also provides eternal theoretical guidance for later generations of the proletariat to understand the capitalist system and wage liberation struggles.

马克思对资本主义工资的反思和批判是其政治经济学的重要组成部分之一。通过对拉萨尔“铁的工资规律”的彻底批判，马克思科学揭示了工资的本质是劳动力的价值或价格，阐明了资本主义工资制度的剥削性。这一理论不仅在当时为德国工人党纠正错误、坚持正确的革命方向提供了理论武器，也为后世无产阶级认识资本主义制度、开展解放斗争提供了永恒的理论指导。

(The author is an associate professor at the School of Marxism, Heilongjiang University.)

（作者系黑龙江大学马克思主义学院副教授）