er, which may be characterized as "from each according to his ability, to each according to his labor." Thus, Marx's writings hold a preconceived commitment to socialism. Contrary to popular myth, Marx did not spend much time at all talking about communism. For Marx, communism would be the stage in which society would evolve after socialism had run its course. The maxim would then become, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."1
Since Marx centered so many of his ideas around the subject of societal economics, it is appropriate to analyze and critique the ideas he presents in both Wage Labour and Capital and Value, Price and Profit. This paper will thus be organized into three major sections, the first dealing with Marx's ideas on wage labor, the second with Marx's ideas on value and profit, finally
1 There are many excellent sources which detail the life and philosophy of Karl Marx. See, for instance, Robert L. Heilbroner, Marxism For and Against, (New York: Norton, 1980); Thomas Sowell, Marxism Philosophy and Economics, (New York: Morrow, 1985; and Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds. History of Political Philosophy, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 755 81.
concluding with a critical comparison and contrast section of both works.
Marx turned to the subject of economics after writing about the materialist conception of history in The German Ideology. The work was first presented in lectures to a German workers' society in 1847, and finally published in 1849. Marx's collaborator and patron, Friedrich Engels, did some minor editing and substituted the phrase "labour power" for the term "labour" to mean the sale of worker labor to the capitalist.
Marx first begins by asking "What are wages, and how are they determined?" Wages are thus explained as the amount that the worker sells to the capitalist for money. "But this is merely an illusion. What they actually sell ...