Book I: Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE WAGES OF LABOUR.

The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompence or wages of labour.

In that original state of things which precedes both the appropriation of
land and the accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labour belongs to
the labourer. He has neither landlord nor master to share with him.

Had this state continued, the wages of labour would have augmented with all
those improvements in its productive powers, to which the division of labour
gives occasion. All things would gradually have become cheaper. They would
have been produced by a smaller quantity of labour ; and as the commodities
produced by equal quantities of labour would naturally in this state of
things be exchanged for one another, they would have been purchased likewise
with the produce of a smaller quantity.

But though all things would have become cheaper in reality, in appearance
many things might have become dearer, than before, or have been exchanged
for a greater quantity of other goods. Let us suppose, for example, that in
the greater part of employments the productive powers of labour had been
improved to tenfold, or that a day's labour could produce ten times the
quantity of work which it had done originally ; but that in a particular
employment they had been improved only to double, or that a day's labour
could produce only twice the quantity of work which it had done before. In
exchanging the produce of a day's labour in the greater part of employments
for that of a day's labour in this particular one, ten times the original
quantity of work in them would purchase only twice the original quantity in
it. Any particular quantity in it, therefore, a pound weight, for example,
would appear to be five times dearer than before. In reality, however, it
would be twice as cheap. Though it required five times the quantity of other
goods to purchase it, it would require only half the quantity of labour
either to purchase or to produce it. The acquisition, therefore, would be
twice as easy as before.

But this original state of things, in which the labourer enjoyed the whole
produce of his own labour, could not last beyond the first introduction of
the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock. It was at an end,
therefore, long before the most considerable improvements were made in the
productive powers of labour ; and it would be to no purpose to trace further
what might have been its effects upon the recompence or wages of labour.

As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of
almost all the produce which the labourer can either raise or collect from
it. His rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which
is employed upon