This book is a very good summary of how the workers are the ones responsible for the creation of value in any society, how the final price of a commodity is not based solely on wages (a fact commonly hidden by modern “economists” and sometimes forgotten even by comrades who mistakenly believe that a raise in wages or social securities for some would lead to an increased exploitation for others) and how the only way for the workers to improve their condition as a whole is through political action.

What do we mean by saying that the prices of the commodities are determined by wages? Wages being but a name for the price of labour, we mean that the prices of commodities are regulated by the price of labour. As “price” is exchangeable value (…) value expressed in money, the proposition comes to this, that “the value of commodities is determined by the value of labour,” (…) The dogma that “wages determine the price of commodities,” expressed in its most abstract terms, comes to this, that “value is determined by value,” and this tautology means that, in fact, we know nothing at all about value. Accepting this premise, all reasoning about the general laws of political economy turns into mere twaddle.

The values of commodities are directly as the times of labour employed in their production, and are inversely as the productive powers of the labour employed.

Part of the labour contained in the commodity is paid labour; part is unpaid labour. By selling, therefore, the commodity at its value, that is, as the crystallization of the total quantity of labour bestowed upon it, the capitalist must necessarily sell it at a profit. He sells not only what has cost him an equivalent, but he sells also what has cost him nothing, although it has cost his workman labour. The cost of the commodity to the capitalist and its real cost are different things.

Rent, interest, and industrial profit are only different names for different parts of the surplus value of the commodity, or the unpaid labour enclosed in it, and they are equally derived from this source and from this source alone. They are not derived from land as such or from capital as such, but land and capital enable their owners to get their respective shares out of the surplus value extracted by the employing capitalist from the labourer.

A general rise of wages would, therefore, result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but not affect values.

As to the limitation of the working day in England, as in all other countries, it has never been settled except by legislative interference. (…) the result was not to be attained by private settlement between the working men and the capitalists. This very necessity of general political action affords the proof that in its merely economical action capital is the stronger side.

They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects (…) They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!"