Wages are not determined by the employed, but by the competition of the unemployed, who rather than starve, will accept any wages on which they can barely subsist
My friend found a book called history of the middle and working class written by some Brit named John Wade and published in 1833 and it seems like he beat Marx to the punch on a lot of shit (he would’ve been a teenager)
Also, does this not sound like the reserve army of labor?
“…Here then we should have a new caste of population, encouraged, and virtually called into being, who are constrained by their lot to live as a sort of bondmen beneath the par of human liberty and enjoyment, and whose very presence in the land would operate as a depressing incubus on the condition of the working people. They would form a body of reserve, from whom masters might indefinitely draw in every question of wages between themselves and their men, and by means of whom, therefore, they could, as in a market overstocked with labour, bring down infinitely its price
Makes me think that maybe we should appeal to other randos who repeated Marxist talking points to show that these ideas have always existed (who am I kidding that probably wouldn’t help)
Extremely fascinating