I’m continuing posting my notes as I’m reading through what I’ve termed the Commie Classics. This is from the first book of Vol II; Wage, Labor, and Capital, by Karl Marx. 
My own comments are indented, but I’ve made only one comment here, so mainly these are my notes as I’m trying to understand what Marx was saying. 

Introduction- by Engels

Engels points out that the work was derived from lectures given around 1849. But the reprint of these ideas has been updated to show Marx’s development over the years to his more fully realized accounting. The main point is the development from workers selling their labor for wages, to selling their labor-power.

Chap 1 What are Wages? How are They Determined?

It appears capitalists buy a worker’s labor for an amount of money. What workers actually sell is their labor-power.

Wages are a commodity like any other, and have a value like any other commodity.  

Workers sell their labor-power in order to live. His work is the active expression of his own life, and he sells it in order to secure the necessary means to life. He works that he may keep alive.  

Chap 2 By What Is the Price of a Commodity Determined?

Competition between buyers and sellers, relation of supply to demand, the call to the offer.

A commodity price rises and falls according to these laws, but what is a rise and fall of prices? By what is the relation of supply and demand determined? It’s essentially the cost of production.

If for example, there is growing demand for a particular commodity, then the price will rise because production hasn’t caught up yet, meaning there is more competition for the commodity in existence.

Marx notes that if the price of silk doubles, then the value of the other things given in its place decrease correspondingly. If that sounds confusing, then it’s basically that every commodity has a monetary value. If silk was one dollar, and then we pay two, the value of the silk went up, but the value of the dollar went down, since it now takes two of them to get the same amount of silk.  

If prices go up in one area, capital floods into the market to produce more of the thing until some equilibrium is established.

Conversely, if there is less demand for a product, then capital is withdrawn until it reaches equilibrium.

The equilibrium is essentially the cost of production, so price is ulitmately determined by the cost of production.

Chap 3 By What Are Wages Determined?

The same laws governing prices of commodities also govern wages. What is the cost of maintaining labor-power? The cost required for the maintenance of the laborer and for his education and training. If your job requires no particular expertise, then the cost is limited to keeping him in working condition, whatever it takes for subsistence.

But just like wear and tear on machinery must be taken into account, the cost of labor production must include the cost of propagation- replacing the workers.

Chap 4 The Nature and Growth of Capital

In the process of production, human beings work not only on nature, but on one another. They produce working together in a specific way, and those social relations are how production takes place.

The totality of these relations is society, and each stage of society has particular types of relations.

Capital is a social relation of production. It consists not only of materials and labor, but also of exchange values, all of which are commodities.  

While everything that makes up capital is a sum of commodities, not every sum of commodities is capital. What makes it capital is the social labor-power. The necessary presupposition of Capital requires the existence of a class with nothing but the ability to work. Furthermore, Marx defines Capital as not just labor as a means of production, but it requires the fact that labor exists purely to preserve its exchange value.  

Dave notes:

I feel like Marx is being exceptionally careful here to define capital as only a system which ensures a subsistence-level working class. But if that’s actually the case, then wouldn’t it follow that a system in which that wasn’t the case, wouldn’t qualify as capitalism?

Chap 5 Relation of Wage-Labor to Capital

Laborers receive wages, their means of subsistence, in exchange for their labor-power. The capitalist receives the productive activity of the laborer, which gives a greater value than it previously possessed to the commodity.  

The laborer uses all his wages for immediate consumption, while the capitalist doubles his through the laborers efforts. Capital presupposes wage labor and wage labor presupposes capital. Capital can only multiply by calling wage-labor to life.

But suppose the most favorable outcome: capital needs more labor, so wages increase. A house may be large or small, it satisfies the social requirements as long as the neighboring houses are the same size. But if a palace springs up next door, the house becomes a hut. Socially, it is relegated to insignificance.

Our wants and desires originate in society, we therefore measure them in relation to society.

Chap 6 The General Law That Determines the Rise and Fall of Wages and Profits.

There is an inverse relation at work. Profit rises in the same degree wages fall, and vice versa.

Marx grants that other factors at play may increase the capitalist’s market share, and profit can increase in these scenarios. But, Marx argues, the results are the same. Profit didn’t rise because wages fell, but nevertheless, wages have fallen in reality as profit has risen. I’ll assume he means that as the profit has increased, wages should have risen equally, but since they didn’t, they fell relatively.

Chap 7 The Interests of Capital and Wage-Labor are Diametrically Opposed: The Effect of Growth of Productive Capital on Wages

Even if wages grow in profitable years, they never grow as much as the profit, which means relative wages have decreased.

Chap 8 In What Manner Does the Growth of Productive Capital Affect Wages?

One capitalist can only drive off others by selling more cheaply, which means he must produce more cheaply, usually by increasing the productive force of labor.

This can be done by a greater division of labor, or more efficient methods of production. When this happens, it kicks off a race for the other capitalists to take advantage of the same measures so as not to be left behind.  

Chap 9 Effect of Capitalist Competition on the Capitalist Class, the Middle Class, and the Working Class

Marx argues that irrevocable laws of capitalism force producers to greater productivity or death. This inexorable march is equally applicable to wages. Laborers are forced to produce more, and the forces of capitalism continually divide labor into simpler tasks until special skill is worthless.  

This force makes the laborer’s work more unsatisfactory and unskilled, and at the same time, makes it easier for even more laborers to compete with him for his job, which forces down his wages.

Displaced workers from dying industries can only find work in lower paying industries.

Additionally, Marx argues, the working class will draw more and more from the middle classes, swelling the ranks of the proletariat.

Small manufacturers couldn’t survive against large entities in a struggle of production, so they must succumb.

Ultimately capitalism drags society completely down under the weight of its own laws. It is unsustainable.