XII. General Relation of Profits, Wages, and Prices Deduct from the value of a commodity the value replacing the value of the raw materials and other means of production used upon it, that is to say, deduct the value representing the past labor contained in it, and the remainder of its value will resolve into the quantity of labor added by the working man last employed. If that working man works twelve hours daily, if twelve hours of average labor crystallize themselves in an amount of gold equal to thirty pence, this additional value of thirty pence is the only value his labor will have created. This given value, determined by the time of his labor, is the only fund from which both he and the capitalist have to draw their respective shares or dividends, the only value to be divided into wages and profits. It is evident that this value itself will not be altered by the variable proportions in which it may be divided amongst the two parties. There will also be nothing changed if in the place of one working man you put the whole working population, twelve million working days, for example, instead of one.
Since the capitalist and workman have only to divide this limited value, that is, the value measured by the total labor of the working man, the more the one gets the less will the other get, and vice versa. Whenever a quantity is given, one part of it will increase inversely as the other decreases. If the wages change, profits will change in an opposite direction. If wages fall, profits will rise; and if wages rise, profits will fall. If the working man, on our former supposition, gets fifteen pence, equal to one half of the value he has created, or if his whole working day consists half of paid, half of unpaid labor, the rate of profit will be 100 percent, because the capitalist would also get fifteen pence. If the working man receives only ten pence, or works only one third of the whole day for himself, the capitalist will get twenty pence, and the rate of profit will be 200 percent. If the working man receives twenty pence, the capitalist will only receive ten, and the rate of profit would sink to 33-1/3 percent [sic -- should be 50 percent and later editions corrected this, P.Z.], but all these variations will not affect the value of the commodity. A general rise of wages would, therefore, result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but not affect values. But although the values of commodities, which must ultimately regulate their market prices, are exclusively determined by the total quantities of labor fixed in them, and not by the division of that quantity into paid and unpaid labor, it by no means follows that the values of the single commodities, or lots of commodities, produced during twelve hours, for example, will remain constant. The number or mass of commodities produced in a given time of labor, or by a given quantity of labor, depends upon the productive power of the labor employed, and not upon its extent or length. With one degree of the productive power of spinning labor, for example, a working day of twelve hours may produce twelve pounds of yarn, with a lesser degree of productive power only two pounds. If then twelve hours' average labor were realized in the value of thirty pence in the one case, the twelve pounds of yarn would cost thirty pence, in the other case the two pounds of yarn would also cost thirty pence. One pound of yarn would, therefore, cost 2-1/2 pence in the one case, and fifteen pence in the other. The difference of price would result from the difference in the productive powers of labor employed. One hour of labor would be realized in one pound of yarn with the greater productive power, while with the smaller productive power, six hours of labor would be realized in one pound of yarn. The price of a pound of yarn would, in the one instance, be only 2-1/2 pence, although wages were relatively high and the rate of profit low; it would be fifteen pence in the other instance, although wages were low and the rate of profit high. This would be so because the price of the pound of yarn is regulated by the total amount of labor worked up in it, and not by the proportional division of that total amount into paid and unpaid labor. The fact I have before mentioned that high-price labor may produce cheap, and low-priced labor may produce dear commodities, loses, therefore, its paradoxical appearance. It is only the expression of the general law that the value of a commodity is regulated by the quantity of labor worked up in it, and that the quantity of labor worked up in it depends altogether upon the productive powers of labor employed, and will, therefore, vary with every variation in the productivity of labor