About the labour wages: A comparative overview of the contributions of Adam Smith and Karl Marx

Abstract

This essay analyzes the contributions of Adam Smith and Karl Marx to the theory of labor wages, to the problematic of their formation, and to the extent of their effects on the well-being of workers and society. Both masters share an economic analysis focused on the supply side, as well as the idea that the entire product of labor belongs to the worker, before the original accumulation and appropriation of land; as does the labor theory of value. And assign an initial role to supply and demand in the labour market as a regulator of the respective market wages; although they consider that, in the long term, a historical component will be imposed in their formation. Thus, while Smith proclaims that market wage fluctuations will tend toward the natural wage, Marx states that the value of labor power is determined by the value of the means of sustenance and by a historical and social component. But there are also very relevant differences between them: against Smith’s proposal that workers be able to live off their work through wages that at least maintain them, Marx proposes the economic reconstruction of society, starting with the abolition of the wage labour system.