About Waged Labour: From Monetary Subordination to Exploitation

Three main propositions are advocated in this paper: 1.Mainstream economists conceived wage as being the price of a commodity (“labour power” or “human labour”) determined on a market as for any other commodity and service; as a consequence wage relationship is thought as an exchange relation ruled by equivalence; this view cannot be derived from the usual basic assumptions without violating the very logic of mainstream theory; following that logic •either the wage relationship should be thought as a relation between human beings having so different conditions that it cannot be interpreted as an exchange ruled by equivalence•or “human labour” is not to be found in the commodity spaceIn any case, the “stylized fact” mentioned above is not accounted for2.Wage is the name of the payment entrepreneurs address to other people with the view to make them participate in production under their control and for their account; wage payment is neither a purchase nor a sale: it just allows wage-earners to enter the market and to spend for acquiring the commodities they desire3.Wage-earners are economically speaking a means used by entrepreneurs for their own ends; exploitation (Fleurbaey’s M-exploitation) is inherent in the wage relationship