High wages derive from monopoly profits and vanish once methods diffuse.

Evidence

This encouragement is necessary to his doing his utmost: but more than this is not necessary. It is necessary every exertion he makes should be sure of its reward; but it is not necessary that such reward be so great, or any thing near so great, as he might have had, had he worked elsewhere. The confinement, which is his punishment, preventing his carrying the work to another market, subjects him to a monopoly; which the contractor, his master, like any other monopolist, makes, of course, as much of as he can. — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 211 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Marx however insisted, not merely that men live their relations to their real conditions of existence “in ideology,” but that, in the capitalist mode of production, they will “think” those conditions, in general, within the limits of a dominant ideology; and that, generally, this will tend to be the ideology of the dominant classes . The fact that the proletariat “lives” the collective socialization of labor, under capitalism, through the fragmenting form of the market , and thinks this condition of its material life within the discourses which organize market practices ideologically (or that, under capitalism the proletariat “lives” the expropriation of surplus value in the “ideological form” of wages —a form giving rise to its own ideological discourses: wage bargaining, economism, what Lenin called “trade-union consciousness,” “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” etc.) is not, for Marx, simply a descriptive feature of capitalism. These ideological inflections perform a pivotal role in the maintenance of capitalist relations and in their continuing domination within the social formation. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 903 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Confinement creates a labor monopoly that lets the contractor set wages — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 211; Standardizing wages removes the third party’s exploitative advantage; Capital accumulation lowers profit rates unless exploitation intensifies via labour rationalisation (+1 more)

Related

• Ideological forms like wages serve to maintain capitalist domination (similarity 0.81)
• Confinement creates a labor monopoly that lets the contractor set wages (similarity 0.81)
• Ideological inflections like wage bargaining maintain capitalist domination, not merely describe it. (similarity 0.80)
• Capitalist production confines workers so thoroughly they fall victim to offerings (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Confinement creates a labor monopoly that lets the contractor set wages #corroborates (0.80) — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 211
• Ideological forms like wages serve to maintain capitalist domination #expands (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 903
• Standardizing wages removes the third party’s exploitative advantage #qualifies (0.75)
• Capital accumulation lowers profit rates unless exploitation intensifies via labour rationalisation #complicates (0.75)