The wage-fund theory frames labor as subordinate commodity dependent on entrepreneurial capital
Evidence
In this model, workers lost economic agency, bringing their work in line with the defi nition of labor in Pantaleoni’s Pure Principles as a “complementary commodity.” Th is concept of labor stresses the priority of capital over labor, a priority also refl ected in the wagefund theory— again, an important building block of pure economics. Th is theory presupposes that wages are always and necessarily paid out of the entrepreneur’s capital— not as a portion of the surplus he has reaped from workers’ labor, but rather as something that is made possible only because of the entrepreneur’s virtuous savings. Th e entrepreneur anticipates wages with his disposable capital and plays the vital task of disciplining/directing labor, insofar as the latter lacks the capacity to selfmanage: “Th e entrepreneur disciplines labour and discipline means coordination … this coordination is a diffi cult problem that few know how to resolve, and the one who knows how to resolve it is called entrepreneur … the entrepreneur does not tell the worker to work but to work in a certain way: you know how to organize without him? Go ahead [fate pure]” (Pantaleoni 1910, 230). … No economic theory could be more distant from the thoughts and practices of the Ordinovista movement detailed in chapter 4. For Gramsci and Togliatti, workers’ political agency emerged from the centrality (and potential autonomy) of their labor. Instead, in the world of these four economics professors, workers’ loss of economic agency ensured their loss of political agency: understood as any other commodity, economists saw labor as a thing to be exclusively priced through the laws of supply and demand. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1252
Categorization
- XREF: Directly contrasts with the Ordinovista/Gramsci position the reader already covered in chapter 4 — this is a built-in internal contrast worth remembering. — connects to: Labor is the commodity whose surplus value is expropriated and realized through market exchange
- DEFINE: Clear definitions of ‘complementary commodity’ and the wage-fund theory as core austerity economics building blocks.