Quiz: Wage Labour and Capital

All 46 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. What is peculiar about the industrial war of capitalists among themselves?

   Its battles are won less by recruiting than by discharging workers It always ends in a truce It is fought out between the workers themselves, not between capitalists It is fought only in the colonies
2. 2. Marx says competition in determining price is threefold. Which of these is not one of the three?

   Competition between the buyers and the sellers Competition among the buyers Competition among the sellers Competition between the state and the market
3. 3. What are wages, according to Marx?

   A share of the capitalist’s profit, handed over once the finished goods are sold Part of already existing commodities with which the capitalist buys labor-power A gift from the employer The worker’s share in the commodities he has himself produced in the course of the day
4. 4. Even in the most favourable case, when capital grows fast and wages rise, what happens according to Marx?

   The worker becomes independent of capital through his savings The social chasm between worker and capitalist widens Profits fall to nothing Class differences disappear as wages catch up with profits
5. 5. How does Marx answer the economists’ claim that workers displaced by machinery find new employment?

   He agrees that all the displaced workers are soon re-employed, in new branches, at higher wages New employment, if any, goes to other workers, such as the young, not to those discharged He says the state must employ them He says machinery creates no unemployment at all, since workers are needed to build and repair it
6. 6. Why was the newspaper series never completed?

   The paper was suppressed amid the revolutionary events of 1849 Engels disagreed with its conclusions and persuaded Marx to stop Marx lost interest in economics The Prussian censor banned the whole series after its first article
7. 7. Marx says wages fell in the sixteenth century although workers received the same coined silver. Why?

   New machinery displaced handicraft workers and drove wages down Richer American mines lowered the value of silver against other commodities Bad harvests across Europe drove up the price of grain for many years together The guilds cut the journeymen’s pay to keep masters’ profits up
8. 8. What kind of thing is capital, according to Marx?

   A mere stock of tools and raw materials, in any society A natural power of money to grow by itself through interest A reward for the abstinence of those who save from income A social relation of production, a bourgeois relation of production
9. 9. What happens when a commodity’s price rises well above its cost of production?

   The state steps in to fix a maximum price for the commodity by law Demand for it collapses, and its production stops altogether Workers in that branch win a permanent rise in their wages Capital flows into that branch until supply brings the price down
10. 10. Which of these is not one of the three divisions Marx planned for the series?

    The inevitable ruin of the middle classes The relation of wage-labor to capital The commercial subjugation of the European nations by England The history of the guilds
11. 11. Which creature would be “a perfect example of a wage-worker”, according to Marx?

    A silkworm that spun only to prolong its existence as a caterpillar A horse that worked all day only for its evening oats An ox that pulled the plough only under the driver’s whip A bee that stored honey only for the keeper to take it away
12. 12. What is the cost of production of labor-power?

    The cost of the machines he operates The cost of maintaining the laborer as a laborer and of training him Whatever the employer chooses to pay The full value of everything he produces in a working day for his employer
13. 13. How does greater division of labor affect competition among workers?

    It makes workers into small masters It has no effect on competition One worker does the work of five, ten or twenty, so competition among workers rises It reduces competition by making each worker a specialist who cannot easily be replaced
14. 14. According to Engels, what had the economists really been measuring when they spoke of the cost of production of “labor”?

    The value of the finished product he turns out for sale The cost of the raw materials The cost of the machinery The cost of production of the living laborer himself
15. 15. How can one capitalist drive another from the field, according to Marx?

    By combining with others into a guild that fixes prices Only through political influence over tariffs and state contracts By paying higher wages and so attracting the best workers Only by selling more cheaply, which means producing more cheaply
16. 16. What does the claim that “the worker has an interest in the rapid growth of capital” really mean, according to Marx?

    Capital will in time be shared out among the workers The worker will soon become a capitalist himself The faster he enriches the capitalist, the larger the crumbs he gets The worker’s share of output will rise
17. 17. What do relative wages express, as distinct from real wages?

    The difference between skilled and unskilled pay The price of labor-power measured against the prices of all other commodities Living labor’s share of the new value it creates, compared with capital’s Wages in one country compared with another
18. 18. How does Marx treat the economists’ claim that capitalist and worker have the same interest?

    He says the worker has no interest of his own, being a mere appendage of capital He accepts it fully: what is good for capital is in every respect good for the worker It is true only as mutual dependence: the worker’s lot depends on capital He rejects it as a deliberate lie with no grain of truth in it at all
19. 19. What does Engels call “the economic constitution of our entire modern society”?

    Value is created by exchange Capital and labour are equal partners in production Land is the source of all wealth The working class alone produces all values
20. 20. What does a worker in a cotton factory produce, besides cotton goods?

    Nothing else His own tools Rent Capital
21. 21. Marx says the “minimum of wages” holds good not for the single individual but for what?

    The nation The capitalist The race (the working class as a whole) The skilled worker in the best trades
22. 22. How does the free laborer differ from the slave, according to Marx?

    The slave is sold once for all; the free laborer sells himself by the hour The slave sells his own labor-power; the free laborer has none of his own to sell The slave receives wages in kind; the free laborer receives a share of the crop There is no difference
23. 23. In Marx’s example, a day-laborer paid one dollar produces two dollars’ worth for the farmer. What happens to the laborer’s dollar?

    He pays it back to the farmer as rent He saves it for old age He invests it and it doubles He spends it on means of subsistence, and it is gone
24. 24. Who translated Wage-Labor and Capital for this 1902 edition?

    Eleanor Marx Aveling Samuel Moore of Manchester Harriet Lothrop Dr. Edward Aveling
25. 25. Who else, besides displaced workers, is pushed into the working class according to Marx?

    Foreign capitalists driven out of the home market by protective tariffs Government officials dismissed as the state cuts its costs Great landowners ruined by the fall in the price of grain from Russia and America Small businessmen and people living on the interest of small capitals
26. 26. What stamps accumulated labor with the character of capital?

    Its being preserved unchanged for future use The dominion of past, accumulated labor over living labor Its being owned jointly by a company of shareholders for profit Its being stored up in money in the strong vaults of a bank
27. 27. Under what circumstances does a cotton-spinning machine become capital?

    When it has been paid for in gold Whenever it is used to spin cotton Only under certain conditions When it is made of iron and driven by steam
28. 28. What does Marx conclude about the interests of capital and wage-labor, even within their relation?

    They can be reconciled by arbitration They are unrelated They are diametrically opposed They are identical
29. 29. Where did Wage-Labor and Capital first appear?

    As a pamphlet issued by the Communist League in Brussels in 1847 As an early chapter of the first volume of Capital In the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 1849 As a speech to the International in 1865
30. 30. What example from 1847 does Marx use to show that money wages and real wages can diverge?

    Bad harvests made food dearer, so the same money wage bought less A strike raised wages in Manchester A banking crisis devalued the currency Free trade lowered the price of bread, and money wages followed it down
31. 31. The text was based on lectures Marx gave in 1847 to which audience?

    The German Workingmen’s Club of Brussels The British Museum Reading Room A Chartist convention in London The University of Berlin
32. 32. What is the general law governing wages and profit in relation to each other?

    They are independent, each set by supply and demand in its own market Profit is fixed by custom, and wages take whatever remains of the product They stand in inverse proportion: profit rises as wages fall, and vice versa They rise and fall together, since both come out of a growing product
33. 33. Determining price by cost of production is equivalent to determining it by what?

    The amount of gold in circulation Labor-time needed to produce it The rate of interest on borrowed capital The wishes and tastes of the consumers who buy it
34. 34. Why is the advantage a capitalist gains from a new machine short-lived?

    Rivals adopt the same machines, and prices fall to the new cost of production The machine wears out within a year and must be replaced at full cost The state soon taxes the new machine heavily to protect the old handicraft trades The workers break the machine, fearing it will throw them out of work
35. 35. Which example does Marx use to show that relations of production change with the means of production?

    The discovery of the firearm transformed the organization of armies The compass transformed the guilds The printing press transformed the church The steam engine transformed the whole organization of agriculture
36. 36. According to Marx, can real wages rise while relative wages fall?

    Only in a declining economy Yes Only in agriculture No, never
37. 37. Which societies does Marx name as distinct totalities of relations of production?

    Hunting, pastoral and agricultural society Asiatic, Greek and Roman society Tribal, national and international society Ancient, feudal and bourgeois society
38. 38. How does the worker regard his labor, according to Marx?

    As a form of worship offered to God As the free fulfilment of his talents and his calling in life As a sacrifice of his life As a pastime for his idle hours
39. 39. According to Marx, what do workers actually sell to the capitalist?

    Their labor Their persons, once and for all Their products Their labor-power
40. 40. What does Marx call the crises that grow more frequent and violent as production expands on credit?

    Industrial earthquakes Market famines Financial avalanches Commercial hurricanes
41. 41. What was the central change Engels made to Marx’s text in 1891?

    He removed the passages on machinery and the division of labour He wrote that the worker sells his labor-power, not his labor He added a chapter on rent He replaced dollars with pounds sterling
42. 42. Which effect of machinery does Marx not describe?

    It supplants skilled laborers by unskilled It raises the wages of the unskilled to those of the skilled It throws workers onto the streets in great masses It replaces men by women, and adults by children
43. 43. What point does Marx make with “a grain of sand is high when examined through the microscope, and a tower is low when compared with a mountain”?

    High and low prices are relative Value depends on how closely it is examined Small producers count for more in the market than the great ones do Prices are random and follow no law at all
44. 44. What is “a necessary presupposition of capital”?

    A class which possesses nothing but the ability to work Free trade between nations and an open world market A strong central bank A large supply of gold
45. 45. What does Marx’s example of the little house next to a palace illustrate?

    Land values rise near palaces and so push up the rents of workers Housing for workers should be built by the state, not by speculators Workers prefer small houses Our needs and satisfactions are social, measured against others’
46. 46. Why does the wage-worker sell his labor-power?

    Out of duty to society In order to live To learn a trade To build up capital