r assumes the commodity form, being at once a use-value and an
exchange-value. At first sight it appears that piecework is an exception
to the general rule that the capitalist buys labor-power and not labor
itself. It seems that when piece-wages are paid it is not the machine,
the living labor-power, but the product of the machine, labor actually
performed, that is bought. Superficially, this is so, of course, but it
does not affect the principle laid down, because, as a matter of fact,
the piecework system is only one of the means used to secure a maximum
of labor-power. The average output of pieceworkers in a trade always
tends to become the standard output for the time-workers, and, on the
other hand, the average wage of pieceworkers tends to keep very near the
standard of time-wages.

Now, as a commodity, labor-power is subject to the same laws as all
other commodities. Its price, wages, fluctuates just as the price of all
other commodities does, and bears the same relation to its value. It may
be temporarily affected by the preponderance of supply over demand, or
of demand over supply; it may be made the subject of monopoly in certain
cases. There is, therefore, no such thing as an "iron law" of wages, any
more than there is an "iron law" of prices for other commodities.
Lassalle took the Ricardian law of wages and, by means of his
characteristic exaggeration, distorted it out of all semblance to truth.
Says Ricardo: "The natural price of labor, therefore, depends on the
price of the food, necessaries, and conveniences required for the
support of the laborer and his family. With a rise in the price of food
and necessaries, the natural price of labor will rise; with the fall in
their price, the natural price of labor will fall."[175] This Lassalle
made the basis of his famous "iron law," according to which 96 per cent
of the wage-workers were precluded from improving their economic
position. Lassalle's chief fault lay in that he made no allowance
whatever for either state interference, or the organized influence of
the workers themselves. He also attaches too little importance to what
Marx calls the traditional standards of living.[176] It is nevertheless
true that the price of labor-power, wages, tends to approximate its
value, just as the price of all other commodities tends, under normal
conditions, to approximate their value.

And just as the value of other commodities is determined by the amount
of social labo