What is “fair” in capitalism?

In 1881 Engels criticized the slogan “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work”. The timid contemporary left returns to repeat it, using moral, humanitarian or even charitable considerations. Instead, the issue is about economics: the workers give to the capitalist their full day’s working power and, in exchange, they receive “no more of the necessaries of life as is required to keep up the repetition of the same bargain every day”.

Engels: “Workers give as much, the capitalists give as little, as the nature of the bargain will admit. This is a very peculiar sort of fairness”.

“According to what we may call common fairness, the wages of the labourer ought to consist in the produce of his labour. On the contrary, the produce of the workman’s labour goes to the capitalist, and the workman gets out of it no more than the bare necessaries of life”.

Therefore, “let the old motto be buried for ever and replaced by another: Possession of the means of work by the working people themselves”.

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