Labor as Commodity

by | Nov 13, 2024

For the individual actor, “as for everyone, other people’s labor as offered for sale on the market is nothing but a factor of production. Man deals with other people’s labor in the same way that he deals with all scarce material factors of production. He appraises it according to the principles he applies in the appraisal of all other goods. The height of wage rates is determined on the market in the same way in which the prices of all commodities are determined. In this sense we may say that labor is a commodity. The emotional associations which people, under the influence of Marxism, attach to this term do not matter. It suffices to observe incidentally that the employers deal with labor as they do with commodities because the conduct of the consumers forces them to proceed in this way.”

—Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

View all posts

Our Books

Shop books published by the Libertarian Institute.

libetarian institute longsleeve shirt

Support via Amazon Smile

Our Books

libertarian inst books

Recent Articles

Recent

WarNotes: A Conflict Podcast Debuts Soon

I am debuting an occasional broadcast called WarNotes: A Conflict Podcast in the next week. It allows me to expand my inquiry into the martial phenomenon beyond the strictures of the niche irregular warfare rubric I labor under in Chasing Ghosts. I’ll dabble in...

read more

Failing Upward: PR Stunt Backfires

The genius public relations mandarins at the Joint F35 program office apparently can't identify the aircraft they have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on. The picture above appears to be the Chinese J35 facsimile of the F35. You can't make this up. The chaos...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This