Subsistenslön och lönedoktrin i den industriella revolutionen.

Abstract

The essay is about the doctrines and estimations of workers’ wages during the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th and early 19th century Britain. It explores, by way of textual analysis and ideology critique the doctrines of the classical economists and Marx, and relates the results to the standard-of-living debate in Economic History since the early 1980s. The overall result provides with the argument that the doctrines of the classics, and in particular Marx’s critique of political economy, offer an understanding of the determination of workers’ wages in capitalism adequate also for our time, and that quantitative basket-of-goods measurement has its raison d’être in such an overall social and historical analysis of wages, growth, and development.