Author: Karl Marx

ISBN: 978-1898231-41-7

Originally delivered as an address at two sittings of the international Working Men's Association on June 20th and 27th 1865.

Marx concluded the pamphlet with the following resolutions:

1. A general rise in the rate of wages would result in a fall in the general rate of profit, but, broadly speaking, not affect the prices of commodities.

2. The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages.

3. Trade Unions work well as centres of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organised forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system.