The Iron Law of Wages is a proposed law of economics that asserts that real wages always tend, in the long run, toward the minimum wage necessary to sustain the life of the worker. The theory was first named by Ferdinand Lassalle in the mid-nineteenth century. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels attribute the doctrine to Lassalle (notably in Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marx), crediting the idea to Thomas Malthus in his work, An Essay on the Principle of Population, and the terminology to Goethe's "great, eternal iron laws" in Das Göttliche.
Famous quotes containing the words iron, law and/or wages:
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Sam Spade: The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”
—John Huston (1906–1987)
“There is a law in each well-ordered nation
To curb those raging appetites that are
Most disobedient and refractory.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)