ABSTRACT
Despite the decline of Marxism, wage relations are often understood as the result of the core opposition between two groups, wage earners and shareholders, and, beyond that, between two legal statuses, ownership and wage labour. This representation has the advantage of highlighting an anomaly in the exchange relations between the two groups and introducing a hint of inequality. Ownership attracts something that is alien to it and which it does not produce itself, namely, profit, the origin of which must be sought on the side of labour, a factor that is far more “demiurgic” than capital (Marx 1990). The difficulties of the Marxian labour theory of value and the rationalisations of neoclassical market theory – according to which each factor (labour, capital) is remunerated according to its contribution – do not entirely dispel the impression, particularly when market imperfections create rents, that between ownership and labour force, equivalents are not always traded for equivalents.
