Wage-Labour and Capital is an essay on economics by Karl Marx, written in 1847 and first published in articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in April 1849. This essay has been widely acclaimed as the precursor to Marx’s important treatise Das Kapital. Wage-Labor and Capital is considered by Marxists as an "in-depth economic and scientific observation on how capitalist economy works, why it was exploitative, and ultimately why it would eventually implode from within".

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, and the three-volume Das Kapital. His political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic and political history