What was one source of economic ideas that Karl Marx found relevant?

Answer 1

Karl Marx's friend, Frederick Engels was a factory owner in England. He possessed a personal knowledge of the industrial and factory systems in England. Between the two men, they shared and discussed the way they viewed economics in the then advanced capitalist system in England. It was from English sources that Marx found relevant to his view of history and economics. From the British political economy he adopted the subsistence theory of wages, or often in England called the Iron Law. This idea on wages was dropped by some radical socialists in that wages began to rise. The Iron law held that the average workingman could never obtain more than a minimum level of living. The corollary for those who wished to draw on this idea was that the existing economic system impeded any future for the laboring class. Marx held on to the discarded theory of labor value from the orthodox economists. This was plain, it gave voice to the idea that a product was only worth the cost of labor to create it.