My answers to the final questions:

12. What are the three types/aspects of wages?

1. Nominal wages: the money price of labour power
2. Real wages: wages relative to the cost of various commodities
3. Relative wages: wages relative to how much capital the work produced (i.e. the capitalist’s profit)

13. As productive capital grows, what is the best possible outcome for the proletariat?

The demand for labour grows, increasing the nominal wages; however, this also maintains or worsens the relative wages (and potentially the real wages), further increasing the power of the capitalists over workers.

14. From the capitalist perspective, the exchange value created by a worker is divided into three parts; which?

1. Replacement for the raw materials and wear-and-tear of the instruments of labour
2. Replacement for the wages
3. Surplus (profit)

15. How do wages change as capitalist profit increases and vice versa?

The change in relative wages is inversely proportional to the change in the share of profit; as the share of profit increases, the nominal wages may be unchanged, but the relative wages (and possibly the real wages) fall, and vice versa.

16. A capitalist can also increase their profit through competition with other capitalists. How does this affect wages?
17. How do increases in productive capital (through greater division of labour and/or greater application of machinery) affect the workers?

Capitalists compete by increasing/improving productive capital, either by a greater division of labour of by improved means of production.

A greater division of labour requires more workers; this increases competition among workers, which makes workers willing to either accept lower wages or perform labour equivalent to what previously required multiple workers for the same wage (and as a worker performs more and more labour, so will the competition, leading to yet lower wages relative to the amount of labour performed). It also simplifies labour, making formerly special skills useless and further increasing competition among workers by lowering the barrier to entry.

Improved means of production (e.g. machinery) has a similar effect as division of labour but at a much greater scale. The new jobs introduced to produce and maintain the new means of production have historically been far fewer than the jobs lost.

18. How do increases in productive capital affect classes other than the proletariat?

More and more members of other classes (e.g. small manufacturers) become proletarian as they can’t compete with the bourgeoisie.

19. How do increases in productive capital affect the periodic crises of capitalism?

As production increases in scale, so do the crises of capitalism (both in terms of frequency and severity) because of the greater mass of products. The crises are temporarily averted by expanding to new markets, which is obviously unsustainable.