Here, Keynes points out that the classical theories of value and production assume that real wages, in a sufficiently free/competitive market, tend to equilibrate to offset marginal disutility of labor, but that there is still an implicit conflation between real wages and money wages. Given that bargaining between entrepreneurs and laborers is usually expressed in terms of money wages, rather than in terms of the real purchasing power of wages, it is perhaps safer to assume that money wages nominally tend to equilibrate to offset marginal disultility of labor.

^288b3d

The traditional theory maintains, in short, that the wage bargains between the entrepreneurs and the workers determine the real wage; so that, assuming free competition amongst employers and no restrictive combination amongst workers, the latter can, if they wish, bring their real wages into conformity with the marginal disutility of the amount of employment offered by the employers at that wage. If this is not true, then there is no longer any reason to expect a tendency towards equality between the real wage and the marginal disutility of labour.