14 THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT BK. I

the general level of real wages, it is, in fact, concernedwith a different object. Since there is imperfectmobility of labour, and wages do not tend to an exactequality of net advantage in different occupations, anyindividual or group of individuals, who consent to a re-duction of money-wages relatively to others, will suffera relative reduction in real wages, which is a sufficientjustification for them to resist it. On the other handit would be impracticable to resist every reduction ofreal wages, due to a change in the purchasing-powerof money which affects all workers alike; and in factreductions of real wages arising in this way are not, asa rule, resisted unless they proceed to an extreme degree.Moreover, a resistance to reductions in money-wagesapplying to particular industries does not raise the sameinsuperable bar to an increase in aggregate employ-ment which would result from a similar resistance toevery reduction in real wages.

In other words, the struggle about money-wagesprimarily affects the distribution of the aggregate realwage between different labour-groups, and not itsaverage amount per unit of employment, which de-pends, as we shall see, on a different set of forces.The effect of combination on the part of a group ofworkers is to protect their relative real wage. Thegeneral level of real wages depends on the other forcesof the economic system.

Thus it is fortunate that the workers, though uncon-sciously, are instinctively more reasonable economiststhan the classical school, inasmuch as they resist reduc-tions of money-wages, which are seldom or never ofan all-round character, even though the existing realequivalent of these wages exceeds the marginal dis-utility of the existing employment; whereas they do notresist reductions of real wages, which are associatedwith increases in aggregate employment and leaverelative money-wages unchanged, unless the reductionproceeds so far as to threaten a reduction of the real