(The
Advantages
of the East India Trade, &c.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
And in Note 2, same page, we further added: --This method of determining, from the standpoint of the labour-process alone, what is productive labour, is by no means directly applicable to the case of the capitalist process of production.
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We now proceed to the further development of this subject.
So far as the labour-process is purely individual, one and the same labourer unites in himself all the functions, that later on become separated. When an individual appropriates natural objects for his livelihood, no one controls him but himself. Afterwards he is controlled by others. A single man cannot operate upon Nature without calling his own muscles into play under the control of his own brain. As in the natural body head and hand wait upon each other, so the labour-process unites the labour of the hand with that of the head. Later on they part company and even become deadly foes. The product ceases to be the direct product of the individual, and becomes a social product, produced in common by a collective labourer, i. e. , by a combination of workmen, each of whom takes only a part, greater or less, in the manipulation of the subject of their labour. As the co-operative character of the labour-process becomes more and more marked, so, as a necessary consequence, does our notion of productive labour, and of its agent the productive labourer, become extended. In order to labour productively, it is no longer necessary for you to do manual work yourself; enough, if you are an organ of the collective labourer, and perform one of its subordinate functions. The first definition given above of productive labour, a definition deduced from the very nature of the production of material objects, still remains correct for the collective labourer, considered as a whole. But it no longer holds good for each member taken individually.
On the other hand, however, our notion of productive labour becomes narrowed. Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus value. The labourer produces, not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply produce. He must produce surplus value. That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus value for the capitalist, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital. If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation. Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between labourer and
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product of labour, but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the direct means of creating surplus value. To be a productive labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune. In Book IV. which treats of the history of the theory, it will be more clearly seen, that the production of surplus value has at all times been made, by classical political economists, the distinguishing characteristic of the productive labourer. Hence their definition of a productive labourer changes with their comprehension of the nature of surplus value. Thus the Physiocrats insist that only agricultural labour is productive, since that alone, they say, yields a surplus value. And they say so because, with them, surplus value has no existence except in the form of rent.
The prolongation of the working day beyond the point at which the labourer would have produced just an equivalent for the value of his labour-power, and the appropriation of that surplus labour by capital, this is production of absolute surplus value. It forms the general groundwork of the capitalist system, and the starting-point for the production of relative surplus value. The latter pre-supposes that the working day is already divided into two parts, necessary labour, and surplus labour. In order to prolong the surplus labour, the necessary labour is shortened by methods whereby the equivalent for the wages is produced in less time. The production of absolute surplus value turns exclusively upon the length of the working day; the production of relative surplus value, revolutionises out and out the technical processes of labour, and the composition of society. It therefore pre-supposes a specific mode, the capitalist mode of production, a mode which, along with its methods, means, and conditions, arises and develops itself spontaneously on the foundation afforded by the formal subjection of labour to capital. In the course of this development, the formal subjection is replaced by the real subjection of labour to capital.
It will suffice merely to refer to certain intermediate forms, in which surplus labour is not extorted by direct compulsion from the producer, nor the producer himself yet formally subjected to capital. In such forms capital has not yet acquired the direct control of the labour-process. By the side of independent producers who carry on their handicrafts and agriculture in the traditional old-fashioned way, there stands the usurer or the merchant, with his usurer's capital or merchant's capital, feeding on them like a parasite. The predominance, in a society, of this form of exploitation excludes the capitalist mode of production; to which mode, however, this form may serve as a transition, as it did towards the close of the Middle Ages. Finally, as is shown by modern --domestic industry,? some intermediate forms are here and there reproduced in the background of Modern Industry, though their physiognomy is totally changed.
If, on the one hand, the mere formal subjection of labour to capital suffices for the production of absolute surplus value, if, e. g. , it is sufficient that handicraftsman who previously worked on their own account, or as apprentices of a master, should become wage labourers under the direct control of a capitalist; so, on the other hand, we have seen, how the methods of producing relative surplus value, are, at the same time, methods of producing absolute surplus value. Nay, more, the excessive prolongation of the working day turned out to be the peculiar product of Modern Industry. Generally speaking, the specifically capitalist mode of production ceases to be a mere means of producing relative surplus value, so soon as that mode has conquered an entire branch of production; and still more so, so soon as it has conquered all the important branches. It then becomes the general, socially predominant form of production. As a special method of producing relative surplus value, it remains effective only, first, in so far as it seizes upon industries that previously were only formally subject to capital, that is, so far as it is propagandist; secondly, in so far as the industries that have been taken over by it, continue to be revolutionised by changes in the methods of production.
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From one standpoint, any distinction between absolute and relative surplus value appears illusory. Relative surplus value is absolute, since it compels the absolute prolongation of the working day beyond the labour-time necessary to the existence of the labourer himself. Absolute surplus value is relative, since it makes necessary such a development of the productiveness of labour, as will allow of the necessary labour-time being confined to a portion of the working day. But if we keep in mind the behaviour of surplus value, this appearance of identity vanishes. Once the capitalist mode of production is established and become general, the difference between absolute and relative surplus value makes itself felt, whenever there is a question of raising the rate of surplus value. Assuming that labour-power is paid for at its value, we are confronted by this alternative: given the productiveness of labour and its normal intensity, the rate of surplus value can be raised only by the actual prolongation of the working day; on the other hand, given the length of the working day, that rise can be effected only by a change in the relative magnitudes of the components of the working day, viz. , necessary labour and surplus labour; a change which, if the wages are not to fall below the value of labour-power, presupposes a change either in the productiveness or in the intensity of the labour.
If the labourer wants all his time to produce the necessary means of subsistence for himself and his race, he has no time left in which to work gratis for others. Without a certain degree of productiveness in his labour, he has no such superfluous time at his disposal; without such superfluous time, no surplus labour, and therefore no capitalists, no slave-owners, no feudal lords, in one word, no class of large proprietors. 1
Thus we may say that surplus value rests on a natural basis; but this is permissible only in the very general sense, that there is no natural obstacle absolutely preventing one man from disburdening himself of the labour requisite for his own existence, and burdening another with it, any more, for instance, than unconquerable natural obstacle prevent one man from eating the flesh of another. 2 No mystical ideas must in any way be connected, as sometimes happens, with this historically developed productiveness of labour. It is only after men have raised themselves above the rank of animals, when therefore their labour has been to some extent socialised, that a state of things arises in which the surplus labour of the one becomes a condition of existence for the other. At the dawn of civilisation the productiveness acquired by labour is small, but so too are the wants which develop with and by the means of satisfying them. Further, at that early period, the portion of society that lives on the labour of others is infinitely small compared with the mass of direct producers. Along with the progress in the productiveness of labour, that small portion of society increases both absolutely and relatively. 3 Besides, capital with its accompanying relations springs up from an economic soil that is the product of a long process of development. The productiveness of labour that serves as its foundation and starting-point, is a gift, not of nature, but of a history embracing thousands of centuries.
Apart from the degree of development, greater or less, in the form of social production, the productiveness of labour is fettered by physical conditions. These are all referable to the constitution of man himself (race, &c. ), and to surrounding nature. The external physical conditions fall into two great economic classes, (1) Natural wealth in means of subsistence, i. e. , a fruitful soil, waters teeming with fish, &c. , and (2), natural wealth in the instruments of labour, such as waterfalls, navigable rivers, wood, metal, coal, &c. At the dawn of civilisation, it is the first class that turns the scale; at a higher stage of development, it is the second. Compare, for example, England with India, or in ancient times, Athens and Corinth with the shores of the Black Sea.
The fewer the number of natural wants imperatively calling for satisfaction, and the greater the natural fertility of the soil and the favourableness of the climate, so much less is the labour-time
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necessary for the maintenance and reproduction of the producer. So much greater therefore can be the excess of his labours for others over his labour for himself. Diodorus long ago remarked this in relation to the ancient Egyptians.
--It is altogether incredible how little trouble and expense the bringing up of their children causes them. They cook for them the first simple food at hand; they also give them the lower part of the papyrus stem to eat, so far as it can be roasted in the fire, and the roots and stalks of marsh plants, some raw, some boiled and roasted. Most of the children go without shoes and unclothed, for the air is so mild. Hence a child, until he is grown up, costs his parents not more, on the whole, than twenty drachmas. It is this, chiefly, which explains why the population of Egypt is so numerous, and, therefore, why so many great works can be undertaken. ? 4
Nevertheless the grand structures of ancient Egypt are less due to the extent of its population than to the large proportion of it that was freely disposable. Just as the individual labourer can do more surplus labour in proportion as his necessary labour-time is less, so with regard to the working population. The smaller the part of it which is required for the production of the necessary means of subsistence, so much the greater is the part that can be set to do other work.
Capitalist production once assumed, then, all other circumstances remaining the same, and given the length of the working day, the quantity of surplus labour will vary with the physical conditions of labour, especially with the fertility of the soil. But it by no means follows from this that the most fruitful soil is the most fitted for the growth of the capitalist mode of production. This mode is based on the dominion of man over nature. Where nature is too lavish, she --keeps him in hand, like a child in leading-strings. ? She does not impose upon him any necessity to develop himself. 5 It is not the tropics with their luxuriant vegetation, but the temperate zone, that is the mother-country of capital. It is not the mere fertility of the soil, but the differentiation of the soil, the variety of its natural products, the changes of the seasons, which form the physical basis for the social division of labour, and which, by changes in the natural surroundings, spur man on to the multiplication of his wants, his capabilities, his means and modes of labour. It is the necessity of bringing a natural force under the control of society, of economising, of appropriating or subduing it on a large scale by the work of man's hand, that first plays the decisive part in the history of industry. Examples are, the irrigation works in Egypt,6 Lombardy, Holland, or in India and Persia where irrigation by means of artificial canals, not only supplies the soil with the water indispensable to it, but also carries down to it, in the shape of sediment from the hills, mineral fertilisers. The secret of the flourishing state of industry in Spain and Sicily under the dominion of the Arabs lay in their irrigation works. 7
Favourable natural conditions alone, give us only the possibility, never the reality, of surplus labour, nor, consequently, of surplus value and a surplus-product. The result of difference in the natural conditions of labour is this, that the same quantity of labour satisfies, in different countries, a different mass of requirements,8 consequently, that under circumstances in other respects analogous, the necessary labour-time is different. These conditions affect surplus labour only as natural limits, i. e. , by fixing the points at which labour for others can begin. In proportion as industry advances, these natural limits recede. In the midst of our West European society, where the labourer purchases the right to work for his own livelihood only by paying for it in surplus labour, the idea easily takes root that it is an inherent quality of human labour to furnish a surplus-product. 9 But consider, for example, an inhabitant of the eastern islands of the Asiatic Archipelago, where sago grows wild in the forests.
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--When the inhabitants have convinced themselves, by boring a hole in the tree, that the pith is ripe, the trunk is cut down and divided into several pieces, the pith is extracted, mixed with water and filtered: it is then quite fit for use as sago. One tree commonly yields 300 lbs. , and occasionally 500 to 600 lbs. There, then, people go into the forests, and cut bread for themselves, just as with us they cut fire-wood. ? 10
Suppose now such an eastern bread-cutter requires 12 working hours a week for the satisfaction of all his wants. Nature's direct gift to him is plenty of leisure time. Before he can apply this leisure time productively for himself, a whole series of historical events is required; before he spends it in surplus labour for strangers, compulsion is necessary. If capitalist production were introduced, the honest fellow would perhaps have to work six days a week, in order to appropriate to himself the product of one working day. The bounty of Nature does not explain why he would then have to work 6 days a week, or why he must furnish 5 days of surplus labour. It explains only why his necessary labour-time would be limited to one day a week. But in no case would his surplus-product arise from some occult quality inherent in human labour.
Thus, not only does the historically developed social productiveness of labour, but also its natural productiveness, appear to be productiveness of the capital with which that labour is incorporated.
Ricardo never concerns himself about the origin of surplus value. He treats it as a thing inherent in the capitalist mode of production, which mode, in his eyes, is the natural form of social production. Whenever he discusses the productiveness of labour, he seeks in it, not the cause of surplus value, but the cause that determines the magnitude of that value. On the other hand, his school has openly proclaimed the productiveness of labour to be the originating cause of profit (read: Surplus value). This at all events is a progress as against the mercantilists who, on their side, derived the excess of the price over the cost of production of the product, from the act of exchange, from the product being sold above its value. Nevertheless, Ricardo's school simply shirked the problem, they did not solve it. In fact these bourgeois economists instinctively saw, and rightly so, that it is very dangerous to stir too deeply the burning question of the origin of surplus value. But what are we to think of John Stuart Mill, who, half a century after Ricardo, solemnly claims superiority over the mercantilists, by clumsily repeating the wretched evasions of Ricardo's earliest vulgarisers?
Mill says:
--The cause of profit is that labour produces more than is required for its support. ?
So far, nothing but the old story; but Mill wishing to add something of his own, proceeds:
--To vary the form of the theorem; the reason why capital yields a profit, is because food, clothing, materials and tools, last longer than the time which was required to produce them. ?
He here confounds the duration of labour-time with the duration of its products. According to this view, a baker whose product lasts only a day, could never extract from his workpeople the same profit, as a machine maker whose products endure for 20 years and more. Of course it is very true, that if a bird's nest did not last longer than the time it takes in building, birds would have to do without nests.
This fundamental truth once established, Mill establishes his own superiority over the mercantilists.
--We thus see,? he proceeds, --that profit arises, not from the incident of exchange, but from the productive power of labour; and the general profit of the country is
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always what the productive power of labour makes it, whether any exchange takes place or not. If there were no division of employments, there would be no buying or selling, but there would still be profit. ?
For Mill then, exchange, buying and selling, those general conditions of capitalist production, are but an incident, and there would always be profits even without the purchase and sale of labour- power!
--If,? he continues, --the labourers of the country collectively produce twenty per cent more than their wages, profits will be twenty per cent, whatever prices may or may not be. ? This is, on the one hand, a rare bit of tautology; for if labourers produce a surplus value of 20% for the capitalist, his profit will be to the total wages of the labourers as 20:100. On the other hand, it is absolutely false to say that --profits will be 20%. ? They will always be less, because they are calculated upon the sum total of the capital advanced. If, for example, the capitalist have advanced ? 500, of which ? 4OO is laid out in means of production and ? 100 in wages, and if the rate of surplus value be 20%, the rate of profit will be 20:500, i. e. , 4% and not 20%.
Then follows a splendid example of Mill's method of handling the different historical forms of social production.
--I assume, throughout, the state of things which, where the labourers and capitalists are separate classes, prevails, with few exceptions, universally; namely, that the capitalist advances the whole expenses, including the entire remuneration of the labourer. ?
Strange optical illusion to see everywhere a state of things which as yet exists only exceptionally on our earth. 11 But let us finish - Mill is willing to concede,
--that he should do so is not a matter of inherent necessity. ? On the contrary: --the labourer might wait, until the production is complete, for all that part of his wages which exceeds mere necessaries: and even for the whole, if he has funds in hand sufficient for his temporary support. But in the latter case, the labourer is to that extent really a capitalist in the concern, by supplying a portion of the funds necessary for carrying it on. ?
Mill might have gone further and have added, that the labourer who advances to himself not only the necessaries of life but also the means of production, is in reality nothing but his own wage- labourer. He might also have said that the American peasant proprietor is but a serf who does enforced labour for himself instead of for his lord.
After thus proving clearly, that even if capitalist production had no existence, still it would always exist, Mill is consistent enough to show, on the contrary, that it has no existence, even when it does exist.
--And even in the former case? (when the workman is a wage labourer to whom the capitalist advances all the necessaries of life, he the labourer), --may be looked upon in the same light,? (i. e. , as a capitalist), --since, contributing his labour at less than the market-price, (! ) he may be regarded as lending the difference (? ) to his employer and receiving it back with interest, &c. ? 12
In reality, the labourer advances his labour gratuitously to the capitalist during, say one week, in order to receive the market price at the end of the week, &c. , and it is this which, according to Mill, transforms him into a capitalist. On the level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the imbecile flatness of the present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects.
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1 --The very existence of the master-capitalists, as a distinct class, is dependent on the productiveness of industry. ? (Ramsay, l. c. , p. 206. ) --If each man's labour were but enough to produce his own food, there could be no property. ? (Ravenstone, l. c. p. 14, 15. )
2 According to a recent calculation, there are yet at least 4,000,000 cannibals in those parts of the earth which have already been explored.
3 --Among the wild Indians in America, almost everything is the labourer's, 99 parts of a hundred are to be put upon the account of labour. In England, perhaps, the labourer has not 2/3. ?
(The Advantages of the East India Trade, &c. , p. 73. )
4 Diodorus, l. c. , l. I. , c. 80.
5 --The first (natural wealth) as it is most noble and advantageous, so doth it make the people careless, proud, and given to all excesses; whereas the second enforceth vigilancy, literature, arts and policy. ? (England's Treasure by Foreign Trade. Or the Balance of our Foreign Trade is the Rule of our Treasure. Written by Thomas Mun of London, merchant, and now published for the common good by his son John Mun. London, 1669, p. 181, 182. ) --Nor can I conceive a greater curse upon a body of people, than to be thrown upon a spot of land, where the productions for subsistence and food were, in great measure, spontaneous, and the climate required or admitted little care for raiment and covering. . . there may be an extreme on the other side. A soil incapable of produce by labour is quite as bad as a soil that produces plentifully without any labour. ? (An Inquiry into the Present High Price of Provisions. Lond. 1767, p. 10. )
6 The necessity for predicting the rise and fall of the Nile created Egyptian astronomy, and with it the dominion of the priests, as directors of agriculture. --Le solstice est le moment de l'anne? e ou commence la crue du Nil, et celui que les Egyptiens ont du observer avec le plus d'attention. . . . C'e? tait cette anne? e tropique qu'il leur importait de marquer pour se diriger dans leurs ope? rations agricoles. Ils durent donc chercher dans le ciel un signe apparent de son retour. ? [The solstice is the moment of the year when the Nile begins to rise, and it is the moment the Egyptians have had to watch for with the greatest attention . . . It was the evolution of the tropical year which they had to establish firmly so as to conduct their agricultural operations in accordance with it. They therefore had to search the heavens for a visible sign of the solstice's return. ] (Cuvier: Discours sur les re? volutions du globe, ed. Hoefer, Paris, 1863, p. 141. )
7 One of the material bases of the power of the state over the small disconnected producing organisms in India, was the regulation of the water supply. The Mahometan rulers of India understood this better than their English successors. It is enough to recall to mind the famine of 1866, which cost the lives of more than a million Hindus in the district of Orissa, in the Bengal presidency.
8 --There are no two countries which furnish an equal number of the necessaries of life in equal plenty, and with the same quantity of labour. Men's wants increase or diminish with the severity or temperateness of the climate they live in; consequently, the proportion of trade which the inhabitants of different countries are obliged to carry on through necessity cannot be the same, nor is it practicable to ascertain the degree of variation farther than by the degrees of Heat and Cold; from whence one may make this general conclusion, that the quantity of labour required for a certain number of people is greatest in cold climates, and least in hot ones; for in the former men not only want more clothes, but the earth more cultivating than in the latter. ? (An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest. Lond. 1750. p. 60. ) The author of this epoch-making anonymous work is J. Massy. Hume took his theory of interest from it.
9 --Chaque travail doit (this appears also to be part of the droits et devoirs du citoyen [rights and duties of the citizen]) laisser un exce? dent. ? [All labour must leave a surplus] Proudhon.
10 F. Schouw: --Die Erde, die Pflanze und der Mensch,? 2. Ed. Leipz. 1854, p. 148.
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11 In earlier editions of Capital the quotation from John Stuart Mill, --I assume throughout. . . of the labourer,? had been given incorrectly, the words --where the labourers and capitalists are separate classes? having been left out. Marx, in a letter dated November 28, 1878, pointed this out to Danielson, the Russian translator of Capital, adding:
--The next two sentences, viz. ? Strange optical illusion to see everywhere a state of things which as yet exists only exceptionally on our earth. But let us finish' - should be deleted and the following sentence substituted:
--Mr. Mill is good enough to believe that this state of things is not an absolute necessity, even in that economic system in which ? labourers and capitalists are separate classes. '?
The substance of this note has been taken from the Volksausgabe. The quotation from Mill is from his Principles of Political Economy, Book II, Chap XV, 5.
12 J. St. Mill. Principles of Pol. Econ. Lond. 1868, p. 252-53 passim.
? ? Chapter 17: Changes of Magnitude in the Price of Labour-Power and in Surplus Value
The value of labour-power is determined by the value of the necessaries of life habitually required by the average labourer. The quantity of these necessaries is known at any given epoch of a given society, and can therefore be treated as a constant magnitude. What changes, is the value of this quantity. There are, besides, two other factors that enter into the determination of the value of labour-power. One, the expenses of developing that power, which expenses vary with the mode of production; the other, its natural diversity, the difference between the labour-power of men and women, of children and adults. The employment of these different sorts of labour- power, an employment which is, in its turn, made necessary by the mode of production, makes a great difference in the cost of maintaining the family of the labourer, and in the value of the labour-power of the adult male. Both these factors, however, are excluded in the following investigation. 1
I assume (1) that commodities are sold at their value; (2) that the price of labour-power rises occasionally above its value, but never sinks below it.
On this assumption we have seen that the relative magnitudes of surplus value and of price of labour-power are determined by three circumstances; (1) the length of the working day, or the extensive magnitude of labour; (2) the normal intensity of labour, its intensive magnitude, whereby a given quantity of labour is expended in a given time; (3) the productiveness of labour, whereby the same quantum of labour yields, in a given time, a greater or less quantum of product, dependent on the degree of development in the conditions of production. Very different combinations are clearly possible, according as one of the three factors is constant and two variable, or two constant and one variable, or lastly, all three simultaneously variable. And the number of these combinations is augmented by the fact that, when these factors simultaneously vary, the amount and direction of their respective variations may differ. In what follows the chief combinations alone are considered.
Section 1: Length of the Working day and Intensity of Labour Constant. Productiveness of Labour Variable
On these assumptions the value of labour-power, and the magnitude of surplus value, are determined by three laws.
(1. ) A working day of given length always creates the same amount of value, no matter how the productiveness of labour, and, with it, the mass of the product, and the price of each single commodity produced, may vary.
If the value created by a working day of 12 hours be, say, six shillings, then, although the mass of the articles produced varies with the productiveness of labour, the only result is that the value represented by six shillings is spread over a greater or less number of articles.
(2. ) surplus value and the value of labour-power vary in opposite directions. A variation in the productiveness of labour, its increase or diminution, causes a variation in the opposite direction in the value of labour-power, and in the same direction in surplus value.
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The value created by a working day of 12 hours is a constant quantity, say, six shillings. This constant quantity is the sum of the surplus value plus the value of the labour-power, which latter value the labourer replaces by an equivalent. It is self-evident, that if a constant quantity consists of two parts, neither of them can increase without the other diminishing. Let the two parts at starting be equal; 3 shillings value of labour-power, 3 shillings surplus value. Then the value of the labour-power cannot rise from three shillings to four, without the surplus value falling from three shillings to two; and the surplus value cannot rise from three shillings to four, without the value of labour-power falling from three shillings to two. Under these circumstances, therefore, no change can take place in the absolute magnitude, either of the surplus value, or of the value of labour-power, without a simultaneous change in their relative magnitudes, i. e. , relatively to each other. It is impossible for them to rise or fall simultaneously.
Further, the value of labour-power cannot fall, and consequently surplus value cannot rise, without a rise in the productiveness of labour. For instance, in the above case, the value of the labour-power cannot sink from three shillings to two, unless an increase in the productiveness of labour makes it possible to produce in 4 hours the same quantity of necessaries as previously required 6 hours to produce. On the other hand, the value of the labour-power cannot rise from three shillings to four, without a decrease in the productiveness of labour, whereby eight hours become requisite to produce the same quantity of necessaries, for the production of which six hours previously sufficed. It follows from this, that an increase in the productiveness of labour causes a fall in the value of labour-power and a consequent rise in surplus value, while, on the other hand, a decrease in such productiveness causes a rise in the value of labour-power, and a fall in surplus value.
In formulating this law, Ricardo overlooked one circumstance; although a change in the magnitude of the surplus value or surplus labour causes a change in the opposite direction in the magnitude of the value of labour-power, or in the quantity of necessary labour, it by no means follows that they vary in the same proportion. They do increase or diminish by the same quantity. But their proportional increase or diminution depends on their original magnitudes before the change in the productiveness of labour took place. If the value of the labour-power be 4 shillings, or the necessary labour time 8 hours, and the surplus value be 2 shillings, or the surplus labour 4 hours, and if, in consequence of an increase in the productiveness of labour, the value of the labour-power fall to 3 shillings, or the necessary labour to 6 hours, the surplus value will rise to 3 shillings, or the surplus labour to 6 hours. The same quantity, 1 shilling or 2 hours, is added in one case and subtracted in the other. But the proportional change of magnitude is different in each case. While the value of the labour-power falls from 4 shillings to 3, i. e. , by 1/4 or 25%, the surplus value rises from 2 shillings to 3, i. e. , by 1/2 or 50%. It therefore follows that the proportional increase or diminution in surplus value, consequent on a given change in the productiveness of labour, depends on the original magnitude of that portion of the working day which embodies itself in surplus value; the smaller that portion, the greater is the proportional change; the greater that portion, the less is the proportional change.
(3. ) Increase or diminution in surplus value is always consequent on, and never the cause of, the corresponding diminution or increase in the value of labour-power. 2
Since the working day is constant in magnitude, and is represented by a value of constant magnitude, since, to every variation in the magnitude of surplus value, there corresponds an inverse variation in the value of labour-power, and since the value of labour-power cannot change, except in consequence of a change in the productiveness of labour, it clearly follows, under these conditions, that every change of magnitude in surplus value arises from an inverse change of magnitude in the value of labour-power. If, then, as we have already seen, there can be
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no change of absolute magnitude in the value of labour-power, and in surplus value, unaccompanied by a change in their relative magnitudes, so now it follows that no change in their relative magnitudes is possible, without a previous change in the absolute magnitude of the value of labour-power.
According to the third law, a change in the magnitude of surplus value, presupposes a movement in the value of labour-power, which movement is brought about by a variation in the productiveness of labour. The limit of this change is given by the altered value of labour-power. Nevertheless, even when circumstances allow the law to operate, subsidiary movements may occur. For example: if in consequence of the increased productiveness of labour, the value of labour-power falls from 4 shillings to 3, or the necessary labour time from 8 hours to 6, the price of labour-power may possibly not fall below 3s. 8d. , 3s. 6d. , or 3s. 2d. , and the surplus value consequently not rise above 3s. 4d. , 3s. 6d. , or 3s. 10d. The amount of this fall, the lowest limit of which is 3 shillings (the new value of labour-power), depends on the relative weight, which the pressure of capital on the one side, and the resistance of the labourer on the other, throws into the scale.
The value of labour-power is determined by the value of a given quantity of necessaries. It is the value and not the mass of these necessaries that varies with the productiveness of labour. It is, however, possible that, owing to an increase of productiveness, both the labourer and the capitalist may simultaneously be able to appropriate a greater quantity of these necessaries, without any change in the price of labour-power or in surplus value. If the value of labour-power be 3 shillings, and the necessary labour time amount to 6 hours, if the surplus value likewise be 3 shillings, and the surplus labour 6 hours, then if the productiveness of labour were doubled without altering the ratio of necessary labour to surplus labour, there would be no change of magnitude in surplus value and price of labour-power. The only result would be that each of them would represent twice as many use-values as before; these use-values being twice as cheap as before. Although labour-power would be unchanged in price, it would be above its value. If, however, the price of labour-power had fallen, not to 1s. 6d. , the lowest possible point consistent with its new value, but to 2s. 10d. or 2s. 6d. , still this lower price would represent an increased mass of necessaries. In this way it is possible with an increasing productiveness of labour, for the price of labour-power to keep on falling, and yet this fall to be accompanied by a constant growth in the mass of the labourer's means of subsistence. But even in such case, the fall in the value of labour-power would cause a corresponding rise of surplus value, and thus the abyss between the labourer's position and that of the capitalist would keep widening. 3
Ricardo was the first who accurately formulated the three laws we have above stated. But he falls into the following errors: (1) he looks upon the special conditions under which these laws hold good as the general and sole conditions of capitalist production. He knows no change, either in the length of the working day, or in the intensity of labour; consequently with him there can be only one variable factor, viz. , the productiveness of labour; (2), and this error vitiates his analysis much more than (1), he has not, any more than have the other economists, investigated surplus value as such, i. e. , independently of its particular forms, such as profit, rent, &c. He therefore confounds together the laws of the rate of surplus value and the laws of the rate of profit. The rate of profit is, as we have already said, the ratio of the surplus value to the total capital advanced; the rate of surplus value is the ratio of the surplus value to the variable part of that capital. Assume that a capital C of ? 500 is made up of raw material, instruments of labour, &c. (c) to the amount of ? 400; and of wages (v) to the amount of ? 100; and further, that the surplus value (s) = ? 100. Then we have rate of surplus value s/v = ? 100/? 100 = 100%. But the rate of profit s/c = ? 100/? 500 = 20%.
So far as the labour-process is purely individual, one and the same labourer unites in himself all the functions, that later on become separated. When an individual appropriates natural objects for his livelihood, no one controls him but himself. Afterwards he is controlled by others. A single man cannot operate upon Nature without calling his own muscles into play under the control of his own brain. As in the natural body head and hand wait upon each other, so the labour-process unites the labour of the hand with that of the head. Later on they part company and even become deadly foes. The product ceases to be the direct product of the individual, and becomes a social product, produced in common by a collective labourer, i. e. , by a combination of workmen, each of whom takes only a part, greater or less, in the manipulation of the subject of their labour. As the co-operative character of the labour-process becomes more and more marked, so, as a necessary consequence, does our notion of productive labour, and of its agent the productive labourer, become extended. In order to labour productively, it is no longer necessary for you to do manual work yourself; enough, if you are an organ of the collective labourer, and perform one of its subordinate functions. The first definition given above of productive labour, a definition deduced from the very nature of the production of material objects, still remains correct for the collective labourer, considered as a whole. But it no longer holds good for each member taken individually.
On the other hand, however, our notion of productive labour becomes narrowed. Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus value. The labourer produces, not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply produce. He must produce surplus value. That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus value for the capitalist, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital. If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation. Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between labourer and
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product of labour, but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the direct means of creating surplus value. To be a productive labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune. In Book IV. which treats of the history of the theory, it will be more clearly seen, that the production of surplus value has at all times been made, by classical political economists, the distinguishing characteristic of the productive labourer. Hence their definition of a productive labourer changes with their comprehension of the nature of surplus value. Thus the Physiocrats insist that only agricultural labour is productive, since that alone, they say, yields a surplus value. And they say so because, with them, surplus value has no existence except in the form of rent.
The prolongation of the working day beyond the point at which the labourer would have produced just an equivalent for the value of his labour-power, and the appropriation of that surplus labour by capital, this is production of absolute surplus value. It forms the general groundwork of the capitalist system, and the starting-point for the production of relative surplus value. The latter pre-supposes that the working day is already divided into two parts, necessary labour, and surplus labour. In order to prolong the surplus labour, the necessary labour is shortened by methods whereby the equivalent for the wages is produced in less time. The production of absolute surplus value turns exclusively upon the length of the working day; the production of relative surplus value, revolutionises out and out the technical processes of labour, and the composition of society. It therefore pre-supposes a specific mode, the capitalist mode of production, a mode which, along with its methods, means, and conditions, arises and develops itself spontaneously on the foundation afforded by the formal subjection of labour to capital. In the course of this development, the formal subjection is replaced by the real subjection of labour to capital.
It will suffice merely to refer to certain intermediate forms, in which surplus labour is not extorted by direct compulsion from the producer, nor the producer himself yet formally subjected to capital. In such forms capital has not yet acquired the direct control of the labour-process. By the side of independent producers who carry on their handicrafts and agriculture in the traditional old-fashioned way, there stands the usurer or the merchant, with his usurer's capital or merchant's capital, feeding on them like a parasite. The predominance, in a society, of this form of exploitation excludes the capitalist mode of production; to which mode, however, this form may serve as a transition, as it did towards the close of the Middle Ages. Finally, as is shown by modern --domestic industry,? some intermediate forms are here and there reproduced in the background of Modern Industry, though their physiognomy is totally changed.
If, on the one hand, the mere formal subjection of labour to capital suffices for the production of absolute surplus value, if, e. g. , it is sufficient that handicraftsman who previously worked on their own account, or as apprentices of a master, should become wage labourers under the direct control of a capitalist; so, on the other hand, we have seen, how the methods of producing relative surplus value, are, at the same time, methods of producing absolute surplus value. Nay, more, the excessive prolongation of the working day turned out to be the peculiar product of Modern Industry. Generally speaking, the specifically capitalist mode of production ceases to be a mere means of producing relative surplus value, so soon as that mode has conquered an entire branch of production; and still more so, so soon as it has conquered all the important branches. It then becomes the general, socially predominant form of production. As a special method of producing relative surplus value, it remains effective only, first, in so far as it seizes upon industries that previously were only formally subject to capital, that is, so far as it is propagandist; secondly, in so far as the industries that have been taken over by it, continue to be revolutionised by changes in the methods of production.
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From one standpoint, any distinction between absolute and relative surplus value appears illusory. Relative surplus value is absolute, since it compels the absolute prolongation of the working day beyond the labour-time necessary to the existence of the labourer himself. Absolute surplus value is relative, since it makes necessary such a development of the productiveness of labour, as will allow of the necessary labour-time being confined to a portion of the working day. But if we keep in mind the behaviour of surplus value, this appearance of identity vanishes. Once the capitalist mode of production is established and become general, the difference between absolute and relative surplus value makes itself felt, whenever there is a question of raising the rate of surplus value. Assuming that labour-power is paid for at its value, we are confronted by this alternative: given the productiveness of labour and its normal intensity, the rate of surplus value can be raised only by the actual prolongation of the working day; on the other hand, given the length of the working day, that rise can be effected only by a change in the relative magnitudes of the components of the working day, viz. , necessary labour and surplus labour; a change which, if the wages are not to fall below the value of labour-power, presupposes a change either in the productiveness or in the intensity of the labour.
If the labourer wants all his time to produce the necessary means of subsistence for himself and his race, he has no time left in which to work gratis for others. Without a certain degree of productiveness in his labour, he has no such superfluous time at his disposal; without such superfluous time, no surplus labour, and therefore no capitalists, no slave-owners, no feudal lords, in one word, no class of large proprietors. 1
Thus we may say that surplus value rests on a natural basis; but this is permissible only in the very general sense, that there is no natural obstacle absolutely preventing one man from disburdening himself of the labour requisite for his own existence, and burdening another with it, any more, for instance, than unconquerable natural obstacle prevent one man from eating the flesh of another. 2 No mystical ideas must in any way be connected, as sometimes happens, with this historically developed productiveness of labour. It is only after men have raised themselves above the rank of animals, when therefore their labour has been to some extent socialised, that a state of things arises in which the surplus labour of the one becomes a condition of existence for the other. At the dawn of civilisation the productiveness acquired by labour is small, but so too are the wants which develop with and by the means of satisfying them. Further, at that early period, the portion of society that lives on the labour of others is infinitely small compared with the mass of direct producers. Along with the progress in the productiveness of labour, that small portion of society increases both absolutely and relatively. 3 Besides, capital with its accompanying relations springs up from an economic soil that is the product of a long process of development. The productiveness of labour that serves as its foundation and starting-point, is a gift, not of nature, but of a history embracing thousands of centuries.
Apart from the degree of development, greater or less, in the form of social production, the productiveness of labour is fettered by physical conditions. These are all referable to the constitution of man himself (race, &c. ), and to surrounding nature. The external physical conditions fall into two great economic classes, (1) Natural wealth in means of subsistence, i. e. , a fruitful soil, waters teeming with fish, &c. , and (2), natural wealth in the instruments of labour, such as waterfalls, navigable rivers, wood, metal, coal, &c. At the dawn of civilisation, it is the first class that turns the scale; at a higher stage of development, it is the second. Compare, for example, England with India, or in ancient times, Athens and Corinth with the shores of the Black Sea.
The fewer the number of natural wants imperatively calling for satisfaction, and the greater the natural fertility of the soil and the favourableness of the climate, so much less is the labour-time
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necessary for the maintenance and reproduction of the producer. So much greater therefore can be the excess of his labours for others over his labour for himself. Diodorus long ago remarked this in relation to the ancient Egyptians.
--It is altogether incredible how little trouble and expense the bringing up of their children causes them. They cook for them the first simple food at hand; they also give them the lower part of the papyrus stem to eat, so far as it can be roasted in the fire, and the roots and stalks of marsh plants, some raw, some boiled and roasted. Most of the children go without shoes and unclothed, for the air is so mild. Hence a child, until he is grown up, costs his parents not more, on the whole, than twenty drachmas. It is this, chiefly, which explains why the population of Egypt is so numerous, and, therefore, why so many great works can be undertaken. ? 4
Nevertheless the grand structures of ancient Egypt are less due to the extent of its population than to the large proportion of it that was freely disposable. Just as the individual labourer can do more surplus labour in proportion as his necessary labour-time is less, so with regard to the working population. The smaller the part of it which is required for the production of the necessary means of subsistence, so much the greater is the part that can be set to do other work.
Capitalist production once assumed, then, all other circumstances remaining the same, and given the length of the working day, the quantity of surplus labour will vary with the physical conditions of labour, especially with the fertility of the soil. But it by no means follows from this that the most fruitful soil is the most fitted for the growth of the capitalist mode of production. This mode is based on the dominion of man over nature. Where nature is too lavish, she --keeps him in hand, like a child in leading-strings. ? She does not impose upon him any necessity to develop himself. 5 It is not the tropics with their luxuriant vegetation, but the temperate zone, that is the mother-country of capital. It is not the mere fertility of the soil, but the differentiation of the soil, the variety of its natural products, the changes of the seasons, which form the physical basis for the social division of labour, and which, by changes in the natural surroundings, spur man on to the multiplication of his wants, his capabilities, his means and modes of labour. It is the necessity of bringing a natural force under the control of society, of economising, of appropriating or subduing it on a large scale by the work of man's hand, that first plays the decisive part in the history of industry. Examples are, the irrigation works in Egypt,6 Lombardy, Holland, or in India and Persia where irrigation by means of artificial canals, not only supplies the soil with the water indispensable to it, but also carries down to it, in the shape of sediment from the hills, mineral fertilisers. The secret of the flourishing state of industry in Spain and Sicily under the dominion of the Arabs lay in their irrigation works. 7
Favourable natural conditions alone, give us only the possibility, never the reality, of surplus labour, nor, consequently, of surplus value and a surplus-product. The result of difference in the natural conditions of labour is this, that the same quantity of labour satisfies, in different countries, a different mass of requirements,8 consequently, that under circumstances in other respects analogous, the necessary labour-time is different. These conditions affect surplus labour only as natural limits, i. e. , by fixing the points at which labour for others can begin. In proportion as industry advances, these natural limits recede. In the midst of our West European society, where the labourer purchases the right to work for his own livelihood only by paying for it in surplus labour, the idea easily takes root that it is an inherent quality of human labour to furnish a surplus-product. 9 But consider, for example, an inhabitant of the eastern islands of the Asiatic Archipelago, where sago grows wild in the forests.
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--When the inhabitants have convinced themselves, by boring a hole in the tree, that the pith is ripe, the trunk is cut down and divided into several pieces, the pith is extracted, mixed with water and filtered: it is then quite fit for use as sago. One tree commonly yields 300 lbs. , and occasionally 500 to 600 lbs. There, then, people go into the forests, and cut bread for themselves, just as with us they cut fire-wood. ? 10
Suppose now such an eastern bread-cutter requires 12 working hours a week for the satisfaction of all his wants. Nature's direct gift to him is plenty of leisure time. Before he can apply this leisure time productively for himself, a whole series of historical events is required; before he spends it in surplus labour for strangers, compulsion is necessary. If capitalist production were introduced, the honest fellow would perhaps have to work six days a week, in order to appropriate to himself the product of one working day. The bounty of Nature does not explain why he would then have to work 6 days a week, or why he must furnish 5 days of surplus labour. It explains only why his necessary labour-time would be limited to one day a week. But in no case would his surplus-product arise from some occult quality inherent in human labour.
Thus, not only does the historically developed social productiveness of labour, but also its natural productiveness, appear to be productiveness of the capital with which that labour is incorporated.
Ricardo never concerns himself about the origin of surplus value. He treats it as a thing inherent in the capitalist mode of production, which mode, in his eyes, is the natural form of social production. Whenever he discusses the productiveness of labour, he seeks in it, not the cause of surplus value, but the cause that determines the magnitude of that value. On the other hand, his school has openly proclaimed the productiveness of labour to be the originating cause of profit (read: Surplus value). This at all events is a progress as against the mercantilists who, on their side, derived the excess of the price over the cost of production of the product, from the act of exchange, from the product being sold above its value. Nevertheless, Ricardo's school simply shirked the problem, they did not solve it. In fact these bourgeois economists instinctively saw, and rightly so, that it is very dangerous to stir too deeply the burning question of the origin of surplus value. But what are we to think of John Stuart Mill, who, half a century after Ricardo, solemnly claims superiority over the mercantilists, by clumsily repeating the wretched evasions of Ricardo's earliest vulgarisers?
Mill says:
--The cause of profit is that labour produces more than is required for its support. ?
So far, nothing but the old story; but Mill wishing to add something of his own, proceeds:
--To vary the form of the theorem; the reason why capital yields a profit, is because food, clothing, materials and tools, last longer than the time which was required to produce them. ?
He here confounds the duration of labour-time with the duration of its products. According to this view, a baker whose product lasts only a day, could never extract from his workpeople the same profit, as a machine maker whose products endure for 20 years and more. Of course it is very true, that if a bird's nest did not last longer than the time it takes in building, birds would have to do without nests.
This fundamental truth once established, Mill establishes his own superiority over the mercantilists.
--We thus see,? he proceeds, --that profit arises, not from the incident of exchange, but from the productive power of labour; and the general profit of the country is
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always what the productive power of labour makes it, whether any exchange takes place or not. If there were no division of employments, there would be no buying or selling, but there would still be profit. ?
For Mill then, exchange, buying and selling, those general conditions of capitalist production, are but an incident, and there would always be profits even without the purchase and sale of labour- power!
--If,? he continues, --the labourers of the country collectively produce twenty per cent more than their wages, profits will be twenty per cent, whatever prices may or may not be. ? This is, on the one hand, a rare bit of tautology; for if labourers produce a surplus value of 20% for the capitalist, his profit will be to the total wages of the labourers as 20:100. On the other hand, it is absolutely false to say that --profits will be 20%. ? They will always be less, because they are calculated upon the sum total of the capital advanced. If, for example, the capitalist have advanced ? 500, of which ? 4OO is laid out in means of production and ? 100 in wages, and if the rate of surplus value be 20%, the rate of profit will be 20:500, i. e. , 4% and not 20%.
Then follows a splendid example of Mill's method of handling the different historical forms of social production.
--I assume, throughout, the state of things which, where the labourers and capitalists are separate classes, prevails, with few exceptions, universally; namely, that the capitalist advances the whole expenses, including the entire remuneration of the labourer. ?
Strange optical illusion to see everywhere a state of things which as yet exists only exceptionally on our earth. 11 But let us finish - Mill is willing to concede,
--that he should do so is not a matter of inherent necessity. ? On the contrary: --the labourer might wait, until the production is complete, for all that part of his wages which exceeds mere necessaries: and even for the whole, if he has funds in hand sufficient for his temporary support. But in the latter case, the labourer is to that extent really a capitalist in the concern, by supplying a portion of the funds necessary for carrying it on. ?
Mill might have gone further and have added, that the labourer who advances to himself not only the necessaries of life but also the means of production, is in reality nothing but his own wage- labourer. He might also have said that the American peasant proprietor is but a serf who does enforced labour for himself instead of for his lord.
After thus proving clearly, that even if capitalist production had no existence, still it would always exist, Mill is consistent enough to show, on the contrary, that it has no existence, even when it does exist.
--And even in the former case? (when the workman is a wage labourer to whom the capitalist advances all the necessaries of life, he the labourer), --may be looked upon in the same light,? (i. e. , as a capitalist), --since, contributing his labour at less than the market-price, (! ) he may be regarded as lending the difference (? ) to his employer and receiving it back with interest, &c. ? 12
In reality, the labourer advances his labour gratuitously to the capitalist during, say one week, in order to receive the market price at the end of the week, &c. , and it is this which, according to Mill, transforms him into a capitalist. On the level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the imbecile flatness of the present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects.
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1 --The very existence of the master-capitalists, as a distinct class, is dependent on the productiveness of industry. ? (Ramsay, l. c. , p. 206. ) --If each man's labour were but enough to produce his own food, there could be no property. ? (Ravenstone, l. c. p. 14, 15. )
2 According to a recent calculation, there are yet at least 4,000,000 cannibals in those parts of the earth which have already been explored.
3 --Among the wild Indians in America, almost everything is the labourer's, 99 parts of a hundred are to be put upon the account of labour. In England, perhaps, the labourer has not 2/3. ?
(The Advantages of the East India Trade, &c. , p. 73. )
4 Diodorus, l. c. , l. I. , c. 80.
5 --The first (natural wealth) as it is most noble and advantageous, so doth it make the people careless, proud, and given to all excesses; whereas the second enforceth vigilancy, literature, arts and policy. ? (England's Treasure by Foreign Trade. Or the Balance of our Foreign Trade is the Rule of our Treasure. Written by Thomas Mun of London, merchant, and now published for the common good by his son John Mun. London, 1669, p. 181, 182. ) --Nor can I conceive a greater curse upon a body of people, than to be thrown upon a spot of land, where the productions for subsistence and food were, in great measure, spontaneous, and the climate required or admitted little care for raiment and covering. . . there may be an extreme on the other side. A soil incapable of produce by labour is quite as bad as a soil that produces plentifully without any labour. ? (An Inquiry into the Present High Price of Provisions. Lond. 1767, p. 10. )
6 The necessity for predicting the rise and fall of the Nile created Egyptian astronomy, and with it the dominion of the priests, as directors of agriculture. --Le solstice est le moment de l'anne? e ou commence la crue du Nil, et celui que les Egyptiens ont du observer avec le plus d'attention. . . . C'e? tait cette anne? e tropique qu'il leur importait de marquer pour se diriger dans leurs ope? rations agricoles. Ils durent donc chercher dans le ciel un signe apparent de son retour. ? [The solstice is the moment of the year when the Nile begins to rise, and it is the moment the Egyptians have had to watch for with the greatest attention . . . It was the evolution of the tropical year which they had to establish firmly so as to conduct their agricultural operations in accordance with it. They therefore had to search the heavens for a visible sign of the solstice's return. ] (Cuvier: Discours sur les re? volutions du globe, ed. Hoefer, Paris, 1863, p. 141. )
7 One of the material bases of the power of the state over the small disconnected producing organisms in India, was the regulation of the water supply. The Mahometan rulers of India understood this better than their English successors. It is enough to recall to mind the famine of 1866, which cost the lives of more than a million Hindus in the district of Orissa, in the Bengal presidency.
8 --There are no two countries which furnish an equal number of the necessaries of life in equal plenty, and with the same quantity of labour. Men's wants increase or diminish with the severity or temperateness of the climate they live in; consequently, the proportion of trade which the inhabitants of different countries are obliged to carry on through necessity cannot be the same, nor is it practicable to ascertain the degree of variation farther than by the degrees of Heat and Cold; from whence one may make this general conclusion, that the quantity of labour required for a certain number of people is greatest in cold climates, and least in hot ones; for in the former men not only want more clothes, but the earth more cultivating than in the latter. ? (An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest. Lond. 1750. p. 60. ) The author of this epoch-making anonymous work is J. Massy. Hume took his theory of interest from it.
9 --Chaque travail doit (this appears also to be part of the droits et devoirs du citoyen [rights and duties of the citizen]) laisser un exce? dent. ? [All labour must leave a surplus] Proudhon.
10 F. Schouw: --Die Erde, die Pflanze und der Mensch,? 2. Ed. Leipz. 1854, p. 148.
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11 In earlier editions of Capital the quotation from John Stuart Mill, --I assume throughout. . . of the labourer,? had been given incorrectly, the words --where the labourers and capitalists are separate classes? having been left out. Marx, in a letter dated November 28, 1878, pointed this out to Danielson, the Russian translator of Capital, adding:
--The next two sentences, viz. ? Strange optical illusion to see everywhere a state of things which as yet exists only exceptionally on our earth. But let us finish' - should be deleted and the following sentence substituted:
--Mr. Mill is good enough to believe that this state of things is not an absolute necessity, even in that economic system in which ? labourers and capitalists are separate classes. '?
The substance of this note has been taken from the Volksausgabe. The quotation from Mill is from his Principles of Political Economy, Book II, Chap XV, 5.
12 J. St. Mill. Principles of Pol. Econ. Lond. 1868, p. 252-53 passim.
? ? Chapter 17: Changes of Magnitude in the Price of Labour-Power and in Surplus Value
The value of labour-power is determined by the value of the necessaries of life habitually required by the average labourer. The quantity of these necessaries is known at any given epoch of a given society, and can therefore be treated as a constant magnitude. What changes, is the value of this quantity. There are, besides, two other factors that enter into the determination of the value of labour-power. One, the expenses of developing that power, which expenses vary with the mode of production; the other, its natural diversity, the difference between the labour-power of men and women, of children and adults. The employment of these different sorts of labour- power, an employment which is, in its turn, made necessary by the mode of production, makes a great difference in the cost of maintaining the family of the labourer, and in the value of the labour-power of the adult male. Both these factors, however, are excluded in the following investigation. 1
I assume (1) that commodities are sold at their value; (2) that the price of labour-power rises occasionally above its value, but never sinks below it.
On this assumption we have seen that the relative magnitudes of surplus value and of price of labour-power are determined by three circumstances; (1) the length of the working day, or the extensive magnitude of labour; (2) the normal intensity of labour, its intensive magnitude, whereby a given quantity of labour is expended in a given time; (3) the productiveness of labour, whereby the same quantum of labour yields, in a given time, a greater or less quantum of product, dependent on the degree of development in the conditions of production. Very different combinations are clearly possible, according as one of the three factors is constant and two variable, or two constant and one variable, or lastly, all three simultaneously variable. And the number of these combinations is augmented by the fact that, when these factors simultaneously vary, the amount and direction of their respective variations may differ. In what follows the chief combinations alone are considered.
Section 1: Length of the Working day and Intensity of Labour Constant. Productiveness of Labour Variable
On these assumptions the value of labour-power, and the magnitude of surplus value, are determined by three laws.
(1. ) A working day of given length always creates the same amount of value, no matter how the productiveness of labour, and, with it, the mass of the product, and the price of each single commodity produced, may vary.
If the value created by a working day of 12 hours be, say, six shillings, then, although the mass of the articles produced varies with the productiveness of labour, the only result is that the value represented by six shillings is spread over a greater or less number of articles.
(2. ) surplus value and the value of labour-power vary in opposite directions. A variation in the productiveness of labour, its increase or diminution, causes a variation in the opposite direction in the value of labour-power, and in the same direction in surplus value.
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The value created by a working day of 12 hours is a constant quantity, say, six shillings. This constant quantity is the sum of the surplus value plus the value of the labour-power, which latter value the labourer replaces by an equivalent. It is self-evident, that if a constant quantity consists of two parts, neither of them can increase without the other diminishing. Let the two parts at starting be equal; 3 shillings value of labour-power, 3 shillings surplus value. Then the value of the labour-power cannot rise from three shillings to four, without the surplus value falling from three shillings to two; and the surplus value cannot rise from three shillings to four, without the value of labour-power falling from three shillings to two. Under these circumstances, therefore, no change can take place in the absolute magnitude, either of the surplus value, or of the value of labour-power, without a simultaneous change in their relative magnitudes, i. e. , relatively to each other. It is impossible for them to rise or fall simultaneously.
Further, the value of labour-power cannot fall, and consequently surplus value cannot rise, without a rise in the productiveness of labour. For instance, in the above case, the value of the labour-power cannot sink from three shillings to two, unless an increase in the productiveness of labour makes it possible to produce in 4 hours the same quantity of necessaries as previously required 6 hours to produce. On the other hand, the value of the labour-power cannot rise from three shillings to four, without a decrease in the productiveness of labour, whereby eight hours become requisite to produce the same quantity of necessaries, for the production of which six hours previously sufficed. It follows from this, that an increase in the productiveness of labour causes a fall in the value of labour-power and a consequent rise in surplus value, while, on the other hand, a decrease in such productiveness causes a rise in the value of labour-power, and a fall in surplus value.
In formulating this law, Ricardo overlooked one circumstance; although a change in the magnitude of the surplus value or surplus labour causes a change in the opposite direction in the magnitude of the value of labour-power, or in the quantity of necessary labour, it by no means follows that they vary in the same proportion. They do increase or diminish by the same quantity. But their proportional increase or diminution depends on their original magnitudes before the change in the productiveness of labour took place. If the value of the labour-power be 4 shillings, or the necessary labour time 8 hours, and the surplus value be 2 shillings, or the surplus labour 4 hours, and if, in consequence of an increase in the productiveness of labour, the value of the labour-power fall to 3 shillings, or the necessary labour to 6 hours, the surplus value will rise to 3 shillings, or the surplus labour to 6 hours. The same quantity, 1 shilling or 2 hours, is added in one case and subtracted in the other. But the proportional change of magnitude is different in each case. While the value of the labour-power falls from 4 shillings to 3, i. e. , by 1/4 or 25%, the surplus value rises from 2 shillings to 3, i. e. , by 1/2 or 50%. It therefore follows that the proportional increase or diminution in surplus value, consequent on a given change in the productiveness of labour, depends on the original magnitude of that portion of the working day which embodies itself in surplus value; the smaller that portion, the greater is the proportional change; the greater that portion, the less is the proportional change.
(3. ) Increase or diminution in surplus value is always consequent on, and never the cause of, the corresponding diminution or increase in the value of labour-power. 2
Since the working day is constant in magnitude, and is represented by a value of constant magnitude, since, to every variation in the magnitude of surplus value, there corresponds an inverse variation in the value of labour-power, and since the value of labour-power cannot change, except in consequence of a change in the productiveness of labour, it clearly follows, under these conditions, that every change of magnitude in surplus value arises from an inverse change of magnitude in the value of labour-power. If, then, as we have already seen, there can be
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no change of absolute magnitude in the value of labour-power, and in surplus value, unaccompanied by a change in their relative magnitudes, so now it follows that no change in their relative magnitudes is possible, without a previous change in the absolute magnitude of the value of labour-power.
According to the third law, a change in the magnitude of surplus value, presupposes a movement in the value of labour-power, which movement is brought about by a variation in the productiveness of labour. The limit of this change is given by the altered value of labour-power. Nevertheless, even when circumstances allow the law to operate, subsidiary movements may occur. For example: if in consequence of the increased productiveness of labour, the value of labour-power falls from 4 shillings to 3, or the necessary labour time from 8 hours to 6, the price of labour-power may possibly not fall below 3s. 8d. , 3s. 6d. , or 3s. 2d. , and the surplus value consequently not rise above 3s. 4d. , 3s. 6d. , or 3s. 10d. The amount of this fall, the lowest limit of which is 3 shillings (the new value of labour-power), depends on the relative weight, which the pressure of capital on the one side, and the resistance of the labourer on the other, throws into the scale.
The value of labour-power is determined by the value of a given quantity of necessaries. It is the value and not the mass of these necessaries that varies with the productiveness of labour. It is, however, possible that, owing to an increase of productiveness, both the labourer and the capitalist may simultaneously be able to appropriate a greater quantity of these necessaries, without any change in the price of labour-power or in surplus value. If the value of labour-power be 3 shillings, and the necessary labour time amount to 6 hours, if the surplus value likewise be 3 shillings, and the surplus labour 6 hours, then if the productiveness of labour were doubled without altering the ratio of necessary labour to surplus labour, there would be no change of magnitude in surplus value and price of labour-power. The only result would be that each of them would represent twice as many use-values as before; these use-values being twice as cheap as before. Although labour-power would be unchanged in price, it would be above its value. If, however, the price of labour-power had fallen, not to 1s. 6d. , the lowest possible point consistent with its new value, but to 2s. 10d. or 2s. 6d. , still this lower price would represent an increased mass of necessaries. In this way it is possible with an increasing productiveness of labour, for the price of labour-power to keep on falling, and yet this fall to be accompanied by a constant growth in the mass of the labourer's means of subsistence. But even in such case, the fall in the value of labour-power would cause a corresponding rise of surplus value, and thus the abyss between the labourer's position and that of the capitalist would keep widening. 3
Ricardo was the first who accurately formulated the three laws we have above stated. But he falls into the following errors: (1) he looks upon the special conditions under which these laws hold good as the general and sole conditions of capitalist production. He knows no change, either in the length of the working day, or in the intensity of labour; consequently with him there can be only one variable factor, viz. , the productiveness of labour; (2), and this error vitiates his analysis much more than (1), he has not, any more than have the other economists, investigated surplus value as such, i. e. , independently of its particular forms, such as profit, rent, &c. He therefore confounds together the laws of the rate of surplus value and the laws of the rate of profit. The rate of profit is, as we have already said, the ratio of the surplus value to the total capital advanced; the rate of surplus value is the ratio of the surplus value to the variable part of that capital. Assume that a capital C of ? 500 is made up of raw material, instruments of labour, &c. (c) to the amount of ? 400; and of wages (v) to the amount of ? 100; and further, that the surplus value (s) = ? 100. Then we have rate of surplus value s/v = ? 100/? 100 = 100%. But the rate of profit s/c = ? 100/? 500 = 20%.
