(Grove: --On the
Correlation
of Physical Forces.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
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%. It is, besides, obvious that the rate of profit may depend on circumstances that
? 365 Chapter 17
in no way affect the rate of surplus value. I shall show in Book III. that, with a given rate of surplus value, we may have any number of rates of profit, and that various rates of surplus value may, under given conditions, express themselves in a single rate of profit.
Section 2: Working day Constant. Productiveness of Labour Constant. Intensity of Labour Variable
Increased intensity of labour means increased expenditure of labour in a given time. Hence a working day of more intense labour is embodied in more products than is one of less intense labour, the length of each day being the same. Increased productiveness of labour also, it is true, will supply more products in a given working day. But in this latter case, the value of each single product falls, for it costs less labour than before; in the former case, that value remains unchanged, for each article costs the same labour as before. Here we have an increase in the number of products, unaccompanied by a fall in their individual prices: as their number increases, so does the sum of their prices. But in the case of increased productiveness, a given value is spread over a greater mass of products. Hence the length of the working day being constant, a day's labour of increased intensity will be incorporated in an increased value, and, the value of money remaining unchanged, in more money. The value created varies with the extent to which the intensity of labour deviates from its normal intensity in the society. A given working day, therefore, no longer creates a constant, but a variable value; in a day of 12 hours of ordinary intensity, the value created is, say 6 shillings, but with increased intensity, the value created may be 7, 8, or more shillings. It is clear that, if the value created by a day's labour increases from, say, 6 to 8 shillings then the two parts into which this value is divided, viz. , price of labour-power and surplus value, may both of them increase simultaneously, and either equally or unequally. They may both simultaneously increase from 3 shillings to 4. Here, the rise in the price of labour- power does not necessarily imply that the price has risen above the value of labour-power. On the contrary, the rise in price may be accompanied by a fall in value. This occurs whenever the rise in the price of labour-power does not compensate for its increased wear and tear.
We know that, with transitory exceptions, a change in the productiveness of labour does not cause any change in the value of labour-power, nor consequently in the magnitude of surplus value, unless the products of the industries affected are articles habitually consumed by the labourers. In the present case this condition no longer applies. For when the variation is either in the duration or in the intensity of labour, there is always a corresponding change in the magnitude of the value created, independently of the nature of the article in which that value is embodied.
If the intensity of labour were to increase simultaneously and equally in every branch of industry, then the new and higher degree of intensity would become the normal degree for the society, and would therefore cease to be taken account of. But still, even then, the intensity of labour would be different in different countries, and would modify the international application of the law of value. The more intense working day of one nation would be represented by a greater sum of money than would the less intense day of another nation. 4
Section 3: Productiveness and Intensity of Labour Constant. Length of the Working day Variable
The working day may vary in two ways. It may be made either longer or shorter. From our present data, and within the limits of the assumptions made above we obtain the following laws:
? 366 Chapter 17
(1. ) The working day creates a greater or less amount of value in proportion to its length - thus, a variable and not a constant quantity of value.
(2. ) Every change in the relation between the magnitudes of surplus value and of the value of labour-power arises from a change in the absolute magnitude of the surplus labour, and consequently of the surplus value.
(3. ) The absolute value of labour-power can change only in consequence of the reaction exercised by the prolongation of surplus labour upon the wear and tear of labour-power. Every change in this absolute value is therefore the effect, but never the cause, of a change in the magnitude of surplus value.
We begin with the case in which the working day is shortened.
(1. ) A shortening of the working day under the conditions given above, leaves the value of labour-power, and with it, the necessary labour time, unaltered. It reduces the surplus labour and surplus value. Along with the absolute magnitude of the latter, its relative magnitude also falls, i. e. , its magnitude relatively to the value of labour-power whose magnitude remains unaltered. Only by lowering the price of labour-power below its value could the capitalist save himself harmless.
All the usual arguments against the shortening of the working day, assume that it takes place under the conditions we have here supposed to exist; but in reality the very contrary is the case: a change in the productiveness and intensity of labour either precedes, or immediately follows, a shortening of the working day. 5
(2. ) Lengthening of the working day. Let the necessary labour time be 6 hours, or the value of labour-power 3 shillings; also let the surplus labour be 6 hours or the surplus value 3 shillings. The whole working day then amounts to 12 hours and is embodied in a value of 6 shillings. If, now, the working day be lengthened by 2 hours and the price of labour-power remain unaltered, the surplus value increases both absolutely and relatively. Although there is no absolute change in the value of labour-power, it suffers a relative fall. Under the conditions assumed in 1. there could not be a change of relative magnitude in the value of labour-power without a change in its absolute magnitude. Here, on the contrary, the change of relative magnitude in the value of labour-power is the result of the change of absolute magnitude in surplus value.
Since the value in which a day's labour is embodied, increases with the length of that day, it is evident that the surplus value and the price of labour-power may simultaneously increase, either by equal or unequal quantities. This simultaneous increase is therefore possible in two cases, one, the actual lengthening of the working day, the other, an increase in the intensity of labour unaccompanied by such lengthening.
When the working day is prolonged, the price of labour-power may fall below its value, although that price be nominally unchanged or even rise. The value of a day's labour-power is, as will be remembered, estimated from its normal average duration, or from the normal duration of life among the labourers, and from corresponding normal transformations of organised bodily matter into motion,6 in conformity with the nature of man. Up to a certain point, the increased wear and tear of labour-power, inseparable from a lengthened working day, may be compensated by higher wages. But beyond this point the wear and tear increases in geometrical progression, and every condition suitable for the normal reproduction and functioning of labour-power is suppressed. The price of labour-power and the degree of its exploitation cease to be commensurable quantities.
? 367
Chapter 17
Section 4: Simultaneous Variations in the Duration, Productiveness, and Intensity of Labour
It is obvious that a large number of combinations are here possible. Any two of the factors may vary and the third remain constant, or all three may vary at once. They may vary either in the same or in different degrees, in the same or in opposite directions, with the result that the variations counteract one another, either wholly or in part. Nevertheless the analysis of every possible case is easy in view of the results given in I. , II. , and III. The effect of every possible combination may be found by treating each factor in turn as variable, and the other two constant for the time being. We shall, therefore, notice, and that briefly, but two important cases.
A. Diminishing Productiveness of Labour with a
Simultaneous Lengthening of the Working day
In speaking of diminishing productiveness of labour, we here refer to diminution in those industries whose products determine the value of labour-power; such a diminution, for example, as results from decreasing fertility of the soil, and from the corresponding dearness of its products. Take the working day at 12 hours and the value created by it at 6 shillings, of which one half replaces the value of the labour-power, the other forms the surplus value. Suppose, in consequence of the increased dearness of the products of the soil, that the value of labour-power rises from 3 shillings to 4, and therefore the necessary labour time from 6 hours to 8. If there be no change in the length of the working day, the surplus labour would fall from 6 hours to 4, the surplus value from 3 shillings to 2. If the day be lengthened by 2 hours, i. e. , from 12 hours to 14, the surplus labour remains at 6 hours, the surplus value at 3 shillings*, but the surplus value decreases compared with the value of labour-power, as measured by the necessary labour time. If the day be lengthened by 4 hours, viz. , from 12 hours to 16, the proportional magnitudes of surplus value and value of labour-power, of surplus labour and necessary labour, continue unchanged, but the absolute magnitude of surplus value rises from 3 shillings to 4, that of the surplus labour from 6 hours to 8, an increment of 33 1/3%. Therefore, with diminishing productiveness of labour and a simultaneous lengthening of the working day, the absolute magnitude of surplus value may continue unaltered, at the same time that its relative magnitude diminishes; its relative magnitude may continue unchanged, at the same time that its absolute magnitude increases; and, provided the lengthening of the day be sufficient, both may increase.
In the period between 1799 and 1815 the increasing price of provisions led in England to a nominal rise in wages, although the real wages, expressed in the necessaries of life, fell. From this fact West and Ricardo drew the conclusion, that the diminution in the productiveness of agricultural labour had brought about a fall in the rate of surplus value, and they made this assumption of a fact that existed only in their imaginations, the starting-point of important investigations into the relative magnitudes of wages, profits, and rent. But, as a matter of fact, surplus value had at that time, thanks to the increased intensity of labour, and to the prolongation of the working day, increased both in absolute and relative magnitude. This was the period in which the right to prolong the hours of labour to an outrageous extent was established; 7 the period that was especially characterised by an accelerated accumulation of capital here, by pauperism there. 8
* Earlier English translations have --6 sh. ? instead of 3 shillings. This error was pointed out to us by a reader, we have investigated and checked with the 1872 German Edition and duly corrected an obvious error.
? ? 368 Chapter 17
B. Increasing Intensity and Productiveness of Labour with
Simultaneous Shortening of the Working day
Increased productiveness and greater intensity of labour, both have a like effect. They both augment the mass of articles produced in a given time. Both, therefore, shorten that portion of the working day which the labourer needs to produce his means of subsistence or their equivalent. The minimum length of the working day is fixed by this necessary but contractile portion of it. If the whole working day were to shrink to the length of this portion, surplus labour would vanish, a consummation utterly impossible under the re? gime of capital. Only by suppressing the capitalist form of production could the length of the working day be reduced to the necessary labour time. But, even in that case, the latter would extend its limits. On the one hand, because the notion of --means of subsistence? would considerably expand, and the labourer would lay claim to an altogether different standard of life. On the other hand, because a part of what is now surplus labour, would then count as necessary labour; I mean the labour of forming a fund for reserve and accumulation.
The more the productiveness of labour increases, the more can the working day be shortened; and the more the working day is shortened, the more can the intensity of labour increase. From a social point of view, the productiveness increases in the same ratio as the economy of labour, which, in its turn, includes not only economy of the means of production, but also the avoidance of all useless labour. The capitalist mode of production, while on the one hand, enforcing economy in each individual business, on the other hand, begets, by its anarchical system of competition, the most outrageous squandering of labour-power and of the social means of production, not to mention the creation of a vast number of employments, at present indispensable, but in themselves superfluous.
The intensity and productiveness of labour being given, the time which society is bound to devote to material production is shorter, and as a consequence, the time at its disposal for the free development, intellectual and social, of the individual is greater, in proportion as the work is more and more evenly divided among all the able-bodied members of society, and as a particular class is more and more deprived of the power to shift the natural burden of labour from its own shoulders to those of another layer of society. In this direction, the shortening of the working day finds at last a limit in the generalisation of labour. In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
1 Note in the 3rd German edition. -- The case considered at pages 321-324 is here of course omitted. -- F. E.
2 To this third law MacCulloch has made, amongst others, this absurd addition, that a rise in surplus value, unaccompanied by a fall in the value of labour-power, can occur through the abolition of taxes payable by the capitalist. The abolition of such taxes makes no change whatever in the quantity of surplus value that the capitalist extorts at first-hand from the labourer. It alters only the proportion in which that surplus value is divided between himself and third persons. It consequently makes no alteration whatever in the relation between surplus value and value of labour-power. MacCulloch's exception therefore proves only his misapprehension of the rule, a misfortune that as often happens to him in the vulgarisation of Ricardo, as it does to J. B. Say in the vulgarisation of Adam Smith.
3 --When an alteration takes place in the productiveness of industry, and that either more or less is produced by a given quantity of labour and capital, the proportion of wages may obviously vary, whilst the quantity, which that proportion represents, remains the same, or the quantity may vary, whilst the proportion remains the same. ? (--Outlines of Political Economy, &c. ,? p. 67. )
? ? 369 Chapter 17
4 --All things being equal, the English manufacturer can turn out a considerably larger amount of work in a given time than a foreign manufacturer, so much as to counterbalance the difference of the working days, between 60 hours a week here, and 72 or 80 elsewhere. ? (Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct. , 1855, p. 65. ) The most infallible means for reducing this qualitative difference between the English and Continental working hour would be a law shortening quantitatively the length of the working day in Continental factories.
5 --There are compensating circumstances . . . which the working of the Ten Hours' Act has brought to light. ? (Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct. 1848,? p. 7. )
6 --The amount of labour which a man had undergone in the course of 24 hours might be approximately arrived at by an examination of the chemical changes which had taken place in his body, changed forms in matter indicating the anterior exercise of dynamic force. ?
(Grove: --On the Correlation of Physical Forces. ? )
7 --Corn and labour rarely march quite abreast; but there is an obvious limit, beyond which they cannot be separated. With regard to the unusual exertions made by the labouring classes in periods of dearness, which produce the fall of wages noticed in the evidence? (namely, before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, 1814-15), --they are most meritorious in the individuals, and certainly favour the growth of capital. But no man of humanity could wish to see them constant and unremitted. They are most admirable as a temporary relief; but if they were constantly in action, effects of a similar kind would result from them, as from the population of a country being pushed to the very extreme limits of its food. ? (Malthus: --Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent,? Lond. , 1815, p. 48, note. ) All honour to Malthus that he lays stress on the lengthening of the hours of labour, a fact to which he elsewhere in his pamphlet draws attention, while Ricardo and others, in face of the most notorious facts, make invariability in the length of the working day the groundwork of all their investigations. But the conservative interests, which Malthus served, prevented him from seeing that an unlimited prolongation of the working day, combined with an extraordinary development of machinery, and the exploitation of women and children, must inevitably have made a great portion of the working-class --supernumerary,? particularly whenever the war should have ceased, and the monopoly of England in the markets of the world should have come to an end. It was, of course, far more convenient, and much more in conformity with the interests of the ruling classes, whom Malthus adored like a true priest, to explain this --over-population? by the eternal laws of Nature, rather than by the historical laws of capitalist production.
8 --A principal cause of the increase of capital, during the war, proceeded from the greater exertions, and perhaps the greater privations of the labouring classes, the most numerous in every society. More women and children were compelled by necessitous circumstances, to enter upon laborious occupations, and former workmen were, from the same cause, obliged to devote a greater portion of their time to increase production. ? (Essays on Pol. Econ. , in which are illustrated the principal causes of the present national distress. Lond. , 1830, p. 248. )
? ? Chapter 18: Various Formula for the rate of Surplus value
We have seen that the rate of surplus value is represented by the following formulae: I. Surplus value ( s ) = Surplus value = Surplus labour
Variable Capital v Value of labor-power Necessary labor
The two first of these formulae represent, as a ratio of values, that which, in the third, is represented as a ratio of the times during which those values are produced. These formulae, supplementary the one to the other, are rigorously definite and correct. We therefore find them substantially, but not consciously, worked out in classical Political Economy. There we meet with the following derivative formulae.
II. Surplus-labor = Surplus value = Surplus-product Working day Value of the Product Total Product
One and the same ratio is here expressed as a ratio of labor-times, of the values in which those labor-times are embodied, and of the products in which those values exist. It is of course understood that, by --Value of the Product,? is meant only the value newly created in a working day, the constant part of the value of the product being excluded.
In all of these formulae (II. ), the actual degree of exploitation of labor, or the rate of surplus value, is falsely expressed. Let the working day be 12 hours. Then, making the same assumptions as in former instances, the real degree of exploitation of labor will be represented in the following proportions.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? 6 hours surplus-labor = Surplus value of 3 sh. 6 hours necessary labor Variable Capital of 3 sh.
From formulae II. we get very differently,
6 hours surplus-labor = Surplus value of 3 sh. Working day of 12 hours Value created of 6 sh.
= 100%
= 50%
? ? ? ? These derivative formulae express, in reality, only the proportion in which the working day, or the value produced by it, is divided between capitalist and laborer. If they are to be treated as direct expressions of the degree of self-expansion of capital, the following erroneous law would hold good: Surplus-labor or surplus value can never reach 100%. 1 Since the surplus-labor is only an aliquot part of the working day, or since surplus value is only an aliquot part of the value created, the surplus-labor must necessarily be always less than the working day, or the surplus value always less than the total value created. In order, however, to attain the ratio of 100:100 they must be equal. In order that the surplus-labor may absorb the whole day (i. e. , an average day of any week or year), the necessary labor must sink to zero. But if the necessary labor vanish, so too does the surplus-labor, since it is only a function of the former. The ratio
Surplus-labor or Surplus value Working day Value created
can therefore never reach the limit 100/100, still less rise to 100 + x/100. But not so the rate of surplus value, the real degree of exploitation of labor. Take, e. g. , the estimate of L. de Lavergne,
? ? ? 371 Chapter 18
according to which the English agricultural laborer gets only 1/4, the capitalist (farmer) on the other hand 3/4 of the product 2 or its value, apart from the question of how the booty is subsequently divided between the capitalist, the landlord, and others. According to this, this surplus-labor of the English agricultural laborer is to his necessary labor as 3:1, which gives a rate of exploitation of 300%.
The favorite method of treating the working day as constant in magnitude became, through the use of formulae II. , a fixed usage, because in them surplus-labor is always compared with a working day of given length. The same holds good when the repartition of the value produced is exclusively kept insight. The working day that has already been realized in given value, must necessarily be a day of given length.
The habit of representing surplus value and value of labor-power as fractions of the value created - a habit that originates in the capitalist mode of production itself, and whose import will hereafter be disclosed - conceals the very transaction that characterizes capital, namely the exchange of variable capital for living labor-power, and the consequent exclusion of the laborer from the product. Instead of the real fact, we have false semblance of an association, in which laborer and capitalist divide the product in proportion to the different elements which they respectively contribute towards its formation. 3
Moreover, the formulae II. can at any time be reconverted into formulae I. If, for instance, we have
Surplus-labor of 6 hours Working day of 12 hours
then the necessary labor-time being 12 hours less the surplus-labor of 6 hours, we get the following result,
Surplus-labor of 6 hours = 100
? ? ? Necessary labor of 6 hours
100
There is a third formula which I have occasionally already anticipated; it is
III. Surplus value = Surplus-labor = Unpaid labor
Value of labor-power Necessary labor Paid labor
After the investigations we have given above, it is no longer possible to be misled, by the formula
Unpaid labor, Paid labor
into concluding, that the capitalist pays for labor and not for labor-power. This formula is only a popular expression for
Surplus-labor, Necessary labor
The capitalist pays the value, so far as price coincides with value, of the labor-power, and receives in exchange the disposal of the living labor-power itself. His usufruct is spread over two periods. During one the laborer produces a value that is only equal to the value of his labor- power; he produces its equivalent. This the capitalist receives in return for his advance of the price of the labor-power, a product ready made in the market. During the other period, the period of surplus-labor, the usufruct of the labor-power creates a value for the capitalist, that costs him no equivalent. 4 This expenditure of labor-power comes to him gratis. In this sense it is that surplus-labor can be called unpaid labor.
? ? ? ? ? ? 372 Chapter 18
Capital, therefore, it not only, as Adam Smith says, the command over labor. It is essentially the command over unpaid labor. All surplus value, whatever particular form (profit, interest, or rent), it may subsequently crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labor. The secret of the self-expansion of capital resolves itself into having the disposal of a definite quantity of other people's unpaid labor.
1 Thus, e. g. , in --Dritter Brief an v. Kirchmann von Rodbertus. Widerlegung der Ricardo'schen Lehre von der Grundrente und Begrundung einer neuen Rententheorie. ? Berlin, 1851. I shall return to this letter later on; in spite of its erroneous theory of rent, it sees through the nature of capitalist production.
NOTE ADDED IN THE 3RD GERMAN EDITION: It may be seen from this how favorably Marx judged his predecessors, whenever he found in them real progress, or new and sound ideas. The subsequent publications of Robertus' letters to Rud. Meyer has shown that the above acknowledgement by Marx wants restricting to some extent. In those letters this passage occurs:
--Capital must be rescued not only from labor, but from itself, and that will be best effected, by treating the acts of the industrial capitalist as economic and political functions, that have been delegated to him with his capital, and by treating his profit as a form of salary, because we still know no other social organization. But salaries may be regulated, and may also be reduced if they take too much from wages. The irruption of Marx into Society, as I may call his book, must be warded off. . . . Altogether, Marx's book is not so much an investigation into capital, as a polemic against the present form of capital, a form which he confounds with the concept itself of capital. ? ("Briefe, &c. , von Dr. Robertus-Jagetzow, herausgg. von Dr. Rud. Meyer,? Berlin, 1881, I, Bd. P. 111, 46. Brief von Rodbertus. ) To such ideological commonplaces did the bold attack by Robertus in his --social letters? finally dwindle down. -- F. E.
2 That part of the product which merely replaces the constant capital advanced is of course left out in this calculation. Mr. L. de Lavergne, a blind admirer of England, is inclined to estimate the share of the capitalist too low, rather than too high.
3 All well-developed forms of capitalist production being forms of cooperation, nothing is, of course, easier, than to make abstraction from their antagonistic character, and to transform them by a word into some form of free association, as is done by A. de Laborde in --De l'Esprit d'Association dans tous les inte? re^ts de la communaute? ". Paris 1818. H. Carey, the Yankee, occasionally performs this conjuring trick with like success, even with the relations resulting from slavery.
4 Although the Physiocrats could not penetrate the mystery of surplus value, yet this much was clear to them, viz. , that it is --une richesse inde? pendante et disponible qu'il (the possessor) n'a point achete? e et qu'il vend. ? [a wealth which is independent and disposable, which he . . . has not bought and which he sells] (Turgot: --Re? flexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses,? p. 11. )
? ? 373
Part 6: Wages
Chapter 19: The Transformation of the Value (and Respective Price) of Labour-Power into
Wages
On the surface of bourgeois society the wage of the labourer appears as the price of labour, a certain quantity of money that is paid for a certain quantity of labour. Thus people speak of the value of labour and call its expression in money its necessary or natural price. On the other hand they speak of the market-prices of labour, i. e. , prices oscillating above or below its natural price.
But what is the value of a commodity? The objective form of the social labour expended in its production. And how do we measure the quantity of this value? By the quantity of the labour contained in it. How then is the value, e. g. , of a 12 hour working day to be determined? . By the 12 working-hours contained in a working day of 12 hours, which is an absurd tautology. 1
In order to be sold as a commodity in the market, labour must at all events exist before it is sold. But, could the labourer give it an independent objective existence, he would sell a commodity and not labour. 2
Apart from these contradictions, a direct exchange of money, i. e. , of realized labour, with living labour would either do away with the law of value which only begins to develop itself freely on the basis of capitalist production, or do away with capitalist production itself, which rests directly on wage-labour. The working day of 12 hours embodies itself, e. g. , in a money-value of 6s. Either equivalents are exchanged, and then the labourer receives 6s, for 12 hours' labour; the price of his labour would be equal to the price of his product. In this case he produces no surplus value for the buyer of his labour, the 6s. are not transformed into capital, the basis of capitalist production vanishes. But it is on this very basis that he sells his labour and that his labour is wage-labour. Or else he receives for 12 hours' labour less than 6s. , i. e. , less than 12 hours' labour. Twelve hours' labour are exchanged against 10, 6, &c. , hours' labour. This equalization of unequal quantities not merely does away with the determination of value. Such a self-destructive contradiction cannot be in any way even enunciated or formulated as a law. 3
It is of no avail to deduce the exchange of more labour against less, from their difference of form, the one being realized, the other living. 4 This is the more absurd as the value of a commodity is determined not by the quantity of labour actually realized in it, but by the quantity of living labour necessary for its production. A commodity represents, say, 6 working-hours. If an invention is made by which it can be produced in 3 hours, the value, even of the commodity already produced, falls by half.
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%. It is, besides, obvious that the rate of profit may depend on circumstances that
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in no way affect the rate of surplus value. I shall show in Book III. that, with a given rate of surplus value, we may have any number of rates of profit, and that various rates of surplus value may, under given conditions, express themselves in a single rate of profit.
Section 2: Working day Constant. Productiveness of Labour Constant. Intensity of Labour Variable
Increased intensity of labour means increased expenditure of labour in a given time. Hence a working day of more intense labour is embodied in more products than is one of less intense labour, the length of each day being the same. Increased productiveness of labour also, it is true, will supply more products in a given working day. But in this latter case, the value of each single product falls, for it costs less labour than before; in the former case, that value remains unchanged, for each article costs the same labour as before. Here we have an increase in the number of products, unaccompanied by a fall in their individual prices: as their number increases, so does the sum of their prices. But in the case of increased productiveness, a given value is spread over a greater mass of products. Hence the length of the working day being constant, a day's labour of increased intensity will be incorporated in an increased value, and, the value of money remaining unchanged, in more money. The value created varies with the extent to which the intensity of labour deviates from its normal intensity in the society. A given working day, therefore, no longer creates a constant, but a variable value; in a day of 12 hours of ordinary intensity, the value created is, say 6 shillings, but with increased intensity, the value created may be 7, 8, or more shillings. It is clear that, if the value created by a day's labour increases from, say, 6 to 8 shillings then the two parts into which this value is divided, viz. , price of labour-power and surplus value, may both of them increase simultaneously, and either equally or unequally. They may both simultaneously increase from 3 shillings to 4. Here, the rise in the price of labour- power does not necessarily imply that the price has risen above the value of labour-power. On the contrary, the rise in price may be accompanied by a fall in value. This occurs whenever the rise in the price of labour-power does not compensate for its increased wear and tear.
We know that, with transitory exceptions, a change in the productiveness of labour does not cause any change in the value of labour-power, nor consequently in the magnitude of surplus value, unless the products of the industries affected are articles habitually consumed by the labourers. In the present case this condition no longer applies. For when the variation is either in the duration or in the intensity of labour, there is always a corresponding change in the magnitude of the value created, independently of the nature of the article in which that value is embodied.
If the intensity of labour were to increase simultaneously and equally in every branch of industry, then the new and higher degree of intensity would become the normal degree for the society, and would therefore cease to be taken account of. But still, even then, the intensity of labour would be different in different countries, and would modify the international application of the law of value. The more intense working day of one nation would be represented by a greater sum of money than would the less intense day of another nation. 4
Section 3: Productiveness and Intensity of Labour Constant. Length of the Working day Variable
The working day may vary in two ways. It may be made either longer or shorter. From our present data, and within the limits of the assumptions made above we obtain the following laws:
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(1. ) The working day creates a greater or less amount of value in proportion to its length - thus, a variable and not a constant quantity of value.
(2. ) Every change in the relation between the magnitudes of surplus value and of the value of labour-power arises from a change in the absolute magnitude of the surplus labour, and consequently of the surplus value.
(3. ) The absolute value of labour-power can change only in consequence of the reaction exercised by the prolongation of surplus labour upon the wear and tear of labour-power. Every change in this absolute value is therefore the effect, but never the cause, of a change in the magnitude of surplus value.
We begin with the case in which the working day is shortened.
(1. ) A shortening of the working day under the conditions given above, leaves the value of labour-power, and with it, the necessary labour time, unaltered. It reduces the surplus labour and surplus value. Along with the absolute magnitude of the latter, its relative magnitude also falls, i. e. , its magnitude relatively to the value of labour-power whose magnitude remains unaltered. Only by lowering the price of labour-power below its value could the capitalist save himself harmless.
All the usual arguments against the shortening of the working day, assume that it takes place under the conditions we have here supposed to exist; but in reality the very contrary is the case: a change in the productiveness and intensity of labour either precedes, or immediately follows, a shortening of the working day. 5
(2. ) Lengthening of the working day. Let the necessary labour time be 6 hours, or the value of labour-power 3 shillings; also let the surplus labour be 6 hours or the surplus value 3 shillings. The whole working day then amounts to 12 hours and is embodied in a value of 6 shillings. If, now, the working day be lengthened by 2 hours and the price of labour-power remain unaltered, the surplus value increases both absolutely and relatively. Although there is no absolute change in the value of labour-power, it suffers a relative fall. Under the conditions assumed in 1. there could not be a change of relative magnitude in the value of labour-power without a change in its absolute magnitude. Here, on the contrary, the change of relative magnitude in the value of labour-power is the result of the change of absolute magnitude in surplus value.
Since the value in which a day's labour is embodied, increases with the length of that day, it is evident that the surplus value and the price of labour-power may simultaneously increase, either by equal or unequal quantities. This simultaneous increase is therefore possible in two cases, one, the actual lengthening of the working day, the other, an increase in the intensity of labour unaccompanied by such lengthening.
When the working day is prolonged, the price of labour-power may fall below its value, although that price be nominally unchanged or even rise. The value of a day's labour-power is, as will be remembered, estimated from its normal average duration, or from the normal duration of life among the labourers, and from corresponding normal transformations of organised bodily matter into motion,6 in conformity with the nature of man. Up to a certain point, the increased wear and tear of labour-power, inseparable from a lengthened working day, may be compensated by higher wages. But beyond this point the wear and tear increases in geometrical progression, and every condition suitable for the normal reproduction and functioning of labour-power is suppressed. The price of labour-power and the degree of its exploitation cease to be commensurable quantities.
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Chapter 17
Section 4: Simultaneous Variations in the Duration, Productiveness, and Intensity of Labour
It is obvious that a large number of combinations are here possible. Any two of the factors may vary and the third remain constant, or all three may vary at once. They may vary either in the same or in different degrees, in the same or in opposite directions, with the result that the variations counteract one another, either wholly or in part. Nevertheless the analysis of every possible case is easy in view of the results given in I. , II. , and III. The effect of every possible combination may be found by treating each factor in turn as variable, and the other two constant for the time being. We shall, therefore, notice, and that briefly, but two important cases.
A. Diminishing Productiveness of Labour with a
Simultaneous Lengthening of the Working day
In speaking of diminishing productiveness of labour, we here refer to diminution in those industries whose products determine the value of labour-power; such a diminution, for example, as results from decreasing fertility of the soil, and from the corresponding dearness of its products. Take the working day at 12 hours and the value created by it at 6 shillings, of which one half replaces the value of the labour-power, the other forms the surplus value. Suppose, in consequence of the increased dearness of the products of the soil, that the value of labour-power rises from 3 shillings to 4, and therefore the necessary labour time from 6 hours to 8. If there be no change in the length of the working day, the surplus labour would fall from 6 hours to 4, the surplus value from 3 shillings to 2. If the day be lengthened by 2 hours, i. e. , from 12 hours to 14, the surplus labour remains at 6 hours, the surplus value at 3 shillings*, but the surplus value decreases compared with the value of labour-power, as measured by the necessary labour time. If the day be lengthened by 4 hours, viz. , from 12 hours to 16, the proportional magnitudes of surplus value and value of labour-power, of surplus labour and necessary labour, continue unchanged, but the absolute magnitude of surplus value rises from 3 shillings to 4, that of the surplus labour from 6 hours to 8, an increment of 33 1/3%. Therefore, with diminishing productiveness of labour and a simultaneous lengthening of the working day, the absolute magnitude of surplus value may continue unaltered, at the same time that its relative magnitude diminishes; its relative magnitude may continue unchanged, at the same time that its absolute magnitude increases; and, provided the lengthening of the day be sufficient, both may increase.
In the period between 1799 and 1815 the increasing price of provisions led in England to a nominal rise in wages, although the real wages, expressed in the necessaries of life, fell. From this fact West and Ricardo drew the conclusion, that the diminution in the productiveness of agricultural labour had brought about a fall in the rate of surplus value, and they made this assumption of a fact that existed only in their imaginations, the starting-point of important investigations into the relative magnitudes of wages, profits, and rent. But, as a matter of fact, surplus value had at that time, thanks to the increased intensity of labour, and to the prolongation of the working day, increased both in absolute and relative magnitude. This was the period in which the right to prolong the hours of labour to an outrageous extent was established; 7 the period that was especially characterised by an accelerated accumulation of capital here, by pauperism there. 8
* Earlier English translations have --6 sh. ? instead of 3 shillings. This error was pointed out to us by a reader, we have investigated and checked with the 1872 German Edition and duly corrected an obvious error.
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B. Increasing Intensity and Productiveness of Labour with
Simultaneous Shortening of the Working day
Increased productiveness and greater intensity of labour, both have a like effect. They both augment the mass of articles produced in a given time. Both, therefore, shorten that portion of the working day which the labourer needs to produce his means of subsistence or their equivalent. The minimum length of the working day is fixed by this necessary but contractile portion of it. If the whole working day were to shrink to the length of this portion, surplus labour would vanish, a consummation utterly impossible under the re? gime of capital. Only by suppressing the capitalist form of production could the length of the working day be reduced to the necessary labour time. But, even in that case, the latter would extend its limits. On the one hand, because the notion of --means of subsistence? would considerably expand, and the labourer would lay claim to an altogether different standard of life. On the other hand, because a part of what is now surplus labour, would then count as necessary labour; I mean the labour of forming a fund for reserve and accumulation.
The more the productiveness of labour increases, the more can the working day be shortened; and the more the working day is shortened, the more can the intensity of labour increase. From a social point of view, the productiveness increases in the same ratio as the economy of labour, which, in its turn, includes not only economy of the means of production, but also the avoidance of all useless labour. The capitalist mode of production, while on the one hand, enforcing economy in each individual business, on the other hand, begets, by its anarchical system of competition, the most outrageous squandering of labour-power and of the social means of production, not to mention the creation of a vast number of employments, at present indispensable, but in themselves superfluous.
The intensity and productiveness of labour being given, the time which society is bound to devote to material production is shorter, and as a consequence, the time at its disposal for the free development, intellectual and social, of the individual is greater, in proportion as the work is more and more evenly divided among all the able-bodied members of society, and as a particular class is more and more deprived of the power to shift the natural burden of labour from its own shoulders to those of another layer of society. In this direction, the shortening of the working day finds at last a limit in the generalisation of labour. In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
1 Note in the 3rd German edition. -- The case considered at pages 321-324 is here of course omitted. -- F. E.
2 To this third law MacCulloch has made, amongst others, this absurd addition, that a rise in surplus value, unaccompanied by a fall in the value of labour-power, can occur through the abolition of taxes payable by the capitalist. The abolition of such taxes makes no change whatever in the quantity of surplus value that the capitalist extorts at first-hand from the labourer. It alters only the proportion in which that surplus value is divided between himself and third persons. It consequently makes no alteration whatever in the relation between surplus value and value of labour-power. MacCulloch's exception therefore proves only his misapprehension of the rule, a misfortune that as often happens to him in the vulgarisation of Ricardo, as it does to J. B. Say in the vulgarisation of Adam Smith.
3 --When an alteration takes place in the productiveness of industry, and that either more or less is produced by a given quantity of labour and capital, the proportion of wages may obviously vary, whilst the quantity, which that proportion represents, remains the same, or the quantity may vary, whilst the proportion remains the same. ? (--Outlines of Political Economy, &c. ,? p. 67. )
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4 --All things being equal, the English manufacturer can turn out a considerably larger amount of work in a given time than a foreign manufacturer, so much as to counterbalance the difference of the working days, between 60 hours a week here, and 72 or 80 elsewhere. ? (Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct. , 1855, p. 65. ) The most infallible means for reducing this qualitative difference between the English and Continental working hour would be a law shortening quantitatively the length of the working day in Continental factories.
5 --There are compensating circumstances . . . which the working of the Ten Hours' Act has brought to light. ? (Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct. 1848,? p. 7. )
6 --The amount of labour which a man had undergone in the course of 24 hours might be approximately arrived at by an examination of the chemical changes which had taken place in his body, changed forms in matter indicating the anterior exercise of dynamic force. ?
(Grove: --On the Correlation of Physical Forces. ? )
7 --Corn and labour rarely march quite abreast; but there is an obvious limit, beyond which they cannot be separated. With regard to the unusual exertions made by the labouring classes in periods of dearness, which produce the fall of wages noticed in the evidence? (namely, before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, 1814-15), --they are most meritorious in the individuals, and certainly favour the growth of capital. But no man of humanity could wish to see them constant and unremitted. They are most admirable as a temporary relief; but if they were constantly in action, effects of a similar kind would result from them, as from the population of a country being pushed to the very extreme limits of its food. ? (Malthus: --Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent,? Lond. , 1815, p. 48, note. ) All honour to Malthus that he lays stress on the lengthening of the hours of labour, a fact to which he elsewhere in his pamphlet draws attention, while Ricardo and others, in face of the most notorious facts, make invariability in the length of the working day the groundwork of all their investigations. But the conservative interests, which Malthus served, prevented him from seeing that an unlimited prolongation of the working day, combined with an extraordinary development of machinery, and the exploitation of women and children, must inevitably have made a great portion of the working-class --supernumerary,? particularly whenever the war should have ceased, and the monopoly of England in the markets of the world should have come to an end. It was, of course, far more convenient, and much more in conformity with the interests of the ruling classes, whom Malthus adored like a true priest, to explain this --over-population? by the eternal laws of Nature, rather than by the historical laws of capitalist production.
8 --A principal cause of the increase of capital, during the war, proceeded from the greater exertions, and perhaps the greater privations of the labouring classes, the most numerous in every society. More women and children were compelled by necessitous circumstances, to enter upon laborious occupations, and former workmen were, from the same cause, obliged to devote a greater portion of their time to increase production. ? (Essays on Pol. Econ. , in which are illustrated the principal causes of the present national distress. Lond. , 1830, p. 248. )
? ? Chapter 18: Various Formula for the rate of Surplus value
We have seen that the rate of surplus value is represented by the following formulae: I. Surplus value ( s ) = Surplus value = Surplus labour
Variable Capital v Value of labor-power Necessary labor
The two first of these formulae represent, as a ratio of values, that which, in the third, is represented as a ratio of the times during which those values are produced. These formulae, supplementary the one to the other, are rigorously definite and correct. We therefore find them substantially, but not consciously, worked out in classical Political Economy. There we meet with the following derivative formulae.
II. Surplus-labor = Surplus value = Surplus-product Working day Value of the Product Total Product
One and the same ratio is here expressed as a ratio of labor-times, of the values in which those labor-times are embodied, and of the products in which those values exist. It is of course understood that, by --Value of the Product,? is meant only the value newly created in a working day, the constant part of the value of the product being excluded.
In all of these formulae (II. ), the actual degree of exploitation of labor, or the rate of surplus value, is falsely expressed. Let the working day be 12 hours. Then, making the same assumptions as in former instances, the real degree of exploitation of labor will be represented in the following proportions.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? 6 hours surplus-labor = Surplus value of 3 sh. 6 hours necessary labor Variable Capital of 3 sh.
From formulae II. we get very differently,
6 hours surplus-labor = Surplus value of 3 sh. Working day of 12 hours Value created of 6 sh.
= 100%
= 50%
? ? ? ? These derivative formulae express, in reality, only the proportion in which the working day, or the value produced by it, is divided between capitalist and laborer. If they are to be treated as direct expressions of the degree of self-expansion of capital, the following erroneous law would hold good: Surplus-labor or surplus value can never reach 100%. 1 Since the surplus-labor is only an aliquot part of the working day, or since surplus value is only an aliquot part of the value created, the surplus-labor must necessarily be always less than the working day, or the surplus value always less than the total value created. In order, however, to attain the ratio of 100:100 they must be equal. In order that the surplus-labor may absorb the whole day (i. e. , an average day of any week or year), the necessary labor must sink to zero. But if the necessary labor vanish, so too does the surplus-labor, since it is only a function of the former. The ratio
Surplus-labor or Surplus value Working day Value created
can therefore never reach the limit 100/100, still less rise to 100 + x/100. But not so the rate of surplus value, the real degree of exploitation of labor. Take, e. g. , the estimate of L. de Lavergne,
? ? ? 371 Chapter 18
according to which the English agricultural laborer gets only 1/4, the capitalist (farmer) on the other hand 3/4 of the product 2 or its value, apart from the question of how the booty is subsequently divided between the capitalist, the landlord, and others. According to this, this surplus-labor of the English agricultural laborer is to his necessary labor as 3:1, which gives a rate of exploitation of 300%.
The favorite method of treating the working day as constant in magnitude became, through the use of formulae II. , a fixed usage, because in them surplus-labor is always compared with a working day of given length. The same holds good when the repartition of the value produced is exclusively kept insight. The working day that has already been realized in given value, must necessarily be a day of given length.
The habit of representing surplus value and value of labor-power as fractions of the value created - a habit that originates in the capitalist mode of production itself, and whose import will hereafter be disclosed - conceals the very transaction that characterizes capital, namely the exchange of variable capital for living labor-power, and the consequent exclusion of the laborer from the product. Instead of the real fact, we have false semblance of an association, in which laborer and capitalist divide the product in proportion to the different elements which they respectively contribute towards its formation. 3
Moreover, the formulae II. can at any time be reconverted into formulae I. If, for instance, we have
Surplus-labor of 6 hours Working day of 12 hours
then the necessary labor-time being 12 hours less the surplus-labor of 6 hours, we get the following result,
Surplus-labor of 6 hours = 100
? ? ? Necessary labor of 6 hours
100
There is a third formula which I have occasionally already anticipated; it is
III. Surplus value = Surplus-labor = Unpaid labor
Value of labor-power Necessary labor Paid labor
After the investigations we have given above, it is no longer possible to be misled, by the formula
Unpaid labor, Paid labor
into concluding, that the capitalist pays for labor and not for labor-power. This formula is only a popular expression for
Surplus-labor, Necessary labor
The capitalist pays the value, so far as price coincides with value, of the labor-power, and receives in exchange the disposal of the living labor-power itself. His usufruct is spread over two periods. During one the laborer produces a value that is only equal to the value of his labor- power; he produces its equivalent. This the capitalist receives in return for his advance of the price of the labor-power, a product ready made in the market. During the other period, the period of surplus-labor, the usufruct of the labor-power creates a value for the capitalist, that costs him no equivalent. 4 This expenditure of labor-power comes to him gratis. In this sense it is that surplus-labor can be called unpaid labor.
? ? ? ? ? ? 372 Chapter 18
Capital, therefore, it not only, as Adam Smith says, the command over labor. It is essentially the command over unpaid labor. All surplus value, whatever particular form (profit, interest, or rent), it may subsequently crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labor. The secret of the self-expansion of capital resolves itself into having the disposal of a definite quantity of other people's unpaid labor.
1 Thus, e. g. , in --Dritter Brief an v. Kirchmann von Rodbertus. Widerlegung der Ricardo'schen Lehre von der Grundrente und Begrundung einer neuen Rententheorie. ? Berlin, 1851. I shall return to this letter later on; in spite of its erroneous theory of rent, it sees through the nature of capitalist production.
NOTE ADDED IN THE 3RD GERMAN EDITION: It may be seen from this how favorably Marx judged his predecessors, whenever he found in them real progress, or new and sound ideas. The subsequent publications of Robertus' letters to Rud. Meyer has shown that the above acknowledgement by Marx wants restricting to some extent. In those letters this passage occurs:
--Capital must be rescued not only from labor, but from itself, and that will be best effected, by treating the acts of the industrial capitalist as economic and political functions, that have been delegated to him with his capital, and by treating his profit as a form of salary, because we still know no other social organization. But salaries may be regulated, and may also be reduced if they take too much from wages. The irruption of Marx into Society, as I may call his book, must be warded off. . . . Altogether, Marx's book is not so much an investigation into capital, as a polemic against the present form of capital, a form which he confounds with the concept itself of capital. ? ("Briefe, &c. , von Dr. Robertus-Jagetzow, herausgg. von Dr. Rud. Meyer,? Berlin, 1881, I, Bd. P. 111, 46. Brief von Rodbertus. ) To such ideological commonplaces did the bold attack by Robertus in his --social letters? finally dwindle down. -- F. E.
2 That part of the product which merely replaces the constant capital advanced is of course left out in this calculation. Mr. L. de Lavergne, a blind admirer of England, is inclined to estimate the share of the capitalist too low, rather than too high.
3 All well-developed forms of capitalist production being forms of cooperation, nothing is, of course, easier, than to make abstraction from their antagonistic character, and to transform them by a word into some form of free association, as is done by A. de Laborde in --De l'Esprit d'Association dans tous les inte? re^ts de la communaute? ". Paris 1818. H. Carey, the Yankee, occasionally performs this conjuring trick with like success, even with the relations resulting from slavery.
4 Although the Physiocrats could not penetrate the mystery of surplus value, yet this much was clear to them, viz. , that it is --une richesse inde? pendante et disponible qu'il (the possessor) n'a point achete? e et qu'il vend. ? [a wealth which is independent and disposable, which he . . . has not bought and which he sells] (Turgot: --Re? flexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses,? p. 11. )
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Part 6: Wages
Chapter 19: The Transformation of the Value (and Respective Price) of Labour-Power into
Wages
On the surface of bourgeois society the wage of the labourer appears as the price of labour, a certain quantity of money that is paid for a certain quantity of labour. Thus people speak of the value of labour and call its expression in money its necessary or natural price. On the other hand they speak of the market-prices of labour, i. e. , prices oscillating above or below its natural price.
But what is the value of a commodity? The objective form of the social labour expended in its production. And how do we measure the quantity of this value? By the quantity of the labour contained in it. How then is the value, e. g. , of a 12 hour working day to be determined? . By the 12 working-hours contained in a working day of 12 hours, which is an absurd tautology. 1
In order to be sold as a commodity in the market, labour must at all events exist before it is sold. But, could the labourer give it an independent objective existence, he would sell a commodity and not labour. 2
Apart from these contradictions, a direct exchange of money, i. e. , of realized labour, with living labour would either do away with the law of value which only begins to develop itself freely on the basis of capitalist production, or do away with capitalist production itself, which rests directly on wage-labour. The working day of 12 hours embodies itself, e. g. , in a money-value of 6s. Either equivalents are exchanged, and then the labourer receives 6s, for 12 hours' labour; the price of his labour would be equal to the price of his product. In this case he produces no surplus value for the buyer of his labour, the 6s. are not transformed into capital, the basis of capitalist production vanishes. But it is on this very basis that he sells his labour and that his labour is wage-labour. Or else he receives for 12 hours' labour less than 6s. , i. e. , less than 12 hours' labour. Twelve hours' labour are exchanged against 10, 6, &c. , hours' labour. This equalization of unequal quantities not merely does away with the determination of value. Such a self-destructive contradiction cannot be in any way even enunciated or formulated as a law. 3
It is of no avail to deduce the exchange of more labour against less, from their difference of form, the one being realized, the other living. 4 This is the more absurd as the value of a commodity is determined not by the quantity of labour actually realized in it, but by the quantity of living labour necessary for its production. A commodity represents, say, 6 working-hours. If an invention is made by which it can be produced in 3 hours, the value, even of the commodity already produced, falls by half.
