) This passage shows, at one and the same time, the strength and the weakness of that kind of
criticism
which knows how to judge and condemn the present, but not how to comprehend it.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
, pp.
327- 328.
)
225 In the celebrated --Livre des me? tiers? of Etienne Boileau, we find it prescribed that a journeyman on being admitted among the masters had to swear --to love his brethren with brotherly love, to support them in their respective trades, not wilfully to betray the secrets of the trade, and besides, in the interests of all, not to recommend his own-wares by calling the attention of the buyer to defects in the articles made by others. ?
226 --The bourgeoisie cannot exist without continually revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production and all the social relations. Conservation, in an unaltered form, of the old modes of production was on the contrary the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolution in production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. ? (F. Engels und Karl Marx: --Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. ? Lond. 1848, p. 5. )
227 --You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live. ? Shakespeare.
228 A French workman, on his return from San-Francisco, writes as follows: --I never could have believed, that I was capable of working at the various occupations I was employed on in California. I was firmly convinced that I was fit for nothing but letter-press printing. . . . Once in the midst of this
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world of adventurers, who change their occupation as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did as the others. As mining did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for the town, where in succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, &c. In consequence of thus finding out that I am fit to any sort of work, I feel less of a mollusk and more of a man. ? (A. Corbon, --De l'enseignement professionnel,? 2e`me ed. , p. 50. )
229 John Bellers, a very phenomenon in the history of Political Economy, saw most clearly at the end of the 17th century, the necessity for abolishing the present system of education and division of labour, which beget hypertrophy and atrophy at the two opposite extremities of society. Amongst other things he says this: --An idle learning being little better than the learning of idleness. . . . Bodily labour, it's a primitive institution of God. . . . Labour being as proper for the bodies' health as eating is for its living; for what pains a man saves by ease, he will find in disease. . . . Labour adds oil to the lamp of life, when thinking inflames it. . . . A childish silly employ? (a warning this, by presentiment, against the Basedows and their modern imitators) --leaves the children's minds silly,? (--Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry of all Useful Trades and Husbandry. ? Lond. , 1696, pp. 12, 14, 18. )
230 This sort of labour goes on mostly in small workshops, as we have seen in the lacemaking and straw-plaiting trades, and as could be shown more in detail from the metal trades of Sheffield, Birmingham, &c.
231 --Ch. Empl. Comm. , V. Rep. ,? p. xxv. , n. 162, and II. Rep. , p. xxxviii. , n, 285, 289, p. xxv. , xxvi. , n. 191.
232 --Factory labour may be as pure and as excellent as domestic labour, and perhaps more so' -- (--Rep. Insp. of Fact. , 31st October, 1865,? p. 129. )
233 --Rep. Insp. of Fact. , 31st October, 1865,? pp. 27-32.
234 Numerous instances will be found in --Rep. of Insp. of Fact. ?
235 --Ch. Empl. Comm. , V. Rep. ,? p. x. , n. 35.
236 Ch. Empl. Comm. , V. Rep. ,? p. ix. , n. 28.
237 l. c. , p. xxv. , n. 165-167. As to the advantages of large scale, compared with small scale, industries, see --Ch. Empl. Comm. , III. Rep. ,? p. 13, n. 144, p. 25, n. 121, p. 26, n. 125, p. 27, n. 140, &c.
238 The trades proposed to be brought under the Act were the following: Lace-making, stocking- weaving, straw-plaiting, the manufacture of wearing apparel with its numerous sub-divisions, artificial flower-making, shoemaking, hat-making, glove-making, tailoring, all metal works, from blast furnaces down to needleworks, &c. , paper-mills, glassworks, tobacco factories, India-rubber works, braid-making (for weaving), hand-carpetmaking, umbrella and parasol making, the manufacture of spindles and spools, letterpress printing, book-binding, manufacture of stationery (including paper bags, cards, coloured paper, &c. ), rope-making, manufacture of jet ornaments, brick-making, silk manufacture by hand, Coventry weaving, salt works, tallow chandiers, cement works, sugar refineries, biscuit-making, various industries connected with timber, and other mixed trades.
239 l. c. , p. xxv. , n. 169.
240 Here (from --The Tory Cabinet. . . . . . to --Nassau W. Senior") the English text has been altered in conformity with the 4th German edition. -- Ed.
241 The Factory Acts Extension Act was passed on August 12, 1867. it regulates all foundries, smithies, and metal manufactories, including machine shops; furthermore glass-works, paper mills, gutta-percha and India-rubber works, tobacco manufactories, letter-press printing and book-binding works, and, lastly, all workshops in which more than 50 persons are employed. The Hours of Labour Regulation Act, passed on August 17, 1867, regulates the smaller workshops and the so-called domestic industries. I shall revert to these Acts and to the new Mining Act of 1872 in Volume II.
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242 Senior, --Social Science Congress,? pp. 55-58.
243 The --personnel? of this staff consisted of 2 inspectors, 2 assistant inspectors and 41 sub-inspectors. Eight additional sub-inspectors were appointed in 1871. The total cost of administering the Acts in England, Scotland, and Ireland amounted for the year 1871-72 to no more than ? 25,347, inclusive of the law expenses incurred by prosecutions of offending masters.
244 Robert Owen, the father of Co-operative Factories and Stores, but who, as before remarked, in no way shared the illusions of his followers with regard to the bearing of these isolated elements of transformation, not only practically made the factory system the sole foundation of his experiments, but also declared that system to be theoretically the starting-point of the social revolution. Herr Vissering, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Leyden, appears to have a suspicion of this when, in his --Handboek van Practische Staatshuishoudkunde, 1860-62,? which reproduces all the platitudes of vulgar economy, he strongly supports handicrafts against the factory system.
[Added in the 4th German edition -- The --hopelessly bewildering tangle of contradictory enactments? (S. 314) (present volume, p. 284) which English legislation called into life by means of the mutually conflicting Factory Acts, the Factory Acts Extension Act and the Workshops' Act, finally became intolerable, and thus all legislative enactments on this subject were codified in the Factory and Workshop Act of 1878. Of course no detailed critique of this English industrial code now in effect can be presented here. The following remarks will have to suffice. The Act comprises:
1) Textile Mills. Here everything remains about as it was: children more than 10 years of age may work 51/2 hours a day; or 6 hours and Saturday off; young persons and women, 10 hours on 5 days, and at most 61/2 on Saturday.
2) Non-Textile Factories. Here the regulations are brought closer than before to those of No. 1, but there are still several exceptions which favour the capitalists and which in certain cases may be expanded by special permission of the Home Secretary.
3) Workshops, defined approximately as in the former Act; as for the children, young workers and women employed there, the workshops are about on a par with the non-textile factories, but again conditions are easier in details.
4) Workshops in which no children or young workers are employed, but only persons of both sexes above the age of 18; this category enjoy still easier conditions.
5) Domestic Workshops, where only members of the family are employed, in the family dwelling: still more elastic regulations and simultaneously the restriction that the inspector may, without special permission of the ministry or a court, enter only rooms not used also for dwelling purposes; and lastly unrestricted freedom for straw-plaiting and lace and glove-making by members of the family. With all its defects this Act, together with the Swiss Federal Factory Law of March 23, 1877, is still by far the best piece of legislation in this field. A comparison of it with the said Swiss federal law is of particular interest because it clearly demonstrates the merits and demerits of the two legislative methods -- the English, --historical? method, which intervenes when occasion requires, and the continental method, which is built up on the traditions of the French Revolution and generalises more. Unfortunately, due to insufficient inspection personnel, the English code is still largely a dead letter with regard to its application to workshops. -- F. E. ]
245 --You divide the people into two hostile camps of clownish boors and emasculated dwarfs. Good heavens! a nation divided into agricultural and commercial interests, calling itself sane; nay, styling itself enlightened and civilised, not only in spite of, but in consequence of this monstrous and unnatural division. ? (David Urquhart, l. c. , p. 119.
) This passage shows, at one and the same time, the strength and the weakness of that kind of criticism which knows how to judge and condemn the present, but not how to comprehend it.
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246 See Liebig: --Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie,? 7. Auflage, 1862, and especially the --Einleitung in die Naturgesetze des Feldbaus,? in the 1st Volume. To have developed from the point of view of natural science, the negative, i. e. , destructive side of modern agriculture, is one of Liebig's immortal merits. His summary, too, of the history of agriculture, although not free from gross errors, contains flashes of light. It is, however, to be regretted that he ventures on such haphazard assertions as the following: --By greater pulverising and more frequent ploughing, the circulation of air in the interior of porous soil is aided, and the surface exposed to the action of the atmosphere is increased and renewed; but it is easily seen that the increased yield of the land cannot be proportional to the labour spent on that land, but increases in a much smaller proportion. This law,? adds Liebig, --was first enunciated by John Stuart Mill in his ? Principles of Pol. Econ. ,' Vol. 1, p. 17, as follows: ? That the produce of land increases, caeteris paribus, in a diminishing ratio to the increase of the labourers employed' (Mill here introduces in an erroneous form the law enunciated by Ricardo's school, for since the ? decrease of the labourers employed,' kept even pace in England with the advance of agriculture, the law discovered in, and applied to, England, could have no application to that country, at all events), ? is the universal law of agricultural industry. ' This is very remarkable, since Mill was ignorant of the reason for this taw. ? (Liebig, l. c. , Bd. I. , p. 143 and Note. ) Apart from Liebig's wrong interpretation of the word --labour,? by which word he understands something quite different from what Political Economy does, it is, in any case, --very remarkable? that he should make Mr. John Stuart Mill the first propounder of a theory which was first published by James Anderson in A. Smith's days, and was repeated in various works down to the beginning of the 19th century; a theory which Malthus, that master in plagiarism (the whole of his population theory is a shameless plagiarism), appropriated to himself in 1815; which West developed at the same time as, and independently of, Anderson; which in the year 1817 was connected by Ricardo with the general theory of value, then made the round of the world as Ricardo's theory, and in 1820 was vulgarised by James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill; and which, finally, was reproduced by John Stuart Mill and others, as a dogma already quite commonplace, and known to every schoolboy. It cannot be denied that John Stuart Mill owes his, at all events, --remarkable? authority almost entirely to such quid-pro-quos.
? ? Part 5: Production of Absolute and Relative Surplus Value
Chapter 16: Absolute and Relative Surplus Value
In considering the labour-process, we began (see Chapter VII. ) by treating it in the abstract, apart from its historical forms, as a process between man and Nature. We there stated, --If we examine the whole labour-process, from the point of view of its result, it is plain that both the instruments and the subject of labour are means of production, and that the labour itself is productive labour. ? 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. ? 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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Chapter 16
--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.
225 In the celebrated --Livre des me? tiers? of Etienne Boileau, we find it prescribed that a journeyman on being admitted among the masters had to swear --to love his brethren with brotherly love, to support them in their respective trades, not wilfully to betray the secrets of the trade, and besides, in the interests of all, not to recommend his own-wares by calling the attention of the buyer to defects in the articles made by others. ?
226 --The bourgeoisie cannot exist without continually revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production and all the social relations. Conservation, in an unaltered form, of the old modes of production was on the contrary the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolution in production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. ? (F. Engels und Karl Marx: --Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. ? Lond. 1848, p. 5. )
227 --You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live. ? Shakespeare.
228 A French workman, on his return from San-Francisco, writes as follows: --I never could have believed, that I was capable of working at the various occupations I was employed on in California. I was firmly convinced that I was fit for nothing but letter-press printing. . . . Once in the midst of this
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world of adventurers, who change their occupation as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did as the others. As mining did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for the town, where in succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, &c. In consequence of thus finding out that I am fit to any sort of work, I feel less of a mollusk and more of a man. ? (A. Corbon, --De l'enseignement professionnel,? 2e`me ed. , p. 50. )
229 John Bellers, a very phenomenon in the history of Political Economy, saw most clearly at the end of the 17th century, the necessity for abolishing the present system of education and division of labour, which beget hypertrophy and atrophy at the two opposite extremities of society. Amongst other things he says this: --An idle learning being little better than the learning of idleness. . . . Bodily labour, it's a primitive institution of God. . . . Labour being as proper for the bodies' health as eating is for its living; for what pains a man saves by ease, he will find in disease. . . . Labour adds oil to the lamp of life, when thinking inflames it. . . . A childish silly employ? (a warning this, by presentiment, against the Basedows and their modern imitators) --leaves the children's minds silly,? (--Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry of all Useful Trades and Husbandry. ? Lond. , 1696, pp. 12, 14, 18. )
230 This sort of labour goes on mostly in small workshops, as we have seen in the lacemaking and straw-plaiting trades, and as could be shown more in detail from the metal trades of Sheffield, Birmingham, &c.
231 --Ch. Empl. Comm. , V. Rep. ,? p. xxv. , n. 162, and II. Rep. , p. xxxviii. , n, 285, 289, p. xxv. , xxvi. , n. 191.
232 --Factory labour may be as pure and as excellent as domestic labour, and perhaps more so' -- (--Rep. Insp. of Fact. , 31st October, 1865,? p. 129. )
233 --Rep. Insp. of Fact. , 31st October, 1865,? pp. 27-32.
234 Numerous instances will be found in --Rep. of Insp. of Fact. ?
235 --Ch. Empl. Comm. , V. Rep. ,? p. x. , n. 35.
236 Ch. Empl. Comm. , V. Rep. ,? p. ix. , n. 28.
237 l. c. , p. xxv. , n. 165-167. As to the advantages of large scale, compared with small scale, industries, see --Ch. Empl. Comm. , III. Rep. ,? p. 13, n. 144, p. 25, n. 121, p. 26, n. 125, p. 27, n. 140, &c.
238 The trades proposed to be brought under the Act were the following: Lace-making, stocking- weaving, straw-plaiting, the manufacture of wearing apparel with its numerous sub-divisions, artificial flower-making, shoemaking, hat-making, glove-making, tailoring, all metal works, from blast furnaces down to needleworks, &c. , paper-mills, glassworks, tobacco factories, India-rubber works, braid-making (for weaving), hand-carpetmaking, umbrella and parasol making, the manufacture of spindles and spools, letterpress printing, book-binding, manufacture of stationery (including paper bags, cards, coloured paper, &c. ), rope-making, manufacture of jet ornaments, brick-making, silk manufacture by hand, Coventry weaving, salt works, tallow chandiers, cement works, sugar refineries, biscuit-making, various industries connected with timber, and other mixed trades.
239 l. c. , p. xxv. , n. 169.
240 Here (from --The Tory Cabinet. . . . . . to --Nassau W. Senior") the English text has been altered in conformity with the 4th German edition. -- Ed.
241 The Factory Acts Extension Act was passed on August 12, 1867. it regulates all foundries, smithies, and metal manufactories, including machine shops; furthermore glass-works, paper mills, gutta-percha and India-rubber works, tobacco manufactories, letter-press printing and book-binding works, and, lastly, all workshops in which more than 50 persons are employed. The Hours of Labour Regulation Act, passed on August 17, 1867, regulates the smaller workshops and the so-called domestic industries. I shall revert to these Acts and to the new Mining Act of 1872 in Volume II.
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242 Senior, --Social Science Congress,? pp. 55-58.
243 The --personnel? of this staff consisted of 2 inspectors, 2 assistant inspectors and 41 sub-inspectors. Eight additional sub-inspectors were appointed in 1871. The total cost of administering the Acts in England, Scotland, and Ireland amounted for the year 1871-72 to no more than ? 25,347, inclusive of the law expenses incurred by prosecutions of offending masters.
244 Robert Owen, the father of Co-operative Factories and Stores, but who, as before remarked, in no way shared the illusions of his followers with regard to the bearing of these isolated elements of transformation, not only practically made the factory system the sole foundation of his experiments, but also declared that system to be theoretically the starting-point of the social revolution. Herr Vissering, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Leyden, appears to have a suspicion of this when, in his --Handboek van Practische Staatshuishoudkunde, 1860-62,? which reproduces all the platitudes of vulgar economy, he strongly supports handicrafts against the factory system.
[Added in the 4th German edition -- The --hopelessly bewildering tangle of contradictory enactments? (S. 314) (present volume, p. 284) which English legislation called into life by means of the mutually conflicting Factory Acts, the Factory Acts Extension Act and the Workshops' Act, finally became intolerable, and thus all legislative enactments on this subject were codified in the Factory and Workshop Act of 1878. Of course no detailed critique of this English industrial code now in effect can be presented here. The following remarks will have to suffice. The Act comprises:
1) Textile Mills. Here everything remains about as it was: children more than 10 years of age may work 51/2 hours a day; or 6 hours and Saturday off; young persons and women, 10 hours on 5 days, and at most 61/2 on Saturday.
2) Non-Textile Factories. Here the regulations are brought closer than before to those of No. 1, but there are still several exceptions which favour the capitalists and which in certain cases may be expanded by special permission of the Home Secretary.
3) Workshops, defined approximately as in the former Act; as for the children, young workers and women employed there, the workshops are about on a par with the non-textile factories, but again conditions are easier in details.
4) Workshops in which no children or young workers are employed, but only persons of both sexes above the age of 18; this category enjoy still easier conditions.
5) Domestic Workshops, where only members of the family are employed, in the family dwelling: still more elastic regulations and simultaneously the restriction that the inspector may, without special permission of the ministry or a court, enter only rooms not used also for dwelling purposes; and lastly unrestricted freedom for straw-plaiting and lace and glove-making by members of the family. With all its defects this Act, together with the Swiss Federal Factory Law of March 23, 1877, is still by far the best piece of legislation in this field. A comparison of it with the said Swiss federal law is of particular interest because it clearly demonstrates the merits and demerits of the two legislative methods -- the English, --historical? method, which intervenes when occasion requires, and the continental method, which is built up on the traditions of the French Revolution and generalises more. Unfortunately, due to insufficient inspection personnel, the English code is still largely a dead letter with regard to its application to workshops. -- F. E. ]
245 --You divide the people into two hostile camps of clownish boors and emasculated dwarfs. Good heavens! a nation divided into agricultural and commercial interests, calling itself sane; nay, styling itself enlightened and civilised, not only in spite of, but in consequence of this monstrous and unnatural division. ? (David Urquhart, l. c. , p. 119.
) This passage shows, at one and the same time, the strength and the weakness of that kind of criticism which knows how to judge and condemn the present, but not how to comprehend it.
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246 See Liebig: --Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie,? 7. Auflage, 1862, and especially the --Einleitung in die Naturgesetze des Feldbaus,? in the 1st Volume. To have developed from the point of view of natural science, the negative, i. e. , destructive side of modern agriculture, is one of Liebig's immortal merits. His summary, too, of the history of agriculture, although not free from gross errors, contains flashes of light. It is, however, to be regretted that he ventures on such haphazard assertions as the following: --By greater pulverising and more frequent ploughing, the circulation of air in the interior of porous soil is aided, and the surface exposed to the action of the atmosphere is increased and renewed; but it is easily seen that the increased yield of the land cannot be proportional to the labour spent on that land, but increases in a much smaller proportion. This law,? adds Liebig, --was first enunciated by John Stuart Mill in his ? Principles of Pol. Econ. ,' Vol. 1, p. 17, as follows: ? That the produce of land increases, caeteris paribus, in a diminishing ratio to the increase of the labourers employed' (Mill here introduces in an erroneous form the law enunciated by Ricardo's school, for since the ? decrease of the labourers employed,' kept even pace in England with the advance of agriculture, the law discovered in, and applied to, England, could have no application to that country, at all events), ? is the universal law of agricultural industry. ' This is very remarkable, since Mill was ignorant of the reason for this taw. ? (Liebig, l. c. , Bd. I. , p. 143 and Note. ) Apart from Liebig's wrong interpretation of the word --labour,? by which word he understands something quite different from what Political Economy does, it is, in any case, --very remarkable? that he should make Mr. John Stuart Mill the first propounder of a theory which was first published by James Anderson in A. Smith's days, and was repeated in various works down to the beginning of the 19th century; a theory which Malthus, that master in plagiarism (the whole of his population theory is a shameless plagiarism), appropriated to himself in 1815; which West developed at the same time as, and independently of, Anderson; which in the year 1817 was connected by Ricardo with the general theory of value, then made the round of the world as Ricardo's theory, and in 1820 was vulgarised by James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill; and which, finally, was reproduced by John Stuart Mill and others, as a dogma already quite commonplace, and known to every schoolboy. It cannot be denied that John Stuart Mill owes his, at all events, --remarkable? authority almost entirely to such quid-pro-quos.
? ? Part 5: Production of Absolute and Relative Surplus Value
Chapter 16: Absolute and Relative Surplus Value
In considering the labour-process, we began (see Chapter VII. ) by treating it in the abstract, apart from its historical forms, as a process between man and Nature. We there stated, --If we examine the whole labour-process, from the point of view of its result, it is plain that both the instruments and the subject of labour are means of production, and that the labour itself is productive labour. ? 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. ? 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.
