No More Learning

By our explanation of the different parts played by the various factors of the labour-process in the formation of the product's value, we have, in fact, disclosed the characters of the different functions allotted to the different elements of capital in the process of expanding its own value. The surplus of the total value of the product, over the sum of the values of its constituent factors, is the surplus of the expanded capital over the capital originally advanced. The means of production on the one hand, labour-power on the other, are merely the different modes of existence which the value of the original capital assumed when from being money it was transformed into the various factors of the labour-process. That part of capital then, which is represented by the means of production, by the raw material, auxiliary material and the
? 144 Chapter 8 instruments of labour does not, in the process of production, undergo any quantitative alteration
of value. I therefore call it the constant part of capital, or, more shortly, constant capital.
On the other hand, that part of capital, represented by labour-power, does, in the process of production, undergo an alteration of value. It both reproduces the equivalent of its own value, and also produces an excess, a surplus value, which may itself vary, may be more or less according to circumstances. This part of capital is continually being transformed from a constant into a variable magnitude. I therefore call it the variable part of capital, or, shortly, variable capital. The same elements of capital which, from the point of view of the labour-process, present themselves respectively as the objective and subjective factors, as means of production and labour-power, present themselves, from the point of view of the process of creating surplus value, as constant and variable capital.
The definition of constant capital given above by no means excludes the possibility of a change of value in its elements. Suppose the price of cotton to be one day sixpence a pound, and the next day, in consequence of a failure of the cotton crop, a shilling a pound. Each pound of the cotton bought at sixpence, and worked up after the rise in value, transfers to the product a value of one shilling; and the cotton already spun before the rise, and perhaps circulating in the market as yarn, likewise transfers to the product twice its, original value. It is plain, however, that these changes of value are independent of the increment or surplus value added to the value of the cotton by the spinning itself. If the old cotton had never been spun, it could, after the rise, be resold at a shilling a pound instead of at sixpence. Further, the fewer the processes the cotton has gone through, the more certain is this result. We therefore find that speculators make it a rule when such sudden changes in value occur, to speculate in that material on which the least possible quantity of labour has been spent: to speculate, therefore, in yarn rather than in cloth, in cotton itself, rather than in yarn. The change of value in the case we have been considering, originates, not in the process in which the cotton plays the part of a means of production, and in which it therefore functions as constant capital, but in the process in which the cotton itself is produced. The value of a commodity, it is true, is determined by the quantity of labour contained in it, but this quantity is itself limited by social conditions. If the time socially necessary for the production of any commodity alters - and a given weight of cotton represents, after a bad harvest, more labour than after a good one - all previously existing commodities of the same class are affected, because they are, as it were, only individuals of the species,8 and their value at any given time is measured by the labour socially necessary, i. e. , by the labour necessary for their production under the then existing social conditions.
As the value of the raw material may change, so, too, may that of the instruments of labour, of the machinery, &c. , employed in the process; and consequently that portion of the value of the product transferred to it from them, may also change. If in consequence of a new invention, machinery of a particular kind can be produced by a diminished expenditure of labour, the old machinery becomes depreciated more or less, and consequently transfers so much less value to the product. But here again, the change in value originates outside the process in which the machine is acting as a means of production. Once engaged in this process, the machine cannot transfer more value than it possesses apart from the process.
Just as a change in the value of the means of production, even after they have commenced to take a part in the labour-process, does not alter their character as constant capital, so, too, a change in the proportion of constant to variable capital does not affect the respective functions of these two kinds of capital. The technical conditions of the labour-process may be revolutionised to such an extent, that where formerly ten men using ten implements of small value worked up a relatively small quantity of raw material, one man may now, with the aid of one expensive machine, work
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up one hundred times as much raw material. In the latter case we have an enormous increase in the constant capital, that is represented by the total value of the means of production used, and at the same time a great reduction in the variable capital, invested in labour-power. Such a revolution, however, alters only the quantitative relation between the constant and the variable capital, or the proportions in which the total capital is split up into its constant and variable constituents; it has not in the least degree affected the essential difference between the two.
1 --Labour gives a new creation for one extinguished. ? --An Essay on the Polit. Econ. of Nations,? London, 1821, p. 13. )
2 The subject of repairs of the implements of labour does not concern us here. A machine that is undergoing repair, no longer plays the part of an instrument, but that of a subject of labour. Work is no longer done with it, but upon it. It is quite permissible for our purpose to assume, that the labour expended on the repairs of instruments is included in the labour necessary for their original production. But in the text we deal with that wear and tear, which no doctor can cure, and which little by little brings about death, with --that kind of wear which cannot be repaired from time to time, and which, in the case of a knife, would ultimately reduce it to a state in which the cutler would say of it, it is not worth a new blade. ? We have shewn in the text, that a machine takes part in every labour- process as an integral machine, but that into the simultaneous process of creating value it enters only bit by bit. How great then is the confusion of ideas exhibited in the following extract! --Mr. Ricardo says a portion of the labour of the engineer in making [stocking] machines? is contained for example in the value of a pair of stockings. --Yet the total labour, that produced each single pair of stockings . . . includes the whole labour of the engineer, not a portion; for one machine makes many pairs, and none of those pairs could have been done without any part of the machine. ? --Obs. on Certain Verbal Disputes in Pol. Econ. , Particularly Relating to Value,? p. 54. The author, an uncommonly self- satisfied wiseacre, is right in his confusion and therefore in his contention, to this extent only, that neither Ricardo nor any other economist, before or since him, has accurately distinguished the two aspects of labour, and still less, therefore, the part played by it under each of these aspects in the formation of value.
3 From this we may judge of the absurdity of J. B. Say, who pretends to account for surplus value (Interest, Profit, Rent), by the --services productifs? which the means of production, soil, instruments, and raw material, render in the labour-process by means of their use-values. Mr. Wm. Roscher who seldom loses an occasion of registering, in black and white, ingenious apologetic fancies, records the following specimen: - --J. B. Say (Traite? , t. 1, ch. 4) very truly remarks: the value produced by an oil mill, after deduction of all costs, is something new, something quite different from the labour by which the oil mill itself was erected. ? (l. c. , p. 82, note. ) Very true, Mr. Professor! the oil produced by the oil mill is indeed something very different from the labour expended in constructing the mill! By value, Mr. Roscher understands such stuff as --oil,? because oil has value, notwithstanding that --Nature? produces petroleum, though relatively --in small quantities,? a fact to which he seems to refer in his further observation: --It (Nature) produces scarcely any exchange-value. ? Mr. Roscher's --Nature? and the exchange-value it produces are rather like the foolish virgin who admitted indeed that she had had a child, but --it was such a little one. ? This --savant se? rieux? in continuation remarks: --Ricardo's school is in the habit of including capital as accumulated labour under the head of labour. This is unskilful work, because, indeed, the owner of capital, after all, does something more than the merely creating and preserving of the same: namely, the abstention from the enjoyment of it, for which he demands, e. g. , interest. ? (l. c. ) How very --skilful? is this --anatomico-physiological method? of Political Economy, which, --indeed,? converts a mere desire --after all? into a source of value.
4 --Of all the instruments of the farmers' trade, the labour of man . . . is that on which he is most to rely for the repayment of his capital. The other two . . . the working stock of the cattle and the . . . carts,
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ploughs, spades, and so forth, without a given portion of the first, are nothing at all. ? (Edmund Burke: --Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, originally presented to the Right Hon. W. Pitt, in the month of November 1795,? Edit. London, 1800, p. 10. )
5 In The Times of 26th November, 1862, a manufacturer, whose mill employed 800 hands, and consumed, on the average, 150 bales of East Indian, or 130 bales of American cotton, complains, in doleful manner, of the standing expenses of his factory when not working. He estimates them at ? 6,000 a year. Among them are a number of items that do not concern us here, such as rent, rates, and taxes, insurance, salaries of the manager, book-keeper, engineer, and others. Then he reckons ? 150 for coal used to heat the mill occasionally, and run the engine now and then. Besides this, he includes the wages of the people employed at odd times to keep the machinery in working order. Lastly, he puts down ? 1,200 for depreciation of machinery, because --the weather and the natural principle of decay do not suspend their operations because the steam-engine ceases to revolve. ? He says, emphatically, he does not estimate his depreciation at more than the small sum of ? 1,200, because his machinery is already nearly worn out.
6 --Productive consumption . . . where the consumption of a commodity is a part of the process of production. . . . In these instances there is no consumption of value. ? (S. P. Newman, l. c. , p. 296. )
7 In an American compendium that has gone through, perhaps, 20 editions, this passage occurs: --It matters not in what form capital re-appears;? then after a lengthy enumeration of all the possible ingredients of production whose value re-appears in the product, the passage concludes thus: --The various kinds of food, clothing, and shelter, necessary for the existence and comfort of the human being, are also changed. They are consumed from time to time, and their value re-appears in that new vigour imparted to his body and mind, forming fresh capital, to be employed again in the work of production. ? (F. Wayland, l. c. , pp. 31, 32. ) Without noticing any other oddities, it suffices to observe, that what re-appears in the fresh vigour, is not the bread's price, but its bloodforming substances. What, on the other hand, re-appears in the value of that vigour, is not the means of subsistence, but their value. The same necessaries of life, at half the price, would form just as much muscle and bone, just as much vigour, but not vigour of the same value. This confusion of --value? and --vigour? coupled with our author's pharisaical indefiniteness, mark an attempt, futile for all that, to thrash out an explanation of surplus value from a mere re-appearance of pre-existing values.
8 --Toutes les productions d'un me^me -- genre ne forment proprement qu'une masse, dont le prix se de? termine en ge? ne? ral et sans e? gard aux circonstances particulie`res. ? (Le Trosne, 1. c. , p. 893. ) [--Properly speaking, all products of the same kind form a single mass, and their price is determined in general and without regard to particular circumstances. ? ]
? ? Chapter 9: The Rate of Surplus value
Section 1: The Degree of Exploitation of Labour-Power
The surplus value generated in the process of production by C, the capital advanced, or in other words, the self-expansion of the value of the capital C, presents itself for our consideration, in the first place, as a surplus, as the amount by which the value of the product exceeds the value of its constituent elements.
The capital C is made up of two components, one, the sum of money c laid out upon the means of production, and the other, the sum of money v expended upon the labour-power; c represents the portion that has become constant capital, and v the portion that has become variable capital. At first then, C = c + v: for example, if ? 500 is the capital advanced, its components may be such that the ? 500 = ? 410 const. + ? 90 var. When the process of production is finished, we get a commodity whose value = (c + v) + s, where s is the surplus value; or taking our former figures, the value of this commodity may be (? 410 const. + ? 90 var. ) + ? 90 surpl. The original capital has now changed from C to C', from ? 500 to ? 590.
The difference is s or a surplus value of ? 90. Since the value of the constituent elements of the product is equal to the value of the advanced capital, it is mere tautology to say, that the excess of the value of the product over the value of its constituent elements, is equal to the expansion of the capital advanced or to the surplus value produced.
Nevertheless, we must examine this tautology a little more closely. The two things compared are, the value of the product and the value of its constituents consumed in the process of production. Now we have seen how that portion of the constant capital which consists of the instruments of labour, transfers to the production only a fraction of its value, while the remainder of that value continues to reside in those instruments. Since this remainder plays no part in the formation of value, we may at present leave it on one side. To introduce it into the calculation would make no difference. For instance, taking our former example, c = ? 410: suppose this sum to consist of ? 312 value of raw material, ? 44 value of auxiliary material, and ? 54 value of the machinery worn away in the process; and suppose that the total value of the machinery employed is ? 1,054. Out of this latter sum, then, we reckon as advanced for the purpose of turning out the product, the sum of ? 54 alone, which the machinery loses by wear and tear in the process; for this is all it parts with to the product. Now if we also reckon the remaining ? 1,000, which still continues in the machinery, as transferred to the product, we ought also to reckon it as part of the value advanced, and thus make it appear on both sides of our calculation. 1 We should, in this way, get ? 1,500 on one side and ? 1,590 on the other. The difference of these two sums, or the surplus value, would still be ? 90. Throughout this Book therefore, by constant capital advanced for the production of value, we always mean, unless the context is repugnant thereto, the value of the means of production actually consumed in the process, and that value alone.
This being so, let us return to the formula C = c + v, which we saw was transformed into C' = (c + v) + s, C becoming C'. We know that the value of the constant capital is transferred to, and merely re-appears in the product. The new value actually created in the process, the value produced, or value-product, is therefore not the same as the value of the product; it is not, as it would at first sight appear (c + v) + s or ? 410 const. + ? 90 var. + ? 90 surpl. ; but v + s or ? 90 var. + ? 90 surpl. , not ? 590 but ? 180. If c = 0, or in other words, if there were branches of industry in which the capitalist could dispense with all means of production made by previous labour,
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whether they be raw material, auxiliary material, or instruments of labour, employing only labour-power and materials supplied by Nature, in that case, there would be no constant capital to transfer to the product. This component of the value of the product, i. e. , the ? 410 in our example, would be eliminated, but the sum of ? 180, the amount of new value created, or the value produced, which contains ? 90 of surplus value, would remain just as great as if c represented the highest value imaginable. We should have C = (0 + v) = v or C' the expanded capital = v + s and therefore C' - C = s as before. On the other hand, if s = 0, or in other words, if the labour-power, whose value is advanced in the form of variable capital, were to produce only its equivalent, we should have C = c + v or C' the value of the product = (c + v) + 0 or C = C'. The capital advanced would, in this case, not have expanded its value.
From what has gone before, we know that surplus value is purely the result of a variation in the value of v, of that portion of the capital which is transformed into labour-power; consequently, v + s = v + v, or v plus an increment of v. But the fact that it is v alone that varies, and the conditions of that variation, are obscured by the circumstance that in consequence of the increase in the variable component of the capital, there is also an increase in the sum total of the advanced capital. It was originally ? 500 and becomes ? 590. Therefore in order that our investigation may lead to accurate results, we must make abstraction from that portion of the value of the product, in which constant capital alone appears, and consequently must equate the constant capital to zero or make c = 0. This is merely an application of a mathematical rule, employed whenever we operate with constant and variable magnitudes, related to each other by the symbols of addition and subtraction only.
A further difficulty is caused by the original form of the variable capital. In our example, C' = ? 410 const. + ? 90 var. + ? 90 surpl. ; but ? 90 is a given and therefore a constant quantity; hence it appears absurd to treat it as variable. But in fact, the term ? 90 var. is here merely a symbol to show that this value undergoes a process. The portion of the capital invested in the purchase of labour-power is a definite quantity of materialised labour, a constant value like the value of the labour-power purchased. But in the process of production the place of the ? 90 is taken by the labour-power in action, dead labour is replaced by living labour, something stagnant by something flowing, a constant by a variable. The result is the reproduction of v plus an increment of v. From the point of view then of capitalist production, the whole process appears as the spontaneous variation of the originally constant value, which is transformed into labour-power. Both the process and its result, appear to be owing to this value. If, therefore, such expressions as --? 90 variable capital,? or --so much self-expanding value,? appear contradictory, this is only because they bring to the surface a contradiction immanent in capitalist production.
At first sight it appears a strange proceeding, to equate the constant capital to zero. Yet it is what we do every day. If, for example, we wish to calculate the amount of England's profits from the cotton industry, we first of all deduct the sums paid for cotton to the United States, India, Egypt and other countries; in other words, the value of the capital that merely re-appears in the value of the product, is put = 0.
Of course the ratio of surplus value not only to that portion of the capital from which it immediately springs, and whose change of value it represents, but also to the sum total of the capital advanced is economically of very great importance. We shall, therefore, in the third book, treat of this ratio exhaustively. In order to enable one portion of a capital to expand its value by being converted into labour-power, it is necessary that another portion be converted into means of production. In order that variable capital may perform its function, constant capital must be advanced in proper proportion, a proportion given by the special technical conditions of each labour-process. The circumstance, however, that retorts and other vessels, are necessary to a
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chemical process, does not compel the chemist to notice them in the result of his analysis. If we look at the means of production, in their relation to the creation of value, and to the variation in the quantity of value, apart from anything else, they appear simply as the material in which labour-power, the value-creator, incorporates itself. Neither the nature, nor the value of this material is of any importance. The only requisite is that there be a sufficient supply to absorb the labour expended in the process of production. That supply once given, the material may rise or fall in value, or even be, as land and the sea, without any value in itself; but this will have no influence on the creation of value or on the variation in the quantity of value. 2
In the first place then we equate the constant capital to zero. The capital advanced is consequently reduced from c + v to v, and instead of the value of the product (c + v) + s we have now the value produced (v + s). Given the new value produced = ? 180, which sum consequently represents the whole labour expended during the process, then subtracting from it ? 90 the value of the variable capital, we have remaining ? 90, the amount of the surplus value. This sum of ? 90 or s expresses the absolute quantity of surplus value produced. The relative quantity produced, or the increase per cent of the variable capital, is determined, it is plain, by the ratio of the surplus value to the variable capital, or is expressed by s/v. In our example this ratio is 90/90, which gives an increase of 100%. This relative increase in the value of the variable capital, or the relative magnitude of the surplus value, I call, --The rate of surplus value. ? 3
We have seen that the labourer, during one portion of the labour-process, produces only the value of his labour-power, that is, the value of his means of subsistence. Now since his work forms part of a system, based on the social division of labour, he does not directly produce the actual necessaries which he himself consumes; he produces instead a particular commodity, yarn for example, whose value is equal to the value of those necessaries or of the money with which they can be bought. The portion of his day's labour devoted to this purpose, will be greater or less, in proportion to the value of the necessaries that he daily requires on an average, or, what amounts to the same thing, in proportion to the labour-time required on an average to produce them. If the value of those necessaries represent on an average the expenditure of six hours' labour, the workman must on an average work for six hours to produce that value. If instead of working for the capitalist, he worked independently on his own account, he would, other things being equal, still be obliged to labour for the same number of hours, in order to produce the value of his labour-power, and thereby to gain the means of subsistence necessary for his conservation or continued reproduction. But as we have seen, during that portion of his day's labour in which he produces the value of his labour-power, say three shillings, he produces only an equivalent for the value of his labour-power already advanced4 by the capitalist; the new value created only replaces the variable capital advanced. It is owing to this fact, that the production of the new value of three shillings takes the semblance of a mere reproduction. That portion of the working day, then, during which this reproduction takes place, I call --necessary? labour time, and the labour expended during that time I call --necessary? labour. 5 Necessary, as regards the labourer, because independent of the particular social form of his labour; necessary, as regards capital, and the world of capitalists, because on the continued existence of the labourer depends their existence also.
During the second period of the labour-process, that in which his labour is no longer necessary labour, the workman, it is true, labours, expends labour-power; but his labour, being no longer necessary labour, he creates no value for himself. He creates surplus value which, for the capitalist, has all the charms of a creation out of nothing. This portion of the working day, I name surplus labour-time, and to the labour expended during that time, I give the name of surplus labour. It is every bit as important, for a correct understanding of surplus value, to conceive it as a
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mere congelation of surplus labour-time, as nothing but materialised surplus labour, as it is, for a proper comprehension of value, to conceive it as a mere congelation of so many hours of labour, as nothing but materialised labour. The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave-labour, and one based on wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer. 6
Since, on the one hand, the values of the variable capital and of the labour-power purchased by that capital are equal, and the value of this labour-power determines the necessary portion of the working day; and since, on the other hand, the surplus value is determined by the surplus portion of the working day, it follows that surplus value bears the same ratio to variable capital, that surplus labour does to necessary labour, or in other words, the rate of surplus value, s/v = (surplus labour)/(necessary labour). Both ratios, s/v and (surplus labour)/(necessary labour), express the same thing in different ways; in the one case by reference to materialised, incorporated labour, in the other by reference to living, fluent labour.
The rate of surplus value is therefore an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labour- power by capital, or of the labourer by the capitalist. 7
We assumed in our example, that the value of the product ? 410 const. + ? 90 var. + ? 90 surpl. , and that the capital advanced = ? 500. Since the surplus value = ? 90, and the advanced capital = ? 500, we should, according to the usual way of reckoning, get as the rate of surplus value (generally confounded with rate of profits) 18%, a rate so low as possibly to cause a pleasant surprise to Mr. Carey and other harmonisers. But in truth, the rate of surplus value is not equal to s/C or s/(c+v), but to s/v: thus it is not 90/500 but 90/90 or 100%, which is more than five times the apparent degree of exploitation. Although, in the case we have supposed, we are ignorant of the actual length of the working day, and of the duration in days or weeks of the labour-process, as also of the number of labourers employed, yet the rate of surplus value s/v accurately discloses to us, by means of its equivalent expression, surplus labour/necessary labour the relation between the two parts of the working day. This relation is here one of equality, the rate being 100%. Hence, it is plain, the labourer, in our example, works one half of the day for himself, the other half for the capitalist.
The method of calculating the rate of surplus value is therefore, shortly, as follows. We take the total value of the product and put the constant capital which merely re-appears in it, equal to zero. What remains, is the only value that has, in the process of producing the commodity, been actually created. If the amount of surplus value be given, we have only to deduct it from this remainder, to find the variable capital. And vice versa^, if the latter be given, and we require to find the surplus value. If both be given, we have only to perform the concluding operation, viz. , to calculate s/v, the ratio of the surplus value to the v variable capital.
Though the method is so simple, yet it may not be amiss, by means of a few examples, to exercise the reader in the application of the novel principles underlying it.
First we will take the case of a spinning mill containing 10,000 mule spindles, spinning No. 32 yarn from American cotton, and producing 1 lb. of yarn weekly per spindle. We assume the waste to be 6%: under these circumstances 10,600 lbs. of cotton are consumed weekly, of which 600 lbs. go to waste. The price of the cotton in April, 1871, was 73/4d. per lb. ; the raw material therefore costs in round numbers ? 342. The 10,000 spindles, including preparation-machinery, and motive power, cost, we will assume, ? 1 per spindle, amounting to a total of ? 10,000. The wear and tear we put at 10%, or ? 1,000 yearly = ? 20 weekly. The rent of the building we suppose to be ? 300 a year, or ? 6 a week. Coal consumed (for 100 horse-power indicated, at 4 lbs. of coal per horse-power per hour during 60 hours, and inclusive of that consumed in heating the mill), 11
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tons a week at 8s. 6d. a ton, amounts to about ? 41/2 a week: gas, ? 1 a week, oil, &c. , ? 41/2 a week. Total cost of the above auxiliary materials, ? 10 weekly. Therefore the constant portion of the value of the week's product is ? 378. Wages amount to ? 52 a week. The price of the yarn is 121/4d. per. lb. which gives for the value of 10,000 lbs. the sum of ? 510. The surplus value is therefore in this case ? 510 - ? 430 = ? 80. We put the constant part of the value of the product = 0, as it plays no part in the creation of value. There remains ? 132 as the weekly value created, which = ? 52 var. + ? 80 surpl. The rate of surplus value is therefore 80/52 = 153 11/13%. In a working day of 10 hours with average labour the result is: necessary labour = 3 31/33 hours, and surplus labour = 6 2/33. 8
One more example.