> >Comparing £491 billion to £787 billion would imply a rate of exploitation
> >of about 60% which would be massive.
Jim Heartfield replied:
> Not that massive considering the long run trend to increase labour
> productivity and thereby cheapen the value of labour power.
I sez:
You've got the ratio reversed. Using these numbers, the rate of exploitation (s/v) would be 1.60. Unfortunately, assuming total value (output) of 1.279 trillion, the figure for surplus includes the replacement cost of fixed capital (see below), so, in that sense it overstates s/v (by excluding c, what Marx called circulating constant capital).
But Jim's point is surely correct; capitalism has been increasingly generating an enormous flow of surplus value, of which many uses are made, only one being profits that accrue to the direct use of capitalists (others uses include, e.g., government--defense, social security, W's drugs, if he pays for them out of his salary, etc.).
Chris:
>
> >Does the figure of £787 billion
> >include raw materials and fixed capital costs?
Jim:
>
> No. As I see it, surplus value under private property relations is the
> capitalist's to spend as he pleases - if he invests, then that's his
> investment. If not, not. The alternative view would be to consider the
> capitalist's property as being held in stewardship for the rest of
> society, which seems apologetic to me.
I think its no to the former and yes to the latter. The fact that part of value (output) goes to replace the fixed capital owned by capitalists is not grounds for including it in surplus value. Simply put, total value = c+v+s. Surplus value (the M' in M-C-M', as Yoshie likes to refer to it) is that which remains when the reproduction cost of both labor and constant capital are accounted for in a round of production.
So removing c (roughly equivalent to depreciation in the accounts) would reduce s/v in Jim's data below 1.60. But to be a bit more precise, the number for wages includes some surplus value in the marxian sense because wages and salaries (and fringe benefits) probably exceed labor's social subsistence (reproduction cost). So transferring that amount to the surplus would raise the ratio.
Chris:
> > what proportion
> >of this ends up redistributed to pension and insurance funds from which
> >working people arguably get some slice of capitalist profits (admittedly
> >from participating in a system totally run according to the requirements of
> >finance capital)?
Jim:
>
> The contributions to pension and insurance funds would come out of
> wages, not Gross Value Added.
Your question, Chris, points out one way wages and salaries exceed labor's living costs--the pension part, not necessarily insurance. Some part of current wages is set aside for future subsistence, so it's actually surplus value in the current production round. Individual workers can set aside some part of their wages as savings as well. And, yes, these funds do become capital--they are surplus value in the hands of labor , which can be invested just like any other capital generated as surplus value and controlled by capitalists.
Pensions, it should be noted, are no sense a concession by capital. Capitalism is a social system. Used up workers are still social beings whose subsistence must be accounted for out of surplus value at some point. Pensions just shift the costs as a meliorative to facing more severe problems down the road of a bunch of starving old people who failed to provide for themselves.
RO