Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
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Part IV: Production of Relative Surplus Value
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Chapter Twelve: The Concept of Relative Surplus Value ."....The surplus-value produced by prolongation of the working day, I call absolute surplus-value. On the other hand, the surplus-value arising from the curtailment of the necessary labour-time, and from the corresponding alteration in the respective lengths of the two components of the working day, I call relative surplus-value. ...
....If one hour’s labour is embodied in sixpence, a value of six shillings will be produced in a working day of 12 hours. Suppose, that with the prevailing productiveness of labour, 12 articles are produced in these 12 hours. Let the value of the means of production used up in each article be sixpence. Under these circumstances, each article costs one shilling: sixpence for the value of the means of production, and sixpence for the value newly added in working with those means. Now let some one capitalist contrive to double the productiveness of labour, and to produce in the working day of 12 hours, 24 instead of 12 such articles. The value of the means of production remaining the same, the value of each article will fall to ninepence, made up of sixpence for the value of the means of production and threepence for the value newly added by the labour. Despite the doubled productiveness of labour, the day’s labour creates, as before, a new value of six shillings and no more, which, however, is now spread over twice as many articles. Of this value each article now has embodied in it 1/24th, instead of 1/12th, threepence instead of sixpence; or, what amounts to the same thing, only half an hour’s instead of a whole hour’s labour-time, is now added to the means of production while they are being transformed into each article. The individual value of these articles is now below their social value; in other words, they have cost less labour-time than the great bulk of the same article produced under the average social conditions. Each article costs, on an average, one shilling, and represents 2 hours of social labour; but under the altered mode of production it costs only ninepence, or contains only 1½ hours’ labour. The real value of a commodity is, however, not its individual value, but its social value; that is to say, the real value is not measured by the labour-time that the article in each individual case costs the producer, but by the labour-time socially required for its production. If therefore, the capitalist who applies the new method, sells his commodity at its social value of one shilling, he sells it for threepence above its individual value, and thus realises an extra surplus-value of threepence. On the other hand, the working day of 12 hours is, as regards him, now represented by 24 articles instead of 12. Hence, in order to get rid of the product of one working day, the demand must be double what it was, i.e., the market must become twice as extensive. Other things being equal, his commodities can command a more extended market only by a diminution of their prices. He will therefore sell them above their individual but under their social value, say at tenpence each. By this means he still squeezes an extra surplus-value of one penny out of each. This augmentation of surplus-value is pocketed by him, whether his commodities belong or not to the class of necessary means of subsistence that participate in determining the general value of labour-power. Hence, independently of this latter circumstance, there is a motive for each individual capitalist to cheapen his commodities, by increasing the productiveness of labour.
Nevertheless, even in this case, the increased production of surplus-value arises from the curtailment of the necessary labour-time, and from the corresponding prolongation of the surplus-labour. [4] Let the necessary labour-time amount to 10 hours, the value of a day’s labour-power to five shillings, the surplus labour-time to 2 hours, and the daily surplus-value to one shilling. But the capitalist now produces 24 articles, which he sells at tenpence a-piece, making twenty shillings in all. Since the value of the means of production is twelve shillings, 14 2/5 of these articles merely replace the constant capital advanced. The labour of the 12 hours’ working day is represented by the remaining 9 3/5 articles. Since the price of the labour-power is five shillings, 6 articles represent the necessary labour-time, and 3 3/5 articles the surplus-labour. The ratio of the necessary labour to the surplus-labour, which under average social conditions was 5:1, is now only 5:3. The same result may be arrived at in the following way. The value of the product of the working day of 12 hours is twenty shillings. Of this sum, twelve shillings belong to the value of the means of production, a value that merely re-appears. There remain eight shillings, which are the expression in money, of the value newly created during the working day. This sum is greater than the sum in which average social labour of the same kind is expressed: twelve hours of the latter labour are expressed by six shillings only. The exceptionally productive labour operates as intensified labour; it creates in equal periods of time greater values than average social labour of the same kind. (See Ch. I. Sect 2. p. 44.) But our capitalist still continues to pay as before only five shillings as the value of a day’s labour-power. Hence, instead of 10 hours, the labourer need now work only 7½ hours, in order to reproduce this value. His surplus-labour is, therefore, increased by 2½ hours, and the surplus-value he produces grows from one, into three shillings. Hence, the capitalist who applies the improved method of production, appropriates to surplus-labour a greater portion of the working day, than the other capitalists in the same trade. He does individually, what the whole body of capitalists engaged in producing relative surplus-value, do collectively. On the other hand, however, this extra surplus-value vanishes, so soon as the new method of production has become general, and has consequently caused the difference between the individual value of the cheapened commodity and its social value to vanish. The law of the determination of value by labour-time, a law which brings under its sway the individual capitalist who applies the new method of production, by compelling him to sell his goods under their social value, this same law, acting as a coercive law of competition, forces his competitors to adopt the new method. [5] The general rate of surplus-value is, therefore, ultimately affected by the whole process, only when the increase in the productiveness of labour, has seized upon those branches of production that are connected with, and has cheapened those commodities that form part of, the necessary means of subsistence, and are therefore elements of the value of labour-power.
etc.
On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 5:32 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Turbulo: "But his or her profits
> have nothing to do with his or her "labor" These functions could just as
> easily be performed for a salary, and are. "
>
> [WS:] This is no different from what I was arguing - that part of the
> capitalist income is salary on his/her productive input and part of it is
> rent on his/her position in the system of production. Salary is
> productive, rent is parasitic so the ratio of rent to salary in capitalist
> income is a measure of parasitism. I tend to refrain from the term profit
> because its lack of analytic clarity (per above) and emotive connotation.
> I'd rather use "operating surplus" (which I believe is the technical term
> used in national accounts) or "income" with the understanding that it has
> the element of compensation for services and the element of rent.
>
> I have another question for you - a big chunk of investment capital today
> comes from institutional investors which include for a large part savings
> and retirement funds of millions of grunts who saved their meager earnings
> for the old age. Does the interest earned on these investments constitute
> a parasitic capitalistic profit?
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 4:45 PM, <turbulo at aol.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Bill: "The core of Marxist theory as I understood it was that all profit
>> ultimately derived from labour."
>>
>> [WS:] Yeah, and this was also a falsehood or reductionism rooted in
>> missing the role of productivity in creating value. Labor may be creating
>> all value, but how much of that value it creates depends on its
>> productivity, and productivity depends on capital investment. In the
>> middle ages, surplus value created by labor was extracted by feudal lords
>> and either consumed or passed along to lord's offspring. Hence the
>> productivity of labor in the middle ages did not change that much and the
>> only way to increase surplus was by increasing labor input (more people
>> working on more land). Capitalism separated investment capital from
>> patrimony, and labor productivity started to improve rather quickly.
>> Unlike feudal lords, who were a purely parasitic element of the medieval
>> economy, capitalists actually perform labor that produce value inasmuch as
>> their labor increases the productivity of all labor. From that pov,
>> capitalist is a hybrid of a feudal lord inasmuch as he engages in
>> conspicuous consumption and a worker inasmuch as he invests capital to
>> improve the productivity of labor. The balance of these two roles of the
>> capitalists - parasitic drones engaged in conspicuous consumption and
>> worker bee producing surplus value for others - varied among different
>> socio-political settings. I'd say that most of the US capitalist class is
>> of the mostly parasitic variety, whereas in Asia and parts of Europe it is
>> more of the worker bee kind.
>>
>> *****************
>>
>> There is no "fallacy" or "reductionism" on Marx's part.
>>
>> The capitalist may or may not participate in the production process--as a
>> worker, a supervisor or manager. But his or her profits
>> have nothing to do with his or her "labor" These functions could just as
>> easily be performed for a salary, and are. Profits accrue to the capitalist
>> in virtue of the fact that s/he is the owner of capital, and nothing else.
>> Productivity does not require investment. It is a function
>> of the instruments, techniques and natural conditions under which work is
>> performed. The fact that these things take the form of capital, and are
>> bought and sold under capitalism, has nothing to do with their inherent,
>> productivity-enhancing qualities.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ___________________________________
>> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Wojtek
>
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
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