From Marxists Internet Archive
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Part III: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value
Chapter Seven: The Labour-Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-Value
Contents
Section 1 - The Labour-Process or the Production
of Use-Values
Section 2 - The Production of Surplus-Value
SECTION 1.
THE LABOUR-PROCESS OR THE PRODUCTION OF USE-VALUES
The capitalist buys labour-power in order to use it; and labour-power in use
is labour itself. The purchaser of labour-power consumes it by setting the
seller of it to work. By working, the latter becomes actually, what before he
only was potentially, labour-power in action, a labourer. In order that his
labour may re-appear in a commodity, he must, before all things, expend it on
something useful, on something capable of satisfying a want of some sort. Hence,
what the capitalist sets the labourer to produce, is a particular use-value, a
specified article. The fact that the production of use-values, or goods, is
carried on under the control of a capitalist and on his behalf, does not alter
the general character of that production. We shall, therefore, in the first
place, have to consider the labour-process independently of the particular form
it assumes under given social conditions.
Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature
participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls
the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature
as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the
natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a
form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing
it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering
powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing
with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere
animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which
a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state
in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose
labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts
operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an
architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst
architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure
in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process,
we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its
commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he
works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus
operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is
no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process
demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in
consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is
attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and
the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily
and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be.
The elementary factors of the labour-process are 1, the personal activity of
man, i.e., work itself, 2, the subject of that work, and 3, its
instruments.
The soil (and this, economically speaking, includes water) in the virgin
state in which it supplies [1] man
with necessaries or the means of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently
of him, and is the universal subject of human labour. All those things which
labour merely separates from immediate connexion with their environment, are
subjects of labour spontaneously provided by Nature. Such are fish which we
catch and take from their element, water, timber which we fell in the virgin
forest, and ores which we extract from their veins. If, on the other hand, the
subject of labour has, so to say, been filtered through previous labour, we call
it raw material; such is ore already extracted and ready for washing. All raw
material is the subject of labour, but not every subject of labour is raw
material: it can only become so, after it has undergone some alteration by means
of labour.
An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, which the
labourer interposes between himself and the subject of his labour, and which
serves as the conductor of his activity. He makes use of the
mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of some substances in order to
make other substances subservient to his aims. [2]
Leaving out of consideration such ready-made means of subsistence as fruits, in
gathering which a man’s own limbs serve as the instruments of his labour, the
first thing of which the labourer possesses himself is not the subject of labour
but its instrument. Thus Nature becomes one of the organs of his activity, one
that he annexes to his own bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite of
the Bible. As the earth is his original larder, so too it is his original tool
house. It supplies him, for instance, with stones for throwing, grinding,
pressing, cutting, &c. The earth itself is an instrument of labour, but when
used as such in agriculture implies a whole series of other instruments and a
comparatively high development of labour. [3]
No sooner does labour undergo the least development, than it requires specially
prepared instruments. Thus in the oldest caves we find stone implements and
weapons. In the earliest period of human history domesticated animals, i.e.,
animals which have been bred for the purpose, and have undergone modifications
by means of labour, play the chief part as instruments of labour along with
specially prepared stones, wood, bones, and shells. [4]
The use and fabrication of instruments of labour, although existing in the germ
among certain species of animals, is specifically characteristic of the human
labour-process, and Franklin therefore defines man as a tool-making animal.
Relics of bygone instruments of labour possess the same importance for the
investigation of extinct economic forms of society, as do fossil bones for the
determination of extinct species of animals. It is not the articles made, but
how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish
different economic epochs. [5]
Instruments of labour not only supply
a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but
they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is
carried on. Among the instruments of labour, those of a mechanical nature,
which, taken as a whole, we may call the bone and muscles of production, offer
much more decided characteristics of a given epoch of production, than those
which, like pipes, tubs, baskets, jars, &c., serve only to hold the
materials for labour, which latter class, we may in a general way, call the
vascular system of production. The latter first begins to play an important part
in the chemical industries.
In a wider sense we may include among the instruments of labour, in addition
to those things that are used for directly transferring labour to its subject,
and which therefore, in one way or another, serve as conductors of activity, all
such objects as are necessary for carrying on the labour-process. These do not
enter directly into the process, but without them it is either impossible for it
to take place at all, or possible only to a partial extent. Once more we find
the earth to be a universal instrument of this sort, for it furnishes a locus
standi to the labourer and a field of employment for his activity. Among
instruments that are the result of previous labour and also belong to this
class, we find workshops, canals, roads, and so forth.
In the labour-process, therefore, man’s activity, with the help of the
instruments of labour, effects an alteration, designed from the commencement, in
the material worked upon. The process disappears in the product, the latter is a
use-value, Nature’s material adapted by a change of form to the wants of man.
Labour has incorporated itself with its subject: the former is materialised, the
latter transformed. That which in the labourer appeared as movement, now appears
in the product as a fixed quality without motion. The blacksmith forges and the
product is a forging.
If we examine the whole process from the point of view of its result, the
product, it is plain that both the instruments and the subject of labour, are
means of production, [6] and that the
labour itself is productive labour. [7]
Though a use-value, in the form of a product, issues from the labour-process,
yet other use-values, products of previous labour, enter into it as means of
production. The same-use-value is both the product of a previous process, and a
means of production in a later process. Products are therefore not only results,
but also essential conditions of labour.
With the exception of the extractive industries, in which the material for
labour is provided immediately by Nature, such as mining, hunting, fishing, and
agriculture (so far as the latter is confined to breaking up virgin soil), all
branches of industry manipulate raw material, objects already filtered through
labour, already products of labour. Such is seed in agriculture. Animals and
plants, which we are accustomed to consider as products of Nature, are in their
present form, not only products of, say last year’s labour, but the result of
a gradual transformation, continued through many generations, under man’s
superintendence, and by means of his labour. But in the great majority of cases,
instruments of labour show even to the most superficial observer, traces of the
labour of past ages.
Raw material may either form the principal substance of a product, or it may
enter into its formation only as an accessory. An accessory may be consumed by
the instruments of labour, as coal under a boiler, oil by a wheel, hay by
draft-horses, or it may be mixed with the raw material in order to produce some
modification thereof, as chlorine into unbleached linen, coal with iron,
dye-stuff with wool, or again, it may help to carry on the work itself, as in
the case of the materials used for heating and lighting workshops. The
distinction between principal substance and accessory vanishes in the true
chemical industries, because there none of the raw material re-appears, in its
original composition, in the substance of the product. [8]
Every object possesses various properties, and is thus capable of being
applied to different uses. One and the same product may therefore serve as raw
material in very different processes. Corn, for example, is a raw material for
millers, starch-manufacturers, distillers, and cattlebreeders. It also enters as
raw material into its own production in the shape of seed; coal, too, is at the
same time the product of, and a means of production in, coal-mining.
Again, a particular product may be used in one and the same process, both as
an instrument of labour and as raw material. Take, for instance, the fattening
of cattle, where the animal is the raw material, and at the same time an
instrument for the production of manure.
A product, though ready for immediate consumption, may yet serve as raw
material for a further product, as grapes when they become the raw material for
wine. On the other hand, labour may give us its product in such a form, that we
can use it only as raw material, as is the case with
cotton, thread, and yarn. Such a raw material, though itself a product, may have
to go through a whole series of different processes: in each of these in turn,
it serves, with constantly varying form, as raw material, until the last process
of the series leaves it a perfect product, ready for individual consumption, or
for use as an instrument of labour.
Hence we see, that whether a use-value is to be regarded as raw material, as
instrument of labour, or as product, this is determined entirely by its function
in the labour-process, by the position it there occupies: as this varies, so
does its character.
Whenever therefore a product enters as a means of production into a new
labour-process, it thereby loses its character of product, and becomes a mere
factor in the process. A spinner treats spindles only as implements for
spinning, and flax only as the material that he spins. Of course it is
impossible to spin without material and spindles; and therefore the existence of
these things as products, at the commencement of the spinning operation, must be
presumed: but in the process itself, the fact that they are products of previous
labour, is a matter of utter indifference; just as in the digestive process, it
is of no importance whatever, that bread is the produce of the previous labour
of the farmer, the miller, and the baker. On the contrary, it is generally by
their imperfections as products, that the means of production in any process
assert themselves in their character of products. A blunt knife or weak thread
forcibly remind us of Mr. A., the cutler, or Mr. B., the spinner. In the
finished product the labour by means of which it has acquired its useful
qualities is not palpable, has apparently vanished.
A machine which does not serve the purposes of labour, is useless. In
addition, it falls a prey to the destructive influence of natural forces. Iron
rusts and wood rots. Yarn with which we neither weave nor knit, is cotton
wasted. Living labour must seize upon these things and rouse them from their
death-sleep, change them from mere possible use-values into real and effective
ones. Bathed in the fire of labour, appropriated as part and parcel of
labour’s organism, and, as it were, made alive for the performance of their
functions in the process, they are in truth consumed, but consumed with a
purpose, as elementary constituents of new use-values, of new products, ever
ready as means of subsistence for individual consumption, or as means of
production for some new labour-process.
If then, on the one hand, finished products are not only results, but also
necessary conditions, of the labour-process, on the other hand, their assumption
into that process, their contact with living labour, is the sole means by which
they can be made to retain their character of use-values, and be utilised.
Labour uses up its material factors, its subject and its instruments, consumes
them, and is therefore a process of consumption. Such productive consumption is
distinguished from individual consumption by this, that the latter uses up
products, as means of subsistence for the living individual; the former, as
means whereby alone, labour, the labour-power of the living individual, is
enabled to act. The product, therefore, of individual consumption, is the
consumer himself; the result of productive consumption, is a product distinct
from the consumer.
In so far then, as its instruments and subjects are themselves products,
labour consumes products in order to create products, or in other words,
consumes one set of products by turning them into means of production for
another set. But, just as in the beginning, the only participators in the labour-process
were man and the earth, which latter exists independently of man, so even now we
still employ in the process many means of production, provided directly by
Nature, that do not represent any combination of natural substances with human
labour.
The labour-process, resolved as above into its simple elementary factors, is
human action with a view to the production of use-values, appropriation of
natural substances to human requirements; it is the necessary condition for
effecting exchange of matter between man and Nature; it is the everlasting
Nature-imposed condition of human existence, and therefore is independent of
every social phase of that existence, or rather, is common to every such phase.
It was, therefore, not necessary to represent our labourer in connexion with
other labourers; man and his labour on one side, Nature and its materials on the
other, sufficed. As the taste of the porridge does not tell you who grew the
oats, no more does this simple process tell you of itself what are the social
conditions under which it is taking place, whether under the slave-owner’s
brutal lash, or the anxious eye of the capitalist, whether Cincinnatus carries
it on in tilling his modest farm or a savage in killing wild animals with
stones. [9]
Let us now return to our would-be capitalist. We left him just after he had
purchased, in the open market, all the necessary factors of the labour process;
its objective factors, the means of production, as well as its subjective
factor, labour-power. With the keen eye of an expert, he has selected the means
of production and the kind of labour-power best adapted to his particular trade,
be it spinning, bootmaking, or
any other kind. He then proceeds to consume the commodity, the labour-power that
he has just bought, by causing the labourer, the impersonation of that labour-power,
to consume the means of production by his labour. The general character of the
labour-process is evidently not changed by the fact, that the labourer works for
the capitalist instead of for himself; moreover, the particular methods and
operations employed in bootmaking or spinning are not immediately changed by the
intervention of the capitalist. He must begin by taking the labour-power as he
finds it in the market, and consequently be satisfied with labour of such a kind
as would be found in the period immediately preceding the rise of capitalists.
Changes in the methods of production by the subordination of labour to capital,
can take place only at a later period, and therefore will have to be treated of
in a later chapter.
The labour-process, turned into the process by which the capitalist consumes
labour-power, exhibits two characteristic phenomena. First, the labourer works
under the control of the capitalist to whom his labour belongs; the capitalist
taking good care that the work is done in a proper manner, and that the means of
production are used with intelligence, so that there is no unnecessary waste of
raw material, and no wear and tear of the implements beyond what is necessarily
caused by the work.
Secondly, the product is the property of the capitalist and not that of the
labourer, its immediate producer. Suppose that a capitalist pays for a day’s
labour-power at its value; then the right to use that power for a day belongs to
him, just as much as the right to use any other commodity, such as a horse that
he has hired for the day. To the purchaser of a commodity belongs its use, and
the seller of labour-power, by giving his labour, does no more, in reality, than
part with the use-value that he has sold. From the instant he steps into the
workshop, the use-value of his labour-power, and therefore also its use, which
is labour, belongs to the capitalist. By the purchase of labour-power, the
capitalist incorporates labour, as a living ferment, with the lifeless
constituents of the product. From his point of view, the labour-process is
nothing more than the consumption of the commodity purchased, i. e., of
labour-power; but this consumption cannot be effected except by supplying the
labour-power with the means of production. The labour-process is a process
between things that the capitalist has purchased, things that have become his
property. The product of this process belongs, therefore, to him, just as much
as does the wine which is the product of a process of fermentation completed in
his cellar. [10]
SECTION 2.
THE PRODUCTION OF SURPLUS-VALUE
The product appropriated by the capitalist is a use-value, as yarn, for
example, or boots. But, although boots are, in one sense, the basis of all
social progress, and our capitalist is a decided “progressist,” yet he does
not manufacture boots for their own sake. Use-value is, by no means, the thing
“qu’on aime pour lui-même” in the production of commodities. Use-values
are only produced by capitalists, because, and in so far as, they are the
material substratum, the depositories of exchange-value. Our capitalist has two
objects in view: in the first place, he wants to produce a use-value that has a
value in exchange, that is to say, an article destined to be sold, a commodity;
and secondly, he desires to produce a commodity whose value shall be greater
than the sum of the values of the commodities used in its production, that is,
of the means of production and the labour-power, that he purchased with his good
money in the open market. His aim is to produce not only a use-value, but a
commodity also; not only use-value, but value; not only value, but at the same
time surplus-value.
It must be borne in mind, that we are now dealing with the production of
commodities, and that, up to this point, we have only considered one aspect of
the process. Just as commodities are, at the same time, use-values and values,
so the process of producing them must be a labour-process, and at the same time,
a process of creating value. [11]
Let us now examine production as a creation of value.
We know that the value of each commodity is determined by the quantity of
labour expended on and materialised in it, by the working-time necessary, under
given social conditions, for its production. This rule also holds good in the
case of the product that accrued to our capitalist, as the result of the labour-process
carried on for him. Assuming this
product to be 10 lbs. of yarn, our first step is to calculate the quantity of
labour realised in it.
For spinning the yarn, raw material is required; suppose in this case 10 lbs.
of cotton. We have no need at present to investigate the value of this cotton,
for our capitalist has, we will assume, bought it at its full value, say of ten
shillings. In this price the labour required for the production of the cotton is
already expressed in terms of the average labour of society. We will further
assume that the wear and tear of the spindle, which, for our present purpose,
may represent all other instruments of labour employed, amounts to the value of
2s. If, then, twenty-four hours’ labour, or two working-days, are required to
produce the quantity of gold represented by twelve shillings, we have here, to
begin with, two days’ labour already incorporated in the yarn.
We must not let ourselves be misled by the circumstance that the cotton has
taken a new shape while the substance of the spindle has to a certain extent
been used up. By the general law of value, if the value of 40 lbs. of yarn = the
value of 40 lbs. of cotton + the value of a whole spindle, i. e., if
the same working-time is required to produce the commodities on either side of
this equation, then 10 lbs. of yarn are an equivalent for 10 lbs. of cotton,
together with one-fourth of a spindle. In the case we are considering the same
working-time is materialised in the 10 lbs. of yarn on the one hand, and in the
10 lbs. of cotton and the fraction of a spindle on the other. Therefore, whether
value appears in cotton, in a spindle, or in yarn, makes no difference in the
amount of that value. The spindle and cotton, instead of resting quietly side by
side, join together in the process, their forms are altered, and they are turned
into yarn; but their value is no more affected by this fact than it would be if
they had been simply exchanged for their equivalent in yarn.
The labour required for the production of the cotton, the raw material of the
yarn, is part of the labour necessary to produce the yarn, and is therefore
contained in the yarn. The same applies to the labour embodied in the spindle,
without whose wear and tear the cotton could not be spun.
Hence, in determining the value of the yarn, or the labour-time required for
its production, all the special processes carried on at various times and in
different places, which were necessary, first to produce the cotton and the
wasted portion of the spindle, and then with the cotton and spindle to spin the
yarn, may together be looked on as different and successive phases of one and
the same process. The whole of the labour in the yarn is past labour; and it is
a matter of no importance that the operations necessary for the production of
its constituent elements were carried on at times which, referred to the
present, are more remote than the final operation of spinning. If a definite
quantity
of labour, say thirty days, is requisite to build a house, the total amount of
labour incorporated in it is not altered by the fact that the work of the last
day is done twenty-nine days later than that of the first. Therefore the labour
contained in the raw material and the instruments of labour can be treated just
as if it were labour expended in an earlier stage of the spinning process,
before the labour of actual spinning commenced.
The values of the means of production, i. e., the cotton and the
spindle, which values are expressed in the price of twelve shillings, are
therefore constituent parts of the value of the yarn, or, in other words, of the
value of the product.
Two conditions must nevertheless be fulfilled. First, the cotton and spindle
must concur in the production of a use-value; they must in the present case
become yarn. Value is independent of the particular use-value by which it is
borne, but it must be embodied in a use-value of some kind. Secondly, the time
occupied in the labour of production must not exceed the time really necessary
under the given social conditions of the case. Therefore, if no more than 1 lb.
of cotton be requisite to spin 1 lbs. of yarn, care must be taken that no more
than this weight of cotton is consumed in the production of 1 lbs. of yarn; and
similarly with regard to the spindle. Though the capitalist have a hobby, and
use a gold instead of a steel spindle, yet the only labour that counts for
anything in the value of the yarn is that which would be required to produce a
steel spindle, because no more is necessary under the given social conditions.
We now know what portion of the value of the yarn is owing to the cotton and
the spindle. It amounts to twelve shillings or the value of two days’ work.
The next point for our consideration is, what portion of the value of the yarn
is added to the cotton by the labour of the spinner.
We have now to consider this labour under a very different aspect from that
which it had during the labour-process; there, we viewed it solely as that
particular kind of human activity which changes cotton into yarn; there, the
more the labour was suited to the work, the better the yarn, other circumstances
remaining the same. The labour of the spinner was then viewed as specifically
different from other kinds of productive labour, different on the one hand in
its speciaI aim, viz., spinning, different, on the other hand, in the special
character of its operations, in the special nature of its means of production
and in the special use-value of its product. For the operation of spinning,
cotton and spindles are a necessity, but for making rifled cannon they would be
of no use whatever. Here, on the contrary, where we consider the labour of the
spinner only so far as it is value-creating, i.e., a source of value,
his labour differs
in no respect from the labour of the man who bores cannon, or (what here more
nearly concerns us), from the labour of the cotton-planter and spindle-maker
incorporated in the means of production. It is solely by reason of this
identity, that cotton planting, spindle making and spinning, are capable of
forming the component parts differing only quantitatively from each other, of
one whole, namely, the value of the yarn. Here, we have nothing more to do with
the quality, the nature and the specific character of the labour, but merely
with its quantity. And this simply requires to be calculated. We proceed upon
the assumption that spinning is simple, unskilled labour, the average labour of
a given state of society. Hereafter we shall see that the contrary assumption
would make no difference.
While the labourer is at work, his labour constantly undergoes a
transformation: from being motion, it becomes an object without motion; from
being the labourer working, it becomes the thing produced. At the end of one
hour’s spinning, that act is represented by a definite quantity of yarn; in
other words, a definite quantity of labour, namely that of one hour, has become
embodied in the cotton. We say labour, i.e., the expenditure of his
vital force by the spinner, and not spinning labour, because the special work of
spinning counts here, only so far as it is the expenditure of labour-power in
general, and not in so far as it is the specific work of the spinner.
In the process we are now considering it is of extreme importance, that no
more time be consumed in the work of transforming the cotton into yarn than is
necessary under the given social conditions. If under normal, i.e.,
average social conditions of production, a pounds of cotton ought to be
made into b pounds of yarn by one hour’s labour, then a day’s
labour does not count as 12 hours’ labour unless 12 a pounds of
cotton have been made into 12 b pounds of yarn; for in the creation of
value, the time that is socially necessary alone counts.
Not only the labour, but also the raw material and the product now appear in
quite a new light, very different from that in which we viewed them in the
labour-process pure and simple. The raw material serves now merely as an
absorbent of a definite quantity of labour. By this absorption it is in fact
changed into yarn, because it is spun, because labour-power in the form of
spinning is added to it; but the product, the yarn, is now nothing more than a
measure of the labour absorbed by the cotton. If in one hour 1 2/3 lbs. of
cotton can be spun into 1 2/3 lbs. of yarn, then 10 lbs. of yarn indicate the
absorption of 6 hours’ labour. Definite quantities of product, these
quantities being determined by experience, now represent nothing but definite
quantities of labour, definite masses of crystallised labour-time. They are
nothing more
than the materialisation of so many hours or so many days of social labour.
We are here no more concerned about the facts, that the labour is the
specific work of spinning, that its subject is cotton and its product yarn, than
we are about the fact that the subject itself is already a product and therefore
raw material. If the spinner, instead of spinning, were working in a coal mine,
the subject of his labour, the coal, would be supplied by Nature; nevertheless,
a definite quantity of extracted coal, a hundredweight for example, would
represent a definite quantity of absorbed labour.
We assumed, on the occasion of its sale, that the value of a day’s labour-power
is three shillings, and that six hours’ labour is incorporated in that sum;
and consequently that this amount of labour is requisite to produce the
necessaries of life daily required on an average by the labourer. If now our
spinner by working for one hour, can convert 1 2/3 lbs. of cotton into 1 2/3
lbs. of yarn, [12] it follows that
in six hours he will convert 10 lbs. of cotton into 10 lbs. of yarn. Hence,
during the spinning process, the cotton absorbs six hours’ labour. The same
quantity of labour is also embodied in a piece of gold of the value of three
shillings. Consequently by the mere labour of spinning, a value of three
shillings is added to the cotton.
Let us now consider the total value of the product, the 10 lbs. of yarn. Two
and a half days’ labour has been embodied in it, of which two days were
contained in the cotton and in the substance of the spindle worn away, and half
a day was absorbed during the process of spinning. This two and a half days’
labour is also represented by a piece of gold of the value of fifteen shillings.
Hence, fifteen shillings is an adequate price for the 10 lbs. of yarn, or the
price of one pound is eighteenpence.
Our capitalist stares in astonishment. The value of the product is exactly
equaI to the value of the capital advanced. The value so advanced has not
expanded, no surplus-value has been created, and consequently money has not been
converted into capital. The price of the yarn is fifteen shillings, and fifteen
shillings were spent in the open market upon the constituent elements of the
product, or, what amounts to the same thing, upon the factors of the labour-process;
ten shillings were paid for the cotton, two shillings for the substance of the
spindle worn away, and three shillings for the labour-power. The swollen value
of the yarn is of no avail, for it is merely the sum of the values formerly
existing in the cotton, the spindle, and the labour-power: out of such
a simple addition of existing values, no surplus-value can possibly arise. [13]
These separate values are now all concentrated in one thing; but so they were
also in the sum of fifteen shillings, before it was split up into three parts,
by the purchase of the commodities.
There is in reality nothing very strange in this result. The value of one
pound of yarn being eighteenpence, if our capitalist buys 10 lbs. of yarn in the
market, he must pay fifteen shillings for them. It is clear that, whether a man
buys his house ready built, or gets it built for him, in neither case will the
mode of acquisition increase the amount of money laid out on the house.
Our capitalist, who is at home in his vulgar economy, exclaims: "Oh!
but I advanced my money for the express purpose of making more money."
The way to Hell is paved with good intentions, and he might just as easily have
intended to make money, without producing at all. [14]
He threatens all sorts of things. He won’t be caught napping again. In future
he will buy the commodities in the market, instead of manufacturing them
himself. But if all his brother capitalists were to do the same, where would he
find his commodities in the market? And his money he cannot eat. He tries
persuasion. “Consider my abstinence; I might have played ducks and drakes with
the 15 shillings; but instead of that I consumed it productively, and made yarn
with it.” Very well, and by way of reward he is now in possession of good yarn
instead of a bad conscience; and as for playing the part of a miser, it would
never do for him to relapse into such bad ways as that; we have seen before to
what results such asceticism leads. Besides, where nothing is, the king has lost
his rights; whatever may be the merit of his abstinence, there is nothing
wherewith specially to remunerate it, because the value of the product is merely
the sum of the values of the commodities that were thrown into the process of
production. Let him therefore console himself with the reflection that virtue is
its own reward, But no, he becomes importunate. He says: “The yarn is of
no use to me: I produced it for sale.” In
that case let him sell it, or, still better, let him for
the future produce only things for satisfying his personal wants, a remedy that
his physician MacCulloch has already prescribed as infallible against an
epidemic of over-production. He now gets obstinate. “Can the labourer,” he
asks, “merely with his arms and legs, produce commodities out of nothing? Did
I not supply him with the materials, by means of which, and in which alone, his
labour could be embodied? And as the greater part of society consists of such
ne’er-do-wells, have I not rendered society incalculable service by my
instruments of production, my cotton and my spindle, and not only society, but
the labourer also, whom in addition I have provided with the necessaries of
life? And am I to be allowed nothing in return for all this service?” Well,
but has not the labourer rendered him the equivalent service of changing his
cotton and spindle into yarn? Moreover, there is here no question of service. [15]
A service is nothing more than the useful effect of a use-value, be it of a
commodity, or be it of labour. [16]
But here we are dealing with exchange-value. The capitalist paid to the labourer
a value of 3 shillings, and the labourer gave him back an exact equivalent in
the value of 3 shillings, added by him to the cotton: he gave him value for
value. Our friend, up to this time so purse-proud, suddenly assumes the modest
demeanour of his own workman, and exclaims: "Have I myself not worked?
Have I not performed the labour of superintendence and of overlooking the
spinner? And does not this labour, too, create value?" His overlooker
and his manager try to hide their smiles. Meanwhile, after a hearty laugh, he
re-assumes his usual mien. Though he chanted to us the whole creed of the
economists, in reality, he says, he would not give a brass farthing for it. He
leaves this and all such like subterfuges and juggling tricks to the professors
of Political Economy, who are paid for it. He himself is a practical man; and
though he does not always consider what he says outside his business, yet in his
business he knows what he is about.
Let us examine the matter more closely. The value of a day’s labour-
power amounts to 3 shillings, because on our assumption half a day’s labour is
embodied in that quantity of labour-power, i.e., because the means of
subsistence that are daily required for the production of labour-power, cost
half a day’s labour. But the past labour that is embodied in the labour-power,
and the living labour that it can call into action; the daily cost of
maintaining it, and its daily expenditure in work, are two totally different
things. The former determines the exchange-value of the labour-power, the latter
is its use-value. The fact that half a day’s labour is necessary to keep the
labourer alive during 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him from working a
whole day. Therefore, the value of labour-power, and the value which that labour-power
creates in the labour-process, are two entirely different magnitudes; and this
difference of the two values was what the capitalist had in view, when he was
purchasing the labour-power. The useful qualities that labour-power possesses,
and by virtue of which it makes yarn or boots, were to him nothing more than a
conditio sine qua non; for in order to create value, labour must be expended in
a useful manner. What really influenced him was the specific use-value which
this commodity possesses of being a source not only of value, but of more
value than it has itself. This is the special service that the capitalist
expects from labour-power, and in this transaction he acts in accordance with
the “eternal laws” of the exchange of commodities. The seller of labour-power,
like the seller of any other commodity, realises its exchange-value, and parts
with its use-value. He cannot take the one without giving the other. The
use-value of labour-power, or in other words, labour, belongs just as little to
its seller, as the use-value of oil after it has been sold belongs to the dealer
who has sold it. The owner of the money has paid the value of a day’s labour-power;
his, therefore, is the use of it for a day; a day’s labour belongs to him. The
circumstance, that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour-power costs
only half a day’s labour, while on the other hand the very same labour-power
can work during a whole day, that consequently the value which its use during
one day creates, is double what he pays for that use, this circumstance is,
without doubt, a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injury to
the seller.
Our capitalist foresaw this state of things, and that was the cause of his
laughter. The labourer therefore finds, in the workshop, the means of production
necessary for working, not only during six, but during twelve hours. Just as
during the six hours’ process our 10 lbs. of cotton absorbed six hours’
labour, and became 10 lbs. of yarn, so now, 20 lbs. of cotton will absorb 12
hours’ labour and be changed into 20 lbs. of yarn. Let us now examine the
product of this prolonged process. There is now materialised in this 20 lbs. of
yarn the labour of five days, of
which four days are due to the cotton and the lost steel of the spindle, the
remaining day having been absorbed by the cotton during the spinning process.
Expressed in gold, the labour of five days is thirty shillings. This is
therefore the price of the 20 lbs. of yarn, giving, as before, eighteenpence as
the price of a pound. But the sum of the values of the commodities that entered
into the process amounts to 27 shillings. The value of the yarn is 30 shillings.
Therefore the value of the product is 1/9 greater than the value advanced for
its production; 27 shillings have been transformed into 30 shillings; a
surplus-value of 3 shillings has been created. The trick has at last succeeded;
money has been converted into capital.
Every condition of the problem is satisfied, while the laws that regulate the
exchange of commodities, have been in no way violated. Equivalent has been
exchanged for equivalent. For the capitalist as buyer paid for each commodity,
for the cotton, the spindle and the labour-power, its full value. He then did
what is done by every purchaser of commodities; he consumed their use-value. The
consumption of the labour-power, which was also the process of producing
commodities, resulted in 20 lbs. of yarn, having a value of 30 shillings. The
capitalist, formerly a buyer, now returns to market as a seller, of commodities.
He sells his yarn at eighteenpence a pound, which is its exact value. Yet for
all that he withdraws 3 shillings more from circulation than he originally threw
into it. This metamorphosis, this conversion of money into capital, takes place
both within the sphere of circulation and also outside it; within the
circulation, because conditioned by the purchase of the labour-power in the
market; outside the circulation, because what is done within it is only a
stepping-stone to the production of surplus-value, a process which is entirely
confined to the sphere of production. Thus “tout est pour le mieux dans le
meilleur des mondes possibles.” [“Everything is for the best in the best
of all possible worlds.” – Voltaire, Candide]
By turning his money into commodities that serve as the material elements of
a new product, and as factors in the labour-process, by incorporating living
labour with their dead substance, the capitalist at the same time converts
value, i.e., past, materialised, and dead labour into capital, into
value big with value, a live monster that is fruitful and multiplies.
If we now compare the two processes of producing value and of creating
surplus-value, we see that the latter is nothing but the continuation of the
former beyond a definite point. If on the one hand the process be not carried
beyond the point, where the value paid by the capitalist for the labour-power is
replaced by an exact equivalent, it is simply a process of producing value; if,
on the other hand, it be con
tinued beyond that point, it becomes a process of creating surplus-value.
If we proceed further, and compare the process of producing value with the
labour-process, pure and simple, we find that the latter consists of the useful
labour, the work, that produces use-values. Here we contemplate the labour as
producing a particular article; we view it under its qualitative aspect alone,
with regard to its end and aim. But viewed as a value-creating process, the same
labour-process presents itself under its quantitative aspect alone. Here it is a
question merely of the time occupied by the labourer in doing the work; of the
period during which the labour-power is usefully expended. Here, the commodities
that take part in the process, do not count any longer as necessary adjuncts of
labour-power in the production of a definite, useful object. They count merely
as depositories of so much absorbed or materialised labour; that labour, whether
previously embodied in the means of production, or incorporated in them for the
first time during the process by the action of labour-power, counts in either
case only according to its duration; it amounts to so many hours or days as the
case may be.
Moreover, only so much of the time spent in the production of any article is
counted, as, under the given social conditions, is necessary. The consequences
of this are various. In the first place, it becomes necessary that the labour
should be carried on under normal conditions. If a self-acting mule is the
implement in general use for spinning, it would be absurd to supply the spinner
with a distaff and spinning wheel. The cotton too must not be such rubbish as to
cause extra waste in being worked, but must be of suitable quality. Otherwise
the spinner would be found to spend more time in producing a pound of yarn than
is socially necessary, in which case the excess of time would create neither
value nor money. But whether the material factors of the process are of normal
quality or not, depends not upon the labourer, but entirely upon the capitalist.
Then again, the labour-power itself must be of average efficacy. In the trade in
which it is being employed, it must possess the average skill, handiness and
quickness prevalent in that trade, and our capitalist took good care to buy
labour-power of such normal goodness. This power must be applied with the
average amount of exertion and with the usual degree of intensity; and the
capitalist is as careful to see that this is done, as that his workmen are not
idle for a single moment. He has bought, the use of the labour-power for a
definite period, and he insists upon his rights. He has no intention of being
robbed. Lastly, and for this purpose our friend has a penal code of his own, all
wasteful consumption of raw material or instruments of labour is strictly
forbidden, because what is so wasted, represents
labour superfluously expended, labour that does not count in the product or
enter into its value. [17]
We now see, that the difference between labour, considered on the one hand as
producing utilities, and on the other hand, as creating value, a difference
which we discovered by our analysis of a commodity, resolves itself into a
distinction between two aspects of the process of production.
The process of production, considered on the one hand as the unity of the
labour-process and the process of creating value, is production of commodities;
considered on the other hand as the unity of the labour-process and the process
of producing surplus-value, it is the capitalist process of production, or
capitalist production of commodities.
We stated, on a previous page, that in the creation of surplus-value it does
not in the least matter, whether the labour appropriated by the capitalist be
simple unskilled labour of average quality or more complicated skilled labour.
All labour of a higher or more complicated character than average labour is
expenditure of labour-power of a more costly kind, labour-power whose production
has cost more time and labour, and which therefore has a higher value, than
unskilled or
simple labour-power. This power being higher-value, its consumption is labour of
a higher class, labour that creates in equal times proportionally higher values
than unskilled labour does. Whatever difference in skill there may be between
the labour of a spinner and that of a jeweller, the portion of his labour by
which the jeweller merely replaces the value of his own labour-power, does not
in any way differ in quality from the additional portion by which he creates
surplus-value. In the making of jewellery, just as in spinning, the
surplus-value results only from a quantitative excess of labour, from a
lengthening-out of one and the same labour-process, in the one case, of the
process of making jewels, in the other of the process of making yarn. [18]
But on the other hand, in every process of creating value, the reduction of
skilled labour to average social labour, e.g., one day of skilled to
six days of unskilled labour, is unavoidable. [19]
We therefore save ourselves a superfluous operation, and simplify our analysis,
by the assumption, that the labour of the workman employed by the capitalist is
unskilled average labour.
Footnotes
[1]
“The earth’s spontaneous productions being in small quantity, and quite
independent of man, appear, as it were, to be furnished by Nature, in the same
way as a small sum is given to a young man, in order to put him in a way of
industry, and of making his fortune.” (James Stueart: “Principles of Polit.
Econ.” edit. Dublin, 1770, v. I, p.116.)
[2]
“Reason is just as cunning as she is powerful. Her cunning consists
principally in her mediating activity, which, by causing objects to act and
re-act on each other in accordance with their own nature, in this way, without
any direct interference in the process, carries out reason’s intentions.”
(Hegel: “Enzyklopädie, Erster Theil, Die Logik,” Berlin, 1840, p. 382.)
[3]
In his otherwise miserable work (“Théorie de l’Econ. Polit.” Paris,
1815), Ganilh enumerates in a striking manner in opposition to the
“Physiocrats” the long series of previous processes necessary before
agriculture properly so called can commence.
[4]
Turgot in his “Réflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses”
(1766) brings well into prominence the importance of domesticated animals to
early civilisation.
[5]
The least important commodities of all for the technological comparison of
different epochs of production are articles of luxury, in the strict meaning of
the term. However little our written histories up to this time notice the
development of material production, which is the basis of all social life, and
therefore of all real history, yet prehistoric times have been classified in
accordance with the results, not of so-called historical, but of materialistic
investigations. These periods have been divided, to correspond with the
materials from which their implements and weapons were made, viz., into the
stone, the bronze, and the iron ages.
[6]
It appears paradoxical to assert, that uncaught fish, for instance, are a means
of production in the fishing industry. But hitherto no one has discovered the
art of catching fish in waters that contain none.
[7]
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.
[8]
Storch calls true raw materials “matières,” and accessory material “matériaux.”
Cherbuliez describes accessories as “matières instrumentales.”
[9]
By a wonderful fcat of logical acumen, Colonel Torrens has discovered, in this
stone of the savage the origin of capital. “In the first stone which he [the
savage] flings at the wild animal he pursues, in the first stick that he seizes
to strike down the fruit which hangs above his reach, we see the appropriation
of one article for the purpose of aiding in the acquisition of another, and thus
discover the origin of capital.” (R. Torrens: “An Essay on the Production of
Wealth,” &c., pp. 70-71.)
[10]
“Products are appropriated before they are converted into capital; this
conversion does not secure them from such appropriation.” (Cheibuliez:
“Richesse ou Pauvreté,” edit. Paris, 1841, p. 54.) “The Proletarian, by
selling his labour for a definite quantity of the necessaries of life, renounces
all claim to a share in the product. The mode of appropriation of the products
remains the same as before; it is in no way altered by the bargain we have
mentioned. The product belongs exclusively to the capitalist, who supplied the
raw material and the necessaries of life; and this is a rigorous consequence of
the law of appropriation, a law whose fundamental principle was the very
opposite, namely, that every labourer has an exclusive right to the ownership of
what he produces.” (l.c., p. 58.) “When the labourers receive wages for
their labour ... the capitalist is then the owner not of the capital only” (he
means the means of production) “but of the labour also. If what is paid as
wages is included, as it commonly is, in the term capital, it is absurd to talk
of labour separately from capital. The word capital as thus employed includes
labour and capital both.” (James Mill: “Elements of Pol. Econ.,” &c.,
Ed. 1821, pp. 70, 71.)
[11]
As has been stated in a previous note, the English language has two different
expressions for these two different aspects of labour: in the Simple Labour-process,
the process of producing Use-Values, it is Work; in the process of
creation of Value, it is Labour, taking the term in its strictly
economic sense. — F. E.
[12]
These figures are quite arbitrary.
[13]
This is the fundamental proposition on which is based the doctrine of the
Physiocrats as to the unproductiveness of all labour that is not agriculture: it
is irrefutable for the orthodox economist. “Cette façon d’imputer à une
seule chose la valeur de plusieurs autres” (par exemple au lin la consommation
du tisserand), “d’appliquer, pour ainsi dire, couche sur couche, plusieurs
valeurs sur une seule, fait que celle-ci grossit d’autant.... Le terme
d’addition peint trés bien la maniere dont se forme le prix des ouvrages de
main d’oeuvre; ce prix n’est qu’un total de plusieurs valeurs consommées
et additionnées ensemble; or, additionner n’est pas multiplier.” [“This
method of adding to one particular object the value of a number of others,”
for example, adding the living costs of the weaver to the flax), “of as it
were heaping up various values in layers on top of one single value, has the
result that this value grows to the same extent ... The expression
‘addition’gives a very clear picture of the way in which the price of a
manufactured product is formed; this price is only the sum of a number of values
which have been consumed, and it is arrived at by adding them together; however,
addition is not the same as multiplication.”] (“Mercier de la Rivière,”
l.c., p. 599.)
[14]
Thus from 1844-47 he withdrew part of his capital from productive employment, in
order to throw it away in railway speculations; and so also, during the American
Civil War, he closed his factory, and turned his work-people into the streets,
in order to gamble on the Liverpool cotton exchange.
[15]
“Extol thyself, put on finery and adorn thyself ... but whoever takes more or
better than he gives, that is usury, and is not service, but wrong done to his
neighbour, as when one steals and robs. All is not service and benefit to a
neighbour that is called service and benefit. For an adulteress and adulterer do
one another great service and pleasure. A horseman does an incendiary a great
service, by helping him to rob on the highway, and pillage land and houses. The
papists do ours a great service, in that they don’t drown, burn, murder all of
them, or let them all rot in prison; but let some live, and only drive them out,
or take from them what they have. The devil himself does his servants
inestimable service.... To sum up, the world is full of great, excellent, and
daily service and benefit.” (Martin Luther: “An die Pfarrherrn wider den
Wucher zu predigen,” Wittenberg, 1540.)
[16]
In “Zur Kritik der Pol. Oek.,” p. 14, I make the following remark on this
point — “It is not difficult to understand what ‘service’ the category
‘service’ must render to a class of economists like J. B. Say and F. Bastiat.”
[17]
This is one of the circumstances that makes production by slave labour such a
costly process. The labourer here is, to use a striking expression of the
ancients, distinguishable only as instrumentum vocale, from an animal as
instrumentum semi-vocale, and from an implement as instrumentum mutum. But he
himself takes care to let both beast and implement feel that he is none of them,
but is a man. He convinces himself with immense satisfaction, that he is a
different being, by treating the one unmercifully and damaging the other con
amore. Hence the principle, univerially applied in this method of production,
only to employ the rudest and heaviest implements and such as are difficult to
damage owing to their sheer clumsiness. In the slave-statcs bordering on the
Gulf of Mexico, down to the date of the civil war, ploughs constructed on old
Chinese models, which turned up the soil like a hog or a mole, instead of making
furrows, were alone to be found. Conf. J. E. Cairnes. “The Slave Power,”
London, 1862, p. 46 sqq. In his “Sea Board Slave States,” Olmsted tells us:
“I am here shown tools that no man in his senses, with us, would allow a
labourcr, for whom he was paying wages, to be encumbered with; and the excessive
weight and clumsiness of which, I would judge, would make work at least ten per
cent greater than with those ordinarily used with us. And I am assured that, in
the careless and clumsy way they must be used by the slaves, anything lighter or
less rude could not be fumished them with good economy, and that such tools as
we constantly give our labourers and find our profit in giving them, would not
last out a day in a Virginia comficid-much lighter and more free from stones
though it be than ours. So, too, when I ask why mules are so universally
substituted for horses on the farm, the first reason given, and confessedly the
most conclusive one, is that horses cannot bear the treatment that they always
must get from negroes; horses are always soon foundered or crippled by them,
while mules will bear cudgelling, or lose a meal or two now and then, and not be
materially injured, and they do not take cold or get sick, if neglected or
overworked. But I do not need to go further than to the window of the room in
which I am writing, to see at almost any time, treatment of cattle that would
ensure the immediate discharge of the driver by almost any farmer owning them in
the North.”
[18]
The distinction between skilled and unskilled labour rests in part on pure
illusion, or, to say the least, on distinctions that have long since ceased to
be real, and that survive only by virtue of a traditional convention; in part on
the helpless condition of some groups of the working-class, a condition that
prevents them from exacting equally with the rest the value of their labour-power.
Accidental circumstances here play so great a part, that these two forms of
labour sometimes change places. Where, for instance, the physique of the
working-class has deteriorated, and is, relatively speaking, exhausted, which in
the case in all countries with a well developed capitalist production, the lower
forms of labour, which demand great expenditure of muscle, are in general
considered as skilled, compared with much more delicate forms of labour; the
latter sink down to the level of unskilled labour. Take as an example the labour
of a bricklayer, which in England occupies a much higher level than that of a
damask-weaver. Again, although the labour of a fustian cutter demands great
bodily exertion, and is at the same time unhealthy, yet it counts only as
unskilled labour. And then, we must not forget, that the so-called skilled
labour does not occupy a large space in the field of national labour. Laing
estimates that in England (and Wales) the livelihood of 11,300,000 people
depends on unskilled labour. If from the total population of 18,000,000 living
at the time when he wrote, we deduct 1,000,000 for the “genteel population,”
and 1,500,000 for paupers, vagrants, criminals, prostitutes, &c., and
4,650,000 who compose the middle-class, there remain the above mentioned
11,000,000. But in his middle-class he includes people that live on the interest
of small investments, officials, men of letters, artists, schoolmasters and the
like, and in order to swell the number he also includes in these 4,650,000 the
better paid portioti of the factory operatives! The bricklayers, too, figure
amongst them. (S. Laing: “National Distress,” &c., London, 1844). “The
great class who have nothing to give for food but ordinary labour, are the great
bulk of the people.” (James Mill, in art.: “Colony,” Supplement to the
Encyclop. Brit., 1831.)
[19]
“Where reference is made to labour as a measure of value, it necessarily
implies labour of one particular kind ... the proportion which the other kinds
bear to it being easily ascertained.” (“Outlines of Pol. Econ.,” Lond.,
1832, pp. 22 and 23.)
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