From Marxists Internet Archive
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Part V: The Production of Absolute and of Relative Surplus-Value
Chapter Sixteen: Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value
In considering the labour-process, we began (see Chapter
VII.) by treating it in the abstract, apart from its historical forms, as a
process between man and Nature. We there stated, “If we examine the whole
labour-process, from the point of view of its result, it is plain that both the
instruments and the subject of labour are means of production, and that the
labour itself is productive labour.” And in Note 2, same page, we further
added: “This method of determining, from the standpoint of the labour-process
alone, what is productive labour, is by no means directly applicable to the case
of the capitalist process of production.” We now proceed to the further
development of this subject.
So far as the labour-process is purely individual, one and the same labourer
unites in himself all the functions, that later on become separated. When an
individual appropriates natural objects for his livelihood, no one controls him
but himself. Afterwards he is controlled by others. A single man cannot operate
upon Nature without calling his own muscles into play under the control of his
own brain. As in the natural body head and hand wait upon each other, so the
labour-process unites the labour of the hand with that of the head. Later on
they part company and even become deadly foes. The product ceases to be the
direct product of the individual, and becomes a social product, produced in
common by a collective labourer, i.e., by a combination of workmen,
each of whom takes only a part, greater or less, in the manipulation of the
subject of their labour. As the co-operative character of the labour-process
becomes more and more marked, so, as a necessary consequence, does our notion of
productive labour, and of its agent the productive labourer, become extended. In
order to labour productively, it is no longer necessary for you to do manual
work yourself; enough, if you are an organ of the collective labourer, and
perform one of its subordinate functions. The first definition given above of
productive labour, a definition deduced from the very nature of the production
of material objects, still remains correct for the collective labourer,
considered as a whole. But it no longer holds good for each member taken
individually.
On the other hand, however, our notion of productive labour becomes narrowed.
Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is
essentially the production of surplus-value. The labourer produces, not for
himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should
simply produce. He must produce surplus-value. That labourer alone is
productive, who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, and thus works for
the self-expansion of capital. If we may take an example from outside the sphere
of production of material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive labourer when,
in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to
enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a
teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation.
Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between
work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour, but also a
specific, social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up
historically and stamps the labourer as the direct means of creating
surplus-value. To be a productive labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck,
but a misfortune. In Book IV. which treats of the history of the theory, it will
be more clearly seen, that the production of surplus-value has at all times been
made, by classical political economists, the distinguishing characteristic of
the productive labourer. Hence their definition of a productive labourer changes
with their comprehension of the nature of surplus-value. Thus the Physiocrats
insist that only agricultural labour is productive, since that alone, they say,
yields a surplus-value. And they say so because, with them, surplus-value has no
existence except in the form of rent.
The prolongation of the working-day beyond the point at which the labourer
would have produced just an equivalent for the value of his labour-power, and
the appropriation of that surplus-labour by capital, this is production of
absolute surplus-value. It forms the general groundwork of the capitalist
system, and the starting-point for the production of relative surplus-value. The
latter pre-supposes that the working-day is already divided into two parts,
necessary labour, and surplus-labour. In order to prolong the surplus-labour,
the necessary labour is shortened by methods whereby the equivalent for the
wages is produced in less time. The production of absolute surplus-value turns
exclusively upon the length of the working-day; the production of relative
surplus-value, revolutionises out and out the technical processes of labour, and
the composition of society. It therefore pre-supposes a specific mode, the
capitalist mode of production, a mode which, along with its methods, means, and
conditions, arises and develops itself spontaneously on the foundation afforded
by the formal subjection of labour to capital. In the course of this
development, the formal subjection is replaced by the real subjection of labour
to capital.
It will suffice merely to refer to certain intermediate forms, in which
surplus-labour is not extorted by direct compulsion from the producer, nor the
producer himself yet formally subjected to capital. In such forms capital has
not yet acquired the direct control of the labour-process. By the side of
independent producers who carry on their handicrafts and agriculture in the
traditional old-fashioned way, there stands the usurer or the merchant, with his
usurer’s capital or merchant’s capital, feeding on them like a parasite. The
predominance, in a society, of this form of exploitation excludes the capitalist
mode of production; to which mode, however, this form may serve as a transition,
as it did towards the close of the Middle Ages. Finally, as is shown by modern
“domestic industry,” some intermediate forms are here and there reproduced
in the background of Modern Industry, though their physiognomy is totally
changed.
If, on the one hand, the mere formal subjection of labour to capital suffices
for the production of absolute surplus-value, if, e.g., it is
sufficient that handicraftsman who previously worked on their own account, or as
apprentices of a master, should become wage labourers under the direct control
of a capitalist; so, on the other hand, we have seen, how the methods of
producing relative surplus-value, are, at the same time, methods of producing
absolute surplus-value. Nay, more, the excessive prolongation of the working-day
turned out to be the peculiar product of Modern Industry. Generally speaking,
the specifically capitalist mode of production ceases to be a mere means of
producing relative surplus-value, so soon as that mode has conquered an entire
branch of production; and still more so, so soon as it has conquered all the
important branches. It then becomes the general, socially predominant form of
production. As a special method of producing relative surplus-value, it remains
effective only, first, in so far as it seizes upon industries that previously
were only formally subject to capital, that is, so far as it is propagandist;
secondly, in so far as the industries that have been taken over by it, continue
to be revolutionised by changes in the methods of production.
From one standpoint, any distinction between absolute and relative
surplus-value appears illusory. Relative surplus-value is absolute, since it
compels the absolute prolongation of the working-day beyond the labour-time
necessary to the existence of the labourer himself. Absolute surplus-value is
relative, since it makes necessary such a development of the productiveness of
labour, as will allow of the necessary labour-time being confined to a portion
of the working-day. But if we keep in mind the behaviour of surplus-value, this
appearance of identity vanishes. Once the capitalist mode of production is
established and become general, the difference between absolute and relative
surplus-value makes itself felt, whenever there is a question of raising the
rate of surplus-value. Assuming that labour-power is paid for at its value, we
are confronted by this alternative: given the productiveness of labour and its
normal intensity, the rate of surplus-value can be raised only by the actual
prolongation of the working-day; on the other hand, given the length of the
working-day, that rise can be effected only by a change in the relative
magnitudes of the components of the working-day, viz., necessary labour and
surplus-labour; a change which, if the wages are not to fall below the value of
labour-power, presupposes a change either in the productiveness or in the
intensity of the labour.
If the labourer wants all his time to produce the necessary means of
subsistence for himself and his race, he has no time left in which to work
gratis for others. Without a certain degree of productiveness in his labour, he
has no such superfluous time at his disposal; without such superfluous time, no
surplus-labour, and therefore no capitalists, no slave-owners, no feudal lords,
in one word, no class of large proprietors. [1]
Thus we may say that surplus-value rests on a natural basis; but this is
permissible only in the very general sense, that there is no natural obstacle
absolutely preventing one man from disburdening himself of the labour requisite
for his own existence, and burdening another with it, any more, for instance,
than unconquerable natural obstacle prevent one man from eating the flesh of
another. [2] No mystical ideas must
in any way be connected, as sometimes happens, with this historically developed
productiveness of labour. It is only after men have raised themselves above the
rank of animals, when therefore their labour has been to some extent socialised,
that a state of things arises in which the surplus-labour of
the one becomes a condition of existence for the other. At the dawn of
civilisation the productiveness acquired by labour is small, but so too are the
wants which develop with and by the means of satisfying them. Further, at that
early period, the portion of society that lives on the labour of others is
infinitely small compared with the mass of direct producers. Along with the
progress in the productiveness of labour, that small portion of society
increases both absolutely and relatively. [3]
Besides, capital with its accompanying relations springs up from an economic
soil that is the product of a long process of development. The productiveness of
labour that serves as its foundation and starting-point, is a gift, not of
nature, but of a history embracing thousands of centuries.
Apart from the degree of development, greater or less, in the form of social
production, the productiveness of labour is fettered by physical conditions.
These are all referable to the constitution of man himself (race, &c.), and
to surrounding nature. The external physical conditions fall into two great
economic classes, (1) Natural wealth in means of subsistence, i.e., a
fruitful soil, waters teeming with fish, &c., and (2), natural wealth in the
instruments of labour, such as waterfalls, navigable rivers, wood, metal, coal,
&c. At the dawn of civilisation, it is the first class that turns the scale;
at a higher stage of development, it is the second. Compare, for example,
England with India, or in ancient times, Athens and Corinth with the shores of
the Black Sea.
The fewer the number of natural wants imperatively calling for satisfaction,
and the greater the natural fertility of the soil and the favourableness of the
climate, so much less is the labour-time necessary for the maintenance and
reproduction of the producer. So much greater therefore can be the excess of his
labours for others over his labour for himself. Diodorus long ago remarked this
in relation to the ancient Egyptians.
“It is altogether incredible how little trouble and expense
the bringing up of their children causes them. They cook for them the first
simple food at hand; they also give them the lower part of the papyrus stem to
eat, so far as it can be roasted in the fire, and the roots and stalks of marsh
plants, some raw, some boiled and roasted. Most of the children go without shoes
and unclothed, for the air is so mild. Hence a child, until he is grown up,
costs his parents not more, on the whole, than twenty drachmas. It is this,
chiefly, which explains why the population of Egypt is so numerous, and,
therefore, why so many great works can be undertaken.” [4]
Nevertheless the grand structures of ancient Egypt are less due to the extent
of its population than to the large proportion of it that was freely disposable.
Just as the individual labourer can do more surplus-labour in proportion as his
necessary labour-time is less, so with regard to the working population. The
smaller the part of it which is required for the production of the necessary
means of subsistence, so much the greater is the part that can be set to do
other work.
Capitalist production once assumed, then, all other circumstances remaining
the same, and given the length of the working day, the quantity of surplus-labour
will vary with the physical conditions of labour, especially with the fertility
of the soil. But it by no means follows from this that the most fruitful soil is
the most fitted for the growth of the capitalist mode of production. This mode
is based on the dominion of man over nature. Where nature is too lavish, she
“keeps him in hand, like a child in leading-strings.” She does not impose
upon him any necessity to develop himself. [5]
It is not the tropics with their luxuriant vegetation, but the temperate
zone, that is the mother-country of capital. It is not the mere fertility of the
soil, but the differentiation of the soil, the variety of its natural products,
the changes of the seasons, which form the physical basis for the social
division of labour, and which, by changes in the natural surroundings, spur man
on to the multiplication of his wants, his capabilities, his means and modes of
labour. It is the necessity of bringing a natural force under the control of
society, of economising, of appropriating or subduing it on a large scale by the
work of man’s hand, that first plays the decisive part in the history of
industry. Examples are, the irrigation works in Egypt, [6]
Lombardy, Holland, or in India and Persia where irrigation by means of
artificial canals, not only supplies the soil with the water indispensable to
it, but also carries down to it, in the shape of sediment from the hills,
mineral fertilisers. The secret of the flourishing state of industry in Spain
and Sicily under the dominion of the Arabs lay in their irrigation works. [7]
Favourable natural conditions alone, give us only the possibility, never the
reality, of surplus-labour, nor, consequently, of surplus-value and a
surplus-product. The result of difference in the natural conditions of labour is
this, that the same quantity of labour satisfies, in different countries, a
different mass of requirements, [8]
consequently, that under circumstances in other respects analogous, the
necessary labour-time is different. These conditions affect surplus-labour only
as natural limits, i.e., by fixing the points at which labour for
others can begin. In proportion as industry advances, these natural limits
recede. In the midst of our West European society, where the labourer purchases
the right to work for his own livelihood only by paying for it in surplus-labour,
the idea easily takes root that it is an inherent quality of human labour to
furnish a surplus-product. [9] But
consider, for example, an inhabitant of the eastern islands of the Asiatic
Archipelago, where sago grows wild in the forests.
“When the inhabitants have convinced themselves, by boring a
hole in the tree, that the pith is ripe, the trunk is cut down and divided into
several pieces, the pith is extracted, mixed with water and filtered: it is then
quite fit for use as sago. One tree commonly yields 300 lbs., and occasionally
500 to 600 lbs. There, then, people go into the forests, and cut bread for
themselves, just as with us they cut fire-wood.” [10]
Suppose now such an eastern bread-cutter requires 12 working hours a week for
the satisfaction of all his wants. Nature’s direct gift to him is plenty of
leisure time. Before he can apply this leisure time productively for himself, a
whole series of historical events is required; before he spends it in surplus-labour
for strangers, compulsion is necessary. If capitalist production were
introduced, the honest fellow would perhaps have to work six days a week, in
order to appropriate to himself the product of one working day. The bounty of
Nature does not explain why he would then have to work 6 days a week, or why he
must furnish 5 days of surplus-labour. It explains only why his necessary labour-time
would be limited to one day a week. But in no case would his surplus-product
arise from some occult quality inherent in human labour.
Thus, not only does the historically developed social productiveness of
labour, but also its natural productiveness, appear to be productiveness of the
capital with which that labour is incorporated.
Ricardo never concerns himself about the origin of surplus-value. He treats
it as a thing inherent in the capitalist mode of production, which mode, in his
eyes, is the natural form of social production. Whenever he discusses the
productiveness of labour, he seeks in it, not the cause of surplus-value, but
the cause that determines the magnitude of that value. On the other hand, his
school has openly proclaimed the productiveness of labour to be the originating
cause of profit (read: Surplus-value). This at all events is a progress as
against the mercantilists who, on their side, derived the excess of the price
over the cost of production of the product, from the act of exchange, from the
product being sold above its value. Nevertheless, Ricardo’s school simply
shirked the problem, they did not solve it. In fact these bourgeois economists
instinctively saw, and rightly so, that it is very dangerous to stir too deeply
the burning question of the origin of surplus-value. But what are we to think of
John Stuart Mill, who, half a century after Ricardo, solemnly claims superiority
over the mercantilists, by clumsily repeating the wretched evasions of
Ricardo’s earliest vulgarisers?
Mill says:
“The cause of profit is that labour produces more than is
required for its support.”
So far, nothing but the old story; but Mill wishing to add something of his
own, proceeds:
“To vary the form of the theorem; the reason why capital
yields a profit, is because food, clothing, materials and tools, last longer
than the time which was required to produce them.”
He here confounds the duration of labour-time with the duration of its
products. According to this view, a baker whose product lasts only a day, could
never extract from his workpeople the same profit, as a machine maker whose
products endure for 20 years and more. Of course it is very true, that if a
bird’s nest did not last longer than the time it takes in building, birds
would have to do without nests.
This fundamental truth once established, Mill establishes his own superiority
over the mercantilists.
“We thus see,” he proceeds, “that profit arises, not
from the incident of exchange, but from the productive power of labour; and the
general profit of the country is always what the productive power of labour
makes it, whether any exchange takes place or not. If there were no division of
employments, there would be no buying or selling, but there would still be
profit.”
For Mill then, exchange, buying and selling, those general conditions of
capitalist production, are but an incident, and there would always be profits
even without the purchase and sale of labour-power!
“If,” he continues, “the labourers of the country
collectively produce twenty per cent more than their wages, profits will be
twenty per cent, whatever prices may or may not be.” This is, on the one hand,
a rare bit of tautology; for if labourers produce a surplus-value of 20% for the
capitalist, his profit will be to the total wages of the labourers as 20:100. On
the other hand, it is absolutely false to say that “profits will be 20%.”
They will always be less, because they are calculated upon the sum total
of the capital advanced. If, for example, the capitalist have advanced £500, of
which £4OO is laid out in means of production and £100 in wages, and if the
rate of surplus-value be 20%, the rate of profit will be 20:500, i.e.,
4% and not 20%.
Then follows a splendid example of Mill’s method of handling the different
historical forms of social production.
“I assume, throughout, the state of things which, where the
labourers and capitalists are separate classes, prevails, with few exceptions,
universally; namely, that the capitalist advances the whole expenses, including
the entire remuneration of the labourer.”
Strange optical illusion to see everywhere a state of things which as yet
exists only exceptionally on our earth. [11]
But let us finish — Mill is willing to concede,
“that he should do so is not a matter of inherent
necessity.” On the contrary: “the labourer might wait, until the production
is complete, for all that part of his wages which exceeds mere necessaries: and
even for the whole, if he has funds in hand sufficient for his temporary
support. But in the latter case, the labourer is to that extent really a
capitalist in the concern, by supplying a portion of the funds necessary for
carrying it on.”
Mill might have gone further and have added, that the labourer who advances
to himself not only the necessaries of life but also the means of production, is
in reality nothing but his own wage-labourer. He might also have said that the
American peasant proprietor is but a serf who does enforced labour for himself
instead of for his lord.
After thus proving clearly, that even if capitalist production had no
existence, still it would always exist, Mill is consistent enough to show, on
the contrary, that it has no existence, even when it does exist.
“And even in the former case” (when the workman is a wage
labourer to whom the capitalist advances all the necessaries of life, he the
labourer), “may be looked upon in the same light,” (i.e., as a capitalist),
“since, contributing his labour at less than the market-price, (!) he may be
regarded as lending the difference (?) to his employer and receiving it back
with interest, &c.” [12]
In reality, the labourer advances his labour gratuitously to the capitalist
during, say one week, in order to receive the market price at the end of the
week, &c., and it is this which, according to Mill, transforms him into a
capitalist. On the level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the imbecile
flatness of the present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its
great intellects.
Footnotes
1.
“The very existence of the master-capitalists, as a distinct class, is
dependent on the productiveness of industry.” (Ramsay, l.c., p. 206.) “If
each man’s labour were but enough to produce his own food, there could be no
property.” (Ravenstone, l.c. p. 14, 15.)
2.
According to a recent calculation, there are yet at least 4,000,000 cannibals in
those parts of the earth which have already been explored.
3.
“Among the wild Indians in America, almost everything is the labourer’s, 99
parts of a hundred are to be put upon the account of labour. In England,
perhaps, the labourer has not 2/3.” (The Advantages of the East India Trade,
&c., p. 73.)
4.
Diodorus, l.c., l. I., c. 80.
5.
“The first (natural wealth) as it is most noble and advantageous, so doth it
make the people careless, proud, and given to all excesses; whereas the second
enforceth vigilancy, literature, arts and policy.” (England’s Treasure by
Foreign Trade. Or the Balance of our Foreign Trade is the Rule of our Treasure.
Written by Thomas Mun of London, merchant, and now published for the common good
by his son John Mun. London, 1669, p. 181, 182.) “Nor can I conceive a greater
curse upon a body of people, than to be thrown upon a spot of land, where the
productions for subsistence and food were, in great measure, spontaneous, and
the climate required or admitted little care for raiment and covering... there
may be an extreme on the other side. A soil incapable of produce by labour is
quite as bad as a soil that produces plentifully without any labour.” (An
Inquiry into the Present High Price of Provisions. Lond. 1767, p. 10.)
6.
The necessity for predicting the rise and fall of the Nile created Egyptian
astronomy, and with it the dominion of the priests, as directors of agriculture.
“Le solstice est le moment de l’année ou commence la crue du Nil, et celui
que les Egyptiens ont du observer avec le plus d’attention.... C’était
cette année tropique qu’il leur importait de marquer pour se diriger dans
leurs opérations agricoles. Ils durent donc chercher dans le ciel un signe
apparent de son retour.” [The solstice is the moment of
the year when the Nile begins to rise, and it is the moment the Egyptians have
had to watch for with the greatest attention ... It was the evolution of the
tropical year which they had to establish firmly so as to conduct their
agricultural operations in accordance with it. They therefore had to search the
heavens for a visible sign of the solstice’s return.] (Cuvier: Discours
sur les révolutions du globe, ed. Hoefer, Paris, 1863, p. 141.)
7.
One of the material bases of the power of the state over the small disconnected
producing organisms in India, was the regulation of the water supply. The
Mahometan rulers of India understood this better than their English successors.
It is enough to recall to mind the famine of 1866, which cost the lives of more
than a million Hindus in the district of Orissa, in the Bengal presidency.
8.
“There are no two countries which furnish an equal number of the necessaries
of life in equal plenty, and with the same quantity of labour. Men’s wants
increase or diminish with the severity or temperateness of the climate they live
in; consequently, the proportion of trade which the inhabitants of different
countries are obliged to carry on through necessity cannot be the same, nor is
it practicable to ascertain the degree of variation farther than by the degrees
of Heat and Cold; from whence one may make this general conclusion, that the
quantity of labour required for a certain number of people is greatest in cold
climates, and least in hot ones; for in the former men not only want more
clothes, but the earth more cultivating than in the latter.” (An Essay on the
Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest. Lond. 1750. p. 60.) The author
of this epoch-making anonymous work is J. Massy. Hume took his theory of
interest from it.
9.
“Chaque travail doit (this appears also to be part of the droits et devoirs
du citoyen [rights and duties of the citizen])
laisser un excédent.” [All labour must leave a surplus]
Proudhon.
10.
F. Schouw: “Die Erde, die Pflanze und der Mensch,” 2. Ed. Leipz. 1854, p.
148.
11.
In earlier editions of Capital the quotation from John Stuart Mill, “I
assume throughout...of the labourer,” had been given incorrectly, the words
“where the labourers and capitalists are separate classes” having been left
out. Marx, in a letter dated November 28, 1878, pointed this out to Danielson,
the Russian translator of Capital, adding:
“The next two sentences, viz.
‘Strange optical illusion to see everywhere a state of things which as yet
exists only exceptionally on our earth. But let us finish’ - should be deleted
and the following sentence substituted:
“Mr. Mill is good enough to
believe that this state of things is not an absolute necessity, even in that
economic system in which ‘labourers and capitalists are separate
classes.’”
The substance of this note has been taken from the Volksaugabe.
The quotation from Mill is from his Principles of Political Economy, Book
II, Chap XV, 5.
12.
J. St. Mill. Principles of Pol. Econ. Lond. 1868, p. 252-53 passim.
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