The People's Marx, Abridged Popular Edition of the the Three Volumes of Capital, Borchardt 1921

Chapter 5


How Surplus-Value Arises

(Extracted from vol. I, ch. 7.)

Labour power in use is labour itself. The purchaser of labour power consumes it by letting its vendor work. With the eye of a connoisseur the capitalist has selected the means of production and the labour power best adapted to his special line of business spinning-mill, shoe manufactory, etc. and he now lets the labourer consume the means of production by his labour. He must begin by taking the labour power just as he finds it; consequently also with a kind of labour as would be found at a time in which capitalists did not exist. Transformations of the forms of production due to the subordination of labour to capital can take place only later, and must therefore be considered later.

The labour process, considered as the consumption of the labour power sold to the capitalist, shows us two peculiarities.

The labourer works under the control of the capitalist. The latter takes care that the work is carried-on properly, and that the means of production are put to a suitable use. In other words: the freedom and independence of the worker during the labour process do not exist.

Secondly, the product is the property of the capitalist, not of the labourer. As the capitalist - according to our hypothesis - pays the daily value of the labour power, it appertains to him to employ this power. Similarly the other elements essential for the manufacture of the product, namely the means of production, belong to him. Consequently the labour process is carried-on amongst things which have all been purchased by the capitalist; and thus the product is his property.

This product constitutes a value in use yarn, boots, etc. But although boots, for example, are to a certain extent the basis of social progress, our capitalist, a decidedly progressive man, does not manufacture them for their own sake. Values in use are produced solely because, and in so far as, they are exchange values. Our capitalist has two purposes In view: firstly, he wishes to produce a value in use having an exchange value an article destined for sale, a commodity; secondly, he wishes to produce a commodity having a higher value than that of the means of production and the labour power, for which he advanced his money on the market. He does not want merely to produce a value in use, but value; and not only value, but surplus-value.

We know that the value of every commodity is determined by the quantity of labour contained in it. This applies also to the product resulting for our capitalist from the process of labour. We must therefore first and foremost calculate the labour thus materialised in the work.

Let us take, for example, yarn. For the production of yarn raw materials, e. g. 10 Ibs. of cotton, were first of all necessary. It is superfluous to inquire at present as to the value of the cotton, seeing that we assume the capitalist purchased the latter at its value, e. g. ten shillings. In the price of the cotton, the. labour required for its production is already expressed as average social labour. We will further assume that the instruments of labour used-up during the manufacture of the cotton spindles, etc. - have a value of two shillings. If an amount of gold equivalent to 12 shillings be the product of 24 working-hours or two working- days, it ensues firstly that two working-days are incorporated in the yarn. The working-time necessary for the production of the cotton is a part of the working-time needed for the production of the yarn, the raw material of which it constitutes, and is consequently included in the yarn. The same holds good of the working-time necessary for the production of the spindles, without the wear and tear of which the cotton cannot be spun. But we start from the assumption that only such working-time is spent as is indispensable under social conditions of production. Thus if only 1 Ib. of cotton be needed for spinning 1 Ib. of yarn, only 1 Ib. of cotton may be used in 'the manufacture of 1 Ib. of yarn. The same applies to the spindle. If the capitalist has the phantasy to use golden spindles instead of iron ones, nevertheless only the socially necessary labour is reckoned in the value of the yarn, i. e. the working-time necessary for the production of iron spindles.

We come next to the question of what amount of value the labour of the spinner himself adds to the cotton. We assume that the labour of spinning is simple, unskilled labour, the average labour of a given state of society. Subsequently we shall see, that, even should we assume the contrary, the question would remain unchanged.

Now it is vitally important that no more time be consumed in the work of spinning than is necessary under given social conditions. If under normal conditions of production l 2/3 Ibs. of cotton be transformed during a working-hour into 1 2/3 Ibs. yarn, then only that working-day counts as a 12 hours day, in which 12 X 1 2/3 Ibs. of cotton are converted into 12 X l 2/3 Ibs. of yarn. For only the socially necessary working-time counts as creative of value.

The fact that the labour consists in spinning, that its material is cotton and its product yarn, is absolutely in- different as regards the creation of value. If the labourer, instead of working in a spinning-mill were employed in a coal mine, the object of the labour, i. e. coal, would be furnished by Nature. But all the same a definite quantity of coal picked from the seam, e. g. 1 cwt., represents a definite quantity of absorbed labour.

When the labour power was sold, it was assumed that its daily value totals 3 shillings, and that in these 3 shillings 6 working-hours are incorporated - - that consequently 6 working-hours are required to produce the average amount of necessaries of life needed by the labourer every day. If now our spinner transforms during one working-hour l 2/3 Ibs. of cotton into 1 2/3 Ibs. of yarn [1], in 6 working-hours he trans- forms 10 Ibs. of cotton into 10 Ibs. of yarn. During the process of spinning, the cotton thus absorbs 6 working-hours. This working-time is represented by a quantity of gold worth 3 shillings. Owing therefore to the spinning, the value of the cotton is enhanced to the extent of 3 shillings.

Let us now turn to the total value of the product, i e. of the 10 Ibs. of yarn. In them are incorporated 2 1/2 working-days, of which 2 are contained in cotton and instruments of labour, and one half is absorbed during the process of spinning. The same working-time is represented by a quantity of gold worth 15 shillings. The price corresponding to the value of the 10 Ibs. of yarn amounts thus to 15 shillings, the price of 1 Ib. of yarn amounts to 1 s. 6 d.

Our capitalist is taken aback. The value of the product is equal to the capital advanced. The value advanced has not been remunerative, has not produced a surplus-value. The price of 10 Ibs. of yarn is 15 shillings, and 15 shillings have been laid out 10 shillings for cotton, 2 shillings for the consumed instruments of labour, and 3 shillings for labour power.

Perhaps the capitalist will say that he advanced his money with the intention of making more money out of it. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and he may just as well have had the intention to make money without producing at all. He threatens. He will never be caught again. In future he will buy the finished commodity on the market instead of manufacturing it himself. But if all his fellow-capitalists were to do the same, how would he find commodities on the market? And money he cannot eat. He becomes unctuous. His sacrifice should be appreciated. He might have squandered his 15 shillings. Instead of which, he has laid-out the latter productively and made yarn out of them. But precisely for that reason he is in possession of good yarn instead of an evil conscience. Moreover, there where nothing is to be had, the King himself forfeits his rights. However meritorious his renunciation, there is nothing available wherewith to pay special remuneration for it, seeing that the value of the commodity resulting from the process of production is but equal to the sum total of the values invested in that process. He should therefore console himself with the reflection that virtue is its own reward. Instead of which he becomes, importunate. The yarn is useless for him. He has produced it for sale. He may therefore sell it, or, still better, may in future only produce commodities for his own use. He defiantly shows his teeth. Could the labourer produce commodities from nothing, merely with his own limbs? Did the capitalist not furnish the materials with which alone the labourer could work, and in which alone his work could be incorporated? Seeing that the greater part of society is composed of persons who possess nothing, has he not rendered society, through his means of production, i. e. his cotton and his spindles, an in valuable service? Has he not rendered the labourer himself such a service, having furnished him with necessaries of life into the bargain? And shall he not count this service for something? But, on the other hand, has not the labourer in his turn rendered him the service of transforming cotton and spindle into yarn? Moreover there is here no question of services. A service is nothing but the useful effect produced by a value in use, be it a commodity. or be it labour. But here there is only question of the exchange value. The capitalist paid the labourer the value of 3 shillings. The labourer gave him back exactly the same value, in the shape of a value; of 3 shillings added to the cotton Thus value is returned for value. Our friend, just now so purse-proud, suddenly assumes the modest attitude of his own labourer. Has the capitalist not worked himself? Has he not performed the work of superintending and controlling the spinners? Does not such work also produce value? His own foreman and his business manager shrug their shoulders. But meanwhile he has already resumed his former smiling face. He bamboozled us with the whole rigmarole. But he does not care a straw. He leaves these and similar hollow subterfuges and shifts to the professor of Political Economy, who is especially paid to repeat them. The capitalist himself is a practical man, who, it is true, does not always reflect on what he says outside his office, but who always knows what he does inside the latter.

Let us consider the matter more closely. The daily value of the labour power amounted to 3 shillings, seeing that half a day's labour is incorporated in it i. e. because the necessaries of life required daily for the production oi labour power cost half a working-day. But the past labour incorporated in the labour power, on the one hand; and the living work which it can put into action, on the other: are two very different magnitudes. The fact that half a day's work is necessary to keep him alive for 24 hours by no means prevents the labourer working the entire day. The value of labour power and the utilisation of that power in the labour process are two different things. The capitalist had this difference of value in view when buying the labour power. The latter?s useful quality, i. e. the capacity for producing yarn or boots, was merely an indispensable secondary condition, because in order to create value labour in an useful shape must be performed. What was decisive was the peculiar value in use of this commodity, which is a source of value, and of value greater than it possesses itself. This is the service which the capitalist expected from it.

And he acted in conformity with the eternal laws governing the exchange of commodities. For it is a fact that the vendor of labour power, like the vendor of every other commodity, obtains its exchange value and sells its value in use. The value in use of his labour power, i. e. the labour itself, belongs just as little to the vendor as the value in use of oil which has been sold belongs to the oil dealer. The capitalist has paid the daily value of labour power; consequently its use during the day, the whole day's labour belongs to him. The circumstance that the daily sustenance of labour power only costs half a working-day, although such labour power can be in action the entire day that consequently the value which its employment creates in a single day is double its own daily value; this circumstance is doubtless particularly lucky for the purchaser, but by no means an injustice towards the vendor.

Our capitalist has foreseen this state of things, which was the cause of his hilarity. The labourer therefore finds in the workshop not only the means of production necessary for working six hours, but also those necessary for working twelve hours. If 10 Ibs. of cotton absorbed 6 working hours and be transformed into 10 Ibs. of yarn, then 20 Ibs. of cotton will absorb 12 working hours and be transformed into 20 Ibs. of yarn. Let us consider the product of this prolonged labour process. Five working days are now materialised in the 20 Ibs. of yarn, i. e. four in the cotton and the lost steel of the spindle, and one absorbed by the cotton during the process of spinning. Expressed in gold, the value of five working 'days is 30 shillings. That is therefore the price of the 20 Ibs. of yarn. The latter still costs 1 s. 6 d. per Ib. But the total value of the commodities entering into the process was 27 shillings, whereas the value of the yarn is 30 shillings. The value of the product has increased to the extent of one-ninth over and above the value advanced for its production. Twenty-seven shillings have been transformed into thirty. A surplus value of 3 shillings has been obtained. The trick has succeeded at last.

All the conditions of the problem are satisfied, and the laws of the exchange of commodities have in no wise been broken. Equal value was exchanged for equal value, capitalist paid as purchaser the value of every commodity - cotton, spindles, labour power. He did what every other purchaser of commodities does - he consumed their value in use. The consumption of labour power yielded 20 Ibs. of yarn, worth 30 shillings. The capitalist now returns to the market and sells commodities after having bought them. He sells the yarn for 1 s. 6d. per lb., not a farthing either above or below its value. And yet he obtains from circulation 3 shillings more than he originally threw into it.

If we compare the process of creating value with that of creating surplus-value, we see the latter to be but the continuation of the former beyond a definite point. If the process be only carried as far as the point where the value paid by capital for labour power be replaced by an exact equivalent, then it is simply a process of producing value. But if the process be continued beyond that point, it becomes a process of creating surplus-value.

But labour is only creative of value in the measure in which the time needed for the production of a value in use is socially necessary. Labour power must be expended under normal conditions. If a self-acting mule be the implement in general use for spinning, the labourer must not be supplied with a distaff and spinning-wheel. He must not, instead of cotton of normal quality, be furnished with rubbish susceptible of tearing any moment. In both cases he would consume more working-time than is socially necessary for the pro- duction of 1 lb. of yarn; and this extra time would not produce value or money. Further, labour power must itself be normal. In that branch of production in which it is expended, it must possess the general average amount of skill, dexterity, and celerity. It must be expended with the general average amount of exertion and with the degree of intensity usual in society at any given moment. 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 purchased the labour power for a specific length of time and he insists on his rights. He will not let himself be robbed. Neither may the raw materials and tools be put 19 a wrong use, because those raw materials or tools which are wasted represent a useless expenditure of labour, and do not, consequently, count in the product nor enter into its value.

We have already observed that in the production of surplus-value it is indifferent whether the labour bought by the capitalist be simple unskilled labour of average quality or more complicated labour. The labour which is of a higher kind and more complicated is the manifestation of a labour power which has cost more to develop, whose production has cost therefore more working-time, and which has consequently a higher value than unskilled labour power. This power being of greater value, it will be expended in labour of a higher class; it will, therefore, materialise itself in an identical length of time in proportionately higher values than unskilled labour. But whatever differences in skill may exist 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. [2]

[1] The figures are here wholly arbitrary.

[2] The differences between skilled and unskilled labour rest in part on mere illusions, or, to say the least, on differences which have long ceased to exist in reality, and only survive by virtue of a traditional convention; in part on the helpless condition of some categories of the working class, a condition that prevents them exacting equally with their comrades the value of their labour power; accidental circumstances play here so great a part, that both forms of labour can sometimes change places. Where, for instance, the physique of the working class has deteriorated, and is relatively speaking exhausted ? and this is the case in all countries characterised by highly developed capitalist production -- the lower forms of labour, which demand great muscular strength, are in general considered as skilled by comparison with much more delicate forms, which sink down to the level of unskilled labour. Take the case of a stonemason in England, whose labour is on. a much higher level than that of a damask-weaver. On the other hand, although the work of a fustian cutter demands great bodily exertion and is very unhealthy into the bargain, yet it counts only as unskilled labour. And we must not forget that the so-called skilled labour occupies-only a small space in the, total labour of a nation. Laing calculates that in England and Wales the livelihood of 11 million persons depends on unskilled labour. If from the total population of 18 million people living at the time when he wrote, we deduct 1 000 000 for the genteel population, and another 1 000 000 for paupers, vagrants, criminals, prostitutes, etc., there remain 4 000 000 who compose, the middle-class, including people that live on the interest of small investments, officials, authors, artists, schoolmasters and the like. In order to obtain this last figure of 4.000.000, he includes all better paid factory operatives among the working category of the middle-class - from which, however, bankers etc. are excluded! The stonemasons, too, figure among the skilled labourers. There remain the above mentioned 11.000.000. (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 article: "Colony". Supplement to the Encyclop. Brit., 1831).

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