Chapter 18: Various Formula for the Rate of Surplus-Value
We have seen that the rate of surplus-value is represented by the following formulae:
Surplus-value (s) Surplus-value Surplus-labor I. == == - Variable Capital (v) Value of labor-power Necessary labor
Surplus-labor Surplus-value Surplus-product II. - == == - Working-day Value of the Product Total Product
In all of these formulae (II.), the actual degree of exploitation of labor, or the rate of surplus-value, is falsely expressed. Let the working-day be 12 hours. Then, making the same assumptions as in former instances, the real degree of exploitation of labor will be represented in the following proportions.
6 hours surplus-labor Surplus-value of 3 sh. - == - == 100%. 6 hours necessary labor Variable Capital of 3 sh.
6 hours surplus-labor Surplus-value of 3 sh. - == - == 50%. Working-day of 12 hours Value created of 6 sh.
Surplus-labor Surplus-value - or - Working-day Value created
The favorite method of treating the working-day as constant in magnitude became, through the use of formulae II., a fixed usage, because in them surplus-labor is always compared with a working-day of given length. The same holds good when the repartition of the value produced is exclusively kept insight. The working-day that has already been realized in given value, must necessarily be a day of given length.
The habit of representing surplus-value and value of labor-power as fractions of the value created a habit that originates in the capitalist mode of production itself, and whose import will hereafter be disclosed conceals the very transaction that characterizes capital, namely the exchange of variable capital for living labor-power, and the consequent exclusion of the laborer from the product. Instead of the real fact, we have false semblance of an association, in which laborer and capitalist divide the product in proportion to the different elements which they respectively contribute towards its formation. [3]
Moreover, the formulae II. can at any time be reconverted into formulae I. If, for instance, we have
Surplus-labor of 6 hours , Working-day of 12 hours
Surplus-labor of 6 hours 100 == -. Necessary labor of 6 hours 100
Surplus-value Surplus-labor Unpaid labor III. == - == . Value of labor-power Necessary labor Paid labor
Unpaid labor , Paid labor
Surplus-labor -. Necessary labor
Capital, therefore, it not only, as Adam Smith says, the command over labor. It is essentially the command over unpaid labor. All surplus-value, whatever particular form (profit, interest, or rent), it may subsequently crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labor. The secret of the self-expansion of capital resolves itself into having the disposal of a definite quantity of other people’s unpaid labor.
[edit] Footnotes
^ Thus, e.g., in “Dritter Brief an v. Kirchmann von Rodbertus. Widerlegung der Ricardo’schen Lehre von der Grundrente und Begrundung einer neuen Rententheorie”. Berlin, 1851. I shall return to this letter later on; in spite of its erroneous theory of rent, it sees through the nature of capitalist production.
NOTE ADDED IN THE 3RD GERMAN EDITION: It may be seen from this how favorably Marx judged his predecessors, whenever he found in them real progress, or new and sound ideas. The subsequent publications of Robertus’ letters to Rud. Meyer has shown that the above acknowledgement by Marx wants restricting to some extent. In those letters this passage occurs:
“Capital must be rescued not only from labor, but from itself, and that will be best effected, by treating the acts of the industrial capitalist as economic and political functions, that have been delegated to him with his capital, and by treating his profit as a form of salary, because we still know no other social organization. But salaries may be regulated, and may also be reduced if they take too much from wages. The irruption of Marx into Society, as I may call his book, must be warded off…. Altogether, Marx’s book is not so much an investigation into capital, as a polemic against the present form of capital, a form which he confounds with the concept itself of capital.”
(”Briefe, &c., von Dr. Robertus-Jagetzow, herausgg. von Dr. Rud. Meyer”, Berlin, 1881, I, Bd. P.111, 46. Breif von Rodbertus.) To such ideological commonplaces did the bold attack by Robertus in his “social letters” finally dwindle down. F.E.
^ That part of the product which merely replaces the constant capital advanced is of course left out in this calculation. Mr. L. de Lavergne, a blind admirer of England, is inclined to estimate the share of the capitalist too low, rather than too high.
^ All well-developed forms of capitalist production being forms of cooperation, nothing is, of course, easier, than to make abstraction from their antagonistic character, and to transform them by a word into some form of free association, as is done by A. de Laborde in “De l’Espirit d’Association dans tout les interets de la communaute”. Paris 1818. H. Carey, the Yankee, occassionally performs this conjuring trick with like success, even with the relations resulting from slavery.
^ Although the Physiocrats could not penetrate the mystery of surplus-value, yet this much was clear to them, viz., that it is “une richesse independante et disponible qu’il (the possessor) n’a point achetee et qu’il vend.” (Turgot: “Reflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses”, p.11.)