The Production Of Absolute Surplus Value
1) The
Labour Process or The Production Of Use Values
The
Capitalist buys labour-power from the worker as a commodity. As with
every other commodity, it is bought at its full Exchange Value i.e.
the labour-time required for its production. In this case, the
labour-time required to produce all of the food, clothing, shelter,
health, education, entertainment etc. required to produce a
sufficient quantity, and quality of workers to meet the needs of
Capital. That is sufficiently healthy, strong, skilled, educated and
so on.
The
capitalist buys this commodity, labour-power, from the worker for the
same reason they buy any other commodity. In other words, for its
Use Value. The Use Value of Labour-power is Labour itself, the
ability to produce other Use Values, that themselves have Value.
Labour-power
is consumed productively by being set to work. As set out
previously, in order for this work to actually produce Value, it must
be in the production of a Use Value, i.e. an article of utility for
someone. Marx says, the fact that this is carried on under the
control of the capitalist, “does not alter the general character
of their production”, and so he begins by examining the labour
process outside any particular social form it might take.
The labour
process is one in which both Man and Nature participate. Indeed, Man
is himself “one of her own forces”, but opposes himself to
it, in order “to appropriate Nature's productions in a form
adapted to his own wants.” He does this by using his own
forces, be they of mind or body, to “regulate and control the
material reactions between himself and Nature.” That means
manipulating Nature to bring about material changes in the world
about him.
“By
thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same
time changes his own nature.” (p 173)
As a result of this process, Man also develops his own intellectual
and productive powers. What distinguishes this kind of human labour
from most instinctive animal labour is the fact that the human
labourer has created an image of the object of his activity prior to
undertaking it. We know that although humans have existed for around
5 million years, it is only from around 100,000 years ago that the
first modern humans or thinking humans have existed, demonstrated in
their production of artwork containing patterns.
“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.”
(p 174)
Nature provides, in the first instance, the “universal subject
of human labour.” It can take two forms. Firstly, it can take
the form of virgin soil (and water) and all those things that are on
or in it (plants, animals, fish etc.) or which can be simply
extracted from it such as ores. All of these things require human
labour before they can be consumed, but they require nothing more
than this. For example, fish can be eaten once caught. However,
Marx says raw material is, on the other hand, any of these products
which has gone through a further process of labour upon it.
So, an ore extracted may not constitute raw material if, after
extraction it is used, e.g. a flint, whereas ore extracted, and being
prepared for smelting, would be raw material.
“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. 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...
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.” ( p 175)
This
development of instruments, including things such as domesticated
animals, arises quickly, once human labour itself develops. From
early on we see the special development of stone tools, weapons for
hunting etc. As Marx says,
“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.” ( p 175)
So, we have the Stone, Bronze and iron Ages, for example. But, the
instruments of labour are also “indicators of the social
conditions under which that labour is carried on.”
Of these, Marx distinguishes two types. First, there are those he
describes as the “bone and muscle of production.” That is
the things of a mechanical nature used for digging, crushing,
grinding, cutting etc. Second, is what he calls the “vascular
system of production.” That is those things like pipes, tubs,
baskets, jars etc., which contain and help transport the materials of
production. This comparison is reminiscent with the way Thomas
Hobbes, who also identified the nature of reality as being based on
movement rather than inertia, and in 'Leviathan' compared the
human body to the movement of a machine, and the body politic to the
human body.
In addition to those instruments of production that take part in this
process, there are those which are needed for the process to take
place. The earth itself is one of these, because without something
to stand on no process is possible. But, also things such as
“workshops, canals, roads” and so on come under this heading.
Mostly, they are things we would refer to as infrastructure or fixed
capital.
“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.” (p 176)
Both the
instrument and the subject of labour constitute the means of
production and the labour itself is productive labour i.e. it creates
new value. However, Marx is quick to point out,
“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.” (Note 2, p
176)
That is because his definition of Productive Labour under Capitalism
is quite different and specific, being defined in terms of productive
not of Value, but of Surplus Value.
“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.” ( p 176-7)
Apart from the extractive industries, all industry is involved in the
manipulation of raw material, i.e. products of Nature that have
already been the subject of labour to extract it. Even with
agriculture this is the case. Current domesticated livestock is the
product of millennia of purposeful human labour to breed into it
specific characteristics. Today, with the introduction of even
greater scientific advances in genetics and bio-engineering that is
even more the case. The same is true with seed and plant selection
in arable farming. Of course, the products derived from this raw
material may themselves form raw material for some further products.
For example, wool can be spun into yarn, which is then weaved into
cloth, which is made into a coat.
Raw material may be the main component or substance of a product, or
it may be just an accessory to a process. For example, oil may be
required to lubricate the workings of a machine, that is itself part
of the productive process. Coal may be required to fuel a boiler
that provides a steam engine with its power, to keep other machines
working; or it might be mixed with the main substance to bring about
some chemical change, e.g. “chlorine into unbleached linen”; or
it could simply assist in enabling work to take place, e.g. providing
heating and lighting in a workshop. As Marx says,
“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.” (p 177)
As described
in Chapter 1, products have a range of Use Values. Corn can be an
end product, or it can be raw material “for millers, starch
manufacturers, distillers and cattle breeders. 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.”
Cattle are both raw material and a provider of manure. Other
products may only be usable as raw material i.e. they only have any
Use Value as substance of some other product. Marx cites “cotton,
thread and yarn”.
“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.” (p 178)
What is a product for one labour process and producer appears as
substance or instrument of labour for another. The more Division of
Labour develops, the more this is the case.
“In the
finished product the labour by means of which it has acquired its
useful qualities is not palpable, has apparently vanished.” (p 178)
All of the means of production are useless unless they are acted upon
by living labour, and will in fact deteriorate without it.
“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.” (p 178)
Marx adopts
a slightly different emphasis in Capital to that he took in the
Grundrisse. In the Grundrisse he describes Production as
consumption, and Consumption as production. So, for example, the
worker in consuming food, shelter etc. at the same time produces his
own labour-power. Labour in consuming the means of Production,
produces new Use values. Whereas in Capital, he writes,
“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...
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.” (p 179)
There are
two characteristics of the labour process now under the capitalist
that can be observed. Firstly, the worker works under the control of
the capitalist not himself. The control of the capitalist ensures
the work is done properly, that the means of production are used
intelligently, that there is no waste and undue wear and tear etc.
Of course, such control and supervision is not necessary where the
worker directly owns the means of production themselves.
Secondly,
although the worker is the producer of the product, he is not its
owner. It belongs to the capitalist. The capitalist has bought the
commodity labour-power for a day, and has the right thereby to use it
for a day, just as if they had hired a horse for a day. For the
capitalist, 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.” (p 180)
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