Marx then describes the process by which this
raising of productivity occurs, and why capitalist competition drives
this process. He does so by looking at the way each capitalist has a
motivation for raising their own productivity in order to make higher
than average profits. This is because of the difference between
Value and Exchange Value.
Suppose 1 hour's labour = £10.
In a working day of 12 hours, £120 of new value
is created. If, in this 12 hours, 120 items are produced, each will
have £1 of new value added to it. Suppose the constant capital used
up, in each article, is also £1. Then the price of each article is
£2.
If a capitalist can raise his productivity,
compared to his competitors, he can make extra profits.
Suppose a capitalist raises his productivity so
that, in 12 hours, he can produce 240 rather than 120 items. The
constant capital in each will still be £1, but the labour in each
will now be only 50p. So, the individual value of his products is
just £1.50.
However, it is not the individual value of these
commodities which determine their market price, but their social
value, the average socially necessary labour-time required for their
production. If this capitalist is only one of a large number
producing these commodities, his lower cost of production will not
change the average SNLT.
So, the market price will remain £2, whereas his
individual value is £1.50, giving him an extra 50p per unit profit
over his rivals. But, in practice, in order to get rid of the
additional supply, he may have to cut his prices below this, say to
£1.75, making just an extra 25p profit, but will in the process
increase his market share.
“This augmentation of surplus-value is
pocketed by him, whether his commodities belong or not to the class
of necessary means of subsistence that participate in determining the
general value of labour-power. Hence, independently of this latter
circumstance, there is a motive for each individual capitalist to
cheapen his commodities, by increasing the productiveness of labour.”
(p 301)
Even in the case described, however, the
additional surplus value arises because the amount of necessary
labour-time is reduced.
Previously, the ratio of surplus value to
necessary value = surplus labour to necessary labour was 20:100 =
1:5, now it is 80:100 = 4:5.
The other way of looking at this, says Marx, is to
view the labour employed in this firm as intensified labour, like
complex labour, so that in every hour, it creates more value than 1
hour of abstract, simple labour. Unlike with complex labour,
however, which would involve the capitalist paying for it at its
higher value, this capitalist continues to pay for it at its original
value. We do see this in practice in a slightly different form. If
we look at the same type of labour employed at different size of
firms, for example, we see workers employed at very large firms,
which enjoy the economies of scale, being paid higher wages, and
receiving better conditions, than the same workers employed by small
firms. In the same way, workers in advanced economies, where
productivity is high, generally have higher wages than workers in
less developed economies where it is low.
“Hence, the
capitalist who applies the improved method of production,
appropriates to surplus-labour a greater portion of the working day,
than the other capitalists in the same trade. He does individually,
what the whole body of capitalists engaged in producing relative
surplus-value, do collectively. On the other hand, however, this
extra surplus-value vanishes, so soon as the new method of production
has become general, and has consequently caused the difference
between the individual value of the cheapened commodity and its
social value to vanish. The law of the determination of value by
labour-time, a law which brings under its sway the individual
capitalist who applies the new method of production, by compelling
him to sell his goods under their social value, this same law, acting
as a coercive law of competition, forces his competitors to adopt the
new method. The general rate of surplus-value is, therefore,
ultimately affected by the whole process, only when the increase in
the productiveness of labour, has seized upon those branches of
production that are connected with, and has cheapened those
commodities that form part of, the necessary means of subsistence,
and are therefore elements of the value of labour-power.” (p 302-3)
“The value of commodities is in inverse ratio
to the productiveness of labour. And so, too, is the value of
labour-power, because it depends on the values of commodities.
Relative surplus-value is, on the contrary, directly proportional to
that productiveness. It rises with rising and falls with falling
productiveness. The value of money being assumed to be constant, an
average social working day of 12 hours always produces the same new
value, six shillings, no matter how this sum may be apportioned
between surplus-value and wages. But if, in consequence of increased
productiveness, the value of the necessaries of life fall, and the
value of a day’s labour-power be thereby reduced from five
shillings to three, the surplus-value increases from one shilling to
three.” (p 303)
“Hence there is immanent in capital an
inclination and constant tendency, to heighten the productiveness of
labour, in order to cheapen commodities, and by such cheapening to
cheapen the labourer himself.” (p 303)
The capitalist is only interested in the surplus
value of the commodities they produce, not their Exchange Value. In
realising the surplus value, they also recover the value of the
constant and variable capital advanced in the production. This
solves the question then of why capital seeks to reduce the Exchange
Value of commodities, because Relative Surplus Value increases with
the productivity of labour, whilst that same process reduces the
Exchange Value of commodities.
“The shortening of the working day is,
therefore, by no means what is aimed at, in capitalist production,
when labour is economised by increasing its productiveness. It is
only the shortening of the labour-time, necessary for the production
of a definite quantity of commodities, that is aimed at. The fact
that the workman, when the productiveness of his labour has been
increased, produces, say 10 times as many commodities as before, and
thus spends one-tenth as much labour-time on each, by no means
prevents him from continuing to work 12 hours as before, nor from
producing in those 12 hours 1,200 articles instead of 120. Nay, more,
his working day may be prolonged at the same time, so as to make him
produce, say 1,400 articles in 14 hours. In the treatises, therefore,
of economists of the stamp of MacCulloch, Ure, Senior, and tutti
quanti [the like], we may read upon one page, that the labourer owes
a debt of gratitude to capital for developing his productiveness,
because the necessary labour-time is thereby shortened, and on the
next page, that he must prove his gratitude by working in future for
15 hours instead of 10. The object of all development of the
productiveness of labour, within the limits of capitalist production,
is to shorten that part of the working day, during which the workman
must labour for his own benefit, and by that very shortening, to
lengthen the other part of the day, during which he is at liberty to
work gratis for the capitalist.” (p 304)
Once again, we see the same thing today, in
relation to the raising of the retirement age. It is now 170 years
since the working day was reduced to 10 hours. Yet, today, many
workers still work an 8 hour day, and the Liberal-Tories, like the
Blairites before them, object to the modest proposal of the EU to
introduce a maximum 48 hour week!!! But, in that 170 years, the
productivity of labour has risen by astronomical amounts. Each
worker, today, produces, in each hour, many hundreds, if not
thousands, times as many use values as they did in 1850. yet, despite that,
and despite the fact, on that basis, that workers should be able to
benefit by working fewer hours per day, fewer days per week, fewer
weeks per year, and fewer years in their life, capital insists on
making workers work both longer hours, and more years out of their
life, to provide itself with more profits.
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