2) The Value Transferred By Machinery To The Product
In the same way that Capital can, without cost,
appropriate the additional power of Labour that arises from
co-operation and division of labour, so capital appropriates natural
forces. However, these natural forces still require the expenditure
of human labour before they can be harnessed. The power of flowing
water requires a water wheel before it can be harnessed; steam a
steam engine; petrol an internal combustion engine and so on.
By harnessing all of these productive forces the
productive potential of labour is raised massively, but it requires
an increased expenditure of labour to bring it about.
The machine creates no new value, but, like all
constant capital transfers a portion of its own value to the product.
Machines clearly have much more value than the tools which were used
under manufacture. The machine, like a tool, has to be present in
its complete form in the production process, but, like the tool, only
gives up a portion of its value in wear and tear to the product. The
difference between the portion given up, and the total value is much
greater for the machine than the tool, because machines are made more
durable and so have have longer lives. In addition, the machine is
constructed so that its use is regulated according to scientific
principles, so the wear and tear is more even and regulated.
Finally, the amount of production, undertaken by a machine is vastly
greater than that of a tool.
But, having allowed for the value of the machine,
transferred to the product, by wear and tear, and the value of
ancillary materials required for it to run, capital acquires all of
the productive power of the machine derived from its harnessing of
science and natural forces for free, just as it does the power of
co-operative labour.
“The greater the productive power of the
machinery compared with that of the tool, the greater is the extent
of its gratuitous service compared with that of the tool. In modern
industry man succeeded for the first time in making the product of
his past labour work on a large scale gratuitously, like the forces
of Nature.” (p 366)
The amount of value added to the individual
product depends upon the quantity of that product.
“Mr. Baynes, of Blackburn, in a lecture
published in 1858, estimates that
“each real mechanical horse-power will
drive 450 self-acting mule spindles, with preparation, or 200
throstle spindles, or 15 looms for 40 inch cloth with the appliances
for warping, sizing, &c.”
In the first case, it is the day’s produce of
450 mule spindles, in the second, of 200 throstle spindles, in the
third, of 15 power-looms, over which the daily cost of one
horse-power, and the wear and tear of the machinery set in motion by
that power, are spread; so that only a very minute value is
transferred by such wear and tear to a pound of yarn or a yard of
cloth. The same is the case with the steam-hammer mentioned above.
Since its daily wear and tear, its coal-consumption, &c., are
spread over the stupendous masses of iron hammered by it in a day,
only a small value is added to a hundred weight of iron; but that
value would be very great, if the cyclopean instrument were employed
in driving in nails. (p 367)
The amount of product depends on the speed of the
machines. Finally,
“Given the rate at which machinery transfers
its value to the product, the amount of value so transferred depends
on the total value of the machinery. The less labour it contains,
the less value it imparts to the product. The less value it gives up,
so much the more productive it is, and so much the more its services
approximate to those of natural forces. But the production of
machinery by machinery lessens its value relatively to its extension
and efficacy. (p 368)
Marx continues,
“An analysis and comparison of the prices of
commodities produced by handicrafts or manufactures, and of the
prices of the same commodities produced by machinery, shows
generally, that, in the product of machinery, the value due to the
instruments of labour increases relatively, but decreases absolutely.
In other words, its absolute amount decreases, but its amount,
relatively to the total value of the product, of a pound of yarn, for
instance, increases. (p 368)
I might misunderstand him here, but this seems to
me the wrong way around. Because machinery is much more expensive,
the amount spent on instruments of labour will rise absolutely, but
precisely because the machinery increases output so greatly, the
relative cost of those instruments must surely fall as a proportion
of the value of each commodity, because that higher cost is spread
across a much larger number of items.
He also notes,
“This portion of value which is added by the
machinery, decreases both absolutely and relatively, when the
machinery does away with horses and other animals that are employed
as mere moving forces, and not as machines for changing the form of
matter.” (Note 2, p 368)
The efficiency of a machine is measured by the
human labour-power it replaces.
“Before Eli Whitney
invented the cotton gin in 1793, the separation of the seed from a
pound of cotton cost an average day’s labour. By means of his
invention one negress was enabled to clean 100 lbs. daily; and since
then, the efficacy of the gin has been considerably increased. A
pound of cotton wool, previously costing 50 cents to produce,
included after that invention more unpaid labour, and was
consequently sold with greater profit, at 10 cents.” (p 369)
Marx emphasises that this saving of labour-power
is not the same as the saving in wages. That is because wages only
represent that part of the day for which capital pays. Suppose 1
hour of labour-time = £1. A machine costing £3,000, therefore,
costs 3000 hours of labour-time. Suppose the machine does the same
work as 150 workers, paid £20 each = £3000. However, if these 150
workers produce Surplus Value at a rate of 100%, then the total value
they create is £6000 = 6000 hours. So, the machine, which costs
3000 hours to produce, does the work of 6000 hours of human
labour-time.
But,
“The use of machinery for the exclusive
purpose of cheapening the product, is limited in this way, that less
labour must be expended in producing the machinery than is displaced
by the employment of that machinery, For the capitalist, however,
this use is still more limited. Instead of paying for the labour, he
only pays the value of the labour-power employed; therefore, the
limit to his using a machine is fixed by the difference between the
value of the machine and the value of the labour-power replaced by
it.” (p 370)
This demonstrates why, for example, the workers at
Ralahine
had an incentive to introduce a reaping machine, whilst capitalists
were still thinking about it. When workers themselves own the means
of production, all labour-time expended in production is their own.
Any saving in that time is an immediate gain for them. For the
capitalist, however, it is only a saving in the paid for labour-time
that counts. That is why worker co-ops always have an incentive to
introduce machinery ahead of capitalist enterprises. The more labour
is exploited by capital, i.e. the higher the rate of surplus value,
the more that is the case.
“Since the division of the
day’s work into necessary and surplus-labour differs in different
countries, and even in the same country at different periods, or in
different branches of industry; and further, since the actual wage of
the labourer at one time sinks below the value of his labour-power,
at another rises above it, it is possible for the difference between
the price of the machinery and the price of the labour-power replaced
by that machinery to vary very much, although the difference between
the quantity of labour requisite to produce the machine and the total
quantity replaced by it, remain constant.” (pp 370-1)
Ironically, the introduction of machinery in some
branches of industry can create such a level of unemployment in
others that wages are forced so low, beneath the value of
labour-power that it makes it uneconomic to introduce machinery into
them.
Generally, capital introduces machines to replace
labour where wages have risen. An example would be the introduction
of new technology in the print industry in the 1980's, or today the
introduction of driverless trains on the London Underground.
Marx writes,
“Hence in a communistic society there would
be a very different scope for the employment of machinery than there
can be in a bourgeois society.” (Note 1, p 371)
Marx gives various examples of how the Factory
Acts raised the cost of employing women and children, and thereby led
to them being replaced by machines.
“In England women are still occasionally used
instead of horses for hauling canal boats, because the labour
required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known
quantity, while that required to maintain the women of the
surplus-population is below all calculation. Hence nowhere do we find
a more shameful squandering of human labour-power for the most
despicable purposes than in England, the land of machinery.” (p
372)
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