[10. The Untenability of the Rodbertian Critique Rodbertus’s of Ricardo’s Theory of Rent. Lack of Understanding of the Peculiarities of Capitalist Agriculture]
Marx quotes Rodbertus on his theory of rent, in which he describes the division of the product of labour between the workers, and the owners of landed property and 'Capital Property'. As Marx says, it's clear here that the division is considered on the basis of use value, i.e. of the physical product. In that, Rodbertus follows one approach by Smith, and by Ricardo. Marx points out that,
“This conception is more or less, mutatis mutandis, applicable to all modes of production where the workers and the owners of the objective conditions of labour form different classes.” (p 150)
In other words, the labourers, in whatever mode of production, undertake a certain quantity of labour, and thereby produce a quantity of new value, which is embodied in a social product in addition to the existing value embodied in the means of production consumed, in the production process. The value of the social product replaces the consumed means of production, and the new value created is divided between the labourers and the owners of landed property and capital property. This new value is itself embodied in a social product. Taken at this level of the division of the physical product, the labourers must obtain a portion of this social product required for the reproduction of their labour power, which then leaves a surplus social product appropriated by the owners of landed property and capital property.
Whilst this description can be applied to all modes of production, therefore, it does not describe what is specific to the capitalist mode of production. As Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value I, the Physiocrats analysis of the production of surplus value, as such a surplus product, derived from the agricultural economy they were describing. With little change in levels of productivity there is little effective difference in describing the division based upon use value, as one based on value. In effect, a physical proportion of output is set aside to replace consumed means of production – seeds etc. – in kind, and frequently wages themselves are paid directly in kind too, and the payment of rent is also a division of this physical product. The same physical division of this product can be undertaken more or less unchanged year after year. But, with capitalism, and the dominance of exchange value, although the same fundamental requirements remain – the means of production must be physically reproduced, and the physical requirements of the workers must be reproduced in their wages – the specific means by which this is effected is different.
The use values that comprise both the constant and variable capital must still be reproduced on a like for like basis, for social reproduction to occur on the same scale, but instead of them being directly reproduced, they are reproduced increasingly as exchange values. In other words, the capitalist buys seeds from a seed merchant rather than from their own output; the worker is paid money wages with which they buy their necessities on the market. Moreover capitalist production continually revolutionises production, and consequently the value of the use values that are physically reproduced. The consequence is that whilst the quantity of use values consumed, as means of production, is physically reproduced, the value of the means of production, the labour time required for their reproduction, constantly falls, and similarly the labour time required for the reproduction of the variable capital also constantly falls. So, the latter results in a constant rise in the rate and mass of surplus value, and the former results in a constant rise in the rate of profit. So, Marx says, Ricardo, who even more than Smith, recognizes the importance of value as determined by labour time, should be reproached for viewing matters only in terms of this division of the social product.
Typical of the duality in much of Smith's thinking, he does put forward a second conception of this division, in which the specifically capitalist context is specified.
“Smith’s second conception, on the other hand, is characteristic of the capitalist mode of production, Hence it alone is a theoretically fruitful formula. For Smith here conceives of profit and rent as springing from the surplus labour which the worker adds to the subject of labour, apart from that portion of labour by which he only reproduces his own wage. This is the only correct standpoint where production rests solely on exchange-value. This concept comprises the process of development, whereas the first concept presupposes that labour-time is constant.” (p 150)
Rodbertus argues that the value of the product is divisible into “wages, rent and profit”, as Smith had set out, and so “basing the incomes of the different classes and particularly also rent on a division of the product is nothing new.” (p 150) but, economists had erred, Rodbertus says, in not considering that it was the whole product, “the total national product” (ibid) that was shared by the workers, landowners and capitalists. The economists conception Rodbertus says, is that the raw produce is shared by workers, capitalists and landlords, but that the manufactured product is shared only by workers and capitalists. Rodbertus fails to recognise that Adam Smith had misled all later economists by his claim that the value of the product resolves itself into wages, rents and profit. Clearly it does not, because it also includes the value of the constant capital consumed in its production.
“As my exposition has shown, the lack of this differentiation made any scientific presentation quite impossible. In this respect the Physiocrats were further advanced. Their “avances primitives et annuelles” are defined as a part of the value of the annual product or as a part of the annual product itself, which is not resolved into wages, profit or rent, either for the nation or for the individual.” (p 151)
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