If the actual content of the process of exchange between capital and labour is analysed, it comes down to this. What capital pays to labour is only a part of the product that labour has itself created. In the terms of the Physiocrats, the capitalist provides a quantity of constant capital, in the form of grain, tools, etc., and this is replaced out of the current production. The capitalist also pays out grain, and other commodities, as wages, to the workers, and these commodities are also replaced out of current production. But, after all of these commodities that comprise the constant and variable-capital, have been replaced, a surplus of commodities still remains.
If we analyse the exchange, not just as a snapshot, at a point in time, but as a process, then it becomes clear that what is paid as wages to the workers, is only a part of what they previously produced. In other words, in Physiocratic terms, 100 kg. of grain is used as seed, and at the end of production the output is 1,000 kg. of grain, the workers have created this additional 900 kg. by their labour. Looking into the next year, out of the 1,000 kg. the 100 kg. of seed is replaced, leaving 900 kg., but the workers are not paid the 900 kg. of grain as wages. They are paid, say, 500 kg. as wages, with 400 kg. being a surplus product, appropriated by the capitalist. Of course, this 500 kg. is not an arbitrary amount, but is determined, objectively by the physical amount of grain that the worker requires to reproduce their labour-power (assuming they only require grain for that purpose). It illustrates, precisely why, as Marx says, all surplus value is ultimately, relative surplus value, because unless social productivity is at a sufficiently developed level, the worker cannot produce more means of subsistence than is required for the reproduction of their own labour-power, and so could not produce a surplus product. So, the worker is paid only with 500 kg. of the 900 kg. of product their own labour had created, and, in such an economy, no money is required for this exchange, because what the workers are paid as wages this year, is only the result of their labour last year. It already exists as a physical product, waiting to be paid to them.
In fact, if we examine the 100 kg. of grain used as seed (constant capital) this is true also. If the capitalist personally consumed 100 kg. of grain, leaving 300 kg. of grain left over for accumulation, then the technical composition of capital is 1:5. i.e. 100 kg. was used as seed and 500 kg. for wages. So the 300 kg. could be accumulated so that an additional 50 kg. is used as seed, and 250 kg as as a wage fund, so that, in the following year, additional workers can be employed.
This shows even more clearly how the wages paid to workers, in the current period, are merely a portion of the product of labour in the previous period. And, this is even more true with money wages, because the money wages paid to workers are simply an indication that the product of labour, in the previous period, has been sold and metamorphosed into money-capital. The process that Marx describes here shows why the circuit of existing industrial capital has to be viewed as P … C` - M`. M – C ... P, and not M – C … P … C` - M`., which only provides a snapshot of the circuit of newly invested money-capital, money-capital being withdrawn from production, or else represents the circuit of capital in terms of a static, one-off event, rather than what it is, which is a dynamic, continuous process.
“Under slavery, etc., the false appearance brought about by the previous transformation of the product into money—insofar as it is expended on wages—does not arise; it is therefore obvious that what the slave receives as wages is, in fact, nothing that the slave-owner “advances” him, but simply the portion of the realised labour of the slave that returns to him in the form of means of subsistence. The same applies to the capitalist. He “advances” something only in appearance. Since he pays for the work only after it has been done, he advances or rather pays the worker as wages a part of the product produced by the worker and already transformed into money. A part of the worker’s product which the capitalist appropriates, which is deducted beforehand, returns to the worker in the form of wages—as an advance on the new product, if you like.” (p 93)
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