If Bailey's proposition is accepted, it still does not help in his argument with Ricardo. As Marx says,
“Likewise the 225 quarters falling to the 6 men would still command 6 men and no more.) (Why does the almighty Bailey then forbid Ricardo to estimate the portion of the men, as well as that of the capitalist, in labour, and compare their mutual value as expressed in labour?” (p 152)
Even in his own terms, Bailey arrives at contradictory and nonsensical conclusions, in trying to sustain his position. So, for example, he says,
“Thus a rise in the proportion which went to the capitalist would be the same as an increase of the value of profits estimated in labour,” (p 152)
Not only then does Bailey try to sustain his argument by first insisting in defining the value of labour in terms of use values, whilst defining profits instead in terms of a proportion of capital, but, here, he refers to the “value of profits”. But, his definition of value is exchange-value, measured in terms of the use values exchanged for a commodity. As Marx says,
“How can he speak of the value of profits and an increase in their value, if “profit … does not denote an article which can be exchanged against other articles” (see above) and, consequently, denotes no “value”? And, on the other hand, is a rise in the proportion which went to the capitalist possible without a fall in the proportion that goes to the labourer?” (p 152)
What Bailey does is not only to measure the value of labour in terms of use values, whilst measuring profit as a proportion of capital, but to confuse and conflate portion and proportion, in relation to the total output. Ricardo does not at all deny that the portion of output that goes to workers can rise alongside the portion that goes to capitalists. If total output rises from 100 units to 300 units, the portion going to workers might, as Bailey says, rise from 75 to 225 units, whilst that going to capitalists rises from 25 to 75 units. In that case, both obtain portions that are three times greater than they were before. But, the proportion of total output received by both remains 75:25. What Ricardo denies, correctly, is that the proportion going to both can rise. For example, if the proportion of total output going to capital rises to 50%, i.e. 150 units, it is tautologically true that only 150 units, or 50% of the total is left for workers, so that the proportion going to workers must, thereby, fall from 75% to 50%. Yet, despite this fall, in the proportion going to workers, the portion going to workers still doubles from 75 units to 150 units.
In fact, it was this fact, that real wages could rise, as a result of rising productivity, whilst the same rise in productivity raised the rate of surplus value, which underlay the shift of industrial capital to a reliance on relative surplus value, and was the basis of Fordism and social-democracy, in the 20th century.
“However, that Mr. Bailey calls the portion of the labourer “value” of “wages”, and the proportion [of the capitalist] value of “profits”, in other words, that the same commodity has two values for him, one in the hands of the labourer, and the other in the hands of the capitalist, is nonsense of his own.” (p 153)
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