But, the author of the pamphlet also fails to recognise two other factors, when they limit the options for the use of this surplus value to those described above. I have set them out previously, and Marx discusses them in Capital III.
“As a result of the introduction of machinery, a mass of workers is constantly being thrown out of employment, a section of the population is thus made redundant; the surplus product therefore finds fresh labour for which it can be exchanged without any increase in population and without any need to extend the absolute working-time.” (p 242)
This is a point that Marx makes in the Grundrisse, and in Capital III, Chapter 14. It is, in fact, the same argument that Marx discusses in relation to the Physiocrats' correct recognition that the basis of all accumulation is the surplus product, created in agriculture. As Marx says, the Physiocrats were quite right to argue that it is impossible to engage in any other additional types of production unless the labour employed in agriculture can produce a surplus product, i.e. a worker on the land must be able to produce more than is physically required for their own reproduction. Only then can they either devote some of their own time to producing other products, or can individual producers devote all of their time to producing other products that can be exchanged for the surplus food produced by workers on the land.
The creation of a surplus product, i.e. overproduction, is then simultaneously the creation of a surplus population, and this surplus population is able to utilise the surplus product, so as to extend the range of products available to society. Overproduction is thus a fundamental requirement for accumulation in all modes of production. By raising productivity, machinery, and other forms of technology, increases the size of the surplus product, but the capitalists do not have to then use the surplus product either to pay higher real wages (because to sell it back to workers the prices of the commodities would have to fall) or to buy fixed capital, or to exchange for imported luxuries. At the same time that an increased surplus product is created, a surplus population is created. Fewer workers are now required to produce all of the previous set of commodities for consumption. The released workers can now produce a range of additional commodities for consumption, as well as all of the commodities required for that production.
These new commodities can then be exchanged for that surplus production of all the old commodities, in the same way that when surplus food production became possible, former agricultural workers could produce, say, pottery, which could then be exchanged for some of the surplus food. In this way, as Marx describes in The Grundrisse, this new production also becomes the demand for the surplus old production, and thereby enables the realisation of its value.
““On the other side, the production of relative surplus value, i.e. production of surplus value based on the increase and development of the productive forces, requires the production of new consumption; requires that the consuming circle within circulation expands as did the productive circle previously. Firstly quantitative expansion of existing consumption; secondly: creation of new needs by propagating existing ones in a wide circle; thirdly: production of new needs and discovery and creation of new use values. In other words, so that the surplus labour gained does not remain a merely quantitative surplus, but rather constantly increases the circle of qualitative differences within labour (hence of surplus labour), makes it more diverse, more internally differentiated. For example, if, through a doubling of productive force, a capital of 50 can now do what a capital of 100 did before, so that a capital of 50 and the necessary labour corresponding to it become free, then, for the capital and labour which have been set free, a new, qualitatively different branch of production must be created, which satisfies and brings forth a new need. The value of the old industry is preserved by the creation of the fund for a new one in which the relation of capital and labour posits itself in a new form”
“Let us assume that 500 workers were employed previously, whereas now there are 300 workers, who perform relatively more surplus labour. The other 200 can be employed by the surplus product as soon as it has increased sufficiently. One portion of the old [variable] capital is converted into fixed capital, the other gives employment to fewer workers but extracts from them more surplus-value in relation to their number and in particular also more surplus product. The remaining 200 are material created for the purpose of capitalising additional surplus product.” (p 242-3)
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