2. Ravenstone. [The View of Capital as the Surplus Product of the Worker. Confusion of the Antagonistic Form of Capitalist Development with Its Content. This Leads to a Negative Attitude Towards the Results of the Capitalist Development of the Productive Forces]
Marx describes this as,
“A most remarkable work.” (p 257)
Where the author of the previous pamphlet viewed the surplus in terms of surplus labour, and was concerned with the extent of labour-time, and specifically surplus labour-time, Ravenstone views the surplus more in terms of a surplus product, and his perspective is one in which the goal is not to drive up productivity, so as to increase relative surplus value, but,
“... the reduction of the producers’ labour-time and the cessation of labour for the possessor of surplus produce.” (p 258)
The Ricardian theory presents labour as “the sole element of value and the only creator of use-values, and the development of the productive forces as the only real means for increasing wealth...” (p 258)
Labour is the essence of value, but, as Marx sets out, in numerous places, it is not the sole creator of use values. Nature also creates use values. As labour becomes more productive, so that it increases wealth, in the shape of an increased mass of use values, so it also reduces the value of each of these products, because each is representative of a diminishing amount of social labour-time.
“This is, in fact, the foundation of capitalist production. Ricardo’s work, in particular, which demonstrates that the law of value is not invalidated either by landed property or by capitalist accumulation, etc., is, in reality, only concerned with eliminating all contradictions or phenomena which appear to run counter to this conception. But in the same measure as it is understood that labour is the sole source of exchange-value and the active source of use-value, “capital” is likewise conceived by the same economists, in particular by Ricardo (and even more by Torrens, Malthus, Bailey, and others after him), as the regulator of production, the source of wealth and the aim of production, whereas labour is regarded as wage-labour, whose representative and real instrument is inevitably a pauper (to which Malthus’s theory of population contributed), a mere production cost and instrument of production dependent on a minimum wage and forced to drop even below this minimum as soon as the existing quantity of labour is “superfluous” for capital.” (p 258-9)
This is, indeed, the case for capitalist production. Capital is the regulator, because its demand for labour-power rises or falls with the potential for capital accumulation, which is governed by its anticipation of being able to expand the mass of profit. As Marx sets out, in Capital III, in contradiction to Ricardo, it is not the rate of profit that is determinant here, but the mass of profit. If the rate of profit rises or falls abruptly, this will undoubtedly influence the willingness of firms to advance more or less capital, but, any gradual or marginal change in the rate of profit does not have any such effect, because a marginal fall in the rate of profit will be more than offset by a rise in the mass of profit, so long as the market is expanding, and vice versa. In an expanding market, competition will drive firms to accumulate, even if the rate of profit is falling. The rate of profit determines the allocation of capital, i.e. capital migrates from low profit areas to high profit areas, which is the process which creates an average rate of profit, but is the potential to increase the mass of profit, not rate of profit, which is determinant as to whether accumulation itself increases.
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