“Ricardo does not assert that capital is productive of value. It only adds its own value to the product, and its own value depends on the labour-time required for its reproduction. It only has value as accumulated labour (or rather, materialised labour) and it only adds this—its value—to the product in which it is embodied. It is true that he is inconsistent when discussing the general rate of profit. But this is precisely the contradiction which his opponents attacked.” (p 263-4)
And, here is shown the importance of making the distinction between the value of commodities (as elements of constant and variable-capital) and the value of capital. The former values are fixed (assuming no change in social productivity), but the latter is not, because it fluctuates, as the rate of profit rises or falls. Ricardo fails to make this distinction between the commodities that comprise the elements of capital, and capital itself. That is partly because he views capitalist categories as natural and eternal, so that means of production are treated as capital, whatever the mode of production.
As far as Ricardo is concerned, the means of production, which for Marx are termed constant capital, only have the value of any other commodity, as determined by the labour-time required for their production. This value is preserved by concrete labour, in the production process, and, thereby, transferred to the value of the final output. But, the commodities that comprise the variable-capital never enter into the production process. Those commodities, the wage goods consumed by the workers, simply go into the workers' consumption, and, thereby, effect their reproduction. As the use value of these commodities never enters the production process, nor can it be a part of the final product, and nor can its value be transferred to the final product.
The use value, and the value of the commodities that comprise the variable-capital is destroyed as soon as they are consumed by the workers. Nor do these commodities that comprise the variable-capital, have any more magical power than those that comprise the constant capital to produce additional value. It is not in the exchange of these commodities for the commodity labour-power that the source of the expansion of value resides. This exchange of commodities – wage goods for labour-power – is an exchange of equal values, as much as the exchange of any other commodities. And, if equal values exchange, its clear that no additional value, surplus value, can arise from this exchange.
What is different, in relation to the variable-capital, as opposed to the constant capital, is this fact that its value is destroyed at the point of its consumption (more correctly it is metamorphosed into the value of the labour-power of the worker), rather than being transferred to the value of the end product. Nor is the value of the labour-power obtained in exchange for these wage goods transferred. If, for example, the workers paid these wages in exchange for their labour-power, are unable to work – for example, because the firm is unable to get raw materials – they create no new value. The new value the workers create by their labour has no relation whatsoever to the value of their labour-power, or the wages paid to them. It is not their labour-power, which creates new value, but their labour, i.e. their activity in the labour process. Indeed, its precisely because of that fact that they can produce surplus value. The value of the variable-capital/wages/labour-power is not somehow transferred to the value of the end product, with a surplus value produced on top of it. The value created by labour, in the labour process, is entirely new value, unrelated to the value of labour-power. The value of constant capital is automatically transferred to, and thereby reproduced in, the value of the end product, but the value of the variable-capital is only reproduced, in the value of the end product, if the new value created by labour is enough to do so. It is entirely dependent, therefore, on the degree of social productivity, which must be such that labour can produce more new value, in a day, than is required to reproduce the value of the labour-power that undertakes it.
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