[d) Hodgskin’s Polemic Against the conception that the Capitalists “store Up” Means of Subsistence for the Workers. His Failure to Understand the Real causes of the Fetishism of Capital]
The “storing up” of commodities, by capital, is not done for the benefit of workers. Whether those commodities form elements of constant capital that the workers require, in order to produce, or comprise the wage goods the worker needs so as to live, while they produce, the capitalist only “stores them up” so as to be able to obtain a profit from their productive use. If the capitalist does not believe that they can extract such a profit, then no “storing up” of these commodities occurs. Or, more precisely, the type of storing up may take on a different form. In other words, the capitalist may store up means of production, as before, in terms of materials, but “stores up” new labour-saving machinery, rather than wage goods, so as to replace immediate labour within the production process. They engage in intensive rather than extensive accumulation, and, in this very act, illustrate the extent to which the needs of immediate living labour are subordinated to the needs of past, dead labour.
Capital does not store up commodities for the benefit of labour, but in order to be able to exploit labour. The shopkeeper, as agent of circulation, can be excluded from this analysis of the relation between capital and labour. The shopkeeper, as seller of commodities, does not confront the workers, who buy from them, as capital, but only as an owner of commodities. The workers who buy commodities from them do not confront the shopkeeper as owners of labour-power, but only as owners of exchange-value, money.
It is only as a buyer of labour-power that capital confronts workers as capital. The workers, in order to live, must buy the commodities they need as wage goods, and in order to buy those commodities, they must have money wages, which means they must sell their labour-power as a commodity. In order to work, they must have access to the means of production, which become monopolised in the hands of a small class of capitalists. So, the workers must then sell their labour-power to these capitalists, in exchange for wages. The capitalists buy this labour-power at its value. But, the particular nature of this commodity, labour-power, is that what the worker actually sells, to the capitalist, is their ability to undertake labour, and thereby to create new value. Their ability to create this new value is not constrained by the value of their labour-power itself. Not only is the capitalist thereby enabled to appropriate any excess of this new value, created by that labour, over and above the value of the labour-power, but the capitalist will not buy the labour-power, unless such a surplus is produced by its employment.
Its in this context that capital “stores up” commodities. Marx then examines the different categories that the capitalist stores up for this purpose.
Firstly, the capitalist stores up all those commodities that comprise his fixed capital such as buildings, machines and tools. The worker does not consume any of these commodities as means of their own subsistence and reproduction. The worker only consumes them productively, on behalf of the capitalist, as part of the production process.
Secondly, there are the raw and auxiliary materials. Again, the worker does not consume these as means of subsistence, or to reproduce their labour-power. They too are consumed productively, by the worker, on the capitalist's behalf, as part of the production process.
Thirdly, there is the commodity-capital, which is the final output, produced by the workers in that production process. In general, these products are not stored up by the individual capitalist, in order to provide them to their workers, as means of consumption. They only hold these temporarily, prior to being sent to market, and, thereby, entering circulation as commodities.
So, the only actual storing up undertaken by the individual capitalist is a storing up of money-capital, which is used to pay money wages to their workers, who use these wages to then buy the commodities they need from society's store of such commodities. Moreover, as Hodgskin previously alluded to, even this social store of commodities is, in large part, an illusion, because it is comprised mostly of the products of coexistent labour. And, for this reason, as Marx says,
“This money may be a mere token of value, it therefore does not have to be a representation “of previous labour” but, in the hands of whoever possesses it, simply expresses the realised price not of past labour (or previously [sold] commodities) but of the contemporaneous labour or commodities which he sells. [Money has] merely a formal existence.” (p 291)
In other words, Capitalist A may pay their workers €100 in wages, in the form of paper notes. These paper notes, in themselves, have no value. As banknotes, historically, they represented a claim to a given quantity of gold. The gold itself represented a given amount of value, i.e. a certain quantity of social labour-time. Value is labour, and so all this really meant was that this claim to a given quantity of gold was a claim to a certain quantity of social labour-time. The gold itself was stored up past labour, whose value is equal to a given quantity of current labour required for its reproduction. But, under developed industrial capitalism, there is no requirement for any such stores of gold, or any other commodity.
At the same time that A's workers are being paid €100 in worthless paper notes, by their employer, B's workers are likewise being handed €100 in worthless paper notes by their employer. If A and B represent the production of all wage goods in the economy, then, simultaneously, as A workers and B workers go to the market to convert their worthless paper notes into the commodities they require, capitalist A and B send the commodities, produced by those workers, to market. A workers, thereby exchange their worthless paper money wages, not for commodities that capitalist B has previously stored up, but for the commodities that B workers have contemporaneously been producing, with their coexistent labour.
“In this sense, the means of subsistence are “stored up” for him in the same way as they are stored up for his capitalist, who likewise buys consumption goods etc. with money (the transformed form of the same commodity).” (p 291)
It doesn't make any difference that the commodities bought by the worker are actually the products of coexistent labour, rather than past labour that have been stored up, any more than it matters that workers meet their consumption needs from the products of other workers' labour rather than their own direct production. In fact, Marx says, Hodgskin could have pointed out that workers meet their consumption needs not just from the products of coexistent labour, and from past labour, but also from the products of future labour.
“Hodgskin could also have added that they are partly the products of future labour, for the worker who buys an overcoat with what he has saved out of six months’ wages buys one which has only been made at the end of the six months, etc.” (p 292)
And, of course the same applies to the bricks with which a house is built.
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