There are two ways the rate of surplus value can rise – either by an increase in absolute surplus value, or an increase in relative surplus-value. As Marx set out previously, all surplus value is ultimately determined by relative surplus value, because it depends on the level of social productivity achieving a minimum level, whereby labour can produce more, in a working-day, than is required for consumption, so as to reproduce the labour-power of the labourer.
Absolute surplus value is increased by lengthening the working-day. If the working day is 12 hours, and 10 hours are necessary labour, then surplus labour is 2 hours, giving a rate pf surplus value of 20%. If the working-day is extended to 15 hours, then 5 hours are now surplus labour, and the rate of surplus value is 50%. Alternatively, if the intensity of labour is increased, the same effect can be achieved. So, if workers continue to work 12 hours, but produce as much in this 12 hours as would normally be produced in 15 hours, it is as though this labour is complex labour. It produces 15 hours of new value, but still requires only 10 of these hours as necessary labour, leaving 5 as surplus, and so a 50% rate of surplus value. If all labour operates at this new level of intensity, it becomes the norm, and so reverts to the previous position whereby it only produces 12 hours of new value, and the rate of surplus value falls back to 20%.
Relative surplus value is increased by reducing the amount of necessary labour in the working-day. That is why Marx says all surplus value is ultimately relative surplus value. The amount of necessary labour depends on the level of social productivity, which depends on the degree of technological development. As new technologies are introduced, as part of capital accumulation, productivity rises, the amount of labour required to produce all commodities, including wage goods, falls, and, as the value of wage goods falls, so the value of labour-power falls, and the amount of necessary labour falls. If the working day remains 12 hours, but the amount of necessary labour falls from 10 hours to 8 hours, the surplus labour rises to 4 hours, and the rate of surplus value rises from 20% to 50%.
Hodgskin's argument is.
““… no labour, no productive power, no ingenuity, and no art can answer the overwhelming demands of compound interest. But all saving is made from the revenue of the capitalist” (that is from simple profit) “so that actually these demands are constantly made, and as constantly the productive power of labour refuses to satisfy them. A sort of balance is, therefore, constantly struck” (op. cit., p. 23).” (p 302)
Marx points out that, in its general sense, this amounts to the same explanation he has given for the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. That is that the rate of surplus value not only may, but must rise, as a result of rising social productivity, and this not only may but must result in a growing mass of profit, and yet the rate of profit will tend to fall, because this rise in the mass of profit will be proportionately smaller than the increase in the mass of capital just as the increase in the mass of labour employed is proportionately smaller than the increase in the mass of capital.
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