Whereas a fall in the value of constant capital, used in the production of luxury goods, due to rising productivity, brings about a fall in the value of luxury goods, a rise in productivity that reduces the value of labour-power, does not reduce the value of luxury goods. It simply raises the rate of surplus value, and rate of profit. But, a rise in productivity in luxury goods production reduces the amount of labour itself employed. It reduces the amount of new value produced, so that the value of luxury goods falls. However, because less labour is employed, less surplus value is also produced. Because the same quantity and value of constant capital is employed, s:(c + v) falls, and so the rate of profit falls. Capital would then leave luxury goods production and migrate to other spheres. Supply, in these other spheres would then rise, and prices fall, which brings about a fall in the rate of profit in these other spheres, so that the average rate of profit falls.
“Ramsay comes closer to a correct understanding of the rate of profit than the others. The shortcomings too are therefore more conspicuous in his exposition. He brings out all the factors involved, but he does it one-sidedly and therefore incorrectly.” (p 351)
Marx quotes Ramsay's view of the rate of profit.
““… the causes which regulate the rate of profit in individual cases […] we have found to be, 1) The Productiveness of the Industry engaged in raising those articles of primary necessity which are required by the Labourer for Food, Clothing, etc. 2) The Productiveness of the Industry employed in raising those objects which enter into the composition of Fixed Capital. 3) The rate of Real Wages””. (p 351)
Marx notes that, in respect of the necessaries that determine the value of labour-power, or “Real Wages”, this must mean the quantity of those necessaries, irrespective of their price.
Ramsay goes on,
““A variation in the first and third of these causes, acts upon profit by altering the proportion of the gross produce which goes to the labourer: a change in the second affects the same, by modifying the proportion necessary for replacing, either directly or by means of exchange, the fixed capital consumed in production; for […] profit is essentially a question of proportion” (loc. cit., p. 172).” (p 351)
So, Ramsay, here, notes that the rate of profit is influenced by changes in the rate of surplus value. If productivity rises, so that wage goods become cheaper, money wages fall, and surplus value rises. If workers require a greater quantity of wage goods, for their reproduction, then money wages will rise, and surplus value fall.
And, he notes that the rate of profit is influenced by the value of constant capital, or fixed capital as he calls it. If productivity rises, so that the value of constant capital falls, the rate of profit rises, not because the rate or mass of surplus value has risen, but because the ratio of s:(c + v) has risen, as c falls.
Ramsay recognises the error of Ricardo's formulation that flows from the acceptance of Smith's “absurd dogma” that the value of commodities resolves entirely into revenues (v + s).
““Mr. Ricardo […] seems always to consider the whole produce as divided between wages and profits, forgetting the part necessary for replacing fixed capital” (loc. cit., p. 174, note).” (p 352)
Where accumulation of surplus value occurs, it is immediately capital. In other words, the surplus labour of the worker is in the form of commodities in the hands of the capitalists. It may take the form of commodities that comprise the constant capital or variable-capital. So, the surplus labour of the worker then confronts them, not as their own labour and its product, but as capital, as alien property.
“[It appears] as a ready-made value of a given magnitude, whose value the worker merely has to augment. It is never the product of his past labour (nor any circumstances which, independently of the particular labour process into which the past labour of his enters, affect or increase its value) which, or the replacement of which, appears as exploitation, but it is always merely the manner and the rate in which his present labour is exploited. As long as the individual capitalist continues to operate on the same scale of production (or on an expanding one), the replacement of capital appears as an operation which does not affect the worker, since, if the means of production belonged to the worker, he would likewise have to replace them out of the gross product in order to continue reproduction on the same scale or on an expanded scale (and the latter too is necessary because of the natural increase of population).” (p 352)
The consequence of this is that the process of social reproduction is simultaneously a process of reproduction of the worker as a wage worker, and of the capitalist as a capitalist. The means of production are perpetually produced, not as means of production, but as capital, in the hands of the capitalist, and, because the worker must have access to the means of production, so as to produce, they can only achieve that as wage labourers. The capitalist, as owner of the means of production allows the worker to use them only if they provide a quantity of unpaid labour, over and above the wage paid to them.
The extension of this process of social reproduction, via the accumulation of capital, both extends and deepens these social relations. On the one hand, more workers must be employed as wage labourers. On the other hand, as the quantity of constant capital grows more quickly than the quantity of variable-capital, and the minimum efficient level of production rises, so it becomes ever more difficult for the worker, individually, to own the means of production required. Only where the workers act collectively, as cooperative labour forces them to do, as associated producers, and as capital itself expands to a level where it “bursts asunder” the fetters imposed by “the monopoly of private capital”, so that it becomes socialised capital, in the shape of cooperatives and corporations does that contradiction reach maturity, and become negated. As Marx says, at that point, this socialised capital becomes the transitional form of property, the form whereby capital is negated within the context of capitalism itself, and the foundation for socialist property arises.
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