Marx quotes Ramsay's statement that,
““The profits of enterprise may … be considered as made up of 3 parts: one… the salary of … the master; another an insurance for risk; the remainder … his surplus gains” (op. cit., p. 226).” (p 357)
Point 2 is irrelevant Marx says, because the insurance against risks distributes any losses uniformly as a reduction in the average rate of profit.
“The profits of the insurance companies—that is, of the capitals which are employed in the business of insurance, and take over this distribution—must be deducted from these uniformly distributed losses.” (p 357)
The profits obtained by the insurance companies are like those of the merchant capitalists. In other words, whilst they do not produce any additional surplus value they do enable a greater quantity of profit to be realised, by reducing circulation costs. They are able to obtain their profits on the basis of this reduction. They enable a release of capital because it is only necessary to insure based upon actuarially determined averaged risks, rather than worst case risks.
“At most one could say that, even apart from capitalist production, the producers themselves might have certain expenses, that is, they would have to spend a part of their labour, or of the products of their labour in order to insure their products, their wealth, or the elements of their wealth, against accidents, etc. Instead of each capitalist insuring himself, it is safer as well as cheaper for him if one section of capital is entrusted with this job. Insurance is paid out of a portion of surplus-value, its protection and distribution between the capitalists has nothing to do with its origin and magnitude.” (p 357-8)
This is, in fact, why all developed capitalist economies create welfare states, based on some kind of general social insurance. It reduces overhead costs, reducing the value of labour-power, and thereby increasing the rate of surplus value, and rate of profit.
That leaves the wages of superintendence, and the profit left over, after the payment of interest and rent. The amount of this surplus profit, or profit of enterprise, if rent, as a return to landed property is discounted, is then determined by the ratio of interest to industrial profit. So, it becomes clear that the interest of industrial capital is not just antagonistic to landed property, but also to money-lending capital.
“As far as 1), the salary, is concerned, it is first of all self-evident that in capitalist production, the function of capital as lord over labour falls to the capitalist, or a clerk or a representative paid by him. Even this function would disappear together with the capitalist mode of production, insofar as it does not arise from the nature of co-operative labour but from the domination of the conditions of labour over labour itself.” (p 358)
Ramsay essentially dismisses, or at least minimises, the wages of superintendence, on the basis of the economies of scale arising from the continued expansion of the scale of production. He says,
“The salary [of the employer], like the work [of superintendence], remains roughly the same, be the concern large or small (loc. cit., pp. 227-29). A worker will never be able to say that he can do the same amount of work as two, three or more of his workmates. But one industrial capitalist or farmer can take the place of ten or more (p. 255).” (p 358)
In fact, as the scale of production expands massively, the labour of superintendence does not remain at the same level, but it does not rise proportionately to the rise in production. Moreover, as this labour of superintendence passes from the hands of the actual capitalist to that of the functioning capitalist, the wages for this labour diminish. The functioning capitalists, or day to day managers, administrators, technicians, sales and purchasing managers, accountants and so on, are increasingly drawn from an educated working-class, and, as the welfare state churns out more and more of these educated workers, from its Fordist education factories, so the wages of this kind of labour-power falls significantly.
As far as the profit of enterprise, or surplus profit, as Ramsay calls it, Marx paraphrases Ramsay's analysis.
““These surplus gains,” Ramsay writes, “do truly represent […] the revenue derived from the power of commanding the use of capital” (in other words from the power of commanding other people’s labour) “whether belonging to the person himself or borrowed from others… these net profits” (interest) “vary exactly as the amount of capital […] on the contrary […] the larger the capital, the greater the proportion they bear to the stock employed” (loc. cit., p. 230).” (p 358)
In other words, as said above, as the scale of production rises, the mass of profit rises in line with the mass of advanced capital, but the wages of superintendence do not rise proportionally.
“... the salaries of masters stand in inverse ratio to the size of the capital. The larger the scale on which the capital operates, the more capitalist the mode of production, the more negligible is the element of industrial profit which is reducible to salary, and the more clearly appears the real character of industrial profit, namely, that it is a part of the surplus gains, i.e., of surplus-value, i.e., of unpaid surplus labour.” (p 359)
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