Cherbuliez
[1. Distinction Between Two Parts of Capital—the Part Consisting of Machinery and Raw Materials and the Part Consisting of “Means of Subsistence” for the Workers]
Most of Cherbuliez' work is based on the writing of Sismondi. He correctly distinguishes between constant capital, comprising machinery and materials, and variable-capital comprising means of subsistence for workers, though he does not use these terms. Like all bourgeois economists, he reduces these elements of capital down to their physical existence as things – means of production, means of subsistence – rather than recognising that what makes them capital is their historically specific social relation to wage labour. For Cherbuliez, the only thing that defines a commodity as capital is the fact that it is used in production rather than for consumption, without distinguishing what mode of production it is.
And, as Marx points out, in relation to the means of subsistence that comprise the variable-capital, this definition is not accurate, anyway. As Ramsay points out, the means of subsistence do not, themselves, take part in the production process.
“... though means of subsistence are indeed a condition for the producer, a prerequisite enabling him to exist during production, they themselves do not enter into the labour process, into which nothing enters but the object of labour, the means of production and labour itself. Thus the objective factors of the labour process—which are common to all forms of production—are here called capital, although the means of subsistence (in which wages are already included) tacitly implies the capitalist form of these conditions of production.” (p 362)
Both Cherbuliez and Ramsay assume that the means of subsistence (variable-capital) diminishes relative to the total capital, i.e. they assume a constantly rising organic composition of capital.
“But both he and Ramsay appear to think that there is an inevitable reduction in the amount of means of subsistence, of necessaries, which can be employed as productive capital. But this is by no means the case.” (p 363)
Marx points out that people frequently confuse the surplus product with that component of the gross product that simply replaces, on a like for like basis, the consumed constant capital. That was the case, as seen in Capital I, in relation to Senior's Last Hour, where the confusion arose from the idea that workers not only had to replace the value of their labour-power, out of the new value they created, each day, but also the value of the constant capital they process.
The process whereby the organic composition of capital rises, only requires that a greater proportion of the gross output consists of constant capital, and that, therefore, a greater proportion of current output is set aside to replace that consumed constant capital. That follows from a rise in social productivity.
“The means of subsistence decrease because a large portion of capital, that is, the part of the gross product employed as capital, is reproduced as constant capital instead of as variable capital. A larger portion of the surplus product, consisting of means of subsistence, is consumed by unproductive workers or idlers or exchanged for luxuries. That’s all.” (p 363)
In other words, the wages that once were paid to any new released labourers, can be consumed as revenue by capitalists, landlords or the state. They can be used to pay wages to unproductive labourers, such as additional domestic servants, mistresses etc., taken on by the exploiters, or they can be exported in exchange for imported luxuries to be consumed by the capitalists.
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