So, a whole period transpires, during which direct production gradual gives way to commodity production. Even where direct producers initially begin to produce commodities, which they exchange, through barter, or for money, which they then use to buy other commodities, C – M – C, they do so in order to acquire use values not exchange-value. A direct producer takes some of their production, which they do not require for their own consumption, to market, simply in order to obtain other commodities they do require for consumption. This is what leads to the confusion of Ricardo, Mill and Say, in their belief that there can be no overproduction, because they continue to believe that all production continues on this basis, as purely a production of products/use values that only assume the form of commodities/money, in order to be exchanged for other products/use values the producer requires for consumption.
This process, whereby the direct producer produces an increasing proportion of their output as commodities to be exchanged for other commodities, and increasingly for money, goes on for a prolonged period. It is encouraged by the division of labour, and comparative advantage, as some producers, in more favourable positions, find that, by specialising in a particular type of production, they can produce commodities with a lower individual value than their market value. So, effectively, they obtain more labour for less labour. It is further encouraged as feudal rents take the form of money-rent, and taxes have to be paid in money, so that producers are incentivised to produce cash-crops.
It takes centuries of such commodity production and exchange before the role of money also then makes possible its accumulation as productive-capital, as well as the development, out of this process of the extension of commodity production and exchange, for sizeable markets, for a range of commodities, to develop that makes capitalist production feasible. It is this same process that means that the labour fund – the commodities required to reproduce labour-power – are increasingly commodities produced by, and bought from others.
“Thus the difference [between the capitalist and other modes of production] does not lie in the fact that, in one case, the labourer produces his own wages and in the other case he does not produce them. The difference lies in the fact that [in one case] his product appears as wages; that in this case, the worker’s product (i.e., the part of the product produced by the worker which makes up the labour fund) 1) appears as the revenue of others; 2) that then, however, it is not expended as revenue, and not spent on labour by means of which revenue is directly consumed, but, 3) that it confronts the worker as capital which returns to him this portion of the product, in exchange not merely for an equivalent but for more labour than the product he receives contains. Thus his product appears in the first place as revenue of others, secondly, as something which is “saved” from revenue in order to be employed in the purchase of labour with a view to profit; in other words it is employed as capital.” (p 424-5)
If we were to take the situation of a capitalist farmer, producing grain, their workers might be seen as buying this grain from them. What do they buy it with? They buy it with their labour. Say the worker's labour-power requires 10 kilos of grain to reproduce it, and it takes 8 hours to produce this 10 kilos of grain. The worker might buy this grain with their labour. They exchange equal values. The worker's labour-power has a value of 8 hours, and, in exchange for it, the farmer gives the worker 10 kilos of grain. But, the condition of the exchange is that the worker must work for 10 hours, and in this 10 hours the worker produces 12.5 kilos of grain, providing the farmer with a surplus product of 2.5 kilos. Alternatively, the worker may be paid money wages. If £1 equals one hour's labour, the worker is paid £8 in wages, the value of their labour-power. The farmer now sends their 12.5 kilos of grain to market, with an exchange-value of £10. The worker now buys the 10 kilos they require, and hands over £8 for them. The farmer sells the remaining 2.5 kilos for £2, as their profit.
So, here, the worker produces their own labour fund, just as they did as an independent producer, but, as an independent producer, those products they required, but had to buy on the market, they bought with other commodities, i.e. with the product of their labour. Those products, in their value, already contained within them any surplus labour they had undertaken. But, as a wage worker they do not buy the wage goods they require with commodities that are the product of their labour. They buy them by exchanging for them their labour-power itself, now sold as a commodity. They produce their own labour fund during 8 hours of the day, as they would have done previously, as an independent producer, but, now, the 2 hours of surplus labour they may have performed, and embodied in additional products, to exchange in the market, is appropriated by the farmer, along with the rest of their production.
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