The labour fund that the worker produces, during 8 hours, which takes the form of 10 kilos of grain, in the hands of the farmer, now confronts the worker, not as their own product, but as the variable-capital of the capitalist farmer. It is the farmer's property, and to acquire it, to sustain their labour-power, they must again sell their labour-power to the farmer in exchange.
The surplus product they produced is also now the property of the farmer, and to the extent it is accumulated as capital, it also now confronts them, not as their own product, but as an alien force, which might either enable more of them to be employed, or might, alternatively, be used to introduce machinery that replaces the need for their labour.
“And this process in which his own product confronts him as capital, is what is described as the labour fund, which “has gone through a previous process of saving”, which “…has undergone a process of accumulation” prior to being converted into the labourer’s means of subsistence, “…exists in another shape” (here it is expressly stated that merely a change of form takes place) “than that of a stock for their” (the labourers’) “immediate consumption”. The whole difference lies in the transformation which the labour fund produced by the worker undergoes before it comes back to him in the form of wages. In the case of peasants or independent artisans, it therefore never assumes the form of “wages”.” (p 425)
It appears that capital arises from the saving of the capitalist out of their profits, rather than from the worker's surplus labour. In previous modes of production, the direct producer does not consume their labour fund as wages, but Jones is also wrong to say that their accumulation takes place out of that part of their production that constitutes necessary labour.
“In fact, however, it is this process that makes it possible for the capitalist to “save” or “accumulate” the labourer’s surplus labour for his own purposes, and this is the reason why Jones places such great emphasis on the fact that, in non-capitalist modes of production, accumulation does not arise from profit, but from wages, in other words, from the income of the self-supporting cultivator or the artisan who exchanges his labour directly for revenue (otherwise how could the middle class have arisen out of the latter?) and from the rent of the landlord. But for the labour fund to undergo these transformations, the conditions of production must confront the labourer as capital, which is not the case in the other modes of production. The expansion of wealth does not appear to be due to the labourer in the latter case [the capitalist mode of production ], but to the saving of profit, the reconversion of surplus-value into capital, in the same way as the labour fund itself (before its expansion as a result of new accumulation) confronts the labourer as capital.” (p 425)
The process by which this middle-class does arise, by the saving out of the surplus labour, is the process of the differentiation of the peasantry, exhaustively discussed by Lenin in “The Development of Capitalism in Russia”, and also in his other economic works of the time, particularly arguing against the economic romanticism of the Narodniks.
““Saving”, taken literally, only makes sense with regard to the capitalist who capitalises his revenue, in contrast to the capitalist who consumes his revenue, i.e., spends it as revenue, but it is meaningless when applied to relations between capitalist and labourer.” (p 425-6)
Marx sets out two “cardinal facts” about capitalist production. The first is that what were the scattered means of production of the individual producers, now appear as a separate “factor of production”, as property of a particular form, concentrated in a few hands, i.e. of capitalist property, monopolised in the hands of a few private capitalists. The second fact is that where previously production was undertaken on an individual basis, or by family units, for personal consumption, now production is undertaken on a collective basis by groups of workers working cooperatively on the basis of the division of labour. And, this goes along with the development of science and technology so that society obtains dominance of the forces of Nature.
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