The labour fund can assume the form of a necessary product produced by a slave or a serf, which is immediately appropriated, along with the total product, by the slave owner, and then handed back to them for their subsistence. It may take the form of a necessary product, produced by the independent producer, which they immediately consume directly, or exchange for other commodities required for their subsistence. In this case, only their surplus labour/product is handed over as rent to the landlord. Finally, it may take the form of a necessary product produced by the wage worker, but which, as with the slave/serf is handed over, along with the surplus product to the capitalist, who only then hands back to them, in the form of wages, the necessary product. In all these instances,
“... the different ways in which the worker confronts his own conditions of production. The manner in which he appropriates his product (or part of it) depends on his relations to his conditions of production.” (p 415)
These three forms, identified by Jones, do not exhaust the possibilities, because,
“Jones overlooks two main forms: the Asiatic communal system with its unity of agriculture and industry. And secondly, the urban craft guild system of the Middle Ages, [which] also [existed] partially in the Ancient World.” (p 417)
Whatever the form of labour fund, its distribution comprises a part that is consumed by the producers of that fund themselves, a portion that is consumed by workers who provide those producers with other services, and a portion that is appropriated by landlords, capitalists and the state, which they use for the subsistence of retainers, servants, and other non-productive workers.
Marx notes, in respect of the first, that the producer must be the owner of their means of production. Only in that way do they directly appropriate their own product, so as to be able to consume it. A portion of this product can also be exchanged, by them, with other direct producers so as to obtain the other products required for their subsistence, but which they do not individually produce for themselves. From early on, as the division of labour in society develops, the portion of direct production that goes to be exchanged for other products of direct consumption increases.
Jones sets out a range of property forms where such independent producers exist, and Marx notes,
“The characteristic feature of these groups is that the worker reproduces the labour fund for himself. It is not transformed into capital. Just as the worker directly produces the labour fund, so he appropriates it directly, although his surplus labour may be appropriated either wholly or in part by him himself or may be appropriated entirely by other classes, depending on the particular form which his relation to his conditions of production assumes. It is entirely due to economic prejudice that Jones describes this category as wage-labourers. Nothing which characterises wage-labourers exists amongst them. It is a pretty bourgeois economic fancy that, because that part of the product which the worker appropriates to himself under capitalism appears as wages, the part of his product which the worker himself consumes must be wages.” (p 416)
In other words, Marx is making the point that wages are a specific social form. The wage is a market price for labour-power, and assumes that this labour-power is then bought and sold as a commodity, whose value is determined as with any other commodity, by the labour-time required for its reproduction. As a market price, the wage is merely the phenomenal form of this value of labour-power. The independent producer does not sell their labour-power as a commodity. The price for it is never subject to the vagaries of the market, or reducible, as a result of competition, to a subsistence level. The labour-power of an independent producer is a use value, but never a commodity. They do not sell their labour-power, but the product of their labour, or else a labour service, and the value of that product or service is determined by the labour-time required for its production, not the labour-time required for the production of the labourer. The independent producer, subject to any rents or taxes they must pay, can consume more or less of their total product, irrespective of the value of their labour-power, dependent upon whether they desire to increase their immediate consumption, or to set aside a part of that production for the accumulation of additional means of production.
“Because surplus labour is converted into capital (instead of being exchanged directly as revenue for labour), capital seems to appear as something saved out of revenue. Jones considers it mainly from this point of view. And in the progress of society the great mass of capital does, in fact, consist of revenue reconverted in this way. But in the capitalist mode of production the original labour fund itself likewise appears as something saved by the capitalist. The reproduced labour fund does not remain in the possession of the worker as in case 1), but appears as the property of the capitalist and confronts the worker as the property of someone else. And this point is not elaborated by Jones.” (p 417)
In other words, as described earlier, the workers produce the gross product, part of which is required to reproduce, in kind, the means of production (constant capital), part of which constitutes the labour fund (variable-capital), and the remainder of which constitutes the surplus product or net product. The independent producer, having covered whatever rents and taxes are due, can either consume the surplus product or save it, accumulating thereby, additional means of production. But, the wage worker cannot do that, because the surplus product, along with the rest of the gross product, is directly appropriated by the capitalist.
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