Marx's comment,
“Some primitive peoples, such as the Turks, have neither the temperament nor the inclination for it.” (p 448)
has to be read in light of the times in which it was written. Nor was Marx's comment intended to suggest that this trait was in some sense inherent to any racial characteristics, as opposed to purely socially determined conditioning. That is shown by the subsequent comments,
“The development of capitalist production creates an average level of bourgeois society and therefore an average level of temperament and disposition amongst the most varied peoples. It is as truly cosmopolitan as Christianity. This is why Christianity is likewise the special religion of capital. In both it is only men who count. One man in the abstract is worth just as much or as little as the next man. In the one case, all depends on whether or not he has faith, in the other, on whether or not he has credit. In addition, however, in the one case, predestination has to be added, and in the other case, the accident of whether or not a man is born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” (p 448-9)
Marx finally turns to Jones' treatment of the source of surplus value and primitive rent. Jones writes,
““When land has been appropriated and cultivated, such land yields, in almost every case, to the labour employed on it, more than is necessary to continue the kind of cultivation already bestowed upon it. Whatever it produces beyond this, we will call its surplus produce. Now this surplus produce is the source of primitive rents, and limits the extent of such revenues, as can be continuously derived from the land by its owners, as distinct from its occupiers” (p. 19).” (p 449)
This echoes Marx's comments in Capital III, on precapitalist rent as arising on the basis of this surplus product. As Marx also writes in Capital III, these precapitalist rents, going back to the earliest times, are also the first means by which surplus value is extracted from the labourers.
“These primitive rents are the first social form in which surplus-value is represented, and this is the obscure conception which forms the foundation of the theory of the Physiocrats.” (p 449)
As Marx has previously described, all surplus value is ultimately relative surplus value, because it requires that social productivity has reached a level whereby the labourer can produce more in a day than is required to reproduce their own labour-power.
“If the entire working-day (available labour-time) of a man (any man) were only sufficient to feed himself (and at best his family as well), then there would be no surplus labour, surplus-value and surplus produce. This prerequisite of a certain level of productivity is based on the natural productiveness of land and water, the natural sources of wealth. It is different in different countries, etc. Needs are simple and crude in early times and the minimum produce required for the maintenance of the producers themselves is consequently small, and so is the surplus product. On the other hand, the number of people who live off the surplus product in those circumstances is likewise very small, so that they receive the sum total of the small amounts of surplus product obtained from a relatively large number of producers.
The basis for absolute surplus-value—that is, the real precondition for its existence—is the natural fertility of the land, of nature, whereas relative surplus-value depends on the development of the social productive forces.” (p 449)
No comments:
Post a Comment