In the same way that a large scale factory replaces many manufactories or workshops, so machines replace many hand tools, and, later, improved single machines replace several older machines. The handicraft worker uses a series of hand tools relevant to their particular craft. The carpenter uses hammers, mallets, chisels, saws, planes, screwdrivers, for example. A detail woodworker, in a manufactory, might be employed only to cut wood, in which case they only need to use a saw. Another might plane the wood, and so on. Already, then, the quantity of tools (fixed capital) per worker is reduced, though the quantity of fixed capital/tools per labour hour might remain the same, because the worker who cuts wood, now uses the saw for 10 hours per day, whereas previously they may have used it for only one hour, spending the rest of the day, using planes, chisels and so on. Moreover, because the manufactory employs more labour, in total, the total number of tools may also rise. In the large scale woodworking factory, machines replace these tools and functions. Now, there is just one machine to one worker, but the complexity of the machine is much greater.
However, like the factory building, the cost of the fixed capital/machine does not increase in proportion to the increase in the volume of output it brings about. As Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, a spinning wheel costs more to produce than the spindle used by the hand spinner, but the spinning wheel produces, say, 100 times as much yarn as a hand spinner, using a spindle. The spinning wheel does not cost 100 times as much as the spindle, nor does it consist of 100 times as much material.
“If one worker can spin as much cotton as 100 [workers spun previously], then the supply of raw material must be increased a hundredfold, and this is moreover brought about only by the spinning-machine which enables one worker to control 100 spindles. But if simultaneously, one worker produces as much cotton as 100 workers did previously and one worker produces a spinning-machine whereas previously he produced only a spindle, then the ratio of value remains the same, that is, the labour expended in the spinning, [in the production of] the cotton and the spinning-machine remains the same as that expended previously in spinning, the cotton and the spindle.”
(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 23)
In other words, although the technical composition of capital, here, has risen, the value composition of capital has fallen by a proportionate amount, so that no change in the organic composition results, and so, there is no change in the rate of profit. In the short-term, at least, its not likely that the value of a spinning machine with 100 spindles, would fall to that of a spinning wheel, though it may do in a relatively short-time, depending on technological development, and rises in social productivity.
“There can be no doubt that machinery becomes cheaper, and this for two reasons: [1] The application of machinery to the production of raw materials from which the machinery is made. [2] The application of machinery in the transformation of these materials into machinery.”
(ibid)
But,
“If one worker is in charge of 1,800 spindles instead of driving a spinning-wheel, it would be quite ridiculous to ask why these 1,800 spindles are not as cheap as the single spinning-wheel. The productivity in this case is brought about precisely by the amount of capital employed as machinery.”
(ibid)
And,
“... the capital which the former laid out on the spinning-wheel was larger relative to the size of the product, than that which the capitalist lays out on the spinning-machine.”
(ibid)
In other words, as previously described in relation to buildings, so too with machinery. The complexity of the machine (and its place as part of a wider complex of machines in the factory) increases, and along with it, the absolute value of the machine increases. But, this increase in value is not proportionate to the increase in the output resulting from the introduction of the machine, so its value as a proportion of total output value falls. This is reflected in the proportion of wear and tear it contributes to the value of the commodity. But, for the reasons Marx describes above, the value of machinery itself falls, because rises in social productivity means that the materials used in its production become cheaper, and the use of machines to produce machines, means that less living labour is required to produce the machine. These two ways in which the value of the machine falls 1) relative to the increased output it produces, and 2) as a result of falls in its own value due to rising social productivity, are the basis of moral depreciation.
Finally,
“Further, one factor in the cheapening of machinery apart from that of its elements, is the cheapening of the source of the motive power (the steam-boiler, for example) and of the transmission mechanism. Economy of power. But this results precisely from the fact that to an increasing extent the same motor can drive a larger system of machines. The motor becomes relatively cheaper (or its cost does not grow in the same ratio as the increase in the size of the system in which it is employed; the motor becomes more expensive as its power grows, but not in the same degree in which it grows); even when its cost increases absolutely, it declines relatively. This is therefore a new and important motive, quite apart from the price of the individual machine, for increasing the capital that is laid out in machinery and confronts labour. One element—the increasing speed of machinery—increases productivity enormously but it does not affect the value of the machinery itself in any way.”
(ibid)
But, of course it does, because it means the materials used to produce machines become cheaper, and the labour required to produce machines is reduced. Marx actually, misses a further element, here, which is that, as the efficiency of the engine/motor increases, it also requires less fuel, as auxiliary material, and also, rises in social productivity reduce the value of the fuel consumed. But, also, Marx misses the point that new types of motor replace older types. These new motors are not only more powerful, and more efficient in the use of fuel, but they frequently use less material than the older motors, and are cheaper, even in absolute terms. For, example, a diesel engine tractor is much smaller than the steam driven tractors it replaces. The steam driven tractor required a huge boiler to create steam, consisting of huge amounts of iron. They had huge metal wheels to support the weight of the boiler, and so on. The diesel tractor uses a fraction of the metal for its engine, and because it is smaller and lighter, it uses smaller wheels and axles, and uses much cheaper rubber tyres. And, as well as being much cheaper to produce than the steam driven tractor, it uses much less fuel, now in the form of more effective diesel, rather than vast amounts of coal, whilst producing more effective power, higher speeds, and greater manoeuvrability etc.
A similar thing can be seen with other forms of power and motor. Electrical equipment, for example, originally used valves made from blown glass, and containing filaments. These were the equivalent of the motor that drove the function of the electrical equipment, the electricity being the fuel. But, in the 1960's, transistors began to replace valves. The transistor is a semiconductor made of a small amount of relatively cheap material. Not only did it use less material than a valve, and was cheaper to produce, but it was far more powerful, and used less electric. In turn, transistors were replaced by microchips, which are made from silicon which had an even greater revolutionising effect.
For all these reasons, as capital expands, although more fixed capital (buildings, machines, tools) is employed in total, and the total value of this fixed capital increases in absolute terms, its value falls as a proportion of total output value, as a result of the increase in productivity it brings about, and because rising productivity and technological development, brings about a fall in its own cost of production. It is not just the labour/new value that falls as a proportion of the total output value, but also that of fixed capital. Even though the unit value of materials falls as a result of rising productivity, the increased mass of these materials consumed in production, as a result of that rising productivity is greater, so that the proportion of total output value accounted for by materials rises, and this is the basis of Marx's Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall.
“Further, the quantity and value of the employed machinery grows with the development of labour productivity but not in the same proportion as this productivity, i. e., not in the proportion in which this machinery increases its output. In those branches of industry, therefore, which do consume raw materials, i. e., in which the subject of labour is itself a product of previous labour, the growing productivity of labour is expressed precisely in the proportion in which a larger quantity of raw material absorbs a definite quantity of labour, hence in the increasing amount of raw material converted in, say, one hour into products, or processed into commodities. The value of raw material, therefore, forms an ever-growing component of the value of the commodity-product in proportion to the development of the productivity of labour, not only because it passes wholly into this latter value, but also because in every aliquot part of the aggregate product the portion representing depreciation of machinery and the portion formed by the newly added labour — both continually decrease. Owing to this falling tendency, the other portion of the value representing raw material increases proportionally, unless this increase is counterbalanced by a proportionate decrease in the value of the raw material arising from the growing productivity of the labour employed in its own production.”
(Capital III, Chapter 6)
No comments:
Post a Comment