Whether it is Robinson, a primitive commune, peasant household, commodity producing economy, capitalist economy, or a future communist society, this same Law of Value applies. The working-day is divided into three parts. One part reproduces the consumed means of production, another part reproduces the means of consumption, and the third part is surplus labour, which can be used to expand consumption, to provide for the consumption of unproductive members of society, provide a reserve for accidents, and so on, as well as to produce additional means of production, so that output can be expanded, and potentially, the productivity of labour can be raised.
So long, therefore, that society has reached a stage where its labour productivity is such that the labourer can produce more in a working-day than is required to reproduce their labour-power for a day, the labourer can produce a surplus product, and the labour embodied in this surplus product constitutes surplus labour/value. Marx gives the example of inhabitants of the Eastern islands of the Asiatic Archipelago, where wild sago grows in the forest.
“When the inhabitants have convinced themselves, by boring a hole in the tree, that the pith is ripe, the trunk is cut down and divided into several pieces, the pith is extracted, mixed with water and filtered: it is then quite fit for use as sago. One tree commonly yields 300 lbs., and occasionally 500 to 600 lbs. There, then, people go into the forests, and cut bread for themselves, just as with us they cut fire-wood.” (Capital I, Chapter 16, Note 10 )
And, Marx says,
“Suppose now such an eastern bread-cutter requires 12 working hours a week for the satisfaction of all his wants. Nature’s direct gift to him is plenty of leisure time.”
(Capital I, Chapter 16)
So, their necessary labour, amounts to only 12 hours per week, so that any additional labour performed in excess of this represents absolute surplus value. If they undertake 15 hours per week, they produce 3 hours of absolute surplus value, if they decide to work for 20 hours, they produce 8 hours of absolute surplus value. For these inhabitants, it is, of course, up to them whether they undertake any such surplus labour or not. But, here, again, Marx sets out his materialist conception of history, and describes why class society performs a progressive role in human social development, because it forces the labourer to undertake such surplus labour, and, as a consequence of it, society develops additional means of production, science and so on, which, in turn, raises the level of labour productivity, and makes even larger social surpluses possible. The evidence can be seen by comparing the development of human society in Europe and elsewhere, as compared to its stagnation in relation to the condition of the Native Americans, prior to European settlement, and so on. As Marx puts it,
“Before he can apply this leisure time productively for himself, a whole series of historical events is required; before he spends it in surplus-labour for strangers, compulsion is necessary. If capitalist production were introduced, the honest fellow would perhaps have to work six days a week, in order to appropriate to himself the product of one working day. The bounty of Nature does not explain why he would then have to work 6 days a week, or why he must furnish 5 days of surplus-labour. It explains only why his necessary labour-time would be limited to one day a week. But in no case would his surplus-product arise from some occult quality inherent in human labour.”
(ibid)
In other words, the material condition, here, determines how much is required as necessary labour, but it does not explain why the same worker might then work for six days, for a capitalist, whilst still being paid wages that equate to only the one day of his labour required to reproduce his labour-power. That can only be explained by the historically determined, social relations that arise on the back of the particular productive relations between capital and labour. Similarly, if in place of a capitalist, a landlord emerged from amongst the midst of the tribe, perhaps having been some form of warrior leader, this landlord might perform no labour themselves, but, in order that they might live, the other members of the tribe have to perform surplus labour. Over a time, the landlord and his descendants might recognise that there is a great scope for such surplus labour, and so, they turn their original tribute payments into regular payments of rent. This is the means by which landlords arose, and extracted rents, in general, in pre-capitalist modes of production. It is the specific means of extracting surplus labour in those historically determined modes of production based upon land ownership.
As Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, it was the merit of Ricardo, and his scientific honesty that he recognised this progressive role of class society, manifest in the concept of production for the sake of production, without which social development, and ultimately, thereby socialism is impossible.
"To assert, as sentimental opponents of Ricardo’s did, that production as such is not the object, is to forget that production for its own sake means nothing but the development of human productive forces, in other words the development of the richness of human nature as an end in itself. To oppose the welfare of the individual to this end, as Sismondi does, is to assert that the development of the species must be arrested in order to safeguard the welfare of the individual, so that, for instance, no war may be waged in which at all events some individuals perish. Sismondi is only right as against the economists who conceal or deny this contradiction.) Apart from the barrenness of such edifying reflections, they reveal a failure to understand the fact that, although at first the development of the capacities of the human species takes place at the cost of the majority of human individuals and even classes, in the end it breaks through this contradiction and coincides with the development of the individual; the higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical process during which individuals are sacrificed for the interests of the species in the human kingdom, as in the animal and plant kingdoms, always assert themselves at the cost of the interests of individuals, because these interests of the species coincide only with the interests of certain individuals, and it is this coincidence which constitutes the strength of these privileged individuals."
(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9)
This is one of the clearest passages setting out Marx's historical materialist theory, of the evolution of human social development, in the same kinds of language as that used by Darwin in his materialist theory of the evolution of species. It is the basis of his concept of The Civilising Mission of Capital, as set out in The Grundrisse.
In systems of Labour Rent, as described by Marx, the peasant producer works, say, 3 days on their own land, and 3 days on the land of the landlord, i.e they provide 3 days of surplus labour/value. Over time, this Labour Rent is superseded by Rent In Kind. The peasant now spends all their time on their own land, but hands over half of their output, as rent, to the landlord, in place of providing them with surplus labour directly. Finally, the peasant pays this rent as Money Rent. In each case, it is simply a means by which the landlord extracts absolute surplus labour/value from the peasant.
There are two ways in which the landlord can extract more absolute surplus value. One is to increase the proportion of labour/value that each peasant must provide to them. The other is to increase the number of peasants paying such rent. That is why, under feudalism, there is always an incentive for the landlord to expand the area of land within their domain, so that they have a greater number of peasants contained within it, and so a greater number paying rent. This is the material foundation of the wars between feudal barons, princes and kings to bring greater land under their control. This is also the material basis for colonialism, as the form that imperialism assumes under feudalism and mercantilism.
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