Absolute Surplus Value - Summary

Summary

• Absolute surplus value refers to the extraction of surplus value from labour by extending, or intensifying the working-day
• For an individual worker, the working-day consists of a number of hours of necessary labour, when they reproduce the value required to reproduce their labour-power, and a period beyond that when the worker performs surplus labour. Labour is value, and so this surplus labour is surplus value. This surplus value is absolute surplus value. If the working-day is lengthened or intensified, the amount of surplus labour, and so of absolute surplus value, increases.
• Intensification of labour is not the same as increased productivity of labour. Intensification means that the worker simply works faster (speed-up), has fewer breaks or periods when they are not undertaking actual labour (for example, use of an assembly line so that the worker stays in one spot), or else simply becomes more adept, and thereby faster (division of labour), which is why bosses like piece work schemes, so they weed out the slower workers. Productivity of labour is a function of the technical conditions of labour, e.g. fertility of land, use of fixed capital/machines/technology so that a given mass of labour produces more use values.
• Intensification means that a given worker, set of workers, produces as much use value in, say 10, hours as other workers produce in, say, 15 hours. If the working-day is 15 hours, the working-day of the former will be the equivalent of 22.5 hours. If, the working-day is divided into 10 hours of necessary labour, and 5 hours of surplus labour, the former group of workers will produce 12.5 hours of surplus labour, because of the intensification of their labour. It is the same as though they had worked for 22.5 hours, rather than 15 hours.
• If all workers work at the same level of intensity then this becomes the standard level of intensity, and so this means of extracting absolute surplus value ceases. Then only a more extensive working-day produces absolute surplus value. Alternatively, more labour must be simultaneously employed. If 1 worker produces 5 hours of absolute surplus value, 2 workers produce 10 hours of absolute surplus value.
• For the collective worker, i.e. the whole employed working-class, the same applies. The individual working-day of each worker multiplied by the number of workers simultaneously employed gives the social working-day. A part of this social working-day constitutes the necessary labour required to reproduce the labour-power of the collective worker/working-class, the rest of the social working-day constitutes surplus labour/value. If the individual working day is increased, absolute surplus value increases, if the number of simultaneously employed workers increases, i.e. the social working-day increases, then again absolute surplus value increases.
• The individual worker does not produce the use values required for their own reproduction. Some do not produce consumption goods, or wage goods at all. Each worker produces, during the necessary part of the working-day, the value required to buy the use values/wage goods required to reproduce their labour-power, and also, thereby, produces an amount of surplus value in excess of it, in the labour they perform in excess of their necessary labour.
• For the collective worker, a section of the working-class produces all of the use values/wage goods (variable-capital) required for the reproduction of the working-class as a whole. Another section of the working-class produces all of the use values required to reproduce the means of consumption consumed in production (constant capital), and another section of workers produces all of the consumption goods and luxury goods consumed by the exploiting classes and the state (surplus value).

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