Robinson is able to produce relative surplus value, because he is able to raise the productivity of his labour, reducing the amount of necessary labour he performs. If he produces certain things on a larger scale he obtains economies of scale, for example the area of a stock pen increases proportionally more than its circumference, and so proportionally more animals can be enclosed in it than the increase in his labour required to enclose it. The more he can spend time on certain types of labour, the more adept he becomes at them, so that his productivity naturally increases. He may even be able to devote entire days to a certain type of production, consuming from his stocks, and be able, thereby, to benefit from a division of his own labour. But, if he is joined by Man Friday, the two together can engage in the type of labour in which each has some more greater skill, so that their overall production increases accordingly, and the necessary labour of each is, thereby, reduced, leaving a greater amount and ratio of surplus labour.
That surplus labour can be increased in this way, via the production of relative surplus value, does not mean that it will be. As Marx sets out, the fact that necessary labour amounts to only, say 12, hours a week, or 1 day a week, does not explain why labourers would, then, work for 6 days a week, accepting only the product of 1 day's labour as wages, and handing over the product of the other 5 day's labour as profit to a capitalist. This latter condition can only be explained by the existence of certain other material conditions, historically determined social conditions, in which the capitalist has a monopoly ownership of the means of production, and is able to insist that, in order to be able to use them, the labourer must provide the capitalist with 5 day's labour for free.
In the same way, under feudalism, the rank and status of the feudal lord, the church and state, supported by a regime of rituals, customs and beliefs ensures that the serf must hand over an amount of their labour, or product of their labour, for free as feudal rent. Under capitalism, it is the monopoly ownership of land that ensures that the capitalist farmer can only use the land, in order to make profits, if they hand over any surplus profits, i.e. profit above the average profit, to the landowner as capitalist rent, having themselves appropriated surplus value as profit, from the labour of their workers. It is similarly, the monopoly ownership of money-capital that enables the money-lending capitalist to appropriate surplus value in the form of interest, by lending money. The capacity for surplus value is not sufficient to ensure that it is produced, and nor does it determine its form. It is the historically determined social relations that ensure that surplus value is produced, and it is those same social relations that determine the form the surplus value assumes. As Marx puts it, each mode of production is determined by the specific means by which the surplus labour/value is pumped out of the labourer.
Under feudalism, necessary labour remains at a more or less constant level for centuries. The basic requirements of the peasant producer remain fairly fixed, and the methods of production also remain relatively unchanged, so that the labour-time required for their production remains unchanged. It is this that Marx describes as leading to the idiocy of rural life. It is in the towns that capitalism begins, as larger populations, in concentrated areas, leads to the development of markets for certain industrial products that can now be produced on a larger scale. This larger scale of production makes capitalist production possible. Merchants and money-lending capitalists are able to buy up the means of production of independent artisans, and to turn these artisans into wage workers. They may initially continue to work as though they were individual handicraft producers, as part of the Putting Out System, being provided with materials by the merchant etc., or else, they may be brought together, with other ruined handicraft producers, in a handicraft workshop owned by a capitalist. Already, this enables surplus value to be pumped from these producers, and this collective production, enables a rudimentary division of labour, and economies of scale to be enjoyed.
This means that the individual value of the output of these capitalist workshops is lower than the market value of these commodities produced by other independent handicraft producers. The capitalist producers, thereby, undercut the remaining handicraft producers. They sell their output in the expanding market of the towns. Some of this production is exchanged for other industrial commodities, produced by other capitalist producers, some is exchanged for agricultural products in the hands of peasants as well as landlords. The capitalist producers obtain relative surplus value, because the labour of their workers is more productive than the labour of the independent handicraft producers. It is as though this labour is complex labour, i.e. as though it produces more value in an hour than does an hour of simple labour. That means that each worker has to work fewer hours per day, creating the value required to reproduce their labour-power, and so a greater quantity of relative surplus value is, thereby, produced. This type of relative surplus value is produced, whenever any particular capitalist producer introduces some new machine or technique that enhances the productivity of the labour they employ, relative to the other labour employed in the industry.
So, for example, suppose in the yarn industry an hour's labour, on average produces 10 kilos of yarn, and the market value of this yarn is £20. Now, one producer introduces a machine, which means that its workers now produce 15 kilos of yarn in an hour. But, they continue to sell this yarn at its market value, as determined by the average for the industry. So, they sell this yarn for £30. If we assume that, the worker required £10 to reproduce their labour-power, equal to 0.5 hours of labour, the workers in the latter firm, produce this £10, in just a third of an hour, or 20 minutes. Their necessary labour time has fallen. That means they produce relative surplus value equal to 40 minutes, as a result of this increase in their productivity. However, if all firms in the industry adopt this new machine, the market value of yarn will fall, because it takes less time to produce. As a consequence, this relative surplus value would disappear.
This same kind of relative surplus value also exists in relation to the different levels of productivity of labour in different countries. If Indian handicraft producers of cotton cloth produced 100 metres in ten hours, but British factory textile labour produced 1,000 meres in ten hours, it is as though the British labour was complex labour. On the global market, cloth is sold at its market value. So, if we assume that market value is equal to the price of the Indian cloth, and assuming 1 hour of labour is equal to £1, then it sells at £0.10 per metre. In ten hours, the Indian producer obtains £10. The British producer, however, obtains £100 for the same 10 hours of labour. It is as though the British worker reproduced their labour-power in a tenth of the time that it required for the Indian worker to reproduce their labour-power. Even though the wage of the British worker might be double, or treble the wages of the Indian worker, the British worker would still produce much more surplus value than the Indian worker. As Marx describes, the rate of exploitation of the British worker is much greater than that of the Indian worker, despite the higher wages of the British worker. This is why all of the Mercantilist theories put forward by various “anti-imperialists”, about “super-exploitation”, “unequal exchange”, and so on, are reactionary bunkum.
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