This problem is also experienced when the Sismondists come to consider not just the replacement of the constant capital, but its accumulation, i.e. expanded, rather than simple reproduction. For the Sismondists, the idea of the exploitation of labour upsets their petty-bourgeois moral sensibilities, but, just as they cannot explain how the constant capital is to be reproduced, if all of output is consumed as revenue, i.e. unproductively as wages and profits, so they cannot explain how accumulation is to increase unless s rises relative to v, i.e. unless the rate of exploitation/surplus value rises. It does not matter what mode of production is being discussed, the material balances that comprise total output – means of production, means of consumption surplus product – remain, simply with different names and forms, reflecting different social relations.
As Marx describes in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, in a post-capitalist society, if its desired to raise living standards, by producing more use values, then more means of production and more means of consumption must be accumulated, and the only place they can be accumulated from is society's surplus product. If the rate at which this accumulation takes place is to increase, then the size of the surplus product must rise, relative to the necessary product. In other words, the rate of exploitation/surplus value must rise. Now, another way of achieving this is by increasing social productivity, but that requires the accumulation of more fixed capital, of more technology in place of labour.
On this basis, not only does (what in capitalist terms is) c rise relative to v, because fixed capital replaces labour, but, because the rise in productivity is reflected in more material being processed by a given quantity of labour, it rises for this second reason. In order to accumulate this additional fixed capital, and circulating constant capital, s has to rise, which again means that the rate of exploitation must rise. That it is the workers themselves that now increase the rate of exploitation, in order to achieve this, does not change the economic reality of the process. Similarly, if workers in such a society want to retire earlier, or to provide better levels of income during sickness etc., the resources to achieve this do not appear from thin air. It requires that the surplus product, out of which such spending is to come, be increased. It means that workers either actually reduce their consumption, or else that the productivity be raised, so that s rises relative to v, i.e. that the rate of exploitation/surplus value be increased.
“This theory, that the entire product of capitalist society consists of two parts—the workers’ part (wages, or variable capital, to use modern terminology) and the capitalists’ part (surplus-value), is not peculiar to Sismondi. It does not belong to him. He borrowed it in its entirety from Adam Smith, and even took a step backward from it. The whole of subsequent political economy (Ricardo, Mill, Proudhon and Rodbertus) repeated this mistake, which was disclosed only by the author of Capital, in Part III of Volume II.” (p 145)
And, it was taken up, as said earlier, by Keynes, and his followers, as well as by proponents of the Permanent Arms Economy, and those who saw it as the basis of imperialism. It was also the basis of the arguments of the Narodniks addressed by Lenin, here.
“At present let us observe that this mistake is repeated by our Narodnik economists. It is of special interest to compare them with Sismondi, because they draw from this fallacious theory the very same conclusions that Sismondi himself drew: the conclusion that surplus-value cannot be realised in capitalist society; that social wealth cannot be expanded; that the foreign market must be resorted to because surplus-value cannot be realised within the country; and lastly, that crises occur because the product, it is alleged, cannot be realised through consumption by the workers and the capitalists.” (p 145)
All of this is correct, but, unfortunately, in exposing the errors of Sismondi, as against Ricardo, Lenin misses the points in which Sismondi is actually correct as against Ricardo. Indeed, Lenin falls into the same error as Ricardo, inherited from Mill and Say, i.e. Say's Law, that supply creates its own demand, or, as Lenin puts it, production creates its own market. Lenin makes the error of failing to take into account the question of demand, and so the role of use value as against exchange-value. Parts of Lenin's argument are correct, but its necessary to disentangle them.
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