Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 4
Marx looks again at the issue, and the idea that the constant capital can all be replaced by an exchange with revenue in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 4, Section 7(a).
In Chapter 4, Marx specifically examines the concept of productive labour. Marx takes the first definition of productive labour given by Adam Smith, as being that labour which produces surplus value, via an exchange with capital, rather than revenue. As Marx and Smith both describe, all labour is capable of producing surplus value, insofar as it is capable of undertaking surplus labour in excess of necessary labour, required for the reproduction of the labourer. As Marx describes in Capital III, its only a question of what form this surplus value takes in different modes of production – surplus product under slavery, rent under feudalism, profit under capitalism, surplus product under communism.
Insofar as political economy analyses capitalism, it is this which is the criterion for the definition of “productive”, i.e. it is not just labour that undertakes surplus labour, and produces surplus value, but that also does so in the context of an exchange with capital, and as a result of which capital appropriates this surplus value as profit, from which it is driven, by the laws of competition, to accumulate more capital. It is productive not just of surplus value, but of capital itself. As Marx describes, an independent commodity producer can produce surplus value, which is embodied in the value of their output, but their labour does not exchange with capital. Indeed, they do not sell their labour at all, in the way a wage worker sells their labour-power, as a commodity. The independent producer sells the product of their labour either as a commodity, or as a labour service. The buyer of this product is not capital but revenue.
For example, a prostitute who sells a labour service to clients, be they capitalists, landlords, clergy, state bureaucrats or workers, exchanges the value of this service for an equal value in money. The money paid by the buyer comes from revenue – either profits, rent, tithes, taxes or wages. It is an exchange with revenue not with capital, and even though the prostitute works 8 hours a day, whereas their necessary labour amounts to only 4 hours per day, meaning they produce 4 hours surplus value, their labour is not productive, because it does not exchange with capital, and so does not result in an expansion of capital. However, if the prostitute works for a capitalist brothel keeper, they no longer exchange their labour with revenue. They do not sell the product of their labour, as a commodity, in exchange for revenue, but now sell their labour-power itself as a commodity. The buyer of this commodity is no longer a consumer of the product of that labour, but is the consumer of the commodity labour-power itself, solely to obtain its specific quality of producing new value, and thereby, surplus value. They consume this commodity, now, productively. The buyer always buys a specific type of concrete labour-power, because it is bought to produce a specific type of use value, for example spinning labour to produce yarn, weaving labour to produce cloth, but the capitalist does not buy labour-power for this purpose but only because, in undertaking such concrete labour it a) creates new value, as abstract labour, and b) as concrete labour preserves the value of the constant capital, transferring it to the value of the end product.
The capitalist, like the independent producer, sells the end product at its value. Their profit is not obtained by selling commodities at prices above their value. Indeed, the capitalist, by producing on a large scale, will usually sell at a lower price than independent producers, because their costs are lower, and by doing so they undercut smaller producers, and capture market share. In both cases, the value of the commodity includes surplus value, because the labour required for its production – discounting the value of constant capital – is greater than the necessary labour required for the reproduction of the labourer. But, the end product sold at this value, is now sold by the capitalist, not the independent producer, and so it is the capitalist that appropriates this surplus value contained in the value of the commodity.
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