Now, the circle is complete, as the the capital is no longer privately owned by capitalists, but is again owned by the labourers, but, now, not as their individual private property, but as their collective capital, as associated producers.
“The capital, which in itself rests on a social mode of production and presupposes a social concentration of means of production and labour-power, is here directly endowed with the form of social capital (capital of directly associated individuals) as distinct from private capital, and its undertakings assume the form of social undertakings as distinct from private undertakings. It is the abolition of capital as private property within the framework of capitalist production itself...
In stock companies the function is divorced from capital ownership, hence also labour is entirely divorced from ownership of means of production and surplus-labour. This result of the ultimate development of capitalist production is a necessary transitional phase towards the reconversion of capital into the property of producers, although no longer as the private property of the individual producers, but rather as the property of associated producers, as outright social property. On the other hand, the stock company is a transition toward the conversion of all functions in the reproduction process which still remain linked with capitalist property, into mere functions of associated producers, into social functions...
Expropriation extends here from the direct producers to the smaller and the medium-sized capitalists themselves. It is the point of departure for the capitalist mode of production; its accomplishment is the goal of this production. In the last instance, it aims at the expropriation of the means of production from all individuals. With the development of social production the means of production cease to be means of private production and products of private production, and can thereafter be only means of production in the hands of associated producers, i.e., the latter's social property, much as they are their social products.”
(Capital III, Chapter 27)
The “immiseration” of labour does not mean the reduction of wages to this bare subsistence level, or else workers' living standard would not have more or less continuously improved, but refers to this non-ownership of the means of production. Marx summarised that in The Critique of the Gotha Programme.
“Since Lassalle's death, there has asserted itself in our party the scientific understanding that wages are not what they appear to be -- namely, the value, or price, of labour—but only a masked form for the value, or price, of labour power. Thereby, the whole bourgeois conception of wages hitherto, as well as all the criticism hitherto directed against this conception, was thrown overboard once and for all. It was made clear that the wage worker has permission to work for his own subsistence—that is, to live, only insofar as he works for a certain time gratis for the capitalist (and hence also for the latter's co-consumers of surplus value); that the whole capitalist system of production turns on the increase of this gratis labour by extending the working day, or by developing the productivity—that is, increasing the intensity or labour power, etc.; that, consequently, the system of wage labour is a system of slavery, and indeed of a slavery which becomes more severe in proportion as the social productive forces of labour develop, whether the worker receives better or worse payment. And after this understanding has gained more and more ground in our party, some return to Lassalle's dogma although they must have known that Lassalle did not know what wages were, but, following in the wake of the bourgeois economists, took the appearance for the essence of the matter.
It is as if, among slaves who have at last got behind the secret of slavery and broken out in rebellion, a slave still in thrall to obsolete notions were to inscribe on the program of the rebellion: Slavery must be abolished because the feeding of slaves in the system of slavery cannot exceed a certain low maximum!”
Proudhon had discovered nothing new, but simply repeated, in crude form, what Ricardo had already stated long before, and whose ideas had also been taken up by earlier socialists such as Bray, Gray, Thompson, Hodgskin and so on. For Proudhon, the idea of value being determined by labour-time, and the exchange of commodities on the basis of these values formed his vision of future society, but, for Ricardo, it was simply a description of existing capitalist society. That is not surprising, because, Proudhon's vision of that future society was merely that of petty-bourgeois socialism. It is not a view of socialism, based on large-scale socialised production, but of continued commodity production, and exchange by independent, small-scale producers.
Marx sets out the way this determination of value by labour-time, contrary to Proudhon's belief, is wholly consistent with the existing capitalist production, and exploitation of labour. His argument is that I set out earlier, in relation to the exchange of linen for wine, but he uses linen and broadcloth.
“To say that this exchange of products measured by labour time results in an equality of payment for all the producers is to suppose that equality of participation in the product existed before the exchange. When the exchange of broadcloth for linen has been accomplished, the producers of broadcloth will share in the linen in a proportion equal to that in which they previously shared in the broadcloth.” (p 50-51)
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