What distinguishes free labour from the labour of the slave, ox, or machine, is precisely that the free labourer acts as an independent cost-centre, in the process of production and exchange. When someone buys a machine, they know that its value is, say, £100. If they sell it tomorrow, they will get only £100 for it, at best. If its normal life is 10 years, it will transfer £10 a year to the value of output, nothing more, and the same with an ox or slave. The cost of maintaining them, and buying the commodities required for the maintenance, resides with their owner.
But, the free labourer owns themselves. It is they that must maintain themselves, and buy the commodities required for their own reproduction. The capitalist pays them a wage, equal to the value of the commodities required to do that, for the period that they contract to sell their labour-power, but, beyond that, the capitalist has no responsibility. That is different to a slave-owner, who must buy the commodities required to maintain their slaves all the time, or a capitalist that must buy the commodities required to maintain a machine, or an ox 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
In a society of only slaves and slave-owners, the social cost of production is the same as the private cost of production. When a slave-owner looks at the value of, say, corn, they do not look at the actual time – concrete labour – required for its production, but only what it costs them. Suppose a slave lives entirely on corn, and consumes 1 kilo per day, but, on average, produces 2 kilos per day. The slave owner will place a value of only ½ a day on the 2 kilos of corn, because that is what it costs them to produce. If someone were to want to sell them 2 kilos for the equivalent of 1 day's labour, say, £1, they would reject the offer, pointing out that they could produce the same 2 kilos for only £0.50, the equivalent of the value of wear and tear of the slave, just as with the value of the output of the automaton.
But, that is not at all the case with the free labourer, be they an independent commodity producer, or wage labourer. If the independent commodity producer expends 10 hours in the production of a commodity, they will see this as its value, and require the equivalent of 10 hours labour in exchange for it, irrespective of the fact that they only require the equivalent of 5 hours labour to reproduce their labour-power. Similarly, when a capitalist, now, employs this labourer, they will still see the value of the produced commodity as being 10 hours labour, and require the same in exchange for it. This is also, where the free labourer, as independent cost-centre, as buyer of commodities is significant. Even if all capitalists thought like slave owners, and valued commodities on the basis of what it has actually cost them to produce – in which case there could be no surplus value – the wage labourer, like the independent commodity producer is not in that position. They must buy the required commodities to live, and the capitalists can charge them a price accordingly, that produces a profit.
In fact, in Capital III, Engels examines the various arguments of other economists, for explaining profit, and says that the argument that each capitalist cheats everyone else, by selling above the value of their production, is just a clumsy, and vulgar expression of what Marx describes. If every capitalist cheats each other, then, that cancels to zero, amongst them. The only sellers of commodities that cannot sell above the value of their commodity, and so make their own profit, are the wage labourers. In fact, as Marx sets out, the profit does not arise for the capitalists from selling commodities above their value, but at their value. That value, however, is greater, by the amount of surplus value, than it has cost them to produce it, because the surplus value is created in production, by the labourer, who creates more new value than they receive as the value of their labour-power, consumed in production.
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