Wage labour, in the form of labour-power, sold as a commodity, has been analysed, but what about capital? According to bourgeois economics,
“Capital consists of raw materials, instruments of labour, and means of subsistence of all kinds, which are utilised in order to produce new raw materials, new instruments of labour, and new means of subsistence. All these component parts of capital are creations of labour, products of labour, accumulated labour. Accumulated labour which serves as a means of new production is capital.” (p 27-8)
Is that true? No. Just as in previous societies, labour-power existed as a use-value, but was not sold as a commodity, and labour, therefore, existed that was not wage labour, so, in previous societies, means of production existed that were not capital. The bow and arrow used by a hunter in a primitive tribe is means of production, and is itself the product of past, accumulated labour, but it is not capital. The wooden plough, and the ox that pulls it, are means of production, and product of past labour, but, used by the subsistence peasant, they are not capital. Indeed, the electric power drill I have in my garage is a means of production, and the product of past labour, but used as a means of undertaking maintenance work on my home, it is not capital.
Just as what determines slave or serf labour, as against the free labour of the independent commodity producer, or the wage labour of the modern industrial worker is the social and historical context, so too with capital. In terms of the labour process, all labour has a superficial identity that involves utilising tools, and interacting with nature so as to create some new product, or to move some existing product to a different location. But, the social relation of the slave/serf to their master is not the same as that of the peasant to the landlord, or the wage-worker to the capitalist.
“A Negro is a Negro. He only becomes a slave in certain relations. A cotton-spinning jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. It become capital only in certain relations. Torn from these relationships, it is no more capital than gold in itself is money, or sugar the price of sugar.” (p 28)
As Marx describes in Theories of Surplus Value, it was always the case that independent commodity producers could fail. They may not have been able to sell their commodities, and so could not obtain money to pay rents or taxes, or to be able to reproduce their means of production. But, in the past, such individual failures meant that they became slaves, serfs, servants or paupers. They did not become wage labourers, selling their labour-power as a commodity, for the simple reason that industrial capital did not exist to employ them.
For that condition to arise, it is necessary for capitalist production to be sufficiently profitable, and, for such production to be more efficient, and, thereby, undercut and replace all other existing forms of production. What is required for that? It is that production can take place on a sufficiently large scale, that economies of scale can be obtained. That means that labourers can be brought together under one roof, and materials bought in bulk; the labour process in the workshop can be subject to a division of labour, and the benefits of cooperative labour obtained, and also that it becomes possible to employ machines that significantly raise productivity.
What is required for that? It is that sufficiently large and concentrated markets for industrial commodities exist (the largely self-sufficient nature of peasant food production, is why capitalism begins in industrial production, in the towns, not in agricultural production in rural areas), such as textiles, jewellery, pottery and so on, are bought and sold in the markets, based in these towns, and the producers of these commodities, also based in the towns, can produce on a larger scale.
Now, when these producers fail, instead of becoming serfs or paupers, their means of production are taken over by their successful neighbours, and their labour-power is itself, now, bought as a commodity, in exchange for wages. By this process, capitalist production is initiated in the towns, with the process of differentiation into winners and losers, bourgeois and proletarians.
“Thus the social relations within which individuals produce, the social relations of production, change, are transformed, with the change and development of the material means of production, the productive forces. The relations of production in their totality constitute what are called the social relations, society, and, specifically, a society at a definite stage of historical development, a society with a peculiar, distinctive character. Ancient society, feudal society, bourgeois society, are such totalities of production relations, each of which at the same time denotes a special stage of development in the history of mankind.” (p 28)
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