As described earlier, for any given level of technological development – manifest in the technical composition of capital – the amount of labour employed is a function of the physical quantity of constant capital employed. In other words, if 10 workers are required to spin 100 kilos of cotton into yarn, the actual number of workers employed will depend upon how much cotton the firm buys to be spun into yarn. If it buys 100 kilos then 10 workers, 1,000 kilos then 100 workers, and so on. How much cotton it buys depends on how much money-capital it has, and the price of cotton. As Marx noted,
“Capital remains the same whether we put cotton in place of wool, rice in place of wheat, or steamships in place of railroads, provided only that the cotton, the rice, the steamships – the body of capital – have the same exchange value, the same price, as the wool, the wheat, the railroads, in which it was previously incorporated. The body of capital can change continuously, without the capital suffering the slightest alteration.” (p 29)
But, an exchange-value of £1 million might buy 0.1 million kilos of cotton, thereby, employing 10,000 spinners, whilst it buys only 0.01 million kilos of silk, thereby, employing only 1,000 spinners. Because capital is this social relation, expressed by Marx above as,
“increase of capital is increase of the proletariat, that is of the working class” (p 31),
it is clear that the capital that employs 10,000 spinners is larger than the capital that employs only 1,000 spinners, and that is manifest in the fact that the former produces ten times as much surplus value as the latter, and so also makes possible a more rapid accumulation of capital.
“If capital grows, the mass of wage-labour grows, the number of wage-workers grows; in a word, the domination of capital extends over a greater number of individuals.” (p 32)
And, for the reasons described earlier, it does not matter whether we have, in this process actual private capitalists, appropriating profits, or not. In fact, as Marx and Engels described, by the end of the 19th century, capitalism was dominated by socialised capital, not the monopoly of privately owned capital. The profits of the mammoth socialised capitals did not go into the pockets of private industrial capitalists, but went back into the money markets, to fund further capital accumulation (or directly into the expansion of the given capital, via retained profit), and into the pockets of the money lenders as interest/dividend payments to banks, and bond and share holders, as well as rents to landlords, and taxes to the state.
Even if none of these exploiting classes existed, sucking out surplus value for use in unproductive personal consumption, it would not have changed the fundamental relation between wage labour and capital, whereby, the employed labour produced surplus value, which was, and had to be, accumulated as additional capital, and where that surplus value had to be maximised. That is the consequence of commodity production and exchange, and of competition, inherent to it.
“Let us suppose the most favourable case: when productive capital grows; the demand for labour grows; consequently, the price of labour, wages goes up.” (p 32)
Its not that nominal or money wages rise, in these conditions, but real wages, i.e. the standard of living, also rises, as described in The Civilising Mission of Capital. By this same token, the standard of living of the capitalists grows even more than that of the workers. They are able to buy luxury commodities, out of reach of the workers, but, also, their revenues expand by such an amount that an increasing portion and proportion of them can be used for additional capital accumulation, rather than personal consumption.
But, Marx also notes the difference between values and prices. As described earlier, price is exchange-value measured against money, or the standard of prices. Consequently, prices can rise even if the value of commodities remains constant or even falls. It only requires that the value of money/standard of prices falls.
“In the sixteenth century, the gold and silver circulating in Europe increased as a result of the discovery of richer and more easily worked mines in America. Hence, the value of gold and silver fell in relation to other commodities. The workers received the same amount of coined silver for their labour-power as before. The money price of their labour remained the same, and yet their wages had fallen, for in exchange for the same quantity of silver they received a smaller amount of other commodities. This was one of the circumstances which furthered the growth of capital, the rise of the bourgeoisie, in the sixteenth century.” (p 33)
Marx gives the opposite example in which, in 1847, as a result of crop failures, food prices rose sharply. This was not an inflation of prices, as in the previous example, resulting from a fall in the value of the standard of prices, but a rise in the value of those specific commodities. If workers nominal or money wages remained the same, they would buy fewer of these necessary products, meaning that real wages/living standards would fall.
“Their wages had fallen, not because the value of silver had diminished, but because the value of the means of subsistence had increased.” (p 33)
No comments:
Post a Comment