IX – Value of Labour
There is no such thing, therefore, as “the price (or value) of labour”, despite that phrase being commonly used to describe wages. It is a bourgeois deception, upon which the exploitation of labour is based. It implies that workers are paid for all the labour they supply, as against the fact that they must supply a quantity of unpaid labour, before the capitalist will employ them. There is no such thing as the value of labour, because labour is a process – the value creating process – not a thing. Labour is value, value is labour, and so to ask what is the value of labour is as meaningless as to ask what is the value of value?
As set out earlier, what is actually meant by the value of labour is, rather, the value of labour-power, and it is this which is the determinant of wages. It is always less than the new value the worker creates, meaning the worker always hands to the capitalist a quantity of unpaid labour, which is the basis of their exploitation, and of surplus-value.
But, workers always get their wages after they have performed a quantity of labour for the capitalist, and this gives the illusion that what they have been paid for is this quantity of labour. In fact, if we took the working-class as a whole, and the capitalist class as a whole, what we would see is that the workers produce everything that society consumes, both productively and personally. They produce the machines, buildings and materials that replace those consumed in production, as well as all those accumulated as additional capital, and they produce all of the commodities (wage goods) required to reproduce their own labour-power, as well as those goods (including luxury goods) consumed by capitalists. So, having produced all of this vast quantity of goods, what would then be seen is that their wages amount only to the capitalists handing back to them a small proportion of what they had produced.
In reality, this is no different to the position of the slave who produces for the slave-owner, who hands back to them a small portion of what they produced, in order that they may live to produce another day. It is no different to the serf who must work for half the week on the landlord's fields, or the peasant who must hand over, as tribute (feudal rent) half of their output, or its monetary equivalent. As Taleb put it,
“Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.”
(Nicholas Nasim Taleb – The Bed of Procrustes)
“A double consequence flows from this.
Firstly. The value or price of the labouring power takes the semblance of the price or value of labour itself, although, strictly speaking, value and price of labour are senseless terms.
Secondly. Although one part only of the workman's daily labour is paid, while the other part is unpaid, and while that unpaid or surplus labour constitutes exactly the fund out of which surplus value or profit is formed, it seems as if the aggregate labour was paid labour.” (p 62-3)
It is, in fact, this false appearance that distinguishes wage-labour from all other forms of labour, and makes the worker into a wage-slave. The slave has no doubt that they are a slave, that they belong, body and soul, to the slave-owner, who exploits their labour. The serf, also, has no doubt that they are the property of their master, and that the three days labour they perform on the master's land is an exploitation of their labour. But, the wage-worker appears to be “free”. Unlike the slave or serf, they are free to sell their labour-power to whichever capitalist will pay the highest wages. They appear to be paid these wages for the labour they have provided, and hence the price of their labour.
But, of course, taken as a whole, none of their potential employers will employ them, unless they provide a quantity of unpaid labour. The amount of surplus labour that the slave owner can extract from the slave, or the master from the serf, depends upon not only how much labour they can perform, in say a week, but also on how much of that labour is required to ensure the reproduction of the slave or serf.
The same is true for the wage-worker, but, appears in a different form, determined by the laws previously set out. The individual capitalist does not “own” the worker, and does not directly provide them with their means of subsistence, as with the slave. The worker is responsible for their own subsistence, which they must buy themselves, with their wages. Its this distinction, a Marx describes in The Grundrisse, which distinguishes free labour (whether of the independent labourer, or wage-worker) from slave labour, and means that the former produces new value (and so, also surplus value) whereas the latter does not (producing only a surplus product).
“in the relations of slavery and serfdom….The slave stands in no relation whatsoever to the objective conditions of his labour; rather, labour itself, both in the form of the slave and in that of the serf, is classified as an inorganic condition of production along with other natural beings, such as cattle, as an accessory of the earth.”
(Grundrisse, p 489)
The slave-owner considers the slave in the same way they consider their animals or machines, as fixed capital. They must be maintained. But, the capitalist has no such concern for the worker. They buy their labour-power for a day or a week, but, beyond that, they have no responsibility to maintain them. If the worker cannot find work, they cannot get wages, and starve, but that is no concern of the capitalist. It is the worker who enters into the market to buy the commodities required for their own reproduction, whereas, it is the slave-owner that enters the market to buy any commodities required for the reproduction of their slaves. The worker can only buy commodities at their market value, i.e. their social cost of production, whereas the slave owner values commodities according to their private cost of production.
In other words, a kilo of wheat may have a social cost of production of 10 hours labour, including 8 hours of current labour performed by a slave. But, for the slave owner, it is only the 4 hours of labour required to reproduce the labour-power of the slave that exists as a cost of production. In a society where slavery predominates, this determines values. If slave owner A is asked to pay the equivalent of 10 hours labour for a kilo of wheat, by slave owner B, as against the cost of production of only 6 hours, they will reject such an exchange. They could, theoretically, produce a kilo of wheat for themselves, using their own slaves, for only the equivalent of 6 hours labour.
But, that is not the case, for a labourer, who must buy wheat. They must lay out the equivalent of 2 hours labour for seeds and materials, and spend 8 hours of their own labour, producing the wheat. For the labourer – whether they are an independent labourer, or a wage worker – the individual cost of production of a commodity, is the same as its social cost of production. They are unable to obtain any amount of free labour. It is this fact that means that, as the market expands, and free labour becomes dominant, it is this social cost of production that determines the value of commodities, and surplus labour takes the form of surplus value, rather than surplus product.
“Well. First of all the wage worker as distinct from the slave is himself an independent centre of circulation, someone who exchanges, posits exchange value, and maintains exchange value through exchange. Firstly: in the exchange between that part of capital which is specified as wages, and living labour capacity, the exchange value of this part of capital is posited immediately, before capital again emerges from the production process to enter into circulation, or this can be conceived as itself still an act of circulation. Secondly: To each capitalist, the total mass of all workers, with the exception of his own workers, appear not as workers, but as consumers, possessors of exchange values (wages), money, which they exchange for his commodity. They are so many centres of circulation with whom the act of exchange begins and by whom the exchange value of capital is maintained. They form a proportionally very great part -- although not quite so great as is generally imagined, if one focuses on the industrial worker proper -- of all consumers. The greater their number -- the number of the industrial population -- and the mass of money at their disposal, the greater the sphere of exchange for capital. We have seen that it is the tendency of capital to increase the industrial population as much as possible.”
(Grundrisse p 419)
In reality, what is true for the individual worker is not true for the working-class as a whole. In periods of high, excess labour supply, the capitalists take the opportunity to exploit labour cruelly. They extend the length and intensity of the working-day beyond the normal limits, without compensation. The workers burn out, become sick and die, but the capitalist knows another ten are there, ready to replace them. That is what happened in the early 19th century, when average lifespans, for workers, halved, and three generations of workers were used up, in the space of just one. But, as a whole, capital must also maintain labour as a whole, because it is the source of new value, and of surplus value. When that over-exploitation threatened to undermine the supply of labour-power, as the working-class suffered severe physical deterioration, capital, as a whole, via its state, imposed regulation. It brought in the Factory Acts. But, also, capital sought to impose constraints on workers' behaviour.
To try to prevent workers escaping, and so reducing labour-supply, it sought to prevent emigration. Brexit, and the removal of the right of workers in Britain to free movement has taken workers back 200 years to that condition.
“In former times, capital resorted to legislation, whenever necessary, to enforce its proprietary rights over the free labourer. For instance, down to 1815, the emigration of mechanics employed in machine making was, in England, forbidden, under grievous pains and penalties.”
(Capital, I, p 538)
And, Marx in Capital quotes a letter in the Times of 24th March, 1863, from Edmund Potter, a former president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, in which he wrote,
“He” (the man out of work) “may be told the supply of cotton-workers is too large ... and ... must ... in fact be reduced by a third, perhaps, and that then there will be a healthy demand for the remaining two-thirds.... Public opinion... urges emigration.... The master cannot willingly see his labour supply being removed; he may think, and perhaps justly, that it is both wrong and unsound.”
But, it also sought to ensure that the existing labour supply was as useful as possible. It created Temperance Societies to encourage sobriety, and even, in places, prohibited the sale of alcohol. It discouraged workers from activity on their own account, on The Sabbath, so that their vital energies were preserved for the work week.
“On the basis of the wages system even the unpaid labour seems to be paid labour. With the slave, on the contrary, even that part of his labour which is paid appears to be unpaid. Of course, in order to work the slave must live, and one part of his working day goes to replace the value of his own maintenance. But since no bargain is struck between him and his master, and no acts of selling and buying are going on between the two parties, all his labour seems to be given away for nothing.” (p 63)
Serfdom existed in Russia, and most of Eastern Europe, up to 1861, and the serf was much like the slave, in that they were bound to their master, and had to provide three days of labour on their land.
“Here, then, the paid and unpaid parts of labour were sensibly separated, separated in time and space; and our Liberals overflowed with moral indignation at the preposterous notion of making a man work for nothing.” (p 63)
But, the same is true for the wage-worker, and yet, for the Liberals, this represents the epitome of freedom and equality.
“In point of fact, however, whether a man works three days of the week for himself on his own field and three days for nothing on the estate of his lord, or whether he works in the factory or the workshop six hours daily for himself and six for his employer, comes to the same, although in the latter case the paid and unpaid portions of labour are inseparably mixed up with each other, and the nature of the whole transaction is completely masked by the intervention of a contract and the pay received at the end of the week. The gratuitous labour appears to be voluntarily given in the one instance, and to be compulsory in the other. That makes all the difference.
In using the word “value of labour,” I shall only use it as a popular slang term for “value of labouring power."” (p 63-4)
No comments:
Post a Comment