Labour-power, as seen, does not transfer its value to production. It is the act of labour that creates the new value. However, if this act of labour, the length of the working-day, is doubled, so as to double the amount of new value created, it similarly means that, as with the machine, the worker suffers additional wear and tear. Their labour-power is exhausted to a greater extent, requiring a greater quantity and value of wage goods for its restoration. If the worker consumes more energy, they require more calories as fuel, just as a machine consumes more fuel. The worker may need more healthcare, and so on.
But, similarly, if the workers' lifespan is reduced from, say, 70 years to just 35 years, as a result of this excessive use, then, just as a machine that wears out in five years rather than ten requires another machine to replace it, so too the worker. The value of a machine may remain £1,000, but, if it wears out in five years rather than ten, the capitalist must put away £200, not £100, each year, for its replacement. If the value of labour-power, over a worker's lifetime is £7,000, it annual value is £100, if the worker lives for 70 years, but is £200, if the average lifespan is only 35 years.
As I have set out, elsewhere, this is a problem for developing economies, with high infant mortality rates. A lot of resources must be put into the rearing of children. This requires food, clothing and shelter, as with anyone else, even though the children cannot reproduce these things themselves via their labour. They also require education and so on, before they can become workers. But, if a large proportion of these children die before they are old enough to become workers, they never reach the stage of being able to reproduce the value they have consumed, by engaging in value creation themselves. This raises the value of labour-power, reducing the potential for surplus value, and, thereby, the capital accumulation required for the economic development that would facilitate a reduction in infant mortality.
But, at times, capital does use machinery to excess, knowing it will wear out prematurely. In a period of rapid technological change, new machines may be introduced that make existing machines redundant, or, at least, cause a huge moral depreciation. The value of the existing machines then fall, not because of wear and tear – which is recovered from production, because that value is transferred to it – but because of depreciation, the value of which is not transferred to the end product, and so is not recovered from it, but represents just a capital loss. So, in these conditions, capital seeks to minimise the potential for capital loss, by using existing machines more extensively and intensively. The sooner they wear out, having recovered their value in wear and tear, the less of their value might be written off as depreciation.
Moreover, as Marx describes, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 23, such reduction in value, via wear and tear, raises the rate of profit. If a company has fixed capital of £1,000 and makes a profit of £90, this is a rate of profit, in relation to the fixed capital of 9%. However, if there is wear and tear of the fixed capital, amounting to £100, during the year, the same £90 of profit, now represents a rate of profit of 10%, in relation to the fixed capital, whose value is now only £900. If the machine is used more, so that its wear and tear is £200, reducing its value to £800, the £100 of profit, represents a rate of profit of 12.5%. As Marx notes, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 23, this is how firms with lots of fixed capital remain competitive with firms using, newer, more efficient machines.
But, a similar situation arises with labour-power. Although, generally, capital needs to maintain labour-power, as the source of its surplus value, at times of excess supplies of labour-power, each capital will be driven by competition to overuse it and waste it, because the failure to do so will lead to a lack of competitiveness. Ricardo had noted that, at one point, excess labour-power meant that it was so cheap that firms used women to pull canal boats, rather than horses.
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