In Capital III, Marx notes that what characterises each mode of production is the specific way in which this surplus labour is pumped from the labourer and appropriated by the exploiters. In slave society – the whole product of the slave (and the slave themselves) belongs to the slave owner, and only what is required to reproduce the slave is handed back to them as necessaries. That same relation exists under wage-slavery/capitalism, except the wage-slave is, nominally, free outside the contracted hours of employment. The wage-slave, also hands over the whole product of their labour to the capitalist, who having realised its value, hands back to the worker only that small part of it required as wages to cover their own reproduction.
In the AMP, the control of the state, and system of castes, based upon well established rules and taboos, leads to the surplus being handed to the state functionaries as tribute. Under feudalism, the serf has access to land to produce their needs for part of the week, but must perform labour on the landlord's fields for the rest of the week. The free peasant farmer similarly meets their needs from their own production, and hands over their surplus labour as rent and taxes etc.
“Historically, up to now, this fund has been the possession of a privileged class, on which along with this possession, political domination and intellectual leadership also devolved. The impending social revolution will for the first time make this social production and reserve fund—that is, the total mass of raw materials, instruments of production and means of subsistence — a real social fund, by taking its disposal away from that privileged class and transferring it to the whole of society as its common property.” (p 248-9)
Engels sets out the contradiction expressed in bourgeois theory, which was seized upon by the first representatives of the working-class, such as Hodgskin.
“It is one of two alternative courses. Either the value of commodities is determined by the costs of subsistence of the labour necessary for their production, that is, in present-day society, by wages. In this case each worker receives in his wages the value of the product of his labour; in this case the exploitation of the wage-earning class by the capitalist class is an impossibility.” (p 249)
The value of a commodity is equal to the value of the materials consumed in its production, including the wear and tear of fixed capital, plus the value added by labour in the production process. But, if that second value is equal to wages, there is nothing left for profit. That is not resolved by claiming as vulgar economics does, that the capitalist then sells the commodity above its value, i.e. moving the source of surplus value, established by Adam Smith, as being in production, into the realm of exchange.
“Let us assume that a worker's costs of subsistence in a given society can be expressed by the sum of three shillings. Then, according to the above-cited theory of the vulgar economists, the product of a day's labour has the value of three shillings. Let us now assume that the capitalist who employs this worker, adds a profit to this product, a tribute of one shilling, and sells it for four shillings. The other capitalists do the same. But from that moment the worker can no longer cover his daily needs with three shillings, but likewise requires four shillings for them. As all other conditions are assumed to have remained unchanged, the wages expressed in means of subsistence must remain the same, while the wages expressed in money must rise, namely, from three shillings to four shillings a day. What the capitalists take from the working class in the form of profit, they must give back to it in the form of wages. We are just where we were at the beginning: if wages determine value, no exploitation of the worker by the capitalist is possible.” (p 249)
In other words, the value of labour-power, and consequently wages, is determined by the use-values that the worker must consume to reproduce their labour-power. It is physically determined as a certain quantity of food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education and so on. As with a motor car, if you want it to drive 100 miles, and its fuel consumption is 50 miles per gallon, it has to have 2 gallons of fuel. It does no good to say it can only have £5 of fuel for the journey, if fuel is £5 per gallon! Similarly, it is no good looking at nominal wages in conditions where the value, or even just the price of wage goods have changed.
If the price of the given basket of wage goods now costs 4 shillings, it is no good saying that nominal wages have remained 3 shillings, because this 3 shillings will only buy 75% of the use-values physically required to reproduce labour-power. Real wages/living standards would have fallen, labour-power deteriorates, and its effective supply is reduced. This is the same point that Marx makes in Capital III, Chapter 47, in relation to the reproduction of capital as a whole. It is the physical use-values themselves that must be reproduced on a like for like basis, and, if there is any change in their value, it results in either a release or tie-up of capital.
“But the formation of a surplus of products is also impossible, for, according to our assumption the labourers consume just as much value as they produce. Moreover, as the capitalists produce no value, it is impossible to see how they are even to live. Yet if such a surplus of production over consumption, such a production and reserve fund, nevertheless exists, and in the hands of the capitalists at that, no other explanation remains possible but that the workers consume for their subsistence merely the value of the commodities and have relinquished the commodities themselves to the capitalist for further use.” (p 249-50)
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