Now, consider a different set of social relations. Suppose that society is characterised by slave production. Now, it may still be the case that A and B require 10 hours of this slave labour to produce them, and that the same 8 hours of labour is required to reproduce the labour-power of the slave. So, the slave undertakes 2 hours of surplus labour, which takes the form of a surplus product. But, in this case, the surplus labour does not take the form of a surplus value. Why? Because, if the society is divided entirely into slaves and slave-owners, it is only the latter that enter the market as buyers and sellers of commodities. The slave does not buy commodities, required for the reproduction of their labour-power, any more than does, say, a horse, or a machine. The slave either receives back from the slave owner a portion of what they have produced, or else obtains the equivalent in the form of other products, obtained by the slave-owner in the market.
But, in such a society, where it is only the slave owners that take commodities to the market, and who buy other commodities, in exchange, the question then arises as to what determines the value of those commodities? It is no longer the social labour-time required for their production, i.e. the 10 hours of labour by the slave, but only what it costs the slave owner to produce them, i.e. the 8 hours of labour required to reproduce the labour-power of the slave. More correctly, it is, in this case, the private cost of production for the slave owner that becomes the social cost of production, because it is only they that enter the market as producers and consumers of commodities. The slave, just like a horse or a machine, creates a surplus product, but this surplus product has no value. From the perspective of society, i.e. of the slave owners, it has no cost of production.
If slave owner 1 seeks to sell A, at a value equal to 10 hours, slave owner 2 will refuse to pay that price, on the basis that they could use their own slaves to produce it at a cost, to them, of only 8 hours. With multiple buyers and sellers in the market, all of whom are slave owners, competition between them would reduce the values of these commodities to their private cost of production, i.e. 8 hours. This does not change the fact that a surplus product is created, only that it does not take the form of a surplus value.
As Marx puts it, in The Grundrisse,
“In production based on slavery, as well as in patriarchal agriculture…..the slave does not come into consideration as engaged in exchange at all.”
(p 419)
and
“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.”
(p 489)
The only thing that obscures this reality is that in no society do we see a division, entirely, into slaves and slave owners. In all societies, a large number of people are engaged as independent labourers and commodity producers who, also, enter the market as buyers as well as sellers of commodities. Their private cost of production, therefore, is determined by the labour they expend on the production of the given commodity. Dependent on the proportion of such producers, as against the proportion of slave production, it is this expenditure of free labour that determines the value of commodities, and the more this is the case, the more the surplus labour takes the form of a surplus value. However, as Marx and Engels set out, if slave production can undercut those independent commodity producers, it, inevitably, ruins the latter, driving them out of the market, and, potentially, into slavery themselves.
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