Engels' analysis, in what follows, explains the source of the surplus value under capitalist production. This might seem to skip over the question, then, of the origin of the capital and surplus value in previous modes of production, i.e. the existence of what Marx calls the antediluvian forms of capital – merchant capital and usurer's capital, and, consequently, commercial profit and interest. It does not. This is one of those cases where its necessary to analyse the developed form of capital – industrial capital – and of surplus value and profit, and then work back from it. Suffice it to say, at this point, that surplus labour, and consequently surplus product and surplus value is not per se, specific to capitalism.
Engels sets out that the problem of the existence of surplus value, under capitalism, cannot be resolved by claims about commodities being sold above their value, by cheating etc. That kid of profit on alienation put forward by the mercantilists, and which also forms the basis of neoclassical economics, can explain the profit of this or that capital, but not of capital as a whole, because what is gained as seller is lost as a buyer. Even the mercantilists recognised the limits of that and only proposed it as a means of any given state enriching itself from trade based on unequal exchange, which formed a material basis for the creation of colonial empires, and the use of protectionism and monopoly. The ideas of the mercantilists continued in the ideas of Stalinists and Third Worldists, and, now, form the basis of the arguments of petty-bourgeois nationalists, Brexiters, Trump et al, as an era of growing protectionism and trade wars is a precursor to WWIII.
Engels sets out the solution provided by Marx, a solution which both he and Marx acknowledged had already been provided by Ferguson, Smith and Ricardo, but who had failed to recognise it, as they failed to distinguish between labour and labour-power. The industrial capitalist buys labour-power, as a commodity, at its value. That value is equal to the labour required for its reproduction, i.e. to produce the food, clothing, shelter etc. required for the reproduction of the worker. That may amount to, say, 8 hours labour, but, having bought the worker's labour-power for a day, the capitalist can employ it for 10, 12 or more hours during that day, creating 10, 12, or more hours of new value. Everything above the 8 hours of necessary labour, required to reproduce the worker's labour-power is surplus labour, and surplus value, appropriated by the capitalist.
But, this surplus labour and surplus value is not something that comes into existence with capitalist production. As soon as humans were able to raise the level of their productivity so as to produce more than required for their own immediate consumption, the excess constitutes surplus labour. As Marx sets out, in Capital III, what defines each mode of production, through history, is the means by which this surplus labour is pumped out of the labourer, and that also, then, determines the form and method of distribution.
Slavery is only possible when the slave can produce more than required for their own reproduction. Their surplus labour takes the form of a surplus product, not surplus value. The serf or peasant under feudalism can only pay a feudal rent, as tribute, to the Lord of the Manor, if they can perform surplus labour. It may take the form of corvee labour, time spent working on the land of the landlord, or, later, a rent in kind, comprising a quantity of their own surplus production, and finally, as feudalism dissolves, as an equivalent amount of money rent.
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