The capitalist class do not sell commodities above their value, but at their value. In Capital II, Marx explains how the capitalist class sells all of these commodities at their value. The workers are paid the value of their labour-power, as wages. It is best seen by excluding the value of constant capital, which is merely preserved in current production. If the total new value of production is equal to 10 million hours of labour, wages are equal to 8 million hours, or 80% of total new value. Each commodity is sold to workers at its value, but, workers can only, thereby, buy 80% of what they produced. The other 20% is in the hands of capitalists.
If capitalists simply consumed the surplus product of their own production the question of realising its value would not even arise. But, of course, capitalist production does not work like that. Assume, however, then, for the sake of simplicity, there are just two commodities produced and sold, A and B. They each have a value equal to 1 million hours of labour. The capitalists who produce A require half for their own consumption, and seek to sell the other half to the capitalists who produce B. As Marx notes, the capitalists do not enter the market only with money to fund their purchases of elements of capital, but also, money to fund their own personal consumption.
Let us say that 1 hour of labour is equal £6. So, the capitalists producing A and B start off with £50 million each. Of this, they each advance £40 million in wages, but, each, then, has £10 million, which they throw into circulation simply to buy commodities for their own personal consumption. So, A capitalists throw £5 million into circulation to buy A commodities. What they spend as a consumer of A, therefore, comes back to them as a capitalist producer of A. They also throw into circulation £5 million to buy the B commodities they require for personal consumption, and that goes into the pocket of the capitalist producers of B.
But, the same applies to the capitalist producers of B. They simultaneously throw £5 million into circulation to buy their own B commodities, and another £5 million to buy A commodities. The first £5 million flows back into their own pocket, but the second £5 million flows into the pocket of A capitalists. At the end of this process of simple reproduction, all commodities have been sold at their value of £100 million. £80 million that had been paid as wages flows back to the capitalists, in payment for 80% of the total product in their hands. The capitalists, themselves, as consumers, rather than as producers, began with £20 million to fund their own consumption, and they throw this into circulation to fund that consumption of the remaining 20% of output. As capitalists, this £20 million flows back into their pockets too.
So, they have £80 million to fund wages in the following year, and they have £20 million in profits to fund their personal consumption in the next year.
“In Marx, the surplus-product as such has absolutely no cost of production; it is the part of the product which costs the capitalist nothing. If therefore the competing entrepreneurs desired to realise the surplus-product at its natural cost of production, they would have to give it away.” (p 274)
Which, as described earlier, is precisely what would happen in a society divided entirely into slaves and slave-owners. It is also what would be the case in a society where all production was undertaken entirely by machines, and so where no new value was produced. The point about commodity production and later capitalist production that distinguishes it from those conditions is the existence of free labour, and that the labourer, whether the independent commodity producer, or the wage-labourer, enters the market as both the seller and buyer of commodities.
No comments:
Post a Comment