For the reasons set out earlier, because the Physiocrats equate use-value with value, they also equate the value created by labour with the value of labour-power, and they equate the value of labour-power with the value of the agricultural products consumed by the labourer. That is why they cannot see the possibility of the industrial labourer producing a surplus value. In other words, industry obtains agricultural products as raw materials and food, and the value of the output of industry cannot be greater than the value of these agricultural inputs. It simply transforms them into industrial products.
“Although it is itself divided into capitalists and wage-workers, according to Quesnay's basic conception, it forms an integral class which is in the pay of the productive class and of the landlords.” (p 318)
The landlords are included, here, because, as set out earlier, industry does not just sell to the farmers, but also to the landlords. The landlords, however, buy from industry with 1 milliard of the rent received from the farmers. As will be seen, this 1 milliard, eventually, finds its way back to the farmers, by way of industry, which buys agricultural products with it.
“The total industrial production, and consequently also its total circulation, which is distributed over the year following the harvest, is likewise combined into a single whole. It is therefore assumed that the annual commodity production of the sterile class is entirely in its hands, at the beginning of the movement set out in the Tableau, and consequently that its whole working capital, consisting of raw materials to the value of one milliard, has been converted into goods to the value of two milliards, one-half of which represents the price of the means of subsistence consumed during this transformation.” (p 318)
So, as described earlier, for the Physiocrats, the value of the industrial production resolves into the value of the raw materials plus the value of the labour expended on processing them. But, in fact, the value of “labour”, here, is actually the value of the labour-power, i.e. the cost of reproducing the labourer. The actual value added to the raw material in the process of production is equal not to the value of labour-power, but to the amount of labour undertaken. Indeed, that is the case with agricultural production as well as industrial production. It is the fact that this quantity of labour undertaken is greater than the necessary labour required to reproduce the labourer that results in the creation of surplus value, both in agricultural production and industrial production.
It is this that explains what might appear as an objection, and which the Physiocrats could only explain by arguing that the “sterile class” sells part of its output to the farmers above its value. In other words, the sterile class consumes part of its own production. If the value of its total production is equal to the value of raw materials and food obtained from the farmers, it should sell all of its output to the farmers – an exchange of equal values. But, it doesn't. It consumes part itself. So, the other part, sold to farmers, must be sold above its value – an unequal exchange. In reality, the towns did sell commodities to rural areas above their values, but that is not the real explanation, here. The real explanation is that the value of the industrial production is greater than the value of raw materials and wages. It is greater by the amount of surplus value created by the industrial labour.
“This, however, does not affect the figures of the Tableau, for the two other classes receive manufactured goods only to the value of their total production.” (p 319)
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