William J. Blake: An American Looks at Karl Marx
Productive labor is the production of use-values. That is so in nature and in the relation of man and nature. In capitalist production, in so far as it is a collective process of work, no one person creates use-values, but he does so only as part of a group that by interaction creates these use-values. But from the viewpoint of the employer, or capitalist, a productive worker is one who turns out not use-values but surplus-value and that alone.
This is the social stamp of capitalism, and it is so pervasive that it carries through the texture of production. It is considered natural to close a factory that has turned out many use-values but no surplus-value.
We have learned that absolute surplus-value arises out of the distinction between the socially necessary labor-time devoted to the reproduction of a worker’s labor-power and the time he gives gratis to the capitalist.
The lengthening of the time devoted gratis is the absolute surplus-value. On the other hand, Marx has just exhibited the varied social implications of the more common mode of extracting surplus-value, the relative, which reduces the time devoted to the reproduction of labor-power by increasing its intense use. By the side of capital exhibiting itself in this form, we have survivals of domestic economy, merchant economy, etc., small masters, which are intermediate between the older system of labor relations and the highly developed ones. But these progressively diminish in importance.
Of course, relative surplus-value is nothing more than a detail of refinement of absolute surplus-value. The absolute surplus-value requires that production permits the worker to have enough surplus to divide. A certain technical level is minimal. Relative surplus-value cannot arise until that previous capacity has become a reality.
In primitive production man is limited by the natural or geographical possibilities of supplying means of subsistence; under capitalism he is limited by the instruments of labor. This difference is shown by the replacement of the fertile tropics by the less fruitful temperate zone as the seat of modern industry.
This recapitulation done, let us now study some changes in the magnitudes or quantitative differences in the price of labor-power and surplus-value.2 We begin with three determinants, length of the working day, intensity of work in any given time and, lastly, the degree of productivity which is dependent on the utilization of machinery, etc. Any of these three determinants may vary, or any two of them, or all three of them may alter. As they vary in degree as well, the combinations are nominally unlimited. Let us consider only the variations most frequently met.
Length of Working Day and Intensity of Labor Constant, Productivity Variable
Since value is labor-time, whatever the variations in the productivity, the value produced will be constant. The same value is spread over more articles if productivity increases, over less if it declines. But the value of labor-power is in inverse relation to productivity, so that the greater the productivity the more the surplus-value, the less the productivity the less the surplus-value.
The value of labor-power and the surplus-value must always move in opposite directions, each being opposed to the other. They can never rise or fall simultaneously. The interests of worker and capitalist are flatly contrary. Without a gain in productivity, in this instance, no increase in surplus-value is possible since the time and intensity of work are constant.3
Length of Working Day Constant, Productiveness Constant, Intensity Variable
The working day produces more value, but the very intensity that causes this greater value causes more wear and tear in labor, and so it requires greater value in labor-power to reproduce itself. The intensity of labor produces more commodities in its working day. Unlike the increased productivity in the former variation, where each commodity is worth less as productivity is increased, here the value of each commodity remains unchanged; as their number increases, so does the sum of their values. If the price of labor were not to increase with the increased intensity, then labor would really be robbed, that is, paid below value, that is, wear and tear not compensated.
The significance of this variation is not in the foregoing as much as in its exhibition of the need for a great elasticity in studying Marxian doctrine and the inadequacy of the learning of his formulas by rote. For here a given working day produces, as a result of the intervention of labor, not a constant but a variable value. Now if the value of a day’s labor increases from $6 to $8, then it is possible for the price of labor-power and surplus-value to rise simultaneously, each can take $1 more, for example. Why? Because labor here varies from its intensity in normal society. Note that Marx formulates a working day as constant and intensity as variable.
In other words, the meaning that a working day is constant applies only when a given intensity is the average, but when it is eccentric the temporary deviation from the social norm permits both labor and capital to take their compensation out of the market. But even a rise in the price of labor-power—in this case, increased wages—if it does not fully compensate the wear and tear of the worker, means that the worker is realizing a higher price but still is being paid below value.
Now it is a Marxist dictum that, with rare and passing exceptions, the changes in the productiveness of labor do not cause any change in the value of labor-power nor, therefore, in the quantity of surplus-value, unless the product so affected is consumed habitually by the workers. Yet here the productiveness of labor does cause such a change. Because when the variation is either in the duration of work (labor-time), or in the intensity of work (but not in productivity, due to machinery), then value is increased, no matter what the articles produced. But if that intensity becomes generalized (as it must if it endures), then this intensity becomes the social norm and so the Marxian law prevails once more.
Marx here shows that even his most cherished doctrines are descriptions of social production, and that wherever there are temporary deviations, even the most cherished formulations cannot ignore these small variations. They do not contradict his laws, rather they demonstrate their real validity, which is that in so far as any production of value is generalized, in that proportion do the Marxist principles hold. But there are comets in the heavens as well as stars and planets.
Productiveness and Intensity of Labor Constant, Working Day Variable
In this variation the creation of value by the worker is in exact relation to the length of the working day. The more hours the more value. Where the working day is shortened, as it cannot fall below the necessary labor-time to reproduce labor-power, it follows that any variation in the time worked would affect only the quantity of surplus-value. This would be true, of course, no matter what the rate of surplus-value.
If the day is lengthened only the surplus-value magnitude is increased, since the necessary labor-time already has compensated the labor-power. So far it looks like a restatement of absolute surplus-value, allowing only for variations in hours worked. But the third law is curious. The value of labor-power, not relative to surplus-value, but the value itself, can be diminished if the prolongation of the working day results only in an increase in surplus-value which thus, by not compensating the labor-power for the increased wear and tear due to longer hours, really takes away from it a part of its actual value.
So that, up to a given point, the increased wear and tear of a long day may be paid for in wages, but beyond that point labor is numbed, and every condition for its perpetuation is suppressed or injured. The price of labor-power no longer can compensate for such a degree of exploitation because the reward and the physiological destruction are no longer commensurable quantities.
Here Marx steps out of mathematical equations to show that the laws of value and surplus-value cease to be operative at a point where the worker is exploited to death’s door. At that point calculation ceases and biology enters. The worker fights for life: there is no longer any question of values to be compensated.
This is a second illustration of the realistic approach to political economy
Transmutation of Surplus-Value Time in Collectivist Economy
In a series of summaries in which he gives many further variations, in one of which he attacks the foundations of fact on which Ricardo based his celebrated theory of rent and diminishing returns, Marx makes a positive contribution to the theory of necessary working-time.
If the length of the working day were to shrink to what the worker required to reproduce his labor-power the capitalist system would vanish. But it does not follow that in a socialist community the necessary labor-time would merely be as long as it is now. For the notion of “means of subsistence” would expand. The laborer, by laying claim to a wholly different standard of living, would work more to produce a higher standard of consumption goods and more ample provision for production goods, so as to accelerate production.
A part of what is now counted as surplus-value would, of course, remain, in so far as it is a provision for reserves and accumulation. It is, then, not so much a question of how many hours would be worked as what would be the social reward for such efforts, in qualities and quantity, and how much a socialist order would create by way of increasing reserves instead of the serious wastes arising under capitalism from crises, competitive duplications, waste, corruption, war, etc.
The elimination of negative aspects of society, that is, all exploitation and all its social concomitants, would reduce the time by that now required to provide these negative features but, to the extent that a richer society was sought, more hours would have to be devoted. It would not be an arithmetical question; it would be a different social reality, not quantitatively comparable with a society based on wholly different assumptions.
The more the productivity of labor increased the more hours could be shortened. The more the working day were shortened the greater the intensity it could absorb, down to a given point. Capitalism, on the other hand, makes every business sharply economical, but squanders its resources in competition, social misuse of labor, diversion of consumption due to the obtaining of labor gratis, and the creation of superfluous employments brought about by the supersession of labor and the need to employ the surplus-value so obtained. Then again, the millions of idlers, wastrels, apologists, satellites, criminals, promoters, etc., could, by being added to the labor supply, appreciably cut down the average social time for production.
1. This chapter is more useful for students intending continued studies of Marxism than for the general course.
2. The following syntheses of all types of surplus-value are helpful but not essential to the introductory study of Marxist economic theory.
3. Ricardo formulated these laws. But he applied them to profit and not merely to surplus-value. As for Marx, with a given rate of surplus-value, one may have several rates of profit and with several rates of surplus-value a single rate of profit; it follows that he regards Ricardo’s formulation as too inclusive and confused.