Part 3: The Production of Absolute Surplus Value
Chap 7: The Labor Process and the Valorization Process
1. The Labor Process
2. The Valorization Process
In the labor process, Marx goes through a very basic definition of labor: the application of effort directed towards an end.
He notes the simple elements of the labor process are 1) purposeful activity, 2) the object on which the labor is performed, and 3) the instruments of that work.
He notes that the means of production include raw materials and tools, each of which may products of prior labor themselves. Finally he notes that the labor process by which the capitalist consumes labor power exhibits two characteristic phenomena: first, the worker works under the control of the capitalist to whom his labor belongs; and second, the product is the property of the capitalist, not the worker, its immediate producer.
The product made by the capitalist has use value, but this only concerns the capitalist in as much as it can 1) be exchanged for money, 2) be exchanged for more money than it cost him- surplus value.
Value is determined by the amount of labor utilized to produce it.
Marx then examines a situation where the costs to produce end up equal to the price for which the commodity can be sold. No surplus value has been created. He narrates that the hypothetical capitalist is incensed. He is not content with the fact that he has produced value and can be recompensed, for him, the point was profit. Marx derides the arrogance of the capitalist for wanting the extra value.
Marx explains that a half day’s labor from the worker would cover the costs for the commodity. But getting a full day’s labor creates surplus value. So the capitalist takes advantage of the fact and uses labor to get more value out of the process than he put in. Marx calls the process of creating an equivalent value for which it can be sold as creating value. He calls creating surplus value- valorization.
Marx sees the first as a process of creating value, the second as merely creating quantities of objectified labor.
One video asks the question, which Marx is essentially asking too: Why does the capitalist get to keep the profit rather than the laborer, who created the product? The capitalist keeps the profit because he controls both the labor and the means of production, without which, the laborer wouldn’t be able to produce anything.
Chap 8: Constant Capital and Variable Capital
Marx spends 12 pages here to rename the process of creating value as ‘constant capital’, and the valorization process as ‘variable capital’. He does this, not because the values that are required under constant capital will remain constant, but that they are necessary in order for the production process. If those values aren’t met, there isn’t any point in producing, since it is a loss. Variable capital will of course vary in amount depending on any number of factors.
Chap 9: The Rate of Surplus Value
1. The Degree of Exploitation of Labor Power
2. The Representation of the Value of the Product by Corresponding Proportional Parts of the Product
3. Senior’s Last Hour
4. The Surplus Product
These were hard sections for me to follow, but in the first, covering the degree by which capitalists exploit labor, Marx starts with Capital beginning with the sum of money laid out on the means of production, plus money laid out on labor-power. At the end of the process, surplus-value gets added in, by having workers work for more hours than is necessary for their subsistence, which is an economic amount Marx considers necessary for them to remain alive and productive.
For Marx, variable capital is the necessary labor, and surplus-value is the surplus labor. He goes through equations and examples to demonstrate that the worker employs more than half his day in producing surplus-value. The constant capital divided by the variable capital, gives you the rate of productivity. This shows you how much labor is needed to provide a commodity. The less labor needed, means a more valuable commodity, since you are producing the same price product for less money.
If you measure the amount of surplus value divided by the amount of variable capital, this gives you the degree of exploitation.
Then, if you divide the amount of surplus value by the amounts of both constant, and variable capital, you get the profit. The rate of profit will always be less than the rate of exploitation, which means that when workers complain of too much exploitation, the capitalist will respond the profits are really low, and they could both be right.
The second section covers a breakdown of the product’s value by proportions. Again, he uses examples and plugs in numbers to arrive at 80% of the price is captured in use-value. But Marx also notes that within that 80%, a portion of that is the labor employed. A further breakdown shows that about 66% of the price is recovering means of production, 14% in labor necessary for price equilibrium, and 20% in labor that generates surplus-value.
The third section covers an analysis in 1836, by English economist Nassau Senior, in which he claims that in a mill where workers labor for 11.5 hour days, the mill only makes a profit on the last hour. Such that if a proposal to limit work days to 10 hours, the mill would lose money. Marx derides this a silly since the argument is predicated on an amount of raw materials based on a 12 hour day, rather than on a percentage of however many hours. If the mill were only operational for 10 hour days, rather than 12, the amount of the raw materials would shrink accordingly. The overall 20% that the capitalist would earn as surplus value on the work day would shrink by one sixth, but the 20% wouldn’t change.
The final section is only a few paragraphs, essentially stating that the relative magnitude of the surplus product is the important factor, not the absolute quantity of product produced.
Chap 10: The Working Day
1. The Limits of the Working Day
2. The Voracious Appetite for Surplus Labor. Manufacturer and Boyar
3. Branches of English Industry without Legal Limits to Exploitation
4. Day Work and Night Work. The Shift System
5. The Struggle for a Normal Working Day. 14th to end of the 17th century
6. The Struggle for a Normal Working Day. 1833-64
7. The Struggle for a Normal Working Day. Impact on other countries.
As Marx has discussed before, capital is derived from labor that goes above and beyond what is necessary for price equilibrium and worker maintenance. In this relatively long chapter, he discusses the length of the workday. Starting with the limits of the workday, the minimum would whatever is needed for worker maintenance. The maximum would of course be 24 hours, but recognizing that humans need rest, and food, etc, there is a necessary reduction from the 24 hours to meet those needs.
Marx notes that workers were paid a set amount per day, as opposed to our hourly wage. Capital has one sole driving force- to valorize itself by creating surplus value. “Capital is dead labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks”. If the worker consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist. Accordingly, the capitalist will stand on the law of commodity exchange and try to extract the maximum possible benefit from the use-value of his commodity. Marx gives a worker side argument based on that principle: maximizing the value of my commodity. The argument is that while the capitalist wants to maximize as much value as possible, the worker should so as well. And since the commodity of the worker is his labor, then he should steward that as carefully and not put himself in the position of being ripped off. Since the capitalist has preached saving and abstinence, as operating principles for the worker, so the worker should save his commodity and not waste it foolishly.
Marx notes the antinomy, the opposition of one rule to another, of right against right, both bearing the seal of the law of exchange. Between equal rights, force decides, and so ensues an extensive and meticulously documented recitation of abuses by capital against workers in the attempt to lengthen the work day and extract as much value as possible from labor.
He starts with a pre-capital example of serfs working on land owned by another. In that example, the serf was compelled to work a set number of days on the owner’s land, and the rest he could work his own land. At least in this arrangement, it was clear-cut when the serf was working for himself, and when he was working for the owner.
But then Marx goes through a long series of cases documenting the attempts of labor to dial back the working day, and the attempts of capital to lengthen it. The cases are horrific, and it goes on for 72 pages. The ultimate point is that capital does this because it is inherent in its nature to demand as much as possible.
Chap 11: The Rate and Mass of Surplus Value
Marx gets back to dry economics and formulas in this chapter. I’ll skip the formulas and aim for the principles. Marx first lays out that there is a mass surplus value consisting of the surplus value times the number of workers. This is going to consist essentially of the number of hours worked by each worker times the number or workers, and increases in one or the other can offset decreases in the corresponding opposite. For example, you can decrease the number of workers by simply increasing the length of hours that the remaining workers put in.
But since the extra hours squeezed out of one worker per day is more profitable than employing more workers, capital naturally gravitates towards squeezing as many hours out of as few workers as possible.
Capital, as a summary, has developed until it had command over labor. Then it developed into a coercive relationship that could require workers to do more than necessary. This appeared without needing to change the productive process at all, all the capitalist did was extend the work day.