Das Kapital

THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Nine
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Chapter Nine: The Rate of Surplus-Value
Contents
Section 1 - The Degree of Exploitation of Labour-Power
Section 2 - The Representation of the Components of the Value of the Product by Corresponding Proportional Parts of the Product itself
Section 3 - Senior’s “Last Hour”
Section 4 - Surplus-Produce
SECTION 1.
THE DEGREE OF EXPLOITATION OF LABOUR-POWER
The surplus-value generated in the process of production
by C, the capital advanced, or in other words, the self-expansion of the
value of the capital C, presents itself for our consideration, in the first
place, as a surplus, as the amount by which the value of the product exceeds
the value of its constituent elements.
The capital C is made up of two components, one, the sum of money
c laid out upon the means of production, and the other, the sum of money
v expended upon the labour-power; c represents the portion that has become
constant capital, and v the portion that has become variable capital. At
first then, C = c + v: for example, if £500 is the capital advanced,
its components may be such that the £500 = £410 const. + £90
var. When the process of production is finished, we get a commodity whose
value = (c + v) + s, where s is the surplus-value; or taking our
former figures, the value of this commodity may be (£410 const. +
£90 var.) + £90 surpl. The original capital has now changed
from C to C', from £500 to £590. The difference is s
or a surplus-value of £90. Since the value of the constituent elements
of the product is equal to the value of the advanced capital, it is mere
tautology to say, that the excess of the value of the product over the
value of its constituent elements, is equal to the expansion of the capital
advanced or to the surplus-value produced.
Nevertheless, we must examine this tautology a little more closely.
The two things compared are, the value of the product and the value of
its constituents consumed in the process of production. Now we have seen
how that portion of the constant capital which consists of the instruments
of labour, transfers to the production only a fraction of its value, while
the remainder of that value continues to reside in those instruments.
Since this remainder plays no part in the formation of value, we may at
present leave it on one side. To introduce it into the calculation would
make no difference. For instance, taking our former example, c = £410:
suppose this sum to consist of £312 value of raw material, £44
value of auxiliary material, and £54 value of the machinery worn
away in the process; and suppose that the total value of the machinery
employed is £1,054. Out of this latter sum, then, we reckon as advanced
for the purpose of turning out the product, the sum of £54 alone,
which the machinery loses by wear and tear in the process; for this is
all it parts with to the product. Now if we also reckon the remaining £1,000,
which still continues in the machinery, as transferred to the product,
we ought also to reckon it as part of the value advanced, and thus make
it appear on both sides of our calculation. We should, in this way, get £1,500 on one side and £1,590 on the other.
The difference of these two sums, or the surplus-value, would still be
£90. Throughout this Book therefore, by constant capital advanced
for the production of value, we always mean, unless the context is repugnant
thereto, the value of the means of production actually consumed in the
process, and that value alone.
This being so, let us return to the formula C = c + v, which we
saw was transformed into C' = (c + v) + s, C becoming C'. We know that
the value of the constant capital is transferred to, and merely re-appears
in the product. The new value actually created in the process, the value
produced, or value-product, is therefore not the same as the value of the
product; it is not, as it would at first sight appear (c + v) + s or £410
const. + £90 var. + £90 surpl.; but v + s or £90 var.
+ £90 surpl., not £590 but £180. If c = 0, or in other
words, if there were branches of industry in which the capitalist could
dispense with all means of production made by previous labour, whether
they be raw material, auxiliary material, or instruments of labour, employing
only labour-power and materials supplied by Nature, in that case, there
would be no constant capital to transfer to the product. This component
of the value of the product, i.e., the £410 in our example,
would be eliminated, but the sum of £180, the amount of new value
created, or the value produced, which contains £90 of surplus-value,
would remain just as great as if c represented the highest value imaginable.
We should have C = (0 + v) = v or C' the expanded capital = v + s and therefore C'
- C = s as before. On the other hand, if s = 0, or in other words, if the
labour-power, whose value is advanced in the form of variable capital,
were to produce only its equivalent, we should have C = c + v or C' the
value of the product = (c + v) + 0 or C = C'. The capital advanced would,
in this case, not have expanded its value.
From what has gone before, we know that surplus-value is purely
the result of a variation in the value of v, of that portion of the capital
which is transformed into labour-power; consequently, v + s = v + v', or
v plus an increment of v. But the fact that it is v alone that varies,
and the conditions of that variation, are obscured by the circumstance
that in consequence of the increase in the variable component of the capital,
there is also an increase in the sum total of the advanced capital. It
was originally £500 and becomes £590. Therefore in order that
our investigation may lead to accurate results, we must make abstraction
from that portion of the value of the product, in which constant capital
alone appears, and consequently must equate the constant capital to zero
or make c = 0. This is merely an application of a mathematical rule, employed
whenever we operate with constant and variable magnitudes, related to each
other by the symbols of addition and subtraction only.
A further difficulty is caused by the original form of the variable
capital. In our example, C' = £410 const. + £90 var. + £90
surpl.; but £90 is a given and therefore a constant quantity; hence
it appears absurd to treat it as variable. But in fact, the term £90
var. is here merely a symbol to show that this value undergoes a process.
The portion of the capital invested in the purchase of labour-power is
a definite quantity of materialised labour, a constant value like the value
of the labour-power purchased. But in the process of production the place
of the £90 is taken by the labour-power in action, dead labour is
replaced by living labour, something stagnant by something flowing, a constant
by a variable. The result is the reproduction of v plus an increment of
v. From the point of view then of capitalist production, the whole process
appears as the spontaneous variation of the originally constant value,
which is transformed into labour-power. Both the process and its result,
appear to be owing to this value. If, therefore, such expressions as “£90
variable capital,” or “so much self-expanding value,” appear contradictory,
this is only because they bring to the surface a contradiction immanent
in capitalist production.
At first sight it appears a strange proceeding, to equate the
constant capital to zero. Yet it is what we do every day. If, for example,
we wish to calculate the amount of England’s profits from the cotton industry,
we first of all deduct the sums paid for cotton to the United States, India,
Egypt and other countries; in other words, the value of the capital that
merely re-appears in the value of the product, is put = 0.
Of course the ratio of surplus-value not only to that portion
of the capital from which it immediately springs, and whose change of value
it represents, but also to the sum total of the capital advanced is economically
of very great importance. We shall, therefore, in the third book, treat
of this ratio exhaustively. In order to enable one portion of a capital
to expand its value by being converted into labour-power, it is necessary
that another portion be converted into means of production. In order that
variable capital may perform its function, constant capital must be advanced
in proper proportion, a proportion given by the special technical conditions
of each labour-process. The circumstance, however, that retorts and other
vessels, are necessary to a chemical process, does not compel the chemist
to notice them in the result of his analysis. If we look at the means of
production, in their relation to the creation of value, and to the variation
in the quantity of value, apart from anything else, they appear simply
as the material in which labour-power, the value-creator, incorporates
itself. Neither the nature, nor the value of this material is of any importance.
The only requisite is that there be a sufficient supply to absorb the labour
expended in the process of production. That supply once given, the material
may rise or fall in value, or even be, as land and the sea, without any
value in itself; but this will have no influence on the creation of value
or on the variation in the quantity of value.
In the first place then we equate the constant capital to zero.
The capital advanced is consequently reduced from c + v to v, and instead
of the value of the product (c + v) + s we have now the value produced
(v + s). Given the new value produced = £180, which sum consequently
represents the whole labour expended during the process, then subtracting
from it £90 the value of the variable capital, we have remaining
£90, the amount of the surplus-value. This sum of £90 or s
expresses the absolute quantity of surplus-value produced. The relative
quantity produced, or the increase per cent of the variable capital, is
determined, it is plain, by the ratio of the surplus-value to the variable
capital, or is expressed by s/v. In our example this ratio is 90/90, which
gives an increase of 100%. This relative increase in the value of the variable
capital, or the relative magnitude of the surplus-value, I call, “The rate
of surplus-value.”
We have seen that the labourer, during one portion of the
labour-process, produces only the value of his labour-power, that is, the
value of his means of subsistence. Now since his work forms part of a system,
based on the social division of labour, he does not directly produce the
actual necessaries which he himself consumes; he produces instead a particular
commodity, yarn for example, whose value is equal to the value of those
necessaries or of the money with which they can be bought.
The portion
of his day’s labour devoted to this purpose, will be greater or less, in
proportion to the value of the necessaries that he daily requires on an
average, or, what amounts to the same thing, in proportion to the labour-time
required on an average to produce them. If the value of those necessaries
represent on an average the expenditure of six hours’ labour, the workman
must on an average work for six hours to produce that value.
If instead
of working for the capitalist, he worked independently on his own account,
he would, other things being equal, still be obliged to labour for the
same number of hours, in order to produce the value of his labour-power,
and thereby to gain the means of subsistence necessary for his conservation
or continued reproduction. But as we have seen, during that portion of
his day’s labour in which he produces the value of his labour-power, say
three shillings, he produces only an equivalent for the value of his labour-power
already advanced by the capitalist; the new value
created only replaces the variable capital advanced. It is owing to this
fact, that the production of the new value of three shillings takes the
semblance of a mere reproduction. That portion of the working-day, then,
during which this reproduction takes place, I call “necessary” labour time,
and the labour expended during that time I call “necessary” labour.
Necessary, as regards the labourer, because independent of the particular social form of his labour; necessary, as regards capital, and the world of capitalists, because on the continued existence
of the labourer depends their existence also.
During the second period of the labour-process, that in
which his labour is no longer necessary labour, the workman, it is true,
labours, expends labour-power; but his labour, being no longer necessary
labour, he creates no value for himself. He creates surplus-value which,
for the capitalist, has all the charms of a creation out of nothing. This
portion of the working-day, I name surplus labour-time, and to the labour
expended during that time, I give the name of surplus-labour. It is every
bit as important, for a correct understanding of surplus-value, to conceive
it as a mere congelation of surplus labour-time, as nothing but materialised
surplus-labour, as it is, for a proper comprehension of value, to conceive
it as a mere congelation of so many hours of labour, as nothing but materialised
labour. The essential difference between the various economic forms of
society, between, for instance, a society based on slave-labour, and one
based on wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour
is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer.
Since, on the one hand, the values of the variable capital and
of the labour-power purchased by that capital are equal, and the value
of this labour-power determines the necessary portion of the working-day;
and since, on the other hand, the surplus-value is determined by the surplus
portion of the working-day, it follows that surplus-value bears the same
ratio to variable capital, that surplus-labour does to necessary labour,
or in other words, the rate of surplus-value, s/v = (surplus labour)/(necessary labour).
Both ratios, s/v and (surplus labour)/(necessary labour), express the same
thing in different ways; in the one case by reference to materialised,
incorporated labour, in the other by reference to living, fluent labour.
The rate of surplus-value is therefore an exact expression for
the degree of exploitation of labour-power by capital, or of the labourer
by the capitalist.
We assumed in our example, that the value of the product =
£410 const. + £90 var. + £90 surpl., and that the capital
advanced = £500. Since the surplus-value = £90, and the advanced
capital = £500, we should, according to the usual way of reckoning,
get as the rate of surplus-value (generally confounded with rate of profits)
18%, a rate so low as possibly to cause a pleasant surprise to Mr. Carey
and other harmonisers. But in truth, the rate of surplus-value is not equal
to s/C or s/(c+v), but to s/v: thus it is not 90/500 but 90/90 or 100%, which is more
than five times the apparent degree of exploitation. Although, in the case
we have supposed, we are ignorant of the actual length of the working-day,
and of the duration in days or weeks of the labour-process, as also of
the number of labourers employed, yet the rate of surplus-value s/v accurately
discloses to us, by means of its equivalent expression, surplus-labour/necessary
labour the relation between the two parts of the working-day. This relation
is here one of equality, the rate being 100%. Hence, it is plain, the labourer,
in our example, works one half of the day for himself, the other half for
the capitalist.
The method of calculating the rate of surplus-value is therefore,
shortly, as follows. We take the total value of the product and put the
constant capital which merely re-appears in it, equal to zero. What remains,
is the only value that has, in the process of producing the commodity,
been actually created. If the amount of surplus-value be given, we have
only to deduct it from this remainder, to find the variable capital. And
vice versâ, if the latter be given, and we require to find
the surplus-value. If both be given, we have only to perform the concluding
operation, viz., to calculate s/v, the ratio of the surplus-value to the
variable capital.
Though the method is so simple, yet it may not be amiss, by means
of a few examples, to exercise the reader in the application of the novel
principles underlying it.
First we will take the case of a spinning mill containing 10,000
mule spindles, spinning No. 32 yarn from American cotton, and producing
1 lb. of yarn weekly per spindle. We assume the waste to be 6%: under these
circumstances 10,600 lbs. of cotton are consumed weekly, of which 600 lbs.
go to waste. The price of the cotton in April, 1871, was 7¾d. per lb.;
the raw material therefore costs in round numbers £342. The
10,000 spindles, including preparation-machinery, and motive power, cost,
we will assume, £1 per spindle, amounting to a total of £10,000.
The wear and tear we put at 10%, or £1,000 yearly = £20 weekly.
The rent of the building we suppose to be £300 a year, or £6
a week.
Coal consumed (for 100 horse-power indicated, at 4 lbs. of coal
per horse-power per hour during 60 hours, and inclusive of that consumed
in heating the mill), 11 tons a week at 8s. 6d. a ton, amounts to about
£4½ a week: gas, £1 a week, oil, &c., £4½ a
week. Total cost of the above auxiliary materials, £10 weekly. Therefore
the constant portion of the value of the week’s product is £378.
Wages amount to £52 a week. The price of the yarn is 12¼d. per.
lb. which gives for the value of 10,000 lbs. the sum of £510. The
surplus-value is therefore in this case £510 - £430 = £80.
We put the constant part of the value of the product = 0, as it plays no
part in the creation of value. There remains £132 as the weekly value
created, which = £52 var. + £80 surpl. The rate of surplus-value
is therefore 80/52 = 153 11/13%. In a working-day of 10 hours with average
labour the result is: necessary labour = 3 31/33 hours, and surplus-labour
= 6 2/33.
One more example. Jacob gives the following calculation for the
year 1815. Owing to the previous adjustment of several items it is very
imperfect; nevertheless for our purpose it is sufficient. In it he assumes
the price of wheat to be 8s. a quarter, and the average yield per acre
to be 22 bushels.
VALUE PRODUCED PER ACRE
Seed
£1 9s. 0d.
Tithes, Rates,
and taxes,
£1 1s. 0d.
Manure
£2 10s. 0d.
Rent
£1 8s. 0d.
Wages
£3 10s. 0d.
Farmer’s Profit
and Interest
£1 2s. 0d.
TOTAL
£7 9s. 0d.
TOTAL
£3 11s 0d.
Assuming that the price of the product is the same as its value, we here
find the surplus-value distributed under the various heads of profit, interest,
rent, &c. We have nothing to do with these in detail; we simply add
them together, and the sum is a surplus-value of £3 11s. 0d. The
sum of £3 19s. 0d., paid for seed and manure, is constant capital,
and we put it equal to zero. There is left the sum of £3
10s. 0d., which is the variable capital advanced: and we see that a new
value of £3 10s. 0d + £3 11s. 0d. has been produced in its
place. Therefore s/v = £3 11s. 0d. / £3 10s. 0d., giving
a rate of surplus-value of more than 100%. The labourer employs more than
one half of his working-day in producing the surplus-value, which different
persons, under different pretexts, share amongst themselves.
SECTION 2.
THE REPRESENTATION OF THE COMPONENTS OF THE VALUE OF THE PRODUCT BY CORRESPONDING PROPORTIONAL PARTS OF THE PRODUCT ITSELF
Let us now return to the example by which we were
shown how the capitalist converts money into capital.
The product of a working-day of 12 hours is 20 lbs. of yarn, having
a value of 30s. No less than 8/10ths of this value, or 24s., is due to
mere re-appearance in it, of the value of the means of production (20 lbs.
of cotton, value 20s., and spindle worn away, 4s.): it is therefore constant
capital. The remaining 2/10ths or 6s. is the new value created during the
spinning process: of this one half replaces the value of the day’s labour-power,
or the variable capital, the remaining half constitutes a surplus-value
of 3s. The total value then of the 20 lbs. of yarn is made up as follows:
30s. value of yarn = 24s. const. + 3s. var. + 3s. surpl.
Since the whole of this value is contained in the 20 lbs. of yarn
produced, it follows that the various component parts of this value, can
be represented as being contained respectively in corresponding parts of
the product.
If the value of 30s. is contained in 20 lbs. of yarn, then 8/10ths
of this value, or the 24s. that form its constant part, is contained in
8/10ths of the product or in 16 lbs. of yarn. Of the latter 13 1/3 lbs.
represent the value of the raw material, the 20s. worth of cotton spun,
and 2 2/3 lbs. represent the 4s. worth of spindle, &c., worn away in
the process.
Hence the whole of the cotton used up in spinning the 20 lbs.
of yarn, is represented by 13 1/3 lbs. of yarn. This latter
weight of yarn contains, it is true, by weight, no more than 13 1/3 lbs.
of cotton, worth 13 1/3 shillings; but the 6 2/3 shillings additional value
contained in it, are the equivalent for the cotton consumed in spinning
the remaining 6 2/3 lbs. of yarn. The effect is the same as if these 6
2/3 lbs. of yarn contained no cotton at all, and the whole 20 lbs. of cotton
were concentrated in the 13 1/3 lbs. of yarn. The latter weight, on the
other hand, does not contain an atom either of the value of the auxiliary
materials and implements, or of the value newly created in the process.
In the same way, the 2 2/3 lbs. of yarn, in which the 4s., the
remainder of the constant capital, is embodied, represents nothing but
the value of the auxiliary materials and instruments of labour consumed
in producing the 20 lbs. of yarn.
We have, therefore, arrived at this result: although eight-tenths
of the product, or 16 lbs. of yarn, is, in its character of an article
of utility, just as much the fabric of the spinner’s labour, as the remainder
of the same product, yet when viewed in this connexion, it does not contain,
and has not absorbed any labour expended during the process of spinning.
It is just as if the cotton had converted itself into yarn, without help;
as if the shape it had assumed was mere trickery and deceit: for so soon
as our capitalist sells it for 24s., and with the money replaces his means
of production, it becomes evident that this 16 lbs. of yarn is nothing
more than so much cotton and spindle-waste in disguise.
On the other hand, the remaining 2/10ths of the product, or 4
lbs of yarn, represent nothing but the new value of 6s., created during
the 12 hours’ spinning process. All the value transferred to those 4 lbs,
from the raw material and instruments of labour consumed, was, so to say,
intercepted in order to be incorporated in the 16 lbs. first spun. In this
case, it is as if the spinner had spun 4 lbs. of yarn out of air, or, as
if he had spun them with the aid of cotton and spindles, that, being the
spontaneous gift of Nature, transferred no value to the product.
Of this 4 lbs. of yarn, in which the whole of the value newly
created during the process, is condensed, one half represents the equivalent
for the value of the labour consumed, or the 3s. variable capital, the
other half represents the 3s. surplus-value.
Since 12 working-hours of the spinner are embodied in 6s., it
follows that in yarn of the value of 30s., there must be embodied 60 working-hours.
And this quantity of labour-time does in fact exist in the 20 lbs of yarn;
for in 8/10ths or 16 lbs there are materialised the 48 hours of labour
expended, before the commencement of the spinning process, on the means
of production; and in the remaining 2/10ths or 4 lbs there are materialised
the 12 hours’ work done during the process itself.
On a former page we saw that the value of the yarn is equal to
the sum of the new value created during the production of that yarn plus
the value previously existing in the means of production.
It has now been shown how the various component parts of the value
of the product, parts that differ functionally from each other, may be
represented by corresponding proportional parts of the product itself.
To split up in this manner the product into different parts, of
which one represents only the labour previously spent on the means of production,
or the constant capital, another, only the necessary labour spent during
the process of production, or the variable capital, and another and last
part, only the surplus-labour expended during the same process, or the
surplus-value; to do this, is, as will be seen later on from its application
to complicated and hitherto unsolved problems, no less important than it
is simple.
In the preceding investigation we have treated the total product
as the final result, ready for use, of a working-day of 12 hours. We can
however follow this total product through all the stages of its production;
and in this way we shall arrive at the same result as before, if we represent
the partial products, given off at the different stages, as functionally
different parts of the final or total product.
The spinner produces in 12 hours 20 lbs. of yarn, or in 1 hour
1⅔ lbs; consequently he produces in 8 hours 13⅔ lbs., or a partial
product equal in value to all the cotton that is spun in a whole day. In
like manner the partial product of the next period of 1 hour and 36 minutes,
is 2⅔ lbs. of yarn: this represents the value of the instruments of
labour that are consumed in 12 hours. In the following hour and 12 minutes,
the spinner produces 2 lbs. of yarn worth 3 shillings, a value equal to
the whole value he creates in his 6 hours’ necessary labour. Finally, in
the last hour and 12 minutes he produces another 2 lbs. of yarn, whose
value is equal to the surplus-value, created by his surplus-labour during
half a day. This method of calculation serves the English manufacturer
for every-day use; it shows, he will say, that in the first 8 hours, or
⅔ of the working-day, he gets back the value of his cotton; and so on
for the remaining hours. It is also a perfectly correct method: being in
fact the first method given above with this difference, that instead of
being applied to space, in which the different parts of the completed product
lie side by side, it deals with time, in which those parts are successively
produced. But it can also be accompanied by very barbarian notions, more
especially in the heads of those who are as much interested, practically,
in the process of making value beget value, as they are in misunderstanding
that process theoretically. Such people may get the notion into their heads,
that our spinner, for example, produces or replaces in the first 8 hours
of his working-day the value of the cotton; in the following hour
and 36 minutes the value of the instruments of labour worn away;
in the next hour and 12 minutes the value of the wages; and that
he devotes to the production of surplus-value for the manufacturer, only
that well known “last hour.” In this way the poor spinner is made to perform
the two-fold miracle not only of producing cotton, spindles, steam-engine,
coal, oil, &c., at the same time that he spins with them, but also
of turning one working-day into five; for, in the example we are considering,
the production of the raw material and instruments of labour demands four
working-days of twelve hours each, and their conversion into yarn requires
another such day. That the love of lucre induces an easy belief in such
miracles, and that sycophant doctrinaires are never wanting to prove them,
is vouched for by the following incident of historical celebrity.
SECTION 3.
SENIOR’S “LAST HOUR”
One fine morning, in the year 1836, Nassau W. Senior,
who may be called the bel-esprit of English economists, well known, alike
for his economic “science,” and for his beautiful style, was summoned from
Oxford to Manchester, to learn in the latter place, the Political Economy
that he taught in the former. The manufacturers elected him as their champion,
not only against the newly passed Factory Act, but against the still more
menacing Ten-hours’ agitation. With their usual practical acuteness, they
had found out that the learned Professor “wanted a good deal of finishing;”
it was this discovery that caused them to write for him. On his side the
Professor has embodied the lecture he received from the Manchester manufacturers,
in a pamphlet, entitled: “Letters on the Factory Act, as it affects the
cotton manufacture.” London, 1837. Here we find, amongst others, the following
edifying passage:
“Under the present law, no mill in which persons under
18 years of age are employed, ... can be worked more than 11½ hours
a day, that is, 12 hours for 5 days in the week, and nine on Saturday.
“Now the following analysis (!) will show that in a mill so worked,
the whole net profit is derived from the last hour. I will suppose
a manufacturer to invest £100,000: — £80,000 in his mill and
machinery, and £20,000 in raw material and wages. The annual return
of that mill, supposing the capital to be turned once a year,
and gross profits to be 15 per cent., ought to be goods worth £115,000....
Of this £115,000, each of the twenty-three half-hours of work produces
5-115ths or one twenty-third. Of these 23-23rds (constituting the whole
£115,000) twenty, that is to say £100,000 out of the
£115,000, simply replace the capital; — one twenty-third (or £5,000
out of the £115,000) makes up for the deterioration of the mill and
machinery. The remaining 2-23rds, that is, the last two of the twenty-three
half-hours of every day, produce the net profit of 10 per cent. If, therefore
(prices remaining the same), the factory could be kept at work thirteen
hours instead of eleven and a half, with an addition of about £2,600
to the circulating capital, the net profit would be more than doubled.
On the other hand, if the hours of working were reduced by one hour per
day (prices remaining the same), the net profit would be destroyed
— if they were reduced by one hour and a half, even the gross profit
would be destroyed.”
And the Professor calls this an “analysis!” If, giving credence
to the out-cries of the manufacturers, he believed that the workmen spend
the best part of the day in the production, i.e., the reproduction or replacement
of the value of the buildings, machinery, cotton, coal, &c., then his
analysis was superfluous. His answer would simply have been: — Gentlemen!
if you work your mills for 10 hours instead of 11½, then,
other things being equal, the daily consumption of cotton, machinery, &c.,
will decrease in proportion. You gain just as much as you lose. Your work-people
will in future spend one hour and a half less time in reproducing or replacing
the capital that has been advanced. — If, on the other hand, he did not
believe them without further inquiry, but, as being an expert in such matters,
deemed an analysis necessary, then he ought, in a question that is concerned
exclusively with the relations of net profit to the length of the working-day,
before all things to have asked the manufacturers, to be careful not to
lump together machinery, workshops, raw material, and labour, but to be
good enough to place the constant capital, invested in buildings, machinery,
raw material, &c., on one side of the account, and the capital advanced
in wages on the other side. If the Professor then found, that in accordance
with the calculation of the manufacturers, the workman reproduced or replaced
his wages in 2 half-hours, in that case, he should have continued his analysis
thus:
According to your figures, the workman in the last hour but one
produces his wages, and in the last hour your surplus-value or net profit.
Now, since in equal periods he produces equal values, the produce of the
last hour but one, must have the same value as that of the last hour. Further,
it is only while he labours that he produces any value at all, and the
amount of his labour is measured by his labour-time. This you say, amounts
to 11½ hours a day. He employs one portion of these 11½ hours, in
producing or replacing his wages, and the remaining portion in producing
your net profit. Beyond this he does absolutely nothing. But since, on
your assumption, his wages, and the surplus-value he yields, are of equal
value, it is clear that he produces his wages in 5¾ hours, and your
net profit in the other 5¾ hours. Again, since the value of the yarn
produced in 2 hours, is equal to the sum of the values of his wages and
of your net profit, the measure of the value of this yarn must be 11½
working-hours, of which 5¾ hours measure the value of the yarn produced
in the last hour but one, and 5¾, the value of the yarn produced in
the last hour. We now come to a ticklish point; therefore, attention! The
last working-hour but one is, like the first, an ordinary working-hour,
neither more nor less. How then can the spinner produce in one hour, in
the shape of yarn, a value that embodies 5¾ hours’ labour? The truth
is that he performs no such miracle. The use-value produced by him in one
hour, is a definite quantity of yarn. The value of this yarn is measured
by 5¾ working-hours, of which 4¾ were, without any assistance
from him, previously embodied in the means of production, in the cotton,
the machinery, and so on; the remaining one hour alone is added by him.
Therefore since his wages are produced in 5¾ hours, and the yarn produced
in one hour also contains 5¾ hours’ work, there is no witchcraft in
the result, that the value created by his 5¾ hours’ spinning, is equal
to the value of the product spun in one hour. You are altogether on the
wrong track, if you think that he loses a single moment of his working-day,
in reproducing or replacing the values of the cotton, the machinery, and
so on. On the contrary, it is because his labour converts the cotton and
spindles into yarn, because he spins, that the values of the cotton and
spindles go over to the yarn of their own accord. This result is owing
to the quality of his labour, not to its quantity. It is true, he will
in one hour transfer to the yarn more value, in the shape of cotton, than
he will in half an hour; but that is only because in one hour he spins
up more cotton than in half an hour. You see then, your assertion, that
the workman produces, in the last hour but one, the value of his wages,
and in the last hour your net profit, amounts to no more than this, that
in the yarn produced by him in 2 working-hours, whether they are the 2
first or the 2 last hours of the working-day, in that yarn, there are incorporated
11½ working-hours, or just a whole day’s work, i.e., two hours
of his own work and 9½ hours of other people’s. And my assertion that,
in the first 5¾ hours, he produces his wages, and in the last 5¾
hours your net profit, amounts only to this, that you pay him for the former,
but not for the latter. In speaking of payment of labour, instead of payment
of labour-power, I only talk your own slang. Now, gentlemen, if you compare
the working-time you pay for, with that which you do not pay for, you will
find that they are to one another, as half a day is to half a day; this
gives a rate of 100%, and a very pretty percentage it is. Further, there
is not the least doubt, that if you make your “hands” toil for 13 hours,
instead of 11½, and, as may be expected from you, treat the work done
in that extra one hour and a half, as pure surplus-labour, then the latter
will be increased from 5¾ hours’ labour to 7¼ hours’ labour, and
the rate of surplus-value from 100% to 126 2/23%. So that you are altogether
too sanguine, in expecting that by such an addition of 1½ hours to the
working-day, the rate will rise from 100% to 200% and more, in other words
that it will be “more than doubled.” On the other hand — man’s heart is a
wonderful thing, especially when carried in the purse — you take too pessimist
a view, when you fear, that with a reduction of the hours of labour from
11½ to 10, the whole of your net profit will go to the dogs. Not at
all. All other conditions remaining the same, the surplus-labour will fall
from 5¾ hours to 4¾ hours, a period that still gives a very profitable
rate of surplus-value, namely 82 14/23%. But this dreadful “last hour,”
about which you have invented more stories than have the millenarians about
the day of judgment, is “all bosh.” If it goes, it will cost neither you,
your net profit, nor the boys and girls whom you employ, their “purity
of mind.” Whenever your “last hour” strikes in earnest, think
of the Oxford Professor. And now, gentlemen, “farewell, and may we meet
again in yonder better world, but not before.”
Senior invented the battle cry of the “last hour” in 1836.
In the London Economist of the 15th April, 1848, the same cry was
again raised by James Wilson, an economic mandarin of high standing: this
time in opposition to the 10 hours’ bill.
SECTION 4.
SURPLUS-PRODUCE
The portion of the product that represents the
surplus-value, (one tenth of the 20 lbs., or 2 lbs. of yarn, in the example
given in Sec. 2) we call “surplus-produce.” Just as the rate of surplus-value
is determined by its relation, not to the sum total of the capital, but
to its variable part; in like manner, the relative quantity of surplus-produce
is determined by the ratio that this produce bears, not to the remaining
part of the total product, but to that part of it in which is incorporated
the necessary labour. Since the production of surplus-value is the chief
end and aim of capitalist production, it is clear, that the greatness of
a man’s or a nation’s wealth should be measured, not by the absolute quantity
produced, but by the relative magnitude of the surplus-produce.
The sum of the necessary labour and the surplus-labour,
i.e., of the periods of time during which the workman replaces the value
of his labour-power, and produces the surplus-value, this sum constitutes
the actual time during which he works, i.e., the working-day.
Footnotes
1. “If we reckon the value of the fixed capital
employed as a part of the advances, we must reckon the remaining value
of such capital at the end of the year as a part of the annual returns.”
(Malthus, “Princ. of Pol. Econ.” 2nd. ed., Lond., 1836, p. 269.)
2. What Lucretius says is self-evident;
“nil posse creari de nihilo,” out of nothing, nothing can be created. Creation
of value is transformation of labour-power into labour. Labour-power itself
is energy transferred to a human organism by means of nourishing matter.
3. In the same way that the English use
the terms “rate of profit,” “rate of interest.” We shall see, in Book III,
that the rate of profit is no mystery, so soon as we know the laws of surplus-value.
If we reverse the process, we cannot comprehend either the one or the other.
4. Note added in the 3rd German edition.
— The author resorts here to the economic language in current use. It
will be remembered that on p. 182 (present edition, p. 174) it was shown
that in reality the labourer “advances” to the capitalist and not the capitalist
to the labourer. — F. E.
5. In this work, we have, up to now,
employed the term “necessary labour-time,” to designate the time necessary
under given social conditions for the production of any commodity. Henceforward
we use it to designate also the time necessary for the production of the
particular commodity labour-power. The use of one and the same technical
term in different senses is inconvenient, but in no science can it be altogether
avoided. Compare, for instance, the higher with the lower branches of mathematics.
6. Herr Wilhelm Thucydides Roscher has
found a mare’s nest. He has made the important discovery that if, on the
one hand, the formation of surplus-value, or surplus-produce, and the consequent
accumulation of capital, is now-a-days due to the thrift of the capitalist,
on the other hand, in the lowest stages of civilisation it is the strong
who compel the weak to economise. (l.c., p. 78.) To economise what? Labour?
Or superfluous wealth that does not exist? What is it that makes such men
as Roscher account for the origin of surplus-value, by a mere rechauffé
of the more of less plausible excuses by the capitalist, for his appropriation
of surplus-value? It is, besides their real ignorance, their apologetic
dread of a scientific analysis of value and surplus-value, and of obtaining
a result, possibly not altogether palatable to the powers that be.
7. Although the rate of surplus-value
is an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labour-power,
it is, in no sense, an expression for the absolute amount of exploitation.
For example, if the necessary labour = 5 hours and the surplus-labour = 5
hours, the degree of exploitation is 100%. The amount of exploitation is
here measured by 5 hours. If, on the other hand, the necessary labour =
6 hours and the surplus-labour = 6 hours, the degree of exploitation remains,
as before, 100%, while the actual amount of exploitation has increased
20%, namely from five hours to six.
8. The above data, which may be relied
upon, were given me by a Manchester spinner. In England the horse-power
of an engine was formerly calculated from the diameter of its cylinder,
now the actual horse-power shown by the indicator is taken.
9. The calculations given in the text
are intended merely as illustrations. We have in fact. assumed that prices
= values. We shall, however, see, in Book III., that even in the case of
average prices the assumption cannot be made in this very simple manner.
10. Senior, l.c., pp. 12, 13. We let
pass such extraordinary notions as are of no importance for our purpose;
for instance, the assertion, that manufacturers reckon as part of their
profit, gross or net, the amount required to make good wear and tear of
machinery, or in other words, to replace a part of the capital. So, too,
we pass over any question as to the accuracy of his figures. Leonard Horner
has shown in “A Letter to Mr. Senior,” &c., London, 1837, that they
are worth no more than so-called “Analysis.” Leonard Horner was one of
the Factory Inquiry Commissioners in 1833, and Inspector, or rather Censor
of Factories till 1859. He rendered undying service to the English working-class.
He carried on a life-long contest, not only with the embittered manufacturers,
but also with the Cabinet, to whom the number of votes given by the masters
in the Lower House, was a matter of far greater importance than the number
of hours worked by the “hands” in the mills.
Apart from efforts in principle, Senior’s statement is confused.
What he really intended to say was this: The manufacturer employs the workman
for 11½ hours or for 23 half-hours daily. As the working-day, so, too,
the working year, may be conceived to consist of 11½ hours or 23 half-hours,
but each multiplied by the number of working-days in the year. On this
supposition, the 23 half-hours yield an annual product of £115,000;
one half-hour yields 1/23 × £115,000; 20 half-hours yield 20/23 ×
£115,000 = £100,000, i.e., they replace no more than
the capital advanced. There remain 3 half-hours, which yield 3/23 × £115,000
= £5,000 or the gross profit. Of these 3 half-hours, one yields 1/23
× £115,000 = £15,000; i.e., it makes up for the wear
and tear of the machinery; the remaining 2 half-hours, i.e., the
last hour, yield 2/23 × £115,000 = £10,000 or the net profit.
In the text Senior converts the last 2/23 of the product into portions
of the working-day itself.
11. If, on the one hand, Senior proved
that the net profit of the manufacturer, the existence of the English cotton
industry, and England’s command of the markets of the world, depend on
“the last working-hour,” on the other hand, Dr. Andrew Ure showed, that
if children and young persons under 18 years of age, instead of being kept
the full 12 hours in the warm and pure moral atmosphere of the factory,
are turned out an hour sooner into the heartless and frivolous outer world,
they will be deprived, by idleness and vice, of all hope of salvation for
their souls. Since 1848, the factory inspectors have never tired of twitting
the masters with this “last,” this “fatal hour.” Thus Mr. Hovell in his
report of the 21st May, 1855: “Had the following ingenious calculation
(he quotes Senior) been correct, every cotton factory in the United Kingdom
would have been working at a loss since the year 1850.” (Reports of the
Insp. of Fact., for the half-year, ending 30th April, 1855, pp. 19, 20.)
In the year 1848, after the passing of the 10 hours’ bill, the masters
of some flax spinning mills, scattered, few and far between, over the country
on the borders of Dorset and Somerset, foisted a petition against the bill
on to the shoulders of a few of their work-people. One of the clauses of
this petition is as follows: “Your petitioners, as parents, conceive that
an additional hour of leisure will tend more to demoralise the children
than otherwise, believing that idleness is the parent of vice.” On this
the factory report of 31st Oct., 1848, says: The atmosphere of the flax
mills, in which the children of these virtuous and tender parents work,
is so loaded with dust and fibre from the raw material, that it is exceptionally
unpleasant to stand even 10 minutes in the spinning rooms: for you are
unable to do so without the most painful sensation, owing to the eyes,
the ears, the nostrils, and mouth, being immediately filled by the clouds
of flax dust from which there is no escape. The labour itself, owing to
the feverish haste of the machinery, demands unceasing application of skill
and movement, under the control of a watchfulness that never tires, and
it seems somewhat hard, to let parents apply the term “idling” to their
own children, who, after allowing for meal-times, are fettered for 10 whole
hours to such an occupation, in such an atmosphere.... These children work
longer than the labourers in the neighbouring villages.... Such cruel talk
about “idleness and vice” ought to be branded as the purest cant, and the
most shameless hypocrisy.... That portion of the public, who, about 12
years ago, were struck by the assurance with which, under the sanction
of high authority, it was publicly and most earnestly proclaimed, that
the whole net profit of the manufacturer flows from the labour of the last
hour, and that, therefore, the reduction of the working-day by one hour,
would destroy his net profit, that portion of the public, we say, will
hardly believe its own eyes, when it now finds, that the original discovery
of the virtues of “the last hour” has since been so far improved, as to
include morals as well as profit; so that, if the duration of the labour
of children, is reduced to a full 10 hours, their morals, together with
the net profits of their employers, will vanish, both being dependent on
this last, this fatal hour. (See Repts., Insp. of Fact., for 31st Oct.,
1848, p. 101.) The same report then gives some examples of the morality
and virtue of these same pure-minded manufacturers, of the tricks, the
artifices, the cajoling, the threats, and the falsifications, they made
use of, in order, first, to compel a few defenceless workmen to sign petitions
of such a kind, and then to impose them upon Parliament as the petitions
of a whole branch of industry, or a whole country. It is highly characteristic
of the present status of so-called economic science, that neither Senior
himself, who, at a later period, to his honour be it said, energetically
supported the factory legislation, nor his opponents, from first to last,
have ever been able to explain the false conclusions of the “original discovery.”
They appeal to actual experience, but the why and wherefore remains a mystery.
12. Nevertheless, the learned professor
was not without some benefit from his journey to Manchester. In the “Letters
on the Factory Act,” he makes the whole net gains including “profit” and
“interests” and even “something more,” depend upon a single unpaid hour’s
work of the labourer. One year previously, in his “Outlines of Political
Economy,” written for the instruction of Oxford students and cultivated
Philistines, he had also “discovered, in opposition to Ricardo’s determination
of value by labour, that profit is derived from the labour of the capitalist,
and interest from his asceticism, in other words, from his abstinence.”
The dodge was an old one, but the word “abstinence” was new. Herr Roscher
translates it rightly by “Enthaltung.” Some of his countrymen, the Browns,
Jones, and Robinsons, of Germany, not so well versed in Latin as he, have,
monk-like, rendered it by “Entsagung” (renunciation).
13. “To an individual with a capital
of £20,000, whose profits were £2,000 per annum, it would be
a matter quite indifferent whether his capital would employ a 100 or 1,000
men, whether the commodity produced sold for £10,000 or £20,000,
provided, in all cases, his profit were not diminished below £2,000.
Is not the real interest of the nation similar? Provided its net real income,
its rent and profits, be the same, it is of no importance whether the nation
consists of 10 or of 12 millions of inhabitants.” (Ric. l.c.,.p. 416.)
Long before Ricardo, Arthur Young, a fanatical upholder of surplus-produce,
for the rest, a rambling, uncritical writer, whose reputation is in the
inverse ratio of his merit, says, “Of what use, in a modern kingdom, would
be a whole province thus divided [in the old Roman manner, by small independent
peasants], however well cultivated, except for the mere purpose of breeding
men, which taken singly is a most useless purpose?” (Arthur Young: “Political
Arithmetic, &c.” London, 1774, p. 47.)
Very curious is “the strong inclination... to represent net wealth
as beneficial to the labouring class... though it is evidently not on account
of being net.” (Th . Hopkins, “On Rent of Land, &c.” London, 1828,
p. 126.)
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