Something for Nothing

We saw in the previous article that exchange itself is not the cause of capitalist profit, and we posed the question—from whence comes this profit?

Let us take again the example of our capitalist who has purchased raw material, machinery and workers’ energies. Obviously the inert material and machinery cannot enhance their own value, they are factors which are constant. Furthermore our capitalist has paid the proper market price for them, thus ruling out any gain in exchange, and he now wishes to transfer their value into the fresh product, together with the new labour of the workers he has employed.

Here lies the crux of the question—does our value for value proposition—hold good here? Do workers get the value of their ability to work? All through we have presented Capitalism as a system whose whole activity centres around the production and sale of commodities and the plain answer to the question is that the workers’ abilities prove no exception to the rules of capitalist production.

The worker appears on the labour-market offering his abilities for a price or wage, his offer is taken up by the capitalist who has use for them, paying in exchange the price then ruling on the market. Thus the power to work, or labour-power, takes on qualities of a commodity—it is produced for sale—it has no use-value to its owner, and it will be a use-value to the consumer or buyer.

But labour-power has a characteristic unlike any of the inert purchases bought by our capitalist, for this living thing can produce value over and above its own. The problem is solved. The value of labour-power is based on the labour-time spent on the food, clothing and shelter necessary to produce it, which value finds its monetary expression in wages. If we therefore subtract the value of these “means of subsistence” from the total value that the worker produces, there is a surplus of value left over to be realised by the capitalist when he markets the product.

Our use of the term labour-power arises because the worker does not—as is usually supposed—sell his labour to the capitalist. The labour expended by the worker goes into the products of the employer and in these the worker has neither ownership nor right of disposal. Actually the owner claims the right to all labour performed within his control during the time that the worker “contracts” over to him the use and disposal of his labour-power. Another aspect of the sale of labour-power is that the worker usually credits the capitalist with a week’s labour-power before being paid for it, the capitalist thereby having a week’s labour in hand before being called upon to settle the wage-bill.

We earlier on said that the value of the workers’ means of subsistence is the labour time necessary to produce it; we can therefore divide the working-day into “necessary labour” equalling the value of the workers’ labour-power, while the rest of the day is surplus-labour. In effect the worker produces value equal to his day’s wage in say, three hours, the remaining time being spent producing surplus-value for his employer. The ratio of necessary-labour to surplus-labour tends to become progressively smaller as the means of production increase and more wealth is turned out with the same or less labour, in other words, the gap between the workers’ subsistence and the “rake-off” taken by tho boss, becomes increasingly greater. As subsistence is in money terms, the worker must keep incessant watch on his ’’real wage,” i.e., its purchasing power, be his “nominal wage” what it may. A general rise in prices, for instance, will tend to leave him selling his labour-power below its value, and this, if for no other reason is why he must unite with others in a union with the withdrawal of labour-power as his final weapon, to hold his nominal or money-wage in line with his real-wage, for he and his like are the sport of the market in which a change of price level affects immediately the standard of living.

Whilst the slave of old was owned outright by his owner, the modern worker affects to be a “free man,” selling, like any other trader, a commodity for which he asks but a fair price in line with its value. As such he suffers all the vicissitudes of the market; he must accept as inevitable, overwork during the boom, unemployment during the slump, along with the regimentation of himself and his family in times of crises when even the right to bargain the price of his commodity is withdrawn by law. Machinery, which should lighten his labours, becomes his rival when installed to “save labour”—his labour and his job—whereupon more often than not, his wife plus children of “working age” are—to balance the family budget—thrust upon the market as his competitors in cheap labour-power.

There is no escape from this market in labour-power, even where it comes under the control of the planners of state capitalism, for the relationship of wage worker-employer, is not thereby abolished. In truth the worker is the slave of capital, a unit of the living labour force which enters the process of commodity production as part of the capital costs necessary to gain for the capitalists—something for nothing. How the capitalists share the gains of the workers’ exploitation will be sketched in our next article, “The Division of the Spoils.”

F. D.