Mr. Roscher's "Nature" and the exchange-value it produces are rather like the foolish virgin who admitted indeed that she had had a child, but " it was such a little one." This "savant serieux" in continuation remarks: " Ricardo's school is in the habit of including capital as accumulated labour under the head of labour. This is unskilful work, because, indeed, the owner of capital, after all, does something more than the merely creating and preserving of the same: namely, the abstention from Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 1 89 While productive labour is changing the means of production into constituent elements of a new product, their value undergoes a metempsychosis. Tt deserts the consumed body, to occupy the new^ly created one. But this transmigration takes place, as it were, behind the back of the labourer. He is unable to add new labour, to create new value, without a the same time preserving old values, and this, because th labour he adds must be of a specific useful kind; and he cannot do work of a useful kind, without employing products as the means of production of a new product, and thereby transferring their value to the new product. The property therefore which labour- power in action, living labour, possesses of preserving value, at the same time that it adds it, is a gift of Nature which costs the labourer nothing, but which is very advantageous to the capitalist inasmuch as it preserves the existing value of his capital.^ So long as trade is good, the capitalist is too much absorbed in money-grubbing to take notice of this gratuitous gift of labour. A violent interruption of the labour-process by a crisis, makes him sensitively aware of \i?
As regards the means of production, what is really consumed is their use- value, and the consumption of this use-value by labour the enjoyment of it, for which he demands, e.gf., interest." (1. c.) How very "skilful" is this '* anatomico-physiological method "of political economy, which, "indeed," converts a mere desire " after all " into a source of value.
1 "Of all the instruments of the farmers' trade, the labour of man...is that on which he is most to rely for the repayment of his capital. The other tvvo...the working stock of the cattle and the...carts, ploughs, spades, and so forth, without a given portion of the first, are nothing at all." (Edmund Burke: " Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, originally presented to the Right Hon. W. Pitt, in the month of November 1795," Edit. London, 1800, p. 10.)
2 In " Tlie Times " of 26th November, 1862, a manufacturer, whose mill employed 800 hands, and consumed, on the average, 150 bales of East Indian, or 130 bales of American cotton, complains, in doleful manner, of the standing expenses of his factory when not working. He estimates them at £6,000 a year. Among them are a number of items that do not concern us here, such as rent, rates, and taxes, insurance, salaries of the manager, book-keeper, engineer, and others. Then he reckons £150 for coal used to heat the mill occasionally, and run the engine now and then. Besides this, he includes the wages of the people employed at odd times to keep the machinery in working order. Lastly, he puts down £1,200 for depreciation of machinery, because " the weather and the natural principle of decay do not suspend their operations because the steam-engine ceases to revolve." He says, emphatically, he does not estimate his depreciation at more than the smaU sum of £1,200, because his machinery is already nearly worn out.
I go Capitalist Production.
results in the product. There is no consumption of their value/ and it would therefore be inaccurate to say that it is reproduced. It is rather preserved; not by reason of any 0[»eration it undergoes itself in the process; but because the article in which it originally exists, vanishes, it is true, but vanishes into some other article. Hence, in the value of the product, there is a re-appearance of the value of the means of production, but there is, strictly speaking, no reproduction of that value. That which is produced is a new use- value in which the old exchangevalue re-appears.2 It is otherwise with the subjective factor of the labour-process, with labour-power in action. While the labourer, by virtue of his labour being of a specialised kind that has a special object, preserves and transfers to the product the value of the means of production, he at the same time, by the mere act of working, creates each instant an additional or new value. Suppose the process of production to be stopped just when the workman has produced an equivalent for the value of his own labour-power, when, for example, by six hours' labour, he has added a value of three shillings. This value is the surplus, of the total value of the product, over the portion of its value that is due t.) the means of production. It is the only original bit of value formed during this process, the only yjortion of the value of the product created by this process. Of course, we 1 "Productive consumption...where the consumption of a commodity is a pert of the process of production...In these instances there is no consumption of value."
2 In an American compendium that has gone through, perhaps, 20 editions, this imssage occurs: "It matters not in what form capital re-appears;" then after a lengthy enumeration of all the possible ingredients of production whose value reappears in the product, the passage concludes thus: "The various kinds of food, clothing, and shelter, necessary for the existence and comfort of the human being, are also changed. They are consumed from time to time, and their value re-appears in that new vigour imparted to his body and mind, forming fresh capital, to be employed again in the work of production." (F. Wayland, 1. c. pp. 31, 32 ) Without noticing any other oddities, it suflBces to observe, that what re-appears in the fresh vigour, is not the bread's price, but its blood-forming substances. What, on the other hand, re-appears in the value of that vigour, is not the means of subsistence, but their value. The same necessaries of life, at half the price, would form just as much muscle and bone, just as much vigour, but not vigour of the same value. This confusion of " value " and "vigour " coupled with our author's pharisaical indefiniteness, mark an attempt, futile for all that, to thrash out an explanation of surplusvalue from a mere re-appearance of pre-existing values.
Constant Capital and Variable Capital, 1 9 1 do not forget that this new value only replaces the money advanced by the capitalist in the purchase of the labour-power, and spent by the labourer on the necessaries of life. With regard to the money spent, the new value is merely a reproduction; but, nevertheless, it is an actual, and not, as in the case of the value of the means of production, only an apparent, reproduction. The substitution of one value for another, is here effected by the creation of new value.
We know, however, from what has gone before, that the labour-process may continue beyond the time necessary to reproduce and incorporate in the product a mere equivalent for the value of the labour-power. Instead of the six hours that are sufficient for the latter purpose, the process may continue for twelve hours. The action of labour-power, therefore, not only reproduces its own value, but produces value over and above it. This surplus-value is the difference between the value of the product and the value of the elements consumed in the formation of that product, in other words, of the means of production and the labour-power.
By our explanation of the different parts played by the various factors of the labour-process in the formation of the product's value, we have, in fact, disclosed the characters of the different functions allotted to the different elements of capital in the process of expanding its own value. The surplus of the total value of the product, over the sum of the values of its constituent factors, is the surplus of the expanded capital over the capital originally advanced. The means of production on the one hand, labour-power on the other, are merely the different modes of existence which the value of the original capital assumed when from being money it was transformed into the various factors of the labour-process. That part of capital then, which is represented by the means of production, by the raw material, auxiliary material and the instruments of labour, does not, in the process of production, undergo any quantitative alteration of value. I therefore call it the constant part of capital, or, more shortly, constant capital.
On the other hand, that part of capital, represented by labour-power, does, in the process of production, undergo an r92 Capitalist Production.
alteration of value. It both reproduces the equivalent of its; own value, and also produces an excess, a surplus-value, which may itself vary, may be more or less according to circumstances. This part of capital is continually being transformed from a constant into a variable magnitude. I therefore call it the variable part of capital, or, shortly, variable capital. The same elements of capital which, from the point of view of the labour-process, present themselves respectively as the objective and subjective factors, as means of production and labourpower, present themselves, from the point of view of the process of creating surplus-value, as constant and variable capital. The definition of constant capital given above by no means excludes the possibility of a change of value ia its elements.
Sup]30se the price of cotton to be one day sixpence a pound, and the next day, in consequence of a failure of the cotton crop, a shilling a pound. Each pound of the cotton bought at sixpence, and worked up after tlie rise in value, transfers to the product a value of one shilling; and the cotton already spun before the rise, and perhaps circulating in the market as yarn, likewise transfers to the product twice its original value. It is plain, however, that these changes of value are independent of the increment or surplus-value added to the value of the cotton by the spinning itself. If the old cotton had never been spun, it could, after the rise, be resold at a shilling a pound instead of at sixpence. Further, the fewer the processes the cotton has gone through, the more certain is this result.
We therefore find that speculators make it a rule when such sudden changes in value occur, to speculate in that material on which the least possible quantity of labour has been spent: to speculate, therefore, in yarn rather than in cloth, in cotton itself, rather than in yarn. The change of value in the case we have been considering, originates, not in the process in which the cotton plays the part of a means of production, and in which it therefore functions as constant capital, but in the process in which the cotton itself is produced. The value of a commodity, it is true, is determined by the quantity of labour contained in it, but this quantity is itself limited by social conditions. If the time socially necessary for the production of any com- Const a7it Capital and Variable Capital 193 modity alters — and a given weight of cotton represents, after a bad harvest, more labour than after a good one — all previously existing commodities of the same class are affected, because they are, as it were, only individuals of the species,^ and their value at any given time is measured by the labour sociall}^ necessary, i.e., by the labour necessary for their production under the then existinor social conditions.
As the value of the raw material may change, so, too, may that of the instruments of labour, of the machinery, &c., employed in the process; and consequently that portion of the value of the product transferred to it from them, may also change. If in consequence of a new invention, machinery of a particular kind can be produced by a diminished expenditure of labour, the old machinery becomes depreciated more or less, and consequently transfers so much less value to the product. But here again, the change in value originates outside the process in which the machine is acting as a means of production. Once engaged in this process, the machine cannot transfer more value than it possesses apart from the process.
Just as a change in the value of the means of production, even after they have commenced to take a part in the labour process, does not alter their character as constant capital, so, too, a change in the proportion of constant to variable capital does not affect the respective functions of these two kinds of capital. The technical conditions of the labour process may be revolutionised to such an extent, that where formerly ten men using tin implements of small value worked up a relatively small quantity of raw material, one man may now, with the aid of one expensive machine, work up one hundred times as much raw material. In the latter case wo have an enormous increase in the constant cai)ital, that is represented by the total value of the means of production used, and at the same time a great reduction in the variable ca})ital, invested in labour-power. Such a revolution, however, alters only the quantitative relation between the constant and the 1 "Toutes les productions d'un meme genre ne foment proprement qu'une masse, dont le prix se determine eu general et sans egard aux circonstauces particulieres. " N 194 Capitalist Production, variable capital, or the proportions in which the total capital is split up into its constant and variable constituents; it has not in the least degree affected the essential difference between the two.
CHAPTER IX.
THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE.
SECTION 1. — THE DEGREE OP EXPLOITATION OP 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=(c4-v) + s, where s is the surplus- value; or taking our former figures, the value of this commodity may be (£410 const. -f £90 var.) + £90 surpl. The original capital has now changed from C to C, from £500 to £590. The difference is 8 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. Tlie 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 product 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-i-v, which we saw was transformed into C =(c -h v) -f 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 valueproduct, is therefore not the same as the value of the product; it is not, as it would at first sight appear (c-|-v)-f s or £410 1 " If we reckon the value of the fixed capital employed as a part of the advances, Tre 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."2nded.,Lond., 1836, p. 269.)
ig6 Capitalist Production.
const. + £90 var. 4-^90 surpl.; bat v-hs or £90 var.-f£90 surpL not £590 but £180. If c=o, or in other words, if there were branches of industry in which the capitahst could dispense with all means of production made by previous labour, whether tliey 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 pn)duct. This component of the value of the product, Le,y the £410 in our example, would be eliminated, but the sum of £180, the amount of new value ci^ated, 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-f 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, weie to pioduce only its equivalent, we should have C=c4v or C the value of the product==(c-fv)+0 or C=Cr. 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 \7henever 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 The Rate of Surplus-value, 197 + £00 surpl.; but £90 is a given and therefore a constant quantity; hence it appears absurd to treat it as variable. But in fact, the terra £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 selfexpanding 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 19^ Capitalist Production.
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 an}^ importance. The only requisite is that there be a sufficient supply to absorb the labour expended in the process of production. Tliat 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)4s we have now the value produced (v-f s). Given the new value produced = fl80, 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 surplusvalue to the variable capital, or is expressed by *. In our example this ratio is %%, 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 Jiis means of subsistence. Now since his 1 What Lucretius says is self-evident; " nil posse creari de nihilo," oat 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.
2 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.
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 labourtime 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 take place, I call " necessai^ " 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 labcjur-process, that in 1 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.
200 Capitalist Production.
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 surpluslabour-time, as nothing but materialised surplus-labour, as it is, for a pi'oper 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.^