(I should say I'm a :LIB: and am reading the abridged Julian Borchardt version of Capital, so maybe there's an excised chapter that explains this or maybe there's a later chapter that does - I'm currently reading Decade of the Rate of Profit from Part II, chapters 13-15)
It seems that he insists surplus value is directly related to variable capital (i.e. labour), but other than semantically defining it that way, is this necessarily so? From the capitalist perspective how is labour really any different from any other input?
For instance, if one has a theoretical FALSC-style factory with no labour, surely one could still add surplus value to goods?
For instance, if one has a theoretical FALSC-style factory with no labour, surely one could still add surplus value to goods?
i think first thing to note (cos its easy to forget) is that the ltv was only ever intended to be applicable to a capitalist mode of production with proletarianised labour, so in falgsc there is no reason it would necessarily apply
and im just gonna post an old comment i made on fairly much this same question, because its a question ive grappled with a lot as well:
the short easy answer is that you can swindle a person but you cant swindle a machine, which you pay for at its full value, but that doesnt fully answer the question.
people sneer at the "social construct" argument, but for me its the most compelling one. value here is a social relation between people within a particular economic system, its not a natural law baked into the fabric of the universe - this might seem like a trite point, but modern economics likes to try and obscure that (and honestly i think its a thought trap that marx sometimes falls into as well). youll note early in capital that marx explicitly emphasises that the ltv doesnt apply to a slave-labour mode of production, but only to one where people "freely" sell their labour-power on a labour market, and i think thats key. so why is proletarian labour valuable in a way that slave labour isnt? or animal labour or machine labour? the ltv will treat the cost of a slave, animal, or machine as essentially the same - the labour used to produce/raise them, and then the ongoing cost of providing inputs (food, fuel, maintenance, etc), and you can say aha! that seems awfully like the value of labour-power (especially for the 1860s proletarian). but the difference here is that the proletarian is someone inside the "social contract" of a society that is nominally for their benefit as well (even if they may be a second class citizen). they are the ones selling their labour-power at its socially-determined value and buying the fruits of production at their socially-determined value and they themselves form part of that determination. but more core than that, in a society for the benefit of full humans, the time and energy of those full humans is considered valuable in a way that the time of a machine or a slave is not.
the machine or working animal or slave exist purely for the benefit of others, not for the benefit of themselves. if theyre not doing something that benefits their owner (or undergoing maintenance/sleep to allow them to continue benefiting their owner), what is the point of their existence in societys eyes? in a slave society it is a nonsense to care about the labour-time of the slave - if they work 16 hours instead of 6, what is the loss (beyond possibly working them to death and losing your commodity)? and likewise the machine or labour animal, society does not put a value on their time as a thing in itself (only the additional fuel/maintenance costs).
but the free labourer acts for themselves, and their time has actual value for the other things that they could be doing instead. not least of which is to spend the time labouring to provide their own necessities as things to use for themselves, not as commodities. and in theory, if people were truly free and there were no restrictions, they could go out and till the land to provide for their own necessities and withdraw from the commodity system completely (which is exactly what happened in the settler colonies where land was "free" (*cough*) - it was hard to hire workers because everyone coming over would bugger off and start their own homestead instead, so proletarianisation had to be enforced with indentures and land costs etc). so their time working for an employer for money to buy commodities has to compete with time working for themselves to provide their own necessities, and also time for themselves for whatever sort of leisure - because that time is also socially valuable for a "free" labourer in a way that it isnt for a slave or a machine.
as "free" humans, we value our own time and effort, and society says that we are allowed to value them and expect a fair recompense - but theres just that inherent trick in there that is the core aspect of the capitalist system, where what it tells us is the fair recompense is just what we need to afford our living costs, and not actually related in any meaningful way to the amount of useful stuff we actually produce. and thats where you can swindle a "free" person but not a machine.
In addition to this, the upward pressure that proletarians apply to value is that they resist exploitation to some degree. Slaves, machines and animals do not push back against their exploitation.
Why is this relevant? Absent any proletarian resistance (in a FALGSC system or a slave society) the cost of a commodity would purely be the cost of inputs. There is no surplus value in a post-scarcity system. Everything is at-cost, even if they still used markets to organize production and distribution.
When proletarians demand a wage for their time, and later demand certain wage increases or benefits, this creates an increased cost to all producers in that system. A large cost that can be reduced to increase surplus value. The more ruthless and exploitative a producing employer is, the more comparative advantage they have over the other producing employers. Thus we can see how surplus value is linked inherently to the degree of exploitation of its proletarian workforce.
The flip side of course is that proletarians want high wages and low commodity prices, a contradictory arrangement. The also enforce this downward force on their own wages when they seek a cheap commodity. The downward force on their wages drives them to further seek cheap commodities. It’s a feedback loop and this is why the rate of profit falls. The entire system enforces a downward force on proletarian wages, and proletarian wages are where profits (surplus value) arises from.
This is one of the inherent contradictions of the capitalist system
I should say I’m a and am reading the abridged Julian Borchardt version of Capital
Any theory reading is good, not lib! Marx wrote in complicated sentences and often belabored a point until it became confusing. I strongly recommend companion material when reading Marx!
The gist of your larger question is really about the semantics of surplus labor value vs. the value created through both labor and fixed capital, e.g. a printing worker + a printing press. The paper published has added value to the raw materials and other inputs, obviously, and when automation comes along and removes the printer's job entirely, that fact won't change. This doesn't disagree with Marx's categorizations at all, in fact he leverages these facts in order to make his distinctions.
Surplus labor value is not the value produced by labor, it's a subset of it under capitalism: the part for which the laborer was not paid and that the owner keeps for themselves. In a system where automation were complete and nobody had to trade their labor with an owner, there can be no surplus labor value because there is no owner leveraging their capital to pocket the difference.
Capitalism depends on exactly what his relationship to function, it's the whole driving force behind the system: leveraging the accumulated productive assets (the means of production) to deliberately underpay labor so that they can pocket the difference and use it to buy even more capital (and yachts and caviar). In fact, the reason the system could overtake other systems to become dominant, according to Marx, is that it became possible to graduate past primitive accumulation (small-time merchants, etc) is through industrialization, through production advancing to a point where a worker is only involved in one small piece of production rather than creating whole products from inputs to selling. Through that process, the social relations become distinctly capitalist: the workers can only sell their labor, the capitalists can only gain through acquiring more capital and taking as much surplus labor value as possible.
Per Marx, labor is different from other inputs because exploitation, i.e. the reaping of surplus labor value, emerges from a social relation (the owner-worker class antagonism). With fixed capital, you're stuck with the flat rate of whatever it took to buy the widget. With labor, you can leverage social relations to decrease labor cost, specifically through owning capital and eventually having a monopoly on violence, e.g. cops and Pinkertons.
Thank you to everybody who responded. I'm not ignoring your posts, I think I need to think about them before responding as there's a lot here.
No, they can’t on the level of the whole economy. It’s either one or the other.
From capitalist perspective there is no difference, correct, but capitalists can’t underpay machines, their cost is fixed and known at the start of production.
No, they can’t on the level of the whole economy. It’s either one or the other.
Can you explain why this is? Why can surplus value be added to labour on the level of the whole economy but not to the work of a machine?
capitalists can’t underpay machines, their cost is fixed and known at the start of production.
Sure, but isn't surplus value only semantically linked to underpayment? Like couldn't you similarly argue the cost of labour (average across an economy) is fixed and known at the start of production as well?
Imagine whole economy of self-repairing machines. Where would people get money or conversely what would be purpose of exploitation in it? If everything is free, why take human labor at all?
No, its not semantic, it’s the core of the argument of where it comes from. If you take the whole economy, and each production would compensate their workers for products sold, how can you extract profit in it? Let’s say I invest 2 million in restaurant, and pay 200k a month to workers, receiving 400k in sales:
A) I recoup 2 million, continue to pay workers 200k, and start taking 200k to my pocket
B) I recoup 2 million, start paying workers 400k, don’t get profit
Which capitalist would choose?
Of course it’s known, capitalist expects profits and projects it. But argument is without exploitation, there is no profit for capitalist (as a whole)
Why can surplus value be added to labour on the level of the whole economy but not to the work of a machine?
Over simplified example incoming.
So... think of all the bills that a company has to pay to keep functioning as a business. Think about all the bills/costs that the company has the power to negotiate with.
Can a company underpay the electric bill and still get electricity from a power plant? Not for long.
Can a company underpay its suppliers of raw materials? Sure, but not for long.
So where can a company underpay its "bill" but continue to be a business? Worker wages. If an employee doesn't like the pay, they can leave and another employee replaces them.
You talk about robots. In a horribly ham fisted way, a freezer case in a grocery store is just a big robot that holds and keeps product frozen. It does nothing else. But the company can't get the freezer case until it spends a "fixed" amount of money to get the equipment installed. Then a relatively "fixed" amount of money to keep the electricity to the freezer cases powered. There really isn't any way for the company to "pay the freezer case less" and keep the extra as profit as after the initial cost of installation and maintenance the company pretty much stops spending money on it until it breaks. (I know I know, freezer cases don't actually make anything but I think the sloppy example is simple enough to still be useful.)
In your factory with no living labor, there could be a difference between the value of the output goods and the input materials/machines/whatever. The added value would not come from the machines, though. It would come from the labor from other factories that make a good with the same use-value. If society produced all of that good completely without labor input, then there would be no added exchange value when it is produced.