19, జనవరి 2012, గురువారం

An Introduction to Marx’s Capital—Part-8


(This is based on and mostly from “Marx’s Capital” written by Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho)

                            (For Part-7, please see the blog entry dated 18-1-2012)

Chapter-2—Commodity production

Labour and Labour Power

1.      In our previous study we have analysed the commodity to find out the social relations hidden behind it, and concluded that the value of a commodity is nothing but the socially necessary labour time required to produce it.We have found that the concrete labours that produced different use values at different workplaces are brought together and measured against each other as abstract, socially necessary homogenous human labour when those use values are exchanged in the market as commodities.

2.      But the exchange of commodities can occur even without capitalism. In a society of artisans, different artisans exchange their products as commodities and it is called as simple commodity production. But such exchange of commodities is not a daily, regular, predominant occurrence in simple commodity production.

3.       In capitalist society, the production is commodity production entirely, that is production of use values for exchang in the market as commodities to get profit.

4.        But what characterises capitalism is not the exchange of products between independent producers, but the purchase and sale of worker’s capacity to labour and its use in commodity production for profit. There is a distinction between the worker from his ability or capacity to work.

5.      To distinguish the worker from his ability or capacity to work, Marx called the latter as labour power and its performance or application as labour.

6.      The most important distinguishing feature of capitalism is that labour power becomes a commodity. The capitalist is the purchaser, the worker is the seller, and the price of labour power is the wage.

7.      The worker sells labour power to the capitalist, who determines how that labour power has to be excercised as labour to produce particular commodities.

8.      As a commodity, labour power has a use value, which is the creation of other use values. This property of labour power to create use values is common in all societies.

9.      However, in capitalist societies use values are produced for sale and hence embody value. We learnt previously that the value of a commodity is the socially necessary labour time (abstract labour time) required to produce it.

10.  In capitalist societies the commodity labour power which the worker sells to the capitalist for wage, has two kinds of use values: (a) it creates other use values (commodities), and (b) it is the source of value, as abstract or socially necessary labour time. No other commodity can create value, except the labour power, since value is nothing but socially necessary labour time for producing the commodity. In this, the labour power is a unique commodity in capitalism.

11.  The worker is not a slave in capitalism, since he owns and sells his labour power. But in many other respects the worker is like a slave. He has no control over his labour process which has to be done as decided by the capitalist who purchased his labour power. Though the worker has the freedom to refuse to sell his labour power, it is a partial freedom, since if he does not sell his labour power for wage, he has to face starvation and social degradation.

12.  On the other side to the class of the workers are the capitalists who control the workers and the products of their labour through their command on wage payments and ownership of means of production (raw materials, tools, machenes etc). The capitalist monopoly of the means of production ties the worker to the wage relation. If the worker owned the means of production or entitled to use the means of production independently of wage contract, there would be no need to sell labour power rather than the product on the market, and therefore, no need to submit to thee capitalist control both during production and outside.

13.  Now we see that the labour theory of value not only explains the distributional relationships established through the exchange of commodities (labour products), but also explains the more fundamental relations of production specific to capitalism, the sale and purchase of labour power, the labour power existing as commodity.

14.  Thus in capitalism, the social exchange of labour power for money, in addition to the exchange of the products of labour through the market, pre-supposes the monopoly of the means of production by the capitalists on the one hand, and the existence of a class of wage workers with no direct access to means of production on the other hand.

15.  This critical distinction between labour and labour power is never drawn in the mainstream economics. The mainstream economics uses a neutral terminology of   factor inputs and factor outputs. This terminology suggests that labour and capital are ‘inputs’, thereby reducing labour also to the status of a physical object. The terminology used by the mainstream economics for the worker is ‘human capital’ means it is part of the capital without any special or significant role and is an ‘input’ and not the creator of the product. The mainstream economics hides the fact that the selling of his labour power by the worker for wage to the capitalist is a specific historical class relation, which existed in capitalism and which did not exist in the earlier societies.

In capitalist society the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist to get profit is covered up and it appears as if profit is directly produced by the machinery or land owned by the capitalist. Like this, several realities appear in a different form covering those realities. Let us know about this in our next study.

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