(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.
కామెంట్లు లేవు:
కామెంట్ను పోస్ట్ చేయండి