On “Labor Power” and the Source of Surplus Value

E. On “Labor Power” and the Source of Surplus Value

In the 1847 version of The Poverty of Philosophy there is mention only of labor not labor-power. Similarly, the original version of the pamphlet “Wage Labour and Capital” (1849), refers only to labor, treating the wage – in Ricardian fashion – in the manner of all other prices: “Wages . . . are the price of a definite commodity, of labour [1891: labour power]. Wages are, therefore, determined, by the same laws that determine the price of every other commodity” (MECW 9: 204). This state- ment – the editorial amendments of 1891 are by Engels – refers back to a summary formulation whereby “wages are the sum of money paid by the bourgeois [1891: capitalist] for a particular labour time or for a particular output of labour” (201): “The bourgeois [1891: capitalist it seems], therefore, buys their labour with money. They sell him their labour for money. [1891: But this is merely the appearance. In reality what they sell to the capitalist for money is their labour power. The capitalist buys this labour power for a day, a week, a month, etc. And after he has bought it, he uses it by having the workers work for the stipulated time.]” As in 1847, the wage rate (subject to fluctuations) is determined by subsistence costs: “Within these fluctuations, however, the price of labour will be determined by the cost of pro- duction, by the labour time necessary to produce this commodity − labour [1891: labour power]” (209). Here allowance is made for training: “What, then, is the cost of production of labour [1891: labour power]? It is the cost required for maintaining the worker as a worker and for developing him into a worker. The less the period of training, therefore, that any work requires the smaller is the cost of production of the worker and the lower is the price of his labour, his wages.” Where apprentice- ship is not required “and where the mere bodily existence of the worker suffices, the

16 The insertion relates to Marx’s correction at some later time though before 1876.

A “First Draft” of Capital 1847–1849 cost necessary for his production is almost confined to the commodities necessary

for keeping him alive [1891: and capable of working].” 17 Allowance is also made for wear and tear: “in calculating the cost of production of simple labour [1891: labour power], there must be included the cost of reproduction, whereby the race of workers is enabled to multiply and to replace worn-out workers by new ones.” In sum, “[t]he cost of production of simple labour [1891: labour power],” therefore, amounts to the cost of existence and reproduction of the worker. The price of this cost of existence and reproduction constitutes wages. Wages so determined are called the wage minimum.” 18

The concept of wage advances is conspicuous in the 1849 document: “Wages are, therefore, not the worker’s share in the commodity produced by him. Wages are the part of the already existing commodities with which the capitalist buys for himself a

definite amount of productive labour [1891: labour power]” (202). 19 And “the sale of labour,” or “the worker’s own life-activity” − “a commodity . . . made over to another” − is undertaken “in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence.” (This is later reworded by Engels: “the exercise of labour power, labour, is the worker’s own life-activity . . . ” and “the commodity” that is sold to the capitalist is “labour power.”) In both versions “free labour” is contrasted with the slave and the serf, the free laborer selling “himself piecemeal” (203), or: “sell[ing] at auction eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his life, day after day, to the highest bidder, to the owner of the raw materials, instruments of labour and means of subsistence, that is, to the capitalist. The worker belongs neither to an owner nor to the land, but eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his daily life belong to him who buys them. The worker . . . belongs not to this or that bourgeois, but to the bourgeoisie, the bourgeois class [1891: not to this or that capitalist, but to the capitalist class], and it is his business to dispose of himself, that is to find a purchaser within this bourgeois [1891: capitalist] class.” 20

The notion of labor as “the worker’s own life-activity,” or that of the free laborer’s selling “at auction eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his life . . . [which]

17 On the tendency of training costs to decline with simplification of the labor process, see pp. 203–4, 216.

18 A further stipulation is that “[t]his wage minimum, like the determination of the price of commodities by the cost of production in general, does not hold good for the single individual

but for the species. Individual workers, millions of workers, do not get enough to be able to exist and reproduce themselves; but the wages of the whole working class level down, within their fluctuations, to this minimum” (MECW 9: 209–10). A similar qualification applies to industry (note 10). 19 But in a subsequent formulation focusing on wages relative to profits, we encounter what may

be a modification regarding the advance of wages: “relative wages . . . express the price of direct labour in relation to the price of accumulated labour, the relative value of wage labour and capital, the reciprocal value of the capitalist and worker” (MECW 9: 218). 20 Marx proceeds to the famous observation: “If the silkworm were to spin in order to continue its existence as a caterpillar, it would be a complete wage-worker” (MECW 9: 203). Rubel observes that “Marx reprend ici presque textuellement certaines notes de ses manuscrits parisiens de 1844, o `u il commente le concept de ‘travail ali´en´e’ ” (Rubel 1963: 1592).

E. On “Labor Power” and the Source of Surplus Value 209 belongs to him who buys them” – the expressions used in 1849 – seem to be

consistent with the mature concept of “labor power.” But whether Engels’s sys- tematic adjustments of 1891 in the passages cited above can be justified remains to be decided. Similarly, we have yet to resolve whether Marx had hit upon the source of surplus-value in Poverty of Philosophy, as Engels asserted in his 1885 Preface to Capital 2 (above, p. 194). For the change of wording may be noth- ing more than an ex post tidying up of little consequence, though Engels himself certainly intended an extension to surplus-value − which after all is the main theoretical outcome attributed to the “labor-power” entity. To these matters we turn next. 21

In Marx’s view, Proudhon had disqualified himself from appreciating non-labor incomes in contemporary society by implicitly treating labor as sole factor (and of uniform quality). “Let us see now,” Marx challenged, “to what extent the applica- tion of labour time as a measure of value is incompatible with the existing class antagonism and the unequal distribution of the product between the individual worker and the owner of accumulated labour,” or whether “exchange of products measured by labour time results in an equality of payment for all the producers” − as Proudhon maintained (MECW 6: 125–6). Proudhon had in fact proven nothing, and indeed had undermined this position by effectively identifying labor embodied and labor commanded: “‘Any man’s labour,’ he says, ‘can buy the value it repre- sents’ [Proudhon 1846, 1: 81]. Thus, according to him, a certain quantity of labour embodied in a product is equivalent to the worker’s payment, that is, to the value of labour” (128). This identification, which implied that labor was the sole factor, was also reflected in the identification of production costs with wage costs: “It is the same reasoning that makes him confuse cost of production with wages. ‘What are wages? They are the cost price of corn, etc., the integral price of all things. Let us go still further. Wages are the proportionality of the elements which compose wealth’ [110].” 22

While Proudhon, runs the charge, had disqualified himself from appreciating non-labor incomes, Marx himself made no positive contribution to the matter, though his criticism implied that the labor theory was (in some manner) essen- tial for an appreciation of surplus. The same conclusion emerges from Marx’s contention that Proudhon’s egalitarianism based on (his understanding of) the labor theory was unoriginal, considering the massive literature by the Ricardian

21 “Exploitation” in a general sense is certainly throughout taken for granted by Marx. In dis- cussing indirect taxation of luxury goods, for example, he remarks in 1847 that industrial

capital “maintains, reproduces and increases itself by the direct exploitation of labour . . . ” (MECW 6: 196). But this does not carry us far from a technical point of view. 22 Marx, we recall, also charges Proudhon with circular reasoning in attempting to specify the “just” return to labor by reference to commodity exchange rates, while basing those rates on labor commanded; and he compounded the error by assuming all labor to be of uniform quality (MECW 6: 128–9; above, pp. 199, 203).

A “First Draft” of Capital 1847–1849 Socialists − as the group in question has since come to be labeled − including

Hodgskin (1827), 23 Thompson (1824), Edmonds (1828), and Bray (1839): “does the ‘equalitarian’ application of this formula [‘the determination of value by labour time’] at least belong to M. Proudhon? Was he the first to think of reform- ing society by transforming all men into immediate workers exchanging equal amounts of labour?” (MECW 6: 138). Extensive quotations are offered from Bray’s “remarkable” Labour’s Wrongs and Labour’s Remedy. Now some of the citations from Bray certainly imply the notion of capitalist exploitation in the sense of unpaid hours of labour: “We have heretofore acted upon no other than [a] most unjust system of exchanges − the workmen have given the capital- ist the labour of a whole year, in exchange for the value of only half a year,” an “inequality of exchanges − of buying at one price and selling at another −” whereby “the capitalists and proprietors . . . give the working man, for his labour of one week, a part of the wealth which they obtained from him the week before! − which just amounts to giving him nothing for something . . . ” (Bray 1839: 48–9).

The citation of Bray might have provided a splendid opportunity for Marx to expound the character of labor power as source of surplus – surplus conceived as unpaid labor hours – demonstrating in particular that it in no way turned upon “unequal exchange” if by that term is intended the advantage taken by capitalists of monopsony power in the labor market. But Marx says nothing on the technical issue of exploitation. Engels’s attribution to Marx – indeed Marx’s own claim – of an early comprehension of the source of surplus value is, in the texts of 1847 so far considered, unsubstantiated.

One section of our document, however, whets the appetite − “Surplus Left by Labour” (“L’excedent du travail”) (MECW 6: 152). Here Marx cites a statement by Proudhon regarding “[a]n axiom generally admitted by economists . . . that all labour must leave a surplus,” which Proudhon considered to be “universally and absolutely true,” but “meaningless according to their theory, and . . . not suscepti- ble of any demonstration” [Proudhon 1846, 1: 73] (152). Proudhon’s own proof of the proposition that all labor must generate a surplus, Marx proceeds − he does not dispute the proposition itself − entailed an illegitimate procedure: “To prove that all labour must leave a surplus, M. Proudhon personifies society; he turns it into a person-society – a society which is not by any means a society of persons, since it has its laws apart, which have nothing in common with the persons of which society is composed, and its ‘own intelligence,’ which is not the intelligence of common

men, but an intelligence devoid of common sense” (152–3). 24 There follows pages 23 “Hopkins” appears in the original edition.

24 Marx cites the American Thomas Cooper (1826) to the effect that the common fiction of col- lective decision making was the source of “deplorable misunderstands” in economics (MECW

E. On “Labor Power” and the Source of Surplus Value 211 of criticism, but no substantive statement of Marx’s own view of the nature and

source of surplus value. 25 We turn now to “Wage Labour and Capital,” published in April 1849, recalling Engels’s systematic replacement in 1891 of “labour” by “labour power” in that document (above, pp. 207–9). Did Engels mislead by imposing a later perspective on the early Marx?

That Marx had progressed towards an appreciation of the “Marxian” notion of labor power in its value-creating capacity seems to be confirmed from a discus- sion of the transition of “commodities” into “capital”: “Capital does not consist in accumulated labour serving living labour as a means for new production” – the traditional view – but “in living labour serving accumulated labour as a means for maintaining and multiplying the exchange value of the latter” (MECW 9: 213; emphasis added). Yet more strikingly, the text refers to the worker’s “creative power” in generating surplus value: “The worker receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labour [1891: labour power], but the capitalist receives in exchange for his means of subsistence labour, the productive activity of the worker, the creative power whereby the worker not only replaces what he consumes but gives to the accu- mulated labour a greater value than it previously possessed.” Indeed, in illustrating the capital-labor relationship, Marx himself uses the terms “power” of the labourer and “labour power” with respect to the source of surplus value: “[The farmer] has bought with . . . five silver groschen just that labour and power of the labourer [le travail et la force; Marx 1982: 215] which produces agricultural products of double value and makes ten silver groschen out of five. . . . The five silver groschen . . . have been exchanged for labour power [une force de travail] which produced ten silver groschen . . . ”(214; emphasis added). One other passage is suggestive: “Finally, in whatever proportion the capitalist class, the bourgeoisie . . . shares the net profit of production within itself, the total amount of this net profit always consists only of the amount by which, on the whole, accumulated labour has been increased by living [1891: direct] labour” (220). Here we have the proposition that sur- plus value, pertaining in the first instance to the capitalists, is then redistributed in its various forms although Marx largely identified surplus value with profit (e.g., 218).

It seems fair to conclude that Marx in 1849 maintained the principle that labor power has a “capacity” to yield surplus value. And, as pointed out at the outset of this chapter, when dealing with the exploitative nature of capitalist production

in Capital Marx cited his 1849 contribution. 26 Yet for all that, still missing is the

25 See also Rubel for this conclusion. The single adjustment by Marx in 1847 of “labour” to read “labour power” (first printed in the reedition of 1896) “anticipe sur une ´etape ult´erieure de la

pens´ee ´economique de Marx” (Rubel 1963: 1548). See note 16. 26 See also for this view Rubel 1963: 1592–3, Mandel 1971: 54. See too an editorial comment

(MECW 9: xviii).

A “First Draft” of Capital 1847–1849 notion of surplus expressed in terms of the breakdown of the work-day between paid

and unpaid labor (though Bray to all intents and purposes had hit upon it). In this respect we are no further in 1849 than in Poverty of Philosophy – which is scarcely surprising since the publication of 1849 comprised lectures given two years earlier.