Surplus Value and the Transition to Growth

C. Surplus Value and the Transition to Growth

We return to the proposition that productivity improvement generates an increase in surplus value in the sense of “a value which is not intended simply to be exchanged as an equivalent but to maintain itself; in a word, more money” (above, p. 242). Now

C. Surplus Value and the Transition to Growth 245 Marx spells out the conditions for transition to an expanding economy entailing

effective accumulation – in his terms the transition of the “money” entity from its “abstract form of general wealth” pertaining immediately after the rise in produc- tivity, to its function as (we shall see) “a draft on future labor” or “labor capacity coming into being.” Accumulation, in brief, requires the availability of an adequate labor supply. We note here that Marx had Proudhon in mind in making his case, for Proudhon had taken a wholly static view by his proposal “that capital should not

be loaned and bear interest, but should be sold as a commodity for its equivalent, like every other commodity [see Bastiat 1850: 65–74]” ; for this was “nothing but the demand that exchange value should never become capital but remain mere exchange value, i.e. that capital should not exist as capital ” (MECW 28 : 244). Bas- tiat, in opposing Proudhon, had “unconsciously, re-emphasise[d] the moments in simple circulation which tend to give rise to capital” (245).

The notion of money as draft on future or new labor, taking the form of accel- erated population growth or a reserve of unemployed, is spelled out in pas- sages describing the transition from an economy “in a state of rest” to one “in motion”:

In a state of rest, this released exchange value, by which society has enriched itself, can only be money; and then only the abstract form of wealth is increased; when in motion, it can only realise itself in new living labour (it may be that previously unem- ployed labour is set in motion or that new workers are created (population [growth] is accelerated) . . . (273–4). 17

The surplus value, the increase of objectified labour, so far as it exists for itself, is money; but money is now in itself already capital, and as such a draft on new labour. . . . [N]o longer as money which is merely the abstract form of general wealth, but as money which is a draft on the real possibility of general wealth – on labour capacity, and, more precisely, on labour capacity coming into being (292).

From this perspective “[t]he accumulation of capital in the form of money is . . . in no way a material accumulation of the material conditions of labour, but the accumulation of property titles to labour. It posits future labour as wage labour, as use value of capital. No equivalent exists for the newly created value; its possibility [exists] only in new labour.”

All this proceeds at rather too abstract a level, merely setting the stage for an appreciation of the transition to growth. Our next section brings the discussion down to earth.

17 Marx proceeds as if there are alternatives to population increase or an available pool of unemployed: “or again . . . a new circle of exchange values is created, . . . the circle of exchange

values in circulation is enlarged, which can occur on the production side, if the released exchange value opens up a new branch of production, therefore [creates] a new object of exchange, objectified labour in the form of a new use value; or finally . . . the same is achieved by the introduction of objectified labour into the sphere of circulation in a new country by means of the expansion of trade” (MECW 28 : 274). But it seems more satisfactory to regard these options as complementing the initially stated conditions rather than as alternatives.

1857–1858 I: Surplus Value