In a capitalist economy the result economic activity of an individual capitalist is expressed in the form of gross cash income (revenue from the sale of goods and services). The result of economic activity is gross cash income minus production costs (costs of raw materials, energy, deductions to the depreciation fund of equipment and other fixed assets, expenses in the form of wages and so on.). This will be the company's gross profit. If we subtract the taxes paid by the company from it, we get net profit. This is “accounting arithmetic” in a simplified form. modern business.
To understand why wage labor is a form of slavery, we need slightly different arithmetic. A company's gross cash income can be expressed as the sum of its labor costs. Some costs relate to past periods - they are embodied in machinery and equipment, raw materials, energy, etc. This is “past” or “materialized” labor. At the enterprise we are considering, “present” or “living labor” is added to the “past” labor. It creates “added value.” The capitalist paid for “past” labor by buying machines, raw materials, energy (these costs are called “constant capital”). But the “real” work belongs entirely to him. He manages it. “Real” labor is the result of the activities of those workers whom he hired for his enterprise. The result of “real” labor (“added value”) is the source of profit for the capitalist. But at the same time, it is also the source of livelihood for hired workers.
Thus, “added value” is divided into two parts, which are usually called “ required product" and "surplus product". “Necessary product” is that part of the “added value” that is necessary to maintain the life and productivity of hired workers. In Marxist theory it is called “variable capital”. “Surplus product” (“surplus value”) is what goes to the capitalist. This is what is the desired goal of his business. The division of “added value” into the two indicated parts is the most important moment of all capitalist activity.
It would seem that workers - that is, those who created “added value” - should play the main role in dividing this “pie”. The role of the capitalist in “baking the cake” was simply that he provided the necessary machinery and equipment (“means of production”, or “constant capital”). Strictly speaking, it should not be related to the section of the “pie” at all: the “pie” is “added value”, and the “means of production” are “past” or “materialized” labor, and the owner of the means of production has already received the necessary compensation for them (equal to depreciation of means of production). A capitalist can only have the right to participate in the division of the “pie” when he personally participated in its “baking” with his “living” labor (obviously, not physical, but mental).
But the paradox (or rather, the drama) of capitalist civilization is that:
- The decisive role in the division of the “pie” is played by the employer, not the employees;
- the employer strives in every possible way to reduce the “necessary product” (the share of the “pie” going to employees) and increase the “surplus product” (the share of the “pie” going to the employer).
From an economic point of view, the surplus product expresses the relationship of exploitation between the employer (slave owner) and the worker (wage slave).
From a legal point of view, profit is theft, misappropriation.
Modern law of capitalist society is dual: on the one hand, it protects property rights and proclaims the “sacredness” of private property; on the other hand, it legalizes the constant theft of the product of labor by employers and does not ensure effective protection workers' rights.
Today we are all so accustomed to many “axioms” of legal science that we often do not notice: many modern laws “legalize” various types of fraud and theft. This applies to different areas of economic relations: labor, credit, fiscal. In this case, we are interested in labor relations of the era of capitalism.
Let us quote from one article, and the author, apparently, is not a “professional” lawyer and has not lost the ability to question the “axioms” of legal science:
“It was self-interest that caused slavery, because it remained as it was. And if it was deprived of one form of satisfaction, then self-interest immediately found and gave society another form of its satisfaction, not so striking - the motive of ownership not of the person producing, but of the tools, means of production that he needs in work. And the alienation of the employee from the rights to the result of labor was and remains one hundred percent. Instead of dividing these rights proportionally between the investment of labor and the investment of capital. That's it. The visibility became different. Previously, the owner could kill the slave, but now the owner of the worker cannot. That's all. That is, physical and labor slavery was eliminated, but the property basis of slavery was and remains. Slavery only changed its external form. After all, the essence of it and the measure of oppression have hardly changed at all. The alienation of the product of workers' labor on far-fetched grounds remains the same. After all, not everything in the production process depends solely on the use of tools. Much, if not more, also depends on the hands applied to these instruments.
What's the trick here? Yes, in a very simple legal juggling of the laws. In nature, things arise as a result of the participation of certain persons, through labor or property, in the creation of these things. But for some reason the law establishes the right to own these things only for those involved in the property. That is, not at all by the fact of involvement in the creation of new things, but by the fact of owning other, old things. The property right of labor to new things did not exist before the abolition of slavery, nor did it arise after the abolition of slavery (emphasis mine. - V.K.) ».
Bourgeois law “legitimized” the new “rules of the game”: “the product of production belongs not to those who produce it, but to those who own the material means of production.” These “rules of the game,” as legal historians say, developed in the 17th-18th centuries. The most interesting thing is that this was around the same time when classical political economy was being formed with its theory of labor value (the main postulate: “the source of value is the labor of workers”). Practical expediency for the founding fathers of capitalism turned out to be more important than the theoretical abstractions of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.
The “rules of the game” that have emerged in recent centuries have led to the fact that people thirsting for wealth do not seek to directly acquire slaves who would create this wealth for them. They acquire the “means of production,” which in turn gives them the legal basis to exploit the wage slaves and appropriate the wealth they produce.
It turns out to be disguised slavery, and such a simple disguise turns out to be sufficient to present capitalism as a “civilized society” that has nothing to do with slavery ancient world. The essence of this disguise was very precisely explained by academic ophthalmologist, director of the Eye Surgery International Scientific and Research Center Svyatoslav Fedorov:
“We don’t always think about what a promotion is. I buy papers as property of the means of production, but in fact, the souls of people.
If stocks give big profits, then I am not interested in the machines on which people work, but in the degree of their organization and professionalism.
That is, it is not machines that are bought, but people. It's practically a slave market. Formerly a man I walked towards him and chose: I like this slave with his body and muscles - I take him; this beautiful woman I'll take it too. And today I go to the market and look: this company’s dividends have been growing for three years - I take these shares (my italics - V.K.).”
There are often cases when the employer appropriates 100% of the product and labor, simply without paying the employee wages. In Russia, this situation is not uncommon. At least, most of the newly created value in the Russian economy comes from the income of employers (company profits) and a smaller part from the wages of employees. Even official statistics cannot hide this fact. In Russia we even have this bitter joke: “If you want money, work; big money- figure out a way to steal them from the workers.”
. This joke is the essence of the entire “political economy” of our capitalism. To determine the degree of exploitation of hired workers, the indicator is used
“norm of surplus value” (NPV). The NPS indicator is the ratio of the surplus product (surplus value) to the amount of “variable” capital (the amount of wages of workers).
Modern economists do not like to remember this indicator, using the usual indicator “rate of profit” (RP). The NP indicator is the ratio of the profit received by the capitalist to the total capital advanced (invested in the business). This capital includes both investments in raw materials, energy, means of production (“past labor”), and the cost of hiring labor (wages). The NP indicator shows the efficiency of using all capital invested in the business (both “fixed” and “variable”). Marx formulated the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in Capital.
Statistics indeed confirm that in the century and a half since the publication of Capital, the rate of profit in industry Western countries has indeed decreased significantly. Based on this, some apologists of capitalism try to argue that capitalism is becoming more “humane” over time. However, a change in the rate of profit reflects, first of all, not the degree of exploitation of hired workers, but an increase in the total volume of capital advanced for the production of the share of “constant” capital (costs of material resources and means of production). This increase in the share of “constant” capital reflects the process of displacement of living labor from production. Behind this is an increase in unemployment, which has a downward impact on the wages of those who remain in production. A decrease in the rate of profit, as statistics show, occurs against the background of an increase in the rate of surplus value (an indicator that really allows one to measure the degree of exploitation of hired workers)
.
For example, created by company employees in a month pure product(“value added”) equals 100,000 monetary units. And the salary they received for a month of this work amounted to 20,000 units. Thus, the surplus product (surplus value) of the capitalist amounted to 80,000 units. In our example, the rate of surplus value will be: 80,000 / 20,000 = 4. And if expressed as a percentage, then 400%. According to the calculations of the Soviet economist S.L. Vygodsky, the rate of surplus value in the US manufacturing industry increased from 210% in 1940 to 308% in 1969 and to 515% in 1973. This growth demonstrates the enormous intensification of the exploitation of wage workers as the economic and political power of the monopolies strengthens, as well as under the influence of the steady replacement of “living labor” by machines. Machines sharply increase the production of surplus product per employed worker. At the same time, machines are increasingly displacing the living worker from the production process, dooming him to an existence of hunger, increasing the army of the unemployed and making those who remained in production more “accommodating” in matters of wages.
If the “pie” went to those who “baked” it, that is, to the workers, then after a while the employer with his “means of production” would not be needed at all for the “baking” process. For a very simple reason: workers would have such incomes that would allow them to buy back the “means of production” belonging to the capitalists. Or, as an option: create (purchase) new “means of production.” The question arises: why does the employer play a decisive role in determining what the proportion of the two parts of the product of labor will be?
The employer's dominance in this “sharing” is ensured by at least two means:
a) the fact that he monopolized the means of production in his hands;
B) the fact that he put the state with its laws, courts, repressive apparatus, ideological machine, etc. at the service of his interests.
All the “basics” of the theory of surplus value, as is known, are set out in Marx’s “Capital”.
At the same time, remaining on the methodological foundation of Marx’s “economic materialism”, we will not be able to answer simple (“childish”) questions:
- Why did employers manage to monopolize the “means of production” in their hands?
- How did they ensure that the state began to ensure their interests, and not the interests of workers?
- What needs to be done to ensure that employees own the results of their labor?
- Are they known in the new and modern history precedents when workers acquired full rights to the results of their labor?
- Etc.
Modern economic “science” is afraid of these issues “like the devil of incense.” Let us only note that the answers to such questions lie outside the boundaries of economic “science”, which does not go beyond the narrow materialistic perception of the world around us. The answers should be sought in the sphere of political and legal relations, and, ultimately, in the spiritual sphere.
At a certain stage of development of commodity production, money is transformed into capital. The formula for commodity circulation was: T (commodity) – D (money) – T (commodity), i.e., the sale of one product to buy another. General formula capital is, on the contrary, M - C - D, i.e. purchase for sale (with a profit). Marx calls surplus value this increase in the initial value of money put into circulation. The fact of this “growth” of money in capitalist circulation is well known. It is this “growth” that transforms money into capital, as a special, historically determined, public attitude production. Surplus value cannot arise from commodity circulation, because it knows only the exchange of equivalents; it cannot arise from a premium to price, because the mutual losses and gains of buyers and sellers would be balanced, and we're talking about specifically about a mass, average, social phenomenon, and not about an individual one. In order to obtain surplus value, “the owner of money must find on the market a commodity whose very use value would have the original property of being a source of value”46, such a commodity, the process of consumption of which would at the same time be a process of creating value. And such a product exists. This is human labor power. Its consumption is labor, and labor creates value. The owner of the money buys labor according to its value, determined, like the value of any other commodity, by the socially necessary labor time required for its production (i.e., the cost of maintaining the worker and his family). Having purchased labor power, the owner of money has the right to consume it, that is, to force it to work all day, say, 12 hours. Meanwhile, the worker for 6 hours (“necessary” work time) creates a product that pays for its maintenance, and over the next 6 hours (“surplus” labor time) creates a “surplus” product or surplus value unpaid by the capitalist. Consequently, in capital, from the point of view of the production process, it is necessary to distinguish two parts: constant capital spent on means of production (machines, tools, raw material, etc.) - its value (immediately or in parts) is transferred without change to finished product - and variable capital spent on labor. The value of this capital does not remain unchanged, but increases during the labor process, creating surplus value. Therefore, to express the degree of exploitation of labor power by capital, it is necessary to compare surplus value not with all capital, but only with variable capital. The rate of surplus value, as Marx calls this ratio, will be, for example, in our example 6/6, i.e. 100%.
The historical prerequisite for the emergence of capital is, firstly, the accumulation of a certain amount of money in the hands of individuals at a relatively high level of development of commodity production in general and, secondly, the presence of a “free” worker in the double sense, free from any restrictions or restrictions on the sale of labor power and free from land and generally from the means of production, an ownerless worker, a “proletarian” worker who has nothing to subsist on except by selling labor power.
An increase in surplus value is possible through two main methods: by lengthening the working day (“absolute surplus value”) and by shortening the necessary working day (“relative surplus value”). Analyzing the first technique, Marx develops a grandiose picture of the struggle of the working class to shorten the working day and intervene state power for lengthening the working day (XIV-XVII centuries) and for shortening it (factory legislation of the 19th century). After Capital appeared, the history of the labor movement of all civilized countries of the world gave thousands and thousands of new facts illustrating this picture.
Analyzing the production of relative surplus value, Marx examines three main historical stages in the increase in labor productivity by capitalism: 1) simple cooperation; 2) division of labor and manufacture; 3) machines and large industry. How deeply Marx revealed here the basic, typical features of the development of capitalism is evident, among other things, from the fact that studies of the Russian so-called “handicraft” industry provide a wealth of material for illustrating the first two of the three stages mentioned above. And the revolutionary effect of large-scale machine industry, described by Marx in 1867, was revealed during the half-century that has elapsed since then in a number of “new” countries (Russia, Japan, etc.).
Further. Extremely important and new is Marx’s analysis of the accumulation of capital, that is, the transformation of part of surplus value into capital, its use not for the personal needs or whims of the capitalist, but for new production. Marx showed the error of all previous classical political economy(starting with Adam Smith), which believed that all surplus value converted into capital goes to variable capital. In fact, it breaks down into means of production plus variable capital. Of enormous importance in the process of development of capitalism and its transformation into socialism is the more rapid increase in the share of constant capital (in the total amount of capital) compared to the share of variable capital.
The accumulation of capital, accelerating the displacement of workers by machine, creating wealth at one pole and poverty at the other, gives rise to the so-called “reserve labor army,” a “relative surplus” of workers or “capitalist overpopulation,” which takes extremely diverse forms and makes it possible for capital to expand extremely quickly. production. This possibility, in connection with credit and the accumulation of capital in the means of production, provides, among other things, the key to understanding the crises of overproduction that periodically occurred in capitalist countries, first on average every 10 years, then at longer and less certain periods of time. The so-called primitive accumulation should be distinguished from the accumulation of capital on the basis of capitalism: the forced separation of the worker from the means of production, the expulsion of peasants from the land, the theft of common lands, the system of colonies and public debts, protective duties, etc. “Primitive accumulation” creates at one pole “free” proletarian, on the other the owner of money, the capitalist.
Marx characterizes the “historical tendency of capitalist accumulation” in the following famous words: “The expropriation of direct producers is carried out with the most merciless vandalism and under the pressure of the meanest, dirtiest, most petty and most frenzied passions. Private property, obtained by the labor of the owner” (peasant and artisan), “based, so to speak, on the fusion of the individual independent worker with his tools and means of labor, is being supplanted by capitalist private property, which rests on the exploitation of someone else’s, but formally free labor force... Now expropriation It is no longer the worker who runs an independent economy who is subject to this, but the capitalist who exploits many workers. This expropriation is accomplished by the play of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself, through the centralization of capital. One capitalist beats many capitalists. Hand in hand with this centralization or expropriation of many capitalists by a few, the cooperative form of the labor process develops on an ever wider, larger scale, a conscious technical application science, the planned exploitation of the land, the transformation of means of labor into such means of labor that allow only collective use, the economization of all means of production by using them as means of production of combined social labor, the weaving of all peoples into the network of the world market, and at the same time the international character of the capitalist regime . Together with the ever-decreasing number of magnates of capital who usurp and monopolize all the benefits of this process of transformation, the mass of poverty, oppression, slavery, degeneration, exploitation increases, but at the same time the indignation of the working class, which is trained, united and organized by the mechanism of the very process of capitalist production . The monopoly of capital becomes the shackles of the mode of production that grew up under and under it. The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labor reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist shell. She explodes. The hour of capitalist private property is striking. The expropriators are expropriated” (“Capital”, I)47.
Extremely important and new is, further, Marx’s analysis of the reproduction of social capital, taken as a whole, given in Volume II of Capital. And here Marx takes not the individual, but mass phenomenon, not a fractional part of society’s savings, but all of these savings in the aggregate. Correcting the above error of the classics, Marx divides everything social production into two large departments: I) the production of means of production and II) the production of consumer goods and examines in detail the points taken by him numerical examples, the circulation of all social capital as a whole, both during reproduction in the same size and during accumulation. In Volume III of Capital the question of the formation of the average rate of profit on the basis of the law of value is resolved. A great step forward economic science, represented by Marx, is that the analysis is carried out from the point of view of mass economic phenomena, the entirety of the social economy, and not from the point of view of individual incidents or the external surface of competition, which is often limited to vulgar political economy or the modern “theory of marginal utility.” First, Marx analyzes the origin of surplus value and then moves on to its breakdown into profit, interest and land rent. Profit is the ratio of surplus value to all capital invested in an enterprise. Capital of a “high organic structure” (that is, with a predominance of constant capital over variable capital in amounts above the social average) gives a rate of profit below the average. Capital of “low organic structure” is above average. Competition between capitals and their free transfer from one industry to another will reduce the rate of profit in both cases to the average. The sum of the values of all goods of a given society coincides with the sum of the prices of goods, but in individual enterprises and individual branches of production, goods, under the influence of competition, are sold not at their values, but at production prices (or production prices), which are equal to the capital expended plus the average profit.
Thus, the well-known and indisputable fact of the deviation of prices from values and the equality of profits is fully explained by Marx on the basis of the law of value, for the sum of the values of all goods coincides with the sum of prices. But the reduction of value (social) to prices (individual) occurs not in a simple, not direct, but in a very complex way: it is quite natural that in a society of isolated commodity producers connected only by the market, the pattern cannot manifest itself other than in the average, social, mass pattern with mutual cancellation of individual deviations in one direction or another.
Increased labor productivity means more fast growth constant capital versus variable capital. And since surplus value is a function of variable capital alone, it is clear that the rate of profit (the ratio of surplus value to all capital, and not to only its variable part) tends to fall. Marx analyzes in detail this tendency and a number of circumstances that cover it or counteract it. Without stopping at the transfer of extremely interesting departments Volume III, devoted to usurious, commercial and monetary capital, we will move on to the most important thing: the theory of land rent. The price of production of agricultural products, due to the limited area of land, which is all occupied by individual owners in capitalist countries, is determined by the costs of production not on average, but on worse soil, not on average, but on worse soil. worst conditions delivering the product to the market. The difference between this price and the production price for best soils(or when better conditions) gives difference or differential rent. Analyzing it in detail, showing its origin with the difference in the fertility of individual plots of land, with the difference in the size of the investment of capital in the land, Marx completely revealed (see also “Theories of Surplus Value”, where special attention deserves criticism from Rodbertus) Ricardo’s mistake that differential rent is obtained only through a sequential transition from the best lands to the worst. On the contrary, there are also reverse transitions, there is the transformation of one category of land into another (due to the progress of agricultural technology, the growth of cities, etc.), and the notorious “law of diminishing soil fertility” is a deep mistake, blaming nature for the shortcomings, limitations and contradictions of capitalism. Then, equality of profit in all sectors of industry and the national economy in general presupposes complete freedom of competition, freedom of capital flow from one industry to another. Meanwhile, private ownership of land creates a monopoly, an obstacle to this free flow. Due to this monopoly, products Agriculture , characterized by a lower capital composition and, therefore, an individually higher rate of profit, do not go into a completely free process of equalizing the rate of profit; the owner of the land, as a monopolist, gets the opportunity to keep the price above the average, and this monopoly price gives rise to absolute rent. Differential rent cannot be destroyed during the existence of capitalism, but absolute rent can - for example, when the land is nationalized, when it becomes the property of the state. Such a transition would mean undermining the monopoly of private owners and would mean a more consistent, more complete implementation of freedom of competition in agriculture. And therefore, the radical bourgeoisie, Marx notes, have repeatedly come out in history with this progressive bourgeois demand for the nationalization of the land, which, however, scares away the majority of the bourgeoisie, because it too closely “touches” yet another, in our days especially important and “sensitive” monopoly: the monopoly of means production in general. (Marx himself outlined his theory of average profit on capital and absolute land rent in a remarkably popular, concise and clear manner in a letter to Engels dated August 2, 1862. See Correspondence, vol. III, pp. 77-81. See also letter dated August 9, 1862, ibid., pp. 86-87)48. – Regarding the history of land rent, it is also important to point out Marx’s analysis, which shows the transformation of labor rent (when a peasant creates a surplus product with his labor on the landowner’s land) into rent in products or in kind (a peasant produces a surplus product on his land, giving it to the landowner due to “non-economic coercion” "), then into cash rent (the same rent in kind, converted into money, the " quitrent " of old Rus', due to the development of commodity production) and finally into capitalist rent, when the place of the peasant is taken by an entrepreneur in agriculture, carrying out cultivation with the help of hired labor . In connection with this analysis of the “genesis of capitalist land rent”, it is worth noting a number of deep (and especially important for backward countries like Russia) thoughts of Marx on the evolution of capitalism in agriculture. “The transformation of rent in kind into money rent is not only inevitably accompanied, but even preceded by the formation of a class of poor day laborers hired for money. During the period of the emergence of this class, when it appeared only sporadically, the more prosperous peasants, obliged to pay dues, naturally developed the custom of exploiting rural wage workers at their own expense - just as in feudal times, wealthy serfs themselves, in turn, kept serfs . These peasants thus gradually develop the ability to accumulate a certain amount of property and transform themselves into future capitalists. Among the old owners of land, leading independent farming, there arises, therefore, a breeding ground for capitalist tenants, the development of which is determined by general development capitalist production outside of agriculture" ("Capital", III 2, 332)49... "The expropriation and expulsion from the countryside of part of the rural population not only “frees up” the workers, their means of living, their tools of labor for industrial capital, but also creates an internal market" ("Capital", I 2, 778)50. The impoverishment and ruin of the rural population plays, in turn, a role in creating a reserve labor army for capital. In every capitalist country, “part of the rural population is therefore constantly in transitional state to transformation into an urban or manufacturing (i.e., non-agricultural) population. This source of relative surplus population flows constantly... The agricultural worker is reduced to lowest level wages, and he always has one foot in the swamp of pauperism" (Capital, I 2, 668)51. The peasant's private ownership of the land he cultivates is the basis of small-scale production and the condition for its prosperity and its acquisition of a classical form. But this small-scale production is compatible only with the narrow primitive framework of production and society. Under capitalism, “the exploitation of the peasants differs from the exploitation of the industrial proletariat only in form. The exploiter is the same - capital. Individual capitalists exploit individual peasants through mortgages and usury; the capitalist class exploits the peasant class through state taxes” (“Class Struggle in France”)52. “The peasant’s parcel (small plot of land) represents only a pretext allowing the capitalist to extract profit, interest and rent from the land, leaving the landowner himself to earn his wages as he pleases” (“18 Brumaire”)53. Typically, the peasant even gives part of his wages to capitalist society, i.e., the capitalist class, sinking “to the level of the Irish tenant - under the guise of a private owner” (“Class Struggle in France”)54. What is “one of the reasons that in countries with predominant small peasant landownership the price of grain is lower than in countries with a capitalist mode of production”? (“Capital”, III 2, 340). The fact is that the peasant gives to society (i.e., the capitalist class) part of the surplus product for free. “Therefore, such low price(bread and other agricultural products) is a consequence of the poverty of producers, and in no case the result of the productivity of their labor” (“Capital”, III 2, 340). Small landed property, the normal form of small production, is degraded, destroyed, and perishes under capitalism. “Small landed property, in its essence, excludes: the development of social productive forces of labor, social forms labor, social concentration of capital, cattle breeding on a large scale, more and more application of science. Usury and the tax system inevitably lead everywhere to its impoverishment. The use of capital to purchase land takes away this capital from being used to cultivate the land. The endless fragmentation of the means of production and the disunity of the producers themselves.” (Cooperatives, i.e., partnerships of small peasants, playing an extremely progressive bourgeois role, only weaken this tendency, but do not destroy it; we must also not forget that these cooperatives give a lot to the wealthy peasants and very little, almost nothing, to the masses of the poor, and then the partnerships themselves become exploiters of wage labor.) “A gigantic theft of human power. The ever-increasing deterioration in the conditions of production and the rise in price of the means of production is the law of parcel (small) ownership”55. Capitalism, in agriculture as well as in industry, transforms the production process only at the cost of the “martyrology of producers.” “The dispersion of rural workers over large areas breaks down their power of resistance, while the concentration of urban workers increases this power. In modern, capitalist agriculture, as in modern industry, an increase in the productive power of labor and its greater mobility are purchased at the price of destruction and exhaustion of the labor force itself. Moreover, every progress of capitalist agriculture is not only a progress in the art of robbing the worker, but also in the art of robbing the soil... Capitalist production, therefore, develops the technique and combination of the social process of production only in such a way that it undermines at the same time the sources of all wealth: land and worker" ("Capital", I, end of the 13th chapter)56.
SURPLUS VALUE
SURPLUS VALUE
according to Marx, the difference between the value of the product of labor and wages. Surplus value, which is the profit of the entrepreneur, arises due to the fact that he works more time than is necessary for the production of an object, which he is paid in accordance with the law of wages (see. Lassalle).
Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary. 2010 .
See what “ADVANCED VALUE” is in other dictionaries:
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The difference between the new value created in the labor process and the value of the labor force used for this (usually expressed in the form of wages). Surplus value serves as the basis not only for profit, but also for all types of taxes, excise taxes,... ... Wikipedia
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16. How surplus value is created.
So, a purchase and sale has been completed: the worker “freely”, of his own free will, sold his labor power, the capitalist bought this product on the labor market in order to receive surplus value in the process of consuming it.
The act of buying and selling labor creates a distorted picture of the relationship between the two main classes of bourgeois society: capitalists and workers. In the market, everything is done in accordance with the requirements of the law of value. One gets the impression of complete equality of commodity owners: the capitalist as the owner of money and the worker as the owner of labor power. Based on this, the bourgeoisie and its learned defenders are trying to prove that there are and cannot be any contradictions between capitalists and workers.
However, the relationship between these “equal” commodity owners does not end at the market, but only begins there.
This is how Karl Marx describes their behavior after they left the market: “The former owner of money walks ahead as the capitalist, the owner of labor power follows him as his worker; one chuckles meaningfully and is eager to get down to business; the other wanders dejectedly, stubbornly, like a man who sold his own skin at the market and therefore does not see any prospects in the future, except one: that this skin will be tanned.”
Why is the capitalist so impatient? Because, having received labor power at his complete disposal, he strives to extract surplus value as quickly as possible and as much as possible.
How does this happen? To understand the process of workers creating surplus value, let us give the following example.
The capitalist, the owner of a shoe factory, in order to increase his capital, acquires raw materials and other materials and, of course, hires workers, without whose labor the machines cannot be set in motion and the raw materials cannot be turned into a finished product. He sells the newly produced goods, and with the proceeds he again buys raw materials and materials and pays for labor.
Let's take the following conditional calculations: 1) each worker produces 10 pairs of shoes in 4 hours; 2) the consumption of raw materials, auxiliary materials, wear and tear of machines, buildings, etc. per these 10 pairs is $30; 3) the daily cost of labor is $8; 4) for each hour of his labor, the worker creates a value equal in monetary terms to $2.
How much will 10 pairs of shoes cost, created by a worker in 4 hours of work?
Firstly, this will include the cost of raw materials and other materials, as well as depreciation of machinery, tools, etc. - $30, secondly, the new value created by the labor of a worker for 4 hours, amounting to $8; This means that the cost of 10 pairs of shoes will be $38.
Now let’s calculate how much these 10 pairs of shoes cost the manufacturer. Production costs cost 30 dollars, the daily cost of labor is 8 dollars. Total - 38 dollars, i.e. exactly as much as the manufacturer received for the newly produced products.
Will the entrepreneur be satisfied with this result? Of course not. He did not buy labor and raw materials for production just to return what he spent. He seeks to obtain a surplus, an increase in his costs.
How can a capitalist achieve an increase in value? There is only one way: to make the labor force he bought function. above 4 hours. After all, the cost of raw materials and other means of production does not increase in itself, it only transferred living labor of a worker for a new product (in our example, shoes). Another thing is labor. The capitalist bought it from the worker for $8, which is equal to the daily cost of its use. In other words, for 8 dollars a worker can completely restore his strength, which he requires for further work. According to the conditions of our example, this required 4 hours of working time.
But the manufacturer forces the worker to work not 4 hours, but much more, say 8 hours. What will the production result then look like?
In an 8-hour workday, 20 pairs of shoes will be produced. What will their cost be?
It will be equal to $60 spent on costs (means of production), plus the new value created by the worker’s labor in 8 hours, which is equal to $16. Total - $76.
Let's calculate the entrepreneur's expenses: $60 for means of production and $8 for paying the daily cost of labor. Total - 68 dollars. Thus, having spent 68 dollars, the manufacturer received 76 dollars.
The difference is 8 dollars. surplus value created by the labor of a worker. In 8 hours of labor, a worker created a value of $16, but to reproduce the value of his labor power, he only needed to work 4 hours. This means that for the remaining 4 hours he worked for the capitalist for free, receiving nothing in return.
V.I. Lenin provides the following factual data, which very well shows who creates surplus value and who appropriates it. In 1908 in capitalist industry Tsarist Russia 2,253,787 workers were employed. During the year, workers received 555.7 million rubles, i.e., an average of 246 rubles. for everyone. total amount production amounted to 4651 million rubles, and all expenses of capitalists - 4082 million rubles. So, industrialists put it in your pocket 568.7 million rub. Consequently, each worker created a new value in a year equal to 498 rubles. (246 + 252), but more than half of this cost appropriated free of charge by capitalists. Citing these calculations, V.I. Lenin notes: “It follows from this that the worker less than half works for himself during the day, and most of the day- on the capitalist. If, for example, we take the average working day to be 11 hours, it turns out that the worker receives pay for only 5 1/2 hours and even slightly less than 5 1/2 hours. The remaining 5 1/2 hours the worker works for nothing, without receiving any payment, and the entire output of the worker for this half a day constitutes the profit of the capitalists.”
But this happened before, more than a hundred years ago. Now, thanks to perfect technology and highly productive machines on which workers work, they no longer work for capitalists half (on average) of their working time, but 99/100 parts of it, or even more!
Here's the one clear example— data from the International Trade Union Confederation report “Scandal: Global Supply Chains 50” largest companies— a look from the inside.”
They show that all the costs of the capitalist monopolies for the production and sale of one T-shirt costing 29 euros do not exceed 6.04 euros, including workers receiving only 0.18 euros, and everything else - 22.96 euros - this is the profit of the capitalists! This means that the workers involved in the production of this T-shirt are working for themselves only 1/156 of their working time, and 155\156 parts they work for free for transnational corporations!!! This is where their owners, the oligarchs, get such profits - the workers simply give them their labor! Slave owners and feudal kings of past centuries did not even dream of such gifts.
But this also says something else - that with modern production technology for workers, in order to live the way they live now, it is quite enough to produce 1.5 T-shirts per month for everyone - the cost of such a quantity of products produced by them completely pays for the minimum means of subsistence that they have today spent on maintaining their workforce. 3 T-shirts per month, if their entire cost goes into the pockets of the workers, will improve the well-being of workers by 2 times, 6 T-shirts - by 4 times. And if all the products produced by workers today for TNCs will belong not to the owners of the monopolies, but to the workers themselves, then they will really all become financially secure, if not rich - after all, their well-being will improve hundreds, if not thousands of times! Moreover, the well-being of all workers will improve! Not one or two of them, but everyone!
But to understand how this can be done, let’s return to the basics of the political economy of capitalism, because in order to defeat a class enemy, you need to know him well—to know where his pain points are.
Thus, we found out that the working day is divided into two parts. That part of the working day that is necessary to create value equal to the value of labor power is called necessary working time , and the labor expended during this time is necessary labor . The other part of the working day, when the worker creates surplus value, which is appropriated free of charge by the capitalist, is called surplus working time , and the labor expended during it is surplus labor .
Therefore, surplus value is the value created in surplus time by the unpaid labor of a hired worker. Marx in his “Capital” designated it with the Latin letter “ T"from the word "mehrvert" - excess cost.
The essence of capitalist exploitation lies in the fact that the surplus value created by the labor of wage workers is appropriated by the capitalists. Surplus value serves as a source of income for all classes of bourgeois society: industrialists, traders, bankers, landowners, etc.
Obtaining surplus value- driving motive the goal of capitalist production. Capitalists buy labor in order to obtain surplus value. “...Capital,” wrote Marx, “has one and only vital desire - the desire to grow, to create surplus value, to absorb with its constant part, the means of production, perhaps large mass surplus labor. Capital is dead labor, which, like a vampire, comes to life only when it absorbs living labor and lives the more fully the more living labor it absorbs.”
The law of surplus value expresses the basic production relation of bourgeois society - the relation of exploitation of wage workers by the capitalist class.
Production and appropriation of surplus value - the basic economic law of capitalism.“The production of surplus value or profit,” Marx pointed out, “this is the absolute law of this mode of production.”
The law of surplus value is the law of the emergence, existence, development and death of the capitalist mode of production. Capitalism emerges Only then, when conditions and the possibility of free hiring of labor are created, conditions and the possibility of free appropriation of surplus labor of hired workers, when money and means of production are transformed into means of extracting surplus value. (The latter is very important for understanding the processes of the destruction of Soviet socialism and the restoration in its place capitalist way production.)
The law of surplus value, as the basic law of capitalism, leads to an increase in the productive forces of society, which is expressed in the construction of more and more new enterprises, in the improvement of production techniques and technology for the manufacture of goods, in the growth of labor productivity. But along with this, the law of surplus value creates the conditions for the inevitable death of capitalism. Deepens the main contradiction of capitalism - the contradiction between the social nature of production and the private capitalist form of appropriation. The growth of productive forces leads to gigantic socialization of production. And the wealth of society is more and more accumulated by a handful of large capitalists. The development of capitalist production, as is known, is the intensification of the exploitation of wage workers, since the labor of the latter is the only source of surplus value. (It would be nice to remember this when listening to how the bourgeois government constantly calls for development. This is exactly how it understands it - as increased exploitation of the working class.) Therefore, the strengthening of the contradiction between labor and capital leads to a sharp intensification of the class struggle, to an increase in organization and cohesion working class. This prepares the conditions for the revolutionary transformation of capitalism and makes the victory of the socialist revolution inevitable. “The doctrine of surplus value,” V.I. Lenin pointed out, “is the cornerstone economic theory Marx."
Surplus value is the amount of profit that is created by an employee by exceeding the cost of his own labor. In this case, the products produced, as well as the time spent, are appropriated free of charge by the employer. This term expresses specific form exploitation, fully consistent with the basic principles of capitalism. However, such a concept can illustrate not only the relationship between employee and employer, but also between various groups the so-called bourgeoisie, for example, landowners and industrialists, bankers and merchants. Surplus value, as well as ways to increase it, can play a significant role in effective development and the transformation of labor into goods or services is considered to be the prerequisite for the appearance of the above term. After all, only at a certain stage in the formation of society could an employer find an employee who was independent of the hired employee.
The source of surplus value may vary in form. There are absolute, redundant and relative groups. The first is achieved by increasing the time of work or by achieving a higher intensity. The second is obtained by increasing the productivity of each individual relative to the average level. The third form in which surplus value can be represented is obtained as a result of a reduction in the share of costs labor resources. Such categories are historically established and fully characterize ways to increase this parameter. However, despite a sufficient number of differences, all these methods have one important common factor - the source is invariably unpaid
The rate of surplus value is the ratio of the mass of all surplus value to the cost of the labor expended necessary for its production. Thus, the above concept can be described as the degree to which one person is exploited by another.
The theory of surplus value is limited by both theoretical arguments and historical facts. The latter were played by the history of the formation and development of states, and the forms of economic structure of society, for example, marginalism and neoclassicism.
Let us also consider the production process, as a result of which surplus value can be obtained. Having acquired labor power, the employer can begin to organize it in such a way that the daily employee not only creates value in an amount equivalent to his labor expended, but also the value that will subsequently become his wages. The latter is considered a component unpaid by the entrepreneur. Therefore, it is surplus value.