Part Four – Production of Relative Surplus Value

Chapters Rereading Marx’s Capital, Volume 1, Chapters 10 to 16

Chapter 10: The Concept of Relative Surplus Value

Nasser Paydar

In the previous discussions, the part of the working day that was required to reproduce the labour-power or the necessary working time was assumed to be a fixed quantity, and the rest was considered surplus labour. At certain stages in history, the capitalist, in order to acquire more surplus labour, took the direct path of lengthening the working day as much as possible. Our present question is, in the absence of the desired lengthening of the working day, what path or paths has capital taken, and is taking with increasing speed, to obtain more and more surplus labour and more astronomical surplus values, in the absence of the desired lengthening of the working day. How can the volume of surplus value be increased by a galaxy without necessarily lengthening the working day? Let us begin the answer with a simple example. The working day is 12 hours, the essence of capital and the capitalist, or the capital personified, is that it is not satisfied with the existing surplus labour or surplus value that it plunders and is not able to lengthen the working day as desired. It thinks of breaking the deadlock and this is where the cry “I found it, I found it” rises. It is true that the working day cannot be extended in a dreamlike manner, but it is possible to shorten the part of the working day that is specific to the production of the worker’s necessities of life or the reproduction of his labour power to the last possible limit. If previously 6 hours of that necessary work were 6 hours of surplus labour and the rate of exploitation was 100%, can it be done so that the worker produces the same amount of means of life and necessities of life with one hour, half an hour, even 15 minutes of work?!! In this case and by committing this oppressive crime, the amount of surplus labour without the need to extend the working day will become 11 hours, 11 and a half hours, 11 hours and 45 minutes and the rate of exploitation will be 1100% – 2300% and finally 4700%. This is exactly the method that is inherent in capital, and its realization is the story of the moment-by-moment history of capitalist production. The capitalist could, of course, and it was entirely consistent with his nature or the nature of capital to engage in the most brutal slaughter of the worker’s food, clothing, shelter, or minimum subsistence. By doing so, without reducing the time for producing these necessities, it would still be possible to increase surplus labour time, because he could reduce the necessary labour time not by maintaining the same amount of the worker’s subsistence necessities, but by reducing it to the extent possible. However, this had its limits and obstacles. First, in order to sell his/her labour power, the worker must reproduce this power. He must survive, and his survival depends on obtaining some means of subsistence. Second, such slaughter, with the insatiable thirst of capital, would be considered a very crude and blatant encroachment on the worker’s limited privacy in all respects. Third, it would bring about a wave of workers’ anger and rage. For all these reasons, capital could not base its work for the cancerous increase of surplus values ​​on the continuous massacre of the worker’s essential means of subsistence. In this regard, the fundamental question under investigation remains unanswered or unresolved. How, in what way, and by what process does capital redistribute necessary and surplus labour? What should it do and what efforts should it make to make the former share as light as possible and the latter share as heavy and enormous as possible? So far it has been quite clear that this redistribution must take place and become the basis of labour. Necessary labour time must recede as much as possible in comparison with surplus labour time. Let us not forget that the reverse is not true. One cannot start from the increase in surplus labour and shorten necessary labour time; quite the opposite, one must begin by shortening the latter, i.e. necessary labour, to the extent possible, so that the former, i.e. the gigantic surplus labour, becomes possible and follows from it. But there is no way to reduce the necessary labour except by shortening the time required to produce the worker’s subsistence needs and shortening it as much as possible. If this is done, then that part of the working day which is the purchase price of labour power or the cost of reproducing labour power will decrease very significantly, and with its decrease, the other part, the hours of additional labour or surplus value, will increase and become greater. To progressively reduce the length of this time, the productivity of labour must be increased as much as possible. The production process must be made the object of continuous changes. In the previous discussions, the way to increase surplus value was always to lengthen the working day. There was no urgent, immediate, and inevitable need for a continuous transformation of the mode of production, but the addition of surplus value in the manner we are now discussing would not have been possible without an upward trend in the productivity of labour, without the production of the maximum product with the minimum of labour, without a transformation of the technical and social conditions of the labour process, without the continuous development of the mode of production. Marx calls the first form of raising surplus value, i.e. its increase through the prolongation of daily work, absolute surplus value, and the second form, or the continuous increase in surplus value through the improvement of labour productivity, relative surplus value. Let us not forget that capitalists sometimes do not use the capital advance as a basis for calculating the cent cost of the worker’s livelihood, its effect on reducing the necessary labour and increasing profits. The inherent, general, and necessary tendencies of capital must be distinguished from the forms in which these tendencies manifest themselves. Here we have not yet entered a phase of the anatomy of capitalism in which we can examine the reflection of the inherent laws of capitalism in the external movement of capital, including the analysis of the phenomenon of competition, even in a few lines. We will postpone this examination to the future, but here, in continuation of what we have said and in order to clarify the subject further, a few important points must be explained.

1. An increase in the productivity of labour reduces the labour time necessary to produce a commodity. This immediately raises the question, if the value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary labour time embodied in it, why should the capitalist be so obsessed with increasing the productivity of labour in the production process and struggle for it? Isn’t it true that increased productivity of labour reduces the labour time embodied in the commodity? Let us follow up the answer with an example. The owner of a shoe factory exploits 100 workers. The workers work 240 hours a month and each worker earns 19 Pounds a month. The factory produces 5,000 shoes a month and each worker works 240 hours a month, producing 50 shoes. The worker’s monthly wage is equivalent to the work he does to produce only 10 shoes and does not receive any rials for the other 40 shoes. In other words, for each pair of shoes produced, he earns 0,38 Pounds of wages and surrenders 1,9 Pounds of surplus value to the capitalist. Raw materials, auxiliary materials, and depreciation costs, or the total fixed capital component used in each shoe, is 1,5 Pounds. Based on this, the cost of producing a shoe is 1,9 Pounds and the total value of the work involved in it (fixed capital component + variable component + surplus value produced) is 3,8 Pounds. Our assumption is that the goods are sold at their real value and the production price matches the value. In this case, and assuming this assumption, each pair of shoes will sell for 3,8 Pounds. We can also do this calculation in another way. Instead of expressing the values ​​in money, let’s take their equivalent socially necessary labour time as the basis. In each pair of shoes, there are eight-tenths of an hour of necessary labour and four hours of surplus labour, a total of four and eight-tenths of an hour of new labour, which is added to the accumulated dead labour time or raw and auxiliary materials and depreciation costs. The exploitation rate is 500 percent. By selling each pair of shoes, the owner of capital gains an additional value equivalent to 1,9 Pounds, and for all shoes, it exceeds 9470 Pounds. But the capitalist is not satisfied. It is the nature of capital to seek more astronomical surplus values. He modernizes the production process. He uses modern technology and doubles the productivity of labour. Instead of 5,000 shoes per month, the factory produces 10,000 pairs ready for sale. Now each worker produces 100 pairs with the same 240 hours of work per month. The 10 shoes are still equivalent to the total cost of living or the cost of reproducing his labour power, but this time the production of the other 90 shoes becomes entirely surplus labour and is appropriated by the capitalist.

The total amount of new labour added to each shoe over the previous one is 2 hours and 24 minutes, which is the result of dividing the worker’s 240 hours of labour per month by 100 shoes. The labour required per shoe is only 22 hundredths of an hour (a little over 13 minutes), which in monetary terms is 0,19 Pounds. The additional labour available per pair is now 2 hours and 18 hundredths of an hour (about 2 hours and 11 minutes), equivalent to 1,9 Pounds. The price of the consumed fixed capital is still 1,5 Pounds, and the value of the shoes is now not 3,8 Pounds, but only 3,6 Pounds. The shoes are put on the market and enter the field of competition. The value of each commodity is determined not by the hours of labour concentrated in it, but by the socially necessary labour time crystallized in it. Under the pressure of ongoing competition, the price of production arises, the time of primary labour inherent in the commodities gives way to socially necessary labour time. The rate of surplus value is transformed into the rate of profit, and the general rate of profit becomes the basis for the distribution of surplus values ​​among the various capitals. The capitalist will not be able to sell each shoe at the same price as before, i.e. 3,8 Pounds, but he will not sell it at the new value, or 3,6 Pounds, either. It depends entirely on the extent and intensity of competition. Let us assume that he sells each pair for 3,7 Pounds. In this case, he/she will plunder an additional value of 2 Pounds by selling each shoe and 19,9 Pounds by selling them all. A figure that is more than double the previous round of accumulation.

In what we saw, it was clearly observed that: firstly, the value of goods is inversely proportional to the productivity of labour, and with its doubling, the value of each shoe fell from 400 thousand tomans to 3,6 Pounds. Secondly, relative surplus value is directly proportional to the productivity of labour. Instead of 9,5 Pounds of surplus value, all shoes carried 19,9 Pounds of surplus value. Thirdly, the value of labour also decreases with the upward trend of labour productivity. In our example, the necessary labour contained in each shoe became only 13 minutes and 12 seconds instead of 48 minutes. Fourthly – and this is very important. In capitalist production the capitalist’s attempt to economize on labour is not at all to shorten the working day. The aim is simply to shorten to the utmost limit the working time necessary for the production of each commodity, while at the same time increasing surplus-working time as cancerously as possible. Wherever the reduction of the working day has occurred, it has been the result of the workers’ struggle. What the capitalist wants and pursues most ferociously is an increase in the working day, accompanied by an unbridled increase in the productivity of labour.

2- The extreme and explosive struggle of capital to endlessly increase the productivity of labour and acquire a galaxy of relative surplus value has historically and from the very beginning sacrificed and beheaded the process of learning, discovery, invention, research, scientific progress and everything related to human knowledge on the threshold of profit-seeking and capitalization. Capitalism has certainly witnessed enormous industrial revolutions, tremendous technical innovations and inventions, astonishing development of sciences, dazzling expansion of human knowledge, discoveries of usurious intelligence and a world of such events, but capitalism has used the entire process of these developments directly and purely in the service of increasing profits and self-aggrandizement without any limits of capital. If these days we witness the deathly bankruptcy and bankruptcy of all the towers of the galaxy of scientific exploration and research in the world, the shameful silence and hateful suffocation of all the universities and scientific and medical centres in the world in the face of the onslaught of the coronavirus and the Covid-19 disease, if the world, filled, inflated and saturated with all knowledge!! remains silent even to produce an effective mask against this virus and trillions of others, it all has its roots here, this same ugly reality, its roots in production for profit, production that is alien and contrary to the real needs of humanity, the inherently anti-human capitalist mode of production. This is a point that explaining and exploring its roots is the backbone of the Marxian critique of political economy, and we will constantly and continuously deal with it in the process of recognizing and teaching what Marx has done.

Chapter 11: Collaboration

The simultaneous and side-by-side work of a number of workers, in a single workplace, for a single capital, to produce value and surplus value is called cooperation. Historically, or in analysing the process of material changes in history, cooperation can be considered an event that testifies to the birth and development of the capitalist mode of production. Why? We summarize the answer in a few important points below.

1 – The primitive cooperation of several workers, in the crafts and workshops, also existed in the previous production methods. There, too, several people worked under the command of a master craftsman, producing value and even surplus value, but the difference between the work of those workers together and their separate and individual work was small. The result of the work of two workers with similar skills and expertise was twice that of one worker. If a third person had joined them, perhaps the product of labour would have been tripled. The surplus value resulting from their collective labour was the surplus value produced by one worker multiplied by 3. The increase and decrease in the number of workers did not change the rate of surplus value in the workshop, did not increase the degree of exploitation of labour power, and did not play a special role in the evolution of the labour process. In short, pre-capitalist handicraft industries were not subject to the “law of value”; the value of their products was not determined by “socially necessary labour” or the average social labour. They did not compete on this basis, and their surplus value was not a share of the total surplus value resulting from such competition. For all these reasons, the artisans of that day were not capitalists, the law of valorisation only becomes fully relevant and applies to individual producers when they produce as capitalists, exploiting a number of workers at the same time and setting the average social labour in motion from the very beginning.

2. The reverse of what we said about the handicraft industries based on the previous mode of production is true of the co-operation with capitalist production. Let us pause for a moment to consider the fact that the mere employment of a large number of workers by a single capital, in a single working environment, even when the mode of production has not changed, changes the objective conditions of the labour process. The establishments in which the workers are exploited, the stores of raw materials and tools, become collective consumers in the labour process. They are used in common and on a large scale without increasing their exchange value. A building in which 20 weavers work with 20 machines is larger than a room in which one weaver and two assistants work. But the establishment of this workshop requires much less work than the establishment of twenty small workshops. The increase in the cost of the means of production concentrated in one place and widely used is also very small and economical compared with the result which this collective use brings about. These means transmit a comparatively smaller share of their value to each unit of the product, because, first, the value which they transmit is divided over a greater number of products, and, secondly, their own value is relatively and completely less compared with the numerous means. In the homogeneous and co-operative mode of capitalist production, unlike the simple co-operation within the previous guild industries, the productive power of the workers is not the sum of the absolute value of the productive power of the individuals but is the manifestation of a new power arising from the nature of collective labour. Here we see a sense of competition which increases the efficiency of the labour of each worker. The labour of each worker as a part of the whole can constitute a certain stage of the whole process of production. This co-operation speeds up the various phases of the labour process. It increases the mechanical power of labour, links the labour of different workers together, makes possible the simultaneity of various works. It contributes to the joint use of the instruments of labour and to the reduction of the cost of production, gives individual labour the character of social average labour. The co-operative co-operation of capitalist production, with these features, makes the specific productive power of the combined working day the social productive power of labour or the productive power of social labour.

3 – The medieval workshop owner could free himself from manual labour by exploiting several workers, appropriating the surplus value of their labour, and acquiring a certain amount of capital. He transformed from a master worker into a capitalist, but the current workshop relations up to this point were a manifestation of a kind of formal capitalism. These relations truly took on the nature of capitalism when they transformed the various processes of labor that were scattered and independent of each other into a continuous social labour process. Labor power, too, was in its previous form, not under the real and organic domination of capital, but in its formal subjugation. Instead of working for himself, the worker worked for the capitalist and under his control. The relationship between the capitalist and the worker was not one with the necessary power to advance, improve, and transform the labour process. At best, the latter learned a few things from the former and became a master worker, but this relationship did not change and develop the labour process. In the twin cooperation of capitalism, the opposite happens. Here, the domination of capital over production practically becomes a necessity for the advancement and transformation of the labour process, and the formal subordination of the worker to capital also becomes his dissolution in the labour process and the creation of capital’s value, a complete separation from labour and the fate of labour, production, and his own life.

4- With the increasing number of workers working together under one roof, the struggle of the workers against the pressure of exploitation and domination of capital on the one hand and the preparation and equipping of capital to brutally crush this campaign increased. The fire of class struggle between the two emerging classes, the working class and the capitalist class, flared up, and the process of ignition accelerated until it became the real driving force of the development of history and the new historical era. Here, the capitalist’s dominance over the labour process was no longer simply a function of the technical nature of the process – the master was not the apprentice – it stemmed from the exploitative nature of the social labour process, from the powerful position of the capital fetish and the exclusion of the worker from determining the fate of her/his labour in this process. The domination, precisely the rule of the exploiting capitalist, the resistance of the exploited worker and the struggle between them was the manifestation of the class struggle. As time went by, the worker’s feeling of alienation from his work and of being separated from determining the fate of his work became deeper and more violent, while on the other hand the capitalist exerted more and more of his power to protect his capital from the danger of workers’ protest and struggle, to make exploitation more intense, capital more self-aggrandizing and enormous, and the workers more miserable, more oppressed, and more dissolved in the system of profit production.

5. The cooperation of workers in the new capitalist workshops, as far as this mode of production was concerned, was designed and melded entirely by capital. The workers’ cohesion, as a single productive unit or as connected links in the chain of profit production, as involuntary and submissive cogs in the capital production machine, was planned and enforced outside of their existence, beyond their will and control, by capital. In this respect, capitalist management has a dual content that arises from the contradictory nature of this mode of production. On the one hand, management is the process of production of use values, and on the other hand, it is the process of production of value and surplus value. This management is coercive and tyrannical, the inevitable necessity of the exploitation of the worker and is against any degree of his freedom, authority and free will. From the very beginning, when the capitalist, by intensifying the exploitation of his workers, exempted himself from manual labour, he immediately formed an army of officers and non-commissioned officers under the names of foremen, supervisors and the like to protect the order of the exploitation of the worker by capital. The same thing that capitalism has done at the level of society and the world. It has made the earth and time its economic, political, legal, civil, cultural, moral and everything else a machine of oppression.

6 – The capitalist buys the labour power of hundreds or thousands of workers as individual units, he pays the price of the labour power of individuals individually, but the labour power that he exploits is not the disjointed, scattered, and isolated labour power of individuals. On the contrary, it is the cooperative, interconnected, composite, collective labour power of thousands or tens of thousands of workers. The efficiency and result of the exploitation of this collective composite labour is not at all comparable to the product of the labour of the individual workers. Capitalism makes the social nature of labour an even more devastating and deadly weapon of exploitation for workers. Workers apparently own their labour power!! But only as long as they have not sold it, in other words, as long as they have not become workers. By becoming workers, they no longer own this power. They do not enter into contact with themselves in this passage, they contact and establish a relationship with capital separately, separately. Their cooperation begins when the labour process has begun. When they no longer belong to themselves. They are the parts of the labour process, the components of the existence of capital, the increased collective power resulting from their collective production belongs to capital. Workers offer this power and the result of the collective or social nature of their labour to capital completely free of charge and without any price.

7. It is not only the social productive power resulting from cooperation that takes the form of the productive power of capital; cooperation itself, in comparison with the labour process of independent and individual workers or even craftsmen, takes on a form specific to capitalist production. This cooperation is the first change that the labour process witnesses after it has become truly subordinate to capital. A spontaneous change that has the form of simultaneous labour of a large number of workers for capital, and its emergence marks the beginning or coincides with the beginning of capitalist production.

Chapter 12: Division of Labor and Manufacture

1 – Dual origin of the manufacturer

Cooperation based on the division of labour, distinct from the earlier simple type of cooperation, and as a twin form of the capitalist production process, revealed its true form in the manufacture. The middle of the sixteenth century to the last third of the eighteenth century can be considered the period of prosperity of the manufactures. The manufacture arose in two forms. First: Workers employed in different and separate crafts were brought together under a common roof by a single capitalist to shoulder the entire burden of producing a given product.

Second: The capitalist brought together a number of craftsmen who all performed a single task, for example, papermaking, at a single time, under a single roof. Each craftsman, with the help of one or two apprentices, took on the entire process of producing goods. They worked together on the basis of a simple form of cooperation. They carried out the work in the same manual way as before, but gradually, and with reference to the needs of the day, the work of producing a single commodity was divided into separate and separate tasks. A kind of division of labour came into being by chance. Instead of the commodity being the product of the work of a single craftsman, it became the product of the work of several workers or a process of work based on cooperation and division of labour. In this way, on the one hand, the manufacture introduced or expanded the division of labour as a new element in the production process, and on the other hand, it integrated independent crafts. Let us remember that in the manufacture, the moving chain of the labour process was everywhere human limbs and organs. In order to have the necessary understanding of the division of labour in the manufacture, the following points are important:

A: Handicraft retains its role as the basis of manufacturing production. The production process consists of various stages of manual operations. Each of these operations, whether simple or complex, has a craft form and is carried out by hand.

B: The division of labour here is a special form of cooperation, but its advantages arise not from this feature but from the general nature of cooperation.

2 – The worker is part of the work and the tool of the work

A worker who repeats an action all his life becomes part of the process of that work and its tool. Compared to the craftsman, he delivers more products in less time, with less labor, and the productivity of his work is higher. At the same time as turning the worker into a part of the work and the tool of the work, the manufacturer develops his skill in that work, reproduces and develops the spontaneous classification existing in the society of the day in the workshop, and by turning a part of the work process into the lifelong job of the individual, he continued the same path that we saw earlier in the form of the inheritance of professions.

3 – Basic Forms of Manufacture – Heterogeneous and Organic

The manufacture had two different forms depending on the nature of the product it produced. The product was either the result of an assembly of components that were made independently of each other or the result of a series of continuous processes and operations. The heterogeneous type was true of the “watch”. At first, the watch was the result of the individual work of this or that craftsman, but later it became a social product based on the work of a large number of workers such as dial makers, spring makers, hand makers, frame makers, screw makers, electroplaters, base makers and dozens of other jobs. In this type of manufacture, each sub-component of work could take the form of an independent industry that the worker who performed it carried out in cooperation with other workers under the domination of a single capitalist.

In the organic manufacture of the perfect form, the production of commodities passed through a series of different and at the same time continuous processes of work, each worker performing a part of this process and completing the work of each other, the production of needles from wire with the cooperation of 72 workers was a typical example of this form of manufacturing production. The work process here became orderly and coordinated and was significantly different from handicraft industry. This, and in particular the saving of time, meant that the production time of products did not exceed the socially necessary labour time for their production. This was imposed from outside and through the level of competition in the production of simple pre-capitalist commodities. There, the sale of commodities at market prices creates the compulsion for the artisan to strive to reduce his working time and adapt it to the socially necessary time; in organic manufacture, on the contrary, the delivery of a certain quantity of product in a certain working time is the technical law of the production process. The paper mill in the paper industry or the stone crusher for crushing metals in the mining industry was among these machines. The fact is that the specific machine throughout the entire manufacturing era was the same collective worker, the workers locked in chains of cooperation, exploited by a single capitalist, under a single roof. The workers, as part of the work, were inserted into the production process by the employer, one by one, based on their level of skill, physical strength, and mental state, they were produced as cogs in the wheel, buried in the same work they were doing, one-sidedly and unilaterally finding the ability to do more work for the owner of capital. In the process of taking over various craft industries, the manufacturer raised the completely one-dimensional and fossilized specialization of the worker, while at the same time becoming the founder and promoter of widespread unspecialization. It created a large class of workers called unskilled, created a hierarchy, divided workers into skilled and unskilled, exempted the work cycle from bearing the cost of training students and promoting them to skilled workers.

4 – Division of Labor in Manufacturing and Division of Labor within Society

If we consider only labour itself, the division of social production into main branches, sub-branches, and division of labour in the workshop can be called the individual division of labour. The relationship between the manufacturing and social division of labour is the general basis of all commodity production. This issue must be resolved. The division of labour within society concerns the belonging of individuals to specific occupations or professions and originates from two completely opposite sources. First – the division of labour, which has a physiological origin, arose within the family on the basis of gender and age differences, grew in the tribe, and expanded with the development of human societies and the increase in population, especially due to conflicts between tribes and the domination of one tribe over another. Second – the division of labour resulting from exchange between different spheres of production, which did not exist at first and gradually emerged and grew as a result of contact between families, tribes, and communities with different means of work and life. Let us clarify that exchange did not create differences between different spheres of production but rather linked these spheres together and transformed them into different branches of social production.

The basis of the division of labour resulting from the exchange of commodities was the separation of town and country. An event that does not need to be explained here. If the simultaneous exploitation of a number of workers by a single capitalist under a single roof was the material precondition of the division of labour in manufacturing, the development and density of population also determined the precondition of the division of labour within society. As for the relationship between the two, it should be said that the division of labour in manufacturing depended to some extent on the development of the division of labour within society, but the development of the latter was clearly influenced by the former. These two forms of division of labour had these links, but their differences were also important. The division of labour in the factory was a reflection of the fact that the means of production were concentrated in the hands of a single capitalist. The division of labour within society, on the contrary, was a distribution of the means of production among numerous and independent producers. Within the workshop, the iron law of numerical proportion between the tasks and the persons responsible for performing them was the basis of the division of labour among individuals; in society, on the contrary, it is lawlessness, chance, or chance that creates and diversifies the distribution of producers and their means of production in different branches. The division of labour in the workshop implies the undisputed authority of the capitalist over a large number of workers, each of whom is nothing more than a helpless and dissolute cog in the capitalist’s capital and labour process. The division of labour within society links together independent and separate producers. Independent and related producers whose only power in their relations is competition for the sale of commodities. 

Let us add another point. If in capitalist production, the dispersed, competitive social division of labour and the completely despotic workshop division of labour are necessary and complementary to each other, in older forms of production, on the contrary, we witnessed a pattern of planned organization of social labour accompanied by the negation of the division of labour within the workshop. A clear example of this pattern can be seen in the Indian hamlets of those times. A small communal society based on communal production on a common farm and an unchanging division of labour, the development of which occurred not through the development and transformation of the productive sphere, but through the creation of similar communal societies. A population of landowners with an area of ​​​​40 to several thousand hectares at their disposal formed a self-sufficient productive and social unit. Products were produced for individual consumption. The results of human labour were not commodities. The land was cultivated collectively, and the products of labour were divided among the members of the community. The members of this community included the chief of police, judge, sheriff, tahsildar, accountant, border guard, Merab, brahmin, teacher, astrologer, blacksmith, carpenter, potter, barber, sawyer, and poet.

5 – Character of manufacturing capitalism

The exploitation of a large number of workers by a single capitalist and under the umbrella of this capitalist’s domination, the foundation of cooperation as a whole, is one of its manufacturing forms. The division of labour in manufacturing makes the increase in population a necessity of the technical process of work. The employment of new workers, subject to the predetermined division of labour, is an inevitable need of manufacturing. The expansion of the division of labour is also dependent on the exponential increase in the number of workers. In this regard, other points are also important, which are briefly as follows:

First: The increase in variable capital also entails the need to increase both components of fixed capital, that is, the fixed component such as buildings and installations, and the circulating component such as raw materials. This means the uninterrupted increase in capital or the continuous transformation of the social means of production and life into capital, which is the essential law of manufacturing production.

Second: The collective labour of the workers in the factory becomes the existential form of capital. All the spoils and profits of the social mechanism of production with the large population of workers as part of labour belong entirely to the capitalist. The productive power resulting from the combination of the types of labour becomes the productive power of capital.

Third: The factory not only places the formerly independent worker under the yoke of the power of capital, it also creates a hierarchy among the workers themselves. Unlike simple cooperation, it transforms the individual mode of labour, attacks labour power from the roots, mutilates and cripples the worker, artificially strengthens his partial skill, but the world burns and reduces his talents, instincts, and inclinations to ashes.

Fourth: If previously the worker sold his labour power to capital because he did not have the material means of production, now his individual labour power is incapable of doing anything until it is sold to capital. His individual labour power is capable of doing work only when and where it is sold and does not belong to him. All that the worker loses is accumulated on his opposite side, which is capital. The division of labour in capitalist manufacturing places the worker in a position where he faces the intellectual forces operating in the material process of production as the property of others and a power ruling over himself. The process of this separation and feeling of alienation from simple cooperation, in which the capitalist assumes the form of a symbol of unity and the representative of the will of the entire organism of social labour, begins, in manufacturing production, with the mutilation, enslavement, and complete dissolution of the worker in capital, gains intensity, depth, and speed, and reaches its peak in large-scale industry, which makes science the sole means of increasing the productivity of labour and the galactic profits of capital.

Fifth: In the factory, the worker was deprived of any individual power of production; his power became the power of collective production, and his entire social power of production became the property of the capitalist. The production of the capitalist factory slaughtered the intellect, and with its prosperity, it closed the return to thought. The workshop became the engine, and the workers became the cogs and nuts of this engine.

Sixth: Cooperation based on the division of labour or manufacture had its beginnings in the automobile, but when it reached a certain degree of development and stability, it became a conscious, planned, and systematic formulation of the capitalist mode of production. It created a certain type of social organization of labour and gave this organization enormous productive power. The division of labour of manufacture, as a form of social production specifically capitalist, could not realize its development process in any other form than the form of capitalist expansion. A process that was nothing other than the production of relative surplus value on the most enormous scale at the expense of labour.

Seventh: The period of manufacture in the proper sense of the word, or the period in which manufacture becomes the dominant form of capitalist production, encounters important barriers and obstacles in the realization of its inner tendencies. It expands the hierarchy among workers and their division into simple and skilled. At the same time, it reduces the number of unskilled workers due to the dominant influence of skilled workers. It adapts the production process to the different degrees of maturity, power and advancement of the tools of labour and in this regard, it intensifies the exploitation of women and children, at the same time it comes into conflict with the resistance of the habits and temperaments of male workers. It divides the craft industries into different branches and reduces the cost of training the worker, but it does not provide for the apprenticeship of the labour force, which requires long-term training. The manufacturer did not have the necessary capacity to dominate the entire social production, nor was it able to realize a radical transformation in this field. With these characteristics, it grew on the existing foundation of urban craft industries and rural cottage industries, as a phase of capitalist production, paving the way for the greater expansion of this mode of production, but at a stage of its development it came into contradiction. It came into conflict with the requirements of the rapid development of capitalism, which was itself a driving force. It contributed to the discovery of some mechanical tools and devices in its own right.

Chapter 13: Machinism and Big Industry

1 – The evolution of Machinism

Capitalism, by its very nature, wants machinery not for man but entirely against him, to increase the productivity of labour, to reduce the cost of production, to lower the price of goods as much as possible, and to raise the rate of profit as much as possible. The transformation of the mode of production in the manufacture begins with labour power, and in large-scale factory industry with the means of labour. In the first step, let’s see how the tool of labour evolves from a hand tool to a machine? English mechanics, mathematicians, and economists call a tool a simple machine and a machine a complex tool. In this regard, they even consider auxiliary devices, ramps, and screws to be machines. This definition is economically incorrect, invalid, and devoid of historical elements. Some people also explain the difference between a machine and a tool by saying that the driving force is the human tool, but the driving force behind the machine is a non-human agent such as an animal. Based on this, for example, a Plow is a machine, but a powerful weaving machine that is moved by human hands would be a tool!

Every machine consists of three basic components: the driving motor, the transmission device, and the machine tool. The first component is the driving force of the machine, and it either produces this motion itself, such as a steam engine, or receives it from a natural force, such as a waterwheel. The second component is the transmission of motion and, if necessary, its type, for example, from linear to rotational. Together, these two components transmit the motion to the machine tool. The third component (machine tool) applies this motion in any desired form. The industrial revolution of the 18th century began with this last component and led to the transformation of the handicraft industry into the machine industry.

The number of tools that a man can use at a time is limited by his physical organs. A machine does the same work as a man, but one hand cannot use dozens of tools and carry out dozens of tasks at the same time. On the contrary, the number of tools assembled in a machine is free from the limitations that the craftsman has physically for using tools simultaneously. Before the advent of the machine, capitalists tried with endless greed to make it possible for a worker to use several tools and complete several tasks at the same time, but this was not possible. The advent of the machine was the starting point and the path to the industrial revolution. Instead of a worker working with a single tool, a mechanism emerged, thanks to which a mass of similar tools worked together. This mass of tools was set in motion by a single motive power. With all this, we have only been dealing with a simple factor of mechanical production. Among the important motive powers that have been used since the time of manufacture, the horse was the worst of all. A self-willed, expensive, and troublesome creature for service within the factory, despite all the great industry that initially used it. It is not without reason that “horsepower” is still a standard. Wind was a variable and uncontrollable force. Water power was superior to all these, and history shows what great use and what wonderful effects it had. In the seventeenth century, great efforts were made to turn both millstones by a “water wheel,” but the water power was not sufficient to set in motion the enormous size of the conveying mechanism, which stimulated wider research into the laws of friction. The flywheel, which later played an important role in mechanical industry, emerged from these efforts, and it was in this direction that the scientific elements of modern industry developed in the era of manufacture. The invention of the second steam engine by James Watt, known as the two-stroke steam engine, was an important turning point in the development of mechanical industry. With this invention, a motive power was found that was powered by coal and water, was under human control, could be transported and played the role of a vehicle, unlike the wheel, which was not rural but urban. It allowed production to be concentrated in the city instead of being scattered in the countryside, and finally, it had a general technical application, and local conditions did not have much influence on its location. As soon as the human hand tool became part of a machine, the driving motor also found an independent form and was freed from the shackles of human power. One machine was able to move several machines at once; the driving machine acquired a wider role. The transmission mechanism underwent a serious transformation into a detailed device, and it is here that we must point out the difference between the cooperation of several machines of the same type and a machine system. In the first case, the entire product is made by a single machine, and the production process involves a simple machine cooperation in the factory. The factory consists of a collection of machines, and cooperation, if we leave aside the worker, reflects nothing more than the gathering and simultaneous operation of these machines. An example is the textile factory, in which a large number of weaving machines are located side by side. Here, of course, there is a mechanical unity, which is important in its own right. All the machines receive their motion simultaneously and equally from the single engine of the factory and therefore play the role of members of a single organ.

In the machine system, in the proper sense of the word, the production of the product is carried out by passing through a series of distinct and connected stage processes. It is true that the manufacture provided the natural basis for the division and organization of the work process of this system, but there is a quite fundamental difference between the two. In the Manufacturer, at first there were workers who, individually or in groups, carried out various processes with manual tools and later gradually became disintegrated parts of the work process, but in machine production, the mental element of the division of labour or the active intellectual role of the worker is eliminated. How each specific production process is completed and how the entire processes are interconnected is a matter that is carried out through scientific planning and with the role of sciences such as mechanics, chemistry, etc. In this regard, science is increasingly dissolved in the capitalist production process and becomes further away from human orientation and response to human needs.

We have already said that the manufacture was the technical basis of large-scale industry. It produced machines which, by developing and perfecting them, large-scale industry consigned artisanal and manufactured production to the archives of history. In other words, machine production emerged from a place within which it was unable to flourish and develop as it should, and in order to flourish and develop, that foundation had to be overturned. The change in the mode of production in one area of ​​industry necessitated a change in other areas. This occurred first in industries which were somehow connected by the division of labour. Although each of them produced a distinct commodity, they played a complementary role in the process of collective production of a single product. For example, in the clothing industry, the invention of the spinning machine made the production of weaving machines necessary. A process that advanced further and further made the need for the creation of new machines wider and more necessary. In this regard, the revolution in industry and agriculture made the necessary grounds for a huge transformation in the general conditions of the social production process, in communications and transportation such as shipping, railways, telegraphs, iron smelting and other fields mandatory. The more extensive, more severe and more brutal exploitation of the working masses, whose numbers were growing explosively, provided capital and the capitalist class with all the necessary means for a prodigious industrial expansion. An endless multitude of wage slaves were exploited, exhausted and terrified, they created capital, they filled countries with capital, the more they produced the more deeply they were separated from their work, the more they fell from existence, they themselves became weaker, more worn out, more oppressed, more miserable, more stupid, more deformed, and they made capital more galactic, more powerful, more gigantic, more intelligent, more scientific and more modern. Everything they created became capital and paved the way for the expansion of the octopus of capital and the economic, political, cultural, intellectual, scientific, technical, and industrial power of capitalism. At every step, they plunged deeper, more crushing, and more pitifully into the abyss of misery, poverty, degradation, and alienation from class consciousness and consciousness, and in return, they made capital the owner of the most dazzling knowledge, techniques, industries, inventions of technical intelligence, and dazzling scientific discoveries. With their work, they gave the ship of science the power to fly to the galaxies and enabled the bourgeoisie to turn all these sciences and achievements of knowledge into a single and complete tool for the cancerous growth of capital and a weapon for more deadly exploitation, more pitiful slavery, more deadly captivity, and more terrible injustice. Big industry grew gigantic from this process, twisted the scroll of the life of manufacturing production, replaced the old machines with ever more modern machines, and created and established its own technical basis for machine building. It entered a phase where it produced machines with machines.

2 – The machine does not create any value, it transfers its value to the commodity

It was previously stated that the entire productive power resulting from the division of labour and the cooperation of workers goes to capital completely free of charge and without any rial cost. Capitalist production has a magical, legendary, incredible and indescribable power and capacity in terms of intensifying human exploitation, making him miserable and making him nothing and void. With each step of socialization, it plunges the worker into a terrifying loneliness and alienates him miles away from his work, from himself, from society, from his fellow workers, from people, from his social existence, from his true class consciousness and knowledge, from everything. It binds people together to bring their alienation to its peak, it unites them to deal the greatest blows to their human solidarity, it liberates them! It gives them the right to extinguish the last spark of freedom in their lives! To crush and wither the roots of every kind of human right. Here, everything is a tool for the increase and self-expansion of capital, and inevitably everything that is human must be bombarded and sacrificed to the profitability of capital. Cooperation and the division of labour are also precisely the captives of this calamity. Thousands of workers cooperate, join, and unite, but only in order that their cooperation and cooperation lower the costs of capital’s production and make the flood of profit and self-expansion of capital more rampant. Cooperation here is a completely free natural force without any cost to capitalist social labour, and it plays exactly the same role that free nature plays for capital, where land, water, air, and other components of nature become the fabric and fabric of profitability without any cost to capital. Knowledge is also caught in the same fate. Capitalism, with large-scale industry, absorbs the enormous forces of nature and natural science into its cycle of valorisation in order to raise the productivity of labour astonishingly. But and this is a very, very important but, this increase in the productivity of production has nothing to do with the value-creating nature of the machine, the machine is devoid of any capacity for value-creating! The astonishing rise in the productivity of production is only the product of the ever-greater labour expended by the worker. The machine, like all other fixed capital, does not create any new value, it merely transfers its value to the product. The machine, because it has value and transfers its value to the commodity, makes the product more expensive to the extent of this transfer value, in proportion to the value it loses and transfers. Instead of making the product cheaper, the machine, on the contrary, makes it more expensive. The machine enters the labour process all at once, but it transfers its value to the commodity gradually and piecemeal. It never transfers more value to the product than it loses through depreciation. One point is very important and fundamental here. It is only in large-scale industry that capital uses the product of past and objectified human labour on a huge scale, absolutely free of charge. The accumulated dead labour of the worker is amazingly intensified, even without a single rial of cost, and the exploitation of the workers is made all the more terrifying. Let us explore the subject a little more carefully. We said that the machine enters the labour process all at once but transfers its value to the product little by little. Accordingly, there is a huge difference between the machine as a factor in shaping the value of the product and as a factor in shaping the product itself. The first case concerns the integral presence of the machine in the production process, the entire productivity-increasing power of the machine is employed by capital, while only a small part of it is consumed in the production of new goods. If we subtract the value of the latter from the former, or deduct the depreciation cost of the machine from its total value, the difference is the value that has been worked on in the machine for a long time, free of charge, in a series of movements to increase productivity, producing the greatest product with the least number of workers and increasing the volume of profits. In this passage, the following points are worth noting.

A. The amount of value that a machine transfers to each unit of product depends on the value of the whole machine or the socially necessary labour crystallized in it. The less labour or social labour time a machine consists of, the less value it transfers to a new unit of product. The less value it transfers, the greater its productive power and the more its application will resemble the role of the forces of nature in the process of production.

B – In comparing the prices of goods produced by crafts and manufacturing on the one hand and large-scale industry on the other, the amount of value transferred per unit of product in the latter (large-scale industry) is relatively higher but absolutely lower.

C – The productivity of a machine is determined by the labour that it eliminates in the production process. If the purpose of using a machine is simply to make a commodity cheaper or to reduce the cost of producing it, then the labour expended in its production must be less than the labour that is made redundant by its use, but the capitalist has a different calculation. He does not pay for labour; he only pays for the value of labour. On this basis, his criterion for using a machine is the difference between the value of the machine and the value of the labour that it makes redundant. That is precisely why the price of labour can have a decisive influence on the capitalist’s decision to use a machine.

3 – Direct effects of machine production on workers

First – The employment of women and children: The advent of the machine somewhat reduced the special importance of muscular power. If previously, strong muscles were a condition for purchasing labour power, with the advent of the machine, capital found it possible to subject the vast mass of weak or weak workers to the most severe forms of exploitation with ease. The play of young children gave way to long, hard work in the slaughterhouses of profit-making. Women entered the labour market on a significant scale, and their slaughter became a condition for the self-promotion of capital and the ever-increasing expansion of capitalism. Previously, in determining the price of labour power, not only the food and drink of the worker selling this power was taken into account; the physical strength of women and children was also part of this price. With the widespread introduction of machinery into the market, the owners of capital, in order to pay the same price, instead of one person, dragged several people to the slaughterhouse of exploitation. In order to pay what was the price of reproducing the labour force and raising the army of labour, they forced men, women, and children to endure the most severe exploitation. The total wages of all these might have been, and usually were, more than the wages of one person, but instead of one day’s work, the capitalists now acquired several days’ work. Instead of the surplus labour time or surplus value resulting from the exploitation of one worker, they appropriated the mass surplus values ​​resulting from the exploitation of several people. Machinery reduced the price of labour power in a very decisive way and made the exploitation of the worker by capital more intense and more exhausting.  The machine even stripped the formal appearance of the empty phrase “free worker” of its poisonous, mind-numbing glaze. The bourgeoisie bombarded the mind to say that the worker was “freely” selling his labour power!!! Capital, with its invasion in the form of the machine, put this together. It forced the worker to force his wife and children to sell their labour power. To become a broker selling his wife and children to capital. The capitalists turned the workshops where pregnant women and weak young children were brutally exploited into establishments for the sale of these wage slaves to partners and owners of other factories. The record of capitalism in this page, like all its pages, is filled with the blackest, most shameless, most shameless, most heinous scenes of inhumanity and barbarity. The mechanistic modernization of capital, from within itself, gave birth to a terrifying market for the sale of women and children, the number of minors whose sale reached the media of the day became more horrific by the minute. The forced labour of women, as an important gift of the mechanistic modernization of capital, led to an explosive mortality of newborns and infants of a few months old. Let us look at some lines from a report on this subject.

“In just 16 areas of England, 9,085 out of every 100,000 children under the age of one die each year. In one area, the number of child deaths is 7,047.” In 24 areas this ratio is 10 to 11 thousand, in 39 areas 11 to 12 thousand, in 48 areas 12 to 13 thousand, in 22 areas over 20 thousand, in 25 areas over 21 thousand, in 17 areas over 22 thousand and in 11 areas over 23 thousand,” the report continues. “In the counties of Hove, Wolverhampton, Ashton-under-Lyne and Preston it is over 24 thousand, in Nottingham and Stockport and Bradford it is over 25 thousand, in Wisbech it is over 26 thousand and in Manchester it is over 26 thousand children.” All these children died because their mothers were forced to abandon them to sell their labour power and leave them alone without any support. Starving children of a few months old, putting them to sleep with opium so that they themselves work the longest working hours for the capitalists and produce profits and capital. It is clear that these sinister inhumane tragedies had nothing to do with the machine or the modernization of machine production. It was capital that did this in the form of the machine, and in the pursuit of its gigantic self-aggrandizement and the galatinization of profits, it transformed the machine industry into a weapon of mass murder of children and deadly torture of mothers.

Second: The lengthening of the working day

Let us emphasize once again that whenever and wherever we speak of machinery, we have in mind mechanized capital or machinery in the capitalist mode of production. Machinery is the most powerful means of increasing the productivity of labour, of shortening the working time for the production of a commodity, and of intensifying the exploitation of the worker by capital. But the increasing intensification of the exploitation of labour by capital is not limited to increasing the productivity of labour or reducing the time required to produce a given commodity. The machine, as a form of embodiment of capital, is also the driving force behind the uncontrolled prolongation of the daily work and the intensified exploitation of the worker in this way. The machine makes capital’s insatiable appetite for profit excessive, pathological, and cancerous. It is the essence of capitalist production that the product of the labour and exploitation of the worker, instead of serving his livelihood, well-being, and satisfaction of his needs, is transformed into capital, into a godlike overpowering force independent of him, into the antithesis of his life. The machine is the gross and completely naked embodiment of this hideous reality. It is the clear symbol of the independent expression of the instrument of labour in relation to the worker. The instrument of labour produced by the worker has become capital, a power independent of the worker, and now the worker knows no bounds for intensified exploitation, wants to produce without ceasing, and in this transition sees the only obstacle in the way, the natural limit of the worker’s physical strength. The machine brutally pushes back this limit, putting the facilitation of the labour process in the service of prolonging the working day as much as possible. We have already seen that the productivity of the machine is inversely related to the part of it that is transferred to the product. The longer the working life of the machine and the greater the mass of product into which the machine’s depreciated value is distributed, the less is its value component transferred to each unit of commodity. In this connection, the following points are important and worthy of emphasis:

A: The wear and tear of a machine does not correspond exactly to its working life, but one thing is clear. If a machine works for seven and a half years, 16 hours a day, the period of production and the amount of value it adds to the total product will not be greater than if the same machine worked for 15 years, 8 hours a day. But in the first case, the value of the machine is reproduced twice as fast as in the second case, and capital absorbs 15 years of surplus value in seven and a half years.

B: The wear and tear of a machine occurs due to excessive use or even lack of use, but apart from this form of wear and tear, the machine also suffers a second type of wear and tear. In the capitalist system, we constantly witness the production of newer machines, machines that have the same quality and efficiency but use less socially necessary labour in their production and are therefore cheaper. With the arrival of these cheaper machines, the exchange value of the old machines also decreases. The price of these machines is now determined on the basis of the socially necessary labour crystallized in the new machines. The shorter the time for the return of the total value of the machine or the longer the worker’s working day, the less this type of wear and tear and depreciation of its value will be. For all these reasons, capital associates the use of the machine with the lengthening of the working day as much as possible.

C: If all other things remain the same, in order for capital to exploit 4,000 workers instead of 2,000, it must double the buildings, machinery, raw materials, and auxiliary means. Now if, in the midst of these changes, the working day becomes longer, then capital can be exempted from bearing the entire cost of increasing buildings and machinery. In this way, the volume of surplus value increases enormously, while the cost of production decreases.

D: The machine contributes to the mass production of relative surplus value in various ways. First, by directly reducing the price of labour, second, by indirectly reducing the worker’s wages by making his subsistence necessities cheaper, and third, by increasing the productivity of social labour, which, as a result of which occurs in certain areas of industry, expands the competitiveness of these areas, the social value of their products increases relative to their original value, and in the meantime, massive monopoly profits accrue to the capitalists.

E: Surplus value arises only from variable capital. Machine industry transforms a part of the capital that was previously variable into fixed capital. A capital that does not produce any surplus value. Two workers can under no circumstances produce as much surplus value as 24 workers. If 24 workers each deliver one hour of surplus labour time in a 12-hour working day, it will be 24 hours, while the total working time of two workers with the same working day is 24 hours. Therefore, the use of machinery for the purpose of increasing the production of surplus value is in a fundamental and essential contradiction. Machinery increases the rate of surplus value only if it reduces the number of workers, and this is while the workers are the only source of surplus value production.

F: As soon as the use of a new machine becomes widespread in a branch of industry, the competitive power of the owners of these machines begins to decline, the difference between the social value and the original value of the commodities produced by them diminishes and disappears. They are no longer able to obtain monopoly profits or to seize a larger share of the surplus-values ​​produced in the market for sale and competition. This causes them to resort again to the brutal prolongation of the working day. Indeed, machinery is the powerful motive force for prolonging the working day.

Third – Increasing work intensity

With the increasing use of machinery in the production cycle, the length of the working day and the speed and intensity of work increased simultaneously and in unison. The long working day with its exhausting, destructive and deadly dimensions became the target of a storm of workers’ struggles, and the bourgeoisie faced a mountain of problems to continue it. In this regard, the most complete preparation and equipment for the use of machinery for the production of relative surplus value became the basic axis of capitalist planning and orientation. Capital rushed to increase the productivity of labour as relentlessly as possible, to produce the maximum product with the minimum number of workers, and to extract the maximum amount of surplus value from the minimum working time of the worker.

But capital was not satisfied with this. While it used mechanism to increase the productivity of labour to the maximum extent possible and to produce an excessive amount of relative surplus value, it also pursued with all its might the goal of obtaining from the reduced working time the same volume of surplus value as it obtained from the long daily work of the workers. The machine also played this role for capital. It placed the worker in a situation where he was forced and automatically forced to work faster, his work intensity increased, he worked very intensively, densely and without any waste and created surplus value. If previously the worker had 8 hours of necessary labour and 4 hours of surplus labour in a 12-hour working day, now in an 8-hour working day there were 6 and two-thirds of necessary labour and 3 and one-third of surplus labour.

Capital’s thirst for profit and the cancerous desire of capitalist production to dissolve the worker more and more violently in the cycle of surplus value production did not find even the slightest relief or relief by doing any of these. Living capital is designed to expand its brutality in deepening and intensifying the exploitation of the worker, without any pause or stop, and in this regard, it began to do all other things to intensify the pressure of work. It increased the speed of the machines, so that the worker would work more and more destructively to adapt the movements of his hands, eyes, ears and other organs to the speed of the machine’s work, and the horror of the overload of work and the inability to complete it on time would make every cell of his being tremble. At the same time, the number of machines under the responsibility of each worker was also increased. If previously he had worked with, for example, a single loom, he now had to do all the work of turning several machines with higher acceleration and speed. By doing this, the capitalists reduced the amount of wear and tear on the machines, lowered the cost of production even further, and made the weight of surplus value incredibly heavy.

4. The Factory

With the replacement of the former tool by the machine, the entire skill, experience, knowledge, and dexterity of the worker were transferred to the machine. This event, of course, had nothing to do with the machine. It was capital that did this in the form of the machine. The new capitalist mechanism transformed the traditional division of labour of manufacture, but the reconstruction of the same system made it abhorrently a means of intensifying the exploitation of the worker even more horribly and of dissolving him more disastrously in the cycle of profit production. Instead of a lifelong specialist in the use of a single tool, it made him a lifelong specialist in the slavish service of a machine. It has made the worker, from the most sensitive period of childhood, a helpless, helpless pawn of the machine. In this way, it has not only minimized the cost of reproducing labour power but has also brought the worker’s emergency dependence on the factory, and indeed on the capitalist, to the limit. Mechanical labour, while excessively tiring and wearing out the human nervous system, has become an obstacle to any free muscular and mental movement. It even makes the ease of work a means of torturing him because it makes his work devoid of content, it deprives him of any kind and any degree of human role, and it makes him a helpless instrument of capital production. It makes the worker, who is the creator of the world of capital and whose work is the field of the entire economic, political, legal, civil, cultural, intellectual, and military octopus power of the day, a miserable, oppressed, ineffective, condemned, mute, humiliated, and buried slave of this very product of his work, and it makes the machine that is in front of him and the product of his work an independent power against his existence. The production process here is not just the process of labour, it is the process of producing surplus value, and precisely on this basis is the process of the overwhelming domination of working conditions over the worker, the process of the absolute domination of dead labour over living labour. Let us not forget that this event, this greatest and most ominous human catastrophe, has nothing to do with machines and industry; everything that exists springs from the depths of the existence of capital.

5 – The Battle Between the Worker and the Machine

The war between the wage worker and capital began with the emergence of capitalism and grew and intensified throughout the manufacturing era. But it was only with the establishment of mechanism that the worker rose up against the means of labour itself, against this form of existence of capital. The worker’s revolt against the machine was the most obvious manifestation of his revolt against the very foundation of the capitalist mode of production. The mass destruction of machinery in a series of powerful uprisings of the working masses, during the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century, in various manufacturing areas of England, was later called the Luddite movement. Time, and of course the radical lesson in the heart of the class struggle, compels the worker to distinguish between the machine and the capitalist use of the machine, between the machine and the capital determined in the existence of the machine, and instead of breaking the machine, to prepare to break the basis of the existence of wage labour. When capital dressed up as the machine, it threw workers out in droves, made them unemployed, and threw them into the abyss of hunger. It lacked food and shelter. It replaced the war between itself and the workers with a war of the workers against each other, for work and for the sale of quasi-free labour. It intensified the competition between the sellers of labour and lowered the level of wages very brutally and brutally. Capital was not satisfied with this incorporation into the machine. It made its mechanical embodiment a very crushing and destructive weapon against every breath of protest of the working masses, against labour revolts and uprisings. It swung the sword of unemployment over their heads and used the fear of hunger as a mechanism to stop their strikes.

6 – The theory of compensation for workers made redundant by machinery

The bourgeois economists claim that the introduction of machinery into the cycle of accumulation, if it dismisses a population of workers, always simultaneously and necessarily frees up a proportionate volume of capital, and this freed up capital, with its own advance, employs all the dismissed workers. This theory is in every respect baseless, deceptive, false and contrary to reality. To demonstrate this baselessness and the demagoguery of the claim, let us consider a very simple example. A capital of 56850 Pounds is divided into 47374 Pounds fixed parts and 9475 Pounds variable parts. The number of exploited workers is 80. The capitalist dismisses 40 workers by purchasing advanced machinery. The annual wages of the unemployed workers, half of the total workforce, amount to 500 million tomans, and he spends these 4737 Pounds on purchasing new machinery.

Let’s assume that the raw materials consumed by the factory are equal in both the previous and current states. Let’s see what the result of these changes is. The fixed capital, which was previously 47,37 pounds, has now become 52 Pounds. The variable capital, which was previously 9,47 Pounds, has decreased to 47,37 Pounds. 40 workers have been fired, and the remaining 40 workers must convert the same raw materials into goods. In other words, they will work instead of the previous 80 workers. Now the question is whether the 40 dismissed workers have been given jobs in this transition. The answer is clear. This has not happened and what the bourgeois economists are weaving together is merely mercenary nonsense or dirty demagoguery that they are doing to purify capitalism. Capital has been “liberated”!! Contrary to the false ideas of the bourgeois economists, it has only lost the possibility of becoming a variable part of capital because it has become an inseparable part of the constant part of capital.

Let us suppose that the capitalist, out of the 4737 Pounds of saved variable capital, converts 3789 Pounds into new fixed capital and allocates the rest to the purchase of labour power. Again, the entire “compensation theory” of the bourgeois economists will remain a disgusting and deceptive farce, because at best, a very small number of workers will be employed instead of the 40 dismissed workers. What this group falsely proclaims under the name of “liberation of capital” is not the liberation of capital but merely the liberation of the means of subsistence, or, more explicitly, the deprivation of the working masses of their minimum subsistence. This is nothing new and is inherent in the capitalist mode of production. Of course, the story does not end here. Workers who become unemployed due to the influx of capital in the form of machinery completely lose the ability to purchase their necessities of life. Whenever this happens on a significant scale, it affects the process of capital accumulation. The production of consumer goods transfers part of its capital to other areas due to the reduction in the number of its customers, and this also leads to unemployment of a larger number of workers. Machines can make work incredibly easy, but in the system of wage slavery, on the contrary, they increase the intensity, speed, difficulty and destructiveness of work to the highest level. Machines are capable of advancing man’s domination over nature to the furthest horizons, but in capitalism they act against it and cause man’s boundless oppression of nature. They should lead to the ever-increasing wealth of the producer, but in capitalism they leave him in the wilderness of misery, poverty and destitution. The real result of mechanism in the capitalist mode of production can perhaps be summed up in one sentence. They increased the productivity of labour, made the intensity of exploitation of the worker explosive, made the necessary labour of the workers nothing and their surplus labour a mountain. The production of surplus value by the worker made it galactic. It maximized the domination of capital over the worker, the degradation of the worker and his burial as a dead cog in the cycle of profit production and his ever more horrific fall from existence made it the greatest human catastrophe in history. The originator and cause of all this was not the machine but capital alone.

7 – The development of the machine industry, the attraction and expulsion of workers, the crisis of the cotton industry

The expansion of the role of machinery and the increase in labour productivity gave the process of changing the ratio between the fixed and variable parts of capital the opportunity to rebel and revolt more and more powerfully. More mass production with fewer workers became the basic rail of the cycle of capital’s valorisation. In some territories the variable part of capital or labour-power has decreased not only relatively but also absolutely. If previously capital had worked with a composition of 40 per cent fixed and 60 per cent variable, now these proportions have given way to 80 per cent fixed and 20 per cent variable. It goes without saying that even in the most flourishing cases, machinery has not, with the exception of exceptional cases, caused any interruption in the process of increasing the absolute number of workers; the population of the working masses has grown, but the relative number of workers has fallen drastically. In this case the following points are worth considering:

First: When machinery advanced in a branch of industry, it drove back the handicraft or manufacturing industries by the breadth of its advance, took over the fields one by one, and in the process achieved the greatest profits. Profits that became a source of boiling accumulation in new territories and led to the opening up of new areas of accumulation.

Second: The above trend accelerated the development of the capitalist mode of production, provided a broad foundation for the factory system. It made machine-to-machine production the agenda and the axis of capitalist development. It launched a wave of the industrial revolution and, thanks to all this, brought capitalism into a phase of expansion where only the shortage of raw materials or the limitation of the sales market could determine the boundaries of this development.

Third: The machine helped increase the raw material cost. It made products cheaper, it was the reason for the significant development of transportation, it paved the way for the large-scale export of goods through mass production, it made handicraft and manufacturing industries in all parts of the world the target of the night blood and threw them into the abyss of collapse. In this regard, capitalism created a market that was all over the world and created and established a completely global division of labour. The most distant parts of the world became the production areas of raw materials for the industries of the advanced capitalist countries.

Fourth: The internationalization of capital fuelled fierce competition between different capitals and capitals of different countries at the global level. Capital gave its scope of production and organization an international dimension. The production of cheap raw materials needed by the factories of capitalist industrial countries in areas under the control of feudal relations became a link in the cycle of valuation and reproduction of capital in the world, and the sale of goods produced by the industries of the countries in the newly established markets became a vital condition for self-expansion and the achievement of golden profits by capital. Capital opened its way to the whole world, creating and expanding the prerequisites for the development of the relationship of buying and selling labour and the development of capitalism in the most backward regions of the world.

Fifth: With the expansion of the use of machinery, the discovery of new machinery, the access to cheap raw materials and a large sales market, the scope of lightning production expanded. The pressure on the working masses for mass production became more and more fierce and unbearable every moment. The excessive production of capital is the nature of capitalism, and the final decades of the eighteenth century were the period of the frenzied display of this excessive production within the historical boundaries of those times. The simultaneous saturation of markets with goods, the crushing competition of capitalists to sell products, the contraction of markets, the paralysis of the production cycle and the occurrence of crises became the routine dynamics of the cycle of capital appreciation. The European working class had created capital like a machine with deadly work and long, destructive working days. Capitals that wanted greater profits and profits, in the struggle for gigantic self-aggrandizement, crushed their creators, the workers themselves, their children, everything that was human and humane, under their wheels. In this way and to achieve this goal, they pushed production even further to the extreme, and finally, in this direction, they collided violently with the huge internal barrier on the way to their excessive production and fell into the abyss of crisis. The pressure of excessive production of capital, the saturation of the market, the surpassing of the rate of accumulation over the rate of production of surplus value, and the absolute decline of the rate of profit made the continuation of valuation impossible and crisis the ruler of the conditions of the day. Workers were being dismissed end masse, they were being starved to death, the wages of those who remained were being drastically reduced, capital was spreading the entire burden of the crisis on the daily livelihood of the workers, while at the same time it was being refined, those with smaller capitals were going bankrupt. The remaining capitalists were starting a new round of accumulation, making the pressure of work more deadly, making the working day longer, the crisis was giving way to prosperity. New workers were being absorbed into the cycle of production, and a few steps later all the previous events were being repeated, the crisis was once again breaking the ceiling of capital’s valuation.  The workers became the targets of the most terrible nightmares. The terrible demon of hunger fell upon them, the house of ruin became more terrible, and the bloodbath of their existence became the only instrument of capital to challenge the crisis, the storm of their struggles against capital intensified, the capitalist class and the ruling political power massacred their movement with all their might. The crisis gave way to prosperity, once again the wider mass of workers set the wheel of capital’s valorisation in motion, only to be unemployed, hungry and surrendered to the death throes of capital a few steps further.

This scenario, which is the most natural image of capitalism, was repeated over and over again. What happened in the cotton industry between 1770 and 1815 and then from 1815 to 1863 was exactly the story of this dark scenario. In the first 45 years, the British manufacturers had a monopoly on machinery and the world market. During this period, five devastating economic crises shook the foundations of capitalism. With an octopus-like and criminal onslaught, the capitalists poured the entire burden of these crises onto the breadless table of the workers, making them prey to a tsunami of poverty, famine, misery and hunger, brutally suppressing their movement and thereby allowing the profit-making machine to turn again. In the second 48-year period, the number of crises increased and their intensity, devastation and destruction became more terrifying. The days of prosperity were significantly shorter than the duration of the crises, limited to 20 years as opposed to 28 years.

8 – The impact of large-scale industry on craft and manufacturing production

A – Eliminating cooperation and division of labour in the workshop:

Machinism abolished the cooperation based on artisanal production and the division of labour corresponding to the manufacturer. If in the past there were workers who each played a specific specialized role in the production process and complemented each other’s work, now in the machine system there was no place for them to play the same role as a cog. The machine or capital became the full and absolute ruler of the worker. The labour process revolved in his being and the worker’s only job was to obey the machine’s work process without the need for thought, will, or consciousness.

B – The new industry disrupted the composition of the labour force. The vicious exploitation of women and children, the exhaustion of minors and their melting in the furnace of profit made them an integral part of the process of capital’s valorisation. Capital crystallized in the existence of the machine not only surrendered the level of wages to the slaughtering knife but also pursued the same goal and made labour cheaper by expanding housework. Throughout urban and rural areas, it created a long network of women, men, and children who worked for the owners of industries without any connection with each other, toiled day and night, produced, shouldered a huge part of the capital’s valuation cycle, pumped a flood of surplus labour or surplus values ​​into the artery of capital’s existence, did all this work individually and for this reason did not have any collective resistance power or class unity against capital. In this way, the capitalists made the greatest savings in the means of production and in this way also increased the volume of profits.

C – The Modern Manufacturer: The mechanism of capitalism drove the manufacturer to the brink of bankruptcy, but the capitalists who owned the manufacturers sought all means of survival, resorted to all expedients, and changed their labour process. All these efforts also converged around one axis. The deadly intensification of the pressure of exploitation of the workers was the beginning and end of this axis. But for this to happen, certain layers of the working masses had to suffer the greatest sacrifices and become the targets of the most brutal slaughters. Here too, women and children were the weakest, most downtrodden, and most vulnerable part of the working class, bearing the brunt of the plague-like onslaught of capital. From all the pores of capital, historically, filth, blood, and brutality have rained down. What happened in the 18th century with the development of the capitalist machine, even though it paled in comparison to the subsequent crimes and inhumanities of this system!!! But it was in its own right the most heinous scenes of genocide, corruption, prostitution, and the bombing of humanity. Declining manufacturing capitalism, struggling to survive, not only tried not to lag behind its capitalist rivals, who owned modern machinery, but even tried to overtake them in intensifying the exploitation of women and children. It forced very weak and suffering children to do the most arduous work, in salt mines, candle factories, and factories producing deadly chemicals, and forced them to work long hours in deadly night labour. It forced young children, using the weapon of economic coercion, to spin the spinning wheel at all hours of the night from the evening of each day until the morning of the next day. With indescribable cruelty, it deprived these children of the right to sleep at all hours. One of the most hateful and destructive jobs of these factories during this period was garbage collection. Children as young as six were forced to dive into the depths of garbage day and night. Children as young as four were forced to work in the coal mines from four in the morning to nine at night. The owners of modern capitalist factories everywhere completed the exploitation of children and their mothers by viciously throwing these people into the abyss of addiction, depravity, corruption, prostitution and other pollutions. Thus, capitalism was valued, grew, nourished and gradually became more octopus, more pestilent and more hateful.

D – New domestic industries: It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the extent of the cannibalism and barbarism of labour capital. The large-scale machine industry built its pride on the unrestrained genocide and the imposition of the bloodiest holocausts on humanity. The creation of vast networks of domestic labour by hungry women and young children was only a small glimpse of these atrocities. The owners of machine industries in most large cities created places run by women under the name of “mistresses”. In each of these places, which were attic rooms, 10 to 40 workers were hunted by the capitalist profit-seeking scavengers in the most pitiful and indescribable way possible. Many of these workers, boys and girls, were only 4 years old!! The area of ​​the room where they were slaughtered was 4 square meters for every 20 children!! They worked 15 hours a day in such deadly conditions!! They did not have the right to scratch their heads, if their eyes closed due to the deadly pressure of fatigue and sleeplessness, the crushing blow of the “long stick” of “Estaban” would shatter their bodies. Each of these poor children, at the end of the 15-hour workday, had to take a heavy package with them to the residential shed when they went home at night. They had to work in their own hut instead of sleeping and deliver the results of the night’s work to the master worker at 4 in the morning! Capitalism has thrived on this barbarity and continues to do so throughout the world today and continues its shameful and illegal existence with this same savagery. Many factory owners exploited and murdered more than 3,000 workers of this age each. These young workers were crowded together in the workrooms because they did not have the necessary space to sit separately. On the coldest days of winter, they had no means of heating themselves. In most of these rooms, the stench made it impossible to breathe, and the children inhaled not oxygen but a mixture of poisonous gases. In 1861 alone, in the straw and hat factories, more than 40,000 workers were exploited, worn out, ruined, and doomed to destruction under the same conditions and within the same age range. Of the 40,043, less than 4,000 were boys or men, and the rest were entirely girls or their mothers’ children. 15,000 were under 10 years old. 7,000 of them were very young children. Mothers, under the pressure of the economic tyranny of capital, under the deadly spur of hunger born of capitalism, forced their daughters to work late into the night, until 11 or 12 at night. The fingers and mouths of the children who weaved the mats were always covered in blood. The strands of straw needed to be soaked in order to be woven and made into mats. The children would put them in their mouths to soak them. The straw would cut their lips and make them bleed. Drops of blood would flow into the oesophagus, stomach, and digestive tract, causing many complications. In many workshops, the place where each child was placed was even more cramped and uncomfortable than what we mentioned above. With these tasks and with its boundless world of savagery and barbarity, capital bombarded and killed all human interests, emotions, and feelings, forcing hungry mothers to consider their children as mere means of livelihood. In order to force them to work harder and more deadly, the system of wage slavery, both rich and poor, hunted its growth from this slaughterhouse, this cesspool, and this plain filled with blood, filth, corruption, and crime.

C – The transition of large-scale industry from modern manufacturing and the civil legalist suppression of the labour movement. Somewhere in this review and in many other places, we have clarified that what in today’s world conditions, bears the name of freedom, right, civilization, choice, and the like, is a tool for eradicating freedom, right, civilization, and the exercise of the will of the working masses. There is no doubt about this but let us not forget that the bourgeoisie has even surrendered these “rights” or “freedoms” under the pressure of the struggle of the working masses. The idea that the capitalist, without the pressure of the struggles of the working class, is willing to accept the lowest human expectations of the workers is a pure illusion. The more the working class is unaware, uninformed and ignorant of the greatness of its fighting power, the bourgeoisie recognizes this power to the same extent and a hundred times more, fears it in every corner of its existence, is terrified of seeing any amount of it and starts thinking of solutions to escape its rebellion and rebellion. If the working masses in this or that part of the world have raised the price of their labour power a little, if they have achieved something under the name of welfare, if they have shortened their working hours, if they have found the possibility of protest, if they have succeeded in limiting child labour, all this has been the result of the bourgeoisie’s fear of the labour movement. We have already spoken about the historical conditions of the last decades of the 18th century and the labour movement of that time, the rise of Luddism or other rebellions and protests. These struggles more or less made the bourgeoisie reflect, but these struggles, at their current level, were too weak to force the capitalists and the ruling regime that preserved wage slavery to make significant retreats.

The labour movement asserted itself, entered the field, sowed the seeds of fear in the heart of the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class and the regime paving the way for the development of capitalism realized that they were unable to control the movement with force and repression alone. They saw the solution in combining all forms of repression. The parliamentary campaign to enact the “Factory Law” was also one of the effective forms of applying force against the protest and uprising of the workers. Ensuring the security of capital and the order of accumulation in the days of transition from the manufactory and the rapid expansion of modern machine industry required these laws as weapons in the hands of the owners of capital to control the protests. Moralistic statesmen and ideologues!! The bourgeoisie have historically tried to forge the identity card of welfare creation, security, health promotion, right seeking and freedom production for the industrial and social development of capitalism!! The foundation of this group’s discourse is based on this deception that it seems that the needs of capitalist development on the one hand and the welfare, legal and social needs of humans are compatible with each other!! And they enjoy a historical homogeneity!! The reality is the opposite. Capital’s need is the bombing of radical human needs and is satisfied and provided for only on the ruins resulting from this bombing. Capital needs the health of the worker, but not because of a person who melts his/her health in the furnace of producing more massive profits, perhaps here and there giving a conciliatory look to the hygiene of the workplace, but not because human life is valuable to it, but only so that its cycle of profit and self-aggrandizement can turn faster. It raises the banner of “right”!! to crush the human foundation of right. It beats the drum of freedom to win the war to eliminate human freedom and to turn its narrative of freedom into a mechanism for washing the human concept of freedom from people’s minds. The legalism of the bourgeoisie is an inseparable part of its reactionary war against the livelihood, welfare, rights, freedom, choice and security of the worker.

The “Factory Act” or “Labor Act” of England was responsible for playing this role. The daily adjustment of children’s work and the reduction of the destructive pressure of child exploitation, the implicit confrontation with the inhuman behaviour of parents who, under the pressure of misery, tried to make their children work as much as possible, the slight shortening of the daily work of adults or other provisions of this law, although it was “old shoes in the desert” for some workers, certainly did not respond to the demands of their daily struggle. On the contrary, the requirements of the supremacy of large-scale machine industry, the decline of the manufacturing system and the need for capital to historically arrange and trim the cycle of profit production, cried out. These laws not only did not reduce the profits of large-scale industry by a single riyal, but they also allocated a portion of the share of the manufacturing bourgeoisie in the surplus value to the accumulation fund of large-scale industries. The addiction to unlimited daily work, exhausting night work, and absolute authority to destroy human life that formed the basis of manufacturing work, on the one hand, provided the greatest resources for the expansion of capitalist machine industry, and on the other, reduced the productive capacity of manufacturing for development. The factory law did not reduce the problem of the working masses, it solved the problem on the way to the development of capitalism, it warned the owners of the manufacturing plants that their era was over, the upper stratum must take the path of capital accumulation in the field of modern industry, and the lower stratum must become workers. The extremely hateful clamour of the intellectual representatives of capitalism about adapting the historical needs of capitalism to the interests, expectations, and demands of the workers of today is merely a page in the black record of the intellectual suppression of workers by capital.

The length and breadth of the provisions of the “Factories Act” passed by the parliament of the “High Government” were summarized in plastering the walls of the workshop, cleaning the workplace, airing the rooms, basic training of workers, a slight adjustment of the deadly pressure of work and reducing the 16-hour workday. All this was more than a response to the demands of the workers; it was the need of the capitalist era to pass through the era of manufacture and the dominance of large-scale industry. The labour movement was not able to stamp its power on the course of events, the workers rebelled, revolted, terrified the bourgeoisie, but the scope of their expectations and the power of their artillery were limited. It did not harm the capitalist cycle of production. It did not disrupt this cycle and did not force the owners of capital or the state to make serious retreats. In 1861, out of one million two hundred and forty-three thousand manufacturing workers in the garment sector, 750,334 were women. A huge number of all workers, both men and women, were young people and children under 20 or under 15. Big industry disrupted this situation by introducing sewing machines. Young children were laid off. The wages of workers who worked with machines were slightly higher than those who sewed by hand. Machines were generally operated by women and girls, which led to a large number of women and a small number of men in this industry. The “Labor Law” or the Factory Law, here and there, made provisions for its clauses!! Nothing is more ridiculous than calling these changes, or specifically the greater employment of women, the dismissal of very young children, the several increases in workers’ wages, “the right of women to employment”!!, “the fight against child labour”!! or the adaptation of the economic and social development of capitalism to the improvement of the working and living conditions of the working masses! Let us applaud their legal version in the bourgeois parliament!! And let us stamp this version as a response to the demands of the workers!!! In the match factories, children were forced to dip matchsticks into molten phosphorus even while swallowing food and inhale the poisonous fumes emanating from phosphorus. The introduction of special machinery practically eliminated the need for children to do this work. The collapse of the manufacturing system under the pressure of large-scale industry moderated the material foundations of the tremendous pressure of parents on children to work more and more and to wear themselves out even more and reduced their exclusive dominance over their children. In this direction, family ties began to collapse. Large-scale capitalist industry was going its own way with these works, responding to the needs of the profit-making cycle. It would be very disgusting if we forged a birth certificate for these events that the development of capitalism was homogeneous with the improvement of the living conditions of the workers.

Section Five – Absolute and Relative Surplus Value Production

Chapter Fourteen: Absolute and Relative Surplus Value

The labour process is, in the beginning and independently of its historical forms, a process between man and nature. As long as man produces to satisfy his subsistence needs, all his activities are under his own authority, will, and control. His intellectual and physical labour are one. But this is not the case. Instead of being the product of the labour of an individual, the product of the collective labour of a large number of people becomes the common product of the collective labour of a large number of people. The product of labour becomes more and more social. A process that seriously affects the concept of productive work and productive worker. With the increasing socialization of the product of labour, a person does not necessarily have to do something with his own hands for his work to be considered productive. If he is a member of the collective body of workers and plays a role in the labour process, he can also consider himself a productive worker. But capitalist production is not fundamentally the production of goods. It is the production of surplus value. The worker does not work for himself. He works for capital and capital produces. Therefore, it is not a question of just producing. He must definitely produce surplus value. Capital considers a worker productive only if he produces surplus value and causes the self-expansion of capital. For example, a teacher is considered productive only if he creates surplus value for the owner of the school, whether private or public, and causes the increase of capital. In this regard, it is completely meaningless for the capitalist to invest his capital in the establishment of a school or to accumulate it in the field of drug cultivation and killing people. Considering all this, the meaning of productive work is not in any way that its result is useful, but that it is profitable for capital, and the productive worker is a human being whose existence is marked by the self-expansion of capital. Being a productive worker is not a blessing; it is a misfortune and a calamity. The capitalist captures absolute surplus value by prolonging the daily labour of the worker to a point above the necessary labour or the labour required to produce his necessities of life. The production of absolute surplus value is the general foundation of the capitalist system and the starting point for the production of relative surplus value. In order for the production of relative surplus value to become the basis of capitalist labour, capital must replace the phase of formal subordination of labour with its real subordination. Let us explain these two concepts a little. The formal subordination of labour to capital refers to a phase of capitalist development in which, alongside independent producers in craft workshops or the agricultural sector, usurers and merchants or owners of usurious and commercial capital feed parasitically on the products of the labour of independent producers. The superiority of this form of exploitation is a sign of the lack of superiority of capitalist production, but this superiority does not negate the process of the formation and development of the capitalist mode of production at the same time. This was the situation in the late Middle Ages. To produce absolute surplus value, the formal subordination of labour to capital was sufficient, for example, it was enough for craftsmen who had previously worked as apprentices to a master craftsman to become wage labourers and work under the control of a capitalist. The mechanisms of production of relative surplus value are also the levers of production of absolute surplus value. We have already seen how large-scale machine industry became the driving force for the unlimited and unbounded increase in the length of the working day. When capitalist production has mastered the essential spheres of production, it ceases to be a mere means of producing relative surplus value and becomes the dominant mode of production in society. From this time on it functions as a definite method of producing relative surplus value only in two cases: first, in new industries which are for the first time really subject to the appropriation or subjugation of capital; second, in industries already possessed, when the existing methods of production undergo an important transformation. The difference between absolute and relative surplus value sometimes seems illusory. Relative surplus value is absolute because its production requires additional labour time, in addition to the necessary labour time or the time to produce the necessities of life of the worker. Likewise, absolute surplus value is relative because it requires a degree of growth in the productivity of labour. But if we examine the current changes in each of these, the difference between these two forms of surplus value becomes quite clear. Let us assume that the price of labour power is equal to its value, that is, the necessities of life of the worker, then we are faced with two situations. 1- The rate of surplus value can only be increased by prolonging the daily labour (absolute surplus value). 2- The daily labour length is fixed, and the rate of surplus value increases only by increasing the burden of surplus labour to the detriment of necessary labour.

The productivity of labour, regardless of the level of development of social production, is nevertheless also affected by natural conditions. These conditions can be divided into two groups. 1- Natural wealth, which is the source of human life necessities, such as fertile soil and water full of fish, 2- Natural wealth, which is the means of labour, such as waterfalls, navigable rivers, forests and timber, coal and metal mines. At the dawn of human civilization, the first group was of increasing importance, but in the later stages, the second group gained a dominant role. The fewer the number of natural needs whose provision is of vital importance and the greater the degree of soil fertility and the favourable climate, the less time will be required to ensure the livelihood and reproduction of the producer himself. In this regard, the greater the amount of work that he can do as additional labour for others. In capitalism, if all conditions are assumed to be constant, if the daily work is given, the greater or lesser amount of surplus value is a function of the natural conditions of the work, especially the degree of fertility of the soil, but it cannot be concluded from this fact that the most fertile soil is the most suitable soil for the formation and development of capitalist production. The origin of this system is not the fertile regions of the equator with their colourful fruits and products. On the contrary, it is the variety of natural products of the soil and the region that provides the natural environment around man for the growth of the diversity of needs, capacities, the development of means and methods of labour, the need for the control of natural forces by society, the need for economy in these forces, their control by human labour on a large scale, and similar problems that dictate human life. History shows that these elements and components have played the most effective role in the growth and development of industry. Favourable natural conditions can make possible surplus labour and, consequently, the production of surplus value, but they cannot of themselves, in the absence of the role played by capitalism, realize it. The result of the difference in the natural conditions of labour is that a given quantity of labour in different countries satisfies a different amount of needs and affects the amount or amount of labour required. The effect of these conditions on surplus labour also stems from this: the less labour time required, the greater the amount of labour time that can be taken over by someone else. The difference in natural conditions has this effect on surplus labour, but as industry develops, this effect diminishes. Capitalism makes all this the basis of its labour process in order to produce ever greater surplus value. In this mode of production, just as the social productive power of labour is induced by the historical development of the productive power of capital, so the productive power based on nature suffers the same fate. The source of surplus value is in any case only the surplus labour of the worker. A fact which bourgeois political economy is unable to understand and has no desire to understand. The mercantilists sought the origin of profit in trade. Ricardo contented himself with saying that surplus value is inherent in capitalism. Instead of seeking the real origin, he went round and round. Mill was in a worse position. While he placed a medal of distinction on his shoulder with the mercantilists, he finally concluded that: “Capital yields profit because food, clothing and tools last longer than the time spent on their production”!!

Chapter 15: Quantitative Changes in the Price of Labor Power and Surplus Value

The value of labour power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the survival of the worker and the reproduction of his labour power. Let us assume that commodities are sold at their value, that is, the socially necessary labour embodied in them, and that the price of labour power, even if it were to rise by chance, does not fall. In this case, the relative values ​​of the price of labour power and surplus value will depend on three factors: the length of the day’s work, the intensity of labour, and the productive power of labour. These connections and ratios can produce different states, depending on whether one of them is constant and the other two are variable, two are constant and one is variable, or all three are variable. Even in the third state itself, the different amount and direction of changes can increase the number of these states still further. Here we ignore the secondary cases and limit ourselves to explaining only the main and determining states.

1. The daily length of work and the intensity of work are constant, but the productive power of labour is variable. With these assumptions, the relationship between the value of labour power and the amount of surplus value can be described by the following components and variations.

First, if, for example, an 8-hour workday has a value of $120, then with increasing labour productivity, only this $120 is divided into a greater number of units of community.

Second: The value of labour and surplus value moves in opposite directions. Any increase in surplus labour is evidence of a decrease in necessary labour. When the productivity of labour increases, the price of labour falls, because the socially necessary labour time for producing the worker’s necessities of life decreases. In the case of surplus value, the situation is completely opposite. The less time the worker spends producing his necessities of life, the more surplus labour or surplus value he delivers to the capitalist. An important point is that the decrease in the price of labour and the increase in surplus value do not occur in the same proportion as the productivity of labour increases, but rather the surplus value increases and decreases in proportion to the size and size of that part of the daily labour that represented the original surplus value. In this regard, it is clear that the increase in surplus value due to the increase in labour productivity is much greater than the decrease in the price of labour.

Third: The increase or decrease of surplus value is always the effect of the decrease or increase in the price of labour power, but never its cause. It is the decrease of necessary labour or necessary labour time that produces the increase of surplus labour and surplus value. When we assume that daily labour and its value are constant, any change in the amount of surplus value cannot be accompanied by a reverse change in the price of labour power. Furthermore, since the value of labour power is obtained only by a change in the productive power of labour, any change in the amount of surplus value will be due to a reverse change in the value of labour power. With a change in the productivity of labour, it is the value of the worker’s means of subsistence, not its volume, that changes. However, as a result of an increase in the productivity of labour, the volume of the means of subsistence for the worker and the capitalist may increase in the same proportion, but this will not result in any change in the price of labour power or the amount of surplus value.

2– The daily work and the productivity of labour are constant, but the intensity of labour changes. The intensity of labour implies the consumption of more labour in a given time and the production of more products during the same time. This increase in product is different from what we saw about the effect of labour productivity. In both cases, the volume of the product of labour increases, but the amount of labour crystallized in the product is not reduced by the increase caused by the intensity of labour. The volume of production has increased, and the previous daily work carries with it increased values ​​in light of the intensity of labour. An increase that can affect the price of labour and surplus value in different proportions.

3– Variable daily work and constant productivity and intensity of work: With these assumptions, we can witness the occurrence of two different situations. First, the daily work becomes shorter. In this case, there will be no change in the value of labour power and necessary labour time, but surplus value and surplus labour time will decrease. In such a situation, the decrease in the absolute amount of surplus value will also affect its relative relationship with necessary labour, and this is where the capitalist enters the field with all his ferocity and prevents the decrease in surplus value by further decreasing the price of labour power. Second. The working day increases instead of decreasing. In this case, if the value of labour-power remains constant, it is clear that the surplus labour time or surplus value will increase. The absolute value of labour-power remaining constant is accompanied by a relative decrease in its amount. When the surplus value becomes heavier, the necessary labour becomes lighter, and the ratio of the latter to the former decreases. The lengthening of the working day or the increase in the absolute surplus value also causes a decrease in the value of labour-power in another way. Longer hours of work lead to a destructive wear and tear of the physical strength of the worker and drastically shorten the worker’s lifespan. The shortening of the worker’s lifespan is a reduction in the time during which he can sell his labour-power, and in this respect a significant decrease in the value of his labour-power.

4. Simultaneous changes in all three daily work factors, work intensity, and work productivity: As mentioned earlier, simultaneous changes in these factors can lead to many different situations, of which we will only mention two.

First: Labor productivity declines and the workday is prolonged. Here, the industries in question are those whose products have a significant impact on determining the value of labour. Let us consider agriculture and industry whose soil fertility has decreased for whatever reason. The price of products has increased. Previously, its workers worked 8 hours a day, producing a value of 7,6 Pounds, and from this amount, they received 0,95 Pounds, equivalent to one hour of work, as wages. Now 9,5 Pounds or one hour of work is not enough to reproduce the livelihood. 1,9 Pounds or 2 hours are needed. It is clear that surplus labour is reduced. Suppose the capitalist extends the daily work by 1 hour and increases it to 9 hours. In this case, the surplus value is again 6,6 Pounds, but its relative value has decreased in comparison with the value of labour power. If the daily work becomes 16 hours, the relative values ​​of surplus and necessary labour return to the original state, but the absolute value of surplus value increases from 6,6 Pounds to 13,2 Pounds.

Second: The daily work is shortened, but the intensity and productivity of work are increased. Both components of labour productivity and labour intensity, by increasing, shorten the necessary working time or the time required to produce the worker’s livelihood.

Chapter 16 – Different Formulas of the Rate of Surplus Value

We have already used the formulas “surplus value divided by variable capital”, “surplus value divided by the value of labour power”, “surplus labour divided by necessary labour” for the rate of surplus value. The first two formulas express the ratio of values, and the third formula expresses the ratio of labour time in which the values ​​are produced. Political economy invents all kinds of formulas to make them a mechanism for distorting the rate of surplus value and denying the real source of surplus value. For example, it resorts to the formulas “surplus product to total product”, “surplus value to the value of the product” or “surplus labour to daily labour”. According to these models, the rate of surplus value never reaches 100% because surplus value is supposed to be compared with the total value produced, and total surplus value reaching 100% means that surplus labour is equal to total labour and therefore necessary labour reaches zero!! Which is impossible because if labour is not necessary, there will be no surplus labour, and no surplus value will be produced. The presentation of surplus value and the value of labour as fractions of the total value of the product is a method that comes from the capitalist mode of production. Political economy adopts this method in order to disguise and invert the nature of this mode of production, the role of living labour or the variable part of capital as the only source of surplus value production, and the purpose of separating the worker from labour and the product of his labour. Capital is not, as Smith said, merely the Master of Labour. Capital is essentially the mastery of unpaid labour. The surplus value of labour without any wages is the unpaid labour of the worker, and in this regard the formula for the rate of surplus value must express the ratio of surplus labour to necessary labour.