Appropriation of surplus value. Surplus value and the price of production

In a capitalist economy, the result of the economic activity of an individual capitalist is expressed in the form of gross cash income (revenue from the sale of goods and services). The result of economic activity is gross cash income minus production costs (expenses for raw materials, energy, deductions to the depreciation fund for equipment and other fixed assets, expenses in the form of wages, etc.). This will be the company's gross profit. If we deduct the taxes paid by the company from it, we get the net profit. This is, in a simplified form, the "accounting arithmetic" of modern business.

To understand why wage labor is a form of slavery, we need a slightly different arithmetic. The gross cash income of a company can be represented as the sum of labor costs. Some costs relate to past periods - they are embodied in machinery and equipment, raw materials, energy, etc. This is the "past" or "reified" labor. At the enterprise we are considering, “real” or “living labor” is added to “past” labor. It creates "added value". The capitalist paid for "past" labor by buying machines, raw materials, energy (these costs are called "constant capital"). But the "real" work belongs entirely to him. He manages them. "Real" labor is the result of the activities of those workers whom he hired for his enterprise. The result of "real" labor ("added value") is the source of profit for the capitalist. But at the same time, it is also a source of livelihood for employees.

Thus, "value added" is divided into two parts, which are usually called "necessary product" and "surplus product". “Necessary product” is that part of the “added value” that is necessary to maintain the life and working capacity of employees. In Marxist theory, it is called "variable capital". "Surplus product" ("surplus value") - this is what goes to the capitalist. This is what is the desired goal of his business. The division of "added value" into these two parts is the most important moment of all capitalist activity.

It would seem that employees - that is, those who created the "added value", and should play the main role in the section of this "pie". The role of the capitalist in "baking the pie" was only to provide the necessary machinery and equipment (the "means of production" or "constant capital"). Strictly speaking, it should not be related to the “pie” section at all: “pie” is “value added”, and “means of production” is “past” or “materialized” labor, and the owner of the means of production has already received the necessary compensation for them (equal to depreciation of means of production). The capitalist can only then have the right to participate in the division of the "pie" when he personally participated in its "baking" with his "live" labor (obviously, not physical, but mental).

But the paradox (or rather, the drama) of capitalist civilization is that:

the decisive role in the section of the "pie" is played by the employer, not the employees;
the employer strives in every possible way to cut the “necessary product” (the share of the “pie” that goes to employees) and increase the “surplus product” (the share of the “pie” that goes to the employer).

From an economic point of view, the surplus product expresses the relations of exploitation between the employer (slave owner) and the worker (wage slave).
From a legal point of view, profit is theft, misappropriation.

The modern law of capitalist society is twofold: on the one hand, it protects the rights of property, proclaims the "sanctity" of private property; on the other hand, it legalizes the constant theft of the product of labor by employers and does not provide effective protection of the rights of workers.

Today we are all so accustomed to many "axioms" of legal science that we often do not notice: many modern laws "legitimize" all sorts of cheating and theft. This applies to different spheres of economic relations: labor, credit, tax and budget. In this case, we are interested in the labor relations of the era of capitalism.

Let me quote from one article, and the author, apparently, is not a “professional” lawyer and has not lost the ability to question the “axioms” of legal science:

“Self-interest is something that caused slavery, because as it was, it remains. And if it was deprived of one form of satisfaction, then self-interest immediately found and threw to society another form of its satisfaction, not so conspicuous - the motive of ownership not of the producing person himself, but of the tools, means of production that he needs in labor. And the alienation of the worker from the rights to the result of labor, as it was, remains one hundred percent. Instead of dividing these rights proportionally between the investment of labor and the investment of capital. That's all there is to it. Visibility has changed. Previously, the master could kill the slave, but now the master of the worker cannot. That's all. That is, physical and labor slavery was eliminated, and the property basis of slavery remained as it was. Slavery only changed its outward form. After all, its essence and the measure of oppression have hardly changed at all. As was the alienation of the product of the labor of workers on far-fetched grounds, it remains so. After all, not everything in the production process depends solely on the use of tools. Much, if not more, depends on the hands applied to these tools.
And what's the trick here? Yes, in a very simple legal juggling in the laws. In nature, things arise as a result of the participation of certain persons by labor or property in the creation of these things. But for some reason, the law establishes the right to own these things only for those who participated in the property. That is, not at all by the fact of involvement in the creation of new things, but by the fact of owning other, old things. The property right of labor to new things did not exist before the abolition of slavery, and did not arise after the abolition of slavery (emphasis mine - V.K.) ». 

Bourgeois law "legitimized" the new "rules of the game": "the product of production does not belong to those who produce it, but to those who own the material means of production." These "rules of the game", as historians of law say, developed in the 17th-18th centuries. The most interesting thing is that this was around the same time that classical political economy was being formed with its theory of labor value (the main postulate: "the source of value is the labor of workers"). Practical expediency for the founding fathers of capitalism turned out to be more important than the theoretical abstractions of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

The “rules of the game” that have developed in recent centuries have led to the fact that people who are hungry for wealth do not seek to directly acquire slaves who would create this wealth for them. They acquire "means of production" which, in turn, give them a legal basis to exploit the wage slaves and appropriate the wealth they produce.

It turns out slavery in disguise, and such a simple disguise is sufficient to present capitalism as a "civilized society" that has nothing to do with slavery. ancient world. Academician-ophthalmologist, director of the MNTK "Eye Surgery" Svyatoslav Fedorov very accurately explained the essence of this disguise:

“We don’t always think about what an action is. I buy papers as property for the means of production, but in fact, the souls of people.

If stocks make a big profit, then I'm not interested in the machines on which people work, but in the degree of their organization and professionalism.
That is, not machines are bought, but people. It's basically a slave market. Previously, a person went to him and chose: this slave is nice to me with his body, muscles - I take him; this beautiful woman I also take. And today I go to the market and look: this company has been growing dividends for three years - I take these shares (emphasis mine.-V.K.)”.

It is not uncommon for an employer to appropriate all 100% of the product and labor, simply not paying wages to the employee. In Russia, this situation is not uncommon. At least most of the newly created value in the Russian economy comes from employers' income (company profits) and a smaller part from the wages of employees. Even official statistics cannot hide this fact. We even have such a bitter joke in Russia: “If you want money, work, if you want big money, think of a way to steal it from the workers”
. This joke is the essence of the whole "political economy" of our capitalism. To determine the degree of exploitation of employees, the indicator is used
"rate of surplus value" (NPS). The NPS indicator is the ratio of the surplus product (surplus value) to the amount of "variable" capital (the amount of workers' wages).

Modern economists do not like to remember this indicator, using the usual indicator of the "rate of return" (NP). The NP indicator is the ratio of the profit received by the capitalist to all the capital advanced (invested in the business). This capital includes both investments in raw materials, energy, means of production (“past labor”), and the cost of hiring labor (wages). The NP indicator shows the efficiency of using all the capital invested in the business (both “fixed” and “variable”). Marx in Capital formulated the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

Statistics indeed confirm that in the century and a half since the publication of Capital, the rate of profit in the industry of Western countries has indeed declined significantly. Some apologists for capitalism, on the basis of this, try to argue that capitalism becomes more “humane” with time. However, the change in the rate of profit reflects, first of all, not the degree of exploitation of employees, but an increase in the total volume of capital advanced for production of the share of "constant" capital (costs for material resources and means of production). This increase in the share of "permanent" capital reflects the process of displacement of living labor from production. Behind this is rising unemployment, which has a downward effect on the wages of those who remain in production. The decrease in the rate of profit, as statistics show, occurs against the background of an increase in the rate of surplus value (an indicator that really allows you to measure the degree of exploitation of employees)
.

For example, the net product (value added) created by the company's employees in a month is equal to 100,000 monetary units. And the salary they received for the month of this work amounted to 20,000 units. Thus, the surplus product (surplus value) of the capitalist amounted to 80,000 units. In our example, the rate of surplus value will be: 80.000 / 20.000 = 4. And if expressed as a percentage, then 400%. According to the calculations of the Soviet economist S.L. Vygodsky, the rate of surplus value in the US manufacturing industry increased from 210% in 1940 to 308% in 1969 and to 515% in 1973. This growth demonstrates a tremendous intensification of the exploitation of wage-workers as the economic and political power of the monopolies strengthens, and also under the influence of the steady replacement of "living labor" by machines. Machines dramatically increase the output of surplus product per employed worker. At the same time, machines are increasingly pushing the living worker out of the production process, dooming him to a starving existence, increasing the army of unemployed and making those who remained in production more “accommodating” in matters of wages.

If the "pie" went to those who "bake" it, that is, the workers, then after a while the employer with his "means of production" would not be required at all for the "baking" process. For a very simple reason: the workers would generate such income that would allow them to buy out the "means of production" belonging to the capitalists. Or as an option: to create (purchase) new "means of production". The question arises: why does the employer have a decisive role in determining what will be the proportion of the two parts of the product of labor?

The dominance of the employer in this "sharing" is ensured by at least two means:

a) by the fact that he monopolized the means of production in his hands;

B) by the fact that he put the state with its laws, courts, repressive apparatus, ideological machine, etc., at the service of his interests.

All the "elements" of the theory of surplus value, as you know, are set out in Marx's "Capital".

At the same time, remaining on the methodological foundation of Marx's "economic materialism", we will not be able to answer simple ("childish") questions:

Why did employers manage to monopolize the “means of production” in their hands?
How did they achieve that the state began to provide for their interests, and not the interests of workers?
What needs to be done to ensure that employees own the results of their labor?
Are there known precedents in modern and recent history when workers acquired full rights to the results of their labor?
Etc.

Modern economic "science" is afraid of these questions "like the devil incense." We only note that the answers to such questions lie outside the boundaries of economic "science", which does not go beyond the narrow materialistic perception of the surrounding world. Answers should be sought in the sphere of political and legal relations, and, ultimately, in the spiritual sphere.

Surplus value is NOT an objectively existing phenomenon, as Marxists say. Just like, for example, an integral in mathematics or energy in physics, surplus value is a mental device, a generalization that incorporates the characteristic moments of the distribution of social production products. This generalization has its own limited scope of adequacy, beyond which it loses its meaning.

Surplus value is defined as the unpaid portion of the labor of wage workers in excess of the value of their labor power. It has a clearly expressed and tangible meaning only as long as the measure of its calculation - money - makes sense. It must be remembered that material production is the purposeful actions of a multitude of individual people. It is possible to operate with money for an adequate description of social production only as long as it is possible to neglect the peculiarities of the intentions of individual members of society due to their statistical averaging. That is, during the period when the society is not going through a critical state: economic crises, revolutions, big catastrophes and the like.

We could see the validity of the previous statement on historical examples. Suppose there was a revolution, and the workers came to the bourgeoisie to demand their hard-earned money - the surplus value not paid to them. And they, of course, can take it with money. But.

The machine of social production, coordinated until now by the former owners of enterprises, simply did not produce for this solemn moment all the mass of necessary objects that the workers would want to receive for their now surplus value, even if this value was paid to them in real gold. And what is most ridiculous (for us it is ridiculous, but not for the workers), they will not be able to get these goods either tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, despite the fact that now the means of production belong to them: the structure of production and the existing economic ties were built under a different structure of goods . Those. they produced, for example, several dozen expensive Rolls-Royces, and the workers need hundreds of thousands of Volkswagens. And for this you need to build a plant, i.e. to create OTHER means of production, sharpened for a different task. The result of such a revolution is the complete disorganization of production, which was observed during the time of war communism in post-revolutionary Russia. The workers who now own the means of production have, as a result, much less than when they did not own them.

As you can see, the means of production, in themselves, are not the defining moment of social production. In addition to this, so to speak, iron, the economy also needs a program, i.e. something that has no material expression. But with her, i.e. the bourgeoisie owned the established economic ties. Are these connections worth any reward? Of course - they stand, since without them production stops with a stake. But what?

As we see, it is possible to operate with surplus value as a measure of injustice only in relation to one or a small number of workers, in conditions where statistical averaging gives us working money and specific prices for goods and labor power. Their values are dictated by the current market situation. In general, there is NO formal criterion by which one could determine the fair share of a participant in social production, which the capitalists certainly are.

2018-May-Tue Surplus value is the value created by the unpaid labor of a wage worker in excess of the value of his labor power and appropriated by the capitalist free of charge. Surplus value expresses the specifically capitalist form of exploitation, in which the surplus product takes on https://website/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/76.jpg , [email protected]

Surplus value- the value created by the unpaid labor of a wage worker in excess of the value of his labor power and appropriated by the capitalist free of charge. Surplus value expresses the specifically capitalist form exploitation, with which surplus product takes the form of surplus value. The production and appropriation of surplus value is the essence of the basic economic law of capitalism. "The production of surplus value or profit - such is the absolute law ..." of the capitalist mode of production.

It reflects economic relations not only between capitalists and wage-workers, but also between various groups of the bourgeoisie: industrialists, merchants, bankers, and also between them and landowners. The pursuit of surplus value plays a major role in the development of the productive forces under capitalism and determines and directs the development of production relations in capitalist society.

The doctrine of surplus value V. I. Lenin called " … cornerstone of Marx's economic theory" was first developed by Marx in 1857-58, in the manuscript "Critique of Political Economy" (the original version of "Capital"), although some provisions were already in such works of the 40s. 19th century, as "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844", "Poverty of Philosophy", "Wage Labor and Capital".

The transformation of money into capital. Labor power as a commodity.

Each capital begins its journey in the form of a certain amount of money. Money in itself is not capital. When, for example, independent small commodity producers exchange commodities, money acts as a medium of exchange, but it does not serve as capital. The commodity circulation formula is as follows: T(product) - D(money) - T(commodity), that is, the sale of one commodity in order to purchase another. Money becomes capital when it is used to exploit the labor of others. The general formula for capital is D – T - D, that is, buying to sell for the purpose of enrichment.

Formula T – D – T means that one use-value is exchanged for another: the commodity producer gives away a commodity that he does not need and receives in exchange another commodity that he needs for consumption. Conversely, with the formula D – T – D the starting and ending points of the movement coincide: at the beginning of the journey the capitalist had money, and at the end of the journey he has money. The movement of capital would be aimless if at the end of the operation the capitalist had the same amount of money as at the beginning. The whole point of the capitalist's activity is that as a result of the operation he has more money than he had at the beginning. Therefore, the general formula of capital in its full form is: D – T – D", where D" denotes an increased amount of money.

The capital advanced by the capitalist, that is, put into circulation by him, returns to its owner with a certain increase. This increase in capital is the goal of its owner.

Where does capital growth come from? Bourgeois economists, in an effort to hide the real source of the capitalists' enrichment, often assert that this increase arises from commodity circulation. Such an assertion is untenable. Indeed. If commodities and money of equal value, i.e., equivalents, are exchanged, none of the commodity owners can extract from circulation a greater value than that which is embodied in his commodity. If the sellers manage to sell their goods above their value, say, by 10%, then, becoming buyers, they must overpay the sellers the same 10%. Thus, what commodity owners gain as sellers they lose as buyers. Meanwhile, in reality, capital growth occurs among the entire class of capitalists. Obviously, the owner of money, who has become a capitalist, must find on the market such a commodity that, when consumed, creates value, and, moreover, greater than that which he himself possesses. In other words, the owner of money must find on the market a commodity whose use-value itself has the property of being a source of value. This commodity is labor power.

Work force is the totality of physical and spiritual abilities that a person has and which he puts into play when he produces material goods. In any form of society, labor power is a necessary element of production. But it is only under capitalism that labor power becomes goods.

Capitalism there is commodity production at the highest stage of its development, when labor power also becomes a commodity. With the transformation of labor power into a commodity, commodity production takes general character. Capitalist production is based on wage labor, and the hiring of a worker by a capitalist is nothing but the purchase and sale of the commodity labor power: the worker sells his labor power, the capitalist buys it.

By hiring a worker, the capitalist receives his labor power at his full disposal. The capitalist employs this labor power in the process of capitalist production, in which the increase of capital takes place.

The value and use value of labor power. The law of surplus value is the basic law of capitalism.

Like any other commodity, labor power is sold at a certain price, which is based on the value of this commodity. What is this cost?

In order for the worker to retain his ability to work, he must satisfy his needs for food; clothes, shoes, housing. Satisfaction of the necessary vital needs is the restoration of the expended vital energy of the worker - muscular, nervous, brain, the restoration of his working capacity. Further, capital needs an uninterrupted influx of labor power; consequently, the worker must be able to support not only himself, but also his family. This ensures the reproduction, that is, the constant renewal, of the labor force. Finally, capital needs not only unskilled, but also skilled workers who can handle complex machines, and the acquisition of qualifications is associated with a certain expenditure of labor for training. Therefore, the costs of production and reproduction of the labor force also include a certain minimum cost of training the rising generations of the working class.

From all this it follows that commodity value labor force equal to the value of the means of subsistence needed to support the worker and his family. "The value of labor power, like that of any other commodity, is determined by the labor time necessary for the production, and hence the reproduction, of this specific article of trade."

With the move historical development societies change both the level of the ordinary needs of the worker and the means of satisfying these needs. In different countries, the level of ordinary needs of the worker is not the same. The peculiarities of the historical path traversed by a given country and the conditions in which the class of hired workers was formed largely determine the nature of its needs. Climatic and other natural conditions also have a certain influence on the worker's needs for food, clothing, and housing. The cost of labor power includes not only the cost of consumer goods needed to restore a person's physical strength, but also the cost of satisfying the cultural needs of the worker and his family (educating children, buying newspapers, books, going to the cinema, theater, etc.). Capitalists always and everywhere seek to reduce the material and cultural conditions of the working class to the lowest possible level.

Getting down to business, the capitalist buys everything necessary for production: buildings, machinery, equipment, raw materials, fuel. Then he hires workers, and the production process begins at the enterprise. When the commodity is ready, the capitalist sells it. The value of the finished product includes: firstly, the value of the spent means of production - processed raw materials, spent fuel, a certain part of the cost of buildings, machines and tools; secondly, the new value created by the labor of the workers in the given enterprise.

What is this new value?

Let us assume that an hour of simple average labor creates a value of $1, and that the daily value of labor power is $6. In such a case, in order to replace the daily value of his labor power, the worker must work for 6 hours. But the capitalist has bought labor power for the whole day, and he forces the proletarian to work not for 6 hours, but for a whole working day, which lasts, let us say, 12 hours. During these 12 hours, the worker creates a value equal to 12 dollars, while the value of his labor power is 6 dollars.

Now we see what the specific use value of the commodity, labor power, is for the buyer of this commodity, the capitalist. Use value of a commodity labor power there is his property of being a source of value, and, moreover, a greater value than he himself has.

The value of labor power and the value created in the process of its consumption are two different magnitudes. The difference between these two quantities is a necessary prerequisite for capitalist exploitation. The capitalist mode of production presupposes a relatively high level labor productivity, in which the worker needs only part of the working day to create value equal to the value of his labor power.

In our example, the capitalist, having spent $6 to hire a worker, receives the value created by the worker's labor equal to $12. The capitalist returns to himself the originally advanced capital with an increment, or surplus, equal to 6 dollars. This increment is the surplus value.

Surplus value is the value created by the labor of the wage-worker in excess of the value of his labor power and appropriated by the capitalist free of charge. Thus, surplus value is the result of the worker's unpaid labor.

The working day in a capitalist enterprise is divided into two parts: necessary labor time and surplus labor time, while the labor of a wage worker is divided into necessary and surplus labor. During the necessary labor time the worker reproduces the value of his labor power, and during the surplus labor time he creates surplus value.

The labor of a worker under capitalism is the process of consumption by the capitalist of the commodity labor power, or the process of squeezing surplus value out of the worker by the capitalist. The labor process under capitalism is characterized by two fundamental features. First, the worker works under the control of the capitalist, who owns the labor of the worker. Secondly, the capitalist owns not only the labor of the worker, but also the product of this labor. These features of the labor process turn the labor of the wage-worker into a heavy and loathsome burden.

The immediate aim of capitalist production is the production of surplus value. According to this, productive labor under capitalism is only labor that creates surplus value. If the worker does not create surplus value, his labor is unproductive labor, unnecessary for capital.

Unlike previous forms of exploitation - slaveholding and feudalism - capitalist exploitation is disguised. When a wage-worker sells his labor power to a capitalist, this transaction seems at first sight to be an ordinary transaction between commodity owners, an ordinary exchange of commodity for money, carried out in full accordance with the law of value. However, the transaction of purchase and sale of labor power is only an external form, behind which lies the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist, the appropriation by the entrepreneur without any equivalent of the worker's unpaid labor.

In clarifying the essence of capitalist exploitation, we assume that the capitalist, when hiring a worker, pays him the full value of his labor power - in strict accordance with the law of value. In what follows, when considering wages, it will be shown that, unlike the prices of other commodities, the price of labor power, as a rule, deviates way down from its value. This further increases the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class.

Capitalism enables the wage-worker to work, and therefore to live, only insofar as he works for a certain amount of time for nothing for the capitalist. Having left one capitalist enterprise, the worker, in the most favorable case for him, finds himself in another capitalist enterprise, where he is subjected to the same kind of exploitation. Exposing the system of wage labor as a system of wage slavery, Marx pointed out that the Roman slave was chained, and the wage worker was tied by invisible threads to his owner. This owner is the capitalist class as a whole.

The basic economic law of capitalism is the law of surplus value. Describing capitalism, Marx wrote: "The production of surplus value or profit - such is the absolute law of this mode of production." This law defines the essence of capitalist production.

The surplus value created by the unpaid labor of wage-workers is the common source of unearned income for the entire bourgeois class. On the basis of the distribution of surplus value, certain relations are formed between various groups of the bourgeoisie: industrialists, merchants, bankers, and also between the capitalist class and the landowning class.

The pursuit of surplus value plays a major role in the development of the productive forces under capitalism. None of the former forms of the exploitative system - neither slavery nor feudalism - possessed such a force that accelerated the growth of technology. Under the social orders that preceded capitalism, technology developed extremely slowly. Capital, in the pursuit of surplus value, brought about a fundamental revolution in the old methods of production - the industrial revolution, which gave rise to large-scale machine industry.

Lenin called the doctrine of surplus value the cornerstone of Marx's economic theory. Having found out the source of exploitation of the working class, surplus value, Marx gave the working class a spiritual weapon to overthrow capitalism. By revealing the essence of capitalist exploitation in his doctrine of surplus value, Marx dealt a mortal blow to bourgeois political economy and its assertions about the harmony of class interests under capitalism.

Capital as a social relation of production. Fixed and variable capital.

Bourgeois economists declare capital to be every instrument of labour, every means of production, beginning with a stone and a stick. primitive man. Such a definition of capital aims to obscure the essence of the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist, to present capital as an eternal and unchanging condition for the existence of any human society.

In fact, the stone and stick of primitive man served him as tools of labor, but were not capital. Neither are the tools and raw materials of the craftsman, implements, seeds, and draft animals of the peasant who runs a household based on personal labor, capital either. The means of production become capital only at a certain stage of historical development, when they are the private property of the capitalist and serve as a means of exploiting wage labor.

Capital there is a value which, through the exploitation of wage-workers, brings surplus-value. According to Marx, capital is "dead labor, which, like a vampire, comes to life only when it sucks in living labor and lives the more fully, the more living labor it absorbs." Capital embodies the production relation between the capitalist class and the working class, which consists in the fact that the capitalists, as owners of the means and conditions of production, exploit wage workers who create surplus value for them. This relation of production, like all other relations of production in capitalist society, takes the form of a relationship of things and is presented as a property of the things themselves - the means of production - to bring income to the capitalist.

This is fetishism of capital: under the capitalist mode of production, a deceptive appearance is created that the means of production (or a certain amount of money with which the means of production can be bought) in themselves have a miraculous ability to provide their owner with a regular unearned income.

Different parts of capital play different roles in the production of surplus value.

The entrepreneur spends a certain part of his capital on the construction of a factory building, on the purchase of equipment and machinery, on the purchase of raw materials, fuel, and auxiliary materials. The value of this portion of capital is transferred to the newly produced commodity as the means of production are consumed or worn out in the labor process. The part of capital that exists in the form of the value of the means of production does not change its magnitude in the process of production and is therefore called permanent capital.

The entrepreneur spends the other part of the capital on the purchase of labor power - on hiring workers. In return for this part of the expended capital, the entrepreneur, at the end of the production process, receives a new value, which is produced by the workers in his enterprise. This new value, as we have seen, is greater than the value of the labor power bought by the capitalist. Thus, the part of the capital spent on the wages of the workers changes its value in the process of production: it increases as a result of the creation by the workers of the surplus value appropriated by the capitalist. The part of capital which is spent on the purchase of labor power (that is, on the wages of workers) and increases in the process of production is called variables capital.

Marx denotes constant capital with a Latin letter With, and variable capital by the letter v. The division of capital into fixed and variable parts was first established by Marx. This division revealed the special role of variable capital used to purchase labor power. The exploitation of wage-workers by the capitalists is the real source of surplus-value.

The discovery of the dual nature of labor embodied in a commodity served Marx as the key to establishing the difference between constant and variable capital, to revealing the essence of capitalist exploitation. Marx showed that the worker, through his labor, simultaneously creates new value and transfers the value of the means of production to the manufactured commodity. As definite concrete labour, the worker's labor transfers the value of the expended means of production to the product, but as abstract labour, as the expenditure of labor power in general, the labor of the same worker creates new value. These two aspects of the labor process differ quite palpably. For example, if the productivity of labor in a given industry is doubled, the spinner will transfer twice as much value of the means of production to the product during the working day (since he will process a double mass of cotton), but he will create the same amount of new value as before.

Rate of surplus value.

Capital did not invent surplus labor. Wherever society consists of exploiters and exploited, the ruling class sucks surplus labor out of the exploited classes. But unlike the slave owner and the feudal lord, who, under the dominance of natural economy, turned the overwhelming part of the product of the surplus labor of slaves and serfs into the direct satisfaction of their needs and whims, the capitalist converts the entire product of the surplus labor of hired workers into money. Part of this money the capitalist spends on the purchase of consumer goods and luxury goods, while the other part of the money he again puts into business as additional capital, bringing new surplus value. Therefore capital reveals, in Marx's words, a truly lunatic greed for surplus labour. The degree of exploitation of the worker by the capitalist finds its expression in the rate of surplus-value.

The rate of surplus value called the ratio of surplus value to variable capital, expressed as a percentage. The rate of surplus value shows in what proportion the labor expended by the workers is divided into necessary and surplus labor, in other words, what part of the working day the proletarian spends on replacing the value of his labor power and what part of the working day he labors for nothing for the capitalist. Marx denotes surplus value with a Latin letter m, and the rate of surplus value m". In the above case, the rate of surplus value, expressed as a percentage, is:

The rate of surplus value here is 100%. This means that in this case the worker's labor is equally divided into necessary and surplus labor. With the development of capitalism, the rate of surplus value grows, expressing an increase in the degree of exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. Growing even faster weight surplus value, as the number of wage-workers exploited by capital increases.

In the article "The Earnings of the Workers and the Profits of the Capitalists in Russia", written in 1912, Lenin gave the following calculation showing the degree of exploitation of the proletariat in pre-revolutionary Russia. According to the results of an official survey of factories and plants, carried out in 1908, which undoubtedly gave exaggerated figures on the size of the earnings of workers and understated on the size of the profits of the capitalists, the wages of the workers amounted to 555.7 million rubles, and the profit of the capitalists amounted to 568.7 million rubles. . The total number of workers in the surveyed enterprises of large factory industry was 2,254 thousand people. Thus, the average wage of a worker was 246 rubles a year, and each worker brought an average profit of 252 rubles a year to the capitalist.

Thus, in tsarist Russia, the worker spent less than half of the day working for himself, and the greater half of the day for the capitalist.

Two ways to increase the degree of exploitation. Absolute and relative surplus value.

Every capitalist strives in every possible way to increase the proportion of surplus labor squeezed out of the worker. The increase in surplus value is achieved in two main ways.

Let us take as an example a working day of 12 hours, of which 6 hours are necessary and 6 hours are surplus labor. Let's depict this working day as a line, on which each division is equal to one hour.

The first way to increase the degree of exploitation of the worker is that the capitalist increases the surplus-value he receives by lengthening the whole working day, say, by 2 hours. In this case, the working day will look like this:

The amount of surplus labor time increased as a result of absolute lengthening the working day as a whole, while the necessary working time remained unchanged. The surplus value produced by lengthening the working day is called absolute surplus value.

The second way to increase the degree of exploitation of the worker is that, with the total length of the working day unchanged, the surplus-value received by the capitalist increases due to the reduction in the necessary working time. The growth of labor productivity in the industries that manufacture the commodities of the workers, as well as supply the tools and materials for the production of these commodities, leads to a reduction in the labor time necessary for their production. As a result, the value of the workers' livelihood decreases and the value of labor power decreases accordingly. If earlier it took 6 hours to produce the worker's means of subsistence, now, let's say, only 4 hours are spent. In this case, the working day will look like this:

The length of the working day remained unchanged, but the amount of surplus labor time increased due to the fact that attitude between necessary and surplus labor time. The surplus value arising from the reduction in necessary labor time and the corresponding increase in surplus labor time is called relative surplus value.

The two ways of increasing surplus value play different roles at different stages of the historical development of capitalism. In the manufacturing period, when technology was low and advanced relatively slowly, the increase in absolute surplus-value was of paramount importance. With the further development of capitalism, in the machine period, when highly developed technology makes it possible to rapidly increase the productivity of labor, the capitalists achieve a tremendous increase in the degree of exploitation of the workers, primarily through the growth of relative surplus-value. At the same time, they continue to strive in every way to lengthen the working day and, in particular, to increase the intensity of work. The intensification of the labor of the workers is of the same importance for the capitalist as the lengthening of the working day: lengthening the working day from 10 am to 11 am, or raising the intensity of labor by one tenth, gives him the same result.

The working day and its limits. Fight to shorten the working day.

In pursuit of raising the rate of surplus-value, the capitalists strive to lengthen the working day to the utmost. Working day called the time of day during which the worker is at the enterprise at the disposal of the capitalist. If it were possible, the entrepreneur would force his workers to work 24 hours a day. However, during a certain part of the day, a person must restore his strength, rest, sleep, eat. These are given purely physical boundaries working day. In addition, the working day has moral boundaries, for the worker needs time to satisfy his cultural and social needs.

Capital, displaying an insatiable greed for surplus labor, does not want to reckon not only with the moral, but also with the purely physical limits of the working day. According to Marx, capital is merciless towards the life and health of the worker. The predatory exploitation of labor power shortens the life span of the proletarian and leads to an extraordinary increase in mortality among the working population.

During the period of the emergence of capitalism, state power issued special laws in the interests of the bourgeoisie in order to force wage-workers to work as many hours as possible. Then technology remained at a low level, the masses of peasants and artisans could work independently, and as a result, capital did not have at its disposal a surplus of workers. The situation changed with the spread of machine production and the growing proletarianization of the population. At the disposal of capital there were enough workers who, under the threat of starvation, were forced to go into bondage to the capitalists. The need for state laws extending the working day has disappeared. Capital has been able, by means of economic coercion, to lengthen working hours to the extreme. Under these conditions, the working class began a stubborn struggle to shorten the working day. This struggle first unfolded in England.

As a result of a long struggle, the British workers achieved the publication in 1833 of a factory law, which limited the work of children under 13 years old to 8 hours and the work of adolescents from 13 to 18 years old to 12 hours. In 1844, the first law was passed limiting women's work to 12 hours. In most cases, child and female labor was used along with the labor of men. Therefore, in enterprises covered by the factory legislation, a 12-hour working day began to be extended for all workers. The law of 1847 limited the work of teenagers and women to 10 hours. These restrictions, however, did not apply to all branches of wage labor. The law of 1901 limited the working day of adult workers to 12 hours.

As worker resistance grew, laws to limit the working day began to appear in other capitalist countries. After the promulgation of each such law, the workers had to wage a relentless struggle to enforce it.

A particularly stubborn struggle for the legislative limitation of working hours unfolded after the working class put forward as its militant appeal the demand eight hour work day. This demand was proclaimed in 1866 by the Workers' Congress in America and the Congress of the First International at the suggestion of Marx. The struggle for the eight-hour day has become an integral part of not only the economic but also the political struggle of the proletariat.

In tsarist Russia, the first factory laws appeared at the end of the 19th century. After the well-known strikes of the St. Petersburg proletariat, the law of 1897 limited the working day to 11 1/2 hours. This law was, according to Lenin, a forced concession won by the Russian workers from the tsarist government.

On the eve of World War I, most of the capitalist developed countries were dominated by a 10 to 12 hour working day. In 1919, under the influence of the bourgeoisie's fear of the growth of the revolutionary movement, representatives of a number of capitalist countries concluded an agreement in Washington on the introduction of an 8-hour working day on an international scale, but then all the large capitalist states refused to approve this agreement. In the capitalist countries, along with the exhausting intensity of labor, there is a long working day, especially in the arms industry. In Japan, on the eve of the Second World War, the law established a 12-hour working day for workers over 16 years old, and in fact in a number of industries the working day reached 15-16 hours. Unreasonably long working hours are the lot of the proletariat in colonial and dependent countries.

Excess added value.

A variation of relative surplus value is excess surplus value. It is obtained when individual capitalists introduce machines and methods of production that are more advanced than those used in the majority of enterprises in the same industry. In this way, the individual capitalist achieves in his enterprise a higher productivity of labor than the average level existing in the given branch of production. As a result, the individual value of the commodity produced at the enterprise of a given capitalist is lower than the social value of this commodity. Since the price of a commodity is determined by its social value, the capitalist receives a higher rate of surplus-value than the usual rate.

Let's take the following example. Suppose that in a tobacco factory a worker produces a thousand cigarettes an hour and works 12 hours, of which during 6 hours he creates value equal to the value of his labor power. If a machine is introduced at a factory that doubles the productivity of labor, then the worker, working as before for 12 hours, produces not 12,000, but 24,000 cigarettes. Wages the worker compensates for a part of the newly created value, embodied (minus the value of the transferred part of the constant capital) in 6,000 cigarettes, that is, in the product of 3 hours. The manufacturer is left with another part of the newly created value, embodied (minus the value of the transferred part of the constant capital) in 18,000 cigarettes, that is, in a product of 9 hours.

Thus, there is a reduction in the necessary labor time and a corresponding lengthening of the surplus labor time. The worker replaces the value of his labor power no longer within 6 hours, but within 3 hours; his surplus labor increased from 6 hours to 9 hours. The rate of surplus value has tripled.

Excess added value there is a surplus of surplus-value above the ordinary rate obtained by individual capitalists who, by means of more perfect machines or methods of production, achieve in their enterprises a higher productivity of labor than that of most enterprises in the same industry.

The acquisition of excess surplus value is only a temporary phenomenon in each individual enterprise. Sooner or later, most of the entrepreneurs in the same industry introduce new machines, and those who do not have sufficient capital for this are ruined in the course of competition. As a result of this, the time socially necessary for the production of a given commodity decreases, the value of the commodity falls, and the capitalist, who applied technical improvements earlier than others, ceases to receive excess surplus-value. However, disappearing at one enterprise, excess surplus value appears at another, where new, even more perfect machines are introduced.

Each capitalist seeks only his own enrichment. But the end result of the scattered actions of individual entrepreneurs is the growth of technology, the development of the productive forces of capitalist society. At the same time, the pursuit of surplus value encourages every capitalist to protect his technical achievements from competitors, gives rise to trade secrets and technological secrets. Thus, it is revealed that capitalism places definite limits on the development of the productive forces.

The development of the productive forces under capitalism takes place in a contradictory form. Capitalists use new machines only when this leads to an increase in surplus value. The introduction of new machines serves as the basis for an all-round increase in the degree of exploitation of the proletariat, a lengthening of the working day and an increase in the intensity of labour; the progress of technology is carried out at the cost of innumerable sacrifices and deprivations of many generations of the working class. Thus, capitalism treats the main productive force of society, the working class, the working masses, in the most predatory way.

The class structure of capitalist society. bourgeois state.

The pre-capitalist modes of production were characterized by the division of society into various classes and estates, which created a complex hierarchical structure of society. The bourgeois era simplified class contradictions and replaced various forms of hereditary privilege and personal dependence with the impersonal power of money, the unlimited despotism of capital. Under the capitalist mode of production, society is increasingly splitting into two large hostile camps, into two opposing classes—the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

Bourgeoisie there is a class that owns the means of production and uses them for the exploitation of wage labor.

Proletariat there is a class of wage-workers deprived of the means of production and consequently compelled to sell their labor power to the capitalists. On the basis of machine production, capital completely subjugated wage labor. For the class of wage-workers, the proletarian fortune became a life-long destiny. By virtue of its economic position, the proletariat is the most revolutionary class.

The bourgeoisie and the proletariat are the main classes of capitalist society. As long as the capitalist mode of production exists, these two classes are inextricably linked: the bourgeoisie cannot exist and enrich itself without exploiting the wage-workers; the proletarians cannot live without hiring themselves with the capitalists. At the same time, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are antagonistic classes whose interests are opposed and irreconcilably hostile. The ruling class in capitalist society is the bourgeoisie. The development of capitalism leads to a deepening of the gulf between the exploiting minority and the exploited masses. The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is the driving force of capitalist society.

In all bourgeois countries, a significant part of the population is the peasantry.

Peasantry there is a class of small producers who run their economy on the basis of private ownership of the means of production with the help of backward technique and manual labor. The bulk of the peasantry is mercilessly exploited by the landlords, kulaks, merchants and usurers and is ruined. In the process of stratification, the peasantry continuously separates from itself, on the one hand, the masses of proletarians and, on the other hand, kulaks and capitalists.

The capitalist state, which replaced the state of the feudal-serf era as a result of the bourgeois revolution, in its class essence is in the hands of the capitalists an instrument for subordinating and oppressing the working class and peasantry. The bourgeois state protects capitalist private ownership of the means of production, ensures the exploitation of the working people and suppresses their struggle against the capitalist system.

Since the interests of the capitalist class are sharply opposed to the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population, the bourgeoisie is compelled to hide the class character of its state in every possible way. The bourgeoisie is trying to present this state in the form of an allegedly supra-class, all-people state, in the form of a state of "pure democracy". But in reality bourgeois "freedom" is the freedom of capital to exploit the labor of others; bourgeois "equality" is a deceit that covers up the actual inequality between the exploiter and the exploited, between the well-fed and the hungry, between the owners of the means of production and the mass of proletarians who own only their own labor power.

The bourgeois state suppresses the masses with the help of its administrative apparatus, police, army, courts, prisons, concentration camps and other means of violence. A necessary addition to these means of violence are the means of ideological influence by which the bourgeoisie maintains its dominance. This includes the bourgeois press, radio, cinema, bourgeois science and art, and the church.

The bourgeois state is the executive committee of the capitalist class. Bourgeois constitutions aim at fixing a social order that is pleasing and beneficial to the propertied classes. The basis of the capitalist system - private ownership of the means of production - the bourgeois state declares sacred and inviolable.

The forms of bourgeois states are very diverse, but their essence is the same: all these states are dictatorship of the bourgeoisie striving by all means to preserve and strengthen the system of exploitation of wage labor by capital.

As large-scale capitalist production grows, the size of the proletariat increases, which becomes more and more aware of its class interests, develops politically and organizes itself for the struggle against the bourgeoisie.

The proletariat is such a working class that is associated with the advanced form of economy - with large-scale production. “Only the proletariat, by virtue of its economic role in large-scale production, is capable of being the leader all working and exploited masses". The industrial proletariat, which is the most revolutionary and most advanced class in capitalist society, is capable of gathering around itself the working masses of the peasantry, all the exploited sections of the population, and leading them to storm capitalism.

SUMMARY

1. Under the capitalist system, the basis of production relations is capitalist ownership of the means of production, which is used to exploit wage workers. Capitalism is commodity production at the highest stage of its development, when labor power also becomes a commodity. As a commodity, labor power under capitalism has value and use value. The value of the commodity labor power is determined by the value of the means of subsistence needed to support the worker and his family. The use value of labor power lies in its ability to be a source of value and surplus value.

2. Surplus value is the value created by the worker's labor in excess of the value of his labor power and appropriated by the capitalist free of charge. The law of surplus value is the basic economic law of capitalism.

3. Capital is a value that brings – through the exploitation of hired workers - surplus value. Capital embodies the social relationship between the capitalist class and the working class. In the process of production of surplus value, different parts of capital play different roles. Constant capital is that part of the capital which is expended on the means of production; this part of the capital does not create new value, does not change its magnitude. Variable capital is that part of the capital which is spent on the purchase of labor power; this part of the capital increases as a result of the appropriation by the capitalist of the surplus value created by the labor of the worker.

4. The rate of surplus value is the ratio of surplus value to variable capital. It expresses the degree of exploitation of the worker by the capitalist. Capitalists raise the rate of surplus value in two ways – through the production of absolute surplus value and through the production of relative surplus value. Absolute surplus value is the surplus value created by lengthening the working day or increasing the intensity of labour. Relative surplus value is the surplus value created by the reduction of necessary labor time and the corresponding increase in surplus labor time.

5. The class interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are irreconcilable. The contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat constitutes the main class contradiction of capitalist society. The organ for the protection of the capitalist system and the suppression of the working and exploited majority of society is the bourgeois state, which is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.