IF A politician in a slave-owaing society were announce that 'untair practices had crept into the Institution of slavery and that it was therciore neerosary to introduce a code af "fair" behaviour regulating the relationship beiween masters and slaves, we would call him a hypocrite.
If, similariy, • rich feudal abbot were to complain that the serfs were slipping up on their carvee flime spent in forced labour for the lord of the manor) and were to deduce that society seemed to be undergoing a moral deterioration, we should also despise him. How could there he any question of "fuirmess' or 'unfairness" in the case of slavery 0г feudalism? For in either case it Institution itself which is 'onfair' und not its shuses.
For most people nothing in the appearance of capitalism suggests that it shares anything in common with slavery or Teudalsm. Savery and feudalism in varying degrees imply forced TOTKE ATEROUr DON capsransmn iepucs pare work freely entered into. Capitalism is "free' ente ige. l Werker alay dhe ae of iei agent. Workers may dispose of their labour as they wish. They are not forced to give it, but they voluntarily sell it at a price. The price of labour is a wage. This price is determined by the result of an agreement reached between the worker and hil or her employer This agreement is the wage contract. Legally, the wage contract is an agreement between equals, and cither party may terminate the agreement if its terms are broken. The agrocment inself stipulates the expenditure of her/his labour for a certain period of time, the worker paid an agreed sum of money. No deception is involved, for the terms of the contract are enforceable at law.
EVENED OUT p Orsopure che apasii sul concede aa Of course, the economists.
concede thai the reality of capits Iasm thay not always live up to is ideal image. One party to a wage con tract, for instance, n here ore vagey BUUT DT CEMREOUABIUMa may be unduly lou justiy bigh Nevertheless, it 1s 2 beid that any short-term imbalance of strengih belween the two partiés to the wage bargain is, in the long run, evened out. For example, while the smal one-person enterprises of carly capitalism have replaced hy huge corporations, workers are now represented by powerful trade unions which protect theil terests, The CBI represents capital and the TUC represents labour. Berween thet & "Tair" division of wages and profits is entorood WHaCSO LOEC DECL HALES!
This is how the world of capitalism appears To iscl t is not the renltv ot. chDialsiT however, but a system of appearanoes which makes che reality of capitalism invisible. At the very beart of this system of appearances lies the wage contract lorit.
What is the nature of the wage contract? In the everyday world, everything proceeds as if wages buy all the labour provided by the worker. Every hour is paid at an agreed rate. Bonuses, piece rates and overtime are minutely Labour is thas paid its full price, and profit appears as the amount added obto the selling price, by the capitalist, as a roward for effort. Capital then appoars to have a power of autonomous growth since labour has been fully paid al the marker rate for work DISGUISED REALITY It was to uncover the disguised realily which lay beneath this appareotly self-evident telationship berween labour and capital thai Marx elaborated the theory of surplus value which is the most important achievement of his centrai work Das Kapital.
The starting point of Marx's theory was to SEL0 GU-TRO WHIE IS CAC SOUrCEDLE capitalist's profic? To answer that question, be had to find a saristactory solutioo to an even mere basic problem: what is it that commodites have in common that enables thems to be exchanged at agreed ratios? To pur it more concretely, what is it chat enables us to say that a cons of sugar - y or of gold = z 100 pencils Pe. The commonsense answer Co Dus CUCSCOn is supply and demand. But only a moment's TE BOTAE STEC T SHOW USLILSUL ply and demand may explain variations in the Drezs ot Bencs or goid, tocy cal dece cn plain how it is in cacial conditions thar l pencil is never worth 1 oz of gold, The only quality in fact that sugar, gold and pencils share in common is that they are all products not have come from the general circulation of colomod bles. because every commodity bas been paid for at its equilibrium value. lt cannot have come from the machinery, beause Do macbine can create more valuc, tha t itself costs. It must theretore have com from the labour power. It is only labour powe which postesses the unique property of creat ing more value, than it itsell is worth: or to put it another way, labour power is the sole source of surplus value and thus of profit.
We are now in a better position to under stand the crucial importance of vlark s disLoction between labour and lahour power. For, as he wrote, 'the talue of the labouring power is determined hy the quantity of labour necessary to maintain or reproduce it, but the use of that labouring power (i.e. labour itself) is only limited by the active coergies and physical strength of the labourer."
If a capitalist hires a worker to work a day of eight hours, it may be that the worker will have laboured sufficiently to reproduce her/ his value (i.e. earn her or his keep) in four hours. But if the worker then stopped work, the capitalist would make no profit, and the entire basis of capitalist production would be removed. The worker sherefore goes on working for the four remaining hours solely for the benefit of the capitalist. So the last four hours i whoily unpaid tabour which constitutes the profit of the capitalist.
FULL PRICE But this is not how matters appear cither to the worker or the capitalist. For wages will not be paid until the end of the day and will b evened out over all the hours of the day. is will therefore seem to the worker that she or he has heen paid for every hour of labour performed and to the capitalist, that labour has been paid at its Tull price.
If chis idea is difficult to grasp, it is becausı every scientific concept appears conrradicrory inasfar as it denies the world of everyday appearance and exposes a different level bi reality beneath it. In the case of capitalism, the mythical appearance of the wage contrac gives the worker's unpaid labour the appear ance of past labour.
Once this myth is exploded, ance it is under stood that prosits are nothing but unpaid labour, then the whole capitalist mythology which derives from it also collapses to tbe ground. For if profits are unpaid labour, thet iir" distribution between protit: and wages becomes ludicrous. .The sanctimon ious phrases of Heales and Callagban, the pompous carnestness of Keith Joseph sound as hotlow as the bleatings of the siavery polt icians. Pious concern about the practices of the workets carries ahout as much ethical charge as grumblings ahout the lazines of slaves. If profits are unpaid wages, then E talk of the CHl and the TUC as if they wert powers of equal magnitude is nonsense. By a similar token, it folows thut for the scale to masquerade as the impersonal arbitrator berwoen capital and labour is a sham. The state under capitalism nor only condones the extraction of surplus value from the working class hut exists to ensure is continued and orderly How.
EXPLOITATION Is then che analogy between capitalism and slavery or feudalism so far-letched after all?
Not at all. For all class societies are characterised by the exploitution of labour by a class of non-producers. . In all such societics a divson is rendered between necessary Jabour (production for one's own wants) and surplus labour (labour which is appropriated to suscain the non-productive ruling class). Whar is spocific to capitalisin is not the fact of explcil.
ation, bur the form it takes, namely the production of surplus value which is a process of exploitation deeply concealed within the prodaction process itself. As Marx put it, "this false appearance distinguisbes witee laooul lon other historical forms of labour. On the basis of the wages system even the uapaid labour seeos to be paid labour. With the slave oo the contrary, even that part of ber/his labour which is paid appears to be 'unpaid".
Similariy, whether a man works three days of the week for himsell on his own field and three days for nothing on the estate of his lard ir whether he works in the facton or the workshop six hours daily for himself, and si for his emplayer, it comes to the same, alchough in the latter case the paid and unpaid poctions of labour are inseparably mixed up wich each other, and the natare of the whole transaction is completely masked by the inter vention of a contract and the pay received at the end of the wock!.
SOCIALIST CHALLENGE 16 May 1977 page 13