Abstract
The second method for augmenting surplus-value is to lower the daily value of labour-power by lowering the value of the requisite means of livelihood of workers by developing productive power. Surplus labour time can be relatively extended by this method of curtailing the requisite labour time. Regardless of the production sphere, individual capital can obtain extra surplus-value by producing commodities using less labour time than the socially necessary labour time, and this compels capitalists to compete through efforts to cheapen the production of commodities by raising productive power. The outcome is the rapid development of productive methods. The starting point of this development is co-operation between many workers, followed by the spread of the manufactures by means of co-operation involving a division of labour, until finally large-scale industry that applies scientific technology to the production process becomes dominant.
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Notes
- 1.
Marx (1872) vividly depicts this system as follows: «An organised system of machines to which motion is communicated by the transmitting mechanism from an automatic centre is the developed form of production by machinery. Here we have, in place of the isolated machine, a mechanical monster whose body fills whole factories, and whose demonic power, at first hidden by the slow and measured motions of its gigantic members, finally bursts forth in the fast and feverish wheel of its countless working organs» (Marx 1976, p. 503: Marx’s emphasis as in the first German edition).
- 2.
Marx (1872) writes: «Large-scale industry tore aside the veil that concealed from men their own social process of production and turned the various spontaneously divided branches of production into riddles, not only to outsiders but even to the initiated. Its principle, which is to view each process of production in and for itself, and to resolve it into its constituent elements without looking first at the ability of the human hand to perform the new processes, brought into existence the whole of the modern science of technology. The varied, apparently unconnected and petrified forms of the social production process were now dissolved into conscious and planned applications of natural science, divided up systematically in accordance with the particular useful effect aimed at in each case. Similarly, technology discovered the few grand fundamental forms of motion which, despite all the diversity of the instruments used, apply necessarily to every productive action of the human body, just as the science of mechanics is not misled by the immense complication of modern machinery into viewing this as anything other than the constant re-appearance of the same simple mechanical processes. / Modern industry never views or treats the existing form of a production process as the definitive one. Its technical basis is therefore revolutionary, whereas all earlier modes of production were essentially conservative» (Marx 1976, pp. 616–617; Marx’s emphasis as in the first German edition).
- 3.
Marx (1872) writes: «As machinery, the instrument of labour assumes a material mode of existence which necessitates the replacement of human force by natural forces, and the replacement of the rule of thumb by the conscious application of natural science. In manufacture the organisation of the social labour process is purely subjective; it is a combination of specialised workers. Large-scale industry, on the other hand, possesses in the machine system an entirely objective organisation of production, which confronts the worker as a pre-existing material condition of production … Machinery … operates only by means of associated labour, or labour in common. Hence the co-operative character of the labour process is in this case a technical necessity dictated by the very nature of the instrument of labour» (Marx 1976, p. 508; Marx’s emphasis as in the first German edition).
- 4.
Marx uses the term «moral depreciation» to refer to the depreciation of fixed capital due to the obsolescence of means of labour caused by social conditions, particularly as a result of a rise in the productive power of labour lowering the value of the means of labour.
- 5.
The following is a compendium of what Marx (1872) wrote on this point: «Through the development of the large-scale capitalist production that employs machinery in the sphere of agriculture the conscious, technological application of science replaces also here the previous highly irrational and slothfully traditional way of working. The capitalist mode of production thus creates the material conditions for the union of agriculture and industry putting an end to the period of their antagonistic isolation. / On the other hand, however, the capitalist production disturbs inevitably the metabolism between man and the earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil. All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil. All progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time by the capitalist farmer is a progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility. / In modern agriculture, as in urban industry, the increase in the productive power of the mobility of labour is purchased at the cost of laying waste and debilitating labour-power itself. At the same time it destroys the physical health of the urban worker, and the intellectual life of the rural worker. / Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker. / But at the same time by destroying the circumstances surrounding that metabolism, which originated in a merely natural and spontaneous fashion, it compels its systematic restoration as a regulating law of social production, and in a form adequate to the full development of the human race» (Marx 1976, pp. 637–638; my emphasis).
With regard to how Marx’s views on ecology deepened along with the development of his critique of political economy, the detailed and lucid study of Saito (2017) is very thought-provoking.
References
Marx K (1872) Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie. Bd. 1. Buch 1: Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals. 2. verb. Aufl. Hamburg. English edition: Marx K (1976) Capital. A critique of political economy. Vol. 1 (trans: Howkes B). Penguin Books
Saito K (2017) Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. New York
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Otani, T. (2018). Methods for the Development of Productive Power. In: A Guide to Marxian Political Economy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65954-1_5
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