Transition

We have seen that the production of surplus-value is accomplished by implementing a certain time relation in production: the time the worker works is longer than the time that is needed to produce the value of her labour-power. This is the secret of the production of surplus-value and the efficiency of this production is expressed in the rate of surplus-value $m/v$. Since the production of surplus-value is the purpose of the capitalist production process, the worker is hired - her labour-power is bought - in order to squeeze a certain amount of surplus living labour out of her, i.e. to put her to work long enough to realise a surplus-value: $m$. We shall see that the wage is the form in which the purchase of labour power and the purpose of this purchase are consolidated. Put differently, the form of payment expresses the truth that necessary labour is conditioned on surplus labour under the rule of capital, not the other way around.

Price of Labour

675:1 On the surface of bourgeois society, the compensation of the laborer appears as price of labor, a certain amount of money paid for a certain amount of labor. People speak of the value of labor, and call its expression in money the necessary or nat ural price of labor. On the other hand they speak of market prices of labor, i.e. prices which oscillate above or below this necessary price. ¹

The form in which the worker is paid the value of her labour-power is the wage: payment for labour instead of labour-power: living labour is paid, not the capacity to work. This is as if you would not buy the icecream, which has the capacity to fill you up, but the filling-up-your-tummy. You are not buying the object but the useful effect of that object when consumed.

We already established in Chapter 6 that it is labour-power not labour which is bought and sold:

270:1 In order to extract value out of the consumption of a commodity, our friend the money-owner must be lucky enough to find within the sphere of circulation, on the market, a commodity whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption is therefore itself an objectification of labour, hence a creation of value. The possessor of money does find such a special commodity on the market: the capacity for labour, in other words labour-power.

But here we encounter that the sale and purchase of this commodity appears differently. However, false consciousness is not the main point of this chapter, the form of payment is real. Capital pays for labour: say 12 hours or a certain amount per produced commodity. This is the predominant form in which capitalists pay for labour.

Appearance

First, we investigate the appearance as such. If payment is made conditional on a certain amount of labour being expended this does not imply that this amount of labour - performance - is what is being paid.

675:2 But what is the value of a commodity? The objectified form of the social labor expended in its production. And how do we measure the quantity of the commodity’s value? By the quantity of the labor contained in it. How would then the value, e.g., of a 12-hour working day be determined? By the 12 working hours contained in a working day of 12 hours, which is an absurd tautology.

How much value, which we measure in a certain amount of congealed abstract labour, is in 12 hours of (abstract) labour. You could say: well, 12. Which doesn’t account for anything, just states again that we are talking about 12 hours. As such, it cannot be an adequate account of what’s going on. This is apt, as it is not labour which is actually sold.

675:3 In any case, if labor were to be sold as a commodity in the market, it would have to exist before being sold. But if the worker were able to endow it with an independent existence, he would be selling a commodity, and not labor.

This echoes a point made earlier (in Chapter 6):

272: The second essential condition which allows the owner of money to find labour-power in the market as a commodity is this, that the possessor of labour-power, instead of being able to sell commodities in which labour has been objectified, must rather be compelled to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power which exists onlu in his living body … If products are produced as commodities, they must be sold after they have been produced, and they can only satisfy the producer’s needs after they have been sold.

The independent existence of labour is in its product, this is how labour actualises itself. If labour could be sold independently, i.e. as a commodity, the worker would: she’d get the value of the product not only her labour-power’s value. It is not this tautology - 12 hours of abstract labour produce 12 hours worth of value - which is being expressed. Instead, “value of labour” is supposed to account for the wage earned by a worker.

676:1 Even if one disregards these contradictions, a direct exchange of money, i.e. of objectified labor, with living labor, would either supersede the law of value, which only begins to develop freely on the basis of capitalist production, or supersede capitalist production itself, which rests directly on wage labor. The working day of 12 hours is represented in a monetary value of, for example, $1.44. There are two alternatives.

The second point - we maintain the law of value so no capital could exist - argued first:

Either equivalents are exchanged, and then the worker receives \$1.44 for 12 hours of labor; the price of his labor would be equal to the price of his product. In that case he produces no surplus-value for the buyer of his labor, the \$1.44 are not transformed into capital, and the basis of capitalist production vanishes. But it is precisely on that basis that he sells his labor and that his labor is wage labor.

If the worker receives the value-product of her labour - there would be no value left for the capitalist.

Or else he receives, in return for 12 hours of labor, less than \$1.44, i.e. less than 12 hours of labor. 12 hours of labor are exchanged for 10, 6, etc. hours of labor. By equating unequal quantities in this way, one does not only do away with the notion of value. Such a self-eliminating contradiction cannot be a law; it canot even be enunciated or formulated as one.

12 hours are equivalent to 10 hours, which are equivalent to 8 1/3 hours, which are equivalent to about 7 hours … etc until its equivalent to nothing at all. So we’d arrive at the conclusion that 12 hours are nothing. But perhaps the form of what is being exchanged does the trick?

676:2 Attributing the exchange of more labor against less to the differences in form—one piece of labor being objectified, the other living24—won’t help either. This suggestion is even more absurd if one keeps in mind that the value of a commodity is determined not by the quantity of labor actually objectified in it, but by the quantity of living labor necessary to produce it. A commodity represents, say, 6 hours of labor. If an invention is made by which it can be produced in 3 hours, its value falls by half, even if the commodity is already produced. It now represents 3 hours of socially necessary labor instead of the former 6. It is therefore the amount of labor required to pro duce it, not the objectified form of that labor, which determines the magnitude of value of a commodity.

One might argue that the aggregate state of labour - liquid or solid, so to speak - is what makes all the difference. But the point of value is that it doesn’t count how much labour was expended on producing a certain commodity, but how much is necessary. As such, the distinction living vs. dead or liquid vs. congealed is void.

Assuming that what is sold is labour is hence a non-starter, it is a contradiction and not an account of what is happening. We already established in Chapter 6 that what is actually sold is labour-power not labour. The form of payment being bound to performance does not imply performance is actually paid:

677:1 That which comes directly face to face with the money owner on the market, is in fact not labor, but the laborer. What the latter sells is his labor-power. As soon as his labor begins, it has already ceased to belong to him; it can therefore no longer be sold by him. Labor is the substance, the immanent measure of value, but has itself no value.

Hence, not only does value of labour attribute value to something which does not value - say the potatoes from your backyard - but something which cannot have value, it is a completely imaginary expression:

677:2 In the expression ‘value of labor’, the concept of value is not only altogether extinguished, but it is turned into its opposite. It is an imaginary expression, like, say, ‘value of the earth’.

So far for the critique of the from as false appearance, but the wage for is real not merely ideology.

These imaginary expressions however are expressions which arise from the relations of production themselves. They are categories for the forms of appearance of essential relations. That in their appearance things often represent themselves in an inverted manner is commonly understood in just about every science, except in political economy.

It is not enough to show the irrationality of this form, but we must also understand why the essence appears in this form. Why does capital pay for labour-power in the form of payment for labour? That this irrational expression isn’t a mere issue of people thinking nonsense is alluded to in the footnote where Proudhon is critiqued for not understanding the grim reality of labour as a commodity.

TBC …