The laborious demonstration which follows will become clearer if we remind ourselves of the objects Marx had in view. Marx’s aim was to show how the propertied class had always lived upon the labour of the non-propertied classes—the possessors upon the non-possessing. This was by no means a new idea, as we have already made its acquaintance in the writings of Sismondi, Saint-Simon, Proudhon, and Rodbertus. But the essence of the criticism of these writers was always social rather than economic, the institution of private property and its injustice being the chief object of attack. Karl Marx, on the other hand, deliberately directed the gravamen of the charge against economic science itself, especially against the conception of exchange. He endeavours to prove that what we call exploitation must always exist, that it is an inevitable outcome of exchange—an economic necessity to which both master and man must submit.
It is convenient to begin with an examination of economic value. Marx lays down the doctrine that labour is not merely the measure and cause of value, but that it is also its substance. We have already had occasion to note how Ricardo was somewhat favourably inclined to the same view, though hardly willing to adopt it. There is no such hesitation on the part of Marx: it is all accepted in a characteristically thorough fashion. Of course, he does not deny that utility is a necessary condition of value and that it is really the only consideration in the case of “value in use.” But utility alone is not enough to explain value in exchange, since every act of exchange implies some common element, some degree of identity between the exchanged commodities. This identity is certainly not the result of utility, because the degree of utility is different in every commodity, and it is this difference that constitutes the raison d’être of exchange. The common or homogeneous element which is contained in commodities themselves heterogeneous in character is the quantity of labour, great or small, which is contained in them. The value of every commodity is simply the amount of crystallized human labour which it contains, and commodities differ in value according to the different quantities of labour which are “socially necessary to produce them.”[965]
Let us take the case of a working man, an employee in any kind of industry, working ten hours a day.
What will be the exchange value of the produce of his labour? It will be the equivalent of ten hours’ labour, whether the commodity produced be cloth or coal or what not. And since the master or the capitalist, as Marx always calls him, in accordance with the terms of the wage bargain, reserves for himself the right of disposing of that commodity, he sells it at its real value, which is the equivalent of ten hours’ labour.
The worker himself is cut off with a wage which simply represents the price which the capitalist pays for his labour force (Arbeitskraft), and the capitalist reserves to himself the right of disposing of the commodity at his own good pleasure. Its value is determined in the same way as that of every other exchangeable commodity. Labour-force or manual labour is just a commodity, and its value is determined by the number of hours of labour necessary for its production.[966]
“The quantity of labour necessary to produce the labour-force” is a somewhat formidable expression, and it is very difficult for any one who is beginning a study of Marx to appreciate its significance, but it is very essential that we should try, since everything turns upon a clear understanding of this phrase. But it is really not so mysterious after all. Suppose that instead of the labour of an artisan we take the work of a machine. No engineer would be surprised if we asked him the running expenses of that machine, and he might reply that it was costing one or two tons of coal per hour or eight or twelve per diem; and since the value of the coal merely represents a certain amount of human labour on the part of the coal-miner, there would be no difficulty in expressing it in terms of labour. Under the wage system the labourer is simply a machine, differing from the latter merely in the smaller quantity of wealth which he produces. The value of an hour’s labour or a day’s toil can be measured by the quantity of necessaries required to keep the worker in full productive efficiency during that period. Every employer who pays wages in kind—which is still the case in agriculture—always makes that kind of calculation, and even when the worker is paid a money wage things are much the same, for the money simply represents the cost of those necessaries.
Let us proceed a step farther. The value of the commodities necessary for the upkeep of labour is never equal to the value of the produce of that labour. In the instance given it would not equal the value of ten hours’ labour—perhaps not even five. Human labour under normal conditions always produces more than the mere value of the goods consumed.[967]
This is the crux of the problem. The mystery surrounding capitalist production is at last solved. The value produced by the labourer passes into the hands of the capitalist, who disposes of it and gives back to the labourer enough to pay for the food consumed by him during the time he was producing the commodity. The difference goes into the capitalist’s pocket. The product is sold as the equivalent of ten hours’ labour, but the labourer receives the equivalent of five hours only. Marx speaks of this as surplus value (Mehrwerth), a term that has become exceedingly popular since.[968]
Thus the capitalist gets ten hours’ labour out of the workman and only pays him for five,[969] the other five hours costing him nothing at all. During the first five hours the workman produces the equivalent of his wages, but after the end of the fifth hour he is working for nothing. The labour of this extra number of hours during which the surplus value is being produced and for which the worker receives nothing Marx calls surplus labour. By that he means the supererogatory labour which yields nothing to the worker, but merely involves an extra tax upon his energies and simply increases the capitalist’s fortune.