Karl Marx/Capital1/Part3

This is a resource about the third part of the first volume of Capital by Karl Marx, entitled "The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value".

This part holds five chapters:

• Chapter 7: The Labour Process and the Valorization Process
• Chapter 8: Constant Capital and Variable Capital
• Chapter 9: The Rate of Surplus-Value
• Chapter 10: The Working Day
• Chapter 11: The Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value

In the third part of Capital Marx enters the sphere of production. In the previous parts the market was the dominant factor. This sphere of circulation was described in the first part of Capital (chapters 1, 2 and 3) in terms of the development of the concept of the commodity, the unit in contradiction of use value and exchange value; next money was introduced, and with money, in the second part (chapters 4,5 and 6) the concept of capital. But in the second part of Capital this concept of capital was only defined as a medium of circulation. A very powerful medium, that on one side has the possibility to grow (M-C-(M+ΔM)), and that on the other side can place itself in an antagonistic relation to labour. Capital can buy goods, like raw materials and machinery, but capital can also buy labour-power. Labour-power is a commodity, like goods, and machinery. It has an exchange-value and a use-value. The use-value of labour-power can only become manifest in the utilization, the consumption of labour-power. And this process of consumption of labour-power is at the same time the production process of commodities, and of surplus-value. And this consumption of labour-power is therefore completed, as in the case of every commodity, outside the market or the sphere of circulation. In dramatic terms Marx describes, at the end of chapter 6, how the capitalist and the labourer leave the sphere of circulation, and enter the sphere of production.

In this third part of Capital one method of production of surplus-value in the capitalist production process is described, the production of absolute surplus-value. In the next part the focus will shift to the production of relative surplus-value.

We leave the sphere of circulation, of the market, and we now enter the production process. The production process is first of all analysed as a labour process, "independently of any specific social formation." (p. 283)^[1] This is very important. About ten pages of this chapter deal with the labour process as "a condition of human existence which is independent of all forms of society; it is an eternal natural necessity which mediates the metabolism between man and nature, and therefore human life itself," as it was first said in the second paragraph of the first chapter of Capital. (p. 133) Of course this must be understood in a dialectical way. There is only one production process. And the labour process as intended here is "wholly natural and wholly human at the same time. It is construed dialectically as a moment of 'metabolism' in which it is impossible to separate the natural from the human."^[2]

The labour process always has three elements:

• the "purposeful activity, that is work itself,"
• "the object on which that work is performed," most of the time this is the raw material,
• "the instruments of that work," tools, machinery, buildings etc. (p. 284-285)

The capitalist combines these elements in his factory.

As we have seen earlier, every labour process is also a process of value creation. Under capitalist conditions this unity of labour process and value creation process gets a new form: it becomes a process of creation of surplus value.

The capitalist production process has two essential features:

• "the worker works under the control of the capitalist to whom his labour belongs";
• "the product is the property of the capitalist and not that of the worker." (p. 291-292)

These conditions allow the capitalist to reach "two objectives: in the first place, he wants to produce a use-value which has exchange-value, i.e. an article destined to be sold, a commodity; and secondly he wants to produce a commodity greater in value than the sum of the values of the commodities used to produce it, namely the means of production and the labour-power he purchased with his good money on the open market. His aim is to produce not only a use-value, but a commodity; not only use-value, but value; and not just value, but also surplus-value." (p. 293) This is the real transformation of money into capital, which "both takes place and does not take place in the sphere of circulation." (p. 301)

Again it must be underpinned, that—in the example of spinning cotton that Marx uses throughout this chapter—"no more time be consumed in the work of transforming the cotton into yarn than is necessary under the given social conditions." (p. 296)

Marx has set out his fundamental theorem: that surplus-value originates from the difference between what labour gets for its labour-power as a commodity on the market, and what the labourer produces in the capitalist production process, the labour process under the command of capital. But he "immediately states a lot of caveats," ^[3] like the question, what exactly are the socially necessary conditions for the production of use-values, and the system, the capitalist has to develop of preventing wasteful consumption of raw material or instruments of labour. Here Marx also marks the problem of the distinction between unskilled and skilled labour. For now he assumes that there is a way to reduce "the higher type of labour to average social labour." (p. 306)

Constant capital is capital that is spent on commodities: raw materials, machinery, etc. Variable capital is used for hiring labourers. This is a distinction that does not correspond to the common use of these terms in (business) economics, mostly named fixed and circulating capital.

• Harvey, David (2010). A Companion to Marx's Capital. London / New York: Verso. ISBN 978 1 84467 359 9.