The one problem I still have difficulty with in Marxian economics is the
idea that labor power - the mental and physical capacity of humans to work
- is sold, rather than labor (not that I think its incorrect, I just have
some problems in understanding it).
snip
Or could someone explain (Better than Ch 6 of Capital 1 does) why it is---
labor power rather than labor which is sold if there is a different
justification for this idea?
Consider Marxs analysis of the wage. The wage is the payment for the sale of labour-power, what the worker receives for selling the property right to use her capacity to work for a limited period. Following from this sale of labour-power, we have the essence of the productive relations of capitalism: the worker works under the control of the capitalist to whom his labour belongs, and the capitalist has the property rights in the products of labour.[1]
This is the precondition for the generation of surplus value--- a coercive relation in which capital is able to compel the performance of surplus labour, where the labour the worker performs for the capitalist exceeds the labour necessary to reproduce the worker as wage-labourer. Understanding the significance of this point--- that the worker sells her labour-power rather than a certain amount of labour--- is absolutely essential. Once we do, we can grasp the generation of surplus value as the result of capitals victories in class struggle and can recognise all the subdivisions of surplus value (e.g., profit, rent, interest) as premised upon exploitation within the process of capitalist production.
But, consider the form of the wage--- what the wage necessarily looks like to the individual capitalist:
On the surface of bourgeois society the workers wage appears as the price of labour, as a certain quantity of money that is paid for a certain quantity of labour.[2]
It looks like this on the surface--- because a certain quantity of labour is exactly what the individual capitalist is purchasing in order to engage in production.
A theory which starts from the forms of appearances, therefore, must conclude that the capitalist pays for (all) the labour he receives, that surplus value accordingly cannot come from exploitation of workers because workers get in accordance with what they contribute--- in short, that rent, profit and wages grow out of the role played by the land, produced means of production, and labour in the production process. The Trinity Formula flows logically from the form of the wage, and nothing is easier to understand than the necessity, the raison dêtre, of this form of appearance.[3]
That is why Marx stressed the decisive importance of the form that the wage necessarily takes:
All the notions of justice held by both the worker and the capitalist, all the mystifications of the capitalist mode of production, all capitalisms illusions about freedom, all the apologetic tricks of vulgar economics, have as their basis the form of appearance discussed above, which makes the actual relation invisible, and indeed presents to the eye the precise opposite of that relation.[4]
The problem with reasoning from the perspective of the individual purchaser of labour-power is precisely that the interconnection of the reproduction process is not understood, i.e. as this presents itself not from the standpoint of individual capital, but rather from that of the total capital. If a certain quantity of money is paid for a certain quantity of labour, what ensures the reproduction of the working class?
And, there we have the question that Marx was so determined to stress (so much so that he concluded Volume I of Capital on this note)--- the necessity for reproduction of this social relation, the necessity that workers be reproduced as dependent upon capital and thus compelled to sell their labour-power in order to survive. The reproduction of the working class in general is at the core of Marxs focus upon the value of labour-power; however, it is a concept inherently invisible on the surface because the sale of labour-power necessarily appears as the sale of labour.[5] Going beyond this form of appearance is critical. Without that distinction between labour-power and labour, it is impossible to understand why the maintenance and reproduction of the working class remains a necessary condition for the reproduction of capital.[6]
So, it is not an accident that, after what would seem like a logical conclusion to Volume I of Capital (the expropriation of the expropriators), Marx added a further chapter--- The Modern Theory of Colonization. Something unusual happened in the New World (the colonies): the working class was not reproduced naturally. Wage-labourers escaped: the worker receives more than is required for the reproduction of his labour capacity and very soon becomes a peasant farming independently, etc, the original relation is not constantly reproduced.[7] In this situation, the social dependence of the worker on the capitalist, which is indispensable was not secured. And, the result, Marx commented, was that workers lost along with the relation of dependence, the feeling of dependence on the abstemious capitalist.[8] What was invisible on the surface in the Old World could not be denied in the New--- the secret that the reproduction of the worker as wage-labourer is the absolutely necessary condition for capitalist production.[9] Q.E.D.
Nevertheless, the great beauty of capitalist production, is that the unique circumstances which yielded this essential insight into the necessary condition of existence of capital are not normally present.[10] Characteristically, capitalist production makes the actual relation invisible, and indeed presents to the eye the precise opposite of that relation. Accordingly, translating the everyday notions of the actual agents of production into a more theoretical form cannot reveal that relation. Rather, the essential relation must first be discovered by science.[11]
[1] Marx, 1977: 291-2.
[2] Marx, 1977: 675.
[3] Marx, 1977: 681.
[4] Marx, 1977: 680.
[5] Lebowitz, 2003: 124-7.
[6] Marx, 1977: 718.
[7] Marx, 1988: 116.
[8] Marx, 1977: 935-6.
[9] Marx, 716, 940.
[10] Marx, 1977: 935.
[11] Marx, 1977: 682.
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Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
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