Jim.+341-358

31 May 2011 Grundrisse pp 341 - 358

//Concerning increases in the value of capital//

more annoying math, but there are some insights here.

342: “...we here assume the working day to be the natural amount of labor time which the worker is able to put at the disposal of capital...”

absolute vs. relative surplus value:

“...its value increased not because the absolute but because the relative amount of labor grew; i.e. the total amount of labor did not grow; the working day is as long before as after; hence no absolute increase in surplus time (surplus labor time); rather the amount of necessary labor decreased, and that is how relative surplus labor increased.”

345: “But it is false that these 140 thalers only represent more use value; they represent a great amount of independent exchange value, of money, of latent capital; i.e. of wealth posited as wealth.”

Marx makes a distinction between money as medium of exchange and capital. The capitalist puts M into the production process and comes out with M’. An increase in productivity of labor means more use values are produced, but M’ remains the same. Still, less of that M’ is means of circulation and more of it is capital. Less goes to pay wages and buy wage goods, more is capital in the hands of the capitalist to be reinvested. So an increase of productivity does add value directly to the system, but indirectly that capital is value-creating potential.

346: “Because that part of the total sum has increased which was not a mere medium of circulation, but money...”

exchange value for -itself [für sich seiend]

“Thus a new capital of 20 thalers is posited -- a sum of self-preserving and self-realizing wealth.”

“...capital of the whole society”

“... as a new domination of objectified labor over living labor.”

347: “The influence of the increase of capital on the increase of productive force is thus infinitely greater than that of the increase of the productive force on the growth of capital.”

OK, he made the case that increased productivity has diminishing returns on the growth of capital. Now is he saying that the growth of capital leads to increased productivity, thought technological change? This is one of Harvey’s points; that technological change is internal to the model.

348: this new capital created needs new living labor to further valorize (population growth, activate dormant workers), new branches of production, new country. This seems to be an argument for accumulation by dispossession, spatial fix, commodification, privatization.

It is important to separate Marx from Ricardo here.

351: “We are the last to deny that capital contains contradictions. Our purpose, rather, is to develop them fully.”

352: Discussion of population growth, although it is difficult to separate Marx from Ricardo:

“With the accumulation of capitals, wages rise unless population grows simultaneously; the worker marries, production is spurred on or his children live better, do not die before their time etc. In short, the population grows. Its growth, however, gives rise to competition among the workers, and thereby forces the worker to sell his labor power to the capitalist at its value again, or momentarily even below it.”

“The wage covers not only the worker, but also his reproduction; so that when this specimen of the working class dies, another replaces it... the costs which had to be paid to their parents above and beyond their wages as individuals, in order to replace themselves with 50 new individuals.”

//Labor does not replace...//

Here is takes five pages to explain that the value in raw materials and instruments of production is preserved in the labor process and passed on to the new commodity. Labor has the ability to preserve this value as it adds new value. If not new labor is added the raw materials will rot and the value will be lost, so it is a necessary service that labor provides. But it isn’t paid for and costs nothing.