democratic and the Communist movement. By and large, the SocialDemocrats were originally those followers of Marx who emphasized the moral aspects of Marxist ideology. Translated into action, this means positive work for improvement, as well as cooperation with the "best" elements of the present society in all efforts toward progress. Communists, by contrast, are Marxists who have put all their reliance on the idea of an historically necessary collapse of the present society. In practice, this amounts to a rejection of any cooperation with the present society, except for the purpose of hastening its destruction. The split between these two branches of Marxism occurred only when Marxist parties had grown numerous and powerful enough to influence legislation and thus had to make up their minds whether they wanted to use their influence to reform or to destroy the present society. It was then that they found out that Marx had left them with two motives which both in theory and practice were incompatible with each other. Marx's indictment of capitalist society In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed—a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of the machinery, etc. Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.1 In this passage, Marx states what he considers the central feature of bourgeois society: The enslavement of the workers by the factory owners. The class that owns the machines rules "despotically" over their propertyless subjects. But this despotic power, Marx adds, does not stem so much from a power-lusting will of each capitalist, nor does it depend on the whip and the bludgeon. Rather, it is an integral feature of the entire economic system called capitalism. In this system, which depends on property and freedom of contract as its legal framework, everything is produced as a commodity, i.e., for the purpose of sale rather than use. Profit is therefore its dominant motive. Labor, too, figures in this system as another commodity, to be bought and sold. The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois production.2 If we . . . consider only the economic forms of (the circulation of commodities), we find its final result to be money: this final product of the circulation of commodities is the first form in which capital appears.3 Commodity production and contractual labor Now the capitalist and the laborer enter into their relation of "despot" and "slave" through a free contract: But in order that our owner of money may be able to find labour-power offered for sale as a commodity, various conditions must first be fulfilled . . . labour-power can appear upon the market as a commodity only if, and so far as, its possessor, the individual whose labour power it is, offers it for sale, or sells it, as a commodity. In order that he may be able to do this, he must be the untrammelled owner of his capacity for labour, i.e. of his person. He and the owner of money meet in the market, and deal with each other as on the basis of equal rights. . . this . . . demands that the owner of the labour-power should sell it only for a definite period. . . . ... The second essential conditions . . . in this-that the labourer instead of being in the position to sell commodities in which his labour is incorporated, must be obliged to offer for sale as a commodity that very labourpower, which exists only in his living self.* 1Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "The Manifesto of the Communist Party" (December 1847-January 1848), Selected Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955), vol. I, pp. 40, 41. 'Marx, Capital (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1906), p. 94. "Surplus value" Commodity production, along with money as its characteristic result, is the first principal basis of the capitalist system of power. The second, already indicated in the passage above, is the capacity of people with money to hire, in a free contract, the services of others who have to offer their labor-power for sale. To these two, Marx adds, as the most essential, another feature: The "exploitation" of the worker in the form of the capitalist's extraction of "surplus value" from labor. "Surplus value" is Marx's formula for the difference between what workers produce in the course of one day, and what they get paid. He assumes that they will be paid only as much as it costs to keep them in existence, and that this corresponds in value to only a part of what a worker creates in full-time work. The value of a day's labour-power amounts to 3 shillings, because on our assumption half a day's labour is embodied in that quantity of labour power, "i.e.," because the means of subsistence that are daily required for the production of labour-power, cost half a day's labour. The fact that half a day's labour is necessary to keep the labourer alive during 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him from working a whole day. Therefore, the value of labour-power, and the value which that labour-power creates in the labour process, are two entirely different magnitudes. . . .5 During the second period of the labour-process, that in which his labour is no longer necessary labour, the workman . . . creates no value for himself. He creates surplus-value which, for the capitalist, has all the charms of a creation out of nothing. . . . The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave labour, and one based on wage labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer. The rate of surplus-value is therefore an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labour-power by capital, or of the labourer by the capitalist. The significance of the concept of "surplus value" We must here distinguish several thoughts from each other. Marx first explains the production of a surplus over the mere necessities of existence. He then attributes both authorship and sole right to this surplus to the manual laborer, and finally claims that the capitalist, with the help of the system of commodity production, takes the surplus value from the worker in order to use it for himself as well as for more capital 'Ibid., pp. 215, 216. Ibid., pp. 240, 241. and more "exploitation." The creation of surplus value is itself no mystery: all civilization depends on it. There can be no education, government, science, art, or any refinement of life without the production of some surplus over and above what is needed to keep oneself alive. The question is how this surplus is collected and distributed for the purposes of civilization. Marx's theory amounts to the assertion that surplus value belongs only to the factory laborer who is robbed of it by the factory owner, by means of a contractual purchase of labor-power. In order to make this assertion plausible, Marx had to assert first that all value results solely from labor. that which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour-time socially necessary for its production." This passage is found on the very first pages of Capital and states, as it were, the assumption on which the entire theory rests. The assumption is that, since it is labor which alone creates value and surplus value, the laborer who has sold his labor-power to the capitalist is robbed of the fruits of his effort; the capitalist, since he has money, obtains control over something that of right is not his; therefore the entire system is one of exploitation and despotic power. The "labor theory of value" It is obvious that all this hinges on the assumption that the worker is the sole author and rightful master of surplus value. Marx established this assumption with the help of the so-called labor theory of value, a theory then current among economists as an explanation of the economic phenomenon of value. As a tool of economic analysis, it has long since been found utterly useless and has been universally discarded. The truth is that value does not arise from labor alone, but also from organization, invention, capital, the efficient use of machines, coordination of production with the market, etc. In Marx's system, however, the labor theory of value serves not merely for purposes of economic analysis, but as a basis for establishing moral title and rightful claim to the goods produced in a complicated system of market-oriented factory work. Marx slides, without making this clear to the reader, from an analytical concept of economic value to an assertion of the social cause of value, and from there to moral conclusions. It is as if he had passed from a scientific analysis of cooking to the finding that since in a family the mother does the cooking, the mother is the sole provider of the family's food, and from there to the conclusion that the mother has the right to go and sell the family dinner for pocket money. 'Ibid., p. 46. Marx's view appears clearly in the following messages: Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him. If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist. The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities.8 ... Hence, it is self-evident that the labourer is nothing else, his whole life through, than labour-power, that therefore all his disposable time is by nature and law labour-time, to be devoted to the self-expansion of capital. Time for education, for intellectual development, for the fulfilling of social functions and for social intercourse, for the free-play of his bodily and mental activity, even the rest time of Sunday (and that in a country of Sabbatarians)-moonshine! . . . The capitalistic mode of production (essentially the production of surplus value, the absorption of surplus-labour), produces thus, with the extension of the working day, not only the deterioration of human labourpower by robbing it of its normal, moral and physical, conditions of development and function. It produces also the premature exhaustion and death of this labour-power itself." In other words, the system is by its nature inhuman and destructive of human life. (Cause for hatred.) It is also a system of despotic capitalist power: the cooperation of wage labourers is entirely brought about by the capital that employs them. . . . Hence the connexion existing between their various labours appears to them. . . in the shape of the powerful will of another, who subjects their activity to his aims. . . . As co-operation extends its scale, this despotism takes forms peculiar to itself. . . . . . Being independent of each other, the labourers are isolated persons, who enter into relations with the capitalist, but not with one another. This co-operation begins only with the labour process, but they have then ceased to belong to themselves.10 Criticism of the theory of "surplus value" Marx's theory of surplus value, which is the core of his Capital, has been criticized along the following lines: Marx says that capitalism depends on the production of surplus value. This is true, but the same is true of any other civilized society, including the Soviet society. 'Ibid., p. 257. |