A Companion to Marx's Capital. David Harvey
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This relation has no basis in natural history, nor does it have a social basis common to all periods of human history. It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older formations of social production. (273)
That the wage-labor system had specific historical origins has to be acknowledged, if only to press home the point that the category of wage labor is no more “natural” than that of the capitalist or of value itself. The history of proletarianization will be taken up in greater detail later, in part 8. For now he simply wants to assume a full-fledged labor market already exists. He nevertheless acknowledges,
The economic categories already discussed similarly bear a historical imprint. Definite historical conditions are involved in the existence of the product as a commodity … Had we gone further, and inquired under what circumstances all, or even the majority of products take the form of commodities, we should have found that this only happens on the basis of one particular mode of production, the capitalist one. (273)
The capitalist mode of production, not other modes of production, we are reminded, is Marx’s exclusive focus.
The commodity production that has in the past existed in various forms, alongside the monetary circulation that historically has also existed in many forms, is clearly related in Marx’s mind to the rise of wage-labor forms. None of these evolutions is independent of the other in the rise to domination of a capitalist mode of production. Again, the historical and logical arguments intertwine. The socially necessary relation that logically binds commodity production to monetization and both in turn to the commodification of wage labor has distinctive historical origins. The wage system and the labor market that to us appear obvious and logical almost certainly did not appear so even toward the end of European feudalism.
The historical conditions of [capital’s] existence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities. It arises only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence finds the free worker available, on the market, as the seller of his own labour-power. And this one historical pre-condition comprises a world’s history. Capital, therefore, announces from the outset a new epoch in the process of social production. (274)
Labor-power is, however, a peculiar commodity, a special commodity unlike any other. First and foremost, it is the only commodity that has the capacity to create value. It is laborers whose socially necessary labor-time is congealed in commodities, and laborers who sell their labor-power to the capitalist. In turn, the capitalist uses this labor-power to organize the production of surplus-value. Note, however, that the form in which labor-power circulates is C-M-C (laborers take their labor-power into the market and sell it in return for money, which then permits them to buy the commodities they need to survive). So the laborer, remember, is always in the C-M-C circuit, while the capitalist works in the M-C-M’ circuit. There will therefore be different rules for how they think about their respective situations. The laborer can be content with the exchange of equivalents because it is use-values that matter. The capitalist, on the other hand, has to solve the problem of gaining surplus-value out of the exchange of equivalents.
So what is it that fixes the value of labor-power as commodity? The answer is complicated because labor-power is not a commodity in the usual sense, not only because it alone can create value but also because the determinants of its value are different from those of shirts and shoes both in principle and in the details. Marx mentions the differences with scarcely any elaboration:
The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this specific article. In so far as it has value, it represents no more than a definite quantity of the average social labour objectified in it … For his maintenance he requires a certain quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour-time necessary for the production of labour-power is the same as that necessary for the production of those means of subsistence; in other words, the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of its owner. (274)
The value of labor-power is fixed, therefore, by the value of all of those commodities that are needed to reproduce the laborer in a given state of life. We add up the value of the bread, the value of the shirts and the shoes and all the other things necessary to sustain and reproduce laborers, and the total is what fixes the value of labor-power.
It seems a simple enough calculation, seemingly no different in principle from any commodity. But how are “needs” determined? Needs distinguish labor from all other commodities. First off, in the course of laboring, “a definite quantity of human muscle, nerve, brain etc. is expended, and these things have to be replaced.” If the laborers are required for a certain kind of laboring (e.g., down in a coal mine) they may need, say, more meat and potatoes to sustain their laboring. Furthermore, “his means of subsistence must therefore be sufficient to maintain him in his normal state as a working individual.” Again, what is “normal”? There are “natural needs … such as food, clothing, fuel and housing” that “vary according to the climatic and other physical peculiarities of his country” (274–5). Workers’ needs are different in the Arctic than in temperate zones. But then comes the really big shift:
On the other hand, the number and extent of his so-called necessary requirements, as also the manner in which they are satisfied, are themselves products of history, and depend therefore to a great extent on the level of civilization attained by a country; in particular they depend on the conditions in which, and consequently on the habits and expectations with which, the class of free workers has been formed. In contrast, therefore, with the case of other commodities, the determination of the value of labour-power contains a historical and moral element. (275)
The implication is that the value of labor-power is not independent of the history of class struggles. Furthermore, “the level of civilization” in a country will vary according to, for example, the strength of bourgeois reform movements. The respectable and virtuous bourgeois are from time to time appalled to witness the poverty of the masses and, feeling guilty, conclude that it is unacceptable in a decent society that the mass of the people live in the way they do. They insist on the provision of decent housing, decent public health, decent education, decent this and decent that. Some of these measures can be seen as self-interested (because, for example, cholera epidemics do not stop at class borders), but there is no bourgeois society anywhere that does not have some sense of civilized values, and this sense plays a crucial role in determining what the value of labor-power should be.
Marx is appealing to the principle that there is a totality of commodities that sets the terms for what counts as a reasonable wage in a particular society at a particular time. He does not discuss any such particulars. Instead we can proceed with the theoretical inquiry as if the value of labor-power is fixed and known, even as the datum is perpetually moving and in any case has to be flexible, reflecting such other features as the reproduction costs of the laborer, from training and the reproduction of skills to raising a family and reproducing the working class (its qualities as well as its quantities) (275–6).
There is one other peculiarity of labor-power as a commodity that is worthy of note. The capitalist enters the marketplace and has to pay for all the commodities (raw materials, machinery, etc.) before putting them to work, but with labor-power the capitalist hires the labor-power and pays its providers only after they have done the work. In effect, the laborer advances the commodity of labor-power to the capitalist, hoping to get paid at the end of the day. This does not always happen, however; firms that declare bankruptcy can renege on wages (277–8). In contemporary China, for example, a large proportion of the labor force in certain industries (construction) and certain regions, particularly the North, have been denied their wages, prompting widespread protests.
Marx’s point here is that the notion of an acceptable standard of living for the laborer varies according to natural, social, political and historical circumstances. Obviously, what is acceptable in one society (say, contemporary Sweden) is not the same as in another (contemporary China), and what was acceptable in 1850 in the United States is not acceptable today. So the value of labor-power is highly variable, depending not only on physical needs but also on conditions of class struggle,