Chapter 12 – The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value

Taken from here

"In this chapter Marx looks at the strategies employed by capitalists to favour the accumulation of surplus-value. For the duration of this chapter we must assume, as Marx does, that the exchange-value of commodities is constant. Thus in this chapter we are primarily concerned with those instances in which the productivity of labour increases without the lengthening of the working day. We are therefore introduced to the rationalisation of the production process as a means of reducing the labour-time necessary for sustaining workers. This capitalist strategy yields the production of relative surplus-value (as opposed to absolute surplus-value, which is a result of the lengthening of the working day).

All this presupposes competition as the force which, in this particular circumstance, encourages the development of more efficient means of production. Close attention needs to be paid here at how close Marx’s discussion is to the reality of production – i.e. one which never develops instantaneously, but is rather a process of gradual adjustment to new conditions. When a single capitalist benefits from a technological advantage over her competitors, she will be able to produce a commodity at a cost lower than that which afflicts the average capitalist. Thus Marx notes that what makes it possible for an individual capitalist to extract relative surplus-value from the production process she controls is the fact that the real value of the commodity produced is not its individual (bearing in mind that the commodity is now being produced at a diminished expense for the capitalist), but its social value. It is therefore not until the technological development in question has spread to the production of a particular commodity in general (i.e. when the advantage has spread across all competitors) that it starts to constitute the new average. It follows that in the time gap between the introductions of new developments into production and the latter’s gradual expansion to all instances of production, the advantaged capitalist is able to undercut her competitors in the market whilst still extracting surplus-value (“he will therefore sell them above their individual but below their social value” [434]). Crucially, when this comes to be true also in the production of those commodities which comprise the means of subsistence of the workers, we can see that it becomes possible for the capitalist to invest less in the re-production of the workforce. This is the moment when the necessary labour-time for the worker’s subsistence is reduced, and relative surplus-value increases. In simple terms, if the goods which are used by workers to satisfy basic needs are produced more easily through improved technology on a generalised social scale, then it follows that the their wage, which serves just this function, will not need to be as high as before once those goods become available on the market at a reduced cost to the worker.

In this context, no capitalist can afford to lag behind and is constantly afflicted by an impetus to improve her production methods; and even when most capitalists have adopted the new, more efficient methods, the impetus remains to keep modernising. We thus have the following: “The value of commodities stands in inverse ratio to the productivity of labour. So, too, does the value of labour-power, since it depends on the values of commodities.

Relative surplus-vale, however, is directly proportional to the productivity of labour. I rises and falls together with productivity” (436). What is politically salient about all this, however, is that it is therefore easy to envisage how the workers witness an increment in their exploitation: with the previous chapter in mind [11], it 2 becomes evident how the objective of capitalist development of the means of production is the reduction, in relative terms, of that chunk of the working day devoted to the production of surplusvalue (i.e. free labour for the capitalist) against that devoted to the attainment of the means of subsistence. At the close of the chapter, Marx also notes that the aforementioned strategy of the cheapening of commodities is only one amongst other methods of producing relative surplus-value."