Theories of Surplus Value, Marx 1861-3
[CHAPTER V] Necker
[Attempt to Present the Antagonism of Classes in
Capitalism as the Antithesis Between Poverty and
Wealth]
Some quotations from Linguet above have already shown
that the nature of capitalist production was clear to him
nevertheless, Linguet, can be brought in here after
Necker.
In his two works Sur la législation et le commerce
des grains (first published 1775) and De
l’administration des finances de la France,
etc. [published 1784], Necker shows how the development of
the productive powers of labour merely results in the worker
requiring less time for the reproduction of his own
wage, and therefore working more time for his
employer unpaid. In dealing with this, he
rightly starts from the basis of the average wage,
the minimum of wages. What he is mainly concerned
with, however, is not the transformation of labour itself
into capital and the accumulation of capital through this
process, but rather the general development of the
antithesis between poverty and wealth, between poverty and
luxury, because, to the extent that a smaller quantity of
labour suffices to produce the necessary means of
subsistence, part of the labour becomes more and more
superfluous and can therefore be used in the production of
luxury articles, in a different sphere of production.
Some of these luxury articles are durable; and so they
accumulate from century to century in the possession of
those who have surplus-labour at their disposal, making the
contrast ever deeper.
The important thing is that Necker traces the origin of
the wealth of the non-labouring classes ||420| —profit and rent—
entirely to surplus-labour. In his treatment of
surplus-value, however, what he has in mind is relative
surplus-value, resulting not from the lengthening of the
total working-day but from the shortening of the
necessary labour-time. The productive power of
labour becomes the productive power of the owner of the
conditions of labour. And productive power itself is
equivalent to the shortening of the labour-time that is
necessary to produce a certain result. The chief
passages are the following:
First: De l’administration des finances de la
France, etc. (Œuvres, t. II, Lausanne et Paris,
1789):
“I see one of the classes of society
whose wealth must always be pretty nearly the same; I see
another of these classes whose wealth necessarily increases:
thus luxury, which arises from a relation and a comparison,
has had to follow the growth of this disproportion and
become more evident as time went on” (l.c.,
pp. 285-86). (The contrast between the two
classes as classes has already been clearly
noticed.) “The class of society whose lot is as
it were fixed by the effect of social laws is
composed of all those who, living by the labour of their
hands, are subject to the imperative law of the
owners” (owners of the conditions of
production) “and are compelled to content themselves
with a wage proportionate to the simple necessities of
life; competition between them and the urgency of
their needs bring about their state of
dependence; these conditions cannot change” (l.c.,
p. 286).
“The continual invention of
instruments which have simplified all mechanical arts
has, then, augmented the wealth and the fortunate lot
of the owners; one part of these instruments, by
reducing the costs of working the land, has increased the
revenue of which the owners of such property can
dispose; another part of the discoveries of genius has so
greatly facilitated the labours of industry that the
men who are in the service of the dispensers of the means
of subsistence” (i.e., of the capitalists)
“have been able, in an equal length of time, and
for the same reward, to produce a greater quantity of
products of all kinds” (p. 287). “Let us
assume that a century ago a hundred thousand workers were
required to do what is done today by eighty thousand; the
other twenty thousand would have found themselves obliged to
take to other occupations to obtain wages; and the
new products of their manual labour resulting from this
would increase the pleasures and the luxuries of the
rich” (pp. 287-88).
“For,” he continues, “it
must not be forgotten that the rewards assigned to all
trades which do not require any special talent are always
proportionate to the necessary price of subsistence for
each labourer; thus the speed of production, when
the knowledge required has become common, does not accrue
to the advantage of the labouring men, and the result
is only an augmentation of the means for the
satisfaction of the tastes and vanities of those who have at
their disposal the products of the land” (l.c.,
p. 288). “Among the various good things of
nature which are fashioned and changed by men’s industry
there are a large number whose durability greatly exceeds
the usual span of life: each generation has inherited a part
of the labours of the preceding generation” <he is
here only taking into account the accumulation of what Adam
Smith calls the consumption fund> “and in all
countries there is a continual accumulation of a
greater quantity of the products of the arts; and as this
quantity is always divided among the owners, the
disproportion between their possessions and those of the
numerous class of citizens has necessarily grown greater and
more noticeable” (p. 289). Hence “the
quickening pace of industrial production, which has
multiplied the things of pomp and luxury on earth, the
length of time in which accumulation has grown from
this, and the laws of property, which have brought
these good things into the hands of one class of society
alone…these great sources of luxury would in any
case have existed, whatever had been the quantity of coined
money” (p. 291).
(The latter argument is directed against those who held
that luxury was the result of the growth in the amount of
money.)
Secondly: Sur la législation et le commerce des
grains, etc. (Œuvres, t. IV):
“When the artisan or the husbandman
have no reserves left, they can no longer argue;
they must work today on pain of dying tomorrow, and
in this conflict of interest between ||421| the Owner and Labourer, the
one stakes his life and that of his family, and the other a
mere delay in the growth of his luxury” (l.c.,
p. 63).
This contrast between wealth that does not labour and
poverty that labours in order to live also gives rise to a
contrast of knowledge. Knowledge and labour become
separated. The former confronts the latter as capital,
or as a luxury article for the rich.
“The faculty of knowing and
understanding is a general gift of nature, but it is only
developed by education; if properties were equal, everyone
would labour moderately” (so once again, the
quantity of labour-time is the decisive thing), “and
everyone would know a little, because everyone would
have a portion of time” (spare time)
“left to give to study and reflection; but with the
inequality of fortunes, resulting from the social order,
education is prohibited for all who are born without
property; because all sustenance being in the hands of that
part of the nation which possesses money or land, and
no one giving anything for nothing , the man born without
any other resource but his strength is obliged to devote it
to the service of the Owners from the first moment when his
strength develops, and to continue thus all his life, from
the moment when the sun rises to the moment when this
strength has been worn down and needs to be renewed by
sleep” (p. 112). “Lastly, is it not
certain that this inequality of knowledge has become
necessary for the maintenance of all the social inequalities
which gave rise to it?” (l.c., p. 113),
(cf. pp. 118-19).
Necker ridicules the economic
confusion—characteristic of the Physiocrats in
relation to the land, and of all subsequent economists in
relation to the material elements of capital—which
glorifies the owners of the conditions of production, not
because they themselves, but these conditions, are necessary
for labour and the production of wealth.
“They begin by confusing the
importance of the owner (a function so easy to perform) with
the importance of the land” (l.c., p. 126).
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