Chapter XIV. Counteracting Influences
If we consider the enormous development of the productive forces of social labour in the last 30 years alone as compared with all preceding periods; if we consider, in particular, the enormous mass of fixed capital, aside from the actual machinery, which goes into the process of social production as a whole, then the difficulty which has hitherto troubled the economists, namely to explain the falling rate of profit, gives place to its opposite, namely to explain why this fall is not greater and more rapid. There must be some counteracting influences at work, which cross and annul the effect of the general law, and which give it merely the characteristic of a tendency, for which reason we have referred to the fall of the general rate of profit as a tendency to fall. The following are the most general counterbalancing forces:
I. Increasing Intensity of Exploitation
The degree of exploitation of labour, the appropriation of surplus labour and surplus value, is raised notably by lengthening the working day and intensifying labour. These two points have been comprehensively treated in Book I as incidental to the production of absolute and relative surplus value. There are many ways of intensifying labour which imply an increase of constant, as compared to variable, capital, and hence a fall in the rate of profit, such as compelling a labourer to operate a larger number of machines. In such cases — and in most procedures serving the production of relative surplus values— the same causes which increase the rate of surplus value, may also, from the standpoint of given quantities of invested total capital, involve a fall in the mass of surplus value. But there are other aspects of intensification, such as the greater velocities of machinery, which consume more raw material in the same time, but, so far as the fixed capital is concerned, wear out the machinery so much faster, and yet do not in any way affect the relation of its value to the price of the labour which sets it in motion. But notably, it is prolongation of the working day, this invention of modern industry, which increases the mass of appropriated surplus labour without essentially altering the proportion of the employed labour power to the constant capital set in motion by it, and which rather tends to reduce this capital relatively. Moreover, it has already been demonstrated — and this constitutes the real secret of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall that the manipulations to produce relative surplus value amount, on the whole, to transforming as much as possible of a certain quantity of labour into surplus value, on the one hand, and employing as little labour as possible in proportion to the advanced capital, on the other, so that the same reasons which permit raising the intensity of exploitation rule out exploiting the same quantity of labour as before by the same capital. These are the counteracting tendencies, which, while effecting a rise in the rate of surplus value, also tend to decrease the mass of surplus value, and hence the rate of profit produced by a certain capital. Mention should also be made here of the widespread introduction of female and child labour, in so far as the whole family must now perform more surplus labour for capital than before, even when the total amount of their wages increases, which is by no means always the case.(1) — Everything that promotes the production of relative surplus value by mere improvement in methods, as in agriculture, without altering the magnitude of the invested capital, has the same effect. The constant capital, it is true, does not, in such cases, increase in relation to the variable, inasmuch as we regard the variable capital as an index of the amount of labour power employed, but the mass of the product does increase in proportion to the labour power employed. The same occurs, if the productive power of labour (no matter, whether its product goes into the labourer's consumption or into the elements of constant capital) is freed from hindrances in communications, from arbitrary or other restrictions which have become obstacles in the course of time; from fetters of all kinds, without directly affecting the ratio of variable to constant capital.
It might be asked whether the factors that check the fall of the rate of profit, but that always hasten its fall in the last analysis, whether these include the temporary, but always recurring, elevations in surplus value above the general level, which keep occurring now in this and now in that line of production redounding to the benefit of those individual capitalists, who make use of inventions, etc., before these are introduced elsewhere. This question must be answered in the affirmative.
The mass of surplus value produced by a capital of a given magnitude is the product of two factors — the rate of surplus value multiplied by the number of labourers employed at this rate. At a given rate of surplus value it therefore depends on the number of labourers, and it depends on the rate of surplus value when the number of labourers is given. Generally, therefore, it depends on the composite ratio of the absolute magnitudes of the variable capital and the rate of surplus value. Now we have seen that, on the average, the same factors which raise the rate of relative surplus value lower the mass of the employed labour power. It is evident, however, that this will occur to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the definite proportion in which this conflicting movement obtains, and that the tendency towards a reduction in the rate of profit is notably weakened by a rise in the rate of absolute surplus value, which originates with the lengthening of the working day.
We saw in the case of the rate of profit that a drop in the rate was generally accompanied by an increase in the mass of profit, due to the increasing mass of total capital employed. From the standpoint of the total variable capital of society, the surplus value it has produced is equal to the profit it has produced. Both the absolute mass and the rate of surplus value have increased; the one because the quantity of labour power employed by society has grown, and the other, because the intensity of exploitation of this labour has increased. But in the case of a capital of a given magnitude, e.g., 100, the rate of surplus value may increase, while the average mass may decrease; for the rate is determined by the proportion, in which the variable capital produces value, while the mass is determined by the proportion of variable capital to the total capital.
The rise in the rate of surplus value is a factor which determines the mass of surplus value, and hence also the rate of profit, for it takes place especially under conditions, in which, as we have previously seen, the constant capital is either not increased at all, or not proportionately increased, in relation to the variable capital. This factor does not abolish the general law. But it causes that law to act rather as a tendency, i. e., as a law whose absolute action is checked, retarded, and weakened, by counteracting circumstances. But since the same influences which raise the rate of surplus value (even a lengthening of the working time is a result of large-scale industry) tend to decrease the labour power employed by a certain capital, it follows that they also tend to reduce the rate of profit and to retard this reduction.(2) If one labourer is compelled to perform as much labour as would rationally be performed by at least two, and if this is done under circumstances in which this one labourer can replace three, then this one labourer will perform as much surplus labour as was formerly performed by two, and the rate of surplus value will have risen accordingly. But he will not perform as much as three had performed, and the mass of surplus value will have decreased accordingly. But this reduction in mass will be compensated, or limited, by the rise in the rate of surplus value. If the entire population is employed at a higher rate of surplus value, the mass of surplus value will increase, in spite of the population remaining the same. It will increase still more if the population increases. And although this is tied up with a relative reduction of the number of employed labourers in proportion to the magnitude of the total capital, this reduction is moderat-ed, or checked, by the rise in the rate of surplus value.
Before leaving this point, it is to be emphasised once more that with a capital of a given magnitude the rate of surplus value may rise, while its mass is decreasing, and vice versa. The mass of surplus value is equal to the rate multiplied by the number of labourers; however, the rate is never calculated on the total, but only on the variable capital, actually only for every working day. On the other hand, with a given magnitude of capital value, the rate of profit can neither rise nor fall without the mass of surplus value also rising or falling.