4) Chapters 9-11: Exploitation¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 9–11: Exploitation¶
The rate of surplus-value, or rate of exploitation, is defined as the ratio ( s/v )—surplus-value to variable capital (wages). Variable capital corresponds to necessary labour, the labour-time required to produce value equivalent to the worker’s subsistence. The remainder of the working day constitutes surplus labour, which produces surplus-value. While surplus labour exists in all class societies, capitalism is distinguished by its specific extraction through wage-labour. The rate of surplus-value is an exact expression of the degree of exploitation of labour-power by capital. Since value is socially necessary labour-time, this rate is a ratio of times: necessary labour-time versus unpaid surplus labour-time. The capitalist’s drive is to maximise the working day to increase this ratio. Capital is dead labour that lives only by sucking living labour; competition forces every capitalist to extend the working day or lose profits. The worker resists, demanding a normal working day to preserve their commodity, labour-power. The length of the working day is therefore determined by class struggle, a battle between collective capital and collective labour.
Marx refutes Senior’s ‘Last Hour’ argument: constant capital’s value is merely transferred, not reproduced by the worker’s labour, so the working day is split only into ( v + s ). The mass of surplus-value equals the rate of exploitation multiplied by total variable capital advanced. British businesses maintain profits despite low productivity and low unemployment by keeping wages low, enabling them to employ more workers for a given quantity of variable capital. Rather than investing in machinery and automation, capitalists exploit cheap labour for quick profit.
Marx explains the dialectical relation between money and capital as one of quantity and quality. Money becomes capital when its owner can live entirely off the labour of others. As the quantity of money grows, the workforce expands until the owner reaches this threshold. Increased labour productivity reduces the number of workers needed to sustain a single capitalist, linking to the rate and mass of surplus-value. Under capitalism, the question is how few workers are needed, not how many; hence mass unemployment persists despite technological advance. Productivity could enable a 20- or 30-hour week with full employment, but this is incompatible with profit. Modern technology could reduce necessary labour to a few hours daily, or eventually eliminate work entirely. Only a socialist system, with rational democratic planning for society’s needs rather than profit, can realise this. Marx stresses that no gain in leisure time has come without organised struggle; the working class must unite to compel legal limits on the working day through protracted class war.