* From: Gil Skillman In response to my comment >OK, let me back up and state that aside more carefully. Specifically what >motivated this thread was Walt's question re Marx's argument in Capital V. >I Ch 6: why is it necessarily the case that capitalists purchase (merely) >labor power, the capacity to work, rather than contracting for specific >labor services?
Charles B writes: >: Because it is a sleight of hand in order to extract surplus value, it's >the "secret" of surplus value extraction. Gil:Assuming that such a "sleight of hand" is necessary in the first place, I don't see why it isn't still present. CB: It's necessary in the first place because otherwise workers might start demanding to be paid for the full value of what they contribute to the commodity produced. They might demand to be paid for their labor instead of their labor power, the exact point that Walt raises. If they are paid for their labor, all of it, then there is no surplus labor for the boss to get the value of. Yes, it _is_ still present. Surplus value is still being extracted, no ? ^^^^^^ Gil: Capitalists could insist that they're paying what the labor services are worth. Paying for specific labor services, no less than paying for labor power, conceals the division between paid and unpaid labor. ^^^^ CB: No, if they paid for the the labor _services_ they would pay to the producers the whole value of the commodities produced, and there wouldn't be any surplus value. If the capitalist pays for 8 hours of _services_ or labor, he (most are men) would pay the total new value added to the products produced to the producers, because the only new value produced comes from the producers ( the other value added the capitalist pays to the capitalists who sells the means and instruments of production to him) ^^^^^^ But anyway, although I know Marx argues this, I don't see that any such "sleight of hand" is really necessary to keep workers generating surplus value. ^^^^^ CB: That's the whole point of Marx referring to it as a "secret". ^^^^^^^ Then where I write > My response was that this was a legitimate question, >especially given the empirical reality that capitalists *do* often contract >for specific labor services, going back to the putting-out system. >CB: Yes, but somehow I'm sure that even with piece-work, the capitalists>gets some surplus labor. The sub-contractor has workers working by the>hour. Both the subcontractor >and the general contractor dip into the surplus pool. Gil: Yes, exactly, that's what I mean to say: it is not necessary for the existence of capitalist exploitation that capitalists purchase (only) the capacity to work. The sense of my reply to Walt is that the *form* of the transaction between capital and labor need not matter for the appropriation of surplus value. CB: Agree ^^^^^ > And, to >take the point a step further, they also appropriate surplus value by >providing loans at interest to, e.g., worker-owned firms [a case Marx >acknowledges in his treatment of "cooperative factories" in V. III]. > >^^^^ >CB: This is the one to expose the secret of today, with finance dominance. Gil: I think I agree... Finally, where I say >So if capitalists *can* sometimes contract directly for the labor services>they seek, why do they typically not do this, opting instead for the more>indirect and costly route of purchasing simply labor power, and then>overseeing its exercise in the context of capitalist production? >CB writes: Because this is the "secret" of extracting surplus value, that>is doing>it in this way is what Marx exposed. He was not making it up. He was >describing the game that the capitalists typically, as you say, play,>piece-work aside. Gil: That last phrase, "piece work aside" is a pretty major caveat, insofar as piece rates were the dominant form of compensation for industrial workers until early in the 20th century. CB: Well, yea that would be a big empirical point, but I thought the typical was by the hour. Surely, Marx observed hourly work as typical. What about the 15,12,10 hour days ? The whole big struggle for a shorter workday ? Why would there be so much to do about the length of the work day if hourly pay wasn't typical ? ^^^^^ So if they constituted an exception to Marx's story, it was a pretty major exception. However, I don't think they did: that is, I don't think that piece-rate workers, any more or less than wage workers, were apt to say "Ahah! the labor embodied in the commodities my compensation can afford is less than the labor I perform for the Man, so I'm being exploited!" If that's right, then capitalists have some other reason for the "game they play" in hiring [simply] labor power and subsuming it in capitalist-controlled production. For details, if interested, see my reply to Michael Lebowitz, which may show up any minute now.... ^^^^ CB: It seems to me that workers going to the same job everyday for a long period of time and doing piecework instead of being paid hourly would be more likely to eventually think "how come the boss gets such a big chunk a change when we do all the work "
