Econ 305, Lecture 10, A Discussion of Marx's Value and Surplus Value Theories

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[taimoorshaukat]

This great professor is Stephen Resnick

[josephjohnson]

Financial Times: German union wins right to 28-hour working week and 4.3% pay rise : IG Metall Union's landmark deal is seen as benchmark for other sectors. German workers won a key victory in their fight for a better work-life balance when a big employers’ group agreed to demands from the country’s largest trade union for the introduction of a 28-hour working week. The agreement between IG Metall, which represents a wide swath of industrial workers, and the Südwestmetall employers’ federation, shows how unions in Germany, that for years have been a model of wage restraint, are flexing their muscles in ways more typical of organised labour in France, home of the 35-hour working week.

The wage settlement was reached in the early hours of Tuesday after six rounds of often bruising talks and a series of 24-hour strikes. The two-year deal covers 900, 000 workers in the metals and electrical industries in Baden-Württemberg, home to several of Germany’s most high-profile industrial groups, including Daimler, the carmaker, and Bosch. But IG Metall’s agreements tend to be seen as benchmarks for the whole of German industry, and it is now expected to be rolled out in other sectors.

The parties agreed on a 4.3 per cent wage raise from April, and other payments spread over 27 months. Workers will be allowed to reduce their working week from the standard 35 hours to 28, while preserving the right to return to full-time work. IG Metall had pushed for a 6 per cent annual rise and held the 24-hour strikes to press its demands. It also threatened to ballot its members on extended industrial action if employers failed to budge. While acknowledging the award would be a burden, Stefan Wolf, Südwestmetall’s negotiator, said the agreement’s long duration would allow companies to better plan ahead. The deal would work out at below 4 per cent per year to employers, he said.



Marx: "The capitalist has bought the labour-power at its day-rate. To him its use-value belongs during one working-day. He has thus acquired the right to make the labourer work for him during one day. But, what is a working-day? At all events, less than a natural day. By how much? The capitalist has his own views of this ultima Thule [the outermost limit], the necessary limit of the working-day. As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus-labour. Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him. If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist. The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commodity.

"Suddenly the voice of the labourer, which had been stifled in the storm and stress of the process of production, rises:
The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the crowd of other commodities, in that its use creates value, and a value greater than its own. That is why you bought it. That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labour-power. You and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer, who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my daily labour-power. But by means of the price that you pay for it each day, I must be able to reproduce it daily, and to sell it again. Apart from natural exhaustion through age, &c., I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force, health and freshness as to-day. What you gain in labour I lose in substance. The use of my labour-power and the spoliation of it are quite different things.. You pay me for one day’s labour-power, whilst you use that of 3 days. That is against our contract and the law of exchanges. I demand, therefore, a working-day of normal length, and I demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place. You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in the odour of sanctity to boot; but the thing that you represent face to face with me has no heart in its breast. That which seems to throb there is my own heart-beating. I demand the normal working-day because I, like every other seller, demand the value of my commodity. "

We see then, that, apart from extremely elastic bounds, the nature of the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit to the working-day, no limit to surplus-labour. The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working-days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the labourer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working-class. Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Ten

Related:
Labour Unions as a Political Force in Germany

Campaign Finance: Germany | Law Library of Congress

Class 06 Reading Marx's Capital Vol I with David Harvey

[nthperson]

If one accepts the definition of "wealth" put forward by Marx (namely, that wealth is only that which is a tangible good, produced by labor and that has exchange value in the market), then one must exclude the factor of production "land" from that which is treated as individual wealth. What, then, is "land"? Land the source of wealth, the commons from which wealth is produced. Marx then argued (but not very vigorously) that "rents" as that portion of tangible wealth that comes from locational advantage rightfully belongs to the community or society.

[whatabouttheearth]

READING

Lecture 10 - A Discussion on Marx's Value and Surplus Value Theories:

-'New Departures in Marxian Theory'. Ch. 6

-'Why Focus on Class?' by Richard Wolff. "East and West: Why Focus on Class?' Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences No.2 (Jan 2005). P 222-240. Calcutta India.

(1st text on LibGen) (I could not find 2nd text)

[nthperson]

So, what about the idea of surplus value taken from labor and absorbed by the owners of capital? What we observe in the world is that in the absence of monopoly-granting licenses issued by government (or, the failure of government to prevent monopolies from forming) the owners of capital goods will invest in such goods in anticipation of obtaining an acceptable market rate of return. The ability of the owners of businesses to obtain workers willing to accept something below the full value of what their contribution to production depends on whether one lives in a full employment society, or at least has the skills and abilities to obtain employment where the supply of qualified workers is less than the demand therefor. This second qualifier occurs and persists, generally, for a limited period of time only. The first qualifier has not existed because systems of law and taxation are heavily skewed in favor of "rentier" privilege.

[CitizenSnips]

Thank you for the upload. Impressive presentation. Does anyone know the name of the professor?

[Alkis]

What post-modernists like the professor don't take into consideration in his critique of the notion that, ultimately, the mode of production is the cause of things happening in society is because marx and engels were materialists. Just as nature and the mind have a dialect relationship, but ultimately nature caused the mind.
The mode of production, been the way humans produce and reproduce society is the material basis upon all else in society came to be. Before writing, one needs to develop language and to produce the means to writing (tools, paint, slabs, whatever). Before develop language, one needs to develop ways to produce food. That is what engles was talking about.

[kingcrazymani]

I am sure that I prefer the fake math and simple diagrams of standard macroeconomics and microeconomics instead of Marxist fake math. I can unfortunately imagine this guy grading one of my exams. His clone or near-clone was the monopolistic Russian Literature professor at my alma mater. I can’t follow prof. Resnick at all. I usually can’t follow glittering generalities that explain apparently very little of any use. I was hoping to learn something here. Oops. I blame Karl Marx for being a simpleton; I might be more charitable about his quasi-followers.

[lowersaxon]

Marx is wrong, totally wrong. Nonsense.