The
Classics, Revolutionary Work, Part 4c
Value, Price and Profit
By 1863 Karl Marx had a sketch plan that was beginning
to resemble the shape of the full work that was published in 1867 as “Capital,
Volume 1”.
By 1865 when he did “Value, Price and
Profit” (download linked
below), Marx had solved most of the theoretical as well as the literary
problems of his master-work.
“Value, Price and Profit” continues our theme of
“Revolutionary Work”. It is an address delivered by Karl Marx at two sessions
of the General Council of the First International on June 20 and 27, 1865. This
is a point where Karl Marx’s theoretical work comes face-to-face with his
activities as a political leader, actually the principal political leader of
the International Working Men’s Association, otherwise known as the First
International.
The Introduction to the 1969
edition of “Value, Price and Profit” makes clear that this June 1863
moment was crucial in the history of the organised working class, and that Marx
saved the day and saved the movement with this outstanding, classic piece of
work.
“Value, Price & Profit” has subsequently served various
purposes. Because it debunks the argument, still used by employers today, that
wage rises will cause unemployment, “Value, Price and Profit” has been a
mainstay for generations of shop stewards and union negotiators. A version of
the same anti-working-class “fixed fund” argument countered by Marx was used by
Richard Baloyi, the employing Public Services Minister, during the 2010 public
service workers’ strike in Johannesburg.
Secondly, and prefiguring Lenin’s argument against
“Economism” four decades later in “What is to be Done?”, “Value, Price and
Profit” states clearly that trade unionism without political organisation will
never succeed in throwing off the yoke of capital (see the excerpt from Chapter
14 on the last page of our download).
This abridged version of “Value, Price and Profit” can also serve
as a “mini-Capital”, i.e. as the short version of “Capital” that so many people
yearn for. It will at least help us to get a better grip on some of the key
concepts such as Labour, Value, Labour-Power, Surplus-Labour, Surplus-Value and
Profit.
The two quoted paragraphs that follow are particularly
instructive. Hobbes’ 1651 book “Leviathan” was a tremendous groundbreaker; Karl
Marx noticed that Hobbes had “instinctively
hit upon this point overlooked by all his successors”, namely the
distinction between Labour-Power and Labour, which Marx had worked so hard and
so long to see clearly (see the remarks about the hunt for surplus value in our
earlier post on Wage Labour and Capital)
‘What the working man sells is not directly his labour, but his labouring
power, the temporary disposal of which he makes over to the capitalist. This is
so much the case that I do not know whether by the English Laws, but certainly
by some Continental Laws, the maximum time is fixed for which a man is allowed
to sell his labouring power. If allowed to do so for any indefinite period
whatever, slavery would be immediately restored. Such a sale, if it comprised
his lifetime, for example, would make him at once the lifelong slave of his
employer.
‘One of the oldest economists and most original
philosophers of England — Thomas Hobbes — has already, in his “Leviathan”, instinctively hit upon this point overlooked by all his successors. He
says: "the value or worth of a man is, as in all other things, his price:
that is so much as would be given for the use of his power." Proceeding
from this basis, we shall be able to determine the value of labour as that of
all other commodities.’
“Value, Price and Profit” includes a counter-intuitive surprise
in Marx’s statement that “Profit
is made by Selling a Commodity at its Value”. Capitalism would still exist even
if it had to shed its nasty price-gouging habits. Capitalism as such is not a
simple swindle, but is a system and a class relationship.
The source
of the “self-increase of capital” is located in the workplace, and not in the
marketplace. This is the fundamental message of “Capital”, the greatest
“classic” of them all. It will not be included here but it will have its own
separate, dedicated course. “Value, Price and Profit” will have to represent it
here. In the next part of this course on the classics, we will move to the
period after the publication of “Capital”, when with the active involvement of
Marx and Engels, the working-class movement revived, organised and expanded in
Europe as never before in history.
The image
is of a capitalist, by George Grosz.
Please download and read the text via the following
link:
Further
(optional) reading:
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