Key Arguments

• He asserts: 'In all the formulae included under II the actual degree of exploitation of labour, or the rate of surplus-value, is falsely expressed.'
• He explains what they really show: 'These derivative formulae express, in reality, only the proportion in which the working day, or the value produced by it, is divided between the capitalist and the worker.'
• He notes that if these are taken as direct measures of exploitation, one is led to a wrong law about the limits of surplus labour: 'If they are to be treated as direct expressions of the degree of capital’s self-valorization, the following erroneous law would hold good: surplus labour or surplus-value can never reach 100 per cent.'
• He underscores that in these derivative expressions 'surplus labour is only an aliquot part of the working day, or since surplus-value is only an aliquot part of the value-product,' so it is necessarily less than the total day or total value-product, which confuses the question of how large surplus labour is relative to necessary labour.

Source Quotes

It is of course understood that by ‘value of the product’ the political economists mean only the value newly created in a working day, the constant part of the value of the product being excluded. In all the formulae included under II the actual degree of exploitation of labour, or the rate of surplus-value, is falsely expressed. Let the working day be 12 hours long.

Let the working day be 12 hours long. Then, making the same assumptions as we have before, the real degree of exploitation of labour will be represented by the following proportions: From the formulae included under II, we get, on the contrary: These derivative formulae express, in reality, only the proportion in which the working day, or the value produced by it, is divided between the capitalist and the worker. If they are to be treated as direct expressions of the degree of capital’s self-valorization, the following erroneous law would hold good: surplus labour or surplus-value can never reach 100 per cent.

Then, making the same assumptions as we have before, the real degree of exploitation of labour will be represented by the following proportions: From the formulae included under II, we get, on the contrary: These derivative formulae express, in reality, only the proportion in which the working day, or the value produced by it, is divided between the capitalist and the worker. If they are to be treated as direct expressions of the degree of capital’s self-valorization, the following erroneous law would hold good: surplus labour or surplus-value can never reach 100 per cent. Since the surplus labour is only an aliquot part of the working day, or since surplus-value is only an aliquot part of the value-product, surplus labour must always be less than the working day, or the surplus-value always less than the total value-product.

If they are to be treated as direct expressions of the degree of capital’s self-valorization, the following erroneous law would hold good: surplus labour or surplus-value can never reach 100 per cent. Since the surplus labour is only an aliquot part of the working day, or since surplus-value is only an aliquot part of the value-product, surplus labour must always be less than the working day, or the surplus-value always less than the total value-product. In order, however, to attain the ratio of 100:100 they must be equal.

Key Concepts

• In all the formulae included under II the actual degree of exploitation of labour, or the rate of surplus-value, is falsely expressed.
• These derivative formulae express, in reality, only the proportion in which the working day, or the value produced by it, is divided between the capitalist and the worker.
• If they are to be treated as direct expressions of the degree of capital’s self-valorization, the following erroneous law would hold good: surplus labour or surplus-value can never reach 100 per cent.
• Since the surplus labour is only an aliquot part of the working day, or since surplus-value is only an aliquot part of the value-product, surplus labour must always be less than the working day, or the surplus-value always less than the total value-product.

Context

Marx critiques the 'formulae included under II' (the economists’ usual way of writing things), showing that they do not actually give the rate of surplus-value but only the sharing-out of the working day or product between worker and capitalist.