Key Arguments

• One worker processes a much larger amount of raw material in the same amount of time due to machinery and division of labor
• The mass of machinery and infrastructure (conditions of labor) increases as a prerequisite for higher productivity
• This technical change is reflected in the value composition: the constant part of capital (machinery/materials) grows at the expense of the variable part (wages)

Source Quotes

‘The same cause,’ says Adam Smith, ‘which raises the wages of labour, the increase of stock, tends to increase its productive powers, and to make a smaller quantity of labour produce a greater quantity of work.’ Apart from natural conditions, such as the fertility of the soil, etc., and apart from the skill of independent and isolated producers (shown rather qualitatively in the high standard of their products than quantitatively in their mass), the level of the social productivity of labour is expressed in the relative extent of the means of production that one worker, during a given time, with the same degree of intensity of labour-power, turns into products. The mass of means of production with which he functions in this way increases with the productivity of his labour.

The increase of the latter appears, therefore, in the diminution of the mass of labour in proportion to the mass of means of production moved by it, or in the diminution of the subjective factor of the labour process as compared with the objective factor. This change in the technical composition of capital, this growth in the mass of the means of production, as compared with the mass of the labour-power that vivifies them, is reflected in its value-composition by the increase of the constant constituent of capital at the expense of its variable constituent. There may be, for example, originally 50 per cent of a capital laid out in means of production, and 50 per cent in labour-power; later on, with the development of the productivity of labour, 80 per cent may be laid out in means of production, 20 per cent in labour-power and so on.

This is also true of the means of production concentrated in buildings, furnaces, means of transport, etc. But whether condition or consequence, the growing extent of the means of production, as compared with the labour-power incorporated into them, is an expression of the growing productivity of labour. The increase of the latter appears, therefore, in the diminution of the mass of labour in proportion to the mass of means of production moved by it, or in the diminution of the subjective factor of the labour process as compared with the objective factor. This change in the technical composition of capital, this growth in the mass of the means of production, as compared with the mass of the labour-power that vivifies them, is reflected in its value-composition by the increase of the constant constituent of capital at the expense of its variable constituent.

Key Concepts

• the level of the social productivity of labour is expressed in the relative extent of the means of production that one worker, during a given time, with the same degree of intensity of labour-power, turns into products
• This change in the technical composition of capital, this growth in the mass of the means of production, as compared with the mass of the labour-power that vivifies them, is reflected in its value-composition by the increase of the constant constituent of capital at the expense of its variable constituent.
• The increase of the latter appears, therefore, in the diminution of the mass of labour in proportion to the mass of means of production moved by it

Context

Marx explaining the fundamental law of the changing composition of capital as accumulation progresses