Chapter 12 - The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value

Summary

In Chapter 12 of Capital, Karl Marx introduces the concept of relative surplus-value, distinguishing it from absolute surplus-value. Unlike absolute surplus-value—gained by extending the working day—relative surplus-value is generated by reducing the time a worker spends producing the value of their own wage, thereby increasing the time spent generating profit for the capitalist, all within the same total working day.

This reduction in necessary labor-time is only possible through increasing the productivity of labor. That means revolutionizing tools, production processes, and industrial methods so that workers produce the same commodities faster. As productivity rises, the value of essential goods falls, and thus the value of labor-power drops, allowing capitalists to extract a larger share of surplus labor without paying more.

Even when wages stay the same, innovations in production allow capitalists to sell more items at a lower cost, undercut competitors, and still earn higher profits—until competitors catch up, and the advantage disappears. This creates a perpetual incentive under capitalism to innovate, reduce costs, and increase labor efficiency, not to ease the worker’s burden.

Marx’s insights remain highly relevant in today’s gig economy and tech-driven labor markets, where optimization often means squeezing more output from the same hours worked.

Questions

1. What is relative surplus-value in Marxist theory?

Relative surplus-value refers to the increase in surplus labor achieved without extending the working day, by reducing the time needed for workers to produce the value of their wages.

2. How do capitalists generate relative surplus-value?

They achieve it by boosting the productivity of labor through technological innovation or improved methods, which lowers the value of basic goods, thereby reducing the necessary labor-time.

3. Why is relative surplus-value important in capitalism?

It reveals capitalism’s tendency to exploit labor more efficiently, pushing workers to produce more in less time, all while maintaining or even lowering wages, and driving constant innovation and competition.

Chapter

That portion of the working day which merely produces an equivalent for the value paid by the capitalist for his labor-power, has, up to this point, been treated by us as a constant magnitude, and such in fact it is, under given conditions of production and at a given stage in the economic development of society. Beyond this, his necessary labor-time, the laborer, we saw, could continue to work for 2, 3, 4, 6, &c., hours. The rate of surplus-value and the length of the working day depended on the magnitude of this prolongation. Though the necessary labor-time was constant, we saw, on the other hand, that the total working day was variable. Now suppose we have a working day whose length, and whose apportionment between necessary labor and surplus labor, are given. Let the whole line a c, a–b–c represent, for example, a working day of 12 hours; the portion of a b 10 hours of necessary labor, and the portion b c 2 hours of surplus labor. How now can the production of surplus-value be increased, i.e., how can the surplus labor be prolonged, without, or independently of, any prolongation of a c?

Although the length of a c is given, b c appears to be capable of prolongation, if not by extension beyond its end c, which is also the end of the working day a c, yet, at all events, by pushing back its starting-point b in the direction of a. Assume that b’–b in the line ab’bc is equal to half of b c

a–––b’–b––c

or to one hour’s labor-time. If now, in a c, the working day of 12 hours, we move the point b to b’, b c becomes b’ c; the surplus labor increases by one half, from 2 hours to 3 hours, although the working day remains as before at 12 hours. This extension of the surplus labor-time from b c to b’ c, from 2 hours to 3 hours, is, however, evidently impossible, without a simultaneous contraction of the necessary labor-time from a b into a b’, from 10 hours to 9 hours. The prolongation of the surplus labor would correspond to a shortening of the necessary labor; or a portion of the labor-time previously consumed, in reality, for the laborer’s own benefit, would be converted into labor-time for the benefit of the capitalist. There would be an alteration, not in the length of the working day, but in its division into necessary labor-time and surplus labor-time.

On the other hand, it is evident that the duration of the surplus labor is given, when the length of the working day, and the value of labor-power, are given. The value of labor-power, i.e., the labor-time requisite to produce labor-power, determines the labor-time necessary for the reproduction of that value. If one working-hour be embodied in sixpence, and the value of a day’s labor-power be five shillings, the laborer must work 10 hours a day, in order to replace the value paid by capital for his labor-power, or to produce an equivalent for the value of his daily necessary means of subsistence. Given the value of these means of subsistence, the value of his labor-power is given;¹ and given the value of his labor-power, the duration of his necessary labor-time is given. The duration of the surplus labor, however, is arrived at, by subtracting the necessary labor-time from the total working day. Ten hours subtracted from twelve, leave two, and it is not easy to see, how, under the given conditions, the surplus labor can possibly be prolonged beyond two hours. No doubt, the capitalist can, instead of five shillings, pay the laborer four shillings and sixpence or even less. For the reproduction of this value of four shillings and sixpence, nine hours’ labor-time would suffice; and consequently, three hours of surplus labor, instead of two, would accrue to the capitalist, and the surplus-value would rise from one shilling to eighteen-pence. This result, however, would be obtained only by lowering the wages of the laborer below the value of his labor-power. With the four shillings and sixpence which he produces in nine hours, he commands one-tenth less of the necessaries of life than before, and consequently the proper reproduction of his labor-power is crippled. The surplus labor would in this case be prolonged only by an overstepping of its normal limits; its domain would be extended only by a usurpation of part of the domain of necessary labor-time. Despite the important part which this method plays in actual practice, we are excluded from considering it in this place, by our assumption, that all commodities, including labor-power, are bought and sold at their full value. Granted this, it follows that the labor-time necessary for the production of labor-power, or for the reproduction of its value, cannot be lessened by a fall in the laborer’s wages below the value of his labor-power, but only by a fall in this value itself. Given the length of the working day, the prolongation of the surplus labor must of necessity originate in the curtailment of the necessary labor-time; the latter cannot arise from the former. In the example we have taken, it is necessary that the value of labor-power should actually fall by one-tenth, in order that the necessary labor-time may be diminished by one-tenth, i.e., from ten hours to nine, and in order that the surplus labor may consequently be prolonged from two hours to three.

Such a fall in the value of labor-power implies, however, that the same necessaries of life which were formerly produced in ten hours, can now be produced in nine hours. But this is impossible without an increase in the productiveness of labor. For example, suppose a shoe-maker, with given tools, makes in one working day of twelve hours, one pair of boots. If he must make two pairs in the same time, the productiveness of his labor must be doubled; and this cannot be done, except by an alteration in his tools or in his mode of working, or in both. Hence, the conditions of production, i.e., his mode of production, and the labor-process itself, must be revolutionized. By increase in the productiveness of labor, we mean, generally, an alteration in the labor-process, of such a kind as to shorten the labor-time socially necessary for the production of a commodity, and to endow a given quantity of labor with the power of producing a greater quantity of use-value.² Hitherto in treating of surplus-value, arising from a simple prolongation of the working day, we have assumed the mode of production to be given and invariable. But when surplus-value has to be produced by the conversion of necessary labor into surplus labor, it by no means suffices for capital to take over the labor-process in the form under which it has been historically handed down, and then simply to prolong the duration of that process. The technical and social conditions of the process, and consequently the very mode of production must be revolutionized, before the productiveness of labor can be increased. By that means alone can the value of labor-power be made to sink, and the portion of the working day necessary for the reproduction of that value, be shortened.

The surplus-value produced by prolongation of the working day; I call absolute surplus-value. On the other hand, the surplus-value arising from the curtailment of the necessary labor-time, and from the corresponding alteration in the respective lengths of the two components of the working day, I call relative surplus-value.

In order to affect a fall in the value of labor-power, the increase in the productiveness of labor must seize upon those branches of industry whose products determine the value of labor-power, and consequently either belong to the class of customary means of subsistence, or are capable of supplying the place of those means. But the value of a commodity is determined, not only by the quantity of labor which the laborer directly bestows upon that commodity, but also by the labor contained in the means of production. For instance, the value of a pair of boots depends not only on the cobbler’s labor, but also on the value of the leather, wax, thread, &c. Hence, a fall in the value of labor-power is also brought about by an increase in the productiveness of labor, and by a corresponding cheapening of commodities in those industries which supply the instruments of labor and the raw material, that form the material elements of the constant capital required for producing the necessaries of life. But an increase in the productiveness of labor in those branches of industry which supply neither the necessaries of life, nor the means of production for such necessaries, leaves the value of labor-power undisturbed.

The cheapened commodity, of course, causes only a pro tanto fall in the value of labor-power, a fall proportional to the extent of that commodity’s employment in the reproduction of labor-power. Shirts, for instance, are a necessary means of subsistence, but are only one out of many. The totality of the necessaries of life consists, however, of various commodities, each the product of a distinct industry; and the value of each of those commodities enters as a component part into the value of labor-power. This latter value decreases with the decrease of the labor-time necessary for its reproduction; the total decrease being the sum of all the different curtailments of labor-time effected in those various and distinct industries. This general result is treated, here, as if it were the immediate result directly aimed at in each individual case. Whenever an individual capitalist cheapens shirts, for instance, by increasing the productiveness of labor he by no means necessarily aims at reducing the value of labor-power and shortening, pro tanto the necessary labor-time. But it is only in so far as he ultimately contributes to this result, that he assists in raising the general rate of surplus-value.³ The general and necessary tendencies of capital must be distinguished from their forms of manifestation.

It is not our intention to consider, here, the way in which the laws, immanent in capitalist production, manifest themselves in the movements of individual masses of capital, where they assert themselves as coercive laws of competition, and are brought home to the mind and consciousness of the individual capitalist as the directing motives of his operations. But this much is clear; a scientific analysis of competition is not possible, before we have a conception of the inner nature of capital, just as the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies are not intelligible to any but him, who is acquainted with their real motions, motions which are not directly perceptible by the senses. Nevertheless, for the better comprehension of the production of relative surplus-value, we may add the following remarks, in which we assume nothing more than the results we have already obtained.

If one hour’s labor is embodied in sixpence, a value of six shillings will be produced in a working day of 12 hours. Suppose, that with the prevailing productiveness of labor, 12 articles are produced in these 12 hours. Let the value of the means of production used up in each article be sixpence. Under these circumstances, each article costs one shilling: sixpence for the value of the means of production, and sixpence for the value newly added in working with those means. Now let someone capitalist contrive to double the productiveness of labor, and to produce in the working day of 12 hours, 24 instead of 12 such articles. The value of the means of production remaining the same, the value of each article will fall to ninepence, made up of sixpence for the value of the means of production and threepence for the value newly added by the labor. Despite the doubled productiveness of labor, the day’s labor creates, as before, a new value of six shillings and no more, which, however, is now spread over twice as many articles. Of this value each article now has embodied in it 1/24th, instead of 1/12th, threepence instead of sixpence; or, what amounts to the same thing, only half an hour’s instead of a whole hour’s labor-time, is now added to the means of production while they are being transformed into each article. The individual value of these articles is now below their social value; in other words, they have cost less labor-time than the great bulk of the same article produced under the average social conditions. Each article costs, on an average, one shilling, and represents 2 hours of social labor; but under the altered mode of production, it costs only ninepence, or contains only 1½ hours’ labor. The real value of a commodity is, however, not its individual value, but its social value; that is to say, the real value is not measured by the labor-time that the article in each individual case costs the producer, but by the labor-time socially required for its production. If therefore, the capitalist who applies the new method, sells his commodity at its social value of one shilling, he sells it for threepence above its individual value, and thus realizes an extra surplus-value of threepence. On the other hand, the working day of 12 hours is, as regards him, now represented by 24 articles instead of 12. Hence, in order to get rid of the product of one working day, the demand must be double what it was, i.e., the market must become twice as extensive. Other things being equal, his commodities can command a more extended market only by a diminution of their prices. He will therefore sell them above their individual but under their social value, say at tenpence each. By this means he still squeezes an extra surplus-value of one penny out of each. This augmentation of surplus-value is pocketed by him, whether his commodities belong or not to the class of necessary means of subsistence that participate in determining the general value of labor-power. Hence, independently of this latter circumstance, there is a motive for each individual capitalist to cheapen his commodities, by increasing the productiveness of labor.

Nevertheless, even in this case, the increased production of surplus-value arises from the curtailment of the necessary labor-time, and from the corresponding prolongation of the surplus labor.⁴ Let the necessary labor-time amount to 10 hours, the value of a day’s labor-power to five shillings, the surplus labor-time to 2 hours, and the daily surplus-value to one shilling. But the capitalist now produces 24 articles, which he sells at tenpence a-piece, making twenty shillings in all. Since the value of the means of production is twelve shillings, 14 2/5 of these articles merely replace the constant capital advanced. The labor of the 12 hours’ working day is represented by the remaining 9 3/5 articles. Since the price of the labor-power is five shillings, 6 articles represent the necessary labor-time, and 3 3/5 articles the surplus labor. The ratio of the necessary labor to the surplus labor, which under average social conditions was 5:1, is now only 5:3. The same result may be arrived at in the following way. The value of the product of the working day of 12 hours is twenty shillings. Of this sum, twelve shillings belong to the value of the means of production, a value that merely re-appears. There remain eight shillings, which are the expression in money, of the value newly created during the working day. This sum is greater than the sum in which average social labor of the same kind is expressed: twelve hours of the latter labor are expressed by six shillings only. The exceptionally productive labor operates as intensified labor; it creates in equal periods of time greater values than average social labor of the same kind. (See Ch. I. Sect 2. p. 44.) But our capitalist still continues to pay as before only five shillings as the value of a day’s labor-power. Hence, instead of 10 hours, the laborer needs now work only 7½ hours, in order to reproduce this value. His surplus labor is, therefore, increased by 2½ hours, and the surplus-value he produces grows from one, into three shillings. Hence, the capitalist who applies the improved method of production, appropriates to surplus labor a greater portion of the working day, than the other capitalists in the same trade. He does individually, what the whole body of capitalists engaged in producing relative surplus-value, do collectively. On the other hand, however, this extra surplus-value vanishes, so soon as the new method of production has become general, and has consequently caused the difference between the individual value of the cheapened commodity and its social value to vanish. The law of the determination of value by labor-time, a law which brings under its sway the individual capitalist who applies the new method of production, by compelling him to sell his goods under their social value, this same law, acting as a coercive law of competition, forces his competitors to adopt the new method.⁵ The general rate of surplus-value is, therefore, ultimately affected by the whole process, only when the increase in the productiveness of labor, has seized upon those branches of production that are connected with, and has cheapened those commodities that form part of, the necessary means of subsistence, and are therefore elements of the value of labor-power.

The value of commodities is in inverse ratio to the productiveness of labor. And so, too, is the value of labor-power, because it depends on the values of commodities. Relative surplus-value is, on the contrary, directly proportional to that productiveness. It rises with rising and falls with falling productiveness. The value of money being assumed to be constant, an average social working day of 12 hours always produces the same new value, six shillings, no matter how this sum may be apportioned between surplus-value and wages. But if, in consequence of increased productiveness, the value of the necessaries of life fall, and the value of a day’s labor-power be thereby reduced from five shillings to three, the surplus-value increases from one shilling to three. Ten hours were necessary for the reproduction of the value of the labor-power; now only six are required. Four hours have been set free, and can be annexed to the domain of surplus labor. Hence there is immanent in capital an inclination and constant tendency, to heighten the productiveness of labor, in order to cheapen commodities, and by such cheapening to cheapen the laborer himself.⁶

The value of a commodity is, in itself, of no interest to the capitalist. What alone interests him, is the surplus-value that dwells in it, and is realizable by sale. Realization of the surplus-value necessarily carries with it the refunding of the value that was advanced. Now, since relative surplus-value increases in direct proportion to the development of the productiveness of labor, while, on the other hand, the value of commodities diminishes in the same proportion; since one and the same process cheapens commodities, and augments the surplus-value contained in them; we have here the solution of the riddle: why does the capitalist, whose sole concern is the production of exchange-value, continually strive to depress the exchange-value of commodities? A riddle with which Quesnay, one of the founders of Political Economy, tormented his opponents, and to which they could give him no answer.

“You acknowledge,” he says, “that the more expenses and the cost of labor can, in the manufacture of industrial products, be reduced without injury to production, the more advantageous is such reduction, because it diminishes the price of the finished article. And yet, you believe that the production of wealth, which arises from the labor of the workpeople, consists in the augmentation of the exchange-value of their products.”⁷

The shortening of the working day is, therefore, by no means what is aimed at, in capitalist production, when labor is economized by increasing its productiveness.8 It is only the shortening of the labor-time, necessary for the production of a definite quantity of commodities, that is aimed at. The fact that the workman, when the productiveness of his labor has been increased, produces, say 10 times as many commodities as before, and thus spends one-tenth as much labor-time on each, by no means prevents him from continuing to work 12 hours as before, nor from producing in those 12 hours 1,200 articles instead of 120. Nay, more, his working day may be prolonged at the same time, so as to make him produce, say 1,400 articles in 14 hours. In the treatises, therefore, of economists of the stamp of MacCulloch, Ure, Senior, and tutti quanti [the like], we may read upon one page, that the laborer owes a debt of gratitude to capital for developing his productiveness, because the necessary labor-time is thereby shortened, and on the next page, that he must prove his gratitude by working in future for 15 hours instead of 10. The object of all development of the productiveness of labor, within the limits of capitalist production, is to shorten that part of the working day, during which the workman must labor for his own benefit, and by that very shortening, to lengthen the other part of the day, during which he is at liberty to work gratis for the capitalist. How far this result is also attainable, without cheapening commodities, will appear from an examination of the particular modes of producing relative surplus-value, to which examination we now proceed.

Notes

¹ The value of his average daily wages is determined by what the laborer requires “so as to live, labor, and generate.” (Wm. Petty: “Political Anatomy of Ireland,” 1672, p. 64.) “The price of Labor is always constituted of the price of necessaries … whenever … the laboring man’s wages will not, suitably to his low rank and station, as a laboring man, support such a family as is often the lot of many of them to have,” he does not receive proper wages. (J. Vanderlint, l.c., p. 15.) “Le simple ouvrier, qui n’a que ses bras et son industrie, n’a rien qu’autant qu’il parvient à vendre à d’autres sa peine… En tout genre de travail il doit arriver, et il arrive en effet, que le salaire de l’ouvrier se borne à ce qui lui est nécessaire pour lui procurer sa subsistance.” [The mere workman, who has only his arms and his industry, has nothing unless he succeeds in selling his labor to others … In every kind of work it cannot fail to happen, as a matter of fact it does happen, that the wages of the workman are limited to what is necessary to procure him his subsistence.] (Turgot, “Réflexions, &c.,” Oeuvres, éd. Daire t. I, p. 10.) “The price of the necessaries of life is, in fact, the cost of producing labor.” (Malthus, “Inquiry into, &c., Rent,” London, 1815, p. 48, note.)

² Quando si perfezionano le arti, che non è altro che la scoperta di nuove vie, onde si possa compiere una manufattura con meno gente o (che è lo stesso) in minor tempo di prima.” (Galiani, l.c., p. 159.) “L’économie sur les frais de production ne peut donc être autre chose que l’économie sur la quantité de travail employé pour produire.” [Perfection of the crafts means nothing other than the discovery of new ways of making a product with fewer people, or (which is the same thing) in less time than previously] (Sismondi, “Études,” t. I. p. 22.)

³ “Let us suppose … the products … of the manufacturer are doubled by improvement in machinery … he will be able to clothe his workmen by means of a smaller proportion of the entire return … and thus his profit will be raised. But in no other way will it be influenced.” (Ramsay, l.c., pp. 168, 169.)

⁴ “A man’s profit does not depend upon his command of the produce of other men’s labor, but upon his command of labor itself. If he can sell his goods at a higher price, while his workmen’s wages remain unaltered, he is clearly benefited…. A smaller proportion of what he produces is sufficient to put that labor into motion, and a larger proportion consequently remains for himself.” (“Outlines of Pol. Econ.” London, 1832, pp. 49, 50.)

⁵ “If my neighbor by doing much with little labor, can sell cheap, I must contrive to sell as cheap as he. So that every art, trade, or engine, doing work with labor of fewer hands, and consequently cheaper, begets in others a kind of necessity and emulation, either of using the same art, trade, or engine, or of inventing something like it, that every man may be upon the square, that no man may be able to undersell his neighbor.” (“The Advantages of the East India Trade to England,” London, 1720, p. 67.)

⁶ “In whatever proportion the expenses of a laborer are diminished, in the same proportion will his wages be diminished, if the restraints upon industry are at the same time taken off.” (“Considerations Concerning Taking off the Bounty on Corn Exported,” &c., London, 1753, p. 7.) “The interest of trade requires, that corn and all provisions should be as cheap as possible; for whatever makes them dear, must make labor dear also … in all countries, where industry is not restrained, the price of provisions must affect the price of labor. This will always be diminished when the necessaries of life grow cheaper.” (I. c., p. 3.) “Wages are decreased in the same proportion as the powers of production increase. Machinery, it is true, cheapens the necessaries of life, but it also cheapens the laborer.” (“A Prize Essay on the Comparative Merits of Competition and Co-operation.” London, 1834, p. 27.)

⁷ “Ils conviennent que plus on peut, sans préjudice, épargner de frais ou de travaux dispendieux dans la fabrication des ouvrages des artisans, plus cette épargne est profitable par la diminution des prix de ces ouvrages. Cependant ils croient que la production de richesse qui résulte des travaux des artisans consiste dans l’augmentation de la valeur vénale de leurs ouvrages.” (Quesnay: “Dialogues sur le Commerce et les Travaux des Artisans.” pp. 188, 189.)

⁸ “Ces spéculateurs si économes du travail des ouvriers qu’il faudrait qu’ils payassent.” [These speculators, who are so economical of the labor of workers they would have to pay] (J. N. Bidaut: “Du Monopole qui s’établit dans les arts industriels et le commerce.” Paris, 1828, p. 13.) “The employer will be always on the stretch to economise time and labor.” (Dugald Stewart: Works ed. by Sir W. Hamilton, Edinburgh, v., viii., 1855. “Lectures on Polit. Econ.,” p. 318.) “Their (the capitalists’) interest is that the productive powers of the laborers they employ should be the greatest possible. On promoting that power their attention is fixed and almost exclusively fixed.” (R. Jones: l.c., Lecture III.)