RE: Relative and absolute surplus value

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

I wrote: >>Nowadays, blue-collar workers are mostly paid by the hour,
usually with some higher rate for over-time (though there are exceptions),
such as time and a half for overtime. A longer work-day may thus not raise
the rate of surplus-value, since the wage paid per hour rises (or at least
stays constant). ...<<

Charles Brown writes:> On this I usually think ( and I been told)  that the
large amount of overtime in the autoplants , for example, for the last 15
years or so, means that the companies don't have to hire a certain margin of
more people. Thereby the company saves on benefits. They squeeze a bit more
( a margin ?) out of overtime workers and that little bit extra has no
benefits paid corresponding to it, benefits being part of the modern wage.
Thus, lots of overtime, a lengthened work day and week ( undermining the 40
hour workweek  and 8 hour day) does get some surplus value out of this that
might be dubbed absolute surplus value. <

Yes, absolutely. Having a fixed cost (benefits) associated with each worker
encourages the boss to pay overtime to existing hires rather than bringing
on new ones. I was taking that for granted, since I was talking about the
treatment of the existing work-force. Raising that group's hours may not
raise the rate of surplus-value, though presumably it raises the mass of
surplus-value (total profits).

>> Return to the waged (blue-collar or pink-collar) workers: if OT is cut
back, this may help the rate of surplus-value, if the wage paid per hour
falls (since OT pay isn't being paid anymore). This can coincide with
_greater _ work-time for the salaried employees. I think this is what's
happening right now, though I don't have the evidence at hand.<<

CB:> I don't think the Big Three would be structuring jobs with so much
overtime for the last 15 years if it tended to cutback the rate of
exploitation of surplus-value or the rate of profit.<

Your point about the role of benefits explains this behavior.

However, it's important to remember that what a bunch of individual firms do
(seeking the maximimum profit) doesn't always work out well for the
capitalist class as a whole (raising the aggregate average rate of profit).
Sometimes their individual greed leads to economic crisis or unproductive
spending. I was simply discussing the capitalists' actions -- and the result
-- rather than their intent.

>>When Marx discussed these issues, he assumed that what economists call the
"real wage" was constant (as Mike Lebowitz argues). Then, absolute
surplus-value extraction means getting more work per paid time period. This
could involve getting more work-time out of the paid time period (as with
the discussion of stretch-out above) or getting more work-effort out of the
work-time spent (increasing the intensity of labor, or speed-up). Relative
surplus-value comes from mechanization and the like, which allows
work-effort to be more productive, lowering the societal cost of the real
wages. Of course, absolute and relative surplus-value get mixed up when
mechanization raises the intensity of labor.<<

CB:> I see what you are saying about lengthening the work day if payment is
by the day. You are saying it was unpaid overtime !<

exactly.

>My recall is that Marx defines relative surplus value such that more
commodities per time whether by mechanization or speedup would be relative
surplus value. Here are a couple of quotes.

>"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 labour-time, and from the corresponding
alteration in the respective lengths of the two components of the
working-day, I call relative surplus-value" ... "Hence, independently of
this latter circumstance, there is a motive for each individual capitalist
to cheapen his commodities, by increasing the productiveness of labour.
Nevertheless, even in this case, the increased production of surplus-value
arises from the curtailment of the necessary labour-time, and from the
corresponding prolongation of the surplus-labour. "<

I'm familiar with this. He hadn't really gotten to the issue of the
intensity of labor yet. It's in chapter 14 of volume I that he defines the
intensity of labor as an "expenditure of labor-power in a given time" (p.
341 of the Int'l Publ. ed.) and he doesn't spend a lot of ink on this issue.
(I'd say instead that the intensity of labor refers to the amount of labor
done (effort) during a specific time period of labor-power hired.) Anyway, I
find it useful to separate increases in labor productivity that occur
because of increased intensity of labor (sweating labor) from those that
occur because effort is more effective (tech progress).

>> It gets even more confusing when we drop Marx's constant real wage
assumption. Are real wage cuts part of absolute surplus-value extraction (as
I asserted) or relative surplus-value extraction (as Michael suggests)?<<

CB:>I'd say wage cuts are neither, but in differentiating relative and
absolute surplus value, <

I've never found Marx to categorize wage cuts as either of these, though
maybe Michael Perelman has. I find it useful to treat wage cuts as being
different from technological progress.

>Marx remarks on this category as actually occurring in practice or class
struggle between the workers and capitalists. ....<

right. But sometimes (like the last quarter century or so in the US), it's
been mostly a one-sided class war.

>> I guess we could spend a lot of time splitting hairs on this issue.
Though I would be interested to find out if Marx wrote anything definitive
on these confusions (and I can't think of anyone more able to find it than
Michael), my interpretation is in terms of the broad sweep of Marx's CAPITAL
rather than the details. I interpret absolute surplus-value extraction as
being  technologically "backward," getting more out of workers without
making labor-effort more productive, and relative surplus-value extraction
as being technologically "progressive," as making labor-effort more
productive. ("Progressive" here is like "productive" in Marx's theory: it's
defined from capital's point of view. However, a future socialism might
benefit from its  labor-efforts being made more productive.)<<

CB:> See above on Marx's direct discussion of this. I agree with your
impression of the differences in "backward" and "progressive" , except I am
thinking that direct speedup ( foremen pushing, literally speeding up the
assembly line in autoplants, shorter breaks) is also a way of extracting
relative surplus value.<

it's a matter of definition. Definitions (ideal constructions of the mind)
never correspond to actual real-world phenomena and we shouldn't assume they
do (i.e., reify them).

>>In the end, the meaning of the distinction shouldn't depend on "what Marx
said," since Marx was wrong once or twice. It should depend on how
theoretically and empirically useful the distinction is, how it fits with a
holistic/dialectical perspective, and how it helps guide practice.<<

CB: >Well, it does depend some on what Marx said, because he developed the
ideas and definitions, and we are dealing with definitions here.<

Of course. Marx was very clear-headed and his definitions -- when he
actually uses definitions -- are useful. One thing, though: the meaning of
Marx's categories depend on what level of abstraction he's working at. And
sometimes he defines things weirdly. As Sweezy remarks, Marx took an entire
book (volume I of CAPITAL) to define "capitalism."

In many cases, what we need to do is simply be clear about what definitions
_we're_ using, acknowledging that they sometimes differ from Marx's. And,
again, we should reify _any_ definitions.