this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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Communism
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Is it because you can't underpay a machine?
The machine only outputs the value you put into it, since it's constant capital. 5G worth of raw materials produces 5G worth of transformed material. 10G produces 10G, etc. You can make your machines faster and more efficient but they will still output exactly what you put into them, hence the rate of profit falls because 5G for 1 item suddenly turns into 3G, then 2G, then 1G as technology progresses. But the machine will still output 3G of transformed material for 3G of raw material (constant capital).
The human worker on the other hand is paid the same for producing more. Hence if it costs 10G to produce one item, you might reasonably think "oh then if I double production, I will be paying 20G per item produced!" but no, it costs you only 19G -- the human is still paid 1G whether he produces one item, two items, or three items. Therein lies profit, the value created by human labour which we call surplus value.
But if this is the case, then what good are machines at all? If they only output the same value that went into them, then wouldn't that make them entirely superfluous? I can understand that human labor is always required in addition to any machine, but surely machines still do increase the value of the material input? And more so the more efficient you make that machine, otherwise what would it even mean to make it more efficient?
its a simplified example, where the boss of the worker can barely break even and depends on the surplus he gets from waged labor to make a profit, machines let the worker make more product in less time, which means, for less wage and gives him more surplus
in the case the machinery would let the worker make 100 chairs for 1g instead of 2, then the exchange value for 100 chairs would go from 950g to 901g and the time to produce them would go from 50 days to just 1
EDIT: if the change of machinery is sudden then the boss can get away with still selling 2 chairs for 19g and have 49g as surplus a DAY, until market pressures take his surplus away
if the worker was eliminated you could cut time shorter and shorter but not reduce cost through wage labor, and in a saturated market competition would barely let you break even