# Class 7: Capital Chapters 5-9: Absolute Surplus-Value, Valorization, the Working Day, part 2

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** YaleCourses
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWDyaP7CgmM
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/24382

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

(soft classical music) - Surplus value. You remember, we're moving into the vocabulary of capital. So we have constant and variable capital. We're going through a perspective shift. We started with the commodity, which in German, as I said, has the monogram W for Ware, so it's not so confusing in German, but regardless of the letters, we're shifting from a vocabulary of commodities into a vocabulary of capital. We have gone through the vocabulary of value. Those things will still be in play, but capital, the book and the set of books is nothing if not also a shift of standpoints. He wants to put you in the standpoint of capital. That is a standpoint, I will say, that nobody has ever stood in, even the capitalists, because "They know not what they do," as he says, quoting the New Testament. Nobody knows what they do, except Marx. Lucky for us. But it isn't a standpoint that's very easy to occupy and there's interference from other standpoints all the time. In fact, the standpoint of capital is the place where you can see the conflict between the standpoint of labor and the standpoint of capitalists. Where you can see the conflict between the standpoint of production and the standpoint of circulation. Where you can see that these things are interlocking, but incompatible with one another. It's a very conflictual standpoint to take. You have to have a strong stomach and a mind for, that can sit with confusion. So as we move in here, we're gonna start to be concerned with terms around capital. Variable capital, constant capital, capital gets advanced And to the, what I would call the, just to be really materialist about it, the control levers of capital. Yes, my second grade teacher already told me my handwriting stinks. It hasn't changed. That says control levers. Capital has a set of control levers that it uses and they will come in as a different set of vocabulary later. That becomes very important, absolute and relative surplus value. It turns out that the main thing that capitalists want to control is this, surplus value. This is a new element and I only wanted to point out that in other, English is lucky in this one instance that you can't really, whoops, you can't really just say Mehrwert, more value, doesn't that much sense. It's just like, yeah, of course more value. And the more that we're concerned with is not just a more, but it's an excess. So we have the luck that it's been translated as surplus value. I think it's much stronger and much more true than plusvalia. You have to do a bit of or Mehrwert or plus-value. You have to do a little bit of critical thinking around those terms to understand that it isn't nearly more. But in English we get the real critical term, something like excess value, surplus value, over the top in a kind of surreality in which it makes sense. This is why we left surplus value as the best translation of Mehrwert because English has that beautiful affordance. We are moving towards our first of the four Xs, the one we're gonna encounter first, which is exploitation. And just because capital is a philological work as well, Marx is a neologist but he also exploits the resources of languages. What we understand under exploitation these days, which is a kind of a moral condemnation, taking more than you deserve, let's say, comes from a Latin word, explicāre, to unfold something, to completely unfold something, to use everything it has. Out of exploitation itself, you don't get surplus necessarily, you just get using up what's there in a kind of sufficient universe. Let's think of exploitation as making the full use of something because the capitalist thinks they're making full use of labor power. It's the laborer who says that's beyond what I consider to be full use of it. And there you get something that is not subject to terminological distinction or philosophical critique.

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

It is just a struggle, a historical struggle. The worker says, this is more than I bargained for and the capitalist says, this is just what I bargained for. You can see where the different standpoints come into conflict there. So, exploitation for us is making full use of, from the capitalist perspective. Only from a worker standpoint is it exploitation in the sense of extracting more than something is worth. Okay, we talked a little bit about in. So, both of these, constant capital and variable capital, need to be exploited as much as they have for the capitalist. In the capitalist standpoint, these need to be used up because they purchased them. They've purchased machinery and tools and raw materials and they've purchased labor power and it's their right, according to the way we think about these things, even beyond law, to use those things to their fullest. You would never buy a hamburger if someone said to you, well you can eat 30% of it. Say well then I'll buy 30% of the burger, right? So it's within the law of exchange or the customs or the metaphysics of exchange that you get what you pay for. And we know from the reading today that, for today, you read at least part of chapter eight, right? You find chapter eight easier? It was mostly history and it's not easy on the stomach thinking about kids working 15 hour shifts in match factories. Constant capital needs to be exploited. That's why we get night work, because otherwise it's not being exploited, not being used to its fullest. Variable capital needs to be exploited. This is where the question of standpoint really comes in, because from the worker standpoint, they've sold a limited amount of labor power. From the capitalist standpoint, they've sold an almost unlimited amount of labor power or as unlimited as the capitalist can make it using their control levers. Variable capital produces, as we know, it replaces the value of labor power and it produces surplus value, right? All of that has to come out of the variable capital and none of it can come out of the constant capital. Why? I know these are the technical parts. We're gonna get into the juicy stuff about fights over the work day and working people to death and. - Because there's like nothing more to extract from constant capital? - You can't extract anything more. So for constant capital, in fact, the constant capital just gives its value directly bit by bit to the product and it's replaced. Do you know where it's replaced out of that value? Well, it's passed on in the sale. Do you know where the constant capital's original purchase comes from? It comes from an advance by the workers in surplus value from previous labor, which then goes back to the capitalist and they invest in constant capital. As we will see, as we move through these chapters, the worker produces everything. The spinner spins their own livelihood, they spin the livelihood of the capitalist, they spin the constant capital, they spin the entire world. They spin and spin and spin. Zoe. - Is there a measurement for the labor power? - Well, this is exactly where capital exploits labor power in a different way that it can exploit constant capital. The question was, is there a measurement for the value of labor power? Yes. What is - The means of that subsistence of the worker. Subsistence of replacement, a small bit of education. - Yeah, the means of subsistence for the worker, which includes, let's call them artificially physical and social subsistence. Physical subsistence would mean food and clothing. And you know, a lot of that is socially determined as well. And social subsistence would mean even going to the movies, but also education, which is not just subsistence

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00]

but is the reproduction of labor power. Insofar as if you're not educated, you might not even understand what the capitalist is asking you to do. I mean you have to have language, you have to be able to, you know, have a certain complex logic. So the value of labor power is the value for reproducing labor at whatever historical level it's at. That may mean an iPhone and a college education or it may mean, you know, knowing how to use a plow and not much further. It may mean as in the child laborers you saw, you saw marks exhibiting what you would call the stupidity of the children who have been subjected to working in match factories and other factories. They didn't even really develop much of a discursive ability. Now, you wouldn't wanna call this stupidity and imagine that it's natural. It's because they have, they don't even have time to think. They certainly don't go to school. They don't even have time to socialize in a way that would build their skills of conversing. It's really astounding the way that kind of labor stunts development. So we will see how it is in the, that's really confusing if you look at it. We will see how the capitalists are invested in reducing the value of labor power to the minimum, which also includes reducing the skill needed for labor. Technological development is partly due to the need to reduce the skill in labor because that reduces the cost of it. This has unintended consequences also of reducing the value of commodities. But we will see that later. For now, just to reiterate, so we understand, labor is a special commodity, which the cost of labor power, the value of labor power equals the cost of its reproduction. But actual labor or activated labor power goes beyond that. Of course, because as we said, it has to cover the reproduction of the capitalist, business and all other relations in society. Not to mention the reproduction of the family, but that is contained under here. Does that make sense? So surplus value is not negotiable. The capitalist can't say I'm simply not gonna take any extra time from these people because surplus value pays for their own veggie burger. It roof and it pays for everything they need in the business to continue including new investments in capital. Surplus value is non-negotiable in the capital system. Capitalists are slaves to it. We have to be careful of the use of the term slave, 'cause you see it haunts marks in certain ways, the slave comparison. But it is true that capitalists serve capital. He says they become functions of capital. They have no choice, but to produce surplus value, but to drive down the cost of labor, but to increase the working day, intensity of work, etcetera. Because they have to meet all sorts of contingencies. What if there's some other company comes in and undercuts them and they're stuck with all these expensive bananas. They have to drop the price and they need the flexibility. That flexibility all comes from surplus value because the rest has gone to labor power and which is called variable capital and to let's say machinery, which is constant capital that's already gone. Okay. I wanna warn you that rate and amount have very different effects in this system. The capitalist will push for a higher rate of surplus value, but the rate of surplus value is related to the amount of variable capital, not all capital advanced. This is an important argument he makes, 'cause you can't tell how much workers are being exploited. If say you have constant capital of 100 and variable capital of 10, if you add surplus value of 10

### Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00) [15:00]

the ratio to this is like 8%, right? If you take this together, all the capital advanced is 110, the surplus value you get out of the workers in extra time is just 10 compared to this. That's what? Eight or 9%. The rate of exploitation is compared to the rate of variable capital. So here this would be a hundred percent rate of exploitation because you are getting double the amount out of the labor as you've paid them for. However, it could be, imagine that we're talking about times of day. This famous example, this famous chart that he gives, right? This part is where the necessary labor time is taken care of. That is the workers reproduce their being of subsistence here and this is the part where surplus value becomes surplus labor time. You can see that here. Let's say this surplus labor time is, let's say this is six hours and this is six hours, so we have a hundred percent, but you're working them for 12 hours. If you can reproduce their labor time and get your needed surplus value in three hours, it's still a hundred percent rate of exploitation. But they've worked half the time. So it's in fact the amount of total surplus labor time that determines the effect on the bodies and the lives of the workers. You have to keep both in mind. You can have the same rate of exploitation on a shorter working day if everything works out and these workers could live a full life. However, if you need to work them this long, they're working 12 hours a day. You can imagine it in 15 hours a day, etcetera, etcetera. So keep your eyes on the amount that's being required. The capitalist wants a higher rate because they're getting this over and over again and it's accumulating. But the absolute amount is what has the greatest effect on workers' lives often, right? You could even imagine if you had a, let's see if I can do this, since I'm not super mathematically minded. You could imagine that they, what did I wanna say? Well, just imagine that the rate of exploitation might be small, but the absolute amount of extra work they're doing may be large and it might kill them anyway. For that reason. Worth keeping that in mind. This is to say, that for our first lever of capitalist control, the actual length of the working day matters a lot. It's the best and strongest lever of control they have. It's also the parameter that's been fought over the most fiercely from both sides. Okay, we've been talking about chapter seven, the rate of surplus value. I wanna point out that we're doing this critical operation that Marx does, which is going from what the economists say and what the business leaders and business directors say, that is, that they need to make a profit and they wanna know where a profit comes from, where the most profit comes from. And we're changing the terminology from profit, which means something like gain, which is thought of as taking place in the circulation system in exchange, which is just simply defined as the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, which tells you nothing about where it comes from. We are shifting the terms from profit, which you might imagine comes from buying cheap and selling dear, to surplus value. Which begins to say to you that the source is in question, that the source matters. It's coming from somewhere that doesn't seem to come naturally from the enterprise of labor and business. So we're moving into this hidden place of production, that he calls it.

### Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00) [20:00]

We're going beyond the market, beyond circulation. We're going to see where value is made, because according to Marx, value is made by a certain process called valorization. That doesn't mean that labor is the only input into the product. This is not a, an undiluted labor theory of value, but labor is the only part of the product, part of the process that valorizes. Nothing else valorizes. Even nature doesn't valorize unless you put a kind of labor into it that involves closing it off and making it hard to get to. Marx is assuming here that nature is free. That's part of his, like you could call it a romantic assumption, that nature gives free gifts or the free gift of nature. Look out for a book by the journalist and political theorist Alyssa Battistoni called "The Free Gift of Nature," in which she is interrogating that concept. Once you get into human society, it's only labor that valorizes. Since valorizes, if we wanna study valorization, we can put the constant capital to zero. In fact, we have to, because it adds no new value. From the capitalist standpoint, they already paid for the machine or the tool or the raw materials and they only have to get back what they paid. It's simply passed on. That cost is passed on to the buyer and the buyer returns that cost. The buyer's not gonna return more of a cost, anything over the cost. Okay, I wanna look for a minute at page 187. We're getting ready to talk about the working day, moving from our narrow entry point, the commodity, to something much broader, the history of work. It was his friend Fred Engles who admonished him to put a chapter like that in. Fred Engles wrote a book in 1845 that woke Marx from his dogmatic idealist slumber called "The Condition of the Working Class in England. " It's a fabulous book and it was really the first ethnography of a factory, certainly the most powerful. You know about Engels a little bit. He was the son of a multinational producer, factory owner, who with a partner owned factories in Germany and in England, and the father wanted Engels to be the heir. So I think, did I tell you this? He sent him to Manchester to do some work in the factory and what he sent back was "The Condition of the Working Class in England," one of the greatest views in the history of the world. We'll have to edit that out too. Oh well. But that was Marxist entree into the causes for studying political economy because of the actual conditions of workers in factories. And so when he got to London, he actually had a stay with Engles at Manchester and observed it. Although Engles, you know, Engels was a famous bon vivant and never gave up his millions. In fact, supported Marx and really loved the finest things in life, especially drink, and spent his time going, looking at the factories and carousing. In any case, Marx discovered this amazing cache of ethnographical reports in the British Museum, now the British Library, when he moved there in the late forties, of factory inspector reports. I mentioned that the factory inspectors are heroes. Did I say how they got their power? The factory inspectors? From the House of Lords? Yeah, so this is a funny contradiction. The main factory inspector that Marx admired tremendously, Leonard Horner, was an educational reformer. Was something like the president of University College London and got commissioned to go out and study these and made the most changes for child labor in all of the 19th century. And Horner is quoted over and over in here. So we're moving towards that whole big panorama of labor and what human beings suffer under capital. We did it through this immensely technical beginning, which I'm sure you regretted having taken the course. If I started the course from chapter eight, there'd be more people in this room. But I wanna point out another aspect that Marx is laying out for you. In the middle of page 187, the second full paragraph. The part of the capital that is spent on labor power.

### Segment 6 (25:00 - 30:00) [25:00]

You see that passage? 187. The part of the capital that is spent on labor power is a definite quantity of objectified labor. In other words, a constant magnitude of value. As is the value of the labor power that the capitalist buys. However, during the labor process itself, activated labor power replaces the 90 pounds that is advanced. Living labor replaces dead labor. A fluid magnitude replaces a fixed one. A variable magnitude replaces a constant one. The result is that V, variable capital, is reproduced with an increase of V. Seen from the standpoint of capitalist production, this entire process is the autonomous movement of value that was originally constant and has been transformed into labor power. And we learn a lot from this passage. This is just summing up where we've got to now, starting from the commodity, to the peculiar commodity labor power. First of all, there's nothing indeterminate about labor power. You buy it for a particular price, you sell price. Of course, you can only sell it for that price that covers your means of subsistence. But it has the special quality. When it's activated, it goes beyond its costs. takes the dead labor of, even the worker is dead labor because the worker has greased itself and fueled itself with veggie burgers and washed itself with soap, to the point that the labor that's gone into reproducing labor power is already dead. When that gets activated to make a product, its value is allowed to express itself. The value, even of the worker, doesn't express itself until it's activated on the labor floor. Everything is dormant under capital that matters until it gets to the labor floor. That's when a fixed magnitude gets replaced by a fluid one. It's a little bit like magic and nobody sees it. You can only see it from the standpoint of capital. How does it become variable? It takes more time. You get more time out of it. The fact that labor power has this secret variability in it is what makes the working day the main parameter, the first main parameter. It's also unfortunately the easiest one to legislate. It's a lot harder to legislate. It's easy, but it's not flawless, as you will have noticed, because you can legislate a 10 hour or a 12 hour workday. You notice that the great achievement of the late 18th and early 19th century is to legislate a 12 hour workday. That was a big achievement. Just so you know. I know students have a 18 hour workday or sometimes a two hour workday depending on their motivation. That's a beautiful thing. It's like, you know, freedom. But when they legislate it, they can't go into the factories and control the execution of it. So you'll notice that the first thing we talk about is the employer's habit of nibbling away at that. But I want to get to this last note. The entire process is the autonomous movement of value. This is what you see when you get to the middle point. critical standpoint, you see that value is autonomous and it is the only subject, which we mentioned I think last time, or I did. And it makes the capitalist do what the capitalist does and it makes the worker do what the worker does. It makes finance do what finance does for sure. I started watching "Industry" last night. Oh my god, it's harrowing. I recommend it to everyone. If you wanna see like what kind of puppets finance people are, really awful. Sorry for those of you who are going into finance. Maybe you can do it differently. We're dealing now with, we've gone from the commodity, human beings whose sociality is very strange, to the autonomous subject that makes people do things that they wouldn't otherwise do. Okay, let's go to chapter eight, the working day. Are there questions in the meantime? Yeah. - Just in that passage, again, could you just repeat what he's referencing when he says force de travail phases in this one. Then he activates - Labor power?

### Segment 7 (30:00 - 35:00) [30:00]

- What makes it? - Because it's a figure he uses to explain a lot of things here in "Capital. " What makes it fluid is that, I don't know what good is that figure for him? Fluid. Well, I think he's comparing it to fixed so in, in constant capital it doesn't, it has no dynamism. I don't know why fluid, actually it sounds strange to me now. Anyone have an idea? On page 187? I guess by fluid he means it's like a physical representation of variability. It will fill up whatever container it's put in. It starts to flow again. It's still a kind of a weak figure for talking about this excess surplus. 'Cause just because something's liquid doesn't mean that it is more, but I guess for him something that's a solid can't possibly be more. Yeah, Richard. - So like the label power, he only produced more value in the confines of production. Like if someone works a whole lot, like that isn't towards the end. - Okay, let's talk about this briefly. It's important. Richard asked about labor in the home, labor outside of the production floor. Marx, yeah, Marx makes a, not just a conceptual distinction, because it has a lot of ramifications in life and in the way you behave. There's no reason to think that reproductive labor for Marx, is any less valuable for the whole system than productive labor. In fact, I think we translated productive labor as production labor. So you wouldn't get the English overtone of something being unproductive. In the home, you have labor that's not involved directly in the production of commodities, but of course it's involved indirectly and the more the labor in the home goes up, let's say, the cheaper the variable capital. For example, if I buy pizza every night, it's gonna be much more expensive for me to keep myself up. I'm gonna need a higher wage than if someone makes the pizza. Just a stupid example. Does that make sense? So domestic labor, reproduction labor. And reproduction doesn't mean just, obviously, biological reproduction of humans. Although Marx sees that, interestingly lumps those together, that the reproduction of little humans is also part of reproduction labor that produces, reproduces the whole capital system for years. But it does have a, it has an indirect effect on value production, no question. And reproduction of little humans also has an indirect effect on value production. Do you have a sense how? Definitely makes more workers. But let's say there's a rhythm by which you make more workers like, well in this case, every seven years in the 19th century, let's say a 7-year-old goes out to work, right? But let's put child labor aside for a minute. Child labor was supplementary labor for the most part, very important for capitalists because they could pay a lot less. The reproduction of a child is much cheaper than the reproduction of an adult and very important for workers' families because they could augment their labor, so they didn't mind if it was low. So children were right at the brunt of where these forces were colliding. Everyone wanted children. It was a benefit to everyone for children to go and work cheaply and work as much as they could. But let's just take adult labor. I lost my train of thought. What we're we talking about, do you know? Oh, having more kids. So imagine there's a regular rhythm of having kids, let's say every 15 years, right? You have kids, you send them off to work. Kids go off to work every 15 years. If you can shorten that, you can work the adults to death quicker. This is the macabre session, sorry. So if you have more kids or you have them more frequently, that serves capital.

### Segment 8 (35:00 - 40:00) [35:00]

This autonomous subject is very cynical. It has no morals. It has no concern for human life. It is only concern for its own life. This is why moral attacks are useless and only philosophical, critical, and systemic attacks have any purchase, yeah. - But then doesn't having children, a lot of children with picked succession, raise the means subsistence of a worker? - There's a balance there for sure, yep. But you can see that from the capitalist perspective, and it isn't like a conscious thinking through, there has to be like, how long do we work these people every day? How long will they last? And these calculations were made very obviously and publicly in terms of African chattel slavery. And so Marx uses that as an analogy because they were very obvious about the calculations of how long they would last and whether they would need to sell them on. Again, we're entering the realm of horror here. Should we start the working day? Limits of the working day. Capital is an autonomous subject. Is the only subject of history in the capitalist era. And it eats its limits. Whatever stands in its way, it eats it. It doesn't eat it, it goes under it. It goes around it, it goes over it. It renders it useless. So when you legislate about the length of the working day, it finds all these other parameters that turn out to be just as horrible if not more horrible. That's the premise for us of the working day chapter and the next chapters on relative and absolute surplus value. How is capital going to eat its limits which history throws up, nature throws up, workers throw up? How does capital eat its limits? It's the most amazing kind of monster. Very good on this is Maxim Massimiliano Tomba at UC Santa Cruz, I believe, who writes on capital as a limit destroying monster. It's amazing. You think you have limits? Not under capital. It will push you and push you. It changes night to day and day to night. It can do as many things to the created world as it can figure out. And it starts with this weird unit, the working day, which as Marx says is, he calls it by three names. Variable, fluid or indeterminate. This is one of the monster's greatest food stuffs. It eats the day. What is a working day? A working day is as much work as is needed before some limit kicks in. As much work as can be done before a limit kicks in. It's a day measured by work. It isn't a day cut up into pieces by work. It's not a Sunday that is a day measured by sun. It's not a religious day or a school day. It's certainly not a beautiful fall day. It is something to do with exploiting the day as a resource until a limit kicks in. Using it all up. Okay. Let's talk about a couple of limits. Then we can turn to the text. There's a lot of limits in capital as there would be in any social system. The limits of a lifetime, the limits of someone's energy, interest. We're always hovering around the reality and topic of exhaustion when we get to capital. 'Cause it is, in fact, the only social system that pushes towards exhaustion, rather than push pushing towards energy. It pushes everything towards exhaustion. The earth towards exhaustion, workers, capitalists, watch industry. In the first episode, a guy dies of exhaustion basically, 'cause he's been taking pills to stay up and it kills him. He's, anyway. So one limit on the working day is the minimum limit for workers, enough labor to reproduce their labor power. This can be long or short depending on factors. How much raw material is available, how complicated the work is, how much energy they have, how skilled they are, right? Outside of capital, this is not just a factor in capital, the minimum limit of a working day, which is to reproduce your labor power for the next day.

### Segment 9 (40:00 - 45:00) [40:00]

That's, by the way, a cynical capital way of putting it, to reproduce your labor power for the next day. In a non-capital system, you would say what's the minimum limit of a working day? Enough to make a good meal. Something like that, right? That would be a positive minimum limit. So the minimum limit for workers can be short or long, depending on these factors. There's a minimum limit for capitalists too that has to be enough to reproduce their own life, enough to reproduce the business with the worker returning. So you see the workers' own subsistence is included in reproducing the business. That's why the capitalist thinks about, will they come back tomorrow? next week? month? Will they come back next year? Will we be here next year? Maybe we won't be here next year so we can work them to death this year. Those are the kinds of calculations in more or less overtly cynical terms that a capitalist has to make. How much of the population are we gonna employ and how much are we gonna throw out of work and make them move 3000 miles away? Again, these are not conscious, usually, but unconscious. And often when you get into the like memos of these being corporations, you see that it was fairly conscious. Are we killing our consumers? Yeah, we know we're killing them. Let's try not to kill them too quickly. Tobacco industry. So they have to reproduce their own life. business with the worker returning for as long or as short as they need and they have to compete in their industry keep up the profit rate in their sector compared to other sectors. Those are from volume three, for those stalwart people who are imagining a future reading Marx. Those actually are just as important factors as workers returning day to day. Those are just the minimal limits. Does that make sense? There are maximum limits too that both capitalists and workers have to face. Physical limits. What Marx calls moral limits. 'Cause that's still a thing there at that time. Social limits. What's a social limit? Well, you know, we're all getting together, it's Christmas. That's a social, if not a physical limit. Or it's Rosh Hashanah or whatever your holiday happens to be or the sales are on. That's a capitalist holiday. So, and the maximal limits are those around which there are historical struggles. How much can we get out of this? How much do we need to work? Capitalists want to stretch labor power to its limits in exchange for the wages it are already contracted for. Workers want to condense labor time or to have a normal working day or expand their wages to feel like they're being compensated for all the energy they're expending. And Marx says, as you will have noticed, in a very famous line, one of them is the right of the buyer and the other seller. And where two rights collide, they just fight. No one can regulate that. The fight over the maximum, the maximum limits on a working day is as far as class struggle ever goes, unless it turns into revolution. That is the fight over the working day. Never stops the automatic subject. It only moves it to a different object, a different activity, as we'll see as we go on. It moves it from the length of the working day to the intensity of work, to the kinds of technology, to the places in the world where labor is cheaper. This is a limit on class struggle. At least until it becomes revolution, until it overthrows the system, it is only a struggle of right and right to contain the limits that then move elsewhere, because capital is this autonomous subject that eats its limits, Richard. - This like machine, capital, to like the maximum amount actually that go back to the name on the minimal limit. - Well, one thing you're saying is right, which we'll see later, and that is that, sorry, I got lost in all the different terms. What was the term I was looking for? One of these things like X, Y, Z, MPV, let's just say means of subsistence or necessary labor time. If you can push that down, right

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that minimum limit, if you can push that down, it has the greatest effect on the maximal limit of surplus value. But we have to get there later when we talk about relative surplus value. What other questions where we are? Is this making you wanna be a socialist, communist, exist. We need a new name. We need new names. That would help. So if you come up with one, let me know. Northist is not a good one. I don't think so. How about, and Marxist is not a good one either. Okay, let's keep going. All right, so those are the limits, minimal limits. And you notice that they're slightly different for capitalists and for workers. Remember that our thesis is that the worker makes the whole world, produces everything, including the capitalist. Another thesis is that a capitalist is not a person, but a function of the system, just like a worker is. Another thesis is that the function of the capitalist in capital is to increase surplus value by whatever means necessary, to increase the rate of surplus value regardless of the amount. That is, regardless of how that affects the worker. And the worker has the function of surviving the amount of surplus value produced. - Salut, when you see the amount of surplus value, that's just a read ringer time, right? - No, the amount just to, yeah, the rate times the time. Something like that, yeah. That has to do with how much absolute labor time they're putting in, because that's what is really detrimental to a worker's social and physical existence, yeah. - So in the ABC chart, how does a capitalist actually kind of push that A and B closer in order to make that distracted the greatest? - Great question. How does the capitalist push A and B closer? Any ideas? How does it make the necessary labor time or the means of subsistence producible in a shorter time? - Make goods cheaper? - Make certain kind of goods cheaper. Subsistence goods?. You don't wanna make the goods you produce cheaper because then you have to work people harder to make the surplus value that you need. So there's always pressure in industrial capital to cheapen agricultural goods. First of all, to cheapen housing, to adulterate bread. For example, if you make up a 10th of the weight of bread in sawdust, then you are driving down the cost of bread and labor power. Like, oh, bread is cheaper. This is why inflation drives capitalists crazy because they have to start to pay more. Okay, go ahead. - Yeah, in that situation in which like you can distract more surplus value, why does the capitalist not then shorten the working bit? - Well, there's all sorts of, so you are asking, the question is why not shorten the working day if you can, if you can shorten A to B, why not shorten B to C? Because that didn't make that, that doesn't make that much sense, because you're getting the same amount of surplus value if you make this shorter like this. And that question asks about why capital needs to expand and grow. Why the rate of surplus value production needs to grow and that comes later. So we're building up the building box. It does need to grow for lots of reasons. The two main reasons are contingencies and competition, but another new reason is the prominence of finance, which only gives money to places where it's growing. Those are three reasons, but that's a complex, the reason it needs to keep growing is given in the picture of the entire capital system, rather than just the movement of a particular capital, which we're looking at now. Speaking of movement, see you Wednesday. (soft music)