Anthem Press A Guide to Marx's 'Capital' Vols I–III: 1-3 (Key Issues in Modern Sociology)

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. A Guide to Marx's Capital Vols I-IIIBy Kenneth SmithWimbledon Publishing CompanyCopyright © 2012 Kenneth SmithAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-0-85728-506-5ContentsIntroduction, 1, Reading Capital, 1, A Note on Marx's Method, 8, A Note on Social Class, 12, A Note on the English Translations of Capital, 12, Part I: The Development of the Capitalist Mode of Production, 15, 1. Absolute and Relative Surplus Value in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 10 and 12, 18, 2. Cooperation and the Division of Labour in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 13-14, 23, 3. Machinery and Modern Industry in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 15, 27, 4. Primitive Accumulation in Capital, Vol. I, Part VIII, Ch. 26-33, 31, Part II: The Capitalist Mode of Production, 37, 5. Simple Reproduction in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 7, 11 and 23, 43, 6. Extended Reproduction in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 24, 50, 7. Simple Reproduction in Capital, Vol. II, Sections 1-8, 55, 8. Extended Reproduction in Capital, Vol. II, Ch. 21, Section 3, 60, 9. The Precipitation of Fixed Capital in Capital, Vol. II, Ch. 21, Sections 1-2; Ch. 20, Section 11, 69, Part III: The Underdevelopment of the Capitalist Mode of Production, 81, 10. Mercantilism and the Circuit of Industrial Capital in Capital, Vol. II, Part I, Ch. 1-4, 86, 11. Credit and the Dissolution of the CMP in Capital, Vol. III, Ch. 27, 91, 12. Rudolf Hilferding and 'Finance Capital': Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 2, 97, 13. Marx on Development and Underdevelopment in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 5, 104, 14. The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall in Capital, Vol. III, Parts I-III, Ch. 1-15, but especially Ch. 14-15, 111, Part IV: The Value Theory of Labour, 121, 15. The Rate of Profit and the Rate of Surplus Value in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 9, Section 3, and Vol. III, Parts I and III, 125, 16. The Degree of Exploitation of Labour by Capital in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 9, Section 1; Ch. 6-7, 133, 17. The Labour Theory of Value and the Value Theory of Labour in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 1, Sections 1-3, 142, 18. The Reification of Commodity Fetishism in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 4, and Vol. III, Ch. 24, 156, Conclusion, 171, Appendix: On Social Classes, 179, Notes, 192, Bibliography, 196, Index, 198, CHAPTER 1ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE SURPLUS VALUE INCAPITAL,VOL. I, CH. 10 AND 12It is obviously possible to extend the length of the working day from 7 or 8 hours, to 10, 12, 14, 16 or even 18 hours, and this was done as a matter of course at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, and is still done to a greater or lesser extent in other parts of the world today in the form of so-called 'overtime' and 'over-working'. However, this process is not without its limits. Firstly, of course, there are only so many hours in the day; although on rare occasions a labourer might well be made to work for longer than 24 hours at one time, by definition the working day itself cannot be extended beyond 24 hours per day. Secondly, labourers must eat and rest in order to renew themselves and reproduce their capacity to labour, and it is not only in the interest of the labourers themselves that they should do this; it is also in the interests of the capitalists who employ them. A continuous supply of labour is just as essential to the capitalist mode of production as it is to any other and a labourer who has rested is likely to make fewer, less costly, mistakes than a labourer who is exhausted. Of course, although capital needs a continuous supply of labour generally speaking, where the supply of labour is plentiful, it is possible to work individual labourers to death and replace them with fresh labour in the form of entirely new labourers. This happened to some extent in the development of European capitalism (Urry 1981, 124); and the pattern of reproducing what Marx calls labour-power (as opposed to reproducing the labourers themselves) is characteristic of slave labour whenever the cost of such labour is sufficiently