Part 4: Chapter 12

One of the things most notable about any philosophical (or even scientific) system is the "constants" which appear initially as more-or-less unremarkable deductions, but that require a great effort to hold onto through further analysis. My favorite example is the constancy of the speed of light in Einstein's physics. Anyone can wrap their head around the simple idea that light has a constant speed. Most will not object either to the speed of light being the limit velocity--i.e. that nothing can be faster than light. However, this velocity, as regards which all other motions are relative has innumerable revolutionary effects in physics--as I understand it--as long as it is held as a constant.

The same could be said for Freud's dictum, "dreams are wish-fulfillments." Simple enough, and most would agree. It is almost a tautology (dreams being synonymous with wishes in everyday language). But if one sticks closely and makes no exceptions, the application of this constant is world-overturning.

The same can be said of Marx's treatment of labor-power as a commodity. In terms of any other commodity, VALUE is the labor-time necessary to (re)produce the commodity. In "free labor," however, that value formula counts only as "necessary labor" where the rest of the time worked is "surplus labor." (Another idea that must be strictly kept-to is the distinction between labor and labor-power. The latter is what functions as a commodity.)

The dry distinction between "absolute" and "relative" surplus-value, from which this chapter takes its name, is important because absolute surplus value (brute extension of the working day) explains the previous chapter ("The Working Day") while positive change in relative surplus value (increases in productivity, mostly) is part of the endless and less-obviously-constrained accumulation of capital. (I.e. the day can only be prolonged so far, while technology and the division of labor can be continually improved upon.)

In Marx's words:
The objective of the development of the productivity of labour within the context of capitalist production is the shortening of that part of the working day in which the worker must work for himself, and the lengthening, thereby, of the other part of the day, in which he is free to work for nothing for the capitalist.

* * * *
"We treat [the] general result as if it were the direct result and the direct purpose in each individual case... The general and necessary tendencies of capital must be distinguished from their forms of appearance."

"The real value of a commodity... is not its individual, but its social value."

It is not that Marx does not care about "the individual case"--in the first case, the immanent drive of capital as a whole is taken as though it were the individual capitalist's purpose as well. It is to be noted that the capitalist is no more "free" than the laborer who is compelled to work for demeaning wages--there is the unbearable force of the "coercive law of competition."

To explain the first quote I provide the second--the "real" is not the "individual," in a very Hegelian sense.