---
schema_version: "library-reader-v1"
source_type: "original_book"
title: "Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx"
author: null
edition: null
publisher: null
year: null
isbn: "9781608461042"
library_document_id: "4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe"
source_sha256: "46dee6b4497d88f0c925457d635dd321964c6f4b00bbc137e1d31adde30698c7"
pdf_physical_page_count: 426
pdf_physical_page_index_base: 0
range_start: 30
range_count: 10
html_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe?start=30&limit=10"
markdown_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe.md?start=30&limit=10"
previous_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe.md?start=20&limit=10"
next_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe.md?start=40&limit=10"
---

# Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx

> 页码规则：PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX 是从 0 开始的权威文件物理页索引；PRINTED_PAGE 是页面中识别出的印刷页码，可能为空，二者不得混用。

## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=30 | PRINTED_PAGE=30

Ricardo took up and developed Smith's ideas. In doing so he pointed to a central ambiguity in Smith's own writings. Smith mixes with the view that labour alone creates value another approach, in which profits and rent as well as labour contribute to the final value of goods. Ricardo rejected this latter view. But soon after his death in the 1 820s it became the orthodoxy among pro-capitalist economists. It was much more palatable to defenders of the existing system than implying that profits were parasitic on labour.

Marx, however, saw that the development of Smith's views by Ricardo could alone provide the basis for a scientific account of how capitalism functioned. Like Ricardo, he recognised it was absurd to say that profits somehow created value when they were part of value that had already been created. But he went much further than Ricardo had in clarifying the issues and working out the implications of the theory.

The first important advance he made was to differentiate clearly two different meanings given to "the value of labour" by Smith. On the one hand it meant the amount of labour required to keep the labourer for the time during which he or she worked. Adam Smith had argued:

There is . . . a certain rate below which it seems impossible to reduce for any considerable time the ordinary wages of even the lower species of labour. A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen would not last beyond the first generation.21

From this point of view, the "value of labour" was the value of the wage of the labourer.

But Smith also used the term "labour" to refer to the amount of labour actually performed by the worker. And, Marx stressed, the two amounts were by no means the same. Labour, he pointed out, was like all other commodities in that it was bought and sold. But it differed from them because it had the peculiar property that when put to use it performed more labour than required to produce it.

In the 1850s he introduced a new term designed to make the distinction between the two uses of the concept of labour in Smith and Ricardo (and in his own earlier writings) absolutely clear. He said that what the capitalist paid for when he employed someone was not labour as such but "labour power"-the ability of someone to work for a certain period of time. The value of labour power depended, like that of any other commodity, on the amount of labour needed to produce it. Workers could not provide labour power unless they had adequate food, clothing, housing, a certain amount of relaxation, etc. These were their requirements if they were to be fit and capable of working. Their wage had to cover the cost of these things-that is, to correspond to the amount of social labour needed to produce them. This determined the value of labour power.

30

Understanding the System: Marx and Beyond

## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=31 | PRINTED_PAGE=31

It should be noted that Marx did not see the minimal level of subsistence alone as determining the value of labour power. There was also the need to make minimal provision for the upbringing of the workers' children, since they would constitute the next generation of labour power. And there was a "historical and moral element" which depended on the "habits and degree of comfort" which the workers were accustomed to. Without it they would not apply their full faculties to their labour and might even rebel against it. In this way the cumulative effect of workers' struggles could influence the value of labour power. Marx was not, as he is sometimes presented, a believer in an "iron law of wages" whereby only a fixed portion of national output could go to the workers.22

Be that as it may, the labour people could perform was greater than the amount of labour needed to provide them with at least a minimal livelihood-to replenish their labour power. It might, for instance, take an average of only four hours work a day to provide the level of consumption necessary for someone to be able to perform a day's work. But they could then perform eight, nine or even ten hours work a day. The extra labour went to the employer, so that the value of the goods turned out by his factory was always greater than his investment. It was this which enabled him continually to get surplus value, which he could keep for himself or pass on to other members of the capitalist class in the form of interest and rent.

The relation between the employer and the worker had the appearance of being between equals. The employer agreed to give the wage and the worker his or her labour. No coercion was involved. On the face of it the situation was very different to that between the slave owner and the slave, or between the feudal lord and the serf. It was compatible with a juridical system based on "the rights of man", of equality before the law of all citizens. Even if actually existing bourgeois societies were tardy in granting this, it seemed engraved on their structure. Yet the surface appearance of equality hid a deeper inequality. The employer possessed the prerequisites for the workers engaging in social production and getting a livelihood. The workers were "free" in the sense that they do not have to work for any individual firm or capitalist. But they could not escape having to try to work for someone. As Marx put it:

Marx's Concepts

31

## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=32 | PRINTED_PAGE=32

the worker can leave the individual capitalist to whom he hires himself whenever he likes . . . But the worker, whose sole source of livelihood is the sale of his labour, cannot leave the whole class of purchasers, that is the capitalist class, without renouncing his existence. He belongs not to this or that bourgeois, but to the bourgeois class. 23

The difference between the value of the worker's labour power and the value created by the labour done was the source of the surplus value. Once the employer had got this surplus value, it could be kept directly as profit, it could be used to pay off interest on any money borrowed to build the factory, or as rent to the owner of the land on which the factory stood. But however surplus value was divided up into profits, interest and rent, its source remained the excess work done by the workers-the exploitation by those who owned the means of production of those who did not. Once the owner had got the profit, he could use it to build new means of production, increasing still further his capacity to blackmail workers into labouring for him on his terms if they were to get a livelihood.

It was this process which made the employer a capitalist. It also gave a special meaning to the word "capital". The word is used by mainstream economists and in everyday life simply to mean longterm investment as opposed to immediate consumption. But it has a deeper significance once the means of production are in the control of one group of society, compelling others who want a livelihood to work for them. It is now a product of past labour which is able to expand through the exploitation of current labour. It is, as Marx put it, not a thing, but a relation:

Value-creating and value-enhancing power belongs not to the worker but to the capitalist . . . All the development of the productive forces of labour is development of the productive forces of capital. By incorporating into itself this power, capital comes alive and begins to work "as if its body were by love possessed". Living labour thus becomes a means whereby objectified labour is preserved and increased <sub>. . .</sub> 24

32

Understanding the System: Marx and Beyond

## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=33 | PRINTED_PAGE=33

The fetishism of commodities now takes the form of making it seem that creativity does not lie with living human beings but with the products of their labour, so that people talk of capital creating wealth and employers "providing people with work", whereas in reality it is labour that adds to the value of capital and the worker who provides labour to the employer.

Absolute and relative surplus value

Marx distinguished between two ways in which firms could raise the ratio of surplus value to wages. One was by the crude method of lengthening the working day. He called this "absolute surplus value". This method of forcing up profits was very widespread in the early days of industrial capitalism, and Marx in Capital provides many examples of it. But Marx also noted in Capital that prolonging the working day over much could be counterproductive for the capitalist:

A point must inevitably be reached, where extension of the working day and intensity of the labour mutually exclude one another, in such a way that lengthening of the working day becomes compatible only with a lower degree of intensity. 25

So it was that, after putting up massive opposition to successive attempts to provide a legal limit to the working day for children, major capitalist interests gave way to working class pressure-and sometimes found that production actually increased once hours were shorter. For much of the 20th century the method of prolonging the working day seemed to belong to the past. In the advanced industrial countries, at least, workers' resistance had forced capitalists to concede a shorter working week and holidays with pay. The 72-hour week of Victorian times had become the 48-hour week and then the 44-hour week.

But there was another range of methods for increasing the amount of surplus value to be obtained from each worker, which

Marx's Concepts

33

## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=34 | PRINTED_PAGE=34

Marx called "relative surplus value". It relied on reducing the proportion of the work time that went into covering the cost of replenishing worker's capacity to work, that is, their labour power.

This took three forms. The first was to introduce new machinery into the workplace, so as to increase productivity and reduce the amount of time it took for the workers to produce goods whose sale would cover their wages. In effect, instead of, say, four hours work covering the cost of their labour power, two hours would do so-with two hours extra going to produce surplus value.

Marx saw this as the method of increasing exploitation capitalists turned to as they faced difficulties in extending the working week any further in the mid-19th century. The productivity of the workforce per hour became central, rather than extending the number of hours worked.2• But it was in itself only a short-term expedient for the capitalist. The first capitalist to introduce new machinery would be able to produce the same amount of value with less hours of labour. Once other capitalists also introduced new machinery, the socially necessary time needed for production fell and with it the value of the goods he sold and the excess surplus value he obtained.

The second form it took was increased productivity in the consumer goods industries and agriculture. This would reduce the amount of labour time needed to produce their output and the prices workers had to pay for their means of livelihood. This meant that the cost to the capitalists everywhere of providing workers with their accustomed living standard (of paying for their labour power) fell, and the amount of surplus value extracted could be increased without cutting real wages or extending the working day.

The third method was to intensify the pressure on workers to work harder. As Marx puts it, the only way to "change the relative magnitudes" of the working day going to the capitalist rather than the worker without cutting real wages was to "change either the productivity of labour or its intensity" .27 There was a drive to impose "on the workman increased expenditure of labour in a given time, heightened tension of labour-power, and closer filling up of the pores of the working-day. "28 Or again, "What is lost by shortening the duration is gained by the increasing tension of labour power" .29

The drive for increased productivity became an obsession for big business, as was shown by the movement for "scientific management" founded by the American F W Taylor in the 1 890s.

34

Understanding the System: Marx and Beyond

## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=35 | PRINTED_PAGE=35

Taylor believed that every task done in industry could be broken down into individual components and timed, so as to determine the maximum which workers could accomplish. In this way, any breaks in the tempo of work could be eliminated, with Taylor claiming he could increase the amount of work done in a day by as much as 200 percent.

"Taylorism" found its fullest expression with the introduction of the assembly line in Henry Ford's car plants. The speed at which people worked now depended on the speed at which the line moved, rather than their individual motivation. In other industries the same pressure on people to work flat out was achieved by increasing surveillance by supervisors, with, for instance, mechanical counters on machines indicating the level of work achieved. And today a similar approach is being attempted in a variety of white collar occupations with increased use of assessment, attempts at payment by results, the use of key stroke counters on computers, and so on.

Accumulation and competition

A world of commodity production is a world of competition between producers. It is this element of competition which distinguishes a society based on commodity production and exchange value from one where individuals or groups decide on what use values to produce for their own consumption. Through exchange the effort put in by those working in one unit of production is linked to those of millions of other individuals in other units, but the link only takes place through competition between those taking the decisions about production in the individual units. In Engels' phrase there is "social production but capitalist appropriation" .30

The capitalist firm which exploits the worker is therefore, necessarily, in competition with other capitalist firms. If it cannot out-compete them, eventually it will be forced out of business. To out-compete means keeping ahead in developing new, more productive techniques-only in that way can it ensure that it is not going to be driven out of business by rivals producing and selling goods more cheaply than it can. It cannot guarantee being able to afford new equipment using such techniques unless its profits are as high as possible. But if it raises its profits in order to be able to reinvest, so must its rivals. The fact that each firm is involved in exploiting wage labour means that none of them dare rest on its laurels.

Marx's Concepts

35

## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=36 | PRINTED_PAGE=36

However successful a firm may have been in the past, it lives in fear of a rival firm investing profits in newer and more modern plant and machinery. No capitalist dare stand still for any length of time, for that would mean falling behind the competitors. And to fall behind is eventually to go bust. It is this which explains the dynamism of capitalism. The pressure on each capitalist to keep ahead of every other leads to the continual upgrading of plant and machinery.

So it is that capitalism becomes not merely a system of exploiting "free" wage workers, but also a system of compulsive accumulation. The Communist Manifesto, which Marx wrote with Engels early in 1 848, insisted:

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than all the preceding generations put together.

It emphasised the continual transformation of industry under capitalism:

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the means of production . . . Constant revolutionising of production . . . distinguishes the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.

In Capital Marx sees the continual drive to build up ever bigger industry as the characteristic feature of capitalism:

Fanatically bent on making value expand itself, he [the capitalist] ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production's sake . . . Accumulation for the sake of accumulation, production for production's sake!31

The work's first volume begins with analysing production for the market ( "commodity production"), then looks at what happens when wage labour arises and labour power becomes a commodity, and finally culminates in showing how production using wage labour brings about a process of compulsive accumulation that ignores human need and individual desires.

36

Understanding the System: Marx and Beyond

## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=37 | PRINTED_PAGE=37

Capital is not then defined just by exploitation (which occurred in many precapitalist societies), but by its necessary drive to selfexpansion. The motivation for production and exchange is increasing the amount of value in the hands of the capitalist firma process for which some Marxist writers use the (in my view confusing) neologism "valorisation" .32

So the system is not just a system of commodity production; it is also a system of competitive accumulation. This creates limits to the action possible not only for workers, but also for capitalists. For if they do not continually seek to exploit their workers as much as is practically possible, they will not dispose of the surplus value necessary to accumulate as quickly as their rivals. They can choose to exploit their workers in one way rather than another. But they cannot choose not to exploit their workers at all, or even to exploit them less than other capitalists do-unless they want to go bust. They themselves are subject to a system which pursues its relentless course whatever the feelings of individual human beings.

Surplus value, accumulation and the rate of profit

Machines and raw materials do not themselves create value. Only the exercise of human labour has added to the natural wealth that existed in a state of nature and only continued human labour can increase it still further. Machines and raw materials exist because human labour has been applied in the past and they cannot substitute for it in the creation of new value. But they are necessary if labour is to achieve the average level of productivity prevailing in a particular society at a particular time. The final value of goods produced has to include an element covering the cost of the machines and materials used.

When a company produces cloth by employing workers to work on power looms that weave wool, the price of the final product has to cover not only the cost of providing the labour power of the workers (their wages) and the profit of the company, but also the cost of the wool and the wear and tear to the power looms. If the power loom can keep going for ten years, then in each year one tenth of its cost has to be covered by the annual sales of the cloth-this is what accountants refer to the depreciation costs of capital. Or, to put it another way, the labour incorporated in the value of the cloth includes not only the new socially necessary labour expended by the workers, but also the "dead labour" used to produce the wool and one tenth of the power loom.

Marx's Concepts

37

## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=38 | PRINTED_PAGE=38

For these reasons, Marx argued that the investment made by the capitalist could be divided into two parts. One was the expenditure on paying wages to hire the workers. This he called "variable capital"-because it was capital that by putting labour power to work expanded value to create surplus value in the course of production. The other part was expenditure on the means of production. He called this "constant capital" because its existing value passed into the value of the goods produced without growing any bigger-its value was simply transferred to the final product. In the case of fixed constant capital (factory buildings, machinery etc) this took place over several production cycles; in the case of circulating constant capital (raw materials, energy, components) in a single production cycle.

Marxists usually use the letter v to stand for variable capital (wages that purchase workers' labour); c to stand for constant capital (plant, equipment and raw materials); s to stand for surplus value. The ratio of surplus value to variable capital (wages) is the ratio of the length of the working day the worker gives to capital compared to that which provides for themselves-sometimes called the rate of exploitation. It can be represented by s/v.

But for the capitalist, the ratio of surplus value to wages is not the only thing that matters, since his investment is bigger than simply what he has spent on wages. He is interested in making his total capital expand, not just that which goes into wages. What matters, therefore, is the ratio of surplus value to total investmentthat is, expenditure on instruments and materials of production as well as on wages. This is the "rate of profit", which Marx depicted as s/(c+v).

It is affected not only by the ratio of surplus value to wages, but also by the ratio of expenditure on instruments and materials of production (constant capital) to wages (variable capital). Marx called this last ratio (c/v) the "organic composition of capital". This varies from industry to industry and over time. Different production processes can use the same amount of labour but different amounts of plant and equipment; the cost of equipment in a factory employing 1,000 people to sew cloth into clothes is less than that to employ the same number to smelt iron ore into steel. This has important implications for the dynamic of capitalism. It is driven forward not only by concern with the ratio of surplus value to wages, but by the drive to maintain and increase the ratio of surplus value to different levels of total investment. It is a point we will have to return to repeatedly.

38

Understanding the System: Marx and Beyond

## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=39 | PRINTED_PAGE=39

Primitive accumulation

Today we take the buying and selling of labour power for granted. It seems as "natural" as the rising and setting of the sun. Yet nowhere was it more than a minor feature of any society until a few hundred years ago. So in Europe in the late Middle Ages, or in Africa and Asia at the time of European colonisation in the 1 8th and 19th centuries, most people had at least some direct access to the means of getting a livelihood-even if they had to hand over a slice of what they produced to a parasitic landlord. Peasants could grow food on their own land and craftsmen make goods in their own little workshops.

What changed this, according to Marx, was a primeval act of robbery-the use of force to remove masses of people from any control over the means of production. This was often carried through by the state at the behest of some of the most privileged groups in society. In England and Wales, for example, the rise of capitalism was accompanied by "enclosures"-the forcible driving of peasants from common land they had cultivated for centuries. Laws against "vagrancy" then compelled the dispossessed peasants to seek work at whatever wage they could get. In Scotland the "clearances" had the same effect, as the lairds drove the crofters (small farmers) from the land so as to replace them first by sheep and then by deer. As Britain's rulers carved out an empire for themselves throughout the rest of the world, they took measures to bring about the same separation of the mass of people from control over the means of gaining a livelihood. In India, for example, they granted complete ownership of the land to the already highly privileged zamindar class. In East and South Africa they usually forced each household to pay a fixed sum of money, a poll tax, which it could only raise by sending some of its members to seek employment with European ranchers or businessmen.

Marx called this process of creating the conditions for the growth of capitalist production "the primitive accumulation of capital". Marx tells how:

Marx's Concepts

39

下一段：[继续读取](https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe.md?start=40&limit=10)