2 questions

[ColonelCossack]

what is the "Das Kapitalian" word for the kind of labour provided by workers rather than machinery? I think its variable-something...

my second question is: why is this so essential to creating surplus value/capital/profit/whatever?
:confused:

[Old Mole]

I am not really sure about what you mean, but I will still try to explain. Actually machinery doesnt provide any labour, workers do. I think the "variable" something you think of is variable capital, which is the part of capital used to by labour power. As opposed to constant capital, that is used to by machinery, factories, raw materials etc. The means of production can never give more value to the product than what it loses in the work process (a machine rusts, gets destroyed). This is not the case with labour power. It is living labour that can produces new value (machinery for example is dead labour), to the extent of creating more value than the cost of labour power itself. Not the best explanation ever, the best one is found in Capital.

[ColonelCossack]

I am not really sure about what you mean, but I will still try to explain. Actually machinery doesnt provide any labour, workers do. I think the "variable" something you think of is variable capital, which is the part of capital used to by labour power. As opposed to constant capital, that is used to by machinery, factories, raw materials etc. The means of production can never give more value to the product than what it loses in the work process (a machine rusts, gets destroyed). This is not the case with labour power. It is living labour that can produces new value (machinery for example is dead labour), to the extent of creating more value than the cost of labour power itself. Not the best explanation ever, the best one is found in Capital.

Thanks, I had learned those terms (constant capital and variable capital) before, but I had forgotten them. My vocab's very rusty. It was really bugging me that I couldn't remember...
Thanks for the explanation of why constant capital doesn't give back surplus value, that was just what i was looking for, comrade! :lol: