jdhoch
1st April 2012, 06:55
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Having paid the value of labor power, what a capitalist receives in return is a worker’s exertion of labor power for the duration of the working day. If it turns out that a worker’s exertion of labor power over a day results in the production of more output (value) than is necessary to reproduce the worker (and the worker’s dependents), a surplus is left over for the capitalist. Put simply, the source of surplus value, for Marx, derives from the fact that:
Workers produce more than it costs to reproduce themselves
Or expressed differently:
Workers produce more than the value of their own labor power
What Marx stressed was that this result strictly obeys the capitalist principle of ‘equal exchange’. The capitalist pays the ‘value’ of labor power; workers sell their labor power. It is an ‘equal’ exchange. However, it is an exchange that takes place within a particular social system and pattern of property ownership: namely, one that gives the capitalist the (socially sanctioned) right to work employees for longer than is necessary for their own reproduction. Workers ‘freely’ enter such a (contractual) arrangement. They are free, if they prefer, not to work … and not to be reproduced.
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MORE…
heteconomist .com /?p=4969
Having paid the value of labor power, what a capitalist receives in return is a worker’s exertion of labor power for the duration of the working day. If it turns out that a worker’s exertion of labor power over a day results in the production of more output (value) than is necessary to reproduce the worker (and the worker’s dependents), a surplus is left over for the capitalist. Put simply, the source of surplus value, for Marx, derives from the fact that:
Workers produce more than it costs to reproduce themselves
Or expressed differently:
Workers produce more than the value of their own labor power
What Marx stressed was that this result strictly obeys the capitalist principle of ‘equal exchange’. The capitalist pays the ‘value’ of labor power; workers sell their labor power. It is an ‘equal’ exchange. However, it is an exchange that takes place within a particular social system and pattern of property ownership: namely, one that gives the capitalist the (socially sanctioned) right to work employees for longer than is necessary for their own reproduction. Workers ‘freely’ enter such a (contractual) arrangement. They are free, if they prefer, not to work … and not to be reproduced.
…
MORE…
heteconomist .com /?p=4969