Surplus Value and Merchant Capitalists

[Evo2]

In Marxist Theory we have three classes of Capitalists, money lending capitalists (the banks), merchant capitalists (the supermarkets) and the industrial capitalists (the mill owner).

With the Industrial Capitalist profit is made by paying the workers less than the amount of value he produces in a working day (minus the wage to sustain her). He gets SV through production and unequal exchange through paying the workers less for their labour power than the Value they produce.

However with a Merchant Capitalist (Tesco), the capitalist buys a commodity in order to sell it higher than he bought it. The worker is who processes the transaction.

A problem I have here is that the IC can get profit buy paying the workers less than the value of the final product because he produces something. However the MC only buys in order to sell again, he doesn't produce anything, so how can his M - C - M = P? How can he get P is the worker does not produce value, and so he cannot pay her less than the value she creates?

He has to pay the producer the commodities worth, and has to bay the fixed capital (rent etc). He could pay the worker less but she does not produce, she just serves as a mediator between the exchange. It therefore appears that in a MC enterprise (Tesco) P derives from selling higher than V, with no extraction of SV from the worker.


Thats where I'm at at the moment, all criticism and corrections welcomed :)

[Slavic]

The service industry is not as clear cut and easy to fit into formulas like that of the production industry.

I look at it this way.

Value is still added to the facilitation of trade. Tesco may make a profit through exploiting price differences in commodities, but the workers and industry of Tesco still add value to the commodity that Tesco is purchasing from production industries. Commodities require transportation, storage, and maintenance. All of these activities add constant capital to the commodities: Trucks, Store, Fuel/Energy.

Since these activities are not automated they need workers to work them which infuses the constant capital into the commodities. That takes care of value being added through constant capital.

Because of the need for workers, Tesco must employ drivers, grocers, and maintenance to work its constant capital into the commodity. I do not know how to analyze the exact value added from the workers labor into the equation, its not as easy as production labor. I'd still make the guess that the workers are producing surplus value as I can not see Tesco willing to pay its workers any more than their required needs for subsistence.

[IWantToLearn]

What about that, after taking away the costs of reinvertion and rents there is a surplus, a part of this surplus is taken by the workers who made this surplus by selling the commodities and the rest is taken away by the employer who didn't work or worked like the others but in the end receives a higher share.

Does that makes sense?, i guess this is not the best way to explain this kind of exploitation but it's the best i could think.