CHAPTER X.
LABOUR POWER ‑ THE LIVING COMMODITY.
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Profit making is the main purpose of all capitalist activity in the capitalist cycle of production. But to obtain this end, the capitalist must invest his capital by employing labour in the production of goods and services to be sold in the market.
It would be hypocritical for the capitalist to complain about the risks he is taking for 'the benefit of the public' and to expect unreasonable returns for his alleged troubles. Nobody is forcing him to start a business, this is what he likes to do, and by this trade he earns his living. If he did not invest his capital either by himself or by lending it to somebody else, eventually he would have to find another way to survive.
It is self interest, not concern for society that drives the capitalist to employ labour. He will discard the labourer as soon as he has no more use for him, and he will decline any further responsibility for him.
Labour is the origin of all wealth, and, as it has been essential for the first accumulation of capital, so it is essential for the continuation in the production of all profits.
It is Human labour in the first place that transforms inanimate materials into commodities and services, and it is labour which takes them to market. Therefore, the capitalist must employ laborers. By laborers we intend anybody, whether a manual worker, tradesman, people in the professions, etc. who works for wages, salary, or on contract.
The capitalist does not buy the laborers, this would be slavery. He just buys their labour power for a definite amount of time, at a definite price.
In cold economic terms, labour power for the capitalist is a commodity not very much different in substance from the labour power of an ox or a donkey. Its price (wage, salary, etc ) is subject to the law of demand and supply; but labour power, which is the most important of all commodities, is also a Human being who, although he may not have any business sense, may be more intelligent and sensitive than the capitalist who employs him. Moreover, a Human being can only be forced to the labour market either by incentives or by necessity.
Since the beginning, the capitalist have appreciated the importance of the labourer more than the laborers themselves. John Bellers (1654,l725) pointed out that the richest man, if he had no laborers, would be just a labourer himself, "... and as laborers make men rich, so the more laborers there will be, the more rich men. . . . the labour of the poor being the mines of the rich."
Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1753) was even more explicit:
" . . . .it would be easier, where property is well secured, to live without money than without the poor; for who would do the work ?" He goes on defining what has been the dream of the capitalists from the beginning to the present day: - a multitude of "laboring poor ", not so miserably paid that they may rebel, nor so well paid that they may not be continually in need to be employed; always in plentiful supply to fulfill the needs of armies and navies, and always kept in blissful ignorance, contented with their lot.
This philosophy has determined the industrial, economic and social policies of the capitalists in government up to the present.
As we have seen before, one of the main conditions for the development of capitalist economy was the improvement of the methods of cultivation, the enclosure of great tracts of land for pasture, the gradual appropriation of all cultivable land, including most of the common land, by the nobles and the wealthier landlords.
This gradual process, together with the displacement of the primitive "cottage industries" by the advance of technology, set free most of the rural population from the country to the towns; a growing labour army in need of work, ready to satisfy the needs of an expanding capitalist industry. Without any land, the people had to find work in the new factories in order to survive.
Few people would work for a master if they had the opportunity to work for themselves and be self sufficient. To attract such people, the capitalist employer would have to raise the conditions and the wages of labour, and, consequently, lower the profitability of his invested capital.
This is one reason why it is essential in capitalist economy that the land be almost completely the property of a minority or of the Crown, and that its price be relatively high, in order to compel the majority of the population to work for wages.
In a large country, during a depression, if the land was cheap we could see an exodus of unemployed people from the towns to the countryside. This would be a very effective method of decentralisation; but would the capitalists be happy to see a part of their reserve of unemployed labour disappear from the market?
Adam Smith stated that labour, not gold and silver, is the origin of all wealth. He stated that labour "was the first price, the original purchase money that was paid for all things." There cannot be any doubt about this; therefore, labour is itself real capital because it is the origin of capital; therefore we could say that people are capital because they possess labour power (or labour potential). The people and the land are the real capital of a country. We could say also that unemployed people are wasted labour power they are wasted capital.
Unfortunately, the majority of workers, whether laborers or professional people, have very little consciousness of their potential, and the capitalists have a vested interest in keeping them as confused as possible. Adam Smith's assessment of the laborers, ".. those who live by wages", is still valid today :
". . But though the interest of the labourer is strictly connected with that of the society, he is incapable either of comprehending that interest, or understanding its connection with his own. His condition leaves him no time to receive the necessary information, and his education and habits are commonly such as to render him unfit to judge even though he was fully informed..."
The capitalists naturally believe that money and property are capital and Human labour is only a commodity that cannot be utilised without first acquiring capital. Having obtained supremacy, the capitalists in two centuries have gradually convinced the population that there cannot be life without capital; they have imposed on society their own particular mentality and values - the particular logic of the merchant class has become the law of the land.
Capitalists resent the fact that in the production of profit they have to depend on such an unstable and intractable living commodity as labour power, a commodity that can fight for its own protection. Therefore, they have been competing with one another to eliminate labour from the process of production; but this trend will produce the necessity to eliminate "people" as they become redundant and become a burden to those who are still employed.
Today, with new technology and industrial robots, capitalist businessmen may succeed in realizing their wish; but this achievement will either precipitate the collapse of capitalism or it will push the system from the present stage of irrationality into a new stage of complete madness. What good is it to a society to increase production by automation if the majority of the people will not be able to buy the products because they will be out of work? Will these products be sold on foreign markets if the foreign countries are either in the same situation trying to sell their own products, or are too poor to buy anything at all?
This is probably one of the reasons why in this country during the eighties all the money saved by cuts in government spending and wages restraint was squandered by our entrepreneurs in playing 'Monopoly' in the stock market and by conspicuous consumption.
Merchants are not as stupid as our politicians are. Why undertake the hard and risky work of investing the country's capital to modernize our industries and increase production with the uncertain long term prospect of some profits in a saturated and lop-sided world market, when, with the help of fools in government, with the incentive of an indiscriminating 'negative gearing' tax saving device, with the help and cheers of their castrated economic experts and mignons in the Media, they could get rich quick in a gamble of double or nothing in the world's stock markets ??? They could not lose, at every raise of the stakes some of the country's capital stuck in their pockets.
Why is it that these business geniuses are buying any Media stocks, even if not very profitable, as soon as they can if it isn't because whoever controls the Media has the politicians in his pockets?