cluding, that the capitalist pays for labour and not for labour-power. This formula is only a popular expression for surplus-lahourneccessary labour. The capitalist pays the value, so far as price coincides with value, of the labour-power, and receives in exchange the disposal of the living labour-power itself. His usufruct is spread over two periods. During one the labourer produces a value that is only equal to the value of his labour-power: he produces its equivalent. Thus the capitalist receives in return for his advance of the price of the labour power, a product of the same price. It is the same as if he had bought the product ready made in the market. During the other period, the period of surplus-labour, the usufruct of the labour-power creates a value for the capitalist, that costs him no equivalent.[1] This expenditure of labour-power comes to him gratis. In this sense it is that surplus-labour can be called unpaid labour.
Capital, therefore, is not only, as Adam Smith says, the command over labour. It is essentially the command over unpaid labour. Al surplus-value, whatever particular form (profit, interest, or rent), it may subsequently crystallise into, is in substance the materialisation of unpaid labour. The secret of the self-expansion of capital resolves itself into having the disposal of a definite quantity of other people’s unpaid labour.
- ↑ Although the Physiocrats could not penetrate the mystery of surplus-value, yet this much was clear to them, viz., that it is “une richesse indépendante et disponible qu’il (the possessor) n’a point achetée et qu'il vend.” (Turgot: “Réflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses,” p. 11.)
acter}}, and to transform them by a word into some form of free association, as is done by A. de Laborde in “De l’Esprit de l’Association dans tous les intérêts de la communauté” Paris 1818. H. Carey, the Yankee, occasionally performs this conjuring trick with like success, even with the relations resulting from slavery.
