Chapters 17 & 18 :
17 Changes of Magnitude in the Price of Labour-Power and in Surplus Value
As has already been demonstrated in previous chapters of Capital, there are three circumstances that determine the relative magnitudes of the price of labour-power and of surplus-value. These are: “(1) the length of the working day, or the extensive magnitude of labour, (2) the normal intensity of labour, or its intensive magnitude, whereby a given quantity of labour is expended in a given time, and (3) the productivity of labour, whereby the same quantity of labour yields, in a given time, a greater or smaller quantity of the product, depending on the degree of development attained by the conditions of production” (p655). Proceeding from the assumptions that commodities are sold at their value, and that the price of labour-power occasionally rises above its value, but never sinks below it, Marx outlines the most prominent combinations of the above conditions and their effect upon the magnitudes of the price of labour-power and surplus-value. Continue reading ‘Part 5, chapters 17 and 18’