Part 5, chapters 17 and 18

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.

Capital 1, Part 5: The Production of Absolute and Relative Surplus Value. Chapters: 16, 17 & 18

In Part 5 Marx articulates in greater detail the characteristics of productive labour under capitalism, developing further the relationships between productive labour, the production of absolute and relative surplus value, and the conditions of formal and real subsumption. The general understanding of the labour process articulated earlier in the book here gives way to the more detailed analysis of the conditions of the capitalist process of production.