1. THE CONCEPT UF RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE 

For a given working day, surplus-labour can be increased only 
by reducing the necessary labour; this can in turn be obtained— 
apart from lowering wages below value—only by reducing the 
value of labour[-power], that is, by reducing the price of the 
necessary means of subsistence. (Pp. 291-93.) This, in turn, is to be 
attained only by increasing the productive power of labour, by 
revolutionising the mode of production itself. 

The surplus-value produced by lengthening the working day is 
absolute, that produced by shortening the necessary labour-time is 
relative surplus-value. (P. 295.) 

In order to lower the value of labour[-power], the increase in 
productive power must seize upon those branches of industry 
whose products determine the value of labour-power—ordinary 
means of subsistence, substitutes for the same, and their raw 
materials, etc. Proof of how competition makes the increased 
productive power manifest in a lower commodity price. (Pp. 
296-99.) 

The value of commodities is in inverse ratio to the productive 
power of labour, as is also the value of labour-power, because it is 
determined by the value of commodities. Relative surplus-value, on 
the contrary, is directly proportional to the productive power of 
labour. (P. 299.) 

The capitalist is not interested in the absolute value of 
commodities, but only in the surplus-value incorporated in them. 

Realisation of surplus-value implies refunding of the value 
advanced. Since, according to p. 299, the same process of 
increasing productive power lowers the value of commodities and 
' increases the surplus-value contained in them, it is clear why the 
capitalist, whose sole concern is the production of exchange-value, 
continually strives to depress the exchange-value of commodities. 
(Cf. Quesnavy,* p. 300.) 

Hence in capitalist production, economising labour, through 
developing productive power by no means aims at shortening the 
working day—the latter may even be lengthened. We may read, 
therefore, in economists of the stamp of McCulloch, Ure, Senior 
and tutti quanti, on one page that the labourer owes a debt of gratitude 
to capital for developing the productive forces, and on the next page 
that he must prove his gratitude by working in future for 15 hours 
instead of 10. The object of this development of productive forces 
is only to shorten the necessary labour and to lengthen the labour 
for the capitalist. (P. 301.) | 

2. CO-OPERATION 

According to p. 288, capitalist production requires an individual 
capital big enough to employ a fairly large number of workers at a 
time; only when he himself is wholly released from labour does 
the employer of labour become a full-grown capitalist. The activity 
of a large number of workers, at the same time, in the same field 
of work, for the production of the same kind of commodity, 
under the command of the same capitalist, constitutes, historically 
and logically, the starting point of capitalist production. (P. 302.) 

At first, therefore, there is only a quantitative difference 
compared to the past, when fewer labourers were employed by one 
employer. But a modification takes place at once. The large 
number of labourers already guarantees that the employer gets 
real average labour, which is not the case with the small master, who 
must pay the average value of labour[-power] none the less; in the 
case of small shops, the inequalities are compensated for society at 
large, but not for the individual master. Thus the law of the 
production of surplus-value is fully realised for the individual 
producer only when he produces as a capitalist, and sets many 
labourers to work at the same time—hence from the outset average 
social labour. (Pp. 303-04.) 

Moreover: economy in means of production is achieved through 
large-scale operation alone, less transfer of value to the product by 
constant capital components arises solely from their joint con- 
sumption in the labour process of many workmen. That is how the 
instruments of labour acquire a social character before the labour 
process itself acquires it (up to this time merely similar processes 
side by side). (P. 305.) 

The economy in the means of production is to be considered 
here only in so far as it cheapens commodities and thus lowers .the 
value of labour [-power]. The extent to which it alters the ratio of 
surplus-value to the total capital advanced (c+v) will not be 
considered until Book III.’*° This splitting up is quite in keeping 
with the spirit of capitalist production; since it makes the working 
conditions confront the worker independently, economy in the 
means of production appears to be a distinct operation, which 
does not concern him and is therefore detached from the methods 
by which the productivity of the labour-power consumed by the 
capital is increased. 

The form of labour of many persons, methodically working 
together and alongside one another in the same _ production 
process or in related production processes, is called co-operation. 
(P. 306.) (Concours de forces. Destutt de Tracy.*) 

The sum-total of the mechanical forces of individual workers 
differs substantially from the potential mechanical force developed 
when many hands act together at one time in the same undivided 
operation (lifting of weight, etc.). Co-operation, from the very 
start, creates a productive power that is, in and of itself, a mass 
power. 

Furthermore, in most productive work, mere social contact creates 

a spirit of emulation which raises the individual efficiency of each, 
so that 12 workers turn out more work in a joint working day of 
144 hours than 12 workers in 12 distinct working days, or one 
worker in 12 successive days. (P. 307.) 
, Although many may be doing the same or similar things, the 
ifidividual labour of each may still represent a different phase of 
the labour process (chain of persons passing something along), 
whereby co-operation again saves labour. Likewise, when a 
building is started from several sides at once. The combined 
worker, or collective worker, has hands and eyes before and 
behind and is, to a certain degree, omnipresent. (P. 308.) 

In complicated labour processes co-operation permits the special 
processes to be distributed and to be done simultaneously, thus 
shortening the labour-time for manufacturing the whole product. 
(P. 308.) 

In many spheres of production there are critical periods when 
many workers are needed (harvesting, herring catches, etc.). Here 
only co-operation can be of aid. (P. 309.) 

On the one hand, co-operation extends the field of production 
and thus becomes a necessity for work requiring great spatial 
continuity of the working arena (drainage, roadbuilding, dam 
construction, etc.); on the other hand, it contracts the arena by 
concentrating the workers in one work-place, thus cutting down 
costs. (P. 310.) 

In all these forms, co-operation is the specific productive power 
of the combined working-day, social productive power of labour. 
The latter arises from co-operation itself. In systematic joint work 
with others, the worker sheds his individual limitations and 
develops the capacities of his species. 

Now, wage-labourers cannot co-operate unless the same capitalist 
employs them simultaneously, pays them and provides them with 
instruments of labour. Hence the scale of co-operation depends 
upon how much capital a capitalist has. The requirement that a 
certain amount of capital be present to make its owner a capitalist 
now becomes the material condition for the conversion of the 
numerous fragmented and independent individual operations into 
one combined social labour process. 

In a like manner, capital’s command over labour was up to now 
only the formal result of the relation between capitalist and 
labourer; now it is the necessary prerequisite for the labour process 
itself; the capitalist represents precisely combination in the labour 
process. In co-operation, control of the labour process becomes the 
function of capital, and as such it acquires specific characteristics. 
(Px2312.) 

In accordance with the aim of capitalist production (the greatest 
possible self-expansion of capital), this control is at the same time 
the function of the greatest possible exploitation of a social labour 
process, and hence involves the inevitable antagonism between 
exploiter and exploited. Moreover, control of proper utilisation of 
the instruments of labour. Finally, the connection between the 
various workers’ functions lies outside them, in capital, so that their 
own unity confronts them as the capitalist’s authority, as an outside 
will. Capitalist control is thus twofold (1. a social labour process for 
producing a product; 2. a process of expansion of capital), and in its 

form despotic. This despotism now evolves its own peculiar forms: 
the capitalist, just relieved from actual labour himself, now hands 
over immediate supervision to an organised band of officers and 
non-coms, who themselves are wage-labourers of capital. In slavery, 
the economists count these supervision expenses as faux frais,’ but 
in capitalist production they bluntly identify control, so far as it is 
conditioned by exploitation, with the same function, so far as it 
arises from the nature of the social labour process. (Pp. 313, 314.) 

The supreme command of industry becomes the attribute of 
capital, just as in feudal times the supreme command in war and 
in the law-courts was the attribute of landed property. (P. 314.) 

The capitalist buys 100 individual labour-powers, and gets in 
return a combined labour-power of 100. He does not pay for the 
combined labour-power of the 100. When the labourers enter the 
combined labour process, they already cease to belong to 
themselves; they are incorporated in capital. Thus the social 
productive power of labour appears as the productive power immanent 
in capital. (P. 315.) 

Examples of co-operation among the ancient Egyptians. (P. 316.) 

The natural co-operation at the beginnings of civilisation, 
among hunting peoples, nomads, or in Indian communities, is 
based: (1) on common ownership of the means of production; (2) 
on the natural attachment of the individual to the tribe and the 
primeval community.—The sporadic co-operation in antiquity, the 
Middle Ages, and in modern colonies is based upon direct rule 
and violence, mostly slavery.—Capitalist co-operation, on the 
contrary, presupposes the free wage-labourer. Historically, it 
appears in direct opposition to peasant economy and_ the 
independent handicrafts (whether in guilds or not), and in this 
connection, as a historical form peculiar to, and distinguishing, the 
capitalist production process. It is the first change experienced by 
the labour process when subjected to capital. Thus, here at once: 
(1) the capitalist mode of production presents itself as a historical 
necessity for the transformation of the labour process into a social 
process; (2) this social form of the labour process presents itself as 
a method of capital to exploit labour more profitably by increasing 
its productivity. (P. 317.) 

Co-operation, as considered so far, in its elementary form, 
coincides with production on a large scale, but it does not 
constitute a fixed form characteristic of a particular epoch of 
capitalist production, and it still exists today, when capital operates 

on a large scale without division of labour or machinery playing an 
important part. Thus, although co-operation is the basic form of 
the whole capitalist production, its elementary form reappears, as a 
particular form, alongside its more developed forms. (P. 318.)