Abstract
In this chapter, Otani observes what is brought about by capital accumulation, based on the assumption that all surplus-value is advanced as an additional capital. This process of expanded reproduction is at the same time the process of the expanded reproduction of the capital/wage-labour relation. If surplus-value is transformed into additional capital, this capital is clearly the embodiment of another person’s labour. Since the enormous capital under developed capitalist society is in entirety accumulated surplus-value, the valorisation of this capital is nothing but the obtaining of the labour of others through the embodiment of others’ labour or what is referred to as «law of capitalist appropriation». This law penetrates in capitalist society as a result of the penetration of the «ownership laws of commodity production», where ownership is mutually seen as the fruit of one’s own labour.
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Notes
- 1.
The assumption in this chapter is that the accumulation funds are immediately advanced as additional capital. But in ordinary practice, accumulation funds are only advanced as additional capital in the production process once they have been amassed to a certain amount (see 7 Sect. 14.4.3 in Part II).
- 2.
Marx (1872) writes: «The relation of exchange between capitalist and worker becomes a mere semblance belonging only to the process of circulation, it becomes a mere form, which is alien to the content of the transaction itself, and merely mystifies it. The constant sale and purchase of labour-power is the form; the content is the constant appropriation by the capitalist, without equivalent, of a portion of the labour of others which has already been objectified, and his repeated exchange of this labour for a greater quantity of the living labour of others. Originally the rights of property seemed to us to be grounded in a man’s own labour. Some such assumption was at least necessary, since only commodity-owners with equal rights confronted each other, and the sole means of appropriating the commodities of others was the alienation of a man’s own commodities, commodities which, however, could only be produced by labour. Now, however, property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or its product, and the impossibility, on the part of worker, of appropriating his own product. The separation of property from labour thus becomes the necessary consequence of a law that apparently originated in their identity. . . . / To the extent that commodity production, in accordance with its own immanent laws, undergoes a further development into capitalist production, the property laws of commodity production must undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become laws of capitalist appropriation» (Marx 1976, pp. 729–730 and 733–734; Marx’s emphasis as in the first German edition).
- 3.
With regard to the significance of a change in the consciousness of labouring individuals, Marx (1861–1863) writes: «The recognition of the product as its own, and its awareness that its separation from the conditions of its realisation is an injustice—a relationship imposed by force—is an enormous consciousness, itself the product of the capitalist mode of production and just as much the knell to its doom as the consciousness of the slave that he could not be the property of another reduced slavery to an artificial, lingering existence, and made it impossible for it to continue to provide the basis of production» (Marx 1975, p. 246; Marx’s emphasis). We will further consider this issue in 7 Sect. 11.2.2.
- 4.
From the above, the reader can grasp the fallacy of the common belief that the capitalist relations of production come down to the capitalist’s property relation towards the means of production. It is a completely upside-down view to see the pivot of relations of production in the property relations, which is the relation of mutual recognition between economic persons outside the production process. Rather, what constitutes the core of the capitalist relations of production is that, in the production process, the labouring individuals relate to the means of production separated from them in the manner of dealing with capital, i.e. as something belonging to others. Capitalist ownership is a legal relation that is constructed on the basis of the relations of production.
We saw in 7 Sect. 1.4.3 of the Introduction that in precapitalist forms of society—i.e. forms based on a community and the petty producer’s mode of production—the ownership of the means of production is premised on the labour of labouring individuals. In the capitalist mode of production, this relation between ownership of the means of production and the labour of labouring individuals is completely inverted. Namely, what generates and reproduces the capitalist ownership of the means of production is precisely the relationship vis-à-vis the means of production by the labouring individuals who are separated from those means of production.
References
Marx K (1861-1863) Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Manuskript 1861–1863). MEGA II/3, Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1976–1982. English edition: Marx (1975) Economic Manuscript 1861–1863. Collected Works, vol 34. Progress Publishers et al. New York.
Marx K (1872) Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie. Bd. 1. Buch 1: Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals. 2. verb. Aufl. Hamburg. English edition: Marx K (1976) Capital. A Critique of Political Economy, vol 1 (trans: Howkes B). Penguin Books, Harmondsworth
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Otani, T. (2018). Accumulation of Capital. In: A Guide to Marxian Political Economy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65954-1_9
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