ABSTRACT
The goal and driving motive of capital is to maximise valorisation, expressed through the rate (s/v) and mass (s/v × V) of surplus-value. This is done by extending the working day, by employing as many workers as possible and by increasing the productivity of labour to get hold of an extra surplus-value, which on a societal scale leads to a progressive increase of relative surplus-value. Capital Volume I, Chapter 12 introduced this concept of relative surplus-value, as an opening to Part 4 (Chapters 12–15), which is devoted to a more detailed overview over methods for producing this relative surplus-value. The following Part 5 (Chapters 16–18) then offers some further examples of how absolute and relative surplus-value are produced. Not least the brief Chapters 12 and 16 help in clarifying the interrelation between these two basic modes of valorisation. The latter chapter starts with a useful summary of what has so far been said about capitalist production and then continues by arguing that surplus-value is no natural result of human labour, but dependent upon capitalist relations of production. Part 6 (Chapters 19–22) is a condensed overview of wages. All these central parts of this volume offer a mix of theoretical discussion, economic calculations and almost journalistic narrative, which will here be summarised in a number of sections.
