Philosophy in the modern world a new history of western philosophy, volume 4 (new history of western philosophy) ( PDFDrive ) (1) 301

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
own maintenance, he wants another amount of necessaries to bring up a certain
quota of children that are to replace him on the labour market and to perpetuate
the race of labourers. (VPP 39)

It follows that the value of labouring power is determined by the cost of
keeping the labourer alive and well and capable of reproduction.
To show how the capitalist exploits the labourer, Marx invites us to
consider a case such as described above. Suppose that it takes twenty hours
to produce the means of subsistence of the labourer for one week. He would,
in that case, produce a value sufficient to maintain himself by working for
twenty hours. But he has sold his working power for sixty hours. So over and
above the twenty hours to replace his wages he is working a further forty
hours. Marx calls these hours of surplus labour, and the product of those hours
of labour will be surplus value. It is the surplus value that produces the
capitalist’s profit. The profit is the difference between the value of the
product (six days’ labour) and the value of the labourer’s work (two days’
labour). It is, Marx says, just as if he was working two days of the week for
himself and working unpaid four days of the week for his employer.
As technology develops, and productivity increases accordingly, surplus
value increases and the proportion of the labourer’s work that is returned to
him in wages becomes smaller and smaller. The surplus value in the output of
a factory is shared between the landlord who takes rent, the banker who takes
interest, and the entrepreneur who takes a commercial profit. All that goes to
the labourer is the ever smaller sum that is necessary to keep him alive.
The very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scale in
favour of the capitalist against the working man, and consequently the general
tendency of capitalistic production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of
wages, or to push the value of labour more or less to its minimum limit. (VPP 61)

Given the inexorable tendencies of the capitalist system, it is futile to call for

‘a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work’. Only the total abolition of the cash
nexus between employer and employee can achieve a fair return for labour.
The systematic exploitation endemic to the wages system is bound to reach a
point at which the proletariat finds it intolerable and rises in revolt. Capitalism
will be replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which will abolish private
property, and usher in a socialist state. Under socialism the means of production will be totally under central government control. The socialist state itself,
however, will be only a temporary stage of the evolution of society. Eventually
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