In order to be sold as a commodity in the market, labour must at all events exist before it is sold. But could the labourer give it an independent objective existence, he would sell a commodity and not labour.[1]
Apart from these contradictions, a direct exchange of money, i.e., of realized labour, with living labour would either do away with the law of value which only begins to develop itself freely on the basis of capitalist production, or do away with capitalist production itself, which rests directly on wage-labour. The working day of 12 hours embodies itself, e.g., in a money value of 6s. Either equivalents are exchanged, and then the labourer receives 6s. for 12 hours’ labour; the price of his labour would be equal to the price of his product. In this case he produces no surplus-value, for the buyer of his labour, the 6s. are not transformed into capital, the basis of capitalist production varishes. But it is on this very basis that he sells his labour aud that his labour is wage-labour. Or else he receives for 12 hours’ labour less than 6s., i.e., less than 12 hours’ labour. Twelve hours labour are exchanged against 10, 6, &c., hours’ labour. This equalisation of unequal quantities not merely does away with the determination of value. Such a self-destructive contradiction cannot be in any way even enunciated or formulated as a law.[2]
It is of no avail to deduce the exchange of more labour against less, from their difference of form, the one being realized, the other living.[3] This is the more absurd as the
- ↑ “If you call labour a commodity, it is not like a commodity which is first produced in order to exchange, and then brought to market where it must exchange with other commodities according to the respective quantities of each which there may be in the market at the time; labour is created the moment it is brought to market; nay, it is brought to market before it is created.” (Observations on some Verbal Disputes, etc., pp. 75, 76.)
- ↑ “Treating labour as a commodity, and capital, the produce of labour, as another, then, if the values of these two commodities were regulated by equal quantities of labour, a given amount of labour would … exchange for that quantity of capital which had been produced by the same amount of labour; antecedent labour would … exchange for the same amount as present labour. But the value of labour in relation to other commodities … is determined not by equal quantitles of labour.” (E. G. Wakefield in his edition of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” vol. i., London, 1836, p. 231, note.)
- ↑ “Il a fallu convenir (a new edition of the contrat social!) qne toutes les fois qu'il échangerait du travail fait contre du travail à faire, le dernier (le capitaliste) aurait une valeur supérieure au premier” (le travailleur). Simonde (i.e., Sismondi), “De la Richesse Commerciale,” Genéve, 1808, t. 1, p. 37.
