did so through an explanation based outside the workplace itself, taking in broader changes in juridical, political and transactional relationships between class actors in the legal sphere, the market and society at large. But it was insufficient simply to stop there, and, having established this state of affairs in Capital, Marx took readers beyond the ‘realm of Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham’ into the sphere of production to explore the implications of these changes for how work is performed and experienced, and the hidden mechanics and dynamics of value creation in capitalist society.62 What Marx called the ‘valorization process’ – the process by which the value invested in production is expanded in pursuit of profit and the reproduction of the conditions for business to continue – compels the process by which labour is bought, sold and engaged in the ‘labour process’.63 Profit, for Marx, arises where the capitalist is able to receive more from the sale of the good or services they produce than they have expended on its production – in other words, from surplus value. In order to understand how this surplus can be raised from the exchange of equivalents, we pick up where Marx’s account of the constitution of wage labour in the proletariat’s ‘double freedom’ left off. The individual’s labour power must be sold to a willing buyer in possession of the means of production required to put that labour to good use. This labour power presents at the point of sale a purely potential quantity, for which a wage is agreed in order for the willing buyer – the capitalist – to claim its ownership and thus the ability to turn what is merely a potential into actuality. In selling labour power to the capitalist, the individual thus gives over full and sole discretion as to how, when and for how long the labour power can be employed in its next stage of development – as labour in its concrete, practical existence.64
The secret of the surplus at first appears inscrutable because the capitalist purchases the commodity labour power at its value.65 This value is the ‘socially necessary’ minimum amount of time that the worker must labour to reproduce her labour power so that she might reappear for work the following morning.66 Yet for a profit to be turned and the value invested valorized, the monetary worth of what they produce must be greater than the employer has outlaid on wages. How can this be so? Marx contends that the commodity of labour power possesses a unique quality when inserted in the labour process and applied to the means of production: it can create more value than it is worth.67 For Marx, this cannot be determined in the market alone, but rests on a specific set of antagonistic and highly conflictual relationships situated in the labour process itself. This has to do with the way that the time, effort and productivity of workers is managed through organizational and technological means. The contract of employment having been signed, the employer has the power to wield control over the worker they have recruited, but there is no telling what the effectiveness of the labour capacity they have acquired may be in the production process itself – varying in skill or militancy, for instance. A struggle therefore ensues on the part of the employer to extract from that labour power as much effort and productivity as possible in combination with the means of production they own.68
For Marx, the production of commodities is divided up into two parts: necessary labour and surplus labour. Translated into time, the first ‘necessary’ portion has two determinations: the amount of time taken to produce the commodity demanded for sale by the capitalist, as a measure of general human labour in the abstract; and the amount of time the worker takes to produce the commodity in order to reproduce their labour power with the consumption of equivalent commodities through the provision of a wage. This demonstrates the dual nature of necessary labour-time: necessary for the worker, because of their sustenance, and necessary for the capitalist because ‘the continued existence of the worker is the basis of that world’.69
Whereas the necessary labour-time is that part of the working day where the labourer works ‘for himself’, what Marx calls surplus labour-time is time spent working for the capitalist. Here, labour power is consumed by the capitalist in order to produce surplus value: that part of the value generated from the labour process left over when the worker’s recompense and other associated expenses are taken into account. As such, it is in the capitalist’s interests to prolong this part of the working day for as long as possible and minimize the proportion of time spent on the reproduction of the worker. By manipulating the length and composition of the working day, the capitalist can secure a greater amount of value from the commodity of labour power than its value at the point of purchase.
This can be done in two main ways, according to Marx: through raising absolute surplus value or relative surplus value. Both centre on the rate of surplus value, or what Marx also called the rate of exploitation: surplus labour divided by necessary labour.70 If productivity and intensity are given, the rate of surplus value can only be raised by the prolongation of the working day – absolute surplus value – and if the working day is given, the rate of surplus value can only be increased by a shift in the ratio of necessary to surplus labour, achieved by a change in either productivity or intensity – in other words, relative surplus value.71
In raising what Marx calls ‘absolute surplus value’, employers extend the time workers work above and beyond the bare minimum to earn the wage necessary for the reproduction of their labour power. The employer pays the same but gets more in return. In this context, ‘moments are the elements of profit’. The means of production that lie dormant in workplaces overnight demand this, existing only to ‘absorb labour’. Starved of this, plant and equipment do not perform their function, constituting a loss to the capitalist. As such, Marx signifies here that ‘to appropriate labour during all the 24 hours of the day is the inherent tendency of capitalist production’.72 With a watchful eye on the clock, times extraneous to the labour process are carefully cropped. Workers see infinitesimal, yet ever-increasing, portions of their free time eroded at the beginning and end of the day and at break-times, accumulating over the year into a significant surplus under the command of the employer. Such is the capitalist’s ‘right’ as a buyer: the contract of employment signed, the capitalist possesses full discretion over the way in which the commodity at their disposal is used.73
But, likewise, it is the labourer’s ‘right as a seller’ to have a set duration to the working day.74 Although the working day can vary, certain limits do exist that cannot easily be transgressed by capital: firstly, the physical need for the worker to reproduce himself in order to arrive at the factory gates the next morning; and secondly, the ‘moral’ aspect related to the social standard of satisfaction, associated with spare time away from work, which varies between individual circumstances and social conditions.75 Where these limits are in place, raising absolute surplus value becomes more difficult for the capitalist. Other means must be found to increase the ratio of surplus to necessary labour, which do not extend the working day outwardly but restructure it internally. This centres on raising what Marx calls ‘relative surplus value’.
The prerogative of relative surplus value pertains to the ‘curtailment of the necessary labour-time, and [with it] the corresponding alteration in the respective lengths of the two components of the working day’.76 The necessary labour-time can only be lessened by a fall in the value of the labour power that needs reproducing. This implies that the means of subsistence must be produced over a shorter period, through an increase in productivity.77 By intensifying work and reducing that portion of the day in which the worker labours for her own reproduction, whether through advances in productivity-raising technologies or management regimes, the capitalist can keep the length of the working day the same whilst increasing the proportion of it given over to the production of surplus value. The immediate aim of capital is, thus, less the contraction in labour-time itself as a narrowing of the time necessary within the day for the worker to reproduce themselves, and thus for a set amount of commodities to be produced.78 The part of the working day ‘socially necessary’ to the reproduction of both capital and labour is proportionally shortened, whilst the ‘surplus’ part of the day that belongs to the capitalist and accrues as surplus value is proportionally lengthened, without infringing limits placed upon the length of the working day as a whole. Whilst the practical consequence of these dynamics might appear to be the theft of workers’ time,
