Ch. 23: Interest and Profit of Enterprise

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Interest, as we have seen in the two preceding chapters, appears originally, is originally, and remains in fact merely a portion of the profit, i.e., of the surplus-value, which the functioning capitalist, industrialist or merchant has to pay to the owner and lender of money-capital whenever he uses loaned capital instead of his own. If he employs only his own capital, no such division of profit takes place; the latter is then entirely his. Indeed, as long as the owners of the capital employ it on their own in the reproduction process, they do not compete in determining the rate of interest. This alone shows that the category of interest — impossible without determining the rate of interest — is alien to the movements of industrial capital as such.

"The rate of interest may be defined to be that proportional sum which the lender is content to receive, and the borrower to pay, annually, or for any longer or shorter period, for the use of a certain amount of moneyed capital.... When the owner of a capital employs it actively in reproduction, he does not come under the head of those capitalists, the proportion of whom, to the number of borrowers, determines the rate of interest."; (Th. Tooke, History of Prices, London, 1838, II, pp. 355-56.)

It is indeed only the separation of capitalists into money-capitalists and industrial capitalists that transforms a portion of the profit into interest, that generally creates the category of interest; and it is only the competition between these two kinds of capitalists which creates the rate of interest. As long as capital functions in the process of reproduction — assuming that it even belongs to the industrial capitalist and he has no need of paying it back to a lender — the capitalist, as a private individual, does not have at his disposal this capital itself, but only the profit, which he may spend as revenue. As long as his capital functions as capital, it belongs to the process of reproduction, is tied up in it. He is, indeed, its owner, but this ownership does not enable him to dispose of it in any other way, so long as he uses it as capital for the exploitation of labour. The same is true of the money-capitalist. So long as his capital is loaned out and thereby serves as money-capital, it brings him interest, a portion of the profit, but he cannot dispose of the principal. This is evident whenever he loans out his capital for, say, a year, or more, and receives interest at certain stipulated times without the return of his principal. But even the return of the principal makes no difference here. If he gets it back, he must always loan it out again, so long as it is to function for him as capital — here as money-capital. As long as he keeps it in his own hands, it does not collect interest and does not act as capital; and as long as it does gather interest and serve as capital, it is out of his hands. Hence the possibility of loaning out capital for all time. The following remarks by Tooke directed against Bosanquet are, therefore, entirely wrong. He quotes Bosanquet (Metallic, Paper and Credit Currency, London, 1842, p. 73):

"Were the rate of interest reduced as low as 1%, capital borrowed would be placed nearly on a par with capital possessed.";

To this Tooke adds the following marginal note:

"That a capital borrowed at that, or even a lower rate, should be considered nearly on a par with capital possessed, is a proposition so strange as hardly to warrant serious notice were it not advanced by a writer so intelligent, and, on some points of the subject, so well informed. Has he overlooked the circumstance, or does he consider it of little consequence, that there must, by the supposition, be a condition of repayment?"; (Th. Tooke, An Inquiry into the Currency Principle , 2nd ed., London, 1844, p. 80.)

If interest were = 0, the industrial capitalist operating on borrowed capital would stand on a par with a capitalist using his own capital. Both would pocket the same average profit, and capital, whether borrowed or owned, serves as capital only as long as it produces profit. The condition of return payment would alter nothing. The nearer the rate of interest approaches zero, falling, for instance, to 1%, the nearer borrowed capital is to being on a par with owner's capital. So long as money-capital is to exist as money-capital, it must always be loaned out, and indeed at the prevailing rate of interest, say of 1%, and always to the same class of industrial and commercial capitalists. So long as these function as capitalists, the sole difference between the one working with borrowed capital and the other with his own is that the former must pay interest and the latter must not; the one pockets the entire profit p, and the other p - i, the profit minus the interest. The nearer interest approaches zero, the nearer p - i approaches p, and hence the nearer the two capitals are to being on a par. The one must pay back the capital and borrow anew; yet the other must likewise advance it again and again to the production process, so long as his capital is to function, and cannot dispose of it freely, independent of this process. The sole remaining difference between the two is the obvious difference that one is the owner of his capital, and the other is not.

The question which now arises is this. How does this purely quantitative division of profit into net profit and interest turn into a qualitative one? In other words, how is it that a capitalist who employs solely his own, not borrowed capital, classifies a portion of his gross profit under the specific category of interest and as such calculates it separately? And, furthermore, how is it that all capital, whether borrowed or not, is differentiated as interest-bearing capital from itself as capital producing a net profit?

It is understood that not every accidental quantitative division of profit turns in this manner into a qualitative one. For instance, some industrial capitalists join hands to operate a business and then divide the profit among themselves in accordance with some legal agreement. Others do their business, each on his own, without any partners. These last do not calculate their profit under two heads — one part as individual profit, and the other as company profit for their non-existent partners. In this case the quantitative division therefore does not become a qualitative one. This occurs whenever ownership happens to be vested in several juridical persons. It does not occur whenever this is not the case.

In order to answer this question, we must dwell somewhat longer on the actual point of departure in the formation of interest; that is, we must proceed from the assumption that the money-capitalist and industrial capitalist really confront one another not just as legally different persons, but as persons playing entirely different roles in the reproduction process, or as persons in whose hands the same capital really performs a two-fold and wholly different movement. The one merely loans it, the other employs it productively.

For the productive capitalist who works on borrowed capital, the gross profit falls into two parts — the interest, which he is to pay the lender, and the surplus over and above the interest, which makes up his own share of the profit. If the general rate of profit is given, this latter portion is determined by the rate of interest; and if the rate of interest is given, then by the general rate of profit. And furthermore: however the gross profit, the actual value of the total profit, may diverge in each individual case from the average profit, the portion belonging to the functioning capitalist is determined by the interest, since this is fixed by the general rate of interest (leaving aside any special legal stipulations) and assumed to be given beforehand, before the process of production begins, hence before its result, the gross profit, is achieved. We have seen that the actual specific product of capital is surplus-value, or, more precisely, profit. But for the capitalist working on borrowed capital it is not profit, but profit minus interest, that portion of profit which remains to him after paying interest. This portion of the profit, therefore, necessarily appears to him to be the product of a capital as long as it is operative; and this it is, as far as he is concerned, because he represents capital only as functioning capital. He is its personification as long as it functions, and it functions as long as it is profitably invested in industry or commerce and such operations are undertaken with it through its employer as are prescribed by the branch of industry concerned. As distinct from interest, which he has to pay to the lender out of the gross profit, the portion of profit which falls to his share necessarily assumes the form of industrial or commercial profit, or, to use a German term embracing both, the form of Unternehmergewinn (profit of enterprise). If the gross profit equals the average profit, the size of the profit of enterprise is determined exclusively by the rate of interest. If the gross profit deviates from the average profit, its difference from the average profit (after interest is deducted from both) is determined by all the circumstances which cause a temporary deviation, be it of the rate of profit in any particular sphere from the general rate of profit, or the profit of some individual capitalist in a certain sphere from the average profit of this sphere. We have seen however that the rate of profit within the production process itself does not depend on surplus-value alone, but also on many other circumstances, such as purchase prices of means of production, methods more productive than the average, on savings of constant capital, etc. And aside from the price of production, it depends on special circumstances, and in every single business transaction on the greater or lesser shrewdness and industry of the capitalist, whether, and to what extent, he buys or sells above or below the price of production and thus appropriates a greater or smaller portion of the total surplus-value in the process of circulation. In any case, the quantitative division of the gross profit turns here into a qualitative one, and all the more so because the quantitative division itself depends on what is to be divided, the manner in which the active capitalist manages his capital, and what gross profit it yields to him as a functioning capital, i.e., in consequence of his functions as an active capitalist. The functioning capitalist is here assumed as a non-owner of capital. Ownership of the capital is represented in relation to him by the money-capitalist, the lender. The interest he pays to the latter thus appears as that portion of gross profit which is due to the ownership of capital as such. As distinct from this, that portion of profit which falls to the active capitalist appears now as profit of enterprise, deriving solely from the operations, or functions, which he performs with the capital in the process of reproduction, hence particularly those functions which he performs as entrepreneur in industry or commerce. In relation to him interest appears therefore as the mere fruit of owning capital, of capital as such abstracted from the reproduction process of capital, inasmuch as it does not "work,"; does not function; while profit of enterprise appears to him as the exclusive fruit of the functions which he performs with the capital, as the fruit of the movement and performance of capital, of a performance which appears to him as his own activity, as opposed to the inactivity, the non-participation of the money-capitalist in the production process. This qualitative distinction between the two portions of gross profit that interest is the fruit of capital as such, of the ownership of capital irrespective of the production process, and that profit of enterprise is the fruit of performing capital, of capital functioning in the production process, and hence of the active role played by the employer of the capital in the reproduction process — this qualitative distinction is by no means merely a subjective notion of the money-capitalist, on the one hand, and the industrial capitalist, on the other. It rests upon an objective fact, for interest flows to the money-capitalist, to the lender, who is the mere owner of capital, hence represents only ownership of capital before the production process and outside of it; while the profit of enterprise flows to the functioning capitalist alone, who is non-owner of the capital.

The merely quantitative division of the gross profit between two different persons who both have different legal claims to the same capital, and hence to the profit produced by it, thus turns into a qualitative division for both the industrial capitalist in so far as he is operating on borrowed capital, and for the money-capitalist, in so far as he does not himself apply his capital. One portion of the profit appears now as fruit due as such to capital in one form, as interest; the other portion appears as a specific fruit of capital in an opposite form, and thus as profit of enterprise. One appears exclusively as the fruit of operating with the capital, the fruit of performing capital, or of the functions performed by the active capitalist. And this ossification and individualisation of the two parts of the gross profit in respect to one another, as though they originated from two essentially different sources, now takes firm shape for the entire capitalist class and the total capital. And, indeed, regardless of whether the capital employed by the active capitalist is borrowed or not, and whether the capital belonging to the money-capitalist is employed by himself or not. The profit of every capital, and consequently also the average profit established by the equalisation of capitals, splits, or is separated, into two qualitatively different, mutually independent and separately individualised parts, to wit — interest and profit of enterprise — both of which are determined by separate laws. The capitalist operating on his own capital, like the one operating on borrowed capital, divides the gross profit into interest due to himself as owner, as his own lender, and into profit of enterprise due to him as to an active capitalist performing his function. As concerns this division, therefore, as a qualitative one, it is immaterial whether the capitalist really has to share with another, or not. The employer of capital, even when working with his own capital, splits into two personalities — the owner of capital and the employer of capital; with reference to the categories of profit which it yields, his capital also splits into capital-property, capital outside the production process, and yielding interest of itself, and capital in the production process which yields a profit of enterprise through its function.

Interest, therefore, becomes firmly established in a way that it no longer appears as a division of gross profit of indifference to production, which occurs occasionally when the industrial capitalist happens to operate with someone else's capital. His profit splits into interest and profit of enterprise even when he operates on his own capital. A merely quantitative division thus turns into a qualitative one. It occurs regardless of the fortuitous circumstance whether the industrial capitalist is, or is not, the owner of his capital. It is not only a matter of different quotas of profit assigned to different persons, but two different categories of profit which are differently related to the capital, hence related to different aspects of the capital.

Now that this division of gross profit into interest and profit of enterprise has become a qualitative one, it is easy to discover the reasons why it acquires this character of a qualitative division for the total capital and the entire class of capitalists.

Firstly, this follows from the simple empirical circumstance that the majority of industrial capitalists, even if in different numerical proportions, work with their own and with borrowed capital, and that at different times the proportion between one's own and borrowed capital changes.

Secondly, the transformation of a portion of the gross profit into the form of interest converts its other portion into profit of enterprise. The latter is, indeed, but the opposite form assumed by the excess of gross profit over interest as soon as this exists as an independent category. The entire analysis of the problem how gross profit is differentiated into interest and profit of enterprise, resolves itself into the inquiry of how a portion of the gross profit becomes universally ossified and individualised as interest. Yet historically interest-bearing capital existed as a completed traditional form, and hence interest as a completed sub-division of surplus-value produced by capital, long before the capitalist mode of production and its attendant conceptions of capital and profit. Thus it is that to the popular mind money-capital, or interest-bearing capital, is still capital as such, as capital par excellence. Thus it is, on the other hand, that up to the time of Massie the notion prevailed that it is money as such which is paid in interest. The fact that loaned capital yields interest whether actually employed as capital or not — even when borrowed only for consumption — lends strength to the idea that this form of capital exists independently. The best proof of the independence which interest possessed during the early periods of the capitalist mode of production in reference to profit, and which interest-bearing capital possessed in reference to industrial capital, is that it was discovered (by Massie [[J. Massie] An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest, London, 1750. — Ed.] and after him by Hume [D. Hume, "On Interest." In: "Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects," Vol. I, London, 1764. — Ed.] ) as late as the middle of the 18th century, that interest is but a portion of the gross profit, and that such a discovery was at all necessary.

Thirdly, whether the industrial capitalist operates on his own or on borrowed capital does not alter the fact that the class of money-capitalists confronts him as a special kind of capitalists, money-capital as an independent kind of capital, and interest as an independent form of surplus-value peculiar to this specific capital.

Qualitatively speaking, interest is surplus-value yielded by the mere ownership of capital; it is yielded by capital as such, even though its owner remains outside the reproduction process. Hence it is surplus-value realised by capital outside of its process.

Quantitatively speaking, that portion of profit which forms interest does not seem to be related to industrial or commercial capital as such, but to money-capital, and the rate of this portion of surplus-value, the rate of interest, reinforces this relation. Because, in the first place, the rate of interest is independently determined despite its dependence upon the general rate of profit, and, in the second place, like the market-price of commodities, it appears in contrast to the intangible rate of profit as a fixed, uniform, tangible and always given relation for all its variations. If all capital were in the hands of the industrial capitalists there would be no such thing as interest and rate of interest. The independent form assumed by the quantitative division of gross profit creates the qualitative one. If the industrial capitalist were to compare himself with the money-capitalist, it would be his profit of enterprise alone, the excess of his gross profit over the average interest — the latter appearing to be empirically given by virtue of the rate of interest — that would distinguish him from the other person. If, on the other hand, he compares himself with the industrial capitalist working with his own, instead of borrowed, capital, the latter differs from him only as a money-capitalist in pocketing the interest instead of paying it to someone else. The portion of gross profit distinguished from interest appears to him in either case as profit of enterprise, and interest itself as a surplus-value yielded by capital as such, which it would yield even if not applied productively.

This is correct in the practical sense for the individual capitalist. He has the choice of making use of his capital by lending it out as interest-bearing capital, or of expanding its value on his own by using it as productive capital, regardless of whether it exists as money-capital from the very first, or whether it still has to be converted into money-capital. But to apply it to the total capital of society, as some vulgar economists do, and to go so far as to define it as the cause of profit, is, of course, preposterous. The idea of converting all the capital into money-capital, without there being people who buy and put to use means of production, which make up the total capital outside of a relatively small portion of it existing in money, is, of course, sheer nonsense. It would be still more absurd to presume that capital would yield interest on the basis of capitalist production without performing any productive function, i.e., without creating surplus-value, of which interest is just a part; that the capitalist mode of production would run its course without capitalist production. If an untowardly large section of capitalists were to convert their capital into money-capital, the result would be a frightful depreciation of money-capital and a frightful fall in the rate of interest; many would at once face the impossibility of living on their interest, and would hence be compelled to reconvert into industrial capitalists. But we repeat that it is a fact for the individual capitalist. For this reason, even when operating with his own capital, he necessarily considers the part of his average profit which equals the average interest as fruit of his capital as such, set apart from the process of production; and as distinct from this portion singled out as interest, he considers the surplus of the gross profit as mere profit of enterprise.

Fourthly, [A blank in the manuscript].

We have seen, therefore, that the portion of profit which the functioning capitalist has to pay to the owner of borrowed capital is transformed into an independent form for a portion of the profit, which all capital as such, whether borrowed or not, yields under the name of interest. How large this portion is depends on the average rate of interest. Its origin is only still revealed in the fact that the functioning capitalist, when owner of his capital, does not compete — at least not actively — in determining the interest rate. The purely quantitative division of the profit between two persons who have different legal titles to it has turned into a qualitative division, which seems to spring from the very nature of capital and profit. Because, as we have seen, as soon as a portion of profit universally assumes the form of interest, the difference between average profit and interest, or the portion of profit over and above the interest, assumes a form opposite to interest — the form of profit of enterprise. These two forms, interest and profit of enterprise, exist only as opposites. Hence, they are not related to surplus-value, of which they are but parts placed under different categories, heads or names, but rather to one another. It is because one portion of profit turns into interest, that the other appears as profit of enterprise.

By profit we here always mean average profit, since variations do not concern us in this analysis, be they of individual profits or of profits in different spheres — hence variations caused by the competitive struggle and other circumstances affecting the distribution of the average profit, or surplus-value. This applies generally to this entire inquiry.

Interest is then net profit, as Ramsay calls it, which the ownership of capital yields as such, either simply to the lender, who remains outside the reproduction process, or to the owner who employs his capital productively. But in the latter's case, too, capital yields this net profit to him not in his capacity of productive capitalist, but of money-capitalist, of lender of his own capital as interest-bearing capital to himself as to a functioning capitalist. Just as the conversion of money, and of value in general, into capital is the constant result of capitalist production, so is its existence as capital its constant precondition. By its ability to be transformed into means of production it continually commands unpaid labour and thereby transforms the processes of production and circulation of commodities into the production of surplus-value for its owner. Interest is, therefore, the expression of the fact that value in general-materialised labour in its general social form-value which assumes the form of means of production in the actual process of production, confronts living labour-power as an independent power, and is a means of appropriating unpaid labour; and that it is such a power because it confronts the labourer as the property of another. But on the other hand, this antithesis to wage-labour is obliterated in the form of interest, because interest-bearing capital as such has not wage-labour, but productive capital for its opposite. The lending capitalist as such faces the capitalist performing his actual function in the process of reproduction, not the wage-worker, who, precisely under capitalist production, is expropriated of the means of production. Interest-bearing capital is capital as property as distinct from capital as a function. But so long as capital does not perform its function, it does not exploit labourers and does not come into opposition to labour.

On the other hand, profit of enterprise is not related as an opposite to wage-labour, but only to interest.

Firstly, assuming the average profit to be given, the rate of the profit of enterprise is not determined by wages, but by the rate of interest. It is high or low in inverse proportion to it[1]

Secondly, the functioning capitalist derives his claim to profits of enterprise, hence the profit of enterprise itself, not from his ownership of capital, but from the function of capital, as distinct from the definite form in which it is only inert property. This stands out as an immediately apparent contrast whenever he operates with borrowed capital, and interest and profit of enterprise therefore go to different persons. The profit of enterprise springs from the function of capital in the reproduction process, hence as a result of the operations, the acts by which the functioning capitalist promotes this function of industrial and commercial capital. But to represent functioning capital is not a sinecure, like representing interest-bearing capital. On the basis of capitalist production, the capitalist directs the process of production and circulation. Exploiting productive labour entails exertion, whether he exploits it himself or has it exploited by someone else on his behalf. Therefore, his profit of enterprise appears to him as distinct from interest, as independent of the ownership of capital, but rather as the result of his function as a non-proprietor — a labourer.

He necessarily conceives the idea for this reason that his profit of enterprise, far from being counterposed to wage-labour and far from being the unpaid labour of others, is itself rather a wage or wages of superintendence of labour, higher than a common labourer's, 1) because the work is far more complicated, and 2) because he pays them to himself. The fact that his function as a capitalist consists in creating surplus-value, i.e., unpaid labour, and creating it under the most economical conditions, is entirely lost sight of in the contrast that interest falls to the share of the capitalist even when he does not perform the function of a capitalist and is merely the owner of capital; and that, on the other hand, profit of enterprise does fall to the share of the functioning capitalist even when he is not the owner of the capital on which he operates. He forgets, due to the antithetical form of the two parts into which profit, hence surplus-value, is divided, that both are merely parts of the surplus-value, and that this division alters nothing in the nature, origin, and way of existence of surplus-value.

In the process of reproduction the functioning capitalist represents capital as the property of another vis-à-vis the wage-labourers, and the money-capitalist, represented by the functioning capitalist, takes a hand in exploiting labour. The fact that the investing capitalist can perform his function of making the labourers work for him, or of employing means of production as capital, only as the personification of the means of production vis-à-vis the labourers, is forgotten in the contradiction between the function of capital in the reproduction process and the mere ownership of capital outside of the reproduction process.

In fact, the form of interest and profit of enterprise assumed by the two parts of profit, i.e., of surplus-value, expresses no relation to labour, because this relation exists only between labour and profit, or rather the surplus-value as a sum, a whole, the unity of these two parts. The proportion in which the profit is divided, and the different legal titles by which this division is sanctioned, are based on the assumption that profit is already in existence. If, therefore, the capitalist is the owner of the capital on which he operates, he pockets the whole profit, or surplus-value. It is absolutely immaterial to the labourer whether the capitalist does this, or whether he has to pay a part of it to a third person as its legal proprietor. The reasons for dividing the profit among two kinds of capitalists thus turn imperceptibly into the reasons for the existence of the profit, the surplus-value, that is to be divided, and which capital as such derives from the reproduction process regardless of any subsequent division. Since interest is opposed to profit of enterprise, and profit of enterprise to interest, and since they are both counterposed to one another, but not to labour, it follows that profit of enterprise plus interest, i.e., profit, and further surplus-value, are derived — from what? From the antithetical form of its two parts! But profit is produced before its division is undertaken, and before there can be any thought of it.

Interest-bearing capital remains as such only so long as the loaned money is actually converted into capital and a surplus is produced with it, of which interest is a part. But this does not rule out that drawing interest, regardless of the process of production, is its organic property. So does labour-power preserve its property of producing value only so long as it is employed and materialised in the labour-process; yet this does not argue against the fact that it is potentially, as a power, an activity which creates value, and that as such it does not spring from the process of production, but rather antecedes it. It is bought as such a capacity for creating value. One might also buy it without setting it to work productively; for purely personal ends, for instance, for personal services, etc. The same applies to capital. It is the borrower's affair whether he employs it as capital, hence actually sets in motion its inherent property of producing surplus-value. What he pays for, is in either case the potential surplus-value inherently contained in capital as a commodity.

Let us now consider profit of enterprise in greater detail.

Since the specific social attribute of capital under capitalist production — that of being property commanding the labour-power of another — becomes fixed, so that interest appears as a part of surplus-value produced by capital in this interrelation, the other part of surplus-value — profit of enterprise — must necessarily appear as coming not from capital as such, but from the process of production, separated from its specific social attribute, whose distinct mode of existence is already expressed by the term interest on capital. But the process of production, separated from capital, is simply a labour-process. Therefore, the industrial capitalist, as distinct from the owner of capital, does not appear as operating capital, but rather as a functionary irrespective of capital, or, as a simple agent of the labour-process in general, as a labourer, and indeed as a wage-labourer.

Interest as such expresses precisely the existence of the conditions of labour as capital, in their social antithesis to labour, and in their transformation into personal power vis-à-vis and over labour. It represents the ownership of capital as a means of appropriating the products of the labour of others. But it represents this characteristic of capital as something which belongs to it outside the production process and by no means is the result of the specifically capitalist attribute of this production process itself. Interest represents this characteristic not as directly counterposed to labour, but rather as unrelated to labour, and simply as a relationship of one capitalist to another. Hence, as an attribute outside of and irrelevant to the relation of capital to labour. In interest, therefore, in that specific form of profit in which the antithetical character of capital assumes an independent form, this is done in such a way that the antithesis is completely obliterated and abstracted. Interest is a relationship between two capitalists, not between capitalist and labourer.

On the other hand, this form of interest lends the other portion of profit the qualitative form of profit of enterprise, and further of wages of superintendence. The specific functions which the capitalist as such has to perform, and which fall to him as distinct from and opposed to the labourer, are presented as mere functions of labour. He creates surplus-value not because he works as a capitalist, but because he also works, regardless of his capacity of capitalist. This portion of surplus-value is thus no longer surplus-value, but its opposite, an equivalent for labour performed. Due to the alienated character of capital, its antithesis to labour, being relegated to a place outside the actual process of exploitation, namely to the interest-bearing capital, this process of exploitation itself appears as a simple labour-process in which the functioning capitalist merely performs a different kind of labour than the labourer. So that the labour of exploiting and the exploited labour both appear identical as labour. The labour of exploiting is just as much labour as exploited labour. The social form of capital falls to interest, but expressed in a neutral and indifferent form. The economic function of capital falls to profit of enterprise, but abstracted from the specific capitalist character of this function.

The same thing passes through the mind of the capitalist in this case as in the case of the reasons indicated in Part II of this book for compensation in the equalisation to average profit. These reasons for compensation which enter the distribution of surplus-value as determinants are distorted in a capitalist's mind to appear as bases of origin and the (subjective) justifications of profit itself.

The conception of profit of enterprise as the wages of supervising labour, arising from the antithesis of profit of enterprise to interest, is further strengthened by the fact that a portion of profit may, indeed, be separated, and is separated in reality, as wages, or rather the reverse, that a portion of wages appears under capitalist production as integral part of profit. This portion, as Adam Smith correctly deduced, presents itself in pure form, independently and wholly separated from profit (as the sum of interest and profit of enterprise), on the one hand, and on the other, from that portion of profit which remains, after interest is deducted, as profit of enterprise in the salary of management of those branches of business whose size, etc., permits of a sufficient division of labour to justify a special salary for a manager.

The labour of supervision and management is naturally required wherever the direct process of production assumes the form of a combined social process, and not of the isolated labour of independent producers.[2] However, it has a double nature.

On the one hand, all labour in which many individuals co-operate necessarily requires a commanding will to co-ordinate and unify the process, and functions which apply not to partial operations but to the total activity of the workshop, much as that of an orchestra conductor. This is a productive job, which must be performed in every combined mode of production.

On the other hand — quite apart from any commercial department — this supervision work necessarily arises in all modes of production based on the antithesis between the labourer, as the direct producer, and the owner of the means of production. The greater this antagonism, the greater the role played by supervision. Hence it reaches its peak in the slave system.[3] But it is indispensable also in the capitalist mode of production, since the production process in it is simultaneously a process by which the capitalist consumes labour-power. Just as in despotic states, supervision and all-round interference by the government involves both the performance of common activities arising from the nature of all communities, and the specific functions arising from the antithesis between the government and the mass of the people.

In the works of ancient writers, who had the slave system before them, both sides of the work of supervision are as inseparably combined in theory as they were in practice. Likewise in the works of modern economists, who regard the capitalist mode of production as absolute. On the other hand, as I shall presently illustrate with an example, the apologists of the modern slave system utilise the work of supervision quite as much as a justification of slavery, as the other economists do to justify the wage system.

The villicus in Cato's time:

"At the head of the estate with slave economy (familia rustica) stands the manager (villicus, derived from villa), who receives and expends, buys and sells, takes instructions from the master, in whose absence he gives orders and metes out punishment.... The manager naturally had more freedom of action than the other slaves; the Magonian books advise that he be permitted to marry, raise children, and have his own funds, and Cato recommends that he be married to the female manager; he alone probably had the prospect of winning his freedom from the master in the event of good behaviour. As for the rest, all formed a common household.... Every slave, including the manager himself, was supplied his necessities at his master's expense at definite intervals and fixed rates, and had to get along on them... The quantity varied in accordance with labour, which is why the manager, for example, whose work was lighter than the other slaves', received a smaller ration than they."; (Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, 2nd ed., 1856, 1, pp. 809-10.)

Aristotle:

"O gar despothz ouc en ktasqai touz doulouz, allen tw crhqaiu oulouz." ("For the master" — the capitalist — "proves himself such not by obtaining slaves" — ownership of capital which gives him power to buy labour-power — "but in employing slaves" — using labourers, nowadays wage-labourers, in the production process.) "Esti de auth h episthmh ouden mega ecousa oude semnon." ("But there is nothing great or sublime about this science.") "a gar ton doulon epistasqai dei poiein eceinon dei tauta epistasq ai epitattein." "But whatever the slave must be able to perform, the master must be able to order.") "Dio osoiz exousia mh autouz cacopaqein epistopoz lambanei tau- thn thn timhn, autoi de politeuontai h filosofosin." ("Whenever the masters are not compelled to plague themselves with supervision, the manager assumes this honour, while the masters attend to affairs of state or study philosophy.") (Aristotle, De republica, Bekker edition, Book I, 7.)

Aristotle says in just so many words that supremacy in the political and economic fields imposes the functions of government upon the ruling powers, and hence that they must, in the economic field, know the art of consuming labour-power. And he adds that this supervisory work is not a matter of great moment and that for this reason the master leaves the "honour" of this drudgery to an overseer as soon as he can afford it. The work of management and supervision — so far as it is not a special function determined by the nature of all combined social labour, but rather by the antithesis between the owner of means of production and the owner of mere labour-power, regardless of whether this labour-power is purchased by buying the labourer himself, as it is under the slave system, or whether the labourer himself sells his labour-power, so that the production process also appears as a process by which capital consumes his labour — this function arising out of the servitude of the direct producers has all too often been quoted to justify this relationship. And exploitation, the appropriation of the unpaid labour of others, has quite as often been represented as the reward justly due to the owner of capital for his work; but never better than by a champion of slavery in the United States, a lawyer named O'Connor, at a meeting held in New York on December 19, 1859, under the slogan of "Justice for the South."

"Now, gentlemen," he said amid thunderous applause, "to that condition of bondage the Negro is assigned by Nature... He has strength, and has the power to labour; but the Nature which created the power denied to him either the intellect to govern, or willingness to work." (Applause.) "Both were denied to him. And that Nature which deprived him of the will to labour, gave him a master to coerce that will, and to make him a useful... servant in the clime in which he was capable of living useful for himself and for the master who governs him... I maintain that it is not injustice to leave the Negro in the condition in which Nature placed him, to give him a master to govern him ... nor is it depriving him of any of his rights to compel him to labour in return, and afford to that master just compensation for the labour and talent employed in governing him and rendering him useful to himself and to the society." [New York Daily Tribune, November 20, 1859, pp. 7-8. — Ed]

Now, the wage-labourer, like the slave, must have a master who puts him to work and rules over him. And assuming the existence of this relationship of lordship and servitude, it is quite proper to compel the wage-labourer to produce his own wages and also the wages of supervision, as compensation for the labour of ruling and supervising him, or

"just compensation for the labour and talent employed in governing him and rendering him useful to himself and to the society."

The labour of supervision and management, arising as it does out of an antithesis, out of the supremacy of capital over labour, and being therefore common to all modes of production based on class contradictions like the capitalist mode, is directly and inseparably connected, also under the capitalist system, with productive functions which all combined social labour assigns to individuals as their special tasks. The wages of an epitropos, or régisseur, as he was called in feudal France, are entirely divorced from profit and assume the form of wages for skilled labour whenever the business is operated on a sufficiently large scale to warrant paying for such a manager, although, for all that, our industrial capitalists are far from "attending to affairs of state or studying philosophy."

It has already been remarked by Mr. Ure[4] that it is not the industrial capitalists, but the industrial managers who are "the soul of our industrial system." Whatever concerns the commercial part of an establishment we have already said all that is necessary in the preceding part.

The capitalist mode of production has brought matters to a point where the work of supervision, entirely divorced from the ownership of capital, is always readily obtainable. It has, therefore, come to be useless for the capitalist to perform it himself. An orchestra conductor need not own the instruments of his orchestra, nor is it within the scope of his duties as conductor to have anything to do with the "wages" of the other musicians. Co-operative factories furnish proof that the capitalist has become no less redundant as a functionary in production as he himself, looking down from his high perch, finds the big landowner redundant. Inasmuch as the capitalist's work does not originate in the purely capitalistic process of production, and hence does not cease on its own when capital ceases; inasmuch as it does not confine itself solely to the function of exploiting the labour of others; inasmuch as it therefore originates from the social form of the labour-process, from combination and co-operation of many in pursuance of a common result, it is just as independent of capital as that form itself as soon as it has burst its capitalistic shell. To say that this labour is necessary as capitalistic labour, or as a function of the capitalist, only means that the vulgus is unable to conceive the forms developed in the lap of capitalist production, separate and free from their antithetical capitalist character. The industrial capitalist is a worker, compared to the money-capitalist, but a worker in the sense of capitalist, i.e., an exploiter of the labour of others. The wage which he claims and pockets for this labour is exactly equal to the appropriated quantity of another's labour and depends directly upon the rate of exploitation of this labour, in so far as he undertakes the effort required for exploitation; it does not, however, depend on the degree of exertion that such exploitation demands, and which he can shift to a manager for moderate pay. After every crisis there are enough ex-manufacturers in the English factory districts who will supervise, for low wages, what were formerly their own factories in the capacity of managers of the new owners, who are frequently their creditors.[5]

The wages of management both for the commercial and industrial manager are completely isolated from the profits of enterprise in the co-operative factories of labourers, as well as in capitalist stock companies. The separation of wages of management from profits of enterprise, purely accidental at other times, is here constant. In a co-operative factory the antagonistic nature of the labour of supervision disappears, because the manager is paid by the labourers instead of representing capital counterposed to them. Stock companies in general — developed with the credit system — have an increasing tendency to separate this work of management as a function from the ownership of capital, be it self-owned or borrowed. Just as the development of bourgeois society witnessed a separation of the functions of judges and administrators from land-ownership, whose attributes they were in feudal times. But since, on the one hand, the mere owner of capital, the money-capitalist, has to face the functioning capitalist, while money-capital itself assumes a social character with the advance of credit, being concentrated in banks and loaned out by them instead of its original owners, and since, on the other hand, the mere manager who has no title whatever to the capital, whether through borrowing it or otherwise, performs all the real functions pertaining to the functioning capitalist as such, only the functionary remains and the capitalist disappears as superfluous from the production process.

It is manifest from the public accounts of the co-operative factories in England[6] that — after deducting the manager's wages, which form a part of the invested variable capital much the same as wages of other labourers — the profit was higher than the average profit, although at times they paid a much higher interest than did private manufacturers. The source of greater profits in all these cases was greater economy in the application of constant capital. What interests us in this, however, is the fact that here the average profit ( = interest + profit of enterprise) presents itself actually and palpably as a magnitude wholly independent of the wages of management. Since the profit was higher here than average profit, the profit of enterprise was also higher than usual.

The same situation is observed in relation to some capitalist stock companies, such as joint-stock banks. The London and Westminster Bank paid an annual dividend of 30% in 1863, while the Union Bank of London and others paid 15%. Aside from the directors' salary the interest paid for deposits is here deducted from gross profit. The high profit is to be explained here by the moderate proportion of paid-in capital to deposits. For instance, in the case of the London and Westminster Bank, in 1863: paid-in capital, £1,000,000; deposits, £14,540,275. As for the Union Bank of London, in 1863: paid-in capital, £600,000; deposits, £12,384,173.

Profit of enterprise and wages of supervision, or management, were confused originally due to the antagonistic form assumed in respect to interest by the surplus of profit. This was further promoted by the apologetic aim of representing profit not as a surplus-value derived from unpaid labour, but as the capitalist's wages for work performed by him. This was met on the part of socialists by a demand to reduce profit actually to what it pretended to be theoretically, namely, mere wages of supervision. And this demand was all the more obnoxious to theoretical embellishment, the more these wages of supervision, like any other wage, found their definite level and definite market-price, on the one hand, with the development of a numerous class of industrial and commercial managers,[7] and the more they fell, on the other, like all wages for skilled labour, with the general development which reduces the cost of production of specially trained labour-power.[8] With the development of co-operation on the part of the labourers, and of stock enterprises on the part of the bourgeoisie, even the last pretext for the confusion of profit of enterprise and wages of management was removed, and profit appeared also in practice as it undeniably appeared in theory, as mere surplus-value, a value for which no equivalent was paid, as realised unpaid labour. It was then seen that the functioning capitalist really exploits labour, and that the fruit of his exploitation, when working with borrowed capital, was divided into interest and profit of enterprise, a surplus of profit over interest.

On the basis of capitalist production a new swindle develops in stock enterprises with respect to wages of management, in that boards of numerous managers or directors are placed above the actual director, for whom supervision and management serve only as a pretext to plunder the stockholders and amass wealth. Very curious details concerning this are to be found in The City or the Physiology of London Business; with Sketches on Change, and the Coffee Houses, London, 1845.

"What bankers and merchants gain by the direction of eight or nine different companies, may be seen from the following illustration: The private balance sheet of Mr. Timothy Abraham Curtis, presented to the Court of Bankruptcy when that gentleman failed, exhibited a sample of the income netted from directorship ... between £800 and £900 a year. Mr. Curtis having been associated with the Courts of the Bank of England, and the East India House, it was considered quite a plum for a public company to acquire his services in the boardroom" (pp. 81, 82).

The remuneration of the directors of such companies for each weekly meeting is at least one guinea. The proceedings of the Court of Bankruptcy show that these wages of supervision were, as a rule, inversely proportional to the actual supervision performed by these nominal directors.

  1. ↑ "The profits of enterprise depend upon the net profits of capital, not the latter upon the former." (Ramsay, Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, p. 214. For Ramsay net profits always mean interest.)
  2. ↑ "Superintendence is here" (in the case of the farm owner) "completely dispensed with." (J. E. Cairnes, The Slave Power, London, 1862, p. 48.)
  3. ↑ "If the nature of the work requires that the workmen" (viz., the slaves) "should be dispersed over an extended area, the number of overseers, and, therefore, the cost of the labour which requires this supervision, will be proportionately increased." (Cairnes, 1. c., p. 44.)
  4. ↑ A. Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures, French translation, 1836, I, p. 67, where this Pindar of the manufacturers at the same time testifies that most manufacturers have not the slightest understanding of the mechanism which they set in motion.
  5. ↑ In a case known to me, following the crisis of 1868, a bankrupt manufacturer became the paid wage-labourer of his own former labourers. The factory was operated after the bankruptcy of its owner by a labourers' co-operative, and its former owner was employed as manager. — F. E.
  6. ↑ The accounts quoted here go no further than 1864, since the above was written in 1865. — F. E.
  7. ↑ "Masters are labourers as well as their journeymen. In this character their interest is precisely the same as that of their men. But they are also either capitalists, or the agents of the capitalists, and in this respect their interest is decidedly opposed to the interests of the workmen." (p. 27). "The wide spread of education among the journeymen mechanics of this country diminishes daily the value of the labour and skill of almost all masters and employers by increasing the number of persons who possess their peculiar knowledge" (p. 30, Hodgskin, Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital, etc., London, 1825).
  8. ↑ "The general relaxation of conventional barriers, the increased facilities of education tend to bring down the wages of skilled labour instead of raising those of the unskilled." (J. St. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 2nd ed., London, 1849, I, p. 479.)
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