READ AND DISCUSS:

ASINAMALI! The bosses’ arguments exposed (South African Labour Education Project, 1981) ⁴⁵

“The boss buys the worker's labour-power – for a day, for a week, for a month, as the case may be. That is the so-called 'contract' of employment. The boss and the worker 'agree' on a price for the worker's labour-power. That is the amount of the wage. Workers enter the 'contract' of employment with the bosses; under very obvious disadvantages. Workers have no property to sustain them. Poverty, hunger, pressing needs drive them into whatever jobs they can get. At the same time, the state and the bosses conspire together to keep the workers’ bargaining position weak.

The result is that wages tend to remain at the lowest level necessary to keep the working class alive - to keep the workers capable of working and to replace them with other workers when they become too, old or sick for work, or when they die. At times of high unemployment, when many workers are forced to compete with each other for very few jobs, the bosses may be able for a while to force wages even below this level. At other times, when the pressure of unemployment eases, and when the workers' organisations are strong, it may be possible for a while to force wages above the level of bare survival. But, as workers in South Africa have found from long experience, wages tend to remain around the breadline. Thus workers, who have spent a lifetime in toil, have seen their employers prosper while they themselves stay poor.

This is in the nature of the capitalist system. Workers are paid wages - the price for selling their labour-power. But they are not paid according to the wealth their labour produces. That wealth becomes the property of the capitalists.

Let us take the example of a garment factory. This is only an example - the same process takes place in the motor industry, in mining, and in every industrial workplace where workers are toiling for the bosses. In this garment factory (let us say) 20 workers work a 10-hour day. During each day, they make up 200 completed garments, which the boss sells off at R5 each. So, at the end of each day, the boss sells 200 garments and gets R1000 in exchange. This R1000 represents the value of the garments.

How is this R1000 in the pocket of the employer made up? If R500 worth of cloth, cotton and so on has been used up in the day's production of garments, and the wear-and-tear on the machinery has amounted to R100, we can see that R600 of the R1000 in the boss's pocket represents the earlier labour of workers who produced sewing machines, cloth, cotton, and so on. But that still leaves R400 out of the R1000 to account for. This R400 comes directly from the day's labour of the workers in the boss's garment factory itself. Through their toil in the process of production, these 20 garment workers have added R400 to the value of the raw materials and machinery which have gone into the making of the garments.

Let us say the boss pays these workers R6 a day each. His daily wage bill will be 20 X R6, or R120 altogether. But these workers have produced R400 in value. The difference - R280 - is profit for the boss. It represents labour of the workers for which they receive no pay.

In other words, in a 10-hour day, the garment workers have added R400 in value but have 'earned' only R120 in return. Clearly, they have spent only part of the working day producing the value of their own wages. If the workers create R400 in value during 10 hours' work, they create R40 every hour. The total of their day's wages, R120, is therefore produced in only 3 hours' work. For, the remaining 7 hours of every working day, the workers in our example are working 'free' for the boss. They spend these seven hours performing unpaid or 'surplus' labour (that is to say, labour over and above the labour needed to cover their own wages) and producing 'surplus' value (that is to say, value over and above the value of their own wages). This is where profit comes from - the unpaid labour of the workers. This is what capitalist exploitation consists of.

In the workers' vital fight for higher wages and shorter hours; the time spent working 'free' for the bosses may be reduced, while the part of the working day that they spend working for their own benefit, may be increased. The rate of exploitation may be reduced in this way. But it is obvious that exploitation will nevertheless continue as long as capitalism survives. As long as factories, mines, land and banks are privately owned, workers will have to go on selling their working power to bosses. They will have to go on working part of every day, not for their own benefit and that of society, but for the profits' of the owners. They will have to go on being exploited day by day.

Exploitation can be ended only when the profit system is ended; when the capitalists are overthrown and dispossessed; when the means of production are taken into common ownership under workers’ control and management; and when all the working people enjoy collectively the fruits of their labour, developing production and building the economy for the common good. The whole trade union movement should clearly see that as the goal of the struggle. Then every small gain, every increase in wages, every reduction in working hours, every lessening of exploitation at the hands of the bosses, will be fought for, defended and used by the workers as a step in the struggle for complete emancipation of the working class.”

Reading the example produced by SALEP in their 1980s pamphlet ‘Asinamali’ [meaning ‘We have no money’],

1. In apartheid South Africa – as in other capitalist societies where workers are super-exploited and their collective organisation repressed,

At what minimum level does the pamphlet suggest workers’ wages are set under capitalism, if the bosses are able to get away with it?

2. Check through the numbers for yourself showing that the bosses’ daily profit is 280 Rand. [For these worked examples, the cost of any rent and interest payments have been excluded]. Now:

(a) Try calculating the profit in a different way - by looking at the boss’s costs: R500 (raw materials) + R100 (machinery) + R120 (wages) against a sales income of R1000. Show that this still gives a profit of R280.

(b) If 20 workers are producing R400 of new value a day, then one worker is producing R20 of new value individually in their ten-hour working day. But the worker is only paid R6 a day. Can you again show that the worker is therefore working 3 hours a day to cover their own wages, and 7 hours a day as unpaid labour for their boss?

(c) After a bitter trade union struggle, the garment workers win a pay rise to R7 a day. The workers return to the same level of production as before and the boss, competing with other capitalist firms, still has to sell the garments produced at R5 each. The workers still produce R400 in new value a day, so what else has changed? Show that the wage rise just means that the bosses’ profit is now ‘only’ R260 a day.

(d) The factory owner now decides to invest in new, quicker, machines. The 20 workers – at their new pay of R7 a day – can now produce 220 garments a day, instead of just 200. So, the boss can now increase their sales income to R1100. They will use up more cloth, so raw material costs will rise, say to R550. The increased outlay on machinery will mean that the value of the machines transferred to the finished garments will go up from R100 to, say, R110. Show that the investment means the workers now produce R440 in new value a day, so that their boss can now make a profit of R300 a day.

(e) Can you see from the examples above why Marxists explain that (i) wage rises don’t cause inflation, they just cut profits; (ii) capitalism encourages reinvestment in new techniques to increase overall profit – although, over time, that creates a tendency for more of their profits to be tied up in the costs of machinery.

3. What does the pamphlet put forward as the only way to make sure the exploitation of the working class at the hands of capitalist bosses is ended once and for all?