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Manga answers why machines do not create profit
(lemmygrad.ml)
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this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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Is it because you can't underpay a machine?
The machine only outputs the value you put into it, since it's constant capital. 5G worth of raw materials produces 5G worth of transformed material. 10G produces 10G, etc. You can make your machines faster and more efficient but they will still output exactly what you put into them, hence the rate of profit falls because 5G for 1 item suddenly turns into 3G, then 2G, then 1G as technology progresses. But the machine will still output 3G of transformed material for 3G of raw material (constant capital).
The human worker on the other hand is paid the same for producing more. Hence if it costs 10G to produce one item, you might reasonably think "oh then if I double production, I will be paying 20G per item produced!" but no, it costs you only 19G -- the human is still paid 1G whether he produces one item, two items, or three items. Therein lies profit, the value created by human labour which we call surplus value.
But if this is the case, then what good are machines at all? If they only output the same value that went into them, then wouldn't that make them entirely superfluous? I can understand that human labor is always required in addition to any machine, but surely machines still do increase the value of the material input? And more so the more efficient you make that machine, otherwise what would it even mean to make it more efficient?
The machine increases the exploitation of the worker by reducing the amount of labor hours it takes to make a thing.
For a simple example suppose holes in the ground have a value, if a capitalist pays a worker to dig holes and the worker can dig 1 hole an hour with a shovel but 2 with an excavator then while paying for the same 1 hour of work the worker will create twice the value for the capitalist.
But really the distinction is mostly semantic and it doesn't matter much whether Marx was right and the machines create no value or some other economists were right and it takes machines/tools as well as labor to create value hardly matter because either way the capitalist brings nothing to the table.