PROCEEDINGS
OF THE TOMSK POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
OF THE ORDER OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION
AND THE ORDER OF THE RED BANNER OF LABOR
named after S. M. Kirov

Volume 255                                                                                     1972

THE INFLUENCE OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS

ON THE RATIO OF NECESSARY TO SURPLUS

LABOR UNDER SOCIALISM

N. G. SMIRNOV

(Presented to the scientific seminar of the Department of Political Economy)

Scientific and technological progress, being a form of movement and development of the productive forces, is always realized within a definite social form of production. In studying the social impulses of scientific and technological progress, one should proceed from the duality of the social goal of this progress. On the one hand, the development of science and technology makes it possible to satisfy various needs ever more fully and in more diverse ways, and makes it possible to produce a greater quantity of products with smaller expenditures. On the other hand, this absolutely useful result of technical progress actually takes place if it corresponds to the goal of the social form of production within whose framework it is carried out.

A comprehensive analysis of the dependence of the increase in the productive power of labor on the social form of production was given by K. Marx in Chapter 13 of the first volume of Capital. Considering the questions of the formation and development of capitalist production relations, he arrived at a strictly scientific conclusion: a given social system can be based not on just any productive forces, but only on definite ones, capable of developing and developing according to laws adequate to that system. The maximization of surplus labor and, consequently, of surplus value—such is the indispensable condition and determining requirement imposed on scientific and technological progress by this social form of production.

Emphasizing the direct connection between the development and application of machines and the production relations concerning the division of labor into necessary and surplus labor, K. Marx pointed out that “the characteristic feature of the application of machines is the saving of necessary labor …”

and the creation of surplus labor”¹. It is precisely this characteristic that is the key which makes it possible to approach correctly the disclosure of the social conditions and incentives of scientific and technological progress.

For socialism, the economic problems of scientific and technological progress—especially questions concerning the application of its results in production—are likewise in close unity with the division of labor into necessary and surplus labor.

At first glance it may seem that, with the establishment of social ownership and the corresponding change in the goal of production, such a connection loses its significance and ceases actively to affect the development of society’s productive forces. And indeed, socialism, as a fundamentally new system of production relations, creates unprecedented scope for scientific and technological creativity and for the application of its results in production. Society as a whole, acting as a single producer, is vitally interested in the most rapid assimilation of the achievements of science and technology, in raising the productive power of social labor, and in reducing the costs of producing a unit of product.

On this basis, the law of the use of machines under socialism—or, as it is also called, the “criterion of the economic expediency of introducing technology”—is not an increase in the mass of surplus labor, but a reduction in the costs per unit of product and the easing of the worker’s labor. The correctness of such a conclusion is beyond doubt. Marx already drew attention to the fact that “if machines are considered exclusively as a means of cheapening the product, then the limit to their employment is determined by the fact that the labor which their production costs must be less than the labor which is replaced by their employment”².

However, in such a general form the specific character of the influence of the production relations of socialism on the process of replacing living labor with objectified labor is not fully reflected.

Under socialism, the economically separate cost-accounting enterprise acts as the directly managing subject. And although it is only an individual link in production organized according to plan, its interests may, to some extent, not coincide with the interests of society. This difference of interests is embedded in production itself and is above all a direct consequence of the division of labor into necessary and surplus labor. It leads to the preservation of an objective basis for the existence of two measures of the costs of producing a unit of product: the costs of society and the costs of the cost-accounting enterprise. Quantitatively, these magnitudes are not equal to one another, which must of natural necessity give rise to different criteria for evaluating the application of the achievements of science and technology at the level of society and at the level of the enterprise. If society can and must, in this case, proceed from the standpoint of conserving the total mass of all living labor it employs, then the enterprise’s approach is inevitably confined to that part of living labor which is paid from the funds of the cost-accounting enterprise. Under these conditions, by no means every saving of living labor at the enterprise level can be regarded as economically advantageous and expedient. From this conclusion it follows with sufficient obviousness that, for socialism as well, the socio-economic conditions and limits of the use in the national economy of the results of scientific and technological pro—

progress are closely connected with the production relation concerning necessary and surplus labor.

That is why, as it seems to us, the specificity of the socialist law of the application of machines cannot be seen in the fact that here its connection with surplus labor is completely severed. It is preserved, but it acquires a new content and a different social significance in comparison with the preceding capitalist system.

The influence of the production relation concerning necessary and surplus labor on scientific and technological progress, and the reverse effect of the application of machines on this relation, can be understood only as a result of disclosing the essence of the categories of necessary and surplus labor under socialism.

Necessary and surplus labor are a social characteristic of labor, of its economic form. And by virtue of this social nature of theirs they cannot be derived from the labor process itself as a physical process of interaction between man and nature. Special attention should be paid to this important methodological aspect of the question, since in most cases the proposition that the categories of necessary and surplus labor are categories of production, and not of distribution, is argued as follows: in the labor process the worker’s vital energy is expended; this energy can be restored only by consuming a quite definite quantity of means of subsistence. Therefore the labor that ensures the reproduction of labor power is necessary labor, and that beyond it is surplus labor.

What is misleading in this logic is the obviousness and incontestability of the fact that the expenditure of human energy must be compensated, since otherwise his participation in the repetition of the labor process becomes physically impossible. But the whole point is that this circumstance has practically no relation whatever to the problem of necessary and surplus labor. The possibility of expending labor beyond the measure required for the current reproduction of labor power can and does in reality serve only as the material basis for the division of labor into necessary and surplus labor; but in itself, all else being equal, it says nothing about whether labor actually breaks down into these two parts or not.

The constitutive feature of the division of labor into necessary and surplus labor is the separation, in one form or another, of the direct producer from ownership of the means of production. Moreover, for the emergence of this division it is completely immaterial who is the bearer of this ownership: a private person or a cooperation of persons distinct from the worker himself, or society as a whole. The first law of property, as K. Marx called it—the law of the identity of labor and property—was characteristic of the primitive state of the productive forces. Therefore primitive society did not know the production relation concerning necessary and surplus labor, since it had no material basis for such a division; small commodity production does not know it, because in it there is no separation of ownership of the means of production from the producer himself. All other types of social organization of production in one way or another presuppose the absence of a direct economic connection between the worker and the means of production as his own. The historical progress of the productive forces destroyed the law of the identity of labor and property, replacing it with the law of the opposition of labor and property.

At first glance it seems that the dialectic of development is such that, with the establishment of social ownership, we again return to the unity, to the identity of these moments. In actual fact, however, the logic of development leads not simply to a return to the initial state, but to the formation of a new quality, which synthesizes within itself elements both of the unity and of the opposition of labor and ownership. If socialism is considered only from the standpoint of the first law of ownership, then there remain no grounds for speaking of socialist society as an independent subject of production relations. Therefore, in our view, it is legitimate to speak of this synthesis as a third law of ownership.

Taking into account this profound feature of socialist production relations, socialism can be correctly understood as an association of working people who work for themselves, in the name of the common good, and whose labor at the same time is divided into necessary labor and surplus labor. However, in order to clarify the character of the effect of the division of labor (necessary and surplus) on scientific and technological progress, it is not enough to ascertain the objective nature of this relation. It is precisely here that the laws governing the formation of the quantitative characteristics of both these forms of labor acquire decisive significance.

If one proceeds from the labor process only as a physical process, then the objective magnitude of necessary labor is placed in direct connection with the expenditures that restore, for the given process, the worker’s capacity for labor, while surplus labor always remains a residual magnitude, appearing as the difference between the entire mass of living labor and necessary labor. But since the relation under consideration itself can be derived not from the labor process proper, but from the social form of production, this is equally true of the quantitative measure that defines one part of labor as necessary and the other as surplus.

From a historical approach to the boundaries of the necessary product in different socio-economic systems it becomes clear that, strictly speaking, only the system of wage labor, having turned labor power into a commodity, reduced these boundaries to the costs of reproduction of labor power, since the value of any commodity is determined by the costs of its reproduction. The systems preceding capitalism were in this sense profoundly different from it. For example, the attitude toward the slave as toward a thing, engendered by ownership of him, also determined the character of the formation of the necessary product in that society. In each separate case it was by no means based on a magnitude proceeding from the conditions of reproduction of labor power.

The boundaries of necessary and surplus labor find their justification not in the labor process as such and not in the worker’s needs as such, but in the social purpose of the labor process that is imparted to it by the form of ownership of the means of production.

Proceeding from the social purpose of labor, it is easy to explain why under socialism there is an expansion of the boundaries of the necessary product. The needs of the producer here are at the same time the needs of the entire labor association. But society, as the subject of production relations, also appears as the bearer of the needs of development and improvement of production itself. This enables society, each time, to establish the boundaries of necessary and surplus labor on the basis of the actually achieved level of production and the objective needs of its development.

On this basis, for socialism the problem of the ratio—or, as it is now said, the optimization—of necessary and surplus labor, and the optimization of accumulation and consumption, acquires independent significance. In capitalist society a question of this kind does not arise, since the magnitude of necessary labor is given there before the labor process, as the value of labor power. Therefore surplus labor here always appears as the difference between the newly created value and the value of labor power. The residual character of surplus labor is objectified by the commodity form of the relation of hiring labor power, in which the size of the necessary product is fixed. The actual norm of surplus labor appears as a derivative of the length of the working day and the productivity of labor. Hence also the definition of the capitalist law of the application of machines as a law ensuring the saving of necessary labor and the increase of surplus labor.

If one proceeds from the assumption that for socialism the magnitude of the necessary product is likewise determined by the conditions for the reproduction of labor power, then analogous conclusions must be drawn for this system of production relations as well. And indeed, since it is assumed that necessary labor is given in a definite amount before the labor process as a condition of this process, an increase in the productive power of labor within the framework of a given length of the working day leads to an increase in the mass of surplus labor.

However, such an analogy cannot be recognized as legitimate. A form of production based on public ownership proceeds, as the classics of Marxism-Leninism repeatedly pointed out, not from the reimbursement of the costs of labor power, but from the need to satisfy comprehensively the material and spiritual needs of all members of society.

The basic economic law of socialism establishes a fundamentally new connection between production and consumption. It appears in the form of the law of the growth of consumption following the growth of production. But if such a connection really exists, then the size of the necessary product under socialism cannot be a magnitude given before the labor process, before the process of production as a whole.

In this peculiarity of the formation of the necessary product is also found the justification for the fact that, at the level of the entire national economy, the saving of all living labor becomes a condition for applying in production the latest achievements of science and technology. The increase in the volume of production, ensured by the growth of labor productivity, becomes the material basis for expanding the boundaries of both the necessary and the surplus product.

The orientation of scientific and technological progress toward the saving of all living labor opens a broad path for introducing the achievements of science and technology into production regardless of the previously given level of the surplus product. From the national-economic point of view, even those capital investments may prove effective which, while saving living labor, do not ensure an increase in profitability. At this level, the profit obtained as a result of capital investments does not serve as the criterion of their effectiveness. Here the decisive significance is acquired by the physical increase of the net product. A reduction in the level of profitability, even in the presence of an increase in the net product, socialist society could regard as economically inexpedient if it possessed

became a reserve of free labor power. In this case, the attraction of additional labor resources, even without changes in the technical structure of production, ensures an increase in output without reducing the efficiency of additional investments. But under conditions of full employment, society may also make positive decisions in favor of investments that are less efficient than the preceding ones.

The criterion considered for the effectiveness of scientific and technological progress is characteristic of the system of socialist relations of production when these relations are approached from the standpoint of the identity of labor and property. Within the limits of this identity, the division of labor into necessary and surplus labor ceases to have an autonomous significance and cannot exert a direct influence on the conditions under which the achievements of science and technology are applied in production. But, as was shown earlier, the nationwide character of property presupposes not only the identity but also the opposition of labor and property. The means of production belong to the worker not as a separate, isolated individual, but as a member of society, that is, as an associated worker. On this basis there arises a distinction between the moments of appropriation carried out, on the one hand, by society and, on the other, by the worker. It acquires decisive significance in economic practice when the need arises to replace, at already operating enterprises, the equipment and technology of production with more advanced and progressive ones.

The cost-accounting enterprise, acting in relation to the worker as a representative of society, evaluates the living labor of the producer to the extent that it pays for it. But it pays not for all living labor, only for part of it. Moreover, this evaluation, which on the surface of relations takes the form of wages, does not even constitute the whole necessary product, but only the product for oneself, distributed in accordance with the law of distribution according to labor.

The size of the product for oneself (wages) appears for the enterprise as a magnitude given prior to the labor process itself, and constitutes one of the elements of its costs of production. The unpaid part of the worker’s labor takes, for the enterprise, the form of income. In this form the economic efficiency of the enterprise’s work finds its reflection. If, at the level of society, the immediate satisfaction of needs—carried out on an increasing scale through the growth of the product produced—serves as the target motive for the improvement and development of production, then, with respect to an individual enterprise, to this motive is added the receipt of income in the form of profit. But “profit,” as K. Marx notes, “comes not from a reduction of the labor applied in general, but from a reduction of paid labor”³).

Consequently, for a socialist enterprise, with the limits of the working day set by society and with a given amount of payment for a fixed quantity and quality of labor, the level of its profitability can be raised only by changing the relative magnitude of the component parts of the working day, i.e., of necessary and surplus labor; and this change presupposes, in turn, an increase in the productive power of labor. The growth of labor productivity proves economically justified for the enterprise if it outstrips the growth of wages, if the ratio of pay—

³) K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, p. 405.

of valuable and unpaid labor changes in favor of the latter. Thus, one may consider that the objective prerequisite for introducing the achievements of scientific and technological progress at operating enterprises is the saving of labor for oneself and the increase in the share of labor for society. New machinery and technology appear here above all as means of producing income.

Therefore, in our view, one cannot regard as correct the assertion that under socialism, in all cases and at any level, there operates a law according to which the productivity of a machine is measured by the degree to which it replaces living labor. The advantage of socialism over the preceding, capitalist system in this matter consists in the fact that a socialist enterprise cannot extend the limits of the working day established by society and thereby raise the rate of surplus labor. Nor can it exert any significant influence on the size of wage rates and official salaries, whose establishment is the prerogative of society. Furthermore, a distinguishing feature of socialism is also that the growth of income at enterprises, secured by the application of the latest achievements of science and technology, concentrates in the hands of society a large mass of newly created product. On this basis, socialist society obtains the possibility of establishing, proceeding from the optimal ratio of accumulation and consumption, new boundaries both between necessary and surplus labor and between labor for oneself and labor for society, by raising wage rates and official salaries for all or for particular categories of workers.

Thus, scientific and technological progress and the use of its achievements in production under socialism continuously change the actual ratio between necessary and surplus labor. However, this change is not limited to a one-sided increase in the share of surplus labor, but directly affects the magnitude of necessary labor as well, making it possible, without extending the limits of the working day, to broaden the framework of the necessary product and to ensure an ever fuller satisfaction of needs on the basis of the development and improvement of production.

1. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 46, part 1, p. 358. ↩

2. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, p. 404. ↩