#surplus labor

The capitalist pays the value of the labor power (or, if the price diverges from this, he pays the price) and receives in exchange the right to dispose of the living labor power itself. The length of time during which he utilizes this labor power is divided into two separate parts. During one period, the worker produces a value that is only equal to the value of his labor power, a product of the same price. It is the same as if he had bought the product ready-made in the market. During the other period, the period of surplus labor, the utilization of labor power creates a value for the capitalist without costing him any value in return. He is thus able to set labor power in motion without paying for it. It is in this sense that surplus labor can be called unpaid labor. Capital, therefore, is not only the command over labor, as Adam Smith thought. It is essentially the command over unpaid labor. All surplus value, whatever particular form (profit, interest, rent) it may subsequently crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labor time. The secret of the self-valorization of capital resolves itself into the fact that it has at its disposal a definite quantity of the unpaid labor of other people.

Assume that the usual working day is 12 hours and the daily value of labor power is 3 shillings, which is the expression in money of a value embodying 6 hours of labor. If the worker receives 3 shillings, then he receives the value of his labor power, which functions through 12 hours. […] As the value of labor is only an irrational expression of the value of labor power, it follows of course that the value of labor must always be less than its value-product, for the capitalist always makes the labor power work longer than is necessary for the reproduction of its own value. In the above example, the value of the labor power that functions through 12 hours is 3 shillings, which requires 6 hours for its reproduction. The value which the labor power produces is however 6 shillings, because it in fact functions during 12 hours, and its value-product depends, not on its own value, but on the length of tie it is in action. Thus we reach a result which is at first sight absurd; labor which creates a value of 6 shillings has a value of 3 shillings.  We see further: the value of 3 shillings, which represents the paid portion of the working day, i.e., six hours of labor, appears as the value of price of the whole working day of 12 hours, which thus includes 6 hours which have not been paid for. The wage-form thus extinguishes every trace of the division of the working day into necessary and surplus labor, into paid and unpaid labor. All labor appears as paid labor. […] All the notions of justice held by both the worker and the capitalist, all the mystifications of the capitalist mode of production, all capitalism’s illusions about freedom, all the apologetic tricks of vulgar economics, have as their basis the form of appearance discussed above, which makes the actual relation invisible, and indeed presents to the eye the precise opposite of that relation.

[The capitalist’s] profit arises simply from the fact that a part of the cost of production costs him nothing, hence does not enter into his outlays, his production costs.