Das Kapital

Marx reiterates that the purpose of work under the capitalist mode of production is just to produce surplus value. This holds true whether or not the job is at a “sausage factory” or a “teaching factory” (644). Marx proposes that capitalists first try to increase surplus value through “formal subsumption of labor” (645), which is through increasing the length of the workday. The capitalist mode of production enables “real subsumption of labour” through the use of machines and large-scale, organized labor (646).

Turning to history, Marx notes that the more fertile the environment was, the less labor power was required from the culture that developed there, and the more surplus labor could be extracted. Marx gives the example of ancient Egypt, where agriculture was relatively easy due to the climate and the Nile’s soil deposits, so there was surplus labor available for the construction of great monuments (648).

As industrial technology develops, however, the circumstances of the environment matter less. Marx argues that there is nothing natural about the need for capitalists to extract relative surplus value using industrial organization and technology. This claim is in contrast to the views of the economist David Ricardo and others, who believes “the capitalist mode of production […] is the natural form of social production” (651).