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THE CONSCIOUS REGULATION OF WAGES
Marx shows that the laws of capitalism enforce the growing accumulation of capital. This means that the stock of means of production in the society increase: that the amount of dead labour wielded by every living worker increases And thus his productivity increases. The accumulation of capital increases the productive capacity of labour: with the same intensity of labour and the same working day it is possible to produce more. The capitalist is able to accumulate out of the portion of surplus value which falls to him in the working out of the law of the general (average) rate of profit. The use of "public money" has opened up a source for capital accumulation which does not depend on the working of this law. It depends on a conscious decision by the society that production should continue in a particular industry. That decision is being taken today for a variety of reasons:
(l) that it represents an area in which the productive forces should be developed, e.g. computers or Concorde or numerically controlled machine tools
(2) that it provides employment in a place or industry in which the working class has actively used political power to be employed
(3) it is production in a sector in which a national economy ought to have capacity (steelmaking).
Within a national economy there is an absolute amount of means of production and living labour power available for production at any one time. If population is not to continue to increase thus providing more living labour, the only way in which the absolute amount of production can increase is by increasing the means of production.. Unless a national economy continues to produce means of production at an increasing rate, its working class cannot continue to consume at an increasing rate. This has been the essence of the Government's and the CBI's position in the Tripartite Talks. There is a need for the conscious regulation of wages if the consumption of the working class is to continue to increase.
If wages are not consciously regulated, there is no way to ensure that the production of means of production is sufficient to make labour more productive: i.e. to enable the same amount of labour to produce a greater amount of goods to be consumed. (The other way of increasing production is to increase the intensity of labour or the length of the working day. Neither the Government or the CBI suggested this as a viable or possible alternative.)
The alternative to conscious regulation of wages is to let only that labour produce which is profitable. Under the profitability criterion, the accumulation of capital is taken care of by the law of value which enforces the socially necessary (and therefore paid) labour. The movement of capital forces that socially necessary labour to be profitable labour. But, we have seen that the criterion of profitability alone means that a substantial sector of the working class is unemployed for indefinite periods of time depending on the cyclical behaviour of capitalist production. It also means that a substantial portion of the means of production are unemployed for long periods. It also means that if a capitalist pays wage rates which make his production unprofitable, he ceases production. If wages are not consciously regulated by the society, the only other way to ensure the survival of a national economy is to revert to the trade cycle as a regulator of production and consumption. Keynes' logical solution that all resources in a national economy could be fully employed by the use of public credit does not determine how these resources should be employed: in producing means of production or consumption. The conscious regulation of wages is necessary to ensure that there are adequate means of production produced to ensure that capital continues to be accumulated so that the productivity of labour can continue to increase.