LET’S start with a recap on “surplus value.” Before Marx, economists recognised the key importance of work — a distinctive feature of our species — to the creation of everything that humans need to survive.

What Marx added is the recognition that under capitalism, in “selling” labour power (their capacity to work) to any employer, workers receive less than the value they produce.

The difference — “surplus value” — is taken by the owners of capital, some of which is invested in more capital (“capital accumulation”) enabling them to extract more surplus value; for the capitalist, this is a virtuous cycle, underlying the extraordinary dynamism of capitalism.

Marx illustrated this with the metaphor of a worker, employed for eight hours per day, but only paid the value produced in perhaps roughly half this time. The remainder was taken in the form of rent, interest or direct profit by the capitalist — the owner of the “means of production.”

The rate of surplus value (sometimes called the rate of exploitation) expresses the proportion of effectively unpaid work (“s”) taken by the capitalist beyond the “socially necessary labour time” (“v” or “variable capital”) that is received by the worker directly in the form of wages or indirectly through the social wage (health services, education, state pension, transport infrastructure, etc) needed in order to survive and reproduce the next generation of workers (raise a family).

“Absolute” and “relative” are terms used by Marx to refer to different ways in which capitalists increase their profits, realised from the surplus value (the product of effectively unpaid labour) of their employees’ work. In Capital he declares: “The prolongation of the working-day beyond the point at which the labourer would have produced just an equivalent for the value of his labour-power, and the appropriation of that surplus-labour by capital, produces absolute surplus-value.

“It forms the general groundwork of the capitalist system, and the starting point for the production of relative surplus-value. The latter presupposes that the working-day is already divided into two parts, necessary labour, and surplus-labour.

“In order to prolong the surplus-labour, the necessary labour is shortened by methods whereby the equivalent for the wages is produced in less time.

“The production of absolute surplus-value turns exclusively upon the length of the working-day; the production of relative surplus-value revolutionises the technical processes of labour and the composition of society.”

Raising the level of absolute surplus value involves increasing unpaid labour time — the hours worked for a given wage. This can include increasing the length of the working day, week or year by cutting rest breaks or holidays but also increasingly through more subtle methods such as unpaid overtime, phoney subcontracting, piecework and zero-hours contracts.

Increasing profits through relative surplus value primarily entails enhancing labour productivity.

It can involve a direct reduction in real wages for a given time worked, often facilitated by reducing the cost of wage-goods (for example through cheap imports), but a key feature is an increase in the productivity and intensity of labour, including mechanisation, automation and the “rationalisation” of production processes, alongside direct and indirect pressure on employees to make them work harder.

The distinction between the two is often unclear. As Marx himself acknowledged: “From one standpoint, any distinction between absolute and relative surplus-value appears illusory.

“Relative surplus-value is absolute, since it compels the absolute prolongation of the working-day beyond the labour-time necessary to the existence of the labourer himself.

“Absolute surplus-value is relative, since it makes necessary such a development of the productiveness of labour as will allow the necessary labour-time to be confined to a portion of the working-day.”

Marx insisted on the importance of distinguishing between the two means of increasing the extraction of surplus value, declaring: “Accelerating accumulation through a greater development of the productive powers of labour and accelerating it through the greater exploitation of the worker are two completely different processes.”

It is important to recognise that Marx’s use of the image of a worker being paid for only part of the value of hours worked is an illustration, a metaphor. In Volume III of Capital, titled The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole, Marx emphasises that the concept of surplus value applies to the value produced by workers in the aggregate.

The division of labour — in the factory, in the office, in the supermarket; between production, distribution and exchange — make it difficult to identify the specific value of any single process or activity.

Many jobs (think of cold calling, insurance, banking or advertising) do not in themselves produce any physical “product” with an attributable value, but they are nevertheless central to the operation and functioning of capital.

Moreover, today the production of that aggregate surplus value is not limited to any one country but is distributed globally. The super-exploitation of workers in the global South involves a process of dependency, unequal exchange and the generalisation of relative surplus value throughout the world.

Capital increasingly uses a combination of methods — absolute and relative — to increase its extraction of surplus value. A classic example is Amazon, which has weaponised surveillance and automation technologies in its “fulfilment centres” to squeeze the maximum surplus value from its workers.

Employees are not permitted to sit other than during their unpaid 30-minute statutory lunch break, and the number and length of toilet breaks they are allowed to take are strictly monitored (absolute).

“Pickers” are transported along the storage racks by robotised carriers and conveyor belts feed goods to the “packers.” Monitoring the output of all workers leads to individual targets, increasing their required output per unit time (relative).

In the public sector, analogous processes often involve less direct methods including the under-resourcing of health, education and welfare services leading to extraordinary pressure on staff to “deliver” without the facilities to do so.

Throughout the economy, it is clear today how real wages have been reduced, both directly and by a reduction in their purchasing power.

The latter is achieved through inflation and through other means including “shrinkflation” (reducing the content particularly of packaged food items) and “hidden” increases in taxation — most recently in Britain in the freezing of the personal allowance and income tax bands (which will see millions of the lower paid worse off) and the ending of the “triple lock” on the state pension (reducing its real value by £388 per year).

In parallel with this, there are increasing onslaughts on the social wage –– from raising the retirement age (currently the focus of demonstrations in many countries though resistance is oddly muted in Britain) to major attacks on health services, education, social and welfare benefits, safety and working conditions, food standards, and environmental quality of our towns, countryside, waterways, seas and atmosphere.

Attacks on these elements of the social wage — all secured through years of struggle, many of them were virtually non-existent in Marx’s time — represent a sometimes less obvious increase in the extraction of absolute surplus value. But they’re just as important as the attacks on wages.

Battles over capitalism’s continuing intensification of exploitation through the extraction of surplus value are central to the class struggle. The concepts of absolute and relative surplus value remain valuable analytical tools for exploring the way that exploitation is changing, and for fighting back.

The Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School’s rich programme of on-site and online seminars continues with a four-week course on Women, Work and Trade Unions starting May 24, a presentation on Class Mobilisation and Class Consciousness on May 25, a book launch for Jesus: Life in Class Conflict on June 1 and a discussion on Tony Benn and Labour’s 1973-74 programme for “an irreversible shift of wealth and power in favour of working people” on June 8. Details of all of these plus links to previous Full Marx columns (this is number 97) are at www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk.