72 SOCIAL SCIENTIST over social production and life (''the anarchy of the market/ a very inadequate term), and further (ii) capitalist production in which the working class is alienated from the labour process and its product, and is dominated by the capitalist class. We saw further that surplus value was created in production. It was the result of the difference between the value of labour power and the length of time for which the capitalist had the use of the labour power (that is, the working day). Thus out of a working day of eight hours, by the first (say) four hours of his work., the worker produces commodities equal in value to the bundle of commodities needed to support and reproduce him daily. During the remaining time he performs unpaid labour for the capitalist. The means of production play a ^passive' role. By performing the appropriate, specific kind of labour (like spinning for conversion of cotton into yarn) the worker preserves the value of the means of production "used up' and transfers it into the product. The value of the means of production is determined in the labour processes where they are produced, and not in the one where they serve as means of production. They thus do not change in value (for example, the value given up by the tool, that is, its depreciation, is transferred into the product by concrete labour, thus no loss of value nor gain occurs), and are called by Marx conslan. capital. By analogous reasoning the portion of capital expended in purchasing labour power is called variable capilal. We might say that constant capital is ^dead labour' and variable capital is ^living labour.5 The working day was seen to be composed of two parts: necessary labour (equal to daily value of labour power), and surplus labour. A measure of capitalist exploitation of labour is provided by the ratio of surplus labour to necessary labour. Marx calls this the rate of surplus value or the rate of exploitation. In the initial phase of capitalist development, expansion of surplus value takes place through lengthening of the working day rather than through higher productivity. Marx calls this absolute surplus-value production. The subsequent developments in the class struggles waged by the working class against the capitalist class render this mode of expansion of surplus value very difficult. This leads in turn to relative surplus-value production which we shall next examine. A V BALU (T 1 Karl Marx, Grunclrisse, Pelican, 1973, p 35, emphasis in original. a Karl Marx, Capital, vol I, Moscow 1967, p 177. 8 Ibid., p 178. 4 Ibid., p 179. 5 Ibid., pp 180-181, emphasis added. 8 Ibid., pp 183-184, emphasis added. 7 Ibid., p 183. 8 Ibid., p 185. 9 Bourgeois sociologists (e.g. L Blauner) and the Humanist School (e.g. Erich Fromm)