Profit and Surplus
When I was in high school, I worked at a local Mexican fast-food restaurant for several months. The owner, a gentleman by the name of Vic, was a small-scale capitalist, interested in profiting with as little effort on his behalf as possible. The idea of surplus-value, which was defined by Karl Marx as the money produced beyond the costs of the labor that were required to produce the product (Tucker 332), was an easy task to accomplish for Vic because he governed rules which all his employees were to follow. As the owner of the business, he had the ability to make rules to increase surplus-value; furthermore; if any employee did not agree with his way of business, they would no longer be paid for their work.
Surplus-value can be achieved several ways; a very simple way being the absence of a raise in wages over time (Tucker 361). By maintaining constant wages for work that improves over time, the employer is able to profit from the increase in skill that the employee develops. The main reason for an employer to employ a worker would be the hope that more money would be gained by doing so; hence, an employee makes money for the employer. The hours that I worked for Vic became an equivalent to money for both of us. During the first few days the work would be considered mediocre considered to the other workers, and so I would be the only person profiting from my employment. Over several weeks, I would learn the skills that would increase my productivity in every moment of work, which would not be rewarded with an increase in salary, but rather an increase in the amount of work that was accomplished for Vic in the same amount of time. Since "time is money," a better use of my working-time would induce more money being produced for Vic.
It would seem that at an unclear point in time, the mediocre work produced by a new employee, such as myself, had to become efficient so that the business would not be burdened. After this level of experience and proficiency is met the employer is making a surplus-value; furthermore, as time goes on, the surplus-value increases. When I became more knowledgeable of my work within the restaurant, another employee was hired and I was given the task of training him during work hours. The mentor-ship that I was assigned was awarded no increase in pay and I was still expected to maintain my own productivity while passing on my wisdom. By using experienced employees to train the inexperienced, the surplus-value that was developed from my knowledge was not lost in the wages of a person paid to train new employees.
The wages in a small Mexican restaurant are nowhere near that of well-educated Doctors; in fact, California's minimum-wage laws were the only reason I was able to earn as much as I did. One of the attractive benefits I found in the job was a mandatory fifteen-minute break mid-shift with the option of a free meal and beverage; aside from my own source of income, the delicious food attracted me to the restaurant as a place of business. It would appear that a free meal would be a loss to the restaurant and a gain to the employee-a way to decrease the surplus value created by steady wages-but that would prove to be an interesting false assumption. After eating at the same Mexican restaurant every day for several weeks, the delicious food seemed to become repetitive; the food lost the appeal that had originally caused me to dine at the restaurant once a week. This loss of interest in the dinner menu caused me to join the other employees' eating habits of a small plate of nachos and a drink, thereby absorbing less of Vic's surplus-value. Vic's free meal policy ended up creating interest with new employees, but only for the short amount of time when the surplus was small due to their lack of on-the-job training; thus highly skilled workers produce much surplus-value with little loss though meals.
An education was not required to work in the back of a fast food restaurant preparing food; in fact, an education was indirectly unwelcome. By Vic wanting his employees to work any shift needed he left the responsibilities of other activities to be arranged around the work schedule, making high school difficult for myself. From Vic's point of view, an education was useless in the type of work his employees were doing; after-all, a dishwasher does not need to know mathematics, nor does a fryer need to have comprehended a novel by Homer. The only knowledge that was required to prepare foods could be learned with experience; experience thus increased the surplus-value under which my efforts went.
The bitterness that was created with the conditions that each employee worked under were hardly ever obvious; however, bitterness did appear when a gentlemen purchased food one evening with a twenty-dollar bill that was noticeably counterfeit. As the customer waited, everyone working that night gathered and looked at the bill, trying to decide what action to take. The final decision was made after someone said "just accept it, it's only twenty bucks." The problem posed could cause no loss for the employees, only a loss to Vic, who would learn that twenty-dollars of his surplus-value could not be used as he had expected. Had working conditions been better for the employees, Vic would not have faced such carelessness.
On the first day I was employed at the restaurant, I was told that I would be earning minimum wage; the fact that I could be making as much as minimum wage impressed me in itself. Later that month, I asked one of my co-workers, who had had his job for many years, how much he was making. To my surprise he was making minimum wage as well. By failing to award raises over time, Vic could profit from his employees' surplus-value to the maximum extent legally possible. If it were not illegal, Vic would most probably pay each of his employees less than they were making and thereby increase the surplus-value that could be created. Aside from the surplus-value created by an increase in skill, a rule when working in such an environment is that the job is not necessarily complete when your shift is done thereby allows for surplus-value to increase. Many nights I was forced to stay after my shift to help with tasks that were not completed; this extra time without pay amounted in surplus-value for Vic.
The amount of surplus-value that is produced everyday is unclear to an employee who is in a job that depicts workers as units whose productivity is expected to increase over time. By Vic considering my employment to be a blessing to myself, an understanding is implied that an optimization of my abilities in the workplace, at all times, produces the same amount of exchange-value that is needed to be produced for my wages to be paid. A business can be maintained with employees who do not work to the best of their abilities; this suggests that all employees working at minimum wage, never developing skills, could actually sustain a business who's surplus-value, or expansion, is unwanted. The lack of clarity between an employer who's capitalistic tendencies rob employees of what they should be paid as a result of their work, and an employer who is running a business honestly and stretching every dollar, is unclear. This is the same lack of clarity which plays to the employer's advantage by means of a surplus-value. By using the size of the business as an excuse for the inability for employees to earn more, Vic was able to obtain the surplus-value of our increased skill as well as the free overtime that coincidentally occurred quite often.
The exchange-value, or the usefulness of the item to the consumer, can be unclear to both the producer (the wage employee) and the consumer. Where the exchange of money can be without unbalance, the exchange of goods, which will be consumed, does not have a clearly defined value other than that which the capitalist gives. When an amount of food is purchased, the labor that went into producing the product is not apparent; likewise, the amount of labor that is dedicated to the production of a product is not apparent to an employee when the product is created or sold to the consumer. Without the ability to know that the exchange-value reflects solely the labor that was put into it, an employee cannot know if he is being exploited for a surplus-value. By working at the quality and duration I was told to, I was intentionally misled to think that my hard work resulted in an exchange which would exactly pay my wage. The idea that I was working more than what my wage resulted in was intentionally never suggested.
By paying an employee a mediocre wage, an employer can force long-term employment; such phenomena occurs through the limitation of self-progress outside the workplace. Low wages lesson the ability for any person to advance in their lives with the ownership of a new car, home, expensive hobby, or more importantly, education or training outside the workplace. By preventing an individual from acquiring skills that open opportunities for a better career, an employer can oppress his employee into living day-by-day. Without the means of advancement, an individual cannot escape their situation.
Marx states that "A greater number of labourers working together... constitutes, both historically and logically, the starting-point of capitalist production" (Tucker 384). In addition to the increase in productivity, human interactions and professional relationships are made between co-workers which give each worker not only a sense of belonging, but also a responsibility to one's co-worker. The concept of my parting from individuals who depended on myself raised a feeling of betrayal in my fellow employees, and Vic felt a destabilization of the equilibrium created by my own employment and the interactions that were made thereof. In addition to the innocent co-workers that were in the same situation as myself, one of the employees, Jose, owed his life to Vic and therefore was the most faithful of all. When Jose heard that I would be leaving the restaurant, he faithfully and understandably took Vic's side. Vic's bitterness and hope of persuasion caused by my parting was conveyed through conversations with Jose.
The most powerful tool that an employer has is his blindness to the fact that he is making a surplus-value from his employees' work. Instead of seeing unfair surplus, Vic believed that he was doing a favor by letting individuals make him money. By believing that and employee owes a debt, an employer can cause more work to be produced without having to ask; an employer can also cause the notion that ceasing to work in the business is a betrayal of the trust that was present in the workplace. The feeling of betrayal brought about by a loss of trust is actually the employer's unhappiness with the fact that surplus-value cannot be created from individuals whom he does not employ; hence, wage laborers whom he does not employ refuse to be subjected to producing surplus-value. Having to leave the restaurant due to a conflict with my high school schedule caused Vic to believe that I was betraying him. He believed my parting was breaking the "trust" that we had had, and my preference of training (education) outside the workplace that could not benefit him was considered an insult as well. I made the na¥ve suggestion that I might be able to return during summer vacation, but the idea was rejected due to Vic's belief that he could hire someone else who could be able to take my place and more reliably produce surplus-value.
Works Cited:
The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert C. Tucker. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.
