The value of every commodity produced in the capitalist way is represented in the formula: C = c + v + s.
A simple formula. A commodity’s (C) value is equal to constant capital (c), variable capital (v), and surplus-value (v) combined.
Constant capital refers to the cost of inanimate things related to production: i.e. the cost of a factory building, the cost of the machines in the factory, the cost of the upkeep of the factory, etc. Variable capital refers usually to the workers’ wages, which are variable given that they are alive and conscious. Surplus value is simply the gross amount of money a product makes against the cost it takes to make the product.
To test out if this theory is correct, I decided to determine the value of the commodity known as a paperclip. After flying to West China and finding a factory that produced paperclips, I asked around and got the following information:
The factory was mostly made of machines that did the work of bending and cutting steel wire. These machines, and the steel required, cost about 3.5 million Yuan, or 500,000 USD to purchase and upkeep regularly each year.
Only one person worked there, a man who went by the name Bo. He didn’t work so much as check the machines and fix them if they broke. His yearly salary was 141,000 Yuan, or about 20,000 USD. He told me it’s more than enough where he lives because he lives in the factory. When I asked him if he liked working and living in the factory he told me he appreciates the lack of a commute, something he grew tired of when working in Beijing.
That leaves only the Surplus-Value left and then we’ll have our equation. A single paperclip sells for 2 cents. In a year, the factory sells roughly 2 Billion individual paperclips, which leads to about 4 billion pennies, or 40 Million USD. It is estimated that each individual paperclip costs about .025 cents to make. So each year they spend 50,000,000 making paperclips.
40,000,000 (Money Made)
- 50,000,000 (Money Spent)
This equals -10,000,000
Now we can put together our equation: C = 500,000 + 20,000 + -10,000,000
C = -9,480,000
So, the value of the commodity of the paperclip is nearly negative 10 million dollars. I showed my figures to Bo and he told me “Something seemed wrong," with my equation, but I couldn’t make heads or tales of what he was talking about. I did the math perfectly well. “If that’s the case, though,” he said, “this company shouldn’t exist!” Ah, but he didn't read the next sentence in Capital Vol III!
If we subtract surplus-values from this value of the product there remains a bare equivalent or a substitute value in goods, for the capital-value c + v expended in the elements of production.
So, the bare equivalent value of a paper clip is 520,000 USD. When I showed this to Bo he told me that “Something still seems wrong.” We poured over the text of Capital and worked it against the information we had concerning the production of paperclips in this factory in West China. I couldn’t find anything wrong.
Economics is an admittedly tricky business. But, when I studied Economics (at Harvard, but that’s unimportant—well, it is important, but I won’t talk about it right now) I became the go-to tutor for those struggling in both macro AND micro-economics classes. Students and professors were amazed at my ability to solve complex, variable equations in minutes. Economics, like a paperclip factory’s machinery, is cold and lifeless and therefore very easy to manipulate—for me at least.
Each and every economic equation that exists is nothing more than an effervescent attempt to make sense of the insensible. My third wife, a dedicated Leninist, divorced me because I wouldn’t shut up about numbers. But it wasn’t numbers, it was numerology—the secrets of the universe were embedded in these equations, but she didn’t see that. She now works for Congress, representing Republicans. She’s very successful and once had a threesome with [the editors have decided to remove the name of the respected politician written here to protect that individual’s reputation against this admittedly irrelevant and irreverent accusation].
It’s important to stick with numbers and cling to the dying faith of 19th-century economic theories because without them we’re left with the real world and non-abstract concepts, all of which are very difficult to manipulate—not to mention boring.
Take for instance cutting down trees. On paper, no pun intended, cutting down a tree is the dumbest thing you could possibly do. They are very real and very good for us and very beautiful. However, once you realize there are numbers in the trees, and value inherent in the product known as "wood," then cutting down trees makes perfect sense; indeed, you are compelled to chop down trees until you get what you deserve, namely, some good old fashioned wealth.
I took my new friend Bo out to the theatre in a nearby city to thank him for his helpful, if somewhat naive, contributions to discovering the C-value of paperclips. He took work off, saying that it “didn’t matter” all that much if he wasn’t there. Well and good. Off we went into the big city. When we arrived they were playing a new opera. Now, revolutionary opera might strike some as old-fashioned and corny, but something about the title of the opera, 革命前夕農民夢遺與馬克思同志的邂逅, really caught my attention. While Mandarin lacks a phrase for “Wet Dream” the idea is nonetheless implied in the title.
Anyway, we went to the play, which featured a young peasant farmer who worked day and night to cultivate enough grain for the capitalist overseers. One of the early musical numbers “每隔幾個月燒掉你的工具很重要” (“It’s Important to Burn Your Farm Tools Every Few Months”) really moved me. Something about the way the peasants sang and danced when they tossed their farm tools into a pyre made me want to do the same. There was a really nice almost ballet section reminiscent of the wood-chopping scene in the film Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, one of my all-time favorite movies.
But the central dream sequence wherein the young Peasant dreams of Karl Marx moved Bo and me so much that we both wept and held each other like Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring in the dream theatre. At one point, Karl Marx, suspended and posed like Michelangelo’s Sistine God, shoots a beam of light into the chest of the Peasant who, looking like Saint Theresa in ecstasy, receives a holy revelation regarding economic theory, communism, and, intertwined with those both, the meaning of life. He proceeds to duet with Marx, singing the song, “我們所需要的只是正確的數字和一塊好地塊”
(“All We Ever Needed Were the Right Numbers and a Good Plot of Land”). There were many parts of the song that moved me, but perhaps most beautiful were the lines sung by the Peasant,
“我一生都在等待
現在我知道答案了
哦，沒有答案！那是美麗而真實的.”
Which translates roughly to, “Oh, all my life I’ve sought the answer [in vain] / And now I know the answer / Oh, there is no answer! And that is beautiful and good.”
The mystical communal revelation, how good and true!
If only peasants weren’t so fucking stupid.
