Finally, each ( absolute ) competitive price in labour units is obtained, as the sum of constant capital, variable capital, and " profit " per unit of output, in the last column of table 2.
32.
In Marx's analysis of capitalist development, technological progress yields a higher ratio of constant capital ( non-labor inputs ) to variable capital ( labor inputs ), which lowers the demand for labor relative to capital inputs.
33.
Technological advancement tends to increase the amount of capital needed to start a business, and it tends to result in an increasing preponderance of capital being spent on means of production ( constant capital ) as opposed to labour ( variable capital ).
34.
According to the Swiss Federal Act on Collective Investment Schemes ( Collective Investment Schemes Act-CISA ), an open-ended collective investment scheme may be in the form of a contractual fund or an investment company with variable capital ( SICAV ).
35.
This is the ratio of constant capital to newly produced value ( roughly, what modern economists call " value added " ), i . e ., surplus-value + variable capital and close to the concept of a capital / output ratio.
36.
Finally, a technological revolution can also radically change the proportions between constant and variable capital, reducing the cost of constant capital, and lowering the OCC . In that case, operating costs are reduced in a short span of time, or cheaper alternatives substitute for the inputs traditionally used.
37.
How the distinction between productive and unproductive labor is drawn obviously has a big mathematical effect on the estimated total profit rate on production, if unproductive labor costs are excluded from the total variable capital outlay, and included in the part of total net output which represents total surplus value produced.
38.
We have seen that the development of the capitalist mode of production and of the productive power of labour at once the cause and effect of accumulation enables the capitalist, with the same outlay of variable capital, to set in action more labour by greater exploitation ( extensive or intensive ) of each individual labour-power.
39.
Another clarification is that Marx may have used the terms fixed and variable capital to emphasize the idea that the input cost of compensation can be varied by the enterprise, which sets the compensation levels of its workers, whereas the price of the other input factors sold to the company is " fixed, " insofar as it is set by external vendors.
40.
It will be remembered that if through the introduction of new, or the extension of old, machinery, a portion of variable capital is transformed into constant, the economic apologist interprets this operation which fixes capital and by that very act sets labourers free, in exactly the opposite way, pretending that it sets free capital for the labourers.
