Reply To: Is capitalism collapsing?
You are right. When introducing the concept of labour-power and its value in chapter 6 of Volume I of Capital Marx explains that, unlike other commodities, the value of labour-power contains “a historical and moral element” that varies from country to country and depends “to a great extent on the level of civilization attained by a country”. However, “at any given period” this is fixed. What this suggests is that the value of labour-power can change over a longer period, either up or down. In other words, as you point out, the value of labour can change through this historical and moral element coming to be reduced.
Marx is also fairly explicit about what paying workers less than the value of their labour-power over a long period would mean:
The minimum limit of the value of labour-power is determined by the value of the commodities, without the daily supply of which the labourer cannot renew his vital energy, consequently by the value of those means of subsistence that are physically indispensable. If the price of labour-power fall to this minimum, it falls below its value, since under such circumstances it can be maintained and developed only in a crippled state. But the value of every commodity is determined by the labour-time requisite to turn it out so as to be of normal quality.
It also means that reducing wages below the value of labour power is not likely to increase profits in the long run, as is being suggested, but rather to reduce them as a sub-normal quality of labour-power won’t be able to produce as much surplus value as labour-power of normal quality would.