“FLOATING CAPITAL IS CONSUMED, FIXED CAPITAL MERELY USED IN THE GREAT WORK 
OF PRODUCTION” ({ The] Economist, [No. 219, 6 November 1847, p. 1271] Notebook 
VI, p. 1). 

“It will be shown that the first stick or stone he took into his hand to help him 
in the pursuit of those objects, by performing part of his work, fulfilled exactly the 
same function as the capitals employed at present by the mercantile nations” 
(Lauderdale, [Recherches sur la nature et Uorigine de la richesse publique, Paris, 1808,] 
p. 87, Notebook 8, a).¢ 14 “It is one of the characteristic and distinguishing features 
of the human species thus to supplant labour by capital transformed into machinery” 
(p. 120) (p. 9, Notebook Lauderdale). “Now it will be seen that the profit of capital 
always derives either from its supplanting a portion of labour which would 
otherwise have to be performed by the hand of man; or from its performing a 
portion of labour which is beyond the reach of the personal exertion of man to 
accomplish” (p. 119, I. c.). 


Lauderdale takes issue with Smith and Locke, [VI-43] whose 
belief that labour is the source of profit has, according to 
Lauderdale, the following result: 


“If this notion of the profit of capital were strictly correct, it would follow that 
profit is not an original source of wealth but a derivative one; and capital could not 
be considered a source of wealth, its profit being only a transfer from the pocket of the 
labourer into that of the capitalist” (1. c., pp. 116, 117). 

“The profit of capital always derives either from its supplanting a portion of 
labour which would otherwise have to be performed by the hand of man; or from 
its performing a portion of labour which is beyond the reach of the personal 
exertion of man to accomplish” (p. 119, 1. c., [Notebook] p. 9, b). 

“It should be noted that if the capitalist, by the use he makes of his money, 
saves a certain amount of labour to the class of consumers, he does not substitute for it 


a See this volume, p. 30. Marx quotes in French.— Ed. 

b See this volume, pp. 35-36. Marx quotes partly in French.— Ed. 

¢ This and the following passages from Lauderdale are quoted in French in the 
manuscript. In one quotation (from p. 116) Marx occasionally uses German 
words.— Ed. 


Chapter on Capital 79 


an equal portion of his own; which proves that it is his capital, and not himself, that 
performs it” (10, Notebook, I. c., p. 132). 

“If Adam Smith had not imagined that the effect of a machine was to facilitate 
labour or, as he expressed himself, to increase the productive power of labour (it is 
a strange confusion of ideas that has led Dr. Smith to describe the effect of capital 
as increasing the productive power of labour. According to this logic, one could 
very well claim that shortening a circuitous road between two given places by half means 
doubling the velocity of the walker), he would have seen that it was by supplanting 
labour that the funds paid for the machine yielded profit, and he would have 
attributed the origin of profit to this very circumstance” ({Notebook,] p. 11; 
p. 137). 

“Capital, whether fixed or circulating, in home trade, far from serving to set 
labour in motion, or adding to the productive power of labour, is, on the contrary, 
only useful and profitable in these two situations: either it supplants the necessity 
of a portion of labour that would otherwise have to be performed by the hand of 
man, or it performs a certain kind of labour that is beyond the powers of man 
himself to accomplish.” 


This, Lauderdale says, is not a purely verbal distinction. 


“The idea that capital sets labour in motion, and that it adds to its productive 
power, gives rise to the opinion that labour is everywhere proportioned to the 
quantity of existing capital; that the industry of a country always corresponds to the 
funds employed; from which it follows that the increase of capital is by far the best 
and unlimited means of augmenting wealth. If, instead, we admitted that capital 
can have no other useful and profitable employment than that of supplanting or 
performing a certain kind of labour, we would draw the natural conclusion that the 
State can derive no advantage from possessing more capital than can be employed 
in performing or supplanting labour in the production and manufacture of things 
required by the consumer” (pp. 150-52, [Notebook,] pp. 11, 12). 


To prove his proposition that capital is, independently of 
labour, a source sui generis oF profit and thus or weattu, he points to 
the surplus profit which the owner of a newly invented machine 
derives before his brevet d%invention expires, and competition 
depresses prices, and then concludes with the words: 


“This alteration in the rule of charging does not prevent the profit” (for the use 
value) “of the machine from being received out of a fund of the same nature as 
that which it was paid from before the expiration of the patent: this fund is always 
that part of the revenue of the country which formerly was destined to pay the wages of the 
labour supplanted by the new invention” (I. c., p. 125, [Notebook,] p. 10, b). 


Ravenstone, on the contrary, argues (IX, 32)'' that: