## ECONOMIC MANUSCRIPT OF

[I-A] August. 1861. Third Chapter. Capital in General’ 
I. The Production Process of Capital 

1) Transformation of Money into Capital 
a) The Most General Form of Capital. b) Difficulties. 

c) Exchange of Capital with Labour Capacity. 
d) Value of Labour Capacity. e) Labour Process. 
f) Valorisation Process. g) Capitalist Production 

[II-A] I.1) h) The Two Components of the Transformation Process* 

Cover page of Notebook I of the Economic Manuscript of 1861-63 

Inside cover page of Notebook I of the Economic Manuscript of 1861-63

## A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY Third Chapter Capital in General

[I-A] August. 1861. Third Chapter. Capital in General’ 
I. The Production Process of Capital 

1) Transformation of Money into Capital 
a) The Most General Form of Capital. b) Difficulties. 

c) Exchange of Capital with Labour Capacity. 
d) Value of Labour Capacity. e) Labour Process. 
f) Valorisation Process. g) Capitalist Production 

[II-A] I.1) h) The Two Components of the Transformation Process* 

Cover page of Notebook I of the Economic Manuscript of 1861-63 

Inside cover page of Notebook I of the Economic Manuscript of 1861-63 

[1-1] I. THE PRODUCTION PROCESS OF CAPITAL 

1) TRANSFORMATION OF MONEY INTO CAPITAL 

a) M—C—M. THE MOST GENERAL FORM OF CAPITAL 

How does money become capital? Or how does the owner of 
money (i.e. the owner of commodities) become a capitalist? 

Let us look first at the form M—C—M: the exchange of money 
for the commodity, i.e. buying in order to exchange the 
commodity for money again, i.e. in order to sell. We have already 
noted * that in the form of circulation C—-M—C the extremes C 
and C are qualitatively distinct, even though they are equal in 
magnitude of value, hence in this form a real exchange of 
materigls takes place (different use values are exchanged for each 
other), therefore the result C—-C—the exchange of commodity 
for commodity, in fact the exchange of use values for one 
another—has an obvious purpose. In the form M—C—M in 
contrast (buying in order to sell) the two extremes M and M are 
qualitatively the same, namely they are money. Indeed, if I 
exchange M (money) for C (commodity), in order to exchange the 
commodity (C) in turn for M (money), i.e. if I buy in order to 
sell, the result will be that I have exchanged money for money. In 
actual fact the circulation M—-C—M (buying in order to sell) falls 
into the following acts: first, M—C, the exchange of money for 
the commodity, purchase; second, C—M, the exchange of the 
commodity for money, sale; and the unity of the two acts, or the 
passage through both stages, M—-C—M, the exchange of money 
for the commodity in order to exchange the commodity for 
money, buying in order to sell. The result of the process, however, 
is M—M, the exchange of money for money. If I buy cotton for 

a K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present 
edition, Vol. 29, pp. 324, 332).— Ed. 

10 The Production Process of Capital 

100 thalers and sell the cotton again for a hundred thalers, I have 
at the end of the process 100 thalers just as I had at the 
beginning; the whole movement consists in my expending 
100 thalers by the purchase and then taking in 100 thalers again 
by the sale. The result is thus M—M: I have in fact exchanged 
100 thalers for 100 thalers. Such an operation appears to be 
without purpose, however, and therefore absurd.* At the end of 
the process, as at the beginning, I have money, which is 
qualitatively the same commodity and quantitatively the same 
magnitude of value. Money is the starting-point and the finishing- 
point of the process (of the movement). The same person gives 
out the money as purchaser to receive it back as seller. The point 
from which the money departs in this movement is the point to 
which it returns. Because the extremes M, M, are qualitatively the 
same in M—C—M, the process of buying in order to sell, this 
process can only receive a content and a purpose if they differ 
quantitatively. If I buy cotton for 100 thalers and sell the same 
cotton for 110 thalers, I have in fact exchanged 100 thalers for 
110 thalers, i.e. I have bought 110 thalers for 100. Thus the form 
of circulation [I-2] M—-C—M, buying in order to sell, receives a 
content as a result of the fact that the extremes M, M, although 
qualitatively the same—money—are quantitatively different, since 
the second M represents a higher magnitude of value, a greater 
sum of value, than the first. The commodity is bought so as to be 
sold dearer; in other words, it is bought cheaper than it is sold. 

Let us look first at the form M-—-C—M _ (buying in order to 
sell) and compare it with the circulation form C—M—C (selling 
in order to buy) which we examined earlier.* First of all, the 
circulation M—C-—M, like the circulation C—M-—C, splits up 
into two distinct acts of exchange, of which it is the unity: namely 
M—C, the exchange of money for the commodity, or purchase— 
in this act of exchange a buyer confronts a seller—and secondly 
C—M, sale, the exchange of the commodity for money—1in this 
act, as in the first, two persons, the buyer and the seller, confront 

* This is quite correct. Nevertheless the form does occur (and the purpose is 
irrelevant here). For example, a purchaser may not be in a position to sell the 
commodity dearer than he bought it. He may be compelled to sell it cheaper than 
he bought it. In both cases the result of the operation contradicts its purpose. Even 
so, this does not prevent it from having the form M—C—M, in common with the 
operation which does correspond to its purpose. 

a K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present 
edition, Vol. 29, pp. 324-34).— Ed. 

Transformation of Money into Capital 11 

each other. The buyer buys from the one and sells to the other. 
The buyer, with whom the movement originates, is involved in 
both acts. First he buys and then he sells. Or his money goes 
through both stages. It appears as starting-point in the first stage 
and result in the second. The two persons with whom he 
exchanges, in contrast, each perform only one act of exchange. 
The one with whom the buyer makes his first exchange sells the 
commodity. The other person, with whom he makes the last 
exchange, buys the commodity. Therefore the commodity sold by 
the one and the money with which the other buys it do not pass 
through the two opposed phases of circulation; each rather 
completes just a single act. Neither of these one-sided acts of sale 
and purchase performed by these two persons presents us with a 
new phenomenon. What is new is the whole process which the 
buyer, who is also its originator, passes through. Let us therefore 
look instead at the whole movement passed through by the buyer 
who sells again, or by the money with which he started the 
operation. 

M—C—M. The starting-point is money, the converted form of 
the commodity, in which it is always exchangeable, in which the 
labour contained in it has the form of general social labour, i.e. in 
which it is exchange value become independent. The starting-point of 
this form of circulation, this movement, is therefore itself already 
a product of the circulation of commodities, i.e. it comes from 
circulation, for only in and through circulation does the commodi- 
ty obtain the form of money, only in this way is it changed into 
money or does it develop its exchange value, the particular 
independent forms which present themselves as various formal 
determinations of money. Secondly, the value emerging in this 
way from circulation and assuming an independent existence in 
the form of money enters again into circulation, becomes a 
commodity, but returns again from the commodity form to its 
monetary form, having at the same time increased its magnitude. 

The money which passes through this movement is capital, i.e. 
value become independent in money and passing through this 
process is the form in which capital initially presents itself or 
appears. 

We can translate the form M—C—M: value become indepen- 
dent in money (if we employ the word value without defining it 
more closely, it must always be understood as exchange value‘), 
hence value emerging from circulation, enters again into circula- 
tion, maintains itself in it and returns from it multiplied (returns 
as a greater magnitude of value). In so far as money constantly 

12 The Production Process of Capital 

describes this circuit afresh, it is value emerging from circulation, 
entering into it again, perpetuating (maintaining) itself in circula- 
tion and multiplied in it. 

[I-3] In the first stage of the process money becomes a 
commodity, in the second stage the commodity again becomes 
money. The extreme from which the process starts, money— itself 
already a form of the commodity arisen from circulation, in which 
it has taken on independence in its determination as exchange 
value—is at once the point of departure and the point of return. 
Value is thus preserved in the process it passes through and at the 
conclusion of the process returns again to its independent form. 
At the same time, however, the result of the movement, whilst 
changing nothing in this form (of value), namely its being money, 
is that the magnitude of the value has grown. The value is thus 
not only preserved as value, but grows as well, multiplies, increases 
its magnitude in this movement. 

“Capital ... permanent, self-multiplying value” (Sismondi, Nouveaux principes 
etc, Vol. 1, p. 89). 

In M-—C—M exchange value appears just as much the 
prerequisite as the result of circulation. 

Value (money) resulting from circulation as adequate exchange 
value (money), taking on an independent form, but entering again 
into circulation, preserving and multiplying (increasing) itself in 
and through it, is capital. 

In M—C—M exchange value becomes the content and the end 
in itself of circulation. In selling in order to buy the purpose is use 
value; in buying to sell it is value itself. 

Two points must be stressed here. Firstly, M—C—M is 
value-in-process, exchange value as a process that takes its course 
through various acts of exchange or stages of circulation, and at 
the same time dominates over them. Secondly: In this process value 
is not only preserved, it increases its magnitude, it is multiplied, 
increases itself, i.e. it creates in this movement a surplus value. It is 
thus not only self-preserving but self-valorising value, value that 
posits value. 

Firstly: Let us initially look at M—-C—M from the point of view 
of its form, disregarding the fact that the second M is a value of 
greater magnitude than the first M. The value exists first as 
money, then as commodity, then again as money. It is preserved 
in the alternation of these forms and returns out of them to its 
original form again. It passes through changes of form in which it 
is, however, preserved, and it therefore appears as the subject of 

Transformation of Money into Capital 13 

these changes. The alternation of these forms therefore appears as 
its own process, or, in other words, value as it presents itself here 
is value-in-process, the subject of a process. Money and the 
commodity each appear only as particular forms of existence of 
the value which is preserved in passing over from one to the other 
and always returns to itself as money, in the form in which it has 
become independent. Money and commodity thus appear as the 
forms of existence of value-in-process or capital. Hence the 
interpretations of capital. On the one hand, the one above, given 
by Sismondi. Capital is self-preserving value. 

“It is not matter which makes capital, but the value of that matter” (J. B. Say, 
Traité d’économie politique etc., 3rd ed., Vol. 2, Paris, 1817, p. 429).4 

On the other hand, when it is conceived not as the whole 
movement but in each of its forms of existence—the forms in 
which it exists each time—: capital is money, capital is commodity. 

“CAPITAL IS COMMODITIES” (J. Mill, Elements of Political Economy, London, 1821; . 

.] 74).

## The Production Process of Capital

TERMINATING OBJECT” (Thomas Chalmers, On Political Economy in Connexion with the 
Moral State and Moral Prospects of Society, 2nd ed., London, 1832, [pp.] 165-66). 

// Another point in relation to the formula M—C—M. Value as 
capital, self-valorising value, is value raised to a second power. Not 
only does it have an independent expression, as in money, but it 
compares itself with itself (or is compared by the capitalist), 
measures itself at one period (the magnitude of value in which it 
was preposited to the production process) against itself in another 
period, namely after its return from circulation—after the 
commodity has been sold and re-converted into money. Value 
therefore appears as the same subject in two different periods, 
and indeed this is its own movement, the movement that 
characterises capital. Only in this movement does value appear as 
capital. See in opposition to this “A Critical Dissertation on the 
Nature, Measures, and Causes of Value; Chiefly in Reference to the 
Writings of Mr. Ricardo and His Followers. By the Author of Es- 
says on the Formation and_ Publication of Opinions.” 
// S. Batley, // London, 1825. // 

Bailey’s main argument against the whole determination of 
value by labour time is this: Value is only the relation according to 
which different commodities are exchanged. Value is only a 
RELATION between 2 commodities. 

* Value * is nothing * “intrinsic or absolute” * (I.c., p. 23). * “It is impossible to 
designate, or express the value of a commodity, except by a quantity of some other 

Transformation of Money into Capital 101 

commodity” * (l.c., [p.] 26). * “Instead of regarding value as a relation between 2 
objects, they” * (THE RICARDIANS) (and Ricardo himself) * ‘consider it as a positive 
result produced by a definite quantity of labour” * (l.c., [p.] 30). * “Because the 
values of A and B, according to their doctrine, are to each other as the quantities 
of producing labour, or ... are determined by the quantities of producing labour, 
they appear to have concluded, that the value of A alone, without reference to 
anything else, is as the quantity of its producing labour. There is no meaning 
certainly in the last proposition” * (pp. 31-32). They speak of * ‘value as a sort of 
general and independent property” * (l.c., [p.] 35). *“The value of a commodity 
must be its value in something” * (l.c.) 

As objectification of social labour the commodity is expressed as 
something relative. For [if the]* labour contained [in A]? is 
equated to all others, this is only as a particular form of existence 
of social labour. In this, however, the individual is already not 
viewed in isolation, but if Bailey wishes it, his labour is posited 
relatively and the commodity is itself posited as the form of 
existence of this relative thing. 

[11-54] The same Bailey says (l.c., p. 72): 

*“Value is a relation between contemporary commodities, because such only 
admit of being exchanged for each other; and if we compare the value of a 
commodity at one time with its value at another, it is only a comparison of the 
relation in which it stood at these different times to some other commodity.” * 

He says this as an argument against ‘“‘COMPARING COMMODITIES AT 
DIFFERENT PERIODS” as if for example in the turnover of capital the

## Transformation of Money into Capital

1) TRANSFORMATION OF MONEY INTO CAPITAL

a) M-C-M. THE MOST GENERAL FORM OF CAPITAL

How does money become capital? Or how does the owner of money (i.e. the owner of commodities) become a capitalist?

Let us look first at the form M-C-M: the exchange of money for the commodity, i.e. buying in order to exchange the commodity for money again, i.e. in order to sell. We have already noted3 that in the form of circulation C-M-C the extremes C and C are qualitatively distinct, even though they are equal in magnitude of value, hence in this form a real exchange of materials takes place (different use values are exchanged for each other), therefore the result C-C - the exchange of commodity for commodity, in fact the exchange of use values for one another - has an obvious purpose. In the form M-C-M in contrast (buying in order to sell) the two extremes M and M are qualitatively the same, namely they are money. Indeed, if I exchange M (money) for C (commodity), in order to exchange the commodity (C) in turn for M (money), i.e. if I buy in order to sell, the result will be that I have exchanged money for money. In actual fact the circulation M-C-M (buying in order to sell) falls into the following acts: first, M-C, the exchange of money for the commodity, purchase; second, C-M, the exchange of the commodity for money, sale; and the unity of the two acts, or the passage through both stages, M-C-M, the exchange of money for the commodity in order to exchange the commodity for money, buying in order to sell. The result of the process, however, is M-M, the exchange of money for money. If I buy cotton for

a K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 324, 332). - Ed.

100 thalers and sell the cotton again for a hundred thalers, I have at the end of the process 100 thalers just as I had at the beginning; the whole movement consists in my expending 100 thalers by the purchase and then taking in 100 thalers again by the sale. The result is thus M-M: I have in fact exchanged 100 thalers for 100 thalers. Such an operation appears to be without purpose, however, and therefore absurd.* At the end of the process, as at the beginning, I have money, which is qualitatively the same commodity and quantitatively the same magnitude of value. Money is the starting-point and the finishing-point of the process (of the movement). The same person gives out the money as purchaser to receive it back as seller. The point from which the money departs in this movement is the point to which it returns. Because the extremes M, M, are qualitatively the same in M-C-M, the process of buying in order to sell, this process can only receive a content and a purpose if they differ quantitatively. If I buy cotton for 100 thalers and sell the same cotton for 110 thalers, I have in fact exchanged 100 thalers for 110 thalers, i.e. I have bought 110 thalers for 100. Thus the form of circulation [1-2] M-C-M, buying in order to sell, receives a content as a result of the fact that the extremes M, M, although qualitatively the same - money - are quantitatively different, since the second M represents a higher magnitude of value, a greater sum of value, than the first. The commodity is bought so as to be sold dearer; in other words, it is bought cheaper than it is sold.

Let us look first at the form M-C-M (buying in order to sell) and compare it with the circulation form C-M-C (selling in order to buy) which we examined earlier.3 First of all, the circulation M-C-M, like the circulation C-M-C, splits up into two distinct acts of exchange, of which it is the unity: namely M-C, the exchange of money for the commodity, or purchase - in this act of exchange a buyer confronts a seller - and secondly C-M, sale, the exchange of the commodity for money - in this act, as in the first, two persons, the buyer and the seller, confront

* This is quite correct. Nevertheless the form does occur (and the purpose is irrelevant here). For example, a purchaser may not be in a position to sell the commodity dearer than he bought it. He may be compelled to sell it cheaper than he bought it. In both cases the result of the operation contradicts its purpose. Even so, this does not prevent it from having the form M-C-M, in common with the operation which does correspond to its purpose.

a K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 324-34). - Ed.

each other. The buyer buys from the one and sells to the other. The buyer, with whom the movement originates, is involved in both acts. First he buys and then he sells. Or his money goes through both stages. It appears as starting-point in the first stage and result in the second. The two persons with whom he exchanges, in contrast, each perform only one act of exchange. The one with whom the buyer makes his first exchange sells the commodity. The other person, with whom he makes the last exchange, buys the commodity. Therefore the commodity sold by the one and the money with which the other buys it do not pass through the two opposed phases of circulation; each rather completes just a single act. Neither of these one-sided acts of sale and purchase performed by these two persons presents us with a new phenomenon. What is new is the whole process which the buyer, who is also its originator, passes through. Let us therefore look instead at the whole movement passed through by the buyer who sells again, or by the money with which he started the operation.

M-C-M. The starting-point is money, the converted form of the commodity, in which it is always exchangeable, in which the labour contained in it has the form of general social labour, i.e. in which it is exchange value become independent. The starting-point of this form of circulation, this movement, is therefore itself already a product of the circulation of commodities, i.e. it comes from circulation, for only in and through circulation does the commodity obtain the form of money, only in this way is it changed into money or does it develop its exchange value, the particular independent forms which present themselves as various formal determinations of money. Secondly, the value emerging in this way from circulation and assuming an independent existence in the form of money enters again into circulation, becomes a commodity, but returns again from the commodity form to its monetary form, having at the same time increased its magnitude.

The money which passes through this movement is capital, i.e. value become independent in money and passing through this process is the form in which capital initially presents itself or appears.

We can translate the form M-C-M: value become independent in money (if we employ the word value without defining it more closely, it must always be understood as exchange value4), hence value emerging from circulation, enters again into circulation, maintains itself in it and returns from it multiplied (returns as a greater magnitude of value). Insofar as money constantly

describes this circuit afresh, it is value emerging from circulation, entering into it again, perpetuating (maintaining) itself in circulation and multiplied in it.

[1-3] In the first stage of the process money becomes a commodity, in the second stage the commodity again becomes money. The extreme from which the process starts, money - itself already a form of the commodity arisen from circulation, in which it has taken on independence in its determination as exchange value - is at once the point of departure and the point of return. Value is thus preserved in the process it passes through and at the conclusion of the process returns again to its independent form. At the same time, however, the result of the movement, whilst changing nothing in this form (of value), namely its being money, is that the magnitude of the value has grown. The value is thus not only preserved as value, but grows as well, multiplies, increases its magnitude in this movement.

"Capital ... permanent, self-multiplying value" (Sismondi, Nouveaux principes etc., Vol. 1, p. 89).

In M-C-M exchange value appears just as much the prerequisite as the result of circulation.

Value (money) resulting from circulation as adequate exchange value (money), taking on an independent form, but entering again into circulation, preserving and multiplying (increasing) itself in and through it, is capital.

In M-C-M exchange value becomes the content and the end in itself of circulation. In selling in order to buy the purpose is use value; in buying to sell it is value itself.

Two points must be stressed here. Firstly, M-C-M is value-in-process, exchange value as a process that takes its course through various acts of exchange or stages of circulation, and at the same time dominates over them. Secondly: In this process value is not only preserved, it increases its magnitude, it is multiplied, increases itself, i.e. it creates in this movement a surplus value. It is thus not only self-preserving but self-valorising value, value that posits value.

Firstly: Let us initially look at M-C-M from the point of view of its form, disregarding the fact that the second M is a value of greater magnitude than the first M. The value exists first as money, then as commodity, then again as money. It is preserved in the alternation of these forms and returns out of them to its original form again. It passes through changes of form in which it is, however, preserved, and it therefore appears as the subject of

these changes. The alternation of these forms therefore appears as its own process, or, in other words, value as it presents itself here is value-in-process, the subject of a process. Money and the commodity each appear only as particular forms of existence of the value which is preserved in passing over from one to the other and always returns to itself as money, in the form in which it has become independent. Money and commodity thus appear as the forms of existence of value-in-process or capital. Hence the interpretations of capital. On the one hand, the one above, given by Sismondi. Capital is self-preserving value.

"It is not matter which makes capital, but the value of that matter" (J. B. Say, Traité d'économie politique etc., 3rd ed., Vol. 2, Paris, 1817, p. 429).a

On the other hand, when it is conceived not as the whole movement but in each of its forms of existence - the forms in which it exists each time -: capital is money, capital is commodity.

"Capital is commodities" (J. Mill, Elements of Political Economy, London, 1821; [p.] 74).

"Currency employed to productive purposes is capital" (McLeod, The Theory and Practice of Banking etc., Vol. I, London, 1855, Ch. I).5

In the form of circulation C-M-C the commodity passes through two metamorphoses, the result of which is that it remains behind as a use value. It is the commodity - as unity of use value and exchange value, or as use value, with the exchange value of the commodity figuring as a mere form, an evanescent form - which passes through this process. But in M-C-M money and the commodity appear only as different forms of existence of exchange value, which is seen on the one occasion in its general form as money, and on the other in its particular form as the commodity, at the same time figuring as the dominant and self-asserting element in both forms. [1-4] Money is in itself the form of existence of exchange value become independent, but the commodity too appears here only as the repository of exchange value's material embodiment.

[1-16]6 It can easily be understood that if there exist classes which do not take part in the production of commodities, and yet possess commodities or money, which is only a form of the commodity, they have a share in the commodities without exchange, through a title gained either by law or force, not to be discussed any further at this point. The commodity owner or producer - for the moment we can only understand the commodity owner as a commodity producer - must give up to those classes

a Marx quotes in French. - Ed.

a portion of his commodities or of the money he receives for their sale. By virtue of this money, for which they have given no equivalent, they would then be consumers, buyers, without ever having been sellers. These buyers, however, can only be explained as participants in the commodities of the seller (co-owners), a position they have reached through a process inexplicable here.3 If therefore they buy commodities, they merely give back to the commodity owners and producers a portion of those commodities in exchange for other commodities, commodities they received from the latter without exchange.

It is entirely explicable that if all the producers of commodities sell them at more than their value they will receive from these buyers more than they gave them, but they will only get back more of a sum of value which belonged to the commodity producers in the first place. If someone steals 100 thalers from me and I sell him a commodity worth only 90 thalers for 100 thalers, I make a profit of 10 thalers from him. This is a method of taking away from this buyer, who is a consumer without being a producer, by way of trade a part of the sum of value of 100 thalers that originally belonged to me. If he takes 100 thalers a year from me and I sell him commodities valued at 90 thalers similarly for 100 every year, I admittedly gain 10 thalers a year from him, but only because I lose 100 thalers a year to him. If his taking away of 100 thalers is an institution, the trading that follows is a means of cancelling out this institution in part, here to the extent of 1/10. However, no surplus value arises in this way and the extent to which this buyer can be defrauded by me, i.e. the number of transactions in which I can sell him 90 thalers' worth of commodities for 100, depends precisely on the number of times he takes 100 thalers from me without giving any equivalent whatever. It is therefore not a transaction through which capital, value preserving and increasing itself in circulation, can be explained, still less the surplus value of capital. Not only Torrens, but Malthus himself makes leaps of this kind, and is reproached for it with moral indignation by the Ricardians.7 Thus Malthus thinks - and correctly under the given conditions - that the income of the mere consumers, mere buyers, must be increased so that the producers can make a profit from them, so as to encourage production.

* "The zeal for 'encouraging consumption', as supposed necessary for trade in general, springs from the real usefulness of it with regard to the venders of a

a See this volume, pp. 190-91. - Ed.

particular trade” * ([p.] 60). * “ ‘What we want are people who buy our goods’... But they have nothing in the world to give you for your goods, but what you gave them first. No property can originate in their hands; it must have come from yours. Landlords, placemen, stockholders, servants, be they what they may, their whole means of buying your goods was once your means, and you gave it up to them” * ([pp.] 61-62). * “The object of selling your goods is to make a certain amount of money; it never can answer to part with that amount of money for nothing, to another person, that he may bring it back to you, and buy your goods with it: you might as well have just burnt your goods at once, and you would have been in the same situation” * ([p.] 63) (An Inquiry into those Principles, Respecting the Nature of Demand and the Necessity of Consumption, Lately [1-17] Advocated by Mr. Malthus etc., London, 1821).

* “Mr. Malthus sometimes talks as if there were two distinct funds, capital and revenue, supply and demand, production and consumption, which must take care to keep pace with each other, and neither outrun the other. As if, besides the whole mass of commodities produced, there was required another mass, fallen from Heaven, I suppose, to purchase them with.... The fund for consumption, such as he requires, can only be had at the expense of production” * (l.c., [pp.] 49, 50). * “When a man is in want of demand, does Mr. Malthus recommend him to pay some other person to take off his goods?” * ([p.] 55).

[1-4] In the form of circulation C—M—C, viewed as the total metamorphosis of the commodity, the value admittedly exists as well, first as the price of the commodity, then in money as the realised price, and finally in the price of the commodity again (or, in general, in its exchange value); but it only puts in a transitory appearance here. The commodity exchanged by means of the money becomes a use value; the exchange value disappears, as the irrelevant form of the commodity, and it drops out of circulation altogether.

In simple commodity circulation—C—M—C—money always appears in all its forms as merely the result of circulation.3 In M—C—M it appears, to an equal extent, as starting-point and as result of circulation, so that exchange value is not, as in the first form of circulation, the merely transitory form of commodity circulation—the form of the commodity itself taking shape within the exchange of commodities and in turn vanishing—but on the contrary the purpose, the content and the propulsive heart of circulation.

The starting-point of this circulation is money, exchange value become independent. Historically the formation of capital also proceeds everywhere from monetary wealth, and the first conception of capital is that it is money, but money that passes through certain processes.

a K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, p. 372).- Ed.

The form of circulation M—C—M, or money-in-process, self-valorising value, takes as its starting-point money, the product of the simple circulation C—M—C. It therefore presupposes not just the circulation of commodities but a circulation of commodities which has already developed all the forms of money. The formation of capital is therefore only possible where the circulation of commodities—the exchange of products as commodities and the establishment of exchange value's independence in money and the latter's various forms—has already developed. In order to pass through the process in which it appears as starting-point and result, exchange value must have already attained its independent, abstract shape in money.

The first act of the form M—C—M, namely M—C, or purchase, is the last act of the form C—M—C, namely M—C once again. In the last act, however, the commodity is bought, money is converted into a commodity, so that the latter may be consumed as a use value. The money is expended. By contrast, in M—C as the first stage of M—C—M, the money is converted into a commodity, exchanged for a commodity, only so that the commodity may be converted back into money, so that the money may be recovered, retrieved from circulation again by means of the commodity. The money therefore appears only to have been given out so that it may return, only thrown into circulation so that it may be withdrawn again through the commodity. Hence it is only advanced.

* “When a thing is bought, in order to be sold again, the sum employed is called money advanced; when it is bought not to be sold, it may be said to be expended” * (James Steuart, Works etc., ed. by General Sir James Steuart, his son etc., Vol. I, London, 1805, [p.] 274).a

If we look at the form C—M—C, in its first act, C—M, the commodity appears as a mere materialisation of exchange value (hence a mere means of exchange) for the seller. Its use value is not as such use value for himself—the seller—but for a third factor, the buyer. He therefore sells it, converts it into money, in order with that money to buy a commodity which is a use value for himself. The price of the commodity he buys has value for him only insofar as it determines the quantity—the quantity of use values—he obtains for his money. In purchase therefore the exchange value of the commodity appears here only as a transitory form of the commodity, and similarly the independence of this3 exchange value in money only puts in a transitory appearance.

3 J. Steuart, An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy. In: J. Steuart, The Works, Political, Metaphysical, and Chronological.-Ed.

In M—C—M, on the other hand, [1-5] where the purchase forms not the second but rather the first act of circulation or the processes of exchange, the commodity into which the money is converted is equally no more than a materialisation of exchange value for the buyer, just a disguised form of money, so to speak. Here both M and C appear merely as specific forms, modes of existence of exchange value, between which it alternates; money as the general, the commodity as a particular form of exchange value. The exchange value is not lost in the transition from one mode of existence to the other; it merely changes its form and hence always returns to itself in its general form. It appears as dominating over its two modes of existence, money and the commodity, and precisely for that reason it appears as the subject of the process, in which it presents itself now as the one and now as the other, hence either as money-in-process or as value-in-process.

Secondly. As we have already noted, M—C—M would, however, be a movement without content if the extremes M, M, which are qualitatively the same, were not quantitatively different. The process would be without content if a certain sum of value were cast into circulation as money, so that the same sum of value could be withdrawn again from circulation in the form of money, thus leaving everything as it was before, at the starting-point of the movement, as a result of two acts of exchange in opposite directions. The characteristic feature of the process is rather that the extremes M, M, although qualitatively the same, are quantitatively different, quantitative distinction being altogether the only thing exchange value as such—and in money it exists as such—is capable of by its nature. As a result of the two acts of buying and selling, the conversion of money into a commodity and the reconversion of the commodity into money, at the end of the movement more money, a larger sum of money, hence an enhanced value, emerges from circulation: more money than the amount cast into circulation at the beginning.

If, for example, the money was originally, at the start of the movement, 100 thalers, it is 110 at the end. The value has therefore not only maintained itself but has in the course of circulation posited a new value, or surplus value, as we shall call it. Value has produced value. Or value appears to us here for the first time as self-valorising. Hence value as it appears in the movement M—C—M is value coming out of circulation, entering it, maintaining itself in it, and valorising itself, positing surplus value. As such it is capital.

In hoarding, which one might recall here, value does not valorise itself.3 The commodity is converted into money, sold, and in this shape withdrawn from circulation, laid aside. The same magnitude of value as existed previously in the form of the commodity now exists in the form of money. The commodity has not increased its magnitude of value; it has simply taken on the general form of exchange value, the money form. This was a purely qualitative change, not a quantitative one.

In the present case, however, the commodity is already presupposed in the form of money as the starting-point of the process. It gives up this form temporarily in order to reassume it at the end as an increased magnitude of value. Money as hoard, in contrast, remains fixed in its form as exchange value become independent, and, far from being valorised, is withdrawn from circulation. Its power of acting as exchange value is retained in petto b for the future, but suspended for the present. Not only does the magnitude of its value remain unaltered, it loses its function, its quality, of exchange value-as long as it remains a hoard-since it does not function as money, whether means of purchase or means of payment. Apart from this it has no direct use value as money, and has therefore also lost the use value it possessed as a commodity. It can only win this use value back [1-6] by acting again as money, being thrown into circulation and thereby giving up its character as the presence of exchange value. The only thing that takes place in hoarding is that the commodity is given the form of money, the adequate form of exchange value, by the sale of the commodity at its price. In place of valorisation-i.e. an increase of the original value-there occurs no utilisation at all of the money fixed as a hoard; it possesses only a potential value, in actuality it is valueless. Thus this relation of self-valorising value or capital has nothing in common with hoarding, except that both of them are concerned with exchange value, with the hoarder, however, employing an illusory method of increasing it.

In C—M—C, selling in order to buy, in which use value and therefore the satisfaction of needs is the ultimate purpose, there is nothing in the form itself that directly requires its repetition once the process has taken place. The commodity is exchanged by means of money for another commodity, which now drops out of circulation as a use value. With this the movement has come to an end.

a K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 359-70).- Ed.

b Literally: “in the breast”. In a figurative sense: “in a secret place”, “in a concealed form”, “in reserve”.- Ed.

In M—C—M, by contrast, the very form of the movement implies that no end is at hand: the end of the movement already contains the principle and the driving force of its resumption. For since money, abstract wealth, exchange value is the starting-point of the movement and its multiplication is the purpose; since the result and the starting-point are qualitatively the same, being a sum of money or value, whose quantitative limit appears at the end as much as at the beginning of the process as a barrier to its general concept—for the more the quantity of exchange value or money is increased the more it corresponds to its concept—(money as such can be exchanged for all wealth, all commodities, but the degree to which it is exchangeable depends on its own mass or magnitude of value)—self-valorisation remains as much a necessary activity for the money which emerges from the process as for the money which started it off—consequently the principle of the movement's resumption is already given with the movement's end. Moreover, it emerges at the end as what it was at the beginning, namely the prerequisite of the same movement in the same form. This is what this movement has in common with hoarding: the absolute drive for enrichment, the drive to gain possession of wealth in its general form.

//At this point it will be necessary to go in detail into Aristotle's discussion, Republic I, 1, ch. 9.9//

It is the money owner (or commodity owner, for money is after all only the converted shape of the commodity) who makes his money, or the value he possesses in the form of money, pass through the process M—C—M. This movement is the content of his activity and he therefore appears only as the personification of capital defined in this way, as the capitalist. His person (or rather his pocket) is the starting-point of M, and it is the point of return. He is the conscious vehicle of this process. Just as the result of the process is the preservation and increase of value, the self-valorisation of value, what forms the content of the movement appears in him as a conscious purpose. To increase the amount of value he possesses appears thus as his sole purpose. His purpose is the ever-growing appropriation of wealth in its general form, exchange value, and only insofar as it appears as his sole driving motive is he a capitalist or a conscious subject of the movement M—C—M. Never use value, only exchange value must therefore be regarded as his direct purpose. The need he satisfies is for enrichment as such. It goes without saying, incidentally, that he continuously increases his control over real wealth, over the world of use values. For whatever the productivity of labour, at a given

stage of production a higher exchange value is always represented by a larger mass of use values than a smaller.10 [1-6]

[1-14]11 In order to develop the concept of capital we must begin not with labour but with value, or, more precisely, with the exchange value already developed in the movement of circulation. It is just as impossible to pass directly from labour to capital from the different races of men directly to the banker, or from nature to the steam-engine.12

As soon as money is posited as exchange value which not merely makes itself independent of circulation (as in hoarding) but maintains itself inside it, it is no longer money, for money as such does not extend beyond the negative determination; it is capital. Hence money is also the first form in which exchange value proceeds to the character of capital, and historically it is the first form in which capital appears, being as a result historically confused with capital itself. For capital, circulation appears not only, as with money, as a movement in which exchange value vanishes, but also as a movement in which it is preserved and is itself the alternation of the two determinations of money and commodity. In simple circulation, in contrast, exchange value is not realised as such. It is always realised only in the moment of its disappearance. If the commodity becomes money and the money again becomes commodity, the exchange value determination of the commodity disappears, for it only served to obtain a quantity of the second commodity corresponding to the first commodity, the second commodity to the corresponding amount, whereupon the latter commodity as a use value is swallowed up in consumption. The commodity becomes indifferent towards this form and ceases to be more than the direct object of need. If the commodity is exchanged for money, the form of exchange value, money, persists only as long as it stays outside exchange, puts itself in a negative relation to circulation. The imperishability money strove for by taking up a negative stance towards circulation is achieved by capital, in that the latter preserves itself precisely by self-abandonment to circulation. [1-14]

[1-7] b) DIFFICULTIES ARISING FROM THE NATURE OF VALUE, ETC.

We first examined the form of capital in which it is directly presented or appears for observation. It can, however, be easily shown that the form M —C—M, value re-entering circulation, preserving and valorising itself within it, seems utterly incompatible with the nature of money, the commodity, value and circulation itself.

Circulation, in which the commodity is now represented as commodity, now as money, involves a change of form for the commodity; the manner in which its exchange value is represented changes but the exchange value itself remains unaltered. The magnitude of its value does not change, it is not affected by this change of form. If we take a commodity, a ton of iron for example, its exchange value, the labour time contained in it, is expressed (represented) in its price, say £3. If it is now sold, it is converted into £3, into the quantity of money indicated by its price, money which contains an identical amount of labour time. Now it exists no longer as a commodity but as money, as independent exchange value. The magnitude of value remains unaltered, being the same in the one form as in the other. Only the form in which the same exchange value exists has altered. The change in the form of the commodity which constitutes circulation, buying and selling, has in itself nothing to do with the magnitude of the commodity's value: this magnitude is rather pre-posited to circulation as a given factor. The money form is merely another form of the commodity itself, in which no change takes place in its exchange value except that it now appears in its independent form.

But in the circulation C—M—C (selling in order to buy) there is a simple confrontation of commodity owners, one of whom possesses the commodity in its original shape, the other in its converted shape as money. Like the circulation C—M —C, the circulation M —C—M contains the two acts of sale and purchase and no more. The one starts with a sale and ends with a purchase; the other starts with a purchase and ends with a sale. Each of the acts of exchange needs only to be considered for itself in order to see that the sequence of these acts cannot change their nature in any way. In the first act, M —C, what we have called capital exists only as money; in the second act, C—M, it exists only as a commodity. In both acts, therefore, it can only have the effect of money and commodity. In the first it confronts the other commodity owner as the buyer, the money owner, in the second as seller, commodity owner. If we assume that through some inexplicable circumstance the buyers have the opportunity of buying cheaper, i.e. buying the commodity at less than its value and selling it at its value or at more than its value, our man is admittedly a buyer in the first act (M—C) and would therefore buy the commodity at less than its value, but in the second act (C—M) he is a seller and another commodity owner confronts him as buyer; the latter would in turn have the privilege of purchasing the commodity from him at less than its value. What he gained with one hand would be lost with the other. If, on the other hand, one assumes that he sells the commodity at more than its value, this being a privilege enjoyed by the seller, then in the first act, before he himself acquired the commodity in order to sell it later, someone else confronted him as the seller and sold him his commodity too dear. If they all sell their commodities e.g. 10% too dear, i.e. at 10% over their value—and we have here only commodity owners confronting each other, whether they possess their commodities in the commodity or the money form; in fact they will possess them alternately in one form and then the other—then it will be exactly the same as if they sold them to each other at their real value. Similarly if they all buy the commodities at, for example, 10% under their value.

It is clear, insofar as one considers the simple use value of the commodities, that both parties can gain by the exchange. [1-8] In this sense it can be said that "exchange is a transaction in which both sides only gain" (Destutt de Tracy, Elémens d'idéologie. Traité de la volonté et de ses effets (forms part IV and V), Paris, 1826, p. 68. It says there:

"Exchange is an admirable transaction in which the two contracting parties always gain, both of them"3).

To the extent that the whole circulation is only a mediating movement to exchange one commodity for another, each person alienates the commodity he does not need as a use value and appropriates the commodity he does need as a use value. They both gain from this process, therefore, and they only enter into it because they both gain. Yet another point: A, who sells iron and buys grain, possibly produces more iron over a given labour time than the grain farmer B could produce in the same time, and B for his part produces more grain in the same labour time than A could produce. By means of the exchange, therefore, whether mediated through money or not, A receives more grain for the same exchange value, and B more iron, than they would if the exchange had not taken place. Insofar as it is a matter of the use values iron and grain, then, both sides gain by the exchange. Similarly, if we regard each of the two acts of circulation, buying and selling, in isolation, and limit our consideration to use value, both parties gain. The seller, who converts his commodity into money, gains because he now has it for the first time in a generally exchangeable form, and only thus does it become general means of exchange for him. The buyer, who converts his money back into a commodity, gains because he has taken it out of this form which is required for circulation, but is otherwise useless, and turned it into a use value for himself. There is not the slightest difficulty in understanding, therefore, that both sides gain by the exchange, insofar as it is a question of use value.

It is entirely different with exchange value. Here the reverse is the case: "Where there is equality there is no gain" (Galiani, Della moneta, Custodi. Autore etc., Parte Moderna, Vol. IV, [p.] 244... "Dove è eguaglità, non è lucro").

It is clear that if A and B exchange equivalents, quantities of exchange value or objectified labour time of equal magnitude, whether in the form of money or of commodities, they both bring back from the exchange the same exchange value as they threw into it. If A sells his commodity at its value, he now possesses in the form of money the same quantity of objectified labour time (or a draft on the same quantity, which is for him in practice the same) as he previously possessed in the form of the commodity, i.e. the same exchange value. The same thing holds good, but inversely, for B, who has bought the commodity with his money. He now possesses in the form of the commodity the same exchange value as he previously possessed in the form of money. The sum of the two exchange values remains the same, as also the exchange value possessed by each of them. It is impossible that A should buy the commodity from B under its value and thus receive back in the commodity a higher exchange value than he gave B in money, while B simultaneously sells the commodity above its [value] and thus receives from A in the money form more exchange value than he gave him in the commodity form.

(* "A cannot obtain from B more corn for the same quantity of cloth, at the same time that B obtains from A more cloth for the same quantity of corn" *) (A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Measures, and Causes of Value etc., London, 1825, [p. 65]).

(The anonymous author is Bailey.)*

* That commodities are exchanged in accordance with their value, or, with regard to the particular form of exchange which occurs in the circulation process, are sold and bought, means nothing more than that equivalents, equal magnitudes of value, are exchanged, replace each other, i.e. commodities are exchanged in proportion as their use values contain equal magnitudes of worked-up labour time, are quanta of labour of equal size.

It is of course possible that one person may lose what the other gains, with the result that the two exchangers are exchanging non-equivalents. Hence one person will draw from the exchange a higher exchange value than he threw in, and indeed precisely in the proportion in which the other person draws a lower exchange value from the exchange than he threw into it. Let us suppose that the value of 100 lbs of cotton is 100 shillings. If A now sells 150 pounds of cotton at 100 shillings to B, B has won 50 shillings, but only because A has lost 50 shillings.

[1-9] If 150 lbs of cotton with a price of 150s. (the price is here only its value expressed, measured, in money) are sold at 100s., the sum of the two values is 250s. after the sale as well as before. Hence the total sum of value present in circulation has not increased, has not valorised itself, has posited no surplus value. It has, rather, remained unaltered. All that has taken place within the exchange or by means of the sale is a change in the distribution of the value pre-posited to it, which existed before it and independently of it. 50s. have passed from one side to the other. It is therefore clear that the fraud which has occurred on one side or the other, whether committed by the buyer or by the seller, does not increase the sum of exchange values present in circulation (whether they exist in the commodity or the money form) but only alters (changes) their distribution among the various commodity owners. Let us assume in the above example that A sells 150 lbs of cotton with a value of 150s. to B for 100s., and B sells it at 150s. to C. In this way B gains 50s., or it appears that his value of 100s. has posited a value of 150. But in fact the same amount is present after the transaction as before it: 100s. in A's possession, 150s. in B's, commodities to the value of 150s. in C's. Summa summarum: 400s. Originally there were present: commodities to the value of 150s. in A's possession, 100s. in B's, 150s. in C's. Summa summarum: 400s. No further change has taken place except the change in the distribution of the 400s. between A, B and C. 50s. have travelled from A's pocket to B's, and A has become poorer precisely to the extent that B has been enriched. What applies to one sale and one purchase applies equally to the sum total of all sales and purchases, in short to the whole of the circulation of commodities taking place between the whole of the owners of commodities within any period of time. If one commodity owner, or a number of them, take advantage of the rest and thereby draw a surplus value from circulation, its quantity

can be exactly measured by the reduction in the value drawn from circulation by the other commodity owners. Some of them extract more value from circulation than they threw in because, and to the extent that, the others extract less value, suffer a deduction from, a lessening in, the value they originally laid out. The sum total of existing values is not thereby altered, only their distribution.

“The exchange of two equal values neither increases nor diminishes the amount of the values available in society. Nor does the exchange of two unequal values ... change anything in the sum of social values, although it adds to the wealth of one person what it removes from the wealth of another” (J. B. Say, Traité d’économie politique, 3rd ed., Vol. 2, Paris, 1817, pp. 443-44).a If we take all the capitalists of a country and the sum total of purchases and sales between them in the course of a year, for example, one capitalist may admittedly defraud the other and hence draw from circulation more value than he threw in, but this operation would not increase by one iota the sum total of the circulating value of the capital. In other words: the class of capitalists taken as a whole cannot enrich itself as a class, it cannot increase its total capital, or produce a surplus value, by one capitalist’s gaining what another loses. The class as a whole cannot defraud itself. The sum total of capital in circulation cannot be increased by changes in the distribution of its individual components between its owners. Operations of this kind, therefore, however large a number of them one may imagine, will not produce any increase in the sum total of value, any new or surplus value, or any gain on top of the total capital in circulation.

To say that equivalents are exchanged is in fact to say nothing more than that commodities are exchanged at their exchange value, that they are bought and sold and bought at their exchange value.

“In fact the exchange value of one commodity expressed in the use value of another commodity represents equivalence” (I-15).b Where exchange has developed into the form of circulation, however, the exchange value of the commodity is expressed, by means of the price, in money (the material of the commodity which serves as the measure of values and hence as money). Its price is its exchange value expressed in money. Therefore, the fact that it is sold in return for an equivalent in money means nothing more than that it is sold at its price, i.e. its value.

a Marx quotes in French.— Ed.

b K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 279-80).— Ed.

Similarly, in the case of a purchase, the money buys the commodity at its price, i.e. here the identical sum of money. [I-10] The prerequisite that commodities are exchanged for their equivalents is the same as that they are exchanged at their value, bought and sold at their value.

Two things follow from this.

Firstly. If the commodities are bought and sold at their value, equivalents are exchanged. The value cast by each hand into circulation returns back from circulation into the same hand. It is therefore not increased, it is not affected at all by the act of exchange. Capital, i.e. value which valorises itself in and through circulation, i.e. increasing value, value which posits a surplus value, would thereby be impossible if the commodities were bought and sold at their value.

Secondly. If, however, the commodities are not sold or bought at their value, this is only possible—and, altogether, non-equivalents can only be exchanged—if one side takes advantage of the other, i.e. if one person receives through the exchange exactly as much more than the value he laid out as the other receives less than the value he laid out. But the sum total of the values exchanged is not thereby altered and no new value has therefore arisen through the exchange. A possesses 100 lbs of cotton to the value of 100s. В buys it for 50s. В has gained 50s., because A has lost 50s. The total sum of values before the exchange was 150s. It is the same after the exchange. But В owned 1/3 of this sum before the exchange, and afterwards he owns 2/3. A in contrast owned 2/3 before the exchange and only owns 1/3 afterwards. All that has happened, therefore, is a change in the distribution of the sum of values, 150s. The sum itself has remained unchanged.

According to this, capital, self-valorising value, would once again be impossible as a general form of wealth, as in the first case, since an increase of value on the one side would imply a corresponding reduction of value on the other, hence the value as such would not rise. In circulation, one value would only increase because the other value declined, hence was not even maintained.

It is therefore clear that exchange as such, whether in the form of direct barter or in the form of circulation, leaves the values cast into it unchanged, adds no value.

* “Exchange confers no value at all upon products” * (F. Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy, Boston, 1843, [p.] 169).

Even so, one still meets with the nonsensical assertion, even from renowned modern economists, that surplus value as such derives from things being sold dearer than their purchase price.

Thus, e.g., Mr. Torrens:

* “Effectual demand consists in the power and inclination, on the part of the consumers, to give for commodities, either by immediate or circuitous barter, some greater portion of all the ingredients of capital than their production costs” * (Torrens, An Essay on the Production of Wealth etc, London, 1821, p. 349).

Here we merely have seller and buyer before us. The question whether the commodity owner (the seller) has produced the commodity by himself, and whether the other, the buyer (whose money, however, must also have originated from the sale of commodities, is only their converted form) wants to buy the commodity for consumption, to buy it as a consumer, does not alter the relation in any way. The seller always represents use value. The [economists’] phrase, reduced to its essential content, and with its incidental accoutrement stripped off, means nothing more than this, that all buyers buy their commodities at more than their value, hence the seller in general sells his commodity at more than its value, and the buyer always buys at less than the value of his money. To bring in the producer and the consumer does not alter things in the least; for they do not confront each other in the act of exchange as consumer and producer but as seller and buyer. Yet where the individuals exchange solely as commodity owners each of them must be both producer and consumer, and each can only be the one insofar as he is the other. Each would lose as buyer what he gains as seller.

On the one hand, then, if a surplus value, as we still can call every form of gain here, is to emerge from the exchange, it must already have been present before the exchange, as a result of some act which is, however, invisible, not perceptible, in the formula M-C-M.

* “Profit* (this is a special form of surplus value),* in the usual condition of the market, is not made by exchanging. Had it not existed before, neither could it after that transaction” * (G. Ramsay, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, Edinburgh, [London,] 1836, p. 184).

Ramsay says in the same place:

* “The idea of profits being paid by the consumers, is, assuredly, very absurd. Who are the consumers?”* etc. (p. 183).

There are only commodity owners facing each other, each of whom is just as much a consumer as a producer; and each of them can only be the one to the extent that he is the other. But if one thinks, anticipating, of classes which consume without [I-11] producing, even so their wealth can only consist of a share of the commodities of the producers, and one cannot explain the increase in value by saying that classes which are given values for nothing are defrauded when an exchange is made in return for those values. (See Malthus.13) The surplus value or the self-valorisation of value cannot arise from exchange, from circulation.

On the other hand, value which as such creates value can only be a product of exchange, of circulation, for only in exchange can it function as exchange value. In itself, isolated, it would be a hoard and as such it no more valorises itself than it serves as a use value.

Or if, e.g., one were to say: the money owner buys the commodity, but he works on it, applies it productively, and in that way adds value to it, and then in turn sells it, the surplus value would have arisen entirely and exclusively from his labour. Value as such would not have functioned, would not have valorised itself. He does not obtain more value because he has value: the increase of value comes instead from the addition of labour.

In any case, if capital is a specific form of wealth, a potentiality of value, it must be developed on the basis that equivalents are exchanged, i.e. that the commodities are sold at their value, i.e. in proportion to the labour time contained in them. This seems impossible, however. If equivalents are exchanged for each other in M-C-M, both in the act M-C and in the act C-M, how can more money emerge from the process than went into it?

The investigation of the origins of surplus value has therefore formed the most important problem of political economy from the Physiocrats to the present day. It is in fact the question of how money (or the commodity, as money is only the converted form of the commodity), a sum of values in general, becomes transformed into capital, how capital originates.

The apparent contradictions which lie in the problem—in the conditions of the task—led Franklin to the following utterance: * “There are only 3 ways of increasing the riches of a state: the first is by war: that is robbery; the second is by commerce: this is cheating; and the third is by agriculture: this is the only honest way”* ([The] Works of B. Franklin, Vol. II, ed. Sparks, [p. 373,] “Positions to be examined concerning National Wealth”).14

Here one can already see why two forms of capital that correspond most closely to the ordinary conception of capital and are, in fact, historically the oldest forms of existence of capital— capital in two functions, for its appearance as a particular sort of capital depends on whether it functions in one form or the other—do not come into consideration here at all, for we are dealing with capital as such, but must rather be developed later as derived, secondary forms of capital.15

The movement M-C-M is shown most clearly in merchant’s capital proper. It was therefore realised at an early stage that its purpose is to increase the value or the money cast into circulation, and that the form in which this is achieved is through buying in order to sell again.

“All the orders of merchants have in common that they buy in order to re-sell” (Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses, (appeared in 1766) in Oeuvres de Turgot, ed. by Eugène Daire, Vol. 1, Paris, 1844, p. 43).a

On the other hand, surplus value appears here to originate purely in circulation, in that the merchant sells dearer than he buys, whether by buying cheaper than he sells (buying the commodity at less than its value and selling it at or above its value) or by buying the commodity at its value but selling it above its value. He buys the commodity from one person, sells it to another, representing money to the one and the commodity to the other; and when he begins the movement all over again, he sells also in order to buy, but the commodity as such is never his goal, the latter movement serving him only as [I-12] a mediation for the first. He alternately represents the different sides (phases) of circulation towards the buyer and the seller, and the whole of his movement falls within circulation, or rather, he appears as its vehicle, as the representative of money, just as in simple commodity circulation the whole movement seems to proceed from the medium of circulation, from money as medium of circulation.b He appears only as the intermediary of the different phases the commodity has to pass through in circulation and he therefore mediates only between available extremes, available sellers and buyers, who represent available commodities and available money. Since no other process is added here to the circulation process, the surplus value (profit) the merchant makes by alternately selling and buying—for all his operations can be reduced to sales and purchases—the increase in the money or value brought by him into circulation seems to be explained purely by his taking advantage of the parties with whom he is alternately concerned; the explanation appears to lie in the exchange of non-equivalents, whereby he always draws out of circulation a greater value than he puts into it. His gain—the surplus value

a Marx quotes in French.— Ed.

b K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, p. 337).— Ed.

created for him by the value he has brought into the exchange - thus appears to stem exclusively from circulation and hence only to be made up of the losses of the people trading with him.

Merchant wealth can in fact originate purely in this manner, and the wealth of the trading peoples which conduct a carrying trade between industrially less developed nations originated to a large extent in this manner. Merchant's capital can act between nations standing at very diverse stages of production and of the economic structure of society in general. It can therefore act between nations where the capitalist mode of production does not occur, hence long before capital is developed in its main forms. But if the gain made by the merchant, or the self-valorisation of the merchant's wealth, is not merely to be explained by his taking advantage of the commodity owners; if, therefore, it is to be more than just a different distribution of previously existing sums of value, it must evidently be derived only from prerequisites which do not appear in its movement, in its specific function, and its gain, its self-valorisation, appears as a purely derivative, secondary form, the origin of which must be sought elsewhere. Indeed, if its specific form is viewed independently, for itself, commerce must appear, in Franklin's words, as mere cheating, and if equivalents are exchanged, or commodities are sold and bought at their exchange value, it must appear altogether impossible.

"Under the rule of invariable equivalents commerce would be impossible"* (G. Opdyke, A Treatise on Political Economy, New York, 1851, [p.] 67). (Hence Engels, in his Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy - see Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, Paris, 1844 - sought in similar fashion to explain the difference between exchange value and price by saying that commerce was impossible as long as commodities were exchanged at their value.3)

Another form of capital, similarly age-old, is money lent out at interest, interest-bearing money capital, from which popular opinion has taken its concept of capital. Here we do not see the movement M-C-M, the exchange of money for the commodity followed by the exchange of the commodity for more money. All we see is the result of the movement M-M: money is exchanged for more money. It returns to its starting-point, but augmented. If it was originally 100 thalers, it is now 110. The money, the value represented by the 100 thalers, has preserved and valorised itself, i.e. it has posited a surplus value of 10 thalers. We find interest-bearing money, money that posits money, formally therefore capital, in almost all countries and epochs of history, however primitive the mode of production of the society and however undeveloped its economic structure. One side of capital comes still closer here to the [popular] conception than was the case with merchant's wealth. [1-13] (The κεφάλαιον of the Greeks is our capital in its etymological formation as well.16) Namely the fact that value as such valorises itself, posits surplus value, because it (enters into circulation) already exists previously as value, independent value (money), and that, in general, value is only posited, and the [original] value is only preserved and multiplied, because value - value as value - was pre-posited, because it functions as self-valorising. It is sufficient to remark here (we shall return to this on another occasion17):

Firstly: If money is lent out as capital in the modern sense of the word, it is already assumed that money - a sum of value - is in itself capital; i.e. that the person to whom the money is lent can or will apply it as productive capital, as self-valorising value, and will have to pay a portion of the surplus value thereby created to the person who has lent him the money as capital. Here, then, interest-bearing money capital is manifestly not only a derived form of capital, capital in a particular function, but capital is assumed to be already fully developed, so that now a sum of value - whether in the money or the commodity form - can be lent as capital, not as money and commodity, i.e. capital itself can be thrown into circulation as a commodity sui generis.3 Here capital is already presupposed in finished form as a power of money or the commodity, of value in general, so that it can be thrown into circulation as this potentiated value. Interest-bearing money capital in this sense therefore already assumes the development of capital. The capital-relation must already be complete before it can appear in this specific form. The self-valorising nature of value is here already presupposed as rooted in it, so that a sum of value could be sold as self-valorising value, disposed of to a third person on certain conditions. Similarly, interest appears then merely as a particular form and branch of surplus value, just as the latter divides altogether later on into different forms, which constitute different kinds of revenue, such as profit, rent, interest. All questions about the magnitude of the interest, etc., therefore appear as questions of the distribution of the available surplus value between different sorts of capitalist. The existence of surplus value as such is presupposed here.

Of a special kind. - Ed.

In order that money or commodities, a sum of value in general, may be lent as capital, capital is already so far presupposed as a specific potentiated form of value that, just as money and commodities are presupposed as material elements over against capital in general, the capital form of value is here presupposed as the identical inherent quality of money and commodities, so that money or commodities can be made over as capital to a third person, since commodities or money are not developed as capital during circulation but can instead be cast into circulation as finished capital, as capital in itself, as a particular commodity, which also has its own particular form of alienation.

On the basis of capitalist production itself, therefore, interest-bearing capital appears as a derived, secondary form.

Secondly. Interest-bearing money appears as the first form of interest-bearing capital, just as money in general appears as the starting-point of capital formation, since value first becomes independent in money, hence the increase of money initially appears as an increase in value in itself, and in money the standard is available for the measurement of, first, the value of all commodities, but then the self-valorisation of value. Money can now be lent out to productive purposes, hence formally as capital, although capital has not yet taken control of production, there is no capitalist production yet, hence no capital exists yet in the strict sense of the word, whether because production takes place on the basis of slavery, or the surplus product belongs to the landlord (as in Asia and in feudal times), or craft industry or peasant economy and the like is the rule. This form of capital is therefore just as independent of the development of the stages of production as merchant's wealth (the only presupposition being that the circulation of commodities has proceeded far enough to create money), and hence appears historically before the development of capitalist production, on the basis of which it is only a secondary form. Like merchant's wealth it only needs to be formally capital, capital in a function in which it can exist before it has taken control of production; the latter capital alone is the basis of an historical mode of social production of its own.18

[1-14] Thirdly. Money can be borrowed (just like commodities) for buying, not for productive employment, but for consumption, to expend it. In this case no surplus value is formed, there is merely a change in distribution, a displacement of the available values.

Fourthly. Money can be borrowed for payment. Money can be borrowed as a means of payment. If this is done to cover debts arising out of consumption, it is the same case as 3, the only difference being that there money is borrowed to buy use values, here to pay for use values which have been consumed.

But the payment may be required as an act of the circulation process of capital. Discount. The examination of this case belongs in the doctrine of credit.19

After this digression back to the subject.

In developing capital it is important to keep in mind that the sole prerequisite - the sole material we start out from - is commodity circulation and money circulation, commodities and money, and that individuals only confront each other as commodity owners.20 The second prerequisite is that the change of form the commodity undergoes in circulation is only formal, i.e. that in all forms the value remains unchanged, that although the commodity exists at one time as a use value and next time as money, there is no alteration in the magnitude of its value, that the commodities are therefore bought and sold at their value, in proportion to the labour time contained in them: in other words, that equivalents alone are exchanged.

Of course, if one looks at the form C-M-C, one finds that here too the value is preserved. It exists first in the form of the commodity, then in that of money, then in that of the commodity again. E.g. if a ton of iron is sold at a price of £3, the same £3 then exist as money, and after that as wheat at a price of £3. The magnitude of the value, £3, has therefore been preserved in this process, but the grain, as a use value, now drops out of circulation into consumption and with this the value is annihilated. Even though the value is preserved in this case as long as the commodity stays in circulation, this appears a purely formal matter.3

K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, p. 324). See also this volume, p. 20. - Ed.

[1-15] γ) EXCHANGE WITH LABOUR. LABOUR PROCESS. VALORISATION PROCESS

In the process M-C-M the value (a given sum of value) should be maintained and increased while it enters into circulation, i.e. alternately takes on the forms of commodity and money. Circulation should not be a mere change of form but should raise the magnitude of value, should add to the value already present a new value, or surplus value. As capital the value should be, as it were, raised to the second power, potentiated.

The exchange value of the commodity is the quantity of equal social labour objectified in its use value, or the quantity of labour which has been embodied, worked up in it. The magnitude of this quantity is measured by time: the labour time that is required to produce the use value, and is therefore objectified in it.

Money is distinguished from the commodity solely by the form in which this objectified labour is expressed. In money, the objectified labour is expressed as social labour (in general), which is therefore directly exchangeable with all other commodities in proportion as they contain the same amount of labour. In the commodity, the exchange value it contains, or the labour objectified in it, is only expressed in its price, i.e. in an equation with money; it is only expressed notionally in gold (the material of money and the measure of values). Both forms, however, are forms of the same magnitude of value and, viewed in terms of their substance, forms of the same quantity of objectified labour, thus they are objectified labour in general. (As we have seen,3 money can be replaced in internal circulation both as means of purchase and of payment by tokens of value, tokens of itself. This in no way alters the essence of the matter, as the token represents the same value, the same labour time, as is contained in the money.)

K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 348-51). - Ed.

In the movement M-C-M, and in the concept of capital in general, money is the starting-point. This means nothing more than that the starting-point is the independent form assumed by the value contained in the commodity, or by the labour contained in it: the form in which labour time is present as labour time in general, regardless of the use value in which it was originally embodied. Value, both in the form of money and of the commodity, is an objectified quantity of labour. If money is converted into a commodity, or a commodity into money, the value changes only its form, not its substance, which consists in its being objectified labour, nor its magnitude, whereby it is a definite quantity of objectified labour. All commodities therefore differ only formally from money; money is only a particular form of existence taken on by commodities in and for circulation. As objectified labour they are the same thing, value. The change of

form, the fact that this value is present now as money, now as commodity, ought on our assumption to be irrelevant to capital, or it is a prerequisite—assuming that capital in each of these forms is self-maintaining value—without which money, and value in general, does not become capital at all. In general, it should only be a matter of the same content changing its form.

The sole antithesis to objectified labour is non-objectified, living labour. The one is present in space, the other in time, the one is in the past, the other in the present, the one is already embodied in a use value, the other, as human activity-in-process, is currently engaged in the process of self-objectification, the one is value, the other is value-creating. If a given value is exchanged for the value-creating activity, if objectified labour is exchanged for living labour, in short if money is exchanged for labour, the possibility seems to be available that by means of this process of exchange the existing value can be preserved or increased. Let us therefore assume that the money-owner buys labour, hence the seller sells not a commodity but labour. This relation cannot be explained on the basis of the relation of the circulation of commodities, considered previously, where the only parties confronting each other are [1-16] the owners of commodities.20 For the moment we shall not inquire here into the conditions for this relation, and simply assume it as a fact.21 Our money-owner’s sole aim in buying labour is to increase the value he possesses. The particular kind of labour he purchases is therefore a matter of indifference to him. All that is necessary is that it should be useful labour, producing a particular use value, hence a specific kind of labour, e.g. the labour of a linen-weaver. We do not as yet know anything about the value of this labour; nor do we know how the value of labour in general is determined.

[1-17] It is therefore clear that the magnitude of the value of a given quantity of labour cannot be changed, let alone increased, by the mere fact of its existing first in the form of money, the commodity in which the value of all other commodities is measured, and then in any other use value; in other words, by its existing first in the form of money and then in the form of the commodity. It is impossible to conceive how a given sum of value, a definite quantity of objectified labour, should even be preserved as such via a metamorphosis of this kind. When it is in the form of money, the value of the commodity—or the commodity itself, in so far as it is exchange value, a definite quantity of objectified labour,—exists in its immutable form. The money form is precisely the form in which the value of the commodity is maintained, conserved as value or as a definite quantity of objectified labour. If I transform money into a commodity, I transform value from a form in which it is preserved into a form in which it is not preserved; and in the movement of buying in order to sell, value would first be transformed from its immutable form into a form in which it does not preserve itself, so that it could then be retransformed into money again, the immutable form. This transformation may or may not be successful in circulation. But the result would be that I possessed the sum of value, the objectified labour in its immutable form, as a definite sum of money, both before and after the process. This is an entirely useless operation, indeed it runs counter to my purpose. If, however, I keep hold of the money as such, it is a hoard, it has a use value again, and it is preserved as an exchange value only because it does not act as such. It is preserved, as it were, as petrified exchange value, by staying out of circulation, relating to it negatively. On the other hand, in the commodity form the value perishes with the use value in which it is contained, since use value is a transitory thing and as such would be dissolved simply by the metabolic process of nature. And if it is really utilised as a use value, i.e. consumed, the exchange value contained in the use value perishes along with it.

An increase in value means nothing other than an increase in objectified labour; but it is only through living labour that objectified labour can be preserved or increased.

[1-18] Value, the objectified labour which exists in the form of money, could grow only by exchange with a commodity whose use value itself consisted in the ability to increase exchange value, whose consumption would be equivalent to the creation of value or the objectification of labour. (No commodity has any direct use value at all for the value which is to be valorised, except insofar as its use itself constitutes the creation of value; insofar as it is useful for increasing value.) But such use value is only possessed by living labour capacity. Value, money, can therefore only be transformed into capital through exchange with living labour capacity. Its transformation into capital requires that it be exchanged, on the one hand, for labour capacity and, on the other, for the material conditions prerequisite to the objectification of labour capacity.

Here the basis is the circulation of commodities, in which absolutely no dependency relations between the participants in exchange are presupposed apart from those given by the process of circulation itself; the exchangers are distinguished solely as buyers and sellers.20 Accordingly, money can only buy labour capacity to the extent that the latter is itself offered for sale as a commodity, sold by its owner, the living possessor of labour capacity. The condition for this is first of all that the possessor of labour capacity should have the disposition of his own labour capacity, that he should be able to dispose of it as a commodity. For this to be possible, he must be its proprietor. Otherwise he could not sell it as a commodity. But a second condition, already contained in the first, is that he himself must bring his labour capacity as a commodity to the market, and sell it, because he no longer has labour to sell in the form of another commodity, another use value composed of objectified labour (labour existing outside his subjectivity). Instead, the sole commodity he has to offer, to sell, is precisely his living labour capacity, present in his own living corporeity.21 (Capacity is here absolutely not to be conceived as fortuna, fortune, but as potency, δύναμις.3)

Instead of selling a commodity in which his labour is objectified, he must be compelled to sell his own labour capacity, that commodity which is specifically distinct from all other commodities, whether they exist in the commodity form or the money form. A prerequisite for this is the absence of the objective conditions for the realisation of his labour capacity, the conditions for the objectification of his labour; these must have been lost to him, becoming instead subject to an alien will, as a world of wealth, of objective wealth confronting him in circulation as the property of the commodity owners, as alien property. Later on we shall be able to be more precise about the kind of conditions required for the realisation of his labour capacity, i.e. the objective conditions for labour, labour in processu, conceived as activity realising itself in a use value.b

If then the condition for the transformation of money into capital is its exchange with living labour capacity, or the purchase of living labour capacity from its proprietor, money can, in general, be transformed into capital, or the money owner turn into a capitalist, only to the extent that the free worker is available on the commodity market, within circulation; free, that is, insofar as he, on the one hand, has at his disposal his own labour capacity as a commodity, and, on the other hand, has no other commodity at his disposal, is free, completely rid of, all the objective conditions for the realisation of his labour capacity; and therefore, as a mere subject, a mere personification of his own labour capacity, is a worker in the same sense as the money owner is a capitalist, as subject and repository of objectified labour, of value sticking fast to itself.

a Ability.— Ed.

b See this volume, pp. 55-66.— Ed.

This free worker, however, is evidently himself the product, the result, of a prior historical development, the summation of many economic transformations; and his existence presupposes the fall of other social relations of production and a definite development of the productive forces of social labour. The same is therefore also true of the exchange between the money owner and the owner of labour capacity, between capital and labour, between capitalist and worker. The definite historical conditions [1-19] associated with the relation presupposed here will emerge of themselves from the later analysis of that relation.22 In any case, capitalist production proceeds from the presupposition that free workers, i.e. sellers who have nothing but their own labour capacity to sell, will be found available within the sphere of circulation, on the market. Thus the formation of the capital-relation demonstrates from the outset that it can only enter the picture at a definite historical stage of the economic development of society—of the social relations of production and the productive forces. The capital-relation appears straight away as a historically determined economic relation, a relation that belongs to a definite historical period of economic development, of social production.21

We started out from the way the commodity appears on the surface of bourgeois society, as the simplest economic relation, the element of bourgeois wealth. The analysis of the commodity showed that definite historical conditions were wrapped up in its existence, too.a For example, if the products are only produced by the producers as use values, the use value does not become a commodity. This presupposes that the relations among the members of society are historically determined. If we had pursued the question further, asking under what circumstances the products are generally produced as commodities, or under what conditions the product in its existence as commodity appears as the universal and necessary form of all products, it would have turned out that this only takes place on the basis of one particular historical mode of production, the capitalist one. But this way of looking at things would not have been relevant to the analysis of the commodity as such, for in that analysis we were only concerned with the products, the use values, to the extent that they appeared in the commodity form, and not with the question of the socio-economic basis for the appearance of every product as a commodity. We were proceeding instead from the fact that the commodity is found to be present in bourgeois production as such a universal elementary form of wealth.20 The production and therefore the circulation of commodities can, however, take place between different communities or between different organs of the same community, even though the major part of what is produced may be produced as use values, for the producers’ own direct personal requirements, and therefore may never take on the commodity form. The circulation of money, for its part, and hence the development of the different elementary functions and forms of money, presupposes nothing more than commodity circulation itself, and crudely developed commodity circulation at that.23 Of course, this is also a historical prerequisite, but owing to the nature of the commodity it may be fulfilled at very different stages of the social production process. A closer analysis of the individual forms of money, e.g. the development of money as a hoard and of money as means of payment, pointed to very different historical stages of the social production process. These are historical differences, arising out of the sheer form of these different functions of money24; but the mere existence of money in the form of a hoard or of means of payment was shown to be in equal degree a feature of every halfway developed stage of commodity circulation. Money is therefore not restricted to a particular period of production, being as characteristic of pre-bourgeois stages of the production process as of bourgeois production. Capital, however, steps forth from the outset as a relation which can only be the result of a definite historical process and the basis of a definite epoch in the social mode of production.

Let us now look at labour capacity itself in its antithesis to the commodity, which confronts it in the form of money, or in its antithesis to objectified labour, to value, which is personified in the money owner or capitalist and in this person has become a will in its own right, being-for-itself,25 a conscious end in itself. Labour capacity appears on the one hand as absolute poverty, in that the whole world of material wealth as well as its general form, exchange value, confronts it as alien commodity and alien money, whereas it is itself merely the possibility of labour, available and confined within the living body of the worker,3 a possibility which

a K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 282-83, 292).— Ed.

a In the manuscript, “subject” is written above “worker”.— Ed.

is, however, utterly separated from all the objective conditions of its realisation, hence from its own reality, denuded of them, and existing independently over against them. To the extent that all the objective conditions for labour to come to life, for its actual process, for really setting it in motion-all the conditions for its objectification-mediate between the capacity for labour and actual labour, they can all be described as means of labour. In order that labour capacity may as an independent factor come to meet the [1-20] objectified labour represented by the owners of money and commodities, that it may confront the value personified by the capitalist, it must be denuded of its own means of labour and step forth in its independent shape as the worker who is obliged to offer his labour capacity as such for sale as a commodity. Since actual labour is the appropriation of nature for the satisfaction of human needs,26 the activity through which the metabolism between man and nature is mediated, to denude labour capacity of the means of labour, the objective conditions for the appropriation of nature through labour, is to denude it, also, of the means of life, for as we saw earlier,3 the use value of commodities can quite generally be characterised as the means of life. Labour capacity denuded of the means of labour and the means of life is therefore absolute poverty as such, and the worker, as the mere personification of the labour capacity, has his needs in actuality, whereas the activity of satisfying them is only possessed by him as a non-objective capacity (a possibility) confined within his own subjectivity. As such, conceptually speaking, he is a pauper, he is the personification and repository of this capacity which exists for itself, in isolation from its objectivity.

On the other hand, since material wealth, the world of use values, exclusively consists of natural materials modified by labour, hence appropriated solely through labour, and the social form of this wealth, exchange value, is nothing but a particular social form of the objectified labour contained in the use values; and since the use value, the real use of labour capacity is labour itself, i.e. the activity which mediates use values and creates exchange value, it follows that labour capacity is, just as much, the general possibility of material wealth and the sole source of wealth in the particular social form wealth has as exchange value. Value as objectified labour is after all only the objectified activity of labour capacity. Hence, if in dealing with the capital-relation one starts from the presupposition that objectified labour is preserved and increased, that value is preserved and increased, by the fact that the owners of money or commodities continuously find available in circulation a section of the population who are mere personifications of labour capacity, mere workers, and therefore sell their labour capacity as a commodity, continuously offering it on the market, then the paradox which seems to be the starting-point of modern political economy stems from the nature of the case.27 While on the one hand political economy proclaims labour to be the source of wealth, in both its material substance and its social form, as regards both use values and exchange values, on the other hand it proclaims, just as much, the necessity for the worker to be in absolute poverty, a poverty which means nothing else than that his labour capacity is the sole remaining commodity he can sell, that he confronts objective, real wealth as mere labour capacity. This contradiction is present in the fact that, whether value appears in the form of the commodity or of money, it confronts labour capacity as such as a special kind of commodity.

A further antithesis is this: in contrast to money (or value in general) as objectified labour, labour capacity appears as a capacity of the living subject; the former is past labour, labour already performed, the latter is future labour, whose existence can only be the living activity, the currently present activity of the living subject itself.28

Just as on the side of the capitalist there stands value as such, which has its social, universally valid, general existence as objectified labour in money, and for which every particular form of existence, existence in the use value of every particular commodity, only means a particular and in itself indifferent embodiment, value as such being wealth in the abstract, so he is confronted, in the shape of the worker as the mere personification of labour capacity, by labour as such, the general possibility of wealth, value-creating activity (as a capacity) in general. Whatever the particular kind of actual labour the capitalist may wish to buy, this particular kind of labour capacity only retains its validity to the extent that its use value is the objectification of labour in general, hence value-creating activity in general. The capitalist, who represents value as such, is confronted by the worker, as labour capacity pure and simple, as worker in general, so that the antithesis between [1-21] self-valorising value, self-valorising objectified labour, and living value-creating labour capacity forms the point and the actual content of the relation. They confront each other as capital and labour, as capitalist and worker. This abstract opposition can be found for example in industry under the guild system, where the relation between master and journeyman is of an entirely different nature.29 //This point, and probably the whole of this passage, should be put in first in the section "Capital and Wage Labour".30//

VALUE OF LABOUR CAPACITY.

MINIMUM SALARY OR AVERAGE WAGE OF LABOUR

Labour capacity is specifically distinguished as use value from the use values of all other commodities. Firstly, because it exists as a mere ability in the living body of the seller, the worker; and secondly (this is something that imprints on it an entirely characteristic difference from all other use values) because its use value-its actual realisation as a use value, i.e. its consumption-is labour itself, hence the substance of exchange value; because it is the creative substance of exchange value itself. Its actual using-up, its consumption, posits exchange value. Its specific use value is that it creates exchange value.

As a commodity, however, labour capacity itself possesses an exchange value. The question is, how to determine this value? In so far as a commodity is considered from the point of view of exchange value, it is always viewed as a result of the productive activity that is required for the creation of its use value. Its exchange value is equal to the quantity of labour used in working on it, objectified in it, and the measure of this is labour time itself. As exchange value, commodities are distinguished from each other only quantitatively, but from the point of view of its substance each commodity is a certain quantity of average social labour, of necessary labour time, which is required to produce, and therefore also to reproduce, this particular use value under the given general conditions of production. Hence the value of labour capacity, like that of every other use value, is equal to the quantity of labour worked up in it, the labour time required to produce labour capacity (under the given general conditions of production). Labour capacity exists only as an ability of the living body of the worker. Once labour capacity is presupposed as given, its production comes down to reproduction, preservation, as does the production of every living thing. The value of labour capacity can therefore be resolved at the outset into the value of the means of subsistence needed to maintain it, i.e. to maintain the worker's life as a worker, so that having worked today he will be able to repeat the same process under the same conditions the next day.

Secondly: Before the worker has developed his labour capacity, before he is able to work, he must live. Thus if capital is continuously to find sellers of their own labour capacity available on the market, within circulation-and this is a prerequisite for money to develop into capital, for the capital-relation to occur-it is necessary, the worker being mortal, that he should receive, apart from his own means of subsistence, enough of the means of subsistence to perpetuate the race of workers, to increase their number, or at the very least to maintain it at its given level, so that the labour capacities withdrawn from the market through unsuitability or death are replaced by fresh ones. In other words, he must receive adequate means of subsistence to nourish children until they themselves can live as workers. In order to develop a particular labour capacity, in order to modify his general nature in such a way that he is capable of performing a particular kind of labour, the worker requires practice or training: an education which must itself be paid for, and is more or less expensive according to the particular kind of productive labour he is learning to do. This therefore also forms a part of the cost of production of labour capacity. Important as the latter consideration becomes when it is a matter [1-22] of analysing the differing values of individual branches of labour, here it is irrelevant, for we are only concerned with the general relationship between capital and labour, and therefore have in view ordinary, average labour, seeing all labour as only a multiple of this average labour, the training costs of which are infinitesimally small. In any case, the training costs-the outgoings required to develop the nature of the worker so that he has expertise and dexterity in a particular branch of labour-are always included in the means of subsistence the worker requires to convert his children, his replacements, in turn into labour capacities. These costs form part of the means of subsistence required for the worker to reproduce himself as a worker.

The value of labour capacity can therefore be resolved into the values of the means of subsistence required for the worker to maintain himself as a worker, to live as a worker, and to procreate. These values for their part can be resolved into the particular amount of labour time needed, the quantity of labour expended, in order to create means of subsistence or the use values necessary for the maintenance and propagation of labour capacity.

The means of subsistence needed for the maintenance or reproduction of labour capacity can all be reduced to commodities, which possess more or less value as the productive power of labour varies, i.e. according to whether they require a shorter or longer labour time for their production, so that the same use values contain more or less objectified labour time. The value of the means of subsistence required for the maintenance of labour capacity therefore varies, but it is always precisely measured by the quantity of labour necessary to produce the means of subsistence needed for the maintenance and reproduction of labour capacity, or to maintain or reproduce labour capacity itself. The magnitude of the labour time required for this purpose is subject to variation, but a definite portion of labour time-larger or smaller-is always available, and must be devoted to the reproduction of labour capacity. The living existence of this capacity itself is to be regarded as the objectification of that labour time.

Naturally, the means of subsistence needed by the worker to live as a worker differ from one country to another and from one level of civilisation to another. Natural needs themselves, e.g. the need for nourishment, clothing, housing, heating, are greater or smaller according to climatic differences. Similarly, since the extent of the so-called primary requirements for life and the manner of their satisfaction depend to a large degree on the level of civilisation of the society, are themselves the product of history, the necessary means of subsistence in one country or epoch include things not included in another. The range of these necessary means of subsistence is, however, given in a particular country and a particular period.

Even the level of the value of labour rises or falls when one compares different epochs of the bourgeois period in the same country. Finally, the market price of labour capacity at one time rises above and at another falls below the level of its value. This applies to labour capacity as to all other commodities, and is a matter of indifference here, where we are proceeding from the presupposition that commodities are exchanged as equivalents or realise their value in circulation. (This value of commodities in general, just like the value of labour capacity, is represented in reality as their average price, arrived at by the mutual compensation of the alternately falling and rising market prices, with the result that the value of the commodities is realised, made manifest, in these fluctuations of the market price itself.31) The problem of these movements in the level of the workers' needs, as also that of the rise and fall of the market price of labour capacity above or below this level, do not belong here, where the general capital-relation is to be developed, but in the doctrine of the wages of labour.32 It will be seen in the further course of this investigation that whether one assumes the level of workers' needs to be higher

or lower is completely irrelevant to the end result.33 The only thing of importance is that it should be viewed as given, determinate. All questions relating to it as not a given but a variable magnitude belong to the investigation of [1-23] wage labour in particular and do not touch its general relationship to capital. Incidentally, every capitalist who for example sets up a factory and establishes his business necessarily regards wages as given in the place where and the time when he sets himself up in business. //

// “Diminish the cost of subsistence of men, by diminishing the natural price of the food and clothing, by which life is sustained, and wages will ultimately FALL, NOTWITHSTANDING THAT THE DEMAND FOR LABOURERS MAY VERY GREATLY INCREASE” (Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, 3rd ed., London, 1821, p. 460). //

// “The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution. The power of the labourer to support himself and his family does not depend on the quantity of money which he may receive for wages, but on the quantity of food, necessaries, and conveniences which that money can purchase. The natural price of labour, therefore, depends on the price of the food, necessaries, and conveniences.... With a rise in the price of food and necessaries, the natural price of labour will rise; with a fall in their price, it will fall” (Ricardo, l.c., p. 86). //

// The English peck (a measure of corn) = 1/4 bushel. There are 8 bushels to 1 quarter. The standard bushel contains 2,218 and 1/5 cubic inches, and measures 18 1/2 inches in diameter, and 8 1/4 inches deep. Malthus says: “From a comparative review of corn prices and wages from the reign of Edward III onwards we may draw the inference that during the course of 500 years, the earnings of a day’s labour in this country have been more frequently below than above a peck of wheat; that 1 peck of wheat may be considered as something like a middle point, or a point rather above the middle, about which the corn wages of labour, varying according to the demand and supply, have oscillated” (Malthus, Principles of Political Economy etc., 2nd ed., London, 1836, [pp. 240,] 254). //

If a lower-grade commodity is put in the place of a higher and more valuable one, which formed the worker’s main means of subsistence, e.g. if corn, wheat, replaces meat, or potatoes are put in the place of wheat and rye, the level of the value of labour capacity naturally falls, because the level of its needs has been pushed down. In our investigation, however, we shall everywhere assume that the amount and quality of the means of subsistence, and therefore also the extent of needs, at a given level of civilisation, is never pushed down, because this investigation of the rise and fall of the level itself (particularly its artificial lowering) does not alter anything in the consideration of the general relationship. Among the Scots, for example, there are many families that live for whole months on oatmeal and barley meal, mixed with only water and salt, instead of on wheat and rye, “and that very comfortably” , says Eden in his The State of the Poor etc., Vol. I, London, 1797, b. II, Ch. II. That curious philanthropist and ennobled Yankee, Count Rumford, exerted his limited brainpower at the end of the last century in the artificial creation of a low average. His Essays are a fine cookery book with recipes of all kinds of the cheapest possible grub for replacing the present expensive normal food with surrogates for the workers. The cheapest meal which can be prepared, according to this “philosopher”, is a soup of barley, Indian corn, pepper, salt, vinegar, sweet herbs and 4 herrings in 8 gallons of water. In the work cited above Eden heartily recommends this pretty pig-swill to workhouse overseers. 5 lbs of barley, 5 lbs of Indian corn, 3d. worth of herring, 1d. salt, 1d. vinegar, 2d. pepper and herbs, in all 20 3/4d., provide a soup for 64 people, and given the average price of corn it should be possible to reduce the cost per portion to 1/4d. //

// “The mere workman, who has only his arms and his industry, has nothing unless he succeeds in selling his labour to others.... In every kind of work it cannot fail to happen, and as a matter of fact it does happen, that the wages of the workman are limited to what is necessary to procure him his subsistence” (Turgot, Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses, (appeared first in 1766) in Oeuvres de Turgot,34 ed. by Eugène Daire, Vol. 1, Paris, 1844, [p.] 10).b //

[1-26] // 35 It is possible, on the one hand, to bring down the level of the value of labour capacity by reducing the value of the means of subsistence or the way needs are satisfied, through replacing better by cheaper and inferior provisions, or in general through reducing the scope, the volume of provisions. But in view of the fact that the nourishment of women and children enters into the determination of the level, the average level, it is also possible, on the other hand, to push down this level by forcing them to work. Children are already made use of for work during the time when they should be developing. But we are leaving this case out of consideration, like all other cases affecting the level of the value of labour.36 We are therefore giving capital a fair chance by assuming precisely its greatest abominations to be non-existent.// // The level can equally be lowered by reducing the period of apprenticeship or its cost as near to zero as possible through simplification of work. //

a B. [Thompson,] Count of Rumford, Essays, Political, Economical and Philosophical, Vol. I, London, 1796, p. 294.— Ed.

b Marx quotes in French.— Ed.

// The following passage from the Whig sycophant Macaulay can be adduced here, in reference to the early exploitation of children as workers.3 It is characteristic of the kind of history-writing, and the kind of attitude in the economic sphere too, which, while not being laudator temporis acti,b limits its audacity to the retrospective, transferring it into the passive. Concerning child labour in factories, similar things in the 17th century. But the passage dealing with the historical process or the machine, etc., is better [suited for it].37 See Factory Reports, 1856.// [1-26]

[1-24] It was naturally of the highest importance for grasping the capital-relation to determine the value of labour capacity, since the capital-relation rests on the sale of that capacity. What had above all to be established was the way in which the value of this commodity is determined, for the essential feature of the relation is that labour capacity is offered as a commodity; but as a commodity the determination of its exchange value is the decisive factor. Since the exchange value of labour capacity is determined by the values or the prices of the means of subsistence, the use values necessary for labour capacity’s preservation and reproduction, the Physiocrats were able to form on the whole a correct conception of its value however little they grasped the nature of value in general. Hence this wage of labour, which is determined by the average necessities of life, plays an important role with these people, who established the first rational conceptions of capital in general.c //

In his anonymously published work A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Measures, and Causes of Value etc., London, 1825, directed against Ricardo’s theory of value altogether, Bailey remarks as follows on the former’s determination of the value of labour capacity: * “Mr. Ricardo, ingeniously enough, avoids a difficulty, which, on a first view, threatens to encumber his doctrine, that value depends on the quantity of labour employed in production. If this principle is rigidly adhered to, it follows that the value of labour depends on the quantity of labour employed in producing it—which is evidently absurd. By a dexterous turn, therefore, Mr. Ricardo makes the value of labour depend on the quantity of labour required to produce wages; or, to give him the benefit of his own language, he maintains that the value of labour is to be estimated by the quantity of labour required to produce wages; by which he means the quantity of labour required to produce the money or commodities given to the labourer. This is similar to saying, that the value of cloth is to be estimated, not by the quantity of labour bestowed upon its production, but by the quantity of labour bestowed on the production of the silver for which the cloth is exchanged” * ([pp.] 50-51).38

a The passage in question—Marx does not quote it here—occurs in Th. B. Macaulay’s The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, Vol. I, London, 1854.— Ed.

b A laudator of times gone by (Horace, Ars poetica).— Ed.

c See this volume, pp. 353-54.— Ed.

The only thing right about this polemic is that Ricardo has the capitalist use his money to buy labour directly, instead of disposition over labour capacity. Labour as such is not directly a commodity, for this is necessarily objectified labour, worked up in a use value. Ricardo does not distinguish between labour capacity as the commodity the worker sells, use value, which has a definite exchange value, and labour, which is merely the use of this capacity in actu. He is therefore incapable, leaving aside the contradiction picked out by Bailey—that living labour cannot be estimated by the quantity of labour employed in its production— of demonstrating how surplus value can emerge, namely the inequality between the quantity of labour the capitalist gives to the worker as a wage and the quantity of living labour the capitalist buys for this amount of objectified labour. For the rest Bailey’s remark is silly. The price of cloth does indeed consist also of the price of the cotton yarn consumed in it, just as the price of labour capacity consists of the means of subsistence that enter into it through the metabolic process. Incidentally, the reproduction of living, organic things does not depend on the labour directly applied to them, the labour worked up in them, but on the means of subsistence they consume—and this is the way of reproducing them. Bailey could also have seen this in the determination of animals’ value; even in the case of machines, insofar as coal, oil and other matières instrumentalesa consumed by them enter into their cost. To the extent that labour is not restricted merely to the maintaining of life, the need being rather for a special kind of labour which directly modifies labour capacity itself, develops it in such a way that it can practise a particular skill, this too enters into the value of labour—as is the case with more complex labour—and here it is directly incorporated in the worker, is labour expended to produce him. Otherwise Bailey’s joke only has the upshot that the labour applied to the reproduction of the organic body is applied to its means of subsistence, not directly to the body itself, since the appropriation of these means of subsistence through consumption is not work but rather enjoyment. // 

a Instrumental materials.— Ed.

[1-25] The necessities of life are renewed daily. If we take for example the mass of necessities of life that are required during a year for the worker to be able to live as a worker and maintain himself as a labour capacity, and the exchange value of this sum—i.e. the quantity of labour time that is worked up, objectified, contained in these means of subsistence—the total quantity of the means of subsistence the worker requires on the average in a day, taking one day with another, and the value of the same needed to live the whole year through, represent the value of his labour capacity on each day, or the quantity of the means of subsistence required on one day so that this labour capacity may continue to exist, be reproduced, as living labour capacity. Some of the means of subsistence are consumed more quickly, others more slowly. For example, the use values that serve daily as sustenance are also consumed daily, and the same is true of the use values that serve for heating, soap (cleanliness) and lighting. Other necessary means of subsistence, in contrast, such as clothes or housing, are worn out more slowly, although they are used and needed every day. Some means of subsistence must be bought afresh every day, renewed (replaced) every day, others, like for example clothes, need replacing or renewing only at longer intervals although they have to be used every day. This is because they continue to serve as use values for longer periods of time and only become worn out, unserviceable, at the end of these periods. If the total amount of the means of subsistence the worker must consume every day in order to live as a worker=A, in 365 days it = 365A. In contrast to this, if the total amount of all the other means of subsistence he needs, which only need replacing, i.e. buying anew, three times a year, = B, he would only need 3B in the whole year. Taking them together, therefore, he would need 365A+3B in a year; and every day (365A+3B)/365. This would be the average amount of the means of subsistence he needed every day, and the value of this amount would be the daily value of his labour capacity, i.e. the value required day by day, counting one day as equivalent to another, to buy the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of his labour capacity. (If one counts the year as 365 days it will contain 52 Sundays, leaving 313 working days; one can therefore take an average of 365A+3B/310 working days.) If now the value of (365A+3B)/365 = 1 thaler, the daily value of his labour capacity would = 1 thaler. He must earn

this amount every day in order to be able to live through the year day by day, and nothing in this is altered by the fact that the use value of certain commodities is not renewed every day. The annual total of his necessities of life is therefore given; then we take their value or price; then we take the daily average, i.e. we divide the total by 365, and we thus obtain the value of the worker’s average necessities of life or the average daily value of his labour capacity. (The price of 365A+3B=365 thalers, hence the price of his daily necessities of life = 365A+3B/365 thalers.)

EXCHANGE OF MONEY WITH LABOUR CAPACITY

Labour capacity has a specific character and is therefore a specific commodity—just as money was both a commodity in general and a specific commodity, though with money its specific character was produced by the way all commodities related to any commodity which happened to be chosen as the exclusive commodity,3 whereas here it is produced by the nature of the commodity’s use value—but despite this it is like every other commodity 1) a use value, a particular object whose use satisfies particular needs, and 2) it has an exchange value, i.e. a definite quantity of labour has been used up, objectified, in it as object, as use value. As objectification of labour time in general it is value. The magnitude of its value is determined by the quantity of labour used up in it. This value, expressed in money, is the price of labour capacity. As we are proceeding here from the presupposition [1-26] that all commodities are sold according to their value,b price is in general distinguished from value only by the fact that it is the value estimated or measured or expressed in the material of money. The commodity is therefore sold at its value when it is sold at its price. Similarly, one should understand under the price of labour capacity nothing but its value expressed in money. The value of labour capacity for a day or a week is therefore paid when the price of the means of subsistence required for the maintenance of labour capacity during a day or a week is paid. This price or value, however, is not just determined by the means of subsistence entirely consumed by labour capacity each day, but equally by the means of subsistence it makes use of each day, such as clothes, for example, but does not entirely use up each day thereby necessitating their constant renewal; they therefore need to be renewed or replaced only over a certain period of time. Even if all objects relating to clothing were only used up once within one year (vessels for eating and drinking, e.g., do not need to be replaced so quickly as clothing, because they do not wear out so rapidly, and this applies still more to furniture, beds, tables, chairs, etc.), the value of these articles of clothing would still be consumed during the whole year for the maintenance of labour capacity, and the worker would have to be able to replace them after the end of the year. He would therefore have to receive every day on an average an amount such that after deduction of the daily expenditure for daily consumption enough was left over to replace worn-out clothing by new after the year had run its course; hence a daily requirement of, if not the such and such portion of a coat, at least one day’s aliquot part of the value of a coat. The maintenance of labour capacity, if it is to be continuous, which is a prerequisite with the capital-relation, is not determined only by the price of the means of subsistence consumed in a day and therefore to be renewed, replaced on the next day: there must also be added the daily average of the price of the means of subsistence which need replacing over a longer period of time but must be used every day. It amounts to a difference in payment. A use value like a coat, for example, must be bought as a whole and used up as a whole. It is paid for by holding in reserve every day 1/x of the price of labour.

Since labour capacity is available only as an ability, an aptitude, a power enclosed in the living body of the worker, its maintenance means nothing other than the maintenance of the worker himself at the level of strength, health, vitality in general, which is needed for the exercise of his labour capacity.

[1-27] We must therefore state the following:

The commodity the worker offers for sale on the market in the sphere of circulation, the commodity he has to sell, is his own labour capacity, which, like every other commodity, has an objective existence so far as it is a use value, even if it is here only an ability, a power in the living body of the individual himself (it is hardly necessary to mention here that the head belongs to the body as well as the hand). Its functioning as a use value, however, the consumption of this commodity, its use as a use value, consists in labour itself, just like wheat, which only really functions as a use value when it is used up in the nutrition process, when it takes effect as an alimentary substance.

The use value of this commodity, like that of every other commodity, is only realised in the process of its consumption, hence only after it has passed from the hand of the seller into that of the buyer, but it has nothing to do with the process of sale itself except that it is a motive for the buyer. This use value, which exists as labour capacity before it is consumed, has in addition an exchange value, which, as in the case of every other commodity, is equal to the quantity of labour contained in it and therefore required for its reproduction; and as we have seen it is exactly measured by the labour time required to create the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the worker. Time is the measure for life itself, just as e.g. weight is the measure for metals; hence the labour time required on an average to keep the worker alive for one day would be the daily value of his labour capacity, by virtue of which it is reproduced from one day to the next, or, what is the same thing here, preserved under the same conditions. As we have already said,3 the range of these conditions is not prescribed by simple natural need but by natural need historically modified at a certain level of civilisation.

This value of labour capacity expressed in money is its price, and we presuppose that it is paid, since we in general assume that equivalents are exchanged or that commodities are sold at their value. This price of labour is called the wage. The wage which corresponds to the value of labour capacity is its average price, as we have explained itb; it is the average wage, which is also called the minimum wage or salary, whereby we understand by minimum not the extreme limit of physical necessity but the average daily wage over e.g. one year, in which are balanced out the prices of labour capacity during that time, which now stand above their value, and now fall below it.

It lies in the nature of this particular commodity, labour capacity, that its real use value only really passes from one hand to the other, from the hand of the seller to that of the buyer, after it has been consumed. The real use of labour capacity is labour. But it is sold as a capacity, a mere possibility before the labour has been performed, as a mere power, whose real manifestation only takes place after its alienation to the buyer. Since here the formal alienation [by sale] of the use value and its actual handing over are not simultaneous occurrences, the money of the buyer in this exchange mostly functions as means of payment. Labour capacity is paid for daily, weekly, etc., but not at the moment when it is bought, rather after it has really been consumed in a day, a week, etc. In all countries where the capital-relation is developed the worker’s labour capacity is only paid for after it has functioned as such. In this connection it can be said that everywhere the worker gives credit to the capitalist, by the day or by the week; this is due to the special nature of the commodity he is selling. The worker hands over to him the use of the commodity he sells, and only receives its exchange value or price after it has been consumed. // In times of crisis, and even with isolated bankruptcies, it is then revealed that this credit given by the workers is no mere phrase, since they do not get paid.// Nevertheless this does not initially alter the exchange process. The price is laid down by contract, hence the value of labour capacity is estimated in money, although it is only realised, paid, later. The determination of price is therefore related to the value of labour capacity, not the value of the product which accrues to the buyer of labour capacity as a result of its consumption, its actual utilisation. Nor is it related to the value of labour, which is not a commodity as such.

[1-28] We now know in fact what is paid to the worker by the owner of money who wants to transform his money into capital, and therefore buys labour capacity: he in fact pays him e.g. the daily value of his labour capacity, a price or daily wage corresponding to its daily value, in that he pays him a sum of money = the value of the means of subsistence necessary to the daily maintenance of labour capacity; a sum of money which represents exactly as much labour time as is required for the production of these means of subsistence, i.e. for the daily reproduction of labour capacity.

We do not yet know what the buyer receives for his part. It is bound up with the specific nature of this commodity, labour capacity, and with the specific purpose of its purchase by the buyer—namely that he may prove himself as representative of self-valorising value—that the operations occurring after the sale are of a specific nature and must therefore be considered separately. In addition—and this is the essential point—the specific use value of the commodity and its realisation as use value concern the economic relationship, the determinate economic form itself, and are therefore relevant to our analysis. It can be pointed out here in passing that use value originally appears as a matter of indifference, as any material prerequisite one cares to choose. In the analysis of the commodity the real use value of the individual commodities is completely irrelevant,39 and the same therefore holds for the specific character of the commodities altogether. What is alone important here is the general distinction between use value and exchange value, out of which money develops, etc. (See above.40) //What the worker has in fact sold to the money owner is the disposition over his labour capacity, and the latter has to employ it in accordance with its nature, its specific character. Within what limits, will be seen later.3// [1-28].

THE LABOUR PROCESS

[I-A]41 In considering the exchange between capital and labour we have to distinguish two things:

1) The sale of labour capacity. This is a simple sale and purchase, a simple relation of circulation, like any other sale and purchase. In investigating this relation the employment or consumption of the commodity purchased is irrelevant.

The harmonisers seek to reduce the relation of capital and labour to this first act, because here buyer and seller meet each other only as commodity owners, and the specific and distinctive character of the transaction is not apparent.42

2) The consumption of the commodity obtained in this exchange by capital (of labour capacity), the using up of its use value, forms here a specific economic relation; whereas with the simple sale and purchase of commodities the use value of the commodity, just like the realisation of this use value, consumption, is irrelevant to the economic relation itself.

In the exchange between capital and labour the first act is an exchange (purchase or sale), comes entirely within the sphere of simple circulation. The exchangers only confront each other as buyer and seller. The second act is a process qualitatively distinct from the exchange. It is an essentially different category. [I-A]

[1-28] After the owner of money has bought labour capacity—made the exchange for labour capacity (the purchase is complete once the two sides have reached an agreement, even if payment takes place later)—he applies it as use value, consumes it. But the realisation, the actual use, of labour capacity, is living labour itself. The consumption process of this specific commodity sold by the worker therefore coincides with, or rather is, the labour process itself. Since labour is the activity of the worker himself, the realisation of his own labour capacity, he enters into this process as a labouring person, a worker, and for the buyer he has in this

process no other existence than that of labour capacity in action. It is therefore not a person, but active labour capacity personified in the worker, that is working. It is characteristic that in England the name for workers, hands, is derived from the main organ with which their labour capacity performs its function, namely their own hands.

Real labour is purposeful activity aimed at the creation of a use value, at the appropriation of natural material in a manner which corresponds to particular needs.43 Whether the muscles or the nerves suffer greater wear through this activity is in this connection irrelevant, as is the degree of idealisation the materials of nature have already undergone.44

All real labour is particular labour, the exercise of a particular branch of labour distinct from the others. Just as one commodity is distinguished from another by its specific use value, so a specific kind of activity, of labour, is embodied in it. Since the conversion of money into capital or the formation of capital presupposes a developed circulation of commodities, it presupposes a developed division of labour, a division of labour understood here in the manner in which it is manifest (appears) in the multiplicity of commodities in circulation, hence as a division of the totality, of the whole of social labour, into manifold modes of labour, hence a totality of specific modes of labour.45 The labour performed by the worker will therefore belong exclusively to a specific branch of labour, just as his labour capacity is itself specific. The particular content or purpose, and therefore the particular mode of labour, concern us here just as little as the particular material or use value of the commodity concerns us when we analyse the commodity.39 Which specific branch of labour the worker works in is irrelevant, although of course the purchaser can only buy labour of a specific kind. The sole point to be kept in view here is the specificity of labour where it appears as a real process. It will be seen below that this indifference towards the specific content of labour is not only an abstraction made by us; it is also made by capital, and it belongs to its essential [1-29] character.46 //Just as the investigation of the use values of commodities as such belongs in commercial knowledge, so the investigation of the labour process in its reality belongs in technology.4111

In looking at the labour process we are only interested in the entirely general moments into which it falls and which belong to it as labour process. These general moments must emerge from the nature of labour itself. Before the worker had sold the disposition over his labour capacity, he could not set the latter in motion as labour, could not realise it, because it was separated from the objective conditions of its activity. This separation is overcome in the actual labour process. Labour capacity now functions, because in accordance with its nature it appropriates its objective conditions. It comes into action because it enters into contact, into process, into association with the objective factors without which it cannot realise itself. These factors can be described in entirely general terms as means of labour. But the means of labour themselves fall necessarily into an object which is worked on, and which we want to call the material of labour, and the actual means of labour, an object which human labour, activity, interposes as a means between itself and the material of labour, and which serves in this way as a conductor of human activity. (This object does not need to be an instrument, it can be e.g. a chemical process.)48

A precise analysis will always reveal that all labour involves the employment of a material of labour and a means of labour. It is possible that the material of labour, the object to be appropriated by means of labour for a specific need, is available in nature without the assistance of human labour: the fish caught in water for example, or the wood felled in the primeval forest, or the ore brought up out of the pit. In such a case only the means of labour itself is a product of previous human labour. This characterises everything that can be called extractive industry; it only applies to agriculture to the extent that, say, virgin soil is being cultivated. Here, however, the seed is both means and material of labour, just as everything organic is both at once, the animal in stock-breeding for example. In contrast to this, it can only occur at the most primitive stages of economic development, hence only in conditions where the formation of the capital-relation does not come into question, that the instrument of labour is available in nature without further mediation. It is apparent of itself, and follows from the nature of the case, that the development of human labour capacity is displayed in particular in the development of the means of labour or instrument of production. It displays, namely, the degree to which man has heightened the impact of his direct labour on the natural world through the interposition for his working purposes of a nature already ordered, regulated and subjected to his will as a conductor.

The means of labour, in contrast to the material of labour, comprise not only the instruments of production, from the simplest tool or container up to the most highly developed system of machinery, but also the objective conditions without which the labour process cannot occur at all, e.g. the house in which the work is done or the field on which sowing takes place, etc. These do not enter directly into the labour process, but they are conditions without which it cannot occur, and therefore necessary means of labour. They appear as conditions for the occurrence of the whole process, not as factors enclosed within the process. The means of labour equally include substances consumed in order to make use of the means of labour as such, like oil, coal, etc., or chemical substances used to call forth a certain modification in the material of labour, as e.g. chlorine for bleaching, etc. There is no point in going into details here.

With the exception of the production of raw materials the material of labour will always have itself already passed through a previous labour process. What appears as material of labour and hence raw material in one branch of labour appears as result in another. The great majority even of things regarded as products of nature, e.g. plants and animals, are the result, in the form in which they are now utilised by human beings and produced anew, of a previous transformation effected by means of human labour over many generations under human control, during which their form and substance have changed. As we have already noted, the means of labour in one labour process is the result of labour in another.

[1-30] Hence in order to consume labour capacity it is not sufficient for the money owner to buy labour capacity // temporary disposition over it//; he must also buy the means of labour, a bigger or smaller quantity of them: the material of labour and the means of labour. We shall come back to this afterwards.3 Here we only need to remark that for the money owner who has bought labour capacity to be able to proceed to its consumption, i.e. to the actual labour process, he must, with another part of his money, have bought the objective conditions of labour, which roll round within circulation as commodities. Only in combination with them can labour capacity make the transition to the actual labour process.

The money owner also buys commodities, but commodities whose use values are to be consumed by living labour, consumed as factors in the labour process: in part as use values which are to constitute the material of labour, and hence the element of a higher use value; and in part as means of labour, which serve as a conductor for the operation of labour on the material of labour. To consume commodities--here initially the use values of commodities--in this way in the labour process is to consume them productively, namely to consume them only as the means or object through and in which labour creates a higher use value. It is the industrial consumption of commodities (use values).49 So much for the money owner, who transforms his money into capital by making the exchange with labour capacity.

See this volume, pp. 66-67.--Ed.

Within the actual labour process itself commodities are only available as use values, not exchange values; for they confront real living labour only as its conditions, as means for its realisation, as factors determined by the nature of labour itself, which it requires for its realisation in a particular use value. The linen weaver, for example, is related in the act of weaving to the material of his labour, the linen yarn, only as material of this particular activity, weaving, only as an element in the fabrication of the product, linen. He is not related to it insofar as it has an exchange value, is the result of previous labour, but as a thing in front of him, whose properties he utilises for its rearrangement. In the same way, the fact that the loom is a commodity, the repository of exchange value, is of no concern at all here, it only matters as the means of the weaver's labour. Only as such is it used and consumed in the labour process. The material of labour and the means of labour, although they are themselves commodities and therefore use values which possess an exchange value, confront actual labour only as moments, as factors of its process. This being so, it is obvious that in this process they do not confront labour as capital either. Actual labour appropriates the instrument as its means and the material as the material of its activity. It is the process of appropriation of these objects as of the animated body, the organs of labour itself. Here the material appears as the inorganic nature of labour, and the means of labour as the organ of the appropriating activity itself.50

When we speak here of "higher" use values, this should not be understood in a moral sense; we do not even mean that the new use value necessarily occupies a higher rank in the system of needs. Grain distilled into schnapps is a lower use value than schnapps. Every use value that is preposited as an element in the formation of a new one is a lower use value vis-a-vis this new one, because it forms its elementary prerequisite, and the more labour processes have been undergone by the elements out of which a use value has been freshly formed, i.e. the more mediate its existence, the higher that use value is.51

The labour process is therefore a process in which the worker performs a particular purposive activity, a movement which is both the exertion of his labour capacity, his mental and physical powers, and their expenditure and using-up. Through it he gives the material of labour a new shape, in which the movement is materialised. This applies whether the change of form is chemical or mechanical, whether it proceeds of itself, through the control of physiological processes, or merely consists in the removal of the object to a distance (alteration of its spatial location), or only involves separating it from the body of the earth. Whilst labour materialises itself in this manner in the object of labour, it forms it and uses up, consumes the means of labour as its organ.52 The labour goes over from the form of activity to the form of being, the form of the object. As alteration of the object it alters its own shape. The form-giving activity consumes the object and itself; it forms the object and materialises itself; it consumes itself in its subjective form as activity and consumes the objective character of the object, i.e. it abolishes the object's indifference towards the purpose of the labour. Finally, the labour consumes the means of labour, which likewise made the transition during the process from mere possibility to actuality, by becoming the real conductor of labour, but thereby also got used up, in the form [1-31] in which it had been at rest, through the mechanical or chemical process it had entered.

All 3 moments of the process, whose subject is labour and whose factors are the material on which and the means of labour with which it operates, come together in a neutral result--the product. In the product labour has combined with the material of labour through the agency of the means of labour. The product, the neutral result in which the labour process ends, is a new use value. A use value in general appears as a product of the labour process. This use value may now either have attained the final form in which it can serve as means of subsistence for individual consumption, or, even in this form, it can again become a factor in a new labour process, as e.g. corn may be consumed not by human beings but by horses, may serve for the production of horses; or it can serve as an element for a higher, more complex use value; or the use value is a finished means of labour which is to serve as such in a fresh labour process; or, finally, the use value is an unfinished, a semi-manufactured product, which has to enter again as material of labour into a longer or shorter series of further labour processes, distinct from the labour process from which it has emerged as product, and also pass through a series of material changes. But with respect to the labour process from which it has emerged as product, it appears as a finished, conclusive result, as a new use value whose fabrication formed the

content of the labour process and the immanent purpose of labour's activity; formed the expenditure of the labour capacity, its consumption.

Therefore in the labour process the products of previous labour processes are employed, consumed by labour, in order to manufacture new products of higher, i.e. more mediated, use value. Within the limits of the particular labour process itself, in which the objective factors of labour only appear as the objective conditions of their realisation, this determination of use values, that they are themselves already products, is entirely irrelevant. It does however demonstrate the mutual material dependence of the different social modes of labour and the way they supplement each other to form a totality of social modes of labour.

To the extent that past labour is considered in its material aspect, i.e. to the extent that in looking at a use value which serves as means or material of labour in a labour process the circumstance is kept in mind that this use value is itself already a combination of natural material and labour, the past concrete labour objectified in use values serves as a means to the realisation of fresh labour, or, and this is the same thing, the formation of fresh use values. But one should certainly keep in mind the sense in which this is the case in the actual labour process. For example, loom and cotton yarn serve in weaving only in the qualities they possess for this process as material and means of weaving, only through the physical qualities they possess for this particular labour process. Cotton, wood and iron have taken on the forms in which they perform these services in the labour process, the one as yarn, the others as the loom. The fact that they have acquired this particular employment of their use value through the agency of previous labour, that they themselves already represent a combination of labour and natural material, is, as such, a circumstance which, just like the circumstance that wheat performs the particular services, finds the particular employment of its use value we see in the nourishment process, is irrelevant for this particular labour process as such, since they serve in a particular manner as use values, acquire a specific useful application. The process could not however, take place if cotton, iron and wood had not acquired the shape and therefore the specifically applicable qualities they possess as yarn and loom as a result of an earlier, past labour process.

Looked at purely materially, from the point of view of the actual labour process itself, a definite past labour process therefore appears as a preliminary stage and a condition for the entry into action of the new labour process. But then this labour process itself becomes merely a condition for the manufacture of a particular use value, even viewed from the standpoint of use value. In the consumption of a use value in general the labour contained in it is irrelevant and the use value only functions as use value, in other words it satisfies certain needs according to its qualities in the process of consumption, hence only the qualities it possesses as this object and the services it renders as this object are of interest; equally, in the labour process, which is itself only a definite, specific process of the consumption of use values, a particular, specific manner of using them up, what matters is only the qualities the products of earlier labour have for this process, not their existence as the materialisation of past labour. The qualities acquired by any natural material through earlier labour are now its own physical qualities, with which it functions or serves. The fact that these qualities are mediated by earlier labour, this mediation itself, is cancelled out, extinguished, in the product.

[1-32] What was the specific mode, the driving purpose, the activity of labour, now appears in its result, in the alteration in the object brought about by labour in the product, as an object with particular new qualities which it has for use, for the satisfaction of needs. If we are reminded in the labour process itself that the material and means of labour are the product of earlier labour, this only happens insofar as they fail to develop the necessary qualities, e.g. a saw that does not saw, a knife that does not cut, etc. This recalls to us the imperfection of the labour which has provided a factor for the labour process currently under way. Where products of earlier labour processes enter into a new labour process as factors, as material or means, it is only the quality of the past labour that interests us. We want to know whether its product really possesses the useful qualities it claims to have, whether the work was good or bad. It is labour in its material effect and reality that interests us here. For the rest, where the means and the material of labour serve as such use values in the actual labour process and possess the appropriate qualities, though whether they possess these qualities as use values at a higher or lower level, whether they serve their purpose more or less perfectly, depends on the past labour whose products they are, it is entirely irrelevant that they are the products of previous labour. If they fell ready-made from the sky they would perform the same service. If they interest us as products, i.e. as the results of past labour, it is only as the results of specific labour. We are interested in the quality of this specific labour, on which depends the quality of the results as use values, the degree to which they really serve [as] use values for this specific consumption process. Similarly, in a given labour process the labour is only of interest to the extent that it functions as this particular purposive activity; but the particular material content, and the degree to which the product is good or bad, to which it really possesses, acquires, the use value it ought to acquire in the labour process, depends on the higher or lower quality of the labour, on its thoroughness and suitability to the purpose.53

On the other hand, products which are destined to enter as use values into a fresh labour process, hence are either means of labour or unfinished products, i.e. products which need further treatment in order to become real use values, to serve for individual or productive consumption; products which are therefore either means or materials of labour for a further labour process, are realised as such only by entering into contact with living labour, which overcomes their dead objectivity, consumes them, transforms them from use values which only exist potentially into real and effective use values by consuming and utilising them as the objective factors of its own living movement. A machine that does not serve in the labour process is useless, dead wood and iron. Apart from this it falls victim to consumption by elemental forces, to the universal metabolism [of nature]. Iron rusts, wood rots. Yarn that is not woven or knitted, etc., is only wasted cotton, cotton unfitted for the other useful applications it possessed in its state as cotton, as raw material.

Since every use value can be made use of in various ways, every thing having various qualities in which it can serve to satisfy needs, it loses these qualities by acquiring use value in a particular direction through an earlier labour process, acquiring qualities with which it can only be useful in a particular subsequent labour process; hence products which can only serve as means and material of labour not only lose their quality as products which they acquired through the earlier labour, their quality as these particular use values, but also the raw material of which they consist is spoiled, pointlessly squandered, and along with the useful form it acquired as a result of labour previously carried out it falls victim to the dissolving action of natural forces. In the labour process the products of an earlier labour process, the material and means of labour, are as it were awakened from the dead. They only become real use values by entering as factors into the labour process, only in that process do they act as use values and only through it are they withdrawn from the dissolving action of the universal metabolic process so as to re-appear in the product as a new formation.

The labour process also destroys the machine, but as a machine. It lives and acts as a machine, for it to be consumed is the same thing as to be effective, and in the changed form of the material its movement is realised, fixed, as the quality of a new object. Similarly, it is only in the labour process itself that the material of labour develops the useful qualities it possesses as such. The process of its consumption is a process of refashioning, alteration, from which it emerges as a use value of a higher order.51

[1-33] Hence if existing products, the results of earlier labour, mediate the realisation of living labour as its objective conditions, living labour, for its part, mediates the realisation of these products as use values, as products, and preserves them, withdraws them from the universal metabolism of nature, by breathing life into them as the elements of a "new formation".

Insofar as actual labour creates use values, is appropriation of the natural world for human needs, whether these needs are needs of production or individual consumption, it is the universal condition for the metabolic interaction between nature and man, and as such a natural condition of human life it is independent of, equally common to, all particular social forms of human life.43 The same is true of the labour process in its general forms; it is after all nothing but living labour, split up into its specific elements, whose unity is the labour process itself, the impact of labour on the material of labour working through the means of labour. The labour process itself appears in its general form, hence still in no specific economic determinateness. This form does not express any particular historical (social) relation of production entered into by human beings in the production of their social life; it is rather the general form, and the general elements, into which labour must be uniformly divided in all social modes of production in order to function as labour.

The form of the labour process which has been examined here is only its abstract form, a form divorced from all particular historical characteristics and fitting equally well with every kind of labour process, irrespective of the social relations human beings may enter into with each other in its course. Just as little as one can tell from the taste of wheat whether it has been produced by a Russian serf or a French peasant, equally little can one tell from the labour process in its general forms, the general forms of this labour process, whether it is happening under the whip of the slave-driver or the eye of the industrial capitalist, or indeed whether the process is that of a savage dispatching wild beasts with his bow.54

With his money, the money owner has in part bought disposition over labour capacity, in part material and means of labour, so that he can use up, consume, this labour capacity as such, i.e. have it operate as actual labour, in short, so that he can have the worker really work. The universal determinants of this labour, which it has in common with every other manner of working, are not altered by the fact that it is done here for the money owner or appears here as the process of his consumption of labour capacity. He has subsumed the labour process under his dominion, appropriated it, but thereby left its general nature unchanged. To what extent the character of the labour process is itself changed by its subsumption under capital is a question which has nothing to do with the general form of the labour process and will be discussed later on.5

The wheat I eat, whether I have bought it or produced it myself, functions in either case in the nourishment process according to its own natural characteristics. Similarly, it does not change anything in the labour process in its general form, i.e. it changes nothing in the conceptual moments of work in general, whether I work for myself with my own material and instrument of labour, or I work for the money owner, to whom I have temporarily sold my labour capacity. The consumption of this labour capacity, i.e. its actual operation as labour power, actual labour, which in itself is a process wherein an activity enters into certain relations with objects, remains the same as before and moves within the same general forms. The labour process or actual work implies precisely that the separation in which the worker found himself before the sale of his labour capacity from the objective conditions which alone permit him to activate his labour capacity, to work, that this separation has been overcome, that he now enters into the natural relation as worker to the objective conditions of his labour, that he enters into the labour process. Hence in considering the general moments of this process I am only considering the general moments of actual labour in general.

(The practical application of this is namely that the apologists of capital confuse or identify it with a moment of the simple labour process as such, maintaining that a product intended for the production of another product is capital, that raw material is capital or that the tool of labour, the instrument of production is capital, that therefore capital is, whatever the relations of distribution and forms of social production, a factor of the

labour process as such, a factor of production. It will be better to deal with this point when once the valorisation process has been treated.56 For money to be transformed into capital (productive capital), it must be transformed into material of labour, instrument of labour and labour capacity, all of them products of past labour, use values provided through the agency of labour and employed for new production. Viewed from its material side capital thus appears now - insofar as it exists as use value - [1-34] as existing, present in the form of products which serve for new production, raw material, tools (but also as labour). The converse, however, by no means follows: these things are not as such capital. They only become capital given certain social pre-conditions. Otherwise it could just as well be said that labour is in and for itself capital, hence the usefulness of labour could be used to demonstrate to the worker the usefulness of capital, since in the labour process the labour belongs to the capitalist just as much as the tool does.)

The moments of the labour process, considered in relation to labour itself, have been specified as material of labour, means of labour and labour itself. If these moments are considered with regard to the purpose of the whole process, the product to be manufactured, they can be described as material of production, means of production and productive labour (perhaps not this last expression).57

The product is the result of the labour process. But products appear just as much as its prerequisite, with which it does not end but from whose existence it starts out as a condition. Not only is the labour capacity itself a product; the means of subsistence the worker receives as money from the money owner for the sale of his labour capacity are already finished products for individual consumption. Likewise, his material and means of labour, one or the other, or both, are already products. Products are therefore presupposed to production; products both for individual and for productive consumption. Nature itself is originally the store-house in which the human being, equally presupposed as a natural product, finds available for consumption finished natural products, as well as finding available in part, in the very organs of his own body, the first instruments of production for the appropriation of these products. The means of labour, the means of production, appears as the first product produced by the human being; and the first forms of this product, stones, etc., are also found present in nature by him.58

As we have said, the labour process as such has nothing to do with the act of purchasing the labour capacity on the part of the capitalist.a He has bought the labour capacity. Now he must employ it as use value. The use value of labour is work itself, the labour process. We therefore ask what this process consists in, in its general moments, i.e. independently of the future capitalist, in the same way as if we were to say: he buys wheat and now wants to use it as a means of nourishment.b In what does the process of nourishment by cereals consist, or rather, what are the general moments of the nourishment process as such?

THE VALORISATION PROCESS

Insofar as the result of the labour process is still viewed in relation to the process itself, as the crystallised labour process, whose different factors have come together in a static object, a combination of subjective activity and its material content, this result is the product. But this product viewed for itself, in the independence in which it appears as a result of the labour process, is a particular use value. The material of labour has acquired the form, the particular qualities, whose manufacture was the purpose of the entire labour process and which as the driving objective determined the specific way the labour itself was carried on. This product is a use value insofar as it is now present as the result, with the labour process lying behind it as past, as the history of its origin. What money has acquired by its exchange with the labour capacity, or what the money owner has acquired by the consumption of the labour capacity he has bought - this consumption being however by the nature of the labour capacity an industrial, productive consumption or a labour process - is a use value. This use value belongs to him; he has bought it by giving an equivalent for it, namely he has bought the material of labour and the means of labour. But the labour itself likewise belonged to him, for owing to his purchase of the labour capacity - hence before any actual work was done - the use value of this commodity belongs to him, and this is labour itself. The product belongs to him just as much as if he had consumed his own labour capacity, i.e. himself worked on the raw material. The whole labour process only takes place after he has provided himself with all its elements on the basis of commodity exchange and in accordance with its laws, namely by purchasing these elements at their price, which is their value expressed, estimated, in money. To the extent that his money has been converted into the elements of the labour process and the whole labour process itself appears merely as the consumption of the labour capacity bought by the money, the labour process itself appears as a transformation that money passes through by being exchanged not for an available use value but for a process which is its own process. The labour process is as it were incorporated in it, subsumed under it.

a See this volume, pp. 54-55. - Ed.

b Ibid., p. 52. - Ed.

Yet, the purpose of the exchange of money for the labour capacity was by no means use value; it was the transformation of money into capital. Value, become independent in money, was to maintain, increase itself in this exchange, assume a self-sufficient character, and the money owner was to become a capitalist precisely by representing value dominant over circulation and asserting itself [1-35] as subject within it. What was at stake here was exchange value, not use value. Value asserts itself as exchange value only if the use value created in the labour process, the product of actual labour, is itself a repository of exchange value, i.e. a commodity. For the money that was being turned into capital, therefore, it was a matter of the production of a commodity, not a mere use value. The use value was important only insofar as it was a necessary condition, a material substratum of exchange value. What was involved, in fact, was the production of exchange value, its preservation and its increase. It will now be necessary, therefore, to calculate the exchange value obtained in the product, in the new use value. (It is a matter of the valorisation of value. Hence not only a labour process but a valorisation process.)

Just one more preliminary remark before we proceed to this calculation. All the prerequisites of the labour process, all the things that went into it, were not just use values but commodities, use values with a price expressing their exchange value. Commodities were present in advance as elements of this process, and must emerge from it again. Nothing of this is shown when we look at the simple labour process as material production. The labour process therefore constitutes only one side, the material side of the production process. As the commodity is itself from one aspect use value, from another exchange value, so naturally must the commodity in actu,a in the process of its origin, be a two-sided process: [on the one hand] its production as use value, as product of useful labour, on the other hand its production as exchange value, and these two processes must only appear as two different forms of the same process, exactly as the commodity is a unity of use value and exchange value. The commodity, from which we proceeded as something already given,3 is viewed here in the process of its becoming. The production process is not the process of the production of use value, but of the commodity, hence of the unity of use value and exchange value. Even so, this would not yet make the mode of production into a capitalist one. All that is required so far is that the product, the use value, be destined not for personal consumption but for alienation, for sale. Capitalist production, however, requires not only that the commodities thrown into the labour process should be valorised, should acquire a new value by the addition of labour - industrial consumption is nothing but the addition of new labour - but also that the values thrown into industrial consumption - for the use values thrown into it all had value to the extent that they were commodities - should valorise themselves as values, should produce new value owing to the fact that they were values. If it was just a matter of the first requirement we should not have passed beyond the simple commodity.

a In process. - Ed.

We assume that the elements of the labour process are not use values to be found in the possession of the money owner himself, but were originally acquired as commodities by purchase and that this forms the prerequisite of the entire labour process. We have seen that it is not necessary for every kind of industry that in addition to the means of labour the material of labour as well should be a commodity, i.e. a product already mediated by labour, that it should be exchange value - a commodity - as objectified labour.b Here, however, we proceed from the presupposition that all elements of the process are bought, as is the case in manufacturing. We take the phenomenon in the form in which it appears most completely. This does not detract from the correctness of the analysis, since one only has to set one factor = 0 for other cases. Thus in fishing the material of labour is not itself a product, hence does not circulate beforehand like a commodity, and so one factor of the labour process, namely the material of labour, if considered as exchange value, as a commodity, can be set = 0.

a K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, p. 269). - Ed.

b See this volume, p. 56. - Ed.

It is however an essential presupposition that the money owner should buy more than just the labour capacity. In other words, not only must money be exchanged for the labour capacity, but equally for the other objective conditions of the labour process, material of labour and means of labour; and under these headings there may lie a great multiplicity of things, of commodities, depending on whether the labour process is of a simpler or a more complex nature. To begin with, this presupposition is methodologically necessary at the stage of development presently being considered. We have to see how money is transformed into capital. But every money owner who wants to transform his money into industrial capital goes through this process every day. He must buy the material and the means of labour in order to be able to consume alien labour. - Necessary for real insight into the nature of the capital-relation. The latter proceeds from the circulation of commodities as its basis.20 It implies the supersession of the mode of production in which personal consumption is the main purpose of production, and in which only the surplus is sold as a commodity. It is the more completely developed the more the elements that concern it are themselves commodities, hence can only be appropriated through purchase. The more production itself acquires its elements from circulation - i.e. as commodities - so that they enter into it as exchange values already, the more is this production capitalist production. If we here theoretically presuppose the existence of circulation before the formation of capital, and therefore proceed from money, this is also the course followed by history.59 [T36] Capital develops out of monetary wealth, and the formation of capital presupposes that commercial relations, formed at a stage of production that precedes it, are already highly developed. Money and the commodity are the presuppositions from which we must proceed in considering the bourgeois economy. Further consideration of capital will demonstrate that it is in fact capitalist production alone whose surface presents the commodity as the elementary form of wealth.60

One therefore sees the absurdity of the custom introduced by J. B. Say with his French schematism, but not followed by any of the classical economists. Because he was on the whole merely a vulgariser of Adam Smith, all he could do was provide a pretty or uniform arrangement for material he had by no means assimilated. He examines first production, then exchange, then distribution, and finally consumption, also sometimes distributing these four rubrics somewhat differently.61 The specific mode of production we are to consider presupposes from the outset as one of its forms a particular mode of exchange, and produces a particular mode of distribution and a particular mode of consumption, in so

far as consideration of the latter falls within the sphere of political economy at all. (This must be returned to later.)62

So, now ad rem.

The exchange value of the product (of the use value) that emerged from the labour process consists of the total amount of labour time materialised in it, of the total quantity of labour worked up, objectified, in it.* It therefore consists firstly of the value of the raw material contained in the product, or the labour time required to produce this, the material of labour. Let us assume it to be 100 working days. This value is however already expressed in the price at which the material of labour was bought, say, e.g. a price of 100 thalers. The value of this part of the product enters into it already determined as price. Secondly, as regards the means of labour, tools, etc., the tool will not necessarily be completely worn out; it can continue to function as a means of labour in fresh labour processes. Hence only that part of the tool can enter into the calculation that has been used up, since it alone has entered into the product. Later on the method of calculating the wear and tear on the means of labour will be shown more precisely,63 but at this point we shall assume that the whole of it is worn out in the one labour process. This assumption makes the less difference to the case in that actually the tool only enters the calculation insofar as it is consumed in the labour process, hence is transferred to the product; hence only the worn out means of labour enters the calculation. This is equally purchased. Hence the labour time contained in it, say of 16 working days, is expressed in its price of 16 thalers.

Before we now go further we ought to discuss here how the value of the material and means of labour is preserved in the labour process, so that it re-appears as a finished, presupposed constituent of the value of the product, or, what is the same thing, how the material and means of labour are consumed, altered in the labour process, either altered or completely destroyed (as with the means of labour), but their value is not destroyed, re-appearing instead in the product as a constituent, a presupposed constituent of its value.

// Capital has been regarded from its material side as a simple production process, a labour process. But, from the side of its formal determination, this process is a process of self-valorisation. Self-valorisation includes preservation of the preposited value as well as its multiplication. Labour is purposeful activity and from the material side it is therefore presupposed that the labour has employed its means to the appropriate purpose in the production process so as to give the material of labour the intended new use value.//

//Since the labour process is a process of the consumption of labour capacity by the capitalist—for the labour belongs to the capitalist—he has, in the labour process, consumed his material and means of labour by labour, and has consumed the labour itself by his material, etc.//65

[1-37] For the labour process as such, or in the labour process as such, effective labour capacity, the real worker, is concerned with the material and means of labour only as the objective prerequisites of the creative unrest that is labour itself, in fact only as the objective means to the realisation of labour. They are this through their objective qualities alone, through the qualities they possess as material and means of this particular labour. Where they are themselves products of earlier labour, this fact is extinguished in their capacity as things. The table that serves me for writing upon has its own form and its own characteristics; these appeared previously in the form-giving quality or specificity of the joiner's labour. In using the table as a means for further labour I have to do with it to the extent that it serves as a use value, has a particular useful application as a table. The fact that the material out of which it consists has acquired this form through earlier labour, the labour of the joiner, has disappeared, is extinguished in its existence as an object. It serves as a table in the labour process, quite regardless of the labour that turned it into a table.

In exchange value, in contrast, what matters is the quantity of labour materialised in this particular use value, or the quantity of labour time required to produce it. In this labour its own quality, the quality of being, for example, a joiner's labour, is extinguished, for it is reduced to a definite quantity of equal, general, undifferentiated, social, abstract labour.66 The material specificity of the labour, hence of the use value in which it has been fixed, is thereby extinguished, vanished, irrelevant. It is presupposed that it was useful labour, that is, labour which resulted in a use value. The nature of this use value, hence the particular nature of the labour's usefulness, is extinguished in the existence of the commodity as exchange value, for as exchange value it is an equivalent, expressible in every other use value, hence in every other form of useful labour which constitutes a quantity of social labour of the same magnitude. In respect of value therefore—i.e. considered as quantities of objectified labour time—the material of labour and the worn out means of labour can always be regarded as if they were moments of the same labour process, so that what is required to manufacture the product, the new use value, is 1) the labour time objectified in the material of labour, and 2) the labour time materialised in the means of labour. The material of labour is admittedly different in its original form, although it also re-appears in substance in the new use value. The means of labour has disappeared entirely, although it re-appears in the form of the new use value as effect, result. The particular material specificity, usefulness, of the acts of labour that were present in the material and means of labour, is just as extinguished as the use values in which they resulted have themselves vanished or changed. But as exchange values, and even before they entered this new labour process, they were merely a materialisation of labour in general, they were nothing but a quantity of labour time as such, absorbed in an object. For this labour time the particular character of the actual work being done, as well as the particular nature of the use value in which it was realised, was a matter of indifference.

After the new labour process the relationship is exactly the same as it was before. The quantity of labour time necessary e.g. to produce the cotton and the spindle is a quantity of labour time necessary to manufacture the yarn, insofar as cotton and spindle are used up in the yarn. That this quantity of labour time now appears as yarn is entirely irrelevant, since it continues to appear in a use value for whose manufacture it is necessary. If I for example exchange cotton and spindle to the value of 100 thalers for a quantity of yarn which is equally worth 100 thalers, in this case too the labour time contained in the cotton and spindle exists as labour time contained in the yarn. The fact that in their actual material transformation into yarn the cotton and the spindle also undergo changes in their material, with the one acquiring another form and the other entirely perishing in its material form, makes no difference, because this concerns them only as use values, hence in a shape towards which they are, as exchange values, essentially indifferent. Since as exchange values they are only a particular quantity of materialised social labour time, hence equal magnitudes, equivalents, for every other use value which represents a quantity of materialised social labour time of the same magnitude, it makes no difference to them that they appear now as the factors of a new use value. The sole conditions are these, that they should 1) appear as labour time necessary for the creation of the new use value, and 2) really result in another use value—hence in use value [T38] in general.

They are labour time necessary for the creation of the new use value because the use values in which they were originally crystallised were factors necessary for the new labour process. Secondly, however, according to our condition, the use values, as they existed before the labour process—as cotton and spindle—have in fact resulted through the new labour process in a new use value, the product, the yarn.

(That only such quantities of the material and means of labour should enter into the new product as are necessary for its creation, hence that no more labour time should be used than is necessary in these definite quantities; in other words that neither material nor means of production should be squandered, is a condition which has to do not with the material and means of labour as such but with the suitability and productivity of the new labour which uses them up in the labour process as its material and means; it is therefore a point that has to be considered in dealing with this labour itself. Here, however, the assumption is that the means and the material of labour only enter into the new process in quantities in which they are really required as such for the realisation of the new labour, are really objective conditions of the new labour process.)

Two results therefore.

Firstly: The labour time required for the manufacture of the material and means of labour used up in the product is labour time required for the manufacture of the product. Insofar as exchange value is considered, the labour time materialised in the material and means of labour can be regarded as if the latter were moments of the same labour process. All the labour time contained in the product belongs to the past; hence it is materialised labour. The labour time which perished in the material and means of labour passed away earlier; it belongs to an earlier period than the labour time functioning directly in the last labour process. But this changes nothing. They merely constitute earlier periods during which [part of] the labour time contained in the product was worked up, as against the part which represents the labour entering into it directly. The values of the material and means of labour therefore appear again in the product as constituents of its value. This value is presupposed, since the labour time contained in the material and means of labour was expressed in their prices in its general form, as social labour; these are the prices at which the money owner bought them as commodities before he began the labour process. The use values in which they consisted have perished but they themselves have remained unaltered and remain unaltered in the new use value. The only change that has taken place is that they appear as mere constituents, factors of his value, as factors of a new value. To the extent that the commodity is exchange value at all, the particular use value, the particular material determinateness in which it exists is after all only a particular mode of its manifestation; it is in fact a universal equivalent and can therefore exchange this incarnation for any other. Through circulation and first of all through being transformed into money it is indeed capable of giving itself the substance of every other use value.

Secondly: The values of the means of labour and the material of labour are therefore preserved in the value of the product, enter as factors into the value of the product. But they only re-appear in it because the real alteration the use values have received in them did not affect their substance at all, but only the forms of use value in which they existed before, as after, the process; and the particular form of use value in which the value of the product exists, or indeed the specific usefulness of the labour, which is reduced in that value to abstract labour, does not, in the nature of things, affect the essential character of value at all.

However, it is a conditio sine qua non for the re-appearance of the value of the material and means of labour in the product that the labour process really proceed to its end, to the product, that it really result in the product. If, therefore, it is a matter of use values whose production extends over a long period, one sees what an essential moment the continuity of the labour process is for the valorisation process in general, even so far as merely the preservation of existing use values is concerned. //This however implies, according to our presupposition, that the labour process proceeds on the basis of the appropriation of labour capacity by purchase on the part of money, by the continuous transformation of money into capital. The assumption is therefore that the working class is constantly in existence. This constancy is itself first created by capital. At earlier stages of production too an earlier working class may be present sporadically, not however as [T39] a universal prerequisite of production. The case of colonies (see

* Quesnay, etc., base their proof of the unproductiveness of all labour save agricultural labour on this addition.64

a To the matter in hand.—Ed.

As far as the preservation of the values of the material and means of labour is concerned--assuming therefore that the labour process eventuates in a product--this is simply attained by the fact that these use values are consumed as such by living labour in the labour process, that they figure as actual moments of the labour process, but only by their contact with, and incorporation into, living labour as the conditions of its purposeful activity. Living labour only adds value in the labour process to the value preposited in the material and means of labour to the extent that it is itself a new quantity of labour as such; it does not do so as actual, useful labour, not as viewed from the angle of its material determinateness. The yarn only has greater value than the sum of the values of the cotton and the spindle consumed in it because a new quantity of labour has been added in the labour process, in order to convert those use values into the new use value, yarn; the reason, therefore, is that the yarn now contains an extra, newly added quantity of labour over and above the quantity contained in the cotton and the spindle. But the exchange values of the cotton and the spindle are preserved simply by the fact that the actual labour, spinning, converts them into the new use value, yarn, hence consumes them to the purpose, makes them vital factors of its own process. The values entering the labour process are therefore preserved simply by the quality of the living labour, the nature of its expression. Those dead objects, in which the preposited values are present as their use values, are now really seized upon as use values by this new useful labour, spinning, and made into moments of new labour. They are preserved as values by entering as use values into the labour process, i.e. by playing their conceptually determined roles of material and means of labour towards actual useful labour.

Let us stay with our example. Cotton and spindle are used up as use values because they enter as material and means into the particular labour of spinning; because they are placed in the actual spinning process, one as the object, the other as the organ of this living purposeful activity. They are therefore preserved as values by being preserved as use values for labour. In general, they are preserved as exchange values because they are consumed as use values by labour. But the labour which consumes them in this way as use values is actual labour, labour considered in its material determinateness, this particular useful labour which is related exclusively to these specific use values as material and means of labour, related to them as such in its living manifestation. It is this particular useful labour, spinning, which preserves the use values cotton and spindle as exchange values, and therefore lets them re-appear as an exchange-value component in the product, in the use value yarn, because in the actual process it relates to them as its material and its means, as the organs of its realisation, because it breathes life into them as its own organs and makes them function as such. And thus the values of all commodities which in line with the nature of their use values do not enter into direct individual consumption, but are destined for new production, are only preserved in this way, that as material and means of labour, which they are only potentially, they become really the material and means of labour, and are utilised as such by the particular labour they are as such able to serve. They are only preserved as exchange values by being consumed as use values by living labour in accordance with their conceptual determination. They are, however, only use values of this kind--material and means of labour--for actual, definite and specific labour. I can only use up cotton and spindle as use values in the act of spinning, not in the acts of milling or boot-making.-- In general, all commodities are only use values potentially. They only become real use values by being actually used, consumed, and their consumption in this case is the specifically determined labour itself, the specific labour process.

[1-40] The material and means of labour are therefore only preserved as exchange values by being consumed in the labour process as use values, i.e. when living labour relates to them actu as to its use values, lets them play the role of its material and means, in its living unrest both posits and supersedes them as means and material. But insofar as it does that, labour is actual labour, a specific purposeful activity, labour as it appears in the labour process, materially determined, as a specific kind of useful labour. It is, however, not labour in this specific determinateness which adds--or it is not in this specific determinateness that labour adds--new exchange value to the product, or to the objects--use values--which enter into the labour process.

Spinning, for example. Spinning preserves in yarn the values of the cotton and spindle consumed in it, because this process really uses up cotton and spindle in spinning, consumes them as material and means for the production of a new use value, the yarn, or lets cotton and spindle really function in the spinning process as material and means of this specific living labour, spinning. If, however, the spinning raises the value of the product, yarn, or adds new value to the values already present beforehand in the yarn, which simply re-appear, the values of the spindle and the cotton, this only occurs to the extent that new labour time is added to the labour time contained in the cotton and the spindle by spinning.

a In action.-- Ed.

Firstly, in accordance with its substance, spinning creates value, not as this concrete, specific, materially determined labour of spinning, but as labour in general, abstract, equal, social labour. Therefore, it does not create value to the extent that it is objectified as spun yarn, but to the extent that it is a materialisation of social labour in general, i.e. is objectified in a universal equivalent.

Secondly, the magnitude of the value added depends exclusively on the quantity of labour added, on the labour time that is added. If, as a result of some invention, the spinner were able to convert into yarn a particular quantity of cotton, using a given number of spindles, in half a day's labour instead of a whole day, only half the value would have been added to the yarn compared with the first case. But the entire value of the cotton and the spindles would have been preserved in the product, yarn, in one case as much as the other, whether a day or half a day or an hour of labour time is required to convert the cotton into yarn. These values are preserved by the very fact that cotton is converted into yarn, that cotton and spindles have become the material and means of spinning, have entered into the spinning process. The labour time required by this process is here entirely irrelevant.

Let us assume that the spinner adds to the cotton only as much labour time as is necessary to produce his own wages, hence as much labour time as the capitalist expended in the price of the spinner's labour. In this case the value of the product would be exactly equal to the value of the capital advanced; namely equal to the price of the material + the price of the means of labour + the price of labour. No more labour time would be contained in the product than was present in the sum of money before it was transformed into the elements of the production process. No new value would have been added, but after as before the value of the cotton and spindle would be contained in the yarn.

Spinning adds value to cotton insofar as it is reduced to equal social labour in general, reduced to this abstract form of labour, and the amount of value it adds depends not on its content as spinning but on its duration. The spinner therefore does not need two periods of labour, one to preserve the value of cotton and spindle, the other to add new value to them. It is rather that while he spins the cotton, makes it into an objectification of new labour time, adds new value to it, he is at the same time preserving the value cotton and the worn out spindle had before they entered the labour process. Merely by adding new value, new labour time, he preserves the old values, the labour time that was already contained in the material and means of labour. It is as spinning, however, that spinning preserves them; not as labour in general and not as labour time, but in its material determinateness, through its quality as this specific, living, actual labour, which in the labour process, as living activity with a definite purpose, snatches the use values cotton and spindle out of their indifferent objectivity, not abandoning them as indifferent objects to nature's metabolism, but making them into real moments of the labour process.

But whatever the specific character of particular, actual labour may be, what every variety of this labour has in common with every other is that by its process--through the contact, the living interaction it enters into with its objective conditions--it makes them play the roles of means and material of labour appropriate to their nature and purpose, transforms them into conceptually determined moments of the labour process itself and thus preserves them as exchange values by using them up as real use values. [1-41] It is therefore through its quality as living labour, which converts the products available in the labour process into the material and means of its own activity, its own realisation, that it preserves the exchange values of these products and use values in the new product and use values. It preserves their value because it consumes them as use values. But it only consumes them as use values because, as this specific labour, it awakens them from the dead and makes them into its material and means of labour. In so far as it creates exchange value labour is only a definite social form of labour, actual labour reduced to a definite social formula, and in this form labour time is the sole measure of the magnitude of value.

Because the preservation of the values of the material and means of labour is so to speak the natural gift of living, actual labour, and hence the old values are preserved in the same process as increases value--since new value cannot be added without the preservation of the old values, because this effect stems from the essential nature of labour as use value, as useful activity, originates from the use value of labour itself--so the preservation of these values costs nothing either to the worker or to the capitalist. The latter therefore receives the preservation of the preposited values in the new product gratis.

Although his purpose is not the preservation but the increase of the preposited value, this free gift by labour shows its decisive importance e.g. in industrial crises, during which the actual labour process is interrupted. The machine becomes rusty, the material spoils. They lose their exchange values: these are not preserved, because they are not entering as use values into the labour process, they are not coming into contact with living labour; their values are not being preserved because they are not being increased. They can only be increased, new labour time can only be added to the old, to the extent that a start is made again with the actual labour process.

Hence values are preserved in the labour process by labour as actual living labour, whereas new value is added to the values by labour only as abstract social labour, labour time.

The actual labour process appears as productive consumption. The latter can now be defined more closely in the sense that the preposited values of the products are preserved in the labour process by these products being used up, consumed, as use values--material and means of labour--and converted into real use values for the formation of a new use value.

But the values of the material and means of labour only re-appear in the product of the labour process to the extent that they were preposited to the latter as values, i.e. were values before they entered into the process. Their value is equal to the social labour time materialised in them; it is equal to the labour time necessary to produce them under given general social conditions of production. If later on more or less labour time were to be required to manufacture these particular use values, owing to some alteration in the productivity of the labour of which they are the products, their value would have risen in the first case and fallen in the second; for the labour time contained in their value only determines it to the extent that it is general, social, and necessary labour time. Hence although they entered the labour process with a definite value, they may come out of it with a value that is larger or smaller, because the labour time society needs for their production has undergone a general change, a revolution has occurred in their production costs, i.e. in the magnitude of the labour time necessary for their manufacture. In this case more or less labour time than previously would be required to reproduce them, to manufacture a new sample of the same kind. But this change in the value of the material and means of labour involves

absolutely no alteration in the circumstance that in the labour process into which they enter as material and means they are always preposited as given values, values of a given magnitude. For in this process itself they only emerge as values insofar as they entered as values. A change in their value never results from this labour process itself but rather from the conditions of the labour process of which they are or were the products and to which they therefore are not preposited as products. If their general conditions of production have changed, this reacts back upon them. They are an objectification of more or less labour time, of more or less value than they were originally; but only because a greater or smaller amount of labour time is now required than originally for their production. The reaction is due to the fact that as values they are a materialisation of social labour time but the labour time contained in them only counts to the extent that it is reduced to general [1-42] social labour time, raised to the power of equal social labour time. These changes in their value, however, always arise from changes in the productivity of the labour of which they are the products, and have nothing to do with the labour processes into which they enter as finished products with a given value. If this value changes before the new product of which they are the elements is finished they nevertheless relate to it as independent, given values preposited to it. Their change of value stems from alterations in their own conditions of production, which occur outside and independently of the labour process into which they enter as material and means; not as a result of an operation occurring within the labour process. For it they are always values of a given, preposited magnitude, even though owing to external agencies, acting outside the labour process, they are now preposited as of greater or smaller magnitude than was originally the case.//

We saw that just as the product is the result of the labour process so are its products prerequisites for the same process3; but now it must equally be said that if the commodity, i.e. a unity of use value and exchange value, is the result of the labour process, commodities are just as much its prerequisites. The products only emerge from the valorisation process as commodities because they have entered it as commodities, products with a definite exchange value. The difference is this: the products are changed as use values so that a new use value can be formed. Their exchange values are not affected by this change in the material, and they therefore re-appear unchanged in the new product. If use value is the product of the labour process, exchange value must be regarded as the product of the valorisation process, and thus the commodity, the unity of exchange value and use value, must be regarded as the product of both processes, which are merely two forms of the same process. If one wished to disregard the fact that commodities are preposited to production as its elements, the only matter of concern in the production process would be the use of products for the formation of new products; and this can, indeed, occur in states of society in which the product has not developed into the commodity, still less the commodity into capital.68

We now know two components of the value of the product: 1) the value of the material consumed in it; 2) the value of the means of production consumed in it. If these are equal respectively to A and B, the value of the product will initially consist of the sum of the values of A and B, or P (the product). P=A+B + x. With X we denote the as yet undetermined portion of value that has been added to the material A by labour in the labour process. Therefore, we now come to consider this third component.

We know what price or value the money owner has paid for disposition over labour capacity or the temporary purchase of labour capacity, but we do not yet know what equivalent he receives in return for this.—We proceed, furthermore, from the assumption that the labour performed by the worker is ordinary average labour, labour of the quality or rather the qualitylessness in which it forms the substance of exchange value.69 We shall see in the course of our investigation that the power of the labour, the question whether it is more or less potentiated simple labour, is a matter of complete indifference for the relation to be developed here.3 We proceed therefore from the assumption that whatever the particular material determinateness of the labour, whatever specific branch of labour it belongs to, whatever particular use value it produces, it is only the expression, the activity of average labour capacity, so that whether this manifests itself in spinning or weaving, etc., or farming, concerns only its use value, the manner of its application. It does not concern what it cost to produce the labour capacity itself, hence not its own exchange value. It will also be seen that differences in the wage paid for different working days, higher or lower, the unequal distribution of wages between the different branches of labour, do not affect the general relation between capital and wage labour.32—

What the money owner gets back from the purchase of labour capacity can only become manifest in the actual labour process. The value added by labour in the labour process to the already existing value of the material is exactly equal to its duration. It is naturally presupposed that over a definite period of time, e.g. one day, precisely as much labour is employed on the product of this day as is necessary to produce it at the given general productive level of labour (under the given general conditions of production).70 That is, it is presupposed that the labour time employed for the manufacture of the product is necessary labour time, the labour time required to give a certain quantity of material the form of the new use value. If, under the general conditions of production we have presupposed, 6 lbs of cotton can be converted into twist in the course of 1 day of 12 hours, only a day in which 6 lbs of cotton is converted into twist is regarded as a working day of 12 hours. On the one hand, therefore, necessary labour time is presupposed; on the other hand, it is presupposed that the particular labour performed in the labour process is ordinary average labour, whatever specific form it may have as spinning, weaving, digging, etc. (and the same is true of the labour employed in the production of the precious metals71). It follows, accordingly, that the quantity of value or the quantity of objectified general [1-43] labour time which this labour adds to the existing value is exactly equal to its own duration. This, under the given assumptions, simply means that precisely as much labour is objectified as the time taken for the process during which the labour is objectifying itself.

Let us say that 6 lbs of cotton can be spun into twist, say 5 lbs of twist, in a day of 12 hours. During the labour process the labour is continuously passing from the form of unrest and motion into the objective form. (5 lbs=80 ounces.) (Over 12 hours this would make exactly 6 2/3 ounces an hour.) The spinning constantly results in yarn. If one hour is required to turn 8 ounces of cotton into yarn, say 6 2/3 ounces of yarn, 12 hours would be required to turn 6 lbs of cotton into 5 lbs of yarn. What interests us here, however, is not that one hour of spinning turns 8 ounces of cotton into yarn and 12 hours 6 lbs, but that in the first case 1 hour of labour is added to the value of the cotton, and in the second 12 hours. In other words, we are only interested in the product from this point of view to the extent that it is the materialisation of new labour time and this naturally depends on the labour time itself. We are interested only in the quantity of labour absorbed in the product. Here we do not look at spinning as spinning, we do not look at it insofar as it gives the cotton a definite form, a new use value, but only insofar as it is labour in general, labour time and its materialisation, which is present in the yarn, the materialisation of general labour time as such. It is entirely irrelevant whether the same labour time is employed in the form of any other particular labour or to produce any other particular exchange value.

Originally, it is true, we were able to measure labour capacity with money, because it was itself already objectified labour, and the capitalist could therefore buy it; but were unable to measure labour itself directly, for as bare activity it escaped our standard of measurement. Now, however, in the measure to which, in the labour process, labour capacity proceeds to its real manifestation, to labour, the latter is realised, appears itself in the product as objectified labour time. The possibility is now available for comparing what the capitalist gives in wages with what he gets back in exchange for wages through the consumption of labour capacity. At the end of a certain measure of labour time, e.g. hours, a certain quantity of labour time has been objectified in a use value, say twist, and now exists as the latter’s exchange value.

Let us assume that the labour time realised in the spinner’s labour capacity amounts to 10 hours. We are speaking here only of the labour time realised daily in his labour capacity. In the price the money owner has paid the labour time required to produce or reproduce the labour capacity of the spinner every day is already expressed in average labour. We assume on the other hand that his own labour is the same quality of labour, i.e. the same average labour, as forms the substance of value, and in which his own labour capacity is evaluated.

Let us therefore assume initially that the spinner works 10 hours for the money owner or gives him, has sold him, 10 hours’ disposition over his labour capacity. This 10-hour disposition over the spinner’s labour capacity is consumed by the money owner in the labour process. This means, in other words, simply that he has the spinner spin for 10 hours, has him work in general, since here the particular form in which he has him do this is irrelevant. The spinner has therefore added to the value of the cotton through the agency of the means of labour 10 hours of labour in the shape of the spun thread, the yarn. If, therefore, the value of the product, the spun thread, the yarn, disregarding the newly added labour, was equal to A+B, it now=A+B + 10 hours of labour. The capitalist pays for these 10 hours of labour with 10d. Let us call these 10d. C. The product of the yarn now = A+B + C, i.e. it equals the labour time contained in the cotton, in the spindles (to the extent that they have been consumed) and finally in the newly added labour time.

Let the sum of A+B + C be=D. D is then equal to the sum of money the money owner laid out in material of labour, means of labour, and labour capacity before he began the labour process. That is to say, the value of the product—the yarn—is equal to the value of the elements of which the yarn consists, i.e.=the value of the material of labour and the means of labour (which is entirely consumed in the product on our assumption) + the value of the newly added labour, which has combined with the other two in the labour process to form yarn. Therefore 100 thalers of cotton, 16 thalers of instrument, and 16 thalers of labour capacity =132 thalers. In this case the values advanced would admittedly have been preserved, but not increased. The only alteration that would have taken place before the money was transformed into capital [1-44] would have been a purely formal one. This value was originally = 132 thalers, a definite quantity of objectified labour time. The same unity re-appears in the product, as 132 thalers. The magnitude of value is the same, but this is now the sum of the value components 100, 16 and 16, i.e. the values of the factors into which the money originally advanced is divided in the labour process, and each of which has been purchased separately by that money.

In itself this result is not in the least absurd. If I buy yarn for 132 thalers, merely by converting money into yarn—i.e. by way of simple circulation—I pay for the material, means and labour contained in the yarn in order to acquire this particular use value and consume it in one way or the other. If the money owner has a house built in order to live in it, he pays an equivalent for the house. In short, when he goes through the circulation C—M—C, he in fact does nothing other than this. The money with which he buys is equal to the value of the commodity originally in his possession. The new commodity he buys is equal to the money in which the value of the commodity originally possessed by him has acquired an independent shape as exchange value.

Yet the purpose of the capitalist in transforming money into the commodity is not the commodity’s use value but the increase of the money or value laid out in the commodity—the self-valorisation of value. He does not buy for his own consumption but in order to draw out of circulation a higher exchange value than he originally threw into it.

If he were to re-sell the yarn, which is worth A+B+C, at, say, A+B+C+x, we should come back to the same contradiction. He would not sell his commodity as an equivalent, but above its equivalent. In circulation, however, no surplus value, no value over and above the equivalent, can arise unless one of the parties to the exchange receives a value below its equivalent.3

The transformation of money into the elements of the labour process - or the actual consumption of the labour capacity that has been purchased, which is the same thing - would therefore be completely purposeless under the assumption that the money owner sets the worker to work for the same period of labour time as that he has paid him as an equivalent for his labour capacity. Whether he buys yarn for 132 thalers, so as to re-sell the yarn at 132 thalers, or converts the 132 thalers into 100 thalers of cotton, 16 thalers of spindles, etc., and 16 thalers of objectified labour, i.e. the consumption of labour capacity for the period of labour time contained in 16 thalers, so as to sell the 132 thalers' worth of yarn thus produced at 132 thalers once again, the process is entirely the same from the point of view of its result, except that the tautological outcome of the process would have been arrived at by a more roundabout route in one case than in the other.

A surplus value, i.e. a value which forms an excess over the values that originally entered the labour process, can evidently only originate in that process if the money owner has bought disposition over the employment of labour capacity during a longer period than the amount of labour time required by the labour capacity for its own reproduction, i.e. than the labour time which is incorporated in the labour capacity itself, forms its own value and as such is expressed in its price. Let us apply this to the case mentioned above. If the cotton and the spindle belonged to the spinner himself, he would have to add 10 hours of labour to them in order to live, i.e. in order to reproduce himself as a spinner for the next day. If he were now to set a worker to work for 11 hours instead of 10, a surplus value of 1 hour would be produced, because the labour objectified in the labour process would contain an hour more of labour time than is necessary to reproduce the labour capacity itself, i.e. to keep alive the worker as worker, the spinner day in day out as spinner. Every portion of time worked by the spinner in the labour process over and above the 10 hours, [1-45] all surplus labour in excess of the quantity of labour incorporated in his own labour capacity, would form a surplus value, because it would be surplus labour, hence more spun thread, more labour objectified as yarn.

See this volume, pp. 23-29. - Ed.

If the worker must work for 10 hours in order to live for the whole day, which consists of 24 hours (in which are naturally included the hours during which he must as an organism rest from labour, sleep, etc., is unable to work), he can work over the whole day for 12, 14 hours, although he only needs 10 out of these 12, 14 hours for the reproduction of himself as a worker, as living labour capacity.

If we now assume that this process corresponds to the general law of commodity exchange, that equal quantities of labour time are alone being exchanged, i.e. that the exchange value of the commodity is equal to the quantity of any other use value that expresses the same exchange value, i.e. the same quantity of objectified labour, the general form of capital - M-C-M - will have lost its absurdity and acquired content. Since the commodity, here the yarn, for whose elements the money owner exchanged his money before the labour process, would have received an addition to the original quantity of objectified labour, in the shape of the product of the labour process, the new use value, the yarn, the product would possess a greater value than the sum of the values preposited in its elements. If it was originally = 132 thalers, it would now be =143, if instead of 16 thalers (1 thaler = 1 day of labour) X more days of labour were contained in it. The value would now be =100+16+16+11, and if the capitalist re-sold the product of the labour process, the yarn, at its value, he would gain 11 thalers from the 132 thalers. The original value would have been not only preserved but increased.

One must ask whether this process does not contradict the law originally presupposed, that commodities are exchanged as equivalents, i.e. at their exchange values; the law, therefore, that governs the exchange of commodities?a

It does not, for two reasons. Firstly, because money finds this specific object, living labour capacity, on the market, in circulation, as a commodity. Secondly, owing to the specific nature of this commodity. Its peculiar character consists namely in the fact that, whereas its exchange value, like that of all other commodities = the labour time incorporated in its own actual existence, in its existence as labour capacity, i.e. = the labour time necessary to keep alive this living labour capacity as such, or, what is the same thing, to keep the worker alive as a worker, - its use value is labour itself, i.e. precisely the substance which posits exchange value, the particular fluid activity which fixes itself as exchange value and creates it.72 With commodities, however, only their exchange value is paid for. One does not pay for oil's quality of being oil on top of paying for the labour contained in it, any more than one pays for the drinking of wine in addition to the labour contained in it, or for the enjoyment when paying for the drinking. Similarly therefore with labour capacity: what is paid for is its own exchange value, the labour time contained in it itself. But since its use value is in turn labour itself, the substance that creates exchange value, it in no way contradicts the law of the exchange of commodities that the actual consumption of labour capacity, its actual use as a use value, posits more labour, manifests itself in more objectified labour, than is present within it itself as exchange value.

See this volume, p. 33. - Ed.

The sole condition required for this relationship to come into existence is that [1-46] labour capacity itself should step forth as a commodity to meet money, or value in general. But this confrontation is conditioned by a definite historical process which narrows down the worker to pure labour capacity; this is the same as saying that this process confronts labour capacity with the conditions of its realisation, hence confronts actual labour with its objective elements, as alien powers, separated from it, as commodities in the possession of other keepers of commodities.21 Under this historical presupposition labour capacity is a commodity, and under the presupposition that it is a commodity it by no means contradicts the law of the exchange of commodities, it much rather corresponds to it, that the labour time objectified in labour capacity or its exchange value does not determine its use value. The latter, however, is in turn itself labour. Hence in the actual consumption of this use value, i.e. in and through the labour process, the money owner can receive back more objectified labour time than he paid out for the exchange value of the labour capacity. So that although he has paid an equivalent for this specific commodity he receives back as a consequence of its specific nature - that its use value itself posits exchange value, is the creative substance of exchange value - a greater value by its use than he had advanced by its purchase, in which he paid for its exchange value alone, in line with the law of the exchange of commodities.

Therefore, presupposing a relationship in which labour capacity exists as mere labour capacity, hence as a commodity, and in which it is accordingly confronted by money as the form of all objective wealth, the money owner, being only concerned with value as such, will only purchase labour capacity on condition that he acquires disposition over it for a longer period, or that the worker binds himself to work for him during the labour process for a longer period, than the labour time the worker would have to put in in order to keep himself alive as a worker, as living labour capacity, if he himself owned the material and means of labour. This difference between the labour time which measures the exchange value of labour capacity itself and the labour time during which it is used as use value, is the labour time worked by labour capacity beyond the labour time contained in its own exchange value, hence beyond the value it cost originally. As such it is surplus labour - surplus value.

If the money owner makes this exchange of money with living labour capacity and with the objective conditions for the consumption of this labour capacity - i.e. with the material and means of labour corresponding to its particular material determinateness - he thereby transforms money into capital, i.e. into self-preserving and self-augmenting, self-valorising value. At no time does he contravene the law of simple circulation, of the exchange of commodities, whereby equivalents are exchanged or the commodities - on the average - are sold at their exchange values, i.e. exchange values of equal magnitude, whatever use values they may exist in, replace each other as equal magnitudes. At the same time he fulfils the formula M-C-M, i.e. the exchange of money for the commodity so as to exchange the commodity for more money, and accordingly does not contravene the law of equivalence, acting instead entirely in line with it.

Firstly: Say, a normal working day = 1 thaler, is expressed in the quantity of silver denominated by a thaler. The money owner expends 100 thalers for raw material; 16 thalers for instrument; and 16 thalers for the 16 labour capacities which he employs and whose exchange value = 16 thalers. Thus he advances 132 thalers, which re-appear in the product (result) of the labour process, [1-47] i.e. in the consumption of the labour capacity he has bought, the labour process, productive consumption. But the commodity he has bought at its exchange value of 15 days of labour provides as a use value, say, 30 days of labour, a day of 6 hours provides 12 hours, objectifies itself in 12 hours of labour; i.e. it posits as a use value twice as great a value as it possesses as exchange value. But the use value of a commodity is independent of its exchange value and has nothing to do with the price at which it is sold - this is determined by the amount of labour time objectified in it. The product therefore = A+B+C+15 hours of labour time. It is thus greater by 15 hours of labour time than the value preposited to the labour process. If A was =100, B=16, C=16, the product =143, i.e. 11 thalers' more value than the capital advanced. If he re-sells this commodity at its value, he gains 11 thalers, although the law of the exchange of commodities was not infringed at any moment of the whole operation, the commodities having on the contrary been exchanged at every moment at their exchange values and therefore as equivalents.

Simple as this process is, it has so far been very little understood. The economists have never been able to reconcile surplus value with the law of equivalence they themselves have postulated. The socialists have always held on to this contradiction and harped on it, instead of understanding the specific nature of this commodity, labour capacity, whose use value is itself the activity which creates exchange value.73

Through this process, therefore, the exchange of money with labour capacity and the subsequent consumption of the latter, money is transformed into capital. The economists call this the transformation of money into productive capital, on the one hand in reference to other forms of capital, in which this basic process admittedly exists as a prerequisite but is extinguished in the form; and on the other hand in reference to the fact that money, in so far as it is confronted with labour capacity as a commodity, is the possibility of this transformation into capital, therefore is in itself capital, even if it is only through this process itself that it is transformed into actual capital. It has however the possibility of being transformed into capital.

It is clear that if surplus labour is to be realised, more of the material of labour is needed; more of the instrument of labour only in exceptional cases. If in 10 hours 10a pounds of cotton can be converted into twist, 10a+2a will be converted in 12 hours. In this case, therefore, more cotton is needed or it must be assumed from the outset that the capitalist buys an adequate quantity of cotton to absorb the surplus labour. But it is also possible, for example, that the same material can only be worked up into a half-finished state in half a day and completely finished in a whole day. Even so, in this case too, more labour has been consumed in the material and if the process is to continue from day to day, to be a continuous production process, more of the material of labour would still be required than if the worker only replaced by his work in the labour process the labour time objectified in his

own wages. Whether more of the means of labour is required and to what extent--and the means of labour is not limited to what are actually tools--depends on the technological nature of the particular labour, hence on the nature of the means consumed by it.

In every case more new labour must have been absorbed into the material of labour at the end of the labour process, and therefore objectified, than the amount of labour time objectified in the worker's wage. Let us simply stick to the example of the manufacturer. This surplus absorption of labour manifests itself as the working up of more material or the working up of the same material to a higher level than could be attained with less labour time.

[1-48] If we compare the valorisation process with the labour process, the distinction is strikingly apparent between actual labour, which produces use value, and the form of this labour which appears as the element of exchange value, as the activity that creates exchange value.

It is apparent that the particular kind of labour being performed, its material determinateness, does not affect its relation to capital, which is the only issue here. But we started out from the assumption that the labour of the worker was common average labour. Yet the casus is not altered if it is assumed that his labour has a higher specific gravity, is potentiated average labour.69 Simple labour or average labour, the labour of the spinner, the miller, the tiller or the engineer, what the capitalist acquires objectified in the labour process, appropriates for himself through it, is the particular labour of the worker, spinning, milling, tilling the fields, building machines. The surplus value he produces always consists in the surplus quantity of labour, of labour time, during which the worker spins, mills, tills the fields, builds machines for longer than is necessary to produce his own wage. It therefore always consists in a surplus quantity of his own labour, which the capitalist receives for nothing, whatever the character of that labour may be, whether simple or potentiated. The relation, for example, in which potentiated labour stands to average social labour alters nothing in the relation of this potentiated labour to itself, it does not change the fact that an hour of it creates only half as much value as two hours, or that it is realised in proportion to its duration. Hence so far as the relation between labour and surplus labour--or labour which creates surplus value--comes into consideration, it is always a matter of the same kind of labour, and here the following is correct, although it would not be correct in reference to exchange value positing labour as such:

* "When reference is made to labour as a measure of value, it necessarily implies labour of one particular kind and a given duration; the proportion which the other kinds bear to it being easily ascertained by the respective remuneration given to each" * ((J. Cazenove,] Outlines of Political Economy, London, 1832, [pp.] 22-23).

The product obtained by the capitalist in this way is a particular use value, whose value is equal to the value of the material, the means of labour, and the quantity of labour added (=the quantity of labour contained in the wage+the surplus labour, which is not paid for)=A+B+S+S'. Hence, if he sells the commodity at its value, he gains exactly as much as the amount of surplus labour. He does not gain through selling the new commodity at over its value but because he sells it at its value, converts the whole of its value into money. He thereby receives payment of a part of the value, a part of the labour contained in the product, which he has not bought and which has cost him nothing. The part of the value of his product which he has not paid for and sells constitutes his gain. In circulation, therefore, he merely realises the surplus value he has received in the labour process. This does not arise from circulation itself, it does not spring from his selling his commodity at more than its value.a

// The value of the material and means of labour consumed in the labour process--the labour time objectified in them--reappears in the product, the new use value. It is preserved, but it cannot be said in the proper sense of the word that it is reproduced; for it is not affected by the change of form that has taken place in the use value, the fact that it now exists in a different use value from previously. If a day's labour is objectified in a use value, this objectification, the quantity of labour fixed in the use value, is not altered by the fact that e.g. the 12th hour of labour only enters into its composition 11 hours after the first hour of labour. Thus the labour time contained in the material and means of labour can be regarded as if it had only entered into the product at an earlier stage of the production process necessary for the manufacture of the whole product, hence of all its elements.

As against this, the situation is otherwise with labour capacity, in so far as it enters the valorisation process. It replaces the value contained in itself and therefore paid for itself or the objectified labour time paid for in its price, in the wage, by adding an equal quantity of new living labour to the material of labour. It therefore reproduces the value present in itself in advance of the labour process, quite apart from the fact that it also adds a surplus, surplus labour, over and above this quantity. The value of the material and means of labour only re-appears in the product because the material and means of labour possess this value before the labour process and independently [1-49] of it. But the value, and more than the value, of the labour capacity re-appears in the product a because it is replaced, hence reproduced, by a greater quantity of new living labour in the labour process (even so, in this distinction the surplus quantity is at first irrelevant).//

UNITY OF THE LABOUR PROCESS AND THE VALORISATION PROCESS. (THE CAPITALIST PRODUCTION PROCESS)

The actual production process, which occurs as soon as money has been transformed into capital by being exchanged for living labour capacity and ditto for the objective conditions for the realisation of this capacity--the material and means of labour--this production process is a unity of the labour process and the valorisation process, just as its result, the commodity, is a unity of use value and exchange value.

The production process of capital, looked at from its material side, the production of use values, is, first of all, a labour process in general, and as such it displays the general factors which pertain to this process as such under the most varied forms of social production. These factors are determined, namely, by the nature of labour as labour. Historically, in fact, at the start of its formation, we see capital take under its control (subsume under itself) not only the labour process in general but the specific actual labour processes as it finds them available in the existing technology, and in the form in which they have developed on the basis of non-capitalist relations of production. It finds in existence the actual production process--the particular mode of production--and at the beginning it only subsumes it formally, without making any changes in its specific technological character. Only in the course of its development does capital not only formally subsume the labour process but transform it, give the very mode of production a new shape and thus first create the mode of production peculiar to it.55 But whatever its changed shape may be, as a labour process in general, i.e. as a labour process viewed in abstraction from its historical determinateness, it always contains the general moments of the labour process as such.

This formal subsumption of the labour process, the assumption of control over it by capital, consists in the worker's subjection as worker to the supervision and therefore to the command of capital or the capitalist. Capital becomes command over labour, not in the sense of Adam Smith's statement that wealth is absolutely command over labour,a but in the sense that the worker as worker comes under the command of the capitalist. For as soon as he has sold his labour capacity for a definite period of time to the capitalist in return for a wage he must enter into the labour process as a worker, as one of the factors with which capital works.

If the actual labour process is the productive consumption of the use values that enter into it through labour, hence through the activity of the worker himself, it is also just as much the consumption of labour capacity by capital or the capitalist.74 He employs the worker's labour capacity by having him work. All the factors of the labour process, the material of labour, the means of labour and living labour itself, as the activity, the consumption, of the labour capacity he has bought, belong to him; so the whole labour process belongs to him just as much as if he himself were working with his own material and his own means of labour. But since labour is at the same time the expression of the worker's own life, the manifestation of his own personal skill and capacity--a manifestation which depends on his will and is simultaneously an expression of his will--the capitalist supervises the worker, controls the functioning of labour capacity as an action belonging to him. He will make sure that the material of labour is used for the right purpose: consumed as material of labour. If any material is wasted, it does not enter into the labour process, is not consumed as material of labour. The same is true of the means of labour, when, e.g. the worker wears out their material substance in a manner other than that prescribed by the labour process itself. Lastly, the capitalist will make sure that the worker really works, works the whole time required, and expends necessary labour time only, i.e. does the normal quantity of work over a given time. In all these aspects, the labour process and thereby labour and the worker himself come under the control of capital, under its command. I call this the formal subsumption of the labour process under capital.75

a See this volume, p. 383.--Ed.

In the whole of the following investigation the labour the capitalist himself may perhaps perform is never reckoned among the components of the product's value. If it consists of simple labour, it has nothing to do with the relation as such, and the capitalist [1-50] is not operating as capitalist, as mere personification, capital incarnate. If, however, it is a form of labour that arises from the peculiar functions of capital as such, hence from the capitalist mode of production as such, we shall subject it later on to a more specific and precise examination as "labour of superintendence".76

This formal subsumption of the labour process under capital, or the command of the capitalist over the worker, has nothing in common with, e.g., the relation that prevailed in the guild industry of the Middle Ages between the master and the journeymen and apprentices.29 It emerges instead, purely and simply, from the fact that productive consumption, or the production process, is at the same time a process of the consumption of labour capacity by capital, that the content and determining purpose of this consumption is nothing but the preservation and increase of the value of capital, and that this preservation and increase can only be attained by the most effective, most exact organisation of the actual labour process, which depends on the will, the hard work, etc., of the worker, and which is therefore taken under the control and supervision of the capitalist will.

// One more remark with reference to the production process: Money, in order to be transformed into capital, must be transformed into the factors of the labour process--i.e. into commodities which configure as use values in the labour process; hence it must be transformed into means of consumption for labour capacity--i.e. the worker's means of subsistence--or into the material and means of labour. All commodities, therefore, or all products, which cannot be employed in this manner or are not destined to be thus employed, belong to the consumption fund of society, but not to capital (here we understand under capital the objects wherein capital exists). Nevertheless, as long as these products remain commodities, they are themselves a mode of existence of capital. If capitalist production is presupposed, capital produces all products without exception, and it is entirely irrelevant whether these products are destined for productive consumption or are unable to enter into it, unable therefore to become the body of capital again. But they then remain capital as long as they remain commodities, i.e. are present in circulation. As soon as they are definitively sold, they cease to be capital in this sense. To the extent that capital is not at

the stage of the labour process, it must absolutely be on hand in the form of commodity or money (if only perhaps a mere claim on money, etc.). But they cannot enter into the labour process or the production process as use values.

In the same measure as the worker is active as a worker, i.e. externalises his labour capacity, he alienates it, since it has already been alienated by sale as a self-externalising capacity to the money owner before the labour process begins. As labour realises itself--on the one hand, as the form of raw material (as use value and product) and, on the other hand, as exchange value, objectified social labour in general--it is transformed into capital.

In general, to say that capital is a product, employed as a means for new production, is, as already remarked above, to misconstrue the capital-relation as covering the objective conditions of every labour process.56 On the other hand, the same confusion may arise--and is even to be found in part in Ricardo himself77--when capital is described as accumulated labour a employed for the production of more accumulated labour. The expression is ambiguous, since one needs to understand no more by accumulated labour than products which are employed for the production of new use values. But the expression can also be understood in the sense that the product (as exchange value) is, in general, nothing but a definite quantity of objectified labour, expended in order to make this quantity grow--hence the process of self-valorisation. Although the second process presupposes the first, the first process, in contrast, does not necessarily imply the second.

To the extent that the objective conditions of labour, the material and means of labour, serve directly in the labour process, they are employed by the worker. But it is not labour which employs capital, it is capital which employs labour.78 It is this specific position taken up by value in general towards labour capacity, by objectified, past labour towards living, present labour, by the conditions of labour towards labour itself, which forms the specific nature of capital. We shall go into this in somewhat more detail at the end of this section I. 1) (Transformation of Money into Capital).6 Here it suffices to say, for the moment, that in the production process--in so far as this is a valorisation process and hence a process of the self-valorisation of the preposited value or money--value (i.e. objectified general social labour), past labour, [1-51] preserves and increases itself, posits surplus value, through exchange, through the relative appropriation of living labour, an exchange mediated by the purchase of labour capacity. It thus appears as value-in-process, and preserving and maintaining itself in the process. It thus appears as a self--the incarnation of this self is the capitalist--the selfhood of value. Labour (living) appears only as the means, the agency through which capital (value) reproduces and increases itself.

* "Labour is the agency by which capital is made productive of wages, profit, or revenue"* (John Wade, History of the Middle and Working Classes etc., 3rd ed., London, 1835, p. 161).

(In the abstract economic section of his book Wade has some original points for his time, e.g. on commercial crises, etc. The whole of the historical part is, in contrast, a striking example of the shameless plagiarism that predominates among the English economists. It is in fact copied almost word for word from Sir F. Morton Eden, The State of the Poor etc., 3 vols, London, 1797.)79

Value, objectified labour, acquires this relation to living labour only to the extent that it is confronted by labour capacity as such, i.e. to the extent that, conversely, the objective conditions of labour--and hence the conditions for the realisation of labour capacity--confront labour capacity itself in separation and independence, under the control of an alien will. Hence although the means and material of labour are not as such capital, they themselves appear as capital because their independence, their existence as entities in their own right vis-a-vis the worker and therefore labour itself, is rooted in their being. Just as gold and silver appear as money, and are, notionally, directly connected with the social relation of production of which they are the vehicles.80

Within capitalist production, the relationship between the labour process and the valorisation process is that the latter appears as the purpose, the former only as the means. The former is therefore stopped when the latter is no longer possible or not yet possible. On the other hand, it is revealed in times of so-called speculative fashions, of crises of speculation (shares and so forth), that the labour process (actual material production) is only a burdensome requirement, and the capitalist nations are seized by a universal mania for attaining the goal (the valorisation process) without using the means (the labour process). The labour process as such could only provide its own purpose if the capitalist were concerned with the use value of the product. He is, however, only concerned with alienating it by sale as a commodity, converting it back into money, and, since it was money originally, with the increase of this sum of money. In this sense it can be said:

"The value makes the product" (Say, Cours complet, p. 510).a81

(This is in fact true for all production of commodities. On the other hand, it is also correct that only capitalist production is commodity production to the broadest extent, i.e. production for the individual's own use entirely disappears and the elements of production, even in agriculture, are to a greater and greater degree already commodities when they enter the production process.60)

Here, in dealing with the transformation of money into capital, we only need to point generally to the form in which money appears (since we shall be returning to this in dealing with circulation82). In any case this has already been done for the most part, in I. 1) a) (The Most General Form of Capital).

A further remark needs to be made with regard to the valorisation process: It is not merely value, but a sum of value, that is preposited to it. A value of a definite magnitude, a point which will be developed still further later on.b It must (even as capitalist in nucec) at least be capable of buying 1 worker and the material and instrument needed for him. In short, the sum of value is here determined from the outset by the exchange values of the commodities which enter directly into the labour process.

We therefore call the whole thing the capitalist production process on the basis of capital. It is not a question of producing a product but a commodity--a product destined to be sold. And it is not a question of simply producing commodities in order by selling them to gain possession in this way of the use values available in circulation, but of producing commodities in order to preserve and increase the preposited value.

[1-52] If the labour process is viewed entirely abstractly, it can be said that originally only two factors come into play--man and nature. (Labour and the natural material of labour.) His first tools are his own limbs, and even these he must first appropriate for himself. Only with the first product that is employed for new production--even if it is just a stone thrown at an animal to kill it--does the labour process proper begin.83 One of the first tools appropriated by man is the animal (domesticated animal). (See on this point the passage in Turgot.84) To this extent, from the point of view of labour, Franklin is right to define man as "a tool-making animal" or "engineer".85 The earth and labour would then be the original factors of production; the products destined for labour, produced material of labour, means of labour, means of subsistence, would only be derivative factors.

"The earth is necessary; capital is useful. And labour with the earth produces capital" (Colins, L'economie politique. Source des revolutions et des utopies pretendues socialistes, Vol. III, Paris, 1857, [p.] 288).a

Colins believes that this achievement of independence by value, see VII-153, 154,86 which is contained in the concept of capital, was invented by the economists.

The above-mentioned ambiguity is also present in James Mill.

* "All capital"* // here capital in the merely material sense // * "consists really in commodities.... The first capital must have been the result of pure labour. The first commodities could not be made by any commodities existing before them"* (James Mill, Elements of Political Economy, London, 1821, [p.] 72).

However, this separation of production into the factors man, as vehicle of labour, and earth (actually nature) as object of labour, is also totally abstract. For man does not originally confront nature as a worker but as a proprietor, and it is not man as a solitary individual but man as member of a tribe, a clan, a family, etc., as soon as one can at all speak of man leading a human existence.87

In the same Mill:

* "Labour and Capital ... the one, immediate labour ... the other, hoarded labour, that which has been the result of former labour"* (l.c., [p.] 75).

If, on the one hand, capital is reduced in the labour process to its merely material mode of existence--if it is separated into its factors--in order in general to smuggle it in as a necessary element of all production,56 it is, on the other hand, also conceded that capital is of a purely notional nature, because it is value (Say, Sismondi, etc.).b

If it is said that capital is a product as opposed to a commodity (Proudhon, Wayland, etc.)c or that it is the instrument of labour and the material of labour, or that it also consists of the products the worker receives, etc., it is forgotten that in the labour process labour has already been incorporated into capital and belongs to it just as much as the means and material of labour.

* "When the labourers receive wages for their labour ... the capitalist is the owner, not of the capital only"* (in this material sense), * "but of the labour also. If what is paid as wages is included, as it commonly is, in the term capital, it is absurd to talk of labour separately from capital. The word capital, as thus employed, includes labour and capital both"* (James Mill, l.c., [pp.] 70, 71).

Just as it is convenient for the apologists of capital to confuse it with the use value in which it exists, and to call use value as such capital, in order to present capital as an eternal factor of production, as a relation independent of all social forms, immanent in every labour process, hence immanent in the labour process in general, so equally does it happen that it suits Messieurs the economists when reasoning away some of the phenomena which belong peculiarly to the capitalist mode of production to forget the essential feature of capital, namely that it is value positing itself as value, hence not only self-preserving but at the same time self-multiplying value. This is convenient e.g. for proving the impossibility of overproduction.88 The capitalist is here conceived as someone who is only concerned with the consumption of certain products (their appropriation by means of the sale of his commodity), not with the increase of the preposited value, purchasing power as such, abstract wealth as such.

Through the transformation of money into capital (effected by the exchange of money with labour) the general formula for capital, M-C-M, has now acquired a content. Money is the independent existence of exchange value. Viewed from the angle of its quality, it is the material representative of abstract wealth, the material existence of abstract wealth. But, the degree [1-53] to which it is this, the extent to which it corresponds to its concept, depends on its own quantity or mass. In the increase of money--corresponds to the increase of value as such--this increase is an end in itself. To make money by means of money is the purpose of the capitalist production process--the increase of wealth in its general form, of the quantity of objectified social labour which is, as this labour, expressed in money. Whether the existing values figure merely as money of account in the ledger, or in whatever other form, as tokens of value, etc., is initially a matter of indifference. Money appears here only as the form of independent value which capital assumes at its starting-point as also at its point of return, but constantly abandons again. A more detailed treatment of this belongs in II) The Circulation Process of Capital82

Capital is here money-in-process, for which its forms as money and commodity are themselves merely alternating forms. It is continuously estimated in money of account--and is only valid as this money's material existence, even as long as it exists as a commodity; and no sooner does it assume the form of money than

it must, in order to valorise itself, abandon that form again. To say the capitalist is concerned with money is to say nothing but that he is concerned purely with exchange value, with the increase of exchange value, with abstract enrichment. But this is solely expressed as such in money.

"The great object of the monied capitalist, in fact, is to add to the NOMINAL AMOUNT OF HIS FORTUNE. IT IS THAT, IF EXPRESSED PECUNIARILY THIS YEAR by £20,000 for example, it should be expressed pecuniarily next year by £24,000. To ADVANCE HIS CAPITAL, as estimated in money, is the only way in WHICH HE CAN ADVANCE HIS INTEREST AS A MERCHANT. The IMPORTANCE of this object to him is not affected by fluctuations in the currency or by a change in the real value OF money. For instance, he may have advanced his fortune, by the business of one year, from £20,000 to £24,000; and yet, from a decline in the value of money, he may not have increased his command over the comforts, etc. Still it was as much his interest [to have engaged in the business], as if money had not fallen; for else, his monied fortune would have remained stationary, and his real wealth would have declined in the proportion of 24 to 20.... Commodities are, therefore, not the terminating object of the trading capitalist, save in the spending of his revenue, and when he purchases for the sake of consumption. In the outlay of his CAPITAL, AND WHEN HE PURCHASES FOR THE SAKE OF PRODUCTION, MONEY IS HIS terminating object" (Thomas Chalmers, On Political Economy in Connexion with the Moral State and Moral Prospects of Society, 2nd ed., London, 1832, [pp.] 165-66).

//Another point in relation to the formula M-C-M. Value as capital, self-valorising value, is value raised to a second power. Not only does it have an independent expression, as in money, but it compares itself with itself (or is compared by the capitalist), measures itself at one period (the magnitude of value in which it was preposited to the production process) against itself in another period, namely after its return from circulation-after the commodity has been sold and re-converted into money. Value therefore appears as the same subject in two different periods, and indeed this is its own movement, the movement that characterises capital. Only in this movement does value appear as capital. See in opposition to this "A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Measures, and Causes of Value; Chiefly in Reference to the Writings of Mr. Ricardo and His Followers. By the Author of Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions." [S. Bailey,] London, 1825.11

Bailey's main argument against the whole determination of value by labour time is this: Value is only the relation according to which different commodities are exchanged. Value is only a relation between 2 commodities.

* Value* is nothing * "intrinsic or absolute"* (l.c., p. 23). * "It is impossible to designate, or express the value of a commodity, except by a quantity of some other commodity" * (l.c., [p.] 26). * "Instead of regarding value as a relation between 2 objects, they" * (the Ricardians) (and Ricardo himself) * "consider it as a positive result produced by a definite quantity of labour" * (l.c., [p.] 30). * "Because the values of A and B, according to their doctrine, are to each other as the quantities of producing labour, or ... are determined by the quantities of producing labour, they appear to have concluded, that the value of A alone, without reference to anything else, is as the quantity of its producing labour. There is no meaning certainly in the last proposition"* (pp. 31-32). They speak of * "value as a sort of general and independent property"* (l.c., [p.] 35). * "The value of a commodity must be its value in something" * (l.c.)

As objectification of social labour the commodity is expressed as something relative. For [if the]a labour contained [in A]a is equated to all others, this is only as a particular form of existence of social labour. In this, however, the individual is already not viewed in isolation, but if Bailey wishes it, his labour is posited relatively and the commodity is itself posited as the form of existence of this relative thing.

[11-54] The same Bailey says (l.c., p. 72):

* "Value is a relation between contemporary commodities, because such only admit of being exchanged for each other; and if we compare the value of a commodity at one time with its value at another, it is only a comparison of the relation in which it stood at these different times to some other commodity."*

He says this as an argument against "comparing commodities at different periods" as if for example in the turnover of capital the capitalist had not continuously to compare the value of one period to the VALUE OF ANOTHER PERIOD.38

// It could now be asked, what is the relationship in which capital's monetary expression stands to capital itself. Once money exists in the form of money, the constituent elements for which it is exchanged in its transformation into productive capital confront it as commodities. Here, therefore, the laws developed in the metamorphosis of the commodity or in the simple turnover of money are valid.b If tokens of value circulate, whether they serve as means of circulation or means of payment, they merely represent the value of the commodities estimated in money or they directly represent money, which is equal in quantity to the amounts of money expressed in the prices of the commodities. As such they have no value. They are therefore not yet capital in the sense that the latter is objectified labour. They represent instead in full the price of the capital, as they previously represented that

a MS damaged.- Ed.

b K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 324-34).- Ed.

of the commodity. If real money circulates, this is itself objectified labour-capital-(because commodity).

If we divide the total sum of money turning over by the number of times it turns over, we get the quantity of money really engaged in the process of turning over, and this is a constituent element of the capital, fixed or circulating according to the view one wishes to take of it. I can buy commodities for 120 thalers with the same 6 thalers if they turn over 20 times in a day: they represent the value of 120 thalers in the course of a day. But the 6 thalers themselves must be added to this. So the whole amount of capital turning over in the course of the day = 126 thalers.

If a capital = 100 thalers, and it buys commodities with those 100 thalers, then the same 100 thalers now represent a 2nd capital of 100 thalers and so on. If they turn over 6 times in the day, they have successively represented a capital of 600 thalers. How much or how little capital they represent on a given day therefore depends on their velocity of turnover = the speed of the commodity's metamorphosis, which appears here as the metamorphosis of capital, alternately assuming and abandoning its forms of money and commodity. If the money functions as means of payment, 600 thalers of money can pay for any amount of capital, since its negative and positive charges cancel out, leaving a balance of 600 thalers.

Whereas originally, in the simple circulation of commodities, money appears as a point of transition, the metamorphosis of the commodity,3 the commodity transformed into money appears as the point of departure and conclusion of the movement of capital, and the commodity appears as metamorphosis of capital, as a mere point of transition.

The only distinguishing marks of money insofar as it appears as a form of capital-as real money, not as money of account-are these: 1) It returns to its point of departure, and in increased quantity. Money expended for consumption does not return to its point of departure; capital-money advanced for the purpose of production-returns in increased quantity to its point of departure. 2) Money which has been expended remains in circulation, from which it withdraws the commodity; capital throws back into circulation more commodities than it withdrew and it therefore also constantly withdraws anew from circulation the money it has expended. The more rapid this cyclic movement, i.e. the more

a K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 332).- Ed.

rapid the circulation or metamorphosis of capital, the more rapid the turnover of money, and since this movement of capital is many-sided, the more does money serve as means of payment and the more do debts and assets balance each other. //

Capital transformed into money in the way we have described becomes productive capital insofar as it has subsumed the production process, functions as buyer and employer of labour. Only where capital has subjected production itself to its control, hence where the capitalist produces, does capital exist as the dominant, specific form of a period of production. Formally speaking, it may already have emerged previously in other functions, and it appears in these functions in its own period too. But then these are only derivative and secondary forms of capital, such as commercial and interest-bearing capital, etc.15 So when we speak of productive capital, the whole of this relation is to be understood, not as if one of the forms of use value in which it appears in the labour process were in itself productive, with the machine or the material of labour producing value, etc.89

From the valorisation process, whose result is the value advanced and a surplus, a surplus value (in the labour process itself capital appears as a real use value; i.e. as real consumption, for only in consumption is [11-55] use value realised as use value; this process of the consumption of capital itself forms an economic relation, has a definite economic form and is not indifferent, falling outside the form, as in the concept of the mere commodity39; these use values of which capital consists are conceptually determined by the activity of labour capacity, which consumes them) it follows that the actual specific product of capital, so far as it produces as capital, is surplus value itself and that in production by capital the specific product of labour, so far as capital incorporates labour, is not this or that product but capital. The labour process itself appears only as the means of the valorisation process, just as, in general, use value appears here as only the repository of exchange value.

THE 2 COMPONENTS INTO WHICH THE TRANSFORMATION OF MONEY INTO CAPITAL IS DIVIDED

[II-A] 90What the worker sells is disposition over his labour capacity-temporally limited disposition over it. The piece-work system of payment does, admittedly, introduce the semblance that the worker obtains a definite share in the product. But this is only another form of measuring labour time. Instead of saying: you will work for 12 hours, it is said: you will receive such and such an amount per piece, i.e. we measure the number of hours by the product, as the size of the average product of an hour has been established by experience. The worker who cannot supply this minimum is dismissed. (See Ure.91)

In accordance with the general relation of purchase and sale, the exchange value of the worker's commodity cannot be determined by the way in which the purchaser uses the commodity; it is determined solely by the quantity of objectified labour contained in the commodity itself; here, therefore, by the quantity of labour it costs to produce the worker himself, for the commodity he offers exists only as an ability, a capacity, and has no existence outside his bodily form, his person. The labour time necessary both to maintain him physically and to modify him to develop this special capacity is the labour time necessary to produce the worker as such.

In this exchange the worker in fact only receives money as coin, i.e. merely a transitory form of the means of subsistence for which he exchanges it. Means of subsistence, not wealth, are for him the purpose of the exchange.

Labour capacity has been called the capital of the worker in so far as it is the fund he does not consume by an isolated exchange, but is able to repeat the exchange again and again for the duration of his life as a worker. On this argument everything that formed a fund for repeated processes by the same subject would be capital; e.g. the eye would be the capital of sight. Phrases.92 The fact that, as long as he is capable of working, labour is always a source of exchange for the worker, and not exchange absolutely but exchange with capital, is inherent in the definition of the concept, according to which he only sells the temporary disposition over his labour capacity, hence can always begin the same act of exchange anew once he has half satisfied his hunger and slept half long enough, taken in the appropriate quantity of substances to be able to reproduce afresh the manifestation of his life.

Instead of wondering at this and presenting to the worker the fact that he lives at all, hence is able to repeat certain life processes every day, as a great service rendered by capital, the whitewashing sycophants of bourgeois political economy should rather have fixed their attention on the fact that after constantly repeated labour he always has only his living, direct labour itself to exchange. The repetition itself is, in fact, merely an apparent one. What he exchanges for capital (even if it is represented in relation to him by different, successive capitalists) is his entire labour capacity,

which he expends over 30 years, say. It is paid for in doses, just as he sells it in doses. This changes absolutely nothing in the essence of the matter, and in no way justifies the conclusion that, because the worker must sleep for a certain number of hours before he is capable of repeating his labour and his exchange with capital, labour forms his capital. Hence what in fact is here conceived as his capital is the limit to his labour, its interruption, the fact that he is not a perpetuum mobile. The struggle for the normal working day proves that the capitalist would like nothing better than for the worker to squander his dosages of vital force, as far as possible, without interruption. [H-A]

[11-55] The whole movement that money performs to be converted into capital therefore falls into two distinct processes: the first is an act of simple circulation, purchase on one side, sale on the other; the second is the consumption of the purchased article by the buyer, an act which lies outside circulation, takes place behind its back. The consumption of the purchased article, in consequence of the latter's specific nature, here itself constitutes an economic relation.39 In this consumption process the buyer and the seller enter into a new relation with each other, which is at the same time a relation of production.

The two acts may be entirely separate in time; and whether the sale is realised straight away or first concluded nominally and subsequently realised, it must always, at least nominally, as a stipulation made between buyer and seller, precede as a specific act the second act, the process of consumption of the purchased commodities--although their stipulated price is not paid until later.

The first act fully corresponds to the laws of commodity circulation, to which it belongs. Equivalents are exchanged for equivalents. The money owner pays out on the one hand the value of the material and means of labour, on the other hand the value of the labour capacity. In this purchase he therefore gives in money exactly as much objectified labour as he withdraws from circulation in the form of commodities--labour capacity, material of labour and means of labour. If this first act did not correspond to the laws of the exchange of commodities, it could not appear at all as the act of a mode of production whose foundation is namely that the most elementary relationship individuals enter with each other is that of commodity owners. 0 A different foundation of production would have to be assumed in order to explain it. But, inversely, it is precisely the mode of production whose product always has the elementary form of the commodity, and not that of use value, which is based on capital, on the exchange of money for labour capacity.

The second act displays a phenomenon which in its result and its conditions is not only entirely alien to the laws of simple circulation but even appears to be at odds with it. In the first place, the social position of the seller and the buyer changes in the production process itself. The buyer takes command of the seller, to the extent that the latter himself enters into the buyer's consumption process with his person as a worker. There comes into being, outside the simple exchange process, a relation of domination and servitude, which is however distinguished from all other historical relations of this kind by the fact that it only follows from the specific nature of the commodity which is being sold by the seller; by the fact, therefore, that this relation only arises here from purchase and sale, from the position of both parties as commodity owners, therefore in itself once again includes political, etc., relationships. The buyer becomes the chief, lord (master), the seller becomes his worker (man, hand). In the same way as the relation of buyer and seller, as soon as it is inverted to become the relation of creditor and debtor, alters the social position of both parties--but there it is only a temporary change. Here it is a permanent.

But if one considers the result itself, it completely contradicts the laws of simple circulation, and this becomes even more striking when, as is usually the case, payment is only made after the labour has been delivered, the purchase being therefore in fact realised only at the end of the production process. For now labour capacity no longer confronts the buyer as such. It has become objectified in the commodity, say for example 12 hours of labour time, or 1 day's labour. The buyer therefore receives a value of 12 hours of labour. But he only pays for a value of say 10 hours of labour. Here equivalents would not really be exchanged for each other; but in fact no exchange is taking place at all now. One could only say: even assuming--and this is a favourite phrase--assuming that Act I has not taken place in the manner described but [11-56] instead the buyer pays not for the labour capacity but rather for the labour itself that has been provided. It can only be imagined. The product is now ready, but its value only exists in the form of its price. It must first be realised as money. If, then, the capitalist immediately realises for the worker his part of the product in money, it is in order that the worker should be content with a lesser equivalent in money than he has given up in the commodity.

From a general point of view this is absurd. For it adds up to the assertion that the seller must always be satisfied with a lesser equivalent in money than he provides in the commodity. Once the buyer transforms his money into a commodity, buys, the value only continues to exist in the commodity he buys as price; it no longer exists as realised value, as money. He receives no compensation for the fact that his commodity has lost the form of exchange value, of money. On the other hand, he has gained by the transaction, in that it now exists in the form of the commodity.

But, it is further argued, if I buy a commodity for my own consumption, that is something different; I am interested in its use value. There, it is only a matter of transforming exchange value into means of subsistence. In contrast to this, if I buy a commodity in order to re-sell it, I evidently suffer an initial loss when I exchange my money for it. For I am only concerned with exchange value and by the act of purchase my money loses the form of money. The exchange value exists now only as price, as an equation with money which has yet to be realised. But the intention with which I buy a commodity has nothing to do with its value. The phenomenon that in buying in order to sell a surplus value emerges would here be derived from the intention of the buyer that this surplus value should emerge, which is obviously absurd. When I sell a commodity I am completely indifferent to the use the buyer intends to make of it, as also to the misuse. Let us assume that the commodity owner has insufficient money to buy labour, but enough to buy the material and means of labour. The sellers of the material and means of labour would laugh him to scorn if he were to say: the material and means of labour are incomplete products; one is so in the nature of things, the other, likewise, only forms a constituent element of a later product and has no value except insofar as it enters into that product. Let us say that in fact the material of labour costs 100 thalers, the means of labour 20, and the labour I add to them, measured in money, is equal to 30 thalers. The value of the product would then be 150 thalers, and as soon as I am done with my work I have a commodity of 150 thalers, which, however, must first be sold in order to exist in the form of exchange value, as 150 thalers. I have given 100 thalers to the seller of the material, and 20 thalers to the seller of the means of labour; these form constituent elements of my commodity's value; they form 80% of its price. This 80% of my as yet unsold commodity--which I must first turn back into money--has been realised in money by the sellers of the raw material and the means of labour in that they sold them to me, before the product was finished, and furthermore before it was sold. I am therefore making them an advance by the mere act of buying, and they ought accordingly to sell me their commodities at less than their value. The case is just the same.

In both cases I have a commodity of 150 thalers in my hands, but it must first be sold, realised in money. In the first case I have myself added the value of the labour, but I have paid in advance the value of the material and means of labour, not only before the product has been sold, but before it is finished. In the second case the worker has added the value and I have paid him before the sale of the commodity. So one would always arrive at the absurd conclusion that the buyer as such has the privilege of buying cheaper, whereby he would lose just as much in his capacity of seller as he would have gained as buyer. At the end of the day for example the worker has added a day's labour to the product and I possess this labour of his in objectified form, as exchange value; I only pay him for this when I give back to him the same exchange value in money. The form of use value in which the value exists changes the magnitude of value just as little as it is changed by existing in the form of the commodity rather than that of money, as realised rather than non-realised value.

What creeps into this conception is the recollection of cash discount. If I have commodities ready, and either have money advanced on them--without selling them (or only making a conditional sale)--or draw out money on a bond of payment for a commodity which is already sold but for which payment first falls due later--for which I therefore have received in payment a bond, a bill of exchange or the like, only to be realised later--in both of these cases I pay discount. I pay for having received money without selling the commodity, or for having received money before the commodity is payable, before the sale is actually realised; in one or the other form I borrow money, and I pay for this. I give up part [11-57] of the price of the commodity, yielding it to the person who advances me money for the commodity as yet unsold or the commodity whose price is not yet payable. Here, therefore, I am paying for the metamorphosis of the commodities.

But if I am the buyer of labour--once it has been objectified in the product--this relation does not fill the bill, to begin with. For whether money is advanced [on unsold commodities] or the payment bond is discounted, in both cases the advancer of the money is not the buyer of the commodity but a third person who interposes himself between buyer and seller. But in our case the capitalist confronts the worker who has provided him with the commodity--a definite amount of labour time objectified in a particular use value--as buyer, and he pays when he has already received the equivalent in the commodity. Secondly, this whole relation between the industrial capitalist and the capitalist advancing money at interest presumes that the capital-relation already exists. It is assumed that money--value in general--possesses as such the quality of valorising itself within a definite period of time, the ability to create a certain surplus value, and payment is made for its use on this assumption. Here, therefore, a derived form of capital is being presupposed in order to explain its original form--a particular form in order to explain its general form.94

In any case, the upshot of the whole thing is always this: The worker cannot wait until the product is sold. In other words, he does not have a commodity to sell, only his own labour. If he had commodities to sell, this would imply that in order to exist as a seller of commodities--since he does not live off the product and the commodity is not a use value for himself--he would always have to have in stock in the form of money as much of the commodities as he needs to live, to buy provisions, until his new commodity is finished and sold. Once again we have the same presupposition as in the first act, namely that the worker is faced, as mere labour capacity, with the objective conditions of labour, which include both his means of subsistence--the means to living while he works--and the conditions for the realisation of his labour itself.21 Under the pretext of reasoning out of existence the first relation on which everything depends, and which is decisive, it is thus re-established.

Another form is just as idiotic: By receiving his wages, the worker has already received his share of the product or the value of the product, hence he has no further demands to make. Capitalist and worker are associés,a joint proprietors of the product or its value, but one partner has his share paid to him by the other and thereby loses his right to the value resulting from the sale of the product and the profit realised therein. Arising from this we have to distinguish between two fallacies. If the worker had received an equivalent for the labour added by him to the raw material, he would in fact have no further claim. He would have received his share payment at its full value. This would of course show why he has nothing further to do with either the commodity or its value, but it by no means shows why he receives an equivalent in money

a Partners.-- Ed.

which is smaller than he provided in the labour objectified in the product.

Thus in the above example the seller of raw material at 100 thalers and the seller of the means of labour at 20, which were bought from them by the producer of the new commodity, have no claim to the new commodity and its value of 150 thalers. It does not, however, follow from this that the one received only 80 thalers instead of 100 and the other only 10 instead of 20. It only proves that if the worker has received his equivalent before the sale of the commodities--he has, however, sold his commodity--he has nothing further to demand. But it does not prove that he has to sell his commodity at less than the equivalent. Now of course a second illusion creeps in. The capitalist now sells the commodity at a profit. The worker, who has already obtained his equivalent, has already waived his claim to the profit which arises from this subsequent operation. Here then we once again have the old illusion that profit--surplus value--arises from circulation and therefore that the commodity is sold over its value and the buyer is defrauded. The worker would have no share in this fraud carried out by one capitalist on another; but the profit of the one capitalist would be equal to the loss of the other, and thus no surplus value would exist in and for itself, for capital as a whole.3

There are of course particular forms of wage labour in which it appears as if the worker sold not his labour capacity but his labour itself, already objectified in the commodities. In the piece wage for example. However, this is [11-58] only another form of measuring labour time and supervising labour (of only paying for necessary labour).*5 If I know, for example, that average labour can deliver 24 units of some article in 12 hours, then 2 units would be equivalent to 1 hour of labour. If the worker receives payment for 10 of the 12 hours he works, hence if he works 2 hours of surplus time, this is the same as if in every hour he provided 1/6 of an hour of surplus labour (labour for nothing). (10 minutes, hence 120 minutes over the whole day = 2 hours.)

Assuming that 12 hours of labour, evaluated in money, = 6s., then 1 hour = 6/12s. = 1/2s. = 6d. The 24 units therefore = 6s., or a single unit = 1/4s. = 3d. It is all the same whether the worker adds 2 hours to 10 or 4 units to 20. Each unit of 3d. = 1/2 hour of labour of 3d. The worker, however, receives not 3d. but 2 1/2d. And if he delivers 24 units, he receives 48d. + 12d. = 60d. = 5s., while the capitalist sells the commodity at 6s. It is therefore only another way of measuring labour time (and equally of supervising the quality of the labour). These different forms of wage labour have nothing to do with the general relationship. It is in any case obvious that the same question arises with piece wages: where does the surplus value come from? It is clear that the piece is not completely paid for; that more labour is absorbed in the piece than is paid for in money.

a See this volume, pp. 25-26.-- Ed.

b Ibid., pp. 103-04.-- Ed.

Hence the whole phenomenon can only be explained (all other ways of explaining it ultimately return to presupposing its existence) by the fact that the worker does not sell his labour as a commodity--and it is a commodity as soon as it is objectified, in whatever use value, hence always as a result of the labour process, hence mostly before the labour has been paid for--but his labour capacity, before it has been set to work and realised itself as labour.

The result--that the preposited value, or the sum of money the buyer cast into circulation, has not only been reproduced but valorised itself, grown in a definite proportion, that a surplus value has been added to the value--this result is only realised in the direct production process, for only here does labour capacity become actual labour, only here is labour objectified in a commodity. The result is that the buyer gets back more objectified labour in the form of the commodity than he advanced in the form of money. This surplus value--this surplus of objectified labour time--arose first during the labour process itself; later the buyer throws it back into circulation by selling the new commodity.

But this second act, in which surplus value really arises and capital in fact becomes productive capital, can only occur as a result of the first act and is only a consequence of the specific use value of the commodity, which is in the first act exchanged for money at its value. The first act, however, only takes place under certain historical conditions.21 The worker must be free, in order to be able to dispose of his labour capacity as his property, he must therefore be neither slave, nor serf, nor bondsman. Equally, he must on the other hand have forfeited the conditions for the realisation of his labour capacity. He must therefore be neither a peasant farming for his own needs nor a craftsman; he must have altogether ceased to be an owner of property. It is assumed that he works as a non-proprietor and that the conditions of his labour confront him as alien property. Thus these conditions also imply that the earth confronts him as alien property; that he is excluded from the use of nature and its products. This is the point at which landed property appears as a necessary prerequisite for wage labour and therefore for capital. But in any case this does not have to be borne in mind any further in considering capital as such, since the form of landed property corresponding to the capitalist form of production is itself a historical product of the capitalist mode of production.95 There therefore lies hidden in the existence of labour capacity offered as a commodity by the worker himself a whole range of historical conditions which alone permit labour to become wage labour, hence money to become capital.

Here, of course, it is a matter of production's resting in general on this basis; wage labour and its employment by capital should not occur as sporadic phenomena on the surface of the society, but should constitute the [11-59] dominant relation.

For labour to be wage labour, for the worker to work as a non-proprietor, for him to sell not commodities but disposition over his own labour capacity--to sell his labour capacity itself in the sole manner in which it can be sold--the conditions for the realisation of his labour must confront him as alienated conditions, as alien powers, conditions under the sway of an alien will, as alien property. Objectified labour, value as such, confronts him as an entity in its own right, as capital, the vehicle of which is the capitalist--hence it also confronts him as the capitalist.

What the worker buys is a result, a definite value; the quantity of labour time equal to the quantity contained in his own labour capacity, hence an amount of money necessary to keep him alive qua worker. For what he buys is money, hence merely another form for the exchange value he himself already possesses as labour capacity, and in the same quantity.

What the capitalist buys, in contrast, and what the worker sells, is the use value of labour capacity, i.e. labour itself, the power which creates and enhances value. This value-creating and value-enhancing power therefore belongs not to the worker but to capital. By incorporating into itself this power, capital comes alive and begins to work "as if its body were by love possessed".a Living labour thus becomes a means whereby objectified labour is preserved and increased. To the extent that the worker creates wealth, living labour becomes a power of capital; similarly, all development of the productive forces of labour is development of the productive forces of capital. What the worker himself sells--and this is always replaced with an equivalent--is labour capacity itself, a definite value, whose magnitude may oscillate between wider or narrower limits, but which is always reducible conceptually to a definite amount of the means of subsistence required for the maintenance of labour capacity as such, i.e. so that the worker may continue to live as a worker. Objectified, past labour thereby becomes the sovereign of living, present labour. The relation of subject and object is inverted. If already in the presupposition the objective conditions for the realisation of the worker's labour capacity and therefore for actual labour appear to the worker as alien, independent powers, which relate to living labour rather as the conditions of their own preservation and increase--the tool, the material [of labour] and the means of subsistence only giving themselves up to labour in order to absorb more of it--this inversion is still more pronounced in the result. The objective conditions of labour are themselves the products of labour and to the extent that they are viewed from the angle of exchange value they are nothing but labour time in objective form.

a Goethe, Faust, Der Tragödie erster Teil, "Auerbachs Keller in Leipzig".-- Ed.

In both directions, therefore, the objective conditions of labour are the result of labour itself, they are its own objectification, and it is its own objectification, labour itself as its result, that confronts labour as an alien power, as an independent power; while labour confronts the latter again and again in the same objectlessness, as mere labour capacity. 6

If the worker needs to work only for half a day in order to live for a whole day, i.e. in order to produce the means of subsistence necessary for his daily maintenance as a worker, the exchange value of his daily labour capacity = half a day's labour. The use value of this capacity, on the other hand, consists not in the labour time needed to preserve and produce, or reproduce, that capacity itself, but in the labour time it can itself work. Its use value therefore consists for example in a day's labour, whereas its exchange value is only half a day's labour. The capitalist buys it at its exchange value, at the labour time required to preserve it; what he receives, in contrast, is the labour time during which it can itself work; hence in the above case a whole day, if he has paid for a half. The size of his profit depends on the length of the period of time for which the worker places his labour capacity at his disposal. But in all circumstances the relation consists in this, that the worker puts it at his disposal for longer than the amount of labour time necessary for his own reproduction. The capitalist only buys it because it has this use value.

Capital and wage labour only express two factors of the same relation. Money cannot become capital without being exchanged for labour capacity as a commodity sold by the worker himself; therefore without finding this specific commodity available on the market. On the other hand, labour can only appear as wage labour once the specific conditions of its realisation, its own objective conditions, confront it as powers in their own right, alien property, value-being-for-itself25 and holding fast to [11-60] itself, in short as capital. Hence if capital from its material side--or in terms of the use values in which it exists--can only consist of the objective conditions of labour itself, the means of subsistence and means of production (the latter in part material of labour, in part means of labour), from its formal side these objective conditions must confront labour as alienated, as independent powers, as value--objectified labour--which relates to living labour as the mere means of its own preservation and increase.

Wage labour--or the wage system--(the wage as the price of labour) is therefore a necessary social form of labour for capitalist production, just as capital, potentiated value, is a necessary social form the objective conditions of labour must have for labour to be wage labour. One thus sees what a deep understanding of this social relation of production is possessed by e.g. a Bastiat, who says the form of the wage system is not to blame for the evils the socialists complain of. //More on this subject later.// The fellow thinks that if the workers had enough money to live until the sale of the commodity, they would be able to share with the capitalists on more favourable terms. That is, in other words, if they were not wage labourers, if they could sell the product of their labour instead of their labour capacity. The fact that they cannot do this makes them precisely wage labourers and their buyers capitalists. Thus the essential form of the relation is regarded by Mr. Bastiat as an accidental circumstance.97

There are a few more questions attached to this, which will be looked at immediately. First, though, one more remark. We have seen that by adding new labour in the labour process--and this is the only labour he sells to the capitalist--the worker preserves the value of the labour objectified in the material of labour and the means of labour. And indeed he does this for nothing. It happens in virtue of the living quality of labour as labour, not that a fresh quantity of labour would be required for this.

//Where e.g. the instrument of labour has to be improved, etc., requires new labour for its maintenance, it is the same thing as if a new tool or an aliquot part of a new means of labour were to be bought by the capitalist and thrown into the labour process. //

The capitalist receives this for nothing. Just as the worker advances

his labour to him, in that it is only paid for after it is objectified (This is a point to be made against those who speak of the price of labour’s being advanced. The labour is paid for after it has been provided. The product as such does not concern the worker. The commodity he sells has already passed into the possession of the capitalist before it is paid for.)

But yet a further result comes to pass owing to the whole transaction, and the capitalist also gets this for nothing. After the end of a labour process of, for example, one day the worker has turned the money he receives from the capitalist into means of subsistence and has thereby preserved, reproduced his labour capacity, so that the same exchange between capital and labour capacity can begin again afresh.* But this is a condition for the valorisation of capital, for its further existence in general, which allows it to be a continuous relation of production. This reproduction of labour capacity as such means the reproduction of the sole condition under which commodities can be transformed into capital. The worker’s consumption of his wage is productive for the capitalist not only because the latter receives in return labour, and a greater quantity of labour than is represented by the wage, but also because it reproduces for him the condition [for capital’s further existence], labour capacity. Hence the result of the capitalist process of production is not just commodities and surplus value; it is the reproduction of this relation itself (its reproduction on an ever growing scale, as will be seen later).100

Insofar as labour is objectified in the production process, it is objectified as capital, as not-labour, and insofar as capital yields itself up in the exchange to the worker, it only turns into the means of reproducing his labour capacity. At the end of the process, therefore, its original conditions, its original factors and their original [mutual] relation, are again in place. The relation of capital and wage labour is therefore reproduced by this mode of production just as much as commodities and surplus value are produced. All that emerges at the end of the process is what entered at the start: on the one hand objectified labour as capital, on the other hand objectless labour as mere labour capacity, so that the same exchange is constantly repeated afresh. In colonies, where the domination of capital—or the basis of capitalist production—is not yet sufficiently developed, so that the worker receives more than [11-61] is required for the reproduction of his labour capacity and very soon becomes a peasant farming independently, etc., the original relation is not constantly reproduced; hence great lamentations by the capitalists and attempts to introduce the relation of capital and wage labour artificially (Wakefield67).

* [II-61] “The material undergoes changes.... The instruments, or machinery, employed ... undergo changes. The several instruments, in the course of production, are gradually destroyed or consumed.... The various kinds of food, clothing, and shelter, necessary for the existence and comfort of the human being, are also changed. They are consumed, from [11-62] time to time, and their value reappears, in that new vigor imparted to his body and mind, which forms a fresh capital, to be employed again in the work of production” (F. Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy, Boston, 1843, [p.] 32). [11-62]a"

Linked with this reproduction of the total relationship—with the fact that by and large the wage labourer only emerges from the process to find himself in the same position in which he entered it—is the importance for the workers of the nature of the original conditions under which they reproduce their labour capacity and of the average wage or the limits within which they have traditionally to live in order to live as workers. This is more or less obliterated in the course of capitalist production, but it takes a long time. What means of subsistence are needed to maintain the worker—i.e. what kind of means of subsistence and in what quantity in general they are considered necessary—on this see Thornton.a But this is a striking demonstration that wages are made up of means of subsistence alone, and that the worker continues to result merely as labour capacity. The difference lies only in the more or the less of a thing that counts as the measure of his requirements. He always works only for consumption; the difference is only in whether his consumption costs (=production costs) are larger or smaller.

a W. Th. Thornton, Over-population and its Remedy, London, 1846, p. 19.—Ed.

Wage labour is therefore a necessary condition for the formation of capital and it remains the constant, necessary prerequisite for capitalist production. Therefore although the first act, the exchange of money for labour capacity or the sale of labour capacity, does not enter as such into the direct production process (labour process), it does enter into the production of the whole relation. Without it, money does not become capital, labour does not become wage labour and therefore the whole labour process is not brought under the control of capital, either, not subsumed under it; hence the production of surplus value in the manner defined earlier does not take place either. This question—of whether this first act belongs to the production process of capital—is the actual subject of discussion in the dispute between the economists as to whether the part of capital laid out in wages—or, what is the same thing, the means of subsistence for which the worker exchanges his wage—does constitute a part of capital. (See Rossi, Mill, Ramsay.)101

The question: are wages productive is in fact the same misunderstanding as the question: is capital productive?

In the latter case capital is understood to mean nothing other than the use values of the commodities in which it exists (the physical objects which comprise capital), not the formal determination, the definite social relation of production of which the commodities are the vehicles. In the former case the emphasis is on the fact that the wage as such does not enter into the direct labour process.

It is not the price of a machine which is productive but the machine itself, to the extent that it functions as a use value in the labour process. When the value of the machine reappears in the value of the product, the price of the machine in the price of the commodity, this only occurs because it has a price. This price produces nothing; it does not preserve, still less does it increase itself. From one aspect wages are a deduction from the productivity of labour; for surplus labour is limited by the labour time the worker requires for his own reproduction, preservation. Hence the surplus value is limited. From another aspect they are productive, insofar as they produce labour capacity itself, which is the source of valorisation altogether and the basis of the whole relation.

The portion of capital expended in wages, i.e. the price of labour capacity, does not enter directly into the labour process, although it does indeed in part, since the worker has to consume means of subsistence several times a day in order to continue with his work. Nevertheless, this consumption process falls outside the actual labour process. (Like coal, oil, etc., in the case of the machine, perhaps?,02) As matière instrumentale of labour capacity? The preposited values only enter into the valorisation process at all to the extent that they are available. With the wage it is different, for this is reproduced; replaced by fresh labour. In any case, if wages themselves—split up into means of subsistence—are regarded merely as the coal and oil needed to keep the machine of labour in motion, they only enter into the labour process as use values to the extent to which they are consumed by the worker as means of subsistence and they are productive to the extent to which they keep him in motion as a working machine. But they do this insofar as they are means of subsistence, not because these means of subsistence [11-62] have a price. The price of these means of subsistence, however, the wage, does not come in here, for the worker must reproduce it. With the consumption of the means of subsistence the value contained in them is annihilated. He replaces this value with a fresh quantity of labour. It is therefore this labour which is productive, not its price.

//We have seen that the value contained in the material and means of labour is simply preserved by their being used up as material and means of labour, hence by their becoming factors of new labour, hence by the addition of new labour to them.3

Let us now assume [that this is done] in order to carry on a production process on a particular scale—and this scale is itself determined, for only necessary labour time is to be employed, hence only as much labour time as is necessary at the given social stage of development of the productive forces. This given stage of development is however expressed in a certain quantity of machinery, etc., a certain quantity of products required for fresh production. Hence do not weave with a handloom when the power loom is predominant, etc. In other words, in order that only necessary labour time be applied, labour must be placed in conditions which correspond to the mode of production. These conditions are themselves expressed as a certain quantity of machinery, etc., in short as means of labour which are prerequisites for ensuring that only as much labour time be employed for the manufacture of the product as is necessary at the given stage of development. Thus to spin yarn at least a minimum size of factory is needed, a steam engine with so and so much horsepower, mules with so and so many spindles, etc. Hence in order to preserve the value contained in these conditions of production—and spinning with machines in turn implies that a definite quantity of cotton must be consumed every day—it is necessary not only to add fresh labour but to add a certain quantity of that labour, so that the quantity of material determined by the stage of production itself should be used up as material, and that the particular time during which the machine must be in motion (must be utilised every day as instrument) should really be available as the machine’s period of utilisation.

If I have a machine which is constructed in such a way as to require the spinning of 600 lbs of cotton a day, and if 1 working day is needed to spin 6 lbs, 100 working days must be absorbed by these means of production, so as to preserve the value of the machinery. It is not that the fresh labour is in any way employed in the preservation of this value; all it does is add new value, while the old value re-appears unchanged in the product. But the old value is only preserved by the addition of new value. To re-appear in the product it must proceed as far as the product. Hence if 600 lbs of cotton must be spun so that the machinery is used as machinery, this 600 lbs must be transformed into product, i.e. there must be added to it the quantity of labour time which is necessary to transform it into product. In the product itself the value of the 600 lbs of cotton and the aliquot part of the machine that has been worn out simply reappears; the freshly added labour changes nothing in this, but it increases the value of the product. One part of it replaces the price of the wage (of labour capacity); another creates surplus value. If, however, the whole of this labour had not been added, the value of the raw material and the machinery would not have been preserved either. This part of the labour, in which the worker reproduces only the value of his own labour capacity, hence only adds this afresh, therefore preserves only the part of the value of material and instrument which has absorbed this quantity of labour. The other part of the labour, which creates the surplus value, preserves a further component of the value of the material and the machinery.

Let us assume that the raw material (the 600 lbs) costs 600d. = 50s.=£2 10s. The worn out machinery=£1, but the 12 hours of labour add £1 10s. (replacement of wage, and surplus value), so that the total price of the commodity=£5. Assuming the wage amounts to £1, 10s. expresses the surplus labour. Value preserved in the commodity=£2 10s., or half of it [of the £5]. The total product of the working day (one may imagine that this is a working day X 100, i.e. a working day of 100 workers, since each one works for 12 hours)=£5. This makes 8 1/3s. per hour, or 8s. 4d. In one hour, therefore, 4s. 2d. of raw material and machinery is replaced and 4s. 2d. is added in labour (necessary and surplus labour).

The product of 6 hours of labour is [II-63] = 50s.=£2 10s.; preserved in this are raw material and machinery to the value of £1 5s. But in order to use machines so productively, 12 hours must be worked, hence as much raw material must be consumed as 12 hours of labour will absorb. The capitalist can therefore view the matter like this: in the first 6 hours alone the price of the raw material is replaced, amounting to precisely £2 10s. (50s.), the

value of the product of 6 hours of labour. 6 hours of labour can only preserve, through the labour thereby added, the value of the material needed for 6 hours of labour. But the capitalist makes his calculations as if the first 6 hours had merely preserved the value of the cotton and machinery, because he must use his machine as a machine, let 12 hours be worked, hence also consume 600 lbs of cotton, in order to extract a definite surplus value. On our assumption, however, the value of the cotton was £1 10s. = 30s., 3/10 of the whole.103

To simplify matters - since the figures are here a matter of indifference - let us assume that £2 worth of cotton (hence 80 lbs, each lb. costing 6d.) is spun in 12 hours of labour; that £2 worth of machinery is used up in 12 hours of labour; and finally that £2 of value is added by fresh labour, of which £1 for wages, £1 for surplus value, surplus labour. £2 (40s.) for 12 hours would come to 3 1/3s. per hour (3s. 4d.), expressing the value of an hour of labour in money; similarly 3 1/3s. worth of cotton is used up each hour, on our assumption 6 2/3 lbs; lastly 3 1/3s. worth of machinery is worn out each hour. The value of the commodities finished each hour = 10s. But of this 10s. 6 2/3s. (6s. 8d.) or 66 2/3% is merely preposited value, which only re-appears in the commodity because 3 1/3s. of machinery and 6 2/3 lbs of cotton are required to absorb 1 hour of labour; because they have entered into the labour process as material and machinery - as material and machinery in these proportions - hence the exchange value contained in this quantity [of material and machinery] has gone over to the new commodity, the twist for example.

The value of the yarn produced in 4 hours = 40s. or £2, of which in turn 1/3 (namely 13 1/3s.) is newly added labour, and 2/3 or 26 2/3s. is merely the preservation of the value contained in the worked up material and the machinery. And indeed this is only preserved because the new value of 13 1/3s. is added to the material, i.e. 4 hours of labour are absorbed in it; or this is the quantity of material and machinery needed by the 4 hours of spinning labour for its realisation. In these 4 hours no value has been created apart from the 4 hours of labour which, objectified, = 13 1/3s. But the value of the commodity, or of the product of these 4 hours, 2/3 of which is preposited value preserved, = £2 (or 40s.), is exactly equal to the value of the cotton which needs to be spun (consumed) in 12 hours of labour by the spinning process. If, therefore, the manufacturer sells the product of the first 4 hours, he has thereby replaced the value of the cotton which he requires over the 12 hours, or which he requires so as to absorb 12 hours of labour time. But why? Because on our assumption the value of the cotton that enters into the product of 12 hours = 1/3 of the value of the total product. In 1/3 of the labour time he consumes only 1/3 of the cotton and therefore only preserves the value of this one third. If he adds another 2/3 of labour, he thereby consumes 2/3 more cotton and in 12 hours he has preserved in the product the total value of the cotton, because all 80 lbs of cotton have really entered into the product, into the labour process. Now, if he were to sell the product of 4 hours of labour, whose value = 1/3 of the total product, which is also the part of the value of the total product formed by the cotton, he might imagine that he had reproduced the value of the cotton in these first 4 hours, that it had been reproduced in 4 hours of labour. In actual fact, however, only 1/3 of the cotton enters these 4 hours, hence only 1/3 of its value. He assumes that the cotton consumed in the 12 hours was reproduced in the 4 hours. But the calculation only works because he included in the cotton 1/3 for the instrument and 1/3 for labour (objectified), which together form 2/3 of the price of the product of the 4 hours. They = 26 2/3s., and in price therefore = 53 1/3 lbs of cotton. If he were only to work for 4 hours, he would only have in his commodity 1/3 of the value of the total product of 12 hours. Since the cotton forms 1/3 of the value of the total product, he can reckon that in the product of 4 hours he brings forth the value of the cotton needed for 12 hours of labour.

[11-64] If he works for a further 4 hours, this again = 1/3 of the value of the total product, and since the machinery = 1/3 of the latter, he can imagine that in the 2nd third of the labour time he has replaced the value of the machinery needed for 12 hours. Indeed, if he sells the product of this 2nd third, or of these other 4 hours, the value of the machinery used up in 12 hours has been replaced. On this calculation the product of the last 4 hours contains neither raw material nor machinery, whose value it would include, but simply labour. Newly created value, therefore, so that 2 hours = the reproduced wage (£1) and 2 hours are surplus value, surplus labour (also £1). In reality, the labour added in the last 4 hours only adds 4 hours of value, hence 13 1/3s. But it is presupposed that the value of the raw material and means [of labour], which enter to 66 2/3% into the product of these 4 hours, merely replaces the labour added. The value added by labour in the 12 hours is thus conceived as if it were added by labour in 4 hours. The whole calculation comes out because it is presupposed that 1/3 of the labour time not only creates itself but also the value of the 2/3 of the preposited values contained in the labour's product.a

If it is assumed in this way that the product of a whole third part of the labour time is merely the value added by labour - although this value is only 1/3 - the result is naturally the same as if over 3 x 4 hours the real third part were calculated on labour and the 2/3 on the preposited values. This calculation may be quite practical for the capitalist, but it entirely distorts the real relationship and leads to the greatest absurdity, if it is supposed to have theoretical validity. The preposited value of raw material and machinery alone forms 66 2/3% of the new commodity, whilst the added labour only forms 33 1/3%. The 66 2/3% represents 24 hours of objectified labour time; how ridiculous therefore the requirement that the 12 hours of new labour should objectify not only itself but in addition a further 24 hours, hence 36 hours altogether.

The point, then, is this:

The price of the product of 4 hours of labour, i.e. of a third of the total working day of 12 hours, = 1/3 of the price of the total product. According to our assumption, the price of the cotton forms 1/3 of the price of the total product. Hence the price of the product of 4 hours of labour, of 1/3 of the total working day, = the price of the cotton that enters into the total product, or is spun in 12 hours of labour. The manufacturer therefore says that the first 4 hours of labour replace only the price of the cotton that is consumed during the 12 hours of labour. But in fact the price of the product of the first 4 hours of labour = 1/3 of the value added in the labour process, i.e. 13 1/3s. labour (in our example), 13 1/3s. cotton, and 13 1/3s. machinery, the last two components only re-appearing in the price of the product because they have been consumed by the four hours' labour in their shape as use values, hence re-appear in a new use value, and have therefore preserved their old exchange value.

What is added in the 4 hours to the 26 2/3s. of cotton and machinery (which possessed this value before they entered into the labour process, and only re-appear in the value of the new product because they have entered into the new product through the agency of the four-hour spinning process) is nothing other than 13 1/3s., i.e. the newly added labour. (The quantity of newly added labour time.) If we therefore deduct the 4 hours from the price of the product, the 26 2/3s. advanced from the 40s., only 13 1/3s. remains as value really created in the process, the four hours of labour expressed in money. If now 2/3 of the price of the product, namely the one third or 13 1/3s. which represents the machinery, and the other third or 13 1/3s. which represents the labour, is evaluated in cotton, there emerges the price of the cotton that is consumed in the 12 hours.

In other words: In 4 hours of labour time only 4 hours of labour time is in fact added to the values previously present. But these values appear again - the values of the quantities of cotton and machinery - because they have absorbed this 4 hours of labour time or because as factors in the spinning they have become constituents of the yarn. The price of the cotton which re-appears in the value of the product of 4 hours of labour therefore = only the value of the quantity of cotton which has really entered as material into this 4-hour labour process, has been consumed; hence = 13 1/3s., according to the [original] assumption. But the price of the total product of 4 hours of labour = the price of the cotton consumed in 12 hours, because the product of 4 hours of labour time = 1/3 of the total product of 12 hours, and the price of the cotton constitutes 1/3 of the price of the total product of 12 hours.

[11-65] What is true of 12 hours of labour is true of one hour. The proportion between 4 hours and 12 hours is the same as between 1/3 hour and 1 hour. Hence in order to simplify the whole example even more let us reduce it to 1 hour. On the given assumption the value of the product of 1 hour = 10s., of which 3 1/3s. is cotton (6 2/3 lbs of cotton), 3 1/3s. machinery, and 3 1/3s. labour time. If an hour of labour time is added, the value of the whole product = 10s. or 3 hours of labour time, because the values of the material consumed and the machinery consumed, which re-appear in the new product, the yarn, = 6 2/3s., which = 2 hours of labour on our assumption. The manner in which the values of the cotton and the spindle re-appear in the value of the yarn and the manner in which the freshly added labour enters into it are now to be distinguished.

Firstly: The value of the whole product = 3 hours of labour time, or 10s. Of this, 2 hours were labour time contained in the cotton and spindle and in existence prior to the labour process, i.e. they were values of cotton and spindle before these entered into the labour process. They therefore simply re-appear, are merely preserved, in the value of the total product, of which they form 2/3. The excess of the value of the new product over the values of its material constituents is only = 1/3, = 3 1/3s. This is the sole new value created in this labour process. The old values, which existed independently of it, have merely been preserved.

But, secondly: How have they been preserved? Through being applied by living labour as material and means, through being consumed by it as factors in the formation of a new use value, that of yarn. The labour has only preserved their exchange value because it related to them as use values, i.e. consumed them as the elements in the formation of a new use value, of yarn. The exchange values of the cotton and the spindle therefore re-appear in the exchange value of the yarn, not because labour in general, abstract labour, pure labour time - labour as it forms the element of exchange value - has been added to them, but this particular, real labour, spinning, useful labour which is realised in a particular use value, in yarn, and which as this specific purposeful activity consumes cotton and spindle as its use values, utilises them as its factors, making them, through its own purposeful activity, into the formative elements of yarn.

If the spinner - therefore the labour of spinning - were able to convert 6 2/3 lbs of cotton into yarn in half an hour instead of 1 hour with a more ingenious machine, which nevertheless had the same value relation, the value of the product would = 3 1/3s. (for cotton) + 3 1/3s. (for machine) + 1 2/3s. of labour, since half an hour of labour time would be expressed in 1 2/3s. on our assumption. The value of the product would therefore = 8 1/3s., in which the value of the cotton and the machinery would re-appear entirely, as in the first case, although the labour time added to them would amount to 50% less than in the first case. They would re-appear entirely, because no more than half an hour of spinning was required to convert them into yarn. Hence they re-appear entirely because they entered entirely into the product of half an hour's spinning, into the new use value, yarn. The labour, so far as it preserves them as exchange values, does so only to the extent that it is real labour, a specific purposeful activity aimed at producing a particular use value. It does this as spinning, not as abstract social labour time which is indifferent to its content. Only as spinning does the labour preserve here the values of cotton and spindle in the product, the yarn.

On the other hand, in this process in which it preserves the exchange values of cotton and spindle the labour, spinning, relates to them not as exchange values, but as use values, elements of this particular labour, spinning. If by using certain machinery the spinner can convert 6 2/3 lbs of cotton into yarn, it is for this

a This should read: "...but also the value of the preposited values, contained in the labour's product to the amount of 2/3 of that product". - Ed.

process quite irrelevant whether the lb. of cotton costs 6d. or 6s., for he consumes it in the spinning process as cotton, as the material of spinning. There must be as much of this material as is required to absorb 1 hour of spinning labour. The price of the material has nothing to do with this. The same applies to the machinery. If the same machinery cost only half the price and performed the same service, this would not affect the spinning process in any way. The sole condition for the spinner is that he should possess material (cotton) and spindle (machinery) to the extent, in such quanta, as are required for spinning over the course of an hour.3 The values or prices of cotton and spindle do not concern the spinning process as such. They are the result of the labour time objectified in themselves. They therefore only re-appear in the product to the extent that they were preposited to it as given values, and they re-appear only because the commodities cotton and spindle are required as use values, in their material determinateness, for the spinning of yarn, because they enter as factors into the spinning process.

On the other hand, however, spinning adds to the value of cotton and spindle a new value not to the extent that it is this particular labour of spinning but only because it is labour in general, and the labour time of the spinner is general labour time, for which it is a matter of indifference whatever [11-66] use value it is objectified in and whatever specific useful character, specific purpose it has, or whatever the specific kind or mode of existence of the labour as whose time (measure) it is present. An hour of spinning labour is here equated with an hour of labour time as such (whether this = one hour or several has no bearing on the matter). This hour of objectified labour time adds to the combination of cotton and spindle 3 1/3s., for example, because this sum objectifies the same labour time in money.

If the 5 lbs of yarn (6 lbs of spun cotton)104 could be produced in half an hour instead of a whole hour, the same use value would be preserved at the end of half an hour as in the other case at the end of the whole hour. The same quantity of use value of the same quality, 5 lbs of yarn of a given quality. The labour, to the extent that it is concrete labour, spinning, activity directed at producing a use value, would have achieved in the half hour as much as previously in the whole hour, it would have created the same use value. As spinning it achieves the same in both cases, although the duration of the spinning is twice as long in one case as in the other. To the extent that labour itself is use value, i.e. purposeful activity directed at producing a use value, the necessary time required, the time labour must last, to produce this use value is completely irrelevant; whether labour needs 1 hour or 1/2 hour to spin 5 lbs of yarn. On the contrary. The less time it needs to produce the same use value, the more productive and useful it is. But the value it adds, the value it creates, is measured purely by the labour's duration. In 1 hour, the labour of spinning adds twice as great a value as in 1/2, and in 2 hours twice as great a value as in one, etc. The value it adds is measured by the labour's own duration and, as value, the product is nothing but the materialisation of a definite amount of labour time in general. It is not the product of this specific labour of spinning, or spinning only comes into consideration to the extent that it is labour in general and its duration is labour time in general. The values of cotton and spindle are preserved because the labour of spinning converts them into yarn, hence because they are employed as the material and means of this specific mode of labour; the value of the 6 lbs of cotton is only increased because it has absorbed 1 hour of labour time; in the product, yarn, 1 hour more of labour time is objectified than was contained in the value elements cotton and spindle.

a Above the words "an hour" Marx wrote: "a definite time".- Ed.

However, labour time can only be added to existing products or, in general, to existing material of labour to the extent that it is the time of a specific labour, which relates to the material and means of labour as to its own material and means; hence 1 hour of labour time can only be added to the cotton and the spindle in that an hour of spinning labour is added to them. The fact that their values are preserved derives merely from the specific character of the labour, from its material determinateness, from its being spinning, precisely the particular labour for which cotton and spindle serve as the means for the production of yarn; and further, from its being living labour in general, purposeful activity. The fact that value is added to them derives merely from spinning labour's being labour in general, abstract social labour in general, and from the hour of spinning labour being equivalent to an hour of social labour in general, an hour of social labour time. Hence the values of the material and means of labour are preserved and re-appear as value components in the total value of the product merely through the process of valorisation - which is in fact merely an abstract expression for actual labour - through the process of adding new labour time - since this must be added in a particular useful and purposeful form. But the work is not done twice, once to add value, the next time to preserve the existing values; instead, since the labour time can only be added in the form of useful labour, specific labour, like spinning, it automatically preserves the values of material and means [of labour] by adding new value to them, i.e. by adding labour time.

It is now clear, furthermore, that the quantity of existing values preserved by the new labour stands in a definite relation to the quantity of value the new labour adds to them, or that the quantity of already objectified labour that is preserved stands in a definite relation to the quantity of new labour time that is added, is objectified for the first time; that, in a word, a definite relation occurs between the direct labour process and the valorisation process.

If the labour time necessary to spin 6 lbs of cotton, using up x amount of machinery, is 1 hour under given general conditions of production, only 6 lbs of cotton can be converted into yarn in the one hour and only x amount of machinery can be used up, hence only 5 lbs of yarn can be produced; so that for every hour of labour by which the value of the yarn is higher than the value of the cotton and x spindles there would be 2 hours of labour (of objectified labour time), 6 lbs of cotton and x spindles (3 1/3s.) preserved in the yarn. Cotton can only be valorised (i.e. obtain a surplus value) by 1 hour of labour, 3 1/3s., insofar as 6 lbs of cotton and x amount of machinery is used up; on the other hand, these can only be used up, and therefore their values can only re-appear in the yarn, if 1 hour of labour time is added. Thus if the value of 72 lbs104 of cotton is to re-appear in the product [11-67] as a value component of the yarn, 12 hours of labour must be added. A definite quantity of material only absorbs a definite quantity of labour time. Its value is only preserved in proportion as it absorbs the latter (with a given productivity of labour). Therefore the value of the 72 lbs of cotton cannot be preserved unless it is all spun into yarn. But this requires a labour time of 12 hours, on our assumption.

If the productivity of labour - i.e. the quantity of use value it can provide in a definite time - is given, the quantity of given values it preserves depends purely on its own duration; or the amount of value of material [and] means [of labour] that is preserved depends purely on the labour time that is added, hence on the measure in which new value is created. The preservation of values falls and rises in direct proportion to the fall or rise in the addition of value. If on the other hand the material and means of labour are given, their preservation as values depends purely on the productivity of the labour added, on whether this labour needs more or less time to convert them into a new use value. Here, therefore, the preservation of the given values stands in an inverse relation to the addition of value,a i.e. if the labour is more productive, they require less labour time to be preserved; and vice versa.

//But now a peculiar circumstance comes into the picture, through the division of labour, and still more through machinery. Labour time as the element, substance, of value is necessary labour time; hence labour time required under given general social conditions of production. If for example 1 hour is the labour time necessary for the conversion of 6 lbs of cotton into yarn, it is the duration of a labour of spinning which needs certain conditions for its realisation: e.g. a mule with so and so many spindles, a steam engine with such and such horse-power, etc. The whole of this apparatus would be necessary to convert 6 lbs of cotton into yarn over a period of 1 hour. But this case belongs to a later discussion.b//

Now back to our example. 6 lbs of cotton spun in one hour. Value of the cotton = 3 1/3s., value of the spindle, etc., used up = 3 1/3s., value of the labour added = 3 1/3s. Therefore value of the product = 10s. The given values = 2 hours of labour, as the cotton and the spindle are each equal to 1 hour of labour. The price of the total product at the end of the hour = the sum of prices; = 10s.; or 3 hours of objectified labour time, of which 2 hours, the hours accounted for by the cotton and the spindle, merely re-appear in the product, and 1 hour alone represents the creation of new value or added labour. The price of each of the factors forms 1/3 of the total price of the product of 1 hour of labour. Hence the price of the product of 1/3 of an hour of labour = the price of 1/3 of the total product, hence = the price of the labour, or cotton, or machinery, contained in the total product, as each of these 3 elements of the total product constitutes 1/3 of its price. Therefore, if 1/3 of an hour's work is done, the product = 2 lbs of yarn of a value of 3 1/3s., with which I could buy cotton to the amount of 6 lbs. Or the price of the product of 1/3 of an hour = the price of the cotton consumed in a whole hour of labour. The price of the 2nd third = the price of the machinery used up. The price of the product, e.g. 1/3 of an hour = the price of the whole of the labour added (both the part which constitutes an equivalent for the wage and the part which constitutes surplus value or profit).

a Above "the addition of value" Marx wrote "labour productivity".- Ed.

b See this volume, pp. 318-43.- Ed.

The manufacturer can therefore calculate as follows: I work 1/3 of an hour to pay the price of the cotton, 1/3 of an hour to replace the price of the machinery worn out, and 1/3 of an hour of which 1/6 replaces wages, 1/6 forms the surplus value. Correct as this calculation is in practice, it is completely absurd if it is meant to explain the real formation of value (valorisation process) and therefore the relation between necessary and surplus labour. In particular the preposterous notion creeps in here that 1/3 of an hour of labour creates or replaces the value of the cotton that has been used, 1/3 replaces the value of the worn out machinery, while 1/3 forms the newly added labour or the newly created value, which is the common fund for wages and profit. It is in fact only a trivial method of expressing the relation in which the given values of cotton and means of labour re-appear in the product of the whole of the labour time (the hour's labour), or the relation in which given values, objectified labour, are preserved in the labour process by the addition of an hour of labour time.

If I say: the price of the product of 1/3 of an hour of labour = the price of the cotton spun in a whole hour of labour, let us say = the price of 6 lbs of cotton, 3 1/3s., I know that the product of 1 hour of labour = 3 times the product of 1/3 of an hour of labour. If, then, the price of the product of 1/3 of an hour of labour = the price of the cotton which is spun in 3/3, or 1 hour of labour, this only means that the price of the cotton = 1/3 of the price of the total product, that 6 lbs of cotton enter into the total product, hence its value re-appears and this value forms 1/3 of the value of the total product. Ditto with the value of the machinery. Ditto with the labour.

If I therefore say that the price of the product of 2/3 of the time that labour is [11-68] in general carried on, i.e. for example the price of the product of 2/3 of the hour of labour = the price of the material and the price of the machinery which is worked up in 3/3 or 1 hour of labour, this is only another way of expressing the fact that the prices of the material and means of labour enter to an extent of 2/3 into the price of the total product of the hour, hence the hour of labour added is only 1/3 of the whole value objectified in the product. The fact that the price of the product of a part of the hour, 1/3, or 2/3, etc., is equal to the price of the raw material, the machinery, etc., definitely does not mean, therefore, that the price of the raw material, the machinery, is produced or even reproduced in the proper sense of the word in the course of 1/3 or

The Production Process of Capital

2/3, etc., of an hour; it means rather that the price of these partial products, or these products of aliquot parts of labour time = the price of the raw material, etc., which re-appears, is preserved, in the total product.

The absurdness of the other conception is best seen if one looks at the final third, which represents the price of the labour added, the quantity of value added, or the quantity of new objectified labour. The price of the product of this last third is on our assumption equal to 1 1/9 s. of cotton, = 1/3 of an hour of labour; + 1 1/9 s. of machinery = 1/3 of an hour of labour; + 1/3 of an hour of labour, which is, however, newly added. The sum total therefore = 3/3 of an hour of labour, or 1 hour of labour. This price is therefore, in fact, the monetary expression of the whole of the labour time added to the raw material. But according to the confused notion mentioned earlier 1/3 of an hour of labour would be represented by 3 1/3 s., i.e. by the product of 3/3 of an hour of labour. Similarly in the first third, where the price of the product of 1/3 of an hour of labour = the price of the cotton. This price consists of the price of 2 lbs of cotton at 1 1/9 s. (1/3 of an hour of labour), the price of the machinery at 1 1/9 s. (1/3 of an hour of labour) and 1/3 of what really is newly added labour, the labour time, indeed, that was required to convert 2 lbs of cotton into yarn. The sum total therefore = 1 hour of labour, = 3 1/3 s. But this is also the price of the cotton that is required in 3/3 of an hour of labour. In fact, therefore, the value of 2/3 of an hour of labour (= 2 2/9 s.) is only preserved in this first third, as in every subsequent third, of an hour of labour because x amount of cotton has been spun, and hence the value of the cotton and the machinery used up re-appears. Only the 1/3 of newly objectified labour has been added to this as new value.

But in this way it does look as if the manufacturer is right in saying that the first 4 hours of labour (or 1/3 of an hour of labour) only replace the price of the cotton he needs in 12 hours of labour, the second 4 hours of labour only replace the price of the machinery he uses up in 12 hours of labour, and the last 4 hours of labour alone form the new value, one part of which replaces the wages and the other constitutes the surplus value he gets as the result of the whole production process. He thereby forgets, however, that he is assuming that the product of the last 4 hours objectifies only newly added labour time, hence 12 hours of labour, namely the 4 hours of labour in the material, the 4 hours of labour in the machinery used up, and finally the 4 hours of labour that have really been newly added; and he obtains the result that the price of the total product consists of 36 hours of labour, 24 of which merely represent the value the cotton and the machinery had before they were worked up into yarn, while 12 hours of labour, 1/3 of the total price, represent the newly added labour, the new value, which is exactly equal to the newly added labour. //

//The fact that the worker, placed face to face with money, offers his labour capacity for sale as a commodity implies21:

1) That the conditions of labour, the objective conditions of labour, confront him as alien powers, alienated conditions. Alien property. This also implies, among other things, the earth as landed property, it implies that the earth confronts him as alien property. Mere labour capacity.

2) That he is related as a person both to the conditions of labour, which have been alienated from him, and to his own labour capacity; that he therefore disposes of the latter as proprietor and does not himself belong among the objective conditions of labour, i.e. is not himself possessed by others as an instrument of labour. Free worker.

3) That the objective conditions of his labour themselves confront him as merely objectified labour, i.e. as value, as money and commodities; as objectified labour which only exchanges with living labour to preserve and increase itself, to valorise itself, to turn into more money, and for which the worker exchanges his labour capacity in order to gain possession of a part of it, to the extent that it consists of his own means of subsistence. Hence in this relation the objective conditions of labour appear only as value, which has become more independent, holds onto itself and aims only at increasing itself.

The whole content of the relation, and the mode of appearance of the conditions of the worker’s labour alienated from labour, are therefore [II-69] present in their pure economic form, without any political, religious or other trimmings. It is a pure money-relation. Capitalist and worker. Objectified labour and living labour capacity. Not master and servant, priest and layman, feudal lord and vassal, master craftsman and journeyman, etc. In all states of society the class that rules (or the classes) is always the one that has possession of the objective conditions of labour, and the repositories of those conditions, insofar as they do work, do so not as workers but as proprietors, and the serving class is always the one that is either itself, as labour capacity, a possession of the proprietors (slavery), or disposes only over its labour capacity (even if, as e.g. in India, Egypt, etc., it possesses land, the proprietor of which is however the king, or a caste, etc.). But all these forms are distinguished from capital by this relation being veiled in them, by appearing as a relation of masters to servants, of free men to slaves, of demigods to ordinary mortals, etc., and existing in the consciousness of both sides as a relation of this kind. In capital alone are all political, religious and other ideal trimmings stripped from this relation. It is reduced--in the consciousness of both sides--to a relation of mere purchase and sale. The conditions of labour confront labour nakedly as such, and they confront it as objectified labour, value, money, which knows itself as mere form of labour and only exchanges with labour in order to preserve and increase itself as objectified labour. The relation therefore emerges in its purity as a mere relation of production--a purely economic relation. And where relations of domination develop again on this basis, it is known that they proceed purely from the relation in which the buyer, the representative of the conditions of labour, confronts the seller, the owner of labour capacity.//93

Let us therefore now return to the question of the wage system.

We have seen that in the labour process--hence in the production process, to the extent that it is production of a use value, realisation of labour as purposeful activity--the values of the material and means of labour simply do not exist for labour itself.3 They exist only as objective conditions for the realisation of labour, as objective factors of labour, and as such they are consumed by it. However, the fact that the exchange values of the material and means of labour do not enter into the labour process as such signifies, in other words, simply that they do not enter into it as commodities. The machine serves as a machine, cotton as cotton, and neither of them because they represent a definite quantity of social labour. Rather, as materialisation of this social labour their use value is extinguished in them, they are money. There are in fact labour processes in which the material costs nothing, e.g. fish in the sea, coal in the mine.

But it would be wrong to conclude from this that their character as a commodity has absolutely nothing to do with the production process; for this process produces not only use value, but exchange value, not only product, but commodity; or its product is no mere use value, but a use value with a definite exchange value, and the latter is in part determined by the exchange values which the material and means of labour themselves possess as commodities. They enter into the production process as commodities; otherwise they could not emerge from it as commodities. If one were to say, therefore, that the values of the material and means of labour had nothing to do with the production process, their quality as commodities had nothing to do with it, because they figure in the labour process not as commodities, but simply as use values, this would be the same thing as saying that it was irrelevant for the production process that it is not only a labour process, but at the same time a valorisation process; and this in turn amounts to saying that the production process takes place for personal consumption.68 Which contradicts the presupposition. But with respect to the pure valorisation process too, their values are not productive for they merely re-appear in the product, are merely preserved.

Now let us consider the wage, or price of labour capacity. The price of labour capacity or the wage is not productive, i.e. if it is understood by “productive” that it must enter as an element into the labour process as such. It is the worker himself--the human being bringing his labour capacity into action--who produces use value, purposefully employs the material and means of labour, not the price at which he has sold his labour capacity. Or, when he enters into the labour process, he enters as the activation, the energy of his labour capacity--as labour. Now it can be said [II-70] that the wage comes down to the means of subsistence necessary for the worker to live as a worker, for his self-preservation as living labour capacity, in short, for the maintenance of his life during the work. The means of subsistence which keep the worker in motion as a worker enter into the labour process just as much as the coal and oil, etc., which are consumed by the machine.102 The worker’s costs of maintenance during the work are just as much a moment of the labour process as are the matières instrumentales consumed by the machine, etc. Even so, here too--in the case of the machine--the coal, oil, etc., in short the matières instrumentales, enter into the labour process as use values alone. Their prices have nothing to do with the matter. Is this also true of the price of the worker’s means of subsistence, his wage?

Here the question only has importance in the following way:

Are the means of subsistence the worker consumes--and which therefore form his cost of maintenance as a worker--to be viewed as if capital itself consumes them as a moment of its production process (in the way that it consumes the matières instrumentales)? This is of course the case in practice. Nevertheless the first act always remains an act of exchange.

The point at issue among the economists is this: Do the means of subsistence the worker consumes, which are represented by the price of his labour, the wage of labour, constitute a part of capital, just as much as the means of labour?101 (Material and means of labour.) The means of labour are, d’abord,a also means of subsistence, as it is assumed that the individuals only confront each other as commodity owners, whether in the form of buyers or sellers20; hence he who lacks the means of labour has no commodity to exchange (assuming also that production for one’s own consumption is out of the question; assuming that the product being considered is, in general, a commodity) and therefore no means of subsistence to get in return. On the other hand, the direct means of subsistence are equally means of labour; for in order to work he must live, and in order to live he must consume such and such an amount of the means of subsistence every day.

Labour capacity, which confronts the material conditions of its realisation, its own reality, as mere labour capacity, deprived of the object, therefore stands in the same position towards the means of subsistence or the means of labour, or both of them confront it uniformly as capital. Capital is admittedly money, the independent existence of exchange value, objectified general social labour. But this is only its form. Once it has to realise itself as capital--i.e. as self-preserving and self-increasing value--it must transform itself into the conditions of labour; in other words, these conditions form its material existence, they are the real use values within which it exists as exchange value. But the chief condition for the labour process is the worker himself. What is essential, therefore, is the component of capital which buys labour capacity. If there were no means of subsistence on the market, it would be pointless for capital to pay the worker in money. The money is only a promissory note the worker receives on a definite quantity of the means of subsistence available on the market. The capitalist therefore has these δυνάμει15 and they form a component part of his power. Moreover, even if there were no capitalist production, the costs of maintenance (originally provided by nature free of charge58) would continue to be just as necessary conditions of the labour process as the material and means of labour. All the objective moments, however, which labour needs at all for its

a In the first place.--Ed.

b Potentially.--Ed.

realisation, appear as alienated from it, as standing on the side of capital, the means of subsistence no less than the means of labour.80

Rossi,105 etc., want to say, or say in fact (whether they want to or not) nothing more, actually, than that wage labour as such is not a necessary condition of the labour process. They only forget that the same would then be true of capital.

//We must go into this further (in the additions3) in countering Say’s nonsense about the same capital—but here he means value—which is doubly consumed, productively for the capitalist, unproductively for the worker. //

// Property in the instrument of labour is characteristic of guild industry, or the medieval form of labour.106//

The social mode of production in which the production process is subsumed under capital, or which rests on the relation of capital and wage labour, and indeed in such a way that it is the determining, dominant mode of production, we call capitalist production.

The worker goes through the form of circulation C—M-C. He sells in order to buy. He exchanges his labour capacity for money, in order to swap the money for commodities — to the extent that they are use values, means of subsistence. The purpose is individual consumption. In line with the nature of simple circulation, he can proceed at most to the formation of a hoard, through thrift and extraordinary industry; he cannot create wealth. The capitalist, in contrast, goes through M-C-M. He buys in order to sell. The purpose of this [11-71] movement is exchange value, i.e. enrichment.

By wage labour we understand exclusively free labour which is exchanged for capital, is converted into capital and valorises capital. All so-called services are excluded from this. Whatever their character otherwise, money is expended for them; it is not advanced. With them, money is always exchange value as evanescent form, a means of getting hold of a use value. There is as little connection between the services the capitalist consumes as a private person—outside the process of the production of commodities — and productive consumption, i.e. productive from the capitalist point of view, as there is between the purchase of commodities in order to consume them (not to consume them through labour) and productive consumption. No matter how useful, etc., they are.

a See this volume, pp. 137-39.—Ed. Their content is here completely irrelevant. Of course, the services themselves are differently valued—in so far as they are estimated in economic terms—on the basis of capitalist production from under other relations of production. But an investigation of this only becomes possible once the fundamental factors of capitalist production have themselves been made clear.107

With all services, whether they themselves directly create commodities, e.g. the tailor who sews a pair of trousers for me; or not, e.g. the soldier who protects me, similarly the judge, etc., or the musician whose music-making I buy to provide me with aesthetic enjoyment, of the doctor I buy to set a leg back into position, it is always a matter of the material content of the labour, its usefulness, while the circumstance that it is labour is quite irrelevant to me. With wage labour, which creates capital, the content is in fact irrelevant. The particular mode of labour only counts for me insofar as it is social labour as such and therefore the substance of exchange value; money. The above-mentioned workers, performers of services, from prostitute to pope, are therefore never employed in the direct production process. //As for the rest, it would be better to put closer consideration of “productive labour” into the section “Capital and Labour”.108//

With the purchase of one kind of labour I make money, with that of the other I spend money. The one enriches, the other impoverishes. It is possible that the latter may itself be one of the conditions for making money, as policemen, judges, soldiers, executioners. But as such a condition it is always merely an “aggravating circumstance” and has nothing to do with the direct process.

We started out from circulation in order to come to capitalist production. This is also the course of events historically, and the development of capitalist production therefore already presupposes in every country the development of trade on another, earlier production basis. //We shall have to speak of this in more detail.100 //

What we have to consider more closely in the following is the development of surplus value. In doing so we shall see that as the production of surplus value becomes the actual purpose of production or as production becomes capitalist production, the originally merely formal subsumption of the labour process under capital, of living labour under objectified, of present labour under past, considerably modifies the manner in which the labour process is itself carried on: hence the capital-relation—where it emerges in a developed form—implies a particular mode of production and development of the productive forces.55

//With services too I admittedly consume the labour capacity of the person performing the service; but not because the use value of the labour capacity is labour, rather because his labour has a particular use value. //107

ADDITIONS

It says in An Inquiry into those Principles, Respecting the Nature of Demand and the Necessity of Consumption, Lately Advocated by Mr. Malthus etc., London, 1821, in reference to Say’s comments in his letters to Malthus, Paris-Londres, 1820 (p. 36): “These affected ways of talking constitute, in great part, what M. Say calls His doctrine.... ‘If all these propositions appear paradoxical to you, look at the things they express, and I venture to believe that they will then appear very simple and very rational.’ Doubtless; and, at the same time, they will very PROBABLY APPEAR, BY THE SAME PROCESS, NOT AT ALL ORIGINAL OR IMPORTANT. ‘Without this analysis I defy you to explain the whole of the facts·, to explain for example how the same [11-72] capital is consumed twice: productively by a manufacturer and unproductively by his worker.’ It seems to be agreed ‘in most parts of Europe’, to call a fantastical mode of expression a fact" (l.c., p. 110, Note XI).a The joke is that exchange, in the particular case, purchase, is called by Say consumption of money, which is sold.

If the capitalist buys labour for 100 thalers, Say thinks these 100 thalers have been consumed twice, productively by the capitalist, unproductively by the worker. If the capitalist exchanges 100 thalers for labour capacity, he has not consumed the 100 thalers, either productively or unproductively, although he has expended them for a “productive” purpose. He has done nothing but convert them from the money form to the commodity form, and it is this commodity—labour capacity—which he has bought with the money, that he productively consumes. He could also consume it unproductively if he employed the workers to provide him with use values for his own consumption, i.e. if he used them to perform services. The money first becomes capital precisely through this exchange with labour capacity: it is not consumed as capital but rather produced, preserved, confirmed.

The worker on the other hand does not consume capital; the money in his hand has just ceased to be capital, and for him it is only means of circulation. (And at the same time, of course, like every means of circulation for which a commodity is exchanged, it is the existence of his commodity in the form of exchange value, which here is and must be, however, only an evanescent form given up in exchange for the means of subsistence.)

a Marx quotes partly in English and partly in French.—Ed.

Labour capacity, insofar as it is consumed, is converted into capital; the capitalist’s money, insofar as it is consumed by the worker, is converted into means of subsistence for him and ceases to be capital or a component of capital (δυνάμει3) once it is transferred from the hand of the capitalist to that of the worker.

But what actually underlies Say’s nonsense is this: He believes that the same value (with him capital is nothing but a sum of valuesno) is consumed twice, once by the capitalist, the second time by the worker. He forgets that here two commodities with the same value are being exchanged, not 1 value but 2 values are involved; money on the one hand, the commodity (labour capacity) on the other. What the worker consumes unproductively (i.e. without thereby creating wealth for himself) is his own labour capacity (not the money of the capitalist); what the capitalist consumes productively is not his money but the labour capacity of the worker. On both sides the consumption process is mediated through exchange.

In every purchase or sale where the purpose of the buyer is individual consumption of the commodity and the purpose of the seller is production, the same value would according to Say be consumed twice, productively by the seller, who converts his commodity into money (exchange value), and unproductively by the buyer, who dissolves his money into transient enjoyments. However, there are 2 commodities and 2 values involved here. Say’s phrase would have a meaning only in the sense in which he does not mean it. Namely that the capitalist productively consumes the same value twice: first by his productive consumption of labour capacity and second by the unproductive consumption of his money by the worker, the result of which is the reproduction of labour capacity, hence the reproduction of the relation on which the functioning of capital as capital depends. Hence Malthus rightly hits on the last point. //Malthus’s point is this: in so far as his consumption is, in general, a condition for his working, hence for his producing for the capitalist. //

* “H e” (the workman) “is a productive consumer to the person who employs him and to the state but not strictly speaking to himself” * (Malthus, Definitions in Political Economy,  ed. John Cazenove, London, 1853, p. 30).

Ramsay declares that the part of capital which is converted into the wage is not a necessary part of capital, but only forms part of it accidentally owing to the “deplorable” poverty of the workers. By fixed capital he understands namely the material and means of labour. By circulating capital the worker’s means of subsistence. He then says:

* “ Circulating Capital consists only of subsistence and other necessaries advanced to the workmen, previous to the completion of the produce of their labour” * (George Ramsay, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, Edinburgh, 1836, [p.] 23).

* “Fixed capital alone, not circulating, is properly speaking a source of national wealth” * (l.c.).

* “Were we to suppose the labourers not to be paid until the completion of the product, there would be no occasion whatever [11-73] for circulating capital.” *

(What does that mean except that an objective condition of labour—the means of subsistence—will not assume the form of capital? This already contains the admission that these objective conditions of production are, as such, not capital, but only become capital as the expression of a particular social relation of production.) (The means of subsistence will not cease to be means of subsistence; just as little would they cease to be a necessary condition of production; but they would cease to be—capital.)

“Production would be just as great. This proves that * circulating capital111 is not an immediate agent in production, not even essential to it at all, but merely a convenience rendered necessary by the deplorable poverty of the mass of the people”* (l.c., [p.] 24).

I.e., in other words: Wage labour is not an absolute, but rather a historical form of labour. It is not necessary for production that the worker’s means of subsistence should confront himinan alienated form as capital. But the same is true of the other elements of capital and of capital in general. Conversely. If this one part of capital did not assume the form of capital, the other would not either, for the whole relation whereby money becomes capital, or the conditions of labour confront labour as an independent power, would not come into existence. What constitutes the essential form of capital therefore appears to him as “merely a convenience rendered necessary by the deplorable poverty of the mass of the people” [p. 24]. The means of subsistence become capital by being “advanced to the workmen” [p. 23]. The wider sense of Ramsay’s remarks emerges still more clearly in the proposition: * “The fixed capital” * (material and means of labour) * “alone constitutes an element of cost of production in a national point of view” * (l.c., [p.] 26). For the capitalist the wage, i.e. the price he pays for labour

capacity, is a cost of production--money advanced, advanced to make more money, money that is a mere means to make money. If the worker were not a worker but a working proprietor, the means of subsistence he consumes before the product is finished would not appear to him as costs of production in this sense, since the whole production process would appear to him inversely only as a means to create his means of subsistence. Ramsay, on the other hand, thinks that the material and means of labour, products which must be employed, consumed, in order to create new products, are necessary conditions of the production process and must always enter into it, not only from the capitalist's standpoint but from the nation's--i.e., with him, from the point of view of production for society and not for particular classes of society. So here capital means nothing to him but the objective conditions of the labour process as such, and, expressing absolutely no social relation, is merely another name for the objects that are required in every production process, whatever social form it may have; capital is accordingly only a thing, technologically determined. The precise feature that makes it capital is thereby extinguished.56 Ramsay might just as well have said: it is merely a "convenience" that the means of production appear as value in its own right, as independent powers over against labour. If they were the social property of the workers, there would be no opportunity there for "fixed capital". And production would remain just the same as before.112

//The valorisation process is in reality nothing but the labour process in a particular social form--or a particular social form of the labour process. It is not, as it were, two distinct real processes, but the same process, viewed at one time in terms of its content, at the other time according to its form. Despite this, we have already seen that in the valorisation process the relation of the different factors of the labour process takes on new determinations. One further aspect should be brought out here (which will be important later on in dealing with circulation, the determination of fixed capital, etc.). The means of production, e.g. the tool, machinery, factory building, etc., is employed as a whole in the labour process; but, with the exception of the so-called matières instrumentales, it is only exceptionally consumed (all at once) in the same (single, unique) labour process. It serves in repeated processes of the same kind. But it only enters into the [11-74] valorisation process--or, what is the same thing, it only re-appears as an element in the value of the product--in so far as it is used up in the labour process.113 //

Similar to Ramsay is Rossi. First, in leçon XXVII, he gives a general definition of capital.a

"Capital is that portion of the wealth produced which is destined for reproduction" (p. 364).

However this only applies to capital insofar as it is use value--applies to its material content, not to its form. No wonder, then, that the same Rossi proclaims the component of capital explicable solely from its form--the approvisionnement,b the part that is exchanged for labour capacity--to be no necessary component of capital, in fact not to be part of capital's concept at all. Thus he says, on the one hand, that capital is a necessary agent of production, and, on the other hand, that wage labour is not a necessary agent of production or relation of production. Actually he understands by capital only "instrument of production".105 According to him one could, it is true, distinguish between capital-instrument and capital-matière, but actually the political economists are wrong to call raw materials capital; for

"Is it" (the raw material) "really an instrument of production there? Is it not rather an object which is acted upon by the instrument of production?" (leçons. etc., p. 367).

Later on he says:

"Instrument of production, that is to say a material which operates on itself, which is at once object and subject, thing acted upon and agent" (l.c., p. 372).

He also calls capital simply "moyen de production" on p. 372. In reference to Rossi's polemic against the idea that approvisionnement forms a part of capital, we must distinguish two things; or, he confuses two things.

Firstly he views wage labour in general--the capitalist's advancing of the wage--as not a necessary form of production; or wage labour as not a necessary form of labour; thereby forgetting only that capital is not a necessary form (i.e. not an absolute, rather merely a particular historical form) of the conditions of labour or production. In other words: the labour process can take place without being subsumed under capital; this particular social form is not a necessary prerequisite for it; the production process as such is not a necessarily capitalist production process. But here he again makes the mistake of viewing the purchase of labour capacity by capital as not essential for wage labour but as something accidental. For production the conditions of production are required; but not capital, i.e. not the relation which emerges from the appropriation of the conditions of production by a specific class and the existence of labour capacity as a commodity. His stupidity consists in recognising wage labour (or also the independent form of capital) and seeking to argue out of existence the relation of wage labour to capital, which constitutes the former. To say that capital is not a necessary form of social production is merely to say that wage labour is only a transitory historical form of social labour.

Not only does the rise of capitalist production presuppose a historical process of the separation of the workers from the conditions of labour; capitalist production reproduces this relation on an ever increasing scale and gives it a sharper character.106 This is already evident in considering the general concept of capital, and becomes still clearer later on in the context of competition, which essentially effects this separation (concentration, etc.).114 In the actual production process the objects of which capital consists do not confront the worker as capital but as the material and means of labour.a He is of course conscious that they are alien property, etc., capital. But the same thing is true of his sold labour, which belongs not to him but to the capitalist.b

[11-75] Secondly, however, one further point creeps into the Rossian polemic. (The first point was: exchange of money for labour capacity. Rossi is right insofar as he declares that this operation is not necessary for production as such. He is wrong in so far as he views this relation, without which capitalist production would not exist at all, as an inessential, accidental moment of the latter.)

Namely this: we have seen: First the worker sells his labour capacity, i.e. temporary disposition over it.c This includes his bartering it for the means of subsistence that are necessary to preserve him as a worker at all, and more specifically his possession of the means of subsistence "during the work of production" [p. 370]. This is a prerequisite for his entry as a worker into the production process, and for his activation, realisation, of his labour capacity during that process. As we have seen, Rossi understands by capital nothing but the means of production (matière, instrument) required for the manufacture of a new product. The question is: Do the worker's means of subsistence belong there, like, e.g., the coal, oil, etc., consumed by the machine or the fodder eaten by the cattle? In short the matières instrumentales.102 Do the worker's means of subsistence belong to this category as well? With the slave there is no question but that his means of subsistence are to be counted among the matières instrumentales; he is a mere instrument of production, hence what he consumes is a mere matière instrumentale. (As we have already remarked, this confirms the point that the price of labour (the wage) does not enter into the labour process proper any more than the prices of the material and means of labour do; although all three, even if in different ways, enter into the valorisation process.a) To answer the question it is necessary to subdivide it into two questions:

Firstly: To consider the labour process as such, independently of capital; since the people who raise the question here call the moments of the labour process as such capital.b Secondly: To ask how far this is modified once the labour process is subsumed under capital.

Firstly, then: If we consider the labour process as such, its objective conditions are the material of labour and the means of labour, they are simply objective conditions of labour itself, as the purposeful activity of a human being directed at producing a use value.c The worker relates to them as subject. To be sure, he is presupposed as worker, to allow his labour capacity to function, and the provisions necessary for his subsistence, for the development of labour capacity, are therefore also presupposed. But they do not enter as such into the labour process.

He enters the process as a working proprietor. However, if the different moments of the labour process are viewed with regard to its result, the product, the relation is altered. With regard to the product all 3 moments appear as moments of its mediation, hence as means of production. The material of production, the instrument of production, and productive activity itself, are all means for the manufacture of the product, hence means of production.c Here the means of maintaining the machine (oil, coal, etc.), entirely leaving aside their price, form part of the means of production, but so equally do the means of maintaining the worker during the production process itself.102 For all that, the working proprietor will continue to regard the product as such only as a means of subsistence, not his means of subsistence as prerequisites for the manufacture of the product. However, the way of looking at things does not alter the state of affairs one whit. The proportion of the means of subsistence he must consume as worker, without which his labour capacity cannot function as such at all, is just as indispensable for the production process as the coal and oil consumed by the machine. In that sense the consumption fund of society forms part of its means of production (this disappears again on further consideration, in so far as the whole production process itself appears as simply the reproduction process of society or of the social human being), and the worker's consumption is not economically distinguished within these limits from the consumption of the working horse or the machine.

Thus the part of capital that pays labour capacity or forms the wage enters into the actual production process insofar as the means of subsistence the worker consumes are directly consumed, and have to be consumed, in the production process itself. But the part of the capital given out in this way which does not enter directly into the production process also forms a part of the capital before it is exchanged for labour capacity, and for the formation of the capital-relation this is a necessary prerequisite.

[11-76] The capitalist has paid for labour capacity. The major part of the means of subsistence the workers have thus obtained is expended during the labour process itself, and necessarily so. If the workers were slaves, the capitalist would have to advance this part to them as simple matières instrumentales. Here the worker does this for him. For him the worker is a mere agent of production, and the means of subsistence he consumes are the coal and oil necessary to keep this agent of production in motion. This is how the capitalist sees it, and he acts accordingly. If an ox or a machine is a cheaper agent of production, the worker is replaced by one or the other. The opinion is economically incorrect insofar as it is of the essence of wage labour that the 2 processes are distinguished, namely 1) the exchange of money for labour capacity; 2) the consumption process of this labour capacity--the labour process (production process).

Let us now look in some detail at Rossi's criticisms, without coming back to the case considered last (under 2).

With regard to this Rossi makes the following statement:

a P. Rossi, Cours d'économie politique. Année 1836-1837. In: Cours d'économie politique, Brussels, 1843. Marx quotes Rossi in French.--Ed.

b Means of subsistence, provisions.--Ed.

c Means of production.--Ed.

a See this volume, p. 58.--Ed.

b Ibid., pp. 66-67.--Ed.

c Ibid., pp. 51, 81 and 103.--Ed.

a See this volume, pp. 117 and 131-32.--Ed.

b Ibid., p. 71.--Ed.

c Ibid., pp. 55-58.--Ed.

“Those who only regard economic science from the point of view of the entrepreneur, and who only consider the net and exchangeable product that each entrepreneur can obtain, such people must in fact see no difference between a man, an ox and a steam-engine: in their eyes there is only one question worthy of serious attention, and that is the question of the cost price, the question of knowing how much it costs the entrepreneur to obtain what he requires from the steam, the ox, the worker” (Rossi, De la méthode en économie politique etc., in Économie politique. Recueil de monographies etc. Année 1844, Vol. I, Brussels, 1844, p. 83).a

It does appear, then, that the point of view of the entrepreneur, i.e. of the capitalist, is in any case an essential moment in considering capitalist production. But that belongs to the relation of capital and labour.

Our essential concern, however, in considering Mr. Rossi is the way he on the one hand admits that wage labour, hence also capitalist production, is not a necessary (absolute) form of labour and production; but then repudiates this admission, being altogether miles away from any historical understanding.

Rossi’s first objection is this:

“If the worker lives from his income, if he lives from the remuneration of his labour, how can the same thing appear twice in the phenomenon of production, in the calculation of productive forces, once as the remuneration of labour and a second time as capital?” (leçons, p. 369).b

Here one must remark at the outset: This means, expressed in general terms, that the wage appears twice, once as relation of production, once as relation of distribution. Rossi holds this to be incorrect, and he is right as against the political economists in so far as they view the two different forms in which the same thing appears as two mutually independent relations which have nothing to do with each other. We shall return to this subject and demonstrate in general that the relation of production is a relation of distribution and vice versa.62 But, in addition to this, the wage can enter into the phenomenon of production, i.e. constitute a relation of production, without entering into the calculation of productive forces, namely if Mr. Rossi understands by productive force not the development of the productive forces in so far as it is conditioned by the relation of production, but nothing other than the moments that belong to the labour process in general or the production process in general, as such, disregarding all particular social forms.

On the other hand: The means of subsistence form a component of capital as long as they have not yet been exchanged for labour capacity. This exchange would not, however, take place unless they formed a component of capital before it happened. If they are exchanged, they cease to be capital and become income. Indeed it is not the wage but only labour capacity that enters into the direct production process itself. If I have produced grain, it forms a part of my capital until I have sold it. It forms the income of a consumer. (At least it can do so, if it is employed in individual consumption, not in production.) But in fact the means of subsistence [11-77] continue to be a productive force of capital even after the worker has received it as income and consumed it as income, for the reproduction of the worker is the reproduction of the principal productive force of capital.

“One says the remuneration of the worker is capital, because the capitalist advances it to him. If only there were families of workers who had sufficient to subsist for a year, wages would not exist. The worker could say to the capitalist: you advance the capital for the common project, I will bring the labour to it; the product will be shared among us in certain proportions. As soon as the product has been realised, each of us will take his share. Then there would be no advance for the workers. Even if work were at a standstill, they would still consume. What they would consume belongs to the consumption fund, not to capital. Therefore: the advances for the workers are not necessary. Therefore wages are not a constituent element of production. They are only of an accidental nature, a form arising from our social condition. Capital, land, labour, on the other hand, are necessary for production. Secondly: The word wages is employed in a double sense. One says that wages are a capital, but what do they represent? Labour. He who says wages says labour and vice versa. Hence, if the wages advanced constituted a part of capital, one would have to speak only of 2 instruments of production: capital and land” (l.c., p[p. 369-]370).115

In the same way as Rossi says: if the worker possessed the means of subsistence for a year, the capitalist would not need to advance them to him, he could just as well continue: if the worker possessed the material and means of labour for a year, he would not need the interposition of the capitalist for these conditions of labour. Thus the circumstance that “material of labour and means of labour” appear as capital is “not a constituent element of production”. “They are only of an accidental nature, a form arising from our social condition”, which makes them into this. They would still belong to the “production fund”, by no means to capital. Capital would not exist at all. If the particular form which makes labour into wage labour is a social accident, a particular historico-social form of labour, the same can be said of the form which makes the objective conditions of labour into capital or the conditions of production into capital. And it is the same social accident that makes labour into wage labour and the conditions of production into capital. Indeed, if the workers had in their possession even this one condition of production—a year’s means of subsistence—their labour would not be wage labour, and they would have possession of all the conditions of production. They would only need to sell a part of these surplus means of subsistence in order to buy in return the means of production (material and instrument) and produce commodities themselves. What Mr. Rossi is trying to get clear about here, without entirely succeeding, is that a particular social form of production, although it may be a historical necessity, is not on that account an absolute necessity, and therefore cannot be described as an eternal, unalterable condition of production. The admission we shall accept, but not its incorrect application.

So, in order to produce it is not absolutely necessary for labour to be wage labour and therefore, among other things, for the means of subsistence to have confronted the worker originally as a component of capital. But Rossi continues: “Capital, land, labour by contrast are necessary for production.” If he had said: “Land (material of labour, working space and in the first instance means of subsistence); means of labour (instruments, etc.); and labour by contrast are necessary for production”, but “rent, capital and wage labour” are not necessarily required, the proposition would have been correct. But his way of speaking strips away from labour and land the particular social form in which they may appear in the bourgeois economy—their forms as wage labour and landed property, and allows the means of labour in contrast to retain their economic character as capital. He [11-78] conceives them not only as material conditions of production but in their particular social form of capital and therefore arrives at the absurd conclusion that capital is possible without the appropriation of the soil and without wage labour.

Further: If the wage advanced forms part of capital, says Rossi, there are only 2 instruments of production, land and capital, and not 3, as the political economists all assume, land, capital and labour. In reality, here it is a question of the simple moments of the labour process as such, and in this there figure only the material of labour (land), the means of labour (which Rossi incorrectly calls capital) and labour. But definitely not capital. Yet in so far as the whole labour process is subsumed under capital, and the 3 elements which appear in it are appropriated by the capitalist, all 3 elements, material, means, labour, appear as material elements of capital; they have been subsumed under a particular social relation, which has absolutely nothing to do with the labour process considered abstractly—i.e. in so far as it is equally common to all social forms of the labour process. It remains characteristic of Rossi that he regards the relation between the personified product of labour and living labour capacity, a relation which forms the quintessence of the relation of capital and wage labour, as an inessential form, a mere accident of capitalist production itself. (See the wretched Bastiat97 With Rossi there is at least an inkling that capital and wage labour are not eternal social forms of production.)

We have now already had the argument twice from Rossi that if the wage forms a part of capital (originally), the same thing appears twice. First as a relation of production and second as a relation of distribution. Secondly: that in that case one should not enumerate 3 factors of production (material, means, labour) in the labour process, but only 2, namely material (which he calls here land) and means of labour, which he calls here capital.

“What occurs between the entrepreneur and the worker? If all products were started in the morning and finished in the evening, and if there were always buyers present on the market, ready to buy the commodities offered, there would be properly speaking no wage. It is not so. Months, years are required to realise a product.... The worker, who possesses only his arms, cannot wait for the completion (the end) of the project. He says to the entrepreneur, capitalist, farmer, manufacturer what he could say to a third party, a bystander. He could propose to him (the third party) that he buy his claim on the product. He could say to him: I contribute to the production of so-and-so many lengths of cloth, will you buy the remuneration to which I am entitled? Assuming that the third person, the bystander, accepts the proposal and pays the agreed price, can one say that the money expended by the bystander forms a part of the capital of the entrepreneur? That his contract with the worker is one of the phenomena of production? No, he has made a good or bad speculation, which adds nothing to public wealth and takes nothing away from it. That is wages. The worker proposes to the manufacturer what he could have proposed to a third party. The entrepreneur goes along with this arrangement in so far as it may facilitate production. But this is nothing but a second operation, an operation of a quite different nature grafted onto a productive operation. It is not a fact indispensable to production. It could disappear if labour were organised differently. Even today there are spheres of production in which it has no place. Wages are therefore a form of the distribution of wealth, not an element of production. The part of the fund which the entrepreneur devotes to the payment of wages does not constitute a part of capital, any more than the sums of money a manufacturer might employ to discount bills of exchange, or to speculate on the stock-exchange. It is a distinct operation, which undoubtedly may promote the course of production but which cannot be called a direct instrument of production” (l.c., p. 370).

[11-79] Here the point emerges clearly. A relation of production (however the social relation between individuals within production as a whole is viewed) is “not a direct instrument of production”. The relation of capital and wage labour, whereby the exchange of labour capacity for money is conditioned, is not a “direct instrument of production”. Thus the value of the commodity is not a “direct instrument of production”, although the essence of the production process changes according to whether it is only a question of the production of products as such or of the production of commodities. The “value” of the machine, its existence as fixed capital, etc., is not a “direct instrument of production”. A machine would also be productive in a society where there were no commodities at all, no exchange value. The question is by no means whether this “relation of production could disappear in another organisation of labour”; it is rather to investigate the significance of this relation in the capitalist organisation of labour. Rossi concedes that there would be “properly speaking no wage” under such conditions (p. 370). And he will permit me to cease describing as a wage what is “not properly a wage”. He only forgets that there would then be no longer any “capital proper” either.

“Since everyone could wait for the products of one’s labour, the present form of the wage could disappear. There would be partnership between the workers and the capitalists, just as today there is partnership between the capitalists properly so called and the capitalists who are simultaneously workers” (p. 371).a

Rossi is not clear about what would become of the present form of production in these circumstances. To be sure, he may treat this as completely irrelevant if he views production as a purely technological process, disregarding the social forms of production, and if, on the other hand, he understands by capital nothing but a product used for the fabrication of new products. He has at least in his favour his pronouncement that the form of the wage is not a “fact indispensable to production”.

“To conceive the power of labour, while ignoring the workers’ means of subsistence during the work of production, is to conceive an imagined being. He who says labour or the power of labour says worker and means of subsistence, worker and wage ... The same element re-appears under the name of capital; as if the same thing could simultaneously form part of two distinct instruments of production” (l.c., pp. 370, 371).a

Pure labour capacity is indeed “a phantom”. But this phantom exists. Hence when the worker ceases to be able to sell his labour capacity, he starves. And capitalist production is based on the reduction of the labour capacity to such a phantom.

Sismondi is therefore correct to say:

“Labour capacity ... is nothing if it is not sold” (Sismondi, Nouveaux principes etc., Vol. 1, p. 114).

What is stupid about Rossi is his attempt to present “wage labour” as “inessential” for capitalist production.

a Marx quotes in French.— Ed.

b Marx quotes partly in German and partly in French.— Ed.

He could also say of the machine: It is the machine that constitutes part of capital, not its value. The value of the machine, he could say, is paid to the machine manufacturer, and perhaps consumed by him as income. The value of the machine, therefore, ought not to figure twice in the production process, the first time as the takings of the machine manufacturer, the other time as capital or a constituent of the capital of the cotton spinner, etc.

Incidentally, it is characteristic that Rossi says wages, i.e. wage labour, would be superfluous if the workers were rich, while Mr. John Stuart Mill says they would be superfluous if labour were to be had for nothing:

“Wages have no productive power; they are the price of a productive power. Wages do not contribute, apart from labour, to the production of commodities //should be: to the production of products, use values//, no more than the price of machines contributes along with the machines themselves. If labour could be had without purchase, wages might be dispensed with” (John Stuart Mill, Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, London, 1844, p[p. 90-]91).

[11-80] Where the purely general form of capital as self-preserving and self-valorising value is being considered, it is declared to be something immaterial, and therefore, from the point of view of the political economist, a mere idea; for he knows of nothing but either tangible objects or ideas--relations do not exist for him. As value, capital is indifferent towards its particular material forms of existence, the use values of which it consists. These material elements do not make capital into capital.

“Capital is always immaterial by nature, since it is not matter which makes capital, but the value of that matter, value which has nothing corporeal about it” (Say, Traité d’économie politique, 3rd ed., Vol. 2, Paris, 1817, p. 429).

Or, Sismondi:

“Capital is a commercial idea” (Sismondi, LX, Etudes etc., Vol. 2, p. 273).a 116

While all capitals are values, the values as such are still not capital. And so the political economists take flight once again back to the material shape of capital within the labour process. Insofar as the labour process itself appears as the production process of capital and is subsumed under capital, and according to whether some specific aspect of the labour process is fixed upon (as we have seen, the labour process as such by no means presupposes capital but is a feature of all modes of production), it can be said that capital becomes a product, or is a means of production, a raw material, an instrument of labour.56 Thus Ramsay says that raw material and means of labour form capital.3 Rossi says that only the instrument is actually capital.13 The elements of the labour process are viewed here outside any specific economic determinateness. (It will become evident later that also within the labour process this extinction of the determinateness of form is only a semblance.117) The labour process (production process of capital), reduced to its simple form, does not appear as production process of capital, but as production process in the absolute sense, and capital appears here in distinction from labour solely in its material determinateness of raw material and instrument of labour. (But here too labour is in fact capital’s own existence, is embodied in it.) The political economists fix on this side, which is not only an arbitrary abstraction, but one which itself vanishes in the process, in order to present capital as a necessary element of all production.118 Of course, they only do this by arbitrarily fixing on a single aspect.

* “Labour and capital ... the one, immediate labour ... the other, hoarded labour, that which has been the result of former labour” * (James Mill, Elements of Political Economy, London, 1821, [p.] 75).

* “Accumulated labour ... immediate labour” * (R. Torrens, An Essay on the Production of Wealth etc., London, 1821, Ch. I).119

Ricardo, Principles, p. 89: “Capital is that part of the wealth of a country which is employed in production, and consists of food, clothing, tools, raw material, machinery, etc., necessary to give effect to labour.”

“Capital ... is but a particular species of wealth, namely that which is destined, not to the immediate supplying of our wants, but to the obtaining of other articles of utility” (Torrens, l.c., p. 5).

“In the first stone which the savage flings at the wild animal he pursues, in the first stick that he seizes to strike down the fruit which hangs above his reach, we see the appropriation of one article for the purpose OF aiding in the acquisition OF ANOTHER, and THUS DISCOVER the ORIGIN OF capital” (Torrens, l.c., pp. 70-71).

Capital - all articles possessing exchangeable value”, the accumulated results OF past labour (H. C. Carey, Principles of Political Economy, Part I, Philadelphia, 1837, p. 294).

“When a fund is devoted to material production, it takes the name of capital” (H. Storch, Cours d’économie politique, ed. Say, Vol. I, Paris, 1823, [p.] 207).c

“Wealth is only capital insofar as it serves for production” (l.c., p. 219).c

“The elements of the national capital ared: 1) improvements of the soil; 2) buildings; 3) tools or instruments of the trade; 4) means of subsistence; 5) materials; 6) completed work” (l.c., pp. 229 sq.).

[11-81] “Every productive force which is neither land nor labour is capital. It comprises all the forces, either completely or partially produced, that are applied to reproduction” (Rossi, l.c., p. 271).c

a See this volume, p. 139.-- Ed

b Ibid., p. 141.-- Ed

c Marx quotes in French.-- Ed

d Marx quotes the rest of the paragraph in French.-- Ed

“There is no difference between capital and any other part of wealth: a thing only becomes capital by the use that is made of it, that is to say, when it is employed in a productive operation, as raw material, as instrument, or as means of subsistence” (Cherbuliez, Richesse ou pauvreté, 1841, p. 18).a

But in capitalist production it is by no means just a matter of producing a product or even a commodity; what is aimed at is a greater value than was thrown into production.b Hence these definitions:

Capital is the part of wealth which is employed in production and generally FOR THE PURPOSE of obtaining profit (Th. Chalmers, On Political Economy etc., London, 1832, 2nd ed., [p.] 75).

It is above all Malthus who has introduced this element into the definition of capital. (Sismondi’s definition is more precise; since profit is already a more developed form of surplus value.c)

* “Capital. That portion of the stock” (i.e. accumulated wealth) “of a country which is kept or employed with a view to profit in the production and distribution of wealth” * (T. R. Malthus, Definitions in Political Economy, New Ed. etc. by John Cazenove, London, 1853, [p.] 10).

* “Antecedent labour (capital) ... present labour” * (E. G. Wakefield’s commentary to A. Smith, Wealth of Nations, Vol. 1, London, 1835, note to p[p. 230-]31).

Thus we have 1) capital is money; capital is commodity; if the first form in which it emerges is being considered; 2) accumulated (ANTECEDENT) LABOUR as opposed to IMMEDIATE, PRESENT LABOUR, where it is being considered in contrast to living labour, and value simultaneously as its substance; 3) means of labour, material of labour, in general products used to form new products, where the labour process, the material production process, is being considered. Means of subsistence, where the component of capital which is exchanged for labour capacity is being considered, according to its use value.

Insofar as the whole labour process (direct production process) comes together in the product as its result, capital now exists as product. This is, however, simply its presence as use value, except that now the latter is available as the result of the labour process or production process--the process capital has passed through. If this is taken as fixed, and it is forgotten that the labour process is at the same time a process of valorisation, hence its result is not only use value (product) but at the same time exchange value, a unity of use value and exchange value (=the commodity), the absurd notion may arise that capital has been transformed into a simple product, and will only become capital again by being sold, by becoming a commodity. The same absurd notion can be put forward from another point of view. In the labour process itself it is irrelevant (the fact disappears) that the material and means of labour are already products, hence commodities (since on our assumption every product is a commodity). Hence the commodity, and the product itself, only counts here to the extent that it is a use value, e.g. raw material. It can therefore be said that what was previously capital has now been converted into raw material; this is a form of expressing the fact that what was the result of one production process is the raw material (the prerequisite) of the other (or the instrument of labour). Proudhon, for example, argues in this manner:

“What causes the sudden transformation of the notion of product into that of capital? It is the idea of value. This means that the product, in order to become capital, must have passed through an authentic valuation, must have been bought or sold, its price discussed and fixed by a kind of legal convention.” E.g. “hides, coming from the butcher’s shop, are the product of the butcher. Have these hides been bought by a tanner? At once he adds either them or their value to his working capital. By the work of the tanner this capital becomes a product again” (Gratuité du crédit [pp. 178-80]) (see XVI, 29 etc.).3 120

[11-82] Mr. Proudhon altogether has a penchant for appropriating elementary notions, combining them with an incorrect metaphysical apparatus and reproducing this for the public. Does he perhaps believe that the leather does not figure as a value in the butcher’s ledger before leaving the butcher’s shop? In reality all he is saying is that the commodity=capital, which is wrong, since though every capital exists as commodity or money, this does not yet make commodity or money as such into capital. What is needed is precisely to develop how the “notion” of capital develops out of the “notion” of money and commodity. He sees the labour process, but not the valorisation process; it is a result of the latter that the product of the overall production process is not only a use value, but a use value with a definite exchange value, i.e. a commodity. Whether this commodity is sold above or below its value, its passage through a legal convention gives it no new determination of form, it does not make the product into a commodity, still less does it make the commodity into capital. The production process of capital is here fixed upon one-sidedly as a labour process, with its result use value. Capital is viewed as a thing; a thing pure and simple.

a Marx quotes in French.-- Ed

Equally stupidly--and this is characteristic of the way in which declamatory socialism regards society in relation to economic determinations--Proudhon says:

“For society, the difference between capital and product does not exist. This difference is entirely subjective, and related to individuals” [p. 250].a

He calls the specific social form subjective and he calls the subjective abstraction society. The product as such is a feature of every mode of labour, whatever its specific social form may be. The product only becomes capital to the extent that it expresses a particular, historically determined, social relation of production. Mr. Proudhon’s contemplation from the standpoint of society means overlooking, abstracting from, precisely the differences which express the particular social relation or the determinateness of the economic form. As if someone were to say: Looking from the point of view of society there are no slaves and citizens, both are human beings. They are much rather this outside society. To be a slave, to be a citizen, are particular modes of the social existence of human beings a and b. Human being a is as such not a slave. He is a slave in and through the society he belongs to. To be a slave, to be a citizen, are social determinations, relations between human beings a and b. What Proudhon says here about capital and product means for him that from the point of view of society there is no difference between capitalists and workers; a difference which exists precisely from the social standpoint alone.121 It is characteristic of him to conceal his inability to proceed from the category (notion) commodity to the category capital beneath a high-sounding phrase.

Incidentally, one finds other political economists talking the same nonsense about the transformation of the product into capital--in fact this is only a special application of the general narrow-minded conception of capital as a thing--but there it is presented less pretentiously.56 E.g. Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy, Tenth Thousand, Boston, 1843, p. 25.

* “The material which ... we obtain for the purpose of combining it with our own industry, and forming it into a product, is called capital; and, after the labour has been exerted, and the value created, it is called a product. Thus, the same article may be product to one, and capital to another. Leather is the product of the currier, and the capital of the shoemaker.” *

[11-83] With Mr. J. B. Say nothing would surprise us. He tells us for example:

a Marx quotes in French.-- Ed

“ Work on the land, that of animals and machines, is also a value, because a price is set upon it and it is bought.”3122 Hedoesso after he has told us that “value” is “what a thing is worth”, and “price” is the “value of a thing expressed [in money]”.3 Then he declares the wage to be “ le loyer d ’une faculté industrielle” - the rent of labour capacity - and continues, as a sign that he does not understand his own expression, “ ou plus rigoureusement le prix de l’achat d ’un service productif industriel”.b 123 Here labour is taken merely as it appears in the labour process: as an activity aimed at producing a use value. In this sense services productifs are also performed in the labour process by raw material, by the land, using this expression in a general way, and by the means of production (capital). The labour process is precisely the activity of their use value. Once all the elements of production have been reduced in this way to mere factors of the use values involved in the labour process, profit and rent then appear as the prices of the services productifs of land and products, just as the wage appears as the price of the services productifs of labour. The specific forms of exchange value are always explained here by reference to use value, although they are entirely independent of it. //The whole of the Mercantile System is based on the notion that surplus value arises simply from circulation, i.e. from the altered distribution of already existing values.0//

//The extent to which the concept of capital implies not only the preservation and reproduction of value but its valorisation, i.e. the multiplication of value, the positing of surplus value, can be seen from, among other examples (as we shall see later, this is most strikingly evident in the case of the Physiocratsd), the earlier Italian political economists, who applied the term reproduction of value only to this production of surplus value. For example V erri: “The value reproduced is that part of the price of an agricultural or industrial product which exceeds the original value of the material and the outlay on consumption incurred while it is being produced. In agriculture the seed and the consumption of the peasant must be deducted: equally in manufacture one must deduct the raw material and the worker’s consumption; and so every year a reproduced value is created, to the amount of the part that remains” (P. Verri, 3Marx quotes in French. - Ed. b “Or, strictly speaking, the purchasing price of a productive labour service.” - cSeethis volume, p. 351. - Ed d Ibid., pp. 352-76. - Ed. Meditazioni sulla economia politica, Custodi, Parte Modema, Vol. XV, [pp.] 26- 27).al24// //The same P. Verri (although a Mercantilist) admits that if commodities are sold at their value or their average price (prezzo comune) it is unimportant who is the buyer and who the seller; or, in other words, that the surplus value cannot originate from the difference between buyer and seller. He says: We must regard it as irrelevant whether someone is buyer or seller in the act of exchange. “The average price is that in which the buyer can become seller and the seller buyer without perceptible loss or gain. If for example the average price of silk is a gigliato per pound, Isaythata person who possesses 100 pounds ofsilk is just as rich as he who possesses 100 gigliati, since the first can easily have 100 gigliati by handing over the silk, and similarly the second can have 100 pounds of silk by handing over 100 gigliati.... The average price is that at which none of the contracting parties becomes poorer" (l.c., [pp.] 34, 35).a// 

[11-84] Only that which preserves and increases capital has use value for capital as such. Labour, therefore, or labour capacity. (Labour is after all only a function, realisation, activity of labour capacity.) // The conditions for the realisation of labour are eo ipsoh included, since capital cannot employ, consume labour capacity without them.// Labour is therefore not a use value for capital. It is the use value of the latter. * “The immediate market for capital, or field for capital, may be said to be labour” * (An Inquiry into those Principles, Respecting the Nature of Demand and the Necessity of Consumption, Lately Advocated by Mr. Malthus, London, 1821, [p.] 20). // On the exchange of capital with labour capacity: “ Wages are nothing more than the market price of labour, and when the labourer has received them, he has received the full value of the commodity he has disposed of. Beyond this he can have no claim” (John W ade, History of the Middle and Working Classes, 3rd ed., London, 1835, p. 177).// // Productive consumption. * “Productive consumption, where the consumption of a commodity is a part of the process of production.... In these instances there is no consumption of value, the same value existing in a new form ” * (S. P. Newman, Elements of Political Economy, Andover and New York, 1835, [p.] 296).// (“ Capital is consumed just as much as the consumption fund; but in being consumed it is reproduced. A capital is a quantity of wealth destined for industrial consumption, that is for reproduction" (H. Storch, Cours d’économie politique, ed. Say, Vol. I, Paris, 1823, p. 209)).c It is labour capacity, not labour, which is exchanged for capital in the buying process:

aMarx quotes in Italian. - Ed. bBythatveryfact. - Ed cMarx quotes in French. - Ed * “If you call labour a commodity, it is not like a commodity which is first produced in order to exchange, and then brought to market where it must exchange with other commodities according to the respective quantities of each which there may be in themarket at the time; labour is created at the moment it is brought to market; nay it is brought to market before it is created” * (Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes in Political Economy etc., London, 1821, [pp.] 75-76). Viewed as a whole, the production process of capital is divided into 2 sections:

1) exchange of capital for labour capacity, which includes as a corollary the exchange of certain components of capital existing as money (value) for the objective conditions of labour, insofar as they themselves are commodities (hence also products of previous labour). This first act includes the conversion of a part of the existing capital into the worker’s means of subsistence, hence simultaneously into the means of the preservation and reproduction of labour capacity. // In that a partof these means of subsistence has been consumed during the labour process itself, in order to produce labour, the means of subsistence the worker consumes can be counted (as maintenance costs) among the objective conditions of labour into which capital is divided in the production process just as much as can the raw material and the means of production. Or they can be regarded as a moment in reproductive consumption. Or, finally, they can be regarded just asmuchas means of production of the product, rather like the coal and oil the machine consumes during the production process.102// 2) In the actual labour process labour is converted into capital. I.e. it becomes objectified labour (objective labour) - and indeed objectified labour which confronts living labour capacity independently, as the property of the capitalist, the economic existence of the capitalist. On this conversion of labour into capital: “They” (the workers) “exchange their labour for grain” //i.e. means of subsistence in general//. “This becomes income for them” //consum ption fund// “...while their labour has become capital for their m aster” (Sismondi, Nouveaux principes, Vol. 1, p. 90). “H e” (the worker) “required the means of subsistence to live, the boss required labour to make a profit” (Sismondi, l.c., p. 91).a “The workers who, giving their labour for the exchange, convert it into capital” (Sismondi, l.c., p. 105). “W hatever advantages a rapid growth of wealth may provide for the wage workers, it does not heal the causes of their misery.... They remain deprived of any right to capital, consequently obliged to sell their labour and to renounce any pretensions to the products of that labour” (Cherbuliez, Richesse ou pauvreté, p. 68). / / “In the social order, wealth has acquired the characteristic of reproducing itself a Marx quotes this sentence in French. - Ed. by means of alien labour, without any assistance from its owner. Wealth, like labour and through labour, yields an annual fruit, which can be destroyed every year without making therichman poorer thereby. The fruit is the income which arises from capital” (Sismondi, Nouveaux principes, Vol. 1, p. 82).// 

[11-85] //The different forms of income (leaving aside wages), such as profit, interest, rent, etc. (taxes too), are only the different elements into which surplus value divides, is distributed among different classes. For the moment we shall simply examine them in their general form, surplus value. Of course, whatever subdivision it may subsequently undergo changes nothing, either in its quantity or its quality. Moreover, itisalsowell known that the industrial capitalist is the person in the middle, who pays interest, rent, etc. “Labour is the source of wealth; wealth is its product; income, asapartof wealth, must emerge from thiscommon origin; it is customary to derive 3 kinds of income, rent, profit, wages, from 3 different sources, land, accumulated capital and labour. These 3 subdivisions of income areonly3 different ways of participating in the fruits of human labour” (Sismondi, Nouveaux principes, Vol. 1, p. 85).// // “The products are appropriated before they are converted into capital; this conversiona does not release them from appropriation” (Cherbuliez, [Richesse ou pauvreté,] p. 54). // / / “In selling his labour for a definite amount of approvisionnement the worker completely renounces any right to the other parts of capital. The allocation of these products remains the same as before; it is in no way modified by the above-mentioned contract” (l.c., p. 58).// In this conversion of labour into capital lies, in fact, the whole secret of the capital-relation.

If one looks at capitalist production as a whole, the conclusion is:

We should not regard the commodity alone (still less the mere use value of the commodity, the product) as the actual product of this process; not just the surplus value either, although it is a result that is kept in view as the purpose of the whole process, and characterises it. Itisnotjustthis single thing that is produced - the commodity, a commodity greater in value than the capital originally advanced - but also capital and wage labour; or, the relation is reproduced and perpetuated. This will in any case be shown in more detail after the production process has been further discussed.125 Both the surplus value and the wage appear here in a form we have not yet met, namely the form of income, hence a distribution form, on the one hand, and therefore a particular modeofthe consumption fund, on the other. But since this determination is still superfluous (although it will become necessary once we get to1,4, 3 Marx quotes therestofthe sentence in French. - Ed. primitive accumulation126), we shall only investigate the characteristics of this form when we have examined the production process of capital more closely. Here the wage appears to us as a production form because it is as wage system the prerequisite for capitalist production; just as we have included surplus value and its creation in the concept of capital as a relation of production. Only in the second instance must it be demonstrated how these relations of production appear simultaneously as relations of distribution62 (in this context we must also throw more light on the stupidity of considering labour capacity to be the capital of the worker92). This is necessitated in part by the need to show what nonsense it is to regard bourgeois relations of production and of distribution as different in kind. Thus J. St. Mill and many other political economists conceive the relations of production as natural, eternal laws, but regard relations of distribution as artificial, of historical origin, and subject to the control, etc., of human society.61 On the other hand, the description of surplus value e.g. as income (hence the category of income in general) is a formula for simplification, as e.g. in examining the accumulation of capital.127 The questions of what labour is productive, whether wages or capital are productive, and the use of the formulation “income” for wages and surplus value, are to be dealt with at the end of the examination of relative surplus value (or also in part in the relation of wage labour and capital?). (Similarly the worker as C - M - C, the capitalist as M - C - M, saving and hoarding by the former, etc.128) 

// Additions from my Notebook.129 As use value, labour exists only for capital, andis the use value of capital itself, i.e. the mediating activity through which it valorises itself. Therefore labour does not exist as a use value for the worker, it is not a force productive of wealth for him, in the sense of a means or activity of enrichment. A use value for [11-86] capital, labour is a mere exchange value for the worker, an available exchange value. It is posited as such in theactof exchange with capital, through its sale for money. The use value of a thing does not concern the seller as such, only its buyer. The labour (capacity) which the worker sells as a use value to capital is for the worker his exchange value, which he wishes to realise, but which is already determined (like the prices of commodities in general) before thisactof exchange, and presupposed to it as a condition. The exchange value of labour capacity, the realisation of which occurs in the process of the exchange with capital, is therefore presupposed, determined in advance, and only undergoes formal modification (through

(conversion into money). It is not determined by the use value of labour. For the worker himself labour only has use value insofar as it is exchange value, not insofar as it produces exchange value. For capital it only has exchange value insofar as it is use value. It is a use value, as distinct from its exchange value, not for the worker himself, but only for capital. The worker therefore exchanges labour as a simple, previously determined exchange value, determined by a past process - he exchanges labour as itself objectified labour, only insofar as this is a definite quantity of labour; hence only insofar as its equivalent is already measured, given. Capital obtains it through exchange as living labour, as the general productive force of wealth; activity which increases wealth. It is clear, therefore, that the worker cannot enrich himself through this exchange, since in exchange for the available value magnitude of his labour capacity he surrenders its creative power like Esau his birthright for a mess of pottage. Rather, he has to impoverish himself, because the creative power of his labour becomes established as the power of capital, as an alien power confronting him. He divests himself of labour as the force productive of wealth; capital appropriates it, as such. The separation of labour from property in the product of labour, of labour from wealth, is thus posited in this very act of exchange. What appears paradoxical as result is already implied by the presupposition itself. Thus the productivity of the worker's labour comes to confront him as an alien power; as indeed does his labour in general, insofar as it is actual labour, not a capacity but motion. Capital, inversely, valorises itself through the appropriation of alien labour. At least, the possibility of valorisation is thereby posited, as a result of the exchange between capital and labour. The relation is first realised in the act of production itself (where capital really consumes the alien labour). Just as labour capacity, as a presupposed exchange value, is exchanged for an equivalent in money, so the latter is again exchanged for an equivalent in commodities, which are consumed. In this process of exchange, labour is not productive; it becomes so only for capital. It can take out of circulation only what it has thrown in, a predetermined quantity of commodities, which are as little its own product as they are its own value. //Thus all advances of civilisation, in other words every increase in the productive forces of society - the productive forces of labour itself - enrich not the worker, but the capitalist. Hence they only magnify the power ruling over labour, only increase the productive power of capital - the objective power over labour. //

The transformation of labour into capital is in itself the result of the act of exchange between capital and labour. This transformation is posited only in the production process itself. //

//With Say and his associates the instrument, etc., has a claim to remuneration owing to the service productif it performs, and this remuneration is handed over to the owner of the instrument. The independence of the instrument of labour, its social determination, i.e. its determination as capital, is presupposed in this way so as to substantiate the claims of the capitalist. //

//* "Profit is not made by exchanging. Had it not existed before, neither could it after that transaction" * (Ramsay, l.c., p. 184).//

//"Every space of land is the raw material of agriculture" (P. Verri, l.c., [p.] 218).//

[11-87] //Engels gave me this example: 10,000 spindles at 1 lb. per week = 10,000 lbs = £550 of yarn = 1 lb. of yarn for 1 1/10s.

Raw material = 10,000 lbs of yarn.

Waste 15% = 1,500 = 11,500.

at 7d. a lb. = 11,500 £336. Profit 60.

10,000 spindles at £1 per spindle cost £10,000

Annual wear and tear 12 1/2% = £1,250

Hence per week...........................................24

Coal, oil, etc...................................................40 < 84 (5 5/6 of 490)

Wear and tear on the steam engine .....20

Wages 70; price of lb. of yarn 1 1/10s.; hence price of the 10,000 lbs £550

£490

£ 60

490. (Wages are 1/7 of 490.)

Therefore raw material 490/336 = 68 4/7%. Wages, 14 2/7%. Machinery, etc., 17 1/7%. Therefore raw material and machinery = 85 5/7; wages 14 2/7. Wages 1/7 (70), raw material and machinery 6/7 (420). Hence 1/7 wages, 6/7 machinery and raw material. Out of this 6/7, 4/7 comes under raw material + 4/5 of 1/7. 1/7 and 1/5 of 1/7 come under machinery. Thus raw material accounts for somewhat less than 5/7, machinery for somewhat over 1/7, and workers for 1/7. //

This comment from The Manchester Guardian, September 18, 1861, MONEY ARTICLE:

* "In reference to coarse spinning we have received the following statement from a gentleman of high standing:

Sept. 17, 1860 Per lb. Margin Cost of Spinning per lb.

His cotton cost ________ 6 1/4d.

His 16's warps sold for................................. 10 1/4d. ------4d. -------------------3d.

Profit 1d. per lb.

Sept. 17, 1861

His cotton costs ______ 9d.

For his 16's warps to ask ____________ 11d. ------2d. ..................3 1/2d.

Loss 1 1/2d. per lb." *

From the first example it follows that the value of lb. warps is 10 1/4d. (1860), of which 1d. is profit. His outlay is 9 1/4d. 1d. on this comes to 10 30/37%. But if we subtract the raw material (6 1/4) there remain 4d.; of which 3d. must be deducted for cost of spinning. Even if we assume that wages here amount to one half of this, which is wrong, we arrive at a surplus value of 1d. on 1 1/2d. Hence 3:2, or 66 2/3%. 66 2/3% is exactly = 2/3 of the unit. [11-88] Expressing this in hours, the worker works 2 hours for his master for every 3 hours he works for himself. Thus for each hour ... 2/3 of an hour. Hence if he works for 10 hours altogether, 6 hours belong to him, and 4 (1 2/3) to his master. (3:2 = 6:4) If he gives 4 hours out of 10 to his master, he gives 4/10 of an hour out of 1 hour = 24 minutes. In 1 hour he works 36 minutes for himself (36:24 = 3:2) // for 36 x 2 = 72 and 24 x 3 = 72//.

We have seen in the labour process that all its factors can be characterised with reference to the result - the product - as means of production. If, in contrast to this, one looks at the value of the different factors required for the manufacture of the product - the values advanced for its manufacture (values expended) - they are called the production costs of the product. The production costs therefore come down to the sum of labour time required for the manufacture of the product (whether this is the labour time contained in the material and means of labour, or the labour time newly added in the labour process) - the total labour time objectified, worked up, in the product. The formula production costs is for us a mere name initially; it adds nothing new to the definitions already arrived at. The value of the product = the sum of the values of the material, the means [of labour] and the labour added to the material through the agency of the means of labour.

The proposition is purely analytic. It is in reality only another way of saying that the value of the commodity is determined by the quantity of the labour time objectified in it. Only later on in this investigation shall we find an opportunity to discuss the formula of the production costs. (Namely in dealing with capital and profit; there an antinomy enters because on the one hand the value of the product = the production costs, i.e. the value advanced for the manufacture of the product, while on the other hand (this is of the nature of profit) the value of the product, in that it includes the surplus value, is greater than the value of the production costs. This results from the fact that the production costs for the capitalist are only the sum of the values he has advanced; hence the value of the product = the value of the capital advanced. On the other hand, the real production cost of the product = the sum of the labour time contained in that product. But the sum of the labour time contained in it is greater than the sum of the labour time advanced or paid for by the capitalist. And this surplus value of the product over and above the value paid for or advanced by the capitalist forms, precisely, the surplus value; in our definition the absolute magnitude of which the profit consists.)

[11-89] On the Division of Labour.

Thomas Hodgskin, Popular Political Economy etc., London, 1827.

"Invention and knowledge necessarily precedes the division of labour. Savages learned to make bows and arrows, to catch animals and fish, to cultivate the ground and weave cloth, before some of them dedicated themselves exclusively to making these instruments, to hunting, fishing, agriculture and weaving.... The art of working in metals, leather or wood, was unquestionably known to a certain extent, before there were smiths, shoemakers and carpenters. In very modern times, steam engines and spinning mules were invented, before some men made it their chief or only business to manufacture mules and steam engines" ([pp.] 79-80).

"Important inventions are the result of the necessity to labour and of the natural increase of population. If for example the spontaneous fruits are exhausted, man becomes a fisherman, etc." ([p.] 85).

"Necessity is the mother of invention; and the continual existence of necessity can only be explained by the continual increase of people. E.g. the rise in the price of cattle is caused by an increase of people and by an increase in their manufacturing or other produce. The rise in the price of cattle leads to cultivating food for them, augmenting manure and occasioning that increased quantity of produce, which in this country amounts to nearly 1/3 of the whole" ([pp.] 86-87).

"No one doubts that rapid communication between the different parts of the country contributes both to the increase of knowledge and wealth.... Numbers of minds are instantly set to work even by a hint; and every discovery is instantly appreciated, and almost as instantaneously improved. The chances of improvement are great in proportion as the persons are multiplied whose attention is devoted to any particular subject. An increase in the number of persons produces the same effect as communication; for the latter only operates by bringing numbers to think on the same subject" ([pp.] 93-94).

Causes of the division of labour.

"D'abord a division of labour between the sexes in the family. Then differences of age. Then peculiarities of constitution. The difference of sex, of age, of bodily and mental power, or difference of organization, is the chief source of division of labour, and it is continually extended in the progress of society by the different tastes, dispositions, and talents of individuals, and their different aptitudes for different employments" ([pp.] 111 et seq.).

"Apart from the different aptitudes in those who work there are different aptitudes and capacities in the natural instruments they work with. Diversities of soil, climate, and situation, and peculiarities in the spontaneous productions of the earth, and of the minerals contained in its bowels, adapt certain spots to certain arts ... territorial division of labour" ([pp.] 127 et seq.).

Limits to the division of labour.

1) "Extent of market.... The commodity produced by one labourer ... constitutes in reality and ultimately the market for the commodities produced by other labourers; and they and their productions are mutually the market for one another ... The extent of the market must mean the number of labourers and their productive power; and rather the former than the latter.... As the number of labourers increases, the productive power of society augments in the compound ratio of that increase, multiplied by the effects of the division of labour and the increase of knowledge.... Improved methods of conveyance, like rail roads, steam-vessels, canals, all means of facilitating intercourse between distant countries, have, as far as division of labour is concerned, the same effects as an actual increase in the number of people; they bring more labourers into communication with each other, and more produce to be exchanged" ([pp.] 115 et seq.).

Second limit. The nature of different employments.

"As science advances, this apparent limit disappears. In particular, machinery moves it farther away. The application of steam engines to working power looms enables one man to perform the operations of several; or to weave as much cloth as 3 or 4 persons can weave by the hand loom. This is a complication of employments ... but then there follows in turn a subsequent simplification ... hence a perpetual renewal of occasions for the farther division of labour" ([pp.] 127 et seq.).

[11-90] Surplus Labour.

"Owing to the cupidity of the capitalists, etc., there is a constant tendency to extend the number of working hours, and thus by augmenting the supply of labour, to lessen its remuneration.... The increase of fixed capital tends to the same result. For where so great a value is lodged in machinery, buildings, etc., the manufacturer is strongly tempted not to let so much stock lie idle and, therefore, will employ no workmen who will not engage to remain for many hours during the day. Hence also the horrors of night labour

PRACTISED IN SOME ESTABLISHMENTS, ONE SET OF MEN ARRIVING AS OTHERS DEPART” (G. Ramsay, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, Edinburgh, [London,] 1836, [p.] 102).

In the case of absolute surplus value, the capital laid out in labour, the variable capital, retains the same magnitude of value while the value of the total product grows; but it grows on account of the increase in the portion of the value of the product which represents the reproduction of the variable capital. In this case (this relates not to the surplus value as such but to it as profit) there is, apart from this, a necessary growth in the part of the constant capital which constitutes raw materials and matières instrumentales. It should not be assumed, except to a very slight degree, that the outlay (the real wastage, even if it is written off in advance) on machinery, buildings, etc., increases thereby.

In the case of relative surplus value the portion of the value of the product in which the variable capital is reproduced remains the same; but its distribution changes. A larger part represents surplus labour and a smaller necessary labour. In this case the given variable capital is diminished by the amount of the reduction in wages. The constant capital remains the same, except as far as raw material and matières instrumentales are concerned. A part of the capital, previously laid out in wages, is set free, and can be converted into machinery, etc. We have investigated the changes in constant capital elsewhere (in dealing with profit).134 This can therefore be left out here, and our consideration confined to the changes in variable capital. Let the old capital be = c (constant capital) + £1,000. Let this £1,000 represent the variable capital. Say the weekly wages of 1,000 men. Now two situations can be distinguished. The variable capital falls because of falls in the necessaries produced in other branches of industry (e.g. corn, meat, boots, etc.). In this case c remains unchanged, and the number of workers employed, the total amount of labour, remains the same. No change has occurred in the conditions of production. Let us assume that owing to falls in the necessaries the variable capital is reduced (i.e. its value is reduced) by 1/10; it therefore falls from 1,000 to 900. Assume the surplus value was £500, hence = half the variable capital. Then £1,500 would represent the total value of the labour of 1,000 men (since their working day remains the same on our assumption, its magnitude is not altered) no matter how these £1,500 may be divided between capital and labour.

In this case the old capital was:

1) c + 1,000 (v) + 500 (surplus value). Hence surplus labour = 1/3 of the working day.

The new capital would be: 2) c + 900 [v] + 600. Hence surplus labour = 2/5 of the working day. The surplus labour would have risen from 5/15 to 6/15; the working day = 12 hours, thus 1/3 = 4 hours and 2/5 = 4 4/5 hours of labour. Assume that after an interval the variable capital (wages) again fell by 1/10 as a result of the cheapening of means of subsistence which were not produced in this sphere. 1/10 of 900 = 90. The variable capital would fall to 810. We should therefore have:

New capital: 3) c + 810 (v) + 690 (surplus). Therefore the surplus labour = 23/50 of the working day, or 3/50 more than previously. A capital of 100 is set free in the first case, of 90 in the second; together = £190. This release of capital is also a form of accumulation; it is at once the release of money capital, in the form in which we shall find it again when we consider profit.

c + v + s is the product, v + s is a constant magnitude. If now under the given circumstances wages fall, the formula will be C + (v - x) + (s + x).

[11-91] If, in contrast, the relative surplus labour is a result of the cheapening of the article itself, therefore of a change in the productive conditions of the article, e.g. the introduction of machinery, let us assume that 1/2 of the variable capital of 1,000 is converted into machinery. There remains a variable capital of 500, or the labour of 500 men instead of 1,000. The value of their labour = 750, since the value of the 1,000 was £1,500. According to this, then, we should have:

Old capital c + 1,000 (v) + 500 (s).

New capital, (c + 500), or C + v/2, which we shall call c', c' + 500 (v) + 250.

But since it is presumed that the surplus value grows in consequence of the introduction of machinery, the variable capital declines, by say 1/10. We can now either assume that the 500 work up as much (raw material) as before or that they are working up more. For the sake of simplification we shall assume that they work up only as much. 1/10 of 500 = 400. Therefore:

Old capital. c + 1,000 (v) + 500 (s) = (c + 1,000 (v) + v/2).

New capital (c + 500), = c' + 400 (v) + 350 (s) = (c' (c + v/2) + 400 (v) + 7/8 v).

£100 would be set free thereby. But this would only occur if no addition of at least that proportion were needed to the supply of raw materials and matières instrumentales. Only in this case can money capital which was previously expended in the form of wages be released by the introduction of machinery.

In the case of absolute surplus value the matières brutesa and matières instrumentales must grow in the same proportion as the absolute amount of labour grows.

Old capital, c + 1,000 (v) + 500 (s), s here = 1/3 of the working day of 1,000 working days. If the working day = 12 hours, s = 4 hours. Assume now that s grows from 500 to 600, hence by 1/5. Since here the value of 12 hours x 1,000 = £1,500, a value of £100 represents 800 hours of labour for the 1,000 men, or 4/5 of an hour of surplus labour for each man. The amount of material, etc., 1 man can work up in 4/5 of an hour depends on how much he can work up in 1 hour, since the working conditions remain the same. We shall denote this by x. Thus:

New capital: (c + x, or c') + 1,000 (v) + 500 (s) + 100 (s'). Here there is an increase in the capital laid out and a double increase in the product: due to the increase in the capital laid out and due to the increase in the surplus value.

The determination of value itself remains the essential matter - the foundation - hence the basis is that the value is determined, regardless of the level of the productivity of labour, by the necessary labour time 10; hence it is, for example, always expressed in the same sum of money, if money is assumed to be of constant value.

By the Urbariumb of Maria Theresia,135 which abolished serfdom proper in Hungary, the peasants owed the landlords, in return for the Sessions they received //lands on each estate, allotted to the maintenance of the serfs, 35-40 English acres each //, unpaid labour of 104 days per annum, not to mention a series of lesser obligations, [the handing over of] fowls, eggs, etc., [11-92] the spinning of 6 lbs of wool or hemp, provided by the landlord, and besides all this a further 1/10 of all their products to be paid to the church, and 1/2 (??) to the landlord.c In the year 1771 the landlords still constituted 1/21 of a population of 8 millions in Hungary, and there were only 30,921 artisans: these are the kind of facts which give the doctrine of the Physiocrats its historical backing.64

a Raw materials. - Ed.

b Land survey. - Ed

c Jones has: “...and one-ninth to the lord”. - Ed

15 men are killed every week in the English coal mines on an average.136 In the course of the 10 years concluding with 1861 about 10,000 people were killed. Mostly by the sordid avarice of the owners of the coal mines. This * generally to be remarked. The capitalistic production is - to a certain degree, when we abstract from the whole process of circulation and the immense complications of commercial and monetary transactions resulting from the basis, the value in exchange - most economical of realised labour, labour realised in commodities. It is a greater spendthrift than any other mode of production of man, of living labour, spendthrift not only of flesh and blood and muscles, but of brains and nerves. It is, in fact, only at the greatest waste of individual development that the development of general men is secured in those epochs of history which prelude to a socialist constitution of mankind.*

“Should this torture then torment us
Since it brings us greater pleasure?
Were not through the rule of Timur
Souls devoured without measure?”a

* * *

We have to distinguish between more parts in the value of the product than in the value of the capital advanced. The latter = c + v. The former = c + δL. (The part of the product which expresses the newly added labour.) But a = v + s, = The value of the variable capital + the surplus value.

* * *

If concentration of the means of production in the hands of relatively few people - as compared to the mass of the labouring multitude - is in general the condition and prerequisite of capitalist production, because, without it, the means of production would not separate themselves from the producers, and the latter would, therefore, not be converted into wages labourers - this concentration is also a technological condition for the development of the capitalist mode of production and, with it, of the productive power of society. It is in short a material condition for production on a large scale. [11-93] Labour in common is developed through concentration - association, division of labour, the employment of machinery, science and the forces of nature. But there is still another point connected with it, which must be considered under the rate of profit,137 but not yet in the analysis of surplus value. The concentration of workers and of the means of labour in a small area, etc., involves economy of power, the common use by many people of means such as buildings, etc., heating, etc., the cost of which does not increase in proportion to the numbers they serve; lastly labour too, economy on the overhead costs of production. This is particularly clear in the case of agriculture.

a Goethe, “An Suleika”, from Westöstlicher Diwan. - Ed.

“With the progress of civilisation all, and perhaps more than all the capital and labour which once loosely occupied 500 acres, are now concentrated for the more complete tillage of 100” (R. Jones, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth etc., Part I. On Rent, London, 1831, p[p. 190-] 91).

“The cost of getting 24 bushels from 1 acre is less than was the cost of getting 24 from 2; the concentrated space

//this concentration of space is also important in manufacture. Yet the employment of a shared motor, etc., is still more important here. In agriculture, although space is concentrated relatively to the amount of capital and labour employed, it is an enlarged sphere of production, as compared to the sphere of production formerly occupied or worked upon by one single, independent agent of production. The sphere is absolutely greater. Hence the possibility of employing horses, etc. //

“in which the operations of husbandry are carried on, must give some advantages and save some expense; the fencing, draining, seed, harvest work, etc., less when confined to one acre, etc.” (l.c., [p.] 199).

Ten Hours’ Bill and Overworking.

* “Though the health of a population is so important a part of the national capital, we are afraid it must be said that the class of employers of labour have not been the most forward to guard and cherish this treasure. ‘The men of the West Riding’ ” * (quotes The Times from the Report of the Registrar General for October 1861a) * “ ‘became the clothiers of mankind, and so intent were they on this work, that the health of the workpeople was sacrificed, and the race in a few generations must have degenerated. But a reaction set in. Lord Shaftesbury’s Bill limited the hours of children’s labour, etc.’ The consideration of the health of the operatives” * (adds The Times) * “was forced upon the millowners by society.” *

In the larger tailoring shops in London a given piece of work, e.g. on trousers, a coat, etc., is called “an hour”, “a half hour”. (The “hour” = 6d.) How much the average product of an hour comes to is naturally determined by practice. If new fashions or particular improvements and methods of mending emerge, a contest arises between employer and workmen over whether a particular piece of work = 1 hour, etc., until here too experience has decided the question. Similarly in many London furniture workshops, etc.

a “Every government has its traditions. ...”, The Times, No. 24082, November 5, 1861. - Ed.

(It goes without saying that, apart from certain arrangements for apprenticeship, etc., only those workers are taken on who possess the average skill and can deliver during the day the average amount of product. At times when business is bad, where there is no continuity of labour, this latter circumstance is naturally a matter of indifference to the employer.)

[III-95a/A] As one of the main advantages of the Factory Acts:

* “A still greater boon is the distinction at last made clear between the worker’s own time and his master’s. The worker knows now when that which he sells is ended, and when his own begins; and, by possessing sure foreknowledge of this, is enabled to pre-arrange his own minutes for his own purposes” * (Reports of the Inspectors of Factories for the Half Year Ending 31st October 1859. Report of Mr. Robert Baker, p. 52).138

For the worker himself, labour capacity only has use value in so far as it is exchange value, not in so far as it produces exchange values.139 As use value labour exists only for capital, and it is the use value of capital itself, i.e. it is the mediating activity through which capital is increased. Capital is autonomous exchange value as process, as valorisation process.

The separation of property from labour appears as a necessary law of the exchange between capital and labour. As not-capital, not-objectified labour labour capacity appears: 1) Negatively. Not-raw material, not-instrument of labour, not-product, not-means of subsistence, not-money: labour separated from all the means of labour and life, from the whole of its objectivity, as a mere possibility. This complete denudation, this possibility of labour devoid of all objectivity. Labour capacity as absolute poverty, i.e. the complete exclusion of objective wealth. The objectivity possessed by labour capacity is only the bodily existence of the worker himself, his own objectivity.

2) Positively. Not-objectified labour, the unobjective, subjective existence of labour itself. Labour not as object but as activity, as living source of value. In contrast to capital, which is the reality3 of general wealth, it is the general possibility of the same, asserting itself in action. As object, on the one hand, labour is absolute poverty; as subject and activity, [on the other,] it is the general possibility of wealth. This is labour, such as it is presupposed by capital as antithesis, as the objective existence of capital, and such as for its part it in turn presupposes capital.

What the capitalist pays the worker, as with the buyer of any other commodity, is the exchange value of his commodity, which is therefore determined in advance of this exchange process; what the capitalist receives is the use value of the labour capacity—labour itself, the enriching activity of which therefore belongs to him and not to the worker. Hence the worker is not enriched by this process; he rather creates wealth as a power alien to him and ruling over him.

a Here the word “Entelechy” is written in Marx’s hand above the line.— Ed.

## Absolute Surplus Value

Ten Hours’ Birt and OVERWORKING. 

*“ Though the health of a population is so important a part of the national capital, 
we are afraid it must be said that the class of employers of labour have not been 
the most forward to guard and cherish this treasure. “The men of the West 
Riding’”’ * (quotes The Times from the Report of the Registrar General for October 
1861“) * ‘became the clothiers of mankind, and so intent were they on this work, 
that the health of the workpeople was sacrificed, and the race in a few generations 
must have degenerated. But a reaction set in. Lord Shaftesbury’s Bill limited the 
hours of children’s labour, etc.’ The consideration of the health of the 
operatives’ * (adds The Times) * “was forced upon the millowners by society.” * 

In the larger tailoring shops in London a given piece of work, 
e.g. on trousers, a Coat, etc., is called “an hour’, ‘“‘a half hour”. 
(The ‘“hour’=6d.) How much the averace product of an hour 

a “Every government has its traditions. ...”, The Times, No. 24082, November 

170 The Production Process of Capital 

comes to is naturally determined by practice. If new fashions or 
particular improvements and methods of mending emerge, a 
contest arises between EMPLOYER and worRKMEN over whether a 
particular piece of work=1 hour, etc., until here too experience 
has decided the question. Similarly in many London furniture 
workshops, etc. 

(It goes without saying that, apart from certain arrangements 
for apprenticeship, etc., only those workers are taken on who 
possess the averAcE skiLL and can deliver during the day the AveracE 
amount of product. At times when business is bad, where there is 
nO CONTINUITY OF LABOUR, this latter circumstance is naturally a matter 
of indifference to the EMPLOYER.) 

[I11I-95a/A] As one of the main advantages of the Factory Acts: 

*“A still greater boon is the distinction at last made clear between the worker’s own 
time and his master’s. The worker knows now when that which he sells is ended, and 
when his own begins; and, by possessing sure foreknowledge of this, is enabled to 
pre-arrange his own minutes for his own purposes” * (Reports of the Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half Year Ending 31st October 1859. Report of Mr. Robert Baker, 
p. 52).138 

For the worker himself, labour capacity only has use value in so 
far as it is exchange value, not in so far as it produces exchange 
values.!°? As use value labour exists only for capital, and it is the 
use value of capital itself, i.e. it is the mediating activity through 
which capital is increased. Capital is autonomous exchange value as 
process, as valorisation process. 

The separation of property from labour appears as a necessary law 
of the exchange between capital and labour. As _ not-capital, 
not-objectified labour labour capacity appears: 1) Negatively. Not-raw 
material, not-instrument of labour, not-product, not-means of 
subsistence, not-money: labour separated from all the means of 
labour and life, from the whole of its objectivity, as a mere 
possibility. This complete denudation, this possibility of labour 
devoid of all objectivity. Labour capacity as absolute poverty, i.e. the 
complete exclusion of objective wealth. The objectivity possessed 
by labour capacity is only the bodily existence of the worker 
himself, his own objectivity. 

Transformation of Money into Capital 171 

2) Positively. Not-objectified labour, the unobjective, subjective 
existence of labour itself. Labour not as object but as activity, as 
living source of value. In contrast to capital, which is the reality* 
of general wealth, it is the general possibility of the same, asserting 
itself in action. As object, on the one hand, labour is absolute poverty; 
as subject and activity, [on the other,] it is the general possibility of 
wealth. This is labour, such as it is presupposed by capital as 
antithesis, as the objective existence of capital, and such as for its 
part it in turn presupposes capital. 

What the capitalist pays the worker, as with the buyer of any 
other commodity, is the exchange value of his commodity, which is 
therefore determined in advance of this exchange process; what 
the capitalist receives is the use value of the labour capacity— 
labour itself, the enriching activity of which therefore belongs to 
him and not to the worker. Hence the worker is not enriched by 
this process; he rather creates wealth as a power alien to him and 
ruling over him. 

a Here the word “Entelechy” is written in Marx’s hand above the line.— Ed. 

172

## Surplus Value Is to Be Conceived as a Simple Relation to a Definite Portion of Capital, Namely That Laid Out in Wages

The view presented here is also correct in strictly mathematical 
terms. Thus in the differential calculus let us take e.g. y=f(x)+6, 
where c is a constant magnitude. THE CHANGE OF x INTO x+Ax DOES 
NOT ALTER THE VALUE OF ¢. dc would=0, because the constant 
magnitude does not alter. HENCE THE DIFFERENTIAL OF A CONSTANT IS 

ZERO. pa 

a) SURPLUS VALUE IS TO BE CONCEIVED AS 
A SIMPLE RELATION TO A DEFINITE PORTION 
OF CAPITAL, NAMELY THAT LAID OUT IN WAGES 

At the end of the production process capital has a surplus value, 
which means, expressed in accordance with the general concept of 
exchange value: The labour time objectified in the product (or the 
quantity of labour contained in it) is greater than the labour time 
contained in the original capital, the capital advanced during the 
production process. This is only possible (assuming that the 
commodity is sold at its value) because the labour time objectified 
in the price of labour (the wage of labour) is less than the living 
labour time by which it is replaced in the production process. 
What appears as surplus value on the side of capital, appears as 
surplus labour* on the side of the worker. Surplus value is nothing 
but the excess labour provided by the worker over and above the 
quantity of objectified labour he has received in his own wage as 
the value of his labour capacity. 

We have seen that equivalents are exchanged in the exchange 
between capital and labour capacity.* But the result of the 
transaction, as it appears in the production process and as it forms 
on the part of the capitalist the whole purpose of the transaction, 
is this, that the capitalist buys a greater quantity of living labour 
for a definite quantity of objectified labour, or that the labour 
time which is objectified in the wage is less than the labour time 
which the worker works for the capitalist and which is accordingly 
objectified in the product. The mediatory role of the exchange 
between capital and labour capacity (or the fact that the labour 
capacity is sold at tts value) is a circumstance which is irrelevant in 
this context, where the question at issue is the analysis of surplus 
value. What is at stake here is rather the magnitude of the labour 
time objectified in the wage (the value of labour capacity), on the 
one hand, and on the other hand the magnitude of the labour 
time the worker really gives to the capitalist In RETURN, or how much 
use is made of his labour capacity. 

The relation in which objectified labour is exchanged for living 
labour—hence the difference between the value of labour capacity 
and the valorisation of that labour capacity by the capitalist assumes 
another form in the production process itself. For there it presents 
itself as a splitting up of living labour itself into two quantities, 
both measured by time, and as the ratio between these two 
quantities. For firstly the worker replaces the value of his labour 
capacity. 

Let us assume the value of his daily means of subsistence to be 
equal to 10 hours of labour. He reproduces this value by working 
for 10 hours. Let us call this part of the labour time the necessary 
labour time. Let us assume that the material of labour and the 
means of labour—the objective conditions of labour—are the 
property of the worker himself. On our assumption he would have 
to work 10 hours a day, reproduce a value of 10 hours of labour 
time a day, in order to be able every following day to appropriate 
for himself means of subsistence to the amount of 10 hours of 
labour, to reproduce his own labour capacity, to be able to 
continue living. The product of his 10 hours of labour would be 
equal to the labour time contained in the worked up raw material 
and the tool used up in the process of labour+the 10 hours of 
new labour he would have added to the raw material. He could 
only consume the latter portion of the product if he wished to 
continue producing, i.e. to preserve his conditions of production. 

For he must deduct the value of the raw material and the means 
of labour from the value of his product every day in order to be 
able to replace constantly the raw material and the means of 
labour; in order to have afresh at his disposal every day as much 
raw material and means of labour as is required for the realisation 
(application) of ten hours of labour. If the value of the worker’s 
average daily necessary means of subsistence is equal to 10 hours 
of labour, he must work a daily average of 10 hours of labour to 
be able to replace his daily consumption, and provide himself with 
the conditions needed for his life as a worker. This labour would 
be necessary for him personally, for his [III-96] own self- 
preservation, quite irrespective of whether he is or is not himself 
the owner of the conditions of labour—material of labour and 
means of labour, whether his labour is or is not subsumed under 
capital. This labour time is necessary for the preservation of the 
working class itself, and we can call this part of labour time 
necessary labour time. 

But we can also call it this from another point of view. 

The labour time which is necessary to reproduce the value of 
labour capacity itself—i.e. the daily production of the worker 
which is required so that the worker's consumption can be 
repeated every day—or the labour time with which the worker 
adds to the product the value he himself receives every day and 
destroys every day in the form of wages— is also necessary labour 
time from the standpoint of the capitalist in so far as the whole 
capital-relation presupposes the continuous existence of the 
working class, its continuing reproduction, and capitalist produc- 
tion has as its necessary prerequisite the continuous availability, 
preservation and reproduction of a working class. 

Further: Let us suppose that the value of the capital advanced 
for production has to be simply preserved and reproduced, i.e. the 
capitalist creates no new value in the production process. It is then 
clear that the value of the product will only be equal to the value 
of the capital advanced, if the worker adds to the raw material as 
much labour time as he has received in the form of wages, ie. if 
he reproduces the value of his own wage. The labour time which 
is necessary for the worker to reproduce the value of his own daily 
means of subsistence is at the same time the labour time necessary 
for capital simply to preserve and reproduce its value. 

We have assumed that a labour time of 10 hours=the labour 
time contained in the wage; hence the labour time during which 
the worker only gives back to the capitalist an equivalent for the 
value of the wage is at the same time the necessary labour time, the 

labour time necessary both for the preservation of the working 
class itself and for the simple preservation and reproduction of the 
capital advanced, and, finally, for the possibility of the capital- 
relation altogether. 

On our assumption, then, the first 10 hours the worker works 
are necessary labour time and this is at the same time nothing but an 
equivalent for the objectified labour time he has received in the 
form of the wage. Let us call surplus labour all the labour time the 
worker works over and above these 10 hours, this necessary labour 
time. If he works 11 hours, he has provided 1 hour of surplus 
labour, if 12, two hours of surplus labour, and so on. In the first 
case the product possesses a surplus value of one hour in excess of 
the value of the capital advanced, in the second case a surplus 
value of 2 hours, and so on. But in all circumstances the surplus 
value of the product is only the objectification of surplus labour. 
Surplus value is simply objectified surplus labour time, just as value 
in general is merely objectified labour time. Thus surplus value 
amounts to labour time the worker works for the capitalist in 
excess of the necessary labour time. 

We have seen that the capitalist pays the worker an equivalent 
for the daily value of his labour capacity; but he receives in return 
the right to extract from that labour capacity a value greater than 
its own value. If 10 hours of labour a day are necessary for the 
daily reproduction of labour capacity, he sets the worker to work 
for e.g. 12 hours. In reality, therefore, he exchanges 10 hours of 
objectified labour time (objectified in the wage) for 12 hours of 
living labour time. The ratio in which he exchanges objectified 
labour time (objectified in the capital advanced) for living labour 
time is the same as the ratio of the worker’s necessary labour time 
to his surplus labour, the labour time he works over and above the 
necessary labour time. It therefore presents itself as a ratio 
between two portions of the labour time of the worker himself — 
necessary labour time and surplus labour. The necessary labour 
time is the same as the labour time necessary to reproduce the 
wage. It is therefore a simple equivalent given back to the 
capitalist by the worker. The latter has received a certain labour 
time in money; he gives it back in the form of living labour time. 
The necessary labour time is therefore paid labour time. On the 
other hand, no equivalent has been paid for the surplus labour.* 
It is rather the valorisation of labour [III-97] capacity by the 
capitalist in excess of that capacity’s own value. It is therefore 

* Id est, it has not been objectified in an equivalent for the worker himself. 

unpaid labour time. The ratio in which objectified labour is 
exchanged for living labour can be resolved into the ratio between 
the necessary labour time of the worker and his surplus labour, 
and the latter ratio can be resolved into the ratio of paid to unpaid 
labour time. Surplus value is equal to surplus labour is equal to 
unpaid labour time. Surplus value can therefore be resolved into 
unpaid labour time, and the level of surplus value depends on the 
ratio in which surplus labour stands to necessary labour, or unpaid 
to paid labour time. 

If we look now at capital, we find that it is originally split up 
into 3 constituent parts (only two in some industries, such as the 
extractive industries*; but we are taking the most complete form, 
that of manufacturing industry): raw material, instrument of 
production, and finally the part of capital which is exchanged for 
labour capacity in the first instance. Here we are concerned only 
with the exchange value of capital. As regards the part of the 
capital’s value that is contained in the used up raw material and 
means of production, we have seen that it simply re-appears in the 
product.” This part of capital never adds more to the value of the 
product than the value it itself possesses independently of the 
production process. In reference to the value of the product, we 
can call this part of the capital its constant part. As noted under 
heading I, its value may rise or fall, but this rising or falling has 
nothing to do with the production process, in which these values 
enter as values of the material and the instrument of production.‘ 

If 12 hours are worked instead of 10, more raw material is of 
course necessary so as to absorb the two hours of surplus labour. 
What we call constant capital will therefore enter the production 
process in an amount, i.e. an amount of value, a magnitude of 
value, which varies according to the quantity of labour the raw 
material has to absorb, in general the quantity of labour to be 
objectified in the production process. But it is constant in so far as 
its magnitude of value, whatever its ratio towards the total amount 
of capital advanced, re-appears unchanged in the product. We 
have seen that it is not itself reproduced in the proper sense of the 
word. It is rather just preserved because the material and means 
of labour are (in accordance with their use value), made into 
factors of the new product by labour, as a result of which the 

constant capital’s value re-appears in this product. And this value 
is determined simply by the labour time required for its own 
production. They add to the labour time contained in the product 
only as much labour time as they themselves contained before the 
production process. 

It is therefore only the 3rd part of capital, the part exchanged 
for labour capacity or advanced in wages, which is variable. Firstly, 
it is really reproduced. The value of labour capacity, or the wage 
of labour, is annihilated (the value and the use value), consumed 
by the worker. But it is replaced by a new equivalent; an equal 
quantity of living labour time, added by the worker to the raw 
material or materialised in the product, steps into the place of the 
labour time objectified in the wage. And secondly, this part of the 
value of the capital is not only reproduced, and simply replaced by 
an equivalent, but also exchanged in the actual production process 
for a quantity of labour=the labour contained in it+an excess 
quantity of labour, the surplus labour the worker performs over 
and above the labour time which is necessary for the reproduction 
of his own wage, hence is contained in the component of the value 
of the capital which can be resolved into wages. Therefore, if we 
call the labour time contained in constant capital c, that contained 
in variable capital v, and the time the worker has to work over and 
above the necessary labour time s, the labour time contained in P, 
or the value of the product,=c+(uv+s). The original capital was 
equal to c+v. The excess of its value over its original value 
therefore=s. But the value of c simply re-appears in the product, 
whereas the value of v is firstly reproduced in v and secondly 
increased by s. It is therefore only the part of the value of the 
capital denoted by v which has changed, in that v has reproduced 
itself as u+s. s is therefore only a result of an alteration in v*; and 
the ratio in which surplus value is created is expressed as v:s, the 
ratio in which the labour time contained in the v component of 
the value of the total capital has been exchanged for living labour 
time, [III-98] or, which is the same thing, the ratio of necessary to 
surplus labour, of v:s. The newly created value results from the 
alteration in v alone, its transformation into v+s. It is only this part 
of capital which increases its value or posits surplus value. The 
ratio, therefore, in which surplus value is posited, is the ratio in 
which s stands to v, in which the part of the value of capital 

* If it is assumed that c=O and that the capitalist has advanced wages alone 
(variable capital), the magnitude of s remains the same although no part of the 
product replaces c. 

expressed in uv is not only reproduced but magnified. The best 
demonstration of this is that if v is simply replaced by an amount 
of labour time equal to that contained in v itself, no surplus value 
at all is created; on the contrary, the value of the product is equal 
to the value of the capital advanced. 

If, therefore, surplus value is, in general, nothing but the excess 
of living labour for which the labour objectified in capital 1s 
exchanged, or, which is the same thing, nothing but the unpaid 
labour time worked by the worker over and above the necessary 
labour time, the magnitude of the surplus value, the ratio in which 
it stands to the value it replaces, the ratio in which it grows, is 
simply determined by the ratio s:v, surplus labour to necessary 
labour, or, and this is the same, the ratio of the labour time 
advanced by the capitalist in wages to the surplus of labour, etc. 
Thus if the necessary (wage-reproducing) labour time=10 hours, 
and the worker works for 12, the surplus value is equal to 2 hours, 
and the ratio in which the’ value advanced has 
increased =2:10,='/;,=20%, whatever may be the amount of 
labour time contained in ¢, the constant part of capital, whether it 
is 50, 60, 100, in short x hours of labour, whatever may be the 
ratio of the variable to the constant part of capital. As we have 
seen, the value of this [the constant] part of capital simply 
re-appears in the product and has absolutely nothing to do with 
the value-creation that occurs during the production process 
itself.* 

It is very important to keep a strong hold on the idea that 
surplus value=surplus labour, and that the ratio of surplus value is 
the ratio of surplus labour to necessary labour. In this connection 
the customary notion of profit and the rate of profit should 
initially be entirely forgotten. What kind of relation exists between 
surplus value and profit will be seen later on.” 

* [I-A] // If the original ratio of necessary labour to surplus labour= 
10 hours: 2 hours=5:1, and if now 16 hours are worked instead of 12, hence 4 more 
hours, the worker would have to receive 31/3 and the capitalist only 2/, of an 
hour from those 4 hours for the ratio to remain the same; for 10:2=3 1/3:2/3= 
10/3:2/,=10:2. But under the mathematical law that “A RATIO OF GREATER

## Ratio of Surplus Labour to Necessary Labour. Measure of Surplus Labour

b) RATIO OF SURPLUS LABOUR TO NECESSARY LABOUR.
MEASURE OF SURPLUS LABOUR

Capital has in common with hoarding the boundless tendency to
self-enrichment.” Because surplus value is reducible to surplus
labour, capital has a boundless drive to increase surplus labour.
Capital endeavours, in return for the objectified labour expended
in wages, to obtain the greatest possible quantity of living labour
time, i.e. the greatest possible excess of labour time over and above
the labour time required for the reproduction of the wage, i.e.
the reproduction of the value of the daily means of subsistence of
the worker himself. The whole of capital’s history is a proof of its
unrestrained extravagances in this respect. The tendency is
evident everywhere without concealment, and it is only held in
check in part by physical conditions, and in part by social
obstacles, which we shall not go into in any more detail here (and
which that tendency itself is the first to create). All we need do
here is note the tendency. In this respect it is interesting for
example to compare the modern factory system in England with
corvée labour, perhaps in the Danubian Principalities. The two
forms, of which one is a developed capitalist form and the other
is among the crudest forms of serfdom, display with equal
clarity the appropriation of alien excess labour, of surplus labour,
as the direct source of enrichment.© The special circumstances
additionally present in the factory system, in the developed
capitalist mode of production, which allow labour time to be

a See this volume, pp. 252-53.— Ed.
b Ibid., p. 18.— Ed

Absolute Surplus Value 18]

lengthened unnaturally, beyond its natural bounds, can only be
indicated more closely in the course of this investigation.’

In comparing Walachian corvée labour with English wage labour
the following point is to be kept in view. If the total daily labour
time of a worker consists of 12 or 14 hours, and the necessary
labour time in each case amounts to only 10 hours, the worker
would provide in the course of 6 days of the week in the first case
6X2 or 12 hours of surplus labour, in the second case 6X4 or
24 hours of surplus labour. In the first case [he] would work one
day out of 6 for the capitalist without equivalent, in the second
case 2 days. Over the whole year, week in week out, the situation
can be resolved into this: he works 1, 2 or x days a week for the
capitalist, but the other days of the week he works for himself.
This is the form in which the relation appears directly in corvée
labour, that of Walachia for example. In essence the general
relation is in both cases the same, although the form—the
mediation of the relation—is different.

There are, however, natural barriers to the duration of the daily
labour time of a particular individual. Leaving aside the time
required for the intake of food, the individual needs sleep,
relaxation, needs a break during which labour capacity and its
organ can enjoy the rest without which they are incapable of
continuing the work or starting afresh. The day itself can be
characterised as the natural measure of labour’s duration, and
indeed in England the 12 hour day is called the “workinc pay”. The
limits of the working day are however indistinct, and we find it
extended from 10 to 17 (18) hours among different nations and in
specific branches of industry within the same nation. The periods
of work and rest can be displaced, so that for example work can
be done during the night, with the daytime for resting, sleeping.
Or the working day can be distributed between day and night. In
the Russian factories in Moscow, for example, we find that work
proceeds for 24 hours, day and night. (This was also the case in
large part in the early days of the English cotton industry.) But
then two teams (sets) of workers are employed. The first team
works 6 hours during the day and is then replaced by the second
team. After that the first team again works for 6 hours during the
night and is then again replaced for the following 6 hours by the
second team. Or (as in the case of the dressmaker, which is to be
cited) (Bakers too) 30 hours can be worked, one after another, and
then a break, etc.'*°

a See this volume, pp. 331-36.— Ed.

182 The Production Process of Capital

(III-100]* The examples (to be brought in here) on the
extraction of labour time are also useful, because they show
strikingly how value, i. e. wealth as such, can simply be reduced to
labour time.

We have seen that the capitalist pays labour capacity its
equivalent, and that the valorisation of labour capacity beyond its
value does not stand in contradiction to this operation, which
occurs according to the law of the exchange of commodities °—
namely the law that commodities exchange in proportion to the
labour time contained in them, or in proportion to the labour time
required to produce them—on the contrary, that it proceeds from
the specific nature of the use value of the commodity which is
being sold here. Hence the degree to which labour capacity is
valorised by the capitalist, or the extent to which the duration of
labour time in the actual production process is increased, appears
to be a matter of complete indifference, i. e. it does not appear to
be given by the nature of the relation itself. That is to say, in other
words: The magnitude of the living surplus labour, hence also of
the total living labour time obtained by capital in exchange for a
particular quantity of objectified labour, determined by the cost of
production of labour capacity itself, appears to be subject to just as
little restriction by the nature of this economic relation itself as the
manner in which a buyer utilises the use value of a commodity is
determined by the relation of sale and purchase as such. It is
much rather independent of this. The limits that develop
here—e. g., later, economically from the relation of supply and
demand or from state intervention and the like—do not, by
contrast, appear to be included in the general relation itself.

Nevertheless, the following point must be considered: What on
capital’s side is the valorisation of labour capacity (or, as we
previously called it, the consumption of labour capacity ‘—it is of
the nature of labour capacity that its consumption is at the same
time a process of valorisation, objectification of labour) is on the
worker’s side work, hence the expenditure of vital force. If labour
is prolonged beyond a certain period—or labour capacity is
valorised to more than a certain extent—labour capacity will be
temporarily or definitively destroyed, instead of being preserved.
If the capitalist sets the worker to work for e. g. 20 hours today,
tomorrow he will be incapable of working the normal labour time

a Corrected page number. Marx has [IIJ-160).— Ed.
b See this volume, pp. 87-88 and 105.— Ed.

of 12 hours or perhaps any labour time at all. If the overwork
extends over a long period, the worker will perhaps only preserve
himself and therefore his labour capacity for 7 years instead of the
20 or 30 years for which he might otherwise have preserved it. It
is well known, for example, that before the invention of the corron
cIn the 2 hours of manufacturing labour (domestic labour) the
slaves in the southern states of North America had to perform to
separate the cotton wool from its seed, after they had worked in
the fields for 12 hours, reduced their average life expectancy to
7 years. This is still at this moment the case in Cuba, where after
12 hours in the fields the Negroes have a further two hours of
manufacturing labour to perform in connection with the prepara-
tion of sugar or tobacco.

But if the worker sells his labour capacity at its value—and we
are proceeding from this assumption in our investigation, just as
we proceed altogether from the presupposition that commodities
are sold at their value*—all that is assumed thereby is that he
receives an average daily wage which enables him to continue
living in his customary manner as a worker, hence that he is in the
same normal state of health the day afterwards as the day before
(leaving aside the degeneration brought about naturally through
age or through the kind of work he does); that his labour capacity
is reproduced or preserved, hence can be valorised again in the same
way as on the previous day, over a definite normal period of time,
e. g. 20 years. Thus if surplus labour is stretched out to an extent
of overwork which forcibly shortens, temporarily annihilates, i. e.
damages or entirely destroys, the normal duration of labour
capacity this condition is breached. The worker places the use of
his labour capacity at [the capitalist’s] disposal "—if he sells it at its
value—but only to such an extent as to rule out the destruction of
the value of the labour capacity itself, or rather, only to an extent
sufficient to ensure that the wage enables him to reproduce his
labour capacity, to preserve it throughout a certain normal
average time. If the capitalist uses the worker for longer than this
normal labour time, he destroys the labour capacity and with that
its value. He has, after all, only bought the labour capacity’s
average daily [III-101] value, hence by no means the value it
possesses on the next day as well. In other words, he has not
bought in 7 years the value it possesses during 20.

Hence, as, on the one hand, the specific use value of this

a See this volume, p. 33.— Ed.

184 The Production Process of Capital

commodity—labour capacity—implies that its consumption is itself
valorisation, the creation of value, so on the other hand, the
specific nature of this use value implies that the extent to which it
can be consumed, valorised, must be kept within certain limits to
prevent the destruction of its own exchange value.

Here, where we are making the overall assumption that the
worker sells his labour capacity at its value, we also assume that
the total period, the sum of the necessary labour time and the
surplus labour time, does not exceed the normal working day,
whether this is set at 12, 13 or 14 hours, worked by the worker in
order to preserve his labour capacity in its customary state of
health and ability to work for a certain normal average period,
and to reproduce it every day afresh.

It follows from what has been said, however, that there is an
antinomy here in the general relation itself. This antinomy arises
in the following way: On the one hand, if we disregard the natural
limit which absolutely prohibits the extension of labour time
beyond a certain duration, the general relation between capital
and labour—the sale of labour capacity— posits no limit to surplus
labour. But on the other hand, in so far as surplus labour destroys
the value of labour capacity itself, whereas labour capacity’s use is
only sold to the extent to which it preserves and reproduces itself
as labour capacity, implying also the preservation of its value
throughout a definite normal period of time, surplus labour which
goes beyond a certain indeterminate boundary contradicts the very
nature of the relation which is given with the worker’s sale of his
labour capacity.

We know that in practice it depends on the relative power of the
buyer and the seller (which is determined each time economically)
whether a commodity is sold at less or more than its value.
Similarly here. Whether the worker provides surplus labour of
more than the normal amount or not will depend on the power of
resistance he is able to oppose to the measureless demands of
capital. The history of modern industry teaches us, however, that
the measureless demands of capital could never be held in check
by the isolated efforts of the worker. The struggle had instead to
take on the form of a class struggle, and thereby call forth the
intervention of the state power, before the overall daily labour
time was confined within certain limits (as yet mostly within certain
spheres alone).

One might think that, just as the slaveowner, when he has
consumed the Negro in 7 years, is compelled to replace him with a
fresh purchase of Negroes, so capital must itself pay for the rapid

exhaustion of the workers, since the continuous existence of the
working class is capital’s fundamental prerequisite. The individual
Capitalist A may have enriched himself through this “kiLLINc No
MURDER”, '*’ whereas Capitalist B has perhaps to pay the Expenses, or
Generation B of the capitalists does. Nevertheless, the individual
capitalist perpetually rebels against the overall interest of the
capitalist class. On the other hand, the history of modern industry
has shown that continuous overpopulation is possible, although it
consists of a stream of human generations plucked so to speak
before they are ripe, quickly wasted and following each other in
rapid succession. (See the passage in Wakefield.'**)

## Advantage of Overwork

c) ADVANTAGE OF OVERWORK

Let us assume that the average necessary labour time=10 hours,
and that the normal surplus labour=2 hours, hence the total daily
labour time of the worker=12 hours. Now assume that the
capitalist sets the worker to work for 13 hours a day during 6 days
of the week, hence 1 hour over the normal or average surplus
labour time. These 6 hours amount to ?/o working day in the
week. Now one has to take into consideration more than this
surplus value of 6 hours. In order to appropriate 6 hours of
surplus labour, the capitalist would under normal conditions have
had to employ 1 worker for 3 days or 3 workers for one day, i. e.
he would have had to pay for 30 (3x10) hours of necessary labour
time. With this daily extra hour of surplus labour he obtains half a
day of surplus labour a week, without having to pay for the 3 days
of necessary labour time he would have had to pay for under
normal conditions, so as to appropriate the 6 hours of surplus
labour. In the first case a surplus value of only 20%; in the
second, one of 30%; but the last 10% of surplus value do not cost
him any necessary labour time.

## Simultaneous Working Days

[III-102] d) SIMULTANEOUS WORKING DAYS

The amount of surplus value evidently depends not only on the
surplus labour performed by an individual worker above and
beyond the necessary labour time; it depends just as much on the
number of workers employed simultaneously by capital, or the
number of simultaneous working days it makes use of, each of
these=necessary labour time+surplus labour time.’ If the neces-
sary labour time=10 hours, the surplus labour=2, and the total
working day of a worker therefore equals 12 hours, the mag-

186 The Production Process of Capital

nitude of the surplus value will depend on its own magnitude x by
the number of workers employed by capital, or by the number of
simultaneous working days from which the surplus value has
resulted. By simultaneous working days we mean the period
during which a certain number of workers work on the same day.

If a capitalist employs e.g. 6 workers, each of whom works for
12 hours, the 6 simultaneous working days, or 72 hours, objec-
tified by him in the production process, are transferred to the
objective form of value. If the surplus labour of a worker amounts
to 2 hours, on top of 10 hours of necessary labour time, the
surplus labour of 6 workers=6X2=12 hours. (That is, the surplus
labour of the individual worker multiplied by the number of
workers simultaneously employed.) With n workers, then, nx2,
and it is clear that the magnitude of the product n x2 depends on
the magnitude of n, the factor which expresses the number of
workers or the number of simultaneous working days. It is equally
clear that if the mass, the total amount, of surplus value grows with
the number of workers and depends on it, the ratio of surplus
value to necessary labour time, or the ratio in which the capital
advanced in the purchase of labour valorises itself, the proportionate
magnitude of the surplus value, is not thereby altered, hence there
is no change in the ratio between the paid and the unpaid labour.
2:10 is 20%, and so is 2X6:10X6, or 12:60. (2:10=12:60.)
(Or, expressed more generally, 2:10=nX2:nx10. For
2xXnxX10=10XnxX2.) Assuming that the ratio of surplus value to
necessary labour time is given, the amount of surplus value can
only grow in proportion to the increase in the number of workers
(of simultaneous working days). Assuming that the number of
workers is given, the amount, the mass, of surplus value can only
grow in the measure to which the surplus value itself grows, i.e. as
the duration of the surplus labour increases. 2Xn (n being the
number of workers) is equal to 4X"/s.

It is therefore clear that if a particular ratio between necessary
labour time and surplus labour is given—or if the total time
worked by the worker has reached what we shall call the normal
working day—the amount of the surplus value depends on the
number of workers who are simultaneously employed, and it can
only grow in so far as this number increases.

We therefore take the normal working day as the measure of the
consumption and valorisation of labour capacity.

The amount of surplus value therefore depends on the
population and other circumstances (size of capital, etc.) which we
shall investigate straight away.

This much must be noted before we proceed. For the owner of
money or commodities to be able to valorise as capital his money
or commodities, in short the value he possesses, and therefore for
him to produce as a capitalist, it is necessary in advance that he be
capable of employing a certain minimum number of workers
simultaneously. From this point of view, too, a certain minimum
magnitude of value is a prerequisite if it is to be employed as
productive capital. The first condition for this magnitude is given
from the outset by the fact that, in order to live as a worker, the
worker would need merely the amount of raw material (and
means of labour) required to absorb the necessary labour time, say
10 hours. The capitalist must be able to buy at least as much more
raw material as is required to absorb the surplus labour time (or
also as much more of the matiéres instrumentales, etc.). Secondly,
however: Suppose the necessary labour time is 10 hours and the
surplus labour time is 2 hours. The capitalist, if he does not work
himself, would have already to employ 5 workers, so as to take in
a value of 10 hours of labour a day in addition to the value of his
capital. But what he took in every day in the form of surplus value
[III-103] would only enable him to live like one of his workers.
And even this only on condition that his purpose was merely the
preservation of his life, as with the workers, hence not the increase
of his capital, which is the presupposition with capitalist produc-
tion. If he worked alongside them, so as to earn a wage himself,
his mode of life would scarcely differ from that of a worker (it
would merely give him the position of a somewhat better paid
worker) (and this boundary is made hard and fast by the guild
regulations). He would in any case still stand very close to the
position of a worker, particularly if he were to increase his capital,
i.e. capitalise a portion of the surplus value. This is the situation of
the guild masters in the Middle Ages, and in part still that of the
present master craftsmen. They do not produce as capitalists.

If the necessary labour time is given, and similarly the ratio of
surplus labour to it—in a word, the normal working day, the
overall sum of which=the necessary labour time+the time the
surplus labour lasts—the amount of surplus labour, hence the amount
of surplus value, depends on the number of simultaneous working
days, or the number of workers who can be set in motion
simultaneously by capital. In other words: the amount of surplus
value—its total amount—will depend on the number of labour
capacities available and present in the market, hence on the
magnitude of the working population and the proportion in which
this population grows. Hence the natural growth of population,

188 The Production Process of Capital

and therefore the increase of the number of labour capacities
present in the market, is a productive power of capital, since it
provides the basis for the growth in the absolute amount of
surplus value (i.e. of surplus labour).

It is clear on the other hand that capital must grow in order to
employ a greater quantity of workers. Firstly, its constant part must
grow, i.e. the part the value of which merely re-appears in the
product. More raw material is required to absorb more labour.
More of the means of labour is also required, though in a more
indeterminate proportion. If we assume that manual labour is the
main factor, that production is carried on in a handicraft manner
(and here, where we are still only considering the absolute form of
surplus value, this assumption is valid; for although this form of
surplus value remains the fundamental form even of the mode of
production transformed by capital, it is still characteristic of
capital’s mode of production, and it is its sole form as long as
capital has only formally subsumed the labour process under itself,
ie. actually a previous mode of production, in which human
manual labour was the chief factor of production, has merely been
brought under capital’s control”), then the number of instruments
and means of labour must grow fairly uniformly with the number
of the workers themselves and the quantity of raw material
required for labour by the increased number of workers. Thus the
value of the whole constant part of capital grows proportionately to
the growth in the number of workers employed.

Secondly, however, the variable part of capital, which is
exchanged for labour capacity, must grow (as constant capital
grows) in the same proportion as the number of workers or the
number of simultaneous working days. This variable part of
capital will experience its greatest growth under the conditions of
industry of the handicraft type, where the essential factor of
production, the manual labour of the individual, only delivers a
small amount of product in a given time, hence the material
consumed in the production process is small in proportion to the
labour employed; likewise the handicraft instruments, which are
simple and themselves only represent insignificant values. Since
the variable part of capital forms its largest constituent, it will have
to grow most of all when capital grows; or since the variable part
of capital forms its greatest part, it is precisely this part which will
have to grow most significantly when exchanges are made with
more labour capacities. If I employ a capital 7/; of which is
constant, and ?/; of which is laid out in wages, the calculation will
be as follows, if the capital is to employ 2Xn workers instead of n

workers: Originally the capital was= n(7/5+°/s). 2n/5+3n/5. Now it
will be 4n/5+6n/5. The part of capital laid out in wages, or the
variable part, always remains greater than the constant part, in the
same proportion as the growth in the number of workers; in the
same proportion as it was presupposed to be greater at the outset.

On the one hand, therefore, the population must grow, to allow
the amount of surplus value, hence the total capital, to grow
under the given conditions; on the other hand, it is presupposed
that capital has already grown so that the population may grow.
Thus there appears to be a circulus vitiosus* here // which should
be left open as such at this point and not explained. It belongs in
Chapter V'°//.

[111-104] If one assumes that the average wage is sufficient not
only for the preservation of the working population but for its
constant growth, in whatever proportion, an increasing working
population is given in advance for growing capital, while a growth
of surplus labour, hence also an increase of capital through the
growth in population, is simultaneously given. In analysing
capitalist production one must actually proceed from this assump-
tion; for it implies a constant increase in surplus value, i.e. in
capital. We do not yet need to investigate how capitalist
production itself contributes to the growth of population.”

The population numbers working under capital as wage
labourers or the number of labour capacities available on the
market can grow without any absolute growth in the total
population or even in the working population alone. If for
example members of working-class families, such as women and
children, are pressed into capital’s service, and they were not in
this position before, the number of wage labourers has increased
without any increase in the overall size of the working population.
This increase can take place without any increase in the variable
part of capital, the part which is exchanged for labour. The family
might receive the same wage from which they lived previously.
But they would have to provide more labour for the same wage.'”

On the other hand, the overall working population may grow
without any absolute growth in the population as a whole. If
sections of the population which were previously in possession of
the conditions of labour, and worked with them—such as
independent handicraftsmen, allotment-holding peasants, and
lastly small capitalists—are robbed of their conditions of labour (of
property in them) in consequence of the impact of capitalist

a Vicious circle.— Ed.

15*

190 The Production Process of Capital

production, they may turn into wage labourers and thus increase
the absolute number of the working population, without any
increase having occurred in the absolute number of the popula-
tion. There would merely have been an increase in the numerical
size of various classes and in their proportional share in the
absolute population. But this is known to be one of the effects of
the centralisation brought about by capitalist production.* In this
case the amount of the working population would have risen
absolutely. The amount of wealth available and employed in
production would not have increased absolutely. But there would
have been an increase in the portion of wealth turned into capital
and acting as capital.

In both cases there is growth in the number of wage labourers
without any absolute increase, in the one case, in the working
population, and in the other case, in the total population; without
any increase, in the one case, in the amount of capital laid out for
wages, and in the other case, in the absolute amount of wealth
devoted to reproduction. This would at the same time produce an
increase in surplus labour and surplus value and _ therefore
Suvaper” the increase in capital necessary to support the absolute
growth of the population. //This will all be considered under
Accumulation.’”? //

## Character of Surplus Labour

e) CHARACTER OF SURPLUS LABOUR

Once there exists a society in which some people live without
working (without participating directly in the production of use
values), it is clear that the surplus labour of the workers is the
condition of existence of the whole superstructure of the society.
They [the non-workers] receive two things from this surplus
labour. Firstly: the material conditions of life, because they share
in, and subsist on and from, the product which the workers
provide over and above the product required for the reproduction
of their own labour capacity. Secondly: The free time they have at
their disposal, whether for idleness or for the performance of
activities which are not directly productive (as e.g. war, affairs of
state) or for the development of human abilities and _ social
potentialities (art, etc., science) which have no directly practical
purpose, has as its prerequisite the surplus labour of the mass of
workers, i.e. the fact that they have to spend more time in material

a See this volume, p. 142.— Ed.
b Potentially.— Ed.

Absolute Surplus Value 19]

production than is required for the production of their own
material life. The free time of the non-working parts of society is
based on the surplus labour or overwork, the surplus labour time, of
the working part. The free development of the former is based on
the fact that the workers have to employ the whole of their time,
hence the room for their own development,’ purely in the
f{1I-105] production of particular use values; the development of
the human capacities on one side is based on the restriction of
development on the other side. The whole of civilisation and social
development so far has been founded on this antagonism.'*

On the one hand, therefore, the free time of one _ section
corresponds to the surplus labour time, the time in thrall to
labour, of the other section—the time of its existence and
functioning as mere labour capacity. On the other hand: The
surplus labour is realised not only in a surplus of value but in a
surplus product—an excess of production over and above the
quantity the working class requires and consumes for its own
subsistence.

The value is present in a use value. The surplus value is
therefore present in a surplus product. The surplus labour is
present in surplus production, and this forms the basis for the
existence of all classes not directly absorbed in material produc-
tion. Society thus develops in contradictory fashion through the
absence of development of the mass of workers, who form its
material basis. The surplus product need not express surplus value
at all. If 2 quarters of wheat are the product of the same amount
of labour time as previously 1 quarter, the 2 Quarters will not
express any higher value than the 1 quarter did previously. But if
we presuppose a definite, given development of the productive
forces, surplus value will always be represented by a surplus
product, i.e. the product (use value) created over 2 hours is twice
as large as that created over 1 hour. To put it more definitely: the
surplus labour time worked by the mass of workers over and
above the quantity necessary for the reproduction of their own
labour capacity, their own existence, over and above the necessary
labour, this surplus labour time, which presents itself as surplus
value, is simultaneously materialised in extra product, surplus
product, and this surplus product is the material basis for the
existence of all the classes apart from the working classes, of the
whole superstructure of society. It simultaneously provides free time,
gives them opisposasLe time for the development of their other
capacities. Thus the production of surplus labour time on one side
is at once the production of free time on the other. The whole of

192 The Production Process of Capital

human development, so far as it extends beyond the development
directly necessary for the natural existence of human beings,
consists merely in the employment of this free time and
presupposes it as its necessary basis. Thus the free time of society
is produced through the production of unfree time, the labour
time of workers prolonged beyond that required for their own
subsistence. Free time on one side corresponds to subjugated time
on the other side.

The form of surplus labour we are examining here—labour
prolonged beyond the necessary labour time—is common to
capital and all forms of society in which development has taken
place beyond the purely natural relation; a development which is
therefore antagonistic, making the labour of one section into the
natural basis of the social development of another section.’

Surplus labour time as considered here—absolute surplus
labour time—remains the basis in capitalist production too,
although we shall become acquainted with yet another form.

In so far as we have here only the opposition between worker
and capitalist, all the classes which do not work must share the
product of surplus labour with the capitalist, so that this surplus
labour time not only creates the basis of their material existence
but also their free time, the sphere of their development.

Absolute surplus value, i.e. absolute surplus labour, later too
always remains the dominant form.

Just as plants live from the earth, and animals live from the
plants or plant-eating animals, so does the part of society which
possesses free time, pisposaBLE time not absorbed in the direct
production of subsistence, live from the surplus labour of the
workers. Wealth is therefore pisposaste time.’?

We shall see how the political economists, etc., consider this
opposition as natural.’

Since surplus value is initially represented in the surplus
product, but all other work is pisposasLe time in comparison with
the Jabour time employed in the production of the means of
nourishment, it is clear why the Physiocrats base surplus value on
the surplus product of agriculture; they only make the mistake of
regarding it as a simple gift of nature.’

[111-106] Here the following can already be remarked:

The branches of labour employed in the production of
commodities are distinguished from each other according to their
degree of necessity, and this in turn depends on the extent to

a See this volume, pp. 204-05.— Ed

which the use value they create is necessary for physical existence.
This kind of necessary labour is related to use value, not exchange
value. That is to say, we are concerned here not with the labour
time necessary to create a value reducible to the sum of the
products necessary to the worker for his existence; rather with the
relative necessity of the needs satisfied by the products of different
kinds of labour. In this respect the most necessary of all is
agricultural labour (understanding by this all work required to
procure the immediate means of nourishment). It is agricultural
labour which first provides the pisPosaBLE FREE HANDS for industry, as
Steuart says."°° However, we must make a further distinction.
While one person employs the whole of his pisposasie time in
agriculture, the other can employ it in manufacture. Division of
labour. But the surplus labour in all other branches similarly
depends on the surplus labour in agriculture, which provides the
raw materials for everything else.

*“Tt is obvious that the relative numbers of persons who can be maintained

without agricultural labour, must be measured wholly by the productive powers of
cultivation” * (R. Jones, On the Distribution of Wealth, London, 1831, pp. 159-60).!°”

## Additions

Agricultural labour, however, already yields disposable time, compared with the labour time expended in the production of food; it becomes clear why the Physiocrats base surplus-value on the surplus product of agriculture, which they merely mistakenly regard as a pure gift of nature.

It may already be noted here:

The branches of labour employed in the production of commodities distinguish themselves from one another according to the degree of their necessity, and this degree depends on the relative necessity with which the use-value they create is required for physical existence. This kind of necessary labour relates to use-value, not exchange-value. That is, we are not dealing here with the labour time necessary to create a value, resolvable into the sum of products necessary for the worker’s existence; it relates to the relative necessity of the needs which are satisfied by the products of the various labours. In this respect, agricultural labour (understood as including all the labour required to procure the immediate means of subsistence) is the most necessary. It first creates the disposable free hands,^2 as Steuart says, for industry. But a further distinction must be drawn here. Insofar as one person uses the whole of his disposable time on agriculture, another can use it on manufacture. Division of labour. But equally, the surplus labour in all other branches rests on the surplus labour in agriculture, which supplies the raw material for everything else.

“It is undeniable that the relative number of people who can be maintained without themselves performing agricultural labour must be measured entirely by the productive powers of the cultivators.” (R. Jones, On the Distribution of Wealth, London, 1831, pp. 159-60.)

Additions

ad b) In the still ongoing struggle in London between the building workers and the master builders (capitalists), the workers raise, among other things, the following objections to the hourly system operated by the masters (whereby the contract between the two parties is only valid for the hour; in fact the hour is posited as the normal working day):

Firstly: Through this system every normal day (normal working day), hence every limit of the total daily labour (necessary labour and surplus labour taken together), is abolished. The establishment of such a normal day is the constant aim of the working class, which in all such branches, as for example among the job workers^Ü (in the docks, on the Thames, etc.), where no such normal day exists, whether by law or in fact, stands at the lowest point of degradation. They emphasize how such a normal day not only forms the measure of the average length of life of the workers, but also dominates their overall development.

Secondly: That through this hourly system the extra pay?^Z for overtime — i.e. the excess of surplus labour over its normal and customary measure — disappears. This extra pay, while on the one hand in extraordinary cases allowing the masters to have work done beyond the normal day, placed golden chains upon their drive for the endless extension of the working day. This was one reason why the workers demanded extra pay. The second reason: they demand extra pay for overtime because with the extension of the normal day not only a quantitative but a qualitative difference occurs, and the daily value of labour-power itself must thereby be subjected to a different estimation. If, for example, instead of 12 hours’ labour, 13 hours’ labour is performed, then what has to be estimated is the average working day of a labour-power which is, for instance, worn out in 15 years, whereas in the other case the average working day of a labour-power worn out in 20 years has to be estimated.

Thirdly. Because, while one section of the workers works overtime, a corresponding section becomes unemployed, and the wages of those employed are forced down by the wages at which the unemployed would work.

{Absolute and relative surplus-value taken together, the following appears: If the productivity of labour remains the same, as does the number of workers, surplus-value can only grow in so far as surplus labour is increased, i.e. the total working day (the measure of the use of labour-power) is extended beyond its given limit. If the total working day remains the same, ditto the number of workers, surplus-value can only grow if the productivity of labour grows, or, what is the same thing, the part of the working day required for necessary labour is shortened. If the total working day and the productivity of labour remain the same, the rate of surplus-value, i.e. its ratio to necessary labour time, remains unchanged, but the mass of surplus-value can in both cases grow with the increase of simultaneous working days, i.e. with the growth of population. Conversely: the rate of surplus-value can only fall if either surplus labour is reduced, i.e. the total working day is shortened, while the productivity of labour remains the same, or if the productivity

^Ü piece-workers

^Z additional wage

of labour declines, i.e. the part of the working day required for necessary labour increases, while the length of the total working day remains the same. In both cases, with an unchanged rate of surplus-value, the mass of surplus-value can decline if the number of simultaneous working days, i.e. the population, declines. (I.e. the working population.)}

184 2. Absolute Surplus-Value – Notebook II

In all these relations it is presupposed that the worker sells his labour-power at its value, i.e. that the price of labour, or wages, corresponds to the value of that labour-power. This presupposition, as has already been repeated several times, underlies the whole investigation. The extent to which wages themselves rise above or fall below their value belongs to the chapter on wages, just as the presentation of the particular forms (day-wages, week-wages, piece-wages, hourly wages, etc.) in which the distribution between necessary and surplus labour takes place can appear.

In general, however, the following may be noted here: If the minimum of wages, the costs of production of labour-power, were itself pushed down continually to a lower level, surplus-value and hence surplus labour would have grown relatively just as much as if the productivity of labour had increased. It is obvious that the result is the same whether a worker of 12 hours now works only 8 for himself instead of 10, because his labour has become more productive and he could produce in 8 hours the same means of subsistence for which he previously needed 10, or whether in future he receives worse means of subsistence whose production requires only 8 hours, whereas the production of the earlier and better ones required 10 hours. In both cases the capitalist would gain 2 hours of surplus labour, he would exchange the product of 8 hours of labour for one of 12, whereas previously he exchanged the product of 10 for one of 12.

Furthermore: If no such fall in the value of labour-power itself occurred, or no fall, no permanent deterioration in the worker’s way of life, a temporary forcing down of wages below their normal minimum, or, what is the same thing, a temporary fall in the daily price of labour-power below its daily value – for the period during which it takes place – would coincide with the case just mentioned, only that here it is transitory, whereas there it is constant. If a capitalist forces down wages below their minimum as a result of competition among the workers, etc., this means, in other words, nothing but that he deducts a portion from the quantum of the working day that normally¹ constitutes the necessary labour-time, i.e., the part of his labour-time that falls to the worker himself.

Every reduction of necessary labour-time that is not the result of an increase in the productivity of labour is in fact no reduction of necessary labour-time, but only an appropriation of necessary labour-time by capital, an encroachment beyond its domain of surplus labour. If the worker receives lower wages than normal, this is the same as saying that he receives the product of less labour-time than is required for the reproduction of his labour-power under normal conditions, so that if 10 hours of labour-time are required for this, he only receives the product of 8, and of his necessary labour-time of 10 hours, 2 are appropriated by capital.

As far as the capitalist’s surplus-value is concerned, it is of course for this surplus-value, i.e. surplus labour, exactly the same whether he pays the worker the 10 hours that he needs for his normal existence and makes him perform 2 hours of surplus labour for capital, or whether he only makes him work 10 hours and pays him 8 hours, with which he cannot buy the means of subsistence necessary for his normal existence. A forcing down of wages with the productivity of labour remaining the same is an increase of surplus labour by the forcible curtailment of necessary labour-time through encroachments on its domain. It is clear that for the capitalist it is the same whether he pays less for the same labour-time or, for the same wages, makes the worker work longer.

Addition ad e) Inasmuch as in capitalist production capital compels the worker to work beyond his necessary labour-time – i.e. beyond the labour-time which is required² for the satisfaction of his own living needs as a worker – capital, as this relation of the domination of past labour over living labour, creates, produces surplus labour and thereby surplus-value. Surplus labour is labour of the worker, the individual, beyond the limits of his needs, labour in fact for society, although the capitalist here initially pockets this surplus labour in the name of society. This surplus labour is, as stated, the basis of society’s free time on the one hand, and on the other hand thereby the material basis of its entire development and of culture in general. Insofar as it is the compulsion of capital which forces the great mass of society to perform this labour beyond the limits of their immediate needs, it creates culture, it exercises a historical-social function. Thereby the general attention of society as a whole is created beyond the time required by the immediate physical needs of the workers themselves.

It is indeed clear that all ruling classes wherever society —

¹ as a rule

² In the manuscript: sind

society rests upon a class antagonism, so that on one side the owners of the conditions of production rule, and on the other the propertyless, the excluded from possession of the conditions of production, must work, must maintain themselves and their rulers through their labour — within certain limits exercise this same compulsion, e.g. in slavery in a much more direct form than in wage-labour, and therefore also force labour beyond the limits set by mere natural needs. In all conditions, however, in which use-value predominates, the labour time is a matter of more indifference, as long as it is only extended sufficiently to supply the rulers, besides the means of subsistence of the workers themselves, with a sort of patriarchal wealth, a certain quantity of use-values. But to the degree that exchange-value becomes the determining element of production, the lengthening of labour time beyond the measure of natural needs becomes more and more decisive. Where, for example, slavery and serfdom prevail among peoples with little trade, no overwork is to be thought of. Slavery and serfdom therefore assume the most hateful form among commercial peoples, as e.g. the Carthaginians; even more so among peoples who retain them as the basis of their production in an epoch in which their connection with other peoples, with capitalist production; thus e.g. in the Southern states of the American Union. Since in capitalist production exchange-value first dominates the whole of production and the whole articulation of society, the “compulsion applied by capital to labour to go beyond the limits of its needs” is the greatest. Likewise, since in it the necessary labour-time (socially necessary labour-time) for the first time comprehensively determines the magnitude of value of all products, the intensity of labour attains a higher degree under it, because it is here for the first time that the workers are generally compelled to apply to the production of an object only the labour-time necessary under the general social conditions of production. The whip of the slave-holder cannot produce this intensity to the same degree as the compulsion of the capital-relation. In the latter, the free worker, in order to satisfy his necessary needs, must 1. transform his labour-time into necessary labour-time, give it the degree of intensity determined generally socially (by competition); 2. provide surplus labour in order to be allowed (able) to work the labour-time necessary for himself. The slave, on the other hand, has his necessary needs satisfied like the animal, and it now depends on his natural disposition how far the whip etc. induces him, is sufficient motive for him, to give labour in exchange for these means of subsistence. The worker works in order to procure his means of subsistence for himself, to

186 2. Absolute Surplus-Value – Notebook III

win his own life. The slave is kept alive by another in order to be forced by him to work.

The capital-relation is therefore more productive in this way — firstly, because it is concerned with labour-time as such, with exchange-value, not with the product as such or use-value; secondly, because the free worker can satisfy his vital needs only insofar as he sells his labour: is thus compelled by his own interest, not by external compulsion.

Division of labour can only exist at all if each producer of a commodity employs more labour-time in the production of this commodity than his own need for this particular commodity requires. But it does not yet follow from this that his labour-time in general is lengthened beyond the circle of his needs. On the contrary, the circle of his needs — which will certainly expand from the outset with the division of labours, of occupations — will determine the total quantity of his labour-time. E.g. a husbandman who produced all his own means of subsistence did not need to work the whole day in the field, but he would have to, for example, divide 12 hours between field labour and various domestic tasks.

That he now applies his whole labour-time of 12 hours solely to agriculture and exchanges, buys, with the surplus of the product of these 12 hours, products of other labours, is the same as if he himself had employed one part of his labour-time in agriculture, another part in other branches of business. The 12 hours he works are as before the labour-time required for the satisfaction of his own needs, and labour-time within the limits of his natural or rather social need. But capital drives beyond these naturally arisen or traditional barriers of labour time, by at the same time making the intensity of labour dependent on the social level of production and thus extracting it from the sluggish routine of the independent self-producer or of the slave working only under external compulsion. If all branches of production fall to capitalist production, it follows from the mere general growth of surplus labour — of the total labour-time — that the division of the branches of business, the diversity of labours and of the commodities entering into exchange, will multiply. If 100 men in one branch of business work as much time as formerly 110 men — with shorter surplus labour or shorter duration of the total labour — then 10 men can be thrown onto another new branch of business, and likewise that part of capital which was formerly required to employ these 10 men. The mere stepping out — extending

Addenda 187

—beyond traditional barriers—will therefore lead to the application of social labour in new branches of production. To the extent that labour time becomes free—and surplus labour not only creates free time, it also makes labour-power!, which was tied up in one branch of production, free as labour in general (this is the point) for new branches of production. Yet it lies in the law of development of human nature that as soon as provision has been made for the satisfaction of one circle of needs ||109|, new needs become free, are created. Hence, by driving labour time beyond the measure determined for the satisfaction of the worker’s natural necessities, capital drives towards a greater division of social labour—of the labour of society as a whole—a greater diversity of production, an extension of the circle of social needs and of the means of their satisfaction, and therefore also towards the development of the human productive capacity and thereby the activation of human aptitudes in new directions. But just as surplus labour time is the condition of free time, so this extension of the circle of needs and of the means of their satisfaction is conditioned by the fettering of the worker to the necessary means of subsistence,

Addendum to a)

Firstly. In his work, *Letters on the Factory Act, as it affects the Cotton Manufacture etc.*, London, 1837, Nassau W. Senior says: (pp. 12, 13.)

“Under the present law no factory in which persons under 18 years of age are employed can work longer than 11½ hours a day, i.e. 12 hours during the first 5 days and 9 hours on Saturday. Now the following analysis shows that in such a factory the whole net profit is derived (herkömmt, is derived) from the last hour. A manufacturer lays out £100,000—£80,000 in factory building and machinery, £20,000 in raw material and wages. The annual income of the factory, assuming the total capital turns over once a year and the gross income (gross profits) amounts to 15%, must come to commodities to the value of £115,000, reproduced by the constant conversion and reconversion of the £20,000 circulating capital from money into commodities and from commodities into money, in periods somewhat longer than two months. Of these £115,000, each of the 23 half-hours of labour daily produces 5/115 or 1/23. Of these 23/23, which constitute the whole £115,000 (constituting the whole 115,000 l.), 20/23, i.e. £100,000 of the £115,000, merely replace the capital; 1/23, or £5,000 of the £15,000 (profit), replace the wear and tear of the factory and the machinery. The remaining 2/23, i.e. the last two half-hours of each day, produce the net profit of 10%. If, therefore (prices remaining the same), the factory were allowed to work for 13 hours instead of 11½, with an addition of approximately £2,600 to the circulating capital, the net profit would be more than doubled. On the other hand, if the hours of labour were reduced by one hour daily, prices remaining the same, the net profit would be destroyed, if reduced by 1½ hours, the gross profit as well.”

Firstly: The correctness or incorrectness of the positive data supplied by Senior is irrelevant to the subject of our investigation. It may be noted, in passing, however, that the English factory inspector Leonard Horner, a man equally distinguished by thorough knowledge of the facts as by incorruptible love of truth, proved the falsity of those statements which Mr. Senior, as the faithful echo of the Manchester manufacturers, put forward in 1837. (See Leonard Horner, *A Letter to Mr. Senior etc.*, London, 1837.)

Secondly: The quotation from Senior is characteristic of the mental stupefaction to which the expounders of science hopelessly succumb as soon as they descend to the level of sycophants of a ruling class. Senior wrote the work cited in the interest of the cotton manufacturers and, before setting it down, made a special journey to Manchester in order to obtain the material for his work from the manufacturers themselves. In the quotation, Senior, Professor of Political Economy at Oxford and one of the most notable English economists now living, commits gross blunders of a kind he would not forgive in any of his pupils. He advances the proposition that the annual labour in a cotton factory—or, what is the same thing, the labour of 11½ hours a day, day in, day out, throughout the year—creates, besides the labour time or value which it itself adds to the raw material, the cotton, by means of the machinery |110|, also the value of the raw material contained in the product and the value of the machinery and factory building used up in production. Accordingly, in a cotton spinning mill, for example, the workers, in addition to the spinning labour (i.e. the value)—simultaneously, during their 11½ hours of labour time—would produce the cotton they work on, likewise the machine with which they work the cotton, and the factory building in which this process takes place. Only in this case could Mr. Senior say that the 23/23 daily hours of labour over the whole year ‘constitute’ the £115,000, i.e. the value of the total annual product. Senior calculates as follows: The workers work so many hours of the day to “replace”, i.e. to create, the value of the cotton, so many hours to “replace” the value of the worn-out part of the machinery and factory buildings, so many hours to produce their own wages, and so many hours to produce the profit. This childish and absurd notion, according to which the worker, apart from his own labour time, also creates the labour time contained in the raw material which he works—

¹ In the manuscript: labour compulsion.

works, and the labour-time contained in the machinery he employs works simultaneously, i.e., produces raw material and machinery at the same time as they, as finished products, form the conditions of his labour, is to be explained by the fact that Senior, completely under the sway of the lessons imparted to him by the manufacturers, garbles a practical method of calculation of theirs, a method which, while theoretically quite correct, is on the one hand entirely irrelevant to the relation Senior claims to examine, namely that between labour-time and profit, and on the other hand easily gives rise to the absurd notion that the worker produces not only the value he adds to his working conditions but also the value of those working conditions themselves. That practical calculation is as follows. Let us suppose that the value of the total product, say of a 12-hour labour-time, consists, e.g., of ⅓ made up of the value of the material of labour, say cotton, ⅓ of the means of labour, say machinery, and ⅓ of the newly added labour, e.g., spinning. The numerical ratio here is indifferent. Some specific ratio must always be assumed. Suppose the value of this product is = £3. Then the manufacturer may calculate: The value of the product of ⅓ of the daily labour-time, or of 4 hours’ labour-time, is equal to the value of the cotton which I need for the 12 hours or which is worked up in the total product. The value of the product of the second ⅓ of the daily labour-time is equal to the value of the machinery which I wear out during 12 hours. Finally, the value of the product of the third ⅓ of the daily labour-time is equal to the wages plus the profit. He may therefore say that the first ⅓ of the daily labour-time replaces for him the value of the cotton, the second ⅓ the value of the machinery, and finally the third ⅓ forms the wages and the profit. This, however, means in fact nothing other than that the whole daily labour-time, on the one hand, adds to the independently pre-existing value of the cotton and the machinery nothing but itself, i.e., the value which on the one hand forms the wages and on the other hand forms the profit. For the value of the product of the first third of the day, or of the first 4 hours, is equal to ⅓ of the value of the total product of 12 hours of labour. The value of the product of these first 4 hours is equal to £1, if the value of the 12-hour total product = £3. But of the value of this £1, ⅔, i.e., 13⅓ shillings, consist of the pre-existing value of cotton and machinery (according to the assumption). Newly added value is only ⅓, or the value of 6⅔ sh., of 4 hours’ labour. The value of the product of the first ⅓ of the working day is = £1, because in this product ⅔, or 13⅓ sh., consist of the pre-supposed values of the raw material and the worn-out machinery, values which merely reappear in the product. The labour in the 4 hours has created only 6⅔ sh. value, and therefore creates in the 12 hours only 20 sh. or £1 value. The value of the product of the 4-hour labour is something quite different from the newly created value, the value of the newly added labour, the spinning labour, which, according to the assumption, merely increases the pre-existing values by ⅓. In the first 4 hours spinning labour does not work up the raw material of 12 hours, but that of 4 hours. If the value of the yarn of 4 hours is nevertheless equal to the value of the cotton worked up during 12 hours, this arises only because, according to the assumption, the value of the cotton formed ⅔ of the value of the yarn of each individual hour, and hence also ⅔ of the value of the yarn produced in 12 hours, i.e., is equal to the value of the yarn produced in 4 hours. The manufacturer could also calculate that the product of 12 hours’ labour replaces the value of the cotton for 3 days, and would thereby just as little affect the relation itself with which we are concerned.

For the manufacturer the calculation has a practical value. At the production stage at which he works, he must process as much cotton as is required to absorb a specific quantum of labour-time. If cotton constitutes ⅓ of the value of the total product of 12 hours, then the product of ⅓ of the total working day of 12 hours, or of 4 hours, constitutes the value of the cotton worked up during 12 hours. One sees how important it is to hold firmly that in a specific production process, e.g., spinning, the worker creates no value other than that measured by his own labour-time (here spinning), of which labour-time one part replaces the wages and the other forms the surplus-value accruing to the capitalist.

(In fact the workers neither produce nor reproduce any particle either of the value of the raw material or of that of the machinery, etc. To the value of the raw material and to the value of the machinery consumed in production they add nothing but their own labour, and this is the newly created value, of which one part is equal to their own wages and the other equal to the surplus-value which the capitalist receives. The total product – if production is to continue – is therefore also not divisible between capitalist and worker, but only the product minus the value of the capital advanced in it. Not a single hour of labour is devoted to “replacing” the capital in Senior’s sense, as though the labour produced doubly, its own value and that of its material, etc. Senior’s assertion amounts merely to this, that out of the 11½ hours which the worker works, 10 hours form his wages and only ½ or 1 hour his surplus labour-time.)

Thirdly: the entirely unscientific treatment by Mr. Senior, that

Page 111 from Notebook II

Additions 193

he does not specialise what was crucial, namely the capital laid out in wages, but lumps it together with that laid out for raw material. Meanwhile, if the proportion he gave were correct, then out of the 11½ hours or 23 half-hours the workers would work 21 half-hours for themselves and provide only 2 half-hours¹ of surplus labour to the capitalist. The surplus labour would then relate to the necessary labour as 2:21 = 1:10½; i.e., 9½² per cent, and this is supposed to yield a 10% profit on the total capital! The strangest thing, which demonstrates his complete ignorance of the nature of surplus-value: He assumes that of the 23 half-hours or 11½ hours only 1 hour constitutes surplus labour, hence surplus-value, and is therefore astonished that if the workers were to add another 1½ hours of surplus labour to this 1 hour of surplus labour, would work 5 half-hours instead of 2 half-hours (hence 13 hours in total), the net profit would grow by more than double. Equally naïve is the discovery that, on the assumption that the whole surplus labour, or surplus-value, equals one hour, the whole net profit would vanish ‘as soon as the working time is reduced by this one hour, i.e., as soon as no surplus labour at all is worked.’ On the one hand one sees the astonishment at the discovery that surplus-value, and therefore also profit, resolves itself into mere surplus labour, and on the other hand, at the same time, the failure to grasp this relation, which struck Mr. Senior merely as a curiosity in cotton manufacture, under the influence of the manufacturers.

Secondly. The money which the worker receives as wages represents the labour-time present in the commodities required for the satisfaction of his necessities of life. Surplus-value arises through the fact that the worker⁴ gives back more labour-time in exchange for these commodities than is contained in them, more living labour for a definite quantum of objectified labour. He buys these commodities, whose compass forms his wages, therefore with more labour than is required for their production.

‘Whatever quantity of labour may be necessary to produce any commodity, the labourer must always, in the present state of society, give a great deal more labour to acquire and possess it than is necessary to buy it from nature. Natural price thus increased to the labourer is social price.’ ([p.] 220, Th. Hodgskin, Popular Pol. Econ., London 1827.)

¹ In the manuscript: #4 half-hours, the workers 2/4; half-hours for themselves and only %5 hours
² In the manuscript: 9%,
³ In the manuscript: 34;
⁴ In the manuscript: die Arbeit

194 2. Absolute surplus-value – Notebook III

‘Brotherton, himself a manufacturer, declared in the House of Commons, that the manufacturers would add hundreds of pounds weekly to their profits, could they get their men to work only one hour longer a day.’ (Ramsay, l. c., p. 102.)

‘Where there is no surplus labour, there can be no surplus produce, therefore no capital.’ ([p.] 4, ‘The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties etc.’, London 1821.)

[112] ‘Whatever quantity of capital can be invested at a given moment, either in a given country or in the world, so as to yield not less than a given rate of profit, seems to depend in principle on the quantity of labour which, by investing that capital, the number of human beings currently in existence can be induced to perform.’ ([p.] 20, ‘An Inquiry into those Principles respecting the Nature of Demand etc., lately advocated by Mr. Malthus’, London 1821.)

On pp. 106, 107:

‘If the labourer can be brought to feed on potatoes instead of bread, it is indisputably true that more can be extracted from his labour; meaning that if, to live on bread, he was obliged to retain for his own and his family’s maintenance the labour of Monday and Tuesday, on potato fare he will retain only half of Monday for his own support; and the other half of Monday and the whole of Tuesday will be set free either for the benefit of the state or for the capitalist.’ ([p.] 26, ‘The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties’, London 1821.)

“Whatever may accrue to the capitalist, he can always appropriate only the surplus labour of the worker, for the worker must live. But it is the full truth: If capital does not decline in value in proportion as it increases in mass, the capitalists will squeeze out of the workers the product of every hour of labour over and above what the worker can live on: and, however odious and horrible it may appear, the capitalist may finally be in a position to speculate on the means of subsistence the production of which costs the least labour, and in the end to say to the worker: ‘You shall eat no bread, for barley grits are cheaper. You shall eat no meat, for one can live on beetroot and potatoes.’” ([p.] 23/24, loc. cit.) Addition to e) p. 107.

“Wealth is disposable time and nothing else.” (p. 6, “The Source and Remedy etc.”)

In capitalist production the labour of the worker is much greater than that of the independent worker, because its relation is in no way determined by the relation of his labour to his need, but by the unlimited, boundless need of capital for surplus labour.

! Surplus labour 2 surplus product

Additions 195

“The labour, e.g., of the countryman, will already, for that very reason, amount to much more, because it is no longer governed by the particular needs of the countryman.” (p. 90, Büsch, J. G., “Abhandlung von dem Geldumlauf...”, Pt. 1, Hamburg and Kiel 1800. 1) ad e) p. 104.

The relation which compels the worker to surplus labour is the existence of his conditions of labour confronting him as capital. No external constraint is imposed on him, but in order to live – in a world where the commodity is determined by its value – he is forced to sell his labour capacity as a commodity, whereby the valorisation of this labour capacity beyond its own value accrues to capital. Thus his surplus labour, just as it increases the multiplicity of production, creates free time for others. The economists like to conceive this relation as a natural relation or a divine institution. As regards the industriousness produced by capital:

“‘Legal constraint’ (to labour) ‘is accompanied by too much trouble, violence and noise, creates ill-will etc., whereas hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitting pressure, but, as the natural motive to industry and labour, calls forth the most powerful exertions.’” ([p.] 15, “A Dissertation on the Poor Laws”, By a Wellwisher to Mankind, 1786 (The Rev. Mr. J. Townsend), republished London 1817.)

Since the capital relation presupposes that the worker is compelled to sell his labour capacity, hence essentially has nothing to sell but his labour capacity itself, Townsend says:

“‘It seems to be a law of nature that the poor are to a certain degree improvident, so that there are always some to perform the most servile, the most sordid, and the most ignoble functions in the community. The fund of human happiness is thereby greatly increased. The more delicate are thereby relieved from drudgery, and can pursue undisturbed higher callings etc.’ ([p.] 39, loc. cit.) ‘The Poor Law has a tendency to destroy the harmony and beauty, the symmetry and order of that system which God and nature have established in the world.’ (p. 41.)”

This parson Townsend is admittedly not the actual discoverer of the so-called population theory, but he first gave it the form in which Malthus appropriated it and turned it into big literary capital. It is a curious fact that with the exception of the Venetian monk Ortes (“Della Economia Nazionale”, libri sei 1774, far more ingenious than Malthus) it was principally parsons of the English Church who wrestled with the “urgent appetite” and the “checks which

! In the manuscript: p. 39 seqq.

196 2. Absolute Surplus-Value – Notebook III

tend to blunt the shafts of Cupid”! (as Townsend ? says). In contrast to the Catholic superstition (superstition? says Townsend) they claimed the command “be fruitful and multiply” for the priesthood itself, while they preached celibacy to the working class.

“God has ordained that the men who exercise the most useful professions should be born superabundantly.” (p. 78, Galiani, “Della Moneta”, Vol. Il, in Custodi.)

The progress of national wealth, says Storch,

“engenders that useful class of society … which performs the most tedious, the coarsest, and the most disgusting occupations; in a word, takes upon its shoulders everything that life has of the unpleasant and servile, and thereby procures for the other classes the time, the serenity of mind, and the conventional dignity of character which they need to pursue successfully their higher vocations.” (“Cours d’Ec. Pol.”, ed. Say (p. 223), Vol. III, Paris 1823.) “Our zone requires labour for the satisfaction of wants, and therefore at least one part of society must labour unremittingly …”. (Sir Morton Eden, “The State of the Poor, or an History of the Labouring Classes in England from the Conquest to the present period etc.”, London 1797, Vol. I, Book I, Ch. 1.)

‘ad d) p. 102. This law only implies that, with constant productivity of labour and a given normal day, the mass of surplus-value increases with the mass of simultaneously employed workers. It does not follow from this that in all branches of production (e.g., agriculture) the productivity of labour remains the same to the extent that a greater quantity of labour is employed. (This is to be placed in a note.)

It follows that, other conditions remaining the same, the wealth of a country, on the basis of capitalist production, depends on the mass of the proletariat, that part of the population reduced to wage labour.’

'The more slaves a master has, the richer he is; it follows that, given “equal oppression of the masses, a country is the richer the more proletarians it has.”’ ([p.] 331, vol. III, Colins, *L’Économie Politique, Sources des Révolutions et des Utopies prétendues Socialistes*, Paris 1857.)

Addition to a) Illustration of surplus-value.

According to Jacob, in the year 1815, with the wheat price at 80s. per quarter and the average product per acre 22 bushels (now 32) per acre, hence the average product per acre 11 qrs. He calculates that the straw pays the expenses of harvesting, threshing and conveying to the place of sale. He then reckons the items as follows:

| | £ | s. | | £ | s. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seed (wheat) | ... | ... | Taxes?² | 1 | 1 |
| Manure | ... | 2 | 10 | Rent’³ | 18 |
| Wages | ... | 3 | 10 | Farmer’s profit and interest | ... |

In this column the right-hand side—taxes, imposts, tithes, rent, farmer’s profit and interest—represents only the total surplus-value which the farmer (the capitalist) receives, but rent, &c., portions which he gives away under various names and titles to the state, landlord, etc. The total surplus-value therefore = £3 11s. The constant capital (seed and manure) = £3 19s. The capital laid out in labour = £3 10s. |114| This latter part of the capital, the variable, is alone to be considered when it is a question of surplus-value and the ratio of surplus-value. Hence in the present case the surplus-value stands in relation to the capital laid out in wages, or the rate in which the capital laid out in wages increases, is the ratio of £3 11s. to £3 10s. The capital laid out in labour of £3 10s. reproduces itself as a capital of £7 1s. Of this £3 10s. represents only the replacement of the wages, whereas £3 11s. represents the surplus-value, which thus amounts to over 100%. According to this, the necessary labour time would not be quite as much as the surplus labour, it would be approximately equal to it, so that of the normal working day of 12 hours, 6 would belong to the capitalist (including the various sharers in this surplus-value). It may, however, be the case that, for example, this price of the quarter of wheat of 80s. stood above its value, and hence a part of its price arises from the fact that other commodities were sold below their value against wheat. But, in the first place, the only point is to make clear how surplus-value in general, and therefore the rate of surplus-value, is to be understood. On the other hand, if the market price of a bushel of wheat stands, say, 10s. above its value, this can only increase the surplus-value which the farmer receives, in so far as he does not pay the agricultural labourer for his labour, which has risen above its normal value, this excess over the normal value. 

¹ Item   ² Taxes and imposts   ³ Ground-rent   \* In the manuscript: ab

‘strong desire’ and the ‘hindrances which contribute to blunting Amor’s arrows’ ² idolatry

Additions 1 9 7

2. Absolute Surplus-Value – Notebook III

Let us take another example from modern English agriculture, namely the following Real Bill of a high formed estate!:

| Annual expenses in production itself: | | Receipts and outgoings of the farmer | |
|---|---|---|---|
| | £ | | £ |
| Manure… … … … … … … … | 686 | Rent | 843 |
| Seed | 150 | Tax | 150 |
| Cattle feed | 100 | Tithes (missing) | |
| Losses, pay- | | Profit | 488 |
| ments to trades- | | | |
| men, etc. | 453 | | |
| | 1,389 | | 1,481 |
| Wages | 1,690 | | |
| | 3,079 | | |

In this example, therefore, the variable or capital exchanged for living labour amounts to £1,690. It reproduces itself as 1,690 + 1,481 = £3,171. The surplus-value £1,481, the ratio of surplus-value to that part of capital from which it springs = ¹⁴⁸¹⁄₁₆₉₀², or somewhat more than 87 per cent. (Newman, F. W., *Lectures on Polit. Econ.*, London 1851, p. 166 [ , 167].)

(‘The unquenchable passion for gain, the *auri sacra fames*!’, always determines the capitalists.’ (p. 163, McCulloch, *The Principles of Political Economy*, London 1825.))

ad e) p. 104.

‘Precisely because one works, the other must rest.’ (Sismondi, *N[ouveaux] Princ[ipes] d’É[conomie] P[olitique]*, vol. I, p. 76/77.)

ad e) p. 107. The surplus labour, together with the multiplication of products, brings about the production of luxury articles, so that a part of production throws itself upon the production of luxury products or, what is the same thing, exchanges itself for them (by means of foreign trade).

‘As soon as a surplus of products is in existence, the superfluous labour must be devoted to luxury articles. The consumption of objects for the satisfaction of basic needs is limited, that of luxury articles is limitless.’ (p. 78, Sism., vol. I, *N[ouveaux] Pr[incipes]* etc.) ‘Luxury is only possible if it is bought with the labour of others; uninterrupted labour without a pause is only possible if it can procure, not insignificant trifles, but solely the necessities of life.’ (p. 79, loc. cit.)

! Genuine account of a highly developed estate
² In the manuscript: ¹⁶⁹⁰⁄₁₄₈₁

Page 113 from Notebook III

Additions 201

{The workers’ demand for capital is therefore the only demand the capitalist requires, i.e., everything turns for him on the relation in which living labour offers itself for objectified labour.

‘As to the demand from labour, that is either exchange of labour ||115| against commodities, or, if one prefers to consider it in another way, but which comes to the same thing, exchange of present finished products against a future and accruing new value ..., transferred to certain material parts which were entrusted to the worker. This is the real demand, the increase of which is essential to the producers, in so far as any demand is desired, independent of what commodities supply to one another when increased.’ ([p.] 57, *An Inquiry into those Principles respecting the Nature of Demand and the Necessity of Consumption etc.*, London 1821)}

When James Mill, e.g., says:

‘To enable a considerable portion of the community to enjoy the advantages of leisure, the return to capital must evidently be large.’ (p. 50, James Mill, *El[ements] of Pol. Ec.*, London 1821), this means nothing but: So that many may have leisure, the wage-worker must slog a great deal, or the free time of one part depends on the ratio of surplus labour-time to the necessary labour-time of the worker.

The task of the capitalist is

‘to extract from the expended capital’ (the capital exchanged against living labour) ‘the greatest possible sum of labour.’ (p. 62, J. G. Courcelle-Seneuil, *Traité théorique et pratique des Entreprises industrielles etc.*, Paris 1857, 2nd edit.)

That the valorisation of capital, the surplus-value it produces beyond its own value, its productive power, therefore consists in the surplus labour which it appropriates, J. St. Mill, e.g., says

‘Capital, strictly speaking, has no productive power. The only productive power is that of labour, assisted of course by tools and acting upon materials! ... The productive power of capital is nothing but the quantity of real productive power’ (labour) ‘which the capitalist, by means of his capital, can command.’ (J. St. Mill, *Essays on some unsettled questions of Pol. Economy*, London 1844, p. 90, 91.)

ad a) That in the reproduction of capital and its increase the value of the raw material and machinery as such — in general for the production process — is a matter of indifference, is clear. Take raw material, e.g., flax. How much labour the flax can absorb in order to transform itself, e.g., into linen, depends, if the stage of production, the specific degree of technological development, is given, not on its value, but on its quantity,

! tools and acting upon machinery

202 2. Absolute Surplus-Value : Notebook III

just as the assistance a machine renders 100 workers does not depend on its price, but on its use-value.

ad p. 114) Or let us take another example. Symons, J.C., *Arts and Artisans at Home and Abroad*, Edinburgh 1839 [p. 223], gives, e.g., the following calculation for a Glasgow power-loom weaver with 500 looms, calculated to weave a good fabric of calico or shirting, such as is generally made in Glasgow!.

Cost of erecting the factory and machinery £ 18000

Annual product, 150,000 pieces of 24 yards at 6sh. £ 45000
Interest on the fixed capital and for the depreciation of value of the machinery 1800, of which we will count 900 (5 p.c.) for the interest. Steam-engine, oil, tallow, repair of the machinery etc. ...... 2000 Yarn and flax³ ...... 32000 Wages ...... 7500 Profit ...... 1700 Total £ 45000

In this case the interest and profit come to 1700 + 900 = 2600. The part of capital laid out against labour, which reproduces and increases itself... £ 7500 Surplus-value = 2600; rate of the same therefore: almost 33 p.c.

|116| ad b)⁹⁹)

R. Jones, in his *Essay on the Distribution of Wealth*, London 1831, rightly considers labour service, or what he calls labour rent, as the most original form of rent, which is here to be regarded merely as a specific form of the surplus-value accruing to the landed proprietor.⁷⁹ It is thus a form in which the agricultural labourers possess a portion of the land, which they cultivate for their own subsistence. The labour-time they expend on this corresponds to the necessary labour-time through which the wage-worker replaces his own wages. But while, e.g., the modern agricultural day labourer realises his entire labour-time on the same land (that rented by the tenant farmer) — both the part of it that replaces his wages and the part that forms the surplus-value — just as the factory worker employs the same machinery for the realisation of his necessary and his surplus labour — here there takes place not only a division

! looms, calculated to weave a good fabric of calico or shirting, such as is generally made in Glasgow
² depreciation of value
³ yarn and flax

Additions 203

of the time (and much more palpable than in wage labour), but also a division of the production conditions (the sphere of production) in which this labour-time is realised.

E.g., on certain days in the week the corvée labourer cultivates the field assigned to him for possession. On other days he works on the seigneurial estate and for the landowner. This form of labour has this in common with wage labour, that what the labourer gives the owner of the conditions of production is not, as in other modes of production, product or money, but labour itself. Surplus labour appears here more palpably separated from necessary labour than in wage labour, because necessary labour and surplus labour are here exercised on two different terrains. The labour necessary for the reproduction of his own labour-power the corvée labourer performs on the field possessed by him. The surplus labour for the landowner he performs on the seigneurial estates. Through this spatial separation, the division of the total labour-time into two portions also appears more palpably, whereas in the case of the wage labourer one can just as well say that he works, out of 12, say 2 for the capitalist, as that he works 1/12 of each hour or any other aliquot! part of the 12 hours for the capitalist. Thus, firstly, the division into necessary labour and surplus labour, labour for the reproduction of his own labour-power and labour for the owner of the conditions of production, appears more obvious, more palpable in the form of corvée labour than in the form of wage labour. Secondly, however, it follows from this that in the form of corvée labour it is more obvious than in wage labour that the surplus labour is unpaid labour and that the whole surplus-value is dissolved into surplus labour, i.e. unpaid labour. If the corvée labourers worked 5 days in the week on their own field, the 6th day on the seigneurial, it is clear that they perform unpaid labour on this 6th day, work not for themselves, but for another, and that the whole revenue of this other is the product of their unpaid labour; which is precisely why it is called corvée labour. If factory workers work daily 2 out of 12 hours for the capitalist, this is the same as if they worked 5 days in the week for themselves and 1 for the capitalist, hence in substance the same as if they performed one day of corvée labour in the week for the capitalist. In the whole system of corvée labour the form of wages disappears, and this makes the relation more palpable again. The corvée labourer has the conditions of production required for the realisation of his own necessary labour

! corresponding

204 2. Absolute Surplus-Value: Notebook II

assigned to him once and for all. He therefore pays himself his own salary, or he directly appropriates the product of his necessary labour. In the case of the wage labourer, by contrast, his total product is first transformed into capital, only to flow back to him then in the form of his wages. If the corvée labourer who works 1 day in the week for his lord had to deliver the product of the whole week to the latter, who then transformed it into money and paid back 6/7 of this money to the corvée labourer, the corvée labourer would on this side be transformed into a wage labourer. Conversely. If the wage labourer who works 2 hours daily for the capitalist were to collect himself the product or the value of the product of his 5-day labour (the deduction of the value for the conditions of production, working material and means, takes place in both relations, though under a different form) and worked the 6th day for capital for nothing, he would be transformed into a corvée labourer. In so far as the nature and the relation of necessary labour and surplus labour come into consideration, the result is the same.

We find corvée labour mingled in larger or smaller doses with all forms of bondage. Where it appears pure, however, as the dominant production relation, as was notably the case and still partly is in Slavonic lands and in the Danubian territories occupied by the Romans, we can say with certainty, ||117| that it did not spring from bondage as its basis, but rather, conversely, bondage sprang from it. It rests on a community, and the surplus labour which the members of the community performed over and above that necessary for subsistence, partly for a reserve fund (communal), partly to cover their communal, political, and religious needs, gradually transforms itself into corvée labour for the families who usurp the reserve funds and the political and religious dignities as their private property. In the Danubian Principalities, likewise in Russia, this process of usurpation can be exactly demonstrated. A comparison of the greed for alien labour-time on the part of the Wallachian boyars and the English factory owners is of interest, in that in both the appropriation of alien labour appears as the direct source of wealth; surplus-value as surplus labour.

{“The undertaker will always do everything in his power to save time and labour.” (p. 318, Dugald Stewart, vol. 1, “Lectures on Polit. Econ.”, Edinburgh 1855, vol. VIII of the “Collected works”, ed. by Sir W. Hamilton.) ad p. 107, ad Addition ad e)}

In corvée labour surplus labour appears in its most primitive “independent free” form; free, in so far as in slavery the whole day

Additions 205

of the slave, like that of cattle, belongs to the owner, whom he must naturally feed:

Even in Moldavia and Wallachia, rent in kind still exists alongside corvée. We take here the Règlement organique! mis en vigueur en 1831!. It is for our present purpose indifferent, and therefore only to be noted in passing, that landed property, cattle, etc., actually belong to the Wallachian peasants, that through usurpation the prestation to the proprietors? arose and that the Russian règlement raised the usurpation to the status of law. The rent in kind consists [of] 1/2 of all other products; 1/2 of the hay; 1/2 of the wine. (All this in Wallachia.) The peasant possesses: 1. for house and garden 400 stagenes (about 2 m?) en plaine and 300 in the montagnes; 2. 3 pogones (1½ hectares) de terrain de labour; 3. 3 pogones de prairie à foin.’ (Pasture for 5 head of horned cattle.)

It may be noted in passing: That this serfdom code was proclaimed as a code of liberty by the Russians (under Kisseleff) and recognised by Europe. Secondly: les boyars, en fait les redacteurs du règlement%. Thirdly: The relation is considerably worse in Moldavia than in Wallachia.

According to the règlement each peasant owes the proprietor annually: 1. 12 days of labour in general. 2. 1 day of field labour; 3. 1 day of wood transport. The days, however, are not measured by time, but by the work to be accomplished. The Règlement organique itself therefore lays down that the 12 labour days shall be equal to the product of a manual labour of 36 days, the field labour day = 3 days, the wood transport day likewise = 3 days. Summa summarum 42 days. There is added, however, the so-called iobagie (service, servitude), i.e., labour for the extraordinary production requirements of the proprietor. This extraordinary labour amounts to a levy on the part of the villages? of 4 men per 100 families, 3 in villages of 63-75 families, 2 in villages of 38-50, 1 for villages of 13-25 families. This iobagie is estimated at 14 labour days for each Wallachian peasant. Thus the corvée labour determined by the règlement itself = 42 + 14 = 56 labour days. The agricultural year in Wallachia, on account of the harsh climate, consists of 210 days, of which 40 go for Sundays and holidays, 30 on average for bad weather, together 70 days. Remain 140 days. From these deduct—

! put into force in 1831

? landowners

? 400 stagenes (about 2 m [per stagene]) in the plain and 300 in the mountains; 2. 3 pogones (1½ hectares) arable land; 3. 3 pogones meadow for hay

% in fact the boyars were the authors of the ordinance

? villages

206 2. Absolute Surplus-Value : Notebook III

the 56 corvée days. Leaves 84 days; a relation, however, no stronger than that of the English agricultural labourer, if the time he works for his wages is compared with the time he works for the production of the surplus-value distributed among tenant farmer, church, state, landowner, etc.

These are the corvée days legally due to the owner, the legal surplus labour. However, the règlement has so arranged matters that the corvée labour can be further extended without violation of its letter. It namely defines each day’s work in such a way that an extra amount of labour time falls upon the following day to complete it. It defines, for example,

“the day’s work in weeding, which is assessed at 12 rods, a task twice as great as a man could accomplish in one day”, particularly in the maize plantations. The day’s work for weeding is in fact so arranged by the ordinance “that it begins in the month of May, in order to end in the month of October”.

1118) “In Moldavia,” says one of the great boyars himself, “the 12 corvée days of the peasant, as the ordinance lays them down, actually correspond to 365 days.” [p. 311.]

With what refinement the boyars exploit this law to appropriate the labour time of the peasants can be further seen in: E. Regnault, “Histoire Politique et Sociale des Principautés Danubiennes”, Paris 1855, p. 305 sqq.

Let us now compare with this the ravenous appetite for labour time — surplus labour time — on the part of capitalist production in England.

It is not my intention to enter here upon the history of overwork since the invention of machinery in England. The fact is that in consequence of the excesses, pestilences broke out, whose devastations threatened capitalist and worker alike, that the state, in the face of the greatest resistance from the capitalists, had to introduce a normal working day in the factories (later more or less imitated everywhere on the Continent), that even at this moment this introduction of the normal working day has had to be extended from the factories proper to other branches of work (bleaching works, printing works, dyeing works), and that at this moment this process is still in progress, the struggle over it is continuing (e.g., for the introduction of the Ten Hours’ Bill!, the extension of the Factory Act e.g. to the lace manufacture! in Nottingham, etc.). For the details on the earlier phases of this process I refer to: F. Engels, “The Condition of the Working Class in England”, Leipzig 1845. The practical resistance of the manufacturers, however, was no greater than the theoretical resistance put up by their interpreters and apolo-

! lace manufacture ”

Additions 207

gists, the professional economists. Thus Mr. Newmarch!, the co-editor of Tooke’s “History of Prices”, as President of the Economic Science Section at the last Congress of the British association for Arts etc. (the name of the association to be looked up) in Sept. 1861 at Manchester! felt compelled to emphasise the insight into the necessity of the legal regulation and compulsory restriction of the normal working day in factories etc. as one of the very newest achievements of present-day political economy, by virtue of which it surpasses its predecessors! 84

My object is only, by way of a parallel with the voracity of the boyars, to adduce a few passages from the most recent Factory Reports; likewise one or two examples of branches of industry in which the Factory Acts have either not yet been introduced (lace manufacture)!3 or have only recently been introduced (printing works?).[!3] It is here simply a question of some proofs of the tendency, which operates no more strongly in Wallachia than in England.

First illustration. Lace trade’ in Nottingham.

*Daily Telegraph* of 17 January 1860.

“Mr Broughton, a county magistrate,* who presided at a meeting held at Nottingham Town Hall? on 14 January 1860, declared that in that part of the local population connected with the lace trade there existed a degree of suffering and privation absolutely unknown in the rest of the civilised world ... Children of 9 to 10 years are dragged from their filthy beds at 2, 3, 4 o’clock in the morning and compelled to work for bare subsistence until 10, 11, 12 o’clock at night, while their limbs waste away, their frame shrivels, their face weathers, and their human being absolutely sinks into a stone-like torpor,6 the aspect of which is exceedingly horrible to behold ... We are not surprised that Mr Mallet or other manufacturers appear to enter a protest against any discussion ... The system, as the Rev. Montagu Valpy describes it, is a system of unrestricted slavery, slavery in social, physical, moral and intellectual respects ... What is to be thought of a town that holds a public meeting to petition that the working time of men should be limited to 18 hours a day? ... We declaim against the Virginian and Carolinian cotton planters. Is their Negro market, with all the horrors of its whip and barter in human flesh, more detestable

* County magistrate. ? Town hall. 6 A stone-like torpor.

15*

208 2. Absolute Surplus-Value – Notebook III

than this slow human sacrifice that takes place in order that veils and collars! may be manufactured for the benefit of the capitalists?” ||119] {(Original reads: “It was declared [...] capitalists?”) #2]

[1120| Since the false view exists in general that the factory system has become something quite different, I quote here in the note from: *General Register Office*, 28 Oct. 1857 (*The Quarterly return of the Marriages, Births and Deaths etc.*) published by authority of the Registrar-General,2 etc., N. 35, p. 6, where it says:

“Mr Leigh of the Deansgate sub-district (Manchester) makes the following sensible remarks, which deserve the careful attention of the population of Manchester: The life of a child there is very sad ... The total number of deaths, not counting such as are the subject of the coroner’s inquest, amounts to 224, and of these 156 were children under 5 years ... Never before have I known such a proportion. It is obvious that the circumstances which ordinarily influence the life of adults remain essentially what they were; those, by contrast, that act with the utmost danger upon the very young have been extremely active ... 87 of the children died before they were a year old. Neglected diarrhoea, confinement in narrow, badly ventilated rooms while suffering from whooping-cough, lack of proper nutrition, too large doses of soothing medicines which lead to debility and convulsions as well as to water on the brain and congestion in the brain, something of this kind must explain why ... the mortality (of children) still remains so high.”

! Veils and collars. 2 Published by authority of the Registrar-General.

Addenda 209

/119/ Second illustration. Factory Reports.

“The fraudulent manufacturer begins work a quarter of an hour before 6 o’clock in the morning” (sometimes still earlier, sometimes somewhat later) “and ends it a quarter of an hour after 6 o’clock in the afternoon” (sometimes still later, sometimes somewhat earlier). “He takes away 5 minutes from the beginning and the end of the nominal half-hour for breakfast, and pinches off 10 minutes from the beginning and end of the hour set aside for dinner. On Saturday he works a quarter of an hour” (sometimes more, sometimes less) “after 2 o’clock in the afternoon.

Thus his gain {here the gain is directly identified with the pilfered surplus labour}


 Before 6 a.m.  15 minutes  Total in 

 After 6 p.m.  15 ditto  5 days: 

 For breakfast time  10 ”  300 minutes 

 For dinner time  20 ”   

   60 ”   




 On Saturdays 

 Before 6 a.m.  15 minutes  Weekly 

 For breakfast time  10 ”  total gain: 

 After 2 p.m.  15 ”  340 minutes 

   40 ”   



Or 5 hours 40 minutes weekly, which multiplied by 50 working weeks, after deducting 2 weeks for holidays or occasional stoppages, gives 27 working days.” (p. 4, 5, “Suggestions etc.”, by Mr. L. Horner in “Factories Regulation Acts. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 9 August 1859”)

“The extra profit” (to be made by overwork beyond the legal time) “appears to many” (manufacturers) “a temptation too great to be resisted. They reckon on the chance of not being found out; and when they see the smallness of the fines and costs which those who have been convicted have had to pay, they consider that even if detection occurs a considerable balance of gain would remain to them.” ([p.] 34, “Report of the Inspectors of Factories for the halfyear ended 31ˢᵗ Oct. 1856”) “If the working day is prolonged daily 5 minutes beyond the normal duration, that gives 2½ production days in the year.” ([p.] 35, l.c.)

!3 In the manuscript: Newman ? calico printing works.— 3 Lace trade.

„In den Fällen, wo die zusätzliche Zeit durch Multiplikation kleiner Diebstähle im Laufe des Tages gewonnen wird, stehn den Inspektoren fast unüberwindliche Schwierigkeiten der Beweisführung im Weg.“ (p.35, l.c. An dieser Stelle die so angeeignete Mehrarbeit direkt als theft, „Diebstahl“ bezeichnet von den offiziellen englischen Fabrikinspektoren.)

/120/ Diese kleinen Diebstähle werden auch bezeichnet als „Mausereien von Minuten“ (p.48, l.c.), ferner als „Wegschnappen von Minuten“ (l.c.) „oder, wie es genannt wird, ‚knabbern‘ oder ‚knapsen an den Essenspausen‘ “, (l.c.) „‚Wenn Sie mir erlauben‘, sagte mir ein sehr respektabler Fabrikherr, ‚täglich nur 10 Minuten Überzeit arbeiten zu lassen, stecken Sie jährlich 1000 Pfund Sterling in meine Tasche‘.“ (p. 48, loc. cit.)

Nach den Fabrikinspektoren ist die Arbeitszeit in englischen printworks! faktisch noch unbeschränkt, und haben noch im Jahr 1857 daselbst Kinder von 8 Jahren und drüber von 6 Uhr morgens bis 9 Uhr abends (15 Stunden) [gearbeitet].

U Calico printing works.

210 2. Absolute Surplus-Value: Notebook III

„Die Arbeitszeit in Kattundruckereien kann als praktisch unbegrenzt betrachtet werden, trotz gesetzlicher Beschränkung. Die einzige Arbeitsbeschränkung ist im Punkt 22 des ‚Printwork Act‘“ (8. und 9. Viktoria C29 189) „enthalten, welcher verfügt, daß kein Kind d.h. kein Kind im Alter von 8 bis 13 Jahren — während der Nacht beschäftigt werden soll, die laut Definition von 10 Uhr abends bis zum folgenden Morgen 6 Uhr früh gerechnet wird, Also können achtjährige Kinder von 6 Uhr morgens bis 10 Uhr abends“ (16 Stunden) „fortgesetzt und ohne irgendwelche Arbeitsunterbrechungen, um sich auszuruhen oder einen Imbiß zu sich zu nehmen, nach dem Gesetz beschäftigt werden mit Arbeiten, die in vieler Hinsicht der Fabrikarbeit entsprechen, und das häufig in Räumen, in denen es drückend heiß ist; und wenn ein Junge 13 Jahre alt geworden ist, kann er ohne jede Beschränkung eine beliebige

Zahl von Stunden am Tage oder in der Nacht gesetzlich beschäftigt werden. Kinder von 8 Jahren und darüber sind in der Tat von 6 Uhr morgens bis 9 Uhr abends während des letzten Halbjahres in meinem Distrikt abgerackert worden.” ([p.] 39, „Reports of the Inspect. of Factories“, 31st Oct. 1857, Reports of Mr. A. Redgrave.)

„Eine zusätzliche Stunde täglich, dadurch gewonnen, daß in kleinen Raten vor 6 Uhr morgens und nach 6 Uhr abends und zu Beginn und Ende von der für Mahlzeiten nominell festgelegten Spanne ein wenig Zeit erhascht wird, ist nahezu gleichwertig mit 13 Monaten im Jahr.“ („Reports of the I. of F.“, 30th April 1858, Report of Mr. L. Horner, p. [9, 10].)

So ängstlich sind die Fabrikinspektoren, klarzumachen, daß der Gain! nichts andres ist als Arbeitszeit, Surplusarbeitszeit, der Extragain, daher Surplusarbeitszeit über den Normaltag hinaus.

||121] Eine Zeit der Krise ändert daher nichts an dem Versuch, overtime? arbeiten zu lassen. Werden nur 3 oder 4 Tage in der Woche gearbeitet, so besteht der Profit überhaupt nur in der Surpluszeit, die während dieser 3 oder 4 Tage gearbeitet wird. Also extraordinary profit? nur in der unbezahlten surplustime‘, die über die normale Surpluszeit und daher über den legal bestimmten Normaltag hinaus gearbeitet wird. Multipliziere ich 2 Stunden Surplusarbeit mit 3 Tagen in der Woche, so ist der Mehrwert natürlich nur halb so groß, als wenn ich sie mit 6 Tagen in der Woche multipliziere. Daher während der Krisen um so größer die Versuchung, in den Tagen, die wirklich gearbeitet wird, Überzeit, d.h. mehr unbezahlte Arbeitszeit als sonst, arbeiten zu lassen. (Andre Fabrikanten tun faktisch dasselbe durch Herabsetzung des Arbeitslohns, d.h. durch Verkürzung der notwendigen Arbeitszeit während der 3 oder 4 Tage, in denen gearbeitet wird.) Daher 1857-58:

„Man mag es für eine Inkonsequenz halten, daß irgendwelche Überarbeit“ {durchaus nicht widersprüchlich, daß der Fabrikant während der Krise den größtmöglichsten Teil unbezahlter Arbeitszeit zu erhaschen sucht} „zu einer Zeit stattfindet, wo der Handel so schlecht geht, aber sein schlechter Zustand spornt skrupellose Leute zu Überschreitungen an, sie sichern sich so einen Extraprofit.“ ([p. 10,] „Reports etc.“, 30th April 1858, Report of Mr. L. Horner.)

{Je schlechter die Zeit, je weniger Geschäfte gemacht, desto größer soll der Profit auf das gemachte Geschäft sein.} Daher bemerkt Horner, l.c., daß zu derselben Zeit, wo 122 mills in seinem Distrikt ganz aufgegeben wurden,

143 still standen und alle übrigen short time! arbeiteten, daß overwork over the legal time? hinaus fortgesetzt wurde. (l.c.) Ebenso berichtet aus demselben

Jahr Fabrikinspektor T. J. Howell:

„Ich erhalte jedoch“ (obgleich in den meisten Fabriken wegen des schlechten Geschäftsstandes nur halbe Zeit gearbeitet wird) „nach wie vor die übliche Anzahl von Klagen, daß eine halbe oder dreiviertel Stunde täglich den Arbeitern weggeschnappt werden durch Eingriffe in die ihnen“ [gesetzlich] „zugesicherten Fristen für Erholung und Mahlzeit ... während des Arbeitstages und indem man morgens 5 Minuten oder länger vor Arbeitsbeginn anfängt und 5 Minuten oder mehr nach Arbeitsschluß am Abend aufhört. Diese kleinen Diebereien, die sich täglich insgesamt auf eine halbe bis dreiviertel Stunde belaufen, sind sehr schwer zu ermitteln.“ (p. 25, l.c., T.J. Howells „Report“.)

„Die Beobachtungen eines Inspektors genügen selbstverständlich nicht, um einen systematischen Kurs auf Überarbeit, bestehend aus Minuten, die zu 6 verschiedenen Zeiten im Laufe des Tages genommen werden, nachzuweisen.“ ([p. 35,] „Reports“, L. Horner, 31st Oct. 1856.) „Es ist diese allgemeine Zulassung in der Anwendung, wenn auch nicht Anerkennung des Prinzips, und die allgemeine Übereinstimmung, daß die Arbeitsbeschränkung zweckmäßig ist etc.“ („Reports etc.“, 31st Oct. 1855, p. 77.)

In the same measure as capitalist production, hence the factory system, have developed on the Continent, the governments (France, Prussia, Austria, etc.) were compelled to follow the English example of restricting working time in one way or another.* They mostly copied, with certain modifications, the English factory legislation,° and have had to copy it.

|}122| 212 2. Absolute Surplus-Value – Notebook III

In France, prior to 1848, there existed in fact no law for the limitation of the working day in factories. The law of 22 March 1841 (based on 3 & 4 Wm IV, c. 103% for the restriction of child labour in factories, works and workshops employing moving power, or a continuous fire, and all establishments giving employment to more than 20 workmen‘$) remained a dead letter and has, to this day, only been practically carried out in the département du Nord. Moreover, under this law children under? 13 years may also be employed at night (between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.), “upon the occasion of urgent repairs, or the stoppage of a waterwheel” ! , children over 13 years also during the night, “if their labour is indispensable” ? .

On 2 March 1848 the provisional government decreed a law whereby working time, not only in factories but in all manufactures and handicraft workshops, not only for children but also for adult workmen, was limited to 10 hours in Paris and 11 in the departments. The provisional government proceeded from the false assumption that the normal working day was 11 hours in Paris and 12 in the departments. But:

“In the greater number of spinning mills the labour lasted 14–15 hours, to the great detriment of the health and morality of the workers, and especially of the children; and even longer.” (“Des classes ouvrières en France, pendant l’année 1848”. Par M. Blanqui.)

The National Assembly, by law of 8 Sept. 1848, modified this law to the effect that:

“The daily labour of the worker in manufactures and factories shall not exceed 12 hours. The government has the right to authorise exceptions to the above regulation in those cases where the particular nature of the work or the machinery requires it.”

By decree of 17 May 1851 the governments put these exceptions into effect. First, various branches are specified to which the law of 8 Sept. 1848 is not applicable. In addition, however, the following restrictions were made:

“The cleaning of machinery at the end of the day; work that must be performed in the event of damage to the motive power, the steam boiler, the machinery or the buildings. In the following cases the labour may be extended: !  by 1 hour at the end of the day in dye works, bleach works and calico printing works, for washing and stretching pieces of cloth. By 2 hours in sugar refineries and sugar-boiling houses and in chemical works. By 2 hours on 120 days a year at the discretion of the manufacturer and with the approval of the prefect in dye works, calico printing works and finishing establishments.”

(Factory Inspector A. Redgrave, “Reports etc.”, 31 Oct. 1855, p. 80, remarks with reference to the execution of this law in France:

“Several manufacturers have assured me that when they wished to make use of the permission to extend the working day, the workers opposed it on the grounds that an extension of the working day at this moment—in the next, would lead to a reduction of the usual number of working hours … and they were particularly opposed to work exceeding 12 hours per day, because the law which fixes this number of hours is the only good thing that has remained to them from the legislation of the Republic.”

“The extension of the working day is left to the free choice of the worker … when they have agreed on it … the hourly wage rate (after 12 hours) is generally higher than their ordinary wage.” (p. 80, loc. cit.)

A. Redgrave notes p. 81 that as a result of overwork and the consequent physical enervation and mental demoralisation

“the working population of Rouen and Lille … is wasting away”, “their stature has become dwarfish” and “many suffer from a kind of lameness whose victims are called ‘factory cripples’ in England”. (p. 81, loc. cit.)

“It must be admitted that daily labour of 12 hours constitutes a sufficient strain for the human organism, and if one adds to the working hours the necessary pauses for meals and the time needed to go to and return from work, then the remainder left to the worker is not excessively large.” (p. 81, A. Redgrave, loc. cit.)

Among the hypocritical pretexts (objections) of the English manufacturers against the Ten Hours’ Bill! is the following:

“One of the many objections raised against the Ten Hours’ Bill was the danger of giving working young persons and women so much free time, which they, owing to their deficient education, would either waste or misuse; and it is put forward that in the interest of morality it would be more advisable to spend the whole day in the factory until education has made progress and care has been taken for the use of the free time which the Ten Hours’ Bill intends to grant to the factory population for useful mental and social activity.” ([p.] 87, A. Redgrave, loc. cit.)

! shortened

2 overwork beyond the legally fixed time

3 and therefore

% in one way or another

° factory legislation

$ Factories, works and workshops using motive power or a continuously burning fire, and all industrial establishments employing more than 20 workers.

? under

How greatly Macaulay distorts economic facts in order to be able to appear as the Whig apologist of the existing order — Cato the censor only against the past, sycophant of the present — is shown by the following passage among others:

“The practice of setting children prematurely to work, a practice which the state, as the legitimate protector of those who are unable to protect themselves, has, in our time, wisely and humanely interdicted, prevailed in the seventeenth century to an extent which, considering the then state of industry, seems almost incredible. At Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, a child of six years old was held to be fit for labour. Several writers of that time, and among them some who were regarded as eminently benevolent, mention with exultation the fact that, in that single city, boys and girls of a very tender age created wealth exceeding what was necessary for their own subsistence to the amount of twelve thousand pounds in a year. The more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more

! Factory owners against the Ten Hours Bill

214 2. Absolute Surplus-Value – Notebook II

reason we shall find to reject the opinion of those who consider our age as fruitful of new social evils. The truth is that the evils are, with scarcely an exception, old. That which is new is the intelligence which discerns them, and the humanity which

heals them.” (Macaulay’s “History of England”, vol. I, p. 417.)

The passage proves precisely the opposite, namely that at that time child labour was still an exceptional phenomenon, which economists mentioned with particular commendation and with exultation. What modern writer would mention as something particularly noteworthy that children of tender age are used up in the factories? Everyone who reads writers like Child, Culpeper, etc. with a healthy human understanding comes to the same result.

The legal time of working is often exceeded,

“by keeping the children, young persons, and women in the factory to clean the machinery during a part of the meal-times and on Saturdays after 2 o’clock, instead of the work being finished within the specified time.” (p. 12, L. Horner, “Reports etc.”, 30 April 1856.)

This overworking also takes place with workpeople

“who are not employed upon piecework, but receive weekly wages,” (L. Horner, p. [8,] 9, “Reports of the Insp. of F.”, 30 April 1859.)

(M. Horner, besides being one of the Factory Inquiry Commissioners of 1833, was one of the original Inspectors of Factories, and during the early days of factory supervision had to contend with serious difficulties.) Horner says in his last Report dated 30 April 1859:

“The education of the children, for which due provision is said to be made, is in numerous cases nothing but sheer mockery; the protection of the workers against bodily injuries and death from unfenced machinery, against which provision is likewise said to have been made, has become in practice a dead letter; the reporting of accidents is to a great extent nothing but a waste of public money ... Overtime working still prevails to a considerable extent, and in most cases with that security against detection and punishment which the law itself affords.” (p. 9, 8, l.c.)

! Exultation

Additions 215

(Children above 13 years qualified to be employed for the same number of hours as adult men; half-timers children under 13 years.)

|124| “The fact is, that prior to the Act of 1833, young persons and children were worked out all night, all day, or both ad libitum.” (“Reports etc.”, 30 April 1860, p. [50,] 51.)

By the Act of 1833 night between 81/2 p.m. and 51/2 a.m. The mill-owners permitted,

“to use for their legal hours of work any portion of the time between 51/2 a.m. and 81/2 p.m.” [p. 51.]

This signification of “day” and “night” continued through all the subsequent Factory Acts, though with restricted hours of work until 1850, when, for the first time, the day hours of permitted labour, were fixed at from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and in winter from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. if so desired by the mill occupier.

“The mass of accidents occurred in the largest factories ... the unceasing rush for every minute of time, in which the work is urged on with an unvarying power of about one thousand horse-power, leads necessarily to dangers. In such establishments moments are the elements of profit — every one’s attention is required at every moment. Here ... a constant struggle between life and inorganic forces may be seen; where mental energy must direct, and bodily powers must move and be kept in equilibrium with the revolutions of the spindles. They must not lag, notwithstanding the stress upon them, whether from excessive excitement or heat; nor be diverted for a single moment by scattered glances at the most varied motions in the room, for in every lagging lies loss.” (p. 56, “Reports of the Ins. of F.”, 30 April 1860.)

“The Commission for child labour, whose reports were published in different years, brought to light many enormities that also still continue — some of them far worse than any that were ever laid to the charge of factories or calico printing works ... Without an organised system of inspection by paid officers, responsible to Parliament, and compelled to do their duty by half-yearly reports of their proceedings, the law would soon become inoperative; the de-

! Children over 13 years regarded as fit to be employed the same number of hours as adult men; half the time for children under 13 years.

? the Act of 1833 stipulated that the night lasts from 8½ in the evening to 5½ in the morning. The factory owners were permitted

3 This definition of “day” and “night” was, despite the limitation of hours of labour, retained in all the subsequent Factory Acts until 1850, when for the first time the permitted labour in the day hours was fixed at between six o’clock in the morning and six o’clock in the evening, and in winter between seven o’clock in the morning and seven o’clock in the evening, if the factory owner so wished.

216 2. The absolute surplus-value – Notebook III

showed the ineffectiveness of all the Factory Acts prior to that of 1833 and, as is the case nowadays in France, where the Factory Act of 1841 contains no provision for systematic inspection.” (p. 10, “Rep. o.t. Insp. etc.,” 31st Oct. 1858.)

The Factory Acts “have put an end to the premature old age of the formerly long-toiling workers; by making them” [the Factory Acts] “them” [the workers] “masters of their own time, they have given them a moral force which directs them towards the possible possession of political power.” (p. 47, “Rep. o.th. I. o.F.,” 31st Oct. 1859.)

“A still greater advantage consists in the fact that a clear distinction has at last been drawn between the time which belongs to the worker himself, and that which belongs to his employer. The worker now knows when the time that he sells is ended and his own begins, and as he knows this precisely in advance, he can dispose of his own minutes for his own purposes beforehand.” (loc. cit.,

p. 52.)

This is very important with regard to the fixing of the normal working day. Before 1833:

“The employer had time for nothing but money, the worker time for nothing but labour.” (loc. cit., p. 48.)

“The greed of the factory owners, their cruelties in the hunt for profit were scarcely surpassed by those perpetrated by the Spaniards during the conquest of America in the hunt for gold.” (p. 114, John Wade, “History of the Middle and W. Classes,” 3rd ed., London 1835.)

||124a| “Certain groups of workers” (e.g. adult male and female weavers) “are directly interested in overtime, and it may be assumed that they exercise some influence on the groups of younger ones, the latter moreover having an understandable fear of dismissal should they give any evidence or information likely to incriminate their employers ... even if they” (the juvenile workers) “are caught at work at unlawful times, their testimony can rarely be relied upon for the confirmation of the facts before the college of magistrates, since they would run the risk of losing their jobs.” (p. 8, “Factory Inspectors’ Reports, for half-year ending October 31st 1860”)

“A factory employs 400 people, of whom half work on ‘piece-wages’ and ... have a direct interest in working longer. The other 200 are paid by the day, work just as long as the others, but receive no money for the overtime. In some places the practice has arisen of regularly letting the correct hours of labour begin 5 minutes earlier and end 5 minutes later. There are there 3 different starting and 3 different finishing times daily; and thus at 6 different times 5 minutes each are gained, i.e. ½ hour daily. And this affects not just one person, but 200 who receive day wages. The labour of these 200 people for half an hour daily is equal to the labour of one person for 50 hours, or 5/6 of the weekly labour output of one person, and is a real gain for the employer.” (loc. cit., p. 9.)

Additions 2 1 7

If payment is by piece-work, the worker indeed has a share in his overtime! and appropriates to himself a part of the surplustime? during which he works. But the capitalist, apart from the more rapid valorisation of fixed capital, surplus profit?, even if he pays for the hour of overtime as much or even more than for the hours of the normal working day, 1. because he does not need to increase the machinery with which the work is done (e.g. spindles, looms). The same worker, whether he works 12 or 15 hours, works at the same power-loom* at the same time. Thus a part of the capital outlay is eliminated in this production of surplustime. 2. If the normal working day is 12 hours, of which 2 hours are surplus labour, then 10 hours must be paid for 2 hours of surplus time.

Here, of the 30 minutes (½ hour), ½ is gained = 5 minutes, and 25 minutes are paid to him. Surplus time otherwise depends on the worker first working 10 hours for himself. Here it is already presupposed that he has earned his necessary wages. He can therefore be compensated with an aliquot part of the overtime.

If the overtime is gratis, capital gains it without paying for necessary labour time; 100 hours of overtime, when 10 hours are worked daily, = the labour time of 10 workers, for whom the wages are entirely saved.

||124b| The Bleaching and Dyeing Acts were to come into operation on August 1, 1861.

The main provisions of the actual Factory Acts are:

„All persons under 16 years of age must be examined and certified by the competent physician. Children under 8 years of age may not be employed. Children between the ages of 8 and 13 may be employed only for half the time and must attend school instruction daily. Women and young persons under 18 years of age may not be employed before 6 o’clock in the morning nor after 6 o’clock in the evening, nor after 2 o’clock in the afternoon on Saturdays. Women and young persons may not be employed during any mealtime nor be permitted to remain in any factory room while a production process is in progress. Children under 13 years of age may not be employed both in the morning and after 1 o’clock of the same day.” (p. 22, 23, l.c.) — “The hours of work are checked by a public clock, generally the clock of the nearest railway station ... It is sometimes given as a pretext, when someone is caught in a factory during meal breaks or at other illegal times, that he does not wish to leave the factory at the fixed time and that} force is necessary to interrupt his work, especially on Saturday afternoons. Although the workers remain in the factory after the machinery has been stopped and busy themselves with cleaning their machines or similar tasks, they would none the less not be so employed if sufficient time had been specially set aside for cleaning, etc., either before 6 o’clock in the evening or before 2 o’clock in the afternoon on Saturdays.”

(p. 23, l.c.)

! Mealtimes

Further provision of the factory acts in regard to mealtimes!:

“All young persons and women must be given one and a half hours of free time at the same time between 7.30 a.m. and 6 p.m.; of this, one hour must be before 3 p.m., and no one may be employed for longer than 5 hours without a break of 30 minutes before 1 p.m. The usual duration of the meal breaks for mechanics throughout the country is half an hour for breakfast and one hour for the main meal.” ([p.] 24, l. c.)

Further provision of the factory acts:

“Parents are obliged to send their child to school for 3 hours a day on 5 weekdays. Limits are set upon the employment of children by the employer if he has not procured a certificate from the teacher each Monday morning showing that each child has attended school on 5 days in the past week for 3 hours each day.” (p. 26.)

In earlier centuries, in the times preceding capitalist production, we likewise find forcible, i.e. legal, regulation by the government. But to compel the worker to work a certain length of time, whereas the present regulations are all, conversely, designed to compel the capitalist to allow him to work only a certain length of time. In face of developed capital, working time can only be restricted by government compulsion. At the stages where capital is only first developing, government compulsion ||124c| steps in to transform the worker forcibly into a wage-labourer.

“When the population is thinly scattered and land is overabundant, the free labourer is lazy and impudent. Cleverly devised regulations are frequently found which were not only useful but absolutely necessary to force him to work. Nowadays, says Mr. Carlyle, the emancipated Negroes on our West Indian islands are not ready to work; they have the hot sun for nothing and pumpkins (pumpkin) for almost nothing. He seems to consider legal regulations to enforce labour absolutely necessary, even for their own sake. For they quickly relapse into their original barbarism. The experience of England 500 years ago is cited to show that the poor did not need to work and did not want to work. During the great

! Mealtimes

Addenda 219

plague of the 14th century, which had decimated the population, the difficulties of setting labourers to work at reasonable prices had increased so much that they became intolerable and threatened the industry of the kingdom. Consequently, in 1349, under Edward III, Statute No. 23 was enacted, which forced the poor to work and interfered with the fixing of wages. This was followed over several centuries by a whole series of legal regulations with the same purpose. The wages of artisans as well as those of agricultural labourers, wages for piece-work and for day-work, the times during which the poor had to work, even the pauses for meals” (as in the factory acts of today) “were fixed by law. Acts of Parliament which, however, regulated wages against the workers in favour of the employers, lasted for the long period of 464 years. The population grew. These laws, originally founded, now became superfluous and burdensome. In 1813 they were all repealed.” (p. 205, 206, [John Barnard Byles,] “Sophisms of Free Trade, etc.”, 7th ed., London, 1850.)

„From the statute of 1496 it appears that the diet was regarded as equivalent to 1/3 of the income of an artisan and 1/2 of the income of a labourer’s! , which indicates a higher degree of independence among the workers than prevails now; for the diet of labourers and artificers? is now estimated at a higher rate of their wages?. The hours for meals and relaxation* were more liberal than nowadays. From March to September, for example, they amounted to 1 hour for breakfast, 1½ hours for dinner, and ½ hour for noon-meal° . (3 hours in all.) In winter, work was from 5 a.m. until dark. In contrast, now in the cotton factories ½ hour for ||124d| breakfast, 1 hour for dinner, thus only 1½ hours, exactly half that of the 15th century. (p.25, 24 and 577, 578, John Wade, ‘History of the Middle and Working Classes’, 3rd ed., Lond[on] 1835.)

! labourers

? artisans

3 wages

* meals and relaxation

° afternoon break

The Bleaching and Dyeing Works Act 1860 was enacted. The provisions of the Print Works Act, Bleaching and Dyeing Works Act$ and the Factory Act differ.

‘The Bleaching, etc., Works Act restricts the hours of labour of all women and young persons to between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., but permits children to work not later than 6 p.m. The Print Works Act restricts the hours of women, young persons and children to between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., provided that the children have attended school for 5 hours on one day, apart from Saturday, before 6 p.m.’ (p.20, 21, ‘Factory Inspector’s Reports’ for 31st Oct. 1861.) ‘The Factory Acts require that 1½ hours’ free time be allowed each day and that this be given between 7.30 a.m. and 6 p.m., and one hour of it shall be granted before 3 p.m., and that neither a child, a young person nor a

$ in the Print Works, Bleaching and Dyeing Works Act

220 2. Absolute Surplus-Value – Notebook III

woman shall be employed longer than 5 hours without an interval for meals of at least 30 minutes before 1 p.m. on any day ... In the Print Works Act there is no requirement whatever ... for any mealtime. Accordingly, young persons and women may work from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. without interruption for meals.’ (p.21, l.c.) ‘In print works a child may work during the period between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. ... under the Bleaching Works Act a child may only work for as long as is laid down by the Factory Act, while the labour of the young persons and women, with whom it previously worked during the day, may be continued until 8 p.m.’ ([p.] 22, l.c.)

‘If we take silk manufacture as an example, since 1850 it has been legally permitted to employ children of 11 years and upwards’ (hence from 11 to 13 years) ‘at the reeling and throwing of raw silk for 10½ hours a day. From 1844 to 1850 their daily labour was restricted to 10 hours, and to fewer on Saturdays, and before that period to 9 hours. These changes were made on the plea that the labour in silk factories was lighter than in other textile factories, and also, in other respects, in no way so detrimental to health.’ (p.26, l.c.) ‘The assertion put into circulation in 1850, to the effect that silk manufacture was a healthier occupation than the manufacture of other textile goods, not only lacks ||124e| all proof, but the proof is exactly the reverse; for the average mortality rate in the silk districts is extremely high, and among the female part of the population even higher than in the cotton districts of Lancashire, where, although the children, it is true, only work half the time, a high mortality rate from pulmonary complaints, which must be regarded as unavoidable, is nevertheless brought about by the causes injurious to health present in cotton manufacture.’ (p.27, l.c.)

Lord Ashley, in his speech on the Ten Hours’ Bill (March 15th, 1844), says that at that time the hours of labour in the Austrian factories were

‘15 and not infrequently 17 hours a day’. (‘Ten Hours’ Factory Bill’, London 1844, p.5.) In Switzerland the regulations are very strict: ‘In the canton of Aargau children under 14 are not permitted to work more than 12½ hours, and the factory owners are obliged to provide for school education.’ In the canton of Zürich ‘the hours of labour are restricted to 12; and children under 10 years may not be employed ... In Prussia, under the law of 1839, no child who has not completed his 16th year may be employed for longer than 10 hours a day; no one under 9 years may be employed at all’. (p.[5,] 6.)*

* In the manuscript deleted: The capital laid out in raw material grows even more disproportionately fast than in manufacture based solely on the division of labour, in relation to that laid out in wages. And in addition, comes the whole great mass of the part of capital laid out in instruments of labour.!

! See present volume, p.322

Additions 221

2. Absolute Surplus-Value – Notebook III

Sub-Inspector Baker reports (Factory Reports, 1843) that he “had seen several women who, he was sure, could barely have completed their 18th year, but were forced to work from 6 in the morning until 10 at night with only 1½ hours’ meal breaks. In other cases, he points out, women are forced to work the whole night through at a temperature of 70-80° [Fahrenheit] … I discovered” (says Mr. Horner, Factory Reports, 1843) “many young women, just 18 years old, at work from half past 4 in the morning until 8 in the evening without any break except a quarter of an hour for breakfast and 3 quarters of an hour for dinner. One may safely assert that they work 15½ out of the 24 hours. Among them there are” (says Mr. Saunders, Fact. Rep., 1843) “women who are employed for many weeks at a stretch, with the loss of only a few days, from 6 in the morning until 12 at night, with less than 2 hours for meals, so that for 5 nights in the week, of the 24 hours of the day, only 6 remain to them to go to and from home and to rest in bed.”

The premature wearing out of the capacity for labour, in other words, early ageing, as a result of the forcible lengthening of the working time:

“In the year 1833 Mr. Ashworth, a very important factory owner, addressed a letter to me which contained the following remarkable passage: ‘Next, you will naturally inquire about the old men, who are said to die or become incapable of work as soon as they reach the fortieth year or a little later.’ Note the phrase, ‘old men’ of 40.” (l.c., p. 12.)

The Government Commissioner M’Intosh (one of those commissioners expressly sent to collect evidence against that adduced by the committee in 1832) says in his report of 1833:¹

“Although prepared, because I saw childishness taken possession of in this way, it is very hard to believe the age that men of advanced years state of themselves, so complete is their premature senescence.” (p. 13, l.c.)

In 1816 Sir R. Peel procured a committee of the House of Commons to examine the Apprentice Act of 1802.² Among other things, according to the evidence of John Moss, overseer of a mill near Preston, the Apprentice Act was constantly set at nought. The witness did not even know of it. The children in the mill, almost all apprentices from London parishes, were worked from 5 in the morning³ until 8 at night, the whole year through, with 1 hour for the 2 meals; invariably they worked from 6 on Sunday morning until 12, in cleaning the machinery for the week. (15 hours.)

Average labour among the bakers in London 17 hours. 17 hours regular in the first period of the cotton industry. Shortly afterwards introduction of night work.

¹ Government Commissioner M’Intosh (one of the commissioners expressly sent to collect evidence against that adduced by the committee in 1832) said in his report of 1833.

² In 1816 Sir R. Peel procured the formation of a committee of the House of Commons to examine the Apprentice Act of 1802.

³ Evidence of John Moss, overseer of a mill near Preston, the provisions …

## Rate of Surplus Value

If the worker does 10 hours of necessary tasour and 2 hours of 
SURPLUS LABOUR, the rate=7/j9='/,=20%. It would result in an 
incorrect calculation, i.e. the rate of exploitation would be wrongly 
stated, if one were to consider the whole of the working day of 
12 hours, and say, for instance, that the worker receives °/, and 
the capitalist 1, of it. The rate would then amount to 'V/, 
(?/.=2 hours),=167/3%. The same error would occur if the 
product were calculated, and indeed not the ratio of the surptus 
propucr to the part of the propucr which is equivalent to the wage, 
but to the surplus PRODUCT AS ALIQUOT PART OF THE AGGREGATE PRODUCT. This 
point is not only very important for the determination of surplus 
value but it is later of decisive importance for the correct 
determination of the rate of profit.’? | 

[IlI-124f] “He” (one of the entrepreneurs in the FIRST period of the 
development of the COTTON INDUSTRY) “communicated an admirable idea to me, I 
don’t know whether it is his own invention, but it is truly worthy of him: it is the 
organisation of night work. The workers will be divided into two gangs, in such a way 
that each of them on alternate nights will be awake until the morning: the business 
will no longer come to a halt. The work, when confined to 17 hours, allowed an 
enormous capital—the value of the machines, the rent of the buildings, etc.—to lie 
dormant for 7 whole hours. These 7 whole hours of interest a day will no longer 
be lost. He explained to me a plan thanks to which he will recover, and more than 
recover, the expenses of lighting, simply by his way of remunerating night work” 
(St. Germain Leduc, Sir Richard Arkwright etc. (1760 & 1792), Paris, 1842, 
[pp.] 145-46).8 

This is now the norm in the corron factories of Moscow. Much 
more frightful at this moment the system followed in the mirror 
factories of Manchester, with children being used as well. There 
are two gangs, which relieve each other every 6 hours, day and 
night, during the whole of the 24 hours. We read in Babbage (On 
the Economy of Machinery etc., London, 1832): 

“The first machines for manufacturing tulle were very expensive when first 
purchased, at between £1,000 and £1,200 or £1,300 sterling. Every manufacturer 
who possessed one of these machines soon found that he was manufacturing more, 
but because its work was limited to 8 hours a day he could not, in view of its price, 
compete with the old method of manufacture. This disadvantage stemmed from 
the considerable sum of money devoted to the initial establishment of the machine. 
Soon, however, the manufacturers noticed that with the same expenditure of initial 
capital and a small addition to their circulating capital they could set the same 
machine to work for 24 hours. The advantages thereby realised induced other 
people to direct their attention to the means of perfecting the machine; so that its 
purchase price underwent a considerable reduction simultaneously with increases in 
the speed and quantity of tulle manufacture” (Ch. XXII).!74 

a Marx quotes Leduc and, below, Macnab in French.— Ed. 

230 The Production Process of Capital 

Dale, Owen’s predecessor in the cotron mill at New Lanark, and 
himself a philanthropist, still employed children for 13 hours a 
day, even those under 10 years old. 

“To cover the expense of these so well combined arrangements, and for the 
general upkeep of the premises, it was absolutely necessary to employ these 
children in the cotton mills from 6 o'clock in the morning until 7 o’clock in the 
evening, summer and winter alike.... The directors of the workhouses, through 
misplaced motives of economy, did not want to send the children entrusted to their 
care, unless the owner of establishment took charge of them from the ages of 6, 7 
or 8 years” (Henry Grey Macnab, Examen impartial des nouvelles vues de M. Robert 
Owen, et de ses établissements a New-Lanark en Ecosse. Traduit par Laffon de Ladébat, 
Paris, 1821, [p.] 64). 

“Thus the arrangements of Mr. Dale and his tender solicitude for the 
well-being of these children were in the last resort almost entirely useless and 
unsuccessful. He had taken these children into his service, and without their labour 
he could not feed them” (l.c., [p.] 65). 

“The source of this evil was that the children [III-124g] sent by the workhouses 
were much too young for the work, and ought to have been kept for four more 
years, and to have received primary schooling.... If this is the true and not 
exaggerated picture of the situation of our apprentices emerging from the 
workhouses, in our present manufacturing system, even under the best and most 
humane regulations, how deplorable must the situation of these children be under 
a bad management?” (l.c., [p.] 66). 

As soon as Owen took over the management: 

“The system of accepting apprentices drawn from the workhouses was 
abolished.... They gave up the practice of employing children of six to eight years 
of age in the factories” ({p.] 74). 

“Working hours, which were 16 out of the 24, have been reduced to 10 and a 
half per day” ({[p.] 98). 

This was naturally regarded as subversive of society. A great 
noise was made by the économistes and Benthamite “philosophers”. 

* * * 

“But it is still easier to obtain bread in the eastern islands of the Asian 
archipelago, where sago grows wild in the forests. When the inhabitants have 
convinced themselves, by boring a hole in the trunk, that the pith is ripe, the tree is 
cut down and divided into several pieces, the pith is extracted, mixed with water 
and filtered: it is then quite fit for use as sago meal. One tree commonly yields 300 
pounds, and it may yield 500-600. There, then, one goes into the forest and cuts 
one’s own bread, just as with us one cuts firewood” (J. F. Schouw, Die Erde, die 

Pflanzen und der Mensch, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1854, [p.] 148). 

Suppose that 1 day (of 12 hours) a week is required for this 
bread-cutter to satisfy all his needs. If capitalist production were 
introduced, he would have to work 6 days a week in order to 
appropriate for himself the product of that one day. 

Absolute Surplus Value 231 

Surplus labour naturally consists of the same kind of labour as 
NECESSARY labour. If the worker is a spinner, his surplus labour 
consists of spinning, and his surp.us propuct of spun yarn. If he is a 
miner, similarly, etc. It can therefore be seen that the kind of 
labour it is, its particular quality, the particular branch it belongs 
to, is entirely irrelevant to the ratio of surplus LABOUR tO NECESSARY 
Labour. Equally irrelevant, therefore, is the ratio between the values 
of different days of labour, or, which is the same thing, the ratio 
in which a Day OF MORE OR LESS SKILLED LABOUR IS EQUATED WITH A DAY OF 
UNSKILLED AVERAGE LABOUR. This equation has no effect at all on the 
ratio under investigation here. In order to simplify (the presenta- 
tion) we can therefore always argue as if the labour of all the 
workers employed by the capitalist=Average UNSKILLED LABOUR, 
simple labour. In any case, in the capitalist’s own calculations (in 
the monetary expression of labour), every kind of labour is 
reduced, in practice and in fact, to this expression. 

{I1lI-124h] The qualitative differences between the different 
kinds of Averace taBourR, whereby one requires more dexterity, the 
other more strength, etc., cancel each other out in practice. But as 
regards the individual differences between workers who perform the 
same labour, the following must be pointed out: These differences 
are greatest in handicraft production (and in the higher spheres of 
so-called unproductive labour). They vanish progressively as time 
goes on, and in developed capitalist production, where division of 
Jabour and machinery prevail, their role is limited to a sphere 
almost too small for calculation. (If we set aside the short period 
during which apprentices learn their trade.) The averace wage must 
be high enough to preserve the averace worker’s life as a worker; 
and an aAveRAGE performance is here the prerequisite the worker 
must fulfil to be allowed into the workshop at all. He who stands 
above or below this averRacE is an exception, and, viewing the 
workshop as a whole, its entire personnel provides the aveERAcE 
product in the averace time of the branch in question under the 
AVERAGE conditions of production. In the daily or weekly wage, etc., 
no regard is in fact taken of these individual pirrerences. They are 
taken into account in the piece-wage system, though. But this does 
not change the relation between capitalist and worker at all. If the 
labour time of A is higher than that of B, his wages are higher 
too, but also the surptus vatuz he produces. If his performance falls 
below the averace, his wages fall, but also the surplus vatue. The 
workshop as a whole, however, must provide the averace. What is 
above and below the averacz is mutually complementary, and the 
AVERAGE, Which the GREAT BULK OF LABOURERS perform in any case, 

232 The Production Process of Capital 

remains what it was. These matters are to be considered under the 
wages of labour.” For the relation being considered here they are 
irrelevant. For the rest, the piece-wage was introduced very early 
on into the English factories. Once it was established how much 
could be performed on AN average in a given period of labour, the 
wage was determined accordingly (the number of hours in the 
working day being simultaneously given). And 1n Fact the wage 
(the accrecATE) was then lower if 17 hours a day were worked than 
if 10 were worked. Only with extraordinary overtime working would 
the workers benefit from the distinction, so that they could 
APPROPRIATE TO THEMSELVES a PART Of this EXTRAORDINARY SURPLUS LABOUR. 
Which, incidentally, is also the case where there is EXTRAORDINARY 
SURPLUS LABOUR under the daily wage system, etc. 

We have seen that the basis of value is the fact that human 
beings relate to each other’s labour as equal, and general, and in 
this form social, labour. This is an abstraction, like all human 
thought, and social relations only exist among human beings to 
the extent that they think, and possess this power of abstraction 
from sensuous individuality and contingency. The kind of political 
economist who attacks the determination of value by labour time 
on the ground that the work performed by 2 individuals during 
the same time is not absolutely equal (although in the same trade), 
doesn’t yet even know what distinguishes human social relations © 
from relations between animals. He is a Beast. As BEASTS, the same 
fellows then also have no difficulty in overlooking the fact that no 
2 use values are absolutely identical (no 2 leaves, Leibniz’) and 
even less difficulty in judging use values, which have no common 
measure whatever, as exchange values according to their degree of 
utility. 

If the MONETARY EXPRESSION (MONE€y TO BE SUPPOSED TO KEEP ITS VALUE, AS IT 
REALLY DOES FOR LONGER PERIODS) Of an AVERAGE working day of 12 hours 
were=10s., it would be clear that the worker who works for 12 
hours can never add more than 10s. to the object of labour. If the 
total amount of the means of subsistence he needs every day is 5s., 
the capitalist will have to pay 5s. and receive 5s. of surpius vatue. If 
it comes to 6 he will only receive 4, if 7 only 3, if 3 in contrast 
then 7, etc. With a given labour time—length of the working 
day—it must be firmly grasped that the sum total of the NrcEssARY 
and the surpius rasour is represented in a product of constant value

## Relative Surplus Value

We call the form of surplus value considered so far abso- 
lute surplus value because its very existence, its rate of growth, 
and its every increase is at the same time an absolute increase of 
created value (of produced value). It arises, as we have seen,’ from 
an extension of the necessary working day beyond its limits, and 
its absolute magnitude is equal to the magnitude of this extension, 
whereas its relative magnitude—the proportional surplus value, or 
the rate of surplus value—is given by the ratio of this extension, 
this fluxion, to its fluent,’” necessary labour time. If the necessary 
labour time is 10 hours, the working day will be extended by 2, 3, 
4, 5 hours. As a result, a value of 12-15 hours of labour will be 
created instead of one of 10. The extension of the normal working 
day, i.e. the total of necessary labour time+surplus labour time, is 
here the process by which surplus value grows, is increased. 

Let us assume that the overall working day has reached its 
normal limits. Now there emerges, in the manner peculiar to and 
characteristic of it, capital’s tendency to posit surplus value, 1.e. 
surplus labour time. Let the normal working day consist of 12 
hours, of which 10 are necessary labour time, and 2 surplus labour 
time. Let an extension beyond this duration, hence a growth in 
absolute surplus value, be out of the question. It is of course clear 
that such a barrier—however one may fix it—1is bound to assert 
itself, to be reached. (One may also assume, in order to have the : 
problem present in its purest form, that the sum total of absolute 
surplus value cannot be raised any further, since the working 
population is given.) In this case, therefore, where the surplus 

a See this volume, pp. 175-76.— Ed. 

234 The Production Process of Capital 

value cannot be raised any further by lengthening the overall 
working day, how can it be raised any further at all? By shortening 
the necessary labour time. Given an overall working day of 12 hours 
(10 hours necessary labour time, 2 hours surplus labour time) the 
surplus value or the surplus labour time may e.g. grow by 50%, 
may grow from 2 hours to 3—without any extension of the overall 
working day—if the necessary labour time is shortened from 10 
hours to 9 hours, by ‘No. The quantum of surplus labour time, 
consequently surplus value, may grow not only through a direct 
increase of surplus labour time achieved by a simultaneous 
lengthening of the overall working day, but also through the 
shortening of the necessary Jabour time, hence the conversion of 
labour time from necessary to surplus labour time. The normal 
working day would not be lengthened, but necessary labour time 
would be reduced and there would have been a change in the 
ratio governing the division of the overall working day into labour 
which replaces wages and labour which creates surplus value. 

As we have seen,’ necessary labour time (as paid labour time) is 
nothing but the labour time which replaces the labour time 
contained in the wage, in the purchasing price of labour capacity 
(which is in reality the labour time required for the production of 
the wage). It could be reduced by reducing the wage. If the value 
of the wage is forcibly cut down, so also is the labour time 
contained in the wage, hence the labour time paid for the 
reproduction, the replacement, of the wage. As the value fell, so 
would the equivalent for the value: the equivalent value corres- 
ponding to, or rather equal to, this value. This is exactly what 
happens in practice, of course. The price of labour capacity, like 
that of every other commodity, does in practice rise and fall above 
and below its value. But this is of no concern to us, as we proceed 
from the assumption that the price of the commodity corresponds 
to its value, or we consider the phenomena on this assumption. The 
reduction of necessary labour time which is under discussion here 
has therefore to be analysed under the presupposition that labour 
capacity is sold at its value, that the worker receives the normal 
wage, and therefore that no reduction occurs in the amount of the 
means of subsistence which are required for the normal and 
traditional reproduction of his labour capacity. 7 

[1II-126] //An increase in surplus value achieved by reducing 
wages below their average level (without increasing the productivi- 
ty of labour) is an increase in profit achieved by forcing the 

a See this volume, pp. 173-76.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value 235 

worker below the level of his normal conditions of life. On the 
other hand, an increase in wages over their normal average level 
is, on the part of the worker, a sharing in, an appropriation of, a 
part of his own surplus labour (similarly assuming the productive 
power of labour remains constant). In the first case * the capitalist 
encroaches upon the vital conditions of the workman, and upon 
the times of labour necessary for its own sustainance.* In the 
second case *the workman expropriates part of his own surplus 
labour. In both cases the one loses what the other gains, but the 
workman loses in life, what the capitalist gains in money, and in the 
other case the workman gains in enjoyment of life, what the 
capitalist loses in the rate of appropriating other people’s 
labour.*// 

Any reduction in necessary labour time which takes place on the 
assumption that the price of labour capacity is equal to its value, 
hence that wages are not forced down below normal wages, is 
possible only through an increase in the productivity of labour, or 
through a higher development of the productive forces of labour, which 
is the same thing. 

We saw when we were considering the commodity "° that if the 
productive power of labour increases, the same use value will be 
produced in a shorter labour time, or a greater quantity of the 
same use values will be produced in the same labour time (or a 
shorter time, but this is included in case 2). The use value of the 
commodity remains the same although its exchange value has 
fallen, i.e. a smaller quantity of labour time is objectified in it, less 
labour is required to produce it. The amount of the means of 
subsistence required for the normal reproduction of labour 
capacity is not determined by their exchange value but by their 
use value—dqualitatively and quantitatively. It is therefore not 
determined by the labour time required to. produce them, 
objectified in them, but by the result of this labour time, by the 
real labour, to the extent that it is present in the product. Hence if 
the same amount of the means of subsistence can be produced in 
a shorter working period owing to an increase in the productivity 
of real labour, the value of labour capacity will fall, and along with 
that the labour time required for its reproduction, for the 
production of its equivalent value, the necessary labour time, 
although labour capacity will continue to be sold at its value. Just 
as any other commodity continues to be sold at its value if it costs 
Hoo less today than before, because ‘oo less labour time is 
contained in it, although it continues to possess the same use value 
as before. Here the value of labour capacity falls, and therefore 

236 The Production Process of Capital 

the necessary labour time too, not because the price of labour 
capacity has fallen below its value but because its value has itself 
fallen, i.e. because less labour time is objectified in the labour 
capacity, and therefore less labour time is required for its 
reproduction. In this case surplus labour time grows because 
necessary labour time has diminished. A part of the overall 
working day which was previously reserved for necessary labour is 
now set free, is annexed to the surplus labour time. A part of the 
necessary labour time is converted into surplus labour time; hence 
a portion of the overall value of the product, which previously 
entered the wage, now enters the surplus value (the capitalist’s 
gain). I call this form of surplus value relative surplus value. 

It is clear from the outset that an increase in the productive 
power of labour can only lessen the value of its labour capacity or 
its necessary labour time to the extent that the products of this 
labour either directly enter into the worker’s consumption, such as 
means of nourishment and heating, housing, clothing, etc., or go 
into the constant capital (raw material and instrument of labour) 
which is required for the manufacture of those products. The 
value of the constant capital entering into the product re-appears 
in the value of the product, and therefore the value of the 
product clearly falls, not only when there is a fall in the labour 
time required for its own manufacture but also, and just as much, 
when there is a fall in the labour time required for the 
manufacture of its conditions of production; that is to say the 
value of the raw material and instrument of labour required for 
the manufacture of the products which enter into the consump- 
tion of the worker, in short the value of the constant capital (see 
Ramsay'”’ ) 

// The distinction between the re-appearance or simple preserva- 
tion of the value in the product and the reproduction of that value 
is as follows: In the latter case a new equivalent replaces the 
exchange value lost through the consumption of the use value in 
which it was contained. In the first case no new equivalent is put 
in the place of the original value. For example, the value of the 
wood which re-appears in the table is not replaced by a newly 
created equivalent. The value of the wood only re-appears in the 
table because the wood previously possessed value and _ the 
production of its value is a prerequisite for the production of the 
table’s value. // 

But, secondly: Take the worker in the branch of labour in which 
he himself works. If, owing to a rise in the productive power of 
labour, a worker in a weaving-mill produces 20 yards of calico in one 

Relative Surplus Value 237 

hour, whereas he previously produced only 1 yard, the 20 yards, after 
deduction of the increased amount of constant capital contained in 
them, therefore in so far as they are, in general, value created by 
the worker himself, [III-127] possess no more value than the 1 yard, 
did previously. If the productive power of labour remains the 
same in all the other branches as it was before this transformation 
in the weaving trade, the worker would be unable to buy more of 
the means of subsistence than before with his 1 hour, despite the 
heightened productive power of his labour—i.e. he could only buy 
commodities in which 1 hour of labour is objectified, just as 
before. The growth of productive power in his own branch of 
labour, the increased productivity of his own labour, would 
therefore only cheapen the reproduction of his own labour 
capacity and hence only diminish his necessary labour time, in so 
far as and to the extent to which calico enters into his own 
consumption as, say, an element in his clothing. Only in this 
proportion. But this is true of every specific branch of production, 
hence of every individual capital, taken for itself, in the sphere of 
its own industrial functioning. 

If we take the total capital of society, hence the whole capitalist 
class vis-a-vis the working class, it is clear that the capitalist class 
can only increase surplus value without extending the overall 
working day and without lessening the normal wage in so far as a 
greater productivity of labour, a higher development of the 
productive power of labour, makes it possible to maintain the 
working class as a whole with less labour, to produce the total 
amount of its means of subsistence more cheaply, and therefore to 
reduce the amount of labour time in total that the working class 
requires for the reproduction of its own wages. But this total 
amount consists simply of the total amount of individual means of 
subsistence and the total amount of the specific branches of 
labour; hence of the total amount of the individual branches of 
labour which produce these means of subsistence; hence of the 
total amount of the reductions in labour time on account of the 
increased productive power of labour in each of these individual 
branches. For the purpose of generalising the presentation, 
however, we are justified in viewing the process as if the worker 
lived from the use values he produces himself—and we can only 
view the process by picturing a particular individual capital with 
particular workers in a particular sphere. (It is not assumed here 
that the worker’s need for necessary labour time declines in the 
same measure as the amount of product he provides in the same 
period increases, but that his own product, which has now become 

18* 

238 The Production Process of Capital 

cheaper, enters into his own consumption in proportion as his 
necessary labour time declines. This is valid for the whole of 
society, hence for the sum total of all the individuals, since the 
social sum of relative surplus labour is nothing but the sum of all 
the surplus labours of the individual workers in the individual 
branches of labour. It is only that compensations and adjustments 
come into the picture, the consideration of which does not belong 
here, although they hide the true relation. 

A reduction in necessary labour time is therefore an increase in 
surplus labour time. The one grows smaller in proportion as the 
other grows larger, and inversely. This rise and fall does not, 
however, affect the overall working day and its magnitude.) The 
worker himself can in fact only create relative surplus value to the 
extent that he creates it in the sphere of his own activity, i.e. 
produces products entering into his own consumption in less time 
than previously. The political economists therefore always take 
flight to this assumption, in so far as they go into the nature of 
relative value at all (see Mill'”). 

In fact, one looks at the usual course of events. If the working 
day was=12 hours, surplus labour time=2 hours, and the 
capitalist, in consequence of increased productivity of labour, 
produces e.g. twice as much. Then surplus value can grow—his 
gain can emerge—only from two sources. Either the product of 
labour enters in a certain proportion into the reproduction of 
labour capacity, and labour capacity is cheapened in this propor- 
tion, so that the wage, i.e. the value of labour capacity falls in this 
ratio, hence there is also a fall in the part of the total working day 
required until then for the reproduction of this part of the value 
of labour capacity. Or the manufacturer sells the commodity above 
its value, i.e. as if the productivity of labour had remained the 
same. Only in the proportion to which he sells it above its value, 
hence buys all other commodities below their value, cheaper than 
the ratio between the amount of labour time contained in them 
and that contained in his commodity would require, does he posit 
a new surplus value. The worker, however, only receives the same 
normal wage as before. He therefore obtains a smaller part of the 
total value of the product, or a smaller part of that value is 
expended in the purchase of labour capacity than before the increase in 
the productivity of labour. A smaller part of his whole day is therefore 
expended in reproducing his wages, a larger part for the capitalist. It is 
the same thing, in practice, as if his cost of upkeep were lessened as a 
result of the increased productivity of his labour, or as if he could buy 
all other means of subsistence cheaper as a result of the greater 

Relative Surplus Value 239 

productivity of his labour in the same proportion as the 
capitalist receives new value. 

[111-128] In any case, we do not need to repeat here that the 
general presupposition of a sale of commodities above their value 
negates itself, and competition in fact compensates for sale above 
the value by sale below the value. What is involved here is the case 
where an increase in the productivity of labour has not yet become 
universal in the same branch of business, where the capitalist 
therefore sells (in a certain proportion at least, for he will always 
sell cheaper than the other) as if more labour time had been 
needed for the manufacture of his product than was really 
necessary. He sells e.g. the product of 37, of an hour as the 
product of 1 hour, because the majority of his competitors still 
need 1 hour to manufacture this product. If the total working day 
was 12 hours, he sells, in the given case, as if it had been 15 hours. 
(?/4=3, 12+3=15.) He has not lengthened the working day. If 
necessary labour time was=10, and surplus labour time was=2, it 
is stil=2. Actually, however, he sells as if necessary labour time 
were only 7 hours and surplus labour 5 hours (7+5=12). In fact, 
the labour of his own workers relates to that of average workers in 
such a way that they buy with the value of 7 hours as much as the 
latter buy with the value of 10 (since value has not fallen in 
proportion to productivity). With the original ratio, he had to give 

5/12 5x12 

a(S =2; =10). 
Now, in consequence of the rise in the productivity of labour, he 
sells 12 at 15. If an hour of labour were paid for as an hour that 
stands '/, above average labour, the workers, instead of 10 hours, 
would only have to work 10—'/4. If the necessary working day 
until then was 10 hours, and 2 hours of surplus labour, the 
workers would now only need to work 10X°*/; hours instead of 
10x*/, hours (since their labour would count for '/, more than the 
average hour of labour), hence they would need to work 7'/s 
hours instead of 10, and the surplus value, just as before, would 
come to "/s of the necessary labour time ('°/;=2). It would now be 
‘Is of 7*/o hours, or "1p hours. '/5 of °/2=""/10=1 Pho= 1! /2, or */9, or °/4. 
In fact if °/; of an hour of this labour=1, or */, of an hour of ave- 
rage labour, 6/, of the same labour=°/,, or 2 hours of labour. The 
working day would thereby be reduced to 7'/.+°/2=9 hours. The 
capitalist has the workers work 12 hours, as before, pays for the 
necessary labour time with 7'/s, and therefore pockets 4'/y5 hours. 

His gain derives from the fact that the necessary labour time 
of 10 hours has fallen to 7'/2, or the worker can buy all his 

the workers 10 hours out of the 12, ie 

240 The Production Process of Capital 

necessary means of subsistence with the product of 71/2 hours. It is 
exactly the same as if he were to produce the whole of his means 
of subsistence himself and were to be able to produce as much in 
*/, of an hour as previously in 1 hour, owing to the higher 
productivity of his labour, hence producing in 7'/2 hours as much 
as he previously produced in 10. If with the increased productivity 
of labour the proportion had remained the same, the overall 
working day would have become shorter, because necessary labour 
would have been lessened while the proportion between necessary 
labour and surplus labour would have remained the same. In 
practice it comes to exactly the same thing: Whether the value of 
labour capacity and therefore the necessary labour time is lessened, 
because the worker’s product enters into his own consumption in a 
certain proportion and therefore the necessary labour time 
declines and the surplus labour time, hence also surplus value, 
increases in this proportion; or whether as a result of the 
increased productivity of labour this particular branch of labour 
rises above the level of the socially average worker in the same 
branch, therefore the value e.g. of the hour of labour rises relative 
to all other commodities, the capitalist pays this labour as average 
labour—according to the previous standard—but sells it as labour 
of a higher than average level. In both cases a smaller number of 
hours is sufficient to pay the wage, i.e. the [III-129] necessary 
labour time has been reduced and in both cases the relative 
surplus value, i.e. surplus value not attained through an absolute 
prolongation of the working day, results from the decline in the 
amount of labour time required for the reproduction of the wage 
consequent on the increased productivity of labour; relative 
surplus value results in the one case directly, because the worker 
produces the same quantity of use values in a lesser labour time, 
although the product continues to be sold at its value. In the other 
case it results because a smaller quantity of labour time is equated 
with a greater quantity of average labour time as a result of the 
rise in productivity, and the worker therefore receives the same 
quantity of use values with labour time which is smaller but sold at 
a higher price. In both cases the relative surplus value results from 
a reduction in the necessary labour time. 

The following is in any case clear in itself: If the productivity of 
labour grows, and the ratio remains the same, the worker would 
either have to work less labour time to reproduce his wages, say 
7'/2 instead of 10 hours, thereby shortening the working day as a 
whole; or he would have to receive a greater quantity of means of 
subsistence, his wages would rise above the [average] level. If 

Relative Surplus Value 241 

neither the one thing nor the other takes place, it is clear that the 
result of the increased productivity of labour has only been to 
increase the amount of labour he performs for the capitalist, and 
to reduce the amount of labour he performs for himself. 

The whole difficulty arises from this, that when the individual 
capitalist raises the productivity of labour, he is not thinking 
directly of a diminution of necessary labour time, but of its sale 
above its value—of raising it above average labour time. Of this 
raised labour time, however, a smaller proportion is needed for 
the replacement of wages; i.e. the surplus labour time grows, 
although this growth presents itself in a roundabout way, through 
sale above value. 

The working day as a whole does not grow along with the 
growth in relative surplus value, hence relative labour time. It 
therefore follows that there is only a fall in the proportion in which 
the worker participates in his own working day. There is a fall in 
relative wages, or the weight of capital rises in relation to labour. 

Further: As a result of the growth in the productivity of labour 
the quantity of products is increased. The same value is present in 
their total amount (e.g. the total for one working day) as was 
present previously in a smaller total. The individual product or 
the individual commodity therefore falls in value, but it is 
multiplied by a larger factor, which is indicated by the number of 
products. 6X4 is not more than 122. Here, then, we have a 
growth in the real wealth of use values, without any growth in 
their exchange value or the labour time contained in them, 
whereas in the first case—absolute surplus value—the amount of 
products also grows, but simultaneously with their exchange value, 
i.e. in proportion to the labour time contained in them. 

This is to be understood as follows. If 10 [lbs] of cotton are 
converted into twist in the same time as previously 1 Ib, the 10 Ibs 
have not absorbed more spinning labour than the previous 1 |b. 
The value added to the 10 lbs is no greater than the value of the 
1 lb. Every 1 Ib of twist contains ten times less spinning labour in the 
first case than in the second. And since they both contain the same 
amount of cotton, every 1 Ib of twist, caeteris paribus,’ is ‘ho 
cheaper if the spinning labour amounts to ‘/19 of the value. 
[111-130] If the added day of spinning labour=10, and the value 
of 1 lb of cotton=20 (for the sake of simplicity the instrument is 
set=0 in both cases), in the first case 1 lb of twist=10+20=30; in 
the second case 10 lbs of twist=100+10=110, making 1 Ib of 

242 The Production Process of Capital 

twist=11, and 10 Ibs=110, whereas in the first case 10 Ibs=300. 

Relative surplus value is therefore distinguished from absolute 
as follows. In both, surplus value=surplus labour, or, the ratio of 
surplus value is equal to the ratio of surplus labour time to 
necessary labour time. In the first case the working day is 
extended beyond its limits and the surplus value grows (or the 
surplus labour time grows) in proportion as the working day is 
extended beyond its limit. In the second case the working day is 
given. Here, the surplus value, or the surplus labour time, is 
increased owing to the reduction of the portion of the working day 
that was required, or was necessary, for the reproduction of the 
wage. In the first case a given level of the productivity of labour is 
presupposed. In the second case the productivity of labour is 
raised. In the first case the value of an aliquot part of the total 
product or a part of the product of the working day remains 
unchanged; in the second the value of the part of the product 
changes, but its quantity (number of articles) grows in the same 
proportion as its value diminishes. The value of the total amount 
thus remains unchanged, whilst the total amount of products or 
use values has increased. Further the matter is to be presented 
simply as follows: 

As we saw in our analysis of the commodity,” the productivity 
of labour does not increase the value of the product or the 
commodity in which the labour manifests itself. If we presuppose 
that the labour time contained in the commodities is, under the 
given | conditions, necessary labour time, socially necessary labour 
time “—and this is always the presupposition we start from once 
the value of a commodity is reduced to the labour time contained 
in it—what takes place is rather the following: The value of the 
product of labour is in an inverse ratio to the productivity of labour. This 
is in fact an identical proposition. It means nothing more than 
this: If labour becomes more productive, it can represent a greater 
quantity of the same use values in the same period, it can embody 
itself in a greater amount of use values of the same kind. 
Accordingly, an aliquot part of these use values, e.g. a yard of 
linen, contains less labour time than previously, has therefore less 
exchange value and indeed the exchange value of the yard of linen 
has fallen in the same proportion as the productivity of the labour 
of weaving has grown. Inversely, if more labour time than 
previously were required to produce a yard of linen (let us say, 
because more labour time was required to produce a pound of 
flax), the yard of linen would now contain more labour time, hence 
would have a higher exchange value. Its exchange value would 

Relative Surplus Value 243 

have increased in the same proportion as the labour required to 
produce it had become less productive. 

If we therefore take the whole working day—the average 
normal working day—the value of the sum total of its products 
remains unchanged, whether the labour becomes more or less 
productive. For the sum total of use values produced comes to one 
working day, just as before, it continues to represent the same 
quantity of socially necessary labour time. If, on the other hand, 
we take an aliquot part of the daily overall production, or a part 
of the product, its value rises and falls in inverse ratio to the 
productivity of the labour contained in it. For example, if 1 
quarter or 8 susHELS are the product of a month’s labour, let 
agriculture double its productivity in one case, and halve its 
productivity in another case. We should then have 3 cases: 8 
BUSHELS the product of a month’s labour; 16. susHEs the 
product of the same labour time; 4 sBusHers the product of the 
same labour time. The value of the total amount produced during 
the month, 8, 16 or 4 susHELs, would continue to contain 
respectively the same quantity of necessary labour time. The value 
of this total amount would therefore have remained unchanged, 
although in one case the productivity of labour would have 
doubled, in the other case declined to half its original level. But in 
the first case 1 Bushel would contain '/s of a month=?/j., in the 
second case */4 or ?/s=*/1s, and in the third case only 11,5. With the 
productivity of agriculture doubled, the value of the susuets fell by 
a half; with productivity declining to half its original level, the 
value doubled. The value of a commodity can therefore never 
increase as a result of [increases in] the productivity of labour. 
This would involve a contradiction. Growth in the productivity of 
labour means that it brings forth the same product (use value) in 
less time. Growth in the exchange value of the product means that 
it contains more labour time than previously. 

If, therefore, the value of the individual commodity stands in an 
inverse ratio to the productivity of labour, whilst the value of the 
total amount of products in which a given labour time is embodied 
remains untouched, unchanged, by any variation in the productivi- 
ty of labour, the surplus value in contrast depends on the 
productivity of labour: if, on the one hand, the commodity is sold 
at its value, and on the other hand the length of the normal 
working day is given, the surplus value can only increase as a result 
of a rise in the productivity of labour. The surplus value is not 
related to the commodity; it expresses rather a relation between 
two parts of the overall working day—a relation namely between 

244 The Production Process of Capital 

the part during which the worker works to replace his wage (the 
value of his labour capacity) and the part during which he works 
for the capitalist over and above this replacement. Since these two 
parts together make up the whole of the working day, since they 
are parts of the same whole, their magnitudes clearly stand in 
inverse ratio to each other, and the surplus value, i.e. the surplus 
labour time, rises or falls according to whether the necessary 
labour time falls or rises. The growth or diminution of the latter, 
however, stands in inverse ratio to the productivity of labour. 

[III-131] But if there were to be a general doubling of the 
productivity of labour, i.e. in all branches of industry providing 
directly or indirectly the commodities (use values) required for the 
reproduction of labour capacity, providing products which enter 
into the consumption of the workers, the value of labour capacity 
would fall in proportion as this general productivity of labour 
uniformly increased, hence the labour time necessary for the 
replacement of this value would fall, and the part of the day which 
forms surplus time, which is worked for the capitalist, would 
increase in the same proportion as the former would decline. 
However, the development of the productive forces in these 
different branches of labour is neither uniform nor simultaneous, 
being subject to uneven, diverse and often mutually opposed 
motions. If the productivity of labour increases in a branch of 
industry which enters directly or indirectly into the worker’s 
consumption, e.g. the industry supplying fabrics for clothes, we 
cannot say that the value of labour capacity falls in the same 
proportion as the productivity of this particular industry grows. It 
is only this means of subsistence that is produced more cheaply. 
The cheapening only affects an aliquot part of the worker’s vital 
requirements. The increased productivity of labour in this one 
branch does not lessen the necessary labour time (i.e. the labour 
time required for the production of the means of subsistence 
needed by the workers) in proportion to the growth in productivi- 
ty, but only in proportion as the product of this labour enters, on 
the average, into the worker’s consumption. No definite calcula- 
tion of this can be made for each individual branch of industry 
(excepting perhaps the products of agriculture). 

This does not change the general law in any way. It remains 
correct, just as before, that relative surplus value can only arise 
and increase in the proportion to which use values (means of 
subsistence) directly or indirectly entering into the worker’s 
consumption are cheapened, i.e. not in the proportion to which 
the productivity of a specific branch of industry has grown, but 

Relative Surplus Value 245 

rather in the proportion to which this increase in its productivity 
lessens necessary labour time, i.e. produces more cheaply a 
product which enters into the worker’s consumption. In consider- 
ing relative surplus value therefore, we not only can but we must 
always proceed from the presupposition that the development of 
productive power or the development of the productivity of 
labour in every particular branch in which capital investment takes 
place directly reduces the necessary labour time in a definite 
proportion, i.e. that the product produced by the worker forms a 
part of his means of subsistence and its cheapening therefore 
reduces the labour time required for the reproduction of his life 
in a definite proportion. Since relative surplus value arises only on 
this condition, we can and must always assume the presence of this 
condition in considering relative surplus value. 

It is clear, further, that the presence and the growth of relative 
surplus value by no means require as a condition that the worker’s 
life situation should remain unchanged, i.e. that his average wage 
should always provide the same quantitatively and qualitatively 
determined amount of means of subsistence and no more. This is 
not the case, although relative surplus value can neither arise nor 
grow without a corresponding fall in the value of labour capacity or 
the value of wages (average wages). Indeed, relative surplus value 
might well rise continuously, and the value of labour capacity, hence 
the value of average wages, fall continuously, yet despite this the 
range of the worker’s means of subsistence and therefore the 
pleasures of his life could expand continuously. For this is 
conditioned by the quality and quantity of the use values 
(commodities) he can appropriate, not by their exchange value. 

Let us assume a doubling of productivity which is universal, 
covering all branches of production.’” Assume that before this 
doubling the normal day was 12 hours, 10 of them necessary 
labour time, 2 surplus labour time. The total amount of the 
worker’s daily means of subsistence, which previously cost [10] 
hours of labour, could now be produced in 5 hours. Instead of 
needing 10 hours of labour to replace the value (price) of his 
labour capacity every day, i.e. to provide an equivalent for his 
daily wages, the worker would now need only [5] hours. The value 
of his labour capacity would have fallen by a half, for the means 
of subsistence required for its reproduction would now be the 
product of 5 hours; instead of 10 as before. If the worker 
now—after this revolution in the productivity of labour—received 
a daily wage equivalent to 6 hours, that is to say, if he had in 
future to work 6 hours [I[V-138] a day, his material living 

246 The Production Process of Capital 

situation would have improved in the same proportion as if, under 
the previous conditions of production, he had worked the whole 
day of 12 hours for himself (i.e. for the reproduction of his wages) 
and a labour time of 0 for the capitalist; as if the whole of the 
working day necessary labour time had been worked, and no 
surplus labour time at all. For 5:6=10:12. (5x12=6x10.) 
Nevertheless, surplus labour time would have increased in this 
case from 2 hours to 6 hours, and a relative surplus value of 4 
hours would have been added to the absolute surplus value of 2 
hours. Instead of working as before 10 hours for himself and 2 
for the capitalist, hence "/12 (=°/e), therefore °/s of the day, for 
himself and */;2='/s of the day for the capitalist, the worker now 
works only /49 or 7/6 of the day for himself and, instead of 5, he 
also works °*/s, half the day, for the capitalist. Necessary labour 
time would have fallen from 10 to 6, hence the value of the day’s 
labour capacity, instead of being 10 hours, would only be 6 hours: 
4 hours less, i.e. it would have fallen by 40% (10:4=100:40). 
Surplus value would have increased to 300%, from 2 to 6. 
//Instead of '/s of the day */s. ?/s added to '/¢ gives */s, therefore a 
200% increase. This for the surplus value. On the other hand, from 
5/4, down to °/, is a reduction of ?/s, i.e. the increase on the surplus 
labour [time] side or the side of the capitalist is exactly as much, 
viewed absolutely, as the reduction on the necessary labour time 
side or the value of labour capacity side. It amounts to 7/s of a day, 
or 4 hours of labour. (?/¢=*/12.) But if we look at the increase on 
one side in proportion to the original surplus labour time, and the 
decrease on the other side in proportion to the original necessary 
labour time (or the value of labour capacity), the increase on one 
side and the decrease on the other are expressed in different 
proportions, although the absolute magnitude of the time subtracted 
from one side and added to the other is the same identical 
magnitude. 

Thus in the above case: '°/i9 or °/s are related to °/\2 or °/s or 

eee a 5:3, as 60% (should be 40%, see the other page'), for 

5:3=100:60 (5x60=300 and 3x100 similarly=300), while 7/19 or 
— (@/e) as 1:3, ie. 100:300, hence as 
300%. Therefore, although the absolute increase in surplus labour 
[time]=the absolute decrease in necessary labour time, which has 
occurred as a result of the raised productivity of labour, the 
proportion in which the value of labour capacity declines or the 
necessary labour time falls is not identical with the proportion in 

1, is related to °/,9 or to 

Relative Surplus Value 247 

which the surplus labour time or the surplus value rises, but 
depends rather on the original proportion in which surplus labour 
time and necessary labour time shared in the normal overall 
working day, participated in it. // 

//It follows from this that in the proportion in which total 
surplus labour time (both the part of it which arose from the 
reduction of necessary labour time consequent on the increase in 
the productivity of labour, and the part which arose from the 
lengthening of the working day up to its normal limits) already 
forms a greater part (a more significant portion) of the overall 
working day, any increase in the productive power of labour and 
resultant reduction in necessary labour time (or increase in relative 
surplus value) can only increase the proportional surplus value in a 
smaller ratio. Or that a reduction of necessary labour time causes 
an increase in surplus labour time in a proportion which is 
smaller, the greater the already achieved total magnitude of 
surplus labour time, and greater, the smaller the achieved total 
magnitude of the surplus labour time. Therefore (and this must 
be dealt with in more detail under profit'*?) the more advanced the 
industry, the smaller the proportional growth of surplus value, if 
productive power continues to increase in the same degree. 
Productive power in general, or productive power altogether, to 
the extent that it influences the reproduction of labour capacity. 
In other words, the proportion in which an increase in the [IV-139] 
productive power of labour reduces necessary labour time (hence 
the value of labour capacity) and raises surplus labour time, hence 
surplus value, stands in an inverse relation to the proportion in 
which necessary labour time and surplus labour time originally, 1.e. 
each time before the coming of the new increase in productive 
power, shared in, or participated in, the overall working day. 

Assume that the working day=12 hours, 10 hours of necessary 
labour, and 2 hours of surplus labour. Let there be a general 
doubling of productive power. Now 5 hours would suffice for 
necessary labour time, surplus labour time would be increased by 
5 hours, by the same amount as the decrease in necessary labour 
time (hence in the value of labour capacity)—1.e. 5 hours. 
Necessary labour time would have declined from 10 to 5, 1e. by 
half=50%. //(If the necessary labour time were to decline from 10 
to 6, this would be a reduction of 4 hours. 10:4=100:40, therefore 
by 40%. I said 60% before.'*’ This is wrong, because I calculated 
10:6=100:60, whereas in fact what we are concerned with is the 
ratio of 10 to the remainder of the 10 when 6 is taken away from 
it, hence the ratio of 10 to 4. After all, the labour time has not 

248 The Production Process of Capital 

been reduced by 6 hours, i.e. not by 60%.) On the other hand 
surplus labour time has risen from 2 to 7 hours (with the addition 
of 5 hours of surplus labour time), and 2:7=100:350 (2x350=700 
and 7x 100 also=700); hence a rise to 350%. It would have increased 
to three and a half times its original magnitude. 

Let us now assume that once this proportion has become 
established, with the overall working day falling into 5 hours of 
necessary labour, 7 hours of surplus labour, the general produc- 
tive power of labour is redoubled, i.e. necessary labour time 
diminishes by 2'/2 hours, surplus labour time therefore rising by 
the same 2!/. hours; hence from 7 to 9'/> hours. Here the 
necessary labour time has again fallen by 50%, and surplus labour 
time risen in the ratio '/. (7) to 1/2 (9'/s), thus 14:19. 
14:19=100:x; x= 19/14,=135°/7%. (19X100=1,900 and 14x 135°/, 
(or 135'°%/14) also=1,900). Therefore, although in both cases the 
productive power of labour has doubled and the necessary labour 
time has therefore fallen by a half, by 50%, surplus labour time or 
surplus value would have risen to 350% in one case and only to 
135°/7% in the other. (The proportion in which the productive 
power generally increases would always be the same,=the proportion in 
which the necessary labour time fell as compared with itself, 1.e. with its 
extent before this increase in productive power.) But in the first case the 
surplus labour time amounted to only '/. of the whole working 
day, 2 hours, =7/12, before the doubling of the productive power 
took effect, while in the second case it amounted to 7 hours or 7/19. 
(The same peculiarity holds for the increase of money, as has been 
demonstrated by Jacob, for example. It grew more in the 18th 
century than in the 17th. But the proportional increase was 
smaller.’*) 

[[V-140] If we now take an actual casz, in which productive 
power is e.g. doubled in one branch, but not in the other branches 
at the same time, perhaps remaining unaltered in the branches of 
production which provide constant capital for this one branch, so 
that the expenditure on raw materials remains the same, i.e. grows 
along with the increase in productive power, and the expenditure 
on machinery increases, even if not in the same ratio, it is clear 
that the profit, i.e. the ratio of the surplus value to the total value 
of the capital expended, does not increase in the same proportion 
as the necessary labour falls through the increase in productive 

a W. Jacob, An Historical Inquiry into the Production and Consumption of the 

Relative Surplus Value 249 

power. There are two reasons why this does not happen. Firstly 
because with the more developed productive power of labour, 
surplus value does not grow in the same proportion as necessary 
labour diminishes. Secondly because this surplus value, which has 
grown in a smaller proportion, is calculated on capital which has 
increased its value approximately in proportion to the heightening 
of productive power. // 

//One can calculate the diminution in necessary labour time in 
two ways: 1) in proportion to its own magnitude before the 
increase in the productive power of labour; 2) in proportion to the 
whole of the working day. It is clear in the first calculation 
that— presupposing an overall heightening of productive power— 
necessary labour time (and therefore the value of labour capacity) 
declines in the same measure as productive power increases; but 
the proportional growth of surplus labour time or surplus value 
depends on the proportion in which the overall working day was 
originally divided between necessary labour time and _ surplus 
labour time. Thus if the working day was 12 hours originally, 
divided into 10 of necessary and 2 of surplus labour, and if the 
productive power of labour doubled, necessary labour time would 
fall from 10 to 5, 1.e. by 50%, while productive power doubled. 
(This proportion is expressed in the case of productive power by a 
100% growth, in the case of necessary labour time by a 50% fall. 
That necessary labour time falls from 10 to 5, i.e. by 50%, means 
that in 1 hour I can produce as much as I did previously in 2, Le. 
twice as much, 1. the productive power of labour has increased 
by 100%.) Surplus labour, on the other hand, has grown from 2 to 
7, 1e. to 350% (a threefold increase, 23, or [6] hours, and a rise 
by a half, =*/,=1, thus the whole has gone up from 2 to 7), 
because it originally only amounted to 2 hours out of 12. If it had 
originally already amounted to 3 hours, and necessary labour only 
9 hours, the latter would have fallen by 4’/2 hours, again by 50%, 
while surplus labour would have risen from 3 to 7 Io: i.e. to 250% 
(for 3:7"/2, or °/o:'*/2, or 6:15,=100:250. 15x100=1500 and 
6X 250=1500). If we now consider the whole of the working day, 
the ratio is not altered. [Necessary] labour time originally 
amounted to 10 hours or "°/i9 of the working day; now it only 

amounts to °/12 in the first case. (In the second it was originally °/12 
1 

. 41/ 
of the working day, and afterwards came to no more than > .) 

It is all the same whether I compare necessary labour time with 
itself or with the working day as a whole. All that is added is the 
divisor 12. This rix has therefore been dealt with. // 

250 The Production Process of Capital 

Now back to page 138 before the bracket.* The worker’s life 
situation would have improved despite the fall in the value of his 
labour capacity, the reduction by 4 hours in his necessary labour 
time and the increase of 4 hours in his surplus labour time for the 
capitalist, because he himself would have received a share of 1 
hour in the time now set free. I.e., the labour time he worked for 
himself, i.e. for the reproduction of his wages, would not have 
been reduced to the full extent of the shortening of this necessary 
labour time resulting from the [increased] product of the labour. 
He would receive more use values of less value—i.e. containing 
less labour time than previously. But the degree in which new 
surplus labour would have been formed in general, in which 
relative surplus value would have arisen, would correspond 
completely to the degree in which a part of his necessary labour 
time had been converted into surplus labour time for the 
capitalist, or in which the value of his labour capacity had declined. 
This is enough here. Later on the proportional elements in the 
matter must in general be put together *’ (see also above”). Thus 
this in no way alters the nature and the law of relative surplus 
value—that a greater part of the working day is appropriated by 
capital as a result of rises in productivity. Hence the preposterous- 
ness of wanting to refute this law by statistical demonstrations that 
the material condition of the worker has improved here or there, 
in this or that aspect, [[V-141] as a result of the development of 
the productive power of labour. 

// Standard. October 26, 1861. We read here of proceedings 
taken by the firm of John Bright and Co. against its workers, 
before the Rochdale MacistraTEs, 

*to prosecute for intimidation the agents of the Carpets’ Weavers’ Trades Unions. 
Bright’s partners had introduced new machinery which would turn out 240 yards 
of carpet in the time and with the labour previously required to produce 160 
yards. The workmen had no claim whatever to share in the profits made by the 
investment of their employers’ capital in mechanical improvement. Accordingly, 
Messrs. Bright proposed to lower the rate of pay from I /od. per yard to ld., 
leaving the earnings of the men exactly the same as before for the same labour. 

But there was a nominal reduction, of which the operatives, it is asserted, had not 
had fair warning beforehand.* !84 // [[V-141] 

a See this volume, p. 246, the bracket before “Instead”’.— Ed. 
b Ibid.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value 251 

[IV-138a]’” 1) The surplus value capital receives through the 
development of the productive forces does not flow from an 
increase in the amount of products or use values created by the 
same amount of labour, but from a reduction in necessary labour 
and an increase of the same proportion in surplus labour. The 
surplus value capital receives through the production process 
consists in nothing more than the excess of surplus labour over 
necessary labour. 

Surplus value exactly equals surplus labour; an increase in surplus 
labour is exactly measured by a reduction in necessary labour. 
With absolute surplus value the reduction in necessary labour is 
relative, i.e. necessary labour falls relatively because overtime is 
increased directly. If the necessary labour=10 hours, and the 
surplus labour=2 hours, and if the latter is now increased by 2 
hours, i.e. the total working day is lengthened from 12 hours to 
14, the necessary labour remains 10 hours, as it was before. But 
previously its ratio to the surplus labour was 10:2, i.e. 5:1, and 
now it is 10:4,=5:2, or, in other words, previously it was equal to 
*/s of the working day, now it is only 5/7, Here, therefore, 
necessary labour time is reduced relatively, because total labour 
time, and therefore surplus labour time, has grown absolutely. In 
contrast to this, if the normal working day is given, and the 
increase in relative surplus value occurs through an increase in 
productive forces, the necessary labour time is lessened absolutely 
and the surplus value is thereby increased both absolutely and 
relatively without any increase in the value of the product. In the . 
case of absolute surplus value, therefore, there is a relative fall in 
the value of wages as compared with the absolute growth in 
surplus value; whereas in the case of relative surplus value there is 
an absolute fall in the value of wages. Nevertheless, the first case is 
always worse for the worker. In the first case the price of labour 
falls absolutely. In the second case the price of labour may rise. 

2) The surplus value of the capital is increased not by the 
multiplier of the productive power but by the fraction of the 
working day which originally represented the necessary labour 
time, divided by the multiplier of the productive power. 

3) The greater the surplus value prior to the new increase in 
productive power, i.e. the greater the part of the day worked for no 
return already is, and the smaller therefore the paid part of the 
day, the fraction of the day which forms the worker’s equivalent, 
the less the growth in surplus value which capital obtains from the 
new increase in productive power. Its surplus value rises, but in an 
ever smaller proportion to the development of the productive 

252 The Production Process of Capital 

forces. The barrier remains the ratio between the fraction of the 
day which expresses necessary labour and the whole of the working 
day. Movement can only take place within these limits. The 
smaller the fraction allotted to necessary labour, and the greater 
therefore the surplus labour, the smaller the ratio in which an 
increase in productive power lessens necessary labour time, since 
the denominator of the fraction is that much larger. The rate of 
capital’s self-valorisation therefore grows more slowly in the 
measure to which it is already valorised. This does not, however, 
happen because the wage or the worker’s share in the product has 
risen but because the fraction of the working day which represents 
necessary labour has already fallen very low in proportion to the 
working day as a whole. [IV-138a] 

[1V-141] A certain development of the productivity of labour is 
in general presupposed, even for the existence of absolute surplus 
value, i.e. surplus labour in general, and therefore for the 
existence of capitalist production, as for all earlier modes of 
production in which one part of society works not only for itself 
but also for the other part of society. 

*“The very existence of the former (the master-capitalists) as a distinct class is 
dependent on the productiveness of industry” * (Ramsay, An Essay on the 
Distribution of Wealth etc., Edinburgh, [London,] 1836, [p.] 206). 

*“Jf each man’s labour were but enough to produce? his own food, there could 
be no property” * (this word is used here for CAPITAL) (Piercy Ravenstone, Thoughts 
on the Funding System, and its Effects, London, 1824, p. 14). 

In any case, the capital-relation develops at a historical stage of 
the economic formation of society which is already the result of a 
long series of previous developments. The level of the productivity 
of labour from which it proceeds is not of natural origin but is 
something created historically; by that time labour has long 
emerged from its first raw beginnings. It is clear that if a country 
possesses soil that is naturally fertile, waters teeming with fish, rich 
coal deposits (combustible materials in general), metal mines, etc., 
in comparison with other countries, where these natural conditions 
for the productivity of labour are present to a lesser degree, less 
time is required in the first country to produce the necessary 
means of subsistence, hence a greater quantity of excess labour for 
others over and above labour for oneself is possible from the 
outset; and therefore absolute surplus labour time, thus absolute 

a Ravenstone has: “procure”’.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value 253 

surplus value, is greater here from the outset. Capital (or any 
other relation of production whereby surplus labour is enforced) is 
therefore more productive here than under less favourable natural 
conditions. 

The ancients were already aware that natural cheapness of 
labour capacity, i.e. of its cost of production and reproduction, was 
a great factor in industrial production. For example, it says in 
Diodorus’ Historical Library, b. 1, ch. 80," in relation to the 
Egyptians: 

“It is altogether incredible how little trouble and expense the bringing up of 
their children causes them. They cook for them the first simple food that comes to 
hand; they also give them the lower part of the papyrus stem to eat, if it can be 
roasted in the fire, and the roots and stalks of marsh plants, some raw, some 
boiled, and some roasted. Most of the children go without shoes and unclothed, 
since the air is so mild. Hence a child, until he is grown up, costs his parents no 
more than twenty drachmas altogether. This is the main reason why the population of 
Egypt is so numerous, and, therefore, why it has been possible to undertake so 
many great works.” 

//Once the ratio of surplus value is given, its amount depends 
on the size of the population; if the size of the population is given, 
it depends on the ratio of surplus to necessary labour. // 

All that follows from this is that, in places where the 
capital-relation predominates (or a similar relation of production 
which enforces absolute surplus labour, for this natural fertility 
only facilitates the prolongation of surplus labour time and its 
existence; it does not create relative surplus value in our sense), 
the productivity of capital is at its greatest—i.e. the most surplus 
labour is available and therefore the most surplus value, or the 
value of labour capacity is naturally at its lowest, which is the same 
thing—where the natural conditions of labour, [[V-142] hence in 
particular the soil, are at their most fruitful. This by no means 
implies that the most fertile countries are the most well suited to 
the development, thus also the fruitfulness, of the capital-relation 
itself. When Ricardo speaks of the fertility of the soil as one of the 
main conditions for the productivity of labour, he assumes 
capitalist production, and the proposition is only uttered on this 
assumption. He is naturally inclined everywhere to presuppose 
bourgeois relations of production as given. This does not interfere 
with the development of his argument as he deals exclusively with 
production in this particular form. The following passage is 
important, both for the concept of surplus labour in general and 

a Diodor von Sicilien, Historische Bibliothek. Ubers. von Julius Friedrich Wurm 

19* 

254 The Production Process of Capital 

for the misunderstanding about the point we have just touched 
on. 

“In different stages of society, the accumulation of capital, or of the means of 
employing labour* is more or less rapid, and must in all cases depend on the productive 
powers of labour. The productive powers of labour are generally greatest, where 
there is an abundance of fertile land? (Ricardo).@ 

“If, in the first sentence, the productive powers of labour mean the smallness of that 
aliquot part of any produce that goes to those whose manual labour produced it, the 
sentence is nearly identical, because the remaining aliquot part is the fund whence 
capital can, if the owner pleases, be accumulated. But then this does not generally 
happen where there is most fertile land. It does in North America, but that is an 
artificial state of things. It does not in Mexico. It does not in New Holland.» The 
productive powers of labour are, indeed, in another sense, greatest where there is 
much fertile land, viz. the power of man, if he chooses it, to raise much raw produce 
in proportion to the whole labour he performs. It is, indeed, a gift of nature, that men can 
raise more food than the lowest quantity that they could maintain and keep up the 
existing population on; but ‘surplus produce’ (the term used by Mr. Ricardo p. 93) 
generally means the excess of the whole price of a thing above that part of it which goes to 
the labourers who made it; a part, which is settled by human arrangement, and not 
fixed” (Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes in Political Economy, Particularly 
Relating to Value, and to Demand and Supply, London, 1821, pp. 74-75).< 

This man does not see that in fact “THE SMALLNESS’ OR BIGNESS “OF

## Cooperation

increase of surplus labour-time — to the extent that it is itself a product of capitalist (or, more generally, social) production. The main forms are: co-operation, division of labour and machinery, or application of scientific power! etc.

a) Co-operation

This is the basic form. Division of labour presupposes co-operation, or is only a specific way of carrying it on. The same applies to the workshop based on machinery, etc. Co-operation is the general form which underlies all social arrangements for increasing the productivity of social labour, and in each of them it merely receives further specification. But at the same time co-operation itself is a particular form that exists alongside its more developed and more highly specified forms. (Just as much as it is a form that reaches beyond its previous developments.)

As a form distinct from its own further developments or specifications and, in this distinction, existing separately from them, co-operation is the most primitive, the crudest and the most abstract of its own kinds; while, moreover, in its simplicity, in its simple form, it continues to remain the basis and presupposition of all its more highly developed forms.

Co-operation is therefore initially the direct — not mediated by exchange — combined action of many workers for the production of the same result, the same product, the same use-value (or utility). In slave production. (See Cairnes. 1%)

It is, firstly, the combined action of many workers. Hence the existence of an agglomeration, a concentration of many workers in the same space (on one site) working simultaneously, is its first precondition — or is itself already the material existence of co-operation. This precondition underlies all its more highly developed forms.

The simplest, not yet further specified mode of co-operation is obviously that in which the workers, thus combined in one place and working simultaneously, do not perform different tasks but the same task; however, the simultaneity of their action is required to produce a particular result at all, or within a particular time. This aspect of co-operation remains in its more highly developed forms. In division of labour, too, many do the same thing simultaneously. Even more so in the automatic workshop. —

scientific power

248 3, The relative surplus-value – Notebook IV

One of the oldest forms of this co-operation is found, for example, in the chase. Likewise in war, which is merely the hunt for men, a more developed form of the chase. 1% The effect produced, for instance, by the charge of a cavalry regiment cannot be produced by the individual members of the regiment, each taken separately, although during the charge each individual acts only as an individual, insofar as he acts at all. The great buildings of the Asians are another example of this kind of co-operation, just as in building in general the importance of this simple form of co-operation emerges very strikingly. An individual may build a hut, but to build a house many are required who do the same thing at the same time. An individual may row a small skiff; a larger boat requires a definite number of oarsmen. In division of labour, this aspect of co-operation appears in the principle of the proportion of the multiples that have to be applied for each particular branch. In the automatic workshop the main effect rests not on division of labour, but on the identity of the work performed simultaneously by many. E.g., that the spinning mules¹ set in motion simultaneously by the same motor are supervised at the same time by so and so many spinners. j

Wakefield’s new system of colonisation has the merit — not that he discovered or |144| promoted the art of colonisation, nor that he made any new discoveries whatever in the field of political economy — but that he naively discovered the narrow-mindedness of political economy, without himself being clear as to the importance of these discoveries or being in the slightest degree free from the economic narrow-mindedness.

In the colonies, namely, especially in the first stages of their development, the bourgeois relations are not yet completed; not yet presupposed as in old established countries. They are only coming into being. Hence the conditions of their becoming emerge more clearly. It becomes apparent that these economic relations are neither there by nature, nor are they things, as the economist is readily inclined to conceive capital, etc. We shall see later how Mr. Wakefield, to his own astonishment, gets behind this secret in the colonies. Here we shall first merely quote a passage relating to this simple form of co-operation:

‘There are numerous operations of so simple a kind that they admit of no division into parts, which can nevertheless be performed only by the joint action of many pairs of hands. For example, the lifting of a large tree onto a wagon, keeping down the weeds among growing crops on large fields, the simultaneous shearing of a large flock of sheep, gathering in a grain harvest at a time when it is ripe enough and not too ripe, the moving of a heavy weight; in short, everything that cannot be done unless a great number of pairs of hands help one another simultaneously in the same undivided occupation.’ (p. 168, Wakefield, E.G., A view of the art of colonization, etc., Lond[on] 1849.)

So, for example, fishing. The result when many fish at once — as in the chase. Building of railways, digging of canals, etc. This kind of co-operation in the public works of the Egyptians and the Asians. The Romans used their armies for public works! (See passage in Jones.²)

We have already seen in considering absolute surplus-value that, given its rate, its mass depends on the number of workers simultaneously employed, hence so far³ on their co-operation. However, it is precisely here that the distinction from relative surplus-value — insofar as the latter presupposes increased productive power of labour and hence the development of the productive power of labour — emerges strikingly. If, instead of 10 workers, each of whom works 2 hours of surplus labour, 20 are employed, the result is 40 surplus hours instead of 20 in the first case. 1:2, = 20:40. The ratio is the same for the 20 as for the one. Here there is only the addition or multiplication of the labour hours of the individual. Co-operation as such changes absolutely nothing in the ratio here. Here, by contrast, we consider co-operation as a natural power of social labour, insofar as by means of co-operation the labour of the individual attains a productivity that it would not obtain as the labour of the isolated individual. For example: If 100 people mow simultaneously, each works only as an individual and does the same thing. But the result, that in this particular time, before the hay rots, etc., mowing is done — that this use-value is produced — is only the result of 100 people simultaneously setting their hands to this same work. In other cases a real increase of force occurs. For example, in lifting, etc., loading burdens. Here a force arises which the isolated individual does not possess, but only the individual acting jointly and simultaneously with the others. In the first case, he could not spatially extend his sphere of action enough for the attainment of the result. In the second case, he could not develop the necessary potential of force at all, or only with an infinite loss of time. The time in which 10 people here load a tree onto a wagon is shorter (if the case is possible at all) than the time in which one person, in 10 times greater time, would achieve the same result. The consequence is that, through co-operation, production takes place in less time than the same individuals, if the same number worked scattered, could produce in the same time, or that use-values are produced which could not be produced at all otherwise. A single person cannot do in 100 days, often 100 single persons cannot do in 100 days, what 100 through co-operation can do in one day. Here, therefore, the productive power of the individual grows through the social form of labour. By thus making it possible to produce more in less time, the necessary means of subsistence, or the conditions required for their production, can be produced in less time. Necessary labour time diminishes. Relative surplus time is thereby made possible. The one can be lengthened, the other shortened.

‘The strength of the individual man is quite slight, but the union of these quite slight strengths yields a total force that is greater than the sum of all the partial forces, so that the mere union of the forces can reduce the time and enlarge the space of their action.’ (G.R.Carli, Note 1, p. 196, to Pietro Verri, Meditazioni sulla Econ[omia] Polit[ica] etc., 1.XV, Custodi, Parte Moderna.)

{Here one may perhaps recall that this simple form of co-operation permits the common utilisation of working conditions in many branches of industry, e.g., fuel, buildings, etc. But this does not concern us here yet. It is to be considered under profit. Here we have only to see how far the relation of necessary labour and surplus labour is directly affected,⁴ not the ratio of surplus labour to the total sum of the capital laid out. This is to be kept in mind for the following sections as well.}

{It is not absolutely necessary that the union takes place in the same space. If 10 astronomers make the same observations from the observatories of different countries, etc., that is not a division of labour, but the carrying out of the same labour in different places, a form of co-operation.} At the same time, however, concentration of the means of labour.

Extension of the sphere of action; shortening of the time in which a particular result is achieved; finally, the creation of productive forces to whose development the isolated worker is generally incapable — these are characteristic of simple co-operation as well as of its more specifically developed forms.

In simple co-operation it is only the mass of human force that is operative. In the place of one person with two eyes, etc., there appears a many-eyed, many-armed, etc., monster. Hence the great works of the Roman armies. The great Asian and Egyptian public works. Here, where the state is the expender of the revenue of the whole country, it possesses the power to set great masses in motion.

¹ Spinning machines.
² See present volume, p. 251.
³ so far.
⁴ In the manuscript: directly affects.

„Es geschah in vergangenen Zeiten, daß diese orientalischen Staaten nach Bestreitung ihrer Zivil- und Militärausgaben sich im Besitz eines Überschusses von Lebensmitteln befanden, die sie für Werke der Pracht und des Nutzens verausgaben konnten. Ihr Kommando über die Hände und Arme fast der ganzen nichtackerbauenden Bevölkerung [...] und diese Nahrungsmittel, die dem Monarchen und der Priesterschaft gehörten, boten ihnen die Mittel zur Errichtung jener mächtigen Monumente, womit sie das Land erfüllten ... in der Bewegung der kolossalen Statuen und der enormen Massen, deren Transport Staunen erregt, wurde fast nur menschliche Arbeit verschwenderisch angewandt ... Grabstätten und Staubecken Ceylons, die Chinesische Mauer, die zahlreichen Bauwerke, deren Ruinen die Ebenen Assyriens und Mesopotamiens bedecken.“ (Richard Jones, „Textbook of Lectures on the Polit. Econ. of Nations“, Hertford 1852, p. 77.) „Die Zahl der Arbeiter und die Konzentration ihrer Mühen genügte.“ {Die Zahl der Arbeiter und die Konzentration derselben, die Basis der einfachen Kooperation.} „So sehen wir mächtige Korallenriffe aus den Tiefen des Ozeans zu Inseln anschwellen und festes Land bilden, obgleich jede individuelle Ablagerung winzig, schwach und verächtlich ist. Die nichtackerbauenden Arbeiter einer asiatischen Monarchie haben außer ihren individuellen körperlichen Bemühungen wenig zum Werk zu bringen. |146| Aber ihre Zahl ist ihre Kraft, und die Macht der Direktion über diese Massen ließ Paläste und Tempel usw. in die Höhe wachsen. Es war diese Konzentration der Einkünfte, welche sie [die Arbeiter] nährte, in einer [Hand] oder in wenigen Händen, welche solche Unternehmungen möglich machte.“ ([p.] 78, l. c.)

{Die Kontinuität der Arbeit überhaupt der kapitalistischen Produktion eigen; entwickelt sich aber erst vollständig mit der Entwicklung des capital fixe, worüber später.}

Diese Macht der ägyptischen und asiatischen Könige und Priester oder der etruskischen Theokraten in der alten Welt ist in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft auf das Kapital und damit die Kapitalisten übergegangen.

Die einfache Kooperation wie ihre weiterentwickelten Formen — wie überhaupt alle Mittel, die Produktivkraft der Arbeit zu steigern — fallen in den Arbeitsprozeß, nicht in den Verwertungsprozeß. Sie steigern die efficiency der labour*. Der Wert des Produkts der labour hängt dagegen ab von der zu ihrer Herstellung erheischten notwendigen Arbeitszeit. Die efficiency der labour kann daher nur den Wert eines bestimmten Produkts verringern, nie ihn steigern. Aber alle diese Mittel, die angewandt werden, um die efficiency* des Arbeitsprozesses zu steigern, vermindern (to a certain degree!) die notwendige Arbeitszeit und vermehren so den Surpluswert, den Teil des Werts, der dem Kapitalist zufällt, obgleich der Wert des Gesamtprodukts nach wie vor bestimmt bleibt durch die Totalität der angewandten Arbeitszeit.

„Das mathematische Prinzip, daß das Ganze der Summe seiner Teile gleich ist, wird falsch auf unsren Gegenstand angewandt. In bezug auf die Arbeit, diesen großen Grundpfeiler der menschlichen Existenz, kann man sagen, daß das ganze Produkt der gemeinschaftlichen Anstrengung unendlich alles übertrifft, was individuelle und isolierte Bemühungen möglicherweise erfüllen könnten.“ (p. 84, Michael Thomas Sadler, „The law of Population“, t. 1.)

– Die Kooperation — i.e. ihre Anwendung durch den Kapitalisten, i.e. Geld- oder Warenbesitzer — erheischt natürlich Konzentration der Arbeitsmittel, dito der Lebensmittel (des gegen Arbeit ausgetauschten Teils des Kapitals) in seiner Hand. Um einen Mann 360 Tage während des Jahrs zu beschäftigen, erheischt ein 360mal kleinres Kapital, als um 360 Mann an demselben Tag zu beschäftigen. .

Die gesellschaftliche Produktivkraft, die aus der Kooperation entspringt, ist unentgeltlich. Die einzelnen Arbeiter oder vielmehr Arbeitsvermögen werden bezahlt, und zwar als vereinzelte. Ihre Kooperation und die daher entspringende Produktivkraft wird nicht bezahlt. Der Kapitalist zahlt 360 Arbeiter; er zahlt nicht die Kooperation der 360 Arbeiter: denn der Austausch zwischen Kapital und Arbeitsvermögen findet zwischen dem Kapital und dem einzelnen Arbeitsvermögen statt. Er ist bestimmt durch den Tauschwert des letztren, der ebenso unabhängig ist von der Produktivkraft, die dies Vermögen unter gewissen gesellschaftlichen Kombinationen erhält, als davon, daß die Zeit, die er arbeitet und arbeiten kann, größer ist als die zu seiner Reproduktion erheischte Arbeitszeit.

Die Kooperation, diese Produktivkraft der gesellschaftlichen Arbeit, stellt sich dar als eine Produktivkraft des Kapitals, nicht der Arbeit. Und diese Transposition findet innerhalb der kapitalistischen Produktion in bezug auf alle Produktivkräfte der gesellschaftlichen Arbeit statt. Dies bezieht sich auf die reale Arbeit. Ganz wie der allgemein abstrakt gesellschaftliche Charakter ||147| der Arbeit — d. h. der Tauschwert der Ware — als Geld — und alle Eigenschaften, die das Produkt als Darstellung dieser allgemeinen Arbeit besitzt, sich als Eigenschaften des Gelds darstellen; so der konkret gesellschaftliche Charakter der Arbeit als Charakter und als Eigenschaft des Kapitals.

In der Tat: Sobald der Arbeiter in den wirklichen Arbeitsprozeß eintritt, ist er qua Arbeitsvermögen bereits dem Kapital einverleibt, gehört er nicht mehr sich selbst, sondern dem Kapital, und sind daher auch die Bedingungen, unter denen er arbeitet, vielmehr Bedingungen, unter denen das Kapital arbeitet. Bevor er aber in den Arbeitsprozeß eintritt, tritt er mit dem Kapitalisten in Kontakt als einzelner Warenbesitzer oder Verkäufer, und zwar ist diese Ware sein eignes Arbeitsvermögen. Als einzelnes verkauft er es. Gesellschaftliches wird es, sobald es bereits in den Arbeitsprozeß getreten ist. Diese Metamorphose, die mit ihm vorgeht, ist ihm selbst ein Äußerliches, woran es keinen Anteil hat, das ihm vielmehr angetan wird. Der Kapitalist kauft nicht einen, er kauft viele einzelne Arbeitsvermögen gleichzeitig, aber alle als vereinzelte, vereinzelten voneinander unabhängigen Warenbesitzern angehörige Waren. Sobald sie in den Arbeitsprozeß treten, sind sie bereits dem Kapital einverleibt, und ihre eigne Kooperation ist daher nicht ein Verhältnis, worin sie sich setzen, sondern worin sie vom Kapitalisten versetzt sind, nicht eine Beziehung, die ihnen gehört, sondern der sie jetzt angehören und die selbst als ein Verhältnis des Kapitals zu ihnen erscheint. Es ist nicht ihre gegenseitige Vereinigung, sondern eine sie beherrschende Einheit, deren Träger und Leiter eben das Kapital selbst ist. Ihre eigne Vereinigung in der Arbeit — Kooperation — ist tatsächlich eine ihnen fremde Macht, und zwar die Macht des Kapitals gegenüber den vereinzelten Arbeitern. Soweit sie als unabhängige Personen, als Verkäufer, ein Verhältnis zum Kapitalisten haben, ist es das von vereinzelten, voneinander unabhängigen Arbeitern, die jeder im Verhältnis zum Kapitalisten, aber nicht im Verhältnis zueinander stehn. Soweit sie als werktätige Arbeitsvermögen in ein Verhältnis zueinander treten, sind sie dem Kapital einverleibt, und dies Verhältnis steht daher als Verhältnis des Kapitals, nicht als ihr eignes, ihnen gegenüber. Sie finden sich agglomeriert. Die Kooperation, die aus ihrer Agglomeration entspringt, ist ihnen gegenüber ebensosehr die Wirkung des Kapitals als diese Agglomeration selbst. Ihr Zusammenhang und ihre Einheit liegt nicht in ihnen, sondern im Kapital, oder die daraus entspringende gesellschaftliche Produktivkraft ihrer Arbeit ist Produktivkraft des Kapitals. Wie die nicht nur ersetzende, sondern vermehrende Kraft des einzelnen Arbeitsvermögens als Vermögen des Kapitals erscheint — die Surplusarbeit —, so der gesellschaftliche Charakter der Arbeit und die aus diesem Charakter entspringende Produktivkraft.

Es ist dies die erste Stufe, worauf die Subsumtion der Arbeit unter das Kapital nicht mehr als bloß formelle Subsumtion erscheint, sondern die Produktionsweise selbst verändert, so daß die kapitalistische Produktionsweise spezifische Produktionsweise ist. Formell ist die Subsumtion, soweit der ein- |148| zelne Arbeiter, statt als unabhängiger Warenbesitzer zu arbeiten, jetzt als dem Kapitalist gehöriges Arbeitsvermögen und daher unter dem Kommando und Aufsicht des Kapitalisten auch nicht mehr für sich, sondern für den Kapitalisten arbeitet; auch die Arbeitsmittel nicht mehr als Mittel zur Verwirklichung seiner Arbeit, seine Arbeit vielmehr als Mittel der Verwertung — d.h. Einsaugen von Arbeit — für die Arbeitsmittel erscheint. Formell ist dieser Unterschied, soweit er existieren kann, ohne daß irgendwie die Produktionsweise und die gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse, in denen die Produktion stattfindet, im geringsten verändert werden. Mit der Kooperation tritt schon ein spezifischer Unterschied ein. Die Arbeit vollzieht sich unter Bedingungen, unter denen die unabhängige Arbeit des einzelnen sich nicht vollbringen kann — und zwar erscheinen diese Bedingungen als ein ihn beherrschendes Verhältnis, als ein Band, das das Kapital um die einzelnen Arbeiten schlingt.

Mit dem Zusammenarbeiten vieler, denen ihr Zusammenhang selbst ein fremdes Verhältnis ist, deren Einheit außer ihnen liegt, tritt die Notwendigkeit des Kommandos, der Oberaufsicht selbst, als eine Produktionsbedingung auf, als eine durch die Kooperation der Arbeiter notwendig gewordne und durch sie bedingte neue Art Arbeit, labour of superintendence*, ganz wie bei einer Armee, selbst wenn sie bloß aus derselben Waffengattung besteht, zu ihrem Wirken als Corps die Notwendigkeit von Befehlshabern, die Notwendigkeit des Kommandos eintritt. Dies Kommando gehört dem Kapital, obgleich der einzelne Kapitalist es selbst wieder durch spezifische Arbeiter vollziehn lassen kann, die jedoch das Kapital und den Kapitalisten gegenüber der Arbeiterarmee vertreten. (Sklaverei.) (Cairnes.*)

Soweit besondre Arbeiten dieser Art aus Funktionen entspringen, die die kapitalistische Produktion selbst erzeugt, ist es natürlich Blödsinn, das Kapital dadurch für nötig zu beweisen, daß es diese Funktionen vollzieht. Es ist dies eine Tautologie. Es wäre, als wollte man den Negern die Sklaverei dadurch rechtfertigen, daß sie als Sklaven des Sklavenaufsehers mit der Peitsche bedürfen, der zu ihrer Produktion ebenso notwendig ist als sie selbst. Aber er ist nur notwendig, weil und sofern sie Sklaven sind — auf der Basis der Sklaverei. Sofern dagegen Kooperation, wie z.B. im Orchester, einen Direktor erheischt — es ist etwas ganz andres, die Form, die dies unter den Bedingungen des Kapitals annimmt und die es sonst z.B. bei Assoziation annähme, als eine besondre Funktion der Arbeit neben andren, aber nicht als die Macht, die ihr eigne Einheit als ihnen fremde und die Exploitation ihrer Arbeit als von fremder Macht an ihnen verübte, vollführt.

*Effectiveness of labour.
*Labour of superintendence.

Page 138a from Notebook IV

a) Cooperation 257

Cooperation may be continuous; it may also be merely temporary, as in harvesting in agriculture, etc.

The main point in simple cooperation remains the simultaneity of the action, a simultaneity whose result can never be achieved by the isolated workers acting one after another in time.

The most important thing remains: this first transposition of the social character of labour as the social character of capital, of the productive power of social labour as the productive power of capital; finally, the first transformation of the formal subsumption under capital into a real alteration of the mode of production itself.

||138a| As means of increasing the productivity of labour, D. de Tracy distinguishes:

1. The combined action of forces. (Simple combined action.) “Is it a matter of defending oneself? Ten men will easily resist an enemy who would annihilate them completely if he attacked them one after another. Must a load be moved? A load whose weight had presented insurmountable resistance to the efforts of a single person yields at once to the exertions of several who act together. Is it a question of a complicated labour? Then several different things must be done simultaneously. One does one thing while another does something else, and all contribute to an effect that a single individual could not have produced. One rows while another steers and a third throws the net or harpoons the fish, and the fishery has a success that would be impossible without this cooperation.” (l.c., p. 78.)

Here, in this latter cooperation, division of labour already takes place, because plusieurs choses doivent être faites simultanement!, but this is not division of labour in the proper sense. The three can row, steer, and fish by turns, although in the act of combined action each

does only one thing. The proper division of labour, by contrast, consists in the fact that,

“when several persons work reciprocally, the one for the others, each can devote himself exclusively to the occupation for which he possesses the greatest aptitudes, etc.” (p.79, l.c.)

! several things must be done simultaneously

258 3. Relative Surplus-Value – Notebook IV

||149| b) Division of Labour!

Division of labour is a particular, specified, further developed form of cooperation, a mighty means of raising the productive power of labour, of performing the same work in a shorter labour time, hence of shortening the labour time necessary for the reproduction of the labour-capacity and lengthening the surplus labour time.

In simple cooperation it is the combined action of many who perform the same labour. In division of labour it is the cooperation of many workers under the command of capital, who produce the different parts of the same commodity, of which each particular part requires a particular labour, a particular operation, and each worker or a definite multiple of workers performs only one particular operation, another another, etc.; but the totality of these operations produces a commodity, a definite particular commodity; hence the totality of these particular labours presents itself in the commodity.

We say commodity in a double respect. Firstly, a commodity produced by division of labour may itself again be semi-finished product, raw material, material of labour for another sphere of production. Such a product therefore by no means needs to be a use-value that has received its final form, in which it finally enters into consumption.

If different production processes are required for the manufacture of a use-value, e.g. of printed calico — spinning, weaving, printing — then printed calico is the result of these different production processes and the totality of the particular modes of labour, spinning, weaving, printing. For this reason, no division of labour in the sense now under consideration yet takes place. If the yarn is a commodity, the cloth a commodity, and printed calico a particular commodity alongside these commodities — these use-values that are the product of processes that must precede the printing of the calico — then no division of labour in the sense now under consideration takes place, although a social division of labour does take place, for the yarn is the product of spinners, the cloth the product of weavers, and the calico the product of printers. The labour necessary for the production of printed calico is divided into spinning, weaving, printing, and each of these branches forms the occupation of a particular department of workers, each of whom performs only this particular operation of spinning or weaving or printing. Here, therefore, firstly, a totality of particular labours is necessary to produce the printed calico;

b) Division of Labour 259

and, secondly, different workers are subsumed under each of these particular labour operations. But it cannot be said that they compete in the production of the same commodity. Rather, they produce commodities independent of one another. According to the presupposition, the yarn is just as much a commodity as printed calico. The existence of a use-value as a commodity does not depend on the nature of this use-value, hence also not on how near or how far it stands to the form in which it finally enters into consumption, be it as means of labour or means of subsistence. It depends only on the fact that a definite quantum of labour time is represented in this product and that it is the material for the satisfaction of certain needs, whether these be needs of a further production process or of the consumption process. If, on the other hand, printed calico first appeared on the market as a commodity only after it had passed through the processes of spinning, weaving and printing, it would be produced by division of labour.

We have seen!!” that the product in general only becomes a commodity, and commodity exchange only takes place as a condition of production in general, when a social division of labour |[150| or a division of social labour takes place. In the particular commodities there inhere particular modes of labour, and the producer or possessor of the individual commodity appropriates only his aliquot! part of the social production, i.e. of the products of all other branches of labour, through exchange, viz.? the sale of his product, through the transformation of his commodity into money. That he produces a commodity at all implies that his labour is one-sided and does not directly produce his means of subsistence, that he obtains these rather only through the exchange of his labour for the products of other branches of labour. This social division of labour, which is presupposed in the existence of the product as commodity and of commodity exchange, is essentially different from the division of labour we are considering here. The latter presupposes the former as its point of departure and its foundation. In the former, division of labour takes place in so far as each commodity represents the other, i.e. each commodity owner or producer represents a particular branch of labour gegenüber the other, and the totality of these particular branches of labour, their existence as the whole of social labour, is mediated through commodity exchange, or more precisely the circulation of commodities, which, as we have seen, 0% includes the circulation of money. A significant division of labour in this sense can take place without division of labour in the latter sense existing. On

! corresponding

? namely

260 3. Relative Surplus-Value – Notebook IV

the basis of commodity production, by contrast, the latter cannot take place without the former, although it can take place without the products being produced as commodities at all, without production in general taking place on the basis of commodity exchange. The first division of labour shows itself in the fact that the product of a particular branch of labour confronts, as a particular commodity, the products of all other branches of labour, as self-subsistent commodities distinct from it. The second division of labour, on the other hand, takes place in the production of a particular use-value, before it enters the market, circulation, as a particular, self-subsistent commodity. In the first case, the complementing of the different labours takes place through commodity exchange. In the second, it is direct cooperation of the particular labours, not mediated by commodity exchange, for the manufacture of the same use-value under the command of capital. Through the first division of labour, the producers face one another as self-subsistent commodity owners and as representatives of particular branches of labour. Through the second, they appear rather as non-self-subsistent, in that they produce a whole commodity, produce a commodity at all, only through their cooperation, and each represents not a particular labour but rather only the individual operations combined in a particular labour, operations that run together, and the commodity owner, the producer of the whole commodity, confronts them, the non-self-subsistent workers, as capitalist.

A. Smith constantly confuses the division of labour in these very different meanings, which are certainly complementary but also in certain respects antithetical. More recent Englishmen!!, to avoid the confusion, call the first kind Division of Labour, division of labour, the second Subdivision of Labour, subdivision of labour, which, however, does not express the conceptual difference.

Just as pins and twist are two particular commodities, each of them represents a particular branch of labour, and their producers face one another as commodity owners. They represent the division of social labour, of which each part confronts the other as a particular sphere of production. By contrast, the various operations required for the production of a pin — assuming, that is, that the particular parts of it do not appear as particular commodities —, while they represent just so many modes of labour under which particular workers are subsumed, constitute division of labour in the second sense. It is the particularisation of the operations within the sphere of production belonging to a particular commodity, and the distribution of each of these operations among particular workers, whose cooperation creates the whole product, the commodity, whose representative, however, is not the worker, but the capitalist.

## Division of Labour

The division of labour is a particular, differentiated, further 
developed form of cooperation, a powerful means of heightening 
the productive power of labour, performing the same work in less 
labour time, hence reducing the labour time necessary for the 
reproduction of labour capacity and extending surplus labour 
time. 

Simple cooperation involves many people working together to 
perform the same work. In the division of labour many workers 
cooperate under the command of capital to produce different parts 
of the same commodities, each particular part requiring a specific 
kind of labour, a specific operation, and each worker or definite 
multiple quantity of workers performing one specific operation 
only, with the others performing others and so forth; the totality 
of these operations, however, producing a single commodity, a 
particular specific commodity; the latter therefore representing 
the totality of these specific forms of labour. 

We say commodity from a twofold point of view. Firstly, a 
commodity produced under the division of labour can itself be a 
semi-manufacture, a raw material, a material of Jabour for another 
sphere of production. A product of this kind therefore by no 
means needs to be a use value which has taken on its final form, 
the form in which it ultimately enters consumption. 

If different production processes are required for the manufac- 
ture of a use value, e.g. printed calico—spinning, weaving, 
printing—the printed calico is the result of these different 
production processes and of the totality of the specific modes of 
labour, spinning, weaving, printing. No division of labour in the 
sense we are now considering has yet taken place on that account. 
If the spun yarn is a commodity, the woven cloth a commodity, and 
the printed calico a specific commodity alongside the other two 
commodities—those use values which are the product of processes 
which must precede the printing of calico—no division of labour 
in the sense we are now considering takes place, although there is 
a social division of labour, because the yarn is the product of 
spinners, the cloth is the product of weavers and the calico is the 
product of printers. The labour necessary for the production of 
printed calico is divided into spinning, weaving and printing and 

Relative Surplus Value 265 

each of these branches forms the occupation of a particular section 
of workers, each of whom performs only the one particular 
operation of spinning or weaving or printing. Here, then, what is 
needed is firstly a totality of particular kinds of labour, in order to 
produce the printed calico; and secondly the subsumption of 
different workers under each of these particular labour opera- 
tions. But it cannot be said that they cooperate in producing the 
same commodity. They rather produce commodities independent of 
each other. The yarn is on our assumption as much a commodity 
as the printed calico. The existence of a use value as a commodity 
does not depend on the nature of that use value, hence it does not 
depend, either, on its distance from or nearness to the shape in 
which it finally enters consumption, whether as means of labour or 
means of subsistence. It depends solely on this, that a definite 
quantity of labour time is represented in the product and that it 
forms the material for the satisfaction of certain needs, whether 
these are the needs of a further production process or those of the 
consumption process. On the other hand, if the printed calico first 
came onto the market as a commodity after having passed through 
the processes of spinning, weaving and printing, it would have 
been produced by division of labour. 

We have seen that the product only becomes a commodity at all, 
and the exchange of commodities as a condition of production 
only takes place at all, given a social division of labour, [IV-150] or 
a division of social labour.* The specific commodities are the 
repositories of specific modes of labour, and the producer or 
owner of the individual commodity only takes possession of his 
aliquot part of social production, i.e. of the products of all the 
other branches of labour, through exchange, namely the sale of 
his product, through the conversion of his commodity into money. 
That he produces a commodity at all implies that his labour is 
one-sided and does not directly produce his means of subsistence, 
that these are rather obtained only by the exchange of his labour 
for the products of other branches of labour. This social division 
of labour, which is presupposed in the existence of the product as 
a commodity and of the exchange of commodities, differs 
essentially from the division of labour we are investigating here. 
The latter presupposes the former as its point of departure and 
basis. 

A division of labour occurs in the former case in so far as every 

a K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present 
edition, Vol. 29, p. 292).— Ed. 

266 The Production Process of Capital 

commodity represents the other commodity, hence every commod- 
ity owner or producer represents a specific branch of labour 
vis-a-vis the other one; and the totality of these specific branches 
of labour, their existence as the whole gamut of social labour, is 
mediated through the exchange of commodities, or, more closely 
defined, the circulation of commodities, which as we have seen 
includes the circulation of money.* A considerable division of 
labour in this sense may take place without there being any 
division of labour in the other sense. But the second type cannot 
occur without the first under conditions of commodity production, 
although it can occur where products are not produced as 
commodities at all, where production does not, in general, take 
place on the basis of the exchange of commodities. The first 
division of labour shows itself in the fact that the product of a 
specific branch of labour confronts as a specific commodity the 
producers of all other branches of labour as independent 
commodities differing from it. The second division of labour, in 
contrast, takes place when a specific use value is produced before 
it comes onto the market, enters into circulation, as a specific, 
independent commodity. In the first case the different kinds of 
labour complement each other through the exchange of com- 
modities. In the second there is direct, cooperative action by the 
different kinds of labour, not mediated through the exchange of 
commodities, with the aim of manufacturing the same use value 
under the command of capital. In the first division of labour the 
producers meet as independent commodity owners and represen- 
tatives of specific branches of labour. In the second they appear 
rather as dependent, since they only produce a complete 
commodity, indeed only produce a commodity at all, through their 
cooperation, and each of them represents not a specific piece of 
work, but rather the individual operations which are combined, 
which meet, in a specific piece of work, while the commodity 
owner, the producer of the complete commodity, confronts the 
dependent workers as capitalist. 

Adam Smith constantly confuses these very different senses of 
the division of labour, which admittedly complement each other, 
but are also in certain respects mutually opposed. In order to 
avoid confusion, more recent English writers call the first type 
DIVISION OF LABOUR and the second svuppIvisioNn oF LABOUR, although this 
fails to bring out the conceptual distinction.’” 

a K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present 
edition, Vol. 29, Chapter Two, “Money or Simple Circulation”).— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value 267 

Pins and twist are two specific commodities; each of them 
represent a specific branch of labour and their producers confront 
each other as commodity owners. They represent a division of 
social labour, each section of which confronts the other as a 
specific sphere of production. In contrast to this, the different 
operations required for the production of a pin constitute a 
division of labour in the second sense if they represent just as 
many modes of labour under which particular workers are 
subsumed—it being presupposed, namely, that the particular 
parts of the pin do not emerge as_ specific commodities. 
Characteristic of this kind of division of labour is the differentia- 
tion of the operations within the sphere of production which 
belongs to a particular commodity, and the distribution of each of 
these operations among particular workers, whose cooperation 
creates the whole product, the commodity, but whose representative 
is not the worker but the capitalist. [IV-151] Even this form of the 
division of labour, which we are considering here, by no means 
exhausts the subject of the division of labour, which is in a certain 
respect the category of categories of political economy. But here 
we have only to consider it as a particular productive power of 
capital. 

It is clear, 1) that this division of labour presupposes the social 
division of labour. First the exchange of commodities develops the 
differentiation of social labour, and then the branches of labour 
become so widely separated that each specific branch is traced 
back to a specialised kind of labour, and the division of labour, its 
analysis, can take place within this specialised labour. It is equally 
clear, 2) that the second division of labour must, in its turn, 
extend the first—reacting back upon it. Firstly in so far as it, like 
all other productive forces, reduces the amount of labour required 
for a particular use value, therefore sets labour free to take part in 
a new branch of social labour. Secondly, and this is specific to it, in 
so far as it is able in its analysis to split up a speciality in such a 
way that the different components of the same use value are now 
produced as different commodities, independent of each other, or 
also that the different varieties of the same use value, which previously 
all fell to the share of the same sphere of production, are now 
allotted to different spheres of production through the analysis of 
the individual varieties. 

The one is division of social labour into different branches of 
labour, the other is division of labour in the manufacture of a 
commodity, hence not division of labour in society but social 
division of labour within one and the same workshop. Division of 

268 The Production Process of Capital 

labour in the latter sense presupposes manufacture, as a specific 
mode of production. 

Adam Smith does not distinguish these two senses of the division 
of labour. The second division of labour therefore does not 
appear with him as something specific to capitalist production. 

The chapter on the division of labour with which he opens his 
work (book I, chapter I) (On the Division of Labour) begins like 
this: 

“The effects of the division of labour, in the general industry of society, will be 
more easily understood by considering in what manner these effects operate in 
some particular manufactures” (Garnier, p. 11] (Vol. I, p. 15].!% 

The division of labour within the atelier (which really means 
workshop, Facrory, mine, or farm here, the only assumption being 
that the individuals employed in the production of a particular 
commodity cooperate under the command of capital), the capitalist 
division of labour, is only of interest to him, and he only discusses 
it in particular, as being a more easily comprehensible, more 
tangible and clearer example of the effects of the division of 
labour within society in general and upon the “general industry of 
society”. The following passage proves this: 

“It is commonly supposed that this division is carried furthest in some 
manufactures which produce articles of little value; not perhaps that it really is 
carried further in them than in others of more importance: but in those trifling 
manufactures which are destined to supply the small wants of but a small number 
of people, the whole number of workmen must necessarily be small; and those 
employed in every different branch of the work can often be collected into the same 
workhouse, and placed at once under the view of the spectator. In those great 
manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply the wants of the 
great body of the people, every different branch of the work employs so great a number 
of workmen that it is impossible to collect them all [IV-152] into the same workhouse. We 
can seldom see more, at one time, than those employed in one single branch of the 
work. Though in such manufactures, therefore, the work may really be divided 
into a much greater number of parts than in those of the first kind, the division is 
not near so obvious, and has accordingly been much less observed” [I.c., pp. 11-12]. 

Firstly, this passage demonstrates the small scale on which 
industrial enterprises still operated in Adam Smith’s time. 

Secondly, the division of labour in a workshop and the division 
of a branch of labour within society into distinct, mutually 
independent branches, are only subjectively different matters for 
him, not objectively. In the first case one sees the division at a 
glance, in the second case one does not. The change is not in the 
real situation but only in the way the observer sees it. For 
example, if one looks at the whole of the iron-producing industry, 
starting from the production of pig iron and going through all the 
different types of product into which the industry is divided, each 

Relative Surplus Value 269 

of which forms an independent branch of production, an 
independent commodity, whose connection with its preceding or 
subsequent stages is mediated by the exchange of commodities, the 
social division of this branch of industry probably involves more 
subdivisions than we meet with inside a pin factory. 

Hence Adam Smith does not grasp the division of labour as a 
particular, specifically distinct form characteristic of the capitalist 
mode of production. 

The division of labour, as we regard it here, presupposes firstly 
that the social division of labour has already attained a consider- 
able level of development, that the various spheres of production 
are separated from each other, and that within each sphere there 
are further divisions into independent subspecies; indeed, capital 
can only develop on the basis of a circulation of commodities 
which is already relatively extensive, and is identical with a 
relatively extensive development of the division (autonomisation) 
of branches of business within society as a whole. Once this is 
presupposed, hence e.g. once the production of cotton yarn exists 
as an independent, autonomous branch of business (hence is no 
longer e.g. a subsidiary occupation of the countryside), the second 
prerequisite for the division of labour, which precedes this one 
and exists before it, is that many workers in this branch should be 
associated in a workshop under the command of capital. This 
association, the agglomeration of workers under the command of 
capital, which is the condition for capitalist cooperation, comes 
about for two reasons. Firstly, surplus value does not depend only 
on its rate; its absolute amount, magnitude, depends at the same 
time on the number of workers who are simultaneously being 
exploited by the same capital. Capital functions as capital in 
proportion to the number of workers it simultaneously employs. 
The independence of the workers in their production is thereby at 
an end. They work under the supervision and command of 
capital. In so far as they work together and are interconnected, 
this interconnection exists in capital, or, this interconnection itself 
is for them merely external, a mode of capital’s existence. Their 
labour becomes compulsory labour because once they enter into the 
labour process it belongs not to them but already to capital, is 
already incorporated in capital. The workers are subjected to the 
discipline of capital and placed in completely changed conditions 
of life. The first manufactories in Holland, and in all countries 
where they developed independently and were not imported 
ready-made from abroad, were little more than conglomerations 
of workers who produced the same commodity, with the means of 

20* 

270 The Production Process of Capital 

labour being concentrated in the same workshop under the 
command of the same capital. A developed division of labour was 
not a feature of those places, the development rather took place 
first within them as its natural basis. In the medieval guilds the 
master [IV-153] was prevented from becoming a capitalist by the 
guild regulations, which restricted to a very low maximum the 
number of workers he was permitted to employ at any one time. 

Secondly, the economic advantages which arose from the 
common utilisation of the buildings, of furnaces, etc., and soon 
gave these manufactories such an advantage in productivity over 
the patriarchal or guild-based enterprises—apart from any effect 
of the division of labour—do not belong to our subject here, as 
we have only to consider, not the economy made on the conditions 
of labour,'*? but the more productive application of variable capital; 
the extent to which these means directly raise the productivity of 
the labour employed in a particular sphere of production. 

Even where a particular branch of business—see e.g. Blanqui*— 
is very subdivided, but patriarchal, so that the product of each 
part exists as a specific commodity independently of the others, or 
is only mediated by the exchange of commodities, association in a 
single workshop is by no means merely formal. In_ these 
circumstances the work almost always takes the form of domestic- 
rural subsidiary labour, there thus being no absolute subsumption 
of the worker under an entirely one-sided and simple operation. It 
is not his exclusive task. But then the main feature is lacking. 
These workers work with their own means of labour. The mode of 
production itself is in fact not capitalist, instead, the capitalist 
merely steps between these independent workers and the defini- 
tive purchaser of their commodities as middleman, as merchant. This 
form, in which capital has not yet taken control of production 
itself, still predominates over much of the Continent; it always 
constitutes the transition from the subsidiary industries of the 
countryside to the capitalist mode of production proper. Here the 
worker himself appears as commodity owner, producer and seller, 
and the capitalist still confronts him as buyer of commodities, not of 
labour. The basis of capitalist production is therefore still absent. 

Where, as in Blanqui’s example, the division of labour exists in 
the form of independent branches of production, a multiplicity of 
time-consuming and unproductive intermediate processes takes 
place, conditioned by the existence of the different stages of the 

a See this volume, pp. 285-86.— Fd. 

Relative Surplus Value 271 

commodity as commodities in their own right, and by the fact that 
their interconnection in the overall production of the commodity 
has first to be mediated through the exchange of commodities, 
through sale and purchase. Working for each other in the 
different branches is subject to all kinds of accidents, irregularities 
and so on, for it is the compulsion of the workshop which first 
introduces simultaneity, regularity and proportionality into the 
mechanism of these different operations, in fact first combines 
them together into a uniformly operating mechanism. 

If the division of labour—once it proceeds, now on the basis of 
the existing workshops, to a further subdivision of the operations 
and subsumption under them of definite multiple numbers of 
workers—if the division of labour carries itself further, it is also its 
opposite. For in so far as the disjecta membra poetae* were 
previously autonomous, existing side by side as an equal number 
of independent commodities, and hence as the products of an 
equal number of independent commodity owners, the division of 
labour is also their combination in one mechanism; an aspect 
entirely overlooked by Adam. 

Later on” we shall investigate in more detail why the division of 
labour within society, a division which through the exchange of 
commodities emerges as the totality of production and only has an 
impact on its individual representatives through competition, the 
law of supply and demand, develops further at the same pace as, 
goes hand in hand with, the division of labour within the 
workshop, the division of labour characteristic of capitalist 
production, in which the independence of the workers is 
completely annihilated and they become parts of a _ social 
mechanism standing under the command of capital.” 

[I1V-154] This much is clear. Adam Smith did not grasp the 
division of labour as something peculiar to the capitalist mode of 
production; something whereby, in addition to machinery and 
simple cooperation, labour is transformed not only formally, but 
in its reality—through subsumption under capital. He conceives it 
in the same way as Petty and others of his predecessors after Petty. 
(See the East Indian pamphlet.) 

Like his predecessors, Smith in fact still views the division of 
labour from the standpoint of antiquity,in so far as they lump it 

a “Scattered limbs of the poet” (Horace, Satirarum, I, 4).— Ed. 

b See this volume, pp. 312-16.— Ed. 

c W. Petty, An Essay Concerning the Multiplication of Mankind; [H. Martyn,] The 

272 The Production Process of Capital 

together with the division of labour within society. They only 
differ from the conception held by the classical world in their view 
of the result and purpose of the division of labour. They conceive 
it as from the outset a productive force of capital, in so far as they 
stress and almost exclusively discuss the fact that the division of 
labour cheapens commodities, reduces the amount of necessary 
labour time required to produce a particular commodity, or 
increases the quantity of commodities that can be produced in the 
same necessary labour time, thereby lessening the exchange value of 
the individual commodities. They lay all their emphasis on this 
aspect— exchange value—and the modernity of their point of view 
consists in this. And this is of course the decisive point if the 
division of labour is conceived as a productive force of capital, for 
it is such a force only in so far as it cheapens the means of 
subsistence required for the reproduction of labour capacity, 
reduces the amount of labour time needed for their reproduction. 
The ancients, on the other hand, had their eyes fixed exclusively 
on use value, in so far as they made any attempt at all to reflect 
upon and understand the division of labour. The consequence of 
the division of labour for them was that the products of the 
individual branches of production attained a better quality, whereas 
the quantitative point of view predominates among the moderns. 
The ancients, therefore, consider the division of labour not in 
relation to the commodity but in relation to the product as such. 
What interests the commodity owners who have become capitalists 
is the influence of the division of labour on the commodity; its 
influence on the product as such only has a bearing on the 
commodity in so far as it is a matter of the satisfaction of human 
needs in general, a matter of use value as such. The historical 
background of the Greeks’ views is always Egypt, which they 
regarded as the model of an industrial country, in just the same 
way as Holland and later England were regarded by the moderns. 
The division of labour therefore occurs with them, as we shall see 
later, in relation to the hereditary division of labour and the caste 
system deriving from it, as it existed in Egypt. 

Adam Smith confuses the two forms of the division of labour 
later on too. Thus he says further in the same book I, chapter I: 

“The division of labour, so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a 
proportionable increase of the productive powers of labour. The separation of 
different trades and employments from one another seems to have taken place in consequence 
of this advantage. This separation, too, is generally carried furthest in those 
countries which enjoy the highest degree of industry and improvement; what is the 

work of one man in a rude state of society being generally that of several in an 
improved one” [Garnier, p. 15] [Vol. I, p. 18). 

Relative Surplus Value 273 

Adam Smith explicitly picks out the quantitative point of view, 
i.e. the curtailment of the labour time needed for the production 
of a commodity, as the exclusive consideration, in the passage 
where he is enumerating the advantages of the division of labour: 

“This great increase in the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of 
labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different 
circumstances” ([Garnier,] Book I, Chapter I [p. 18]) [Vol. I, p. 21]. 

According to him these advantages consist in 1) the dexterity the 
worker attains in his one-sided branch [I1V-155] of labour: 

“First, the improvement of the dexterity of the workman necessarily increases 
the quantity of the work he can perform; and the division of labour, by reducing every 
man’s business to some one simple operation, and by making this operation the sole 
employment of his life, necessarily increases very much the dexterity of the 
workman.” (Hence rapidity of the operations.) 

Secondly: saving of the time which gets lost in moving from one 
task to another. In that connection both “change of place” and 
“different tools” are required. 

“When the two trades can be carried on in the same workhouse, the loss of time is 
no doubt much less. It is even in this case, however, very considerable. A man 

commonly saunters a little in turning his hand from one sort of employment to 

another” (Garnier, pp. 20, 21] [Vol. I, p. 23]. 
Finally Smith mentions 

“that the invention of all those machines by which labour is so much facilitated 
and abridged seems to have been originally owing to the division of labour” 
[Garnier, p. 22] [Vol. I, p. 24] 

(invented by the workers themselves, the whole of whose 
attention is exclusively directed towards a simple object). And even 
the influence exerted on the invention of machinery by 
philosophers or men of speculation is due to the social division of 
labour, for it is through it that 

“philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principal 
or sole trade occupation of a particular class of citizens” [Garnier, p. 24] [Vol. I, 

p. 25). 

Adam Smith remarks that if on the one hand the division of 
labour is the product, the result, of the natural diversity of human 
talents, the latter are to a much greater degree the result of the 
development of the division of labour. In this he follows his 
teacher Ferguson. 

“The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than 
we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of 
different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not so much the cause as the effect 

of the division of labour.... All must have had the same duties to perform” (without 
the division of labour and without exchange, which he makes into the basis of the 

274 The Production Process of Capital 

division of labour), ‘‘and the same work to do, and there could have been no such 
difference of employment as could alone give occasion to any great difference of 
talents”. “By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different 
from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound” [Garnier, pp. 33-35] 
[Vol. I, pp. 33-35]. 

Smith explains the very existence of the division of labour by 
referring to 

‘“‘men’s inclination to trade and exchange”, without which “every man must have 
procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of life” ([Garnier,] Book I, 
Chapter II, [p. 34]) (Vol. I, p. 34]. 

Thus he assumes exchange in order to explain the division of 
labour, and assumes the division of labour IN ORDER THAT THERE BE 
SOMETHING TO EXCHANGE. 

The naturally evolved division of labour precedes exchange, and the 
exchange of products as commodities first develops between 
different communities, not within the same community. (The division of 
labour rests in part not only on the naturally evolved differences 
between human beings themselves, but on natural elements of 
production found available by these different communities.) Of 
course, the development of the product into a commodity and the 
exchange of commodities react back onto the division of labour, so 
that exchange and division enter into a relation of interaction. 

[IV-156] Smith’s main merit in dealing with the division of 
labour is that he stresses it and puts it in the forefront, indeed 
views it directly as a productive power of labour (i.e. capital). In 
his conception of it, however, he is dependent on the contempor- 
ary level of development of manufacture, which was still far 
removed from the modern factory. Hence also the relative 
preponderance conceded to the division of labour over machinery, 
which still appears merely as its appendage. 

In the whole section on the division of labour Adam Smith 
essentially follows his teacher Adam Ferguson, often to the extent of 
copying from him ([A. Ferguson,] Essai sur Vhistotre de la société 
civile, translated by M. Bergier, Paris, 1783). Under conditions of 
barbarism the human being inclines to sloth: 

“He is, perhaps, by the diversity of his wants, discouraged from industry; or, by 
his divided attention, prevented from acquiring skill in any kind of labour” 
([A. Ferguson, l.c.,] Vol. II, p. 128).4 

Among the different circumstances which gradually lead men 
“to subdivide their professions without any conscious end in 
mind”, Ferguson similarly indicates “the prospect of being able to 

a Here and below Marx quotes Ferguson in French.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value 275 

exchange one commodity for another”, although he does not imitate 
Smith’s one-sidedness in giving it as the sole reason. He goes on 
to say: 

“The artist finds, that the more he can confine his attention to a particular part 
of any work, his productions are the more perfect, and grow under his hands in the 
greater quantities. Every undertaker in manufacture finds, that the more he can 
subdivide the tasks of his workmen, and the more hands he can employ on separate 
articles, the more are his expenses diminished, and his profits increased.... The 
progress of commerce is but a continued subdivision of the mechanical arts” 

({p.] 129). 

Adam Smith asserts that originally the workers invented the 
machine, because, owing to the division of labour, 

“when the whole of every man’s attention is directed towards some one object”, 
they devised ‘all those machines by which labour is so much facilitated and 
abridged” ((Garnier,] Book I, Chapter I [p. 22]) [Vol. I, p. 24]. 

Adam Ferguson speaks of 

“the methods, the means, the devices ... which the artist, attentive to his own affair, 
has invented, to abridge or to facilitate his separate task” (p. 133). 

Adam Smith says: 

“In the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like every 
employment, the principal or sole occupation of a particular class of citizens” 
([Garnier,] Book I, Chapter I [pp. 23-24]) [Vol. I, p. 25]. 

Adam Ferguson: 

“This method, which yields such great advantages in regard of industry, can be 
applied with equal success to more important things, in the various departments of 
policy and war ... in this age of separations, [thinking] itself may become a peculiar 
craft” (pp. 131, 136). 

Ferguson, like Adam Smith, makes special mention of the 
application of science to industrial practice (p. 136). 

What distinguishes him from Adam Smith is the fact that he 
brings out more sharply and emphatically the negative aspects of 
the division of labour (and with Ferguson the quality of the 
commodity still plays a role, while Adam Smith, from the capitalist 
point of view correctly, leaves it aside as a mere ACCIDENT). 

“It may even be doubted, whether the measure of national capacity increases 
with the advancement of arts. Many mechanical arts require no capacity; they 
succeed perfectly without recourse to sentiment and reason; and ignorance is the 
mother of industry as well as of superstition. Reflection and fancy are subject to 
err; but a habit of moving the hand, or the foot, is independent of either. One 
might therefore say that perfection, in regard of manufactures, consists in the 
ability to proceed without consulting the mind” (especially, and this is an important 
point with regard to the workshop) “in such a manner that the workshop may 
[I1V-157], without any great effort of imagination, be considered as an engine, the parts of 
which are men” (pp. 134, 135). 

276 The Production Process of Capital 

The concept of manufacture comes out much more clearly here 
than in Adam Smith. Furthermore, Ferguson emphasises the 
change in the relationship between manufacturer and worker 
which occurs as a result of the division of labour. 

“Even in manufacture, the genius of the master, perhaps, is cultivated, while 
that of the inferior workman lies waste.... The general officer may be a great 
proficient in the knowledge of war, while the soldier is confined to a few motions 
of the hand and the foot. The former may have gained, what the latter has lost” 
(pp. 135, 136). 

What he says of the general in relation to the ordinary soldier is 
true of the capitalist or his MaNnacER in relation to the army of 
workers. The intelligence and independent development which 
were applied on a small scale in autonomous work are now 
applied on a large scale for the whole workshop, and monopolised 
by the boss; the workers are thereby robbed of these attributes. 

“He [the general] may practise on a larger scale all the arts of preservation, of 
deception and of stratagem, which the savage exerts in leading a small party, or 
merely in defending himself” (p. 136). 

Hence Ferguson also expressly treats of the “subordination” 
consequent on the “separation of arts and professions” (l.c., 
p- 138). Here the antagonism of capital, etc. 

With regard to entire nations, Ferguson has this to say: 

“Nations of tradesmen come to consist of members who, beyond their own 

particular trade, are ignorant of all human affairs” (p. 130). ‘““We make a nation of 
helots, and have no free citizens” (l.c., p. 144). 

He contrasts this with classical antiquity, although he points out 
at the same time that slavery was the foundation for the more 
complete all-round development of the free citizens. (See the 
Frenchman,'”* who indulges in more speechifying on the whole of 
this Fergusonian theme, but wittily.) 

Thus if one takes Ferguson, who was Smith’s teacher directly, 
and Petty, whose example of watchmaking was replaced by Smith 
with the one of the pin factory,’” Smith’s originality consists only 
in his putting the division of labour in the limelight and his one-sided 
(hence economically correct) estimation of it as a means for increasing the 
productive power of labour. 

It says in A. Potter, Political Economy, New York, 1841 (Part 2 of 
which is almost exclusively a reprint or Scrope’s Political Economy, 
London, 1833): 

*“The first essential towards production is labour. To play its part efficiently in 
this great business, the labour of individuals must be combined; or, in other words, 
the labour required for producing certain results must be distributed among several 
individuals, and those individuals thus be enabled to cooperate” * (Scrope, p. 76). 

Relative Surplus Value 277 

Potter remarks on this, in a note on the same page: 

*“The principle here referred to is usually called the division of labour. The 
phrase is objectionable, since the fundamental idea is that of concert and cooperation, 
not of division. The term of division applies only to the process; this being subdivided 
into several operations, and these being distributed or parcelled out among a number of 
operatives. It is thus a combination of labourers effected through a subdivision of 
processes.” * It is: COMBINATION OF LABOUR. 

The title of Ferguson’s book is: Essay on the History of Civil 
Society. 

[IV-158] Dugald Stewart, COLLECTED works, ED. By Sir W. Hamilton, 
Edinburgh. I cite from Vor. VIII of the coLLecTEep works, which Is 
Vot. I (published in 1855) of the Lectures on Political Economy. 

On the way in which the division of labour increases the 
productivity of labour, he says among other things: 

*“The effects of the division of labour, and of the use of machines ... both 
derive their value from the same circumstance, their tendency, to enable one man to 
perform the work of many” * (p. 317). 

*“Tt produces also an economy of time, by separating the work into its different 
branches, all of which may be carried into execution at the same moment ... by carrying on 
all the different processes at once, which an individual must have executed separately, 
it becomes possible to produce a multitude of pins for instance completely finished 
in the same time as a single pin might have been either cut or pointed” * ({p.] 319). 

This goes beyond Adam Smith’s second argument above, that 
the single worker who passes through the whole circuit of the 
different operations loses time in the transition from one 
operation to another.* 

The different operations performed successively by a worker in 
a patriarchal or craft-based business in order to make his product, 
which are mutually intertwined as different modes of his activity, 
and follow each other in chronological sequence; the different 
phases through which his work passes, and in which it undergoes 
variation, are separated from each other, isolated, as independent 
operations or processes. This independence becomes solidified, 
personified, when each simple and monosyllabic process of this 
kind becomes the exclusive function of a particular worker or a 
definite number of workers. They are subsumed under these 
isolated functions. This work is not divided among them; they are 
divided among the various processes, each of which becomes the 
exclusive life-process of one of them—in so far as they function as 
productive labour capacity. The heightened productivity and 
complexity of the production process as a whole, its enrichment, is 
therefore purchased at the cost of the reduction of labour capacity 

a See this volume, p. 273.— Ed. 

278 The Production Process of Capital 

in each of its specific functions to nothing but a dry abstraction—a 
simple quality, which appears in the eternal uniformity of an 
identical function, and for which the whole of the worker’s 
productive capacity, the multiplicity of his capabilities, has been 
confiscated. The processes separated out in this way, and 
performed as functions of these living automatons, allow combi- 
nation precisely through their division and autonomy; allow these 
different processes to be carried out simultaneously in the same 
workshop. Here division and combination condition each other. 
The overall production process of a single commodity appears 
now as a combined operation, a complex of many operations, all of 
which complement each other independently, and can be carried 
out simultaneously alongside each other. The complementarity of 
the different processes is here transferred from the future to the 
present, whereby a commodity which is begun at one side is 
finished at the other. At the same time, since these different 
operations are performed with virtuosity, because they have been 
reduced to simple functions, there is added to this simultaneity, 
which is in general characteristic of cooperation, a reduction in 
labour time, which is attained in each of the simultaneous and 
mutually complementary functions which are combined together 
into a single whole; so that within a given time not only more 
whole commodities, more commodities finished and ready for use are 
in general delivered, but also more finished commodities. Through 
this combination the workshop becomes a mechanism of which the 
individual workers form the different elements. 

But the combination—cooperation, as it appears in the division 
of labour, no longer as the parallel existence of the same functions 
or their temporary subdivision, but as the separation of a totality 
of functions into their constituent elements, and the unification of 
these different components—now has a twofold existence: it exists 
on the one hand, if we look at the production process itself, in the 
workshop as a whole, which, as a total mechanism of this kind 
(although in fact it is nothing other than the manifestation of the 
workers’ cooperation, their social mode of action in the production 
process) confronts the workers as [IV-159] an external power, 
dominating and enveloping them, in fact as the power of capital 
itself and a form of its existence, under which they are 
individually subsumed, and to which their social relation of 
production belongs. On the other hand, it exists in the finished 
product, which is in turn a commodity belonging to the capitalist. 

For the worker himself no combination of activities takes place. 
The combination is rather a combination of the one-sided 

Relative Surplus Value 279 

functions under which every worker or number of workers is 
subsumed, group by group. His function is one-sided, abstract, 
partial. The totality which is formed from this is based precisely 
on his merely partial existence and isolation in his separate function. 
It is therefore a combination of which he forms a part, but it 
depends on the fact that his labour is not combined. The workers 
form the building blocks of this combination. However, the combina- 
tion is not a relation that belongs to them, nor is it subsumed 
under them as a united group. This point is also directed against 
Mr. Potter’s pretty phrases about combination and concert as 
opposed to Division. 

Here the capitalist mode of production has already seized upon 
the substance of labour and transformed it. The subsumption of 
the worker under capital is no longer merely formal: the fact that 
he works for someone else, under alien command and alien 
supervision. Nor is the situation any longer merely as it was in the 
case of simple cooperation, where the worker cooperates with 
many others, performing the same work with them at the same 
time, while his work as such remains unchanged and a merely 
temporary connection is created, a contiguity, which by the nature 
of things may easily be dissolved and which in most cases of simple 
cooperation takes place only for specific, limited periods, to satisfy 
exceptional requirements, as with harvesting, road-building, etc. 
Nor is it like manufacture in its simplest form, where the main 
thing is the simultaneous exploitation of many workers and a 
saving on fixed capital, etc., and where the worker only formally 
becomes a part of a whole, whose head is the capitalist, but in 
which he is not further affected—as a producer—by the fact that 
many other workers are doing the same thing alongside him, also 
making boots, etc. With the transformation of his labour capacity 
into what is merely a function of part of the complete mechanism, 
the whole of which forms the workshop, he has altogether ceased 
to be the producer of a commodity. He is only the producer of a 
one-sided operation, which in general produces something solely 
in connection with the whole of the mechanism that forms the 
workshop. He is thus a living constituent of the workshop, and has 
himself become an accessory to capital through the manner of his 
work, since his skill can only be exercised in a workshop, only as a 
link in a mechanism which confronts him as the presence of 
capital. Originally he had to sell to the capitalist, instead of the 
commodity, the labour that produced the commodity, because he 
was not in possession of the objective conditions for the realisation 
of his labour capacity. Now he has to sell it because his labour 

280 The Production Process of Capital 

capacity only continues to be labour capacity in so far as it is sold 
to capital. Thus he is now subsumed under capitalist production, 
has now fallen under the control of capital, no longer just because 
he lacks the means of labour, but because of his very labour 
capacity, the nature and manner of his labour; now capital has in 
its hands no longer just the objective conditions, but the social 
conditions of subjective labour, the conditions under which his 
labour continues to be labour at all.” 

The increase of productive power which arises from the division 
of labour, this social mode of existence of labour, is therefore not 
only capital’s, instead of the worker’s, productive power. The social 
form of the workers’ combined labours is the existence of capital 
over against the worker; combination confronts him as a 
paramount destiny to which he has fallen victim through the 
reduction of his labour capacity to an entirely one-sided function, 
which is nothing apart from the mechanism as a whole, [IV-160] 
and therefore depends entirely upon it. He has himself become a 
mere detail. 

Dugald Stewart, l.c., calls the workers subordinated to the 
division of labour 

*“living automatons ... employed in the details of the work”,* while the 
* “employer will be always on the stretch to economize time and labour” * (p. 318). 

Dugald Stewart cites maxims from classical antiquity relating to 
the division of labour within society. 

“Cuncta nihilque sumus.” “ In omnibus aliquid, in toto nihil.” 4 ““to AN Hariotato Epya, 
xaxas Sinlotato travtTa.” b198 
(this from the Margites, cited in the Seconp ALCIBIADES, ONE OF THE SPURIOUS 
DIALOGUES OF Plato).° 

Thus, in the Odyssey, XIV, 228: 

ooo 

GAOL yap T’&AAotow avyp Emutéptretar Epyoul”’,4 

and the statement by Archilochus, quoted in Sextus Empiricus 

2 oF 

“adkdol GAAM Em” Epy xapdStyv Catvetar”’.€ 

Thucydides makes Pericles contrast the agriculturalists of 
Sparta, where consumption was not mediated through the 

a “We are everything and nothing”. “We can do something of everything, but 
nothing as a whole”.— Ed. 

b “He knew many crafts, but he knew all of them badly”.— Ed. 

e “Men differ as to what things cheer their hearts” (Sextus Empiricus, Adversus 
mathematicos, XI, 44).— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value 281 

exchange of commodities, hence no division of labour took place 
either, with the Athenians, describing the Spartans as 
“avroupyot”* (working not for gain but for subsistence). 

This is what Pericles says about nautical matters in the same 

speech (Thucydides, Book I, Chapter 142): 

“Seamanship, like any other skill, is a matter of art, and practice in it may not 
be left to odd times, as a sideline; on the contrary, no other pursuit may be carried 
on as a subsidiary occupation” !99 

We shall come to Plato directly, although he actually belongs 
before Xenophon. The latter, who possesses a considerable amount 
of bourgeois instinct, and is therefore often reminiscent of both 
bourgeois morality and bourgeois political economy, looks more 
closely than Plato at the division of labour, in so far as it takes 
place in the individual workshop as well as on a broad scale. The 
following account by Xenophon is interesting, 1) because he shows 
the dependence of the division of labour upon the size of the 
market; and 2) because in contrast to Plato he does not confine 
himself to the division of occupations, but rather stresses the 
reduction of labour to simple labour brought about by the division 
of labour, and the skill which can more easily be attained under 
that system. Although as a result he is much closer to the modern 
conception, he still retains the attitude which is characteristic of 
the ancients: he is concerned only with use value, with the 
improvement of quality. He is not interested in the curtailment of 
Jabour time any more than is Plato, even in the one passage 
where, exceptionally and in passing, the latter indicates that more 
use values are provided. Even here it is only a matter of an 
increased quantity of use values; not of the effect of the division of 
labour on the product as commodity. 

Xenophon relates that it is not only an honour to receive food 
from the table of the King of Persia, but a joy as well (because the 
food tastes better). 

“But the food that is sent from the king’s board really is much superior in the 
pleasure it gives to the palate as well. That this should be so, however, is no marvel. 
For just as all other arts are developed to superior excellence in large cities, in the 
same way the food at the king’s palace is also elaborately prepared with superior 
excellence. For in small towns the same workman makes dining couches and doors 
and ploughs and tables and often this same artisan builds houses, and even so he is 
thankful if he can only find [1V-161] enough employers> to allow him to make a 

living. And it is of course impossible for a man of so many trades to be proficient in all of 
them. In large cities, on the other hand, where every workman finds many customers, one 

a “Working for themselves” .— Ed. 
b Xenophon uses the word épyodé6tas. Marx comments in brackets: “épyod67ns 
is an employer who contracts the work out”.— Ed. 

282 The Production Process of Capital 

trade alone, and often even less than a whole trade, is enough to support a man: one man, 
for instance, makes shoes for men, another for women. It happens that one man 
earns a living by only stitching shoes, another by cutting them out, another by 
cutting the uppers to shape, while there is another who performs none of these 
operations but only assembles the parts. It follows therefore that HE who performs the 
simplest work MUST NEEDS DO THE THING BEST (he is compelled to provide the best work). 
Exactly the same thing holds true with the art of cooking. He for whom one and the 
same man arranges the dining couches, lays the table, bakes the bread, prepares now 
one sort of dish and now another, he must take things as they come. But where it is all 
one man can do to stew meats and another to roast them, for one man to boil fish and 
another to bake them, for another to bake bread, and not every sort at that, but where 
it suffices if he makes one kind that has a high reputation—everything that ts 
prepared in this manner will, I think, necessarily be worked out with superior 
excellence. Thus Cyrus by far exceeded everyone when, as a sign of attention, he sent 
someone food prepared in this way.” (With this kind of preparation, the food at 
Cyrus’ table surpassed all others in its excellence.) (Xenophon, Cyropaedia, ed. 
E. Poppo, Lipsiae, 1821, Book VIII, Ch. II.) 199 

Plato’ discussion in the Republic forms the direct basis and point 
of departure for a group of English writers who wrote about the 
division of labour after Petty and before Adam Smith. See e.g. 
James Harris (later Earl of Malmesbury), the 3rd rreatise of Three 
Treatises etc., 3rd ed., London, 1772, in which however he presents 
the DIVISION OF EMPLOYMENTS as the Natural foundation of  society 
(pp. 148-55). He himself says in a footnote that he drew the wuote 
ARGUMENT from Plato. 

In the 2nd book of the Republic, which we cite from the edition 
by Baiter, Orelli etc., Zurich, 1839, Plato starts with the origin of the 
moAus (city and state coincide here). 

“The polis ... comes into existence ... once each of us is no longer self-sufficient, 
but has need of many.” [IV-162] “It” [the polis] “is founded by our needs.” 199 

Now the most immediate requirements are enumerated: food, a 
dwelling-place, clothing: 

“The first and most important requirement is the procurement of food in order 
to be able to exist and live.... The second is the construction of a dwelling-place, the 
third the making of clothes and the like.” 

How should the 7roAts satisfy these different needs? One man 
becomes a farmer, another a house-builder, others become 
weavers, cobblers, etc. Should each of them divide his labour time, 
cultivating the land in one part of it, building in the second, 
weaving in the third, etc., in order to satisfy his different 
requirements himself, or should he devote the whole of his labour 
time exclusively to one single occupation, so that he, e.g., produces 
corn, weaves, etc., not only for himself but also for the others? 
The second plan is better. For, in the first place, people differ in 
their natural aptitudes, which means that their capacity to perform 
different kinds of work differs. //To the range of different needs 

Relative Surplus Value | 283 

there corresponds a range of different aptitudes, enabling the 
individuals to perform the different kinds of work necessary for 
the satisfaction of those needs.// Someone practising one single 
skilled craft will perform his task better than one who exercises 
many skills. If something is carried on merely as a subsidiary 
occupation, the appropriate time for production will often be 
allowed to slip by. The work cannot wait for the leisure of the 
person who has to perform it; rather must the person doing the 
work be guided by the conditions of his production, etc. 
Therefore he should not do it as a sideline. Hence if one person 
exclusively does one particular kind of work (in accordance with 
the nature of the thing, and at the right time) and does not 
concern himself with other work, everything will be produced in 
greater quantity, better, and more easily. 

The main emphasis lies on the better: the quality. The word 
atketw* only occurs in the passage we are about to quote; otherwise 
it is always xaddvov.” 

“How wil our polis be able to supply all these demands? Will one man have to 
be a farmer, another a builder, and a third a weaver?” etc.... “Is each one of them 
to bring the product of his work into a common stock? Should our one farmer, for 
example, provide food enough for four people and spend the whole of his time 
and industry in producing corn, so as to share with the rest; or should he take no 
notice of them and grow just a quarter of this corn, for himself, in a quarter of the 
time, and divide the other three quarters between building his house, weaving his 
clothes, and making his shoes, so as to save the trouble of sharing with others and 
attend himself to all his own concerns?... The first plan is easier, of course.... 
Firstly, no two people are born exactly alike. They have different aptitudes, which 
fit them for different occupations.... And will a man do better working at many 
trades, or keeping to one only? Keeping to one.... Also, work may be ruined, if you 
let the right time go by.... For the workman must wait upon the work; it will not 
wait upon his leisure and allow itself to be done in a spare moment.— Yes, he 
must.—So the conclusion is that more will be produced of every thing and the work will 
be more easily and better done, when every man is set free from all other occupations to do, 
at the right time, the one thing for which he is naturally fitted.” 

Plato goes on to show how a further division [IV-163] of labour 
or the setting up of different branches of business becomes 
necessary. E.g. 

“If the farmer is to have a good plough and hoe and other farming tools, he 
wil not make them himself. Nor will the house-builder, or the weaver” etc. “Now 
how does the individual gain a share in the excess product of the other producers, 

and how do the others participate in the excess of the first individual’s product? 
Through exchange, through selling and buying.” 199 

a More.— Fd. 
b Better.— Ed. 

284 The Production Process of Capital 

Plato then examines different kinds of trade and therefore 
different kinds of trader. Wage labourers are also mentioned, as a 
particular kind of human being owing their existence to the 
division of labour. 

“There are also the services of yet another class, who have the physical strength 
for heavy work, though on intellectual grounds they are hardly worth including in 

our society—wage labourers, as we call them, because they sell the use of their 
strength for wages.” 

After he has indicated a large number of different occupations 
made necessary by the further refinement of city life, etc., he comes 
to the separation of the craft of war from other crafts, and therefore 
to the formation of a special warrior estate. 

“We agreed ... that no one man can practise many trades satisfactorily....— Well, 
how do things stand now? Is not the conduct of war an art?...— But we would not 
allow our shoemaker to try to be also a farmer or weaver or builder, because we 
wanted our shoes well made. We gave each man one trade, for which he was naturally 
fitted; he would do good work, if he confined himself to that all his life, free from 
other occupations and never letting the right moment slip by. Now in no form of 
work is efficiency so important as in war.... So it is our business ... to select those 
men who are by nature fitted to be guardians of the polis” (l.c., pp. 439-41 
passim). 

Different activities are required to satisfy the different needs 
there are in a community; different gifts enable people of 
different natures to perform one activity better than another. 
Hence the division of labour and the different social estates 
corresponding to it. What Plato always emphasises as the main 
point of the system is that it allows each piece of work to be done 
better. Quality, use value, is for him, as for all other writers of 
antiquity, the decisive point, and the exclusive way of looking at 
things. For the rest, the basis of his whole conception is an 
Athenian idealisation of the Egyptian caste system. 

The writers of antiquity in general ascribed the remarkable level 
of industrial development attained by the Egyptians to their 
hereditary division of labour and the caste system which was based 
on it. 

“In Egypt ... the arts, too, have ... reached the requisite degree of perfection. 
For it is the only country where craftsmen may not in any way interfere in the 
affairs of other classes of citizens, but must follow that calling alone which by law is 
hereditary in their clan.... Among other peoples it is found that tradesmen divided 
their attention between too many objects.... At one time they try agriculture, at 
another they take to commerce, at another again they busy themselves with 2 or 3 
occupations at once. In free countries they mostly frequent the popular 
assemblies... In Egypt, on the contrary, a craftsman is severely punished if he 
meddles with affairs of state, or carries on several trades at once. Thus,” says 
Diodorus, “there is nothing to disturb their application to their calling... In 

Relative Surplus Value 285 

addition to having inherited from their forefathers ... numerous: rules of their 
trade, they are [IV-164] eager to discover still more advantageous ways of 
practising it” (Diodorus, Historische Bibliothek, b. I, ch. 74). 

With Plato the division of labour is presented as the economic 
foundation of a community in which each member is dependent 
on the others, and does not satisfy the whole range of his needs 
himself, independently, without any connection with other people. 
The division of labour within the community develops out of the 
many-sidedness of needs and the one-sidedness of aptitudes, 
which differ with different people, who therefore perform more 
successfully in one occupation than in another. The main point for 
him is that if one person makes a craft into his exclusive vocation, 
he does it better, and adapts his activity completely to the 
requirements, the conditions, of the work he has to perform, 
whereas if he engages in it as a sideline, the work has to wait for 
the opportunities left to him by his involvement in other matters. 
This point of view, that the téxvn* cannot be carried on as a 
tapepyov, subsidiary occupation, also appears in the passage from 
Thucydides, cited earlier. 

Xenophon goes further, in that he firstly emphasises the 
reduction of labour to the simplest possible activity, and secondly 
makes the degree to which the division of labour can _ be 
implemented dependent on the extension of the market. 

For comparison. 

Blanqui distinguishes, in the passage we referred to earlier,” 
between the “regulated and in some degree forced labour of 
workers under the system of large-scale manufacture” * and the 
industries of the countryside, carried on as handicrafts or as 
subsidiary domestic work. 

“The disadvantage of manufacture ... is that it subjugates the worker, placing 
him ... and his family, at the discretion of the work.... Compare, for example, the 
industry of Rouen or Mulhouse with that of Lyons or Nimes. Both have as their 
aim the spinning and weaving of two yarns: one of cotton, the other of silk; and 
yet they do not resemble each other at all. The former only takes place in giant 
establishments, with much expenditure of capital ... and with the aid of veritable 
armies of workers, confined in their hundreds, nay their thousands, in gigantic 
barrack-like factories, as high as towers, and studded with windows resembling 
loopholes. The latter, in contrast, is entirely patriarchal; it employs a large number 
of women and children, but without exhausting or ruining them; it allows them to 
stay in their beautiful valleys of the Drome, the Var, the Isere, the Vaucluse, 
cultivating their silkworms and unwinding their cocoons; it never becomes a true 
factory industry. However, although it is applied to as high a degree in this 

a Skill — Ed. 

b See this volume, p. 270.— Ed. 
¢ Marx quotes in French.— Ed 

21* 

286 The Production Process of Capital 

industry as in the first one, the principle of the division of libour takes on a special 
character here. There do indeed exist winders, throwsters, dyers, sizers, and finally 
weavers; but they are not assembled in the same workshop, nor are they dependent on a 
single master; they are all independent. Their capital, which is made up of their tools, 
their looms, and their braziers, is not large, but it is sufficient to put them on a 
certain footing of equality with their employer. Here there are no factory 
regulations, no conditions to submit to; everyone makes his own stipulations, in 
complete freedom” (A. Blanqui ainé, Cours d’économie industrielle, ed. etc. by 
A. Blaise, Paris, 1838-39, pp. 44-80 passim).@ 

On the basis of modern industry an out oF poors factory system is 
growing up once again which shares all the disadvantages of the 
original system without enjoying any of its advantages. But this 
does not belong here, and will be dealt with later.?° 

[IV-165] “Everyone knows from experience that if the hands and the 
intelligence are always applied to the same kind of work and the same products, 
these will be produced more easily, in greater abundance, and in higher quality, 
than if each individual makes for himself all the things he needs.... In this way, 
men are divided up into various classes and conditions, to their own advantage and 
to that of the commodity” (Cesare Beccaria, Elementi di economia pubblica, Custodi, 
Parte Moderna, Vol. XI, [p.] 28).> 

“For in so vast a city” (as London) “manufactures will beget one another, and 
each manufacture will be divided into as many parts as possible, whereby the work 
of each worker will be simple and easy. As for example in the making of a watch: if 
one man shall make the wheels, another the spring, another shall engrave the 
dialplate, and another shall make the cases, then the watch will be better and 
cheaper, than if the whole work be put upon one man” (W. Petty, An Essay 
Concerning the Multiplication of Mankind etc., 3rd ed., [London,] 1698, [p. 35)). 

He then goes on to explain how the division of labour brings it 
about that specific manufactures are concentrated in specific 
towns, or streets of great towns. 

Here “the commodity peculiar to those places is made better and cheaper than 
elsewhere” (l.c.). 

Lastly he goes into the commercial advantages, such as the 
saving on unnecessary incidental expenses, like carriage charges, 
etc., whereby in consequence of this distribution of interrelated 
manufactures in one place the prices of their products are 
reduced and the profit from foreign trade is increased (l.c., 
[p-] 36). 

What from the outset distinguishes Petty’s conception of the 
division of labour from that of classical antiquity is his grasp of its 
influence on the exchange value of the product, on the product as 
commodity—its cheapening. 

a Marx quotes in French.— Ed. 
b Marx quotes in Italian.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value 287 

The same point of view is put forward, but expressed more 
emphatically, as the curtailment of the labour time necessary for 
the production of a commodity, in The Advantages of the East-India 
Trade to England Considered etc., London, 1720.°" 

What is important is to make each commodity with “THE LEAST AND 
EASIEST LABOUR”. If a thing is made with “Less Lazour”, it is made 
“CONSEQUENTLY WITH LABOUR OF LESS PRICE”. Thus the commodity is 
cheapened, and then competition will make it a universal law to 
reduce labour time to the minimum necessary for its production. 

*“Tf my neighbour, by doing much with little labour, can sell cheap, I must 
contrive to sell as cheap as he’’* [p. 67]. 

He lays particular stress on the following aspect of the division 
of labour: 

*“The more variety of artists to every manufacture, the less is left to the skill of 
single persons” * [p. 68]. 

Later writers such as Harris (see above”) merely develop Plato’s 
arguments. Then Ferguson.” What distinguishes Adam Smith—who 
in some respects lags behind his predecessors—is that he employs 
the phrase “increase of the productive powers of labour”. Adam 
Smith’s conceptions still remain located in the epoch of large-scale 
industry’s infancy. How much this is the case is shown by his view 
of machinery as merely the corollary to the division of labour; 
with him, the workers still make mechanical inventions in order to 
ease and shorten their labour. 

Division of labour through simplification facilitates learning a 
trade; therefore lessens the overall production costs of labour 
capacity. 

[[1V-166] The workshop, which is based on the division of 
labour, always involves a certain hierarchy of skills, since some 
operations are more complex than others, some require more 
physical strength, some a more delicate touch or greater dexterity. 
In the workshop, as Ure says, 

“a workman is assigned to each operation, his wage corresponding to his skill... 
It is still the adaptation of the labours to the different individual capacities ... the division 

of labour in manifold gradations ... the division of labour according to different 
degrees of skill”.4 

a Marx quotes this sentence in English and adds its German translation.— Ed. 

b See this volume, p. 282.— Ed. 

d A. Ure, Philosophie des manufactures etc, Vol. I, Brussels, 1836, pp. 28, 30. 
Marx used this French translation of Ure. He quotes in a mixture of German and 

288 The Production Process of Capital 

The dexterity of the individual continues to be important. 

It is in fact an analysis of the process into operations which can 
each be performed by an individual worker; each operation is 
separated from the one that accompanies it, but the fundamental 
principle remains that of viewing it as a function of the worker, so 
that in analysis it is distributed among different workers and 
groups of workers according to their level of skill, physical 
development, etc. The process is not yet analysed as_ such, 
independently of the worker who performs it, whereas in the 
automatic factory, the system 

“decomposes a process into its basic constituents, and embodies each part in the 
operation of an automatic machine”, whereupon one can “entrust a person of 

ordinary capacity with any of the said elementary parts after a short probation” 
[p. 32]. 

“The master manufacturer, by dividing the work to be executed into different 
operations, each requiring different degrees of skill or of force, can purchase 
exactly that precise quantity of both which is necessary for each operation; whereas, 
if the whole work were executed by one worker, that person must possess sufficient 
skill to perform the most delicate, and sufficient strength to execute the most 
laborious, of the operations” (Ch. Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery etc., 
London, 1832, Ch. XIX). 

“When —according to the particular nature of the products of each kind of 
manufacture—-the most advantageous method of dividing the manufacturing 
process into partial operations and the number of workers to be employed in them 
have been ascertained by experience, then all factories the number of whose 
workers is not a direct multiple of that number will produce with less economy” 
(Babbage, I.c., Ch. XXII). 

If e.g. 10 workers are needed for various operations, the 
number of persons employed must be a multiple of 10. 
“If that is not the case, the workers cannot each of them constantly be used to 

perform the same operation in the manufacturing process.... That is one cause of 
the colossal size of industrial establishments” (.c.). 

Here, as with simple cooperation, we again have the principle of 
multiples.* But now in proportions that are determined in their 
proportionality by the division of labour itself. In general, it is 
clear that the larger the scale on which the work is done, the 
further the division of labour can be carried. In the first place, the 
correct multiple can be applied in that way. Secondly, the extent to 
which the operations are subdivided and to which the whole of an 
individual worker’s time can be absorbed by one _ operation 
naturally depends on the magnitude of the scale. 

If, therefore, the division of labour requires a greater capital, 
because more raw material is worked up over the same period of 

a See this volume, p. 256.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value 289 

time, whether it is implemented at all depends on the scale on 
which the work is done, hence on the number of workers who can 
be simultaneously employed. A greater capital—i.e. its concentra- 
tion in one hand—is necessary for the development of the division 
of labour, which in turn uses the productive power attained 
thereby [I[V-167] to work up a greater amount of material, thus 
increasing the size of this component of capital. 

“He who was reduced to doing a very simple operation in a manufactory 
entered into dependence upon the man who wished to employ him. He no longer 
produced a complete piece of work, but only part of one, and to do this he had as 
much need for the assistance of the labour of others as he did for raw materials, 
machinery, etc.... He was always in a subordinate position over against the head of 
the workshop ... he confined his demands to what was strictly necessary to make 
possible the continuation of the labour he offered, while the head of the workshop 
alone profited from the whole of the increase of the powers of production which 
was brought about by the division of labour” (Sismondi, Nouveaux principes etc., 
Vol. 1, pp. 91-92).4 

*“Division of labour shortens the period required for learning an operation” * 
(F. Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy, Boston, 1843, p. 76). 

*In establishing a manufactory, it is important so to adjust the number and 
kind of workmen, that, when the different operations of a process have been 
assigned to different persons, these persons may be in such proportions as exactly 
and fully to employ each other. The more perfectly this is accomplished, the greater 
will be the economy and, this having been once ascertained, it is also evident that 
the establishment cannot be successfully enlarged, unless it employ multiples of this 
number of workmen * (l.c., p. 83). 

At the end of his section onthe division of labour Adam Smith 
once again slips back into the assumption that the various workers 
among whom the labour is divided are the owners and producers 
of commodities (we shall see that he abandons this illusion later). 

“Every workman has a great quantity of his own work to dispose of beyond 
what he himself has occasion for; and every other workman being exactly in the 
same situation, he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of goods of his own 

production for a great quantity, or, what comes to the same thing, for the price of 
a great quantity of theirs” [Garnier, pp. 24-25] [Vol. I, p. 26]. 

The transmission of skill from generation to generation is always 
important. This aspect is decisive in the case of the caste system, as 
later with guilds. 

*“Easy labour is only transmitted skill”* (Th. Hodgskin, Popular Political 
Economy, London, [Edinburgh,] 1827, p. 48). 

“For dividing labour, and distributing the powers of men and machinery, to the 
greatest advantage, it is in most cases necessary to operate upon a large scale; in 
other words, to produce wealth in great masses. It is this advantage which gives 

a Marx quotes Sismondi partly in German and partly in French.— Ed. 

290 The Production Process of Capital 

existence to the great manufactories” (J. Mill, Elémens d’économie politique. Traduit 
par J. T. Parisot, Paris, 1823 [p. 11)).3 

The division of labour—or rather the workshop based on the 
division of labour—merely increases the surplus value received by 
the capitalist (at least this is its only direct effect, and the direct 
effect is the only thing we are concerned with here). Or, in other 
words, this increase in the productive power of labour only stands 
the test as a productive force of capital in so far as it is applied to 
use values which are consumed by the workers, hence curtails the 
labour time necessary for the reproduction of labour capacity. 
From precisely this circumstance, that the division of labour on a 
large scale is chiefly applied just to oBjecr oF COMMON usE, Parson 
Wayland draws the opposite conclusion, that it is the poor, and 
not the rich, who benefit from its advantages. The parson is in 
one sense correct, with regard to the mippuinc ciass. But here we are 
not concerned at all with the non-conceptual relation between 
poor [[V-168] and rich, but with the relation of wage labour and 
capital. The passage from the parson runs as follows: 

*“The greater the cost of the product, the smaller will be the number of 
persons who are able to purchase it. Hence, the less will be the demand; and 
hence, also, the less opportunity will there be for division of labour. And, besides, 
the greater the cost of the article, the greater amount of capital is required in order 
to produce it by division of labour.... Hence it is, that division of labour is but 
sparingly used in the manufacture of rich jewelry, and in articles of expensive 
luxury; while it is so universally used in the production of all articles of common 
use. Hence we see, that the benefits of the use of natural agents and of division of 
labour, are vastly greater and more important to the middling and lower classes 
than to the rich. These means of increased production, reduce the cost of the 
necessaries and of the essential conveniences of life to the lowest rate, and, of 

course, bring them, as far as possible, within the reach of all” * (F. Wayland, The 
Elements of Political Economy, Boston, 1843, [pp.] 86-87). 

In addition to an increase in the amount of capital, the division 
of labour requires for its application, as a basic prerequisite, the 
cooperation, agglomeration, of workers, which will in any case 
only occur where the population has reached a certain density. //It 
is required at the same time that the population should be taken 
from its scattered dwellings in the countryside and collected 
together in the centres of production. On this see Steuart.'* This 
to be discussed in more detail in the section on accumulation.” // 

*“There is a certain density of population which is convenient, both for social 

intercourse, and for that combination of powers by which the produce of labour is 
increased” * (James Mill, Elements of Political Economy, London, 1821, [p.] 50). 

a Marx quotes in French.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value 291 

The development of the division of labour leads to the 
disappearance of every individual product of labour—although 
such a product is still entirely possible when the subsumption of 
labour under capital is purely formal. The finished commodity is 
the product of the workshop, which is itself a mode of existence of 
capital. The fact that the exchange value of labour itself—labour, 
not its product—becomes the only thing the worker is able to sell, 
is due not only to the nature of the contract betweer capital and 
labour but also to the mode of production itself. Labour becomes 
in fact the worker’s sole commodity, and the commodity altogether 
becomes the general category under which production is sub- 
sumed. Our starting-point was the commodity as the most general 
category of bourgeois production. It first becomes a general 
category of this kind through the transformation which the mode 
of production has itself been subjected to by capital.” 

*“There is no longer any thing which we can call the natural reward of 
individual labour. Each labourer produces only some part of a whole, and each 
part, having no value or utility of itself, there is nothing on which the labourer can 
seize, and say: it is my product, this I will keep for myself” * ([Th. Hodgskin,] 
Labour defended against the claims of Capital etc., London, 1825, p. 25). 

“The progress of wealth has brought about the division of conditions and that 
of trades; what is exchanged is no longer each person’s superfluous product but 
subsistence itself... In this new situation, the life of each man who works and 
produces depends not on the completion and success of his labour, but on its sale” 
(Sismondi, Etudes, Vol. 1, p. 82).4 

*The greater productiveness of human industry, and the diminished price of 

the necessaries of life, conspire to swell productive capital in modern times* 
(S. P. Newman, Elements of Political Economy, Andover and New York, 1835, 

[pp. 88-] 89). 

In so far as in the division of labour one aspect of the worker’s 
natural individuality, as a natural basis, is further developed, it is 
put in place of his overall capacity for production and trained up 
to a specific skill, which can only prove itself useful by being 
exercised in the context of the workshop as a whole; exercised as a 
particular function of the workshop. 

[1V-169] Storch, like Adam Smith, conflates the two types of 
division of labour, except that with him one type appears as the 
most extreme development of the other; one appears as the point 
of departure for the other, which is a step forward. 

“The division of labour proceeds from the separation of the most widely 
different professions to the point where several workers divide between them the 

preparation of one and the same product, as in manufacture” (This should read 
not product but commodity. Different people work on the same product in the 

a Marx quotes in French.— Ed. 

999 The Production Process of Capital 

other division of labour too.) (H. Storch, Cours d’économie politique, avec des notes 
etc. par J.-B. Say, Paris, 1823, Vol. 1, p. 173). 

“It is not sufficient that the capital required for the subdivision of trades should 
be in readiness in society; it must also be accumulated in the hands of the entrepreneurs 
in sufficiently large quantities to enable them to work on a large scale.... The more 
the division of trades increases, the greater an outlay of capital in tools, raw 
material, etc., is required for the constant employment of a given number of 
workers. Increase of the number of workers with the division of labour. Increased 
amount of capital in buildings and means of subsistence” (Storch, 1. c., pp. 250, 
251). 

cee is united ... whenever employments are divided.... The greatest 
division of labour takes place amongst those exceedingly barbarous savages who 
never help each other, who work separately from each other; and division of 
employment, with all its great results, depends altogether on combination of labour, 
cooperation” * (Wakefield, note to his edition of A. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 
London, 1835, Vol. 1, p. 24). 

This distinction between the separation OF EMPLOYMENTS and the 
“DIVISION OF LABOUR” is Wakefield’s hobbyhorse. What he vaguely 
feels is precisely the distinction, not emphasised by Adam Smith, 
between the division of labour within society and that within the 
workshop. Adam Smith has the employments cooperate with one 
another by means of ExcHancE, and not only knows—which is a 
matter of course—but says expressly that the division of labour 
within the individual manufactory automatically implies its combi- 
nation. What is a real step forward in Wakefield—and we shall 
come to this later—is his feeling that the latter division of labour, 
based on free bourgeois labour, is a form peculiar to the 
capitalist mode of production and therefore only occurring under 
definite social conditions.” 

Adam Smith makes exchange the foundation of the division of 
labour, whereas it is (but does not have to be) the opposite, its 
result. Hodgskin remarks correctly that a division of employments, 
hence of social labour, takes place in all countries and under all 
political institutions. It exists originally in the family, where it 
emerges spontaneously from physiological differences, differences 
of sex and age. Variations in individual organisation, in physical 
and mental capacities, form a fresh source for the division of 
employments. But then, owing to the diversity of natural 
conditions, differences in the soil, in the distribution of water and 
land, mountain and plain, climate, situation, the presence of 
minerals in the earth and peculiarities of its own spontaneous 
creations, there is added the difference in the naturally available 
instruments of labour, which divides the employments of different 

Relative Surplus Value 293 

tribes, and it is in the exchange between them that we have, in 
general, to look for the original transformation of product into 
commodity ' (see Th. Hodgskin, Popular Political Economy etc., 
London, 1827, Chs IV, V and VI).* Where the population is 
stagnant, as in [[V-170] Asia, the division of labour is stagnant too. 

*“Improved methods of conveyance, like railroads, steam vessels, canals, all 
means of facilitating intercourse between distant countries act upon the division of 
labour in the same way as an actual increase in the number of people; they bring 
more labourers into communication etc.” * [p. 119]. 

Population and the procress of the same is the chief basis for the 
DIVISION OF LABOUR. 

*“As the number of labourers increases, the productive power of society 
augments in the compound ratio of that increase, multiplied by the effects of the 
division of labour and the increase of knowledge” * (l.c., p. 120). 

“It is by means of an additional capital only, that the undertaker of any work 
can ... make a more proper division of labour among his workmen. When the work 
to be done consists of a number of parts, to keep every man constantly employed 
in one way, requires a much greater capital than where every man is occasionally 
employed in every different part of the work” (A. Smith, [Garnier,] Book II, 
Ch. III [pp. 338-39]) [Vol. II, pp. 115-16]. 

“The productive powers of the same number of labourers cannot be increased, but in 
consequence either of some addition and improvement to those machines and 
instruments which facilitate and abridge labour; or of a more proper division and 
distribution of labour” (I. c.). 

“The owner of capital which employs a great number of labourers, necessarily 
endeavours, for his own advantage, to make such a proper division and distribution 
of tasks, that the labourers may be enabled to produce the greatest quantity of 
work possible. For the same reason, he endeavours to supply them with the best 
machinery which either he or they can think of. What takes place among the labourers 
in a particular workhouse, takes place, for the same reason, among those of a great society. 
The greater their number, the more they naturally divide themselves into different 
classes and subdivisions of employment. More heads are occupied in inventing the 
most proper machinery for executing the work of each, and. it is, therefore, more 
likely to be invented” (A. Smith, [Garnier,] Book I, Ch. VIII [pp. 177-78]) [Vol. I, 
pp. 145-46]. 

In the beginning of the present century Lemontey (Cuvres 
completes, Vol. I, Paris, 1840, pp. 245 sq.) wittily reworked Fergu- 
son’s discussion of the subject (“Sur linfluence morale de la 
division du travail’’).?°? 

“Society as a whole has this in common with the interior of a workshop, that it 
too has its division of labour. If one took as a model the division of labour in a 
modern workshop, in order to apply it to a whole society, the society best organised 
for the production of wealth would undoubtedly be that which had a single chief 

employer, distributing tasks to the different members of the community according 
to a previously fixed rule. But this is by no means the case. While inside the 

a See this volume, pp. 163-64.— Ed. 

294 The Production Process of Capital 

modern workshop the division of labour is meticulously regulated by the authority 
of the employer, modern society has no other rule, no other authority for the 
distribution of labour than free [I[V-171] competition” (Misére de la philosophie, 
Paris, 1847, p. 130).@ 

“Under the patriarchal system, under the caste system, under the feudal and 
guild system, there was division of labour in the whole of society according to fixed 
rules.... As for the division of labour in the workshop, it was very little developed in 
all these forms of society. It can even be laid down as a general rule that the less 
authority presides over the division of labour inside society, the more the division 
of labour develops inside the workshop, and the more it is subjected there to the 
authority of a single person. Thus authority in the workshop and authority in 
society, in relation to the division of labour, are in inverse ratio to each other” (l.c., 
pp. 130, 131).5 

“The accumulation and concentration of instruments and workers preceded the 
development of the division of labour inside the workshop.... The development of 
the division of labour supposes the assemblage of workers in a workshop.... Once 
the men and the instruments had been brought together, the division of labour, 
such as it had existed in the form of the guilds, was reproduced, necessarily 
reflected inside the workshop” (l.c., [pp.] 132, 133).¢ 

“The concentration of the instruments of production and the division of labour 
are as inseparable one from the other as are, in the political sphere, the 
concentration of public powers and the division of private interests” (I.c., p. 134).4 

The prerequisites for adopting the division of labour are 
therefore: 

1) Conglomeration of workers, for which a certain density of 
population is necessary. Means of communication can _ replace 
density to a certain degree. Depopulation of the country (see the 18th 
century). In a thinly populated country this conglomeration could 
only take place at a few points. However, conglomeration is also 
brought about if agriculture only requires a sparse population, 
and the mass of the population, separated from the land, can 
therefore conglomerate around the available means of production, 
the centres of capital. Relative concentration on the one side can be 
brought forth by relative rarefaction on the other, even with a 
given population, the existence of which originally remains rooted 
in the non-capitalist mode of production. 

What is needed first, therefore, is not an increase in the 
population, but an increase in the purely industrial population, or 
a different distribution of the population. The first condition for 
this is that the population directly employed in the production of 

a K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (present edition, Vol. 6, p. 184). Here and 
further on, Marx quotes from this work in the language of the original 

Relative Surplus Value 295 

the means of subsistence, in agriculture, be diminished, that 
people be separated from the land, from mother earth, and that 
they be thereby set free (FREE HANDS, as Steuart says ‘*°), mobilised. 
The separation from agriculture of the kinds of work bound up 
with it, and the—progressive—limitation of agriculture to fewer 
hands, is the main condition for the division of labour and for 
manufacture in general, if it is to emerge not in individual cases, 
at isolated points, but playing a predominant role. // All this 
belongs to accumulation. //'°° The same population, distributed 
differently, does not need a greater supply of the means of life, 
but only a different apportionment, distribution, of them. The 
capitalist who applies the division of labour, hence employs a 
greater number of workers agglomerated at one point, pays larger 
amounts in wages than the master craftsman, requires more 
variable capital, which is ultimately reduced to means of subsis- 
tence; but for this it is necessary that the same wage that was 
previously paid to the workers by 100 people [[V-172] should now 
be paid by one. All we have here, then, is a greater concentration 
of variable capital in fewer hands, and the same thing goes for the 
means of subsistence for which these wages are exchanged. What 
is required here is not an increase in this part of capital but only its 
concentration; just as we have, not a bigger population, but a 
greater agglomeration of the population under the command of 
one and the same capital. 

2) Concentration of the instruments of labour. 

The division of labour leads to a differentiation and accordingly a 
simplification of the instruments which serve as means of labour; and 
therefore to their improvement. But under the division of labour 
the means of labour remains an implement of labour, an 
instrument which can only be employed thanks to the personal 
dexterity of the individual worker. It is the conductor of his own 
skill; in reality it is an artificial organ added on to his natural 
organs. The same number of workers requires a greater variety of 
instruments, not more of them. In so far as the workshop is a 
conglomeration of workers it also presupposes an agglomeration 
of instruments. And in any case this part of constant capital grows 
only in the same proportion as does the variable capital, which is 
laid out in wages, or the number of workers employed simulta- 
neously by the same capital. 

The other conditions of labour, particularly accommodation, 
factory buildings, can be regarded as a new addition to constant 
capital, since in the days before manufacture the workshop did not 
yet exist separately from the private house. 

296 The Production Process of Capital 

With this exception, a greater concentration takes place of the 
part of capital which consists of the means of labour; not 
necessarily a growth in capital and by no means a relative growth 
in capital as compared with the component laid out in wages. 

3) Increase in raw material. The part of capital laid out in raw 
material grows absolutely against the part laid out in wages, since 
the same quantity of raw material absorbs a smaller quantity of 
labour time, or the-same quantity of labour time realises itself in a 
greater quantity of raw material. Nevertheless, this can also have 
occurred originally, without an absolute increase in the raw 
material in a country. The same amount of raw material available 
in a country may absorb less labour, i.e. a smaller number of 
workers over the whole country may be employed in working it 
up, in transforming it into new product, although this number of 
workers is now concentrated in larger groups at various points 
under the command of individual capitalists, instead of being 
scattered over a wide area, as previously. 

In absolute terms, therefore, nothing is required for manufac- 
ture, 1.e. for the workshop based on the division of labour, but a 
change in the distribution of the different constituents of capital, 
concentration instead of dispersal. As long as they are dispersed, 
these conditions of labour do not yet exist as capital, although they 
do exist as the material constituents of capital, in the same way as 
the working part of the population exists, although not yet in the 
quality of wage labourers or proletarians. 

Manufacture (as distinguished from the mechanical workshop or 
the Factory) is the mode of production or form of industry which 
specifically corresponds to the division of labour. It emerges 
independently, as the most developed form of the capitalist mode of 
production, before the invention of machinery proper (although 
machines and particularly fixed capital are already being em- 
ployed). 

[1V-173] With Petty and the apologist for the Easr [npia Trang, 
cited earlier (with the moderns, therefore)?’ it is from the outset a 
characteristic feature of their discussion of the division of labour 
that the cheapening of the commodity—the diminution of the 
labour socially necessary for the production of a particular 
commodity—is the main aspect considered. With Petty this is 
mentioned in connection with foreign trade. With the East Inpian it 
is presented directly as a means of underselling competitors on the 

Relative Surplus Value 297 

world market, just as he presents world trade as itself a means for 
attaining the same result in less labour time. 

In Book I, Chapter I, where he treats the division of labour ex 
professo, Adam Smith discusses at the end of the chapter the 
extraordinary multiplicity of the kinds of work, either derived 
from different countries or present in their many-sidedness in a 
single “civilised country”, i.e. a country where the product 
universally assumes the commodity form, which contribute to 
provide e.g. the furniture, the clothing, the tools of an ordinary 
day labourer. 

“Observe,” begins this conclusion, “the accommodation of the most common 
artificer or day labourer in a civilised and thriving country, and you will perceive 
that the number of people of whose industry a part, though but a small part, has 
been employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all computation. 
The woolen coat, for example, which covers the day labourer, as coarse and rough 
as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of,a great multitude of 
workmen” and so on [Garnier, p. 25] [Vol. I, p. 26]. 

And Adam Smith concludes his reflections with these words: 

“Perhaps the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much 
exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the 
latter exceeds that of some African king, the absolute master of the lives and 
liberties of ten thousand naked savages” [Garnier, p. 28] [Vol. 1, pp. 28-29]. 

The whole of this passage as well as this way of viewing the 
matter is copied from de Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, first 
published in 1705 as a Porm, with the 2nd part, which CONSISTS OF A 
SERIES OF SIX DIALOGUES (prose), having been published in 1729. In 
1714 HE ADDED THE PROSE NOTES WHICH MAKE THE BULK OF THE FIRST VOLUME OF 
THE WORK AS WE HAVE IT Now. It says there, among other things: 

*“Tf we trace the most flourishing nations in their origin, we shall find, that, in 
the remote beginnings of every society, the richest and most considerable men 
among them were a great while destitute of a great many comforts of life that are 
now enjoyed by the meanest and most humble wretches; so that many things which 
were once looked upon as the inventions of luxury are now allowed even to those 
that are so miserably poor as to become the objects of public charity.... A man 
would be laughed at that should discover luxury in the plain dress of a poor 
creature that walks along in a thick parish gown, and a coarse shirt underneath it; 
and yet what a number of people, how many different trades, and what a variety of 
skill and tools must be employed to have the most ordinary Yorkshire cloth?” * etc. 
(Remark P., Vol. I, pp. 181-83 of 1724 ed.). 

“What a bustle is there to be made in several parts of the world before a fine 
scarlet or crimson cloth can be produced; what multiplicity of trades and artificers 
must be employed! Not only such as are obvious, as woolcombers, spinners, the 
weaver, the cloth-worker, the scourer, the dyer, the setter, the drawer, and the 
packer; but others that are more remote, and might seem foreign to it,—as the 
mill-wright, the pewterer, and the chemist, which yet all are necessary, as well as a 
great number of handicrafts, to have the [[V-174] tools, utensils, and other 

298 The Production Process of Capital 

implements belonging to the trades already named.” * He then goes over the 
contribution to this of shipping, foreign countries, in a word the world market 
(Search into the Nature of Society (APPENDED TO THE SECOND EDITION), pp. 411-13). 

The content of all this enumeration is merely this: Once the 
commodity becomes the general form of the product, or production 
takes place on the basis of exchange value and therefore of the 
exchange of commodities, the production of each individual, first 
of all, becomes one-sided, whereas his needs are many-sided. 
Innumerable independent branches of labour must therefore 
contribute to satisfy the needs, even the simplest needs, of the 
individual. Secondly: The whole range of the objective conditions 
which are required for the production of a single commodity, such 
as the raw materials, instruments, matiéres instrumentales, enter into 
the production of that commodity as commodities, are conditioned 
by the sale and purchase of these elementary constituents of the 
commodity, which have been produced independently of each 
other.* This takes place to the extent that the individual elements 
which are required for the production of a commodity exist as 
commodities outside it, hence originally enter into this individual 
branch of production as commodities from outside, through the 
agency of circulation. That is to say, this takes place the more the 
commodity becomes the general elementary form of wealth, 1.e. the 
more production ceases to be for the individual the direct creation 
of his own means of subsistence, and becomes tTrapE, as Steuart 
says,’ with the commodity therefore ceasing to be the form of the 
part of the individual’s production which goes beyond the 
individual’s needs, 1.e. the part which is superfluous and therefore 
saleable for the individual. Here the product as such is still the 
basis and production is for subsistence. Here the production of 
commodities still rests on the foundation of a production the main 
product of which does not become a commodity. It is not yet a 
situation where subsistence itself depends on sale; where the 
producer, unless he produces a commodity, produces nothing at all; 
where to be a commodity is therefore the general, elementary, 
necessary form of his product, which alone makes it into an 
element of bourgeois wealth.” This distinction is strikingly 
demonstrated when one compares large-scale modern agriculture 
with the agriculture in which production for the individual’s own 
subsistence still forms the basis, and which itself creates most of 
the conditions for its production; so that these conditions do not 

a See this volume, pp. 80-81.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value 299 

enter it as quantities of commodities, through the agency of 
circulation. 

In reality, therefore, the views expressed by de Mandeville and 
others mean nothing more than that the commodity is the general 
elementary form of bourgeois wealth; that what is decisive for the 
producer is no longer the use value of the product but its 
exchange value alone, the use value being only the vehicle of the 
exchange value for him; that he must in fact produce not merely a 
particular product, but money. This prerequisite, that the product 
is universally produced as a commodity, hence is mediated by the 
conditions of its own production as commodities, by circulation, 
into which they enter, implies an all-embracing division of social 
labour, or, in other words, the separation of the various mutually 
conditioning and complementing labours into independent 
branches of labour only brought into contact with each other 
through the circulation of commodities, through sale and pur- 
chase. Or, it is identical with this situation, since for products to 
confront each other generally as commodities presupposes a 
mutual confronting of the activities producing them [...]* This way 
of viewing things is therefore historically important [...]* 

[V-179]°™ At this stage of the development of society it is more 
interesting to examine the contrast with the situation where the 
individual family itself directly satisfies almost all its needs, as we 
see in e.g. Dugald Stewart, |.c., p. 327[-28]: 

*“In some parts of the Highlands of Scotland, not many years ago, every 
peasant, according to the Statistical Accounts, made his own shoes of leather tanned 
by himself. Many a shepherd and cottar too, with his wife and children, appeared 
at church in clothes which had been touched by no hands but their own, since they 
were shorn from their sheep and sown in their flaxfields. In the preparation of 
these, it is added, scarcely a single article had been purchased, except the awl, 
needle, thimble, and a very few parts of the iron work employed in the weaving. 
The dyes, too, were chiefly extracted by the women from trees, shrubs, and 
herbs” * (Lectures on Political Economy, Vol. 1, l.c.). [V-179] 

[V-175] In contrast to this, at a more advanced stage of the 
development of bourgeois society, of the kind that already faced 
Adam Smith, the simple reproduction of these Mandevillian, 
Harrisian, etc., reflections does not appear without an admixture 
of pedantic childishness; and in particular the churning out of 
such remarks by Smith has the effect that he fails to grasp the 
division of labour clearly and definitely as a specifically capitalist 
mode of production; while, on the other hand, the extraordinary 
importance he attaches to the division of labour in manufacture 

a The manuscript is damaged here.— Ed. 

300 The Production Process of Capital 

shows that in his time the modern factory system was only in its 
origins. Ure remarks on this, correctly’: 

“When Adam Smith wrote his immortal work on the elements of political 
economy, automatic machinery being hardly known, he was properly led to regard 
the division of labour as the grand principle of manufacturing improvement.... But 
what was in Dr. Smith’s time a topic of useful illustration, cannot now be used 
without risk of misleading the public as to the real principle of modern industry... 
The scholastic dogma of the division of labour into degrees of skill has been 
exploited 205 by our enlightened manufacturers” (Andrew Ure, Philosophie des 
manufactures etc, Vol. I, Ch. 1) (first appeared in 1835). 

This strikingly demonstrates that the division of labour dealt 
with here—and, in fact, by Adam Smith too—is not a general 
category common to most states of society, and the most varied 
ones, but a particular historical mode of production, correspond- 
ing to a particular historical stage of development of capital; 
indeed a mode of production which belonged, in the all-embracing 
and predominant form in which one sees it in Adam Smith, to the 
stage of development of capitalist production reached by his own 
epoch and since then already overcome and passed. 

In the passage we have just cited, Ure says, 

1) “He” (Adam Smith) “therefore concludes that to each of these operations a 
workman can naturally be appropriated, with a wage corresponding to his skill. 
This appropriation forms the very essence of the division of labour.” 

So we have firstly the appropriation of the worker to a particular 
operation, his subsumption under it. From now on he belongs to 
this operation, which becomes the exclusive function of his labour 
capacity now reduced to an abstraction. 

Firstly, then, labour capacity is appropriated to this specific 
operation. Secondly, however, since the basis of the operation 
itself remains the human frame, it happens that this appropriation 
is at the same time, as Ure says, 

“a distribution, or rather adaptation of labour to the different individual 
abilities”’. 

That is, the operations themselves are adapted in the course of 
division to the natural and acquired abilities of the workers. This 
is not a dissolution of a process into its mechanical components, 
[V-176] but a dissolution that takes into account the fact that these 
individual processes have to be performed as functions of human 
labour capacities. 

a Marx quotes Ure in French.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value 301 

In the volume of notes he added to his translation of Adam 
Smith, Germain Garnier, in Note 1 to Smith’s chapter on the 
division of labour, pronounced himself opposed to popular 
education. Garnier says it is contrary to the division of labour, and 
with it 

“our whole social system would be proscribed” (l.c., Vol. V, p. 2).8 

Some of his comments are worth noting here. 

“The labour which feeds, dresses and houses all the inhabitants of a country is a 
burden which lies on society as a whole, but which it necessarily transfers to one 
part of its members alone” (l.c., p. 2). 

And the greater the industrial progress of society, the more do 
its material demands grow, 

“and consequently the more labour will be employed in producing them, 
preparing them” (the means of subsistence in general) “and bringing them to the 
consumers. At the same time, however, and as a consequence of the same progress, the 
class of people released from this manual labour increases in size relatively to the 
other class. The latter, therefore, has at once more people to provide for and more 
abundant and elaborate provisions to furnish for each of them. Thus, the more 
society prospers, i.e. the more its industry, its commerce, its population grows, etc. 
... the less tome does the man destined to a mechanical trade have to spare. The richer 
society becomes, the more valuable” (this should rather be “the greater the value 
of”) “the time of the worker”.... “Thus, the more society advances towards a state of 
splendour and power, the less time the working class will have to give to studying and to 
intellectual and speculative work” (pp. 2-4). 

That is to say, the free time of society is based on the absorption 

of the worker’s time by compulsory labour !™*; thus he loses room 
y Pp y 

for intellectual development, for that is time. 

“From another angle, the less time the working class has to exploit the domain of 
knowledge, the more time remains for the other class. If the men of this latter class can 
devote themselves consistently and assiduously to philosophical observations or 
literary compositions, it is because they are free from all concern for the 
production, manufacture or transportation of the objects of their daily subsistence, 
and because other people have undertaken the burden of these mechanical 
operations for them. Like all other divisions of labour, that between mechanical 
and intellectual labour becomes more pronounced and more clear-cut in 
proportion as society advances towards a wealthier condition. This division, like 
every other, is an effect of past and a cause of future progress.... Ought the

## (Continuation) A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Mercantile Capital. Money-dealing Capital. Third Chapter. Capital and Profit

CONTINUATION OF NOTEBOOK XV

Thus mercantile capital enters into the equalisation of surplus value to form an average profit (although it does not enter into the production of that surplus value), and therefore the AVERAGE RATE OF PROFIT already contains the deduction from surplus value which falls to mercantile capital, hence the MERCANTILE DEDUCTION from the profit of productive capital.

Surplus
value
E.g. EXTRACTIVE capital 200 30
AGRICULTURAL capital 300 45
MANUFACTURING capital 200 25
MERCANTILE capital 100
600 100

If the mercantile capital enters into the distribution of the surplus value, the rate of profit=12 1/2%. If it does not, the rate=14 2/7%. The mercantile capital of 100 must turn over 8 times in order to buy and sell 800 (for the value of the commodity=700 (cost price)+100 profit=800). And therefore, in order that it may also come to 14 2/7%, it must in every turnover give rise to an eighth of 14 2/7; or 1+3/4+1/28=1+11/14%. The 800 would lose 14 2/7. There would therefore remain 785 5/7. And the real profit made by the capital of 700 would=85 5/7=12 16/49. Less than if the mercantile capital enters into the distribution. Because in fact the mercantile capital would make 14 2/7%, whereas the others would

be reduced to a quota which emerges if 1/8 of the capital makes 14 2/7%. In fact, however, if a mercantile capital of 100 is necessary to turn over 781 1/2 (at 12 1/2%), a larger mercantile capital would be necessary to turn over 800. 102 3/4. 1/563 would be necessary. More industrial capital would have to be converted into mercantile capital. The amount of surplus value would thereby be lessened, hence the rate of profit; but the mercantile rate of profit would always remain somewhat higher than the industrial rate.
If the calico man has realised in the £1,000 for which he sells the 12,000 yards the whole production process of the 12,000, it initially appears to be no concern of his if the MERCHANT adds e.g. 10% to the price. But, first, once he buys yarn, machine, coal, etc., he has for his part to pay for the addition to the price. If the calico enters into the worker's consumption, his wages rise. In both cases the calico man's rate of profit falls. If his product enters into the constant capital of another capital, this is the same thing for the equalisation of the rate of profit as if it entered into his own. Furthermore, the nominal increase in the rate of profit brings with it an uncompensated increase in the rate of interest. If the product enters into the consumption of the non-worker, his capacity for accumulation, etc., is reduced.
[XVII-1030] But this way of conceiving the matter is wholly incorrect.
Firstly, it contradicts the historical fact that mercantile capital, so FAR FROM BEING EXCLUDED OF PARTICIPATING IN THE REGULATION OF THE AVERAGE PROFIT, rather, as the first free form of capital, is the FIRST TO ENTER INTO THAT CREATION. Mercantile profit originally determines the profit of productive capital. Only when capitalist production has penetrated fully, and the producer is a mere merchant, is the MERCANTILE PROFIT REDUCED TO THE ALIQUOT PART OF THE SURPLUS VALUE FALLING DUE TO IT IN REGARD TO THE ALIQUOT PART IT FORMS OF THE GENERAL CAPITAL.
Secondly, it altogether contradicts the concept of a general rate of profit, which is entirely indifferent towards the particular function of the capital which PARTICIPATES IN THE PARTITION OF THE GENERAL MASS OF SURPLUS VALUE, and is indifferent towards THE DEGREE IN WHICH IT CONCURRED IN ITS PRODUCTION.
It can therefore be seen that even MERCANTILE CAPITAL, once it appears as a mere element of capitalist production, is subsumed under it, does not contradict the law that the sum total of the average prices of the commodities, i.e. the sum of their production prices, =the sum of their values, and the sum of the profits (INTEREST AND RENT INCLUDED)=the sum of the surplus value or the unpaid SURPLUS labour. It is only that the mercantile capital shares the

profit with the productive capital, while the latter directly winkles it out of the worker in the form of surplus value.
The magnitude of the deduction profit suffers through MERCANTILE profit—i.e. the magnitude of the difference between the BUYING PRICE OF THE MERCHANT (THE SELLING PRICE OF THE PRODUCER) AND THE SELLING PRICE OF THE MERCHANT (THE BUYING PRICE OF THE CONSUMER), hence the apparent "extra charge" the merchant makes upon the price of the individual commodity—is determined, since the general rate of profit is already given, by the AVERAGE NUMBER OF TURNOVERS, REVOLUTIONS OF MERCANTILE CAPITAL, which is in turn expressed in the proportion in which the MERCANTILE CAPITAL stands to the total capital. For e.g. 100 to realise a profit of 20%, the merchant must add 5% to each sum of commodities of a price of £100 if his capital revolves 4 times, 4% if it revolves 5 times, 2% if it revolves 10 times. The difference between the BUYING PRICE AND THE SELLING PRICE of the merchant is the smaller, the greater the proportion of the part of capital directly employed in production.
There now remains the question: Since the MERCHANT himself may employ labour, apart from his capital // to the extent that his own labour enters here, it forms a part of wages, as with industrial capital//, does he create surplus value through this labour? Does it originate directly as a part of the profit he CHARGES on account of the function of his own capital? What is his relation to his own wage labourers (commis,a etc.)?
Just as productive capital makes a profit by selling labour, contained in the commodity, which it has not paid for, so does mercantile capital do the same by paying productive capital not the whole of the unpaid labour contained in the commodity (in the commodity as product of that capital as an aliquot part of the total capital), but only a part of it, [and pocketing] the unpaid part which is still, for mercantile capital, contained within the commodity. 128 Just as [profit] appears to industrial capital as an extra, a supplement to the cost, the part of the value it has not laid out in production, not advanced, so for commercial capital does the purchase price of the commodity, and the supplement to the price, the difference between SELLING AND BUYING PRICE, appear as something independent of the production process and the value of the commodity itself, although it is moderate in degree and is kept within bounds by the laws of competition.
If we therefore take the last price—the MERCANTILE PRICE—as distinct from the factory price, it is only in the former that the

production price of the commodity is completely expressed.
The merchant [sells]—if we leave aside the intermediate transactions within the merchant estate itself, which are of no interest at all here—1) to the industrial consumer, i.e. to productive capital. Here the mercantile profit enters as a cost into production. 2) He sells to the individual consumers; to the extent that he is himself one of these, this must be regarded as the direct appropriation of a part of his profit sub specie use value; 
[XVII-1031} what he himself consumes in this way is a deduction 
from the amount of the commodity in which the total surplus 
value is realised; when he sells to the industrial capitalist— profit 
and interest—this appears under both categories directly as a 
deduction from surplus value; what he sells to the workers is sale 
to variable capital. Finally he sells to the recipient of rent. 

The merchant lessens the number of buyers for productive capital. 
The merchant lessens the number of sellers for the consumer. 
Towards the industrialist he concentrates the consumers into 
fewer persons, towards the consumer he concentrates the produc- 
ers into fewer persons. Hence a great curtailment of this exchange 
process or of the loss of time on labour, etc., conditioned by mere 
circulation. The function of pure merchants’ capital, separated 
from the previously mentioned continuation of productive opera- 
tions in the circulation process, such as transportation, etc.,* can be 
reduced simply to buying and selling. With developed capitalist 
production and a developed division of labour we also find 
merchants’ capital functioning in a certain sphere in its pure form, 
separated from its entanglement with other operations. E.g. 
forwarding and transport only concern the merchant in so far as 
they enter into the suyinc price of the commodity, as ireMs among 
the costs constituting its price. Similarly rent for wareHousinc, which 
falls to the share of another capital, that invested in pocks, etc. 
Finally, reraminc does not fall within the province of merchants’ 
capital, but of another section of merchants. 

Merely buying and selling involves the merchant in costs over and 
above the capital directly advanced, hence existing in the form of 
either money capital or commodity capital; namely the part of 
capital which really belongs to him. Firstly buying and selling 
themselves; the time this kind of labour costs (function); writing, 
calculating, accounting, travel costs, cost of correspondence, etc. 
And with bigger capital the clerks, the assistants who work for the 
merchant, finally His orrice. Whatever of his own labour goes into 

a See this volume, pp. 38-48.— Ed. 

158 Capital and Profit 

the shit can be deducted from profit, just as with every other kind 
of capital. The outlays this causes form a second part of the 
capital, which is not directly mvvesrep in wares. They are costs 
incurred in buying and selling over and above the part of capital 
which is directly involved in this function. And the merchant adds 
to this part of capital the same profit as he adds to the other one, 
or the price of the commodity must not only replace thee costs 
for him, but yield a profit on them. The whole thing therefore 
enters as an element into the surcharge the merchant adds to the 
price of the commodity, or into the excess of the sELiinc prick over 
the suyine price. This excess therefore makes good a part of the 
costs which derive from the operation of suyinc and setiine itself, 
and which are for the merchant as it were included in the suyinc 
prick of the commodity, although he does not have to pay them to 
the seller but must himself advance them. 

These circulation costs—or costs of pure merchants’ capital— 
can be divided up into an insignificant part, which has to do with 
the consumption of commodities themselves, namely e.g. travel 
costs, Postage, paper, ink, orricz, etc.; and a more important part, 
which consists in the payment of alien labour, which is formally wage 
labour, since it is exchanged directly for capital, and is only 
exchanged for it in the reproduction process of capital. Both sorts 
of circulation costs occur in part in productive capital itself (its 
mercantile or office costs); since circulation is after all its own process. 
With merchants’ capital, in contrast, these costs occur as indepen- 
dent. In the former case the orrice stands alongside the factory, 
mine, Farm, etc. In the latter case the orrice is there as such with its 
outgoings. 

These costs are not incurred in the production of the 
commodity itself, i.e. they are not necessary in the labour process 
in order to produce its use value. They are rather incurred in or 
for the circulation of commodities, they are necessary in order to 
realise them as value. They are necessary for their reproduction 
process. The commodity is a unity of exchange value and use 
value; but it is use value whose [XVII-1032] exchange value exists 
only ideally as price and must first be realised. In so far as this 
realisation gives rise to costs, those costs enter into the reproduc- 
tion costs of the commodity, although not into its direct 
production cost. These reproduction costs also occur without 
capitalist production, as soon as production becomes commodity 
production in general. The circulation process is not only the 
realisation of surplus value, it is rather only the latter in so far as it 
is simultaneously and above all the realising of value. 

Mercantile Capital. Money-dealing Capital (Notebook XV) 159 

Since merchants’ capital is absolutely nothing but a form of 
productive capital functioning in the circulation process which has 
achieved an independent position, all questions relating to it must be 
solved by posing the problem first in the form in which those 
phenomena peculiar to Mercantie capital do not yet appear 
independently, but rather as directly linked, in direct connection, 
with productive capital. As orrice in contrast to factory, productive 
capital functions continuously in the circulation process. We 
therefore have first to consider the orrice and its costs, and their 
relation to the value and surplus value of commodities, where the 
office appears as the side of productive capital itself which is 
turned to circulation. 

Orrice costs can be reduced d’abord* to the rent of accommoda- 
tion, which is itself in turn composed of ground rent, interest for 
the capital fixed in the house, and finally the annual depreciation 
in replacement of that capital. 

The rent is merely a part of the surplus value, as is the interest. 
The capitalist does not pocket them himself; he pays them to 
another capitalist. That does not change anything in the situation. 
They appear to him as costs. They are, nonetheless, deductions 
from the surplus value created by the worker. This part of the 
costs of circulation can therefore be reduced to the fact that 
productive capital has to pay a part of the surplus value, in the 
form of house rent, to another capitalist and to the Lanpiorp. 

Only a part of the orrice rent remains as a real advance, the 
depreciation of the house which is to be replaced annually. Now 
come the office costs, which can all be reduced to paper, ink, pens, 
stamps and the salaries of clerks, travelling salesmen, etc. The fixed 
capital needed by these fellows, apart from the raw material of the 
paper, etc., comes down to the depreciation of the house (this part 
of the rent of the accommodation) and the few miserable sticks of 
furniture they need to set up an office. These are costs which the 
productive capitalist must cover, pay cash for, to a greater or 
lesser extent, depending on the particular nature of his business; 
they form a real capital advance, and are not concealed surplus 
value which appears as a cost to the person who must pay it and as 
interest or rent, i.e. appears in the form of surplus value, to the 
other person, who pockets it. 

In calculating the rate of profit the capitalist counts this part of 
the capital advanced just as much as he does the part advanced in 
raw material, machines, etc. These are values which are consumed, 

a First.— Ed. 

160 Capital and Profit 

and must be consumed, not to produce the commodity itself, i.e. 
the use value of the commodity, but to make it circulate as a 
commodity, and it could not be reproduced without them; since it 
must be converted into money, must have realised its value, before 
its reproduction. They form part of the faux frais* of production, 
i.e. they are costs of reproduction which are not costs incurred in 
the manufacture of the use value of the commodities, but derive 
instead from their economic form as commodity. Relatively, these 
costs are always very insignificant as compared with the real 
outlays for production, and they are the more insignificant the 
larger they appear, because they are only noticeable where a big 
capital is set in motion, in proportion to which they are 
visible—on account of their concentration—but relatively weaker 
than in the case of a small capital. Yet we are not concerned here 
with the quantity, but with their qualitative determination. 

In any case, these outlays have the peculiarity, which distin- 
guishes them from the actual costs of production, that whereas the 
rate of profit (here=rate of surplus value, as we disregard the 
adjustment) depends in the best case on the costs of production, 
here inversely the costs stand in proportion to the amount of 
profit. If the business is small, the amount of profit is small, so the 
office costs are minimal, since the producer can take care of this 
almost alone. If the business is large, the amount of profit is large, 
so office costs increase and occasion a certain degree of division of 
labour. The great extent to which these costs are associated with 
the profit is shown e.g. in the fact that if they increase, a part of 
the salary is paid by giving a percentage share in that profit. In so 
far as the salary assumes this form, this part of the office costs is 
reduced to a deduction from the profit of the capitalists, a 
deduction which nevertheless leaves him the averacE rate, because 
he works under more favourable conditions than the aveRacE 
CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION. 

Hence this is also to be eliminated from the question. 

In any case, these office costs—in so far as they do not consist 
of the labour of the capitalist himself, in so far as they have to be 
paid and require advances — enter into those advances. They enter 
into the price of the commodity, and, [XVII-1033] for the 
commodity to be able to be reproduced, a part of its value must be 
set aside (hence a part of the commodity itself must be exchanged) 
for the orricr, pens, ink, paper, salaries of the clerks, etc. Since 
these expenses add nothing to the use value of the commodity, are 

Mercantile Capital. Money-dealing Capital (Notebook XV) 161 

expenses which do not enter into the direct production process, 
the capitalist seeks to restrict them as much as possible. In so far 
as that part of the value of the commodity is realised which 
constitutes wages, these expenses belong to the conditions of 
production of the commodity-producing labour itself (even if no 
capitalist were there), they belong therefore to the conditions of 
reproduction of the salary, [and] to the conditions of labour. A 
part of the annual labour of the country is therefore employed in 
the reproduction of these conditions. The worker must therefore 
reproduce them as capital, if not as profit as well. In so far as they 
are required to reproduce the part of the value of the commodities 
which represents surplus value, they have nothing to do with the 
worker as such. UNnbER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES, aS expenses which have 
always to be reproduced, they reduce the rate of profit and the 
amount of profit in so far as this part of capital cannot be laid out 
in, raw material, wages, etc. 

The only question which opens up here is this: The clerks and 
other members of the office are formally wage labourers. They 
sell their labour capacity directly to capital. If the productive 
capitalist now makes a profit, does he extract surplus value directly 
from this sort of wage labourer or not? Does their labour enter 
into the value of the commodity, and how? Here, notabene, it is not 
a matter of overlookers, MANAGERS, who are employed in the act of 
production in a directing role, but of purely mercantile workers, 
who are only concerned with the realisation of the value of the 
commodity, and the functional labours that are involved in the 
circulation process of the commodity. 

There is, at the outset, an analogy between the clerks and the 
wage labourers: If e.g. a division of labour is introduced among 
them, the same number will perform more labour. But they 
receive their wages as individuals. The wage bears no relation to 
the productivity of their labour. The social character of their 
labour appears to them as rather a productive power of capital 
and a form belonging to capital itself. 

Further: The more intensive or extensive their working day, the 
fewer of them does the capitalist need to retain. The higher his 
rate of profit on a given aliquot part of capital, e.g. 100, the lower 
is this 1rEM of costs, and the more, pro rata, is the capital advanced 
lessened in proportion to the surplus value. The greater is then 
the amount of profit, since a proportionately greater part of the 
capital can be employed directly in production. 

Just as labour is involved in direct production, so is the clerk in 
the direct reproduction of alien wealth. His labour, like that of the 

162 Capital and Profit 

worker, is only a means for the reproduction of capital, as the 
power which commands him, and at the same time as the worker 
creates surplus value, the clerk is employed in helping its 
realisation, not for himself, but for capital. 

But there always remains this difference between these mercan- 
tile workers and the wage labourers engaged in the production 
process: The more labour the capitalist extracts from the latter, 
the greater his surplus value. The more unpaid labour they 
perform, the more saleable, but unpaid, value they produce. And 
the greater the number of workers employed at a given stage of 
production, the greater the amount of surplus value. Surplus 
value can in general only be created by labour, whose realisation 
depends on its quantity, irrespective of whether this labour is, or is 
not, paid for. With the mercantile wage labourers, on the other 
hand, the value they add to the commodity is never greater than 
what they themselves cost; it depends not on their labour but on 
the value of their labour capacity. The capitalist can only extract 
surplus value from them in so far as he pays their labour capacity 
at less than its value, but reckons it among the items of cost at its 
value. This case does not belong here, where we always 
presuppose that full values are paid. The less the capitalist pays 
the mercantite worker, i.e. the more he has him work for the same 
price, the smaller his costs. I.e. the less it costs him to realise the 
surplus value. But the latter is not itself affected by this (only 
indirectly, in so far as a large part of the capital can be invested in 
productive expenditure). The increase in the number of these 
workers as such therefore occurs only if there is more value and 
surplus value to be realised, hence more of this kind of labour is 
required. It is always a result, never a cause of the increase of 
surplus value. 

The mercantile worker has something else in common with the 
wage labourer proper: What is paid to him is the value—the cost 
of reproduction—of his specific labour capacity, which stands 
higher than that of the wage labourer. (Incidentally, this depends 
very much on competition, and becomes ever cheaper wit THE 
PROGRESS OF CIVILISATION.) With the development of capitalist produc- 
tion—and therefore of civilisation—this labour capacity depre- 
ciates. Its cost of reproduction becomes cheaper: 1) because of the 
emergence of the division of labour, which means that [XVII- 
1034] a more one-sided capacity needs to be produced, and part 
of the cost of this production is not borne by the capitalist since, 
like the aptitudes of the worker, this capacity develops by the 
exercise of the function itself, and develops the more rapidly the 

Mercantile Capital. Money-dealing Capital (Notebook XV) 163 

more one-sided the function becomes with the division of labour; 
2) because the preliminary training, the acquisition of the 
knowledge of reading, writing, arithmetic and commercial matters 
in general, language skills, etc., becomes ever quicker with the 
progress of science, and can be reproduced more easily, more 
universally and more cheaply, the more the capitalist mode of 
production predominates, and therefore science and methods of 
teaching are directed to practical ends; 3) [because of] the 
introduction of universal public education, which permits the 
recruitment of this kind of worker from classes which were 
previously excluded, and are accustomed to an inferior living 
standard. The development of capitalist production therefore 
devalues the labour capacity of these people, their salaries, while 
their capacity for work increases; partly through better prelimi- 
nary training, and superior skill resulting from the increase in the 
division of labour and the tradition handed down from the past. 
The auxiliary means of this labour, such as all the necessary books 
on commercial arithmetic, etc., and the art of book-keeping, etc., 
are also perfected. 

But the labour time these people have to work stands in no 
connection with the labour time required for the reproduction of 
their labour capacity. All the labour they perform over and above 
this is unpaid labour time, which capital appropriates without an 
equivalent. Its costs would otherwise be very much increased, if it 
only received an equivalent in excuaNnce for the value of this labour 
capacity which it pays. Its rate of profit would be very much 
reduced. But whatever the relation of the unpaid to the paid 
labour time which this kind of worker provides for capital, this 
unpaid labour never increases the value of the commodity, and it 
therefore does not add any surplus value to it. All it does is lessen 
the cost of realising the value, hence lessen the ratio of the capital 
advanced to the surplus value, hence increase the rate of profit in 
the same proportion as it is not paid and no equivalent for it 
enters into the costs of production. It never adds to the value of 
the commodity more than its own value, hence never more than 
its cost, however far that cost may sink below the labour time for 
which the labour is active. If the capitalist could reduce this labour 
to 0, the rate of profit and the amount of profit would be higher 
to a corresponding degree. But if, on the other hand, the (actual) 
wage labour were reduced to 0, profit would vanish and, with 
surplus value, capital itself. 

The side of capital turned towards circulation therefore appears 
double to the money capital, which must always buy. This achieves 

164 Capital and Profit 

an independent position in the shape of mercanTwe capital, as 
capital which is always in the state of circulation, and which both 
alternately assumes the forms of commodity and of money and 
also, although in different proportions at different times, always 
exists simultaneously in both forms. 

But productive capital not only alternately assumes the forms of 
commodity and money in the circulation process, its function thus 
appearing as that of selling and buying; not only must it always, 
for the sake of the continuity of the production process, be 
represented IN A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF CIRCULATING CAPITAL, CONSISTING IN 
money. Buying and selling requires labour and this labour gives rise 
to costs, circulation costs. These are represented, alongside the 
productive workshop, in the orrice and its costs, which ¢an be 
reduced partly to the consumption of the commodities needed to 
perform this labour of circulation, partly to the wages of the 
workers who are only employed in functions which arise from the 
circulation process of the commodity, partly in the realisation of its 
value, partly in the reconversion of the realised value into 
conditions of production, or, to look at this purely formally, in 
selling and buying. The commodities are sold to realise their 
value, they are bought (by the productive capitalist) for the 
purpose of reproduction, of starting industrial consumption or 
renewing it. This part of the capital advanced does not exist with 
the Farmer, e.g.; it is barely visible with the small industrialist, it 
attains a paLpasLe form in large-scale industry, but, like all the 
determinations which are appropriate to productive capital as 
circulating capital, it appears independently with MERCANTILE CAPITAL. 
Besides the part of mercantile capital which functions as commodi- 
ty or money, another part is advanced in orrice costs, and in the 
wages of its in and our oF poor FuncTionaries. This is the only 
workshop of mercantie capital. The part of capital employed in 
this way appears much larger with the big mercuant than with the 
industrialist, because apart from the MERCANTILE offices proper which 
are associated with every productive workshop, the part of 
productive capital which would have to be employed in this 
manner by the whole class of productive capitalists is concentrated 
in the hands of individual mercuants, who, just as they attend to 
the continuation of the function of circulation, attend also to the 
continuation of the costs of circulation which grows out of this 
continuation. What is true of the other part of meRcANnTILE CAPITAL is 
true of this one. Every individual mercantile capital functions for a 
LOT OF PRODUCTIVE CAPITALS, and the whole of the mercantile capital 
laid out in this way replaces a capital which in this form was 

Mercantile Capital. Money-dealing Capital (Notebook XV) 165 

employed by the whole [XVII-1035] propuctive crass, and it replaces 
it with a smaller amount, since the total amount of these 
circulation costs is lessened by division and concentration of 
labour. It is precisely in this way that it increases the capital 
employed in production itself and thereby indirectly the produc- 
tive power and the quantity of the productive capital. 

In so far as these costs enter into the function of MERCANTILE 
capital, they naturally do not form, as costs of this kind, a part of 
its profit. As we saw directly with productive capital, they enter 
into the price of the commodity as capital advanced, costs of 
production. In so far as these costs of realising the price (selling) 
or converting value into commodity (buying)—these costs of 
circulation—enter into the difference between the MERCANTILE SELLING 
price and the svuyine price, this part of the difference does not form 
a profit, and it is not a part of the surplus value, but rather a 
mere reproduction of capital advanced. So that if we are speaking 
of mercantile profit, this part of the merchant’s Expenses, or this 
part of the selling price, Or RATHER the difference between selling 
PRICE and BUYING PRICE, Must be deducted. 

But there is a considerable difference between the relation of 
MERCANTILE Capital to its MERCANTILE wage labourers—and the same 
relation between productive capital and its mercantue clerks, etc. 

It goes without saying, first of all, that just as the function of 
MERCANTILE CAPITAL Creates absolutely no surplus value (the same is 
true of the mercantile part of propuctive capital), the workers 
employed by it create no surplus value either. The costs of 
circulation always increase the capital outlay, and always reduce 
the rate of profit. The commodities which are consumed in 
circulation are withdrawn as much from industrial as from 
individual consumption, and the labour which is performed there 
is always a deduction from productive labour. 

The relation of mercanriE capital to surplus value is different 
from the relation of productive capital. The former appropriates a 
part of the surplus value, TRANsrERs PART OF IT To Itself. The latter 
produces it by direct exploitation of labour, direct appropriation 
of alien labour. The costs of circulation appear to productive 
capital as expenses; they appear to mercantile capital as the source 
of its profit, which—presupposing the general rate of profit—is in 
proportion to the magnitude of the costs of circulation. For 
mercantile capital, therefore, mvestmenT in these costs of circulation 
is productive invesrMenT. Hence the MERCANTILE Labour it buys is also, 
for it, directly productive. It is only through its function of 
realising value that mercantile capital functions as capital in the 

166 Capital and Profit 

reproduction process. The amount of profit it makes depends on 
the amount of capital it can employ in this process, and the 
greater the unpaid labour of the clerks, the more of this capital 
can it employ (the more capital can it employ in buying and 
selling). For the most part, however, it has its workers perform the 
function itself, through which its capital acts as reproductive 
capital (not merely interest-bearing capital, for example), but it 
pays them as labour capacity. Although the unpaid labour of these 
clerks does not create surplus value, any more than mercantile 
capital does in general, it does create for it an appropriation of 
surplus value, which for the particular capital is the same thing. It 
is therefore a source of profit for it. Mercantile business could 
otherwise never be conducted on a large scale—in capitalist 
fashion. The relation of the merchant to his “clerks, etc.” is 
therefore much more analogous to the relation of productive 
capital to the productive wage labourer than the relation of the 
clerks in the MERCANTILE offices attached to the factory, etc., although 
the exploitation of the mercantite worker himself is the same in 
both cases. 

Capital employed in money-dealing is a particular kind of 
commercial capital alongside capital employed in commodity-dealing. 
The one is a development of commodity capital, the other a 
development of money capital, or the one is a development of capital 
as commodity, the other of capital as money. Both are merely 
forms and modes of existence of productive capital present in the 
circulation process which have attained an independent role. Just as 
mercantile capital exists before productive capital, as the first free 
form of capital, so does money-dealing and capital employed 
therein (MonzyeED Capital, interest-bearing capital, also belongs here) 
presuppose only merchants’ capital [XVII-1036]; it therefore 
equally exists as a form of capital which precedes productive capital. 

Mercantile capital—within the capitalist reproduction process— 
is absolutely nothing but on the one hand productive capital in 
general in its circulation C—M—C (which however simultaneously 
assumes a shape of its own, because the commodity here is capital: 
M—C’'C"—M), in its function of buying and selling—or in the 
movement of the complete metamorphosis it passes through in its 
sphere of circulation, and on the other hand a part of productive 
capital which has been separated off from it, has become 
independent, and for which the sphere of circulation is the sphere 
of production peculiar to it. The situation is exactly the same with 
money-dealing capital. 

Circulating capital (and all capital circulates, even fixed capital, 

Mercantile Capital. Money-dealing Capital (Notebook XV) 167 

to the extent that its depreciation enters into the commodity as a 
value component) is precipitated as money when it returns from a 
circuit or appears as the starting point of a circuit. For a sum of 
value which must first be converted into capital, money appears as 
a starting point in isolation. This is only the case for newly invested 
capital But for capital already involved in the process, and 
therefore IN A CONTINUAL COURSE OF REPRODUCTION, both the concluding point 
and the starting point appear only as points of transit. In so far as 
capital has to pass through C—M—C’ between its stay in the 
sphere of production and its return to the latter, the M is in fact 
only the result of a phase of the metamorphosis, to become after 
that the starting-point for the opposite phase which complements 
it. Capital, however, simultaneously passes through the acts C—M 
and M—C. Le. not only is there a capital in the stage M—C, 
while the other is in the stage C—M, but the same capital is 
simultaneously buying constantly and selling constantly, owing to 
the continuity of the production process. Capital is continuously to 
be found in both stages simultaneously. While a part of it is 
converted into money, to be reconverted into commodities, the 
other part is simultaneously converted into commodities, to be 
reconverted into money. Whether the money functions here as 
means of circulation or means of payment—in the second case so 
that the balances are paid, in the first case so that the value is 
always present in a dual form, at one pole as commodity, at the 
other as money—depends on the form of commodity exchange 
itself. But in both cases the capitalist has constantly to pay out 
money (and to many people; the productive capitalist has to pay 
many merchants, the merchant has to pay many capitalists, etc.) in 
order constantly to receive money in payment. This merely 
technical operation of paying money and collecting money in itself 
constitutes labour, which, in so far as money functions as means of 
payment, makes acts of account settling necessary, after the 
balance has been calculated. This labour is a cost of circulation. A 
definite part of the capital must constantly be available as hoard 
(as a coin reserve, i.e. a reserve of means of purchase and a fund 
for payment, a reserve for payments) and a part of the capital 
constantly returns in this form. This makes necessary, apart from 
payment and collection, the keeping in safe custody of this hoard, 
which is in turn a separate operation. It is therefore in fact the 
constant dissolution of the hoard into means of circulation and 
means of payment, and its rebuilding as money obtained through 
sale or payment fallen due—this constant movement of the part 
of capital which constantly exists as money—separated from the 

12* 

168 Capital and Profit 

function itself, this technical movement, which gives rise to 
particular labour and costs. Circulation costs. It is a result of the 
division of labour that these technical operations, which flow from 
the functions of capital, are allotted to definite functionaries on 
behalf of the whole capitalist class, and that these operations are 
concentrated in their hands. Here, as with merchants’ capital, 
there is division of labour in a dual sense. It becomes a particular 
operation, a particular business, and because it becomes a 
particular business, performed for the whole class, it is concen- 
trated, carried out on a large scale, and a division of labour takes 
place within it, both through its splitting into different branches 
which are independent of each other, and through the develop- 
ment of the workshop within these branches. A part of the 
productive capital involved in this movement is separated off from 
productive capital, and is employed only in these operations—first 
the storing of the money, then its payment, collection, settlement 
of balances, etc.—which are separate from the acts necessitating 
these technical operations. This is [XVII-1037] productive capital 
which has attained an independent role in money dealing. 

If we now consider the reproduction process of a single capital, 
we see that the realised surplus value returns in the form of 
money. The profit is in part expended as income, and it must in 
part be reconverted into capital. The reproduction process is not 
only a simple reproduction process but a process of accumulation, 
reproduction on an increased scale. This manifests itself in part as 
accumulation of money. Whether the individual capitalist can 
immediately reconvert into capital his profit which exists in the 
form of money, i.e. utilise it within his reproduction process, 
depends 1) on the state of the market, which does not perhaps 
permit the extension of a particular business at that moment; 
2) also on the organic composition of his productive capital; since 
not every sum can be converted immediately into productive 
capital, this conversion depending in part on the technological 
conditions (I may have enough money to extend a factory, not 
enough to add a new one), in part on the magnitude of the sum, 
which must be large enough to be divided into variable and 
constant capital in the appropriate proportions. As long as this is 
not possible, the money is a hoard lying idle—now capital lying 
idle. The job of storing it falls to the money dealer. This is an 
operation of the money dealer which arises from a moment of the 
capitalist process of accumulation, which initially presents itself as 
accumulation of money (in part at least). As long as the capitalist 
cannot invest the money in his own business, he endeavours to 

Mercantile Capital. Money-dealing Capital (Notebook XV) 169 

valorise this idle hoard as interest-bearing capital, to lend it out. 
The money dealer does this for the whole class; lending and 
borrowing, like paying and collecting money, become a particular 
function of capital employed in money dealing—a function which 
proceeds from the reproduction process of capital itself. What 
previously appeared as a concentration of the hoard reservoir, now 
appears as simultaneously a concentration of money loanable as 
capital. 

The same is true of the capitalist who has brought his gains into 
safety but wants to consume them not as money but as capital, i.e. 
wants to live on interest. 

Similarly for all productive capitalists themselves—for the part of 
the profit they expend as income, yet not at once, but au fur et a 
mesure.* This consumption fund (the actual coin reserve) can be 
lent out as capital in the interval, and it must under all 
circumstances be accumulated as money 1 N certain pimENsIons. The 
same holds for the recipient of rent who wants, apart from this, to 
consume a part of his income as interest-bearing capital. Ditto for 
all unproductive workers whose income is in part capitalised, in 
part consumed au fur et a mesure, but received in larger portions at 
certain intervals. 

All this is concentrated as loan capital with the money dealer, 
who apart from this himself lends money and must keep reapy 
definite funds, in order always to be able to pay. The function of 
his particular capital is only the independent form of the processes 
which emerge from the reproduction process of capital (conver- 
sion of profit into capital), in part from the form of circulation; 
the fact that newly arisen capital steps forth in the form of money. 
The money dealer lends and borrows for the whole class, or 
rather he performs the lending and borrowing of the whole class. 

Exchange rate business and exchange business proceed from the 
function of money as world money; the difference between the 
national currencies. Finally the suzion trade; in part the settlement of 
international payments, therefore the movement back and forth of 
money capital (here capital, because it is a form of capital); in part 
the procurement of fresh supplies of gold and silver from their 
sources of production. The latter is in fact brought about by 
foreign trade. But the technical aspect, the BULLION RETURN, is taken 
over by the money dealer. Hoard formation—usurers’ capital— 
the exchange of international coins—the suttion trade (the EncLisu 
co.psmiTHs) form the foundations of the independent development 

170 Capital and Profit 

of money dealing. It is specially connected with dealing in 
commodities [XVII-1038], since only merchants’ capital—before 
the development of capitalist production—constantly buys and 
sells on a mass scale, lends and borrows, pays and collects, in short 
constantly has its wealth chiefly in the form of money.’ 

Only with the credit system does moniep capiraAL and money dealing 
receive the form which emerges from the capitalist mode of 
production itself. 

The profit of money dealing does not offer the same difficulty as 
that of mercantile capital. With the latter the difficulty arises from 
the fact that the profit originates through an addition to the prices 
of the commodities, and the commodity is sold dearer than it is 
bought; which appears to contradict the determination of the price 
of production and ultimately the value of the commodity by 
labour time. With the former, in contrast, the commodity as such 
remains entirely outside the picture, and by far the greater part of 
the money dealer’s profit consists of the interest for which he 
lends capital, whereas he borrows it for nothing; or of the excess 
of the interest at which he lends it over the interest at which he 
borrows it. A part of the surplus value itself therefore directly 
appears as the source of his profit, and his profit merely appears 
as a share in that surplus value. 

We shall be able to go into this in more detail in the section on 
capital as credit,” but this does not form part of our task at 
present. 

171

## Surplus Value and Profit

Considered in its totality (wholeness) (or considered completely) 
(or in its completeness) the movement of capital is a unity of the 
process of production and the process of circulation. 

The surplus value produced within a given period of circulation 
(let us take e.g. a year as the measure; see above, Chapter II”), 
when measured against the total capital which has been advanced, 
is called— profit. (Under profit is included not only interest— 
known to be a mere portion of the total profit—but also the rent 
of land, which is nothing but a part of the capital employed in 
agriculture. The particular way capital is specified by this 
particular form of investment belongs to the consideration of 
landed property.” Here we shall merely indicate that profit is not 
to be understood exclusively as what is called industrial or 
commercial profit.) 

Considered with respect to its material, profit is absolutely 
nothing but surplus value itself. Considered with respect to its 
absolute magnitude, it therefore does not differ from the surplus 
value produced by capital over a particular turnover time. It is 
surplus value itself, but calculated differently. By its nature, 
surplus value is related to that part of the advanced capital 
through exchange with which it arises, and it is therefore 
calculated in relation to that part. Circulation time, in so far as it 
differs from production time, only comes into consideration here 
as a barrier to the creation of surplus value. But as profit, surplus 
value is related to, and therefore measured by, not a part of the 
capital advanced, but the whole amount of the capital advanced, 
without regard to the entirely different positions these different 

components occupy in the creation of surplus value and the 
production of the value of the commodity in general. 

So: Assume there is a capital equal to 600 thalers. The constant 
part of the capital consists of °/, of it, namely raw material and 
machinery; the variable part, laid out in wages, consists of the 
remaining '/.. If the surplus value produced in a year amounts to 
60 thalers—hence the value of the whole product in a year is 
660 thalers—this surplus value of 60 thalers is called profit, as 
long as it is not considered with regard to the 100 thalers which 
are exchanged for 160 in the capitalist production process, not 
with regard to the sixth of the capital from which it arises, but 
with regard to the °/g of which the capital advanced consists, i.e. 
with regard to the total capital advanced of 600 thalers. Although 
the 60 thalers continue to have the same magnitude of value, 60 on 
100 makes 60 per cent while 60 on 600 only makes 10%. Surplus 
value therefore receives in profit—which always expresses a 
relation,* a proportion—a new expression, numerically different 
from its original shape. The same magnitude naturally alters its 
numerical expression, once it is calculated, instead of in its organic 
relation to part of a whole, in a relation to the whole of the whole. 

[XVI-974] The difference is not only numerical but also 
conceptual, essential. It is not only a matter of a different valuation, 
measurement or calculation. There is more to it. This difference 
in calculation, measurement, valuation is a necessity for capital, it 
expresses a new characteristic relation of capital, the creation of a 
new form, which is just as essential as the difference between the 
form of exchange value and that of money, perhaps. 

As we have seen, the relation between surplus value and the 
variable part of capital is an organic one. In fact it expresses the 
secret of the formation and growth, of the existence of capital as 
capital. This organic relation is extinguished in the relation 
between profit and capital. Surplus value obtains a form in which 
the secret of its origin is no longer hinted at with the slightest 
trace. Since all parts of capital equally appear as the basis of the 
newly created value, the capital-relation becomes a complete 
mystification. In surplus value as such, the relation of capital to 
the labour which capital appropriates is constantly expressed. In 
the relation of capital to profit, capital is related not to labour but 
to itself. It is on the one hand a merely quantitative relation of an 
amount of value or an amount of money to itself. If I say for 
example that a capital of 100 thalers brings in a profit of 

* An appendix should be added to this. See Malthus, etc. 

10 thalers a year, I am merely comparing thalers with thalers. On 
the first occasion the principal, the cariTaL, the main amount, 
appears as given, on the other occasion these 100 thalers become 
the main amount, the principa., the capita, precisely because they 
bring in an extra amount, and the main amount appears as the 
underlying cause, of which this extra amount is the effect. This is 
its natural fruit. (See Aristotle on usury,’ and also the one passage 
in Sismondi where he says that wealth like labour bears fruit 
annually. When he adds to this “like labour and through labour” he 
is already going too far.) 

The difference between capital and its particular forms is 
therefore extinguished in this form, and this is therefore also true 
of capital’s functions in which it appears even before capitalist 
production itself. Capital thereby becomes a thing, which existed 
just as much in antiquity as it exists today. 

“The capitalist expects an equal profit upon all the parts of the capital” 
(Malthus).2 

On the one hand this contains the correct point that profit is a 
form of surplus value, if the latter is related equally to all parts of 
the capital and therefore measured equally against the total 
amount of capital. But there is also the point that the capitalist 
knows nothing of the essence of capital, and surplus value exists in 
his consciousness only in the form of profit, a converted form of 
surplus value, which is completely abstracted from the relations 
under which it originates and by which it is conditioned. During 
the direct process of production, the nature of surplus value does, 
it is true, continuously enter the capitalist’s consciousness, as 
indeed we have seen in considering surplus value, the greed for 
alien labour time, etc.*? But this is only a transitory moment. In 
fact the capitalist himself regards capital as a self-acting automa- 
ton, which has the quality of increasing itself and bringing in a 
gain, not as a relation, but in its material existence. The social 
relations under which value takes on this quality, and the things in 
which it exists as its body (use value), appear as eternal natural 
relations, or rather, it is grasped at most that certain (artificial) 
conditions hinder this natural development and cannot allow it to 
unfold completely. 

The notion of capital as a self-acting automaton of this kind lies 
at the basis of e.g. Price’s calculation of interest and compound 
interest, which completely turned the head even of William Pitt. 

(See Luther on the growth of interest.*') Hence also the kind of 
idiotic proclamations one finds on the part of the political . 
economists. E.g. there must be profit, otherwise the capitalist 
would put his capital out at interest. He would have no reason to 
throw it into production instead of putting it out at interest 
[XV1-975] (thus capital would allegedly bring in interest even if no 
capital were thrown into production). Thus Turgot already says: If 
it brought in no profit, everyone would buy land with his capital. 
(See Turgot.” Thus here a particular mode of employment of 
capital is regarded as being of itself profitable.) 

Surplus value, however, necessarily assumes the form of profit in 
the bourgeois mind—and this is not just a way of looking at 
things. The relation of surplus value as a relation of profit 
dominates bourgeois production, determines the distribution of 
the capitals in the different branches of production, is so to speak 
the triangulation point for free competition (the competition of 
capitals amongst each other, i.e. the real movement of capitals in 
which alone the laws of capital are realised. These laws are in fact 
nothing but the general relations of this movement, its result on 
the one hand, its tendency on the other.) 

The relations under which a quantity of value, money, 
commodities, the particular use values in which value re-enters 
production, becomes capital, i.e. the owner of this quantity of 
value becomes a capitalist, are, under capitalist production, within 
bourgeois society, so enmeshed with the existence of capitalists 
that for example Wakefield had to go to the Colonies to discover 
that these relations are not self-evident, and that without them 
value does not become capital and the owner of value does not 
become a capitalist. So self-evident, and so altogether incom- 
prehensible, that this discovery of Wakefield’s could in fact mark a 
kind of epoch in modern political economy.” 

The actual production process of capital is constantly bound up 
with its circulation process. Both are moments of the production 
process itself, as the production process for its part in turn 
appears as a moment of the circulation process. The two 
constantly overlap, interpenetrate, and thereby constantly falsify 
each other’s characteristic distinguishing marks. But in the process 
of circulation surplus value on the one hand assumes new 
determinations, on the other hand capital passes through transfor- 
mations, and finally it so to speak steps out of its organic life into 
foreign conditions of life, into relations in which not capital and 
labour but on the one hand capital and capital confront each 
other, and on the other hand the individuals as well again 

confront each other in the relations of simple circulation, as 
commodity owners, buyers and _ sellers—circulation time and 
labour time thus cut across each other as this path is followed, and 
thus appear to determine surplus value equally. Now the original 
form in which capital and wage labour confront each other 
disappears as it were, and relations enter the picture which are 
apparently independent of this, surplus value itself no longer 
appears as a product of the appropriation of labour time, but as 
the excess of the selling price of commodities over their value, and 
as well, above all, as money. The result is the complete extinction 
of the memory of the original nature of surplus value, or 
alternatively this original nature never enters clearly into con- 
sciousness at all, but appears at most as an equally valid moment 
alongside the moments which arise out of circulation independent- 
ly of capital’s original nature, hence as a moment of the movement 
which belongs to capital independently of its relation to labour. 
Indeed, these phenomena of circulation are themselves directly 
adduced by other political economists (such as Ramsay, Malthus, 
Senior, Torrens, etc.) as proofs that capital in its material 
shape—regardless of the social relation of production which 
makes it capital—is an independent source of surplus value 
alongside labour and independently of labour. But it lay in the 
nature of this relation, as we already saw in considering the 
process of production of capital,* that the socially productive 
forces of labour appear as productive forces transposed into 
capital, that the autonomisation and personification of past labour 
and of the value which exists in practice in the shape of the 
capitalist, the rule of past labour over living labour, which 
constitutes the essence of capital, the transformation as against this 
of the worker into mere objective labour capacity, a commodity, 
the fruitfulness of capital, in so far as it exists objectively, does not 
appear as a consequence of the social relation of production, the 
latter appearing rather inversely as a consequence of the material 
relation between those objects and labour as particular moments 
{[XVI-976] of the process of production. In the capital-relation—to 
the extent that it is still considered independently of its circulation 
process—what is essentially characteristic is the mystification, the 
upside-down world, the inversion of the subjective and the 
objective, as it already appears in money. Corresponding to the 
inverted relation, there necessarily arises, already in the actual 
production process itself, an inverted conception, a transposed 

consciousness, which is completed by the transformations and 
modifications of the actual process of circulation. However, the 
capitalist as capitalist is nothing but this movement of capital itself. 
What he is in reality, he is also in consciousness. Since the positive, 
dominant side of the relation is expressed in him, he only feels at 
home precisely in these contradictions; they do not disturb him, 
whereas the wage labourer, who is trapped in the same inverted 
notion, only from the other extreme, is driven in practice, as the 
oppressed side, to resistance against the whole relation, hence also 
against the notions, concepts and modes of thinking correspond- 
ing to it. 

It must be added that in the real process of circulation not only 
do those transformations we have considered take place (and 
impel even the better political economists to adopt the capitalists’ 
conceptions, if in a somewhat more doctrinaire form) but they 
coincide with real competition, buying and selling above and below 
value, hence profit does not appear to the capitalists as surplus 
value, as it is in fact for every one of them, not as dependent on 
the degree of exploitation of labour, but as the result of one 
person’s taking advantage of another, a notion which not only the 
older, but even the more recent political economists have 
sanctioned. (E.g. Torrens.” See also Senior on money, etc., and 
wages.°°) 

In fact the only thing which interests capital in practice, and 
regulates the real movement of capital, competition, is profit, and 
not surplus value, i.e. the ratio of the surplus value to the total 
amount of capital advanced, and not the ratio of the surplus value 
to the capital laid out in the purchase of labour capacity. This 
leads us (and is the actual transition) to the consideration of costs of 
production and their relation to the process of the sale of the product. 

There are still a few remarks to make before we pass on to this. 

Firstly: From the standpoint of the society in which capitalist 
production prevails, capital appears as a seLFactor—value as 
possessing in itself the quality of self-increase in consequence of 
qualitates occultae* of some kind; how much this is the case appears 
strikingly in interest-bearing money capital, money capital loaned 
out at interest. An amount of value is sold here as in itself capital; 
i.e. capital itself appears as a commodity. A certain quantity of 
values, or a bill on values, is sold as a self-preserving and 
self-increasing amount. The situation is not altered by the fact that 
this amount is not money itself but the commodity into which it 

can be converted. For as self-preserving and self-increasing value 
commodities are viewed and sold merely qua exchange value, i.e. 
qua money. This quality of being capital is sold as an immanent 
quality of the amount of value. It therefore returns to its owner 
with a profit. 

Secondly: It needs no discussion here that if a commodity is sold 
above or below its value, there takes place merely a change in the 
distribution of surplus value between different capitalists, between 
the buyer and the seller. This difference in distribution, or 
alteration in the proportions in which different people share in 
the surplus value, does not change anything, either in_ its 
magnitude or in its nature. 

Thirdly: The relation of competition, in so far as we have 
considered it here as an illustration (not as belonging to the 
development itself), entails that the surplus value the individual 
capitalist makes is not really the decisive factor. [XVI-977] For an 
average profit is formed; i.e. a general measure, and laws, 
according to which the capitalists calculate among themselves the 
total value of their class. (See Jones as well on this.*) The real price 
of the commodity—disregarding fluctuations in the market 
price—is thereby considerably modified, and it differs from the 
value of the commodity. No individual capitalist can therefore say, 
nor does any one of them know, to what extent the surplus value 
he has produced himself enters, or does not enter, into the profit 
he makes, to what extent a part of the surplus value produced by 
the class of capitalists enters into the price of his commodity. It is 
best to bring this point in when considering the costs of 
production, just as it is best to bring in there the inverted manner 
in which the laws of capital are represented in competition. The 
perception, as it arises out of competition, the relation that 
dominates the capitalist (for it is in fact the laws of capital 
themselves which in competition appear to him as_ external 
compulsion applied by his capital to other capitals and to his 
capital by other capitals), alienates him completely from the 
perception of the inner essence of the relations within which he 
moves, and of which he is merely the interested agent or 
functionary. 

Fourthly: The confusion or lack of distinction between surplus 
value and profit is the source of the greatest BLUNDERS IN POLITICAL 
ECONOMY, even where it is merely a matter of giving a correct 
presentation. The significant political economists, such as e.g. 

Ricardo, naturally do not confuse the two completely, although 
they never consciously grasp the difference. But for that reason 
the real law appears with them, on the one hand, as an abstraction 
from the real movement, which therefore also contradicts it 
everywhere in detail. On the other hand, they are bound to want 
to use the nature of value or surplus value to explain phenomena 
which only arise from surplus value in the form of profit. Hence 
incorrect laws. Ricardo abstracts from competition where he 
develops the general nature of capital. On the other hand, he 
already brings in fixed capital, etc., as determining moments right 
at the beginning, in the determination of value, and thereby 
abolishes his so-called law or reduces it to a mere shadow, as 
Malthus correctly shows. On the other hand, with his followers, 
like Mill and McCulloch, we see the insane attempt e.g. to 
convert circulation time into labour time, and finally to describe as 
labour not only the functions of beasts, but of inanimate things, all 
their natural motions. Say too in this connection.” However this 
criticism belongs to the concluding section of this chapter.” 

2) [PROFIT ALWAYS EXPRESSES SURPLUS VALUE TOO SMALL] 

It follows from the characteristic distinction of form between 
surplus value and profit that profit always expresses a smaller 
proportion than that of real surplus value, hence the rate of profit 
always represents the ratio in which capital appropriates alien 
labour as much smaller than it really is. This (tautological) law, 
once understood, does away with all incorrect statistics, and it has 
bigger merits. It is essential for the comprehension of phenomena 
which would otherwise remain incomprehensible and limp along 
beside the theory as indigestible fragments of reality. 

It goes without saying that the magnitude a expresses a smaller 
ratio if it is measured against b+c+a than if it is measured against 
c+a, or that a magnitude expresses a larger or smaller part of a 
third magnitude according to whether that latter magnitude is 
itself larger or smaller. The total capital is therefore always larger 
than the part of it which is exchanged for wages.

## Profit Always Expresses Surplus Value Too Small

2) [PROFIT ALWAYS EXPRESSES SURPLUS VALUE TOO SMALL] 

It follows from the characteristic distinction of form between 
surplus value and profit that profit always expresses a smaller 
proportion than that of real surplus value, hence the rate of profit 
always represents the ratio in which capital appropriates alien 
labour as much smaller than it really is. This (tautological) law, 
once understood, does away with all incorrect statistics, and it has 
bigger merits. It is essential for the comprehension of phenomena 
which would otherwise remain incomprehensible and limp along 
beside the theory as indigestible fragments of reality. 

It goes without saying that the magnitude a expresses a smaller 
ratio if it is measured against b+c+a than if it is measured against 
c+a, or that a magnitude expresses a larger or smaller part of a 
third magnitude according to whether that latter magnitude is 
itself larger or smaller. The total capital is therefore always larger 
than the part of it which is exchanged for wages. 

[XVI-978] 3) [THE RATIO IS ALTERED NUMERICALLY AND 
IN FORM] 

Profit is therefore a different relation firstly in its form; and 
secondly it is numerically different. It is a converted form of 

Relation of Surplus Value and Profit 77 

surplus value, in which there is a change firstly in the latter’s 
numerical relation, secondly in its conceptual determination. 

4) [THE SAME SURPLUS VALUE MAY BE EXPRESSED 
IN VERY DIFFERENT RATES OF PROFIT;

## The Ratio Is Altered Numerically and in Form

3) The ratio is altered numerically and in form 

4) The same surplus value may be expressed in very different 

rates of profit; the same rate of profit may express very 
different surplus values 

5) Relation of surplus value and profit=relation of variable 

capital to total capital 

6) Production costs. a) Profit equals the excess of the value of 

the product over the value of the production costs. Does 

8 Marx’s Summary of Contents 

not belong to the production costs of the individual capital. 
b) Profit belongs to the production costs of capitalist 
production in general. c) Commodities can be sold at a 
profit below their value. d) If the surplus value is given, the 
rate of profit rises if the value of the constant capital falls, 
through economy in its employment. e) A definite quantity 
of capital—100—as yardstick of profit. f) Profit, not 
surplus value, [determines] the rate of accumulation of total 
capital and, hence, of the capitalists’ real gain. g) Rate of 
profit and amount of profit. Profit in relation to the 
magnitude of capital or the average rate of profit. h) Fixed 
capital and labour time 
7) General law of the fall in the rate of profit with the progress 
of capitalist production 
XVII 
Miscellanea. Labour process and valorisation process. Diminution 
in the rate of profit. Constant capital: absolute quantity of capital. 
Decline in the rate of profit. Accumulation 
Continuation of Notebook XV’ 
Mercantile capital. Money-dealing capital 
I) Episode. Rercux movements of money in the circulation of 
capital. (Reproduction process) 
II) Episode. Growth of the absolute amount of the individual capital or 
rise of the scale of production 
XIX? 
Continuation of Notebook V"° 
3) Relative surplus value 
y) Machinery, etc. 
KX lt 
3) Relative surplus value 
y) Machinery, etc. 
h) Relative and absolute surplus value. Correlations of wages and 
surplus value. Converted form of the value of labour capacity 
in the value or price of labour. Derivative formulas for the 
ratio of surplus value to variable capital, and of surplus to 
necessary labour 
Intermezzo. Hume and Massie. Interest

## The Same Surplus Value May Be Expressed in Very Different Rates of Profit; the Same Rate of Profit May Express Very Different Surplus Values

buys means of subsistence. THE SAME CASE AS FAR AS HE BUYS INSTRUMENTS OF 
PRODUCTION AND matiéres instrumentales. [XVIII-1073] Hence the 
whole annual product of the gold producer //we are deliberately 
leaving foreign trade out of the picture here// can be resolved into 

Episode. Reflux Movements of Money 235 

the expression of surplus value in gold; it is a part of the surptus 
Lagour Of the wuHo ez society which is directly incarnated in gold, 
converted into gold. For the gold producer, as for any other 
capitalist, his total product consists of 1) a part which reproduces 
the constant capital; 2) a part which replaces the variable capital; 
and 3) a third part which represents the surplus vacue. But in 
relation to the whole society it is merely the incarnation of surplus 
VALUE and surplus LaBour. To the extent that this surptus value comes 
into consideration, the gold producer is distinguished from the 
others only in that for him it is a form emerging directly from the 
process of production, whereas for the others it is mediated 
through exchange, through circulation. The other producers— 
whether of means of subsistence or of constant capital—exchange, 
out of the part of their product which represents surplus value, a 
part for the gold of the gold producer; they thus replace his 
capital for him and he gives them the commodity in which they 
realise a part of their surplus value. The relation of the gold 
producer to classes I and II is therefore exactly the same as the 
relation of classes I and II to each other. That is, the whole of his 
annual product can be resolved into income, ie. it is exchanged 
for a part of the means of subsistence and means of production 
which represent income for their producers, i.e. realisation or 
SURPLUS LABOUR. Just as Class I realised a part of its surpius value in its 
own products, so also can the gold producer. But he can realise 
only a part. He must consume a part of his surptus vaLur. The 
others, in contrast, must not consume a part of their surplus VALUE, 
if they want to possess it in the form of gold. Therefore, in so far 
as this form of replacement comes into consideration, the 
exchange between the gold producer and the other classes does 
not represent a new phenomenon. But it is a new phenomenon in 
so far as a part of the surpius vatuz is here directly converted into 
the material of money and thereby the simple reproduction 
process assumes the special feature that the valorisation of the 
commodity presents itself directly as accumulation of gold, hence 
as accumulation of latent money capital. 

If we leave aside the form of capitalist production, it is clear that 
the producers must exchange a part of their products with each 
other, in part for individual consumption, in part for productive 
consumption. This part (and it forms By FAR THE GREATEST PART OF THEIR 
PRODUCE) Can ON AN AVERAGE be regarded as given, particularly in static 
conditions, such as were normal before the capitalist mode of 
production. They can only exchange the surezus with the product 
of the gold or silver producer. And in fact their hoards are formed 

236 Capital and Profit 

in this manner, and in general the basis is laid for the circulation 
of metallic money. The situation that only this surplus can be 
converted into gold remains the same in capitalist production. 

In so far as the gold producer and the other producers now 
convert their [surplus] into capital anew as money (in addition to 
the money otherwise circulating amongst them), the question is 
not specific. The same conditions are needed as are required in 
general for the conversion of money into capital. 

So far, therefore, we merely have this: The accumulation of 
money—as identical with new gold production—requires that a 
part of the surplus labour of the country should be invested in the 
production of gold. 

But now let us pose the question in a different form, in which 
the production of new gold is entirely left on one side. It is known 
that during a considerable period of time, roughly from 1808 to 
1830, the newly added gold and silver were exactly sufficient to 
replace the abrasion, etc., the wear AnD TEAR, of the money capital of 
Europe. The capitalist accumulation process must also be consi- 
dered in itself—precisely with regard to money —without bringing 
in the production of gold and silver at ail. 

The question that concerns us here is not the same as the one 
considered previously, in dealing with reproduction: how surplus 
value existing as money, or RATHER the part of the surplus value 
which is not consumed, can be converted back into productive 
capital. The question is rather how, and UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS, a 
part of the surplus value, Instead OF BEING SPENT, MAY BE ACCUMULATED AS

## Relation of Surplus Value and Profit=Relation of Variable Capital to Total Capital

5) [RELATION OF SURPLUS VALUE AND PROFIT=RELATION 
OF VARIABLE CAPITAL TO TOTAL CAPITAL]) 

Since profit is nothing but the ratio of the surplus value to the 
total amount of capital advanced, the rate of profit, or its 
proportional magnitude, evidently depends on two circumstances, 
firstly the total amount of capital advanced, and secondly the ratio 
of the variable part of the capital advanced to its constant part. 
This is when the surplus value is presupposed as given. Otherwise, 
it depends on 1) the ratio of the surplus value to the variable part 
of the capital; secondly the ratio of the variable part to the total 
quantity of capital, or also, and this is the same thing, its ratio to 
the constant part of the capital. E.g. 50 is '/e of 100, but it is, at 
ee of 600. If 50=S (surplus value), 100= V, 
the variable capital, then “/j9 is the rate of surplus value, 
which='/. or 50%=%/y. If the total capital is 600=C(500)+ V, then 

the same time, 

78 Capital and Profit 

3 : : s SS 
fog = 198 3% is the profit, which Pee’ V VAC 

Ss eS) 
or also —— (the rate of profit) ip fis related to the rate of 
v+e 

surplus value)=V (as the variable capital): V+C (is related 

=(V+C):V. 

7 Ss Ss 
to the total capital). Thus oawy aals C). 
r+e 

Profit is related to surplus value as variable {should read: total] 
capital is related to total [should read: variable] capital (we do not 
need the categories of fixed and circulating capital here, because 
variable capital is circulating capital, but a part of constant capital 
is also circulating capital, so this antithesis does not belong here) 
and this evidently depends on the proportion in which constant 
and variable capital form components of the total capital [C], since 
V=C~-c and c=C~—v. If C were=0, variable capital would have 
reached its maximum; i.e. the whole amount of the capital 
advanced would be variable capital, i.e. capital laid out directly in 

J 
wages. In this case profit would be a a i.e. [XVI-979] it would 

be equal to the surplus value. This would be the expression of its 
maximum. It declines in the same measure as c¢ grows, and 
therefore as the total amount of capital advanced, c+v, or C, 
diverges from the variable capital v. If one considers the 

expression. — 7. @ue. sees that its magnitude evidently stands in a 
ore 
direct ratio to the absolute magnitude of s, which is however 

ele . X . . . . 
conditioned by the ratio 5b it stands in an inverse ratio to the 

magnitude of v+c, i.e. the total amount of capital advanced. With 
Cherbuliez (see Notebook”) the determination of profit would be 
correct, if he did not confuse product and value of the product, 
use value and exchange value of the commodity.

## Costs of Production

6) COSTS OF PRODUCTION 7 

a) We have seen” that the general form of capital is M—C— 

M’. In other words, money, an amount of value, is thrown into 
circulation in order to extract from it a larger amount. The 
process which produces this larger amount of value is capitalist 
production; the process which realises it is the circulation process 
of capital. 

Costs of Production 719 

The capitalist does not produce the commodity for its own sake, 
not for the sake of its use value or for consumption. The product 
capital is in reality concerned with is not the material product but 
the gain, the excess of the product’s value over the value of the capital 
advanced, which enters into the production of the commodity. If 
he converts £1,000 into machinery, cotton and wages, this is not 
for the sake of the twist he produces but because the machinery, 
cotton and wages now represent £1,200, after their conversion 
into twist, instead of £1,000 as originally. The hoarder as such 
changes a commodity of a definite value, e.g. £1,000 of twist, from 
the form of a commodity into that of money, in order to withdraw 
the latter from circulation and to possess the exchange value of his 
commodity in the independent form of money, the form in which 
it is independent of the commodity itself. The capitalist does not 
share the hoarder’s superstitions. The forms in which exchange 
value appears, commodity or money, are indifferent to him, they 
are impermanent forms, because all real wealth is for him in fact 
merely exchange value in its different embodiments. He first 
converts money into a commodity—a commodity of a higher 
exchange value than the money advanced, because within the 
capitalist process of production more labour time is materialised in 
the commodity than was originally contained in its factors of 
production, and indeed it is realised through the unpaid 
appropriation of alien labour time—and in the circulation process 
he converts this commodity back into money, but now into a larger 
amount of money than the amount from which the process took 
its departure. A part of this excess over its original magnitude 
serves him as income, which he consumes, and a part is converted 
back into capital in order to begin the same cycle afresh. Whether 
he converts it into variable or constant, fixed or circulating capital, 
the capitalist must, on the one hand, uniformly withdraw every 
part of the capital from his private consumption and consume it 
industrially, and, on the other hand, expose it to the chances and 
risks of circulation, once it has assumed the form of the product. 
The capitalist uniformly advances the total capital—without 
regard to the qualitative differences within it in the production of 
surplus value—in order not only to reproduce the capital 
advanced but to produce an excess of value over and above the 
capital. He can only exploit labour, i.e. convert the value of the 
variable capital he advances into a higher value, through the 
exchange with living labour, by advancing at the same time the 
conditions for the realisation, the conditions of production of this 
labour—raw material and machinery—converting a sum of value 

80 Capital and Profit 

he possesses into this form of the conditions of production, just as 
he is only a capitalist at all, can only undertake the process of 
exploitation of labour at all, because he, as proprietor of the 
conditions of production, confronts the worker, as the mere 
possessor of labour capacity. It is quite indifferent to him whether 
it is considered that he advances constant capital to make a profit 
on the variable capital, or advances variable capital [XVI-980] to 
make a profit out of the constant capital; whether he lays out 
money in wages to give a higher value to the machinery and raw 
material, or advances money in machinery and raw material to be 
able to exploit labour. Although the profit he makes, the surplus 
value of the commodity he realises in the process of circulation, 
consists only of the excess of unpaid labour appropriated by him 
over the labour he has paid—his commodity only has a surplus 
value because a portion of unpaid labour time is now contained in 
it, and he sells this although he has not paid for it—the size of his 
profit by no means depends on the surplus value alone, but rather 
on the ratio of the surplus value to the total amount of capital 
advanced. If the capital advanced was 1,000, and if the value of 
the commodity into which it is converted is 1,200, the profit is 
only 200 compared with 1,000; 200:1,000=20%. The part of the 
capital that was laid out in machinery and material of labour is 
just as much advanced by the capitalist as is the part laid out in 
wages, and although the latter part alone creates surplus value, it 
only creates it on condition that the other parts, i.e. the conditions 
of production for the labour, are advanced, and all these elements 
enter uniformly into the product. Since the capitalist can only 
exploit labour by advancing constant capital, since he can only 
valorise constant by advancing variable capital, all these things are 
lumped together in his notion of the matter, and all the more so 
because his real profit is determined by the ratio of surplus value 
not to variable capital but to the total capital, hence is not 
determined at all by surplus value, but rather by the profit, which, 
as we have just seen, may remain the same and yet express 
different rates of surplus value. 

We now return, therefore, to the point of departure from which 
we proceeded in considering the general form of capital. Profit 
represents the excess of exchange value, produced in the process 
of production and realised in the process of circulation, over the 
amount of money or exchange value originally converted into 
capital by the capitalist. Firstly, the real rate at which the capitalist 
profits, hence capital grows and accumulates, depends on this 
relation. Secondly, therefore, the competition between capitals is 

Costs of Production 81 

also dependent on this. Thirdly, this leads to the disappearance of 
any recollection of the real origin of this profit and the qualitative 
distinction between the various elements, or the entry of these 
elements into the capitalist process of production. 

Profit therefore=the excess of value of the product or rather 
the amount of money realised in circulation for the product 
(hence in the capitalist process, this excess during a particular 
turnover time) above the value of the capital which entered the 
formation of the product. The whole of the capital accordingly 
appears as means of production for this profit, and since these 
means of production are values which are here given over in part 
to the industrial process of production, in part to circulation, in 
order to create this excess of value or profit, the whole amount of 
the capital advanced appears as costs of production of the commodity, 
in fact costs of production of the gain or profit which is made by 
means of the commodity. 

Cost of production means everything, all the components of the 
product the capitalist has paid for. If he sells the commodity at 
£1,200, and surplus value on this amounts to 200, he has paid 
£1,000, he has bought it, and converted it from the form of 
money, of exchange value, in which he originally possessed it, into 
the form of the commodity; i.e., from the standpoint of exchange 
value, into a lower form. If he were not to sell the commodity, 
which he has not produced for its use value, the £1,000 advanced 
would be lost. They are in any case costs, and must be replaced by 
the sale, so that the capital can be available again and again in its 
original state, so that it may simply be preserved. [XVI-981] The 
£1,000, or rather the advance of the £1,000, for they are intended 
to be replaced, are the price—hence the costs—which the capitalist 
pays in order to buy the £1,200. 

It therefore follows that the production costs of the commodity from 
the standpoint of the individual capitalist, and its real production 
costs, are two different things. 

The production costs contained in the commodity itself are 
equal to the labour time it costs to produce it. Or its production 
costs are equal to its value. The labour materialised in it includes 
the labour used to produce the raw material which has entered 
into it, as well as the labour used to produce the fixed capital 
employed in producing it, and, finally, the labour, the neces- 
sary and surplus labour, paid and unpaid labour, employed to 
produce it. 

From the standpoint of the capitalist, the costs of production 
consist only of the money he has advanced —or only of the part of 

82 Capital and Profit 

the production costs of the commodity which he has paid. The 
capitalist has not paid for the surplus labour contained in the 
commodity. Indeed, it is precisely the fact of not paying for this 
which constitutes his profit. This surplus labour costs the capital- 
ist nothing, although it naturally costs the worker labour just as 
much as does his paid labour, and enters into the commodity 
as an element constitutive of value just as much as the paid 
labour. 

It follows, therefore, that surplus value, hence also profit, in so 
far as it is only another form of surplus value, does not enter into 
the production costs of the capitalist who sells the commodity, 
even though it does enter into the production costs of the 
commodity. His profit arises precisely from the fact that he has 
something to sell which he has not paid for. For him the profit consists 
in the excess of the value (the price) of the commodity over its 
production costs, which means in other words nothing but the excess 
of the total amount of labour time contained in the commodity 
over the labour time paid for by the capitalist which is contained 
therein. 

This solves the controversy over whether profit enters into the 
costs of production or not. (See in Say, Jones, and particularly 
Torrens, etc.; these matters will be examined in more detail later 
on.”’) 

b) In a deeper sense, it is a question (see the absurd Say, Storch, 
etc.) of whether profit enters into the costs of production, i.e. is 
indispensable to capitalist production. It boils down to the fact that 
surplus value, hence also profit, is not merely a form of income 
but a relation of production for capital (for accumulation, etc.); 
the absurdity of the abstract distinction between a relation of 
production and a relation of distribution is in general demon- 
strated here. The question can only be brought up at all through 
an absolute failure to comprehend the nature of capital, hence 
also of capitalist production. In the shape of interest, profit 
already enters as an element into the costs of production. 

c) It follows from the law that the production costs of capital are 
smaller than the value of the commodities produced by it (and 
profit is constituted precisely by the excess of the value of the 
commodity over the value of the production costs contained in it, or 
the excess of the labour contained in it over the paid labour 
contained in it), that commodities can be sold below their value at a 
profit. As long as some excess over the production costs is realised, 
a profit is always realised. The commodity will be sold at a profit 
as long as it is sold above the value of its production costs, 

Costs of Production 83 

although this does not mean that the buyer has to pay the whole 
of the difference between the value of the production costs and 
the value of the commodity. Assume that a pound of twist has a 
value of ls., of which */; are costs of production. 1h is unpaid 
labour, hence the element that constitutes the surplus value. If the 
1 Ib. of twist is sold at only Is., it is sold at its value, and the profit 
realised in it amounts to '/5s.="*/sp.=2°/sd. If the 1 Ib. were to be 

4x12 

sold at ‘/ss., or d.=**/;d.=97/sd., it would be sold at 

"fs below its value, and no profit at all would be realised. But if it is 
sold above 9°/sd., say perhaps at 10d., [XVI-982] it is sold at a 
profit of °/sd., although this is still 2d. or ™/\od. below its value. 
The profit is there as soon as it is sold above its production costs; 
even if it is sold below its value. If it is sold at its value, the whole 
of the surplus value is realised for the capitalist, i.e. the whole 
excess of the unpaid labour contained in the commodity over the 
paid labour contained therein. Therefore delimited here is the 
whole of the room available for the rise and fall of profit. This 
room is determined by the surplus value, i.e. by (the correlation 
of] the value of the commodity and the value of its production 
costs, by difference between the value of the commodity and the 
value of its production costs, between the total amount of labour 
contained in it and the paid labour contained in it. 

If the capitalist sells the commodity at a profit, but below its 
value, a part of the surplus value is appropriated by the buyer 
instead of the seller. This different division of the surplus value 
among different persons would naturally change nothing in its 
nature, just as it is a matter of complete indifference to the worker 
(unless he happens himself to be the buyer of the commodity) 
whether his unpaid surplus labour is appropriated by the capitalist 
who exploits him directly or by the class of capitalists, etc. 

This law, that the capitalist can sell the commodity at a profit, 
although below its value, is very important for the explanation of 
certain phenomena of competition. 

In particular, one of the main phenomena, which we shall come 
back to later in more detail, would be entirely inexplicable without 
this: namely, a general rate of profit, or the way in which the capitals 
work out amongst themselves the total surplus value produced by 
capital. A general rate of profit of this kind is only made possible 
by the fact that some commodities are sold above, others below, 
their value, or that the surplus value realised by the individual 
capital depends not on the surplus value it itself produces but on 

84 Capital and Profit 

the average surplus value produced by the whole of the capitalist 
class. 

d)’’ Therefore, if the surplus value is given, absolute or 
relative—i.e., on the one hand, there is a given limit to the normal 
working day, beyond which labour time cannot be extended, on 
the other hand the productive power of labour is given, so that 
the minimum of necessary labour time cannot be curtailed any 
further— profit can only be increased in so far as it is possible to 
reduce the value of the constant capital required for the 
production of the commodity. When constant capital enters into 
the production of a commodity, is required for its production, it is 
not its price (its exchange value) but its use value which alone 
comes into consideration. The amount of labour that flax e.g. can 
absorb in spinning does not depend on the value of the flax, but 
on its quantity, given the stage of production, i.e. given a definite 
stage of technological development; just as the assistance a 
machine affords to e.g. 100 workers does not depend on its value, 
price, but on its use value, its character as a machine. At one stage 
of technological development a bad machine may be expensive, 
while at a higher stage of technological development an excellent 
machine may be cheap. The English cotton industry was first able 
to develop once cotton was converted from an expensive into a 
cheap material by the invention of the corron cin (1793) //because 
1 old black woman could separate 50 Ibs of cotton fibres from 
cotton seed in 1 day immediately after the invention of this 
chopping machine, whereas previously the day’s labour of 1 black 
man was required to perform this process for a single pound of 
cotton//. 

The value of the constant capital required at a particular 

technological stage can only be reduced, hence the profit, —— can 
c+v 

only be increased, while the surplus value remains the same, in 
two circumstances. Either if there is a direct fall in the value of the 
fixed and circulating capital employed, i.e. both become the 
product of less labour time, hence there is an increase in the 
productive power of the branches of labour of which they are the 
direct products. In this case there is an increase in the profit in a 
branch of labour because of a growth in the productivity of labour 
(hence to a certain degree a growth in surplus labour) in the other 
branches of labour which supply it with the conditions of 
production. [XVI-983] In this case too, therefore, the profit 
thereby obtained (or the increase of profit, or, and this is the same 
thing, the diminution of the difference between profit and surplus 

Costs of Production 85 

value), or the greater productivity of capital (for profit is the 
actual product of capital) is a result of the growth in the 
productivity of labour and the appropriation of that growth by 
capital. Only this does not take place directly, i.e. it takes place 
indirectly. Thus the growth of the profit a capitalist obtains 
through the cheapening of cotton and the spinning machine, 
though not a result of the rise in the productivity of spinning, is 
indeed a result of the rise in the productivity of machine 
manufacture and flax cultivation (or cotton cultivation, etc.). 
The advantage of this is twofold, it raises the productivity of 
capital in two ways. In order to materialise a given quantity of 
labour, hence to appropriate a given quantity of surplus labour, a 
smaller outlay is needed in purchasing the conditions of labour, 
the constant part of capital, the value of which only reappears in 
the product but is not increased in it. There is therefore a fall in 
the production costs now required to appropriate a given quantity 
of surplus labour. This is expressed by a rise in the ratio of the 
variable part of capital to the constant part, hence to the total 

. . . : . Ss 
capital. There is therefore an increase in profit, for ae clearly 
CU 

grows in line with a fall in the value of C, the numerical 
magnitude of C, since it would reach its maximum when C=0. 

Secondly: Let us assume that a constant capital of a given 
magnitude was previously required e.g. to employ a given number 
of spinners and to appropriate a given quantity of their surplus 
labour. At the given stage of production the employment of these 
100 men requires machinery* of a certain quality and a definite 
size, and similarly a definite quantity of raw material, cotton, wool, 
silk, etc. But the value of this constant capital has nothing to do 
with the spinning process into which it enters. If it fell by a half, 
the surplus value produced in the spinning process would firstly 
remain the same as before, but the profit would have increased. If 
the constant capital was originally °/, of the total capital, the 
variable capital '/s—hence e.g. out of £600, £500 constant, £100 
variable—and the surplus value 30%, the rate of profit would 
come to 5% on £600 (1006 makes 600; 6X5=30).(Rate of profit 
5%: surplus value 30%=600 (c+v):100(v)) (5x600=3,000, and 
30100 similarly=3,000). The rate of profit was 5%. If now the 
production costs of the constant capital were to fall by half —i.e. if 
there were a doubling of productive power in the branches which 

a In the manuscript, Marx wrote the words “fixed capital” over the word 

86 Capital and Profit 

provided this constant capital—therefore from 500 to 250, the 
total amount of capital employed would have fallen from 600 to 
350. The surplus value, at 30, and the variable capital, at 100, 
would remain the same... So now it is 30 on 350. The rate of 
30 A 30 

profit is 8*/;,%. (350:30=100:8%/7.) The profit would therefore have 
increased because in the first case the ratio of the variable capital 
to the total capital=100:600=1:6. In the second case it is 
100:350=1:"/s. In the first case the variable capital='/¢ of the total 

. : : l Ses 7 ‘ 
capital, in the second it= —=7/,. But the ratio is 1/6:?/7=7/ay:'7/49. 
‘2 
The ratio of the variable capital to the total capital has therefore 
risen from 7/49 to '?/49, i.e. by °/4. The rate of profit has increased 
by the same ratio as that by which the ratio of the variable capital 
to the total capital has increased, [XVI-984] because a Pas Ps 

profit, instead of ; so instead of 5% the 

7x4 
7:12=5:8"/y. (5x 12=60, and 7X (84 4/7)=56+ a —56+4=60.) 

This would therefore be the first gain, or, speaking generally, a 
capital of 350 would now bring in as much profit as a capital of 
600 did previously, because the surplus value would remain the 
same, but the employment of the same amount of capital laid out 
in wages would now only require for its realisation a constant 
capital of 250 instead of the 500 required previously. The 
production costs required for the production of the surplus value 
and accordingly of the profit would have been reduced. 

Secondly, however, £250 out of the total capital of £600 
required previously for the production of the same amount of 
commodities and the same surplus value would be set free. This 
money could either be invested in another branch of business 
for the appropriation of alien labour, or employed in the same 
branch of business. Presupposing the same stage of production 
and therefore the same ratio between the different parts of the 
capital, twice the number of workers could be employed, hence 
twice the surplus labour could be appropriated, without any 
increase at all in constant capital. An increase of only £100 would 
be needed for wages; hence a total capital of £700, to make a gain 
(a surplus value) of £60 (60:200, the same as 30:100, surplus value 
as before is 30%). Previously £1,200 would have been needed 
(according to the previous rate). Or if the 250 were added as new 
capital to the old (where this is technically possible) and divided 
into c and v in the same proportion, 71°/, would be the share of 

Costs of Production 87 

labour and 178*/, the share of constant capital. According to the 
previous ratio, surplus value would then be 21°/; (or 30%) 
(100:30=73°/7:21°/7). The total profit on the capital of £600 
(although the rate of surplus value remains the same, surplus 
value itself has increased, because the ratio of variable capital to 
total capital has increased) now=304219/,=515/z. 

The rate of profit would have increased from 5% to 84/4% as 
compared with the original situation, while the amount of profit 
would have increased, because surplus value has increased, from 
30 to 51°/;. Every reduction in the value of the constant capital, 
leaving aside the fact that it increases the rate of profit, because it 
reduces the ratio of total capital to variable, now permits the 
exploitation of the same amount of labour with a smaller outlay of 
capital overall, therefore leaving the surplus value unaltered, and 
sets free a part of the capital, which can be converted now into 
variable capital, the self-increasing part of capital, instead of being 
converted into constant capital, as it was previously. Any increase 
in the value of constant capital (if the stage of production, hence 
the technological conditions of production, remain the same) only 
increases the production costs required for the production of the 
same surplus value, and therefore reduces the rate of profit. Any 
reduction in the value of constant capital, as long as the stage of 
production remains the same, increases the part of capital which 
can be converted into variable capital, capital which is not only 
self-preserving but self-increasing, and therefore increases not 
only the rate of profit, but its amount, because it increases the 
amount of surplus value. 

[XVI-985] Another example. 

If, therefore, there is a given capital, of e.g. £9,000 sterling, and 
if the same flax, machinery, etc., which cost £6,000 previously, 
and was worked on by 100 workers during the year, at 
£30 apiece, can now be bought at £3,000, the profit (surplus value 
calculated on the total capital) which accrued to the capitalist for 
the £6,000 would be as large as the profit for which 9,000 was 
previously necessary. He would need '/3 less capital in order to 
absorb and appropriate the same surplus labour. £3,000 would 
therefore be set free for him. If the ratio remained the same, he 
could now, out of the £3,000 which had been set free, employ 
1,500 for machinery and flax, 1,500 for wages, and absorb the 
surplus labour of 50 more workers than previously with the same 
capital of £9,000. In the first case, the rate of profit would have 
risen if he only employed £6,000, because the ratio of the variable 
to the total capital would have increased. In the second case, the 

7* 

88 Capital and Profit 

AMOUNT Of profit would have risen as well as the rate, if he 
continued to employ the £9,000 in production, because 
1) 4,500 out of the 9,000 would have been exchanged for living 
labour, as against 3,000 previously, and because 2) the surplus 
labour of 50 more men would have been appropriated, the 
quantity of surplus labour would have increased not only relatively 
but absolutely. In both cases, the productivity of labour, in so far as 
it affects the constant capital, only increases the profit (the rate of 
profit) because it increases surplus labour relatively, in proportion 
to the capital laid out, or absolutely (the latter when a part of the 
capital which previously, on a given, on the same, scale of 
production, had to be converted into constant capital, now 
becomes free, or can be converted into variable capital). 

The increase in the rate of profit—through a reduction in the ratio 
between variable capital and constant capital [or in the ratio of 
variable capital to] 78 the total amount of capital advanced, or, and 
this is the same thing, through a reduction in the value of the 
constant capital, as a result of the increased productive power of 
the labour which produces it—originates in both cases solely from 
the fact that surplus value is increased relatively or absolutely in 
proportion to its production costs, i.e. to the total amount of 
capital required to produce it, or that the difference between 
profit and surplus value is lessened. This increase in the rate of 
profit therefore rests on the development of productive power, 
not in the branch of labour belonging to a particular capital, but 
in the branches of labour of which the product is the constant 
capital required in that branch of labour. 

//In reality the part of capital which exists as fixed capital—or 
also all the commodity capital which was produced under the old 
conditions of production—is relatively devalued by this increase in 
productive power or the relative devaluation of this capital; just as 
the rate of profit is lessened, hence also profit is lessened 
proportionately to capital, whereas the value of that capital itself 
rises, if there is a reduction in productive power, an increase, it 
may be, in the cost of iron, wood, cotton, etc., and other elements 
which [form] fixed capital and circulating capital, to the extent 
that they enter into constant capital, given that surplus value 
remains the same. This effect is to be considered in dealing with 
competition.” This circumstance never comes into consideration 
with new capital investment, whether in the same business or in the 
newly established one; just as little with the raw material which has 
to be bought afresh. // 

// Furthermore, the rate of profit can be increased by curtailment 

Costs of Production 89 

of circulation time, hence by all inventions which ease communications 
and speed up the means of transport, and similarly by speeding 
up the formal transformation processes of the commodity, thus 
through the development of credit and the like. But this actually 
needs to be considered under the heading of the circulation 
process.” // 

A second kind of increase in the rate of profit arises from 
another source, not from economy in the labour which produces 
constant capital, but from economy in the employment of constant 
capital. Constant capital is on the one hand saved by the 
concentration of workers, by cooperation, by labour on a large 
scale. The same factory buildings, heating, lighting, etc., cost less, 
relatively speaking, when employed on a large than when 
employed on a small scale of production. Here it is the common 
application of the same use value which lessens the costs of 
production. Similarly, the cost of a part [XVI-986] of the 
machinery, etc., e.g. a steam-boiler, does not rise in proportion to 
its horsepower. (See example.) Although its absolute value rises, 
its relative value falls, in proportion to the scale of production and 
the magnitude of the variable capital which is set in motion, or the 
quantity of labour power which is exploited. The economy a 
capital applies in its own production, e.g. spinning, rests directly 
on economy of labour, i.e. the exchange of as little objectified labour 
as possible for as much living labour as possible, the production of 
the maximum amount of surplus labour, which is only made 
possible by increasing the productive power of labour. The 
economy just mentioned, in contrast, rests on accomplishing this 
greatest possible appropriation of alien unpaid labour in the most 
economical way possible, i.e., on the given scale, with the smallest 
possible production costs. This economy, too, rests either on 
exploiting the productivity of social labour outside this particular 
branch of production, i.e. the productivity of the labour employed 
in the production of constant capital; or, in the case considered 
above, on economy in the employment of constant capital, which 
either directly makes possible saving through cooperation, etc., the 
social form of labour within capitalist production, and the scale of 
this production, or makes possible the production of machinery, 
etc., on a scale at which its exchange value does not grow 
uniformly with its use value. In both cases, the raised productivity 
is the increase in the productivity of labour which arises from the 
social form of labour, this time not [through changes] in the 
labour itself but in the conditions under which and with which it 
produces. It is also relevant here that in large-scale production the 

90 Capital and Profit 

waste products more easily become the materials for new industry 
than does the scattered waste of small-scale industry; this likewise 
means a reduction in production costs. 

Capital therefore has a tendency in the direct employment of 
living labour to reduce it to necessary labour, and always to curtail 
the labour necessary for the manufacture of a product by 
exploiting the social productive power of labour, hence to 
economise on living labour—to employ as little labour as possible 
for the manufacture of a commodity. In the same way, it has a 
tendency to employ this labour which has been economised and 
reduced to necessary labour under the most economical conditions, 
i.e. to reduce the exchange value of the constant capital to the 
minimum possible level—hence altogether to reduce production 
costs to their minimum. If we see, therefore, that the value of the 
commodity is determined not by the labour time contained in it as 
such, but by the necessary labour time contained in it, capital 
realises this determination first, and at the same time continuously 
curtails the labour socially necessary to the production of a 
commodity. The price of the commodity is thereby reduced to its 
minimum, since all the elements of the labour required to produce 
it are reduced to a minimum. 

e) In order to calculate profit (like surplus value) we take not 
only the surplus value a particular capital produces in a given 
period of time (turnover time) but also a quantity of capital, 
e.g. 100, as a yardstick, so that the ratio is expressed in per 
cent. 

f) It is clear that the rate of accumulation, i.e. of the real growth 
of capital, is determined by the profit and not by the surplus 
value, since, as we have seen, the same profit and the same rate of 
profit may express very different rates of surplus value. It is profit 
that expresses surplus value in proportion to the total amount of 
capital advanced, hence the real growth (or the ratio of real 
growth) of the total capital. The real gain the capitalist makes is 
therefore not expressed by the surplus value but by the profit. 
Surplus value is related only to the part of the capital from which 
it directly arises. Profit is related to the whole of the capital which 
has been advanced in order to produce that surplus value; this 
capital therefore contains not only the part directly exchanged for 
living labour, but also the part representing the sum of the value 
of the conditions of production under which alone the other part 
of the capital. can be exchanged for living labour and the latter 
exploited. 

[XVI-987] Surplus value only expresses the excess of the part of 

Costs of Production 91 

living labour exchanged and appropriated in the production 
process over the equivalent given away in exchange for it in wages, 
in the form of objectified labour. Profit, however, expresses the 
excess of the value of the product over the value of the whole of the costs 
of production; hence it expresses in fact the increment of value 
which the total capital receives at the end of the processes of 
production and circulation, over and above the value it possessed 
before this process of production, when it entered into it. 

Profit is therefore also the sole form which interests capital 
directly, and in it the memory of its origin is completely 
extinguished. The conversion of surplus value into profit there- 
fore completes the mystification which makes capital appear as a 
SELFACTOR and a person vis-a-vis labour, thus turning the objective 
moment of the production process into a subject. 

g) How, then, is profit related to the size of the capital, 
presupposing the same surplus value? This is the same question as: 
How is the amount of profit related to the rate of profit? 

But secondly, how does a general rate of profit originate, a rate of 
profit dependent on the size of the capital alone, and independent 
of the surplus value which is created by a particular capital in a 
particular branch of business, or of the productivity (i.e. the ratio 
of appropriation of alien labour) prevailing in a particular branch 
of business? 

These two questions, which are connected with production costs, 
must be answered before we proceed to the solution of the most 
important question in this section—the decline of the rate of 
profit in the course of capitalist production. 

//Before this, one further remark regarding 6 c).**° Since 
commodities can be sold at a profit beneath their value—namely, 
provided that they are sold above the capitalist’s costs, the part of 
the production costs paid for by the capitalist himself, the part 
advanced from his own purse—and since the difference between 
the value of the commodity and costs of production allows the 
capitalist considerable room for manoeuvre and makes it possible 
to set very different price levels for the commodity below its value 
without liquidating profit altogether— it is clear that competition 
could force down the rate of profit everywhere, not only in one 
branch, but in many, indeed in all branches of production, 
through a gradual compression of prices below their value. If 
society consisted purely of industrial capitalists, this would balance 
out, since each of them would obtain his conditions of labour 

4 See this volume, pp. 82-84.— Fd. ’ 

92 Capital and Profit 

cheaper not only as a private consumer but as an industrial 
consumer, the rate of profit therefore rising again generally as a 
result both of the devaluation of the total capital advanced and of 
the diminution in the production costs of labour capacity, hence 
the rise of surplus value relatively to variable capital. But society 
includes classes with fixed incomes, THE MONEYED CLASS, etc., creditors 
and so on, hence there are fixed deductions from surplus value or 
profit which do not fall with the reduction in the rate of profit or 
the fall of the prices of commodities beneath their value. These 
classes would make a double gain. The rate which would fall to 
their share would have a higher exchange value, because it 
remained unchanged, while the prices of commodities would on 
the average have fallen beneath their value. They would come to a 
greater proportion of the deduction, and would be able to buy 
more with this. Something of the kind took place in England 
between 1815 and 1830 (see Blake). Under these circumstances, 
the situation of the actual industrial capitalists might be very 
precarious. The moneyed classes would in fact pocket the 
considerable part of the surplus value lost by industrial capital 
itself. However, such a state of affairs could only be temporary, 
since it would call forth bankruptcies among the industrialists (as 
among the English farmers between 1815 and 1830) and hold up 
the accumulation of capital. A reaction would necessarily occur. 
Therefore, although competition may reduce the rate of profit not 
only in a particular branch of industry, as long as it is higher than 
the average rate, but also, [XVI-988] as Adam Smith says,” in all 
branches, the latter effect can only be temporary. The capital 
accumulated in the hands of the fixed income and MONEYED CLASSES 
would either have to be employed in the purchase of commodities 
for consumption, and in this case the price of the commodity 
would again move closer to its value, hence the rate of profit 
would again rise; or it would itself be loaned out again as capital. 
In the latter case there would be on the one hand a yet further 
increase in competition, hence the rate of profit, which had 
already fallen a long way, would sink still further owing to a 
further reduction of the prices of the commodities beneath their 
values, thereby bringing about a crisis, an explosion and a 
reaction; but on the other hand, the new placements of funds, 
whether as interest or as rent, would be made at a lower rate, in 
line with the fall in prices, thereby bringing forth a situation 
approximating to that in which all capitalists sold the commodities 
beneath their value, hence, through equalisation, at their value. 
The rate of profit would thereby rise to its normal level again. 

Costs of Production 93 

From this standpoint, therefore, it appears that Adam Smith’s 
view is correct in one aspect, overlooked by his opponents, that it 
explains certain temporary phenomena of modern industry, but 
does not explain the general phenomenon which is involved in the 
normal decline of the rate of profit; all it does is to explain merely 
temporary general fluctuations, which are later again balanced out. 

Further: This view does not in fact imply that the rate of profit 
in general sinks, but rather the rate of profit which appears 
directly as industrial profit. It implies that there merely takes place 
a different distribution, since in fact a considerable part of the 
surplus value is pocketed by the Moneyed INTEREST and the FIXED INCOME 
MEN, instead of the industrial capitalists themselves. There is, it 
suggests, merely a different distribution of profit in general; profit 
itself has not changed its rate, since it now appears as higher 
income in the hands of other classes. In the long term, indeed, 
this would lead to crises and reaction. So Adam Smith does not 
explain the actual phenomenon. But the value of the Fixed incomes 
would rise, on the one hand because they would collect a higher 
rate of overall profit—although the rate would remain the same 
nominally—and secondly because they would in fact buy for their 
share not only more products, but also a greater amount of 
objectified labour, even if this labour was not paid for by them. // 

It is clear that if the surplus value is given, and the rate of profit 
in which it is expressed is given //this may, as we have seen, vary 
greatly while the surplus value remains the same //, the amount of 
profit, the absolute magnitude of profit, depends entirely on the 
magnitude of the total capital employed. If the profit on 100 thalers is 
10, it is 10,000 on 100,000, namely 101,000, since the ratio of 
capital 100 to capital 100,000=10:(10x1,000). The amount of 
profit grows in this case in exactly the same measure as the value 
or the magnitude of the capital advanced; just as when the capital 
is given, the amount of profit depends on the rate of profit. 

1) We see, however, that the same surplus value may be 
expressed in very different rates of profit, according to the ratio 
of the variable capital to the total capital. 

2) But secondly, the surplus value itself is in the nature of 
things not the same for different capitals. It differs. In the first 
place, the ratio of the actual circulation time to production time 
varies, and therefore the turnover time of different capitals is 
different, and the surplus value really created stands in a ratio 
which is the inverse of that between circulation time and 
production time. Secondly, the normal working day differs with 
different capitals, and therefore surplus labour time is different, 

94 Capital and Profit 

although this is initially only to be conceived as compensation for 
the proportions in which the different modes of labour stand 
towards simple average labour. Thirdly, the ratio of circulating to 
fixed capital, the ratio in which fixed capital turns over, etc., are 
different. Productivity differs in different branches of industry, 
and the proportion in which they participate in the productivity of 
other branches of industry is also different. For example, an 
industry which employs very few hands does not participate in the 
cheapening of agricultural products, or, in general, in the 
cheapening of means of subsistence, in the same measure as an 
industry which employs many hands, one setting in motion much 
living labour; just as an industry which employs little machinery 
does not participate in the same measure in the cheapening of 
machinery as one which employs a great deal of machinery. 

[XVI-989] One can only speak of an average rate of profit when 
the rates of profit in the different branches of production of 
capital are different, not when they are the same. 

A closer investigation of this point belongs to the chapter on 
competition.” Nevertheless, the decisive general considerations 
must be adduced here. 

Firstly, it lies in the nature of a common or general rate of 
profit that it represents the average profit; the average of very 
diverse rates of profit. 

The average rate of profit presupposes further that if a 
particular capital in a particular investment brings in a profit 
which rises or falls about a certain point, its profit rises or falls 
above or below the normal rate of profit, which is therefore 
determined precisely by the level designated from this point of 
measurement. At this level the rate of profit counts as the normal 
one, which capital as such is by and large entitled to. But even 
now we are not yet at the decisive point. 

A rate of profit—to the extent that it is not compensated for by 
the particular nature of the capital investment, in an analogous 
manner to the way concurrent circumstances, such as the 
particular nature of the labour, etc., modify somewhat the 
differences in length of the normal days of different branches of 
labour—above or below the average counts as an exceptional 
condition for capital in the particular branch of investment where 
it takes place, and it will be forced down or raised up by 
competition to the general level, through the entry of outside 
capitals into the privileged branch, or in the opposite case the exit 
of local capitals—capitals which are settled in that branch—out of 
the latter. The level of the rate of profit thereby falls in the first 

Costs of Production 95 

case, and rises in the second. The surplus profit, or the short-fall 
of profit, an individual capitalist encounters in a particular branch 
(district) of capital investment, does not belong to this discussion at 
all. What is involved here is rather the profit of capital in all the 
particular branches of production, or in every particular sphere of 
capital investment conditioned by the social division of labour— 
for every capital placed in average or normal conditions. This 
qualification is necessary, in order to proceed, through analysis, to 
what lies at the basis of the average rate of profit. 

If we adopt some particular quantity of capital, e.g. 100, as a 
yardstick—i.e. a yardstick for comparing the magnitude of 
different capitals—the meaning of the average rate of profit is that 
on £100 a profit of e.g. £10, of ‘ho of the capital advanced, or of 
10%, is made, entirely disregarding the particular nature or 
determination of the sphere of production in which this £100 is 
invested as capital. It therefore by no means follows that a sum of 
value of £100 can be invested as capital in every sphere of 
production. It only follows that in each of these spheres 10% is 
made on 100, whatever the magnitude of the capital required for 
engaging in a particular branch of production. A general rate of 
profit therefore means in fact nothing but that the total amount of 
profit is absolutely determined by the magnitude of the capital 
advanced. The capital may be large or small, the average rate of 
its profit is 10%, and indeed in the same circulation time, turnover 
time, hence 1 year for example, as the measure of circulation time. 
If circulation time is posited as indifferent for all capitals (or 
identical, which is the same thing); furthermore the rate of profit 
too; the amount of profit will depend entirely on the magnitude 
of the capital. Or, the amount of profit=a times x, in which a is a 
fixed magnitude, x is the variable which expresses the magnitude 
of the capital. Or, given the magnitude of the capital, the amount 
of profit is given, namely determined, by the general rate of 
profit. [XVI-990] That the general rate of profit=10%, e.g., 
means nothing at all except that '/:) of the capitals, in whatever 
branch they are employed, returns as profit or that the profit 
stands in the same ratio to the magnitude of the capital—has the 
same ratio to the magnitude of the capital advanced, its amount 
therefore depends directly on the magnitude—stands in direct 
ratio to the magnitude of the capital; hence is similarly indepen- 
dent of the real turnover time of the capital (since the rate of profit 
is the same for any given circulation time), is independent of its 
specific circulation time—i.e. of the ratio of its circulation ume to its 
production time; is similarly independent of the organic relation 

96 Capital and Profit 

of the different components of capital in each particular branch 
of production, hence independent of the real surplus value— 
ice. the real quantity of surplus labour—which every individual 
capital absorbs or produces in every particular branch of produc- 
tion. 

The conversion of surplus value into profit alters not only the 
numerical relation—or rather the expression of the numerical 
relation—but the form as such. Surplus value appeared as a 
relation in which objectified labour was exchanged for living 
labour, or in which objectified labour appropriated living labour 
without exchange. The organic relation of the different parts of 
the capital advanced to each other, and therefore also the relation 
of the surplus value to a specific component of the capital 
emerges, is expressed in this. The relation ceases as soon as 
surplus value is expressed as profit. All parts of the capital 
advanced appear as uniform magnitudes of value, only differing 
quantitatively -amounts of exchange value, sums of value which 
in relation to their quantity—or rather added together— 
uniformly have the quality of producing not only themselves but 
an excess over their original magnitude: profit. The capital is the 
main sum, the profit is the subsidiary sum produced by this main 
sum in a definite circulation time. The main sum, the capital, is 
related as ground (cause) to the subsidiary sum as the grounded 
(consequence, effect). This appears as the existing law of capitalist 
production. How and whence and why is so little expressed in this 
relation of capital and profit that the spokesmen of capitalist 
production, the political economists, give the most varied and 
contradictory interpretations of this phenomenon. 

Nevertheless, even after this conversion of surplus value into 
profit, surplus value remains equal to profit as an absolute 
magnitude. Whether 100 is calculated as a profit of 10% on 1,000, 
or as a surplus value of 20% on the variable part contained within 
that 1,000, say 500, the 100 continues [to appear] as the same 
magnitude of value, only differently calculated //and in the 
difference of the calculation there exists the difference of form, 
the extinction of the relation of this excess over the capital advanced 
to the organic relation of the different components of capital//. In itself 
the distinction remains purely formal. The difference of surplus 
value in particular capital investments would therefore continue to 
be displayed here as a difference of profit. 

The situation is entirely different, however, with the general rate 
of profit, the most general Jaw of which is expressed in the fact that 
the rate of profit is equal for all capitals, or, and this is the same 

Costs of Production 97 

thing, that the amounts of profit are related to each other directly 
and exactly as the magnitudes of the capitals. 

The general rate of profit, and therefore profit in its real, 
empirical shape, already implies the conversion of surplus value 
into profit and therefore the conversion of the rate of surplus 
value into the rate of profit. But then the differences in surplus value 
(in its rate) (and therefore also relatively in the total amounts of 
surplus value), as they emerge in the particular spheres of capital 
investment, partly owing to differences in the ratio of variable to 
constant capital, partly owing to the ratio of circulating and fixed 
capital (let us say owing to all the relations which emerge from the 
ratio of production time to circulation [XVI-991] time)—these 
different rates of surplus value, or the diversity of surplus value, 
continue to exist, although in the altered form of differences in 
profit or different rates of profit. These serve as the substance, the 
prerequisite, of the general rate of profit, and therefore of profit in 
us organic form. They are equalised, reduced to their average 
magnitude, which is then the real (normal) rate of profit in all 
particular spheres—particular spheres of production of capital— 
produced by the division of social labour. On the basis of the first 
transformation, therefore, a second takes place, which no longer 
affects the form alone, but also the substance itself, in that it alters 
the absolute magnitude of profit—hence of surplus value, which 
appears in the form of profit. This absolute magnitude was 
untouched by the first transformation. 

Whatever the production costs (in the capitalist’s eyes) in any 
particular sphere of production—hence of any particular com- 
modity—the capitalist adds e.g. 10% (the general rate of profit) to 
the sum advanced, calculates thus that 10% will be added to the 
amount of commodities produced in a year. This 10% then enters 
into the price of the commodity, and if the commodity is sold at 
this price the normal profit, or the average profit, is realised. If, 
e.g., the capitalist were to reckon 2% over this average profit in 
the first half of the year, and 2% under in the second half, the 
total amount of commodities during a year, or the average profit 
he makes during a year, would represent the normal profit or 
average profit of a capital of a given magnitude, since the 
increases and reductions in profit during the daily transactions 
would have balanced out to that amount. 

But in its essence profit consists of surplus value—not of a 
formally higher valuation of the product, as perhaps the money 
price rises nominally if the value of the material of money, gold 
perhaps, falls, without a simultaneous fall in the value of 

98 Capital and Profit 

commodities. Surplus value is a genuine creation of new value. It 
represents more objectified labour—hence a higher real exchange 
value—than the labour originally objectified in the capital, i.e. it 
goes beyond its original exchange value. And this surplus quantity 
of labour is realised in a surplus quantity of product or use value. 
Just as it would be wrong to regard a greater quantity of use 
values or products as a greater quantity of objectified labour on 
account of their greater quantity—with an increase in the 
productivity of labour they may represent the converse, a smaller 
quantity of labour—so it is correct that at a given level of the 
productivity of labour, at a given stage of production, surplus 
labour or surplus value expresses itself at the same time as surplus 
product, more use value. If we consider the total capital, the total 
surplus value represents the total excess quantity of labour which 
is realised in the total surplus propuce, over and above the product 
which replaces the constant part of capital and is required for the 
reproduction of the whole of the working class—a surplus PRODUCE 
which is in part converted back into capital, and in part forms the 
income of all the classes living, under various headings, from their 
command over alien labour, from their respective shares in this

## General Law of the Fall in the Rate of Profit with the Progress of Capitalist Production

7) [GENERAL LAW OF THE FALL IN THE RATE OF PROFIT 
WITH THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION] 

We have seen (6 g))* that real profit—i.e. the current average 
profit and its rate—is different for the individual capital from 
profit, and therefore from the rate of profit, in so far as the latter 
consists of the surplus value really produced by the individual 
capital and the rate of profit therefore=the ratio of the surplus 
value to the total amount of the capital advanced. But it was also 
shown that considering the sum total of the capitals which are 
employed in the various particular spheres of production, the total 
amount of the social capital, or, and this is the same thing, the total 
capital of the capitalist class, the average rate of profit is nothing 
other than the total surplus value related to and calculated on this 
total capital; that it is related to the total capital exactly in the way 
in which profit—and therefore the rate of profit—is related to 
the individual capital, in so far as profit is considered only as 
surplus value which has been converted formally. Here, therefore, 
we once again stand on firm ground, where, without entering into 
the competition of the many capitals, we can derive the general 
law directly from the general nature of capital as so far developed. 
This law, and it is the most important law of political economy, is 
that the rate of profit has a tendency to fall with the progress of capitalist 
production. 

[XVI-1000] Since the general rate of profit is nothing but the 
ratio of the total amount of surplus value to the total amount of 
capital employed by the capitalist class, we are not concerned here 
with the different branches into which surplus value is divided, 
such as industrial profit, interest, rent. Since all these different 
forms of surplus value are only components of the total surplus 
value, one part may increase because the other declines. We are 
concerned here, however, with a fall in the rate of the total 
surplus value. Even the rent of land—as Adam Smith has already 
correctly noted—falls with the development of capitalist produc- 
tion, instead of rising, not in proportion to the particular area of 
land of which it appears to be the product, but in proportion to 
the capital invested in agriculture, therefore precisely in the. form 
in which it steps forth directly as a component of surplus value.*’ 
This law is confirmed by the whole of modern agronomy. (See 
Dombasle,** Jones, etc.) 

So where does this tendency for the general rate of profit to fall 
come from? Before this question is answered, one may point out 

General Law of the Fall in the Rate of Profit 105 

that it has caused a great deal of anxiety to bourgeois political 
economy. The whole of the Ricardian and Malthusian school is a 
cry of woe over the day of judgement this process would inevitably 
bring about, since capitalist production is the production of profit, 
hence loses its stimulus, the soul which animates it, with the fall in 
this profit. Other economists have brought forward grounds of 
consolation, which are not less characteristic. But apart from 
theory there is also the practice, the crises from * superabundance 
of capital or, what comes to the same, the mad adventures capital 
enters upon in consequence of the lowering of [the] rate of profit. 
Hence crises—see Fullarton—acknowledged as a_ necessary 
violent means for the cure of the plethora of capital, and the 
restoration of a sound rate of profit.* 

// Fluctuations in the rate of profit, independent of organic 
changes in the components of capital, or of the absolute magnitude 
of capital, are possible if the value of the capital advanced, 
whether it is engaged in the form of fixed capital, or exists as raw 
material, finished commodities, etc., rises or falls in consequence 
of an increase or reduction, independent of the already existing 
capital, in the labour time needed for its reproduction, since the 
value of every commodity—hence also of the commodities of 
which the capital consists—is conditioned not only by the 
necessary labour time contained in it itself, but by the necessary — 
socially necessary —labour time which is required for its reproduc- 
tton, and this reproduction may occur under circumstances which 
hinder or facilitate it, and are different from the conditions of the 
original production. If under the changed circumstances twice as 
much labour time, or, inversely, half as much, is generally 
required to reproduce the same capital, as was needed to produce 
it, that capital, presupposing that the value of money remains 
permanently unchanged, would now be worth 200 thalers, if it was 
previously worth 100, or, if it was previously worth 100, it might 
now only be worth 50. If this increase or decline in value were to 
affect uniformly all sections of capital, profit too, like the capital, 
would now be expressed in twice as many or in half as many 
thalers. The rate would remain unchanged. 5 is related to 50 as 10 
to 100 or 20:200. Let us assume however that the nominal value 
of fixed capital and raw material alone rises, and that they form *f. 
of 100, hence 80, the variable capital forming '/;, hence 20. In this 
case the surplus value, hence the profit, would continue to be 
expressed in [XVI-1001] the same sum of money. Thus the rate of 
profit would have risen or fallen. In the first case surplus 
value=10 thalers, which makes 10% on 100. But the 80 are now 

106 Capital and Profit 

worth 160, hence the total capital=180. 10 on 
180='/:g= /1g= 100:18=5=5°/9%, instead of the previous 10%. In 
the second case 40 instead of 80, the total capital=60, on which 
10=)/6=!9/,. 100:6=16=167/;%. But these fluctuations can never 
be general, unless they affect the commodities which enter into the 
worker’s consumption, hence unless they affect variable capital, 
hence the whole of capital. In this case, however, the rate of profit 
remains unchanged, even though the amount of profit has 
changed nominally. // 

The general rate of profit can never rise or fall through a rise 
or fall in the total value of the capital advanced. If the value of the 
capital advanced, expressed in money, rises, the nominal monetary 
expression of the surplus value rises too. The rate remains 
unchanged. Ditto in the case of a fall. 

The general rate of profit can only fall: 

1) if the absolute magnitude of surplus value falls. The latter 
has, inversely, a tendency to rise in the course of capitalist 
production, for its growth is identical with the development of the 
productive power of labour, which is developed by capitalist 
production; 

2) because the ratio of variable capital to constant capital falls. 
As we have seen, the rate of profit is always smaller than the rate 
of surplus value which is expressed in it.* But the larger the ratio 
of constant to variable capital, the smaller it is. Or, the same rate 
of surplus value is expressed in a rate of profit which is the 
smaller, the larger the ratio of the total amount of capital 
advanced to the variable part of the latter, or the greater a part 
the constant capital forms of the total capital. Surplus value 

boa. F : 
expressed as profit is Che? and the larger C is, the smaller this 
: 

magnitude, and the more it diverges from 

S 
the rate of surplus 
U 

value. For 

hence 5 = 2 

C+eot 
But the law of development of capitalist production (see 
Cherbuliez,” etc.) consists precisely in the continuous decline of 
variable capital, i.e. the part of capital laid out in wages, in return 
for living labour—the variable component of capital—in relation 
to the constant component of capital, i.e. to the part of capital 

would reach its maximum when C=0, 

a See this volume, pp. 69-77.— Ed. 

General Law of the Fall in the Rate of Profit 107 

which consists in fixed capital and in the circutatine carrrat laid out 
for raw material and matiéres instrumentales.* , The whole develop- 
ment of relative surplus value, i.e. of the productive power of 
labour, i.e. of capital, consists, as we have seen,” in the curtailment 
of necessary labour time, hence also the reduction of the total 
amount of the capital exchanged for labour, through the increase 
in the production of surplus labour by means of division of 
labour, machinery, etc., cooperation, and the expansion in the 
amount of value and the mass of constant capital expended which 
this involves, accompanied by a reduction in the capital expended 
for labour. 

So when the ratio of variable capital to the total amount of 
capital alters, the rate of profit falls, ie. the ratio of surplus value 
to the variable part of capital” is the smaller, [XVI-1002] the 
smaller the ratio of variable capital to constant capital. 

If, for example, in the production of India the ratio of the 
capital laid out as wages to the constant capital=5:1, and in 
England it is 1:5, it is clear that the rate of profit in India must 
appear much larger, even if the surplus value actually realised is 
much smaller. Let us take 500. If the variable capital=°"/;=100, 
the surplus value 40, the rate of surplus value will be 40%, the 
rate of profit only 10%. In contrast, if the variable part is 400 and 
the rate of surplus value is only 20%, this would make 80 on 400, 
and on 500 a rate of profit of 80:500, of 8:50. 8:50=16:100. 
Therefore 16%. (100:16=500:80 or 50:8=250:40 or 25:4=125:20. 
25x20=500. 4x125=500.) So although labour would be twice as 
strongly exploited in Europe as in India, the rate of profit in India 
would be related to the rate of profit in Europe as 16:10, as 
8:5,=1:°/s. Hence as 1:0,625. And indeed this is because */; of the 
total capital is exchanged for living labour in India, and only '/; in 
Europe. If real wealth appears slight in those countries where the 
rate of profit is high, it is because the productive power of labour 
is slight, a fact which is expressed precisely in the high rate of 
profit. 20% is 1/, on labour time, hence India could only feed Ms of 
the population not directly involved in the product; whereas 40% 
is 7/;, hence in England twice the proportion of the population 
could live without working.” 

The tendency towards a fall in the general rate of profit 
therefore=the development of the productive power of capital, i.e. 

a Instrumental materials.— Ed. 
b Thus in the manuscript. The passage should read: “... i.e. the ratio of surplus 
value to the total capital”.— Ed. 

108 Capital and Profit 

the rise in the ratio in which objectified labour is exchanged for 
living labour.” 

The development of productive power has a double manifesta- 
tion: [Firstly,] in the magnitude of the productive forces already 
produced, in the amount of value and the physical extent of the 
conditions of production under which new production takes place, 
i.e. the absolute magnitude of the productive capital already 
accumulated. Secondly, in the relative smallness of the capital laid 
out for wages, in comparison with the total capital, i.e. the 
relatively small amount of living labour which is required for the 
reproduction and exploitation of a large capital—for mass 
production. 

This implies, at the same time, the concentration of capital in 
large amounts at a small number of places. The same capital is 
large if it employs 1,000 workers united into a single labour force, 
small if it is divided into 500 businesses employing two workers 
apiece. 

If the ratio of the variable part of capital to the constant part, or 
to the total capital, is large, as in the above example, this shows 
that all the means towards the development of the productivity of 
labour have not been employed, that, in a word, the social forces of 
labour have not been developed, that therefore with a large 
quantity of labour little is produced, [XVI-1003] whereas in the 
Opposite case a (relatively) large amount is produced with a small 
amount of labour. 

The development of fixed capital (which produces of itself a 
development of the circulating capital laid out in raw material and 
matiéres instrumentales (see Sismondi™) is a particular symptom of 
the development of capitalist production.” It implies a direct 
reduction, relatively speaking, of the variable part of capital, i.e. a 
lessening in the quantity of living labour. The two are identical. 
This is most striking in agriculture, where the reduction is not 
only relative but absolute. 

//Adam Smith’s idea that the general rate of profit is forced 
down by competition *—on the presupposition that capitalists and 
workers alone confront each other—or that the division of surplus 
value among different classes is not further considered —comes 
down to saying that profit does not fall because wages rise; but 
wages do indeed rise because profit falls, hence it is—from the 
point of view of the result, an increase in wages corresponding to 
the fall of profit—the same mode of explanation as Ricardo’s 
completely opposite one, in which profit falls because wages 
become more expensive, etc.,”” or as Carey’s, because there is an 

General Law of the Fall in the Rate of Profit 109 

increase not only in costs of production (exchange value) but in 
the use value of the wage.” That profit Temporarily falls as a result 
of competition between capitals—i.e. their competition in the 
demand for labour—is admitted by all political economists (see 
Ricardo*’), Adam Smith’s explanation, *if he did not speak of 
industrial profits only, would raise this to a general law very 
contradictory to the laws of wage[s] developed by himself.* // 

The development of productive power has a double manifesta- 
tion: in the increase of surplus labour, i.e. the curtailment of the 
necessary labour time; and in the reduction of the component of 
capital which is exchanged with living labour, relatively to the total 
amount of capital, i.e. the total value of the capital which enters 
into production. (See Surplus Value, Capital, etc. ) Or, expressed 
differently: it is manifested in the greater exploitation of the 
living labour employed (this follows from the greater quantity of 
use values which it produces in a given time, hinc* the curtailment 
of the time required for the reproduction of the wage, hinc the 
prolongation of the labour time appropriated by the capitalist 
without equivalent) and in the reduction in the relative amount of 
living labour time which is employed in general—i.e. in its amount 
relatively to the capital that sets it in motion. Both movements not 
only go [hand in hand] but condition each other. They are only 
different forms and phenomena in which the same law is 
expressed. But they work in opposite directions, in so far as the 
rate of profit comes into consideration. Profit is surplus value 
related to the total capital, and the rate of profit is the ratio of this 
surplus value, calculated according to a particular measure of the 
capital, e.g. as a percentage. However, surplus value—as an 
overall quantity—is determined firstly by its rate, but secondly by 
the amount of labour employed simultaneously at this rate, or, 
and this is the same thing, the magnitude of the variable part of 
the capital. On the one hand there is a rise in the rate of surplus 
value, on the other hand there is a (relative) fall in the numerical 
factor by which this rate is multiplied. In so far as the 
development of productive power lessens the necessary (paid) part 
of the labour employed, it raises the surplus value, because it 
raises its rate, or it raises it when expressed as a percentage. 
However, in so far as it lessens the total amount of labour 
employed by a given capital, it reduces the numerical factor by 
which the rate of surplus value is multiplied, hence it reduces its 
amount. 

110 Capital and Profit 

Surplus value is determined both by the rate, which expresses 
the ratio of surplus labour to necessary labour, and by the 
amount* of working days employed. However, with the develop- 
ment of the productive forces, the latter—or the variable part of 
the capital—is reduced in relation to the capital laid out. 

If C=500, c=100, v=400, and S=60, °/,=""/400=15%, so that 
the rate of profit=°/s90.=12%. [XVI-1004] Furthermore, if 
C=500, c=400, v=100, and S=30, °/,=*°/1900=30%, so that the 
rate of profit=*°/s99>=6%. The rate of surplus value is doubled, the 
rate of profit is halved. The rate of surplus value exactly expresses 
the rate at which labour is exploited, while the rate of profit 
expresses the relative amount of living labour employed by capital 
at a given rate of exploitation, or the proportion of the capital laid 
out in wages, the variable capital, to the total amount of capital 
advanced. 

If C=500, c=400, and v=100, for the rate of profit to be 12% 
or profit to be 60, surplus value would have to be 60, 
$1, = /190= 60%. 

For the rate of profit to remain the same, the rate of surplus 
value (or the rate of exploitation of labour) would have to grow in 
the same ratio as the magnitude of the capital laid out in labour 
grows, in the same way as the magnitude of the variable capital 
falls relatively, or the magnitude of the constant capital grows 
relatively. It is already strikingly apparent from one single 
circumstance that this is only possible within certain limits, and 
that it is rather the reverse, the tendency towards a fall in 
profit—or a relative decline in the amount of surplus value hand 
in hand with the growth in the rate of surplus value—which must 
predominate, as is also confirmed by experience. The part of the 
value which capital newly reproduces and produces is=to the living 
labour time directly absorbed by it in its product. One part of this 
labour time replaces the labour time objectified in wages, the 
other part is the unpaid excess amount, surplus labour time. But 
both of them together form the whole amount of the value 
produced, and only a part of the labour employed forms the 
surplus value. If the normal day=12 hours, 2 workers who 
perform simple labour can never add more than 24 hours (and 
workers who perform higher labour can never add more than 
24 hoursxthe factor which expresses the ratio of their working 
day to the simple working day), of which a definite part replaces 

a In the manuscript the word “number” is written over the word “amount” — 
Ed. 

General Law of the Fall in the Rate of Profit 111 

their wages. The surplus value they produce cannot, whatever the 
circumstances, be more than an aliquot part of 24 hours. If, 
instead of 24 workers, only 2 are employed to a given quantity of 
capital (in proportion to a given measure of capital), or 2 workers 
are necessary in the new mode of production where 24 were 
necessary in the old one, in proportion to a given amount of 
capital, then if the surplus labour in the old mode of 
production='/12 of the total working day, or=1 hour, no increase 
in productive power—however much it raised the rate of surplus 
labour time—could have the effect that the 2 workers provided 
the same amount of surplus value as the 24 in the old mode of 
production. If one considers the development of productive power 
and the relatively not so pronounced fall in the rate of profit, the 
exploitation of labour must have increased very much, and what is 
remarkable is not the fall in the rate of profit but that it has not 
fallen to a greater degree. This can be explained partly by 
circumstances to be considered in dealing with competition 
between capitals,” partly by the general circumstance that so far 
the immense increase of productive power in some branches has 
been paralysed or restricted by its much slower development in 
other branches, with the result that the general ratio of variable to 
constant capital—considered from the point of view of the total 
capital of society—has not fallen in the proportion which strikes 
us so forcibly in certain outstanding spheres of production. 

In general, therefore: The decline in the average rate of profit 
expresses an increase in the productive power of labour or of 
capital, and, following from that, on the one hand a heightened 
exploitation of the living labour employed, and [on the other 
hand] a relatively reduced amount of living labour employed at the 
heightened rate of exploitation, calculated on a particular amount 
of capital. 

It does not now follow automatically from this law that the 
accumulation of capital declines or that the absolute amount of 
profit falls (hence also the absolute, not relative, amount of surplus 
value, which is expressed in the profit). 

[XVI-1005] Let us stay with the above example.’ If the constant 
capital is only '/; of the total capital advanced, this expressed a low 
level of development of productive power, a limited scale of 
production, small, fragmented capitals. A capital of 500 of this 
kind, with surplus value at 15% (the variable capital at 400) gives a 
total amount of profit of 60. If we reverse the ratio, this expresses 

a See this volume, p. 110.— Ed. 

112 Capital and Profit 

a large scale, the development of productive power, cooperation, 
division of labour, and large-scale employment of fixed capital. Let 
us therefore assume that a capital of this kind is of 20 times 
greater extent; 500x20=10,000, thus 6% profit on 10,000 (or 
surplus value of 30%, if the variable capital=2,000) 600. A capital 
of 10,000 therefore accumulates more quickly with 6% than a 
capital of 500 with 12%. The one realises a labour time of 400, the 
other one of 2,000, hence an absolute amount of labour time 
5 times greater, although relatively to its magnitude, or to a given 
amount of capital, e.g. 100, it employs four times less [labour 
time]. (See Ricardo’s example.?!”’) 

Here, as in the whole of our analysis, we entirely disregard use 
value. With the greater productivity of capital it goes without 
saying that the same value employed at the more productive scale 
represents a much greater amount of use value than it does at the 
less productive scale, and therefore also provides the material for 
a much more rapid rate of growth of the population and 
consequently of labour powers. (See Jones.”) 

This fall in the rate of profit leads to an increase in the 
minimum amount of capital—or a rise in the level of concentration 
of the means of production in the hands of the capitalists— 
required in general to employ labour productively, both to exploit 
it, and to employ no more than the labour time socially required for 
the manufacture of a product. And there is a simultaneous growth 
in accumulation, i.e. concentration, since large capital accumulates 
more rapidly at a small rate of profit than does small capital at a 
large rate of profit. Once it has reached a certain level, this rising 
concentration in turn brings about a new fall in the rate of profit. 
The mass of the lesser, fragmented capitals are therefore ready to 
take risks. Hinc crisis. The so-called plethora of capital refers only 
to the plethora of capital for which the fall in the rate of profit is 
not counterbalanced by its size. (See Fullarton.’’) 

Profit, however, is the driving aceNncy in capitalist production, 
and only those things are produced which can be produced at a 
profit, and they are produced to the extent to which they can be 
produced at a profit. Hence the anxiety of the English political 
economists about the reduction in the rate of profit. 

Ricardo already noted that the increase in the amount of profit 
accompanying a decline in the rate of profit is not absolute, but 

aD. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, 3rd ed., 

General Law of the Fall in the Rate of Profit 113 

that there may be a decline in the amount of profit itself, despite 
the growth of capital. Strangely enough, he did not grasp this in 
general, but merely gave an example. Nevertheless, the matter is 
very simple. 

500 at 20% gives 100 profit. 

50,000 at 10% gives 5,000 profit; but 5,000 at 2% would only 
give 100 profit, no more than 500 gives at 20%, and at 1% it 
would only give 50 profit, hence only half as much as 500 at 20%. 
In general: As long as the rate of profit falls more slowly than 
capital grows, there is a rise in the amount of profit and therefore 
the rate of accumulation, although relative profit declines. If the 
profit were to fall to the same degree as the capital grew, the 
amount of profit would, despite the growth in capital, remain the 
same as it was with a higher rate of profit on a smaller capital. 
This would therefore also be true of the rate of accumulation. 
Finally, if the rate of profit fell in a greater proportion than the 
growth in capital, the amount of profit and therewith the rate of 
accumulation would fall along with the rate of profit, and it would 
stand lower than in the case of a smaller capital with a higher rate 
of profit at a correspondingly less developed stage of production. 

[XVI-1006] //We do not consider use value at all, except in so 
far as it determines the production costs of labour capacity or the 
nature of capital, as with fixed capital, because we are considering 
capital in general, not the real movement of capitals or competi- 
tion. But it may be remarked here in passing that this production 
on a large scale, with a higher rate of surplus value and a reduced 
rate of profit, presupposes an immense production, and therefore 
consumption, of use values, hence always leads to periodic 
overproduction, which is periodically solved by expanded markets. 
Not because of a lack of demand, but a lack of paying demand. 
For the same process presupposes a proletariat on an ever- 
increasing scale, therefore significantly and progressively restricts 
any demand which goes beyond the necessary means of subsist- 
ence, while it at the same time requires a constant extension of 
the sphere of demand. Malthus was correct to say that the demand 
of the worker can never suffice for the capitalist?’° His profit 
consists precisely in the excess of the worker’s supply over his 
demand. Every capitalist grasps this as far as his own workers are 
concerned, only not for the other workers, who buy his 
commodities. Foreign trade, luxury production, the state’s ex- 
travagance (the growth of state expenditure, etc.)—the massive 

a Th. R. Malthus, Principles of Political Economy..., pp. 315, 405.— Ed. 

114 Capital and Profit 

expenditure on fixed capital, etc-—hinder this process. (Hence 
sinecures, extravagance on the part of the state and the 
unproductive classes, are recommended by Malthus, Chalmers, 
etc., aS a nostrum.*) It remains curious that the same political 
economists who admit the periodic overproduction of capital (a 
periodic plethora of capital is admitted by all modern political 
economists) deny the periodic overproduction of commodities. As 
if the simplest analysis did not demonstrate that both phenomena 
express the same antinomy, only in a different form. // 

That this mere possibility disturbs Ricardo (Malthus and the 
Ricarpians similarly) shows his deep understanding of the condi- 
tions of capitalist production.’ The reproach that is made against 
him, that in examining capitalist production he is unconcerned 
with “human beings”, keeping in view the development of the 
productive forces alone—bought at the cost of whatever sac- 
rifices—without concerning himself with distribution and there- 
fore consumption, is precisely what is great about him. The 
development of the productive forces of social labour is the historic 
task and justification of capital. It is exactly by doing this that it 
unconsciously creates the material conditions for a higher mode of 
production. What makes Ricardo uneasy here is that profit—the 
stimulus of capitalist production and the condition of accumula- 
tion, as also the driving force for accumulation—is endangered by 
the law of development of production itself. And the quantitative 
relation is everything here. 

There is in reality a deeper basis for this, which Ricardo only 
suspects. What is demonstrated here, in a purely economic manner, 
from the standpoint of capitalist production itself, is its barrier — 
its relativity, the fact that it is not an absolute, but only an historical 
mode of production, corresponding to the material conditions of 
production of a certain restricted development period. 

To bring this important question to a decisive conclusion, the 
following must first be investigated: 

1) Why does it happen that with the development of fixed 
capital, machinery, etc., the passion for overwork, prolongation of 
the normal working day, in short the mania for absolute surplus 
labour grows, along with precisely the mode of production in 
which relative surplus labour is created? 

2) How is it that in capitalist production profit appears—from 
the point of view of the individual capital, etc.—as a necessary 

4 See Th. R. Malthus, Principles of Political Economy..., pp. 326, 361, 408 et al.; 
Th. Chalmers, On Political Economy..., 2nd ed., Glasgow, 1832, pp. 344-46. oe 

General Law of the Fall in the Rate of. Profit 115 

condition of production, hence as forming part of the absolute 
production costs of capitalist production? 

If we take surplus value, its rate is greater, the smaller the 
variable capital in proportion to it, and less, the larger the variable 

capital. — rises or falls inversely as v rises or falls. If v=O, this [s] 

would be at its maximum, for no outlay of capital for wages would 
be necessary, no labour would have to be paid in order to 

. . . AY 
appropriate unpaid labour. Inversely: the expression Panes the 
C+D 

rate of profit, would be at its maximum if c=0, that is, if the rate 
of profit=the rate of [XVI-1007] surplus value, i.e. if no constant 
capital c at all had to be laid out in order to lay out capital v in 
wages and thus realise it in surplus labour. The expression a 
therefore rises and falls inversely as c rises or falls, hence it also 
rises or falls against v. 

The rate of surplus value is greater, the smaller the variable 
capital in proportion to the surplus value. The rate of profit is 
greater, the greater the variable capital in proportion to the total 
capital, and this proportion is greater the smaller the constant 
capital in proportion to the total capital, hence also in the 
proportion to which it forms a smaller part of the total capital 
than the variable capital. But the variable capital for its part is 
smaller in proportion to the total capital, the greater the 
proportion of the total capital and therefore of the constant capital 
to the variable capital. 

Assume s=50, v=500, c=100. Then s’=°"/s99=5/s0='/10= 10%. 
And Pp. (rate of profit)="°/g00="/co='/12=8'/3%. Hence s/, is 

: Si os : Sone 
greater, the smaller v is, ae is greater, if s is given, the greater v 

is and the smaller c is, but 5/, increases when c increases. If now 

5/, becomes 35/,, and ¢ grow 3 times, so that , vu which was 

cto 
originally related 

to ¢ as vi(ut+c) 
is now related as v:(v+3c) 
c—U Cay 
v=— and v= 
v+c v+3c 
c c 

116 Capital and Profit 

If s became greater than v in the measure to which ¢ grew or v 
becomes greater than c+v, hence if the rate of surplus value grew 
through greater employment of constant capital in the same 
measure as the proportion of variable capital to total capital 
declines, the rate of profit would remain unchanged. 

S 35 
Originall e had —H=p'. N have ——-=p’. 
ginally w oon p ow we ha ee P 

The first question is by how much [is less than] a 

5 

3c+0 
s sy s(e+e)—s(c+e) 

cte 3etr  (ct+e)3c+e) 

_ sB3e+e—c—-t) 5 (2c) 

(cHe)Bcet+e)  (e+e)Bc+e) 

[XVI-1008] Let surplus value=120. Variable capital=600. In this 
case s’, or rate of surplus value, = !?"/go9=20%. If the constant 
capital=200, then p’=" /s00= '7/s0=°/90= 15%. If now the constant 
capital is increased threefold, from 200 to 600, and everything else 
remains unchanged, then s’=20% as before, but p’ 
now=""9/; 990= |7/1290=°/60="/30= |/10=10%. The rate of profit would 
have fallen from 15 to 10 [per cent], by ls; the constant capital 
would have tripled. The _ variable capital was previously 
ls0=°/g="/4 of the total capital, it is now ©°/;,990, only '/o or 7/4, it 
has therefore become smaller by 7/3. 

But if the surplus value increased threefold through the tripling 
of the constant capital, ie. if it grew from 120 to 120x3=360, 
then s’ would now=*'/e99=°°/69=9/10="/5=60%, and p’ would 
= 9005/1205 /20=*/10= 30%. 

But since the variable capital is now related to the total capital as 
600:1,200, whereas previously it was as 600:800, it is now My of the 
total capital, and was previously 51, or 3/4, so it has fallen.??” 

[XVI-1009] s=120, v=600, c=200. 51 = 699 = 20%, 
p=" len0= 15%. 

s=120. v=600. c=600.  s’='"/e99=20%. pp’ =""°/1 200= 10%. 
15:10=3:2=1:7/;. Hence p’ has fallen by '/s, c has risen 3 times, 
total capital has grown from 800 to 1,200, by '/s; finally v was 
originally related to ¢ as 600:200=3x200=3c, but now=v. Hence 
v has fallen 3fold against c. Finally v was previously related 
to c as 600:800=6:8=3:4=7/4c Now it is related as 

a The lower half of page 1008 is filled with calculations relating to the ratios 
given above.— Ed. 

General Law of the Fall in the Rate of Profit 117 

600:1,200=6:12=2:4; = /y or */4c. Hence it has fallen against c by 
/4. 

For the rate of profit to remain the same at 15%, the surplus 
value would have to rise from 120 to 180, hence by 60 (but 
60:120=1:2), hence by a half. Furthermore, [a rise in} s’ from 
/600 or 20% to '°/go0 or 30%, from 20 to 30, is again [a rise] by 
50%. 

The surplus value had to increase in the same proportion as the 
total capital grew from 800 to 1,200, i.e. by 50%, that is it had to 
increase from 20 to 30%. Originally v was °/, of the total capital, 
now it is 7/4. But °/4 Cx20 is as much as 7/,; C x30, namely “ 
(=15%). 

// It is self-evident that the variable capital may constantly grow 
in the absolute sense, i.e. the absolute number of workers may 
grow, although it is constantly falling in proportion to total capital 
and fixed capital. Hence the inane dispute over whether machin- 
ery reduces the number of workers. It almost always reduces the 
number when introduced, not in the sphere in which it has itself 
been introduced, but through the suppression of workers who 
carry on the same industry at the previous stage of production. 
For example the machine spinners drive out the hand spinners, 
the machine weavers the hand weavers, etc. But in the branch of 
industry which employs the machinery the number of workers 
may grow constantly in the absolute sense //although here men 
are often driven out by women and younc persons// although it 
declines relatively. // 

[XVI1-995] Let us first assemble the facts. 

C=v+c. s=surplus value. s’=rate of surplus value. p'’=rate of 

. AY 
profit. s'=S/,, p’=5/¢ or —. 

Ute 
Kel: 
C=800. c=200. v=600. s=120. In this case, c='/4C 6° /4=200) 
3 3xx . or 120 : 
and v="/4C (- r -x)} s'="*"/eg9=20%. If c increases from 200 

to 600, by a factor of three, C will rise from 800 to 1,200, ie. by 
50%. 
Since c='/4C, its threefold increase causes it to grow from */4 to 
°/4 (by 7/4). The total capital is now *°/4C4+5/,C=17/4C. It has 
@ Here and below, the dots in square brackets designate the damaged places in 
the manuscript. The sign x in the next few paragraphs stands for illegible symbols 

in the manuscript.— Ed. 

118 Capital and Profit 

therefore risen by [...]. It was originally=*/sC (=600), so if it 
is tripled this brings it from °*/, to °/4, from 600 to 1,800, and it 

brings the total capital to 2,000 ([...] CIXxxxC [...] over and 

above the original capital °/,C=1,200 (1,200+800=2,000). How 
far therefore the total capital [...] becomes xxxx growth in ¢, 
depends on the original proportion of ¢ to C, which presents itself 
entirely as a particular proportion between c and v [...] of C. So 
the greater the proportion of c:v or of ¢:C (c+v), the more does 
the total amount C grow through [...] the more does the rate of 
profit fall and the greater is the growth in the rate of surplus 
value required for the rate of profit to remain the same. [...] the 
growth of the total capital if the rate of surplus value is given. 

In the case of an increase of C from 800 to 1,200, of c from 
200 to 600, the constant capital is tripled and the total capital 
grows by [...] by 50%. In this case the rate of surplus value or s’ 
continues to be 20% and s=120. But p= 200= 10%. Surplus 
value and rate of surplus value [...] have fallen from 15 to 10, ice. 
by '/3 or 33'/3%. Why is there this difference, that the rate of 
profit falls by 33'/;% [...] grows by 50%? Because the relation of 
the rate of profit expresses itself as the inverse of the relation of 
the two capitals we have compared. [...] or 1,200. This growth is 
from 800:1,200=2:3, hence from 2:(2+1) or by 50%. The fall in 
the rate of profit expresses itself inversely, as fall of [...] from 
1201290 to 1/1900 Or | °/go0:'?°/1 200=3:2; hence as a fall of ‘/s or 
331/3%. 

The fall in the rate of profit therefore depends directly on the 
growth in the total capital, if the variable capital remains the same; 
its fall expresses itself in inverse proportion to the growth of the 
capital. If this grows from 2:3, the rate of profit falls from 3:2. 
Furthermore, if the variable capital remains the same, the growth 
of the total capital can only derive from the growth of the constant 
capital. However, the proportion in which a particular increase in 
constant capital causes the total capital to increase depends on the 
original ratio between c¢ and C. This inverse relation explains in 
part why the rate of profit does not fall in the same proportion as 
the capital increases, even if the rate of surplus [value] remains the 
same. If 2 increases to 4, that is a growth of 100%. If 4 falls to 2, 
that is a fall of 50%. 

b) If in the second case indicated above the rate of profit is to 
remain the same, the profit, hence the surplus value, will have to 
rise from 120 to 180, ie. by 60 or My of 120, rise by half its 
original magnitude. The surplus value would therefore have 

General Law of the Fall in the Rate of Profit 119 

directly to grow in the same proportion as the total capital, by 50%, 
therefore rising in a greater proportion than the fall in the rate of 
profit, surplus value remaining the same. 

If c had risen to 1,200 instead of 600, the total capital would 
have risen to 1,800, for C would have risen by 1,000, hence by 
125%. [...] remain the same, the total amount of surplus value=the 
total profit, would have had to rise to 270. But 270:120 must 
[imply] a growth of 150 [...] or 125% on top of 120. 120 on 120 is 
100%, and 30 on 120 is '/4 or 25% (4x30=120) [...]%.) 

c) How in this case (b) would s’ or surplus value have risen? 

It was originally '°/g99=20% or '/s of the variable capital. If the 
capital grows to 1,200 or c is tripled, 180/559 or 30% or [...]. In the 
third case, if the capital grows to 1,800, [surplus value is] 270 eo0="/20 
of the variable capital,=45%. In [this case the rate of] surplus 
value has risen from 20 to 30%, i.e. by 50%, to the same degree as 
the total capital has grown in this case and the absolute surplus 
value or [... has risen in this] case from 20 to 45; i.e. by 25; but 
25:20=1'/, (20+'/420 or 5) hence 125%. (This [...] only on the 
growth of the increment, not the relation of the numbers to each 
other as such.) The rate of surplus value would therefore have to 
{grow] directly [as the] total capital grew or in the same proportion 
as the absolute surplus value would have to grow for the rate of 
profit to remain unaltered with a growing [...]. 

Variable capital amounted to 

Case I: 600 out of total constant 

capital 800=3/, C; capital 200=!/4C 
Case II: 600 ” 1,200=2/4 C; ” 600=2/4 C 
Case III: 600 ” 1,800=!/,[C]; ” 1,200=2/, C

## Proletarian Opposition on the Basis of Ricardo

4) THOMAS HODGSKIN, POPULAR POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
FOUR LECTURES DELIVERED 157 
AT THE LONDON MECHANICS’ INSTITUTION, LONDON, 1827 

*“Easy labour is only transmitied skill” * ([p.] 48). 

“As all the advantages derived from the division of labour * naturally centre in 
and belong to the labourers, if they are deprived of them,* and in the * progress 
of society* those only are enriched *by their improved skill who never 
labour—this must arise from unjust appropriation; from usurpation and plunder 
in the party enriched,* and from *consenting submission in the party im- 
poverished” * ([pp.] 108-09). 

(XVIII-1085] “The labourers, to be sure, multiply too rapidly when * that 
multiplication is only compared with the want of the capitalist for their services” 
(I.c. [p.] 120). “Malthus points out the effects which an increase in the number of 
labourers has in lessening the share which each one receives of the annual 
produce—the portion of that distributed amongst them being a definite and 
determinate quantity not regulated in any degree by what they annually create” 
(.c.). 

“Labour, the exclusive standard of value, * but *labour, the creator of all wealth 
{is] no commedity” * (l.c., [p.] 186). 

Regarding the influence of money on the expansion of wealth, 
Hodgskin remarks correctly: 

*“As a man can dispose of small portions of produce that is corruptible, for 
what is incorruptible, he is under no temptation to throw it away; and thus the use 
of money adds to wealth, by preventing waste” * ([p.] 197). 

The chief advantage of RETAIL TRADE derives from the fact that the QUANTITY in 
which commodities are best produced is not that in which they are best distributed 
(.c. [p. 146]). 

*“Both the theory relative to capital, and the practice of stopping labour at that 
point where it can produce, in addition to the subsistence of the labourer, a profit 
for the capitalist, seem opposed to the natural laws which regulate production” * 
([p.] 238). 

With regard to the accumulation of capital, Hodgskin advances 
roughly the same ideas as those contained in his first book.'* 
Nevertheless—for the sake of completeness—we will reproduce 

the main passages. 

254 Theories of Surplus Value 

“If one considers for example fixed capital, the most favourable position for the 
IDEA OF CAPITAL AIDING PRODUCTION, 3 CLASSES of circumstances are to be 
distinguished under which [the results of] accumulation of capital are very

## Machinery, Utilisation of the Forces of Nature and of Science (steam, electricity, mechanical and chemical agencies) (Con

(*STEAM, ELECTRICITY, MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL AGENCIES*)] 
[((CONTINUED)] !0 

[V-211] Costs of machinery, buildings, etc., when not workinc. In 
The Times for November 26, 1862* a spinning manufacturer 
points out that his mii, empLoyinc 800 worxPEopLe and CONSUMING, WHEN 
AT FULL Work, About 150 Bates or East INpIAN, oR About 130 BALES OF 
AMERICAN Cotton, costs him asout £6,000 a year (asout £120 a weex) 
when not workinc. There are, first of all, fixed costs, which do not 
concern us here (but which are very important in practice), namely 
RENT, the most significant Fixep cost, whether the machine works or 
not (RENT in the above case=£2,450), further Insurance (INSURANCE OF 
MILLS AND MACHINERY AGAINST FIRE in the above case=£477, INSURANCE OF 
COTTON IN Process £123); taxes on this property // RATES ON THE MILLS AND 
MACHINERY, AS PAID IN 1861 (pooR RATE INCLUDED) £310//. Further: salaries 
OF MANAGER, BOOK KEEPER and SALESMEN. (In the above case £625.) 
Then WAGES OF LODGEKEEPER, WATCHMEN, ENGINEER, AND OCCASIONAL LABOUR TO 
TEND THE MACHINERY (£250. This occasional LABOUR TO TEND THE MACHINERY 
belongs to the outgoings to conserve iT). Then COAL FOR WARMING THE 
MILL, AND OCCASIONALLY WORKING THE STEAM ENGINE. (£150.) Finally “aztow- 
ANCE FOR DETERIORATION OF MACHINERY”. (£1,200, because the machinery 
is already very worn out.) With regard to the last point, the 
Lancashire spinner remarks: 

*“It may appear to many that, as the mills and machinery are not working, 
they cannot be deteriorating... It is not intended to cover the cost of the ordinary 
wear and tear, which is repaired, as a knife has a new blade, by a staff of 
mechanics provided for the purpose by every manufacturer when his mill is 

working. But it is intended to cover that kind of wear which cannot be repaired 
from time to time, and which, in the case of a knife, would ultimately reduce it to a 

a “The Case of the Millowners. To the Editor of The Times”, The Times, 

Machinery 373 

state in which the cutler would say of it, ‘it is not worth a new blade’. It is alse 
intended to cover the loss which is constantly arising from the superseding of 
machines before they are worn out by others of a new and better constitution. 
From these two causes it is well known that the machinery in a mill gets entirely 
renewed, at the least, once in every 15 or 20 years; and invention does not stand 
still in times like these, being always stimulated by difficulties; nor do the weather 
and the natural principle of decay suspend their operations because the steam 
engine ceases to revolve.” * 

The same fellow also says: 

*“No doubt a large number (of manufacturers) have ample reserves on which 
they can fall back, but the bulk of Lancashire manufacturers have no spare capital. 
The habit of the trade is to spend in extensions of their mills and machinery their 
profits as fast as they make them, and as a rule they have an insufficiency rather 
‘than a redundancy of floating capital” * [p. 12]. 

[V-212] Cherbuliez: Riche ou pauvre etc, Paris, 1841.7" (Reprint 
of the Geneva edition.) 

“New Capital Old Capital 
1) the machine 1) provisioning of the workers 
2) annual upkeep 2) the instrument and its upkeep 
3) raw materials 3) raw materials.” ¢ 

// There is of course provisioning of the workers in the case of 
new Capital as well. He is only speaking here of the provisioning of 
the workers replaced by the machine. //4 

“On both sides one must abstract from the number of workers who are 
necessary to supervise and direct the movements of the machine. The old capital 
would grow in direct proportion to the number of workers employed. If it is 100 for 
a particular number, it is 200 for twice that number. The new capital is not subject 
to the same laws of growth, for the element of the machine that serves the 
application of the motor does not grow in numbers or in dimensions in proportion 
to the number of workers whose labour it replaces. Hence whatever the superiority 
of the new capital over the old for a given number of workers, it lies in the nature 
of this surplus labour that it is converted into inferiority, in proportion as one 
increases the number of the workers represented and replaced by the machine. If 2 
workers are replaced, it is perhaps more expensive. If 4, 10, 20 workers are 
replaced, it becomes ever cheaper. This favourable result can only be obtained on 
condition that one disposes of a previously accumulated capital which is sufficient 
to set up a machine to replace the required number of workers and to obtain a 

a The words “ Fixed capital” are written in the margin opposite the following two 
sentences.— Ed. 

b In the margin opposite this paragraph, Marx wrote “Improvement of machinery 
paid for with loans” .— Ed. 

d Marx wrote this paragraph to the right of the Cherbuliez text.— Ed. 

374 Relative Surplus Value 

quantity of raw materials proportionate to that number. Here again, as in the case 
of a new subdivision of labour, the saving is linked to the prior realisation of an 
additional capital. Each accumulation of wealth provides the means of accelerating 
subsequent accumulation” ([pp. 28-]29).2 

// Firstly. The situation with accumulation is to be taken into 
account in the conversion oF SURPLUS VALUE INTO capital. It should be 
mentioned here that just as accumulation is a condition of 
capitalist production, so capitalist production is a cause of 
ACCUMULATION. 

Secondly: The machine replaces a certain quantity of workers, 
either in real terms, i.e. by taking their place (this is always the 
case when the trade is not new but was previously carried on 
without machinery); or potentially, in that so and so many workers 
would be necessary to replace it. If we speak e.g. of the millions of 
workers (see Hodgskin*”) who would be needed to furnish the 
amount of production now furnished in the cotton industry, we 
are speaking of the number of the workers who would be needed 
to replace the machinery. It is different when we say that so and so 
many weavers were displaced by the powertoom. Then we are 
speaking of the workers the machine has replaced. This is a big 
distinction. Once machinery has been introduced as the basis of a 
branch of production (with no more competition from manufac- 
ture) it only displaces workers to the degree that it is improved. 
But production expands with a given level of prrrection of the 
machinery before it attains a higher level. 

If e.g. 10 were employed at handlooms, and 20 are employed at 
POWERLOOMS, and if a powerloom replaces 10 handlooms, then the 20 
accomplish as much as 200 did previously. But they have not 
driven out or replaced 200. The first powerloom drove out 10. The 
other 19 powerlooms have employed 19. One must not say, 
therefore, that productive power has replaced 180, because 200 
would have been needed without the powerlooms. The productive 
power has merely increased tenfold. 

If a new PpoweRLoom is invented, allowing 10 to do as much as 20, 
the 20 would be replaced by the 10, or 10 thrown out of work. If 
the number of these powerLooms grew in turn to 20, 20 would be 
employed. And 40 would have been necessary on the previous 
scale. And 400 on the original scale. But the 400 men, who never 
existed, have not been replaced. The first powerloom drove out 10 
and second 2. Thus the productive power has grown in the 
proportion 20:1. 

a Marx quotes partly in German and partly in French (with minor altera- 
tions).— Ed. 

Machinery 375 

At any rate there has thus been a twentyfold increase in the 
productive power. If this development had taken place in all 
branches, the worker would have needed 20 times less time to 
reproduce his means of subsistence. Thus if it was 11 hours 
initially, it is now ''/s9 of an hour, and all the remaining part of his 
working day, 11°/29 hours, belongs to the capitalist. But the 
development is not uniform and all-embracing. 

It should further be remarked: the amount of surplus labour is 
determined not by the workers replaced by the machine but by the 
workers employed by it. This is precisely what Cherbuliez forgets. 
The productivity of the machine (and its cheapness) is not only 
determined by the quantity of workers it replaces, but also by the 
quantity of workers whose labours it assists. Or the expressions are 
in [V-213] some respect identical. // 

//In so far as machine labour curtails the labour time needed to 
produce a particular commodity, hence increases the quantity of 
commodities which are produced in the same labour time, 2 things 
are possible. The commodity enters into the consumption of the 
workers. Then, leaving aside what we developed previously,* there 
is an increase in the amount of labour which can be applied to 
produce commodities that do not enter into the consumption of 
the workers; in which surplus labour can therefore be represented. 
This extends the basis, upon which CAN [be] REARED A LARGER UPPER CLASS. 
At the same time the pleasures of this class. But there is also an 
extension of the basis, upon which caN [be] REARED A LARGER WORKING 
class, or the amount of living material on whose exertions the upper 
CLASS IS REARED. If, secondly, the commodity does not enter into the 
consumption of the workers, there is either a cheapening of 
pleasures or a setting free of labour for New Fields OF EXERTION. // 

Distribution of the value of the machinery, suitpines, etc., over the 
quantity of commodities produced.” 

Constant capital, in so far as its relative magnitude of 
value— proportionately to the total capital—enters as a determin- 
ing factor into the rate of profit, is to be left out of account 
entirely in examining surplus value as such. We have therefore 
regarded it as c, of indifferent magnitude, both in the section on 
absolute surplus value and in dealing with cooperation, division of 
labour, etc.© In examining machinery, however, we are compelled 
to concern ourselves especially with constant capital. Nevertheless, 

a See present edition, Vol. 30, p. 235 ff.— Ed. 
b Ibid., pp. 321-27.— Ed. 

25* 

376 Relative Surplus Value 

there is no inconsistency here. Two points should be made about 
this: 

1) Relative surplus value can be created only in so far as the 
commodities entering into the consumption of the workers (means 
of subsistence) are cheapened; hence the value of these com- 
modities is reduced, i.e. the quantity of labour time required for 
their production is reduced. And the labour time contained in the 
commodity consists of two parts: a) the past labour time contained 
in the means of labour consumed in the commodities, and in the 
raw material, s%l y en a*; b) the living labour last added, in short 
the labour which is realised with the aid of those means of labour 
and in that raw material. 

All the methods of shortening the labour time necessary for the 
production of a commodity, HENce reducing its value, leave 
untouched the value of the raw material which enters into 
production. (There is at most a saving of it given labour on a 
larger scale.) This part of the past labour which enters into the 
value of the commodity therefore does not come into considera- 
tion at all. What all these methods have in common is that they 
curtail to a greater or lesser degree the living labour which is 
applied to past labour. 

All that remains to be considered now, therefore, is the part of 
the past labour which consists of the instruments and conditions of 
labour (such as buildings, etc.). This parr remains unchanged with 
simple cooperation and division of labour. (It is, inversely, 
cheapened by concentration and utilisation in common.) But it is 
different with the employment of machinery. Here a specific 
relation enters the picture. The curtailment of living labour rests 
here upon a revolution in this part of constant capital, and one 
can say, expressing it very roughly, that complex, large-scale, and 
expensive instruments of production replace simple and cheap 
ones. If the commodity were therefore just as much made dearer 
by the machinery (or more so) as it is on the other hand cheapened 
by the acceleration and curtailment of the living labour added, the 
value of the commodity would not be reduced. One component 
[of the value] of the commodity would fall by the very fact that the 
other increased. There would be no reduction in the total quantity 
of labour time necessary to the production of the commodity, 
therefore no production of surplus value. So because this method of 
creating relative surplus value rests on the revolution of a 
particular part of the constant capital, and is thereby distinguished 

a If there is any.— Ed. 

Machinery 377 

from other methods, this point must be examined here specifical- 
ly. Viewed quite generally, the problem is solved by saying that the 
total quantity [V-214] of the commodities produced by the 
machinery is so large that in every aliquot commodity there enters 
a smaller value component (part of the depreciation) of the 
machinery, buildings and the matiéres instrumentales* needed for 
the functioning of the machinery than if the same commodity 
were produced in the old manner by human beings and their old 
craft tools. But the fulfilment of this condition will in turn depend 
on the following circumstances: 

a) the quantity of commodities an individual worker can produce 
in a given labour time, e.g. a working day, by means of the 
machinery; 

B) the number of workers who, if the above relation is given, 
simultaneously receive assistance from the machinery in their 
labour; and through whom the value part of the total machinery 
calculated on each individual is relatively reduced; 

‘y) the difference between the period during which the machin- 
ery enters into the labour process and the period during which it 
enters into the valorisation process. E.g. a machine which lasts for 
15 years enters completely into the labour process every year for 
15 years. But only ‘/\5; of it enters into the valorisation process 
every year. The total annual product in commodities therefore 
never contains more than '/,,; of the value component of the 
machinery. 

2) A big distinction is to be made between the question of how 
far the constant capital affects the rate of profit—this is the 
investigation of the question of the ratio of the surplus value to the 
value of the capital advanced, without ANY REGARD TO THE FUNCTIONS OF 
DIFFERENT PARTS OF THAT GAPITAL—and on the other hand, the question 
of how far a particular configuration of constant capital (machin- 
ery, etc.) lessens the price of the individual commodity, or the labour 
time contained in it (past and present labour). In content of course 
the two questions come down to the same thing. But here the 
same phenomenon is considered from entirely different points of 
view. In the one case we investigate how the commodity //and 
therefore labour capacity, in so far as the commodity enters into the 
consumption of the workers // is cheapened, i.e. the total quantity 
of labour, past and living, required for its production, is lessened. 
In the other case we investigate how the ratio of surplus value to 
total capital advanced (the rate of profit) is affected by the 

378 Relative Surplus Value 

revolution in the quantity and value relations of the constituent 
parts of the capital. The latter investigation presupposes surplus 
value; it presupposes the whole of capitalist production (including 
the process of circulation). The former investigation presupposes 
nothing but our general law about the value of commodities and 
the laws that follow therefrom about the value of labour capacity 
and ratio of surplus value to the latter. 

3) The confusion between these questions: the lessening of the 
labour time required for the production of an_ individual 
commodity (or a number of commodities), and the proportion of 
surplus labour to necessary on the one hand, and on the other 
hand the value and quantity relations of the different components 
of capital, is the source of great FALLACIES. 

D’abord* the main Fatiacy. If the essence of capitalist production 
is grasped, it is absolutely no contradiction to say that the labour 
time necessary for the production of a commodity is reduced, but 
that there is on the other hand an increase in the total amount of 
time the worker must use for the production of this commodity 
which has become cheaper. In contrast, this constitutes, in fact, an 
incomprehensible contradiction to the economists who let the 
machine be invented and introduced, not in order to curtail the 
labour time the worker needs for the production of a commodity, 
but in order to curtail the labour time he must provide altogether 
as equivalent of his wage. And especially so, if on the one hand 
profit is explained by the fact that machinery shortens the 
worker’s labour time, and on the other hand it is demonstrated 
(Senior,” etc.) that machinery necessitates the prolongation of that 
labour time. 

Secondly: As far as the labour time of the worker himself is 
concerned, his paid labour time is shortened by this, and his 
unpaid labour time lengthened. It already follows [V-215] from 
this that the quantity of labour time contained in a commodity and 
the proportion in which this labour time is divided between 
capitalist and worker are two entirely different things. If the 
capitalist sells a commodity more cheaply, it does not follow at all 
from this that he makes less profit on it, realises less surplus VALUE On 
it. The situation is usually the reverse. In addition to this, it is not 
the individual commodity, but the total amount of commodities 
produced in a certain period, that is to be considered as the product 
of the capital. 

a First.— Ed. 
> N. W. Senior, Letters on the Factory Act... London, 1837, pp. 11-14; see also 
present edition, Vol. 30, p. 333.— Ed. 

Machinery 379 

Prolongation of absolute labour time in the racTory system.* 

The developed organisation of labour which corresponds to the 
machine system on the capitalist basis is the racrory system, which 
predominates even in modern large-scale agriculture, more or less 
modified by the peculiarities of that sphere of production. 

The main proposition that applies here is that the surpius value 
the capitalist makes derives not from the labour replaced by the 
machine, but from the labour which is employed on the basis of 
machinery. 

Now the yield in surpus vatur is determined by two moments”: 
the rate at which the individual worker is exploited, or the share 
of surplus labour in the working day of an individual worker, and, 
secondly, the number of workers simultaneously employed, the 
number exploited by a given capital. The introduction of 
machinery lessens the latter moment, while it raises the former. It 
raises the surplus labour time of the individual worker, but it 
lessens the number of workers simultaneously exploited by a 
particular capital. The same method, therefore, which has a 
tendency to raise the rate of surp_us value, has at the same time the 
antagonistic tendency to weaken the other moment, which acts 
equally to determine the amount of surplus value. 

If each of 20 workers works for 12 hours, 2 hours of which is 
SURPLUS VALUE, the amount of surplus value=2X20=40 hours of 
labour (=3 working days of 12 hours each plus 4 hours). If each 
of 10 workers works 12 hours, 4 hours of which is surpius Lazour, 
the amount of surrLus vatuE=40 hours as above. But 6 workers, 
each of whom works 6 hours of surplus Lazour, will only provide 36 
hours of surp.us vaLur. And if the same capital set in motion 20 
workers in the first case and 6 workers in the second, the amount 
of surplus value would have declined, even though its rate had 
increased. 

This antagonistic tendency of exploitation based on machinery 
impels the extension of absolute labour time. If e.g. in the second 
case the workers were to work 14 hours instead of 12, and 8 hours 
were SURPLUS LABOUR, the AMOUNT Of surplus value Would=6x8=48. 

This reason, which impels the absolute prolongation of labour 
time—the increase of absolute surpius Lasour, the prolongation of 
the working day—is something the capitalists and their spokesmen 
are totally unconscious of. The phenomenon shows itself once 

2 See present edition, Vol. 30, pp. 330-31. Marx adds the English expression 
factory system in brackets, after its German equivalent.— Ed. 

380 Relative Surplus Value 

machine manufacturing has been sufficiently extended and 
developed through competition for the social value, the market 
value, of the commodities produced with machinery to be brought 
down to their individual value, so that the capitalist can no longer 
pocket the difference. 

This is a driving motive entirely independent of the valorisation 
of the part of the constant capital which consists of machinery and 
buildings. The valorisation motive, as being more obvious, is 
directly present in the consciousness of the capitalists and their 
spokesmen. 

This motive is very simple, and common to all surplus Lasour, but 
it operates. particularly strongly when the value and the amount of 
the capital employed in the means of labour is large enough to be 
predominant. 

D’abord, No ADDITIONAL OUTLAY OF MACHINERY and BUILDING is necessary, 
whether 12 or 24 hours are worked, whereas, if a correspondingly 
greater amount of labour is to be absorbed simultaneously, the 
buildings, machinery [V-216] and To a CERTAIN DEGREE THE MACHINERY 
WHICH PRODUCES THE MOTIVE POWER must be increased in size. The 
commodity is cheapened thereby too. For it is irrelevant whether 
the value of the machinery is distributed over more labour 
spatially, through the number of workers who work alongside each 
other and are assisted simultaneously by it; or this happens 
temporally, by the fact that the same number of workers are assisted 
by the same machinery over 24 instead of 12 hours. 

The absolute reproduction time of the buildings remains 
roughly the same, whether they enter really as conditions into the 
labour process over 12 or over 24 hours. 

The reproduction time of the machinery itself is not curtailed to 
the same extent as its active service is prolonged. But the 
reproduction time of its value is curtailed to the same extent. 

The profit is thus greater in a given section of circulation and the 
profit in general is calculated according to the surplus value which 
is realised in a particular period of circulation, e.g. a year. 

The ratio of constant to variable capital is in general reduced by 
this, because the share of the most important part of the constant 
capital is reduced. 

The examination of this last point therefore belongs to the 
theory of profit.* 

Replacement of the tool of labour by machinery. 

It should be noted here that machinery does not only replace 
living labour, but also the worker and the tools of his craft. The 
latter may of course be very insignificant, e.g. when sewing 

Machinery 38] 

machines replace the usual labour of sewing. This is usually not a 
replacement; the actual workinc Too. rather re-emerges in the 
machinery itself, even if on an infinitely larger scale and more or 
less altered by mechanisation. 

Conglomeration of workers in the factory system. 

Later on we shall go further into the peculiarities of coopera- 
tion,* as it appears in the factory system, as distinct from both 
simple cooperation and manufacture based on the division of 
labour. 

But here it is to be noted above all that developed machinery — 
the system of production based on machinery—presupposes the 
conglomeration of workers at one point, their spatial concentration 
under the direction of a single capitalist. Concentration of this 
kind is its condition. See the quotation from Ravenstone.”” 

The machinery which produces the motive power—and similar- 
ly the directing machinery which subdivides and transmits the 
power—is relatively cheapened to the degree that it is applied to a 
progressively larger system of machinery; there is a similar relative 
reduction in the cost of buildings, heating, superintendence, etc., 
in short the objective conditions of labour which are communally 
needed and consumed by the mass of the workers. There must 
correspond to the system of simultaneously operating machinery 
an army of simultaneously employed workers, partly to put into 
effect the division of labour peculiar to the machine system, partly 
to implement the system of simple cooperation, the simultaneous 
exploitation of many people who do the same thing, which is 
characteristic of the division of labour. Hence although the 
number of workers set in motion by a particular capital—and the 
number of workers required for the production of a given amount 
of commodities—is reduced, the number of workers simultaneous- 
ly employed and commanded under individual capitalists in- 
creases; there is an increase in the concentration of workers acting 
together in space and time. 

Just as the capital functioning in production in this system takes 
on the shape of a great social mass of wealth, even if it belongs to an 
individual capitalist, which stands in no relation at all to an 
individual’s capacity—-however large—for working and earning, 
so the same is true of the system of collaborating workers in a 
great social combination. 

a See this volume, pp. 423-25, 483-85, 496-97.— Ed. 

382 Relative Surplus Value 

[V-217] Condensation of labour.* 

If we call the variable capital v, the constant ¢, and the surplus 
labour contained in the product x, the value of the commodities 
produced by a particular capital, if we assume that the whole of 
the constant capital enters into the valorisation process, considered 
from the point of view of the absolute surplus value=c+ut+x 

The methods which raise relative surplus value change absolute- 
ly nothing in this formula. Or, the value of the total product is not 
raised by these methods. c may grow, because the amount, and 
therefore the value, of the raw material grows. Ditto, because the 
value of the machinery grows. But the value of c remains 
unaltered. It only reappears in the product. Just as little is x 
altered. v is exchanged in the labour process for v+x, where v 
represents the labour time which is expressed in v, and x 
represents the excess over and above this. v+ x is the total working 
day. It is not altered by the methods which create relative surplus 
value. Or, in other words: however much the quantity of products 
produced in a working day is increased by these methods, their 
value is not increased, even though, as a result of the cheapening 
of the products, hinc of the means of reproduction of labour 
capacity, the division of labour time into paid and unpaid is 
changed. (The value of the total product of e.g. one working day 
may be increased: e.g. more cotton may be spun, etc. In short 
because more constant capital is consumed in the same time.) 

There is nevertheless an exception to this. And an exception 
which only develops with machine labour. This is condensation of 
labour, or it is so in so far as, owing to the development of the 
social productive power of labour, the intensity of labour, the 
filling in of the pores in labour time, is driven onwards to such an 
exceptional degree, and becomes so much the constant feature of 
labour in a particular sphere of production, that the more 
intensive hour of labour=the more extensive hour of labour+~x. At 
a certain point what has been gained in extension must be lost in 
intensity. But the same result also occurs in reverse. And the 
replacement here of quantity by degree is not a matter of 
speculation. Where the factum occurs, there is a VERY EXPERIMENTAL 
WAY TO PROVE IT: if it is physically impossible for the worker e.g. 
regularly to perform the same quantity of labour over 12 hours in 
the course of a week as he now performs over 10 or 10 My hours. 
Here we see the necessary reduction of the normal or total 

a See present edition, Vol. 30, p. 335.— Ed. 
b Hence.— Ed. 

Machinery 383 

working day as a result of the greater condensation of labour, 
which implies a greater tautness, nervous tension, but at the same 
time a greater physical exertion. With the increase of the two 
moments—the rapidity and the extent (the quantity) of the 
machinery which is to be supervised—a nodal point is necessarily 
reached, at which the intensity and the extent of labour cannot 
simultaneously grow any further, the one necessarily excluding the 
other. And in this case, in spite of the reduction in absolute labour 
time, the surplus LasouR may not only remain the same, but grow. 
And indeed for two reasons. On the one hand, because the 
productivity of labour grows, i.e. owing to the general law that 
determines relative surrLus value altogether. Secondly, however, 
because the more intensive hour of labour now counts as such, hence 
its product e.g.=the value of 1'/, extensive hours of labour in the 
previous mode of production. The more intensive hour of 
labour—here as the regular, general law of a particular sphere of 
production, not as something accidental and individual—will now 
be reckoned as what it is, as a greater quantity of labour, condensed 
as opposed to more porous labour time. As long as the intensity 
grows simultaneously with the extension of the absolute labour 
time, the worker will admittedly be subject to not only simple but 
double overwork; but the more intensive hour of labour does not 
count as such. It only counts from the moment at which its 
heightened intensity appears as the real, tangible and given limit 
of its extension. 

This is the reason why with the introduction of the Ten Hours’ 
But there was not only a growth in the productivity of the 
branches of English industry into which it was introduced, but also 
a rise rather than [V-218] a fall in the amount of value they 
produced, and even in wages.” 

It should of course always be remarked that as soon as a 
concrete economic phenomenon comes into question, general 
economic laws can never be applied simply and directly. E.g., in 
the matter just referred to, a mass of circumstances come into 
consideration which lie far away from our subject; indeed, it 
would be impossible to explain these circumstances without 
anticipating developments which involve much more concrete 
relations than those we are so far able to grasp. E.g., the rise in 
demand following from the expansion of the world market since 
the discoveries in California and Australia,” and the combinations 

a Cf. present edition, Vol. 30, p. 337 ff.— Ed. 

384 Relative Surplus Value 

connected with this. The influence exerted, precisely during the 
period of occurrence of the phenomenon referred to, by the 
cheapness and abundance of the supply of the raw material 
(cotton), etc., in a number of these branches of industry. And 
finally the measure of the value, e.g. of cotton, is determined not 
by the English hour of labour, but by the average NECESSARY TIME OF 
Labour on the world market. 

But leaving aside all this, the English Facrory Rerorrs unanimous- 
ly demonstrate two facts: 1) that since the introduction of the Ten 
Hours’ Act (later modified to 101/s hours) the small, piece-by-piece 
improvements in machinery were on a far larger scale and more 
continuous than in any prior period, and 2) that the speed of the 
machinery, and the amount of it that the individual worker has to 
overlook, have very much increased the intensity of labour, the 
demands on the worker’s nerves and muscles. 

Furthermore, the same Reports leave no doubt about the other 
two facts: 1) that without the law on hours, the limitation of the 
absolute working day, that great revolution in the running of 
industry would not have occurred, that it was enforced by the outer 
limit set by legislation to the exploitation of the worker; 2) that the 
experiment would not have been possible, i.e. not possible so 
quickly with this favourable result, without the high level of 
technological development already attained, and the means of 
assistance given by the level of capitalist production attained in 
general. 

If all branches of industry were subjected to the same 
restrictions, and with the same success, with an equal rise in the 
intensity of labour, this intensity would count as a GENERAL RULE, and 
not as the distinct property of a specifically determined branch of 
labour. A new averace normal working day would merely have 
been established. The whole day would have been shortened, but 
also the necessary labour time and the surplus labour time within 
that (on an averace) in the different branches. (An English working 
day of 10'/2 hours is not only more productive, but contains 
perhaps as great a quantity of labour as the 24 hours worked in 
the cotron mitts of Moscow.) 

The capitalist mode of production in general condenses labour 
time, or increases the amount of labour provided within a definite 
time, the amount of labour which ts actually workep IN FOR INSTANCE AN 
Hour Or 12 Hours. This is in fact identical with increasing the 
continuity of labour for the individual worker (for the individual 
worker, disregarding the continuity of the production process, i.e. 
its regular continuance over whole periods of time). Even the 

Machinery 385 

formal subsumption of labour under capital brings this about, as 
does the whip in the mode of production based on slavery. This 
intensity is increased still further by cooperation, but particularly 
by the division of labour and even more by machinery, where the 
continuing activity of the individual is bound and conditioned by the 
activity of a whole, of which he only appears as a member, or which 
works, as in the mechanical workshop, with the utter uniformity and 
tirelessness of an inanimate force of nature, an iron mechanism. A 
certain AVERAGE DEGREE Of INTENSITY OF LABOUR—of the real quantity of 
labour which is performed 1 a Given Time—and a relatively higher 
pecree //although in the nature of things it differs in different 
branches of production // than is found in non-capitalist or even in 
merely formally capitalist production, is here altogether a general 
presupposition. It is presupposed for all work, if one speaks of time as 
its measure, and if one speaks of the labour time necessary for the 
production of a commodity. But this is not what is being referred to 
here. 

Just as little is it the greater (or different) performance of the 
same labour in the same time, according to the degree to which 
skill, etc., has been developed through the division of labour and 
TRANSMITTED skit, and efficiency is increased through the aid of 
machinery. These two aspects relate to the higher productivity of 
labour, whereby in Fact the real quantity of labour remains the 
same, and (with machinery) MIGHT EVEN BE DIMINISHED TO A CERTAIN DEGREE. 

[V-219] What is being spoken of here is an increase in the 
exertions of labour which accompanies the development of 
productive power; so that in the same time not only more is 
produced, but more work is done, more labour power is expended, 
and indeed above the average DEGREE—in a degree which is only 
made feasible permanently, day in day out, by limiting the 
extension of labour time. In this case not only relative but absolute 
SURPLUS VALUE is Created, as long as this precree of intensity is not 
universal. But the latter would presuppose, just as much, a general 
reduction of the working day. 

In any case, intensification of labour meets with barriers just as 
does extension of labour. And these barriers are shown by the fact 
that at a certain point the intensity of labour can only be raised by 
reducing its extension. Thus e.g. if 10 hours is the normal average 
working day, with the corresponding level of intensity of 
labour—or of condensation of labour time, quantity of labour 
which is provided at each moment in time—all inventions which 
made labour more productive on this basis, without increasing the 
tension of the labour itself, would only raise relative surplus value. 

386 Relative Surplus Value 

But if a new condensation of labour time were linked to this 
development of the productive forces, so that the quantity of 
labour grew in the same time, and not only the productivity of 
that labour, a point would soon be reached at which the overall 
working day would have to be shortened again. 

It is only capital’s shameless and ruthless lack of moderation, 
impelling it to go beyond the natural limits of labour time into the 
realms of madness, whereby the labour also silently becomes more 
intensive and strained with the development of the productive 
forces, that forcibly compels even the society which rests on 
capitalist production (in this connection the rebellion of the 
working class itself is of course the main driving force) to restrict 
the normal working day within firmly fixed limits. This first 
occurs as soon as Capitalist production has emerged from the 
crude and boisterous years of its adolescence and created a 
material basis for itself. Capital’s reaction to this forcible restriction 
of labour time is a greater condensation of labour, which for its 
part in turn brings about a new curtailment of absolute labour 
time AT A CERTAIN POINT. This tendency to replace extent by DEGREE 
only emerges at a higher level of development of production. This 
is in a certain sense a condition for social progress. Free time is 
created in this way for the worker as well, and the intensity of a 
particular kind of labour therefore does not remove the possibility 
of activity in another direction; this can on the contrary function, 
appear, as a relaxation from it. Hence the extraordinarily 
beneficial consequences—statistically demonstrated—of this pro- 
cess for the physical, moral, and intellectual amelioration of the 
WORKING CLasses in England.?* 

As we have often repeated, we always proceed, in our whole 
development, from the assumption that commodities, and there- 
fore also labour capacity, are always paid for at their value, and we 
consider the chances in surplus LABOUR exclusively on this basis. The 
real cuts in wages, etc., conditioned by competition are therefore 
not mentioned here. Thus e.g. the supply of labour is increased by 
OVERTIME, Without any increase in the number of workers, or one 
group of workers is overworkep, while the other group is entirely or 
partly unemployed. In this way an artificial oversupply OF LABOUR is 
created, with the result that the supply of those rendered 
unemployed by this overworxinc forces down wages altogether (also 
those of the employed). 

This is, on the other hand, one of the reasons why wages rose 
rather than fell in England in the branches of industry covered by 
the ractory Laws. Since the demand for commodities rose as a result 

Division of Labour and Mechanical Workshop 387 

of the extension of the world market, and, in particular, in the 
opinions of the capitalists, the extent of this demand rose still 
further, the demand for labour also rose; but this demand could 
not, as under the old conditions, be satisfied by artificially 
increasing the supply of labour, nor was it possible thereby to 
paralyse its effects on wages. 

[The] supply of workers also fell off very considerably; in part 
through emigration from England, in part through the Irish 
exodus and pestilence.”” 

[XIX-1159]*° One example of the condensation of labour is 
work that is not practised at factories, e.g. tailoring in London. 
During certain months of the year there is both the greatest 
possible extension of the working day, and the work is carried on 
at a feverish rate.* For the rest of the year the tailors are for the 
most part unemployed or only partially employed. The necessary 
labour time—hinc wages—is not determined by the labour time in 
this period of the paroxysm of labour, but is rather calculated on 
the averace labour time, and the wage thus obtained therefore also 
covers a great part of the whole year’s income. Here the 
condensation of labour is bound up with the extension of the 
working day, but the whole working period is restricted e.g. to a 
few months or weeks. One of the most miserable forms of 
exploitation of labour. These are periods of feverish labour, 
alternating with chronic slackness and unemployment.

## Division of Labour and Mechanical Workshop. Tool and Machinery

/I-A/ {If the original ratio of necessary labour to surplus labour = 10 hours : 2 hours = 5:1, and were 16 hours now to be worked instead of 12, i.e. 4 hours more, then in order for the ratio to remain the same, the worker would have to receive 3/4, and the capitalist only 1/4 hour, of these 4 hours; for 10:2 = 3 1/3 : 2/3 = 1 2/3 : 1/3 = 10:2. But according to the mathematical law that!

“a ratio of greater inequality is diminished, and of lesser inequality is increased, by adding an arbitrary quantity to both terms” ?},

it follows that the ratio of wages to surplus-value remains unchanged, even if, in the above proportions, the overtime is divided. Formerly necessary [labour] to surplus = 10:2 = 5:1. (5× larger.) Now there would be 13 1/3 : 2 2/3 = 40:8 = 5:1. 179

j/IV-138a/ 1. The surplus-value which capital obtains through the development of the productive forces does not arise from the fact that the quantity of the products or use-values created by the same labour is increased, but because the necessary labour is reduced, and in the same proportion the surplus labour is increased. The surplus-value which capital obtains through the production process consists in general only in the excess of surplus labour over necessary labour.

Surplus-value is exactly equal to surplus labour; the increase of the one is exactly measured by the reduction of necessary labour. In the case of absolute surplus-value, the reduction of necessary labour is relative, i.e. it falls relatively because the excess labour is directly increased. If necessary labour = 10 hours, surplus labour = 2, and the latter is now increased by 2 hours,

! dal 2 relation? surplus labour

i.e. the total working day is lengthened from 12 hours to 14, necessary labour remains 10 hours as before. But formerly it stood to surplus labour as 10:2, i.e. 5:1, now as 10:4 = 5:2, or formerly it was = 5/6 of the working day, now only = 5/7. Here, then, necessary labour-time has been reduced relatively, because the total labour-time, and thus the surplus labour-time, has grown absolutely. On the other hand, when the normal working day is given, and the increase of relative surplus-value comes about through the increase of the productive forces, necessary labour-time is reduced absolutely, and thereby surplus-value is increased absolutely and relatively, without the value of the product being increased. With absolute surplus-value, therefore, a relative fall in the value of wages, compared with the absolute growth of surplus-value; with relative surplus-value, an absolute fall in the value of wages. Nevertheless, the first case is always worse for the worker. In the first case, the price of labour falls absolutely. In the second case, the price of labour can rise.

344 3. The Relative Surplus-Value – Notebook II |ITI-89| On the Division of Labour

2. The surplus-value of capital does not increase like the multiplier of the productive power, but by the fraction of the working day that represents the necessary labour-time, divided by the multiplier of the productive power.

3. The greater the surplus-value before the new increase in productive power, i.e., the greater already the unpaid portion of the day and therefore the smaller the paid part of it, the fraction of the day which forms the equivalent of the worker, the smaller is the growth of the surplus-value which capital obtains from the new increase in productive power. Its surplus-value rises, but in an ever smaller proportion to the development of the productive powers. The barrier remains the relation between the fraction of the day expressing necessary labour and the whole working day. It can move only within these limits. The smaller already the fraction falling to necessary labour, i.e., the greater the surplus labour, the smaller the proportion in which an increase in productive power diminishes the necessary labour-time, since the denominator of the fraction is that much larger. The rate of the self-valorisation of capital therefore grows the slower, the more it is already valorised. This occurs, however, not because wages have risen or the workers’ share in the product, but because the fraction of the working day representing necessary labour has already fallen so deeply in relation to the whole working day.

Th. Hodgskin, “Popular Polit. Econ. etc.”, London 1827.

“Invention and knowledge necessarily precede the division of labour. The savages had learned to make bows and arrows, to catch animals and fish, to cultivate the soil and to weave cloth, before some of them devoted themselves exclusively to the manufacture of these implements for hunting, fishing, tilling the ground and weaving ... The art of working metals, leather or wood was undoubtedly known to a certain extent before there were smiths, shoe-makers and carpenters. Only in the most recent times were steam-engines and spinning machines invented, before some men made the fabrication of spinning and steam engines their chief or sole business.” ([p.] 79, 80.)

“Important inventions are the result of the necessity of labour and of the natural growth of population. When, for example, the wild-growing fruits are eaten up, man becomes a fisherman, etc.” ([p.] 85.)

“Necessity is the mother of invention; and the continuing existence of this necessity is only to be explained by the constant growth of population. E.g., the rise in the price of cattle, caused by the growth of population and by the increase in its industrial or other products. The rise in the price of cattle leads to the cultivation of fodder, increased use of manure, and to this increased quantity of products, which in this country almost Y,” ([p.]86, 87.) “Nobody doubts that rapid communication between the different parts of the country contributes to both, to the increase of knowledge and of wealth ... Numerous brains are set in motion instantaneously by a mere suggestion; and every discovery is at once appreciated and improved almost as quickly. The possibilities for improvements are great in proportion as the number of persons whose attention is directed to some particular object is multiplied. The increase in the number of persons produces the same effect as communication; for the latter only operates by bringing many to think about the same object.” ([p.] 93/94.)

Causes of the division of labour. “At first division of labour between the sexes in the family. Then the differences of age. Then peculiarities of constitution. The difference of sex, of age, of physical and mental strength, or the difference of organisation, are the main sources of the division of labour, and it is constantly extended in the progress of society in consequence of the different inclinations, dispositions and talents of individuals and their varied abilities for different occupations.” ([p.] 111 sqq.) “In addition to the difference of ability in those who work, there is a different suitability and efficiency in the natural tools with which they work. The inequality of soils, of climate and situation, peculiarities in the original natural products of the earth as well as the minerals in its interior make certain regions also adapted to certain skills ... territorial division of labour.” ([p.] 127 sqq.)

Limits of the division of labour. 1. “Extent of the market ... the article of use,

Subsequent Additions to Points 2 and 3 345

which a worker produced ... actually and ultimately constitutes the market for the articles of use produced by other workers; and they and their products are mutually the market for each other ... the extension of the market must mean the number of the workers and their productive power, and more the former than the latter ... As the number of workers rises, the productive power of society increases in the same proportion as this rise, multiplied by the effect of the division of labour and the increase of knowledge ... Improved methods of transport, such as railways, steamships, canals, all means of facilitating intercourse between distant countries, act upon the division of labour like an actual increase of the population; they bring more workers into contact with one another or more products for exchange.” ([p.] 115 sqq.)

2. Limit. The natur of different employments’. “With the progress of science this apparent limit disappears. Machinery in particular shifts it. The use of steam engines as the motive power for mechanical looms enables one man to perform the functions of several or to weave as much cloth as 3 or 4 persons can weave on the handloom. That is an intertwining of occupations ... but then follows again later simplification ... thus constant renewal of opportunities for the further division of labour.” ([p.] 127 sqq.)

||90| Surplus labour

“Through the greed of the capitalists, etc., constant tendency to increase the number of hours of work and in this way, by increasing the supply of labour, to reduce the remuneration for it ... The increase of fixed capital drives towards the same result. For where so great a value is tied up in machinery and buildings, etc., the manufacturer is strongly tempted not to let so much stock lie idle, and he will therefore employ no worker who does not undertake to remain there for many hours of the day. Hence the oppressive night work which is practised in some establishments, where one set of men comes when the other goes.” ([p.] 102, — G. Ramsay, “An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth”, Edinburgh 1836.)

In the case of absolute surplus-value, the capital laid out in labour, the variable capital, remains the same in its magnitude of value, while the value of the total product grows; but it grows because the portion of the value of the product which represents the reproduction of the variable capital grows. In this case (this refers not to surplus-value but to it as profit) the part of the constant capital which is resolved into raw material and matières instrumentales?¹ also necessarily grows. It is not to be assumed, except for a

¹! The nature of different employments → auxiliary materials of production.

346 3. Relative Surplus-Value — Notebook II

very low degree! that the outlay (the real loss, even if the calculated one) of machinery, buildings, etc. thereby increases.

In the case of relative surplus-value, the portion of value of the product in which variable capital is reproduced remains the same; but its distribution changes. A larger part represents surplus labour and a smaller necessary labour. In this case the given variable capital is reduced by the amount of the reduced wages. The constant capital remains the same, except as far as raw material and instrumental materials are concerned. A part of the capital formerly laid out in wages is set free and can be transformed into machinery, etc. We have examined the changes’ in constant capital elsewhere (in dealing with profit). So we leave that aside here in order to consider only the change in variable capital. Let the old capital be = C (constant capital) + 1000. 1 Let this 1000 represent the variable capital. Say the weekly wages of 1,000 men. Two things may now be distinguished. The variable capital falls because necessaries produced in other branches of industry fall (e.g. corn, meat, boots, etc.). In this case C remains unchanged, and the number of workers employed, the total quantity of labour, remains the same. No change has occurred in the conditions of production. Suppose the variable capital is thereby reduced by Y,, (i.e. its value), thus it falls from 1,000 to 900. Suppose that surplus-value was = 500, hence = half the variable capital. Then 1,500 represents the total value of the labour of the 1,000 men. (Since, by assumption, their working day remains the same, its magnitude does not change.) However these 1,500 may be divided between capital and labour. ——n

V Surplus-value

In this case the old capital was: 1. C + 1,000 + 500. Therefore surplus labour = Y% of the working day;

—— new capital: 2. C + 900 + 600. Therefore surplus labour = % of the working day. Surplus labour would have risen from 5 to %5; the working day = 12 hours, so 3 = 4 hours and % = 4% working hours. Suppose that after an interval the variable capital (wages) again fell by Y, as a result of the cheapening of means of subsistence which are not produced in this sphere. Then Y;) of 900 = 9%. The

1 measure,

2 real loss

3 changes itself. A larger part represents surplus labour and a smaller necessary labour 4 changes

5 necessary articles

Supplementary additions to points 2 and 3 347

variable capital would fall to 810. We would then have: v Surplus new capital: 3. C+ 810 + 690. Therefore surplus labour = 2%, working day or 4, more than before. At the same time, capital is set free: in the first case 100, in the second 90; together = 1901. This release of capital is also a form of accumulation; at the same time release of ‘of money capital, as we find it again when considering profit.

C+ V+S +5 is the product. V + S constant magnitude. wonz now under du ge-

given circumstances wages fall, so the formula C + V = c + (v + s)

||91| If, on the other hand, relative surplus labour is the consequence of the cheapening of the article itself, i.e. of a change in its productive conditions, e.g. the introduction of machinery, then, for instance, of the 1000 variable capital V, a part is to be converted into machinery. There remains variable capital of 500, or labour of 500 men instead of 1000. The value of their labour = 750, since that of the 1000 = 1500. Accordingly we would then have:

  Old capital C + 1000/500.

  New capital (C + 500) or C + Δ, which we shall call C’,
                                 V
                          C’ + 500/250.

Vereinfachung! In the manuscript: C+(V-x)+S+x the surplus-value.

However, since it is assumed that surplus-value grows as a result of the introduction of machinery, the variable capital falls, say V. We can now either assume that the 500 process as much (raw material) as before or more. For the sake of simplification we shall assume that they process only as much. V of 500 = 400. Thus:

                          V   S
  Old capital. C + 1000 + 500  -(c + 1000 + 500) :
                          V   S   C   V
  New capital. (C + 500) = C’ + 400 + 350 = ((C + 1/2V) + 400 + 7/8 V).

In this way, 100 I. would be set free. However, only if no additional outlay for raw material and matières instrumentales is required for at least this rate. Only in this case can money-capital be set free by the introduction of machinery, which was previously expended in the form of wages!

With absolute surplus-value, the matières brutes and matières instrumentales must increase in the same proportion as the absolute quantity of labour grows.

                          V   S
  Old capital, C + 1000 + 500. S here = 500; working day of 1000 working days. If the working day was = 12 hours, then = 4 hours. Now if S grows from 500 to 600, i.e. by 100, then, since the value of 12 hours × 1000 = 1500, a value of 100 represents 800 labour hours for the 1000 men, or % surplus labour hours per man. It now depends on how much material etc. a man processes in 1 hour in order to know how much, as the working conditions remain the same, he processes in % hours. We shall call this x. Thus:

  C   V   S   S’
  New capital. C + x + 1000 + 500 + 100. The capital laid out grows here, and the product grows twofold; by the capital laid out and by the surplus-value.

The main point — the foundation remains the determination of value itself, i.e., the basis that, independently of the degree of productivity of labour, value is determined by the necessary labour-time; thus money, e.g., assumed as of constant value, always expresses itself in the same sum of money—

By the Theresian Urbarium, in which serfdom proper was abolished in Hungary, the peasants owed the landlords annually, for the sessions falling to them {lands on each estate, allotted to the maintenance of the serfs, 35-40 English acres}, unpaid labour of 104 days per annum,* apart from a multitude of small services, fowls, eggs, etc.°

! disbursed in the form of wages

? raw materials

? lands on each estate, allotted to the maintenance of the serfs, 35-40 English acres

* days per annum

° fowls, eggs

Page 91 of Notebook I

Supplementary additions to points 2 and 3 351

1192] Spinning of 6 lbs. wool or hemp, supplied by the landlord, besides ⅓ of their product for the church and ⅓ (2?) to the landlord. In 1771 still, out of 8 million in Hungary, % landlords and only 30,921 artisans! It is such facts in which the doctrine of the Physiocrats possesses a historical support. ?*

In the English coal mines, 15 men are killed on an average per week. During the 10 years concluding with 1861, about 10,000 people killed. Mostly by the sordid avarice of the owners of the coal mines. This generally to be remarked. The capitalistic production is — to a certain degree, when we abstract from the whole process of circulation and the immense complications of commercial and monetary transactions resulting from the basis, the value in exchange — most economical of realized labour, labour realized in commodities. It is a greater spendthrift than any other mode of production of man, of living labour, spendthrift not only of flesh and blood and muscles, but of brains and nerves. It is, in fact, only at the greatest waste of individual development that the development of general men is secured in those epochs of history which prelude to a socialist constitution of mankind. ?12?}

“Should this agony torment us,
Since it increases our pleasure,
Has not Timur’s rule
Devoured myriads of souls?” 50)

In the value of the product we have to distinguish between more parts than in the value of the capital advanced. The latter = C + V. The former = C + A. (The part of the product which represents the newly added labour ex-

! artisan

? killed on average. Over the 10 years up to and including 1861 approximately 10,000 people were killed. Mostly owing to the filthy greed of the owners of the coal mines. This to be stated generally. Capitalist production is — to a certain degree, if we leave aside the whole process of circulation and the enormous entanglements of commercial and monetary transactions which arise as a result of the basis, value in exchange — extraordinarily sparing with objectified labour, labour realised in commodities. It is far more than any other mode of production a great waster of people, of living labour, waster not only of flesh and blood and muscles, but also of brains and nerves. It is, in fact, only through the most tremendous waste of individual development that the development of humanity in general is secured in the historical epoch which precedes the socialist constitution of humanity.

24%

352 3. Relative Surplus-Value – Notebook H

expresses.) But = V + S = the value of variable capital + surplus-value.

If concentration of the means of production in the hands of relatively few — as compared to the mass of the labouring multitude! — is altogether the condition and presupposition of capitalist production, because, without it, the means of production would not separate themselves from the producers, and the latter would, therefore, not be converted into wages labourers? — then this concentration is however also the technological condition for developing the capitalist mode of production, and with it the social productive power. In short, the material condition for production on a large scale. ||93| Through concentration there develops communal labour — association, division of labour, application of machinery, science and the forces of nature. But there is still another point connected with it’, which is to be considered in relation to the rate of profit, not yet in the analysis of surplus value. The concentration of workers and means of labour in a smaller space, etc., economy of power“, common use? by many of means (such as buildings, etc., heating, etc.) whose costs do not increase in proportion as they serve many; finally also labour, faux frais of production economised. This is particularly apparent also in agriculture.

‘In the progress of the cultivation of the soil, all capital and all labour which was formerly scattered over 500 acres, and perhaps even more, is now concentrated on the more thorough cultivation of 100 acres.’ (p. [190,] 191, R. Jones, ‘An Essay on the Distrib. of Wealth etc.’, Part I, ‘On Rent’, London 1831.) ‘The cost of raising 24 bushels on 1 acre is smaller than that of raising 24 on 2; the concentrated space’ {this concentration of space also important in manufacture. Here, however, still more important is the application of the common driving instrument, etc. In agriculture, although the space has become narrower in relation to the amount of capital and labour employed, it nevertheless represents an expanded sphere of production as compared with the sphere of production formerly possessed or cultivated by a single, independent producer. The sphere is absolutely larger. Hence the possibility of employing horses, etc.}, ‘on which the agricultural activity is carried out must bring some advantages and save some costs; fencing, draining, sowing, autumn work, etc. less when they are confined to 1 acre, etc.’ (l.c., [p.] 199.)

! in comparison to the mass of the working multitude

? without it the means of production would not separate from the producer and the latter consequently would not be transformed into wage labourers

3 But there is another point of view connected with it

* economical use of labour-power

5 use

$ incidental costs of production

Subsequent additions to points 2 and 3 353

Ten Hours Bill!! and overworking!

‘Though the health of the population is so important an element of the national capital, we fear we must confess that the capitalists are by no means at hand to preserve and cherish this treasure. “The men of the West Riding”’ (the Times quotes from the ‘Report of the Registrar General’ for October 1861) ‘“became the clothiers of mankind, and so obsessed were they with their work that the health of the working people was sacrificed, and in a few generations the race would have degenerated. But a reaction set in: Lord Shaftesbury’s Bill restricted the hours of children’s labour, etc.” The consideration for the health of the workers was’ (the Times adds) ‘forced upon the manufacturers by society.’ 159

In the larger tailor shops? in London a certain piece of work, e.g. a pair of trousers, a coat, etc., is called an hour, half an hour. (The hour = 6d.) Here practice naturally shows what the average? product of an hour is. When new fashions come up or particular improvements and repairs, there are disputes between employer and workmen as to whether a given piece of work = 1 hour, etc., until here too experience settles the matter. Similarly in many London cabinet-making shops, etc.

(It is understood that, apart from a few individuals for apprenticeship etc., only workers are engaged who possess the average skill and can supply the average mass during the day. In bad business times, where there is no continuity of labour°, this latter circumstance is naturally a matter of indifference to the employer.)

I Surplus labour

? Workshops

3 average

* Employer and craftsman

> the average skill 6 Continuity of labour

Appendix and Index

The foreign-language quotations that were given in German translation in the text are reproduced here from Marx’s manuscript. This also applies to those quotations which Marx did not fully translate into German. Underlinings are emphasised as in the main text by italics, double underlinings by spaced type. Obvious spelling errors are silently corrected. Significant deviations from the original are noted in footnotes.

«Ce n’est pas la matiere qui fait le capital, mais la valeur de cette matiere’.» (J. B. Say, «Trait& de l’Economie Politique», 3. ed., Paris 1817, t. II, p. 429.)

“Capital is commodities.” (J. Mill, “Elements of Polit. Econ.”, Londfon] 1821, [p.] 74.)

“Currency employed to productive purposes is capital,” (McLeod, “The Theory and Practice of Banking etc.”, Lond[on] 1855, t. I, ch. I.)

“The zeal for ‘encouraging consumption’, as supposed necessary for trade in general, springs from the real usefulness of it with regard to the venders of a particular trade.” ([p.] 60.) “What we want are people who buy our goods’ ... But they have nothing in the world to give you for your goods, but what you gave them first. No property can originate in their hands; it must have come from your’s. Landlords, placemen, stockholders, servants, be they what they may, their whole means of buying your goods was once your means, and you gave it up to them.” ([p. 61/]62.) “The object of selling your goods is to make a certain amount of money; it never can answer to part with that amount of money for nothing, to another person, that he may bring it back to you, and buy your goods with it: you might as well have just burnt your goods at once, and you would have been in the same situation.” ([p.] 63.) (“An Inquiry into those Principles respecting the Nature of Demand and the Necessity of Consumption, lately ||]17|advocated by Mr. Malthus etc.”, London 1821.)

“Mr. Malthus sometimes talks as if there were two distinct funds, capital and revenue, supply and demand, production and consumption, which must take care to keep 

! In the manuscript: ces matieres

Appendix and Index

pace with each other, and neither outrun the other. As if, besides the whole mass of commodities produced, there was required another mass, fallen from Heaven, I suppose, to purchase them with ... The fund for consumption, such as he requires, can only be had at the expense of production.” (l.c., [pp.] 49, 50.) “When a man is in want of demand, does Mr. Malthus recommend him to pay some other person to take off his goods?” ([p.] 55.)

“When a thing is bought, in order to be sold again, the sum employed is called money advanced; when it is bought not to be sold, it may be said to be expended.” (James Steuart, “Works etc.”, ed. by General Sir James Steuart, his son etc., Vol. 1, [p.] 274, London 1805.)

“Exchange is an admirable transaction in which both contracting parties always gain, both of them.”

(“A cannot obtain from B more corn for the same quantity of cloth, at the same time that B obtains from A more cloth for the same quantity of corn.”) (“A critical Dissertation on the Nature, Measures and Causes of Value etc.”, London 1825, [p. 65].) (“The exchange of two equal values neither increases nor diminishes the mass of values existing in society. The exchange of two unequal values ... also changes nothing in the sum of social values, although it adds to the fortune of the one what it takes away from the fortune of the other.” J. B. Say, “Traité d’Ec. Pol.”, 3rd ed., Vol. II, pp. 443, 444, Paris 1817.)

“Exchange confers no value at all upon products.” ([p.] 169, Wayland, F., “The Elements of Polit. Economy”, Boston 1843.)

“effectual demand consists in the power and inclination, on the part of the consumers, to give for commodities, either by immediate or circuitous barter, some greater portion of all the ingredients of capital than their production costs”. (Col. Torrens, “An Essay on the Production of Wealth”, London 1821, p. 349.)

“Profit” (this a specific form of surplus-value), “in the usual condition of the market, is not made by exchanging. Had it not existed before, neither could it after that transaction.” (G. Ramsay, “An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth”, Edinburgh 1836, p. 184.) “The idea of profits being paid by the consumers, is, assuredly, very absurd. Who are the consumers?” etc. (p. 183.)

“All orders of merchants have this in common, that they buy in order to sell again.” (p. 43, “Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth”, (appeared 1766) in the “Works” of Turgot, Vol. I, Paris 1844. Ed. by Eugène Daire.)

“Under the rule of invariable equivalents commerce would be impossible.” ([p.] 67, G. Opdyke, “A Treatise on Polit. Econ.”, New York 1851.)

“Diminish the cost of subsistence of men by diminishing the natural price of food and clothing, by which life is sustained, and wages will ultimately fall, notwithstanding that the demand for labourers may very greatly increase.” (p. 460, Ricardo, “Princ. of Pol. Ec.”, 3rd ed., London 1821.)

{“From a comparative survey of corn prices and wages of labour from the reign of Edward III, i.e. over 500 years, it follows that the earnings of a day’s labour in this country have more often been below than above a peck of wheat; that 1 peck of wheat forms a kind of middle point, but rather above the middle, about which the corn wages of labour, varying according to demand and supply, have oscillated.” ([p.240,] 254, Malthus, “Princip. of P. Econ.”, London 1836, 2. ed.)}

{“Le simple ouvrier, qui n’a que ses bras et son industrie, n’a rien qu’autant qu’il parvient à vendre à d’autres sa peine ... En tout genre de travail il doit arriver, et il arrive en effet que le salaire de l’ouvrier se borne à ce qui lui est nécessaire pour lui procurer sa subsistance.” ([p.] 10, Turgot, “Réflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses”, (first appeared in 1766) “Œuvres”, t. I, éd. Eugène Daire, Paris 1844.)}

“Mr. Ricardo ingeniously enough, avoids a difficulty, which, on a first view, threatens to encumber his doctrine, that value depends on the quantity of labour employed in production. If this principle is rigidly adhered to, it follows, that the value of labour depends on the quantity of labour employed in producing it — which is evidently absurd. By a dexterous turn, therefore Mr. Ricardo makes the value of labour depend on the quantity of labour required to produce wages, or, to give him the benefit of his own language, he maintains that the value of labour is to be estimated by the quantity of labour required to produce wages, by which he means, the quantity of labour required to produce the money or commodities given to the labourer. This is similar to saying, that the value of cloth is to be estimated, not by the quantity of labour bestowed upon its production, but by the quantity of labour bestowed on the production of silver, for which the cloth is exchanged.” ([p.] 50, 51.)

“When reference is made to labour as a measure of value, it necessarily implies labour of one particular kind and a given duration; the proportion which the other kinds bear to it being easily ascertained by the respective remuneration given to each.” ([J. Cazenove, p.] 22, 23, “Outlines of Pol. Ec.”, London 1832.)

“Labour is the agency by which capital is made productive of wages, profit, or revenue.” (p. 161, John Wade, “History of the Middle and Working classes etc.”, 3. ed., London 1835.)

“la valeur fait le produit”. (Say, “Cours Complet.”, p. 510.72)

“Le sol est nécessaire; le capital est utile. Et le travail sur le sol, produit le capital.” ([p.] 288, t. III, Paris 1857, Colins, “L’Économie Politique. Source des Révolutions et des Utopies prétendues Socialistes.”)

“All capital” {here capital in the merely material sense} “consists really in commodities ... The first capital must have been the result of pure labour, The first commodities could not be made by any commodities existing before them.” ([p.] 72, James Mill, “Elements of Pol. Ec.”, London 1821.)

“Labour and Capital ... the one immediate labour ... the other, hoarded labour, that which has been the result of former labour.” ([p.] 75.) (l. c.)

“When the labourers receive wages for their labour ... the capitalist is the owner, not of the capital only,” (in this material sense) “but of the labour also. If what is paid as wages is included, as it commonly is, in the term capital, it is absurd to talk of labour separately from capital. The word capital, as thus employed, includes labour and

capital both.” (James Mill, l. c., [p.] 70, 71.)

360) Appendix and Index

94 “The great object of the monied capitalist, in fact, is to add to the nominal amount of his fortune. It is that, if expressed pecuniarily this year by 20000 l. for example; it should be expressed pecuniarily next year by 24000 l. To advance his capital, as estimated in money, is the only way in which he can advance his interest as a merchant. The importance of these objects to him is not affected by fluctuations in the currency or by a change in the real value of money. For example, if in one year he goes from 20 to 24,000 l., through a fall in the value of money he may not have increased his command over the comforts etc. Nevertheless, it is just as much his interest as if money had not fallen; for otherwise, his monied fortune would have remained stationary and his real wealth would have declined in the proportion of 24 to 20 ... commodities are also not the terminating object of the trading capitalist, except in the expenditure of his revenue and in purchases for the sake of consumption. In the outlay of his capital, and when he purchases for the sake of production, money is his terminating object.” ([p.] 165/166, Thomas Chalmers, “On Political Economy in Connection with the Moral State and Moral Prospects of Society”, 2. ed., London 1832.)

95 “It is impossible to designate, or express the value of a commodity, except by a quantity of some other commodity.” ([p.] 26, l. c.) “Instead of regarding value as a relation between 2 objects, they” (the Ricardians) (and Ric. himself) “consider it as a positive result produced by a definite quantity of labour.” ([p.] 30, l. c.) “Because the values of A and B, according to their doctrine, are to each other as the quantities of producing labour, or ... are determined by the quantities of producing labour, they appear to have concluded, that the value of A alone, without reference to anything else, is as the quantity of its producing labour. There is no meaning certainly in the last proposition.” (p.31, 32.) They speak of “value as a sort of general and independent property”. ([p.] 35, l. c.) “The value of a commodity must be its value in something.” (l. c.)

95 “Value is a relation between contemporary commodities, because such only admit of being exchanged for each other; and if we compare the value of a commodity at one time with its value at another, it is only a comparison of the relation in which it stood at these different times to some other commodity.”

96 “comparing commodities at different periods”

108 “The material undergoes changes ... The instruments, ‘or machinery, employed ... undergo changes. The several instruments, in the course of production, are gradually destroyed or consumed ... The various kinds of food, clothing, and shelter, necessary for the existence and comfort of the human being, are also changed. They are consumed, from /62/ time to time, and their value reappears, in that new vigor imparted to his body and mind, which forms a fresh capital, to be employed again in the work of production.” ([p.] 32, F. Wayland, “The Elements of Polit. Econ.”, Boston 1843.)

129 “These affected ways of talking constitute, in great part, what M.Say calls his doctrine ... «Si vous trouvez», he says, p.36, to Malthus, «une physionomie de paradoxe à toutes ces propositions, voyez les choses qu’elles expriment, et j’ose croire qu’elles vous paraîtront fort simples et fort raisonnables.» Doubtless; and, at the same time, they will very probably appear, by the same process, not at all original or important.

«Sans cette analyse je vous défie d’expliquer la totalité des faits; d’expliquer par exemple comment le même ||72| capital est consommé deux fois: productivement par un entrepreneur et improductivement par son ouvrier.» It seems to be agreed, «dans plusieurs parties de l’Europe», to call a fantastical mode of expression a fact.” (l.c., p. 110, N.XI.)

“He” (the workman) “is a productive consumer to the person who employs him and to the state but not strictly speaking to himself.” (p.30, Malthus, “Definitions in Pol. Ec.”, ed, John Cazenove, London 1853.)

“Circulating Capital consists only of subsistence and other necessaries advanced to the workmen, previous to the completion of the produce of their labour.” ([p.], 23, Ramsay, George, “An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth”, Edinburgh 1836.) “Fixed capital alone, not circulating, is properly speaking a source of national wealth.” (l. c.) “Were we to suppose the labourers not to be paid until the completion of the product, there would be no occasion whatever ||73| for circulating capital.”

„Production would be just as great. This proves that circulating capital is not an immediate agent in production, not even essential to it at all, but merely a convenience rendered necessary by the deplorable poverty of the mass of the people.” ([p.] 24, l. c.) “merely a convenience rendered necessary by the deplorable poverty of the mass of the people”. [p. 24.]

“The fixed capital” (material of labour and instruments of labour) “alone constitutes an element of cost of production in a national point of view.” ([p.] 26, l. c.)

«Le capital est cette portion de la richesse produite qui est destinee ä& la reproduction. » p. 364.

«est-cen (die matiöre premiere) «vraiment lä un instrument de production? n’est-ce pas plutöt l’objet sur lequel les instruments producteurs doivent agir ?» (p.367, lecons etc.) Nachher erklärt er: «instrument de production, c.ä.d. une matiere qui agit sur elle m&me, qui est ä la fois l’objet et le sujet, le patient et l’agent». (p. 372, 1. c.)

«Ceux qui n’envisagent la science &conomique que du point de vue des entrepreneurs, et qui ne considerent que le produit net et &changeable que chaque entrepreneur peut se procurer, ceux-lä ne doivent pas en effet appercevoir de difference entre un homme, un boeuf et une machine ä vapeur: il n’est ä leurs yeux qu’une question qui soit digne d’une attention serieuse, c’est Ja question du prix de revient, la question de savoir, combien coüte ä l’entrepreneur ce qu’il demande ä la vapeur, au boeuf, ä l’ouvrier.» (Rossi, «De la Methode en Economie Politigue etc. », p. 83, in « Economie Politique. Recueil de Monographies etc.», ann&e 1844, t.I, Bruxelles 1844.)

„Wenn der Arbeiter von seiner Revenue lebt, wenn er von der Retribution seiner Arbeit lebt, comment voulez-vous que la m&me chose figure deux fois dans le phenomene de la production, dans le calcul des forces productives, une fois comme retribution du travail et une seconde fois comme capital?“ (p. 369, lecons.)

«Chacun pouvant attendre les produits de son travail, la forme actuelle du salaire pourrait disparaitre. I] y aurait societe entre les travailleurs et les capitalistes, comme il ya societe aujourd’hui entre les capitalistes proprement dits et les capitalistes qui sont en m&me temps travailleurs.» (p. 371.)

362 Anhang und Register

141 «Concevoir la puissance du travail, en faisant abstraction des moyens de subsistance des travailleurs, pendant l’oeuvre de la production, c’est concevoir un äfre de raison. Qui dit travail, qui dit puissance du travail, dit ä la fois travailleurs et moyens de subsistance, ouvrier et salaire ... le m&me &lement reparait sous le nom de capital; comme si la m&me chose pouvait faire ä la fois partie de deux instruments distincts de la production.» (p. 370, 371, 1. c.)

142. „Salaire haben no productive power; sie sind der Preis einer productive power. Wages kontribuieren nicht außer der Arbeit, zur Produktion von Waren“ {sollte heißen: zur Produktion von Produkten, Gebrauchswerten}, „nicht mehr als der Preis der Maschinen dazu kontribuiert along with the machines themselves. Könnte Arbeit ohne Kauf gehabt werden, wages might be dispensed with.“ (p.[90/]91, John St. Mill, “Essays upon some unsettled questions of Polit. Econ.”, London 1844.)

142 «Le capital est toujours d’une essence immatérielle, parce que ce n’est pas la matière qui fait le capital, mais la valeur de cette matière, valeur qui n’a rien de corporel.» (Say, p. 429, «Traité d’E. Pol.», 3e édit., t. II, Paris 1817.) or Sismondi: «Le capital est une idée commerciale.» (Sism., l. c., p. 273, t. II, «Etudes etc.».)
 
143 “Labour and capital ... the one, immediate labour ... the other, hoarded labour, that which has been the result of former labour.“ ([p.] 75, James Mill, l. c.) (“Elements of Political Economy”, London 1821.) “Accumulated labour ... immediate labour.” (R. Torrens, “An Essay on the Production of Wealth etc.”, London 1821, ch. 1.)
 
143 Ricardo, “Principles”, p. 89. “Capital is that part of the wealth of a country which is employed in production, and consists of food, clothing, tools, raw material, machinery etc., necessary to give effect to labour.”
 
143 “Capital is only a particular species of wealth, namely that which is destined not to the immediate supplying of our wants, but to the obtaining of other articles of utility.” (p. 5, Torrens, l. c.) “In the first stone that the savage throws at the beast he pursues, and the first stick that he seizes to pull down the fruit that hangs above his reach, we see the appropriation of an article for the purpose of aiding in the acquisition of another, and thus discover the origin of capital.” (Torrens, p. 70/71, l. c.)
 
143 Capital “all articles possessing exchangeable value”, the accumulated results of past labour. (H. C. Carey, “Principles of Political Economy”, part I, Philadelphia 1837, p. 294.)
 
143 «Lorsqu’un fonds est consacré à la production matérielle, il prend le nom de capital.» (p. 207, H. Storch, «Cours d’E. Pol.», ed. Say, Paris 1823, t. 1.) «Les richesses ne sont des capitaux que tant qu’elles servent à la production.» (p. 219, l. c.) “The elements of the national capital are: 1. améliorations du sol; 2. constructions; 3. outils ou instruments de métier; 4. subsistances; 5. matériaux; 6. d’ouvrage fait.” (p. 229 sq., l. c.)
 
143 |81| «Toute force productive qui n’est ni terre, ni travail, c’est là le capital. Il comprend toutes ces forces, ou complètement ou partiellement produites, qu’on applique à la reproduction.» (p. 271, Rossi, l. c.)
 
143 «Il n’y a aucune différence entre un capital et toute autre portion de richesse: c’est seulement par l’emploi qui en est fait, qu’une chose devient capital, c’est-à-dire lorsqu’elle est employée dans une opération productive, comme matière première, comme instrument, ou comme approvisionnement.» (p. 18, Cherbuliez, «Richesse ou Pauvreté», 1841.)
 
“Capital the part of the wealth employed in production and generally for the purpose of obtaining profit.” (p. 75, Chalmers, Th., “On Pol. Ec. etc.”, London 1832, 2nd edit.)

“Capital. That portion of the stock” (i. est accumulated wealth) “of a country which is kept or employed with a view to profit in the production and distribution of wealth.” ([p.] 10, T. R. Malthus, “Definitions in Polit. Eco.”. New Edit. etc. by John Cazenove, London 1853.)

“Antecedent labour” (capital) “... present labour.” (Wakefield, E. G., Note p. [230/1231] on Vol. 1, A. Smith, “Wealth of Nations”, London 1835.)

“What is it that causes the notion of product to transform suddenly into that of capital? It is the idea of value. That means that the product, to become capital, must have undergone an authentic evaluation, have been bought or sold, its price debated and fixed by a sort of legal convention.” For example, “the hide coming out of the butcher’s shop is the product of the butcher. This hide, is it bought by the tanner? Immediately the latter carries it or its value into his operating fund. Through the labour of the tanner, this capital becomes product again.” (“Gratuité du Crédit” [p. 178–180].) (See XV, [p.] 29 etc.) “for society, the difference between capital and product does not exist. This difference is entirely subjective to individuals.” [p. 250.]

“The material which ... we obtain for the purpose of combining it with our own industry, and forming it into a product, is called capital; and, after the labour has been exerted, and the value created, it is called a product. Thus, the same article may be product to one, and capital to another. Leather is the product of the currier, and the capital of the shoemaker.”

“The labour of the land, that of animals and of machines, is also a value, because one sets a price on it and buys it”°, after he has told us that “valeur” is “it is what a thing is worth” and that “prix” is the “value of a thing expressed”, “the hire of an industrial faculty” “or more rigorously the price of the purchase of an industrial productive service.”" “The reproduction of value is that quantity of price which the commodity or manufacture has, beyond the first value of the material and the consumption employed on it to form it. In agriculture one deducts the seed and the consumption of the peasant: in manufactures likewise one deducts the raw material and the consumption of the artisan, and annually a reproduction value is created to the extent that this remaining quantity amounts to.” ([p.] 26, 27, P. Verri, “Meditazione sulla Economia Politica”, Custodi, Parte Moderna, t. XV.)}

“The common price is that at which the buyer can become seller and the seller buyer without appreciable disadvantage or gain. Let the common price be for example ...

! In the manuscript: “Riche et Pauvre” 2 In the manuscript: possibile

of silk one gigliato per pound, I say that he who possesses 100 pounds of silk is equally rich as he who possesses one hundred gigliati, because the first can easily by giving up the silk obtain 100 gigliati, and likewise the second by giving up 100 gigliati obtain 100 pounds of silk ... The common price is that in which neither of the contracting parties impoverishes himself.” ([p.] 34, 35.) 1.c.}

148 “The immediate market for capital, or field for capital, may be said to be labour.” ([p.] 20, “An Inguiry into those Principles respecting the Nature of Demand and the Necessity of Consumption, lately advocated by Mr. Malthus”, London 1821.)

148 “Productive consumption, where the consumption of a commodity is a part of the process of production ... In these instances there is no consumption of value, the same value existing in a new form.” ([p.] 296, Newman, S. P., “Elements of Pol. Ec.”, Andover and New York 1835.) (“Capital is consumed quite as much as the fund for consumption; but in being consumed, it reproduces itself. A capital is a mass of wealth destined for industrial consumption, that is to say, for reproduction.” (p. 209, H. Storch, “Cours d’Économie Politique”, ed. Say, Paris 1823, t. 1.)

149 “If you call labour a commodity, it is not like a commodity which is first produced in order to exchange, and then brought to market where it must exchange with other commodities according to the respective quantities of each which there may be in the market at the time; labour is created at the moment it is brought to market; nay it is brought to market before it is created.” ([p.] 75, 76, “Observations on certain verbal Disputes in Pol. Ec. etc.”, London 1821.)

149 “He” (the worker) “demanded subsistence in order to live, the master demanded labour in order to gain.” (Sismondi, l. c., p. 91.)

153 {“Profit is not made by exchanging. Had it not existed before, neither could it after that transaction.” (Ramsay, [p.] 184, l. c.)} {“Every piece of land is the raw material of agriculture.” ([p.] 218, P. Verri, l. c.)}

154 “In reference to coarse spinning we have received the following statement from a gentleman of high standing:

Sept. 17, 1860 Per lb. Margin. Cost of Spinning per lb. His Cotton cost --- 6½d His 16’s warps ... 4d. to 2s. 3d sold for ---------- 10½d Profit 1d per lb. Sept. 17, 1861 His cotton costs --- 9d For his 16’s warps to ask ------- 11d Loss 1½d per lb.”

181 “It is obvious that the relative numbers of persons who can be maintained without agricultural labour, must be measured wholly by the productive powers of cultivation.” (p. 159/160, R. Jones, “On the Distribution of Wealth”, London 1831.)

Foreign-language Quotations 365.

193 “Whatever quantity of labour may be requisite to produce any commodity, the labourer must always, in the present state of society, give a great deal more labour to acquire and possess it than is requisite to buy it from nature. Natural Price so increased to the labourer is Social Price.” ([p.] 220, Th. Hodgskin, “Pop. Pol. Econ.”, London 1827.)

194 ||112| “The amount of capital which can be invested at a given moment, in a given country, or the world, so as to return not less than a given rate of profits, seems principally to depend on the quantity of labour, which it is possible, by laying out the capital, to induce the then existing number of human beings to perform.” ([p.] 20, “An Inquiry into those Principles respecting the Nature of Demand etc.”, lately advocated by Mr. Malthus, London 1821.)

194 “If the labourer can be brought to feed on potatoes, instead of bread, it is indisputably true that then more can be exacted from his labour; i. e., if when fed on bread he was obliged to retain for the maintenance of himself and family the labour of Monday and Tuesday, he will, on potatoes, require only the half of Monday; and the remaining half of Monday and the whole of Tuesday are available either for the service of the state or the capitalist.” ([p.] 26, “The Source and Remedy of the Nation. Diff.”, London 1821.)

194 “Whatever may be due to the capitalist, he can only receive the surplus labour of the labourer; for the labourer must live. But it is perfectly true, that if capital does not decrease in value as it increases in amount, the capitalist will exact from the labourers the produce of every hour’s labour beyond what it is possible for the labourer to subsist on: and however horrid or disgusting it may seem, the capitalist may eventually speculate on the food that requires the least labour to produce it, and eventually say to the labourer: ‘You sha’n’t eat bread, because barley meal is cheaper. You sha’n’t eat meat, because it is possible to subsist on beet root and potatoes.’” ([p.] 23/24, l.c.)

194 “Wealth is disposable time and nothing more.” (p.6, “The Source and Rem. etc.”)

195 “Legal constraint” (to work) “is attended with too much trouble, violence and noise; creates ill will etc., whereas hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitted pressure, but, as the most natural motive to industry and labour, it calls forth the most powerful exertions.” ([p.] 15, “A Dissertation on the Poor Laws.” By a Wellwisher to mankind, 1786 (The Rever. Mr. J. Townsend), republished London 1817.)

195 “It seems to be a law of nature, that the poor should be to a certain degree improvident, that there always may be some to fulfil the most servile, the most sordid, and the most ignoble affairs in the community. The stock of human happiness is thereby much increased, the more delicate are freed from drudgery, etc., and can pursue higher callings, etc., undisturbed.” ([p.] 39, l.c.) “The poorlaw tends to destroy the harmony and beauty, the symmetry and order of that system, which god and nature | |113| have established in the world.” (p. 41.)

196 “Iddio fa che gli uomini che esercitano mestieri di prima utilità nascono abbondantemente.” (p. 78, Galiani, “Della Moneta”, t. III, bei Custodi.)

196 “fait naître cette classe utile de la société ... qui se charge des occupations les plus fastidieuses, les plus viles et les plus dégoûtantes, en un mot, qui prenant pour sa part

25 Marx/Engels, Werke, Bd. 43

366 Anhang und Register

tout ce que la vie a de désagréable et d’assujettissant, procure aux autres classes le temps, la sérénité d’esprit et la dignité conventionnelle de caractère dont elles ont besoin pour se livrer avec succès aux travaux relevés”. (“Cours d’Ec. Pol.”, éd. Say (p. 223), t. III, Paris 1823,)

196 “Plus un maître a d’esclaves et plus il est riche; il s’ensuit: que, à égalité d’oppression de masses, plus un pays a de prolétaires et plus il est riche.” ([p.] 331, t. III, Colins, “L’Economie Politique, Sources des Révolutions et des Utopies prétendues Socialistes”, Paris 1857.)

198 “C’est parce que l’un travaille, que l’autre doit se reposer.” (Sismondi, “Nouveaux Princ. d’l’Economie Politique”, t. I, p. 76/77.)

198 “Dès qu’il y a surabondance” (des produits) “de produits, le travail superflu doit être consacré à des objets de luxe. La consommation des objets de première nécessité est limitée, celle des objets de luxe est sans limite.” (p. 78, Sism., t. I, “Nouveaux Principes etc.”,) “Le luxe n’est possible, que quand on l’achète avec le travail d’autrui; le travail assidu, sans relâche, n’est possible, que lorsqu’il peut seul procurer, non les frivolités, mais les nécessités de la vie.” (p. 79, l.c.)

201 “As to the demand from labour, that is, either the giving labour ||115| in exchange for

goods, or, if you choose to consider it in another form, but which comes to the same

thing, the giving, in exchange for complete products, a future and accruing addition of value ..., conferred on certain particles of matter entrusted to the labourer. This is the real demand that it is material to the producers to get increased, as far as any demand is wanted, extrinsic to that which articles furnish to each other when increased.”

([p.] 57, “An Inquiry Into those Principles respecting the Nature of Demand and the Necessity of Consumption etc.”, London 1821.)

“To enable a considerable portion of the community to enjoy the advantages of lei-

sure, the return to capital must evidently be large.” (p.50, James Mill, “Elements of Pol. Ec.”, London 1821.)

201 «obtenir du capital dépensé» (dem gegen lebendige Arbeit ausgetauschten Kapital), «la plus forte somme de travail possible». (p.62, J. G. Courcelle-Seneuil, « Traité théorique et pratique des Entreprises industrielles etc.», Paris 1857, 2. edit.)

204 {The employer will be always on the stretch to economize time and labour.” (p. 318, Dugald Stewart, vol.I, “Lectures on Polit. Econ.”, Edinburgh 1855, vol. VIII of the “Collected works”, ed. by Sir W. Hamilton.) ad p. 107, ad supplement ad e,}

206 «la journée de sarclage estimée douze perches en imposant une tâche double en étendue de celle que peut exécuter un homme en un jour», notamment sur les plantations de maïs. La journée de sarclage est en fait tellement organisée par le règlement «qu’il commence au mois de mai pour finir au mois d’Octobre».

206 ||118] «En Moldavie» disait l’un des grands boyards lui-même, «les 12 journées de travail du paysan, accordées par le règlement, équivalent en fait à 365 jours.» [p. 311.]

208 “Mr. Leigh, of the Deansgate subdistrict” (Manchester), “makes the following judicious remarks, which deserve the careful attention of the people at Manchester: Very sad there is the life of a child ... The total number of deaths, exclusive of coroner’s cases, is 224, and of this number 156 were children under 5 years of age ... So large a

25*

proportion I have never before known. It is evident that whilst the ordinary circumstances affecting adult life have been to a considerable extent in abeyance, those militating against the very young have been in great activity ... 87 of the children died under the age of one year. Neglected diarrhoea, close confinement to ill ventilated rooms during hooping cough, want of proper nutrition, and free administration of laudanum, producing marasmus and convulsions, as well as hydrocephalus and congestion of brain, these must explain why ... the mortality” (of children) “is still so high.”} “The fraudulent mill-owner begins work a quarter of an hour” (sometimes more, sometimes less), “before 6 a.m,; and leaves off a quarter of an hour” (sometimes more, sometimes less) “after 6 p.m. He takes 5 minutes from the beginning and end of the half hour nominally allowed for breakfast, and 10 minutes at the beginning and end of the hour nominally allowed for dinner. He works for a quarter of an hour” (sometimes more, sometimes less) “after 2 p.m, on Saturdays.

Thus his gain” {Here the gain is directly identified with the stipulated surplus labour} “is,

before 6 a.m. 15 minutes, Total in 5 On Saturdays Total after6p.m. 15 ditto days before 6 a.m. 15 m. Weekly at breakfast at breakfast Gain time 10 » time 10 340
at dinner 300 minutes after2p.m, 15 minutes time 20

60 40 Or 5 hours and 40 minutes weekly, which multiplied by 50 working weeks in the year, allowing two for holidays and occasional stoppages, are equal to 27 working days.” (p. 4, 5, “Suggestions etc.,” by Mr. L. Horner in “Factories Regulation Acts?. Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 9 August 1859”) “The profit to be gained by it” (overworking over the legal time) “appears to be, to many” (millowners) “a greater temptation than they can resist; they calculate upon the chance of not being found out; and when they see the small amount of penalty and costs, which those who have been convicted have had to pay, they find that if they should be detected there will still be a considerable balance of gain.” ([p.] 34, “Report of the Inspectors of Factories for the halfyear ended 31 Oct. 1856,”) “Five minutes a day’s increased work, multiplied by weeks, are equal to 2½ days of production in the year.” ([p.] 35, l.c.) “In cases where the additional time is gained by a multiplication of small thefts in the course of the day, there are insuperable difficulties to the Inspectors making out a case,” (p. 35. l.c.) At this point the overtime thus appropriated is directly designated as theft by the official English factory inspectors. /120/ These small thefts are also designated as “petty pilferings of minutes” (p. 48, l.c.), further as “snatching a few minutes” (l.c.), “or as it is termed, ‘nibbling’ or ‘cribbling ... at meal times’ ”. (l.c.) “ If you allow me’, said a highly respectable master to me, ‘to work only 10 minutes in the day over time, you put one thousand a year in my pocket’.” (p. 48, l.c.)

“The hours of labour in printworks may practically be considered to be unrestricted, notwithstanding the statutory limitation. The only restriction upon labour is contained in 22 of the ‘Printwork act’” (8. and 9 Victoria C. 29) “which enacts that no child — that is, no child between the ages of 8 and 13 years — shall be employed during the night, which is defined to be between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. of the following morning. Children, therefore of the age of 8 years, may be lawfully employed in labour analogous in many respects to factory labour, frequently in rooms in which the temperature is oppressive, continuously and without any cessation from work for rest or refreshment, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.” (16 hours); “and a boy, having attained the age of 13, may lawfully be employed day and night for any numbers of hours without any restriction whatever. Children of the age of 8 years and upwards have been employed from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the last half-year in my district.” ([p.] 39, “Reports of the Inspect. of Factories”, 31st Oct. 1857, Report of Mr. A. Redgrave.)

“An additional hour a day, gained by small instalments before 6 a.m. and after 6 p.m., and at the beginning and end of the times nominally fixed for meals, is nearly equivalent to making 13 months in the year.” (“Reports of the I. of F.”, 30th April 1858, Report of Mr. L. Horner, p. 9, 10.)

“It may seem inconsistent that there should be any overworking” (by no means inconsistent that the manufacturer, during the crisis, seeks to snatch the largest possible portion of unpaid labour-time) “at a time when trade is so bad; but that very badness leads to transgressions by unscrupulous men; they get the extra-profit of it.” (p. 10, “Reports etc.”, 30th April 1858, Report of Mr. L. Horner.)

“] continue” (although in most factories, on account of the bad times, only half time is worked,) “however, to receive the usual number of complaints that half or 3 quarters of an hour in the day are snatched from the workers by encroaching upon the times allowed for rest and refreshment during the working day, and by starting 5 minutes and more before the proper time in the morning and by stopping 5 minutes or more after the proper time in the evening. These petty pilferings, amounting in the whole to from half to three quarters of an hour daily, are very difficult of detection.” (p. 25, l.c., T. J. Howells “Report”.)

“To prove a systematic course of overworking, made up of minutes taken at 6 different times of the day, could manifestly not be done by the observation of an Inspector.” ([p. 35,] “Reports”, L. Horner, 31st Oct. 1856.) “It is this general acquiescence in the practice, if not approbation of the principle, and the general concurrence that the limitation of labour is expedient etc.” (“Reports etc.”, 31st Oct. 1855, p. 77.)

“The daily labour of the workman in manufactures and works shall not exceed 12 hours. The government has power to declare exceptions to the above enactment in those cases where the nature of the work or of the apparatus requires it.”

“The cleaning of machinery at the end of the day; work rendered necessary by accident to the moving power, the boiler, the machinery, or the building. Labour may be extended in the following cases: For 1 hour at the end of the day for washing and stretching pieces in dye works, bleach works, and cotton print works. For 2 hours in sugar factories, and refineries, and in chemical works. For 2 hours during 120 days a year, at the choice of the manufacturer, and with the sanction of the Préfet, in dye works, print works, and finishing establishments.”

212 “] have been assured by several manufacturers that when they have wished to avail themselves of the permission to extend the working day, the workmen have objected upon the ground that an extension of the working day at one moment would be followed by a curtailment of the ordinary number of hours at another ... and they especially objected to work beyond the 12 hours per day, because the law which fixed those hours is the only good which remains to them of the legislation of the Republic.”

213 “The prolongation of the working day is optional with the workmen ... when it is mutually agreed ... the rate per hour” (beyond 12) “is generally higher than their ordinary pay.” (p.80, l.c.)

213 “the labouring population of Rouen and Lille ... have succumbed” become “diminutive in growth” and “many are afflicted with that species of lameness which in England has given to its victims the name of ‘factory cripples’”. (p. 81, l.c.)

213 “It must be admitted that a daily labour of 12 hours is a sufficient call upon the human frame, and when the requisite intervals for meals, the time required for going to and returning from work, are added to the hours of labour, the balance at the disposal of the workman is not excessive.” (p. 81, A. Redgrave, l.c.)

213 “One of the many objections made to the Ten Hours’ Bill was the danger of throwing upon the hands of the young persons and females so much leisure time, which, from their defective education, they would |123| either waste or misuse; and it was urged that until education progressed, and means were provided for occupying in profitable mental or social employment the leisure hours which the Ten Hours’ Bill proposed to award to the Factory population, it was more advisable, in the interests of morality, that the whole of the day should be spent in the factory.” ([p.] 87, A. Redgrave, l.c.)

213 “The practice of setting children prematurely to work, a practice which the state, the legitimate protector of those who cannot protect themselves, has, in our time, wisely and humanely interdicted, prevailed in the 17th century to an extent which, when compared with the extent of the manufacturing system, seems almost incredible. At Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, a little creature of six years old was thought fit for labour. Several writers of that time, and among them some who were considered as eminently benevolent, mention, with exultation, the fact, that in that single city boys and girls of tender age, created wealth exceeding what was necessary for their own subsistence by 12000 pounds a year. The more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social evils. The truth is, that the evils are, with scarcely an exception, old. That which is new is the intelligence which discerns and humanity which remedies them.” (Macaulay’s “History of England”, vol. 1, p. 417.)

370 Appendix and Index

214 “by keeping the children, young persons, and women in the mill to clean the machinery during a part of the mealtimes, and on Saturdays after 2 o’clock, in place of that work being done within the restricted time”, (p. 12, L. Horner, “Reports etc.”, 30 April 1856.)

214 “who are not employed on piece-work, but receive weekly wages”. (L. Horner, p. [8,] 9, “Reports of the Inspectors of Factories”, 30 April 1859.)

214 “The education of the children, professedly provided for, is, in numerous cases, an utter mockery; the protection of the workpeople against bodily injuries and death from unfenced machinery, also professedly provided for, has become, practically, a dead letter; the reporting of accidents is, to a great extent, a mere waste of public money ... Overworking to a very considerable extent, still prevails; and, in most instances, with that security against detection and punishment, which the law itself affords.” (p. 9, 8, l.c.)

215 “The fact is, that prior to the Act of 1833, young persons and children were worked all night, all day, or both ad libitum.” (“ Reports etc.”, 30 April 1860, p. [50,] 51.)

215 “to take their legal hours of labour at any period within 5 a.m. and 8 p.m.”

215 “the bulk of the accidents happened in the largest mills ... the perpetual scramble for every minute of time, where work is going on by an unvarying power, which is indicated at perhaps a thousand horses, necessarily leads to danger. In such mills, moments are the elements of profit — the attention of everybody’s every instant is demanded. It is here, where ... there may be seen a perpetual struggle between life and inorganic forces; where the mental energies must direct, and the animal energies must move and be kept equivalent to the revolutions of the spindles. They must not lag, notwithstanding the strain upon them either by excessive excitement or by heat; nor be suspended for an instant by any counter attention to the various movements around, for in every lagging there is loss.” (p. 56, “Reports of the Inspectors of Factories”, 30 April 1860.)

215 “The Children’s Employment Commission, the reports of which have been published several years, brought to light many enormities, and which still continue, — some of them much greater than any that factories and printworks were ever charged with ... Without an organized system of inspection by paid officers, responsible to Parliament, and kept to their duty by half-yearly reports of their proceedings, the law would soon become inoperative; as was proved by the inefficiency of all the Factory Laws prior to that of 1833, and as is the case at the present day in France: the Factory Law of 1841 containing no provision for systematic inspection.” ([p.] 10, “Report of the Inspectors, etc.”, 31 Oct. 1858.)

216 The Factory Acts “have put an end to the premature decrepitude of the former long-hour workers; by making them masters of their own time they have given them a moral energy which is directing them to the eventual possession of political power”. ([p.] 47, “Rep. o. th. I. o. F.”, 31st Oct., 1859.)

216 “A still greater boon is, the distinction at last made clear between the worker’s own time and his master’s. The worker knows now when that which he sells is ended, and when his own begins; and, by possessing a sure foreknowledge of this, is enabled to pre-arrange his own minutes for his own purposes!” (l. c., p. 52.)

“The master had no time for anything but money; the servant had no time for anything but labour.” (l. c., p. 48.)

“The cupidity of millowners, whose cruelties in the pursuit of gain have hardly been exceeded by those perpetrated by the Spaniards on the conquest of America, in the pursuit of gold.” (p. 114, John Wade, “History of the Middle and W. Classes”, 3rd ed., London, 1835.)

||124a| “Certain classes of workers” (such as the adult males, and female weavers) “have a direct interest in working overtime, and it may be supposed that they exercise some influence over the more juvenile classes, which latter have, besides, a natural dread of dismissal by giving any evidence or information calculated to implicate their employers … even when detected” (the juvenile workers) “in working at illegal times, their evidence to prove the facts before a Bench of Magistrates, can seldom be relied on, as it is given at the risk of losing their employments.” (p. 8, “Factory Inspectors’ Reports”, for half-year ending October 31st 1860.)

“A factory employs 400 people, the half of which work by the ‘piece’ and have ... a direct interest in working longer hours. The others 200 are paid by the day, work equally long with the others, and get no more money for their overtime. A habit has arisen in some localities of starting systematically 5 minutes before and ceasing 5 minutes after the proper hour. There are 3 starting and 3 leaving off times each day; and thus 5 minutes at 6 different times, equal to half an hour are gained daily, not by one person only, but by 200 who work and are paid by the day. The work of these 200 people for half an hour a day is equal to one person’s work for 50 hours, or 5/6 of one person’s labour in a week, and is a positive gain to the employer.” (l.c., p. 9.) “All persons under 16 years of age must be examined by the certifying surgeon. Children cannot be employed under the age of 8 years, Children between 8 and 13 years of age can only be employed for half-time, and must attend school daily. Females and young persons under the age of 18 years cannot be employed before 6 o’clock in the morning nor after 6 o’clock in the evening, nor after 2 o’clock in the afternoon of Saturdays. Females and young persons cannot be employed during a meal time, nor be allowed to remain in any room in a factory while any manufacturing process is carried on. Children under 13 years of age cannot be employed both before noon and after 1 o’clock on the same day.” (p.22, 23, l.c.) — “The hours of work are governed by a public clock; generally the clock of the nearest railway station ... It is sometimes advanced by way of excuse, when persons are found in a factory either during a meal hour or at some other illegal time, that they will not leave the mill at the appointed hour, and that compulsion is necessary to force them to cease work, especially on Saturday afternoons, But, if the hands remain in a factory after the machinery has ceased to revolve, and occupy themselves in cleaning their machines and in other like work, they would not have been so employed if sufficient time had been set apart specially for cleaning etc. either before 6 P.M. or before 2 P.M. on Saturday afternoons.” (p. 23, l. c.)

“One hour and a half must be given to all young persons and females, persons at the same time between 7.30 a. m. and 6 p.m.; of this one hour must be given before

372 Appendix and Index

3 p.m., and no person can be employed for more than 5 hours before 1 p.m. without an interval of 30 minutes. The usual meal-hours of mechanics throughout the country are, half an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner.” ([p.] 24, l.c.)

“The parent is required to cause his child to attend school for 3 hours daily for 5 days in the week. The occupier is restricted from employing children unless he shall have procured on each Monday morning a schoolmaster’s-certificate that each child has attended school for 3 hours daily for 5 days in the preceding week.” (p. 26.)

“When population is scanty, and land abundant, the free labourer is idle and saucy. Artificial regulation has often been found, not only useful, but absolutely necessary to compel him to work. At this day, according to Mr. Carlyle, the emancipated negroes in our West India Islands, having hot sun for nothing, and plenty of pumpkin” (pumpkin) “for next to nothing, will not work. He seems to think legal regulations compelling work absolutely necessary, even for their own sakes. For they are rapidly relapsing into their original barbarism. So in England 500 years ago, it was found, by experience, that the poor need not, and would not work. A great plague in the 14th century having thinned the population, the difficulty of getting men to work on reasonable terms grew to such a height as to be quite intolerable, and to threaten the industry of the kingdom. Accordingly, in the year 1349, the Statute 23rd, Edward III, was passed, compelling the poor to work, and interfering with the wages of labour. It was followed with the same view through several centuries by a long series of statutable enactments. The wages of artisans, as well as of agricultural labourers; the prices of piecework, as well as of day-work; the periods during which the poor were obliged to work, nay, the very intervals for meals” (as in the Factory acts of the present day) “were defined by law. Acts of Parliament regulating wages, but against the labourer, and in favour of the master, lasted for the long period of 464 years. Population grew. These laws were then found, and really became, unnecessary and burdensome. In the year 1813, they were all repealed.” (p. 205, 206, [John Barnard Byles,] “Sophisms of Free Trade etc.”, 7. ed., London 1850.)

“The Bleaching etc. Works Act limits the hours of work of all females and young persons between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., but does not permit children to work after 6 p.m. The Print Works Act limits the hours of females, young persons and children between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., provided the children have attended some school for 5 hours in any day but Saturday before 6 o’clock p.m.” (p. 20, 21, “Factory Inspector’s Reports” for 31st Oct. 1861.) “The Factory Acts require 1½ hours to be allowed during the day, and that they shall be taken between 7.30 a.m. and 6 p.m. and one hour thereof shall be given before 3 o’clock in the afternoon; and that no child, young person, or female shall be employed more than 5 hours before 1 o’clock in the afternoon of any day without an interval for meal time of at least 30 minutes ... In the Printing Act no requisition ... for any meal time at all. Accordingly, young persons and females may work from 6 o’clock in the morning till 10 o’clock at night without stopping for meals.” (p. 21, l.c.) “In Print Works a child may work between 6 o’clock in

*  In the manuscript: meal pa

... the morning and 10 o’clock at night ... by the Bleach Works Act a child may only work as under the Factories Act, whilst the labour of the young persons and females, with whom it has been previously working during the day, may be continued till 8 o’clock in the evening.” ([p.] 22, l.c.)

“To take the silk manufacture for example, since 1850, it has been lawful to employ children above 11 years of age” (i.e., from 11-13 years) “in the winding and throwing of raw silk for 10½ hours a day. From 1844 to 1850 their daily work, less Saturday, was limited to 10 hours; and before that period to 9 hours. These alterations took place on the ground that labour in silk mills was lighter than in mills for other fabrics, and less likely, in other respects also, to be prejudicial to health.” (p. 26, l.c.) “The allegation put forth in 1850 about the manufacture of silk being a healthier occupation than that of other textile fabrics, not only entirely fails of proof, but the proof is quite the other way; for the average death rate is exceedingly high in the silk districts, and amongst the female part of the population is higher even than it is in the cotton districts of Lancashire, where, although it is true that the children only work half time, yet from the conditional causes which render cotton manufacture unhealthy, a high rate of pulmonary mortality might be supposed to be inevitable.” “15, not unfrequently 17 hours a day”. (“Ten Hours’ Factory Bill”, London 1844, p. 5.) In Switzerland the regulations are very strict: “In the canton of Argovia, no children are allowed to work, under 14 years, more than 12 hours and ½; and education is compulsory on the millowners“. In the canton of Zurich “the hours of labour are limited to 12; and children under 10 years of age are not allowed to be employed. ... In Prussia, by the law of 1839, no child who has not completed his or her 16th year, is to be employed more than 10 hours a day; none under 9 years of age to be employed at all”. (p. [5,] 6.)

/V-196/ Subinspector Baker reports (“Factory reports”, 1843), as to “having seen several females, who, he was sure, could only just have completed their 18th year, who had been obliged to work from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., with only 11½ hours for meals. In other cases, he shows, females are obliged to work all night, in a temperature from 70 to 80 degrees ... I found” (says Mr. Horner, “Factory reports”, 1843) “many young women, just 18 years of age, at work from half past 5 in the morning until 8 o’clock at night, with no cessation except a quarter of an hour for breakfast, and 3 quarters of an hour for dinner. They may be fairly said to labour for 15 hours and a half out of 24. There are” (says Mr. Saunders, “Fact. Rep.”, 1843) “among them females who have been employed for some weeks, with an interval only of a few days, from 6 o’clock in the morning until 12 o’clock at night, less than 2 hours for meals, thus giving them for 5 nights in the week, 6 hours out of its 24 to go to and from their homes, and to obtain rest in bed.” (l.c., [p.] 20, 21.)

“In the year 1833, a letter was addressed to me by Mr. Ashworth, a very considerable millowner in Lancashire, which contains the following curious passage: “You will next naturally inquire about the old men, who are said to die, or become unfit for work, when they attain 40 years of age, or soon after.’ Mark the phrase ‘old men’ at 40 years of age!” (l.c., p. 12.)

374 Appendix and Index

221 “Although prepared by seeing childhood occupied in such a manner, it is very difficult to believe the ages of men advanced in years, as given by themselves, so complete is their premature old age.” (p. 13, l.c.)9

222 ||124£| “He” (one of the entrepreneurs in the first period of the development of the cotton industry) “communicated to me an admirable idea, I do not know if it is his own, but it is truly worthy of him: it is to organise night-work. The workers will be divided into two gangs, so that each gang keeps watch until morning, every other night: the looms will no longer rest. Work, limited to 17 hours, allowed an enormous capital – the value of the looms, the rent, etc. – to sleep for 7 long hours. These 7 long hours of daily interest will no longer be lost. He explained to me a combination by means of which he will recoup, and more than recoup, his lighting expenses, simply by the manner of fixing the night wage.” ([p.] 145, 146, “Sir Richard Arkwright etc. (1760 & 1792)”, by St-Germain Leduc, Paris 1842.)

223 «Pour couvrir la dépense de ces arrangements si bien combinés, et soutenir en général l’établissement, il était indispensablement nécessaire d’employer ces enfants dans l’intérieur des moulins à coton, depuis 6 heures du matin jusqu’à sept heures du soir, l’été comme l’hiver ... Les directeurs des charités publiques, par un motif d’économie mal entendue, ne voulurent pas envoyer les enfants confiés à leurs soins, à moins que les propriétaires de l’établissement ne s’en chargeassent dès l’âge de 6, 7 ou 8 ans. ([p.] 64.) (« Examen Impartial des Nouvelles Vues de M. Robert Owen et de ses Établissemens à New-Lanark en Écosse etc. », par Henry Grey Macnab etc., traduit par Laffon de Ladebat etc., Paris 1821.) «Ainsi, les arrangements de M. Dale et sa tendre sollicitude pour le bien-être de ces enfants, furent en dernier résultat presque entièrement inutiles et sans succès. Il avait pris ces enfants à son service, et sans leur travail il ne pouvait pas les nourrir.» ([p.] 65, l.c.) «Le mal provenait de ce que les enfants [1242] envoyés des hospices, beaucoup trop jeunes pour le travail, auraient dû être gardés quatre ans de plus, et recevoir une première éducation ... Si tel est le tableau fidèle et non exagéré de la situation de nos apprentis sortants des hospices, dans notre système actuel de manufactures, même sous les règlements les meilleurs et les plus humains, quelle ne doit pas être la situation déplorable de ces enfants sous un mauvais régime?» ([p.] 66, l.c.)

224 «Le système de recevoir des apprentis tirés des maisons de charité publique, fut aboli ... On renonça à l’habitude d’employer des enfants de 6 à huit ans dans les fabriques.» ([p.] 74.)

224 «Les heures de travail, 16 sur les 24, ont été réduites à 10 heures et demie par jour.»

243 “to prosecute for intimidation the agents of the Carpet Weavers’ Trades Unions. Bright’s partners had introduced new machinery which would turn out 240 yards of carpet in the time and with the labour previously required to produce 160 yards. The workmen had no claim whatever to share in the profits made by the investment of their employers’ capital in mechanical improvement. Accordingly, Messrs. Bright proposed to lower the rate of pay from 1½d per yard to 1d, leaving the earnings of the men exactly the same as before for the same labour. But there was a nominal reduction, of which the operatives, it is asserted, had not had fair warning beforehand, 1.”

“The very existence of the former” (the master-capitalists) “as a distinct class is dependent on the productiveness of industry.” (p. 206, Ramsay, “An Essay on the Dist. of Wealth etc.”, Edinburgh 1836.)

“If each man’s labour were but enough to produce his own food, there could be no property” (is here used for capital). (p. 14, Piercy Ravenstone, M.A., “Thoughts on the Funding System, and its Effects”, London 1824.)

“In different stages of society, the accumulation of capital, or of the means of employing labour is more or less rapid, and must in all cases depend on the productive powers of labour. The productive powers of labour are generally greatest, where there is an abundance of fertile land.” (Ricardo.) “If, in the first sentence, the productive powers of labour mean the smallness of that aliquot part of any produce that goes to those whose manual labour produced it, the sentence is nearly identical, because the remaining aliquot part is the fund whence capital can, if the owner pleases, be accumulated. But then this does not generally happen where there is most fertile land. It does in North America, but that is an artificial state of things. It does not in Mexico. It does not in New Holland. The productive powers of labour are, indeed, in another sense, greatest where there is much fertile land, viz. the power of man, if he chooses it, to raise much raw produce in proportion to the whole labour he performs. It is, indeed, a gift of nature, that men can raise more food than the lowest quantity that they could maintain and keep up the existing population on; but ‘surplus produce’” (the term used by Mr. Ricardo, p. 93) “generally means the excess of the whole price of a thing above that part of it which goes to the labourers who made it; a part, which is settled by human arrangement, and not fixed.” (p. 74, 75, “Observations on certain verbal Disputes in Pol. Ec., particularly relating to value and to demand and supply”, London 1821.)

“There are numerous operations of so simple a kind as not to admit a division into parts, which cannot be performed without the cooperation of many pairs of hands. For instance, the lifting of a large tree on a wain, keeping down weeds in a large field of growing crops, shearing a large flock of sheep at the same time, gathering a harvest of corn at a time when it is ripe enough and not too ripe, moving any great weight; everything in short, which cannot be done unless a good many pairs of hands help each other in the same undivided employment, and at the same time.” (p. 168, Wakefield, E.G., “A view of the art of colonization etc.”, London 1849.)

“The strength of each individual is minimal, but the union of minimal strengths forms a total strength greater even than the sum of those strengths themselves, so long as the strengths, by being united, can diminish the time and increase the space of their action.” (G. R. Carli, Note 1, p. 196, in Pietro Verri, “Meditazioni sulla Econ. Polit. etc.”, in Custodi, Parte Moderna.)

“It has happened in times past that these Oriental States, after supplying the expenses of their civil and military establishments, have found themselves in possession of a surplus which they could apply to works of magnificence or utility, and in the construction of these their command over the hands and arms of almost the entire non-agricultural population [...], and this food, belonging to the monarch and the priesthood, afforded the means of creating the mighty monuments which filled the land ... in

376 Appendix and Index

moving the colossal statues and vast masses, of which the transport creates wonder, human labour almost alone was prodigally used ... topes and reservoirs of Ceylon, the Wall of China, the numerous works of which the ruins cover the plains of Assyria and Mesopotamia.” (Richard Jones, “Text-book of Lectures on the Polit. Econ. of Nations”, Hertford 1852, p. 77.) “The number of the labourers, and the concentration of their efforts sufficed.” {The number of the labourers and the concentration of the same the basis of simple cooperation.} “We see mighty coral reefs rising from the depths of the ocean into islands and firm land, yet each individual depositor is puny, weak and contemptible. The non-agricultural labourers of an Asiatic monarchy have little but their individual bodily exertions to bring ||146| to the task; but their number is their strength, and the power of directing these masses gave rise to the palaces and temples etc. It is that confinement of the revenues which feed them, to one or a few hands, which makes such undertakings possible.” ([p.] 78, l. c.)

“The mathematical principle that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts becomes false when applied to our subject. Regarding labour, the great pillar of human existence, it may be said that the whole product of combined exertion infinitely exceeds all that individual and disconnected efforts could possibly accomplish.” (p. 84, Michael Thomas Sadler, “The Law of Population”, t. I.)

1. Concours de forces. (Simple cooperation.) “Is it a matter of defence? Ten men will easily resist an enemy who would have destroyed them all by attacking them one after the other. Is it a matter of moving a burden? That whose weight would have opposed an invincible resistance to the efforts of a single individual yields at once to those of several who act together. Is it a question of executing a complex task? Several things must be done simultaneously; one does one while another does another, and all contribute to an effect which a single man could not have produced. One rows while another holds the tiller, and a third casts the net or harpoons the fish, and the fishing has a success impossible without this concourse.” (l.c., p. 78.) “When several men work reciprocally for one another, each can devote himself exclusively to the occupation in which he has the most advantages, etc.” (p. 79, l.c.)

“One will more easily form an idea of the effects of the division of labour on the general industry of society, if one observes how these effects operate in some particular manufactures.” [p. 11.]!9

“It is commonly supposed that this division is carried furthest in some of the manufactures where objects of little value are produced. It is not perhaps that in reality it is carried further there than in more important manufactures; but because, in the former, which are destined for small objects demanded by a small number of people, the total number of workers employed in them is necessarily small, and those who are occupied in each different branch of the work can often be assembled in the same workshop, and placed at once under the eye of the observer. On the contrary, in those great manufactures desti-

!9 In the manuscript: James Sadler, “On Population?”.

ned to supply the objects of consumption of the mass of the people, each branch of the work employs so great a number of workers that it is impossible to assemble them all | |152| in the same workshop. It is rare that one can see at one time anything other than those who are employed in one single branch of the work. Thus, although in these manufactures the work may perhaps in reality be divided into a greater number of parts than in those of the first kind, yet the division is there less apparent, and, for this reason, has been much less observed.” [p. 11/12.]

“In every art, the division of labour, as far as it can be carried, gives rise to a proportional increase in the productive faculties of labour. It is this advantage which seems to have given birth to the separation of the various employments and trades. Thus this separation is in general pushed further in countries which enjoy the highest degree of improvement and industry; and what, in a still somewhat rude state of society, is the work of one man, becomes, in a more advanced society, the task of several.” [p. 15.]

“This great increase in the quantity of work which the same number of hands is able to perform, in consequence of the division of labour, is due to three different circumstances.” (Book I, ch. I [,p. 18].)

“First, the increase of dexterity in the workman necessarily increases the quantity of work he can perform, and the division of labour, by reducing the task of each man to some very simple operation, and by making that operation the sole operation of his life, necessarily causes him to acquire a very great dexterity.” [p. 19.] “When the two trades can be established in the same workshop, the loss of time is no doubt much less; nevertheless, it does not cease to be considerable. Usually a man loafs a little when he quits one job to put his hand to another.” [p. 20/21.]

“that it is to the division of labour that the invention of all those machines apt to abridge and facilitate labour is originally due.” [p. 21/22.]

“philosophical or speculative knowledge becomes, like every other employment, the principal or sole occupation of a particular class of citizens.” [p. 24.]

“In reality, the difference of natural talents between individuals is much less than we believe, and these so different dispositions which seem to distinguish men of the various professions, when they have reached the maturity of age, are not so much the cause as the effect of the division of labour … Everyone would have had the same task to fulfil” (without the division and the exchange, which he makes the basis of the division of labour) “and the same work to do, and there would have been no occasion for that great difference of occupations, which alone can give rise to a great difference of talents.” [p. 33/34.] “By nature, a philosopher is not half as different from a street porter, in talent and intelligence, as a mastiff is from a greyhound.” [p. 35.]

“disposition of men to truck and to exchange,” without which “everyone would have been obliged to procure for himself all the necessaries and conveniences of life.” (B. I, ch. II [, p. 34].)

“it is perhaps that his industry is discouraged by the diversity of his needs or

Appendix and Index

that his attention, too much divided, cannot suffice to acquire skill in any species of labour.” (t. II, p. 128.)

“The artisan finds that the more he can confine his attention, and limit it to a part of some work, the more perfect his labour is, and the more he increases the quantity of his productions. Every manufacturer perceives that his costs diminish, and his profits grow, in proportion as he subdivides the tasks of his workers, and as he employs a greater number of hands on each of the details of the work … the progress of commerce is only a continued subdivision of the mechanical arts.” ([p.] 129.)

“when the attention of a man is entirely directed towards an object” – occupied with a single object, discovers, “all those machines apt to abridge and facilitate labour.” (B. I, ch. I.) [p. 22.]

“the methods, the means, the processes … which the artisan attentive to his own business has invented to abridge or facilitate his particular labour.” (p. 133.)

“in the advancement of society, philosophical or speculative knowledge becomes, like every other employment, the principal or sole occupation of a particular class of citizens.” (B. I, ch. I [, p. 23/24].)

“This method which produces such great advantages in what regards industry, is applied with equal success, to objects of a higher importance, to the various departments of police and of war. … in a period where everything is separated, can itself form a particular trade” (p. 131, 136)

“There might even be reason to doubt whether the general capacity of a nation increases in proportion to the progress of the arts. Several mechanical arts require no capacity; they succeed perfectly when they are totally destitute of the aids of reason and sentiment; and ignorance is the mother of industry, as well as of superstition. Reflection and imagination are subject to err; but the habit of moving the foot or the hand depends on neither. Thus, it might be said that perfection, with regard to manufactures, consists in being able to dispense with mind” (and especially, what is important in regard to the workshop) “so that, without effort of head, the workshop may be ||157| considered as a machine whose parts are men.” (p. 134, 135.) “In the matter of industry itself, the manufacturer may have a cultivated mind, while that of the subordinate workman lies fallow. ... The general officer may be very skilled in the art of war, while the whole merit of the soldier is confined to performing a few movements of foot and hand. The one may have gained what the other has lost!” (p. 135, 136.)

“He practises on a large scale the ruses and all the means of attack and defence that the savage employs at the head of a small troop; or merely for his own preservation.” (p. 136.)

“Nations devoted to industry come to such a point that they are composed of members who, except their trade, are of the greatest ignorance concerning all! the things of life.” (p. 130.) “We are whole nations of helots, and we have no free citizens.” (p. 144, loc. cit.)

! In the manuscript: toute

“The first essential towards production is labour. To play its part efficiently in this great business, the labour of individuals must be combined; or, in other words, the labour required for producing certain results must be distributed among several individuals, and those individuals thus be enabled to cooperate.” (p. 76, Scrope.)

“The principle here referred to is usually called the division of labour. The phrase is objectionable, since the fundamental idea is that of concert and cooperation, not of division. The term of division applies only to the process; this being subdivided into several operations, and these being distributed or parcelled out among a number of operatives. It is thus a combination of labourers effected through a subdivision of processes.”

“The effects of the division of labour, and of the use of machines ... both derive their value from the same circumstance, their tendency, to enable one man to perform the work of many.” (p. 317,) “It produces also an economy of time, by separating the work into its different branches, all of which may be carried into execution at the same moment ... by carrying on all the different processes at once, which an individual must have executed separately, it becomes possible to produce a multitude of pins f. i. completely finished in the same time as a single pin might have been either cut or pointed.” ([p.] 319.) “living automatons ... employed in the details of the work”, while the “employer will be always on the stretch to economize time and labour”. (p. 318.)

“Cuncta nihilque sumus.” “In omnibus aliquid, in toto nihil.”

“Ὅτι μικρὸν ἔργα, καιρῷ δ’ ἀνίστατο πάντα,”

“ὅστις γάρ τ’ ἄλλοισιν ἀνὴρ ἐπιστρέφεται ἔργοις,”

“βιὸς δ’ ἐν ἔργῳ καρδίην ἰαίνεται,” 19

“Ὅτι μὲν γὰρ ἕκαστα ... Καὶ τοῦτο μέντοι οὕτως ἔχειν οὐδέν τι θαυμαστόν· ὥσπερ γὰρ καὶ αἱ ἄλλαι τέχναι διαφερόντως ἐν ταῖς μεγίσταις πόλεσιν ἐξειργασμέναι εἰσί (are perfected to an excellent degree in the large cities), κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον καὶ τὰ παρὰ βασιλεῖ σῖτα πολὺ διαφερόντως ἐκπεπόνηται. Ἐν μὲν γὰρ ταῖς μικραῖς πόλεσιν οἱ αὐτοὶ ποιοῦσι κλίνην (the same person makes bedsteads), θύραν (doors), ἄροτρον (ploughs), τράπεζαν (tables); πολλάκις δ’ ὁ αὐτὸς οὗτος καὶ οἰκοδομεῖ (builds houses), καὶ ἀγαπᾷ ἢν καὶ οὕτως ||161| ἱκανοὺς αὑτὸν τρέφειν ἐργοδότας (ἐργοδότης wage-master, who contracts the work) (finds sufficiently many employers to support himself) λαμβάνῃ· ἀδύνατον οὖν πολλὰ τεχνώμενον ἄνθρωπον πάντα καλῶς (well) ποιεῖν. Ἐν δὲ ταῖς μεγάλαις πόλεσι, διὰ τὸ πολλοὺς ἑκάστου δεῖσθαι, ἀρκεῖ καὶ μία ἑκάστῳ τέχνη εἰς τὸ τρέφεσθαι· (where there are many buyers for each individual (where many have need of each individual), one art is also sufficient for each individual to support himself. (a single art also supports its man.)) πολλάκις δὲ οὐδ’ ὅλη μία (yes, not even a whole one), ἀλλ’ ὑποδήματα ποιεῖ ὁ μὲν ἀνδρεῖα (men’s shoes), ὁ δὲ γυναικεῖα (women’s shoes). Ἔστι δὲ ἔνθα καὶ ὑποδήματα ὁ μὲν νευρορραφῶν (sewing the shoes) μόνον τρέφεται, ὁ δὲ σχίζων (cutting), ὁ δὲ χιτῶνας (clothes) μόνον συντέμνων (cutting), ὁ δέ γε τούτων οὐδὲν ποιῶν ἀλλὰ συντιθεὶς ταῦτα (sets them together). Ἀνάγκη οὖν, τὸν ἐν βραχυτέρῳ διατρίβοντα ἔργῳ (he who performs the simplest work), τοῦτον καὶ ἄριστα δὴ ἀναγκάζεσθαι τοῦτο ποιεῖν. (he must needs do the thing best. forced to deliver it in the best way.) Tὸ αὐτό.

Appendix and Index

ὃ δὲ τοῦτο πέπονθε καὶ τὰ ἀμφὶ τὴν δίαιταν. (So it is with the art of cooking.) οἱ μὲν γὰρ ὁ αὐτὸς κλίνην στορεννύει (spreads the cushions), τράπεζαν κοσμεῖ (sets out the table), μάττει (kneads the bread), ὄψα ἄλλοτε ἀλλοῖα ποιεῖ (prepares now this, now that dish), ἀνάγκη, οἶμαι, τούτῳ, ὡς ἂν ἕκαστον εὐχωρῇ (as each turns out) (as it happens to turn out) οὕτως ἔχειν (you must take it as it comes, as it happens to turn out). ὅπου δ’ ἱκανὸν ἔργον ἑνὶ ἕψειν κρέα (to boil the meat), ἄλλῳ ὀπτᾶν (to roast), ἄλλῳ δὲ ἰχθὺν ἕψειν, ἢ ὀπτᾶν, ἄλλῳ ἄρτους ποιεῖν (to prepare the bread), καὶ μηδὲ τούτους παντοδαπούς, ἀλλ’ ἢν ἓν εἶδος εὐδοκιμοῦν (a favourite kind) παρασχῇ, ἀνάγκη, οἶμαι, ταῦτα οὕτω ποιούμενα πολὺ διαφερόντως ἐξειργάσθαι ἕκαστον. τὰ μὲν δὴ τῶν σίτων θεραπεία τοιαῦτα τούτῳ πολὺ ὑπερεβάλλετο πάντας. (With this preparation, the dishes from the table of Cyrus were superior to all others.) (Xenophon, “Cyrop.”, ed. E. Poppo, Lipsiae 1821, I. VIII, c. II.)

“Γίγνεται τοίνυν... πόλις... ἐπειδὴ τυγχάνει ἡμῶν ἕκαστος οὐκ αὐτάρκης, ἀλλὰ πολλῶν ||162| ἐνδεής.” [369c.]

“ποιήσει δὲ αὐτὴν (sc. the city) ... ἡ ἡμετέρα χρεία.” [369c.]

“Ἀλλὰ μὴν πρώτη γε καὶ μεγίστη τῶν χρειῶν ἡ τῆς τροφῆς παρασκευὴ τοῦ εἶναί τε καὶ ζῆν ἕνεκα... δευτέρα δὴ οἰκήσεως, τρίτη ἐσθῆτος καὶ τῶν τοιούτων.” [369d.]

“Ἆρ’ οὖν ἥ πόλις ἐπὶ τοσαύτην παρασκευήν; Ἀλλό τι γεωργὸς μὲν εἷς, ὁ δὲ οἰκοδόμος, ἄλλος δέ τις ὑφάντης κτλ... Ἕνα ἕκαστον τούτων δεῖ τὸ αὑτοῦ ἔργον ἅπασι κοινὸν κατατιθέναι, οἷον τὸν γεωργὸν ἕνα ὄντα παρασκευάζειν σιτία τέτταρσι καὶ πενταπλασίω χρόνον τε καὶ πόνον ἀναλίσκειν ἐπὶ σίτου παρασκευῇ, καὶ ἄλλοις κοινωνεῖν; ἢ μηδὲν φροντίσαντα ἑαυτῷ μόνον τέταρτον μέρος ποιεῖν τούτου τοῦ σίτου ἐν τετάρτῳ μέρει τοῦ χρόνου, τρία δὲ τὰ μὲν ἐπὶ τῇ τῆς οἰκίας παρασκευῇ διατρίβειν, τὰ δ’ ἱματίου, τὰ δ’ ὑποδημάτων, καὶ μὴ ἄλλοις κοινωνοῦντα πράγματα ἔχειν, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν δι’ αὑτὸν τὰ αὑτοῦ πράττειν;... οὕτω ῥᾴδιον μὰ Δί’ ἐκείνως... πρῶτον μὲν φύεται ἕκαστος οὐ πάνυ ὅμοιος ἑκάστῳ, ἀλλὰ διαφέρων τὴν φύσιν, ἄλλος ἐπ’ ἄλλου ἔργου φυεῖν... πότερον κάλλιον πράττοι ἄν τις εἷς ὢν πολλὰς τέχνας ἐργαζόμενος, ἢ ὅταν μίαν εἷς; Ὅταν... εἷς μίαν... Ἐάν τις τίνος παρῇ ἔργου καιρόν, διόλλυται... Οὐ γὰρ... ἐθέλει τὸ πραττόμενον τὴν τοῦ πράττοντος σχολὴν περιμένειν, ἀλλ’ ἀνάγκη τὸν πράττοντα τῷ πραττομένῳ ἐπακολουθεῖν μὴ ἐν παρέργου μέρει. Ἀνάγκη. Ἐκ δὴ τούτων πλείω τε ἕκαστα γίγνεται καὶ κάλλιον καὶ ῥᾷον, ὅταν εἷς ἓν κατὰ φύσιν καὶ ἐν καιρῷ, σχολὴν τῶν ἄλλων ἄγων, πράττῃ.” [369d-370c.]

“Οὐ γὰρ γεωργός, ὡς ἔοικεν, οὐκ αὐτὸς ποιήσεται ἑαυτῷ τὸ ἄροτρον, εἰ μέλλει καλὸν εἶναι, οὐδὲ σμινύην (hoe), οὐδὲ τἆλλα ὄργανα ὅσα περὶ γεωργίαν. οὐδ’ αὖ ὁ οἰκοδόμος κτλ.” [370c-d.]

“Ἐκ δὴ τίνων... εἰσὶ καὶ ἄλλοι διάκονοι, οἳ ἂν τὰ μὲν τῆς διανοίας μὴ πάνυ εὐκοινώνητοι ὦσι, τὴν δὲ τοῦ σώματος ἰσχὺν ἱκανὴν ἐπὶ τοὺς πόνους ἔχωσιν· οἳ δὴ πωλοῦντες τὴν τῆς ἰσχύος χρείαν, τὴν τιμὴν ταύτην μισθὸν καλοῦντες, κέκληνται... μισθωτοί.” [371e.]

“Ὡμολογήκαμεν δέ που... ἀδύνατον ἕνα πολλὰ καλῶς ἐργάζεσθαι τέχνας...”

[374a–c. e.] (pp. 439–441 passim, loc. cit.) “travail réglementé et en quelque sorte forcé des ouvriers soumis au régime des grandes manufactures” [p. 43.]

“Le tort des manufactures … est d’asservir le travailleur et de le mettre … lui et sa famille, à la discrétion de l’ouvrage.” [p. 118.] “… Comparez, par exemple, l’industrie de Rouen ou de Mulhouse avec celle de Lyon ou de Nîmes. Toutes deux ont pour objet la filature et le tissage de deux filaments: l’un de coton, l’autre de soie; et cependant elles ne se ressemblent en rien. La première ne s’exerce que dans de vastes établissements, à coup de capitaux … avec le secours de véritables armées de travailleurs; cantonnés, par centaines, par milliers même, dans d’immenses usines semblables à des casernes, hautes comme des tours, et criblées de fenêtres comme des meurtrières.” (embrasures.) “La seconde, au contraire, est toute patriarcale; elle emploie beaucoup de femmes et d’enfants, mais sans les épuiser ni les corrompre; elle les laisse dans leurs belles vallées de la Drôme, du Var, de l’Isère, de Vaucluse, y élever des vers et dévider” (wind off) “leurs cocons.” (cocoons of the silkworm:) “Jamais elle n’entre dans une véritable fabrique. Pour être aussi bien observé dans cette industrie que dans la première, le principe de la division du travail s’y revêt d’un caractère spécial. Il y a bien des dévideuses” (female winders), “des moulineurs” (silk-spinners, throwsters), “des teinturiers, des encolleurs, puis des tisserands; mais ils ne sont pas réunis dans un même établissement, ne dépendent pas d’un même maître: tous, ils sont indépendants. Leur capital, qui se compose de leurs outils, de leurs métiers, de leurs chaudières, est peu important, mais il suffit pour les mettre avec leurs commettants sur un certain pied d’égalité. Là, pas de règlement de fabriques, pas de conditions à subir; chacun stipule pour son compte, en pleine liberté.” (Blanqui ainé, Cours d’Économie Industrielle, recueilli etc. par A. Blaise, Paris (1838–39), pp. 44–80 passim.)

[165] “Each person proves by experience that by continually applying the hand and the intellect to the same kind of works and products, one obtains results that are easier, more abundant, and better than if each person, in isolation, were to make only all the things he himself needed … thus dividing themselves, for the common and private utility, into various classes and conditions.” ([p.] 28, Cesare Beccaria, “Elementi di Economia Pubblica”, vol. XI, Custodi, Parte Moderna.)

“IF my neighbour, by doing much with little labour, can sell cheap, I must contrive to sell as cheap as he.” [p. 67.]

“decomposes a process by reducing it to its constituent principles and which subjects all its parts to the operation of an automatic machine, and then one can entrust these same elementary parts to a person endowed with an ordinary capacity, after having subjected them to a short trial.” 1?

Appendix and Index

“The man reduced to a very simple operation in the manufactories became dependent on whoever wanted to employ him. He no longer produced a complete work, but only a part of the work, for which he required the cooperation of the labour of others just as much as raw materials, machinery, etc. His position vis-à-vis the chef d’atelier was subordinated … he limited his demand to the strictly necessary, without which the labour he offered could not have continued, while the chef d’atelier alone profited from all the increase in the productive powers that the division of labour had brought about.” (p. 91, 92, Sismondi, “Nouveaux Principes etc.”, vol. 1.)

“Division of labour shortens the period required for learning an operation.” F. Wayland, p. 76. (“The Elements of Pol. Econ.”, Boston 1843.) “In establishing a manufactory, it is important so to adjust the number and kind of workmen, that, when the different operations of a process have been assigned to different persons, these persons may be in such proportions as exactly and fully to employ each other. The more perfectly this is accomplished, the greater will be the economy and, this having been once ascertained, it is also evident that the establishment cannot be successfully enlarged, unless it employ multiples of this number of workmen.” (p. 83, l.c.)

“Each worker finds himself in possession of a great quantity of his labour which he can dispose of, beyond what he applies to his own needs; and as the other workers are in the same situation, he is able to exchange a great quantity of the commodities he has manufactured for a great quantity of theirs, or, what is the same thing, for the price of these commodities.” 1?

“Easy labour is only transmitted skill.” (Th. Hodgskin, “Popul. Polit. Economy”, London 1827, p. 48.)

«Pour diviser le travail et distribuer les forces des hommes et des machines de la manière la plus avantageuse, il est nécessaire, dans une foule de cas, d’opérer sur une grande échelle, ou en d’autres termes de produire les richesses par grandes masses. C’est cet avantage qui donne naissance aux grandes manufactures.» («Elem. d’Ec. Pol.», James Mill, traduit par J. T. Parisot, Paris 1823, p. 11].)

“The greater the cost of the product, the smaller will be the number of persons who are able to purchase it. Hence, the less will be the demand; and hence, also, the less opportunity will there be for division of labour. And, besides, the greater the cost of the article, the greater amount of capital is required in order to produce it by division of labour ... Hence it is, that division of labour is but sparingly used in the manufacture of rich jewelry, and in articles of expensive luxury; while it is so universally used in the production of all articles of common use. Hence we see, that the benefits of the use of natural agents and of division of labour, are vastly greater and more important to the middling and lower classes than to the rich. These means of increased production, reduce the cost of the necessaries and of the essential conveniences of life to the lowest rate, and, of course, bring them, as far as possible, within the reach of all.” (Ip.] 86, 87, F. Wayland, “The Elements of Pol. Econ.”, Boston 1843.)

“There is a certain density of population which is convenient, both for social intercourse, and for that combination of powers by which the produce of labour is increased.” (Ip.] 50, James Mill, “El. of Pol. Ec.”, London 1821.)

26*

“There is no longer any thing which we can call the natural reward of individual labour. Each labourer produces only some part of a whole, and each part, having no value or utility of itself, there is nothing on which the labourer can seize, and say: it is my product, this I will keep for myself.” (p.25, [Thomas Hodgskin,] “Labour defended against the claims of Capital etc.“, London 1825.)

«Le progrès de la richesse a amené le partage des conditions et celui des professions; ce n'est plus le superflu de chacun qui a été l’objet des échanges, mais la subsistance elle-même ... dans cet état nouveau, la vie de tout homme, qui travaille et qui produit depend non de la completion et de la réussite de son travail, mais de sa vente.» (p.82, t. 1, Sism., «Etudes ».)

“The greater productiveness of human industry, and the diminished price of the necessaries of life, conspire to swell productive capital in modern times.” ([p. 88,] 89, S. P. Newman, “Elements of Polit. Econ.”, Andover and New York 1835.)

“Labour is united ... whenever employments are divided ... The greatest division of labour takes place amongst those exceedingly barbarous savages who never help each other, who work separately from each other; and division of employment, with all its great results, depends altogether on combination of labour, cooperation.” (p. 24, Wakefield, Note t) to his edition of A. Smith, Wealth of Nations, London, 1835.)

“Improved methods of conveyance, like railroads, steam vessels, canals, all means of facilitating intercourse between distant countries act upon the division of labour in the same way as an actual increase in the number of people; they bring more labourers into communication etc.” |[p. 119.]

“As the number of labourers increases, the productive power of society augments in the compound ratio of that increase, multiplied by the effects of the division of labour and the increase of knowledge.” (p. 120, l.c.)

«Ce n’est qu’à l’aide d’un surcroît de capital, que l’entrepreneur d’un genre d’ouvrage quelconque pourra ... établir entre ses ouvriers une division de travail plus avantageuse. Quand l’ouvrage à faire est composé de plusieurs parties, pour tenir chaque ouvrier constamment occupé à remplir sa partie, il faut un capital beaucoup plus étendu que lorsque chaque ouvrier est employé indifféremment à toutes les parties de

x

l’ouvrage, à mesure qu’elles sont à faire.» (A. Smith, [«Recherches»,] 1. II, ch. III, p. 338/339.)

«Quant à la puissance de produire, elle ne peut s’augmenter dans un même nombre d’ouvriers, qu’autant que l’on multiplie ou que l’on perfectionne les machines et instrumens qui facilitent et abrègent le travail, ou bien qu’autant que l’on établit une meilleure distribution ou une division mieux entendue du travail.» (l.c. [, p. 338].)

«Le propriétaire du capital qui alimente un grand nombre d’ouvriers, tâche nécessairement, pour son propre intérêt, de si bien combiner entre eux la division et la distribution des tâches, qu’ils soient à même de produire la plus grande quantité possible d’ouvrage. Par le même motif il s’applique à les fournir des meilleures machines dont lui ou eux peuvent s’aviser. Ce qui a lieu parmi les ouvriers d’un atelier particulier, se trouve avoir lieu pour la même raison parmi ceux de la grande société. Plus leur nombre est grand, plus ils tendent naturellement à se partager en différentes classes et à subdiviser leurs tâches. Il y a un plus grand nombre de têtes qui s’occupent à inventer les machines les plus propres à exécuter la tâche dont chacun est chargé, et dès lors il y a d’autant plus de probabilités que l’on viendra à bout de les inventer.» (ch. VIII, 1. I, [p. 177/178,] A. Smith.)

Appendix and Index

“The whole of society has this in common with the interior of a workshop, that it too has its division of labour. If one took as a model the division of labour in a modern workshop, in order to apply it to a whole society, the society best organised for the production of wealth would incontestably be that which had only a single chief entrepreneur, distributing tasks according to a rule fixed in advance to the various members of the community. But this is by no means the case. While in the interior of the modern workshop the division of labour is minutely regulated by the authority of the entrepreneur, modern society has no other rule, no other authority, for the distribution of labour than free competition.” (p. 130, [Karl Marx,] *Misère de la philosophie*, Paris 1847). “Under the patriarchal regime, under the regime of castes, under the feudal and guild regime, there was division of labour in the whole of society according to fixed rules.... As for the division of labour in the workshop, it was very little developed in all these forms of society. One may even lay it down as a general rule that the less authority presides over the division of labour within society, the more the division of labour develops within the workshop, and the more it is there subjected to the authority of a single person. Thus, authority in the workshop and that in society, in relation to the division of labour, are in inverse ratio to each other.” (p. 130, 131, loc. cit.) “The accumulation and concentration of instruments and workers preceded the development of the division of labour within the workshop.... The development of the division of labour presupposes the gathering of workers in a workshop.... Once men and instruments are brought together, the division of labour as it existed in the form of the guilds necessarily reproduced itself, reflected itself within the workshop.” ([p.] 132, 133, loc. cit.) “The concentration of the instruments of production and the division of labour are as inseparable from one another as are, in the political regime, the concentration of public powers and the division of private interests.” (p. 134, loc. cit.)

“Observe,” this conclusion begins, “in a civilised and flourishing country, what the furniture of a simple day-labourer or of the meanest of manual workers consists of, and you will see that the number of people whose industry has concurred, in some part, to provide him with this furniture, is beyond all possible calculation. The woollen jacket, for example, that covers this day-labourer, coarse as it appears, is the product of the combined labour of an innumerable multitude of workmen,” etc. [p. 25.]

“Between the furniture of a European prince and that of a hard-working and thrifty peasant, there is perhaps not as much difference as between the furnishings of the latter and those of some king who reigns over ten thousand naked savages, and who disposes as absolute master of their liberty and their life.” [p. 28.]

“If we trace the most flourishing nations in their origin, we shall find, that, in the remote beginnings of every society, the richest and most considerable men among them were a great while destitute of a great many comforts of life that are now enjoyed by the meanest and most humble wretches; so that many things which were once looked upon as the inventions of luxury are now allowed even to those that are so miserably poor as to become the objects of public charity ... A man would be laughed at that should discover luxury in the plain dress of a poor creature that walks along in a thick parish gown, and a coarse shirt underneath it; and yet what a number of people, how many different trades, and what a variety of skill and tools must be employed to have the most ordinary Yorkshire cloth?” etc. (Remark, P., vol.I, p. 181-183, ed. of 1724.) “What a bustle is there to be made in several parts of the world before a fine scarlet or crimson cloth can be produced; what multiplicity of trades and artificers must be employed! Not only such as are obvious, as woolcombers, spinners, the weaver, the cloth-worker, the scourer, the dyer, the setter, the drawer, and the packer; but others that are more remote, and might seem foreign to it,—as the mill-wright, the pewterer, and the chemist, which yet all are necessary, as well as a great number of handicrafts, to have the ||174| tools, utensils, and other implements belonging to the trades already named.”

“In some parts of the Highlands of Scotland, not many years ago, every peasant, according to the Statistical Accounts, made his own shoes of leather tanned by himself. Many a shepherd and cottar too, with his wife and children, appeared at church in clothes which had been touched by no hands but their own, since they were shorn from their sheep and sown in their flaxfields. In the preparation of these, it is added, scarcely a single article had been purchased, except the awl, needle, thimble, and a very few parts of the iron work employed in the weaving. The dyes, too, were chiefly extracted by the women from trees, shrubs, and herbs.” (“Lectures on Pol. Ec.”, v. 1, l.c.)

«Lorsque A. Smith écrivit son ouvrage immortel sur les éléments de l’économie politique, le système automatique d’industrie était encore à peine connu. La division du travail lui parut avec raison le grand principe du perfectionnement en manufacture ... Mais ce qui pouvait servir d’exemple utile du temps du docteur Smith ne serait propre aujourd’hui qu’à induire le public en erreur relativement au principe réel de l’industrie moderne ... Le dogme scolastique de la division du travail selon les différents degrés d’habileté a enfin été exploité par nos manufacturiers éclairés.» (Andrew Ure, «Philosophie des manufactures etc.», t. 1, ch. 1.) (first published in 1835.)

l. “It” (A. Smith) “concludes therefore that one can naturally appropriate to each of these operations a worker whose wages correspond to his skill. It is this appropriation which is the essence of the division of labour.”

“distribution, or rather the adaptation of tasks to the different individual capacities.” “The labour that feeds, clothes and houses the totality of the inhabitants of a country, is a charge imposed on society en masse, but which it necessarily shifts onto only a part of its members.” (p. 2, loc. cit.)

“and consequently the more labour will be employed in producing them, in preparing them” (the means of subsistence in general), “in bringing them closer to the consumers. At the same time, however, and as a consequence of these same advances, the class of people delivered from these manual labours increases in its proportion with the other class. The latter therefore has at

386 Appendix and Index

once, more people to provide for, and a more abundant and more highly worked-up provision to supply to each one of them. Also, as society prospers, i. e., as it increases in industry, in commerce, in population etc. ... the man devoted to a mechanical profession has less time to save. The richer society becomes, the more the time of the worker has value (is rather de valeur) ... Thus, the more society advances towards a state of splendour and power, the less time the working class will have to devote to study and to intellectual and speculative pursuits.” (p. 2-4.)

“On the other hand, the less time the working class has to exploit the domain of science, the more remains for the other class. If the men of this latter class can devote themselves consistently and assiduously to philosophical observations or literary compositions, it is because they are freed from all care concerning the production, making or transport of the objects of their daily subsistence, and because others have taken it upon themselves to perform these mechanical operations. Like all the other divisions of labour, that between mechanical labour and intellectual labour becomes more pronounced and more sharply defined as society advances towards a more opulent state. This division, like all others, is an effect of past progress and the cause of future progress ... Should the government then work to thwart this division of |177| labour, and to retard it in its natural course? Should it employ a portion of the public revenue to attempt to confound and mix two classes of labour which tend by themselves to separate?” (p. 4, 5, loc. cit.)

“In every stage of society, as increased numbers and better contrivances add to each man’s power of production, the number of those who labour is gradually diminished ... Property grows from the improvement of the means of product

## Relative and Absolute Surplus Value

We have considered absolute and relative surplus value separ- 
ately. But in capitalist production they are bound together. And it 
is precisely the development of modern industry which shows how 
they develop simultaneously, how the working day is prolonged in 
the same degree as necessary labour time is reduced by the 
development of the social productive powers of labour. It is 
capital’s tendency to develop surplus value simultaneously in both 
forms. It thereby calls forth at once the struggle for the normal 
working day, depicted previously, and its enforced establishment as 
a law imposed on capital by the state.“ The tendency of capitalist 

production is shown clearly when one compares the state’s 
intervention in the first dawn of bourgeois industry (as this 
appears e.g. in the labour statutes of the 14th century) with 
modern factory legislation. In the former case, labour time is fixed 
in order to compel the workers to perform a certain quantity of 
surplus labour for their employers (or even labour in general), to 
compel them to perform absolute surplus labour. In the latter 
case, the aim is forcibly to establish a boundary, beyond which the 
capitalist may not prolong absolute labour time, so as to prevent 
the prolongation of labour time beyond a definite limit. The 
necessity of such an intervention by the state, which was first 
demonstrated in England, the home of large-scale industry, and 
the necessity of extending this intervention progressively to new 
branches of industry, in the same measure as capitalist production 
seizes hold of those branches, proves at once, on the one hand, 
that capitalist production knows of no limits to the appropriation 
of alien labour time, and that, on the other hand, the workers are 
incapable within the established conditions of capitalist produc- 
tion—without acting as a class upon the state, and, through the 
state, upon capital—of saving from the harpy’s claws of capital 
even the free time necessary for their physical preservation.”! The 
working day for children and adults in France is 12 hours. 
According to the Law of 1833, which preceded the Ten Hours’ 
Bill, labour in England from 1835 onwards was to last 9 hours a 
day for children under 12 years old (since 1836 for children of 13 
as well), and 12 hours a day for young persons below 18 years (not 
after 8.30 in the evening and not before 5.30 in the morning).* 
1'/2 hours, pour les repas, mais ce temps n’est pas compris dans les neuf 
ou 12 heures de travail.” (At the same time the Law of 1833 
included 2 hours of compulsory school attendance.) (As late as 
1844 the manufacturers had the workers work 14 to 16 hours in 
those branches where children could be dispensed with or 
replaced by adults who had lost any other means of support.) 

May 1844 1? hours for adults and 6'/5 for children. (12. hours 
inclusive of free hours.) (* Half an hour for breakfast and an hour 
for dinner.*) In 1672 Petty wrote his Political Anatomy of Ireland. 
There he says”: 

*“Labouring men work 10 hours per diem, and make 20 meals per week, viz. 3 a 

day for working-days, and two on Sundays;” * (now only 2 meals) *“whereby it is 
plain, that if they could fast on Friday nights, and dine in one hour and a half” * 

(now breakfast and dinner only amount to 1!/g hours), * ‘whereas they take two, 
from eleven to one; thereby thus working !/99 more, and spending !/g9 less, the 
1/19” * //for taxes// * “abovementioned might be raised” * (10th ED., London, 1691). 

It follows from this passage that in those days the labour time 
for adults was not greater than what is now legally prescribed for 
children over 13 years old, and that the workers had more to eat. 
And we already find this favourable situation for the workers in 
England in the 15th century. 

“It appears from the Statute of 1496 that the diet was then considered 
EQUIVALENT to !/3 of the income of an artificer, and !/, the income of a LABOURER, 
which indicates a greater degree of independence among the WORKING CLASSES than 
prevails at present; for the board, both of LABOURERS and ARTIFICERS, would now 
be reckoned at a much higher proportion of their WAGES. The hours for MEALS and 
RELAXATION were more liberal, too, than at this day. They amounted to e.g. from 
March to September one hour for breakfast, an hour and a half for dinner, and 
half an hour for NOON-MEATE. Hence 3 hours altogether. In winter they worked 
from 5 o’clock in the morning until it went dark. In contrast, in the FACTORIES of 
the present there is only half an hour for breakfast, one hour for DINNER, exactly 
half what there was in the 15th century” (John Wade, History of the Middle and 
Working Classes, 3rd ED., London, 1835, (pp.] 24, 25 and 577, 578). 

[XX-1284] The absolute surplus labour which is gained from 
lengthening the working day is of course the basis from which the 
individual capitalist proceeds, since an increase in the productivity 
of labour only brings about a relative reduction in the wages paid 
by the individual [capitalist], in so far as he is able to sell the 
product of labour above its individual value; in so far as the article 
he produces enters the consumption of the worker the effect is, 
with the exception of articles of decisive importance, not sudden, 
and secondly it is common to all capitalists, whether it is they or 
their BROTHER cariTaLists who bring about this alteration in the value 
of the means of subsistence. With the individual [capitalist], 
however, where there are piece-wages, it appears that with 
improvements in machinery, as Ure himself concedes, the 
piece-wage is reduced in the same proportion, or, if the state of 
business does not allow this, roughly in the same, as the 
productive power of labour grows, although the price of the product 
at first stands above its value, i.e. is not reduced in the same 
proportion as the amount of labour required to make it.* There is 
a striking general example in the fact that directly after the abolition 
of the Corn Laws the manufacturers undertook a fairly general 
reduction of wages by 10%, an act which as late as 1853 produced 
a strike of 8 months in Preston.** Wages rose later owing to a 

combination of circumstances which produced an extraordinary 
demand for labour and were entirely independent of the general 
laws governing average wages.

## Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour under Capital

We have considered the two forms of absolute and relative 
surplus value separately, but shown at the same time how they are 
interconnected, and that it is precisely with the development of 
relative surplus value that absolute surplus value is pushed to its 
uttermost hmit." We have seen how the separation of the two 
forms brings forth differences in the relations of wages and 
surplus value.” Given the development of productive power, 
surplus value always appears as absolute surplus value, and in 
particular any change in it is only possible through a cuance in the 
total working day. If we presuppose the working day as given, the 
development of relative surplus value alone is possible, i.e. 
through the development of productive power. 

But the mere existence of absolute surplus value implies nothing 
more than such a level of natural fertility, hence a productivity of 
labour of natural and spontaneous origin, that not all the (possible) 
(daily) labour time of a man is required for the maintenance of his 
own existence or the reproduction of his own labour capacity. The 
only further requirement is that he should be compelled—that an 
external compulsion should exist for him—to work more than the 
necessary labour time, a compulsion to do surptus labour. However, 
the physical possibility of a surplus propuce, in which surptus LaBour Is 
objectified, clearly depends on 2 circumstances: If needs are very 
limited, then even with a smal] natural productive power of labour 

a See present edition, Vol. 30, pp. 172-346, Vol. 33, pp. 387-501, and this volume, 
pp. 8-86.— Ed. 

94 The Production Process of Capital 

a part of the labour time can suffice to satisfy them, and thus to 
leave another part over for surplus Lasovr, and therewith for the 
creation of the surplus propucr. On the other hand: If the natural 
productive power of labour is very high—i.e. if the natural 
fertility of the soil, the waters, etc., requires only -a slight 
expenditure of labour to be made to gain the means of subsistence 
necessary to existence, this natural productive power of labour, or, 
iF YOU PLEASE, this productivity of labour of natural and spontaneous 
origin, naturally functions—if we consider the mere duration of the 
necessary labour time—in exactly the same way as the development 
of the social productive power of labour. A high level of 
productive power of labour, of natural origin, is connected with a 
rapid increase in the rpoputation—in labour capacities—and there- 
fore in the material out of which the surplus value is cut. [f, 
inversely, the natural productive power of labour is small, hence 
the labour time required for the satisfaction of even simple needs 
is great, the development of svrpius propuce (Or SURPLUS LABOUR) Can 
only come close to forming alien wealth if the number of people 
simultaneously exploited by one person is large. [XXI-1302] If we 
assume that the necessary labour time=11'/. hours, and the 
working day=12 hours, one worker provides a surplus value of '/s 
an hour. But since *°/5 hours are required to maintain a single 
worker, the following calculation applies: 

Workers 
1 provides "ly an hour of surptus labour. 

23 [provide] ?/o hours. 

Hence in this case 23 workers would be necessary in order to 
maintain one single person who lives without work, but only lives 
like a worker. For him to live 3 or 4 times better, and in addition 
to be able to turn a part of the surplus value back into capital, 
perhaps 238 workers,=184 workers, would have to be employed 
for one single individual. Moreover, the real wealth at the disposal 
of the single individual would be very small here. The greater the 
productive power of labour, the greater can the number of 
non-workers be in proportion to the workers, and the greater the 
number of workers who are not employed in the production of 
the necessary means of subsistence, or are not employed in 
material production at all, or, finally, the greater the number of 
persons who either directly are proprietors of the surpius propuce or 
who work neither physically nor intellectually but still perform 
“services” which the owners ‘of the surptus propuce pay for by 
setting aside a part of the latter for them. 

Relative Surplus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour 95 

In any case, to the two forms of surplus value—absolute and 
relative—if each is considered for itself in its separate existence, 
and absolute surplus value always precedes relative—there corre- 
spond two separate forms of the subsumption of labour under capital, or 
two separate forms of capitalist production, of which the first always 
forms the predecessor of the second, although the further 
developed form, the second one, can in turn form the basis for 
the introduction of the first in new branches of production. 

I call the form which rests on absolute surplus value the formal 
subsumption of labour under capital. It is distinguished only formally 
from other modes of production, in which the actual producers 
provide a surplus PRODUCE, a SURPLUS VALUE. i.e. work more than 
the necessary labour time, but for others rather than for them- 
selves. 

The compulsion which is exertéd—i.e. the method by which the 
SURPLUS VALUE, SURPLUS PRODUCE, OF SURPLUS LABOUR, iS Called into 
existence—is of a different kind. We shall first examine the 
specific differences in the next section, under accumulation.” But 
the essential points in this formal subsumption of labour under capital 
are: 

1) that the worker confronts the capitalist, who possesses money, 
as the proprietor of his own person and therefore of his own 
labour capacitv, and as the seller of the temporary use of the 
latter. Thus both meet as commodity owners, as seller and buyer, 
and thus as formally free persons, between whom in fact no other 
relation exists than that of buyer and seller, no other politically or 
socially fixed relation of domination and subordination; 

2) (something which is implied by the first relation—for 
otherwise the worker would not have to sell his labour capacity) 
that the objective conditions of his labour (raw material, instruments 
of labour and therefore also means of subsistence during labour) ™ 
belong, completely or at least in part, not to him but to the buyer 
and consumer of his labour, therefore themselves confront him as 
capital. The more completely these conditions of labour confront 
him as the property of another, the more completely is the relation 
of capital and wage labour present formally, hence the more 
complete the formal subsumption of labour under capital. 

As yet there is no difference in the mode of production itself. The 
labour process continues exactly as it did before—from the 
technological point of view—only as a labour process now 
subordinated to capital. Nevertheless, there develops within the 
production process itself, as we have indicated earlier //and 
everything said about this earlier is only now in the proper 

96 The Production Process of Capital 

place*//, firstly a relation of domination and subordination, in that 
the consumption of labour capacity is done by the capitalist, and is 
therefore supervised and directed by him; and secondly a greater 
continuity of labour. 

. If the relation of domination and subordination replaces those 
of slavery, serfdom, vassalage, patriarchal relations of subordina- 
tion, there takes place only a change in their form. The form 
becomes freer, in that the subordination is now only of an objective 
nature, it is formally speaking voluntary, affects only the position 
between worker and capitalist in the production process. And this 
is the change of form which takes place in agriculture in particular 
when former serfs or slaves are transformed into free wage 
labourers. 

[XXI-1303] Or the relation of domination and subordination in 
the production process replaces an earlier independence in the 
production process, as e.g. with all seir-susTatNiNG PEASANTS, FARMERS 
who only had to pay a rent in kind, whether to the state or to the 
LANDLORD, with rural-domestic subsidiary industry, or independent 
handicrafts. Here, therefore, the loss of a previous independence in 
the production process is the situation, and the relation of 
- domination of subordination is itself the product of the introduc- 
tion of the capitalist mode of production. 

Finally, the relation of capitalist and wage labourer can replace 
the master of the guild type and his journeymen and apprentices, a 
transition accomplished in part by urban manufacture at its very 
beginnings. The medieval guild relation, which developed in 
analogous form in narrow circles in Athens and Rome as well, and 
was of such decisive importance in Europe for the formation of 
capitalists on the one hand, and of a free estate of workers on the 
other, is a limited, not yet adequate, form of the relation of capital 
and wage labour. There exists here on the one hand the relation 
of buyer and seller. Wages are paid, and master, journeyman, and 
apprentice confront each other as free persons. The technological 
basis of this relation is the handicraft workshop, in which the more 
or less skilled manipulation of the instrument of labour is the 
decisive factor of production. Here independent personal labour 
and therefore its professional development, which requires a 
longer or shorter period of apprenticeship, determines the result 
of the labour. The master is admittedly in possession of the 
conditions of production, the tools of the trade, the material of 
labour //although the tools may also belong to the journeyman//, 

Relative Surplus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour 97 

and the product belongs to him. To that extent he is a capitalist. 
But as a capitalist he is not a master. He is first and foremost a 
craftsman himself, and is supposep to be a master of his craft. Within 
the production process itself he figures as a craftsman as much as 
do his journeymen, and he is the first to initiate his apprentices 
into the mysteries of the craft. He has exactly the same relation to 
his apprentices as a teacher has to his pupils. His relation to 
apprentices and journeymen is therefore not that of the capitalist 
as such, but that of the master of a craft, who holds as such a 
hierarchical position in the corporation, and therefore towards 
them, which 1s suprosep to rest on his own mastery in the craft. His 
capital is therefore restricted both in its material form and in the 
extent of its value; it has not by any means yet attained the free 
form of capital. It is not a definite quantity of objectified labour, value 
in general, which can take on this or that form of the conditions 
of labour, and takes on whatever form it chooses, according to 
whether it decides to be exchanged for this or that form of living 
labour, in order to appropriate surplus labour. Only after he has 
passed through the prescribed stages of apprentice and jour- 
neyman, etc., himself produced his masterpiece, can he put money 
to work in this particular branch of labour, in his own craft, partly 
by turning it into the objective conditions of the craft, partly by 
buying journeymen and keeping apprentices. Only in his own 
craft can he convert his money into capital, i.e. use it not only as 
the means of his own labour but also as a means of exploiting 
alien labour. His capital is tied to a particular form of use value, 
and therefore does not confront his workers as capital. The 
methods of work he employs are not only acquired by experience 
but prescribed by guild regulations—they count as the necessary 
methods, and thus from this angle too it is not exchange value but 
the use value of the labour which appears as the ultimate purpose. 
The delivery of work of this or that quality does not depend on 
his own discretion; the whole guild system is rather directed 
towards the delivery of work of a specific quality. The price of 
labour” is just as little subject to his arbitrary will as the method 
of work. The restricted form, which prevents his wealth from 
functioning as capital, is further shown by the fact that a maximum 
is in fact prescribed for the extent of the value of his capital. He is 
not allowed to keep more than a certain number of journeymen, since 
the guild is supposed to ensure for all masters a proportional 
share in the receipts of their craft. Finally there is the relation of 
the master to other masters as a member of the same guild; as 
such he belongs to a corporation, which has certain communal 

98 The Production Process of Capital 

conditions of production (guild order,” etc.), political rights, 
participation in the city administration, etc. He works to order— 
with the exception of his work for merchants—for immediate use 
value, and so the number of masters is regulated accordingly. He 
does not confront his workers as a mere merchant. Still less can the 
merchant convert his money into productive capital; he can only 
“transfer” the commodities, he cannot produce them himself. An 
existence of the estate type—the purpose and result of the exploita- 
tion of alien labour is here not exchange value as such, not 
enrichment as such. What is decisive here is the instrument. The 
raw material is in many branches of labour (e.g. tailoring) 
delivered to the master himself by his customers. The barrier to 
production within the whole range of the available consumption is 
here a law. [t is therefore by no means regulated by the barriers 
of capital itself. In the capitalist relation the barriers disappear 
along with the politico-social bonds in which capital still moves 
here, hence not yet appearing as capital. 

(XXI1-1304]”' [...] in Carthage and Rome, it is restricted to 
peoples among whom the Carthaginians [...] had developed capital 
in the form of commercial capital, and therefore made exchange 
values as such into the direct [...] production, or where, as with the 
Romans, through the concentration of wealth, particularly of 
landed property, in a few hands, production was necessarily 
directed no longer towards use by the producer himself but 
towards exchange value, hence possessed this aspect of capitalist 
production. For although the purpose for the rich Roman was 
consumption, the greatest possible quantity of use values, this 
could only be attained through the magnitude of the exchange 
value of the product offered for sale, and thus production was 
directed towards exchange value, and what concerned him was to 
get as much money as possible, hence to squeeze out as much 
labour as possible from the slaves. 

In comparison with the independent craftsman, who works for stray 
customers, the continuity of [labour of] the worker, who works for 
the capitalist, is naturally greater, for his work does not find any 
limit in accidental needs that set him to work or in the magnitude 
of those needs; he is rather employed day in, day out, by capital, 
continuously, and more or less regularly. In comparison with that 
of the slave, this work is more productive, because more intensive 
and more continuous, for the slave only works under the impulse 
of external fear, but not for his own existence, which does not 
belong to him; the free worker, in contrast, is driven on by his 
own wants. The consciousness” of free self-determination—of 

Relative Surplus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour 99 

freedom —makes the latter a much better worker than the former, 
and similarly the feeling of responsipiuiry; for, like every seller of a 
commodity, he is responsisLe for the commodity he provides, and 
he must provide it at a certain quality, if he is not to be swept 
from the field by other sellers of commodities of the same species. 
The continuity of the relation between slave and slaveholder is 
preserved by the direct compulsion exerted upon the slave. The 
free worker, on the other hand, must preserve it himself, since his 
existence as a worker depends on his constantly renewing the sale 
of his labour capacity to the capitalist. Unlike both the slave and 
the serf, the worker receives an equivalent for his labour, since the 
wage, as we have seen,’ although it in fact only pays the necessary 
labour, appears as the value, the price of the working day; and 
although in fact his surr.us labour is no more paid than the forced 
labour of the serf or the work the slave does over and above the 
time necessary for the reproduction of his keep. The difference 
here can only consist in the quantity of unpaid labour time, 
although a quantitative difference of this kind is not necessary, 
depending rather on the level of the customary value of labour 
capacity. But however much or however little surr.us labour the 
free worker provides, however high or low the average wage 
stands, whatever the relation between his total working day and 
his necessary labour time, for him the form of the matter is always 
that he works for his wages, for money, and if he works for 12 hours 
to obtain an equivalent of 8 hours of labour, the 12 hours are only 
worked to buy with them the equivalent of 8. This is not the case 
with the slave. Even the part of the work he does for himself —i.e. 
in order to replace the value of his own keep—appears to him as 
labour he performs for the slaveowner, whereas with the free 
worker even the surplus labour he performs appears as labour 
performed in his own interest, i.e. as the means of purchasing his 
wages. The money relation, the sale and purchase between worker 
and capitalist, disguises the former’s labour for no return, whereas 
with slave labour the property relation of the slave to his master 
disguises the former’s labour for himself. If the working day=12 
hours, the labour time which is necessary and is therefore 
represented in the wage might=6, 7, 8, 9, 10, or 11 hours, and 
therefore the surplus labour, i.e. labour for no return, might 
equal, respectively, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 hours or 1 hour, but the way the 
relation always appears to the worker is that he sells 12 hours of 

a See this volume, pp. 72-86.— Ed. 

100 The Production Process of Capital 

jabour for a particular price, even if a variable one, and therefore 
always works only for himself, never for his master. 

[XXI-1305] [...] The higher value of this labour capacity must be 
paid to the worker himself, and it is expressed in a higher wage. 
Great differences in wages are therefore found, according to 
whether the specific kind of labour requires a more highly 
developed labour capacity, necessitating greater production costs, 
or not, and this on the one hand opens up an area of free 
movement for individual differences, while on the other hand it 
provides a spur to the development of the individual’s own labour 
capacity. Certain as it is that the mass of labour must consist of 
more or less unskilled Lasour, and therefore that the mass of wages 
must be determined by the value of simple labour capacity, it remains 
possible for isolated individuals to make their way upwards into 
higher spheres of labour by particular energy, talent, etc., just as 
there remains the abstract possibility that this or that worker could 
himself become a capitalist and an expvorrer of alien labour. The 
slave belongs to a particular master; it is true that the worker must 
sell himself to capital, but not to a particular capitalist, and thus he 
has a choice, within a particular sphere, as to who he sells himself 
to, and can change masters. All these differences in the relation 
make the activity of the free worker more intensive, more 
continuous, more agile, and more dexterous than that of the slave, 
quite apart from the fact that they fit the worker himself to 
undertake historical actions of an entirely different nature. The 
slave receives the means of subsistence necessary for his mainte- 
nance in a natural form, which is as fixed in kind as in extent—in 
usé values. The free worker receives them in the form of money, of 
exchange value, of the abstract social form of wealth. However 
much the wage is now in fact nothing but the silver or gold or 
copper or paper form of the necessary means of subsistence, into 
which it must constantly be resolved— money functioning here as 
the merely transitory form of exchange value, as mere means of 
circulation—abstract wealth, exchange value, and not a specific 
traditionally and locally limited use value, still remains for the 
worker the purpose and result of his labour. It is the worker 
himself who turns the money into whatever use values he wants, 
buys the commodities he wants with it, and as an owner of money, as 
a buyer of commodities, he stands in exactly the same relation to 
the sellers of commodities as any other buyer. The conditions of 
his existence—and also the limited extent of the value of the 
money he has acquired—naturally compel him to spend it on a 
rather restricted range of means of subsistence. Nevertheless, 

Relative Surplus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour 101 

some degree of variation is possible here, such as e.g. newspapers, 
which form part of the necessary means of subsistence of the 
English urban worker. He can save something, form a hoard. He 
can also waste his wages on spirits, etc. But in acting this way he 
acts as a free agent, he must pay his own way; he is himself 
responsible for the way in which ue spenns His waces. He learns to 
master himself, in contrast to the slave, who needs a Mastrr. To be 
sure, this only applies when one considers the transformation of a 
serf or slave into a free wage labourer. The capitalist relation 
appears here as a step up the social scale. It is the opposite when 
an independent peasant or craftsman is transformed into a wage 
labourer. What a difference there is between the proup YEOMANRY OF 
Enc.anp, of whom Shakespeare speaks,” and the English agricul- 
tural day labourers! Since the purpose of labour is for the wage 
labourer wages alone, money, a definite quantity of exchange 
value, in which any specific characteristics of use value have been 
extinguished, he is completely indifferent to the content of his 
labour, and therefore to the specific character of his activity. In 
the guild or caste system, on the other hand, this activity was 
regarded as the exercise of a vocation, whereas with the slave, as 
with the beast of burden, it is only a particular kind of activity, of 
exertion of his labour capacity, imposed on him and handed down 
from the past. Hence in so far as the division of labour has not 
made his labour capacity entirely one-sided, [XXI-1306] the free 
worker is in principle receptive to, and ready for, any variation in 
his labour capacity and his working activity which promises better 
wages (as is indeed demonstrated in the case of the surplus 
Population Of the countryside, which constantly transfers to the 
towns). If the developed worker is more or less incapable of this 
variation, he still regards it as always open to the next generation, 
and the emerging generation of workers can always be distributed 
among, and is constantly at the disposal of, new branches of 
labour or particularly prosperous branches of labour. In North 
America, where the development of wage labour has least of all 
been affected by reminiscences of the old guild system, etc., this 
variability, this complete indifference to the specific content of 
labour, this ability to transfer from one branch to another, is 
shown particularly strongly.*". Hence the contrast between this 
variability and the uniform, traditional character of slave labour, 
which does not vary according to the requirements of production, 
but rather the reverse, requiring that production should itself be 

102 The Production Process of Capital 

adapted to the mode of labour introduced originally and handed 
down by tradition, is emphasised by all United States writers as the 
grand characteristic of the free wage labour of the North as 
against the slave labour of the South. (See Cairnes.*) The constant 
creation of new kinds of labour, this continuous variation—which 
results in a multiplicity of use values and therefore is also a real 
development of exchange value—this continuing division of 
labour in the whole of the society—first becomes possible with the 
capitalist mode of production. It begins with the free handicraft- 
guild system, where it does not meet with a barrier in the 
ossification of each particular branch of the craft itself. With the 
merely formal subsumption of labour under capital, the compulsion to 
do surplus labour and therewith on the one hand to create needs 
and the means to satisfy those needs, and on the other hand to 
produce in quantities which go beyond the measure of the 
worker’s traditional needs—and the creation of free time for 
development, independently of material production— merely takes 
on a different form from that of earlier modes of production, but 
it is a form which heightens the continuity and intensity of labour, 
increases production, is favourable to the development of varia- 
tions in labour capacity and accordingly to the differentiation of 
kinds of labour and modes of gaining a living, and finally replaces 
the very relation between the owner of the conditions of labour 
and the worker by a new relation of purchase and sale, and 
eliminates all patriarchal and political admixtures from the 
relation of exploitation. To be sure, a relation of domination and 
subordination enters the relation of production itself; this derives 
from capital’s ownership of the labour it has incorporated and 
from the nature of the labour process itself. The less capitalist 
production goes beyond this formal relation, the less is this 
relation developed, since it presupposes small capitalists alone, 
who are only marginally distinct from the workers themselves in 
their training and mode of employment. 

Technologically, therefore—where this transformation of earlier 
modes of production into the capitalist one takes place and initially 
appears only as a formal subsumption of labour under capital—hence 
the relation of purchase and sale between the owners of the 
conditions of labour and the owners of labour capacity also 
appears this way—the real labour process remains the same, and 
the way in which it is carried on depends on the relation from 

a J. E. Cairnes, The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs..., 

Relative Surplus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour 103 

which it has developed. Agriculture remains the same, although 
the day labourer has replaced the serf; similarly with the 
handicraft system, when it makes the transition from the guild-like 
to the capitalist mode of production. The difference in the relation 
of domination and subordination, when the mode of production is 
not yet affected, is at its greatest where rural or in general domestic 
subsidiary trades, or side occupations carried on just for the needs of 
the family, are transformed into separate branches of labour carried on 
in a capitalist way. 

The difference between labour formally subsumed under capital 
and the previous way of employing labour emerges here to the 
same extent as the growth in the magnitude of the capital employed 
by the individual capitalist, hence in the number of workers he 
employs simultaneously. Only when capital has grown to a certain 
minimum level does the capitalist cease to be a worker himself and 
begin to reserve his energies for management and commercial 
dealings with the commodities that have been produced. On the 
other hand, the proper form of capitalist production, which is now 
to be considered, can only enter the picture once capitals of a 
certain magnitude have directly taken control of production, 
whether through the merchant’s becoming a producer, or because 
larger capitals have gradually been formed within production 
itself. 

*“A free labourer has generally the liberty of changing his master; this liberty 
distinguishes a slave from a free labourer, as much as an English man-of-war sailor 
is distinguished from a merchant sailor... The condition of a labourer is superior to 
that of a slave, because a labourer thinks himself free; and this condition,? however 
erroneous, has no small influence on the character ... of a population” * 
(Th. R. Edmonds, Practical Moral and Political Economy etc., London, 1828, 
{pp. 56-]57). “The motive which impels a free man to labour is much more violent 
than the motive impelling a slave: *a free man has to choose between hard labour 
[XXI-1307] and [starvation for himself and family; a slave has to choose between hard 
labour and] a good whipping” (1.c., [p.] 56). “The difference between the conditions 
of a slave and of a labourer under the money system is very inconsiderable ... the 
master of the slave understands too well his own interest to weaken his slaves by 
stinting them in their food; but the master of a free man gives him as little food as 
possible, because the injury done to the labourer does not fall on himself alone, but on 
the whole class of masters” * (l.c.). 

“In the old world, *to make mankind labour beyond their wants, to make one 
part of a state work, to maintain the other part gratuitously,* could only be brought 
about by slavery, and slavery was therefore introduced universally. * Slavery 
was then as necessary towards multiplication, as it would now be destructive 
of it. The reason is plain. If mankind be not forced to labour, they will only labour for 

themselves; and if they have few wants, there will be few [who] labour. But when 
states come to be formed and have occasion for idle hands to defend them against 

a Edmonds has “opinion”.— Ed. 

104 The Production Process of Capital 

the violence of their enemies, food at any rate must be procured for those who do 
not labour; and as by the suppositions, the wants of the labourers are small, a 
method must be found to increase their labour above the proportion of their 
wants. For this purpose slavery was calculated... The slaves were forced to labour 
the soil which fed both them and the idle freemen, as was the case in Sparta; or 
they filled all the servile places which freemen fill now, and they were likewise 
employed, as in Greece and in Rome, in supplying with manufactures those whose 
service was necessary for the state. Here then was a violent method of making mankind 
laborious in raising food... Men were then forced to labour, because they were 
slaves to others; men are now forced to labour because they are slaves to their own 
wants” * (Steuart, [An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy...,] Vol. I, Dublin 
EDITION, [1770,] pp. 38-40). 

//In agriculture, capitalist production in particular— production 
directed towards exchange value on the one hand, buying labour 
on the other hand—brings about a greater intensity of labour 
because the number of workers is very much reduced. Wages by 
no means increase in proportion to this heightened intensity of 
labour. 

In the 16th century, while on the one hand the lords were 
dismissing their rerainers, the rarmers, who were turning themselves 
into industrial capitalists, “were dismissing the wie moutHs” 

Agriculture was converted from a MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE into a TRADE. 
The consequence, as Steuart says, was this: 

*“The withdrawing ... [of] a number of hands from a trifling agriculture 
forces, in a manner, the husbandmen to work harder; and by hard labour upon a small 
spot, the same effect is produced as with slight labour upon a great extent” * (l.c., 
Vol. I, p. 105). 

//Even in the handicrafts of the towns, production remained 
chiefly production of MEANs oF suasisreNce, although in the nature of 
things the product was produced directly as a commodity, since it 
had first to be converted into money before it could be converted 
into means of subsistence.// (Enrichment as such was not its direct 
purpose.)// 

THE REAL SUBSUMPTION OF LABOUR UNDER CAPITAL 

//(Since the purpose of productive labour is not the existence of 
the worker but the production of surplus value, all necessary 
labour which produces no surplus labour is superfluous and 
worthless to capitalist production. The same is true for a nation of 
capitalists. The same proposition can also be expressed in this way, 
that all gross product which only replaces the worker’s subsistence 
(approvistonnement), and produces no net product, is just as 
superfluous as the existence of those workers who themselves 
produce no net product or no surpius vaLtue—or those who, although 
they were necessary for the production of surpius value at a given 

Relative Surplus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour 105 

stage of the development of industry, have become superfluous to 
the production of that surplus vatue at a more advanced stage of 
development. Or, in other words, only the number of people 
profitable to capital is necessary. The same is true for a nation of 
capitalists. 

“Is not the real interest of a nation similar” to that of a private capitalist, for 
whom it would be a matter quite indifferent whether his capital would “employ 
100 or 1,000 men” provided his [profits on a] capital of 20,000 ‘“‘were not 
diminished in all cases below 2,000? Provided its net real income, its rent and 
profits be the same, it is of no importance whether the nation consists of 10 or of 
12 millions [XXI-1308] of inhabitants... If 5 millions of men could produce as 
much food and clothing as was necessary for 10 millions, food and clothing for 
5 millions would be the net revenue. Would it be of any advantage to the country, 
that to produce this same net revenue, 7 millions of men should be required, that 
is to say, that 7 millions should be employed to produce food and clothing 
sufficient for 12 millions? The food and clothing of 5 millions would be still the 
net revenue” [D. Ricardo, Des principes de l'économie politique et de l’impét, Paris, 
1819).4 

Even the philanthropists can have no objection to bring forward 
against this statement by Ricardo. For it is always better that out of 
10 million people only 50% should vegetate as pure production 
machines for 5 million, than that out of 12 million 7 million, or 
58'/3%, should vegetate in this way.) 

*“Of what use in a modern kingdom would be a whole province thus di- 
vided” * //between * self-sustaining little farmers* as in the * first times of ancient 
Rome//, “however well cultivated, except for the mere purpose of breeding men, 
which, singly taken, is a most useless purpose” * (Arthur Young, Political Arithme- 
tic etc., London, 1774, [p.] 47). 

// Factory work: 

“A man becomes exhausted more quickly when he watches over the uniform 
motion of a mechanism for fifteen hours a day, than when he applies his physical 
strength over the same period of time. This labour of surveillance, which might 
perhaps serve as a useful exercise for the mind, if it did not go on too long, 
destroys both the mind and the body in the long run through excessive 
application” (G. de Molinari, Etudes économiques, Paris, 1846, [p. 49]).>// 

The real subsumption of labour under capital is developed in all 
the forms which produce relative, as opposed to absolute, surplus 
value, though, as we have seen, this definitely does not exclude the 

a Marx quotes Ricardo, partly in German and partly in French, from the book 
by Ch. Ganilh, Des systémes d’économie politique.., 2nd ed., Vol. I, Paris, 1821, 
pp. 214-15. Here the original English is reproduced, due account being taken of 
the changes made by Marx. Cf. D. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, 
and Taxation, 3rd ed., London, 1821, pp. 416-17.— Ed. 

b Marx quotes in French.— Ed. 

106 The Production Process of Capital 

possibility that they might increase the latter while increasing the 
former. 
*“ Agriculture for subsistence ... changed for agriculture for trade ... the im- 

provement of the national territory ... proportioned to this change” * (Arthur Young, 
Political Arithmetic, London, 1774, [p.) 49, note).// 

/{Minimum of wages: 

“The possession of property and *some interest in property * are essential * to 
preserve the common unskilled labourer from falling into the condition of a piece 
of machinery, bought at the minimum market price at which it can be produced,* 
that is *at which labourers can be got to exist and propagate their species, to which 
he is invariably reduced sooner or later, when the interests of capital and labour are 
quite distinct, and are left to adjust themselves under the sole operation of the law 
of supply and demand”* (Samuel Laing, National Distress etc., London, 1844, 
[p.] 46).// 

With the real subsumption of labour under capital, all the 
CHANGES we have discussed take place in the technological process, 
the labour process, and at the same time there are changes in the 
relation of the worker to his own production and to capital—and 
finally, the development of the productive power of labour takes 
place, in that the productive forces of social labour are developed, 
and only at that point does the application of natural forces on a 
large scale, of science and of machinery, to direct production 
become possible. Here, therefore, there is a change not only in the 
formal relation but in the labour process itself. On the one hand 
the capitalist mode of production—which now first appears as a 
mode of production sui generis*— creates a change in the shape of 
material production. On the other hand this change in the 
material shape forms the basis for the development of the 
capital-relation, whose adequate shape therefore only corresponds 
to a particular level of development of the material forces of 
production. We have examined the way in which the worker’s 
relation of dependence in production itself is thereby given a new 
shape. This is the first point to be emphasised. This heightening 
of the productivity of labour and the scale of production is in part 
a result of, and in part a basis for, the development of the 
capital-relation. 

The second point is this, that capitalist production now entirely 
strips off the form of production for sussisrence, and becomes 
PRODUCTION FOR TRADE, in that neither the individual’s own consump- 
tion nor the immediate needs of a given circle of customers 
remain a barrier to production; now the only barrier is the 
magnitude of the capital itself. On the other hand, where the 

Relative Surplus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour 107 

whole of the product becomes a commodity (even where, as in 
agriculture, it partially re-enters production in natural form), all 
its elements leave the circulation and enter into the act of 
production as commodities. [XXI-1309] It is, finally, common to all 
these forms of capitalist production that, for production to occur 
in a capitalist way, an ever-growing minimum of exchange value, 
of money—i.e. of constant capital and variable capital—is 
required to ensure that the labour necessary to obtain the product 
is the labour socially necessary, i.e. that the labour required for the 
production of a single commodity=the minimum amount of 
labour necessary under average conditions. For objectified 
labour—money—to function as capital, it must be present in the 
hands of the individual capitalist in a certain minimum quantity; 
this minimum stands far above the maximum required in the case 
of the merely formal subsumption of labour under capital. The 
capitalist must be the owner or proprietor of means of production 
on a social scale, and the extent of their value, in one man’s 
concentrated possession, stands increasingly outside all relation 
with the amount an individual person or an individual family 
could accumulate over generations by their own hoarding. The 
extent of the conditions of labour required thus stands in no 
relation at all to what the individual worker could appropriate for 
himself in the most favourable case, by saving, etc. This minimum 
amount of capital in a given branch of business is the greater, the 
more developed it is capitalistically, the higher the development of 
the productivity of labour, the social productivity of labour or the 
productivity of social labour within it. Capital must increase the 
magnitude of its value to the same extent, and it must assume the 
extent of the means of production required for social production, 
hence shed its individual character entirely. It is precisely the 
productivity, and therefore the quantity of production, the 
numbers of the population and of the surplus population, created 
by this mode of production, that constantly calls forth new 
branches of industry, operating with the capital and labour that 
have been set free. In these branches capital can once again work 
on a small scale and again pass through the various phases of 
development required until with the development of capitalist 
production labour is carried on on a social scale in these new 
branches of industry as well, and accordingly capital appears again 
as a concentration of a great mass of social means of production in 
a single person’s hands. This process is continuous. 

With the real subsumption of labour under capital a complete 
revolution takes place in the mode of production itself, in the 

108 The Production Process of Capital 

productivity of labour, and in the relation—within production — 
between the capitalist and the worker, as also in the social relation 
between them. 

Only the simplest form, that of simple cooperation, is possible 
under earlier relations of production as well (see above, Egypt, 
etc.) //where this simple cooperation takes place for the building of 
pyramids, etc., instead of railways//* and in the slave relation (on 
this see later“). The relation of dependence worsens here through 
the introduction of female and child labour, so that it again 
approximates to the slave relation. (See Steuart.”) 

What all these forms of production have in common, apart from 
the growing minimum amount of capital required for production, is 
that the common conditions for the labour of a large number of 
associated workers permit, as such, economies to be made in 
contrast with the fragmentation of these conditions when produc- 
tion is on a small scale; since the effectiveness of these common 
conditions of production, which does not appear to have any direct 
connection with the raising of the productivity of labour itself 
through cooperation, division of labour, machines, etc., does not 
require an equal increase in their amount and value. The common, 
simultaneous use of the conditions of production leads to a fall in 
their relative value, even though there is an increase in the absolute 
amount of value they represent. 

//The positive result here is a fall in the labour time needed to 
produce an increased quantity of means of subsistence; this result 
is attained through the social form of the labour, and_ the 
individual’s ownership of the conditions of production appears as 
not only unnecessary but incompatible with this production on a 
large scale. This is represented in the capitalist mode of 
production by the fact that the capitalist—the non-worker—is the 
owner of these social masses of means of production. He never in 
fact represents towards the workers their unification, their social 
unity. Therefore, as soon as this contradictory form [XXI-1310] 
ceases to exist, it emerges that they own these means of 
production socially, not as private individuals. Capitalist property is 
only a contradictory expression of their social property—i.e. their 
negated individual property—in the conditions of production. 
(Hence in the product. For the product is constantly changing into 
the conditions of production.) It appears at the same time that this 

a See present edition, Vol. 28, p. 452 and Vol. 30, pp. 255-63.— Ed. 

b Marx presumably refers to James Steuart’s An Inquiry into the Principles of 
Political Oeconomy... In three volumes, Vol. I, Dublin, 1770, pp. 38-39. Cf. also this 
volume, pp. 103-04.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour 109 

transformation requires a certain stage of development of the 
material forces of production. E.g., in the case of the small peasant 
the piece of land he tills is his. The ownership of this, as his 
instrument of production, is the necessary spur to, and condition 
of, his labour. Similarly with handicrafts. In large-scale agriculture, 
as in large-scale industry, this labour does not first have to be 
separated from property in the conditions of production, the 
separation already in fact exists; this separation of property from 
labour, which is bemoaned by Sismondi,” is a necessary transition 
to the conversion of property in the conditions of production into 
social property. The individual worker could only be restored as 
an individual to property in the conditions of production by 
divorcing productive power from the development of labour on a 
large scale. The alien property of the capitalist in this labour can 
only be abolished by converting his property into the property of 
the non-individual in its independent singularity, hence of the 
associated, social individual. This naturally brings to an end the 
fetishistic situation when the product is the proprietor of the 
producer, and all the social forms of labour developed within 
capitalist production are released from the contradiction which 
falsifies them all and presents them as mutually opposed, e.g. by 
failing to present a reduction in labour time in such a way that all 
work for 6 hours, saying instead that the 15-hour labour of 6 
people is sufficient to maintain 20.*//7° 

Production for production’s sake—i.e. the productive power of 
human labour developed without being determined in advance by 
any barrier of needs established beforehand. Later we shall discuss 
in more detail the fact that, even within capitalist production, this 
contradicts its own barriers, although it is the tendency to aim at 
this.” For while it is the most productive of all modes of 
production so far, it includes—owing to its contradictory character— 
barriers to production, which it constantly endeavours to tran- 
scend, hence crises, overproduction, etc. On the other hand, 
production for production’s sake therefore appears as its precise 
opposite. Production not as the development of human productivi- 
ty; but as the display of material wealth, in antithesis to the 
productive development of the human individual. 

All the methods by which relative surplus value, and therewith 
the specifically capitalist mode of production, is developed, can be 
reduced in the most abstract form to this, that this mode of 

b See this volume, pp. 441-42.— Ed. 

110 The Production Process of Capital 

production aims at bringing the value of the individual commodity 
down to its minimum, and therefore producing as many com- 
modities as possible in a given labour time, or operating the 
transformation of the object of labour into a product with the 
smallest possible quantity of labour in the shortest possible labour 
time. Productivity of labour is in general nothing but the 
production of a maximum of product with a minimum of labour, 
or the realisation of a minimum of labour time in a maximum of 
product, Hence the reduction of the value of the individual product 
to its minimum. 

Two remarks should be made in this connection: 

Firstly: It appears to be a contradiction that production directed 
towards exchange value, and dominated by it, endeavours to 
reduce the value of the individual product to a minimum. But the 
value of the product as such is a matter of indifference to 
capitalist production. Its goal is the production of the greatest 
possible amount of surplus value. And it is therefore determined, 
not by the value of the individual product, the individual 
commodity, but by the rate of surplus value, the ratio of the part 
of the commodity which represents variable capital to its variation, 
or the surplus labour contained in the product in excess of the 
value of the variable capital. Its purpose is not to make the 
individual product and therefore the total amount of product 
contain as much labour as possible, but to make it contain as much 
unpaid labour as possible. This contradiction was perceived by the 
Physiocrats. See Quesnay,’ in Supplementary Notebook C, p. 29 (and 
further 31).” , 

(XXI-1311] Secondly: 

The reduction of the commodity to its minimum value, i.e. its 
greatest possible cheapening, only produces relative surplus value 
directly in so far as those commodities enter into the consumption 
of the worker as necessary means of subsistence, and their 
cheapening is therefore identical with the cheapening of labour 
capacity, i.e. with the reduction of necessary, and hence of paid, 
labour time, which as we have seen? is in turn expressed from the 
point of view of the whole working day as a fall in the value or 
price of labour. 

But this law is not just valid for this particular sphere of 
capitalist production; it covers all the spheres of production which 

a [F.] Quesnay, Dialogues sur le commerce et sur les travaux des artisans. In: 
b See this volume, pp. 83-84.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour 111 

capital seeks gradually to control and subordinate to its mode of 
production. We have seen* that the individual capitalist’s cheaper 
production of his particular commodity does not directly achieve a 
cheapening of labour capacity (at least, there is no cheapening of 
labour capacity arising out of this cheapening of his product) and 
that to the extent that this cheapening is achieved, this does not 
redound to the benefit of this individual capitalist but to that of 
capital in general—the capitalist class—in that it produces a 
general cheapening of labour capacity. 

But because the value of a commodity is determined by the 
average labour time necessary to produce it at a given stage of 
production, the individual value of the commodity which is 
produced by way of exception with more productive methods of 
labour, above the average level characteristic of the given stage of 
production, stands below the general or social value of that 
commodity. If, therefore, it is sold below the social value of 
commodities of the same kind, but above its individual value— 
hence sold at a certain value which retains some of the difference 
between its individual and its general value—it is sold above its 
value, or, in other words, the labour contained in it is momentarily 
higher labour than the average labour with which it is produced in 
general. But the labour capacity of the labour employed to 
produce it is not paid as higher labour capacity. This difference is 
pocketed by the capitalist and forms surplus value for him. This 
kind of surplus value, which is based on the difference between the 
individual and the social value of a commodity, brought about by a 
change in the mode of production, is of diminishing magnitude, 
and falls to 0 once the new mode of production is in general use, 
thereby itself becoming the average mode of production. And it is 
this diminishing surplus value that results directly from changes in 
the mode of production. It therefore forms the direct motive of the 
capitalist, and this thus holds sway over all the spheres of 
production which come under the control of capital equally, 
independently of the use value they produce and therefore 
independently of whether the product does or does not enter into 
the worker’s necessary means of subsistence or into the reproduc- 
tion of labour capacity. This form of surplus value, however, is 
transitory, it can only relate to the individual capitalist and not to 
capital as a whole, and although it produces a relative DEPRECIATION 
of labour capacity or the price of labour in the particular branch, 
this is not because the price falls but because it does not rise. 

a See present edition, Vol. 30, p. 319.— Ed. 

112 The Production Process of Capital 

Therefore, this form does not affect surplus value in general, 
because it does not call forth a permanent (relative) diminution of 
the price of labour in its own branch, any more than it produces a 
general cheapening of labour capacity and therefore a curtailment 
of necessary labour time, since its product does not enter into the 
worker’s necessary means of subsistence. 

But, secondly, the gradual introduction of the capitalist mode of 
production in these branches of production, for the motive we 
have indicated, leads here, as in the branches devoted to 
producing the necessary means of subsistence, to a reduction in 
the labour employed to simple average labour, combined at the 
same time with a tendency to prolong the absolute working day. 
Here, therefore, entirely the same vepreciation of labour capacity as 
in the other branches takes effect, a pepreciaTION which arises not 
from the cheapening of the means of subsistence but from the 
simplification of labour, its reduction to simple average labour. 

If the worker works 12 hours, and, e.g., 10 hours of this is for 
himself and 2 hours for the capitalist, the ratio of the surplus value 
to the variable capital admittedly remains the same whether the 
10 hours are labour of a higher or lower type. The value of the 
variable capital rises or falls with the level of the labour, and since 
the surplus labour has the same character as the necessary labour, 
the ratio between the surplus value and the variable capital 
remains the same. 

The introduction of machine labour, etc., both provides new 
motives for the prolongation of absolute labour time, and at the 
same time facilitates this, since it robs the labour of its sincuLarity, 
so To say. And it exerts this effect entirely independently of the 
particular nature of the branch of production into which it is 
introduced, and independently [XX1-1312] of whether the product 
of this branch enters or does not enter into the consumption of the 
workers. 

As soon as the capitalist mode of production (i.e. the real 
subsumption of labour under capital) has taken control of 
agriculture, the mining industry, the manufacture of the main 
fabrics for the clothing industry and the transport system, means 
of locomotion, it gradually conquers the other spheres too, which 
are either subject to formally capitalist enterprise alone, or are still 
carried on by independent handicraftsmen, and it does this in the 
same measure as Capital itself develops. This is capital’s tendency. 
It has already been remarked, in our consideration of machinery,’ 

Relative Surplus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour 113 

that the introduction of machinery into one branch brings with it 
its introduction in other branches—as well as in other varieties of 
the same branch. For example machine spinning led to machine 
weaving; machine spinning in the cotton industry led to machine 
spinning in wool, linen, silk, etc. The increased employment of 
machinery in coal mines, cotton racrorigs, etc., madé necessary the 
introduction of the large-scale mode of production in machine- 
building itself. Apart from the increased means of transport 
required by this mode of production on a large scale, it is only the 
introduction of machinery in machine-building itself—in particu- 
lar the Cyclopean prime Motor, etc.—which made possible the 
introduction of steamships, steam vehicles and railways (in 
particular it revolutionised the whole of the shipbuilding industry). 
The introduction of large-scale industry throws such masses of 
human beings into the branches not yet subjected to it, or creates 
in those branches such an amount of relative surplus population as iS 
required for the transformation of the handicrafts or of small, 
formally capitalist, enterprise into large-scale industry; the indus- 
try then passes in turn through the various stages—and at the 
same time constantly releases capital. Actually the whole of this 
discussion does not belong here.” But it is necessary briefly to 
indicate, as we have just done, the way large-scale industry seizes 
hold of all around it, and point to its gradual conquest of all the 
spheres of production. (Railway construction itself—we mean the 
building of the ratlway lines—displays merely the form of the 
concentration of capital, on the one hand, and the cooperation of 
workers, on the other hand. The employment of machinery itself 
is very slight here.) 

(Price of labour. Price of labour, not value of labour, is the 
correct expression when one is speaking of labour itself, rather 
than of labour capacity. What the worker really provides is a 
particular quantity of labour, since it is only therein that the use 
value of his labour capacity finds expression, or rather exists. And 
this quantity of labour, labour measured by time, is what the 
capitalist receives, and the only thing that interests him in the 
transaction. The wage therefore appears to the capitalist, as to the 
worker himself, as the price of the labour itself. And it is this in so 
far as the amount of money paid for any commodity is its price. 
But the price of a commodity—in so far as we are not dealing 
here with the accidental quantity of money for which a commodity 
is exchanged in accidental transactions—is above all (the more 
developed forms of market price, etc., can themselves only be 
explained in this way) nothing but its value, which is represented 

114 The Production Process of Capital 

as value, separately from its use value, in the money form, its value 
itself being expressed in the material of money. Although this is 
the case, there is contained in the price, in and for itself, 
something we discussed earlier in dealing with money, the 
possibility that price and value may not correspond.’ The price of a 
commodity does not need to correspond to its value. The value of 
a commodity is the adequate expression of this value. But price—or 
the money form of the value—contains two moments, 1), that the 
value of the commodity receives a particular qualitative expression, 
that the labour time contained in it is expressed as general social 
labour time, i.e. in a form common to all commodities as values—in 
the measure of values, in the money form; and 2), that the amount 
of value—the quantitative expression—is expressed similarly, 
hence the commodity is expressed in a quantity of money of the 
same magnitude of value, in an equivalent—because this is the 
expression of the value of the commodity in the use value of 
another commodity—not its direct, unmediated expression. 
Therefore, because it is inherent in price that the commodity takes 
on a converted form, passes through a process of alienation, first 
ideally then in reality, it lies in the nature of this process that value 
and price may [XXI-1313] diverge. E.g., if a yard of linen has a 
value of 2s. and a price of 1s., the magnitude of its value is not 
‘expressed in its price; and its price is not an equivalent, not the 
adequate monetary expression, of its value. Nevertheless, it 
remains the monetary expression of its value—the value expression of 
the yard of linen—in so far as the labour contained in it is 
represented as general social labour, as money. Owing to this 
incongruence between price and value it is possible to speak 
directly of the price of an object, although one cannot speak 
directly of its value. Initially, to be sure, this concerns only the 
possible incongruence between the magnitude of value of a 
commodity and the amount of value expressed in its price. But 
price can also become an_ irrational expression,” namely a 
monetary expression for objects which have no value, although 
price is in and for itself the expression of an object as money and 
therefore qualitatively (if not necessarily quantitatively) as value. E.g. 
a false oath can have a price, although it has no value (viewed 
economically; we are not speaking of use value here). For if 
money is absolutely nothing but the converted form of the exchange 
value of a commodity, exchange value represented as exchange 
value, it is on the other hand a definite quantity of a commodity 

Relative Surplus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour 115 

(gold, silver or the representatives of gold and silver), and 
anything can be exchanged for anything, the birthright can be 
exchanged for a mess of pottage.* The price relation is the same as 

the irrational expression in algebra, as 4, etc. It can be found by 

further investigation whether or not a rational relation lies hidden 
behind this irrational expression, i.e. whether or not there is a real 
value relation. Since the monetary expression or the price of a 
commodity, of a thing, is an expression in which the use value of 
the object is completely extinguished, which also means the 
extinction of the connection existing between the use value of this 
commodity and its value, i.e. the labour contained in it, which 
obtains an abstract expression in exchange value, abstraction from 
the use value or the nature of the object can proceed further, to 
the point where abstraction is made from whether it is expressed 
according to its nature as value, i.e. whether it is a use value which 
contains and can contain objectified labour. Things which have no 
value may have a price. If one now asks further what value relation 
lies at the basis of this price of labour which appears in 
practice —or one asks, as Adam Smith does, what is the natural 
price of labour—it turns out that the regulating price of labour is 
determined by the value of labour capacity, and is nothing but a 
derivative expression of the latter. Let the quantity of money 
which is paid as the price of a working day of 12 hours be=3s. or 
36d. If necessary labour time=6 hours, 3s. is thus the value of the 
daily labour capacity which is consumed for 12 hours every day. 
This sum of money, in which 6 hours are realised, is expressed 
here as the price of a working day of 12 hours because the worker 
must work for 12 hours in order to obtain the monetary 
expression of 6 hours of labour time, and he in fact receives in 
exchange for 12 hours this price, this sum of money, alone. This 
price is therefore not the expression of the value of his 
labour—this is something one cannot speak of at all—but rather 
the value of his labour capacity, which requires 6 hours of labour 
a day for its reproduction. How this price relates to the value of 
the labour capacity, and secondly to the daily value in which the 
use of this labour capacity, daily labour, is realised, depends on 
the one hand on the value of labour capacity, and on the other 
hand on the daily duration of its use or, in other words, the length 
of the normal working day. But this relation to the value of labour 

b See present edition, Vol. 30, pp. 401-03, Vol. 31, pp. 529-32, and Vol. 32, 
p. 36.— Ed. 

116 The Production Process of Capital 

capacity and therefore the relation of necessary labour to surplus 
labour is completely extinguished in the price of labour. If the 
price of the working day of 12 hours=3s., the price of 
6 hours=1'/ss., and the price of one hour=3d. Thus the whole of 
the labour time appears as paid. No distinction between paid and 
unpaid labour is expressed here. And it does in fact look as if the 
3s. are the value created by 12 hours of labour, although they are 
only half of that value; this is how the expression value of labour 
arose. Here, value of labour as distinct from price of labour means 
nothing but what Adam Smith calls the natural price of labour, i.e. 
its regulating price, determined by the value of labour capacity, as 
distinct from its accidental prices. This wholly irrational expres- 
sion, value of labour, leads on the one hand to a confusion 
[XXI-1314] between the determination of the value of com- 
modities by the labour time contained in them, and_ the 
determination of their value by the price of labour, two 
expressions which have absolutely nothing in common, since the 
value of a commodity is determined by the total amount of labour 
time contained in it, whereas the price of labour expresses only 
the part of this total amount paid to the worker. On the other 
hand, those political economists, such as Ricardo, who found this 
out,” used very clumsy methods to contradict this contradiction. 
Nevertheless, the relation of the price of labour to the value of 
labour capacity makes itself felt in practice even in individual cases. 
Thus for example in the polemic of the London suipers, etc., in 
1860 and subsequently against the introduction of wages by the hour 
instead of a daily wage.?*’ If, e.g..the worker is only employed for 
6 hours, and on the above assumption the following calculation is 
made: 3s.=the price of 12 hours of labour, hence 1'/gs. is the 
price of 6, or 3d. is the price of I hour of labour, a worker would 
provide e.g. 1 '/.s. of surplus labour, or 3 hours, while he would 
not be paid for his necessary labour of 6 hours. In order to 
squeeze out 3 hours of surplus [labour], the master must allow him 
to work 6 hours of necessary labour for himself. In the long run, 
of course, it is impossible to continue this attempt to squeeze out 
surplus labour without allowing the worker to work the necessary 
labour. But the sumpers perceived very clearly, as one can see from 
their polemical publications, that at least in the medium term these 
methods of payment made possible an attempt of this kind on the 
part of the masters, and that it was, on the other hand, a very 

Relative Surplus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour 117 

clever method of reducing the average wage, of depreciating 
labour capacity. The value of labour capacity expressed in money 
is the price paid to the worker for the whole working day, and it 
appears as the direct price of the whole working day, since 
although the sale and purchase of this commodity occurs before the 
labour is performed, payment takes place only after it has been 
performed.) *! 

The point we analysed in dealing with relative surplus value, 
namely that the value of labour capacity stands in an inverse 
relation to the productivity of labour, and falls to the same degree 
as the productivity of labour develops," is nothing other than an 
individual application of the general rule that the value of a 
commodity is determined by the quantity of labour, or the 
magnitude of the labour time, which is realised in it, that its value 
falls in the proportion to which it can be produced with less 
labour, and that the development of the productive power of 
labour means absolutely nothing but the development of condi- 
tions under which the same quantity of commodities (use values) 
can be produced with a declining quantity of labour; hence that 
the value of a commodity falls with the development of the 
productive power of the labour which produces it. 

TRANSITIONAL FORMS 

I am not speaking here of forms transitional between the formal 
subsumption of labour under capital and its real subsumption 
under capital, and thereby of forms leading to the specifically 
capitalist mode of production; but of forms in which the 
capital-relation does not yet exist formally, i.e. under which labour 
is already exploited by capital before the latter has developed into 
the form of productive capital and labour itself has taken on the 
form of wage labour. Such forms are to be found in social 
formations which precede the bourgeois mode of production; on 
the other hand they constantly reproduce themselves within the 
latter and are in part reproduced by the latter itself. 

//Forms transitional to capitalist production. One can only speak of 
transitional forms of this kind where the relation of buyer or seller 
(or, in modified form, of borrower and lender) prevails formally 
between the real producer and the exploiter, in general where 
the content of the transaction between the two partirs is not 

a See present edition, Vol. 30, pp. 233-54, and Vol. 33, pp. 474-78.— Ed. 

118 The Production Process of Capital 

conditioned by relations of servitude and domination, but they 
confront each other as formally free. The two forms in which 
capital appears (this will be discussed in more detail later, in 
Section III) before it takes control of the direct relation of 
production—becoming in this sense productive capital—and 
therefore appears as the relation which dominates production, are 
trading capital and usurers’ capital (interest-bearing capital). Both 
kinds of capital, which appear within capitalist production as a 
special and derivative form of capital, but in previous forms of 
production as the sole and the original forms of capital, may enter 
into such relations to the actual producer that they either appear 
as antediluvian forms of capital, or, in the capitalist mode of 
production itself, as transitional forms, and are in part called forth 
by the capitalist mode of production in modes of production that 
have not yet been subordinated to the former. 

[XXI-1315] For example, in India the usurer (who de prime 
abord* makes the rvor mortgage His ruTURE crop to him BErorE IT Is 
Grown) advances to the rvor the money he needs to plant the 
cotton. The ryvot has to pay 40-50% per annum. Here labour is 
not yet formally subsumed under capital. Ir [capital] pozs Nor EmPpLoy 
THE RYOT AS LABOURER; he is not a wage labourer, any more than the 
usurer who employs him is an industrial capitalist. The product is 
not the property of the usurer, but it is mortgaged to him. The 
money the ryor converts into means of production is admittedly 
alien property, but he disposes of it as his own, since it has been 
lent to him. 

The ryor is His own EMpLover, and his mode of production is the 
traditional one of the independent, small, se-r-susraintnc PEASANT. He 
does not work under alien direction, for another and under 
another, and thus he is not subsumed as a wage labourer to the 
owner of the conditions of production. These therefore do not 
confront him as capital. Thus even the formal capital-relation does 
not take place, still less the specifically capitalist mode of 
production. And yet the usurer appropriates not only the whole of 
the surplus value created by the ryor, i.e. all the surplus propuce 
over and above the means of subsistence necessary for his 
reproduction, but he also takes away from him part of the latter, 
so that he merely vegetates in the most miserable manner. The 
usurer functions as a capitalist in so far as the valorisation of his 
capital occurs directly through the appropriation of alien labour, 

Relative Surplus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour 119 

but in a form which makes the actual producer into his debtor, 
instead of making him a seller of his labour to the capitalist. This 
form heightens the exploitation of the producer, drives it to its 
uttermost limits, without in any way, with the introduction of 
capitalist. production—even if at first with the merely formal 
subsumption of labour under capital—introducing the resulting 
heightened productivity of labour and the transition to the 
specifically capitalist mode of production. It is rather a form which 
makes labour sterile, places it under the most unfavourable 
economic conditions, and combines together capitalist exploitation 
without a capitalist mode of production, and the mode of 
production of independent small-scale property in the instruments 
of labour without the advantages this mode of production offers 
for less developed conditions. Here in fact the means of 
production have ceased to belong to the producer, but they are 
nominally subsumed to him, and the mode of production remains 
in the same relations of small independent enterprise, only the 
relations are in ruins. We find the same relation between e.g. the 
patricians and plebeians of Rome, or the peasants owning small 
parcels of land and the usurers. And at the same time it is a form 
in which the capital of the Jews was created everywhere in the 
Middle Ages, where they appear as money-lenders in the pores of 
purely agricultural peoples. (* Debt slavery in distinction to wage 
slavery.*) 

We find further in India, where the old communities have 
dissolved, that this money-lending is replaced by the loan of the 
instruments of labour, e.g. looms, at an interest of 50-100%. In 
England, on the other hand, this is reproduced in e.g. the shape 
taken on by domestic industry under the impact of large-scale 
industry; e.g. among the stocking weavers, etc. The mass of people 
thrown out through the introduction of machinery, robbed of 
their means of production, continue to be exploited by the owners 
of the means of production in this caricatured form of domestic 
industry, although those means of production do not develop into 
capital, and labour does not develop into wage labour. What 
appears here in the form of interest is not only the total surplits 
value, it is also a part of the normal wage of labour. A critique on 
the level of Mr. Carey’s would be needed to calculate the rate of 
interest in a country from such relations.** (See the Court or 
ExcHrguer case cited in another Notebook.’) This form can be 

a See present edition, Vol. 33, p. 349.— Ed. 

120 The Production Process of Capital 

transitional to the capitalist mode of production. It is itself the 
EXTRANEOUS PRODUCE Of the capitalist mode of production. 

What we have said of usurers’ capital is true of merchants’ capital. 
It can equally be a form transitional to the subsumption of labour 
under capital (initially its formal subsumption). This is the case 
wherever the merchant as such plays the role of Manuracrurer. He 
advances the raw material. He appears originally as the buyer of 
the products of independent industries. But this point should be 
presented in more detail in the next section.™ 

Yet it should only be presented in the next section in so far as it 
is a form transitional to capitalist production, and displays the 
alienation of the conditions of labour as a process of development 
of capitalist production with reference to an historical example. 

On the basis of capitalist production, however, this form, in the 
changed shape in which it reproduces pomestic inpusTRY, is reproduced 
as one of the most dreadful forms of production existing, a form 
which is only brought to an end by the introduction of machinery, 
and in comparison with which the formal subsumption of labour 
under capital appears as a redemption. [XXI-1316] The immense 
surplus porutaTion created by large-scale industry in agriculture 
and the factory system is exploited here in a way which saves the 
“capitalist” a part of the production costs of capital, and allows 
him to speculate directly upon the misery of the workers. It is so 
in JOBBING work, the system under which some of the tailors, 
cobblers, NEEDLEwoMEN, etc., are employed in London. The surplus 
value created here depends not only on overwork and the 
appropriation of surplus labour, but also directly on deductions 
from wages, which are forced down far below their normal average 
level. 

The system of mipptemen and sweaters follows on from this one. 
The actual “capitalist” distributes among the mippiemen a certain 
quantity of raw material which is to be worked on, and they in 
their turn distribute these materials among those unfortunates, 
living in cellars, who have sunk down below the average level of 
the normal workers who are combined together in TRADE UNIONS, 
etc., etc. Thus the profit of these mippLemen, among whom there 
are often in turn further mippLemen, consists exclusively of the 
difference between the normal wage they let themselves be paid, 
and the wage they pay out, which is less than normal. Once a 
sufficient number of workers of the latter kind is organised 
through this system, they are often directly employed by capitalist 
No. I on the same conditions as those under which the mimpLeMEN 
employed them. This is a shining example of the travail de 

Relative Surplus Value. Productivity of Capital 121 

direction.” Colossal fortunes are made in this way. (See the example 
of the NEEDLEwoMEN cited in the other Notebook.) 

*“In wages, besides the rate of wages, which results from the demand for it in 
proportion to its supply, there is a lower rate which may be the result of the 
necessities of the workmen. For example, in those trades where there is what is 
called the ‘Sweating System’ practised, the fair result of the demand and supply 
rate of wages is represented by the amount received by the ‘sweater’” (Trades 
Unions and Strikes: Their Philosophy and Intention, by T. Dunning etc., London, 1860, 
(p.] 6).* “‘A ‘sweater’ is one who takes out work to do, at the usual rate of wages, 
and who gets it done by others at a lower price; the difference, which is his profit, 
being ‘sweated’ out of those who execute the work” ™* (Lc., [p.] 6, note).//¢ 

?

## Productivity of Capital, Productive and Unproductive Labour

(To be cited in addition to the above on the subsumption of the 
different spheres of production under capital: 

*“In the good old times, when ‘Live and let live’ was the general motto, every 
man was contented with one avocation. In the cotton trade, there were weavers, 
cotton-spinners, bleachers, dyers, and several other independent branches, all living 
upon the profits of their respective trades, and all, as might be expected, contented 
and happy. By and by, however, when the downward course of trade had 
proceeded to some extent, first one branch was adopted by the capitalist, and then 
another, till in time, the whole of the people were ousted, and thrown upon the 
market of labour, to find out a livelihood in the best manner they could. Thus, 
although no charter secures to these men the right to be cotton-spinners, 
manufacturers, printers, finishers, etc., yet the course of events has invested them 
with a monopoly of all... They have become Jack-of-all-trades, and as far as the 
country is concerned in the business, it is to be feared, they are masters of none” * 
(Public Economy Concentrated etc., Carlisle, 1833, p. 56). 

*“One of two things ought to have resulted from the use of machinery, either 
that men should have laboured less, or that they should have more comforts. 
Unfortunately, neither of those things have happened. Men’s comforts have been 
lessened since the introduction of machinery; they have had to work double time, 
and infant labour has been called in to aid them, and even to work for their own 
daily bread... The Jewish historian has remarked upon the overthrow of Jerusalem, 
by Titus, that it was no wonder [that] it should have been destroyed, with such a 
signal destruction, when one inhuman mother sacrificed her offspring to satisfy the 
cravings of absolute hunger” * (l.c., [p.] 66).) 

[XXI-1317] We have seen not only how capital produces, but 
how it is itself produced, and how it emerges from the production 
process as a relation changed in essence, how it develops in the 
production process. On the one hand it transforms the mode of 

© See this volume, pp. 343-44.— Fd. 

122 The Production Process of Capital 

production, on the other hand this changed shape of the mode of 
production, as well as the attainment of a specific level of 
development of the material forces of production, is the founda- 
tion and the condition—the presupposition—of capital’s own 
formation. 

Since living labour is incorporated into capital—through the 
exchange between capital and the worker—since it appears as an 
activity belonging to capital, as soon as the labour process starts, all 
the productive powers of social labour present themselves as 
productive powers of capital, just as the general social form of 
labour appears in money as the quality of a thing. Thus the 
productive power of social labour, and the specific forms of it, 
now present themselves as productive powers and forms of capital, 
of objectified labour, of the objective conditions of labour, 
which—as such an independent entity—are personified in the 
capitalist and confront living labour. Here once again we have the 
inversion of the relation, the expression of which we have already 
characterised as fetishism in considering the nature of money.’ 

The capitalist himself only holds power as the personification of 
capital. (In double-entry book-keeping this role he has as capitalist, 
as capital personified, is constantly counterposed to his existence 
as a mere person; in the latter capacity he only appears as a 
private consumer and debtor to his own capital.) 

The productivity of capital consists first of all, even when it is 
only the formal subsumption of labour under capital that is being 
considered, in the compulsion to perform surplus labour; to work 
beyond the individual’s immediate needs. The capitalist mode of 
production shares this compulsion with previous modes of 
production, but exerts it, carries it out, in a manner more 
favourable to production. 

Even from the point of view of this merely formal relation—the 
general form of capitalist production, which has its less developed 
mode in common with the more developed—the means of 
production, the objective conditions of labour—material of labour, 
means of labour (and means of subsistence)—do not appear as 
subsumed under the worker; rather, he appears as subsumed 
under them. He does not employ them, they employ him. And 
they are thereby capital. Capita. emproys Lanour.”’ The means of 
production are not means by which he can produce products, 
whether in the form of direct means of subsistence, or as means of 

a See present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 289, 387 and Vol. 32, pp. 449-64, 

Relative Surplus Value. Productivity of Capital 123 

exchange, as commodities. He is rather a means for them, partly 
to preserve their value, partly to valorise it, i.e. to increase it, to 
absorb surplus LaBour. 

Even this relation in its simplicity is an inversion, a personifica- 
tion of the thing and a reification of the person, for what 
distinguishes this form from all previous ones is that the capitalist 
does not rule the worker in any kind of personal capacity, but only 
in so far as he is “capital”; his rule is only that of objectified 
labour over living labour; the rule of the worker’s product over 
the worker himself. 

But the relation becomes still more complex—and apparently 
more mysterious—in that, with the development of the specifically 
capitalist mode of production, not only do these directly material 
things—all of them products of labour, viewed from the angle of 
use value the objective conditions of labour as well as the products 
of labour, viewed from the angle of exchange value objectified 
general labour time, or money—stand on their hind legs vis-a-vis 
the worker and confront him as “capital”, but also the forms of 
socially developed labour, cooperation, manufacture (as a form of 
the division of labour), the factory (as a form of social labour 
organised on the material basis of machinery) appear as forms of 
the development of capital, and therefore the productive powers of 
labour, developed out of these forms of social labour, hence also 
science and the forces of nature, appear as productive forces of 
capital. In fact, unity in cooperation, combination in the division of 
labour, the application of the forces of nature and science, as well 
as the products of labour in the shape of machinery, for the 
purpose of production, are all things which confront the 
individual workers themselves as alien and objective, as a mere 
form of existence of the means of labour which are independent 
of them and rule over them—just as the means of labour, in their 
simple visible shape as material, instrument, etc., confront the 
workers as functions of capital and therefore functions of the capitalist. 
The social forms of their own labour, or the form of their own 
[XXIJI-1318] social labour, are relations constituted quite indepen- 
dently of the individual workers; the workers as subsumed under 
capital become elements of these social constructions, but these 
social constructions do not belong to them. They therefore 
confront the workers as shapes of capital itself, as combinations 
which, unlike their isolated labour capacities, belong to capital, 
originate from it and are incorporated within it. And this assumes 
a form which is the more real the more, on the one hand, their 
labour capacity is itself modified by these forms, so that it becomes 

124 The Production Process of Capital 

powerless when it stands alone, i.e. outside this context of 
capitalism, and its capacity for independent production is de- 
stroyed, while on the other hand the development of machinery 
causes the conditions of labour to appear as ruling labour 
technologically too, and at the same time to replace it, suppress it, 
and render it superfluous in its independent forms. In this 
process, in which the social characteristics of their labour confront 
them as capitalised to a certain extent—in the way that e.g. in 
machinery the visible products of labour appear as ruling over 
labour—the same thing of course takes place for the forces of 
nature and science, the product of general historical development 
in its abstract quintessence: they confront the workers as powers ot 
capital. They become in fact separated from the skill and 
knowledge of the individual worker, and although—if we look at 
them from the point of view of their source—they are in turn the 
product of labour, they appear as incorporated into capital 
wherever they enter the labour process. The capitalist who 
employs a machine does not need to understand it (see Ure*). But 
vis-a-vis the workers, realised science appears in the machine as 
capital. And in fact all these applications of science, of the forces 
of nature and of large masses of products of labour—applications 
based on social labour—appear only as means of exploitation of 
labour, means of appropriating surplus labour, hence, vis-a-vis 
labour, as forces belonging to capital. Capital naturally employs all 
these means only to exploit labour, but in order to exploit labour, 
it must employ them in production. And thus the development of 
the social productive powers of labour and the conditions for this 
development appear as the work of capital, and not only does the 
individual worker relate passively to this work, it also takes place 
in antagonism to him. 

Capital itself is dual since it consists of commodities. 

Exchange value (money), but self-valorising value, value which 
creates value, grows as value, obtains an increment, through the 
fact that it is value. This can be reduced to the exchange of a given 
quantity of objectified labour for a greater quantity of living 
labour. 

Use value, and here capital appears according to its particular 
situation in the labour process. But precisely here it does not just 
remain material of labour, means of labour to which labour 
belongs, and which have incorporated labour, but involves also, 
along with labour, its social combinations and the development of 

a A. Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures... London, 1835, p. 43. Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value. Productivity of Capital 125 

the means of labour which corresponds to these social combina- 
tions. Capitalist production first develops the conditions of the 
labour process on a large scale—first develops them separately 
from the single independent worker—developing both its objec- 
tive and its subjective conditions, but developing them as powers 
which dominate the individual worker and are alien to him. 

Thus capital becomes a very mysterious being. 

Our investigation of profit’ differs from our investigation of 
surplus value in this way, among others: If surplus labour remains 
the same, profit may rise owing to the economical utilisation of 
communal conditions of labour, of which there are many kinds, 
e.g. savings on building costs, heating, lighting, etc.; or because the 
value of the prime Motor does not rise in the same measure as its 
power increases, so that the value of the prime moror is not so costly 
for big factories as it is for scattered small workshops; economies 
in the prices of raw materials by purchase on a large scale (a point 
we shall not examine any further, since it presupposes the 
development of relations which do not come into consideration 
here, where we presuppose the value of the commodity as given, 
rather than market prices); savings where the transmission 
machinery is on a large scale; or due to the fact that waste 
products occur in such amounts that these excrements of 
production themselves again become saleable commodities (or 
[XXI-1319] are able to enter afresh as means of production into 
the reproduction of the same sphere of production or of another 
one); or savings deriving from a reduction in administration costs 
or from the fact that the masses of commodities concentrated in 
the warehouses do not become dearer in the same proportion but 
rather become relatively cheaper, etc. The whole of the economy 
in the use of these conditions of labour, all this relative cheapening 
of constant capital, while its absolute value increases and its ratio 
to variable capital grows, rests on the fact that the conditions 
of labour, raw material as much as the means of labour, etc., 
are employed communally, and this communal — utilisation 
//concentration in a smaller space is one of the essential points 
here// has as its absolute presupposition the communal cooperation 
of a conglomeration of workers. This conglomeration of human 
beings involves the concentration of the conditions of labour, and 
the latter involves the relative cheapening of these conditions. 
Hence the relative cheapening of constant capital—which raises 
the profit when the surplus value is given—//the replacement of 
the means of transport, etc., must be added to this, as also that of 
the means of storing the commodities required for production//—is 

126 The Production Process of Capital 

itself only an objective expression of the productive power of social 
labour, and follows from the social combination of labour alone. 
//And apart from this economy in the direct production process 
there is only one more cuance possible, a second change, in the 
value of the constant capital. This change proceeds from the 
cheapening of the elements of constant capital which are supplied 
to it from outside; an economising which is therefore not a result 
of the organisation of the labour process into which these 
commodities enter as elements. But these commodities are the 
result of another labour process in another spherc of production.// 
They appear, however, as independent of surplus Lazour and svrpPLus 
VALUE, Since these are presupposed to them as given. That the 
worker delivers more of the product in the same time, on the 
other hand, is a result of cooperation, of the division of labour, 
and lastly of the association of his labour with machinery (natural 
forces) and methods of work (science). Machinery itself (just like 
chemical processes, etc.) is initially only the visible product of a 
combination of labour by head and hand; but in its employment it 
is the employment of combined labour, and it only produces 
surplus value as a means of exploiting to a higher degree the 
worker’s powers of labour and the combination of workers. 

Science, the general intellectual product of social development, 
equally appears here as directly incorporated into capital (and the 
application of science as science to the material processes of 
production, separated from the knowledge and _ skill of the 
individual worker, proceeds from the social form of labour alone) 
as the forces of nature as such and the natural forces of social 
labour itself. Because it is exploited by capital against labour, 
because it acts as a productive power of capital over against 
labour, the general development of society as such equally appears 
as the development of capital, and the more so because the emptying 
of labour capacity [of all content], at least of the vast majority of 
labour capacities, proceeds at the same pace. 

The material result of capitalist production—apart from the 
development of the productive powers of social labour itself, 
which here appear to be merely means for the exploitation of 
labour—is an increase in the amount of products, and all these 
means for the exploitation of labour equally appear to be means 
for the multiplication and diversification of products, since the 
increased productivity of labour is expressed in this increased 
production. Yet seen from this angle, capitalist production appears 
to be the rule of things over people. For the creation of use values 
in increasing extent, quality, diversity—the creation of great 

Relative Surplus Value. Productivity of Capital 127 

material wealth—appears as the purpose for which the labour 
capacities are only means, and a purpose which can only be 
attained by their own restriction to a single activity and deprivation of 
humanity. 

Machinery. 

*“Every fresh application of machinery and horse labour is attended with an 
increase of produce and, consequently, of capital; to whatever extent it may 
diminish the ratio which that part of the national capital forming the fund for the 
payment of wages bears to that which is otherwise employed, its tendency is, not to 
diminish, but to increase the absolute amount [XXI-1320] of that fund, and hence to 
increase the quantity of employment” *. (The Westminster Review, January 1826, 

.] 193).87 
: tne class of capitalists, considered as a whole, is in a normal position in that 
its well-being follows the course of social progress” (Cherbuliez, Riche(sse] et 
pauvre[té], [Paris, 1841, p.] 75).4 “The capitalist is the social man par excellence, he 
represents civilisation” (l.c., [p.] 75).2 “The PRODUCTIVE POWER OF CAPITAL can only 
mean the quantity of real productive power which the capitalist, by means of his 
capital, can command” (J. St. Mill, Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political 
Economy, London, 1844, p. 91). * “Capital is ... collective force” * (John Wade, 
History of the Middle and Working Classes etc, 3rd £D., London, 1835, [p.] 162). 
“Capital is only another name for civilisation” (l.c., [p.] 164). 

//Economy in the use of the conditions of production depends 
entirely on their communal use by the concentrated and cooperat- 
ing mass of workers—hence it depends on this social character of 
their labour. The conditions of labour, as the conditions of the 
labour of many people acting in cooperation, are cheaper than the 
scattered conditions, repeated on a small scale, of the labour of the 
isolated individual worker or small groups of workers; they are 
cheaper as conditions of combined labour than as those of 
fragmented labour. More precisely: 1) a saving in the “subjective” 
conditions of labour communally required by many people, such 
as buildings, heating, light; 2) a saving that arises from the 
concentration of the instruments of production, hence a saving in 
the machinery of transmission; 3) economy in the use of the power 
which sets in motion the prime Motors. Other ways of making things 
cheaper depend on inventions, and belong to the second kind of 
cheapening of constant capital—namely a cheapening which arises 
not from the arrangements directly made for its use, but from the 
development of the productivity of labour in spheres of produc- 
tion of which it is the result. 

Nevertheless, capitalist production does not limit itself to these 
economies which arise from the concentration of workers and of 
the means of labour. A second kind of economy proceeds from 

a Marx quotes in French.— Ed. 

128 The Production Process of Capital 

the contempt with which human material ‘which does not cost 
anything” is treated; thus it is packed together in confined and 
badly ventilated rooms, and rules of safety and comfort are 
ignored, as with the failure to rence in dangerous machinery, and 
the inadequate numbers of shafts, etc., in the mines. These points 
must be backed up with a few examples later on.**// 

Capital is therefore productive: 

1) as the compulsion to do surplus labour, 

2) as absorbing within itself and appropriating the productive 
powers of social labour and the social powers of production in 
general, such as science. 

The question is, how or through what means does labour 
appear productive towards capital, or as productive labour, since the 
productive powers of labour are transposed into capital? And can 
the same productive power count twice,-once as productive power 
of labour and once as productive power of capital? //Productive 
power of labour=productive power of capital. But labour capacity 
is productive owing to the difference between its value and its 
valorisation.// 

Only bourgeois narrowness, which considers the capitalist forms 
of production to be the latter’s absolute forms—and therefore the 
eternal natural forms of production—is able to confuse the 
question of what productive labour is from the standpoint of capital 
with the question of what labour is productive in general, or what 
productive labour is in general, and therefore esteem itself very 
wise in giving the reply that all labour which produces anything at 
all, results in anything whatsoever, is eo ipso* productive labour. 

[Firstly:] Only labour which is converted directly into capital is 
productive; hence only labour which posits variable capital as 
variable, and therefore=C+A. If the variable capital=x before its 
exchange with labour, so that we have the equation y=x, that 
labour is productive labour which converts x into x+h and 
therefore makes y=x into y=x+h This is the sole point that 
needs to be discussed. Labour which posits surplus value, or serves 
capital as an acency for the positing of surplus value and therefore 
enables it to posit itself as capital, as self-valorising value. 

Secondly: The social and general productive powers of labour 
are productive powers of capital; but these productive powers 
concern the labour process alone, or affect use value alone. They 
appear as qualities capital possesses as a thing, they appear as its 

a By that very fact.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value. Productivity of Capital 129 

use value. They do not directly affect exchange value. Whether 100 
work together or each of the 100 works in isolation, the value of 
their product=100 working days, whether this is represented by 
many products or a few. That is to say, the productivity of labour 
is irrelevant to exchange value. 

[XXI-1321] There is only one way in which differences in the 
productivity of labour affect exchange value. 

If the productivity of labour develops e.g. in a single branch of 
labour—if e.g. weaving with powerLooms instead of handlooms 
ceases to be an exception—and if the weaving of a yard with the 
POWERLOOM Yequires only half as much labour time as with the 
HANDLOOM, the 12 hours of the HANDLOOM weaver are no longer 
represented in a value of 12 hours, but in a value of 6, since 
necessary labour time has now become 6 hours. The 12 hours of 
the HANDLOOM WEAVER now only=6 hours of social labour time, 
although he continues to work for 12 hours, as before. But this is 
not the point under discussion. If we take a different branch of 
production, in contrast, such as typesetting, in which no machinery 
is yet employed, 12 hours in this branch will produce just as much 
value as 12 hours will in branches of production where machinery, 
etc., has been developed to the uttermost extent. As productive of 
value, therefore, labour always remains the labour of the 
individual, only expressed generally. Productive labour—as value- 
producing labour—therefore always confronts capital as the 
labour of the individual labour capacity, of the isolated worker, 
whatever social combinations these workers may enter in the 
production process. Whereas capital thus confronts the worker as 
the social productive power of labour, the productive labour of the 
worker never represents towards capital anything more than the 
labour of the isolated worker. 

Thirdly: If it appears as a natural quality of capital—and 
therefore as a quality which gushes forth from its use value—that 
it compels the performance of surplus labour and claims the social 
productive powers of labour as its own, it appears, conversely, as a 
natural quality of labour that it posits its own social productive 
powers as productive powers of capital and its own surplus as 
surplus value, as the self-valorisation of capital. 

These 3 points must now be developed and the distinction 
between productive and unproductive labour derived from them. 

Ad 1. The productivity of capital consists in positing labour as 
wage labour towards itself, and the productivity of labour consists 
in positing the means of labour as capital towards itself. 

We have seen that money is converted into capital, i.e. a given 

130 The Production Process of Capital 

exchange value is converted into self-valorising exchange value, 
into value+surplus value, by the conversion of a part of the 
money into such commodities as serve labour as means of labour 
(raw materials, instrument, in short the material conditions of 
labour), and the employment of another part of the money for the 
purchase of labour capacity. However, it is not this first exchange 
between money and labour capacity, or the mere purchase of the 
latter, which converts money into capital. This purchase incorpo- 
rates into capital the use of labour capacity for a certain period of 
time, or, in other words, it makes a definite quantity of living 
labour into one of the modes of existence of capital itself, its 
entelechy so to speak. In the real production process, living labour 
is converted into capital by on the one hand reproducing the 
wage—hence the value of the variable capital—and on the other 
hand positing a surplus value, and through this process of 
conversion the whole sum of money is converted into capital, 
although the only part which varies directly is that which is laid 
out in the wage. If the value was=c+v, it now=c+(v+x), which is 
the same thing as=(c+v)+ x, or, in other words, the original sum 
of money, magnitude of value, has valorised itself, has been 
posited at the same time as self-preserving and self-multiplying 
value. 

(The following should be noted: The circumstance that only the 
variable part of the capital brings forth its increment changes 
absolutely nothing in the fact that by means of this process the 
whole of the original value is valorised, is increased by a surplus 
value; that therefore the whole of the original sum of money has 
been converted into capital. For the original value=c+v (constant 
and variable capital). It becomes in the process ¢+(v+<x); the latter 
is the reproduced part, which arose through the conversion of 
living into objectified labour, a conversion which is conditioned 
and introduced by the exchange of v for labour capacity or its 
conversion into wages. But ¢+(v+x)=c+v (the original capital)+x 
Apart from this the conversion of v into v+.x, hence of (c+ v) into 
(c+v)+x, could only occur through the conversion of a part of the 
money into c. One part can only be converted into variable capital 
through the conversion of the other into constant capital) 

In the real production process labour is converted in reality into 
capital, but this conversion is conditioned by the original exchange 
between money and labour capacity. It is only through this direct 
conversion of labour into objectified labour which belongs not to 
the worker but to the capitalist that the money is converted into 
capital, including the part which has taken on the form of the 

Relative Surplus Value. Productivity of Capital 13] 

means of production, the conditions of labour. Previously money 
was only capital in itself whether it existed in its own form or in 
the form of commodities (products) which possessed a shape 
enabling them to serve as the means of production for new 
commodities. 

[XXI-1322] It is only this particular relation to labour which 
converts money or commodity into capital, and that labour is 
productive labour which—by means of this relation it has to the 
conditions of production, to which there corresponds a particular 
position in the real production process—converts money or 
commodity into capital, i.e. preserves and increases the value of 
the objective labour which has attained an independent position 
vis-a-vis labour capacity. Productive labour is only an abbreviation 
for the whole relation in which, and the manner in which, labour 
capacity figures in the capitalist production process. It is however 
of the highest importance to distinguish between this and other 
kinds of labour, since this distinction brings out precisely the 
determinate form of labour on which there depends the whole 
capitalist mode of production, and capital itself. 

Productive labour, therefore, is labour which—in the system of 
capitalist production—produces surplus value for its Employer or 
which converts the objective conditions of labour into capital, and 
their owners into capitalists, hence labour which produces its own 
product as capital. 

Hence in speaking of productive labour we are speaking of socially 
determined labour, labour which implies a highly definite relation 
between the buyer and the seller of labour. 

Although the money in the possession of the buyer of labour 
capacity—or, as a commodity, the buyer of means of production 
and subsistence for the worker—only becomes capital through the 
process, is only converted into capital in the process, and therefore 
these things are not capital before their entry into the process, but 
are only about to become capital, they are even so capital in 
themselves; they are capital through the independent shape in 
which they confront labour capacity and in which labour capacity 
confronts them, a relation which conditions and ensures the 
exchange with labour capacity and subsequent process of the real 
conversion of labour into capital. They already possess at the 
outset the social determinacy vis-a-vis the workers which makes 
them into capital and gives them command over labour. They are 
therefore posited in advance as capital vis-a-vis labour. 

132 The Production Process of Capital 

Productive labour can therefore be characterised as labour which 
exchanges directly with money as capital, or, and this is merely an 
abbreviated expression of the same thing, labour which exchanges 
directly with capital, i.e. with money which is in itself capital, has 
the determination of functioning as capital, or confronts labour 
capacity as capital. The expression “labour which exchanges 
directly with capital” means that labour exchanges with money 
as capital and converts it actu* into capital. What the determina- 
tion of immediacy implies will soon become more clearly appa- 
rent. 

Productive labour is therefore labour which reproduces for the 
worker only the previously determined value of his labour 
capacity, but at the same time, as value-creating activity, it valorises 
capital or places the values created by labour in confrontation with 
the worker himself as capital. 

In examining the exchange between capital and labour, as we 
saw in considering the process of production,” two moments need 
to be distinguished, which are fundamentally distinct, although 
they condition each other. 

Firstly: The first exchange between labour and capital is a formal 
process, in which capital figures as money and labour capacity 
figures as commodity. The sale of labour capacity takes place 
notionally or legally in this first process, although the labour is 
paid for only after it has been done, at the end of the day, of the 
week, etc. This does not change anything in this single transaction 
in which labour capacity is sold What is sold here directly is not a 
commodity in which labour has already been realised but the use of 
labour capacity itself, hence in practice labour itself, since the use of 
labour capacity is its acrion—labour. It is therefore not an 
exchange of labour mediated through the exchange of com- 
modities. If A sells boots to B, they both exchange labour, the first 
labour realised in boots, the second in money. But here objectified 
labour in its general social form, i.e. as money, is exchanged for 
labour which exists as yet only as a capacity, and what is bought and 
sold is the use of that capacity, hence labour itself, although the 
value of the commodity that has been sold is not the value of 
labour (an irrational expression) but the value of labour capacity. 
A direct exchange therefore takes place between objectified labour 
and labour capacity which de facto amounts to living labour; hence 
an exchange between objectified labour and living labour. The 

a By that action.— Ed. 
b See present edition, Vol. 30, pp. 33-42.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value. Productivity of Capital 133 

wage—the value of labour capacity—therefore presents itself, as 
explained previously,’ as the direct purchase price, the price of 
labour. 

The relation between worker and capitalist in this first moment 
is the relation between the seller of a commodity and its buyer. 
The capitalist pays the value of the labour capacity, hence the 
value of the commodity, which he is buying. 

At the same time, however, the labour capacity is only bought 
because the labour it can perform, and enters into an obligation to 
perform, is greater than the labour required for the reproduction 
of this labour capacity, and is therefore represented by a value 
greater than the value of the labour capacity. 

{XXI-1323] Secondly: The second moment of the exchange 
between capital and labour has in fact nothing to do with the first, 
and strictly speaking is not an exchange at all. 

In the first moment an exchange of money and commodity 
takes place—an exchange of equivalents—and the worker and the 
capitalist confront each other solely as the owners of commodities. 
Equivalents are exchanged (i.e. the relation is not affected at all by 
the time when they are exchanged, and whether the price of labour 
stands above or below the value of labour capacity or is equal to it 
changes nothing in the transaction. It can therefore take place 
according to the general law of the exchange of commodities.) In 
the second moment no exchange at all takes place. The owner of 
money has ceased to be the buyer of a commodity, and the worker 
has ceased to be the seller of a commodity. The owner of money 
now functions as a capitalist. He consumes the commodity he has 
bought, and the worker provides it, since the use of his labour 
capacity is his labour itself. Labour has itself become a part of 
objective wealth through the earlier transaction. The worker 
performs the labour, but it belongs to capital and is now nothing 
more than a function of the latter. It therefore occurs directly 
under capital’s contro! and direction, and the product in which it 
is objectified is the new shape in which capital appears, or rather 
the shape in which it realises itself actu? as capital. Labour therefore 
directly objectifies itself in this process, converts itself directly into 
capital, after it has already been incorporated formally into capital 
through the first transaction. And indeed more labour is here 
converted into capital than was previously laid out as capital in the 
purchase of labour capacity. A portion of unpaid labour is 

a See this volume, pp. 61-86.— Ed. 

134 The Production Process of Capital 

appropriated in this process, and only in this way is money 
converted into capital. 

Although no exchange in fact takes place here, the result, if one 
disregards the intervening stages, is that in the process—taking 
both moments together—a definite quantity of objectified labour 
has exchanged for a greater quantity of living labour, which is 
expressed in the result of the process in the following way, that 
the labour which has increased its size in its product>than the 
labour which is objectified in labour capacity, and therefore>than 
the objectified labour which is paid to the worker, or that in the 
real process the capitalist receives back, hence obtains, not only the 
part of the capital he laid out in wages, but also a surplus value, 
which costs him nothing. Here the direct exchange of labour for 
capital means 1) the direct conversion of labour into capital, the 
objective component of capital in the production process, 2) the 
exchange of a definite quantity of objectified labour for the same 
quantity of living labour+a surplus quantity of living labour, 
which is appropriated without exchange. 

The statement that productive labour is labour which exchanges 
directly with capital comprises all these moments, and is only a 
derivative formula for the fact that it is labour which converts 
money into capital, exchanges with the conditions of production as 
capital, and therefore by no means relates to the former as simple 
conditions of production, does not relate to them as labour in the 
absolute sense, without any specific social determinateness. 

This implies 1) the relation of money and labour capacity to 
each other as commodities, sale and purchase between the owner 
of money and the owner of labour capacity; 2) the direct 
subsumption of labour under capital; 3) the real conversion of 
labour into capital in the production process, or, and this is the 
same thing, the creating of surplus value for capital. A twofold 
exchange between labour and capital takes place. The first merely 
expresses the purchase of labour capacity and therefore, actu, of 
labour, hence of its product. The second expresses the direct 
conversion of living labour into capital, or its objectification as the 
realisation of capital. 

The result of the capitalist production process is neither a mere 
product (use value) nor a commodity, i.e. a use value which has a 
particular exchange value. Its result, its product, is the creation of 
surplus value for capital, and therefore in fact the conversion of 
money or a commodity into capital; whereas before the production 
process these were capital merely in intention, in themselves, in 
terms of their determination. More labour is absorbed in the 

Relative Surplus Value. Productivity of Capital 135 

production process than was bought, and this absorption, [XXI- 
1324] this appropriation of alien unpaid labour, which is accom- 
plished in the production process, is the immediate purpose of the 
capitalist production process, for what capital wants to produce as 
capital (hence the capitalist as capitalist) is neither direct use value 
for its own consumption, nor a commodity to be converted first 
into money and later into use values. Its purpose is enrichment, the 
valorisation of value, its magnification, hence the preservation of the 
old value and the creation of surplus value. And it achieves this 
specific product of the capitalist production process only in the 
exchange with labour, which for that reason is called productive 
labour. 

In order to produce commodities, labour must be useful labour, it 
must produce use values, it must be represented in use values. And 
therefore only labour which is represented in commodities, hence in 
use values, is able to make the exchange with capital. This is a 
presupposition which goes without saying. But it is not this 
concrete character of the labour, its use value as such, the fact that 
it is e.g. tailoring, cobbling, spinning, weaving, etc., which forms its 
specific use value for capital, stamps it therefore as productive 
labour in the system of capitalist production. Its specific use value 
for capital consists not in its particular useful character, any more 
than in the specific useful features of the product in which it is 
objectified. It is rather its character as the element which creates 
exchange value, abstract labour; not in the sense that it represents 
any particular quantity of this general labour, but that it 
represents a greater quantity than is contained in its price, 1.e. in 
the value of the labour capacity. The use value of labour capacity is 
for it the excess amount of labour it provides over and above the 
labour which is objectified in it, and is therefore required for its 
reproduction. It naturally provides this quantity in the particular 
form appropriate to it as a specific kind of useful labour, as the 
labour of spinning, of weaving, etc. But this concrete character of 
labour, which generally enables it to be represented in a 
commodity, is not its specific use value for capital. This consists for 
capital in its quality of being labour in general, and in the 
difference between the quantity of labour it performs and the 
quantity of labour it costs, in the fact that the former is greater 
than the latter. 

A particular sum of money, x, becomes capital through the fact 
that it is represented in its product as x+h; i.e. the fact that the 
quantity of labour contained in it as a product is greater than the 
quantity of labour originally contained in it. And this is the result 

136 The Production Process of Capital 

of the exchange between money and productive labour, or, in 
other words, only that labour is productive which enables objec- 
tified labour to be represented in the exchange with it as an 
increased quantity of objectified labour. 

The capitalist production process is therefore not merely the 
production of commodities. It is a process which absorbs unpaid 
labour, a process which makes the material and means of 
labour—the means of production—into means for the absorption 
of unpaid labour. 

It emerges from what has been said so far that to be productive 
labour is a determination of labour which has at first absolutely 
nothing to do with the particular content of the labour, its specific 
utility or the peculiar use value in which it is represented. 

The same kind of labour can be productive or unproductive. 

E.g. Milton, wHo pip tHE Paradise Lost ror £5, was an unproductive 
worker. But a writer who does factory labour for his publisher is a 
productive worker. Milton produced Paradise Lost for the same 
reason as a silkworm produces silk. It was an expression of his own 
nature. Later on he sold the product for £5. But the Leipzig 
proletarian of literature who assembles books (such as compendia 
of political economy) under the direction of his publisher is a 
productive worker, for his production is from the outset subsumed 
under capital, and only takes place so that capital may valorise 
itself. A singer who sells her songs on her own account is an 
unproductive worker. But the same singer, engaged by an impre- 
sario, who has her sing in order to make money, is a productive 
worker. For she produces capital.* 

[XXI-1325] There are various questions to be distinguished 
here. 

Whether I buy a pair of trousers, or I buy some cloth and take a 
journeyman tailor into the house, paying him for his service (i.e. 
his tailoring labour) of converting this cloth into trousers, is a 
matter of complete indifference to me, in so far as only the 
trousers are at stake. I buy the trousers from the MERCHANT TAILOR, 
instead of operating in the second way, because the latter way of 
doing things is dearer, and the trousers cost less labour, and are 
therefore cheaper if the caprratist TatLon produces them than if I 
have them produced in the latter manner. But in both cases I do 
not convert the money with which I buy the trousers into capital 
but into trousers, and what is important to me in both cases is to 
use the money as a mere means of circulation, i.e. to convert it 

a See this volume, p. 448.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value. Productivity of Capital 137 

into this particular use value. Here, therefore, the money does not 
function as capital, although in one case it is exchanged for a 
commodity, and in the other case it buys labour itself as a commodity. 
It functions only as money, and more precisely as means of 
circulation. On the other hand, the journeyman tailor is not a 
productive worker, although his labour provides for me the product, 
the trousers, and for him the price of his labour, the money. It is 
possible that the quantity of labour provided by the journeyman is 
greater than the amount contained in the price he receives from 
me. And indeed this is likely, since the price of his labour is 
determined by the price received by the productive journeymen 
tailors. But this is a matter of complete indifference to me. 
Whether he works 8 or 10 hours, once the price has been fixed, is 
completely indifferent to me. The only thing at stake here is the 
use value, the trousers, in which connection I naturally have an 
interest in paying as little as possible for them, whether I buy 
them in one way or the other; but I am not concerned to pay 
more or less in one case than in the other—or only to pay the 
normal price for them. This is an outgoing for the purpose of my 
consumption, not an increase of my money but a lessening of it. It 
is definitely not a means of enrichment, just as little as any other 
kind of expenditure of money for my personal consumption is a 
means of enrichment. One of the savants of Paul de Kock** may 
tell me that I cannot live without this purchase, just as I cannot 
live without the purchase of bread, hence I also cannot enrich 
myself, that it is therefore an indirect means—or at least a 
condition—for my enrichment. The circulation of my blood and 
my respiration would in the same way also be conditions for my 
enrichment. But neither the circulation of my blood nor my 
respiration in themselves enrich me on that account; both of these 
processes rather presuppose a costly metabolism without whose 
necessity there would be no poor devils at all. The mere direct 
exchange of money for labour therefore does not convert money 
into capital or labour into productive labour. What then is the 
characteristic feature of this exchange? What distinguishes it from 
the exchange of money with productive labour? On the one hand 
the fact that the money is expended as money, as the independent 
form of exchange value, which is to be converted into a use value, 
into means of subsistence, an object of personal consumption. 
Therefore the money does not become capital but rather the 
reverse, it loses its existence as exchange value so as to be 
consumed as use value. On the other hand, labour only interests 
me as a use value, as a service by means of which cloth is turned 

138 The Production Process of Capital ene, 

into trousers; the service which it performs for me thanks to its 
particular useful character. But when the journeyman tailor is 
employed by a merchant raior, the service he performs for this 
capitalist by no means consists in his converting cloth into trousers, 
but rather in the fact that the necessary labour time which is 
objectified in a pair of trousers=12 hours of labour, and the wage 
the journeyman receives=6 hours. The service he performs for 
the capitalist therefore consists in the fact that he works 6 hours 
for nothing. That this occurs in the form of the making of 
trousers oply conceals the real relation. Hence as soon as the 
MERCHANT? ¥attor is able to do this, he endeavours to convert the 
trousers back into money again, ie. into a form in which the 
particular character of tailoring has completely disappeared, and 
in which the service performed is expressed in such a way that 
instead of a labour time of 6 hours, which [XXI-1326] is expressed 
in a particular amount of money, a labour time of 12 hours is 
available, which is expressed in twice the amount of money. 

I buy the work of the tailor on account of the service it 
performs as tailoring, which is to satisfy my need for clothing, 
hence to serve one of my needs. The mercuanT Tailor buys it as a 
means of making two thalers out of one. I buy it because it 
produces a certain use value, performs a certain service. He buys 
it because it provides more exchange value than it costs, he buys it 
merely as a means of exchanging less labour for more labour. 

Where money is exchanged directly for labour, and the latter 
does not produce any capital, hence is not productive labour, it is 
bought as a service; this is nothing more than an expression for 
the particular use value provided by labour, just like every other 
commodity; but it is a specific expression for the particular use 
value of labour, in so far as labour does not provide services as an 
object but as an activity, which however by no means distinguishes 
it e.g. from a machine, e.g. a clock. Do ut facias, facio ut facias, facio 
ut des, do ut des* are here completely indifferent forms of the same 
relation, whereas in capitalist production the do ut facias expresses 
a very specific relation of the objective value, which is given, and 
the living activity, which is appropriated. Thus, because the 
specific relation of labour and capital is not contained at all in this 
purchase of services, because it has either been completely 
extinguished or was never present, it is naturally the favourite 

a “T give that you may make”, “I make that you may make”, “I make that you 
may give”, “I give that you may give’—contractual formulas in Roman law (Corpus 
iuris civilis, Digesta XIX, 5.5). Cf. present edition, Vol. 28, p. 393.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value. Productivity of Capital 139 

form used by Say, Bastiat and their associates to express the relation 
of capital and labour.’ 

How the value of these services is regulated, and how this value 
is itself determined by the laws of wages, is a question which has 
nothing to do with the investigation of the relation currently 
under discussion, and which belongs to the chapter on wages. 

The result is that the mere exchange of money for labour does 
not convert the latter into productive labour, and that the content of 
this labour, on the other hand, is initially a matter of indifference. 

The worker himself can buy labour, i.e. can buy commodities 
which are provided in the form of services, and when he expends 
his wage in such services this expenditure does not differ in any 
respect from the expenditure of his wage to buy any other 
commodity. The services he buys may be more or less necessary, 
e.g. he can buy the service of a doctor or a priest, just as he can 
buy bread or spirits. As a buyer—i.e. a representative of money 
towards the commodity—the worker is in exactly the same 
category as the capitalist, when the latter steps forward as buyer 
alone, ie. when it is only a matter of transferring money into the 
form of a commodity. How the price of these services is 
determined, and what relation it has to the actual wage, how far it 
is regulated by the laws governing the latter, and how far not, are 
questions which should be treated in a discussion of wages and 
are a matter of complete indifference for the present investiga- 
tion.” 

If the mere exchange of money and labour does not convert the 
latter into productive labour, or, and this is the same thing, does not 
convert the former into capital, the content, the concrete character, 
the particular utility of the labour, also appears at first to be a 
matter of indifference; as we have just seen, the same labour of 
the sgme journeyman tailor appears as in one case productive, in 
another case not. 

Some services or use values, the results of certain activities or 
kinds of labour, are incorporated in commodities; others, however, 
leave behind no tangible result as distinct from the persons 
themselves: or they do not result in a saleable commodity. E.g. the 
service a singer performs for me satisfies my aesthetic needs, but 
what I enjoy exists only in an action inseparable from the singer 
himself, and once his work, singing, has come to an end, my 
enjoyment is also at an end; I enjoy the activity itself—its 

a See present edition, Vol. 28, pp. 175, 180-81, Vol. 30, pp. 114, 148, and this 
volume, pp. 152-54.— Ed. 

140 The Production Process of Capital >. I 

REVERBERATION in my ear. These services themselves, just like the 
commodities I buy, may be necessary or merely appear necessary, 
e.g. the service of a soldier, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or they may 
be services which provide me with pleasure. This does not change 
their economic determination in any way. If I am healthy and do 
not need a doctor, or I am fortunate enough not to have to 
engage in any lawsuits, I avoid like the plague the expenditure of 
money for medical or legal services. 

[XXI-1328]°' One can also have services thrust upon one, the 
services of officials, etc. 

If I buy the services of a teacher, not in order to develop my 
own capacities, but to acquire skills with which I can earn 
money—or if other people buy this teacher for me—and if I 
really learn something—which is in itself entirely independent of 
my paying for his services—these costs of learning form as much 
a part of the costs of production of my labour capacity as do my 
subsistence costs. But the particular utility of this service changes 
nothing in the economic relation; and this is not a relation in which 
I convert money into capital, or by which the performer of the 
service, the teacher, converts me into his capitalist, His MASTER. 
Whether the doctor cures me, the teacher is successful in 
instructing me, or the lawyer wins my case, is therefore a matter 
of complete indifference for the economic determination of this 
relation. What is paid for is the performance of a service as such, 
and its result cannot by its nature be guaranteed by the person 
performing it. A large part of services belong to the costs of 
consumption of commodities,-as with cooks, maids, etc. 

It is characteristic of all unproductive labours that they are only at 
my disposal in the same proportion as I exploit productive 
workers—as is the case with the purchase of all other consumption 
commodities. It is the productive worker, therefore, who of all 
persons has the least command over the services of unproductive 
workers, although he has to pay the most for involuntary services 
(the state, taxes). Inversely, however, my ability to employ 
productive workers does not at all grow in the proportion to which I 
employ unproductive workers; it is rather the reverse, it declines in 
the same proportion. 

Productive workers may themselves be unproductive workers as far 
as I am concerned. If e.g. I have my house decorated, and these 
decorators are the wage labourers of a master, who sells me this 
function, it is the same for me as if I had bought a ready- 
decorated house, expended money for a commodity I intend to 
consume, but for the master who sets these workers to decorating, 

Relative Surplus Value. Productivity of Capital 141 

they are productive workers, for they produce surplus value for 
him. 

But what is the situation with independent handicraftsmen or 
with peasants who do not employ any workers, hence do not 
produce as capitalists? Either they are producers of commodities, as 
always in the case of peasants //but not e.g. in the case of a 
gardener I take into my household//, and I buy the commodities. 
from them, in which connection it makes no difference e.g. that 
the handicraftsman supplies the commodities to order, whereas 
the peasant delivers his suprty according to the measure of his 
means of producing it. In this relation they meet me as sellers of 
commodities, not as sellers of labour, and this relation therefore 
has nothing to do with the exchange between capital and labour, 
hence it also has nothing to do with the distinction between 
productive and unproductive labour, which depends merely on 
whether the labour is exchanged for money as money or for 
money as capital. They therefore belong neither to the category of 
productive workers nor to that of unproductive workers, although they 
are producers of commodities. Their production is not subsumed 
under the capitalist mode of production. These producers, who 
work with their own means of production, may not only 
reproduce their labour capacity, but also create surplus value, in 
that their position allows them to appropriate their own surplus 
labour, or a part of it (for a part is taken away from them in the 
form of taxes, etc.). And here we meet with a_ peculiarity 
characteristic of a society in which a determinate mode of 
production predominates, although all relations of production 
have not yet been subjected to it. In feudal society, for example, 
which can best be studied in England, because here the system of 
feudalism was introduced in finished form from Normandy, and 
its form was imprinted upon a social foundation which differed 
in many respects, relations which are far from belonging to the 
essence of feudalism also take on a feudal expression. Such is the 
case with e.g. purely monetary relations, where there is no element 
at all of reciprocal personal services between suzerain and vassal. 
E.g. the fiction that the small peasant possesses his farm as a fief. 
It is exactly the same with the capitalist mode of production. The 
independent peasant or handicraftsman is cut into two. 

“In the small enterprises ... the entrepreneur is often his own worker” (Storch, 
Vol. I, St. Petersburg edition, [p.] 242). 

a Marx quotes in French.— Ed. 

142 The Production Process of Capital 

As owner of the means of production he is a capitalist, as 
worker he is his own wage labourer. He therefore pays himself his 
wages as a Capitalist and draws his profit from his capital, i.e. he 
exploits himself as wage labourer and pays himself in surpius value 
the tribute labour owes to capital. Perhaps he pays himself yet a 
third part as landowner (rent), just as the industrial capitalist, as 
we shall see later," when he works with his own [XXI-1329] 
capital, pays himself interest and regards this as something he 
owes himself not as industrial capitalist but as capitalist in the 
absolute sense. The social determinacy of the means of production 
in capitalist production—so that they express a particular relation 
of production—is so intertwined with, and in the understanding of 
bourgeois society so inseparable from, the material existence of 
these means of production as means of production, that that 
determinacy (categorial determinacy) is applied even where the 
relation directly contradicts it. The means of production only 
become capital in so far as they achieve an autonomous position as 
an independent power vis-a-vis labour. In the given case, the 
producer—the worker—is the owner, the proprietor of his means 
of production. They are therefore no more capital than he is a 
wage labourer vis-a-vis them. Nevertheless, they are considered to 
be capital, and he himself is split in two, so that he as capitalist 
employs himself as wage labourer. In fact this way of presenting 
the matter, irrational as it may be on First view, is nevertheless 
correct so Far: The producer admittedly creates his own surplus 
VALUE in the given case //assuming that he sells his commodity at its 
value//, or the whole product objectifies his own labour alone. But 
he owes his ability to appropriate for himself the whole product of 
his own labour, whereby the excess of the value of his product 
over the average price ror insrance of his day’s labour is not 
appropriated by a third wasrer, not to his labour—which does not 
distinguish him from other workers—but to his ownership of the 
means of production. It is therefore only through ownership of 
the latter that he obtains control of his own surplus labour, and 
thus he relates to himself as wage labourer as his own capitalist. 
The separation of the two appears as the normal relation in this 
society. Therefore where it does not take place in practice it is 
assumed, and, as we have just shown, so rar correctly; for (unlike 
e.g. the conditions of ancient Rome or Norway) (or American 
conditions in the North West of the Unirep Srares) the unification 

4 See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. LI, Part V, Ch. XXIIL (present edition, 

Relative Surplus Value. Productivity of Capital 143 

of the two appears here as accidental, their separation as normal, 
and therefore the separation is retained as the relation, even when 
one person unites the different functions. It emerges in very 
striking fashion here that the capitalist as such is only a function 
of capital, and the worker a function of labour capacity. Then 
there is also the law that economic development divides the 
functions among different persons, so that the handicraftsman or 
peasant who produces with his own means of production is either 
turned little by little into a small capitalist who also exploits alien 
labour, or loses possession of his means of production //at the 
outset this may occur even though he remains their nominal 
owner, as with the mortgage system// and is turned into a wage 
labourer. This is the tendency in the form of society in which the 
capitalist mode of production predominates. In considering the 
essential relations of capitalist production, therefore, it can be 
assumed //since this tends to occur more and more, is the 
principal purpose, and the productive powers of labour are 
developed to the highest point in this case alone// that the whole 
world of commodities, all the spheres of material production—the 
production of material wealth—have been subjected (either 
formally or really) to the capitalist mode of production. In this 
presupposition, which expresses the twit, and therefore approxi- 
mates ever more closely to exact accuracy, all the workers engaged 
in the production of commodities are wage labourers and the 
means of production confront them as capital in all spheres of 
production. It can then be described as the characteristic feature 
of productive workers, i.e. of workers producing capital, that their 
labour is realised in commodities, material wealth. And _ thus 
productive labour would have obtained a_ second, -subsidiary 
determination distinct from its decisive characteristic, for which 
the content of the labour is a matter of complete indifference and 
which is independent of that content. 

With non-material production,even when it is conducted purely 
for exchange, hence produces commodities, two things are possible: 
1) It results in commodities, use values, which possess an indepen- 
dent shape separate from the producers and consumers; hence 
may exist in the interval between production and consumption, 
may circulate in this interval as saleable commodities, as in the case 
of books, paintings, in short all the products of artistic creation, 
which are distinct from the artistic performance of the executant 
artist. Here capitalist production is only applicable to a very 
limited degree. To the extent that e.g. the writer of a joint 
work— encyclopaedia—e.g. exploits a number of others as hacks. 

144 The Production Process of Capital 

{XXI-1330] Here things usually remain at the level of the forms 
transitional to capitalist production, where different scientific or 
artistic producers, artisanal or professional, work for a common 
merchant capital, the publisher; a relation which has nothing to do 
with the capitalist mode of production proper, and is itself not yet 
formally subsumed under it. The fact that the exploitation of 
labour is at its worst precisely in these transitional forms does not 
change anything in the situation. 2) The product* is not separable 
from the act of producing, as with all executant artists, orators, 
actors, teachers, doctors, clerics, etc. Here too the capitalist mode 
of production only occurs to a slight extent, and can in the nature 
of things only take place in certain spheres. E.g. teachers in 
educational institutions may be mere wage labourers for the 
entrepreneur who owns the institution; there are many such 
education factories in England. Although they are not productive 
workers vis-a-vis the pupils, they are such vis-a-vis their employer. 
He exchanges his capital for their labour capacity, and enriches 
himself by this process. Similarly with enterprises such as theatres, 
places of entertainment, etc. Here the actor’s relation to the public 
is that of artist, but vis-a-vis his employer he is a productive worker. 
All the phenomena of capitalist production in this area are so 
insignificant in comparison with production as a whole that they 
can be disregarded entirely. 

With the development of the specifically capitalist mode of 
production, in which many workers cooperate in the production of 
the same commodity, the direct relations between their labour and 
the object under production must of course be very diverse. E.g. 
the assistants in the factory, mentioned earlier,” have no direct 
involvement in the treatment of the raw material. The workers 
who constitute the overseers of those who are directly concerned 
with this treatment stand a step further away; the engineer in turn 
has a different relation and works mainly with his brain alone, etc. 
But the whole group of these workers, who possess labour capacities of 
different values, although the total number employed reaches 
roughly the same level, produce a result which is expressed, from 
the point of view of the result of the pure labour process, in 
commodities or in a material product, and all of them together, as a 
workshop, are the living production machine for these products, 
while, from the point of view of the production process as a 
whole, they exchange their labour for capital, and reproduce the 

b See present edition, Vol. 33, pp. 483-84.— Ed. 

Relative Surplus Value. Productivity of Capital 145 

money of the capitalist as capital, ie. as self-valorising value, 
self-multiplying value. It is indeed the peculiarity of the capitalist 
mode of production that it separates the different kinds of labour, 
hence also brain and hand labour—or the kinds of labour in 
which one or the other aspect predominates—and distributes 
them among different people, although this does not prevent the 
material product from being the common product of these persons 
or their common product from being objectified in material 
wealth. Nor, on the other hand, does this prevent, or change in 
any way, the fact that the relation of each individual person is that 
of a wage labourer to capital, and in this eminent sense it is the 
relation of the productive worker. All these people are not only 
employed directly in the production of material wealth, they 
exchange their labour directly for capital’s money, and therefore, 
as well as directly reproducing their wage, they create a surplus 
value for the capitalist. Their labour consists of paid 
labour+unpaid surplus labour. 

In addition to extractive industry, agriculture, and manufactur- 
ing, there exists yet a fourth sphere of material production, which 
also passes through the different stages of the handicraft system, 
the system of manufacture, and mechanised industry; it is the 
transport industry, transporting human beings, it may be, or 
commodities. Here the relation of the productive worker, i.e. the 
wage labourer, to capital is exactly the same as in the other 
spheres of material production. Here too the object of labour 
undergoes a material alteration—a spatial alteration, or change of 
place. In regard to the transport of human beings, this appears 
merely as a service, performed for them by an entrepreneur. But 
the relation between the buyer and the seller of this service has no 
more to do with the relation of the productive worker to capital 
than the relation between the buyer and the seller of twist. If, 
however, we look at the process in regard to commodities, 
[XXI-1331] we find that there does occur an alteration to the 
object of labour, the commodity, in the course of the labour 
process. Its spatial location is altered, and a change in its use value 
accompanies this, in that the spatial location of this use value is 
altered. Its exchange value increases in the measure to which this 
alteration in its use value requires labour, a total amount of labour 
which is in part determined by the depreciation of the constant 
capital, hence the amount of objectified labour which enters into 
it, in part by the amount of living labour, as in the valorisation 
process of all other commodities. Once the commodity has arrived 
at its destination, this alteration which has taken place to its use 

146 The Production Process of Capital 

value disappears, and is now expressed only in its increased 
exchange value, in the greater dearness of the commodity. 
Although the real labour has here left behind no trace in the use 
value, it has nevertheless been realised in the exchange value of 
this material product, and thus it is true of this industry, as of the 
other spheres of material production, that it is embodied in the 
commodity, although it has left behind no visible trace in the use 
value of the commodity. 

Here we are still only concerned with productive capital, Le. 
capital employed in the direct production process. We shall come later 
to capital in the circulation process, and in view of the particular 
shape capital assumes as mercantile capital it will only be later that 
we can answer the question as to how far the workers employed by 
it are productive or not productive.’ 

“The PRODUCTIVE LABOURER” he that “DIRECTLY” increases “HIS MASTER'S 
WEALTH” (Th. R. Malthus, Principles of Political Economy, 2ND ed., London, 1836, 
[p.]. 47 [note]).6 

[ADDENDA] 

//Application of large-scale industry, cooperation and machinery to 
industry. 

“Division of labour cannot be pushed at all to the same extent in agriculture as 
in manufactures * because in the one all the necessary operations can be carried on 
simultaneously by different individuals, in the other, they must follow in rotation, 
according to the change of seasons” * (G. Ramsay, An Essay on the Distribution of 
Wealth, Edinburgh, 1836, [p.] 332, note). *““Under a system of spade hus- 
bandry, a larger produce can be raised, and hence a more numerous population 
supported, from the growth of the soil of any particular country, than by any other 
plan of agriculture” * (L.c., [p.] 339). Although the GROss PRODUCE is greater with 
small-scale agriculture, * “labour is less productive—a waste of labour. If the gross 
produce of the soil be greater, there will on the other hand be a deficiency in every 
thing else” * (L.c., [p.] 337).

## Reconversion of Surplus Value into Capital

a) RECONVERSION OF SURPLUS VALUE INTO CAPITAL

The first result of the capitalist production process--of the absorption of unpaid labour or surplus labour by capital in this process--is that the product contains a higher value than the capital contained before its entry into the process. We shall assume that the product is sold, converted back into money. The closer investigation of this process belongs to the section which follows, on the process of circulation." For the present investigation this is presupposed. If the capital was = 5,000, the constant capital = 4,000, and the variable capital = 1,000, and if the rate of surplus value amounted to 100%, the product would now = 6,000 (presupposing that the whole of the capital had entered into the valorisation process). If the original value of the capital advanced was 5,000, the value is now 5,000 + 1,000 = 6,000. And if we presuppose that it has been reconverted into money, £5,000 represents the capital which has been replaced and preserved, and £1,000 the surplus value which has been turned into gold. The £5,000 has proved itself as capital precisely by preserving and increasing itself as self-valorising value; not only is the £5,000 there again, over and above this it has, unlike itself as the original capital, posited a surplus value of £1,000.

The capitalist--who is not just capital--will consume a part of this surplus value, i.e. he will expend it as means of circulation, so as to convert it into means of subsistence for his own use, and it is a matter of complete indifference whether he also buys "services" on top of the commodities, i.e. whether he buys labour which he needs for the satisfaction of needs of whatever kind, but which is bought for the sake of its use value, not as an element positing exchange value.

See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. II, Part I (present edition, Vol. 36).--Ed.

Here we shall leave out of account the part of the surplus value which the capitalist expends in this way for the satisfaction of his needs. All that needs to be noted is that in this way the capitalist can expend a certain sum of money or amount of value every year without any resulting reduction in the size of his capital. What he expends here is a part of the surplus value he has appropriated--the objectified unpaid labour--and it does not affect the capital itself. The money is an evanescent form here. The surplus value is represented by a surplus product, a surplus of commodities, which the capitalist can consume entirely or in part without touching his own capital; without being prevented from perpetuating the same sum of £5,000 as capital, i.e. preserving it, and making it produce a surplus value, through another exchange with labour.

The capitalist alone is the active representative of capital. As such, his purpose is not enjoyment, not use value, but the increasing of exchange value. Like the hoarder, he represents the absolute drive for self-enrichment, and any definite limit to his capital is a barrier which must be overcome. We shall see later on that in addition the constant magnification of capital, not merely its preservation, is a necessity for capitalist production--a condition for it.a

For the point we are considering here we can entirely make abstraction from the part of the surplus value that is consumed by the capitalist. We are only concerned with the part that enters anew into capitalist production.

If the capital was originally = £5,000, and the surplus value = 1,000, hence the total value = 6,000, the £5,000 have been converted into capital by positing a surplus value, distinct from the original sum, of £1,000, through the exchange of the variable capital with labour. If the £1,000 were entirely consumed, the capital entering anew into production would be as before £5,000. But the capital itself would not have been increased. The £5,000 would [XXII-1354] have become capital by positing, by producing, a surplus value of £1,000, and by repetition of this process it could constantly preserve itself as capital, as the same capital; but for this capital to be able to enter into the production process as a larger capital, hence--at a given level of production--to create a still larger surplus value, a new process must take place in addition. The surplus value itself (disregarding the part that is consumed) must again be converted into capital.

a See this volume, pp. 183-87.--Ed.

How, then, is the surplus value converted into capital? The conditions of this process will be examined in more detail in the next section." Here we shall only establish the purely formal aspect.

The surplus value is not distinguished in any way from the original capital insofar as it is considered from the material point of view. It is the same product; one part of it replaces the original capital, and another part represents surplus product, surplus value, surplus labour. The difference between the two parts is not material, but consists in the fact alone that one part represents an equivalent for paid--objectified and living--labour, the other for unpaid labour. If the product is e.g. twist or corn, and if the surplus value = 1/3 of the product, this 1/3 can be represented just as well in corn or twist as the other 2/3, which replaces the capital. And similarly, once the product has been converted into money (whether actual money or tokens of value) there exists absolutely no difference of form between the part of the money that represents the capital and the part that represents the surplus value. If the value of the capital was 100 and the value of the product is 150, 100 thalers represent the capital and 50 the surplus value, but the one is composed of thalers just as much as the other. The surplus product exists in the same manner as the part of the product that replaces the capital, originally in the shape of the commodity that has been produced, then, once the sale has taken place, in the form of money. (If money functions as means of payment, both can exist in the form of a title to a debt.) Hence for the surplus value to be converted into capital no other conditions whatever are required except those that were originally required for a given value, hence money, to be converted into capital or to produce a surplus value. In order to convert the surplus value into capital, its owner must find available the conditions he needs to exchange it for labour capacity, i.e. he must find on the commodity market on the one hand the objective conditions of labour--the raw materials, the means of labour, etc.--in short the objective conditions of labour available as purchaseable commodities, and on the other hand the subjective condition of labour, purchaseable labour capacities. If, e.g., the capitalist is a cotton spinner, he must find for his surplus value of £1,000 additional cotton available on the market, additional machinery (unless labour time is prolonged or intensified), etc., and additional spinners. If the working day can neither be increased in intensity nor extended, the number of spinners alone must be increased. If the population does not grow sufficiently for this, the conversion is impossible. On the other hand, the same would apply if he found no additional cotton available, at least in this branch. Similarly if additional machinery is required. However, in cotton spinning, for example, it may be sufficient to extend the machinery and increase the raw material, without any need for new workers. In agriculture new workers alone are necessary, and instruments [too], not more raw materials (seed), etc. But all this does not concern us here. We are not concerned with the conditions which make it possible to convert surplus value into capital, or to convert an additional value into capital, to convert a greater amount of value into capital, i.e. to exchange it for labour capacity and the conditions for the latter's exploitation. We assume, as with the original conversion of money into capital, that they are available on the market.

a See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Part VII, chapters XXIV, XXV (present edition, Vol. 35), Vol. II, Part III (present edition, Vol. 36).--Ed.

With this presupposition, then, the capitalist will now exchange, apart from the old amount of value, the sum of money which = the surplus value, for the conditions of labour (material of labour, means of labour) and for labour capacity itself. And the relations within which this occurs are given by the technological conditions, i.e. the ratio in which the additional money is exchanged for the different elements of production. [XXII-1355] If the surplus value were not big enough to buy the different elements--in their given ratio to each other--it could not be converted into capital (in this sphere). It would be possible, for example, for the surplus value to be big enough to employ 10 new workers, but not big enough to buy the material they require, etc. Or, for the employment of a number of new workers to require an increase in the size of the enterprise as a whole, for which the surplus value was insufficient. Thus if this conversion of surplus value into capital may meet a barrier in the available population, it may equally meet a barrier in its own size and the technological conditions of the employment of more capital. This capitalist would then be unable in his own sphere to reconvert the surplus value into capital. On the other hand, the capitalist might perhaps e.g. improve the machinery alone, add new parts, etc., to make it more effective, without being obliged to employ more labour than before. Or he might in agriculture buy more cattle without needing to employ more workers, etc. Or he might replace his old steam engine with a more powerful one. In this case relative surplus value might as a result be increased, because the workers would become more productive without any increase in the quantity of labour. The way this would be expressed initially in the case of a single capital would be that the individual value of its commodity would stand below its social value, and therefore the value of labour capacity would thus be reduced relatively for that capitalist.

All these cases and possibilities should be considered under the real reproduction process. For the capitalist to convert surplus value into capital he must be just as able to exchange it for more labour as he could the original capital, hence set in motion an additional quantity of labour, whether by squeezing out a greater quantity of labour from the old workers through the payment of an increased wage, or by employing an additional number of workmen. And this is the presupposition from which, as a fact, we must proceed in considering the conversion of surplus value into capital. The special circumstances and modifications which enter here are to be considered later.104

It is assumed, therefore, that surplus value is converted into capital in the same manner as money was originally converted into value that posits surplus value. One part of the surplus value is converted into constant capital, the other into variable; i.e. one part buys commodities which figure in the production process as material and instrument, another part buys labour capacity. It is only this latter part which posits surplus value, in exactly the same way as previously, namely by the fact that it is exchanged for more living labour than the amount of objectified labour it contains. The difference between this and the earlier process is that all the elements of the capital now consist of unpaid labour, and the original formation of surplus value, i.e. the appropriation of alien labour without equivalent, appears as a means by which it appropriates more surplus value, appropriates more alien labour without equivalent. This original process of enrichment appears as the means and condition of this kind of enrichment on an increased scale.

In the first process, by which money is converted into capital, hence in the first process of capital formation, the capital advanced appears as itself independent of the labour capacities for which it is exchanged. It is the surplus value alone which consists of unpaid labour. In this process, the capitalist's money was exchanged partly for the means of labour, for equivalents, partly for labour capacities, which were bought at their value. And thus both parts of the money, the constant and the variable, only represented commodities

Reconversion of Surplus Value into Capital

which were exchanged for equivalent commodities, and both of which existed independently of the workers, as the property of the [XXII-1356] capitalist, who laid out his money in this form. This original sum of money, which was converted into capital, was present independently of the worker, like all the other commodities in the possession of their owners, and in exactly the same way as his own commodity, labour capacity, independently confronted these conditions of its realisation. It was the surplus value alone which represented alien unpaid labour appropriated by the capitalist.

Now, in this second process, capital itself, the money that is converted into capital anew, appears as objectified alien unpaid labour which serves as a means of appropriating more surplus labour. The money with which the capitalist now buys the objective conditions of labour, the means of labour and material of labour, represents surplus value alone, is only surplus value converted into money.

Whether the capitalist exchanges the surplus value--in so far as it has been converted into variable capital--as capital with the same workers or with additional new workers makes no difference at all to the relation. It does not alter the situation at all. The money with which he buys the new conditions of labour, just like the money with which he buys the new labour capacities, represents unpaid labour which he has appropriated in the exchange with the old labour capacities, and which he now makes into the means of purchasing more labour, hence more surplus labour. If we consider the whole of the capitalist class on one side--i.e. capital--and the working class on the other side--i.e. the worker as a collective person--the product of the worker's own unpaid labour confronts him now as capital, as the objective power over his labour, as alien wealth, of which he can only re-appropriate a part, by buying back this part with more labour than is present within it, and thus valorising it afresh as capital.

Let us assume that the capital was originally = £5,000, and the surplus value = £1,000. If the capitalist consumes £500 a year and if he converts 500 into capital every year, in 10 years he will have eaten up £5,000, i.e. his original capital; but he now finds himself in possession of a capital of £10,000. And the amount of surplus value he has appropriated in 10 years = £10,000. His total capital therefore now in fact represents nothing other than surplus value converted into capital, i.e. objectified unpaid alien labour, which, in proportion as its amount grows, continuously appropriates growing amounts of alien labour afresh. If the capitalist were to consume only £200 a year, the only resulting change would be that he would expend his original capital in 25 years, and then his capital of £25,000 would represent nothing but surplus value. Thus every capital must after a certain time represent nothing but surplus value. If a worker saves £1,000 and himself becomes a capitalist, making £200 of surplus value every year, of which he consumes 100, in 10 years the surplus value he has saved = £1,000, i.e. = his total capital. The notion that he consumes the surplus value, and not his original capital, instead retaining the latter, naturally does not change in any way the fact that the amount of capital he possesses at the end of the 10 years = the amount of the surplus value he has appropriated, and the amount he has consumed = the amount of his original capital. The expression all political economists are so fond of, that all existing capital is to be viewed as interest and interest on interest, means nothing more than that it is capitalised surplus value, surplus value converted into capital, and that all capital ultimately appears to be a mere form of existence of surplus value. This particular form of surplus value--interest--this name, does not change the situation at all. And here, where we are considering surplus value in general, it is not of course necessary to examine this particular form, the form in which the political economists express capital as a mere form of existence of surplus value, i.e. of unpaid alien labour.105

[XXII-1357] The conversion of surplus value into capital is definitely not distinct from the original conversion of money into capital. The conditions are the same, namely: that a definite amount of value (hence value expressed independently, money, whether this functions as money of account or actual money is irrelevant), a sum of money, is converted into capital through the exchange with the conditions of labour and labour capacity. The distinction does not lie in the process itself--for it is the identical process, the conversion of money into capital. The distinction lies in this alone, that the money which is converted into capital in this second process of capital formation represents nothing but surplus value, i.e. surplus labour, i.e. objectified unpaid alien labour. This conversion of surplus value into capital is called the accumulation of capital.

So far we have noted two points:

1) The whole of the value of the capital into which the surplus value has been reconverted consists of unpaid, alien labour, consists precisely of the surplus labour which was appropriated in the capitalist production process.

2) The value of each capital must represent mere capitalised surplus value after a certain period of time, since after a certain number of years the original amount of value of the capital has been consumed by the capitalist. Here the value alone is to be considered. Therefore the fact that the capitalist imagines that he only consumes a part of the surplus value every year, retaining his capital in contrast, makes no difference here. It does not change in any way the fact that the amount of value of each capital, after a certain number of years, = the accumulated surplus value which has been reconverted into capital, and not an atom of the value of the old capital exists any more.

This second process of capital formation is rightly regarded as so essential and characteristic of capital that capital is depicted, unlike other forms of wealth, as * "wealth saved from revenue (profit) with a view to, etc." * (See R. Jones, etc.)106

Originally, therefore, the labour capacities, or the workers, were confronted with the objective conditions of labour, i.e. objectified labour, in the form of conditions of production (the material of labour and the means of labour) and means of subsistence, as alien commodities in the possession of the keepers of commodities, who are converted into capitalists precisely through the fact that they confront living labour as the personified existence of objectified labour. But now, with this second process of capital formation, the workers are faced with their own labour, objectified in conditions of production and means of subsistence which are capital, i.e. alien property, which confronts labour as a means for the exploitation of labour.

When considering the capitalist production process we saw that 1) absolute surplus value can only be increased at a given stage of the development of production, i.e. at a given level of the productive forces, either by increasing the intensity of labour or extending the working day, or, presupposing both of these as given, by increasing the number of workers employed; in all of which cases the magnitude of the capital laid out must grow; and that 2) relative surplus value can only be increased through the development of the productive power of labour, through cooperation, division of labour, employment of machinery, etc.; all these things again presuppose a growth in the magnitude of the capital laid out. The magnitude of the capital laid out is increased through the reconversion of surplus value into capital, or, what is the same thing, the accumulation of capital, [XXII-1358] since now the capital is formed of the original amount of value plus the surplus value (namely the part of the latter which is reconverted into capital), or the product which represents the original capital plus the surplus product; the surplus value as such is no longer distinct from the capital but is instead added to it as additional capital. Or the formation of surplus value now presents itself as an increase in the magnitude of the capital which enters into the production process. This therefore fulfils the condition that both the quantity of labour employed should be increased and the productive power of the labour should be increased. The objective conditions under which labour develops its social powers of production to a heightened degree [are thereby given]. Production on an increased scale therefore takes place, as regards both the quantity of labour employed and the development of the means of production, of the conditions of production, under which this labour presents itself socially. If, therefore, the capitalist mode of production on the one hand increases the conditions for the creation of surplus value for surplus labour, on the other hand, inversely, the reconversion of surplus value into capital, or the accumulation of capital, is a condition for the development of the capitalist mode of production, of the scale of production, of the growing amount of labour which is exploited, and of the material conditions for the development of the productive powers of social labour.

We saw at the same time3 how the capitalist mode of production continuously produces a relative surplus population, i.e. it sets free, renders disposable a definite number of labour capacities, ejects them from the different spheres of production as superfluous labour power. Capitalist accumulation, therefore, is not conditioned by the purely natural progress of population; it produces a larger or smaller quantity of disposable labour capacities for the already available new capital and the capital which is constantly being formed; these labour capacities can be re-absorbed either by the extension of the old branches of production or by the formation of new branches, depending on whether the additional capital into which the surplus value has been reconverted is used in one way or the other.

If the original capital was = £6,000, and the surplus value is = £1,000, there is no distinction between them, in terms of substance, before they are reconverted into money, for both exist as parts of the same product, in the same commodity form; just as little is there any distinction once they have been converted into money. The conversion of the £1,000 into capital is therefore not at all different from the point of view of its conditions from the conversion of the original £6,000 into capital. The only distinction is that in the £1,000 the workers are now confronted with their own unpaid labour or the product of their own unpaid labour as capital.

a See this volume, pp. 8-61.--Ed.

This is No. 1.

The £6,000 has been converted into capital through producing £1,000 as surplus value, as its valorisation, which differs from its original amount of value. Through the reconversion of the £1,000 into capital this formal antithesis ceases to exist. A capital of £7,000 is now available instead of one of £6,000; i.e. a capital which has grown by 1/6. Or both amounts function as two capitals, one of them as a capital of 6,000, the other as a capital of 1,000. This does not alter the fact that the total capital has increased by 1/6. It merely expresses the fact that the additional 1/6 functions as capital in another sphere of production, or is employed by another capitalist in the same sphere of production. But the one common characteristic remains: what was surplus value as distinct from capital now itself becomes capital, and proves itself to be such by producing surplus value for its part. The surplus value has been converted into additional capital.

The capital has therefore produced capital, by no means merely a commodity, or the capital-relation creates the capital-relation on an increased scale.

[XXII-1359] This increase of capital, i.e. of the amount of wealth produced, which confronts labour as capital, has the following results:

1) the capitalist mode of production is extended over spheres of production which were previously not subjected to capitalist production; i.e. capital increasingly seizes control of the totality of spheres of production;

2) it forms new spheres of production, i.e. it produces new use values and employs new branches of labour;

3) insofar as additional capital is employed in the same sphere of production by the same capitalist, partly to convert the formal subsumption of [labour under] capital into a real subsumption, partly to extend the scale of production, to develop the specifically capitalist mode of production, hence to work with a greater capital, a greater combination of the conditions of labour and the division of labour, etc., this accumulation presents itself as concentration; since a single capital commands more workers and more of the means of production, social wealth appears united in a single hand in greater quantities;

4) in every sphere of production, this formation of capital proceeds at different points on the surface of society. It is different, mutually independent commodity or money owners who first convert this money into capital through the exchange with

labour capacity, and then convert the surplus value back into capital or accumulate capital. A formation of different capitals therefore takes place, or there is an increase in the number of capitalists and independent capitals. Accumulation, as opposed to the concentration of capital or its attraction, presents itself as the repulsion of capitals from each other. The relation between these two opposed forms should not be developed here; it should rather be considered under the competition of capitals.'07 This much is clear. All accumulation of capital is concentration of the means of production in a single hand. But at the same time the concentration of many capitals stands opposed to this fragmentation of capitals as a special process.

In considering the production of absolute surplus value, we saw this:

The value of the constant capital, i.e. of the material of labour and the means of labour, is simply preserved in the labour process; it appears again in the product, not because the worker performs a special kind of labour to preserve this value, but because these conditions of production as such are employed by the living workers. By the fact that the worker adds new labour to objectified labour, and more labour than is contained in his wages, he at the same time preserves the value of the constant capital, of the labour already objectified in the conditions of production. The value of the constant capital he preserves therefore stands in no relation at all to the quantity of labour he adds; it depends instead on the magnitude and therefore the extent of the value of the constant capital with which he works. The more productive his labour becomes, the greater e.g. the quantity of raw material treated by a given number of workers, the greater accordingly is the value of the part of the constant capital he preserves, or the part that re-appears in the product. On the other hand, this greater productivity of his labour is conditioned by the extent and therefore the amount of value of the communal means of production and conditions of production which support his labour, the machinery, draught animals, buildings, fertiliser. Drainage and irrigation canals, etc. This part of the constant capital—objectified labour—enters into the labour process in its entire extent as means of production and means for raising the productivity of labour, whereas it enters into the valorisation process only partially and by stages, over a lengthy period, hence does not raise the value of the individual product in the same degree as it does the amount of products, i.e. [XXII-1360] the productivity of labour. And in the same degree as the capitalist mode of production develops, there develops the difference between the amount of constant capital, i.e. of means of labour and conditions of labour, which enters into the labour process, and the part of the value of the constant capital which enters into the valorisation process. The whole of the value of the constant capital—in so far as it consists of means of production—which does not enter into the valorisation process, whereas it does enter into the labour process, hence in its totality increases the productive power of labour, whereas only an aliquot part of it re-appears as value in the product and therefore raises the price of the product, thus performs exactly the same free services as the forces of nature, such as water, wind, etc., forces of nature which are not the product of human labour, and therefore have no exchange value, enter into the labour process without entering into the valorisation process. A machine, e.g., which serves for 15 years, its value therefore only entering into the annual product to an extent of 1/15, functions in the labour process not as 1/15 but as 15/15. The 14/15 cost nothing. Thus the employment on a larger scale of past labour, or labour objectified in the means of production, increases the productivity of living labour. On the other hand, the amount of value which thus enters gradually into the product grows absolutely, although it does not grow at the same time to the same degree as this component of the value of the constant capital increases. It grows absolutely with the extent of the means of production employed. Labour thus preserves this greater part of the value, makes it re-appear in the product, in the same process by which it adds surplus value (and adds value altogether). Apart from this, it should be remarked that the labour process preserves not only the value which re-appears in the product, hence the part of the value of the constant capital which enters into the product, but also the value which does not enter into the valorisation process, but only into the labour process. We are not speaking here of the particular labour which is necessary for the cleaning of machines, buildings, etc. This falls under repair work, and is different from labour itself, which makes use of the machine. The cleaning of a spinning machine is a different kind of labour from spinning itself. In the latter case what is involved is only the preservation of the spinning machine through the fact that spinning is done with it, the fact that it functions as a spinning machine. The labour process itself preserves its use value as a machine and thereby also its exchange value. This conserving (value conserving) quality of labour, which should be regarded as a natural power of labour, itself costing no labour—i.e. in the given case no further, special labour in addition to the labour of spinning is required to preserve the machine—emerges doubly in times of crisis, i.e. in circumstances in which the machine does not function as a machine, in which the use value of its activity is suspended. Negatively, through the machine’s deterioration. Positively, because at such times a certain number of hours are worked, merely to keep the machine functioning. || All this should be considered when dealing with the labour process and the valorisation process.7/ In the case of the soil, if we regard the land as an agricultural machine—and in the process it is nothing more than this, in the material that is worked on, the seed, the animals, etc.—the labour process not only preserves the exchange value given to it by the work done on it previously, but it also raises its use value, improves the machine itself (see Anderson and Carey0), while the cessation of the labour process produces a dépérissementc of its use value and of the exchange value which falls to its share as the physical existence of objectified labour. (The relevant passages are to be cited further below.)

Thus the matter can be presented from two sides:

1) a) As we showed in dealing with capitalist production, the productivity of labour develops with the employment, of the means of production—of the objective conditions of labour—on a larger scale; it develops along with the extent of the latter.d

But the accumulation of capital, i.e. the reconversion of surplus value into capital, expands, increases the extent of, the objectified means with which living labour functions.

[XXII-1361] ß) The amount of past labour which enters into the labour process without entering into the valorisation process, hence the unrecompensed function of past labour in the production process, increases with the development of the capitalist mode of production, a development which is itself conditioned by the accumulation of capital. These two points are related to the increase of constant capital, the accumulation of which is posited with the accumulation of capital, or, in other words, they are related to the progressive conversion of a part of the surplus value into constant capital. The increase of surplus value as such is limited to the part of surplus value which is converted into variable capital, just as surplus value in general arises from variable capital.

The overall amount of produce, hence surplus produce as well, grows with the productivity of labour, even if surplus value remains constant; hence it grows with the productivity of labour. If necessary labour finds expression in a larger product, this is also true of surplus labour, which is after all not materially different.

2) The two above-mentioned points show how the capitalist mode of production, and therefore the productivity of labour, develops through the entry of objectified labour into the production process to a greater, growing extent; at the same time, as demonstrated previously, this brings about a growth in surplus value. On the other hand, the capitalist mode of production appears as the form of production in which, unlike all earlier forms, objectified labour can enter into the production process to an increasing extent.

Living labour reproduces the variable part of capital, irrespective of the surplus value, and therefore the surplus produce, it adds. This relation must be determined in more detail below.2

What has to be noted here first of all is this:

The portion of the constant part of the capital which enters into the valorisation process—hence the whole of the raw material, all the matières instrumentales,b whether they figure as matières instrumentales for the preparation of the raw material, or as accessory materials for the machinery, or the overall requirements of the workshop, such as heating, lighting, etc.—lastly all of the part of the means of production which is used up during the labour process—re-appears in the product through its contact with living labour. In addition to this the part of the value of the means of production which does not enter into the product is preserved.

This re-appearance is expressed doubly: the value of the total product is raised to the amount of this re-appearing part of the value. Secondly: a growing part of the increased quantity of products represents an equivalent for the growing amount of constant capital.

Irrespective, therefore, of the surplus value or the surplus produce in which it is expressed, we can say that the greater the amount of objectified labour set in motion by a given quantity of living labour ||the greater the objectified wealth which serves for reproduction||—the more abundantly the conditions of labour are available—the greater is the value of the total product (and the quantity of products in which this value is expressed) reproduced by the same amount of labour; although, if we presuppose the (extensive and intensive) magnitude of the working day as given, the same amount of labour only adds the same value to the product, hence e.g. a million workers working 12 hours a day add the same value independently of the level of productivity of their labour and the amount of the objective conditions of labour corresponding to this level of labour, or the extent of the material conditions of production corresponding to particular levels of the productivity of labour. The quantity of products depends of course on the level of productivity of labour. But this level of productivity is expressed in, and depends on, the extent of the material conditions [XXII-1362] presupposed when the labour is functioning.

Although under the presupposition mentioned the same amount of labour only adds the same value to the constant capital (necessary labour+surplus labour, and quite independently of the ratio in which the total working day is divided into these two parts), the value of the product (total product) created by the same amount of labour varies a great deal according to the amount of the value of the constant capital which is set in motion by the same amount of living labour. For the value of this product is determined by the total amount of labour contained in it, hence the sum of the objectified + the added living labour. And although the latter has remained the same according to the presupposition, the former has grown with the development of the extent and richness of the conditions of production. And the amount of the value of the constant capital which is preserved by the living labour does not depend on the quantity of living labour but on 2 circumstances, namely 1) the amount of the value of the constant capital which it sets in motion, an amount which grows as the volume of the constant capital grows (even if not in the same proportion, on account of the growing productivity of labour); and 2), the part of that amount of value which enters into the total product. (We should be able to dispense entirely with the 2nd condition if we assumed an epoch of production in which that amount of value entirely entered into the product.) With the growing amount of the value of the constant capital set in motion by it, the same labour therefore reproduces greater amounts of value of objectified labour, which re-appear in the product, greater amounts of value of the total product. However, the progressive conversion of surplus value into capital or the accumulation of capital—in so far as this is at the same time a progressive concentration of quantities of capital in the hands of individual capitalists, the development of the specifically capitalist mode of production—increases the amount

a See present edition, Vol. 30, pp. 54-106.— Ed.

b Ibid., Vol. 31, pp. 372, 579.— Ed.

c Destruction.— Ed.

d See this volume, pp. 19-21.— Ed.

a See this volume, pp. 193-94.— Ed.

b Instrumental materials.— Ed.

Ricardo is therefore wrong to say that 1 million human beings (under the restrictions mentioned earlier, but not made by him) always produce e.g. every year the same value, independently of the level of the productivity of labour. A million working with machinery, animals, fertiliser, buildings, canals, railways, etc., reproduce an incomparably higher value than 1 million whose living labour takes place without the assistance of this mass of objectified labour. And indeed for the simple reason that they reproduce an incomparably greater amount of objectified labour in the product, a reproduction which is independent of the amount of labour newly added.

Let us take e.g. an English worker who spins in a cotton factory. He spins more [than] 200 Indian or Chinese spinners, who work with distaff and spinning-wheel. And say he spins Indian cotton. One has to assume that the length and the average intensity of the working day are the same--for with comparisons between the working days of different nations modifications of the general law of value arise which we are leaving out of account here as irrelevant.

In this case it would be correct to say that 200 English workers do not create, add, any more value than 200 Indian. Nevertheless, the products of their labour would be very different in value, we mean the total product. Not just that the English spinner converts 200 times as much cotton into yarn as the Indian in the same time, hence creates 200 times as much use value in the same time, hence that his labour is 200 times more productive.

[XXII-1363] 1) The product of the English spinner's working day contains 200 times as much cotton, hence a value 200 times greater than that of the Indian spinner. 2) Admittedly, the quantity of spindles with which the English spinner spins does not contain more value in the same proportion as they exceed in number the one spindle set in motion by the Indian spinner, and the speed with which the English spinner's spindles wear out is not greater in the same proportion as the amount of their value is greater, for the one spindle is made of wood and the others are made of iron. Even so, an incomparably greater part of the value of the incomparably more valuable instrument of labour enters into the daily product of the English spinner than into that of the Indian. An incomparably greater amount of value is therefore preserved and in this sense reproduced in the Englishman's daily product than in the Indian's. It is precisely for this reason that the part of the product which = the value of the constant capital (in so far as it has entered into the mass of products) can be exchanged again for an amount of machinery and raw materials which is 200 times greater than in the case of the Indian. He starts the new production or reproduction with an infinitely greater wealth of the objective conditions, because his labour started out from an incomparably greater amount of the conditions of production, incomparably more already objectified labour serves it as basis and point of departure and is preserved by the newly added labour. This is true of the product. But there is the additional factor that the use value, and therefore the value, of the instrument of labour preserved by the labour of the Englishman, without entering into the valorisation process, is disproportionately greater than that of the Indian's instrument, for through his labour the latter preserves only the value of his distaff, insofar it does not enter into the valorisation process. And the amount of this objective, past labour, past labour which as machinery, etc., cooperates in the Englishman's labour process for free (free namely for all those components of the machinery which do not enter into the valorisation process), is in turn the condition by which his daily product not only creates afresh an incomparably greater use value, but preserves, and therefore reproduces in the product, incomparably more value. Thus living labour preserves greater amounts of value, which exist as past labour, are objectified, the greater the amount of value of the past labour already is, past labour which enters in part as means of labour, in part as material of labour, into the labour process, whereas on the other hand the greater amount of exchange value and use value, of commodities it reproduces in this way, is in turn the condition and the presupposition of a richer reproduction. Under these conditions the amount of surplus value simultaneously rises. This is in part because the amount of variable capital rises, hence the number of workers employed, in part because the productivity of the workers rises, hence the rate of surplus value, and in part because with the productivity of labour there is a rise in the quantity of use values, the surplus produce in which the same surplus value is expressed. For all these reasons a large part of the surplus value can be reconverted back into capital, and this could occur even if the rate of surplus value remained unchanged; more capital can therefore be accumulated, and the objective conditions under which the work takes place, the means of labour and material of labour--objectified, past labour--can be extended, hence production on a larger scale can be repeated, quite apart from the fact that this extension and greater scale of the conditions of labour is itself in turn a means of raising the productivity of labour. (An example from the agriculture of Quesnay, exploitation riche et pauvre,a should also be quoted here.108) The greater the amount of objective wealth living labour works with, the greater the extent to which past labour enters into the living labour process as an element of reproduction, the greater therefore is not only the quantity of use values, but also the amount of their exchange value, and the greater is the increment of production which enters or can enter during reproduction.

It is the wealth expressing the past labour which enters into the production process, that conditions the magnitude of the wealth created by living labour; even disregarding the growing surplus value [XXII-1364] newly added by living labour.

Although the quantity of product of the working day of the Englishman is so much more valuable than that of the Indian, because it reproduces a much greater amount of wealth, i.e. preserves it in the product and as the part of the means of labour which does not enter into the product, the individual product, the individual commodity, is much cheaper. For the Indian adds to perhaps 1 lb. of cotton as much labour time as the Englishman adds to 200 lbs. The Englishman therefore adds only 1/200 of a working day to a lb., where the Indian adds a whole working day. If a greater depreciation of machinery is reproduced in the Englishman's daily product, this value is spread over 200 lbs, whereas the depreciation of the Indian's distaff enters in its entirety into 1 lb.

//The whole of the portion of the product which replaces capital can admittedly be resolved into variable capital, i.e. wages, and constant capital, both of which re-enter into the production process, and cannot therefore enter into the consumption of the capitalist if the mode of production is to be continued on the same scale, and with other circumstances remaining the same. This is even disregarding the fact that this growing amount of the reproduced conditions of production, the growing amount of capital, is the means which permits the exploitation of a growing amount of labour and growing production by the same amount of labour, in addition to which the use values in which the surplus produce is expressed are increased and differentiated, multiplied. This circumstance, that living labour reproduces more capital in proportion to the increase in the basis of past labour on which it stands, i.e. that it produces more past labour in the form of means of production, is by no means irrelevant for the individual capitalist. The individual capitalist is a commodity owner; the whole capitalist class of course cannot sell its own capital, but the individual capitalist can and does, once he withdraws from business, and he can then expend the growing amount of value of his capital as wealth, if he wishes. For the individual capitalist, therefore, leaving aside surplus value, it is not a matter of indifference that his capital grows alongside surplus value.//

Quesnay, and following him his school, the Physiocrats, quite correctly call this growing weight with which past labour enters as an element into the living labour process richesses d'exploitation.109 The greater these richesses d'exploitation, the extent of the value and use value of the past labour from which living labour proceeds as its presupposition, the greater the richesses d'exploitation it reproduces as its result, and the easier it is to extend the scale on which living labour can start the labour process afresh under ever richer objective conditions. The accumulation of capital can be resolved into the extension of the scale on which production can be repeated, into the growing wealth of the conditions, of the objective wealth, of the forces and means of production which have already been produced and which serve as living labour's inorganic body. But these richesses d'exploitation are not only such in Quesnay's sense, namely riches which serve as means of exploitation in agriculture, etc. They are at the same time richesses of exploitation of living labour, the growing extent of the means for its exploitation and the growing power of past labour over living. The fact that the development of the objective conditions of labour appears as a growing power of these objective conditions for and over living labour, instead of as a growing power of labour, is naturally alien to the production process as such. But it is characteristic of the capitalist production process, in which the objectified conditions of labour confront labour in alienated and independent form, as powers in their own right. On the other hand, it is within the capitalist mode of production that past labour first develops to this extent.

[XXII-1365] //Therefore, even if the law were correct, which as we shall see later on is incorrect, when it is expressed as a permanent law, namely, that as a result of the declining natural productivity of the kinds of land which enter the sphere of production the products of the land serving as major food sources, and a part of the raw materials, become dearer //no one has yet asserted that e.g. cotton has become dearer in the same degree as the cotton industry has developed, or silk; the opposite is the case//, this would not prove that they cost more labour, although they have a higher value and although value is exclusively determined by the quantity of labour which is contained in a commodity. Let us take England, for example. The proportion of workers directly employed in agriculture has fallen since the 11th century from 9/10 to at least 1/5, hence 2/10, and the number of workers as compared with the product continues to fall every day. Hence insofar as the number of workers directly employed in agriculture is concerned, it has fallen constantly and is still falling constantly. In 8 centuries it has fallen by at least 7/10. Therefore, insofar as the labour of the agricultural workers comes into consideration, the value of the total product of agriculture has necessarily fallen by 7/10; hence the value of a single item of the product, e.g. of 1 qr of wheat, has also fallen. And the relation between the England of the 19th century and that of the 11th century is the same as the present relation between England and other countries, e.g. Russia. Hence if the value of English corn rose continuously, this would only be possible because more objectified labour, and indeed labour of other spheres of production, had entered into it. It is asserted of these other spheres of production that the labour in them has become more unproductive, or that the same quantity of use value contains more labour and therefore more exchange value. Precisely the reverse. Nevertheless, if the value of the same quantity of corn, of e.g. a quarter, has risen, the quantity of labour contained in it must have increased. The quantity of living agricultural labour contained in it has not increased; hence the quantity of objectified labour coming to it from other spheres must have increased; within this there may also be a quantity of objectified labour which is itself a product of agriculture, such as e.g. cattle. More machinery is necessary, for example, more drainage canals, etc. A greater part of value for machinery, etc., therefore enters into a qr of corn. But the value which is present in the machinery does not consist only of the labour the machine costs, but also of the past labour which is reproduced, contained, in it as a product; and this part of the value which is contained in it does not depend for its reproduction--presupposing that there is no change in the development of the forces of production--on living labour, but on the amount of past labour which enters into the production of a machine and is preserved in it. Similarly with the cattle. If more past labour exists in this form, a greater value component enters into the product for it, although the quantity of living labour

remains the same. The value of the means of production which enter into agriculture can therefore increase without any increase in the living labour necessary for agricultural production, because this living labour reproduces more value in the product, without any contribution on its part, than if it had worked with poorer conditions of production. Thus the value of the individual commodity [XXII-1366] of a single, particular sphere of production could increase, hence e.g. a quarter of corn could be dearer in England than in poorer countries—entirely disregarding differences in the value of gold and silver in poorer and richer countries, which are not to be considered here—even though in fact the quarter of wheat was produced more cheaply in England than in countries where it is cheaper—cheaper, insofar as living labour comes into consideration. One cannot draw from this the ridiculous conclusion that all commodities may be dearer in one country, although they are produced more cheaply. For the entry of past labour into the labour process in general on a larger scale is only possible at all—the replacement of past labour by a larger part of the total product is only possible—because living labour has become more productive, hence a larger part of the product can go into production instead of going into consumption. If, e.g., with the increase in the machinery, a corresponding, equally increased part of its value entered into the individual commodity, a simple transposition of living labour would take place. More labour would be necessary to produce the machine in the same degree as less labour was necessary to employ the machine. A greater part of the value of the machinery would be used up to the same extent as more machinery was employed, and it would therefore have to be reproduced. Exactly as many more machine workers would be needed as e.g. fewer spinners. What would be won on one hand would be lost on the other. Machine labour would therefore be unable to drive out hand labour, as both would produce equally dearly. There would therefore be produced neither more use values nor more surplus value, surplus produce, and it would be impossible for more capital to enter the production process in the form of past labour instead of being laid out as variable capital, i.e in wages; or it would only enter the process in this form because more living labour was employed in this sphere of machine production. However, if in industry proper the productivity of labour grows, hence the quantity of the products of labour which can be converted into means of labour also grows, owing e.g. to a concentration of workers and the implements of labour—a concentration of the latter which also appears physically in machinery—and therefore there is a growth in the objective wealth with which the same quantity of living labour begins the reproduction process, hence also a growth in the value of the total product, although the price and value of the individual commodity falls, all this does not hinder the possibility of employing more objectified labour, hence not only use value but also exchange value, in a particular sphere to produce the same product. In all these spheres the reproduction of the same exchange value costs less, because the same quantity of living labour preserves more objectified labour. More objectified labour can therefore enter into this one sphere in order to replace the declining natural productivity of the land; and the product can therefore become dearer because, although it contains less living labour, it contains more objectified labour than that decline in living labour amounts to, hence it contains more labour altogether, without the nation’s actually having worked more on that account in order to reproduce the same product. The product of agriculture may therefore become dearer, although it in fact costs less labour than in places where it is cheaper, for the greater quantity of objectified labour which enters into it costs the nation in fact nothing, because it is on the one hand reproduced by the same quantity of living labour, and on the other hand the amount of use values is so much increased that a greater part of them can replace this constant capital.//

//That a richer nation can expend more for a particular product, without becoming impoverished, than a poorer nation, is shown among other things by the increasing price of unproductive labour, such as singing, ballet-dancing, etc.110//

[XXII-1367] //I shall take up the development again later, but here I want to insert an earlier presentation of the subject, the appropriate passages of which can be retained.111

The surplus value is itself posited once more as capital, as objectified labour entering into the process of exchange with living labour and therefore dividing itself into a constant part—the objective conditions of labour, material and instrument—and the subjective conditions for the existence of labour—for the existence of living labour capacity, the worker's means of subsistence, the variable part of capital.

In the first appearance of capital, these presuppositions themselves appeared outwardly to emerge from circulation, to be given in it; as external presuppositions of the origin of capital, of the conversion of money into capital. These external presuppositions now appear as moments of the movement of capital itself, as results of its own production process, so that it itself presupposes them as its own moments and conditions.

Objectified surplus labour in its totality, hence the surplus product in its totality, now appears as surplus capital—surplus capital, as compared with the original capital, before it has realised itself as capital; i.e. as exchange value become independent, and confronting living labour capacity as its specific use value. All the moments which confronted living labour capacity as alien, external [powers], consuming and using it under certain conditions independent of it, are now posited as its own product and result.

Firstly: Surplus value or surplus product is nothing but a certain sum of unpaid labour—the sum of surplus labour. This new value, which confronts living labour as value independent of it, is the product of labour, which the capitalist has appropriated for himself without giving an equivalent. It is nothing but the objectified surplus quantity of labour over the quantity of necessary labour.

Secondly: The particular forms which this value must adopt to be valorised anew, i.e. to be posited as capital—on the one hand as raw material and instrument, on the other hand as means of subsistence for the workers—are exactly for this reason merely particular forms of surplus labour itself. //(This should actually be considered when dealing with the reproduction process. What the individual capital has produced is a particular commodity, one part of the value of which is now admittedly employed for the purchase of new raw material, another part for the material of labour, etc., but in natura this particular capital does not produce its own conditions of reproduction but only their value. If we consider the whole of the surplus produce of the total capital, this consists of the material of labour, the means of labour, and the means of subsistence. Hence not only is surplus value reproduced, but also the material forms in which this surplus value can function anew as capital. Here, where the simple form of accumulation is being considered (where in fact it is still being considered formally, for it can only be considered concretely together with the process of circulation and reproduction), what has to be stressed first of all is that in the surplus value the capitalist has the part of the value with which he can buy new material and instrument. Originally the matter appears like this: The capitalist buys instrument and material and labour with his money. In this act of purchase he does nothing but what is done by every purchaser when he converts his money into commodities; the difference lies only in the fact that he buys commodities which are consumed productively, instead of buying commodities for his own individual consumption. This is itself a great gain, for which he is duly grateful. But now the situation changes. He in fact makes his purchases with the worker's money, since this money represents nothing but unpaid alien labour, appropriated without an equivalent. If the worker himself could appropriate his own surplus labour, he would himself be able to sell his surplus produce, and convert a part of it into means of labour and material of labour. Then these would not confront him as capital. They would present themselves as a greater wealth of his own [XXII-1368] conditions of labour, instead of as the surplus capital of the capitalist.)//

Originally it appeared alien to the worker himself, accomplished without his participation, rather as an act of capital, or a circumstance dependent on the accidental size of the capitalist's wealth, that instrument or means of labour were available to an extent which made it possible for living labour to realise itself not only as necessary labour but as surplus labour as well. But now the means of surplus production, which allow the absorption of surplus labour, are themselves merely the converted form of surplus labour or SURPLUS VALUE.

Thirdly: The independent being-for-itself of value in the form of money (as value) or materially in the form of productive capital, means of production, which also includes means of subsistence—hence its being as capital — the separateness of the conditions of labour vis-à-vis living labour capacity, which goes so far that these conditions confront the person of the worker in the person of the capitalist—as a personification with its own will and interest—this absolute divorce, separation of property, i.e. of objective wealth, from living labour capacity—that they confront it as alien property, as the reality of another juridical person, as the absolute realm of his will; and that on the other hand, therefore, labour appears as alien labour vis-à-vis the value personified in the capitalist, or vis-à-vis the conditions of labour—this absolute separation between property and labour, between value and value-creating activity—hence also the fact that the content of labour is alien to the worker himself—this separation now appears as the product of labour itself, as the objectification of its own moments. For through, or in, the act of production itself—which only confirms the exchange between capital and living labour that preceded it—the total result of labour (of both necessary and surplus labour) is posited as capital. Labour capacity has appropriated only the means of subsistence necessary for its reproduction, i.e. for its reproduction as mere labour capacity separated from the conditions of its realisation, and it has posited these conditions themselves as objects, values, which confront it in an alien, commanding personification. It emerges from the process not only no richer but actually poorer than it entered into it. For not only has it created the conditions of living labour as capital; but the valorisation inherent in it as a potentiality, the value-creating potentiality, now also exists as surplus value, surplus product, surplus capital; as value endowed with its own power and will confronting it in its abstract, objectless, purely subjective poverty. Not only has it produced alien wealth and its own poverty, but also the relationship of this wealth as self-sufficient wealth to itself as poverty, which this wealth consumes to draw new life and spirit to itself and to valorise itself anew.

All this arose from the exchange in which the worker exchanged his living labour capacity for an amount of objectified labour, except that now this objectification--these conditions for his being which exist outside him--appear as his own product, as posited by him himself, both as his own objectification and as the objectification of himself as a power independent of himself, indeed dominating him, dominating him through his own actions.

All the moments of surplus capital are the product of alien labour—alien surplus labour converted into capital. It no longer seems here, as it still did when we first considered the production process, as if capital, for its part, brought with it some sort of value from circulation. The objective conditions of labour now appear rather as labour's product—both insofar as they are value in general, and as use values for production. But if capital thus appears as the product of labour, the product of labour for its part appears as capital—objectified labour as dominion, command, over living labour. Labour thus appears to be active in the production process in such a way that it simultaneously rejects its realisation in objective conditions as an alien reality, and therefore posits itself as an insubstantial, merely necessitous labour capacity in face of this reality alienated from it, a reality not belonging to it but to others; that it posits its own reality not as a being-for-itself but as a mere being for something else, and hence also as a mere other-being or as the being of something else confronting it.

[XXII-1369] This process of the realisation of labour is at the same time the process of its de-realisation. It posits itself objectively, but it posits its objectivity as its own non-being, or as the being of its non-being—the being of capital. It returns back into itself as the mere potentiality of positing value or of valorisation, because the totality of real wealth, the world of real

values, and equally the real conditions for its own realisation, are posited as independent existences facing it. It is the potentialities resting in living labour's own womb which come to exist as realities outside it as a result of the production process--but as realities alien to it, which constitute wealth in opposition to it. // //(The continuation of this extract follows immediately below.)/ /

The whole of the surplus capital = the part of the surplus value which has been reconverted into capital, but it is not entirely exchanged for living labour; what is exchanged is rather only the part which is converted into variable capital. The other part is exchanged for objectified labour in forms of the latter which enter into constant capital as its elements. The details of how this happens are only to be considered later in connection with the circulation process.b Just as money was converted into capital by being exchanged for productive labour, the same thing takes place with the surplus capital, which is absolutely nothing but money or commodities converted into capital. But just as, in the case of the original conversion, the money, in order to be exchanged for productive labour, had at the same time to be exchanged for that labour's objective conditions of production, the same is true of the surplus capital. The statement that the conversion of surplus value into capital = the exchange of surplus value for productive labour misleads (even the most notable political economists) to the incorrect notion that this surplus capital is only exchanged for living labour or is only converted into variable capital. The reverse is the case. As this capital formation progresses, an ever greater part of the surplus capital is exchanged for additional past labour, the conditions of labour, and an ever smaller part is exchanged for living labour. Or an ever smaller part, relatively speaking, of the surplus product is reproduced in means of subsistence for the workers, and an ever larger part in means of labour and material of labour. The variable capital is so to speak converted into the worker's flesh and blood, into the living material of labour, the constant capital into the objective conditions of that labour. As capital formation progresses, the ratio between constant and variable capital changes. For the capitalist mode of production extends in part to cover new branches of labour not as yet subjected to it (therefore changing the above ratio in those branches); it creates new branches of labour, which are exploited from the outset in the capitalist manner; finally, it develops and extends previous modes of production by extending the capital outlay, the scale of production in them. In all these cases there is a change in the ratio between variable and constant capital, the ratio between the two components through which capital dirempts and reproduces itself. Capital of the same magnitude--in so far as its magnitude reaches the minimum required for the capitalist mode of production, for industrial operation--can be divided into an absolutely larger constant part and an absolutely smaller variable part. If the magnitude of the total capital varies with the capital formation which grows out of the formation of surplus capital, if it increases, there is under all circumstances a relative fall in the variable part of the capital, even though it has increased absolutely. More labour is set in motion by the increased capital, but less labour as compared with the magnitude of the capital.

a See this volume, pp. 243-47.--Ed.

b See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. II, Part III, Ch. XXI, Sect. III (present edition, Vol. 36).--Ed.

The magnitude of the variable capital can only increase pari passua with the magnitude of the total capital insofar as the mode of production remains unchanged, insofar as no change takes place in the development of the productive forces. If, e.g., the surplus capital is large enough to set up a second factory alongside the first one, and productivity remains the same, the capital which is now twice as large will employ twice as much labour as did previously the capital which was half as large. A greater part of the surplus capital can only be converted into variable capital, i.e. more labour can be employed in proportion to the capital laid out, if it is invested in branches of production which require [XXII-1370] more living labour in proportion to objectified labour. This may be the case in a particular sphere. The one compared with the other.

But for the development of capitalist production, which is bound up with the increasing extent of the amount of capital as its material basis, there are changes in the mode of production, in the productivity of labour, and therefore in the technological proportion in which particular amounts of the objective means of labour require a particular quantity of living labour in order to set them in motion. We saw this when considering the capitalist mode of production.11 The extension of the scale [of production] permits the extension of cooperation, the division of labour, machinery, and other material means of aiding production, and with this a rising productivity of labour is posited. The same labour treats a greater amount of raw material, sets in motion a greater amount of the means of labour, reproduces a greater amount of constant capital in the product, and utilises a greater part of the means of labour not entering into the valorisation process.

a In step.--Ed.

b See present edition, Vol. 33, pp. 285-88, 305, 310.--Ed.

The growing productivity of labour, which is developed with the growing extent of capital, hence with the reconversion of surplus value into capital, with the formation of surplus capital, is expressed precisely in, or is identical with, a change in the ratio between constant and variable capital, and the same amount of labour sets in motion more constant capital, or even a smaller amount of labour sets in motion the same or more constant capital; [the growing productivity of labour] is therefore expressed in the fact that the part of the total capital which is converted into variable capital constantly declines in proportion to the part which is converted into constant capital. The quantity of labour employed grows with the growth of the total capital, but in an ever-declining proportion to the growth of the total capital. The variable part of the surplus capital could continuously absorb the whole surplus population, and yet the relative magnitude of the additional variable capital might still fall constantly, in relation to the total capital. And in the same proportion as capital grows, through the growth of surplus capital and the addition of surplus capital to surplus3 capital, there develops, excluding short intervals of extension [of production] while the productivity of labour remains the same, with the advance in the productivity of labour which accompanies that growth, a relative and absolute increase in constant capital as compared with variable. In the course of development, therefore, and as a result of accumulation, an ever smaller proportion of the surplus capital is converted into variable capital, or into means of subsistence which are exchanged with living labour. This development is merely identical with the fact that the rise in the scale of production results in a decline in the relative amount of living labour needed to convert a growing quantity of the means of production into the product. If, e.g., the ratio of constant capital [to variable] is as 3:1, 1/4 of the surplus capital will be converted into variable capital, while if it = 5:1, 1/6 will be converted, and if it is as 10:1, 1/11 will be convertedb and this ratio changes with accumulation from 3:1, 4:1 into 5:1, 10:1, etc.

1 Should apparently be: "total".--Ed.

b This passage should read: "...1/4 of the surplus capital will be converted into variable capital, while if it = 5:1, 1/6 will be converted, and if it is as 10:1, 1/11 will be converted".--Ed.

The surplus capital changes the ratio for the total capital; it not only changes it for itself, but also for the original capital of which it is the offshoot. For it is precisely through the addition of the surplus capital to the original capital that the objective conditions of the labour process make it possible to raise the productivity of labour, and therefore to reduce the ratio of variable to constant capital. The greater the wealth of the conditions with which the work is being done, the greater the proportion between the part of the total product which is reproduced as constant capital, and the part which is reproduced as variable capital. The same division takes place in surplus capital where production remains the same: a still greater predominance of constant over variable capital. [XXII-1371] Thus the variable capital, i.e. the part of the capital laid out in wages, increases with the accumulation of capital, for this is the sole means of producing absolute surplus value, but it declines relatively, or it increases in a constantly falling ratio as compared with the growth of the total capital and indeed the increasing conversion of unpaid labour into capital, i.e. accumulation of means and necessary producers, is [the cause] of this declining ratio, which not only shows itself in the division of the surplus capital, but reacts back upon the total capital.

All accumulation is the means of greater accumulation, hence the means for the exploitation of more living labour, but at the same time it is the means of employing less living labour in proportion to the total capital.

Hence if a surplus population is employed and absorbed by the surplus capital, this process of the assimilation or absorption of living labour by objectified labour is, as we saw in considering capitalist production,a created and accompanied--with improvements in machinery, etc., and the application of the capitalist mode of production where it did not previously exist--by a continuous expulsion of workers, a releasing of workers, a rendering of them available, with the result that the increasing number of workers attracted by capital is created by an increasing mass of expelled, released workers; a circumstance through which accumulation itself holds in reserve and continuously produces an available surplus population--living material for a still greater accumulation of capital--over and above the natural increase of the population.

a See this volume, pp. 26-30.--Ed.

It certainly must not be imagined that the amount of variable capital is identical with the increasing amount of the means of subsistence which, with the development of the amount of capital and the productivity of labour, can be converted into variable capital, i.e. can be exchanged for living labour; nor should one adopt the fantastic notion that a certain part of the product must be converted into variable capital owing to the nature of its use value, or that variable capital has any kind of necessary relation to the amount of the means of subsistence (or the materials for the means of subsistence) which can enter as means of consumption into the reproduction of labour capacity.

Reproduction.

Reproduction in its narrower sense will be developed in the next section.104 For the present, only the following point needs to be made: Production, considered as a continuously self-renewing act, or considered in the context of its constant renewal, is reproduction. The production process as a whole is always a reproduction process (in so far as new branches of labour are not being set up, and where it cannot be said at the starting point of these that the same product is being reproduced). In the total product there is reproduced 1) the constant capital, 2) the variable capital, and finally, 3) it contains a new component--the surplus produce, which represents the surplus value. The part of the constant capital that does not enter into the valorisation process can be left out of account here. The closer examination of this belongs to the following section. All 3 of these constituents contained in the product exist in the same material shape. It is the same mass of products, the same commodity, each part of which corresponds to the three parts described above. The original value is what is reproduced first, and the surplus value is newly produced. The part that represents surplus value may enter into consumption (although not completely, as will be seen later). To begin with, let us consider the first two [XXII-1372] parts. If production is to be begun again on the same scale, the parts of the product which represent variable capital and constant capital must be reconverted into the use value form they possessed originally. (All this would be better placed in the next section.) In reproduction the starting point is the product; in the simple production process the particular product must first come into existence, or what is reproduced obtains in the product a form it previously did not possess, whereas in reproduction the form is constantly repeated. In reproduction the presuppositions of production themselves appear as its past results and the result of production appears as its presupposition. Every presupposition appears in every reproduction as a result (a

positing) and every result appears as a presupposition; the product both as condition and as result of the production process. Seen as a whole, the production process is a constant reproduction process, although, within every particular sphere of production, and for a single capital, 1) its presuppositions may appear as initial conditions, which are the starting point, as with the opening of any new business; and 2) the product may be converted into money without involving any renewal of the production process. Production, conceived in its flux--its truth--always appears as reproduction. Accumulation is nothing but reproduction on an extended scale. If the surplus value were entirely consumed, the scale would remain the same.

The following points are linked with this:

1) Surplus capital is nothing but surplus labour; 2) from the point of view of its value, every original capital, whether accumulated or not, appears after a certain period of time as having arisen from surplus value--hence it disappears as original capital, as independent wealth not derived from the exploitation of alien labour but rather presupposed to it. (Suppose the capital is 100, the surplus value = 20. There may or may not be accumulation. If there is not, and the production process is always repeated on the same scale // reproduction 1) implies the constant repetition of the same production process, insofar as its product or the use value that results from it comes into consideration; 2) but it is not derived from the constant repetition of this process, the result of which is the commodity, or which is extinguished as a single process in the product, but rather from the fact that at the same time a part of the value of the product entered as a presupposition into production and emerges from it again as a result, and that the material form which this part of the value possessed in the labour process is restored again through the conversion of the product in that process//, hence the surplus value is consumed, the latter can always [be] expressed in a definite ratio with the capital, just as occurs in the case of profit. E.g. 20:100 = 1:5. So if this process is repeated 5 times, the surplus value consumed will = the original capital, and, where value is being considered, the situation is not changed at all, whether it is imagined that the surplus value is consumed and the capital preserved, or the value of the capital is consumed and the surplus value accumulated. After 5 years, the value of the capital in the given case = the value of the surplus value grabbed during the 5 years, or, in the value of the capital, the worker is confronted, from the point of view of the value, with no more than the total amount of the surplus value appropriated by the capitalist without equivalent. If the worker had kept his own surplus value for himself and the capitalist had consumed as before an amount equal to that surplus value, the value of the original capital at the end of the 5 years would have been = 0, while the worker would have possessed a value = the original capital. If, however, surplus value is reconverted into capital, let us say in the above case 10%, nothing changes in the calculation except this: the surplus value consumed is now 1/10 of the original capital, instead of being 1/5 as it was previously. The value of the original capital is now consumed in 2 x 5 years, in 10 years, instead of in 5 years. But it has been replaced at the same time by a value of 20 x 10, i.e. twice the original capital, because the total amount of surplus value capitalised in the 10 years = twice the [XXII-1373] value of the original capital. But the value of the original capital has disappeared, just as happened before, and the value of the whole of the capital is now only equal to the total amount of surplus value accumulated. (If the capital = C, the annual surplus value = y, and if y = C/x (or xy = C, x:C = 1:y) then xy = C. Or if the surplus value = 1/x C = C/x = y, xy = C. Thus if 1/x is the surplus value of one year, the original capital must be replaced by surplus value in x years.) Once more, this fact is not altered in any way whether it is conceived that the value of the original capital has been preserved and half the surplus value has been consumed (over the 10 years), while the other half, which = the original capital, has been accumulated, or that the value of the whole of the capital has been consumed, and on the other hand the whole of the surplus value, = twice the value of the original capital, has been accumulated over the 10 years.) But leaving aside these 2 points, leaving aside accumulation and leaving aside the nature of surplus capital and the ratio between the value of the original capital and the total amount of value of the surplus value that has been consumed, another point, 3), enters the picture:

If we consider the simple reproduction process, the simple repetition of the exchange between the same capital and the same labour capacity, the situation presents itself differently in considering the continuous process, its flux, its constant repetition, in short considering the same process as a reproduction process, from when this process appears as a simple and isolated, a solitary production process. //What converts the production process into a reproduction process--and for this reason the true conception of the production process is to conceive it as a reproduction process--this belongs to the next section--is that the product is reconverted into the elements of its production. I.e. constant capital is again produced in its natural form through the conversion of the product, while another part of the capital, variable capital, is again exchanged for labour capacity. This reconversion of the part of the product which represents capital into the elements of its production is mediated by exchange, and in some branches of industry, e.g. agriculture, it proceeds in a natural form. A part of the product, as seed, manure, cattle, etc., re-enters the same production process as an element.

Within a particular sphere of production--i.e. a sphere which produces a particular commodity, a commodity with a particular use value--reconversion into elements of production of the same material character takes place. The product, in contrast, can be converted from its shape as money into any other elements of production, it can be transferred from one sphere to the other. Then the capital is not reproduced in the same natural form. But this too is reproduction, insofar as the value--which is indeed a product as well--is being considered. Then the form of reproduction changes.// //Rate of profit (average).112 I showed earlier3 that if the rate of surplus value = e.g. 50, and we have the following compositions in various spheres of production: C50, V50 + S25 (S = surplus value), hence a rate of profit of 25; C90, V10, S5, hence a rate of profit of 5; C80, V20, S10, hence a rate of profit of 10; C20, V80, S40, hence a rate of profit of 40%, the average profit is = (25 + 5 + 10 + 40)/4 = 20%. According to this the average rate of profit would be 20%. For a more precise determination it needs to be added that the amount of capital invested in each of the particular spheres also comes into consideration. E.g. if in the above case 2 capitals were invested at 25, 2 at 5, 2 at 10, and 2 at 40%, we would have 8 capitals. Hence (25 x 2 + 5 x 2 + 10 x 2 + 40 x 2)/(2 x 4). The rate of profit would be the same, because the ratio of the total capital to the profit would have remained the same. If the doubling, or indeed any increase at all, of the capital had occurred evenly over every case, the amount of surplus value would have increased in the same proportion; the proportion between the two would therefore have remained the same. However, it is different if we have e.g. 20 capitals of 100 at 5%, 20 at 10, 10 at 25, and 5 at 40. In this case we would have:

See present edition, Vol. 31, pp. 301-02.--Ed.

Capital      Surplus Value      Rate of Profit

20 x 100 = 2,000      100

20 x 100 = 2,000      200

10 x 100 = 1,000      250

5 x 100 = 500         200

Hence: Capital. 5,500      750      13 7/11%

[XXII-1374] Thus we see that the average profit is determined 1) by the average of the unequal profit rates of the different spheres of production; and 2) by the proportional division of the total capital among the different spheres of production. Here "different spheres of production" is to be understood to mean the spheres of production as they diverge according to their differing organic composition of capital.//

The relation we are referring to is this:

If we consider the simple reproduction process of capital--whether it is reproduced in the same sphere of production or a different one is irrelevant--in the course of the constant repetition of the conversion of variable capital into labour the worker constantly reproduces 1) the variable capital, and 2) the surplus value. What confronts him as variable capital is just as much his own product as the surplus value is. He has reproduced the variable capital and it serves to buy his labour anew. He reproduces it again, and again it buys his labour. It is his labour of yesterday, or of the last six months, which buys and pays for his labour of today or of the next six months. His present labour is bought with his past labour. And if we examine the result, in the product he has reproduced firstly his own future wage, perhaps his present wage (if e.g. the wage is paid weekly and the commodity is sold during the week, the worker thus in fact being paid out of his product converted into money; this does occur, just as much as it occurs that other commodities are only converted into money after a year, hence are only then expressed in a form in which they can function as wages; but the relation is not changed at all by this), and then, equally, the surplus value.

The notion which is very widespread among some political economists (e.g. Ricardo3) that the worker and the capitalist share the value of the product--share the product if we take the total product of the total capital, share the value of the product if we take the individual capital--says nothing further. This notion is not an arbitrary one. If we consider the continuous production process, which constantly renews itself, hence if we do not fix on one single production process, the value the worker adds to the means of production forms the fund from which 1) variable capital is renewed, hence wages are paid; 2) surplus value flows, in whatever way it is divided and converted into a consumption fund for the capitalist and an accumulation fund. If the worker is to be continuously employed, this should only be possible insofar as he continuously reproduces the part of the value of the product which serves to pay him, i.e. insofar as he in fact constantly reproduces the means of paying for his own labour. And although the relation originally presented itself as the exchange of objectified for living labour, the value of the product not only contains objectified labour but also objectifies living labour. His objectified labour is therefore the fund from which his living labour is paid.

See present edition, Vol. 32, pp. 52-59.--Ed.

Let us imagine that the worker works with his own means of production, or, and this is the same thing, that he only works with alien means of production as long as is necessary to reproduce his wages (in the latter case the property of the capitalist in the means of production would only be nominal; they would not produce any surplus value for him, and would only serve to reproduce the [worker's] wages). In that case the fund from which he is paid or which he requires for the reproduction of his labour capacity, the fund of means of subsistence which is the natural condition for the renewal of his labour, would not confront him as capital. This fund would not employ him, he would rather apply the fund, constantly reproducing it, in order to maintain his life as a worker. Therefore the fact that this labour fund confronts him as variable capital--as a component of capital at all--is merely a specific social form of this fund, a form which has nothing to do with its nature as a labour fund, or with the service it performs for the reproduction of the worker and, therefore, of his product as such. In capitalist production, this labour fund is constantly reproduced as a mass of commodities belonging to the capitalist, which the worker must constantly buy back, and in doing so he gives more labour than is contained in it. But he must constantly buy it back because he constantly reproduces it as capital. If he constantly reproduced it as his own labour fund, it would not confront him as capital. This is therefore only a particular historical form of appearance of his product (or rather of part of his product), which is admittedly very important for the shape of the production process or rather

the reproduction process, [XXII-1375] but changes nothing, either in this labour fund, insofar as it is considered as use value, or in its character as the worker's own product, as the objectification of his own labour.

It is possible for this labour fund not to assume the form of capital, and despite this for the worker constantly to be obliged to provide surplus labour and to hand over a part of the value of his product without equivalent. This applies e.g. to the situation of the peasants on corvee in the Danubian Principalities, which we examined earlier.3 They do not just reproduce the labour fund itself--this is something all workers do under all forms of society. The labour fund rather assumes the form of capital vis-a-vis them. It appears as not only their product but a product which belongs to them, as the fund for their means of subsistence, which they constantly renew by their labour, but renew for themselves, in order to consume it as their labour fund. The corvee labour they perform for the boyars therefore appears as unpaid labour, while the labour of the wage labourer appears as paid, but it only appears as paid because 1) the labour fund reproduced by the wage labourer constantly passes into the ownership of the capitalist, thus constantly confronts him as variable capital, as alien property, which he must constantly buy back as means of payment from the hands of a third party; 2) the value of his necessary labour, of the part of the labour he does for himself, confronts him as the price for the whole of the working day, necessary + surplus labour, and therefore the whole of the working day appears as paid; 3) his surplus labour therefore does not appear as separated from his necessary labour (separated spatially and temporally). If the worker works 6 hours a day for himself, 6 hours for his capitalist, this is, over 6 days of the week, the same as if he worked 3 days for himself (and during these 3 days used the means of production for himself as his own property) and 3 days for the capitalist, hence worked 3 days for nothing. But since this division does not take place outwardly, he appears to be paid for 6 working days. The corvee worker in Moldavia, on the other hand, works 3 days for himself on his own field, and no one pays him for this; he pays himself; the product of these 3 days of his week's work is not converted into capital, i.e. it never confronts him as a condition of production in the hands of a third party. He works the other 3 days on the boyar's estate for nothing. This surplus labour of his appears as what all surplus labour is--unpaid compulsory labour, provided without an equivalent--but it only appears this way because the product of his necessary labour does not pass into the hands of the boyar, is therefore not given back by the boyar to the corvee peasant in exchange for 6 days [of labour]. If this were the case the whole of his labour would appear as paid, and thus the labour fund he himself produced would confront him as capital. If the boyar were to appropriate the whole of the product of the peasant's labour, and pay back to him what he needed for his existence, so that he could again 1) buy back, i.e. reproduce, this part, which costs 3 days of labour a week or 6 hours a day, but in addition, 2), work 3 days [a week] or 6 hours a day for nothing, the corvee would have been converted into wage labour, and the labour fund into the specific form of variable capital. On the other hand, in India for example (pre-English India) the ryot provided a certain part of his product or his surplus labour in the form of rent in natura. But he never alienated his labour fund; it was not for a moment converted into capital; he himself constantly reproduced it for himself. Since capital, if it is to reproduce itself as capital, as self-valorising value, must constantly yield up to labour capacity part of the value of the product = the means of subsistence necessary for labour capacity's reproduction, and since it must equally constantly appropriate the surplus labour for nothing, just as the boyar or the Mogul does, it is evident that this formal quality of the labour fund of appearing as capital, and in particular as variable capital, is only a particular historical form of appearance of the labour fund, and in and for itself--important as it is for the whole production process and the relation between the worker and the appropriator of surplus labour--it changes nothing in the circumstance that the labour fund [XXII-1376] is nothing but the part of the value of the product or of the product of the worker which he constantly reproduces in order constantly to consume it. All that is different is the way in which he gets into a position to consume it. In the one case it confronts him directly as a product in his possession, and forms a consumption fund which stands directly at his disposal; in the other case this part of the product is first alienated, appears as alien property, as the product of the worker's labour which has become independent vis-a-vis him, the personification of his past labour, which he can appropriate again and again by buying it back again with more living labour than is contained in it. In the other forms, too, he must constantly buy back this part of the product by renewing his labour, but he does not have to buy it back as a commodity from a third party. If a part of the labour, surplus labour, appears as corvee labour, as unpaid compulsory labour to the corvee worker, or the objectification of surplus labour, the surplus product, appears to the ryot as a part of his total product which he must hand over without an equivalent, this is so only because in both cases the necessary labour and the product of that necessary labour appear as labour belonging to, and product belonging to, the corvee peasant and the ryot themselves, and never as labour and product belonging to a third party. With the wage labourer in contrast the whole of his labour appears as paid labour, because no part of his labour appears as belonging to him, and the whole of the product of his labour, even the part that merely forms his own consumption fund, renews his own means of subsistence, constantly presents itself at each moment as a product belonging to the capitalist, as capital. It is only because his necessary labour itself appears as labour alien to him that his total labour appears as paid labour; it is only because the product even of his necessary labour appears as a product which does not belong to him that it can appear as the means of payment for his labour. In order to present itself as means of payment it must pass beforehand into the hands of a third party, and then pass in turn, through purchase and sale, out of his hands and into the hands of the worker. It therefore only appears as means of payment, or the labour fund only appears as capital, because it is directly appropriated, not by the worker, but by the capitalist, because it is first taken, so that it can be given back. This constant divestiture is the condition for its appearance as a fund of means of payment of labour, as capital, instead of as a direct consumption fund.

We have seen, therefore, that:

1) Surplus capital--or capital as surplus capital--consists in all its elements of surplus labour appropriated by the capitalist without an equivalent, and it is the means for the repetition of this appropriation of alien surplus labour;

2) The value of all capital, even where it differs originally from surplus capital, disappears in production as a whole, and is converted simply into capitalised surplus value;

3) Apart from surplus value, variable capital occurs in the production process as a whole as merely a particular historical form of appearance of the labour fund constantly renewed and reproduced by the worker himself for his reproduction.

The political economists express this when they:

1) characterise accumulation as the conversion of income (profit) into capital (this also includes constant capital);

2) characterise the total value of the product //apart from the constant capital// or the product of the worker as the fund from which wages and surplus value are paid, or in which the capitalist and the worker each have a share;

3) conceive variable capital as merely a particular historical form of appearance of the labour fund, as Richard Jones did, who demonstrated how this fund assumes different forms in different epochs.a

a See R. Jones, An Introductory Lecture on Political Economy..., London, 1833, pp. 14-50. Cf. present edition, Vol. 33, pp. 335-45, 352-53.-- Ed.

[XXII-1377] //One of the chief merits of the Physiocrats was their insight into the reproduction process. Thus it is very finely brought out (see Baudeaub) that what appear in production as avancesc appear in reproduction as reprises,d Reprises appear in contrast to avances as a direct or mediated (through the circulation process) reconversion of the components of the product from their natural form into elements of production, components of constant capital; the reconversion of the part of the product which = constant capital into raw material, accessory materials and means of labour. As avances on the other hand these presuppositions of the product appear independent of the latter, they appear as derived from circulation. The difference is constantly evident. If a capital is invested in a particular sphere of production, its avances appear as constantly reproduced, as reconverted forms of components of the product. If new capital is productively invested, money is converted into constant and variable capital. For the individual capitalist these are not reprises, but mere avances, although--because this new capital is surplus capital--they are just as much reprises, considered from the point of view of reproduction as a whole.//113

b N. Baudeau, Explication du Tableau Economique.... In: Physiocrates. Quesnay ... par M. Eugene Daire, Part II, Paris, 1846. See present edition, Vol. 31, pp. 230-32.-- Ed.

c Advances.-- Ed.

d Returns.-- Ed.

//Both the old capital and the surplus capital can be reproduced in an altered natural form. This is possible in a double form. Firstly: The capital (old or surplus capital, original or additional capital) is not reproduced in the shape of the same product as the one of which it originally formed a component, but in the shape of another product, which had already been produced earlier. This is the emigration of capital (its transfer) from one sphere of production to another, whether it happens that the distribution merely of the old capital between the different spheres of production is altered, or that the additional capital, the surplus capital, is invested in another sphere of production, already existing previously, instead of the one from which it originates. This is also a metamorphosis of capital, and indeed a very important one, since it underlies the competition between capitals in different spheres of production, hence the formation of the general rate of profit. The most variable part of capital, which can take on the most diverse forms, is variable capital itself, which is exchanged for living labour. For the natural form of this part of capital to alter, nothing else is necessary than that labour capacity should be employed in one manner rather than another. This rests on the changeability of human labour capacity. The simpler the labour--and in all large branches of production the labour is simple--the less specific training is necessary, the easier is this conversion of the form of concrete labour. Furthermore, as far as circulating capital is concerned, its convertibility into any desired form of existing commodity is naturally absolute; this is the character of money. But this convertibility is purely illusory. For money is only a transitory form of circulating capital //taken here insofar as it does not consist of means of subsistence for the worker; hence as the part of the constant capital which does not consist of fixed capital, implements of labour, etc.// and its amount stands in no relation at all to the amount of circulating capital. If e.g. more rye is to be produced rather than more wheat, more money must be converted into rye seed. If the previous rye harvest was precisely sufficient for previous consumption, and no foreign rye was available for purchase, the investment of more capital in rye could only take place if the consumption of rye were reduced by raising the price of rye, thereby setting free part of the rye as seed. As far as the other conditions are concerned, labour would remain the same, so too fixed capital, and there would merely be a different division of the same labour and the same implements between wheat cultivation and rye cultivation. On the other hand, e.g., to change the numbers of twist which are to be spun, etc., would require only a slight modification of the fixed capital. The kind of labour and the material would remain the same. This is in general the case when the dimensions [XXII-1378] of the same branch of production necessitate a change in the total amount of capital employed in it. Hence where the raw material remains the same. It is on the other hand possible for the raw material to change and the fixed capital and the kind of labour to remain the same, or for the latter to change only a little. E.g. when more of one kind of tree or another is felled, when more of one kind of fish or another is

caught, when more of one metal or another is extracted from the earth. But where the branch of production is essentially different, a given part of the fixed capital cannot be converted from one form into the other. The buildings may remain the same, but the machinery, etc., is very different, and the same is true of the installations erected on the land. When a change like this takes place, therefore, the fixed capital may become devalued and worthless. But if it is merely the surplus capital which changes its employment, the change always amounts to a treatment of the same raw material by different machines, etc. The variability of human labour always forms the basis of this kind of metamorphosis of capital, whether because a part of the old labour capacities alter their work, or because new labour capacities are predominantly employed, not in the old sphere of production, but in another one.

This metamorphosis of capital concerns merely the real metamorphosis, which takes place in the labour process, the changed form of the raw material, machinery, labour, into which the capital has been reconverted. It has nothing to do with the formal metamorphosis, which consists exclusively in the conversion of commodity capital into money capital, and of money capital into productive capital, in fact in the reconversion of commodity capital, as the commodities which form the elements of the labour process. This second metamorphosis is related purely to the changed natural form (the form of the use values) into which the money is reconverted in the course of its reconversion into capital.

Secondly. Old or additional capital is invested in new branches of production. Either new raw material is needed for this, or the newly discovered use value of an old raw material. E.g. railways. No new material in addition to coal, iron, wood, etc., is required for this purpose. Rubber is a contrasting case. Even with the telegraph, there is merely the employment in a new way of old raw materials. The main variation in the latter case lies only in the method of working.

The more productive the labour, the more possible it is to increase the number of branches of labour; to utilise in a new manner labour which has become superfluous in the old production for its reproduction on the same or an extended scale, whether through a new way of using old raw materials, or through the discovery of, or the extension of trade in, new raw materials. The variety of branches of production grows with the accumulation of capital--hence the differentiation of labour.

//The use of the excrements of production and consumption extends along with the capitalist branches of production. By excrements of production we mean its waste products, whether those of industry or of agriculture (such as manure, etc.). By excrements of consumption we mean in part the excrements proceeding from the natural reproduction process (faeces, urine, etc., of human beings), in part the form in which the articles of consumption remain behind after they have been consumed (such as rags, etc.). In a chemical factory, for example, the subsidiary products which are lost in the case of small-scale production again form in the case of mass production the raw material for other branches of chemical production; in large-scale engineering iron filings are again converted into iron; in the manufacture of wood on a mass scale the sawdust again yields a return as fertiliser; thus the excrements either re-enter the same sphere of production as means of production, or other spheres of production. The manure of animals, the urine and faeces of human beings, re-enter cultivation, tanneries, etc. Iron waste re-enters the same branch of production as a means of production; rags go into the paper factory; cotton waste goes into fertiliser; an example should be looked up for chemicals. This is connected partly with the natural interchange of matter, partly with the industrial interchange of form.//96

[XXII-1379] Surplus value is always expressed in surplus produce; i.e. in a part of the product which is at the disposal of the capitalist, and forms a surplus over and above the parts of the product which replace the capital originally laid out. One should not imagine for that reason that surplus produce arises merely because in reproduction the amount of products increases as compared with the original amount. All surplus value is expressed in surplus produce, and it is only this that we call the surplus product. (The surplus of use value in which the surplus value is expressed.) On the other hand, not all of the surplus product represents surplus value; this is a confusion found in Torrens3 and others. Assume, for example, that the year's harvest is twice as large this year as the previous year, although the same amount of objectified and living labour was employed to produce it. The value of the harvest (disregarding here all deviations of price from value brought about by supply and demand) is the same. If the same acre produces 8 qrs of wheat instead of 4 qrs, 1 qr of wheat will now have half as much value as before, and the 8 qrs will have no more value than the 4 had. In order to exclude all outside influences, assume that the seed was cultivated on specific fields, which yielded the same product as the previous year. Thus a qr of seed would have to be paid for with 2 qrs of wheat, and all the elements of capital as also surplus value would remain the same (similarly the ratio of the surplus value to the total capital). If the situation is different in this example, this is only because a part of the constant capital is replaced in natura from the product; hence a smaller part of the product is needed to replace the seed; hence a part of the constant capital is set free and appears as surplus produce.

This belongs to reproduction,10 4

The surplus value is expressed as surplus produce, and the shape of the surplus produce is the same as that of the total product, i.e. the particular use value capital produces in this particular branch. If the product consists of wheat, boards, machines, twist, locks, violins, etc., the surplus produce will also be expressed as wheat, boards, machines, twist, locks, violins, etc.

The following process can now take place with the surplus produce.

Firstly, insofar as it is not converted into surplus capital, but consumed: 1) Either the capitalist can consume it in its natural form, entirely or partially. If only partially, it falls under the case to be examined in 2). For him to consume it in its natural form, it must exist in a form in which it is able to enter into individual consumption. To this there also belong the instruments, containers, etc., which enter into the consumption process as implements, such as needles, scissors, bottles, etc. Or e.g. semi-manufactures, such as sewing materials, which are worked up in the sphere of consumption itself. 2) He consumes it in the form of other use values; he sells it and buys with the money the various objects which form part of the consumption fund. If his product is the kind that cannot enter into individual consumption, its buyer must buy it for productive consumption, i.e. it must enter for him into his capital as a replacement element, or into his surplus capital as an element of new constant capital. Hence the fact that every part of the value of the surplus produce which is not converted by its owner into surplus capital is consumed by him does not imply that this surplus produce itself enters in natura into individual consumption. It may enter into capital. It can in fact be consumed as capital by the buyer of this surplus produce. And again, two things are possible here: Either it replaces original capital or surplus capital, or it represents for the buyer the conversion of a part of his surplus produce into surplus capital. If a greater part of the surplus produce were produced in a natural form in which it can only serve as constant capital, the part of the surplus produce which enters into individual consumption (whether in order to be converted into variable capital, or in order to enter into the consumption fund of the capitalist) being correspondingly [small], there would take place an overproduction of constant capital. If on the other hand too large a part of the surplus produce were reproduced in a form in which it cannot be constant capital, but is destined for individual consumption, whether that of the worker as variable capital, or that of the non-worker, there would have taken place an overproduction of the part of the circulating capital which does not enter into constant capital. These relations could be determined precisely in an enclosed and isolated country. But foreign trade allows a part of the surplus produce which exists in one country in the form of raw materials, semi-manufactures, accessory materials and machinery, to be converted into the form of the surplus produce [XXII-1380] of another country, in which it exists in the form of consumable objects. Foreign trade thus breaks through this barrier. It is therefore necessary for capitalist production, which works according to the measure of its means of production without regard to the satisfaction of a definite given need. The domination of production by exchange value appears for the individual in such a way that his production 1) is not directed towards his own needs, 2) does not directly satisfy his needs; in a word, he produces commodities, which can only be converted into use values for him after their conversion into money. But now this appears in such a way that the production of a whole country is not measured by its direct needs, or by such a distribution of the different parts of production as would be required for the valorisation of that production. With this, the reproduction process is dependent not on the production of mutually complementary equivalents in the same country, but on the production of these equivalents on foreign markets, on the power of absorption and the degree of extension of the world market. This provides an increased possibility of non-correspondence, hence a possibility of crises.

If a country were isolated, its surplus produce could only be consumed in the given natural form of that surplus produce. The sphere within which the surplus produce could be exchanged would be limited by the multiplicity of different branches of production in the same country. Foreign trade tears down this barrier. A surplus produce of twist can be represented in wine, raisins, silk, etc. Thus foreign trade multiplies the forms into which the surplus produce of a country can be converted and in which it can be consumed. But in spite of assuming this foreign form, the surplus produce continues to represent nothing but the surplus value, the surplus labour, of the indigenous workers.

The larger the scale on which the necessary means of subsistence are produced, and therefore the more productive the labour is (with the correspondingly increased accumulation of capital), the greater the part of the labour that can be employed in the production of a multiplicity of forms in which the surplus produce can be consumed.

The objects which enter into the consumption fund may be consumed more slowly or more quickly. The richer the production, the more does a wealth of more or less durable use values enter into this consumption fund, so that the consumption fund increases in size and multiplicity. Part of the consumption fund might in emergency be converted into capital.

However, if we are speaking of surplus produce insofar as it is not converted into surplus capital, but consumed by those who possess it, we can disregard any mediation through either internal or foreign trade. Only the part of the product which is expressed in a form appropriate for individual consumption can enter into the consumption fund. The capitalist does not need to consume everything himself: his cats, dogs, horses, birds, servants, mistresses, etc., eat as well. Or a part can also be consumed by unproductive workers whose services are bought in this way.

II) Insofar as the surplus produce is converted into surplus capital.

The conversion may be into variable capital and constant capital. Variable capital can be increased or reduced (the variable capital in the proportion necessary for the extension of production; this proportion is not however determined by the proportion by which production is extended) without any increase or reduction in the surplus produce or indeed any change in that part of it alone which exists in the form of necessary means of subsistence entering into the worker's consumption. More of this part may be consumed by horses, dogs, mistresses, etc., or more or less may be exchanged for the services of unproductive labour. The part of the surplus produce which is convertible into variable capital may be increased or reduced according to the restriction or the extension of this unproductive consumption. This part of the surplus produce may be reduced e.g. for the following year (at least it may be reduced in relation to the number of productive workers newly set in motion during that year) if a large part of the surplus produce is fixed in the kind of constant capital (fixed capital) which rather than entering directly into the reproduction process forms merely

a basis for extended reproduction, and is neither by nature exportable nor able to be turned into the components of variable capital on foreign markets. [XXII-1381] Thus e.g. with the conversion of surplus produce into railways, canals, buildings, bridges, the draining of marshes, docks, and the fixed parts of a factory, forges, coal mines, etc. None of these things can be transported; nor do they directly increase reproduction, although they are all means for extending reproduction. If they are constructed disproportionately, this may result in a deficit of next year's surplus produce; in particular a lessening of the part of the surplus produce which can be expressed as variable capital and as circulating capital in general. Again there is a potentiality for crises arising from the overproduction of fixed capital.

We demonstrated earlier:

If the scale of production remains the same--if reproduction is repeated to the same extent--the product of the producers who produce constant capital, insofar as this product consists of variable capital (wages) and surplus produce--hence represents in general the income of this class--must be exactly = to the constant capital needed annually by the class which produces the means of consumption. If it were larger, it would have no equivalent--no counter-value corresponding to it--and would be depreciated pro tanto. As remarked above, foreign trade breaks through this barrier. The producers can convert a part of their product into variable capital and objects of consumption of income on the foreign markets.

But let us disregard foreign trade. With reproduction remaining the same, therefore, the variable capital and the surplus produce of class I (which produces constant capital), in particular the surplus produce, cannot be considered as income. It is income for the capitalists involved in this class I alone, not for capital as a whole. For it is a part of the constant capital of class II. Thus one can look at the matter in this way, that the whole of the product of class II only replaces the constant capital of the society, and the whole of the product of class I forms the income of the society, hence represents, after deduction of the variable capital, of the part that is consumed as wages, the surplus produce which is consumed annually in various forms; a consumption which is mediated through exchange, purchase and sale, in such a way that the surplus produce is divided among its various owners according to need.

a See present edition, Vol. 30, pp. 429-41, Vol. 31, pp. 134-45 and Vol. 32, pp. 102-08, 380-85.--Ed.

b Correspondingly.--Ed.

But it is different once the surplus produce is converted into surplus capital.

//This matter must be presented first without regard to money, and then with regard to money.

Without money: For a part of the surplus produce to be able to be converted into surplus capital, a part of it must d'abord be reproduced in a form in which it can serve as additional variable capital. This is true particularly of those items of the variable capital in which the product of one year must serve for the consumption of the following year, as with corn, etc., and all raw materials from the vegetable kingdom, such as cotton, flax, wool too, etc., where the same thing takes place. The sheep may be shorn at different times of year, but the wool harvest depends on the number of sheep available during the year, etc. It is untrue, in contrast, of those means of subsistence the production of which can itself be increased during the year, parallel with their production, if the conditions of this increased production are available, whether machinery and labour, or machinery, labour and raw material. Coal, iron, metals in general, wood, etc., require more labour, more coal, more machinery, and more implements of labour for increased production, if the number of workers in employment is increased. If, on the other hand, just the working day is increased, nothing more is necessary than in one case more raw material, in the other case more accessory materials and a more rapid production subsequently of the machinery or implements which have been worn out. The surplus capital does not need to be invested simultaneously or evenly in all branches. If e.g. new cotton factories are built and filled with machinery (and this is not merely a new distribution of the old capital), the surplus produce does not need to exist simultaneously in the form of cotton, but only once the new factory shall be put to work, perhaps in a year. Then, however, the additional cotton must be procured. What was necessary until then was only the additional conversion of surplus produce partly into wages (variable capital) and partly into more iron, wood, stones, belts and the additional quantity of accessory materials, machinery [XXII-1382] and implements required for an increased production of those items.

a First.--Ed.

A part of the surplus produce can be converted in natura directly into constant capital, may enter directly, as such, into its own reproduction. E.g. wheat may enter as seed, coal as an accessory in coal production, machines in machine-building, etc. Or the producers of the constant capital may exchange it among themselves, in which case it serves each of them, once it has changed hands, as constant capital; but this whole part of the surplus produce, considered as a whole, has been converted directly into constant capital, new, additional constant capital has been created.

Similarly, a part of the surplus produce is directly convertible into variable capital, and often all that is needed for this is a different distribution of the necessary means of subsistence, their exchange with productive instead of with unproductive workers.

A part of the surplus produce may be converted for one capitalist into variable, for another into constant, capital. E.g. the farmer buys new machines, implements, etc. The machine manufacturer employs new workers with the means of subsistence received from the farmer in exchange for the machines.

Since the constant capital employed by class I (the class that produces the means of subsistence) increases, this makes it possible to increase the part of the product produced by class II which can be resolved into variable capital and surplus produce. But the constant capital [of class II] can be increased directly, partly in natura, partly through a division of the surplus produce mediated through exchange, without any exchange with class I, and thus without meeting any direct barrier in the production of class I. Similarly, the exchange of constant capital takes place here directly with the surplus produce of class I (not with its constant capital). It is converted for class II into additional variable capital, and for class I into additional constant capital. Yet the necessary proportions are abolished thereby, made more accidental, hence new potentialities for crisis.

The difference for class I, however, is this, that if a greater part of its product is consumed as variable capital by class II, a smaller amount of product is consumed in the form of surplus produce by the non-productive workers and the capitalists themselves; demand thereby falls for the producers of class I who produce the surplus produce in the form of means of consumption for the non-workers. They are thereby restricted in their reproduction, and a devaluation of part of the capital invested in this class takes place. In reality, the part of the surplus produce which is consumed in the form of luxury products or for the payment of unproductive workers is relatively small at the beginning of the carrière of a nation producing in the capitalist fashion. The surplus produce increases in quantity and value with the accumulation of capital; it is therefore possible for an ever greater part to be reproduced in the form of luxury products, or exchanged for the services of unproductive workers, and accordingly a constantly growing part can be converted into surplus capital. Still greater, with this progress in accumulation, is the part of the capital which is converted into constant capital, while the part converted into variable capital constantly declines relatively, hence in the formation of surplus capital the part of the means of subsistence which is converted into variable capital or withdrawn from unproductive consumption constantly declines, so that there is a constant increase in the amount of products at the disposal of unproductive consumption, despite the growth of capital. The amount of surplus produce converted in the production of constant capital increases, but while the part of the surplus produce which exists in the form of means of subsistence grows to the same degree, there is a decline in the share of the working class--in the part of the surplus which is to be converted into additional variable capital.

a Career.--Ed.

Since the definite proportion in which the total capital is divided between the 2 classes [of producers], or in which the various components of the product enter into the reproduction process at particular points, is dissolved, partly by foreign trade, partly by the changing conversion of surplus produce into surplus capital, there is here a new potentiality of inadequacy and therefore of crises. These disproportions may occur not only between fixed and circulating capital (in their reproduction), between variable and constant capital, and between the different components of constant capital, but also between capital and income.

The case of money is to be examined later.//

[XXII-1383] For our present purpose, the conversion of surplus produce into surplus capital can be conceived most simply as follows: The surplus produce is expressed in products of varying use value. Part of it takes the form of means of consumption which do not enter into the consumption of the working classes. (Foreign trade would make it possible to express this part too in any form of use value, but here we want entirely to make abstraction from foreign trade.) This part enters entirely into the consumption of the possessor of the surplus produce. This is the first deduction to be made. A second part consists of means of consumption which enter into general consumption. A greater or lesser part of this is directly consumed by the possessors of the surplus produce, or indirectly consumed by their dogs, horses, servants or by the unproductive workers whose services are given to the possessors of the surplus produce in exchange. This second part of the surplus produce is thus equally to be deducted. Another part of these means of consumption serves to buy labour. It is converted into variable capital. Finally, part of it consists of seed, raw materials, accessory materials, semi-manufactures, cattle, machinery and tools. This part is converted into constant capital. The sum total of the parts of the surplus produce which are thus converted into variable and constant capital forms the surplus capital, into which a part of the surplus produce or surplus value has been converted. If, e.g., the surplus produce thus converted into capital = 500 thalers, of which 400 consist of constant and 100 of variable capital; if the day's work of 100 workers can be bought with the 100 thalers, and the working day of 100 workers is realised in 200 thalers, the 100 thalers would be the means of buying twice as much labour as is contained in them, and thereby of converting the 500 thalers into 600, into capital. The part of the surplus capital which is converted into variable capital is exchanged for more labour, or is a means of appropriating a part of new additional labour for nothing. But these 100 thalers are themselves alien labour appropriated for nothing, just as are the 400 thalers of additional constant capital, so that the whole of this surplus labour of the worker is, in the hands of the capitalist, a means of appropriating new surplus labour and effecting the reproduction for nothing of the labour already appropriated.

The circumstance that the productivity of labour, and at the same time the value of the product reproduced by it, depends on the wealth of the objective conditions, on the amount of past labour which enters into the production process--hence depends on the accumulation of capital--appears, like all the productive power of labour, as a productive power of capital, independent of labour and confronting it. This stage-by-stage extension of past labour, which is set in motion by living labour in the reproduction process--and which conditions the growing productivity of living labour--is presented as a service performed by this past labour, or it is conceived in such a way that the alienation of this past labour as capital makes it into this essential moment of production; because in fact in capitalist production this past labour constantly confronts living labour as capital, this confrontation, this estranged, socially converted form of labour is regarded as the secret process by which capital makes labour more productive, although naturally this past labour of the worker performed exactly the same service when it functioned as the worker's property. This view is necessary:

1) because only in capitalist production, as opposed to previous modes of production, does past labour enter into reproduction to this increasing extent; it therefore appears as its mark of distinction from previous modes of production; 2) because the antagonistic form in which objectified labour here appears towards living labour is considered as its immanent character, and as inseparable from the function it fulfils in the reproduction process.

Apart from the accumulation of objectified labour, as it appears in the conversion of surplus produce into surplus capital, a constant accumulation of the worker's personal skill takes place, through practice, and through the transfer of acquired skill to the new generation of workers which is growing up. This accumulation costs capital nothing [XXII-1384] although it plays a role of decisive importance in the reproduction process. The accumulation of scientific knowledge should also be added here, insofar as it is applied to the material production process. This accumulation is continuous reproduction on a continuously expanding scale. The results of knowledge achieved are taught and reproduced as the elements of knowledge, and worked on further by the learners as elements of knowledge. Here the cost of reproduction never stands in proportion to the original cost of production.

A warning should be issued here against two notions:

1) confusing saving with accumulation,

2) confusing the accumulation process of capital with accumulation such as occurs in the simple formation of hoards.

Ad 1), saving. The actually disposable part of the product--the surplus produce--could be consumed by the capitalist individually. Hence by converting a part of it into capital he renounces its enjoyment and saves. The notion that the whole of the surplus produce can be consumed is d'abord in and for itself incorrect, because the product passes through all kinds of dangers in the production process proper, as also in the circulation process, and a reserve fund is therefore necessary, not only for ordinary depreciation, but for extraordinary accidents. This reserve fund can only be formed from the surplus produce. Moreover, the capitalist mode of production would be impossible without a constant extension of the division of labour, improved and additional machinery, etc., which likewise requires a part of the surplus produce. Capitalist production is altogether a production directed towards the increase of exchange value, especially surplus value, and this continuous increase can only be attained by the constant conversion of surplus produce into capital. The capitalist mode of production is of course only possible with its conditions, and these are very different from those of a mode of production directed towards immediate subsistence. Thus much initially on the illusion that the whole of surplus produce can be consumed.

But we have here the even more extraordinary notion that the capitalist can consume the whole of his capital, instead of valorising it as capital! First of all, the major part of this capital exists in a non-consumable form, as means of production; it exists in a shape in which it can only be consumed productively. The whole notion rests on the idea of the individual money owner. Instead of converting £1,000 into capital, he can consume it. (He can of course only put it out at interest if he does not consume his £1,000, leaving it instead for others to employ as capital.) But if the total reproduction process were to be interrupted even for only 14 days, that would be the end of the "consumables".

But the capitalist has one merit in comparison with others. It has nothing to do with labour. What the capitalist saves is the product of unpaid labour, hence a product appropriated from the worker without equivalent. The savings of the rich are made at the expense of the poor (Say).a It is accumulated labour, but not his accumulated labour.

2) Accumulation process. The difference between this and hoarding has already been noted previously.b

Insofar as accumulation is understood to mean the building up of supplies, or the existence of commodities in the zone intermediate between production and consumption, this belongs to the circulation process.c

The phrase that no one is more involved in the accumulation process of capital than the worker himself means in the opinion of the vulgarisers that the worker must be happy if he is paid as low a wage as possible (the rate of surplus value, further the rate of profit, as high as possible), because along with the amount of surplus value or surplus produce (profits, developed further) the part which is converted into surplus capital grows, and therefore there is a growth in the amount of *additional variable capital or that part of capital which is converted into wages of productive labour or which is exchanged against labour.* If this part grows more rapidly than the labouring population (and the additional demand for labour is determined by it), the price of labour will increase above its value, or the average. First a lessening of the wage (or at least a relatively low wage) is asserted to be something good; in other words, the worker exchanges as large a part as possible of his time with the capitalist for nothing, and therefore obtains as little of the product of his own labour as possible, and this is supposed to be good because the amount of capital employed is thereby increased. Then an increase in the size of this capital is regarded as something good because surplus labour is thereby reduced, or the wage increases. For a greater part of his free labour to flow back to him as wages under particular circumstances he is expected provisionally to appropriate a smaller part of his labour as wages. What [XXII-1385] pretty, and particularly for the worker what stupid, circular arguments!

Accumulation brings a relative reduction in the part of the capital that is converted into variable capital. This is No. 5.

Secondly, the mass of the population made redundant or the surplus population constantly created by the capitalist mode of production itself increases with the development of the productive forces associated with accumulation.

But leaving this aside, and these are circumstances of decisive importance, accumulation is in the worker's interest, however much it must bring him ever repeated misfortune,

1) insofar as surplus capital is increased through the fact that a smaller part of the surplus produce is consumed by the capitalist and a larger part converted into surplus capital; hence insofar as the growth of surplus capital does not result from an increase in surplus labour (and therefore in surplus produce), but from the conversion of a larger part into capital when this surplus produce is divided into income and capital;

2) but since this depends on the productivity of labour, assuming the magnitude of the surplus produce remains the same, and the productivity of labour in turn depends on the development of the capitalist mode of production, it is in the worker's interest (once wage labour exists) for capitals to be employed in large, concentrated quantities, instead of being scattered among many capitalists and employed in an unproductive manner.

Insofar as the accumulation process is identical with the concentration process, the inner progress of capitalist production consists in an ever increasing supersession of private production, of the kind of production for which the property of the genuinely isolated producer in his conditions of labour appears as a condition of production itself. The worker's relation to the conditions of production develops into a relation to common, social magnitudes.

//Conclusion of the quotation from an earlier presentation of the subject116:

Insofar as the surplus product is valorised anew as surplus capital, enters anew the labour process and the process of self-valorisation, it divides itself into:

1) means of subsistence to be exchanged for labour capacity. This part of the capital can be defined as the wages fund. It serves for the progressive maintenance of labour capacity, since this part of the surplus capital grows continuously, even though by no means in the proportion to which the surplus capital itself grows. This wages fund now appears as alienated labour, converted into capital, just as much as do

2) the objective components, the objective conditions for the employment of additional labour. Both components of capital are now posited by labour, and posited as its presuppositions. What originally appeared as a division of capital within itself now appears in such a way that labour's own product--objectified surplus labour--is divided into those two components which, considered materially, are the objective conditions of the labour process, and the objective conditions for the maintenance and reproduction of labour capacity; but from the point of view of their form these conditions of the realisation of labour confront it as an alien, independent power, as capital. Labour has itself created a new fund for the employment of new labour, but at the same time it has created the condition that this fund can be appropriated only if new surplus labour is employed on the extra part of surplus capital. Hence, by producing surplus capital, surplus value, labour has simultaneously created the real necessity (and possibility) for new surplus labour, surplus capital thus itself being the real possibility of both new surplus labour and new surplus capital. It becomes evident here how progressively the objective world of wealth is enlarged through labour even as an alien power confronting it, and how it gains an ever wider and fuller existence, so that relatively, in relation to the values created or to the extent of the real conditions for the creation of value, the necessitous subjectivity of living labour capacity stands out in ever more glaring contrast. The more labour objectifies itself, the greater becomes the objective world of values which confronts it as alien--as alien property. By creating surplus capital, labour imposes on itself [XXII-1386] the compulsion to create yet further surplus capital, etc., etc.

With regard to the original, not-surplus, capital the relation has changed for labour insofar as 1) the part exchanged for necessary labour is reproduced by this labour itself, i.e. it no longer comes to labour out of circulation but is its own product, and 2) the part of value which represents the real conditions for the utilisation of living labour, in the form of raw material and instrument, has been maintained by living labour itself in the production process. And since every use value by its nature consists of transitory material, and exchange value exists only within use value, this maintenance=protection from destruction, or the negation of the transitory nature of the values owned by the capitalists. In this way, these values are posited as values-for-themselves; as imperishable wealth. Hence only in the production process has living labour posited this original sum of values as capital.

Insofar as surplus capital is considered, the capitalist represents value-for-itself obtained by the appropriation of alien labour. For each moment of surplus capital (material, instrument, means of subsistence) resolves into alien labour, which the capitalist has not appropriated by means of exchange for already existing values but which he has appropriated without exchange. True, the exchange of a part of the values belonging to him, or of objectified labour possessed by him, for labour capacity, appears as the original condition for this surplus capital. The possession of values by the capitalist, part of which he formally exchanges for living labour capacity, appears to be the condition for the formation of surplus capital I, if that is what we call the surplus capital arising from the original production process, i.e. the condition for the appropriation of alien labour, of objectified alien labour. In any case, it appears as a condition for the formation of surplus capital I that there be an exchange of values belonging to the capitalist, thrown into circulation by him, and supplied to the workers by him--of values which do not derive from his exchange with living labour, or from his relation as capital to labour, but rather from a prior, so-called original accumulation. As e.g. this is always the case for every individual who steps into the marketplace as a new capitalist.

But now let us think of surplus capital I being thrown again into the production process, realising its surplus value in exchange once more, and appearing once more as new surplus capital II at the beginning of a third production process. This, surplus capital II has different presuppositions from those of surplus capital I. The presupposition of surplus capital I was the existence of values belonging to the capitalist and thrown by him into circulation. The

a J. B. Say, Traité d'économie politique..., 5th ed., Vol. I, Paris, 1826, pp. 130-31. Marx quotes in French.-- Ed.

b See present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 359-70.-- Ed.

c See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. II, Part I, Ch. VI, Sect. I (present edition, Vol. 36).-- Ed.

presupposition of surplus capital II is nothing but the existence of surplus capital I; in other words the presupposition that the capital has already appropriated alien labour without exchange. This enables him to begin the process again and again, and on an ever-increasing scale. True, in order to create surplus capital II, he had to exchange a part of surplus capital I in the form of means of subsistence for living labour. But what he thus exchanged were values which he did not originally put into circulation from his own funds, but alien objectified labour which he appropriated without giving any equivalent for it, and which he now exchanges again for alien living labour, just as the means of labour in which this new labour is realised and with which it creates new surplus value have come into his possession without exchange, by means of simple appropriation. Past appropriation of alien labour now appears as the simple condition for new appropriation of alien labour. In other words, his possession of alien labour in objective, physical form, in the form of values already in existence, appears to be the condition for his ability to appropriate alien living labour capacity anew, without giving any equivalent for it. That he should already be confronting living labour as capital appears to be [XXII-1387] the sole condition not only for him maintaining himself as capital, but for him as growing capital appropriating alien labour without equivalent on an increasing scale. Property in past or objectified alien labour appears as the sole condition for further appropriation of present or living labour.

Insofar as a surplus capital I was created by means of simple exchange between objectified labour (the original capital) and living labour capacity — [a transaction] based on the law of the exchange of commodities as equivalents estimated by the comparative quantity of labour or labour time contained in them—and in so far as this exchange, speaking juridically, presupposed nothing but the right of property of each person in his own products and his right to dispose of them freely (on the side of the worker—the freedom to dispose of his own personal capacities), and insofar as surplus capital II is merely the result of surplus capital I, hence a consequence of that first relationship [that between labour and capital]—the right of property on the side of capital is dialectically transformed into the right to alien products or into the right of property in alien labour, the right to appropriate alien labour without equivalent; and on the side of the worker it is transformed into the duty to relate himself towards his own labour and its product as alien property. But the exchange of equivalents which appeared as the initial operation has been reversed in such a way
 that on the one side only an apparent exchange takes place, in that the part of capital exchanged for labour capacity is, in the first place, itself alien labour appropriated without equivalent, and in that, secondly, it must be replaced by labour capacity with a surplus, hence it is not in fact given away but only transformed from one form into another. The relationship of exchange is therefore a mere semblance, which belongs to the circulation process. Furthermore, the right to property originally appeared to be based on one’s own labour. Now property appears as the right to alien labour and as the impossibility for labour to appropriate its own product. The separation of property, or wealth, and labour now appears as a consequence of the law which arose from their identity.

Finally, the result of the process of production and valorisation now appears to be above all the reproduction on an ever-increasing scale of the very relationship of capital and labour, of capitalist and worker. The number of necessitous labour capacities, lacking substance, of “the labouring poor”, thus increases along with the amount of capital, and inversely. This antagonistic relation is expressed by Eden, Chalmers, etc.

a See present edition, Vol. 28, pp. 520-21 and Vol. 29, pp. 120-22.— Ed. In fact, this relationship of production (a relationship of social intercourse, into which the subjects enter as agents of production) appears to be an even more important result of the process than its material results. Each side reproduces itself by reproducing its other, its negation. The capitalist produces labour as alien; labour produces the product as alien. The capitalist produces the worker, and the worker the capitalist. As soon as the mode of production based on capital is presupposed //actually money has been transformed into capital only at the end of the first production process, which resulted in its reproduction (1) and in the new production of surplus capital I (2); but surplus capital I is itself only realised as surplus capital once it has reproduced itself (3) and posited surplus capital II (4), i.e. once the presuppositions of money in the process of becoming capital which still lie outside the movement of real capital have disappeared, and capital therefore has in fact itself and in accordance with its immanent essence created the very conditions from which it sets out in reproduction// the condition that the capitalist must bring into circulation values created by his own labour or in some other way—excepting only values created by already existing, past wage labour—belongs to the antediluvian conditions of capital; to its historical presuppositions, which, precisely as such historical presuppositions, have vanished and therefore belong to the history of its formation but by no means to its contemporary history, i.e. do not belong to the real system of the mode of production dominated by it. [XXII-1388] If e.g. the flight of serfs into the cities was one of the historical conditions and presuppositions for the development of the medieval city, it is not a condition, a moment, of the reality of fully developed city life, but belongs to its past presuppositions, to the presuppositions of its becoming, which are superseded in its being. But the conditions of the becoming, the emergence, of capital imply that it is not yet in being but is only becoming. Hence they disappear with the development of real capital, the capital which, setting out from its own reality, itself posits the conditions for its realisation. This occurs, e.g., when the process in which money or value-for-itself originally becomes capital presupposes a primitive accumulation by the owner of money or commodities, which he has achieved as a non-capitalist, whether by saving, or by his own labour, etc. Therefore, while the presuppositions for the transformation of money into capital appear as given, external presuppositions for the emergence of capital, as soon as capital has become capital, it creates its own presuppositions, namely the possession of the real conditions for the creation of new values without exchange—by means of its own production process. These presuppositions, which originally appeared as prerequisites of its becoming, and therefore could not arise from its action as capital, now appear as results of its own realisation, reality, as brought into being by it, not as conditions of its emergence, but as results of its being. It no longer sets out from its presuppositions, but is itself presupposed, and, setting out from itself, it itself creates the presuppositions for its maintenance and growth. The conditions, therefore, which preceded the creation of surplus capital I, and which express the becoming of capital, do not fall within the sphere of the mode of production for which capital serves as the presupposition. They lie behind it as preliminary historical stages of its becoming, just as the processes through which the Earth was transformed from a fluid sea of vapour into its present form, lie beyond its life as finished Earth. Note the views of the bourgeois political economists, who consider capital to be an eternal and natural form of production, but still try to justify it by declaring the conditions of its becoming (the imaginary conditions, moreover) to be the conditions of its present realisation, i.e. they present the moments in which the capitalist appropriates as a non-capitalist—because he is only in the process of becoming—as the very conditions in which
 he appropriates as a fully-fledged capitalist. //Natural laws of production! Here, it is true, it is a matter of the natural laws of bourgeois production, hence of the laws within which production occurs at a particular historical stage and under particular historical conditions of production. If there were no such laws, the system of bourgeois production would be altogether incomprehensible. What is involved here, therefore, is the presentation of the nature of this particular mode of production, hence its natural laws. But just as it is itself historical, so are its nature and the laws of that nature. The natural laws of the Asiatic, the ancient, or the feudal mode of production were essentially different. On the other hand, it is entirely certain that human production possesses definite laws or relations which remain the same in all forms of production. These identical characteristics are quite simple and can be summarised in a very small number of commonplace phrases.// These attempts at apologetics demonstrate a bad conscience and the inability to bring the specific mode of appropriation of capital into harmony with the general laws of property proclaimed by capitalist society itself. On the other hand—and this is much more important—our method indicates the points at which historical analysis must be introduced, or at which the bourgeois economy as a mere historical form of the production process points beyond itself towards earlier historical modes of production. To present thelaws of the bourgeois economy, it is not necessary therefore to write the real history [XXII-1389] of the production relations. But the correct analysis and deduction of these relations always leads to primary equations, which point to a past lying behind this system. If, on the one hand, the pre-bourgeois phases appear as merely historical, i.e. as presuppositions which have been superseded, the present conditions of production [on the other hand] appear as superseding themselves and therefore as positing themselves as historical presuppositions for a future society.// The above already belongs in part to the examination of the so-called primitive accumulation,

a See this volume, pp. 243-56.— Ed.

But the following should be added here:

The conversion of money into capital and therefore the formation of surplus capital I have two conditions;

Firstly: The money must be able to be exchanged freely for labour; the historical conditions which have to be fulfilled for this to happen will be considered later. The money owner, who now enters the marketplace, comes upon these conditions as the ruling conditions of the mode of production. The money (and what it represents) already in itself confronts labour as capital, and now has only to perform its function as such.

Secondly: If an individual wants to become a capitalist today, [he] must have money. If he is to be a newly formed capitalist, who has neither inherited money (is already in possession of money made in a capitalist way), nor been loaned money //for the identity of the person who confronts the worker with money in his pocket is a matter of complete indifference//, nor stolen it, nor acquired it in another sphere of capital (outside the actual sphere of production) as merchant, financier, speculator, etc., and the relation of these secondary functions of capital to productive capital will emerge later (we are not concerned at all here with the division of the available capitals, with their transfer from one hand to another), he must have earned it or worked for it and saved it. (What he gains by putting his savings out to interest, etc., must be deducted from this, for this is already capitalist valorisation.) He first converts his money into capital from the moment when he exploits workers himself. If he was a productive worker himself, the péculea cannot be great.

a Savings.— Ed. But e.g. doctors, writers, lawyers, etc., who have acquired “capital”, have only acquired it because the capitalist mode of production is dominant. The payment of these unproductive labours depends precisely on the wealth of the real agents of production, and the real use value of the service they render is therefore still entirely independent of its price. Milton did the Paradise Lost for £5.

Hoard formation proper does not occur. The hoarder is always a usurer at the same time.

The capitalist mode of production constantly reproduces the conditions, in that:

1) in the simple production process it reproduces the relation of the conditions of labour as capital and that of the worker as wage labour.

2) The continuous conversion of surplus value into capital (accumulation) creates the range of these conditions which exist as capital through the increase of the labour capacities available as wage labourers.

3) The extension of the capitalist mode of production to ever new spheres abolishes the unity which still sometimes existed there between the direct producer and his conditions of production; turns the producer into a wage labourer and his means of labour into capital which confronts him as a wage labourer.

4) The concentration (and competition) of capital eliminates small capitals and fuses them together into large ones, although a process of repulsion in newly formed employments, etc., runs parallel to this process of attraction in the developed spheres. If this were not the case, bourgeois production would be very simple, and would soon arrive at its catastrophe.

[XXII-1390] 11 Table of the Reproduction Process (presented without circulation of money and at a constant scale of reproduction)"7

[First Draft]

Production of Means of Subsistence

Profit

Industrial profit Interest Rent

Constant capital
4,000 / \ \ \ 3,600 (does not enter the valorisation process)

Variable capital I / I / J / 400 (enters the product)

- 100-

Surplus value \ i /\ i / V -------200

Profit r~ - X) Industrial profit Interest Rent

[II] Production of Constant Capital] \ [400]

Constant capital
533 1/3

Variable capital Surplus value f / /

Reconversion of Surplus Value into Capital

[Second Draft]

1) Means of Subsistence Wages Profit Constant capital Variable capital II) Constant Capital Wages Constant capital Industrial profit / Profit Interest Rent 5,333 1/3 4,800 533 1/3 Variable capital 33 1/3 Surplus value 266 2/3 Product 933 1/3 Therefore, summarising the whole:
Constant capital - Variable capital 933 1/3 - 233 1/3 Surplus value 466 2/3 Product in all 1,633 1/3

[XXII-1391] The part of the constant capital (hence here the fixed capital) which does not enter into the product, i.e. does not enter into the valorisation process, is discarded in all cases.

[Third Draft]

1) Means of Subsistence

Constant capital Variable capital Surplus value Product

Under I) we see the constant capital of 400, which re-occurs in the product in its entirety. The whole of this product consists of means of subsistence, which enter into the consumption fund; although they enter only partially into the consumption fund of class I. The variable capital, = 100, posits a surplus value of 200, in addition to its own reproduction in the product. The 100 of variable capital are paid out in money, in wages; these wages draw out of the total product of 700 products to the value of 100. In this way, the money flows back into the hands of the capitalist of class I. The surplus value appears entirely as profit, but is split into industrial profit, interest, and rent, of which at least the last two are entirely paid in money; the total amount of products is drawn on to the extent of 200 by the owners of this income.
Class I has therefore consumed 300 of its own product; at the same time, money has flowed back to the capitalists, with the result that they can pay wages, interest and rent anew in money. There remains an unconsumed and disposable remainder of 400 from the total product, which is the part of the value of the

[XXII-1392] product needed to replace the constant capital of 400.

Under II), the whole of the product consists of raw materials and machines.
The variable capital of 133 1/3 is paid out in wages (money), and 133 1/3 is drawn with this money from the total product of class I.
Thus 133 1/3 of the money of class II flows to class I, and products to the same value flow from class I to class II. The surplus value of 266 2/3 is paid in money as interest and rent, and a quantity of the products of class I is bought with this money. This sum of money together with the money that has flowed back from the wages, interest and rent of class I and the wages of class II is more than sufficient to provide class I with the 400 in money needed to replace class I’s constant capital of 400 and to allow class II to draw means of subsistence from the total product of class I for its industrial profit. The result is that the whole of the product [of class] I has passed into the consumption fund, and 400 of the total product of class II has passed into class I in replacement of its constant capital, but class II, on the other hand, needs 533 1/3 for the replacement of its own constant capital.

The situation is actually as follows.

Class I. 100 are paid in money as wages. For this 100 the workers draw 100 out of the total product of I; with this, 100 flows back to the capitalists of I in money, with which they can buy labour anew. They have already paid a certain part of the 200 of surplus value the year before in interest and rent; with this money interest and rent buy their corresponding parts of the total product of I. The money thus flows back to the capitalists of I, and with this money they pay interest and rent anew or give interest and rent new drafts on the product of the next year. As far as industrial profit is concerned, they partly consume it in natura, and partly exchange [it] among themselves through the mediation of money payments.
Class II has paid 133 1/3 (in money) as wages. For this money, the working class of II buys products from I. These 133 1/3 thus flow back into the hands of class I in money, and class I uses this to buy products of this amount from class II. At the same time, the interest and rent money flows to class I from class II, and the latter similarly draws its share in return for this from the total product of I. With this money, class I buys products from class II, to which the money has thus flowed back again, allowing it to pay wages again, as well as interest and rent. It gives out one part of this money—a part which = its industrial profit—in order to buy products from I. With this money, class I buys the remainder of the products it requires from II. It has now bought for 400, = its constant capital, from class II, and replaced its constant capital.
The whole of the product of class I has passed into the consumption fund. On the other hand, all the money class II needs for the payment of wages, interest, rent and the monetary transactions of the capitalists within this class has returned to it.
Under III), the total product of class II appears as the constant capital of the society, and the total product of class I represents in part the total amount of variable capital of I and II, in part the total amount of income enjoyed by both classes under various categories.//

[XXII-1393] The following should be noted in connection with the foregoing economic tables:
1) The constant capital consists of fixed and circulating capital.
The part of the fixed capital which does not enter into the valorisation process is left out of account. Or, and this is the same thing, that part alone of the fixed capital which enters into annual reproduction, hence into the year’s total product, is here included under the heading of constant capital.
Furthermore, part of the capital consists of money. Here only the variable capital is presented as money capital. Interest and rent, on the other hand, [are presented] as sums of money existing in the hands of their owners. The amount of money to be found in circulation is in fact much less than appears here, partly as the monetary expression of variable capital, partly as the monetary expression of interest and rent.
2) Commercial capital and money-dealing capital are not displayed separately, as this would make the table too complicated.
3) For the same reason, reproduction is conceived as remaining constant, since the presentation of the accumulation process would equally tend to confuse the simple conception of the main movement.
4) Tables I and II show how the total product of II appears as the constant capital of the society, whereas the total product of I is realised in the variable capital and the surplus value of both classes. This process is presupposed in Table III, therefore here the product of II appears directly as constant capital, while the product of I appears as the total amount of variable capital and surplus value.
5) The dotted lines always show the origin of expenditures, the starting point of circulation, where they ascend. The unbroken lines show the origin of expenditures, where they descend.
The complete table follows on the next page [see p. 244]:

[XXII-1395] ß) SO-CALLED PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION

From an earlier presentation of the subject. If we consider first of all the relationship as it has become, value which has become capital (and surplus value which has become surplus capital), and living labour as mere use value confronting it, so that living labour appears as mere means for the valorisation of objectified, dead labour, for its permeation with a life-giving soul while losing its own soul to it—and having produced as a result alien wealth on the one hand, but on the other, as its own property, only the necessitousness of living labour capacity—then we can see clearly that the physical conditions of real labour (the material in which it is valorised, the instrument by means of which it is valorised, and the means of subsistence which kindle the flame of living labour capacity into activity and prevent its being extinguished, and supply the necessary matter for its life process) are posited in and through the process itself as alien, independent existences; in other words as the mode of existence of an alien person, as self-sufficient values-for-themselves, and thus as values which form wealth alien to the living labour capacity which confronts them in subjective isolation, the wealth of the capitalist. The

[XXII-1394] Tableau économique of the Reproduction Process as a Whole

1) Means of Subsistence

Constant capital Variable capital Surplus value Product (means of subsistence)

Profit 466 2/3

The objective conditions of living labour appear as separate values, become independent as against living labour capacity as subjective being, which therefore appears, as against them, only as value of another kind (distinct from them not as value, but as use value).
Once this separation is presupposed, the production process can only produce it anew, reproduce it, and that on a larger scale. How it does this, we have already seen. The objective conditions of living labour capacity are presupposed as independent existences confronting it, as the objectivity of a subject distinct from living labour capacity and independently confronting it. The reproduction and valorisation, i.e. the expansion, of these objective conditions is therefore simultaneously their reproduction and their new production as the wealth of an alien subject, indifferent to and independently confronting labour capacity. What is reproduced and newly produced is not only the being of these objective conditions of living labour but their being as alien to the worker, as independent values, i.e. values belonging to an alien subject, confronting this living labour capacity. The objective conditions of labour gain a subjective existence as against living labour capacity— capital gives rise to the capitalist. On the other hand, the purely subjective being of labour capacity vis-à-vis its own conditions gives it a merely indifferent objective form as against these conditions— it is only a value of a particular use value—a commodity—alongside its own conditions as values of a different use value—other commodities. [XXII-1396] Instead of being reproduced in the production process as conditions for its realisation, they on the contrary emerge from it as conditions for their own valorisation and preservation as values-for-themselves over against it. The material on which it works is alien material; just as the instrument is an alien instrument; its labour appears as a mere accessory to them as substance and therefore objectifies itself in things not belonging to it. Indeed, living labour itself appears as alien vis-à-vis the living labour capacity whose labour it is, whose life it expresses, for it is surrendered to capital in return for objectified labour, for the product of labour itself. Labour capacity relates to it as to something alien, as compulsory labour. Its own labour is alien to it—and, as we see in capitalist production, it really is alien, as regards its content, its ‘direction, and its social form—just as much as material and instrument are. Therefore the product too appears to it as a combination of alien material, alien instrument and alien labour—as alien property, and after production it has become poorer by the life force expended, and it begins the drudgery anew as labour capacity employed by the conditions of labour.
The recognition of the product as its own, and its awareness that its separation from the conditions of its realisation is an injustice—a relationship imposed by force—is an enormous consciousness, itself the product of the capitalist mode of production and just as much the knell to its doom as the consciousness of the slave that he could not be the property of another reduced slavery to an artificial, lingering existence, and made it impossible for it to continue to provide the basis of production.
However, if we consider the original relation, before money entered into the process of self-valorisation, we come up against various conditions which must have arisen, or been given, historically, for money to become capital and for labour to become wage labour. The essential conditions are posited in the relationship itself as it originally appeared: 1) On the one side, the existence of living labour capacity as a purely subjective existence, separated from the moments of its objective reality; therefore separated just as much from the conditions of living labour as from the means of existence, the means of subsistence, the means of self-maintenance of living labour capacity; the living possibility of labour on one side in this complete abstraction. 2) On the other side, the value or objectified labour must be an accumulation of use values, sufficiently large to provide the objective conditions not merely for the production of the commodities necessary to maintain or to reproduce living labour capacity, but also to produce surplus labour, to supply the objective material for it. 3) A system of free exchange—money circulation—between the two sides; a relation ship between the two extremes which is based upon exchange values, not on the lord-subject relationship, i.e. production which does not directly supply the means of subsistence to the producer but is mediated by exchange; and therefore also does not have direct disposition over alien labour, but must buy it from the vehicle of this labour himself. Finally 4) the side which represents the objective conditions of labour in the form in which they have become independent must present itself as value, and the ultimate aim must be the positing of value, the self-valorisation of value, the creation of money—not immediate enjoyment or the creation of use values.

[XXII-1397] So long as both sides exchange their labour with one another in the form of objectified labour—as products, which are commodities—the relation is impossible. It is equally impossible if the worker himself appears as the property of the other side, himself belongs among the objective conditions of labour, and not as a person engaged in exchange. (That slavery can exist at

individual points within the bourgeois system of production, does not contradict this. But slavery is then possible only because it does not exist at other points, and represents an anomaly in relation to the bourgeois system itself.)

The conditions under which the relationship originally appears, or which appear as historical presuppositions for its becoming, exhibit at first glance a dual character - on the one side dissolution of lower forms of living labour, on the other side dissolution of relations more fortunate for the immediate producer. On the one hand, dissolution of slavery and serfdom. On the other, dissolution of the form under which the means of production are immediately available as the property of the immediate producer, whether his work is predominantly directed at use value (agriculture) or exchange value (urban work). Finally, the dissolution of the form of community in which the worker, as organ of this naturally evolved community, is at the same time posited as owner or possessor of his means of production.//

[ADDENDA]

//Petty, Sir Dudley North, Locke. By comparing North's and Locke's writings with Petty's Quantulumcunque (1682) and A Treatise of Taxes, and Contributions (1667), their indebtedness to Petty can be seen. Thus in the matter of 1) the lowering of interest; 2) the RAISING AND ABASING OF money; 3) North's CALLING INTEREST THE RENT OF money, etc. [W. Petty, The Political] Anatomy of Ireland (1672). North and Locke wrote their works a at the same time and on the same occasion: lowering of interest and raising of money. But [they have] opposite views. With Locke it is the want of money that is responsible for the high rate of interest and in general for the fact that things DO NOT FETCH THEIR REAL PRICES and THE REVENUES TO BE PAID OUT OF THEM. North shows the opposite, that it is not want of money but of capital or revenue. We find in his works the first definite concept of stock or capital, or rather of money as a mere form of capital, insofar as it is not means of circulation. In Sir Dudley North's writings we find the first correct conception of interest as opposed to Locke's idea.

a [D. North,] Discourses upon Trade; Principally Directed to the Cases of the Interest, Coynage, Clipping, Increase of Money, London, 1691, and J. Locke, Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money (1691), in: The Works, 7th ed., Vol. II, London, 1768.- Ed.

Petty, A Treatise of Taxes, and Contributions, London, 1667. Supplementary points. a

1) On the quantity of circulating money which a nation needs, §§ 14, 15 [p. 16].

His view of total production is shown in the following passage:

* "If there be 1,000 men in a territory, and if 100 of these can raise the necessary food and raiment for the whole 1,000, if 200 more make as much commodities, as other nations will give either their commodities or money for, and if 400 more be employed in the ornaments, pleasure and magnificence of the whole; if there be 200 governors, divines, lawyers, physicians, merchants and retailers, making in all 900, the question is,* etc.,119 concerning the * paupers ('supernumeraries')" * (p. 12).

In his analysis of rent and of its valuation in money, where he takes equal labour (quantities), Petty remarks:

* "This, I say to be the foundation of equalising and balancing of values; yet in the superstructures and practices thereupon, I confess there is much variety and intricacy" * ([p.] 25).

[XXII-1398] 2) What he was much preoccupied with is [the "natural par] between land and labour" ([p.] 25).

* "Our silver and gold we call [by several names, as in England by] pounds, shillings, and pence, all which may be called and understood by either of the [three. But that which I] would say upon this matter is, that all things ought to be valued by two natural denominations, which is land and labour: that is, all ought to say, a ship or garment is worth such a measure of land, with such another measure of labour; forasmuch as both ships and garments were the creatures of lands and men's labours thereupon; this being true, we should be glad to cut a natural par between land and labour, so as we might express the value by either of them alone as well or better than by both, and reduce one into the other as easily and certainly as we reduce pence into pounds." *

For this reason Petty seeks the "natural values of the fee simple of land", after he has found the monetary expression of rent ([p.] 25).

His definition contains three overlapping elements:

a) The magnitude of value, determined by equal labour time, with labour figuring as the source of value.

b) Value as the form of social labour. Hence money is treated as the true form of value, although in other passages he overturns all the illusions of the Monetary System. With him, therefore, the definition of the concept.

c) Labour as the source of exchange value is confused with labour as the source of use value; and labour is seen as presupposing natural material (land). In fact, he "cuts" the "par" between labour and land by presenting the fee simple of the latter as capitalised rent - therefore not treating land as the natural material of real labour.

See this volume, pp. 170-75.- Ed.

3) With reference to the rate of interest he says:

* "Of the vanity and fruitlessness of making civil positive laws against the laws of nature" * (i.e. the laws arising from the nature of bourgeois production) * "I have spoken elsewhere" * (l.c., [p.] 29).

4) In regard to rent: surplus value consequent on the greater productivity of labour:

* "If the said shires by greater labour than now is used (as by digging instead of ploughing, setting instead of sowing, picking of choice seed instead of taking it promiscuously, steeping [it] instead of using it wholly unprepared, and manuring the ground with salt instead of rotten straw, etc.), could be fertilised, then will the rent be as much more advanced, as the excess of increase exceeds that of the labour" * ([p.] 32).

(He means here the price or wages of labour.)

5) Raising [the value] of money (§§ 18-19). a

6) The passage quoted earlier b "if you allow double, then he works but half so much, etc." must be taken to mean: If the worker received for 6 hours the value of 6 hours, then he would receive double what he now receives, and he receives the value of 6 for 12. He would then work only 6, "which is a loss to the public, etc."

Petty, An Essay Concerning the Multiplication of Mankind (1682). Division of labour (pp. 28-29).120

Political Anatomy of Ireland (and Sapienti Sat.), 1672 (London edition, 1691).

1) * "This brings us to the most important consideration in political oeconomies, viz. how to make a par and equation between land and labour, so as to express the value of any thing by either alone" * ([p.] 63).

In fact, the task in this connection is only to resolve the value of land itself into labour.

[XXII-1399] 2) This work was written later than the one examined earlier. c

* "The day's food of an adult man, at a medium, and not the [day's labour, is the common measu]re of value, and seems to be as regular and constant as the value of fine silver... Wherefore I valued an Irish [cabin at the] number of day's food, which the maker spent in building of it" * ([p.] 65).

This latter statement is quite Physiocratic.

a [W. Petty,] A Treatise of Taxes, and Contributions, London, 1679, Ch. XIV, p. 64.- Ed.

b See this volume, p. 172.- Ed.

c This refers to A Treatise of Taxes, and Contributions, the first edition of which appeared in 1662.- Ed.

* "That some men will eat more than others is not material, since by a day's food we understand 1/100 part [of what 100] of all sorts and sizes will eat, so as [to] live, labour, and generate" * ([p.] 64).

But what Petty is searching for here in the statistics of Ireland is not the common measure of values, but the measure of values in the sense that money is the measure of values.

3) (Quantity of money and wealth of the nation (Verbum Sapienti, 1672, [p.] 13).

4) Capital.

* "What we call the wealth, stock, or provision of the nation, being the effect of the former or past labour, should not be conceived to differ from efficiencies in being" * ([p.] 9).

5) Productive power of labour.

* "We said, that half the people, by a very gentle labour, might much enrich the kingdom ... upon what shall they employ themselves? To which I answer in general, upon producing food and necessaries for the whole people of the land, by few hands; whether by labouring harder, or by introducing the compendium, and facilitations of art, which is equivalent to what men vainly hoped from polygamy. For as much as he, that can do the work of five men by one, effects the same as the begetting four adult workmen" ([p.] 22). "Cheapest food ... will be when food also is raised by fewer hands than elsewhere" * ([p.] 23).

6) Purpose of men and goal ([p.] 24).

7) On money, see also the Quantulumcunque (1682).//

//Buat (comte du), Eléments de la politique, ou Recherche des vrais principes de l'économie sociale (6 volumes), London, 1773.

This feeble and diffuse writer, who takes the outward form of Physiocracy for its essence and glorifies the landed aristocracy - and in fact accepts Physiocracy only insofar as it serves this purpose - would not have to be mentioned at all but for the fact that the brutal characteristics of the bourgeois emerge so sharply in his work; quite as sharply as, e.g., in Ricardo's writings later. His error in restricting the net product to rent makes no difference to this.

What Buat says is repeated by Ricardo in relation to the net product in general. a The workers belong to the faux frais b and exist only in order that the owners of the net product may "form society". (See the relevant passages.121) The free worker's lot is conceived as only a changed form of slavery; but this is necessary so that the higher strata may form "society".// Arthur Young too sees the net product, surplus value, as the purpose of production. a 122//

[XXII-1400] In this connection we may recall the passage in Ricardo, directed against Adam Smith, for whom that capital is the most productive which employs the greatest number of workers. b On this, compare Buat, pp. 30-31; also on the labouring class and slavery ([pp.] 28-29); on the necessity for these labourers to work surplus time, and on the meaning of the strict nécessaire c ([p.] 30). The one passage to be quoted here - because it deals well with the prattle about the risk that the capitalist always runs;

"They" (the merchants) "have risked much to gain much? But they have risked men, and goods or money. As for the men, if they have exposed them to manifest peril for the sake of gain, they have done a very wicked act. As for the goods, if there is any merit in producing them, there should be no merit in risking them for the profit of one individual, etc." (Vol. II, [p.] 297). d//

//Capitalist cultivation of the land:

"As the LAND is PUT in better order, an acre takes less corn to sow it, and less strength" (horses, etc.) "to manage it" (An Essay on the Causes of the Present High Price of Provisions, as connected with Luxury, Currency, Taxes, and National Debt, London, 1773, p. 13) (author: Dickson, author of The Husbandry of the Ancients).

Rent. The pamphlet cited quotes An Inquiry into the Late Mercantile Distress, in Scotland and England etc., London, 1772, and in the latter work, which apart from this calls for an increase in the currency, against which the Essay protests (see p. 245 of the Thick Notebook 123), complaint is made about the great increase in rents. The author says that the view of the landlord is

* "that to advance the rents was the first step to improvements in agriculture" (An Inquiry etc., p. 36). "The rents have been greatly advanced in general all over the country" (Scotland), "and in some parts of it, to a degree that hardly admitted of the tenants' absolute wants being supplied" * ([p.] 38). Many tenants had therefore emigrated to America ([pp.] 51 [-52]).

In the Essay now (1773) the rise in the price of corn in England is in part explained by the fact that the demand for butchers' meat has led to the conversion of the larger part of the land to pasture, and that in England

* "the arable lands are kept in constant tillage; and the grasslands, whether meadows or upland pastures, are kept perpetually in grass" * ([p.] 15).

a See A. Young, Political Arithmetic. Containing Observations on the Present State of Great Britain..., London, 1774.- Ed.

b See D. Ricardo, Des principes de l'économie politique et de l'impôt, Ch. XXVI, and present edition, Vol. 31, pp. 116-19, 126-29.- Ed.

c Absolute necessities.- Ed.

d Marx quotes in French.- Ed.

On the Scottish method, by which lands cultivated in grass and corn are constantly rotated between the two, there is higher production of both corn and meat. On the English method, there is less corn, and not much more butchers' meat, but it is high-fed. According to Dickson, therefore, the irrational system of cultivation in England is the cause of the rise in the price of corn, etc. (disregarding the bad seasons). * “It is a certain truth, that a great quantity of our best lands, formerly in tillage, is now lying in grass’’ ([p.] 9). “Provisions in general are reduced in their quantity, and therefore must be raised in their price” * ([p.] 17). The "free importation" of corn is proposed as one means of lowering the prices of provisions (pp. 73 sqq.). But there is no way of helping the depressed state of manufactures except: * “by reducing the price of materials and labour: and this can only be done by reducing the price of provisions. The landholder is in a different situation from the manufacturer: For as in all farms lately taken in lease, the rent is adapted to the present high price of their productions; if this price is reduced, the tenants of these farms must undoubtedly fail” ([p.] 81). “What is to be done for the support of the farmer? Is he to be left to the mercy of his landlord?” ([p.] 82). “There are some” (landlords) “who have no more compassion for their tenants than for the Moors of Bengal, or the Caribs of St. Vincents. Immersed in dissipation, or possessed by avarice, they assign the management of their country affairs to persons whose whole merit consists in being expert in bargain-making, and who are the more highly valued, the more they are habituated to the low arts of trick and cunning” * ([p.] 83). If prices are reduced through “ free importation ” or “regulation of the currency ” ([pp.] 84 sqq.) it will therefore not be necessary * “that a breach be made in their leases... Should rents be reduced in proportion to the price of commodities, they” * (the * landlords) “will still be able to live as well as at present” * ([p.] 84) (namely on account of the reduced prices of the commodities). [XXII-1401] With him the excessive issue of paper is also a reason . He is a currency principle man. He indicates taxes as a further cause of the rise in the prices of provisions. * “Taxes raise the price of all commodities” * ([p.] 89).. Hence, on pp. 87 sqq., a rise in the price of provisions with the rise in the public debt. Only one tax without * “such [a] bad consequence—a tax on stockholders” * ([p.] 89). Apart from the taxes there is * “the money spent by the taxgatherers” * ([p.] 92). He proposes

* “the saving of 1 or 2 millions annually on the article of posts and pensions” * ([p.] 93). Tithes to be assessed in money, as has long been the case in Scotland ([p.] 104). The division of commonties (l.c.). * “Making roads in the country at the public expense” * ([p.] 105). Not only do roads open markets to the farmer, he “gains * access to foreign manure for improving his lands ... the advantages of one place are communicated to all*” ([p.] 106). What is the cause of the rise in rents? Not bad seasons. For “if the * price of provisions is raised* by *bad crops, land continues of the same value, and the farmer cannot afford a higher rent... In proportion to this” (advancement of price) “the quantity which he sends to market is lessened*” ([p.] 6). Nor can improvements be the cause. Not only “have rents risen nearly in the proportion mentioned in places where no improvements have been made”, but also * “it is even probable that they”, (the improvements) “have prevented the price of provisions from rising so high as otherwise it would have done” ([p.] 7). “When the price is raised by other causes” * (than * bad seasons), “the produce of the land becomes more valuable, and, in proportion to this, the farmer can afford an advancement of rent. When therefore the rise of rents keeps pace with the price of provisions, it is a certain evidence that in the opinion of the farmers the advancement of the price is not owing to bad crops” * ([p.] 6). But now rents have risen, particularly in Southern Scotland, * “nearly in the same proportion as the price of grain and cattle” * ([pp. 6-]7).// //Charles Smith, A Short Essay on the Corn Trade, and the Corn Laws etc., London, 1758. (The corn tracts to be cited later.) The tendency of this pamphlet can be seen from the following: * “Although it be the general opinion that the present dearness of corn arises principally from the avarice of the farmers and [the] iniquity of the factors, merchants, millers, bakers and dealers in corn; yet there is cause to believe that it arises chiefly, if not wholly, from a real scarcity, occasioned by the shortness of crops * in the last 4 to 5 years, 1756 in the whole * kingdom, 1752-55 in * its * West and Northwest parts” * ([Ch. Smith, Three Tracts on the Corn-Trade and Corn-Laws, London, 1766, p.] 5).a He develops the laws of supply and demand against popular prejudices.// (This is the first of the Three Tracts on the Corn-Trade and Corn-Laws published together in 1766.) //Edmund Burke (the late), Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, originally presented to the Right Hon. William Pitt, in the month of November, 1795, London, 1800.3

purchase any of the means of subsistence")* “will be converted into a body of men who earn their subsistence by working for others, and who will be under a necessity of going to market for all they want” ([p.] 147). “There will, perhaps, be more labour, because there will be more compulsion to it” ([p.] 147). “More bread will be consumed, and, therefore, more corn grown: because there will be less ability of going to the price of other food” ([pp.] 147-48). “Towns and manufactures will increase, because more will be driven to them in quest of places and employments. This is the way in which the engrossing of farms naturally operates: And this is the way in which, for many years, it has been actually operating in this kingdom” ([p.] 148). “The very causes which produce depopulation among us, may, for some time, promote tillage” * ([p.] 148). Shows further on pp. 149-52 (p. 32 of the notebook 126), that the labouring classes consumed disproportionately more meat, and that therefore the price of corn, especially wheat, is of less concern to them. Cites Rev. Mr. Addington’s Enquiry into the Reasons for and against Inclosing Open-Fields, London, 1772, pp. 43 and 37: “In Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, * inclosing 127 has greatly prevailed, and most of the new enclosed lands are turned into pasturage·, in consequence of which, many lands have not now 500 acres ploughed yearly, in which 1,500, or at least 1,000 were ploughed formerly; and scarce an ear of corn is now to be seen in some that bore hundreds of quarters. And so severely are the effects of this felt, that worse wheat has been lately sold in those counties at an average of 7s. and 7s. 6d. the Winchester bushel, for many months together than used to be sold at 3s. 6d. and 4s., etc.” * ([p.] 43). Addington also says: * “In the counties of Northampton and Leicester the decrease of the inhabitants in almost all the inclosed villages in which [XXII-1403] they have no considerable manufacture, is obvious to be remarked by every one who knew their state 20 or 30 years ago, and sees them now... The ruin of former dwelling houses, barns, stables, etc., shew every one who pass through them that they were once better inhabited. A hundred houses and families have in some places dwindled into 8 or 10 [pp. 43, 44]. The landholders, in most parishes that have been inclosed only 15 or 20 years, are very few in comparison of the numbers who occupied them in their open field state. Itisno uncommon thing to see 4 or 5 wealthy graziers engrossing a large inclosed lordship, which was before in the hands of 20 or 30 farmers, and as many smaller tenants or proprietors. All these are thrown out of their livings with their families, and many other families which were employed and supported by them” * (Addington, [pp.] 37[-38]). Price comments on these quotations from Addington: * “I have here in view inclosures of open fields and lands already improved. It is acknowledged by even the writers in defence of inclosures, that these diminish tillage, increase the monopolies of farms, raise the prices of provisions, and produce depopulation. Such inclosures, therefore, however gainful they may be at present a In the original the words given by Marx in brackets immediately precede the passage in which he includes them here.— Ed.

to a few individuals, are undoubtedly pernicious. On the contrary. Inclosures of waste lands and commonties would be useful, if divided into small allotments, and given up to be occupied at moderate rents by the poor. But if, besides lessening the produce of fine wool, they bear hard on the poor by depriving them of a part of their subsistence, and only go towards increasing farms already too large, the advantages attending them may not much exceed the disadvantages” * ([pp.] 155-56, note). (One can see from these quotations how shallowly and optimistically the matter is conceived by that compiler and arch-plagiarist MacCulloch in his Literature of Political Economy, London, 1845 (p. 194): * “To whatever other causes the increase of prices might have been ascribed, one could hardly have imagined that the extension of enclosures would have been of the number. Indeed, if there be any thing that contributed more than another to the vast increase that has taken place in the produce of England since the middle of the last century, it has been the enclosure of wastes, etc.” *) One can see how with contemporaries of the process, which forms a major moment in the primitive accumulation of capital— namely (quote Steuart' later) the separation of the earth from its industriouschildren— the formation of big farms is the characteristic feature, as “inclosing” (this is only another word for the concentration of many small farms in a single hand). Just as Mirabeau describes large-scale manufactories as “fabriques réunies” ,b small manufacturing concerns concentrated in one hand. This primitive accumulation, which looks so idyllic in the hands of the liberal cretins, is a most melancholy and tragic story. Concentration of the available conditions of production in a few hands, and their separation from the hands of the direct producers, as whose property or possessions they originally appear, is the decisive factor. On the theft of the possessions of the church by the nobility and the bourgeoisie, see Cobbett’s history of the Reformation.1 The beginning of the liberal regime sees the fraudulent appropriation of the estates of the Crown (see F. Newman6). The fraudulentenclosuresofthecommons. (The passages cited, and others.) In this connection the destruction of the yeomanry,73 the self-cultivating proprietors //as also the cottiers 43//, who had in their hands perhaps 7/10 of the land after 1689, and were in fact the owners of property. a I. Steuart, An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy..., Vol. I, London, 1767, p. 50.— Ed. b Associated factories. See [H. G. V. R.] Mirabeau, De la monarchie prussienne, sous Frédéric le Grand.., Vol. 3, London, 1788, p. 20 — Ed. c W. Cobbett, A History of the Protestant “ Reformation", in England and Ireland.., London, 1824.— Ed. d F. W. Newman, Lectures on Political Economy, London, 1851, pp. 129-30.— Ed.

throwing together of small farms. This is still proceeding now. The clearing of estates has taken place again in Ireland on a very large scale since 1846. The death by hunger of 1 million Irish and the driving of another million overseas—this was a clearing of the estate of Ireland. Still continuing. (Cite details on this.) The clearing of estates only shows, as a systematic process applied to whole counties, what occurred everywhere in detail in that primitive accumulation, as a result of the changed relations of production.)

Now against Price, Addington, etc.:

An Inquiry into the Connection between the Present Price of Provisions, and the Size of Farms etc. By a Farmer, London, 1773.a

This fellow shrugs his shoulders over those whose philosophy “does not see beyond the bellies of the poor”. Modern political economy can certainly not be reproached with this. 

* “The culture of the earth cannot be overdone” * ([p.] 62).

The fellow is a freetrader:

repeal of the corn laws; * “make the trade free and open for export or import at all times and on all occasions, without the least restraint ... let corn flow like water, and it will find its level” * ([p.] 88). /1 Free trade, leaving aside the abolition of restrictions on international trade, means nothing but the free, unrestricted development of capitalist production and its laws, without any regard for the agents of production, without any regard for any [XXII-1405] considerations which fall outside the laws and conditions of the development of capital, whether those considerations are national, humanitarian or whatever . The previous restrictions, insofar as they proceed from the manufacturers, landowners, etc., themselves have the purpose of first creating the conditions in which capital can proceed from itself as its own presupposition. It is only at a certain point in its development that it ceases to need any extraneous help.//

* “Absolute necessity of a perfect freedom in trade in general, but most especially in that of corn” * ([p.] 135).

Against Price:

* “Nor is it a consequence that there must be depopulation, because men are not seen wasting their labour in the open field” ([p.] 124).

“If by converting the little farmers into a body of men who must work for others more labour is produced, it is an advantage which the nation should wish for” ([p.] 128).

“The produce being greater when their joint labours are employed on one farm, there will be a surplus for manufacturers, and by these means manufactures, one of

the mines of this nation, will increase, in proportion to the quantity of corn produced” * ([p.] 129).

//It is not just the surplus which is created by the increased productivity of capitalist production. If, for example, only 3 people are now necessary in place of 4 previously employed on the land, and at the same timethe variable capital is replaced by constant capital and the 3 are thrown into manufacture, part of the farmer’s constant capital is exchanged for the variable capital of the manufacturer. The 3 now receive the quantity of corn they consumed previously as peasants on the land in the form of a wage from the manufacturer. Thus, more grain is thrown onto the market, not because a surplus has been produced, but because the part of the product which was previously consumed directly by the 3 as peasants is now purchased by the same 3 people as workers in manufacture . More has been thrown onto the market because more consumers have been taken from agriculture and thrown into manufacture. What is gained by this is not a surplus of corn produce, but more manufacturing produce.//

He admits that meat continued as late as 1697 to be the chief element in the diet of the workers ([p.] 130).

Incidentally, he has the right idea (hence before Adam Smith) about changes in the relative prices of meat and corn and the way they balance out:

* “The value of the one must fall, or that of the other rise, till they come on a par... The only method of ascertaining what should be the price of the one for it to be in proportion to that of the other, is to allot a certain sum of money to the raising of corn, and an equal sum to the rearing and fattening of cattle; an equal profit will determine the real value of each” * ([pp. 132-]33).

(In this passage rent is not included among the costs of production.) This passage is important for prices of production.128

* “If no labour was wanted, there could be no price” * ([p.] 138).

This man concedes to Dr. Price that wages have not risen in proportion to the price of provisions, and adds in congratulation:

* “In the circumstance of the price of labour’s not being increased in the proportion of the price of provisions, the Doctor’s” (Price’s) “assertion corroborates what is said in the valuable works of Mr. Arthur Young, and will, I hope, pacify the minds of those who imagine that the dearness of provisions must ruin our manufactures” * ([p.] 138).

(This latter point was the general view at that time.)

[XXII-1406] * “I most truly lament the loss of our yeomanry, that set of men who really kept up the independence of this nation; and sorry I am to see their lands now in the hands of monopolising lords, tenanted out to small farmers, who hold their leases on such conditions as to be little better than vassals ready to attend a summons on every mischievous occasion. With regard to the class called hirelings, I believe they

are mostly in the same state as they were, with the benefit of work at present, instead of being prowling about commons and wastes” * ([p.] 139).

The following passages for Smith’s opinion, that corn creates its own consumers and always has value: 

* “The culture of the earth cannot be overdone” ([p.] 62).

“Corn is scarce or not scarce in proportion to the consumption of it. If there are more mouths, there will be more corn, because there will be more hands to till the earth; and if there is more corn, there will be more mouths, because plenty will bring people” ([p.] 125).

“Profuse plenty in manufacturing towns does not produce more labour, but the contrary. It is a fact well known to those who are conversant in that matter, that scarcity, to a certain degree, promotes industry, and that the manufacturer who can subsist on three days’ work, will be idle and drunken the remainder of the week” * ([p.] 93)..

This fellow, who gives very precise calculations of the income and expenditure of the farmers (pp. 146, 103-07), says: * “By the foregoing estimate it appears that the farmer may, by great care and with good luck, obtain about 25 p.c. per annum, but to do this he must sell his wheat [at] 46s. 8d., etc. It is not every soil that will admit of a course attended with so much profit” * (l.c. [p. 107]).

It will be seen how the big farmers enriched themselves at that time--how they accumulated capital—through the impoverishment of the labourers and expropriation of the small tenants . From the end of the 14th or the beginning of the 15th through the 16th century we have the conversion of arable land into sheep pastures. The English laws against this. In the 17th century under Elizabeth, and similarly from the time of the Revolution 12 9 until 1697, the small tenants and occupiers again increase, in part through the extension of corn cultivation, in part because manufacture [ha]s also to perform part of its preparatory work (e.g. spinning) on the land.

[The fact that] this “accumulation of capital” went hand in hand with the impoverishment of the workers can also be seen from Price.

[Price] says131:

[...] Bacon, Essays, Civil and Moral, Sect. 20, says: * “The device of King Henry VII was profound and admirable, [in mak]ing farms and houses of husbandry of a standard; that is, maintained with such a proportion of land to [them, as may breed a sujbject in convenient plenty and no servile condition, and to keep the plough in the [hands of the owners and] not hirelings." “ Inclosures," * says Bacon in his history of the reign of Henry VII, [* “began at that] time (1489) to be more frequent, whereby arable land was turned into pasture, which was [easily manag]ed by a few herdsmen. This bred a decay of people... They” (King and parliament) “took a [course to take] a way depopulating inclosures and depopulating pasturage by consequence. The ordinance was, [that all houses of husbandry with 20 acres of ground to them, should be kept up forever,

together [with a ... proportion of land to be occupied with them, and in no wise to be severed from them. [By these means, the houses bein]g kept up, did of necessity, enforce that dweller not to be a beggar.” *

This statute [was renewed under Henry VIII. Every person who] converted [tillage into] pasture [was subjected to a] forfeiture [of] half the land ([Price, op. cit., Vol. II, pp.] 156, 157).

[XXIII-1407]13 2 In a law passed in the 25th year of the reign of Henry VIII IT IS set forth * “that many farms, and great plenty of cattle, particularly sheep, had been gathered into few hands, whereby the rents of land had been increased, and tillage very much decayed; churches and towns pulled down; the price of provisions excessively enhanced and marvellous number of people rendered incapable of maintaining themselves and families; and, therefore, it was enacted, that no person should keep above 2,000 sheep nor hold more than two farms." “In 3 Edward VI a bill was brought in for the benefit of the poor, for rebuilding decayed farm houses, and maintaining tillage against too much inclosing. [In] 1638 , there was a special commission from Charles I, for enforcing the statute of 30 Elizabeth, by which no cottage was allowed in any country place, without at least 4 acres [of] land to it, to prevent the increase of the poor, by securing to them a maintenance, nor were any inmates allowed in a cottage, to secure the full cultivation of the land, by diffusing the people more over it” ([Price, op. cit., pp.] 157 , 158 ) . “By an act in Cromwell’s time, no new house was to be built within 10 miles of London, unless there were 4 acres of land occupied by the tenant” (l.c.). “Such”,* says Dr. Price, * “was the policy of former times. Modern policy is, indeed, more favourable to the higher classes of people; and the consequence of it may in time prove, that the whole kingdom will consist of only gentry and beggars, or of grandees and slaves” ([p.] 158). “As in former times the number of occupiers of land was greater, and all had more opportunities of working for themselves, it is reasonable to conclude, that the number of people willing to work for others, must have been smaller, and the price of day labour higher. This is now the case in our American colonies, and this likewise, upon inquiry, I find to have been the case in this country formerly” ([pp.] 158, 159). “The nominal price of day-labour is at present no more than about 4 times, or at most 5 times higher. So far, therefore, has the price of labour been from advancing in proportion to the increase in the expenses of living, that it does not appear that it bears now half the proportion to those expenses that it did bear formerly” * ([p.] 159).

Price quotes:

//Mr. Kent, Hints to Gentlemen of Landed Property etc., London, 1776 (2nd ed., 1793), p. 273:

* “The balance at present is considerably against the labourer... The great increase in the poor rates may be accounted for in a few words. The rise upon land and its produce, is at least 60 p.c., the rise upon labour not above 20 p.c. The difference is of course against the working hands; and when their earnings are insufficient for the absolute necessaries of life, they must inevitably fall upon the parish.” * / /

Further, Price himself says:

* “Upon the whole. The circumstances of the lower ranks of men are altered in almost every respect for the worse. From little occupiers of land, they are reduced to the

state of day-labourers and hirelings; and at the same time their subsistence in that state is become more difficult” * ([pp.] 159 sqq.).

[XXIII-1408] 11 Value and price. Let us suppose that the quantity of labour spent upon an acre of land (in wheat) is represented by a quantity of money, — £7.

* “His” * (the * farmer’s) “expenses will always be nearly the same, but his crop may vary, therefore his wheat should sell in proportion to his crop” * ([J. Arbuthnot,] An Inquiry into the Connection etc. By a Farmer, London, 1773, [p.] 107).

The example is a good one, because it is presupposed with some likelihood that labour remains exactly the same.

Then:

* “When he has 5 qrs he can sell at 28s. — £7
4 1/2 about 31s. — ditto*
4 35s.
3 1/2 40s.
3 46s. 8d.
2 1/2 56s.
2 70s.” (l.c., [p.] 108).//133

This farmer, in An Inquiry into the Connection etc., presents the free trade doctrine in its double aspect. On the one hand free import and export. On the other hand

* “perfect freedom in markets134: every restraint on the sale of a commodity, is a check on the trade, and must necessarily enhance the price of the commodity” * (l.c., [p.] 110).

This absolute free movement of capital, according to its own immanent laws, expresses itself at the same time as utter ruthlessness towards the labouring population, who only figure among the “faux frais”a of capital. As long as capitalist production has not yet produced for itself all the conditions of its free development — and the most essential one is the formation of a class of wage labourers absolutely dependent on capital — capital regulates and intervenes, until it has made the conditions adequate to its needs. The measures by which it protects itself against foreign competition are presented as means for securing the labouring people their employment. The application of forcible methods at home is in part presented as [a means for achieving] the national goal of producing “the greatest quantity” possible (l.c., [p.] 3), and in part [as a way of ensuring] that labour does not go to waste and that we shall not be undersold by foreigners.

This farmer (just cited) shows the development of productive power resulting from the capitalist farming of the land. And on the other hand, economy in the use of constant capital. The small farmer does not have at his disposal the appropriate number of horses; he needs apart from this relatively more ready money and more workers ([pp.] 5, 6 sqq.).

* “There are operations on ... almost every kind of soil, which, at different times, require different strength of horses: f.i. sometimes 6 horses will be required in 1 plough, to break up a piece of ground for fallow; thus, in this instance, the farmer of 300 acres will have 2 ploughs at work, when the little farmer cannot have one, but must wait till it is [XXIII-1409] perhaps too late to recover his season; or at least he will have lost all the benefit of the roasting weather, which is to make his fallow. On the other hand, there are many operations in fallowing, and in seed time, when three-horse ploughs are sufficient; in which case the farm of 300 acres will have 4 three-horse ploughs at work when the other can have but one” * [p. 6].

“...Hence the * farmer of 300 acres, with a proportionate capital and number of horses, is able to do more than his proportion of work in the same time; and the doing of it at the critical juncture” * //see Liebig on this as well135// * “is of so much the greater consequence; thus his ground is naturally in better tilth, his fallows, seed-time, dung-cart, in short, every operation performed better, because they can be dispatched; and his ground being in better order, it will not be denied but that his produce must be greater” ([p.] 7).

“The great farmer will also have a considerable advantage in respect to his carts and waggons... The same will hold good with regard to harrows, rollers, and many other implements” * ([pp.] 8-9).136

Further;

* “The keeping of livestock; oxen or sheep, or both... It may be asked ... whether an equal number of cattle may not be kept on the three small farms? The reasons why they cannot are many: The purchasing of stock and providing artificial food for them, not only requires capital, but the resolution of a man in an extensive business... This is one of the great advantages which attends the farmer who at the same time is [a] grazier ... he can, by the assistance of artificial pasture, bring cattle to market at a cheaper rate than when fed on old pastures and hay” * ([pp.] 9, 10).

The small farmer needs relatively speaking as many workers as the big one, and even more. If they are his own children,

* “they are not maintained for so little as hired servants...” *

If the farmer works himself,

* “he is a loser by it. His employment should be, a general attention to the whole: his thresher must be watched ... his mowers, reapers, etc., must be looked after; he must constantly go round his fences; he must see there is no neglect; which would be the case if he was confined to any one spot...” *

As regards the farmers themselves

* “there are 3 men employed to look after 300 acres, which would be at least as well managed by one man on his horse” ([pp.] 11, 12).

“This calculation of the comparative advantage of labour on the great and small farms, only regards the common business of a farmer, without taking in the several great works of marling, land-draining, etc. ... which there is rarely, if ever, an instance of on small farms, for want of a sufficient capital for such an undertaking” * ([p.] 13).

Rent: Some people praise

* “the old method of calculating the profits of the farmer by the three rents. In the infancy of agriculture, it was a conscientious and equal partition of property; such as it is now practised in the less enlightened parts of the world; in most parts of France, Germany, and in some of our American colonies: the one finds land and capital, the other knowledge and labour: but on a well-cultivated and good soil, the rent is now the least object: it is the sum which a man can sink in stock, and in the annual expense of his labour, on which he is to reckon the interest of his money or income” * ([p.] 34).

[XXIII-1410] 11 Pauperism. An Inquiry into the Management of the Poor etc., London, 1767, p. 84;

* “The poor always have, and ever must at least keep pace with, if not out-run, the public provision made for their relief.” *

Hence this public provision is the cause of pauperism. N’est-ce-pas?a//

//An Enquiry into the Causes of the Present High Price of Provisions. In two parts (the author is Rev. Nathaniel Forster), London, 1767.

The causes of the rise in the price of provisions are

1) “the wealth of the country, or the great quantity of money accumulated in it, and circulating through every part of it” ([p.] 1), 2) luxury and 3) taxes.

Too great a natural fertility is unfavourable to the development of a country (l.c., Supplementary Notebook B, p. 8 137).

Defence of machinery (l.c., pp. 8 and 9).

Antagonism between classes.

* “The landed and trading interests are eternally jarring, and jealous of each other’s advantage” * (l.c., [N. Forster, op. cit.,] p. 22, note).

* “From the fluctuating state of most manufactures and many trades, and the consequent fluctuation of wages, the masters and their workmen are unhappily in a perpetual war with each other” * ([p.] 61).

Laziness, luxury, vices of the workers. [Forster] quotes:

“They want the unfortunate to be perfect” (Helvétius, De l’esprit, Vol. II, [Paris, 1758, p.] 38).b

* “From whence do the poor generally learn those vices of idleness and luxury, which are ever unpardonable in them! From their betters altogether. Luxury was never yet found to ascend.” * ([N. Forster, op. cit., pp.] 62-63).

Defence of corn profiteering, etc. (l.c. [Supplementary Notebook B], p. 9.)

* “The landed interest ... has certainly had no reason to complain of late. The value of lands and their produce has been raised to the present high pitch by our trades and manufactures solely. This is not only true in fact, but ... it could not be otherwise. The produce of lands is of no value without a demand for it. And this demand can only arise from industry, in some other way; that is, from commerce and manufactures" * (l.c., [p.] 213).//

Disappearance of the yeomanry.73

* “At that time” * (the time of the revolution of 1688129) * “there existed a race of men in the country, besides the gentlemen and husbandmen, called yeomanry. Men who cultivated their own property, consisting chiefly of farms from 40 to fourscore pounds” (£80) “a year ... the men were hardy, brave, [XXIII-1411] and of good morals; by the influx of riches and a change of manners, they were nearly annihilated, in the year 1750, and are now but faintly remembered” * (A Letter to Sir T. C. Bunbury, Bart. etc. on the Poor Rates, and the High Price of Provisions etc. By a Suffolk Gentleman, Ipswich, 1795, [p.] 4).

//"Reasons for the * deficiency in the supply of bread-corn: First ... an increasing population... Another and principal cause ... that a greater proportion of the general produce is appropriated to the sustenance of horses and other flock, than formerly, in a degree to affect the bread-corn destined for the sustenance of man,* ” etc. (Governor Pownall, Considerations on the Scarcity and High Prices of Bread-Corn and Bread etc., Cambridge, 1795, [p.] 8).

Ingrossing of farms.

“In many parishes of Hertfordshire” (which he lists) “instead of 24 farms (of from 50 to 150 acres) there are now only 3” (Thomas Wright (of Mark-Lane), A Short Address to the Public on the Monopoly of Small Farms, [London, 1795,] pp. 2-3).a

* “It is become a common practice with the landed gentlemen, in every part of the kingdom, to throw several estates together, to make capital farms; or for several landholders to let estates which lie near together, to one man; whereby the renters are so enriched, and their numbers so diminished, — that it is easy for them to form combinations” * (Two Letters on the Flour Trade, and the Dearness of Corn etc. By a Person in Business, London, 1767, [pp.] 19-20)//

Devaluation of labour through a fall in the value of money. (Depreciation of money; the artificial raising of the value of money has the same effect.)

* “Merchants and traders ... can always raise the prices of whatever they deal in, faster than the value of money decreases; but the labourer, having nothing to subsist on but his daily work, must ever be behindhand in advancing the price of his labour; because he is not able to wait till it acquires its due proportion of value, and therefore by it he must suffer extremely” * ([S. Jenyns,] Thoughts on the Causes and Consequences of the Present High Price of Provisions, [London,] 1767, [p.] 18).

//As a reason for the rise in the price of corn: population.

* “During a part of the period from 1771 to 1789, trade, manufactures and population have increased very rapidly” * (Considerations on the Corn Laws etc., By Edgar Corrie, merchant in Liverpool, London, 1791, [p.] 33).//

[XXIII-1412] //Rent. The pamphlet that follows is important for the history of the theory of rent. Although Anderson discovered the theory of differential rent,139 he was far from being able to

explain thereby the rising price of corn and provisions. This happens first here, in the following pamphlet, unlike all the previous literature. Admittedly the author otherwise assumes that rent is an item in the costs of production, and in particular explains the rise in the price of butchers’ meat partly through the inclosure of commons, whereby a large number of farmers were no longer able as before to feed their cattle without paying rent for this. Directly introducing rent in this way as a cause of the increase in the price of cattle, etc., rather than as an effect corresponds not only to Smith's theory of rent but also to Ricardo’s, etc., since Smith’s theory //see Ramsay on this as wella// with regard to the determination of other agricultural prices by the price of corn is not attacked at all, indeed not even investigated. The title of the pamphlet is: A Political Enquiry into the Consequences of Enclosing Waste Lands etc., London, 1785. * “It is not the plenty or scarcity which makes an article dear for any long continuance of time, because the price depends on the necessary charges and expenses in the production of it’ ([p.] 65). “In fact it is not the scarcity that we have any reason to complain of, it is only the dearness or high price" ([p.] 71). “There is now a great plenty of cattle in this country ... and yet the price of butchers' meat is nearly twice as dear as it was 30 years ago; therefore it must be the charge of production, which stamps the price of these articles” ([p.] 72). “Plenty or scarcity of the articles of subsistence do not ultimately govern the price of a commodity, though it may tend to create a temporary rise or fall to a certain degree. It is the charge of production, that stamps the permanent average price on all kinds of commodities whatever... F.i., no possible plenty of Dutch holland, or fine muslins of India, could ever cause those articles to alter for any length of time to an equal low price as the coarse dowlas—because the manufactory of those fine articles is so infinitely more expensive than the coarse” ([p.] 20). “Gold may be bought too dear, and so may corn, or grass, or any other of the useful productions of nature” (l.c.). “Admitting then that the charge of production stamps the permanent averaged price on all kinds of commodities, then I may fairly draw this conclusion; that though by a higher degree of cultivation of the lands in this country, we might be able to produce twice as much corn and grass as we produce at present; yet, if that corn and grass so produced should cost the nation, or the farmer who produced it, on account of the advanced rent of lands, and the exorbitant expenses in the cultivation, twice as much per load as the price of those articles are at present, neither the nation nor the farmer would mend their condition by this increased plenty; on the other hand the poor would suffer double the distress they now suffer unless their wages were doubled; and if their wages were doubled, this would effectually put a stop to all manufactures carried on at present to supply foreign markets” ([pp.] 20-21). “Although the superior skill and industry of the inhabitants of a country where the soil is naturally poor, may sometimes triumph over the inhabitants of another where the soil is naturally more fertile; does that prove that every poor or barren soil to be found in this or other countries, can be brought to yield equal compensation for labour, a G . Ramsay, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, Edinburgh, London, 1836, pp. 278-79. See also present edition, Vol. 33, p. 283.— Ed.

as those soils [XXIII-1413] which are naturally rich and fertile?... There are many degrees of fertility or barrenness” ([pp. 23-]24). “I have been in countries where barely harrowing in the seed was the only cultivation required to produce the most immense crops; and as to manure, should any have been laid thereon, the corn would have been so rank as to have rotted before it was ripe. On the other hand, there are degrees of poverty; f.i. some soils naturally poor pay well for cultivation; there are others which after much labour yield a scanty crop, not equal in value to the expense of raising it; there is a sort of poor soil, of which there are millions of acres in this kingdom which would be much less beneficial to the nation, when cultivated by the best practical method that could be devised, than they are in their present uncultivated state" * ([p.] 24). “One has to distinguish: ‘marshy soils’, which want draining , like the Isle of Dogs, *and many other lands on the banks of large rivers every farmer knows to be, when properly drained, the most productive meadow ground in this kingdom" ([p.] 26). “The waste lands now in England ... chiefly consist of either stiff clays, with little or no staple of mould to produce a profitable vegetation; or of absolute sands, where no verdure but heath can grow; or of chalk soils, where there is only a thin carpet of turf to cover the barren rock” * ([p.] 27).

Rent as entering into the charge of production : * “What is the cause of the present high price of butchers’ meat? Why, the dearness of lean stock; and what is the cause of that dearness?” *—The difference between *the expense of rearing a beast on a common, and that of rearing one on ground for which rent is paid* ([p.]) 81).//

Expropriation of the cottagers43 (The Political Enquiry etc. we have just cited.) * “ Farmers forbidding cottagers to keep any living creature besides themselves, under the pretence, that if they keep any beasts or poultry, they will steal from the farmers’ barns for their support; they also say, keep the cottagers poor and you will keep them industrious. But the real fact is, [so] that the farmers may have the whole right of commons to themselves” ([p.] 75). “Though the farmers, their wives and daughters have, in a great measure, forsaken the ancient system of industry” * //eggs, poultry, the making of butter and milk//, * “yet I do not find that the cottager or his wife ... are in general deficient therein; but the enclosing of commons added to the tyrannical behaviour of farmers, has in many places deprived them of means of exerting their natural industrious disposition" * (l.c., [p.] 76).

average consumption of healthy labouring people . This makes 1 lb. 6 oz. of flour per day (Corn Tracts, [p.] 187).//

[XXIII-1414] //Change in England from a corn exporting to a corn importing country . The Committee of Council (1790) imputes this change TO AN INCREASED POPULATION, AN INCREASED OPULENCE, AND CONSEQUENTLY AN increased demand . This is how the change is presented: * “This kingdom, which in former times used to produce more corn than was necessary for the consumption of its inhabitants, has of late years been under the necessity of depending on the produce of foreign countries for a part of its supply” ([p.] 8). / /Representation of the Lords of the Committee of Council, appointed for the consideration of all matters relating to trade and foreign plantations, upon the present state of the laws for regulating the exportation and importation of corn etc. A new edition, 1800 (made to the King* on the 8th of March 1790).//

Export until 1765, import after 1771.//

//Task work. ( Free and slave labour . ) Where * “ the whole labour was to be performed by slaves, the resource of task-work was unknown, and the farmer or owner of the estate must ... maintain the year round as many slaves as he would want in harvest” * (William Mitford, Considerations on the Opinion Stated by the Lords of the Committee of Council etc., London, 1791, [p.] 59). 140 / /

//Laws on settlement: * “Among the hindrances to agriculture may well be reckoned the present law of settlements, which forbids the migration of industry to the parts where it is wanted, and compels the maintenance of involuntary sloth*... It is a matter of * emancipating the poor from their present attachment to the glebe” * (W. Mitford, l.c., [p.J 53).//

//Differences in fertility. The Question of Scarcity Plainly Stated etc. By Arthur Young, London, 1800. (Young was the Secretary to the Board of Agriculture . ) According to his own calculations, and those of the Board of Agriculture , etc., the average product of an acre = 23 bushels , about 3 quarters, in England (p. 9). 40 counties in England. The worst county average per acre is 15 bushels (Huntingdonshire) and the best is 28 (Lincoln and Rutland). It emerges from these figures that 8 counties have very low averages (15, 18 and 20 bushels ) ; as against this 21 counties produce from the average (23 bushels ) up to the maximum (28).// / /Capital’s stay in the sphere of production. * “A field now—[in] 1814—sown with, and growing a crop of oats or beans, will next year (1815) be fallowed, and ploughed, and harrowed at least 5 or 6 times, to pulverise and to prepare it to receive the seed wheat in September or October 1815; it will then be sown with wheat, which will be reaped in September 1816; consequently the crop is chargeable [ХХШ-1415] with 2 years' rent, and taxes and cesses of every description” * ([Th. Simpson,] A Defence of the Land-owners and Farmers of Great

Britain etc., London, 1814, [pp.] 4-5). * “The lowest rent of land [is] from 30s. to 40s. per acre” * (l.c., [p.] 4).//1 4 1 / / Taskwork, etc. It says in the same pamphlet2: * “The far greater part of the operations of husbandry are performed by men employed by the day, or by the piece. The wages or earnings of these have been taken only at 12s. per week; and though at piece-work a man may properly be supposed, under the increased stimulus to industry, to obtain Is. or perhaps 2s. a week more than he would earn by weekly wages, yet in estimating his general earnings, the loss of time in the course of the year, from bad weather or sickness, may be held equivalent to this addition. The wages of these men will also generally be found to bear—some reference to the necessary charges of subsistence·, so as that a man with two children... may be able to maintain his family without parochial relief” (l.c., [p.] 34). “A reduction in the price of labour can with more propriety be applied to yearly servants ... their necessities being commonly limited to themselves” * ([p.] 35).// / /Rents and fallows: ' ‘'It. until the prevalence of the late high prices, arable land in general bore but little rent, chiefly by reason of the acknowledged necessity of frequent fallows; the rents must again be reduced, to admit of a return to the same system” * (J. D . Hume (OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE), Thoughts on the Corn-Laws etc., London, 1815, [p ] 72).//

//Constant and variable capital. Calculation of income and expenditure for 100 acres of land . (Supplementary Notebook B, [pp.] 21-22.)142/ /

Burke, in the pamphlet quoted earlier,b describes the expression “labouring poor” as detestable political cant ; Burke, that great CANT-MONGER with his EXECRABLE CANT about LANDLORDS, etC. The expression “ labouring poor ” is found in the Statutes, and furthermore in almost all the writers of the 17th and 18th centuries. (Adam Smith too. See e.g. the passage on the consequences of the division of labour.c) Eden, etc. The contrast is made in part with the idle poor ( paupers ) , in part with the self-sustaining peasant or HANDICRAFTSMAN.

//Rent. The period from 1740 to 1750 was the cheapest period in our annals ; it was also the period of the greatest exports (Remarks on the Commercial Policy of Great Britain, Principally as It Relates to the Corn Trade, London, 1815, [p.] 33). One may see from p. 143 of the Lords’ Reportd that the * expense of cultivating 100 acres in 1790 = £411 15s. 11 s. 4d.; in 1813 [it was] £771 16s. 4 1/2d. ; but the former sum bears almost precisely the same proportion to the latter as 6s., the price of wheat in the first year, does to 11s. in the second //per bushel//* (l.c., [p.] 42).

a This refers to Address to the Two Houses of Parliament on the Importance of the Corn Laws to the National Revenue, London, 1815.— Ed.

b E. Burke, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity... (see this volume, pp. 253-54).—Ed.

c See present edition, Vol. 30, p. 306.— Ed.

d Presumably Reports Respecting Grain, and the Corn Laws..., London, 1814.— Ed.

[XXIII-1416] Increase of rent. On most estates from 2 to 5, on many of them more (l.c., [p.] 43).

Increase of rent combined with decline in the rate of rent. The additional capital produces dearer (l.c., [pp.] 44-45). (Supplementary Notebook B, p. 30).

Value of labour and price of the means of subsistence. * “It has been endeavoured to be proved that labour is not influenced by the price of subsistence, but that, on the contrary, it is always cheapest when grain is dearest. In support of this brilliant discovery, which would undoubtedly have entitled the author to a chair in the university of Laputa," no example could be adduced but from the cotton manufactory, in the infancy of which wages were far beyond the rate of common labour; and where from this cause and other improvements in machinery they have always had a tendency to diminish. The real earnings of the cotton weaver are now far less than they were; his superiority over the common labourer, which at first was very great, has now almost entirely ceased. Indeed, whether from the increase in the price of ordinary labour, or from the freer circulation which has been produced by the alteration in the laws of settlement and apprenticeship, the difference in the wages of skilful and common labour is far less now than at any former period” * (l.c., [p.] 48).a

The importation of the precious metals into Europe has doubled since 1770. Shortly after this the great rise in corn began ([p.] 76). “From 1700 to 1770 the importation of silver remained nearly stationary. At that time (according to Humboldt) importation into Europe amounted to 6 million livres (4 for Europe, 2 transmitted to Asia). Since that time there have been increases” (l.c., [pp.] 76-77).

Size of circulation. * “The manufacturer, who has 500 workmen to pay on the Saturday night, cannot do it with the same notes when their wages amount to £500, as he did when they were only £300. The circulation of the country is always regulated by the value of the goods to be exchanged. It is not the greater quantity of shipping which trade between Newcastle and London that has caused the increase in the trade between those two ports. It is the greater quantity of goods which has caused the employment of a greater amount of shipping” * (l.c., [p.] 86).

Cause of the high price of corn. * “Thus it has been shown that the high price of corn has arisen partly from a depreciation in the value of silver, partly from an alteration in the value of the currency, and partly from speculation” (l.c., [p.] 88).

declined throughout Europe with the progress of trade and manufactures. In the Highlands of Scotland this change is not yet fully accomplished, though the ancient state of property is daily subverted by the progress of modern manners. The landlord, without regard to the hereditary tenant, now offers his land to the highest bidder, who, if he is an improver, instantly adopts a new system of cultivation. The land, formerly overspread with small tenants or labourers, was peopled in proportion to its produce; but under this new system of improved cultivation and increased rents the largest possible produce is obtained at the least possible expense; and the useless hands being, with this view, removed, the population is reduced not to what the land will maintain, but to what it will employ. The dispossessed tenants” // “outcasts from home”,3 p. 145// “either seek a subsistence in the manufacturing towns, or, if they can afford the expense of the voyage, emigrate to America” * (David Buchanan, Observations etc., Edinburgh, 1814, [pp.] 143-44).

Personification of capital. * “Stock cultivates land; stock employs labour” * (A. Smith, [An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,] Book V, Ch. II, Buchanan edition, [Vol.] III, [p.] 309).

// Shortening of labour by means of machinery. The workers’ struggle against this. Beckmann, in Supplementary Notebook C, pp. 4[-5].143 Ribbon mills. The gaining of extra wheat by better grinding (l.c., p. 5). Struggle in England against the sawmills (ibid., p. 5). German inventions (ibid., p. 5).//

11 Against Malthus. See Ensor. Supplementary Notebook C, pp. 6-7.

Clearing of estates. * “They dispossessed families as they would grub up coppice-wood, and they treated villages and their people as Indians harassed with wild beasts do, in their vengeance, a jungle with tigers... Men shall be bartered for a fleece or a carcass of mutton, nay, held cheaper... The Moguls, when they had broken into the Northern provinces of China, proposed in council to exterminate the inhabitants, and convert the land into pasture. This proposal many Highland proprietors have effected in their own country against their own countrymen” * (George Ensor, An Inquiry Concerning the Population of Nations etc., London, 1818, [pp.] 215-16).//

// Exchange of objectified for living labour. “Just as everyone is forced to consume before he produces, the poor worker finds himself dependent upon the rich man, and can neither live nor work without obtaining from him existing produce and commodities, in exchange for those he promises to produce by his own labour” (Simonde (i.e. Sismondi), De la richesse commerciale etc., Geneva, 1803, Vol. I, [p.] 36). “To make him” (the rich man) “consent to this” (i.e. to this bargain), “it was necessary to agree that whenever labour already performed was exchanged for [XXIII-1418] labour yet to be done, the latter would have a higher value than the former” ([p.] 37).b //

a D. Buchanan has: “outcasts at home”.— Ed.

b Marx quotes in French.— Ed.

On differences in the return from capital. Sismondi, l.c., [pp. 130-31, 228-29, 232 ] in Supplementary Notebook C, p. 8. The same writer on merchant capital, l.c.

//Sir Dudley North, Discourses upon Trade etc., London, 1691 (Supplementary Notebook C).144

This work, like Locke’s economic writings, is in direct connection with and directly based on Petty’s works.

The work is mainly concerned with commercial capital, and so it is not relevant here. Masterly skill in the field with which it deals.

It is particularly remarkable that from the time of the Restoration of Charles II up to the middle of the 18th century there were continual complaints from the landlords about the fall in rents (just as the price of wheat continually declined especially from ? 145 onwards). Although the industrial capitalist class played a considerable part in the compulsory reduction of the rate of interest (from the time of Culpeper and Sir Josiah Child),3 the real protagonist of this measure was the landed interest. The “ value of land” and the “ raising of it” were proclaimed to be in the national interest. (Just as on the other hand from about 1760 the rise in rents, in the value of land and in the price of corn and provisions, and the complaints of the manufacturers on this score, form the basis of the economic investigations on this subject.)

With few exceptions it is the struggle between moneyed interest and landed interest that fills the century from 1650 to 1750, as the nobility, who lived in the grand style, saw with disgust how the usurers had got their hands on them and, with the building up of the modern credit system and the national debt at the end of the 17th century, confronted them with overwhelming power in the sphere of legislation, etc.

Already Petty speaks of the landlords ’ complaints about the fall in rents and their opposition to the improvements (look up the passage).6 He defends the usurer as against the landlord and puts rent of money and rent of land on the same footing.

Locke reduces both to exploitation of labour.d He takes the same standpoint as Petty. Both oppose the compulsory regulation of interest. The landed interest had noted that the value of land rose

a See also present edition, Vol. 32, pp. 463, 540.— Ed.

b See W. Petty, Political Arithmetick... In: Several Essays in Political Arithmetick..., London, 1699, p. 230, and also present edition, Vol. 31, p. 343.— Ed.

c See W. Petty, A Treatise of Taxes, and Contributions..., London, 1667, Ch. 4, pp. 19-27, and Ch. 5, p. 28.— Ed.

d See this volume, pp. 87-89.— Ed.

when interest fell. At a given level of rent, its capitalised expression, i.e. the value of land, falls or rises in inverse relation to the rate of interest.

The third writer to follow this line of Petty’s is Sir Dudley North, in the work referred to above.

This is the first form in which capital starts its revolt against landed property, as in fact usury was one of the principal means of the accumulation of capital—i.e. through its co-proprietorship in the landlord's revenues. But industrial and commercial capital go more or less hand in hand with the landlords against this outmoded form of capital.

* “As the landed man lets his land, so these (who have stock in trade, and either have not the skill, or care not for the trouble of managing it in trade) let their stock; this latter is called interest, but is only rent for stock” * (here, as also in Petty’s writings, it can be seen how rent, to those just emerging from the Middle Ages, [XXIII-1419] appears as the primary form of surplus value) * “as the other is for land. And in several languages, hiring of money, and lands, are terms of common use; and it is so also in some counties of England. Thus to be a Landlord, or a Stocklord is the same thing; the landlord has the advantage only in this; that his tenant cannot carry away the land, as the tenant of the other may the stock; and therefore land ought to yield less profit than stock, which is let out at a greater hazard” * ([p.] 4).

Interest. North seems to have been the first to have a correct conception of interest, for by stock, as will be seen from the passages next quoted, he means not only money, but capital (as indeed Petty, too, distinguishes between stock and money. Locke considered that interest was determined exclusively by the quantity of money; so did Petty. See the passages in Massie on this3).

* “If there be more lenders than borrowers, interest will ... fall; ...it is not [low] interest [that] makes trade, but trade increasing the stock of the nation makes interest low” ([p.] 4).

“Gold and silver, and, out of them, money, are nothing but the weights and measures, by which traffick is more commonly15 carried on, than could be done without them: and also a proper fund for a surplusage of stock to be deposited in" * ([p.] 16).

Price and money. As the price is nothing but the equivalent of the commodity expressed in money, and, when we are dealing with a sale, the commodity realised in money—that is, it represents the

a See [J. Massie,] An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest; Wherein the Sentiments of Sir William Petty and Mr. Locke, on That Head, Are Considered, London, 1750, pp. 11-19, and this volume, p. 91.— Ed.

b North has “conveniently”.— Ed.

commodity as exchange value in order to convert it subsequently into a use value again—it is one of the earliest recognitions of the fact that here we are dealing with gold and silver only as a form of existence of the exchange value of commodities themselves, as a phase in their metamorphosis, not with gold and silver as such. North puts this very nicely for his time.

* “What do these people want, who cry out for money”,* etc. (The whole passage. Supplementary Notebook C, [pp.] 12-13).146

* “Money being ... the common measure of buying and selling, every body who has anything to sell, and cannot procure chapmen for it, is presently apt to think, that want of money in the Kingdom ... is the cause why his goods do not go off; and so, want of money is the common cry, which is a great mistake” *([p.] 11).

Further: Capital is self-valorising value, whereas in hoarding the crystallised form of exchange value as such is the aim. One of the earliest discoveries of the classical economists is therefore the antithesis between hoarding and the valorisation of money, that is to say, the presentation of money as capital.

* “No man is richer for having his estate all in money, plate, etc., lying by him, but on the contrary, he is for that reason the poorer. That man is richest, whose estate is in a growing condition, either in land at farm, money at interest, or goods in trade"* ([p.] 11).

(Similarly, John Bellers, Essays about the Poor, Manufactures, Trade, Plantations, and Immorality etc., London, 1699, says; * “Money neither increaseth, nor is useful, but when it’s parted with, and as money is unprofitable to a private person but as he disposeth of it, for something valuable, so what money is more than of absolute necessity for a Home Trade, is dead stock to a kingdom or nation, and brings no profit to that country it’s kept in” ([p.] 13).)

“Altho' every one desires to have it” (money), “yet none, or very few care for keeping it, but they are forthwith contriving to dispose of it: knowing that from all the money that lies dead, no benefit is to be expected and it is a certain loss” * ([D. North, op. cit., p.] 21).

[XXIII-1420] Money as world money.

* “A nation, in the world, as to trade, is in all respects like a city in a kingdom, or a family in a city” ([p.] 14). “In this course of trade, gold and silver are in no sort different from other commodities, but are taken from them who have plenty, and carried to them who want or desire them”,* etc. ([p.] 13).

The quantity of money that can circulate is determined by the exchange of commodities.

* “If never so much” (money) “be brought from abroad, or never so much coined at home, all that is more than what the commerce of the nation requires, is but bullion, and will be treated as such; and coined money, like wrought plate at second hand, shall sell but for the intrinsick” * ([pp.] 17-18).

Conversion of money into bullion, and vice versa ([p.] 18) (Supplementary Notebook C, p. 13). Valuation and weighing of money. Oscillatory movement (l.c., p. 14).

Usury and landed interest and trade:

* "The moneys employed at interest in this nation, are not near the tenth part, disposed to trading people, wherewith to manage their trade; but are for the most part lent for the supply of luxury, and to support the expense of persons, who though great owners of land yet spend faster than their lands bring in, and being loath to sell, choose rather to mortgage their estates" * ([North, op. cit., pp.] 6-7).

II A Discourse of the Necessity of Encouraging Mechanick Industry etc., London, 1689.

Child labour.

The late age at which the English employ children as compared with Germany [op. cit., p. 13]. (Supplementary Notebook C, p. 24. Cf. in contrast that falsifier of history Macaulay.3)

Unproductive labour (that of the brain alone). "A necessary evil". Hamburg praised for treating it in this way (l.c. [p. 14]).

//Gold and silver are commodities. This is a basic perception for money to be understood at all; for it is a commodity which develops into money in the process of commodity exchange; it receives the function of money, and the other commodities can only express their value in it insofar as they are exchanged for it as a commodity.

"Silver and gold themselves (which we may call by the general name of bullion) are to be considered but as a finer sort of commodities: and as such are capable of rising and falling in price, and may be said to be of more or less value in divers places, according to their plenty or scarcity. Bullion then may there be reckoned to be of higher value, where the smaller weight will purchase the greater quantity of the product or manufacture of the country" ([S. Clement,] A Discourse of the General Notions of Money, Trade, and Exchanges, as they stand in Relation Each to Other etc. By a Merchant, London, 1695, [p.] 7).

"Silver and gold, coined or uncoined, tho' they are used for a measure of all other things, are no less a commodity than wine, oil, tobacco, cloth or stuffs" ([J. Child,] A Discourse Concerning Trade, and That in Particular of the East-Indies etc., London, 1689, [p.] 2). "The stock and riches of the kingdom cannot properly be confined to money, nor ought gold and silver to be excluded from being [XXIII-1421] merchandise" ([Th. Papillon.] The East-India-Trade a Most Profitable Trade etc., London, 1677, [p.] 4).//

"Weak minds may be alarmed at the exportation of specie ... but ... gold and silver is as much a commodity as corn, wine, and oil, and it must circulate like, and with, all other kinds of property; and will increase or decrease in proportion to the demand at market, like any other goods or merchandise; with this superior advantage attending it, viz. that it is utterly impossible we can ever be in want of cash, so long as we have trade, goods and property to purchase it" * (An Essay upon Publick Credit, in a Letter to a Friend. Occasioned By the Fall of Stocks, London, 1748, [p.] 16).

[XXIII-1422] //A Discourse Shewing the Great Advantages That New Buildings, and the Enlarging of Towns and Cities Do Bring To a Nation, London, 1678.

Just as later on the rise in rents, etc., was ascribed to the most idiotic causes, so at that time the fall in the value of land was treated in the same way. The blame was laid, among other things, upon the large number of new buildings in London at the time. The above work is directed against this argument. The author first of all gives the real causes, in which connection he also notes that the value of land and of rents depends upon the price of the products of agriculture.

* "By the plague, 200,000 people dying in one year, the fall of rents of the land was occasioned, corn, meat, and wool, that was wont to feed and clothe those 200,000 persons, now went wanting, occasioned the market to fall, and the price of land must follow the price of its commodities" * ([p.] 1).

The cause of the "fall of rents in the country" is

* "that the product of the country is greater than the consumption, that is, that there is more corn, wool and other commodities of the country, than the people can dispose of: which makes plenty, and plenty makes things cheap; now the value of land must fall in proportion to the value of the goods that are produced from it; that which has occasioned it, is, that the improvements in the country are greater than the increase of people. The improvements of the country are many, as the draining of fens, the sowing of sanfoin and other seed, the disparking of parks, the inclosing of forests; ... now there is not an increase of people in proportion. First, because of the great plague...; and, secondly, the going away of the people to new plantations, and to improve Ireland" * ([p.] 14).

But secondly the man points to the differential rent on houses, and regards this increasing valorisation of houses as the production of wealth.

* "In all other employments of those hands ... as in making of stuff and cloth, and several other commodities; the market is sometimes overstocked; by which the prices of the goods do so much fall ... that there is greater loss to those goods that were made before, than what is gained by the imploying of the hands in making of new; so that then, the profit by the labour of the poor is lost, and it is much the same thing as if their food had been given them gratis. But this never happens in the building of new houses; for the building of new houses raises the rent of the old ones; and that this is true, appears because in the ends and outparts of all cities and towns, houses are of less value than they are in the middle" ([p.] 3). "Now when cities and towns so flourish, that they incourage builders, so that by the addition of new buildings those houses that were before the ends and outparts of the city, or town, stand nearer to the middle; then the rents of these houses rise in proportion as they become nearer to [XXIII-1423] the middle of the town" * ([pp. 3-]4).

He then uses the example of London to demonstrate this. Situation is for houses what the growth of relative fertility is for the land. The peculiar nature of the creation of value which distinguishes differential rent is picked out here. It is, namely, that the additional production raises the value of the older lands and their produce, instead of reducing it.//

II Writings of Josiah Tucker.

Good point against the mercantile balance of tradea (Supplementary Notebook C, p. 27).

First of all against the possibility of a general overproduction (l.c.).

Population is wealth. More people = more labour, and labour is the "riches of a country" (l.c.).

Against Hume's theory that the richer country must produce dearer on account of the influx of money, etc.b (l.c., p. 28).//

// Value of land. The purpose of all trade is to increase it.

* "All trade, domestick or foreign, that does not in the result increase the value of land, ought to be totally rejected" * ([J. Child,] A Discourse Concerning Trade, and That in Particular of the East-Indies etc., London, 1689, [p.] 1).//

The Mercantile System's view of surplus value:

* "Trade confined amongst ourselves, procures little advantage to the kingdom; no more than the buying and selling of land, one hath more, and another hath less; the owners are changed but the land is still the same. It is foreign trade that is the great interest and concern of the kingdom" * ([Th. Papillon,] The East-India-Trade a Most Profitable Trade to the Kingdom etc., London, 1677, [p.] 1).

In contrast to the Monetary System:

* "If gold and silver must be confined within our walls, i.e. the seas that environ us, it is rendered fruitless, and yields no increase to the kingdom's capital" * (l.c., [pp.] 4-5).

Money of account:

* "It is true, that usually the measure of stock or riches is accounted by money; but that is rather in imagination than reality. A man is said to be worth 10,000 pounds, when possibly he has not 100 pounds in ready money, but his estate, if he be a farmer, consists in land, corn, or cattle, and husbandry implements; if a merchant, in goods," * etc. (l.c., p. 4).

Accelerated rapidity of the turnover of money at a time of quick trade.

* "It is a great mistake, though a common one, to think, that it is the plenty or scarcity of money, that is the cause of a good or bad trade: It is true, when the trade is quick and good, money is more seen, and changeth hands ten times for what it does, when the trade is dull and dead; so that one hundred pounds in a time of quick trading, makes as great an appearance as one thousand pounds in a time of dead trading. It is not so much the money that influenceth the trade, as it is the trade that discovers the money, which otherwise would lie hid" * (l.c., [p.] 5).

a J. Tucker, A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages Which Respectively Attend France and Great Britain, with Regard to Trade, 3rd ed., London, 1753, Introduction, p. VI.- Ed.

b See J. Tucker, Four Tracts, Together with Two Sermons, on Political and Commercial Subjects, 3rd ed., Gloucester, 1776, pp. 35-37.- Ed.

[XXIII-1424] //Reasons for a Limited Exportation of Wool, London, 1677.

On behalf of the landlords and tenants, who blame their misfortunes on the cheapness of wool ([p.] 3), the export of which was prohibited in order to provide the manufacturers with cheap raw material. The whole pamphlet is directed against "the beating DOWN [of] THE PRICE OF WOOL" ([p.] 16).

This is one of the first works to express the antagonism between the landed interest and the manufacturing interest. (Otherwise this period as a whole is characterised more by the antagonism between the landed and the monied interest.)

The author says earlier that the export of wool was only ever suspended for temporary reasons.

In 1647 the export of "wool" was prohibited

* "upon pretence that there was not wool enough to furnish our own necessities. Which (if true) might be because of the great destruction of sheep by the wars. Yet there seems to be another ground for that act. The government of that time having been assisted in the civil wars by great numbers of the wool workmen, (who liked much better to rob and plunder for half a crown a day, than toil at a melancholy work for 6d. a day) to encourage and reward them, I say, and to weaken the gentry, they made this prohibition" * ([p.] 8).

Great stocks of wool lay upon the land; hence a fall in the price; and the ruin of the farmers and graziers, and of the landlords, who were compelled to take over the farms themselves...

* "In fine the farm must be sold, since the wool has no price".*

But the rent had fallen so low, the number of lands offered for sale was so great, that there were no buyers ([p.] 16). The "cheapness of the wool" is to blame for everything. On the other hand:

* "The low price of wool hath made so many apply to husbandry, that usually corn does hardly bear any price wherewith to pay his" (the farmer's) "rent" * (l.c., [p.] 18).

The scourge of pauperism is an effect of industry.

* "Where there is most manufacture there is either always or for the most part, more poor: the reasons are plain. It is true indeed that the first introducing a manufacture employs many poor, but they cease not to be so: and the continuance of it makes many" (l.c., [p.] 19). ("Their masters allow wages so mean, that they are only preserved from starving whilst they can work" ([p.] 4).)

"Now then suppose wool fall to 3d. per pound... The price of all land in England must likewise fall; there being not one acre which produceth not wool (plowed lands at least from harvest to seed-time, and longer when they lie fallow). Consequently the taxes (which now are generally on land, and ever proportioned to rent, the ancient manner of taxing by 10th and 15th being of late out of use) [are] much to the advantage of the usurer, but to the prejudice of the country gentleman" * ([p.] 5).

It can be seen from this that wool was then still the chief product of the country, and that taxes still laid a significant burden upon the landlords, who were later able to shift this burden from themselves by means of indirect taxation.

But now comes the most significant passage in this book:

Because the superfluous wool is unsaleable

* "the one" ([the] farmer) "cannot pay his rent, nor the other" ([the] landlord) "sustain the taxes. And is not this the chiefest, if not the sole reason of sinking our rents, throwing up farms, and the misery of the whole country?... Now that it is the greatest concern and interest of the [XXIII-1425] nation, to preserve the nobility, gentry, and those to whom the land of the country belongs, at least much greater than a few artificers, imployed in working the superfluity of our wool, or the merchants who gain by the exportation of our manufacture, is manifest. 1) Because they" (the landholders) "are the masters and proprietors of the foundation of all the wealth in this nation, all profit arising out of the ground, which is theirs" * (Physiocrats). * "2) Because they bear all the taxes and publick burthens; which in truth are only born by those who buy and sell not; all sellers raising the price of their commodities, or abating of their goodness, according to their taxes" * [op. cit., pp. 4-5].

(Locke, Vanderlint, Physiocrats. Except that Locke immediately turns the point to his own convenience; because all taxes ultimately fall on the landholders, they should also pay them directly, instead of indirectly. How a person comes to buy without selling, hence to possess money, the converted form of the commodity, without throwing any commodities onto the market, is naturally not explained here. Thus this theory was initially constructed by the LANDED INTEREST.)

* "3) Because they maintain great families, which conduce much to the consumption of our manufactures, many people relying upon them, and perhaps as many as upon cloth working" * [op. cit., p. 5].

(The necessity for these people, as "fruges consumere nati" / consumers, in order to provide an impulse to industry. Physiocrats. Later Malthus and his sort!1)

* "4) Because they must of necessity bear all magistracies and public imployments (how burthensome soever)" * (ceases, therefore, with the coming of bureaucracy) * "and are the only hindrances of the confusion which would follow upon equality" * ([p.] 5).//

II Denunciation of wool staplers and factories as a public nuisance. On the history of the formation of the different forms of commercial

a "Born to consume the fruits" (Horace, Epistolae, lib. I, ep. 2:27).- Ed.

b Cf. present edition, Vol. 32, p. 217.- Ed.

capital. Supplementary Notebook E [pp. 153-54]. ([G. Clarke,] The Case of Our English Wool etc., 1685.) (In the same place, Reasons of the Decay of the Clothing-Trade, [London,] 1691 [pp. 154-56].)

//Sir R. Temple, in An Essay upon Taxes etc., London, 1693, gives a compact presentation, on pp. 3-4, of the pre-capitalist tax system (of its principles). For the landlords and mean people. Against usurers, TRADERS and FREEHOLDERS [p. 5].

- "A general excise upon home commodities," he says, is in truth the same thing as "A LAND TAX.... SINCE BOTH ARE A DUTY UPON THE SAME COMMODITIES. WHICH ARE THE PRODUCT OF THE LAND" ([pp. 10-]11).

(The same idea as with Locke, the woolman, etc.a) Says that the taxes upon commodities do not raise their prices for the consumers, but reduce them for the producers, if the "necessity" of the "sellers" is greater than that of the "buyers", which is the case in England with home commodities. (The same point in Quesnay.b) This is said to be the "principal cause of the present fall of rents, and the price of commodities" ([p.] 12). (All this in Supplementary Notebook E [pp. 156-58].) (Against an excise, [p.] 12.) The excise is attacked very well from the political point of view ([p.] 14).// (Exactly the same antagonism towards Holland as in Quesnay [pp. 16 ff.].)

//Struggle between the landlords and the money lords. See the work Remarks on the Proceedings of the Commissioners etc. (by John Trenchard)150 (anonymously), London, 1696. Supplementary Notebook E [pp. 158-60]. Land bank against Bank of England. Conflict: As interest falls (which the monied interest does not want) the value of land rises. The monied men want the kind of interest, etc., that enables them in a few years to appropriate land -

* "so that at this rate in some few years, the traders will invade the antient gentry, and take away their place and station" * ([pp.] 3-4).//

//Cruelty of capital.

* "Such a spirit of cruelty reigns here in England among the men of trade, that it is not to be met with in any other society of men, nor in any other country of the world" * (An Essay on Credit and the Bankrupt Act etc., London, 1707, [p.] 2).

(This should be brought in when dealing with debtors and creditors.151)//

[XXIII-1426] //Once the products are exchanged as commodities, they are per se money. This point should be made in connection with the transition to the metamorphosis of the commodity,152

a See J. Locke, Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money (1691). In: The Works, 8th ed., in 4 vols, Vol. II, London, 1777, pp. 20-21, 34-35, 39, 48. - Ed.

b F. Quesnay, Dialogues sur le commerce et sur les travaux des artisans. In: Physiocrates ... par M. Eugene Daire, Part I, pp. 145-46, 163. - Ed.

c Of themselves. - Ed.

* "The course of trade being thus turned, from exchanging of goods for goods, or delivering and taking, to selling and paying, all the bargains in the world are now stated upon the foot of a price in money, and tho' it be at any time an exchange of goods for goods, yet even those goods are on either side rated at a price in money" * ([p.] 8).a //

//On the insignificance of politics, when exchange value is at stake. [D. Defoe,] An Essay on Loans etc., London, 1710.//

//Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse Concerning Coining the New Money Lighter. In Answer to Mr. Locke's Considerations etc., London, 1696.

It emerges both from Barbon's preface, and from Decus et Tutamen etc. (by a partisan of Locke), that Dr. Barbon, banking entrepreneur, had a private interest in the "raising of money".153

Use value is the basis of value.

* "The value of all things arise from their use ... things of no use are of no value" * ([p.] 2).

The use may derive from physical needs, or mental needs, which means here "desires" ...

* "There are two general uses... They are either useful to supply the wants of the body, ... or the wants of the mind (such things that satisfy desire... Desire implies want; it is the appetite of the mind, and as natural as hunger to the body)" (l.c.). "The greatest number ... have their value from supplying the wants of the mind" ([p.] 3). "Desire and wants increase with riches. And from thence it is, that the contented man is the only rich man, because he wants nothing" ([p.] 3). "If any things could have an intrinsick value in themselves, they would be cattle and corn" * ([p.] 3), namely * "things that supply the wants of the body, and support life" (l.c.). "Rarity and scarcity are the chief reasons for the value of those things that are used for ornament, and not for any excellent quality in themselves" ([p.] 5). "[Value] depends only on opinion" * ([p.] 4). (Storch.b)

Use value and exchange value.

* "There is nothing that troubles this controversy more, than for want of distinguishing betwixt value and virtue. Value is only the price of things: that can never be certain... Nothing can have an intrinsick value. But things have an intrinsick virtue, which in all places have the same virtue; as the load stone to attract iron, etc. But these things, though they may have great virtues, may be of small or no value or price, according to the place where they are plenty or scarce" * ([p.] 6).

Exchange value is indifferent towards the use value of things.

* "There is no difference or distinction in things of equal value; that is, one commodity is as good as another that's of the same value. One hundred pounds worth of lead or iron, is of as great a value as one hundred pounds worth of silver and gold" ([p.] 7).

[XXIII-1427] "Gold and silver are commodities as well as lead or iron" ([p.] 7).

"In trade and commerce there is no difference in commodities when their values are equal" ([p.] 11).

a [D. Defoe,] An Essay upon Publick Credit..., London, 1710. - Ed.

b See this volume, p. 303. - Ed.

"Nothing has a price or value in itself; the price or value of every thing arises from the occasion or use for it; the plenty and scarcity, in respect to their occasion, makes things of greater or less value" ([p.] 10).

"Now if the value of all things arise from their use; if plenty or scarcity makes things dear or cheap; if silver be a commodity for several uses, and more plentiful in some places than in others; then it must necessarily follow, that silver can have no certain or intrinsick value; and if silver be of an uncertain value, then it can never be the instrument of commerce and traffick: For, that which is uncertain in its own value, can never be a certain measure of another value" * ([p.] 8).

Money of account (l.c., [pp.] 17, 18, 27). It is the denomination, etc. ([pp.] 30, 31).

Means of circulation.

* "It is the currency of the coin that all men regard more than the quantity of silver in it" ([p.] 29).

"Money does wear and grow lighter by often telling over" * ([p.] 29).

His polemic against the balance of trade ([pp.] 35-40, 42, 44-45, 51-52). (Supplementary Notebook E [pp. 183-87].)

//* "One sort of wares are as good as another, if the value be equal" * ([p.] 53).

Accounts. Holland ([pp.] 54-55).

World money, bullion, commodity ([pp. 54-]55). The balancing of accompt is not to blame for the sending out of money ([p.] 57). Spaniards ([p.] 57). The relative value of bullion in different countries is to blame for its being sent out ([pp.] 59-60).// ·

//Decus et Tutamen etc., London, 1696.

Subsidiary coinage. Copper coinage ([pp.] 6-7). Assumes, anyway, taking this from Barbon, that bullion is sent abroad not for payments but as a means of purchase ([p.] 51).//

//* "It is evident that enclosures have been in a great measure the occasion of the increase of the poor in their neighbouring parishes" * (Some Thoughts Concerning the Maintenance of the Poor etc., London, 1700, [p.] 10).//

//Land as the basis of wealth.

* "Land paid" * (during the 11 years of war since 1689) * "10s. in the pound, per annum, principal and interest, under which latter name (land) husbandry, manufacture and trade are comprehended, as having their existence from, and being no more than the product and improvement of land, which is the principal stock, and gives birth and maintenance to all of 'em" * ([p.] 2).

On the binding character of contracts extorted by necessity.a This also applies to the contract between capitalist and wage labourer ([p.] 16). (Both quotations come from: [J. Drake,] An Essay Concerning the Necessity of Equal Taxes etc., London, 1702. The

a In the manuscript the English word is given in brackets after its German equivalent. - Ed.

second is on page 4, Supplementary Notebook F.) The INTEREST OF THE YEAR 1699 AMOUNTED TO MORE THAN THE WHOLE CHANGE OF THE YEAR 1688 ([p.] 9).//

//* "Stock jobbing a publick nuisance" * ([p.] 1

(The anatomy of the stock exchange... under George I.)

* Stock jobbers "original thieves and pick pockets" ([ibid., p.] 8). "A gang a rogues and cheats" ([p.] 6).

"That original of stock jobbing, Josiah Child" * ([p.] 13). See stock exchange manipulations ([pp.] 13-15).//

[XXIII-1428] //Value.

* "The value of a thing
Is just as much as it will bring." * 154

Or as Nicholas Barbon quotes "the old maxim" [op. cit., p. 2]: "Valet quantum vendi potest." b //

//Sir Matthew Decker c: one single tax, namely upon houses according to the rents they pay. See the pamphlet in Supplementary Notebook F, p. 6. This pamphlet was already in its 5th edition in 1774. He was a member of parliament. See also Mr. Horsley, 1744.d (Supplementary Notebook F, [p.] 6. In the same place [pp. 6-9] the pamphlet An Essay on the Inequality of Our Present Taxes, Particularly the Land-Tax etc., London, 1746.) In the last-mentioned work:

* "The latter tax" (excises) "has well nigh starved our poor" * ([p.] 25).

Denounces the way the excise falls upon the poor ([p.] 37).

* "The manufacturers who work for their daily bread, ... are the chief consumers of customed as well as excised goods" * ([pp.] 37-38).

Says that out of all the English families 600,000 should pay nothing. The other 900,000 2s. in the pound [of] annual income (hence an income tax), modified according to the number of children and the income ([pp.] 38-39).//

//Some Thoughts on the Interest of Money in General, and Particularly in the Publick Funds etc., London, 1750. This is a very significant work.

Rent:

* "The rent of land, and the price of the things which that land produces, always do, and necessarily must, rise and fall together" * ([p.] 3).

a [D. Defoe,] The Anatomy of Exchange Alley: or, a System of Stock Jobbing, London, 1719. - Ed.

b "A thing costs as much as it can fetch". - Ed.

c [M. Decker,] Serious Considerations on the Several High Duties Which the Nation in General, As Well As Its Trade in particular, Labours Under..., London, 1743. - Ed.

d [W.] Horsley, Serious Considerations on the High Duties Examin'd: Address'd to Sir Matthew Decker, London, 1744. - Ed.

//He thinks, quoting from Locke, that this is connected with the cheapness of money (in view of the plenty of silver) and therefore the dearness of provisions, while the same cause which makes money cheap (its plenty) also reduces the interest ([p.] 12).//

* "The decrease of the interest of money is one cause, or rather measure, of the increase in the price of the necessaries of life" * ([pp.] 6-7).

//Locke is his main authority.//

A fall in profit (interest) and a rise in rents are here for the first time presented as interconnected facts, even though the phenomenon is explained in a curious way according to Lockean principles. Take the following passage:

* "An increase of the rent, or annual value" * (of the land) * "... must proceed from a rise in the price of the produce of [the] land, and the common provisions of life; but I do not mean here that the fall of interest is the immediate cause of the increase of rents, or of the price of the necessaries of life, but that there is such a connection between them that they will accompany one another; so that the cause, whatever that be, which produces the one, will necessarily draw the other after it" * ([p.] 36).

Notes the fall of rents for some years; but this is not a general phenomenon, he says ([pp.] 57-58, [Supplementary Notebook F,] p. 16).

Value. This is the most complete discussion, since Petty and Franklin, of the correct theory of value (Supplementary Notebook F, [pp.] 12 sqq.). (P. 14, where he gets rid of the supply and demand talk in a few words.) (Similarly pp. 15, ++.) Whether gold or silver falls in price or the commodity (l.c., [p.] 15).154

Fall in rents. (Inkling of differential rent.)

* "The fall in the rents of particular farms" * is partly due to the fact that * "many of them have been heretofore raised above a holding rent, and now are sunk down again; and others have consisted of rich and unimprovable lands, and whilst poor and barren lands, by manure and dressing, have been made to yield a greater produce, the richer lands have been at a stand; and such improvements of one must have depreciated the value and rent of the other; for the value, and price, of the lands and the provisions arising from them, all taken [XXIII-1429] together, will be no more than before, unless the mouths to consume them, or the money to buy them, have increased in proportion to the increase in the produce" ([pp.] 58-59). "The persons would indeed live better and more plentifully on such increased produce, but the value and price of the present greater produce would be no more than of the former less produce; and the rent ... put together would be no more" * ([pp.] 58-59).

Price of the necessary means of subsistence and price of labour.

* "Whether the charge to the poor would be heightened by an advance in the price of provisions, is a very great question" ([p.] 72). "As to labour, in husbandry or manufactures, it has been observed, that it is always dearest when provisions are cheapest, because people in low life, who work only for their daily bread, if they can get it by three days' work in a week, will many of them make holiday the other

three, or set their own price on their labour. If a greater price of provisions should oblige them to work one day in a week, or one hour in a day more, or rather play one day, or one hour less than they now do, which would not very much hurt them; the pay of that day or hour would more than make amends for the advance in the prices of such things as they commonly live on; and those who employ them, might very well afford to set the industrious to work, and pay them better wages too, since their profit would be augmented in a proportion much greater" * ([p.] 73).

Investigation of the effect of dearness of labour in making commodity prices dearer.

* “I know 't is frequently a subject of complaint that labour is dear in England, and from thence that the goods of the growth or manufacture of this country, come dear to a foreign or domestic market; but I think that the dearness of them arises rather from the multiplicity of brokers, who intervene between the first producer and the last consumer, and the great profit which is made by those intermediate dealers. The very smallest of abatements made in the gains of the manufacturer, that is the employer, the factor, shopkeeper, or merchant, would make a vast advance in the wages of the labourer and first workman. I doubt therefore that the true reason why merchants of some foreign countries do undersell ours, is because our goods run too long a circuit before they come to the consumer, and the several agents through whose hands they go, eat up a great share of those gains which should belong to the first producer and manufacturer; and neither the factor nor dealer is content with so small a profit as in other countries; and not because the goods, when they come out of first hands, are dearer than in other places” * ([pp.] 73-74).

All taxes must fall on the land. Quotes in this connection a contemporary writer and Locke (Supplementary Notebook F, p. 18). An excise increases prices, etc., for the consumer, but often thereby lowers them for the producer (l.c., p. 19x).//

* “Labour is distant wealth” * ([Ch. Townshend,] National Thoughts, Also with an Appendix Showing the Damages Arising from a Bounty of Corn. By a Land-Owner, London, 1752 or 1753, [p.] 26).

Bounties on exportation of corn, etc., and against import duty (the above-mentioned National Thoughts, Supplementary Notebook F, p. 19).156

[XXIII-1430] //Reasons for the Late Increase of the Poor-Rates: or, A Comparative View of the Price of Labour and Provisions etc., London, 1777.

1) Change in the relative situation of the classes.

* “Labourer depressed almost to the earth” * [p. 5] (Supplementary Notebook F, p. 21).

The landowner receives a double gain from the rising price of provisions: the amount of rent has risen, “advanced rent” [op. cit., p. 8] and therefore the value of land has risen, and secondly [he gains] from the fall in interest (l.c.).157

Factors which help the farmer to raise the price of provisions: (l.c.).

* “The landlord and tenant ... have both gone hand in hand in keeping the labourer down; from a mistaken notion that they could not raise his wages, but at the expense of their respective emoluments” * (Reasons etc., [p.] 11).

Calculation of the means of subsistence now and 40 years ago ([Supplementary] Notebook F, p. 22) shows further how for a long time wages did not rise in the same proportion as 3) the price of the means of subsistence.

* “The disadvantage which the labourer sustains, is slipt into the profits which the landholder has acquired” * (Reasons etc., [p.] 19) (similarly p. 23 [of Supplementary Notebook F], pp. 20-22 in the pamphlet).

On the rubbish talked about the luxuries of the poor (Supplementary Notebook F, p. 23). (Wheaten bread, tea.)

Views of property owners and capitalists.

* “There is a capital error, in the very idea that men of fortune often entertain of the poor. They are apt to consider them as a tax, and a burden upon their property, when, in fact, their property is of no value without them” * ([p.] 23).

Laws regulating wages. Elizabeth. James I.

Pauperism, farmers, manufacturers. Very significant passage (l.c. [Supplementary Notebook F], pp. 23-24 [pp. 26-28 in the pamphlet]).

Value of land.

* “Land itself ... must be considered of no value ([without] the labourer); and that value which it acquires by his means, must be allowed to rise, and fall, in proportion to his strength and industry“ * (Reasons etc., [p.] 29).

How the poor labourer was treated before and now (l.c. [Supplementary Notebook F], pp. 24-25 [pp. 30-35 in the pamphlet]). (Expropriated by farmer and landlord.)

Capitalist and worker.

* “The farmer now absurdly asserts, that he keeps the poor. They are indeed kept in misery” * ([op. cit., p.] 31).

On the nonsensical explanations of misery and the moral means to remedy it ([Supplementary Notebook F,] p. 25).

Previous and present wages ([Supplementary Notebook F,] pp. 25-26 [pp. 36-42 in the pamphlet]). An extremely admirable work!11

//Storch, Cours d'économie politique, Vol. I [St. Petersburg, 1815].a

The earth is a machine (Vol. I, [p.] 168). (Machinery of different powers.)

“The fertility of the soil is manifested sometimes by the abundance of its products, and sometimes by their variety" ([p.] 169).

Disadvantages of the division of labour. With division of labour the worker is merely an accessory (p. 204).

Separation of workers in agriculture ([p.] 209).

a Here and below Marx quotes from and comments on Storch partly in French.— Ed.

Transport. Travel by sledge in Russia ([pp. 226-]227).

[XXIII-1431] Entrepreneurs and workers.

“In small enterprises ... the entrepreneur is often his own worker” ([p.] 242).

Sources of income are at the same time causes of production ([p.] 259) (Supplementary Notebook G, p. 8).

Rent as general expression for surplus value (“income independent of labour”) ([p.] 260).

“Durable wealth in the consumption fund may serve as capital” ([p.] 273).

Fixed capital remains in the hands “of the industrial worker" and does not “change its form at all", whereas circulating capital “is most often converted into new products” ([p.] 295).

With the fisherman circulating capital is nothing, fixed capital is fairly considerable ([p.] 296).

Income ([p.] 331).

Profits of stock in Smith. He confounds the rent of capital with the profit of the entrepreneur ([p.] 334, note).

“Smith— confounds the profit of the entrepreneur and the rent of capital into a single income which he calls the profits of stock” ([p.] 334, note).

Vol. II: Wages of superintendence.

“When it is a matter of separating it” (the wage of the entrepreneur) “from this profit, it is impossible to estimate its value except by virtue of the wage the entrepreneur would have had to pay to a worker if he had hired one to perform this task” ([p.] 1).

Fixed capital and circulating capital (Supplementary Notebook G, pp. 55-56 [Storch, Cours..., Vol. II, pp. 36-37]). Difference in circulation time (l.c. [Supplementary Notebook G], pp. 56-57).

“The worker ... lends his industry” ([p.] 36).

But, adds the cunning Storch, he “risks” nothing except “the loss ... of his wages... The worker does not hand over anything of a material nature” ([pp. 36-]37).

With Storch a double confusion is apparent: 1) when the necessary price is resolved into mere “incomes”, instead of into constant capital+income; 2) when the necessary price of the commodities is determined by the price of wages, etc., and the latter is for its part in turn determined by the prices of the commodities. With regard to the first point:

1) “The circulating capital” //why not the fixed capital as well?// “employed in materials, raw materials and labour already performed, is itself composed of commodities, the necessary price of which is formed of the same elements; with the result that in considering the whole of the commodities in a country, it would be counting twice to place this portion of the circulating capital among the elements of the necessary price” ([p.] 140).

2) “It is true that the worker’s wage, just like the part of the profit of the entrepreneur that consists of wages, if one considers them as a portion of means of subsistence, is also composed of commodities bought at current prices, which themselves consist of wages, the rent of capital, the rent of land, and the profits of entrepreneurs... This observation only serves to prove that it is impossible to resolve the necessary price into its simplest elements" ([pp.] 140[-141], note).

Young—evaluation of the gross product per acre ([Supplementary] Notebook G, p. 59). Rent (average) the same (p. 60 [Storch, Cours..., Vol. II, p. 223]).

Money (as means of credit and payment):

“If these same pieces of money can thus serve as the instrument of different loans for three times ... [or] thirty times ... their value, they can equally serve just as many times successively as an instrument of repayment” ([ibid.,] Vol. III, [p.] 161).

Under Adam Smith the division of labour ([Storch, Cours...,] Vol. VI, Note II) (Supplementary Notebook G, p. 114).

[XXIII-1433]158 Exchange of commodities and division of labour WITHIN SOCIETY.

“For exchanges to take place, it is not sufficient for there to exist exchangeable things; there also has to be ... a variety of things” (Storch, Vol. I, [p.] 75). “The division of labour ... is rather the cause than the effect of exchanges, at least at the beginning” (l.c., [p.] 82, note).

Price of commodities. Price is first of all the monetary expression of value. The fact that the exchange value of one commodity is expressed in the use value of another does not make the latter into the price of the former. Here the category taken from the circulation of money has been smuggled into the simple bartering of commodities. Thus e.g. Storch says:

If e.g. 4 lbs of tea are exchanged for 1 arshin of cloth, “it is clear that the quantity of cloth forms the price of the tea, just as the quantity of tea forms the price of the cloth” ([Vol.] 1, [p.] 87). “It is correlative quantities which constitute the price of commodities” (l.c.).

//

//Productive Class Landlords Sterile Class
2 milliards -- 2 milliards -- 1 milliard
1 milliard -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- milliard
1 milliard -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
1 milliard -- -- -- -- 1 milliard
Annual advances 2 milliards
Total 5 milliards Total 2 milliards a

a Marx gives the Tableau in French; further, in his comments on it, he uses some French words and expressions.— Ed.

This is the simplest form of the Tableau économique.159

1) Money circulation (assuming payment is made only annually). The money circulation starts out from the spending class, the landlords, who have no commodities to sell, who buy without selling.

They buy to the amount of 1 milliard from the productive class, who send back the milliard in money in payment of rent to them. (This disposes of 1/5 of the agricultural produce.) They buy to the amount of 1 milliard from the sterile class, who in this way get 1 milliard in money. (This disposes of 1/2 of the product of manufacture.) With the 1 milliard, the sterile class buy means of subsistence from the productive class; so that 1 milliard in money thus flows back to the latter. (This disposes of a second 1/5 of the agricultural produce.) With the same milliard in money the productive class buy 1 milliard in manufactured products; this replaces for them one half of their advances. (This disposes of the second 1/2 of the produce of manufacture.) The sterile class buy [XXIII-1434] raw materials with the same milliard in money. (This disposes of another 1/5 of the agricultural produce.) In this way the [2] milliards in money have flowed back to the productive class.

So what remains is 2/5 of the agricultural produce. 1/5 is consumed in natura, but in what form is the second 1/5 accumulated? That is to be shown later.160

2) Even from Quesnay’s point of view, according to which the whole sterile class in fact consist only of wage labourers, the falsity of the assumptions made is evident from the Tableau itself.

The original advances (fixed capital) made by the productive class are assumed to be 5 times the size of the annual advances. In the case of the sterile class this item is not mentioned at all—which naturally does not prevent it from existing.

Moreover, it is wrong to say that the reproduction = 5 milliards; the Tableau itself shows it to be 7 milliards; 5 in the case of the productive class and 2 in the case of the sterile class.

The product of the sterile class = 2 milliards. This product consists of 1 milliard in raw materials (which therefore partly enter into the product, and partly replace the wear and tear of the machinery which has entered into the value of the product) and 1 milliard in means of subsistence, which have been consumed in working them up.

They sell this entire product to the landlords and the productive class,a in order firstly to replace the advance (in raw materials),

a Marx has “stériles” (“sterile class”), probably a slip of the pen.— Ed.

Secondly to obtain agricultural means of subsistence. Therefore not a farthing's worth of the manufactured products is left for their own consumption, still less for interest or profit. This in fact was noticed by Baudeau (or [Le] Trosne); he explains it by the sterile class selling their product above its value, so that what they sell for 2 milliards = 2 milliards - x. The profit, and even what they consume in manufactured goods as necessary means of subsistence, is therefore explained only by the raising of the price of the commodities above their value. And here the Physiocrats necessarily fall back on the Mercantile System's profit upon alienation.161 This is why free competition between the manufacturers is so very essential, so that they do not take too great advantage of the productives and agriculturists. On the other hand this free competition is necessary in order that agricultural produce may be sold at a "good price", that is, that it may rise above its native price by sale abroad - the assumption being a country which exports wheat, etc.

"Every purchase is a sale, and every sale a purchase" (Quesnay, Dialogues sur le commerce et sur les travaux des artisans etc., ed. Daire,162 ([p.] 170).b "To buy is to sell, and to sell is to buy" (Quesnay in Dupont de Nemours, Origine etc., [p.] 392).163

"Price always precedes purchases and sales. If the competition of sellers and buyers brings about no change in it, it exists as it is through other causes independent of trade" ([p.] 148).c

"It is always to be presumed that it" (exchange) "is profitable to both" (contracting parties), "since they mutually procure for themselves the enjoyment of wealth which they could only obtain through exchange. But always there is only exchange of wealth of a certain value for other wealth of equal value, and consequently no real increase of wealth" (this should be: no real increase of value) (l.c., [p.] 197).d

Advances and capital are explicitly stated to be identical.

"The increase of capitals is then the principal means of augmenting labour, and is of the greatest benefit to society", etc. (Quesnay in Dupont de Nemours, l.c., [p.] 391).163//

|XXIII-1435| //[J. Cunningham,] An Essay on Trade and Commerce: Containing Observations on Taxes, as they are supposed to affect the price of labour in our manufactories etc., London, 1770. (The same author had already published the essence of this work in Considerations on Taxes etc., London, 1765.)

This fellow vents his spleen against the workers in manufacturing, who should be restored, he says, to the same "happy state" as that enjoyed already by then by the agricultural labourers. His work is very important. One sees in part from it that there was still a lack of discipline in manufacture shortly before the introduction of large-scale industry; that the supply of hands still by no means met the demand; that the worker was still far from regarding the whole of his time as belonging to capital. (Naturally at that time there was still much brutality among the workers; but no more than there was among their natural superiors.) In order to remedy these defects, the author recommends high taxes on the necessaries of life, which will compel the workers to work, in the same way as bad harvests do; general naturalisation, in order to increase competition among them; also debasement of the currency (raising of money), etc. Apart from machinery, everything that this fine man demanded came about shortly afterwards: high price of provisions, immense taxation, depreciation of currency, all circumstances which contributed towards reducing the level of wages, and in the year 1815 happily placed the ragged factory worker alongside the "pauper" who represented the "bold peasantry of England". Above all, the following passages are important, partly as showing the labour time really worked by manufacturing workers in those days, partly as showing the efforts of capital to force them to work to the full extent of their powers (as well as to inculcate in them industrious habits, constancy of labour):

a See N. Baudeau. Explication du Tableau economique... In: Physiocrates... par M. Eugène Daire, Part II, pp. 852-54.- Ed.

b Here and below Marx quotes Quesnay in French.- Ed.

c F. Quesnay, Dialogues...: "Du commerce. Premier dialogue entre M.H. et M.N.".- Ed.

d F. Quesnay, Dialogues...: "Sur les travaux des artisans. Second dialogue".- Ed.

First of all, the whole of the worker's labour time belongs to the "commercial state", meaning here the common interest of industrial capital:

* "An hour's labour lost in a day is a prodigious injury to a commercial state" * ([p.] 47).

Compulsion to labour:

* "Any method ... that will enforce labour and industry, will have the same effect as increasing the number of hands, and will convert what would otherwise be a burthen, into the riches and strength of the state" * ([p.] 18).

(One of these methods is the high price of provisions, to which taxes on the means of subsistence, etc., contribute.)

* "Taxes tend to lower the price of labour" * ([p.] 14).

Price of labour and quantity of labour. (Length of the working day.)

* "To labour less and not cheaper has been the consequence of a low price of provisions" ([p.] 14).

"Men will not labour, while they have the means of idleness in their power; but, as soon as these means are exhausted, necessity again rouses them to their work; and from this cause, no state has ever yet made any considerable figure in commerce, where the necessaries of life could be obtained by little labour" * ([p.] 26).

Some kind of "method" must therefore

* "be found out, to create a general industry; that the moderate labour of 6 days in the week may be so enforced as, in time, to grow habitual, as in the case with the Dutch; for this would be equal to an increase of manufacturing people, near one third, and produce many millions, per annum, more in commodities... Of such vast consequence is sobriety, industry, and constant labour, to a commercial state" ([pp. 28-]29). "When, from a high price of necessaries, persons are obliged to labour 6 days in the week, they keep themselves sober, and the work of such men is always best performed, etc." ([p.] 30). "Sir William Temple observes, that 'of such force is the prevalency of habit, that the change from constant labour to constant ease, is as difficult and disagreeable, as from constant ease to constant labour'" ([pp.] 30[-31]).

|XXIII-1436| "If the making every seventh day an holiday is supposed to be a divine institution, as it implies the appropriating the other six days to labour, surely it will not be thought cruel to enforce it" ([p.] 41).

"If our poor will ... live luxuriously, and work only four days in a week, their labour must of course be dear" ([pp.] 44, etc.).

"I hope I have said enough to make it appear that the moderate labour of 6 days in a week is no slavery" * [p. 55].

Against Postlethwayt (the author of The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce). Postlethwayt had said, in a work entitled Great-Britain's Commercial Interest Explained and Improved, 2nd edition, London, 1759:

* "High taxes must raise the price of necessaries, an high price of necessaries must raise the price of labour, and an high price of labour must enhance the value of commodities: so that the state, in which labour is cheapest, will always be able to undersell other states, and gain their trade" * [pp. 12-13].

The scoundrel we are presently dealing with states the contrary, in his first work, the title of which indicates the whole of its contents: Considerations on Taxes, as they are supposed to affect the price of labour in our manufacturies: also some reflections on the general behaviour and disposition of the manufacturing populace of this kingdom; shewing, by arguments drawn from experience, that nothing but necessity will enforce labour; // hence wages are always to be kept at such a level that necessity is there every single day, today as well as yesterday, that it drives the worker on, and that he is never able to emerge from this "necessity" // and that no State ever did, or ever can, make any considerable figure in trade, where the necessaries of life are at a low price, London, 1765. Postlethwayt answered the fellow in a later edition of his Universal Dictionary.164 (We shall quote the passage later; he inveighs against him in this book.)

* "Our labouring people who are employed in husbandry do this" [work six days in a week] "and, to all appearance, they are the happiest of all our labouring poor:" *

(This blighter himself admits later on in the work that these "happy" fellows have already sunk to the physical minimum, and that at least they would be unable to bear any further increase of the taxes on necessaries without an increase in wages.)

* "but the Dutch do this in manufactories, and appear to be a very happy people. The French do so, when holidays do not intervene" * ([J. Cunningham, An Essay..., p.] 55).

The working class must have the feeling of dependency upon their superiors:

* "But, our manufacturing people have adopted a notion, that as Englishmen they enjoy a birthright privilege of being more free and independent than in any country in Europe. Now, this idea, as far as it may affect the bravery of our troops, may be of some use; but the less the manufacturing poor have of it, certainly the better for themselves and the state. The labouring people should never think themselves independent of their superiors" ([p.] 56). "It is extremely dangerous to encourage mobs in a commercial state like ours, where perhaps seven parts out of eight of the whole are people with little or no property" ([p.] 57).

"It is the quantity of labour, and not the price of it,165 that is determined by the price of provisions and other necessaries: reduce the price of necessaries very low, and of course you reduce the quantity of labour in proportion" ([p.] 48). "That mankind, in general, are naturally inclined to ease and indolence, |XXIII-1437| we fatally experience to be true, from the conduct of our manufacturing populace" * (rabble), * "who do not labour, upon an average, above 4 days in a week, unless provisions happen to be very dear" ([p.] 15).

"Master-manufacturers know, that there are various ways of rising and falling the price of labour, besides that of altering its nominal value" ([p.] 61).

"The cure will not be perfect, till our manufacturing poor are contented to labour 6 days for the same sum which they now earn in four days" ([p.] 69). "This is necessary to bring us upon a par with France" ([pp. 69-]70).

"A day's labour is vague; it may be long or short" ([p.] 73).

"In this kingdom ... the manufacturer, who labours 4 days, has a surplus of money to live idle with the rest of the week. Now, say wheat should rise to 7s. a bushel" * (from 5), * "the only evil the manufacturer has to complain of, is, that he is obliged to work a day and a half, or two days, more in a week, and be frugal and sober, like the Dutch manufacturer, or the English husbandman" * (l.c., [p.] 97).

If workhouses are to be effective, they must become houses of TERROR".

* "If a workhouse scheme is to answer any good purpose, in regard ... to extirpating idleness, debauchery and excess, promoting a spirit of industry, lowering the price of labour in our manufacturies ... such house must be made an house of terror, and not an asylum for the poor" * ([pp.] 242[-43]).

He calls a "workhouse" of this kind an "ideal workhouse", proposing that within it

* "he" (the poor [man]) "shall labour 14 hours in a day, allowing proper time for his meals, in such manner that there shall remain 12 hours of neat labour" * ([p.] 260).

If one sees on the one hand that he demonstrates that 6 days of work in the week are not "slavery" for manufacturing workingmen (see Postlethwayt164 straight away) and that he indicates as an extraordinary fact that in Holland the poor work 6 days in the manufactories; if on the other hand he proposes a working day of 12 hours in his "house of horror", his "ideal workhouse", and one compares this with the situation (in 1833?) when a restriction to 12 hours of labour in factories for children, women and young persons was opposed as a terrible outrage by Ure and his patrons,a while the French workers regard the reduction of the working day to 12 hours as the sole achievement of the February Revolution [of 1848] (see the Report of the Inspectors of Factoriesb), the prolongation of labour time (of the working day) enforced by the capitalist mode of production becomes evident.

* "There is a very great consumption of luxuries among the labouring poor of this kingdom; particularly among the manufacturing populace, by which they also consume their time, the most fatal of all their consumptions" * ([J. Cunningham, An Essay..., p.] 153).

If the workers work more, they should not therefore earn more, for necessity must always remain the stimulus for their labour; they must remain poor, but create the wealth of the "commercial state", i.e., if we paraphrase this, of their bourgeoisie.

* "Temperate living and constant employment is the direct road, for the poor, to |XXIII-1438| rational happiness; and to riches and strength for the state" * ([p.] 54).

What he understands by "rational happiness" of the poor can be seen from his depiction of the agricultural "labourers" as the "happiest". He himself says in another passage of this work:

* "Husbandmen ... but just live decent when provisions are at the cheapest rates... Their powers are always upon the stretch, they cannot live cheaper than they do, nor work harder... But this is far from being the case with the manufacturer" * ([p.] 96).

This, then, is the "rational happiness" of the poor.

Against this there is a passage from Postlethwayt164 ((to be quoted in connection with the normal working day) see Supplementary Notebook G, pp. 50-52).

Primitive accumulation.

The fellowd may be quoted to great effect in connection with the enforcing of labour, and the bringing about with the help of the power of the state, etc., of such circumstances as further the accumulation of capital, and convert the working class into a mere

a See this volume, p. 42.- Ed.

b Reports of the Inspectors of Factories ... for the Half Year Ending 31st October 1855, London, 1856, p. 80. See present edition, Vol. 30. p. 221.- Ed.

c Cf. this volume, p. 292.- Ed.

d [J. Cunningham.] An Essay on Trade and Commerce..., London, 1770.- Ed.

instrument for the valorisation and the quickest and most massive possible increase of capital. It was first of all the forcible legislation passed since the Statute of Edward III* which established the working day (seeking at the same time to hold down wages), but in precisely the opposite way to the Factory Acts of nowadays. The earlier legislation corresponds to the period of the formation of capitalist production, the conditions of which only ripened gradually; the later legislation corresponds to the domination of the capitalist mode of production, which removed all the obstacles standing in its way, and created the circumstances under which the “ natural laws ” could function freely. The earlier legislation was a way of determining the working day in order to force the workers to perform every day a certain quantity of labour, through a form of compulsion which lay outside the compulsion of the laws of economics; these are the laws against the alleged “ indolence and ease ” of the working classes. The later legislation, in contrast, consists of laws against overwork, interventions into the “natural functioning” of the laws of economics. The contrast between these two types of law shows the manner in which capitalist production enforces labour—the former laws compel the workers to labour, the latter enforce the limits of the working day. the fellow starts off like this: * “In the reign of Edward VI indeed the English seem to have set, in good earnest, about encouraging manufactures and employing the poor. This we learn from a remarkable statute which runs thus: “ ‘That all vagrants shall be branded, and be the slaves of those who apprehend them, for two years; to be fed with bread and water’ ” * //later to be the staple diet of the agricultural labourers //, * “with an iron collar or ring fastened on their necks, arms, or legs; and upon running away, to be farther branded, and be condemned to slavery for life; and upon running away again, to be hanged’ (Statute I Edward VI c. 3)’’* [pp. 5-6].

An increase in the price of provisions is a circumstance which brings the labouring poor (without coercive laws) to such a condition “ that they cannot live cheaper... nor work harder ”. They thereby attain to the “ rational happiness ” of the proud peasantry of England [pp. 14-15].

In cases where the price of provisions is high: * “A general industry is immediately created; workmen crowd about the houses of master-manufacturers, begging for work, almost at any rate; and they work 5 or 6 days in the week instead [of] 3or4. Labour being a kind of commodity, the quantity then offered tends to the lowering its price” * ([pp. 15-]16).

(This quantity offered by no means depends merely on the number of workers; it depends rather on the amount of labour which is offered, and this amount is determined, [XXIII-1438a] if the number is given, by the length of the working day, and if the length of the working day is given, it is determined by the number of workers.)

Our friend remarks quite correctly on this point: * “Any method that will enforce labour and industry, will have the same effect as increasing the number of hands” * ([p.] 18). An increase in the price of provisions can naturally first of all result from an increase in population relative to the territory. * “A multitude of people being drawn together in a small territory will raise the price of provisions; but, at the sametime, if the police be good, it must keep down the price of labour, make men industrious, and incline them to exert their best abilities in the improvement of manufactures” * ([p.] 19).

Increase of population through enlistment of foreign workers, thus increasing competition among the workers: * “But the most expeditious way of increasing the number of people, keeping down the price of labour, enforcing industry, and improving our manufactures, is a general naturalisation"* ([p.] 20).

(The flow of Irish people into the industrial districts, etc., since the machine age has fulfilled all this scoundrel’s expectations about “ a general naturalisation ”. It is in fact remarkable how all the pious wishes this obsequious sycophant of the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie mechanically reels off—increase in the prices of agricultural products, growth in the national debt, introduction of taxes on necessaries, enlistment of foreign workers, depreciation of money, workhouses as houses of terror, artificial production of a constant “ redundancy of labour ” — how all this has become a reality since the arrival of the epoch of large-scale industry in England.)

It is in the highest degree characteristic that among all these means “ t o enforce labour and industry ” the fellow never thinks of better pay, or raising wages. The reverse in fact. One may see from his pamphlet that precisely on the eve of the introduction of machine industry the demand for labour grew more rapidly in England than the supply, and that the manufacturing bourgeois, jealous and envious of the “ rational happiness ” the agricultural labourers had already been reduced to, struggled with all their might against the rising rate of wages. The introduction of machinery coincides precisely with the epoch when the spokesmen of the bourgeoisie were racking their brains as to how to increase the supply of labour without raising wages, in view of the preponderance of the demand for labour over its supply. Machinery really did enter the picture at a moment when they were considering ways of lowering wages. the fact that at that time the demand for labour rose more rapidly than the supply of labour can be seen from the following passages (already Vanderlint, and later Forster,3 etc., point out that the bourgeois refuse to provide for themselves a larger amount of labour by paying higher wages): * “Another cause of idleness, in this kingdom, is the want of a sufficient number of labouring hands" ([p.] 27). “Whenever, from an extraordinary demand for manufactures, labour grows scarce, the labourers feel their own consequence” * (which should not happen) * “and will make their masters feel it likewise: it is amazing·, but so depraved are the dispositions of these people, that, in such cases, a set of workmen have combined to distress their employer, by idling a whole day together" * ([pp.] 27-28).

(Compare Vanderlint and Forster on this “ amazing ” [XXIII-1438b] fact and this unheard-of “ depravation ”. ) 166 * “These things never happen when wheat and other necessaries are dear; labour is then so plentiful, and becomes too necessary to admit of such unnatural combinations" * ([p.] 28).

Some “ method ” or other must therefore “ b e found t o create a GENERAL INDUSTRY” ([pp. 28-]29).

Apart from the natural rise in the price of necessaries and a general naturalisation, the method is taxes upon necessaries. * “Indolence and ease are luxuries of the poor, which should not often be indulged, lest they grow into habit; for then they become fatal. Now all the taxes on the necessaries of the poor appear to be the more useful, as they operate to prevent this fatal indulgence, and therefore should be the last taxes to be abolished” ([p·] 45). “Half the taxes which the lower sort of people in England pay, are for superfluities, or the means of a low debauch, and not for the necessaries. When it is considered what luxuries the manufacturing populace consume, such as brandy, gin, tea, sugar, foreign fruit, strong beer, printed linens, snuff, tobacco, etc., it is amazing any one should be so weak as to conceive that taxes raise the price of labour·, or that it should be necessary to raise the price of labour because of our taxes, in order to enable the poor to live comfortably, knowing they consume such heaps of superfluities” ([p.] 46). “ Taxes are so far from injuring our foreign trade, by rendering our manufactures dear in foreign markets,... that I am persuaded we should have no manufactures to export, if all taxes were entirely abolished; and if from other concurrent causes, our manufacturing poor could live at half the expense they have done for 20 years past” ([p.] 47).

a See J. Vanderlint, Money Answers All Things.... London, 1734, and [N. Forster,] An Enquiry into the Causes oj the Present High Price oj Provisions, London, 1767.— Ed. “In the great city of Amsterdam, not above 4 malefactors are capitally convicted in a year, and a beggar is hardly to be seen in the streets; happy consequences these of high taxes, dearness of provisions, and a good police... The great De Witt, in his maxims of Holland, 167 says that ‘high taxes promote invention, industry and frugality’ ” * ([p ] 49). the main reason why England is “undersold” by the French in a number of countries is “the high price of labour’ ’ ([p·] 67). the condition of “rational happiness” to which he wants to bring the working Englishmen is described in what follows. He only commits one more falsification here, in that the French workers of whom he speaks were agricultural labourers, who in England at that time, on his own admission, were already in the same condition of “rational happiness”. (The disproportion between the wages of manufacturing and agricultural labourers was enforced then by the LAWS OF SETTLEMENT.168) * “This [is] necessary to bring us upon a par with France. An author, who stiles himself a Northampton manufacturer, says that ‘labour is * / s cheaper in France than in England; for their poor work hard, and fare hard, as to their food and clothing: their chief diet is bread, fruit, herbs, roots, [XXIII-1439] and dried fish; for they very seldom eat flesh; and when wheat is dear, they eat very little bread’. To which may be added, that their drink is either water or other small liquors, so that they spend very little money, etc." ([pp. 69-]70). “ These things are very difficult to be brought about; but they are not impracticable, since they have been effected both in France and Holland” * ([pp.] 70[-71]).

Quotes authorities for the view that a high price of provisions is necessary “to enforce general industry” : * “Sir William Temple, in his discourse to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, says, ‘provisions must be rendered so dear, as to enforce general industry’. Sir W. Petty, Sir Josiah Child’’ * (the mid-17 th century ancestor of the stockjobbers), * “Mr. Polixfen, Mr. Gee’’ * (chief Mercantilist), * “etc., have all concurred in the same observation; viz. that trade can never be greatly extended, where the necessaries of life are very cheap" * ([p.] 83).

He further quotes the wretched Arthur Young, tax-mongerer and sycophant to the English landed aristocracy, whose merits as an agronomist have been greatly exaggerated, and whose economic views are beneath criticism. The fellow was always an enthusiastic supporter of high prices of provisions, partly because, as he explicitly says, they “compensate” the gentry for the taxes and secure for them the necessary freedom from taxation, partly because they on the one hand force down the level of wages, and on the other hand compel the workers to work more for lower wages. In order to make the “high price of corn” acceptable to the manufacturers, the chief opponents of such a system, (and also to make the bounty on the export of corn palatable to them) he demonstrated statistically (l.c., p. 18) in A Six Weeks’ Tour into Wales, London, 1769,169 that * “there was not any proportion between the rates of labour and those of provisions” * [See J. Cunningham, An Essay..., p. 290].

They were related instead inversely: * “so very far is the rate of the one from the rule of the other, that they are mostly in opposition” * [ibid., p. 291].

His work The Expediency of Allowing the Free Exportation of Corn, 1770, is directed exclusively at proving this point. * “But, in the name of common-sense where are the facts, and what are the reasonings, that prove a high rate of provisions an enemy to manufactures ? Living must be rendered dear before that general industry, which can alone support a manufacturing people, will be rooted amongst them” [p. 293]. “The labouring poor work no more days in a week than are sufficient to maintain themselves; the remainder is spent in idleness” * [p. 294] (Young, l.c., [pp.] 28 sqq.).

Thus far the authorities. the national debt is therefore a good thing, because it effects the increase of taxes, and an increase “of riches” fortunately leads to an increase in the national debt. * “An increase of riches had a tendency to increase the national debt... by making it extremely easy for the government, on any emergency, to borrow money at a low rate of interest” * ([J. Cunningham, An Essay..., pp.] 164-65).

Cites the Dutch national debt and Dutch taxes: * “And yet, after all, labour is cheaper there than in England” * ([p.] 170).

[XXIII-1440] Depreciation of money is also a good method. * “Since the year 1613, the French have, by frequent enhancements of their money, varied the relation between silver and commodities; that is, they have altered the measure of value ; by which means they do not give half so much silver for a day’s labour as they did 150 years ago” ([p.] 211). “France purchases an equal quantity of labour with less silver than we do; consequently labour is cheaper in France than in England"* ([p.] 213).

He therefore wishes * “some alteration” in “the value of money” ([p.] 213). “Labour continues the same in England when wheat is at 10s. a bushel, as it does when it is at 2s. 6d.; and I believe, in other countries, the price of wheat as little governs the price of labour” * ([p.] 160).

But assume * “that an increase of our taxes should raise the price of necessaries 2d. a day to the poor manufacturer; the utmost evil that could arise from thence, supposing there was sufficient employment, would be, that he must work 1 or 2 hours a day3 in a week more, etc.; by working this hour or 2 extraordinary, he would be capable of purchasing as many necessaries and superfluities as he could do before this increase of taxes” ([p.] 161).

“We find that the manufacturing people readily submit to the necessity of labouring more for a maintenance, when, from a bad harvest, wheat is very dear... Taxes on the necessaries of the poor, operate something in this way, and are great incitements to labour and industry ... the price of labour is no way affected by it, but the quantity only” * ([p.] 94).

The workers would submit to this operation by the method of taxes, without noticing it, if only such blighters as Postlethwayt and his gang “were silent” ([p.] 95).

State measures, coercive laws for enforcing the creation of a labour force. First the above-mentioned law of Edward VI.a Then various laws of Elizabeth (Supplementary Notebook G, pp. 32, 40 170). Statute I. Anne (l.c., [p.] 40). Dutch Statute of Charles V, October 7, 1531 (l.c., [p.] 45) (against begging). First Edict of the states and cities of Holland, 19th of March 1614 (l.c., [pp.] 45, 46) (whipping, banishment, burning of beggars). Similarly Placard of the United Provinces, June 25, 1649 (l.c., p. 46).

But he thinks that these frankly coercive laws would not work in England. The same effect must be achieved in a more inconspicuous manner:

* “The lower sort of people in England, from a romantic notion of liberty, generally reject and oppose everything that is forced upon them: and though, from a fear of punishment, you may oblige persons to work certain hours for certain wages, you cannot oblige them to do their work properly” ([p.] 92). “Although necessity must be the basis of any scheme to enforce general industry, yet, it appears from the notions and dispositions of the British populace, that it should not come so fully and directly to the point, as it does in such acts of parliament; for the execution of such laws has almost always produced illegal combinations, riot, and confusion. If possible, the effects of such laws should be produced, almost insensibly, and without the appearance of force” * ([p.] 93).

[XXIII-1441] Piecework. Cantillon, Essai sur la nature du commerce en général (the Amsterdam edition, 1756, forms Vol. III of the Discours politiques, Amsterdam, 1754-1757).b

“These master craftsmen know approximately how much work a journeyman can do per day in each trade, and they often pay in proportion to the work that they do; thus these journeymen work as much as they can, in their own interests, without any other supervision” (l.c., [p.] 185).

“The work of the journeymen is regulated by the day or by the piece” (Cantillon, l.c., p. 202).

Protestantism, was also a means for increasing surplus labour.

“Those states which have embraced Protestantism ... enjoy the advantage of having abolished a large number of the holidays which are days of idleness in the Roman Catholic countries, and lessen the labour of the inhabitants by nearly the eighth part of the year” (Cantillon, l.c., [p.] 231).

// Ch. Ganilh, [La] Théorie de l’économie politique etc., Paris, 1815, 2 vols.

Productive labour.

“This market value, the distinctive characteristic” (!) “of productive labour” (Vol. I, [p.] 266).

Progress of industry and number of workers employed.

“The progress of industry, far from necessitating a larger number of hands, reduces the number” (Vol. I, [p.] 308). “It is not even easy to say when the increase of the products of industry requires the increase of the manufacturing population” ([Vol.] I, [p.] 307).

Rent.

“The rent of land, like every other product” (!) “... is entirely due to the employment of capital” ([Vol.] II, [p.] 77).

“The fact that the capital which produced it belongs to the landowner or the farmer is of little importance” ([Vol.] II, [p.] 80).

“The market price of cultivated land” //and what about uncultivated land?// “can neither be smaller nor greater than the capital which has brought it under cultivation” ([Vol.] I, [p.] 54).

Value. There are no intrinsic values. It depends on the need for the products.

“Whether they have cost much or little is therefore a matter of indifference” ([Vol.] II, [pp.] 335 and 334-37) (p. 126 of Supplementary Notebook G)!//

//Forbonnais, Principes économiques (edit. Daire and Molinari, in: Mélanges d’économie politique, [Vol. I,] Paris, 1847).

Income.

“Income is the fruit of a property made capable of annually bringing new values into trade or circulation” ([p.] 174).

Fixed capital.

“The work of draining and clearing the land requires an amount of labour the land can only pay for over several years” ([p.] 179).

“The level of profit ... is the sine qua non factor” ([p.] 185).

(What Forbonnais says on high and low prices is good, ibid., [pp.] 184-85.)

[XXIII-1442] Conversion of land into fishponds.

“At one time the fashion for fish was a sort of madness, ruining the people as well as the nobility. A large amount of land was converted into ponds. Now the change of taste has converted them into grazing land and pastures” (l.c., [p.] 187, Note 2 by Forbonnais).

Low price (against the Economists1'1) (Supplementary Notebook G, [p.] 129 [op. cit., p. 187]). The same on the reduction in men involved in agriculture and the emigration of these “superfluous men” into other trades (pp. 130-31 [op. cit., pp. 187-88]).

Forbonnais argues well in the following passage against the wretched Ganilh and his associates, who make market price the distinguishing characteristic of productive labour, and [advocate] heavy luxury consumption, etc.:

An increase in the price of relatively useless things is bad,

“when the considerable surplus of some citizens is acquired by cutting down the surplus of the rest of the citizens; for then there is a forcible transfer of property, which constitutes harmful luxury” ([p.] 187). “The more taxes there are, the more luxury there appears to be, because there will be a greater number of men provided with a big surplus through a forcible transfer of other people’s property” ([p.] 206).//

//Abrégé élémentaire des principes de l’économie politique, Paris, 1796 (Germain Garnier).

This fellow, Smith’s translator, a Physiocrat who has gone through him, is above all a plagiarist of Cantillon. Let one phrase suffice:

“Any commodity men have the power to multiply ... has as its average and ordinary value the total amount of land and labour employed to produce it and to put it on sale” ([pp.] 61-62).

The rent of landlords, in contrast to wages and profit,

“is received by the proprietor free of charge and solely in virtue of a legal fiction which recognises and maintains the right of property in certain individuals” ([p.] 28).

Adam Smith.

“He set himself,” says Garnier, “to derive the growth of the wealth of nations from two causes alone, these being 1) the perfecting of the faculties of labour; and 2) the accumulation of capital” ([p.] VI, Preface).

Capital = advances.

“It is rare for the consumer to employ the worker directly. It is equally rare for the latter to have in his possession the wherewithal to feed himself while he is working, or to furnish himself with materials and instruments. Moreover, this advance, whoever makes it, is a service distinct from labour, and requires a specific compensation” ([p.] 34).

Hence because the conditions of labour are separated from labour in capitalist production, it is a service to overcome this separation, and the service must receive special payment--from the workers. (Garnier admits that profits are made on this, p. 35.) The possibility of this service therefore only arises from the reality of the separation. According to Mr. Garnier, if all sellers or buyers of commodities only sold [or bought] their own products, they would have to pay each other reciprocally, by an addition to their prices, “compensation” for the fact that they had advanced to themselves, during their work, the means of subsistence needed for working.

[XXIII-1443] The fellow’s consumption theory, and his polemic against Smith’s distinction between productive and unproductive laboura (Supplementary Notebook G, [pp.] 134, 136, 138, 139). For the rest, there are some sensible statements here and there but he applies them incorrectly, for example the following two:

“A nation necessarily lives from day to day” ([p.] 193). “It cannot become richer except by simultaneously increasing the volume of its consumption and that of its production” ([p.] 194).

Commodities = wealth in the circuit of circulation.

“Wealth, considered in the circuit it has to pass through before arriving in the hands of the consumer, is normally described by the expression commodities” ([pp.] 54-55).

The Physiocratic theory (Supplementary Notebook G, p. 135): subsistence (corn, etc.) gives labour value, labour does not give subsistence value.//

//Condillac, Le commerce et le gouvernement, 1776. [In:] Mélanges etc., edit. Daire and Molinari, [Volume I,] Paris, 1847.

Value depends on the “utility” of “things”, i.e. on our “need” for them, i.e. on our “opinion” of their utility, etc., i.e. on our “judgment” of their useful qualities ([pp.] 251, 252). This “opinion” is further related to the “opinion” we have of their scarcity or abundance, more or less, and therefore of the degree of their value ([pp.] 253, etc.).

“Their value lies ... principally in the judgment we form of their utility, etc.” ([p.] 255).

(“This philosophy” is the source of Mr. Storch’s wisdom on the nature of value.)a

Value is not absolute or inherent (cf. Barbonb).

“One is inclined to regard value as an absolute quality, which is inherent in things independently of the judgments we form, and this confused notion is a source of faulty reasoning... Things have more or less” (value) “solely according to whether we judge them to be more or less useful, or, if they have the same utility, we judge them to be scarcer or more abundant” ([p.] 255).

Surplus value. Exchange of equal values.

“If ... one always exchanges one product of an equal value for another product of equal value, one will multiply the number of exchanges in vain; it is clear that afterwards, just as before, the amount of value or wealth will always be the same” ([pp.] 266-67).

“But it is not true that in an exchange [of commodities] we give equal value for equal value. On the contrary, each of the contracting parties in every case gives a less for a greater value” ([p.] 267). “In fact, if we always exchanged equal values, neither of the contracting parties would have anything to gain. And yet they both do gain something, or they ought to. Why? Because the value of a thing consists solely in its relation to our needs. What is more to the one is less to the other, and vice versa” ([p.] 267). “It is not to be assumed that we offer for sale articles essential for our own consumption: we offer what is superfluous... We wish to part with a thing that is useless to us, in order to obtain one that we need: we want to give less for more” ([p.] 267).

The “ideas on the value of things” then become completely confused by the introduction of the precious metals as units of money:

“When it began to be believed that the price of things was to be seen in a measure which always remained the same, such as an ounce of gold or silver, no one doubted any more that they had an absolute value, and from that time there were nothing but confused ideas on the subject” ([p.] 288).

“It was ... natural to think that, in an exchange, equal value was given for equal value whenever each of the articles exchanged was estimated as being of equal value with the same quantity of money... But there is another point to be considered in the calculation. The question is, whether we both exchange something superfluous [XXIII-1444] for something necessary” ([p.] 291).

Movement of money in capitalist production.

“When it” (money) “moves without giving rise to an exchange, no circulation takes place. For example, the money which comes from taxation has passed through many hands before arriving in the sovereign’s treasury. But this is not circulation; it is only transport... What is needed for circulation is that money should be converted in some sense into all the things which are appropriate to the maintenance of life, etc.” (Condillac, [p.] 295).//

// Considerations Concerning Taking Off the Bounty on Corn Exported.12 In some letters to a friend. To which is added, a Postscript, shewing that the price of corn is no rule to judge of the value of land; which will be increased in proportion to the cheapness of its several products, London, 1753. These letters originally appeared in The Evening Post.

This man is an absolute Free Trader. He even calls for the abolition of the Act of Navigation,173 which Sir M. Decker does not do a... But he also wants all the barriers to capitalist production within the country to be pulled down.

* “To raise the price of corn at home, in whatever manner it is done, is the same thing as to lay a tax on the consumption of it; and to do this in such a manner as lessens the price of it abroad, is to apply this tax for the benefit of foreigners” ([p.] 4).

“The interest of trade requires, that corn and all other provisions should be as cheap as possible; for whatever makes them dear, must make labour dear also, and must lessen the sale of our manufactures” * ([p.] 3).

Reduction of wages. Amount of labour time in the first half of the 18th century in England. Removal of restraints, guild laws, apprenticeship, monopolies, etc. Free movement of capital a means of reducing wages in relation to the price of provisions.

But the * “trader” * himself * “objects, that taking away the bounty, and consequently making corn cheap, the industry of the common people will be lessened ... that the traders in our manufactures3 find the greatest difficulty in carrying on their business upon every extraordinary call from abroad for our manufactures: That the workmen proportion the value of their labour to the demand for the manufactures” * [ibid.];

(There was the rub. Population declined in the first decades of the 18th century, rose only slightly until about 1760; nevertheless it was already superabundant on the land, but owing to laws of settlement, guild laws (apprenticeship, etc.) the ranks of the urban workers in the towns were not filled up to the same degree; fall of the price of corn from 1700 up to about 1760. And the bourgeois did not want the workers to “proportion the value of their labour to the demand for the manufactures”; he did not want the law of supply and demand to operate insofar as it worked against himself. Instead, the worker was supposed to restrict the value of his labour as value of labour capacity to a definite amount of the means of subsistence. Nevertheless, even today almost every attempt of this kind calls forth a strike on the part of the workers, and it only succeeds under the most extraordinary circumstances.)

* “and, when the price of 3 days’ labour will maintain their families [for] a week, will not work six” * [ibid.];

(they will rather only work six for progressive wages. It took [XXIII-1445] time before capital was able to gain de facto the title to all the worker’s available time);

* “and, if the necessaries of life were to be had at a cheaper rate, the case would be still worse... This is true with regard to all labour in England, where a monopoly is given to almost every kind of manufacture, and the traders are not allowed to employ such hands as they think are fit and able to work for them, but are confined to such only as the law has qualified... In all countries, where industry is not restrained, the price of provisions must affect the price of labour. This will always be diminished when the necessaries of life grow cheaper” * ([p.] 3).

He enumerates among the “difficulties” and “discouragements” put upon industry:

3 In the source: “manufacture towns”. - Ed.

the * Apprenticeship Act “(many trades a man may not lawfully exercise who has not served an apprenticeship), others he may not join together: at others he may not work within the limit of a corporation... Every man, if not restrained by law, would pass from one employment to another, as the various turns in trade should require... Our present restraints often put it in the power of workmen to demand higher wages than their works deserve, and thus prevent the sales of our manufactures” * ([p.] 4).

The chief law of capitalist production as opposed to guild industry is the free transfer of labour and capital from one field of employment to another. Labour confronts capital as labour in general, the particular content of which is as accidental and external for capital as the particular use value of the commodity it produces. For what is important for capital is the production of surplus value, the appropriation of alien surplus labour in whatever shape — the shape being of course determined by the wants of the market. On the other hand, in capital labour comes face to face with value as such, objectified labour as such, money in the independent form, the relation of which to living labour is its quality of being capital, a capital which does not increase because of its use value or the particular skill of the capitalists. (This belongs to Chapter IV.a)

All this out of the first letter. In Letter II a representative of the landed interest replies, and this man frankly expresses what is at stake for the landed interest in this question (something only a few did in 1814-15).

Rent and price of provisions (see Supplementary Notebook H, pp. 2-3 [op. cit., pp. 5-6]).

In the third letter our man replies:

Fall in the value of labour capacity: * “In whatever proportion the expenses of a labourer” * //or as he puts it elsewhere, * “the price of provisions” ([op. cit.,] p. 3)// * “are diminished, in the same proportion will his wages be diminished, if the restraints upon industry are at the same time taken off” * (p. 7).

In what follows he endeavours to prove, and this is interesting, that rent does not depend on the level of the price of corn (Supplementary Notebook H, pp. 3-4 [op. cit., pp. 8-9]).//174

//1765 riots in London, 1765 and 1766 in the countryside, as a consequence of the price of provisions (see the Taxes Essay man,b his Preface, and Three Letters etc.,c Supplementary Notebook H, p. 4). Letters to Men of Reason, and the Friends of the Poor, on the Hardships of the Excise Laws relating to Malt and Beer etc., London, 1774. This is the most furious pamphlet against the landed interest. It is therefore very important. (Supplementary Notebook H, pp. 5-9.)//

a See this volume, p. 178. - Ed.

b This refers to J. Cunningham, author of An Essay on Trade and Commerce... See also this volume, pp. 290-94, 315. - Ed.

c Three Letters to a Member of the Honourable House of Commons, from a Country Farmer, Concerning the Prices of Provisions..., London, 1766, pp. 3, 31. - Ed.

//Considerations on the Present State of the Poor, London, 1775 (1st edition 1773). In 1680 the poor rate in England was £665,392; in 1773 it was increased between 4 and 5 times, being 3 millions (Preface, [p.] V). Against the farming out of the poor (Supplementary Notebook H, p. 10 [op. cit., p. 9]).//

//Béardé de l’Abbaye, etc. [Recherches sur les moyens de supprimer les impôts...,] Amsterdam, 1770. Against the Physiocrats (Supplementary Notebook H, [pp.] 10-11 [op. cit., pp. 40-43]).//

//Against the laws of rent and population. M. Fletcher, [Reflexions on the Causes Which Influence the Price of Corn, London,] 1827 (Supplementary Notebook H, p. 12 [op. cit., pp. 9-10, 18]).//

//[M. Fletcher,] An Essay on Political Economy, [London,] 1828. Trickery with the land tax since George II (Supplementary Notebook H, [pp.] 12-13 [op. cit., p. 25]).//

//Rent. [J. F. M. Redesdale,] Observations etc., [London,] 1828 [p. 84]. Situation more important than natural fertility.//

//[G. Robertson,] Essays on Political Economy etc., London, 1830 (Supplementary Notebook H, [pp.] 13[-14]). How capital and rent grew during the Anti-Jacobin War, but the main reason was the privations of the working class and the greater labour time, in part of women and children, in part of the other workers. These passages are important. To be included in the chapter on so-called primitive accumulation. (Supplementary Notebook H, p. 14 [op. cit., pp. 247-48]).//

England and America etc., 2 volumes, London, 1833 (Wakefield). Combination of labour (Vol. I, p. 16) (Supplementary Notebook H, p. 15). In a pin fabric:

* “each pin is the produce of many persons’ united labour” * ([p.] 19).

The first [combination] is therefore “combination in power” ([p.] 20).

Division of agriculture into numerous mutually independent branches ([p.] 27) (Supplementary Notebook H, p. 16).

The concentration of capital (or of great masses of capital) in a few hands is the condition for capitalist production. Where capital is evenly distributed among the producers it does not function as capital; this prevents “the existence of a class of labourers for hire” and labour on a large scale, etc. How then is the scattered capital combined? For this is the presupposition of capitalist production. Wakefield calls this concentration //which in fact coincides with primitive accumulation// * a “contrivance for the accumulation of capital, and the use of capital ... in large masses and a fixed shape”. *

How have men done this?

* “They have divided themselves into owners of capital and owners of labour”, and, horribile dictu? * “this division was ... the result of concert or combination” * (pp. 17-18) ([Supplementary Notebook H,] pp. 15-16).

It is dreadful to relate. - Ed.

Wakefield makes this distinction between England and America: In the United States less than 1/10 of the people are hired labourers, [whereas] in England the bulk of the people consists of this class “whose only property is labour” ([pp.] 42-44) ([Supplementary Notebook H,] p. 16).

Will some idiot now say that this is the case because the bulk of the English people are idlers, and only the few capitalists work, or that this contrast arises out of the difference in energy and thrift between American and English producers?

Increase in capitalists with the accumulation of capital, but not in the same proportion.

* “The number of master-manufacturers ... has increased, though in a less proportion than manufacturing capital” * ([p.] 87).

[XXIII-1447] In America there is a rapid alternation between being a capitalist and being a worker (now this has already changed) ([pp.] 130-31) ([Supplementary Notebook H,] p. 18, below).

Division between worker and capitalist: proportionate wages.

Wakefield says:

* “The mere division of produce between capitalists and labourers is a matter of very small moment, indeed, when compared with the amount of produce to be divided... The grand question is, how much do the two parties divide between them?” * (Vol. I, [p.] 123).

1) We see here, firstly, that wages and profit are viewed as parts of the product. This contradicts the relation of wage labour; but in reality the product of the worker is nonetheless always the fund from which he is paid. The money he receives this week is a part of the realised value of the commodity he produced the day before yesterday, or a week ago, or a month ago, etc.

2) The money that is paid out in wages, or variable capital, consists in substance, from the point of view of its use value, of means of consumption (mainly; the worker may, and must, expend a part of it on so-called unproductive labour), of objectified labour, which always appears towards living labour as past labour. But for that reason this past labour may be contemporaneous or a thing of the future. For example, the worker receives his weekly wage on Saturday; the bread, milk, meat, vegetables, etc., in which it is expended are first produced in the course of the following week, in this final form, the form in which these articles enter into individual consumption. To that extent, his wage is nothing but a draft on the products of simultaneous and even future labour; a draft which the workers receive on their reciprocal products, simultaneous and future. To that extent it would be absurd to maintain that the capitalist accumulates this and holds it in reserve for the workers. But the exclusive possession of the products in which past labour has been objectified, whether as means of labour or as means of subsistence, enables the capitalist to exchange his money for living labour, and, secondly, insofar as he pays it out in wages, to make it into drafts on the products of contemporaneous and future labour. But the conceptual point one must keep hold of here is that the capitalist exchanges money, hence the independent expression of past labour, value, for living labour. How the wage is subsequently realised is another matter. This should be brought forward during the investigation of normal stocks and circulating capital.

3) What Mr. Wakefield overlooks is that the amount of produce to be divided has something to do with the manner in which this amount is produced and that the division of the product has something to do with the method of division. This ought to have been very clear to Mr. Wakefield, because his main point is that capital, wage labour, capitalist production, and the amount of produce dependent on that, only arise with a certain method of division of the produce.

Process of accumulation.

* “Labour creates capital, before capital employs labour” * (Vol. II, [p.] 110).

The accumulation of capital is not identical with the growth of variable capital:

[XXIII-1448] * “It does not follow that, because labour is employed by capital, capital always finds a field in which to employ labour” * ([Vol.] II, [p.] 103, note). * “Capital frequently increases without providing any more employment for labour” * ([Vol.] II, [p.] 99). * “It is not true that all capital employs labour” * (l.c., [p.] 99). * “Though no labour be employed save by capital, still millions upon millions of capital are accumulated, not to employ domestic labour, but, for want of employment for capital, either to lie idle, or to be wasted in distant and ruinous speculations” * ([Vol.] II, [p.] 97). [XXIII-1448]

[XXIII-1448] Rapid succession of generations of workers.

*The overworked children in the factories “die off with strange rapidity; but the places of those who perish are instantly filled, and a frequent change of persons makes no alteration in the scene”* ([Vol. I, p.] 55).

Farming out of the poor (see above, p. 1446,a Considerations etc. ([Supplementary] Notebook [H], p. 10). Cf. Robert Blakey (1602b), The History of Political Literature, [London,] 1855, and here [in] Wakefield [on] Mrs. Hibner,164 etc. (Supplementary Notebook H, [p.] 17).

Large profits during the Anti-Jacobin War.16

*“The rate of interest is a pretty sure criterion of the rate of profit. During the last war the rate of interest was very high”* ([E. G. Wakefield, op. cit., Vol. I, p.] 91).

And what was the concomitant circumstance of this accumulation of capital? Exactly what was “rediscovered” in 1830:

*“The peasant of the South of England ... is not a freeman, nor is he a slave; he is a pauper”* (Wakefield, l.c., [Vol.] I, [p.] 47).

On the bad remuneration of the workers who trade in knowledge ([Supplementary Notebook H,] p. 17 [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 96]).

Universal suffrage and the working classes and the Reform Bill of 1830 (Supplementary Notebook H, p. 19 [op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 184-85]).

(Wages. James Mill (quoted by Wakefield). Article on Education in Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1832):

*“A good diet is a necessary part of a good education... In the great body of the people, all education is impotent without it”* [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 206] (against Rumfordc).

Rent. Situation is almost the only decisive factor in the Colonies ([ibid., pp.] 217-18) ([Supplementary Notebook H,] p. 20).

*“Rent ... arises from competition for the use of land”* ([p.] 218).

How improvements which lessen the cost of production benefit the landlord (l.c., [p.] 224, [Supplementary Notebook H,] p. 20). Circumstances which determine competition for the use of land in England ([ibid., pp. 227-28] Supplementary Notebook H, pp. 20-21).

Minimum of wages.

*“In what country, except North America and some new colonies, do the wages of free labour employed in agriculture, much exceed a bare subsistence for the labourer?” ([p.] 246). “Undoubtedly farm horses in England, being a valuable property, are better fed than English peasants”* ([p.] 246).

a See this volume, p. 307.— Ed.

b This presumably refers to the Act for the Relief of the Poor, 1601. Blakey attributes it to the year 1602.— Ed.

c Б. [Thompson,] Count of Rumford, Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical, Vol. I, London, 1796. See also present edition, Vol. 30, p. 46.— Ed.

Simple labour (quoted by Wakefielda).

*“The great class, who have nothing to give for food but ordinary labour, are the great body of the people”* (James Mill, Article on Colony in Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1832).

Connection of agriculture with domestic industry, etc., in the United States (Supplementary Notebook F, pp. 21-22, 25).//

[XXIII-1449] [J. Gray,] The Essential Principles of the Wealth of Nations, Illustrated, in Opposition to Some False Doctrines of Dr. Adam Smith, and Others, London, 1797.

This man knew of Anderson, for in his appendix he quotes from Anderson’s Agricultural Report for the County of Aberdeen.

This is the only important English work directly linked with the Physiocratic teaching. William Spence’s Britain Independent of Commerce, 1807, is a mere caricature. This same fellow in 1814-15 was one of the most fanatic defenders of the landed interest on the basis of Physiocracy—which teaches free trade. The fellow is not to be confused with Thomas Spence, the deadly enemy of private property in land.

The work contains firstly an excellent and compressed résumé of the Physiocratic doctrine.

He is right in tracing the origin of this view to Locke and Vanderlint, and he describes the Physiocrats as men who

*“very systematically, though not correctly, illustrated”* the doctrine (p. 4). (See also on this [p.] 6; [Supplementary] Notebook H, pp. 32-33.180)

The summary given there brings out very nicely that the privation theory—which the later apologists, and partly even Smith, made the basis for the formation of capital—arose precisely from the Physiocratic view that no surplus value is created in industry, etc.:

*“The expense laid out in employing and maintaining them”* [handicraftsmen, manufacturers 181 and merchants] *“does no more than continue the existence of its own value, and is therefore unproductive”* //because *unproductive of surplus value//. “The wealth of society can never in the smallest degree be augmented by artificers, manufacturers, or merchants otherwise than by their saving and accumulating part of what is intended for their daily subsistence; consequently it is by privation or parsimony alone that they can add any thing to the general stock”* (Senior’s theory of abstinence, Adam Smith’s theory of saving). *“Cultivators, on the contrary, may live up to the whole of their income, and yet at the same time enrich the State; for their industry affords a surplus produce called rent”* ([p.] 6).

*“A class of men whose labour (though it produces something) produces no more than what was bestowed, in order to effect that labour, may with the greatest propriety be called an unproductive class”* ([p.] 10).

Production of surplus value to be clearly distinguished from its transfer.

*“The augmentation of revenue”* //this is accumulation// *“is not, but indirectly, the object of the Economists...171 Their object is the production and reproduction of revenue”* ([p.] 18).

And this is the great merit of Physiocracy. It asks itself: how is surplus value (for him it = revenue) produced and reproduced? The question of how it is reproduced on a larger scale, that is, increased, comes up only in the second place. Its category, the secret of its production, [XXIII-1450] must first be revealed.

Surplus value and commercial capital.

*“When the question is about the production of revenue, it is altogether illogical to substitute for that the transfer of revenue, which all commercial dealings are resolvable into” ([p.] 22). “What does the word commerce imply but commutatio merciuma... sometimes more beneficial to the one than the other; but still what the one gains the other loses, and their traffic really produces no increase” ([p.] 23). “Should a Jew sell a crown piece for 10s., or a Queen Anne’s farthing for a guinea, he would augment his own income, no doubt, but he would not thereby augment the quantity of the precious metals; and the nature of the traffic would be the same, whether his virtuoso customer resided in the same street with himself, or in France, or in China”* ([p.] 23).

The Physiocrats explain the profit of industry as profit upon alienation161 (that is, in the Mercantilist way). This Englishman therefore draws the right conclusion that this profit is only a gain when industrial commodities are sold abroad. From the Mercantilist premiss he draws the right Mercantilist conclusion.

*“No man, as a manufacturer, however he may gain himself, adds anything to the national revenue, if his commodity is sold and consumed at home; for the buyer precisely loses ... what the manufacturer gains... There is an interchange between the seller and the buyer, but no increase” ([p.] 26).

“To supply the want of a surplus ... the master employer takes a profit of 50 p.c. upon what he expends in wages, or 6d. in the shilling on each manufacturer’s pay... And if the manufacture is sold abroad”* ... this *“would be the national profit”* of so and so many *“artificers”* ([p.] 27).

Very good presentation of the reasons for Holland’s wealth. Fisheries. (He should also have mentioned stock raising.) Monopoly of the spices of the East. Carrying trade. Lending money abroad. (Supplementary Notebook H, pp. 36-37).182

*Manufacturers “are a necessary class”* but not a *“productive class”* ([op. cit., p.] 35). They *“occasion a commutation or transfer of the revenue previously provided by the cultivator, by giving a permanency to that revenue under a new form”* ([p.] 38).

a Commodity exchange.— Ed.

There are only 4 essential classes. Productive class or cultivators. Manufacturers. Defenders. The class of instructors (into which he includes the Physiocratic décimateursa or priests),

*“for every civil society must be fed, clothed, defended and instructed”* ([pp.] 50-51).

The mistake of the Economists171 is that they *“deemed receivers of land rents, as mere receivers of rent, a productive class in society... They have in some degree compensated for their error by intimating that the Church and King are to be served out of those rents. Dr. Smith ... suffering it”* (this *error* of the *Economists) “to pervade the whole of this enquiry,”* (this is correct) *“directs his refutation to the sound part of the Economical system”* ([p.] 8).

[XXIII-1451] The landlords as such are not only not productive, but not even an essential class of society.

*“The proprietors of land as mere receivers of land rents are not an essential class of society... By separating the rents of lands from the constitutional purpose of the defence of the State, the receivers of those rents instead of being an essential class, render themselves one of the most unessential and burthensome classes in society”* ([p.] 51).

See his further treatment of this, which is very good (Supplementary Notebook H, pp. 38-39 183)—and this polemic against the receivers of land rent from the standpoint of the Physiocrats, as the final conclusion from their doctrine, is very important.

[The author] also shows that the real tax on land is Turkish ([Supplementary Notebook H, p.] 40 [op. cit., p. 59]).

The landlord taxes not only improvements of land, but often the presumption of future improvement ([Supplementary Notebook H,] p. 40 [op. cit., pp. 63-64]). Tax on rents ([Supplementary] Notebook [H], p. 40; l.c. [p. 65]).

The Physiocratic doctrine anciently established in England, Ireland, feudal Europe, Empire of the Mogul184 ([Supplementary Notebook H,] p. 42; l.c. [pp. 93-94]).

The landlord as tax-imposer ([Supplementary Notebook H,] p. 43; l.c. [p. 118]).

The limitations of Physiocracy break through in the following (lack of understanding of the division of labour):

Let us assume that a clockmaker or calico manufacturer cannot sell his clock or calico.

//But let us assume instead that a producer of coal, iron, flax, indigo, etc., cannot sell these products, or even that a producer of corn cannot sell his corn. Béardé de l’Abbaye, cited above, is very good on this.1b He [the anonymous author] has to stress production for immediate consumption as against the production of commodities—very much in contradiction with the Physiocratic view that valeur vénalea is the principal thing. But that runs right through the work of this fellow. It is the bourgeois view within the pre-bourgeois way of looking at things.//

We will see then *“that a manufacturer only enriches himself by being a seller”*

(we will only see that he produces his product as a commodity)

*“and that when he ceases to be a seller, his profits”*

//and what of the profits of the farmer who is not a seller?//

*“are immediately at a stand, because they are not natural profits, but artificial. The cultivator ... may exist, and thrive, and multiply, without selling any thing”* ([pp. 38-]39).

(But then he must also be a manufacturer.)

Against Arthur Young’s high price as being important for the prosperity of agricultureb; but this is at the same time polemics against the Physiocrats (Supplementary Notebook H, pp. 41, 42 and 43 [op. cit., pp. 65-78 and 118]).

Surplus value cannot be derived from the nominal raising of the price on the part of the seller.

*“Sellers”* are *“not enriched.”* through the *“augmentation of the nominal value of the produce ... since what they gain as sellers, they precisely expend in the quality of buyers”* ([p.] 66).

Vanderlint-like:

*“While a field admitting cultivation can be found for every idler, let no idler be without a field. Houses of industry are good things; but fields of industry are much better”* ([p.] 47).

Against the farm system, and for long leases, because landownership will otherwise only hinder production and improvements ([Supplementary Notebook H,] p. 43 [op. cit., pp. 118-23]). (Irish right of tenantryc)

[XXIII-1452] Quotes the following Mercantilist opinion expressed by Mun or Lee:

*“Great Britain could no more expect to get rich, without the balance of trade in her favour, than a family could get rich, the master of which had no other occupation than winning the money of his wife and children at play”* ([p.] 114).

a Tithe recipients.— Ed.

b Béardé de l'Abbaye, Recherches sur les moyens de supprimer les impôts..., p. 43. See also this volume, p. 307.— Ed.

a Market value.— Ed.

b See this volume, pp. 298-99.— Ed.

c See K. Marx, “The Indian Question.— Irish Tenant Right” (present edition, Vol. 12, pp. 157-62).— Ed.

Quotes in an appendix [p. 7] the above-mentioned arguments by Andersona for long leases, etc. On the yeomanry.73

//[G. Whatley,] Principles of Trade etc., [London,] 1774.

How the phrase that wages are not determined by the price of provisions is used here by the defender of the landed interest, i.e. the bounty on the exportation of corn (Supplementary Notebook H, pp. 44-45 [op. cit., pp. 18, 39]).//

Overworking and dying off of young women (The Times, July 2, 1863. Supplementary Notebook H, p. 168185).

//R. Torrens, An Essay on the External Corn Trade etc., London, 1815.

Against Malthus (Supplementary Notebook G, p. 9).

Extension of the fields devoted to corn productionb:

* “Other things remaining the same, in proportion as the territory, which supplies subsistence, is extended, the inequality in the productiveness of the seasons will be diminished” * ([p.] 2), or its * “irregularity” * (p. 24).

Value of labour capacity. Well worked out (Supplementary Notebook G, p. 10 [op. cit., pp. 62-65]). At that time //also in part in the 18th century// this “law of nature” was exploited by the free traders in favour of the manufacturing interest and against the landed interest and taxes imposed by the state (Corn Laws). On the other hand, the defenders of the landed interest, tax mongers, etc., hold on to the phenomenon of current prices, which is independent of the price of the means of subsistence, and on to the surplus labour and fall in the level of wages (hence direct subjection of the working class to the capitalists) which is brought about by the increasing dearness of the means of subsistence. This doctrine had lost much of its sense, once the whole of the available labour time of the working class was subordinated to capital. In the 18th century it was advocated by the following fellows, apart from Sinclair and other tax gatherers and representatives of the national debt: the Tax Essay man c (completely systematically) (1765 and 1770), Sir W. Temple (apes the Dutch) //the Physiocrats too, half unconsciously//, Principles of Trade (1774)d (in favour of a bounty on corn), Arthur Young, A Six Weeks’ Tour into Wales etc., 1769, The Expediency of Allowing the Free Exportation of Corn (1770) (he, like the Tax Essays man, is a Pindar of the high price of necessaries), and all the rest of his writings, such as Political Arithmetic [1774], the Inquiry [into the Connection between the Present Price of Provisions, and the] Size of Farms [London,] (1773)a (that it was a faith in practice can be seen from Vanderlint’s polemic of 1737 or thereabouts b) and others.

a See this volume, p. 311.— Ed.

b In the manuscript, Marx wrote “(provision)” above “corn production”.— Ed.

c This refers to J. Cunningham, author of Considerations on Taxes... and An Essay on Trade and Commerce... See also this volume, pp. 290-94, 306.— Ed.

d By G. Whatley.— Ed.

In opposition: Vanderlint. Against the Bounty pamphlet (Evening Post letters) (1753),c Letters to Men of Reason (1774),d Essential Principles (1797),e etc. Postlethwayt.

In the 19th century advocated by Malthus, Spence (W.), Lauderdale, Parnell, in short the whole Corn Law gang; opponents included Buchanan, West, Ricardo, Commercial Policy,f Torrens, J. D. Hume and many others, some of whom need to be mentioned again in connection with the squabble over the Corn Laws. (It is to be noted that the same free traders have told the workers since 1830 that this law of nature does not apply to them; they have in part made the same assertions vis-a-vis the workers as the landed interest made towards the free traders. During the first three-quarters of the 18th century, when the price of corn was constantly falling, the issue was in practice a matter of indifference for the bourgeois, whereas they did not succeed until the introduction of large-scale industry in squeezing out of the urban workers THE FULL labour for a price corresponding to the value of labour. They only turned against the landed interest in periods when corn became dearer.)

[XXIII-1453] Mr. Torrens admits, incidentally, that this was tolerable in the period of the Anti-Jacobin War,1 / (1 when 1) England had a monopoly of machinery, 2) she had the monopoly of the world market, and 3) the workers were further protected by the depreciation of the currency. But once this came to an end, competition on the world market became harmful to the cause; apart from this, wages had in part already been driven down to the very limit of their natural price, driven down so far that any further pressure on wages was dangerous; in addition, the struggle and the revolt of the workers against the extension of the working day had already started at that time. (It should be added that insofar as raw produce enters into constant capital, the rate of profit is reduced by an increase in the price of raw produce, independently of wages, and with competition on the world market and the cessation of the monopoly the NOMINAL rise in the value of labour must seriously attack the rate of profit.)

a By J. Arbuthnot.— Ed.

b This presumably refers to J. Vanderlint’s work Money Answers All Things..., London, 1734.— Ed.

c See this volume, pp. 304-06.— Ed.

d Ibid., p. 306.— Ed.

e By J. Gray. See this volume, pp. 311-15.— Ed.

f This presumably refers to Remarks on the Commercial Policy of Great Britain, Principally As It Relates to the Corn Trade, London, 1815.— Ed.

Where food rises without a corresponding rise in wages, etc., disease and death of the workers, until [the wage of] labour rises “up to the level of the money price of corn” ([Torrens, op. cit., pp.] 78-79; Supplementary Notebook G, pp. 12-13).

Exceptions to the principle: 1) when “corn so very gradually rises” as to LEAD to “SUBSTITUTION OF POTATOES FOR bread”, “LOWERING THE STANDARD OF subsistence” (i.e. lowering the value of labour) ([Supplementary] Notebook G, p. 14 [op. cit., p. 90]); 2) Temporary exceptions with sudden rises of corn, as in Thuringia (l.c. [Supplementary Notebook G,] pp. 14-15 [op. cit., pp. 90-91]; 3) If the rise of corn is compensated for by a cheapening of manufactured commodities or a fall in other necessaries owing to a reduction in taxes ([Supplementary Notebook G,] p. 15 [op. cit., pp. 91-92]).

* “Contrary to all sound theory, and in direct opposition to experience, those who would make provisions dear contend that the price of corn has no influence on wages; and cannot, therefore, increase the price of wrought goods, or give the foreigner any advantage over the home manufacturer” * ([op. cit., p.] 227).

Torrens believes—as was the prevailing view before and after Adam Smith, until Ricardo—that raising wages raises the prices of commodities. This point of view was predominant in the 18th century in the polemic against high prices of provisions and therefore high nominal prices of wages. But it does not alter the situation in any way. With West, Ricardo, etc., on account of the (direct) reduction in the rate of profit, with Torrens and his predecessors on account of the rise in the amount of commodities, being undersold on the market of the world, hence, by a detour, a fall in profit.

Torrens quotes the evidence3 of Lauderdale given before the House of Lords. (This should all be quoted in connection with the PRICE OF LABOUR.)

The situation amounts to this: In years of dearth they work extra hours; the quantity of labour added is thereby increased; hence if the demand remains the same, the price of labour falls, while labour time is prolonged. An important point here, once again, is that the supply of labour can rise without any increase in the number of workers. ([To be cited] in connection with the price of labour.) ([Supplementary] Notebook G, pp. 33-34 [op. cit., pp. 227-30].)

Torrens in contrast says this:

* “With respect to labour, as well as with respect to everything else, market will occasionally vary from natural price” * ([op. cit., p.] 229).

Lauderdale further says:

* “In 1790, when wheat=£2 16s. per qr., it cost 15d. to weave an ell of muslin; and in 1812, when wheat was at £6, the same work was done for 6d. ... Dear provisions and low wages of 1812” * (Torrens, [p.] 230).

The author of [Remarks on the] Commercial Policy [London, 1815] comments on this, as quoted above,a that it is admittedly the case for the kind of manufacturing labour that stood far above the common labour price. It was levelled down to the latter. But the evidence given [by Lauderdale] before Lords and Commons (not to mention the Poor Law system, whereby in England part of the wages is paid as alms) proves the contrary, that the nominal price of labour increased considerably on an average, even if not in the same proportion as the price of provisions, except in a very few cases. See the arguments of Torrens ([Supplementary] Notebook G, pp. 34-36 [op. cit., pp. 229-36]). (On the whole, agricultural wages doubled, while the price of the means of subsistence tripled) (between 1790 and 1813) (i.e. the price of corn; meat even more).

[XXIII-1454] Quotes Sir Henry Parnell, pamphlet on the corn trade, 1815b—this fellow was chairman of the Commons’ Committee on the Corn Laws, directed against the manufacturers—as saying that the increased prices will raise corn wages and thereby the prices of manufactures ([Supplementary] Notebook G, p. 37 [op. cit., p. 238]). He, says Torrens,

* “confines his consideration to the market rate of wages” * ([op. cit., p.] 239).

Quantity of imported corn ([Supplementary] Notebook G, p. 39 [op. cit., pp. 290-91]).

* “...when it requires a greater quantity of labour, to procure subsistence, a greater quantity of labour, or of its produce, must remain with the labourer as his wages. But, as a greater quantity of his labour, or (what is the same thing) of the produce of his labour, becomes necessary to the subsistence of the labouring manufacturer, and is consumed by him while at work, a smaller quantity of the productions of labour will remain with the employer; and any given quantity of manufacturing capital will bring to market” * //as if the commodities destined for the workers did not also come on to the market// * “a less supply of wrought goods than before” ([op. cit.,] 235-36).186

“Every reduction in the money price of corn, reduces the money price of labour” ([op. cit., p.] 76). “An increase in the money price of corn, increases wages” * (l.c.).

a See this volume, pp. 162 and 269.— Ed.

b Presumably The Substance of the Speeches of Sir H. Parnell, Bart, in the House of Commons, with Additional Observations, on the Corn Laws, 2nd ed., London. 1814.— Ed.

If the corn duty were suddenly removed:

* “The agricultural labourers, too, who had been employed upon the land thus thrown out of tillage, would lose all the benefit of the skill and dexterity they might have acquired in their accustomed calling; and, deprived of their moral capital, would be driven to seek employments in which their productive powers must be lowered” * ([op. cit., pp.] 179-80).187

But this applies to all workers who are thrown out of their ACCUSTOMED CALLINGS by IMPROVEMENT.

Artificial increase of rent through artificial increase of the price of provisions. Threatened with the revenge of the people ([Supplementary Notebook] G, [pp.] 18-19 [op. cit., p. 199]).

Session 1813-14. Report and Evidence from the Select Committee (of the House of Commons) on Petitions Respecting the Corn Laws and Reports from the Lords’ Committee on the State of the Growth, Commerce, and Consumption of Grain, and All Laws Relating Thereto. Session 1814-15.188//

//G. Newnham (barrister at law).a

The price below which [the import of] corn was prohibited was fixed at 63s. in the law of 1804, but at 80s. in the law of 1815. Above that price it can be imported on payment of a duty of 2s. 6d. ([Supplementary Notebook] E, [p.] 118 [op. cit., p. 2]).

An increase in the price of corn increases wages, where they are limited to mere necessaries189; but it deprives the workers of the little superfluities, compels them

* “to descend from [their] accustomed place in the general scale” * ([Supplementary Notebook] E, [p.] 118 [op. cit., pp. 5-6]).

The wretched Malthus had plagiarised Anderson with regard to the superfluities which went to make up wages apart from corn. In fact a few more superfluities of this kind are indicated by Eden for 1795 and later. These had completely disappeared among the agricultural labourers by 1815. They were in fact reduced to the earlier English prison diet of bread and water ([Supplementary Notebook] E, p. 118, below, [p.] 119, at the beginning, l.c. [p. 6]).

See on the rate at which corn, etc., and wages rose from 1773 to 1812 ([Supplementary Notebook] E, p. 119 [op. cit., p. 7]).

[XXIII-1455] How the wage of agricultural labourers was directly measured by reference to the price of provisions by magistrates, poor house overseers, etc. 1 gallon loaf per week (8 lb. 11 oz.) and 3d. for clothing per week per family of father, mother and 3 children.

a G. L. Newnham, A Review of the Evidence before the Committees of the Two Houses of Parliament, on the Corn Laws, London, 1815.— Ed.

Evidence of Mr. Bennett (Lords’ Report, p. 97; [Supplementary Notebook] E, pp. 119-20; l.c. [p. 20]).

Those swine! Sir F. Eden, Vol. I, p. 577, relates that the squires of Berkshire (in their capacity as magistrates these fellows determined the wages of the agricultural labourers — this in relation to earlier laws, see above on the “ poor” (the second book)b ) * “fixed the rate of wages at Speenhamland, 1795” * as follows: * “income should be 3s. for a man, when the gallon or half-peck loaf of 8 lb. 11 oz. is at 1s., and increase regularly till bread is Is. 5d.; when it is above that sum, decrease regularly till it be at 2s.; and then his food should be Vsth less” * ([G. L. Newnham,] l.c., [p.] 2 0, note).

Bad land which was cultivated then. Rent ([Supplementary Notebook] E, [pp.] 120-21 [op. cit., pp. 51, 17]). See on this what a member in the House of Commons openly says, * “that this is a measure mainly intended to raise rents” * ([Supplementary Notebook] E, p. 121 [op. cit., p. 17]). On the proportion of bad land, it emerges from the evidence that it was not very high ([Supplementary Notebook] E, [pp.] 121-23 [op. cit., pp. 52-53]).

See the table on corn imports ([Supplementary Notebook E,] pp. 123-24 [op. cit., pp. 58-59]).

(On this evidence it is incomprehensible how Adam Smith could drivel on about the disinterestedness of the landlords. 1) Owing to the rise of rents the landlords did not pay a farthing for the Anti-Jacobin war 176; indeed, they gained ([Supplementary Notebook] E, [p.] 23).d //

//Charles H. Parry, M. D., The Question of the Necessity of the Existing Corn Laws, Considered etc., London, 1816. Against the Ricardian and Malthusian conception of differential rent ([Supplementary Notebook] E, p. 17).

In practice rents often do not fall when the price of produce falls (Parry, [p.] 11).

The cases where rent “im pede s” cultivation ([Supplementary Notebook] E, p. 18 [op. cit., pp. 13-14]).

The evidence before the Houses of Commons and Lords ([Supplementary Notebook] E, p. 19 [op. cit., p. 40]).

According to Arthur Young himself in his evidence, the poorer farmers (insufficient cultivators owing to shortage of capital)

a Presumably Reports Respecting Grain, and the Corn Laws...— Ed. b F. M. Eden, The State of the Poor: or, an History of the Labouring Classes in England..., Vol. I. See also present edition, Vol. 30, p. 46.— Ed. c See present edition, Vol. 31, p. 578.— Ed. d See Ch. H. Parry, The Question of the Necessity of the Existing Corn Laws..., pp. 100-01.— Ed.

* “ keep up the price of corn only for the benefit of the greater capitalists, their rivals" * ([Ch. H. Parry, op. cit.,] p. 51).

Parry, a pure free-trade bourgeois, points out that some of the farmers compensated themselves entirely at the expense of the workers, and by throwing them on the parish obstructed * “the usual connection between wages and provisions” * ([op. cit., pp.] 69-70).

Standard of life. Parry bemoans the fact that the English “labourers” do not want to eat any inferior “mixtures of flour”, and says: * “In Scotland, where education is better, this prejudice is ... unknown” * ([op. cit., p.] 69).

Wages. For Eden, the years 1792-96 correspond closely to the dearness of 1812 and the following years. But the labourers suffer still worse ([Supplementary Notebook] E, pp. 20-21 [op. cit., pp. 73-78]). Here bread accounts for approximately half, in Eden not quite half. On an average over 2/5. But with families with more children, it accounts for much more. In 1795 and 1796 there still figure articles [of consumption] which have disappeared by 1815. Bestiality of the farmers ([Supplementary Notebook E,] pp. 21 and 22 [op. cit., pp. 77 and 80-81]). Also on p. 22 [of Supplementary Notebook] E [op. cit., pp. 78-81] there is the demonstration that despite the considerable rise in nominal wages the real wages of the labourer have suffered an immense decline. Cf. Eden [Supplementary Notebook] E, p. 26 [op. cit., p. 213].

Those dirty dogs of landlords are freed by their rents from all taxes. Moreover, gain. On this, and the different varieties of these fellows, see [Supplementary Notebook] E, [pp.] 23-24 [op. cit., pp. 100-04].

[XXIII-1456] Rent and farmers’ profit.

* “If ... it be determined that a farmer must necessarily make a profit because he engages to pay a rent, nothing can be more oppressive”,* etc. ([op. cit., p.[ 158).

Horses in Great Britain and Ireland: 1,800,000. They cost £16,200,000. They eat the food needed by human beings ([op. cit., p.] 176; [Supplementary Notebook] E, p. 25).//

//John Locke, Some Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest etc. (1691). [In:] Works, Vol. II, London, 1777.

* “There being a want of day labourers" //agricultural// “in the country, they must be humoured, or else they will not work for you”, etc. ([p.] 17). “If the labourer hath less wages, he must also pay less for corn, butter, cheese, flesh” ([p.] 48). “The natural worth’’* (use value) * “of any thing, consists in its fitness to supply the necessities, or serve the conveniencies of human life” * ([p.] 28).

In distinction from this, “marketable value".

* “The marketable value of any assigned quantities of two or more commodities are ... equal, when they will exchange one for another" (l.c.). “The value or price of all commodities, of which money passing in trade is truly one, consisting in proportion, you alter this, as you do all other proportions, whether you increase one, or lessen the other" * (l.c., [p.] 30).//

//Pietro Verri, Meditazioni sulla economia politica etc. (first published in 1771), Custodi [his edition Scrittori classici italiani di economia politica], Parte moderna, Vol. XV [Milan, 1804].a

“Money is the universal commodity” ([p.] 16).

(Against the Physiocrats.) (Thick Notebook, p. 95, below [op. cit., pp. 20, 22].) Monetary and Mercantilist.

“These are the pivots around which all the measures of political economy turn: the maximum possible increase in the number of sellers of each commodity, and the maximum possible decrease in the number of buyers” ([op. cit., pp.] 52-53).

See how he extricates himself from that, combining it in his manner with the increase of annual reproduction (Thick Notebook, p. 96, below [op. cit., pp. 53-56]). “The problem of political economy is to increase annual reproduction to the utmost” (he means by that the net product, surplus value) “with the least possible labour, or given the quantity of reproduction to obtain it with the least possible labour; given the quantity of labour to obtain the maximum reproduction; to increase labour as far as possible and to extract from it the maximum reproductive effect” ([op. cit., p.] 190).

Ferdinande Paoletti.b For the Physiocrats (Thick Notebook, p. 98).

Antonio Genovesi, Lezioni di economia civile (1765), [In: Scrittori classici italiani di economia politica. Parte moderna,] Vol. VIII [Milan, 1803].

“It seems that these human forces have much elasticity; because, just like elastic bodies, they never achieve a full development without a great degree of compression and provocation” ([pp.] 10-11).

“The merchant counts the money he has made as almost nothing; he always looks to the future” ([p.] 139).//

[XXIII-1457] //Nicolas Baudeau, Première introduction à la philosophie économique etc. (1771). [In:] Physiocrates, ed. Daire [Paris, 1846].c

“The title of wealth [richesse] therefore presupposes two things: firstly the usual qualities, which make objects suitable for our useful or pleasant enjoyment, and

a Marx quotes the Italian authors in Italian.— Ed.

b F. Paoletti, I veri mezzi di render felici le societd. In: Scrittori classici italiani di economia politica. Parte moderna, Vol. XX, Milan, 1804. See present edition, Vol. 30, p. 368.— Ed.

c Marx quotes Baudeau in French.— Ed.

make them goods [biens]; secondly the possibility of exchanging them, which makes it possible for these goods to obtain other goods for you, and which makes them wealth” ([p.] 661).

“By the continuity, the generality, and the perfection of the art of instruction, men appropriate in good time the results of the reflections, the experiences, and the successes of many generations and many centuries; and it is this appropriation which develops the faculties”, etc. ([p.] 665).//

Process of accumulation. * “Simple labour is produced by the mere multiplication of human beings” * (Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy, Boston, 1843, p. 298).

The natural growth of population is one of the results of reproduction; it is firstly itself accumulation (of human beings) and secondly the prerequisite of the process of accumulation ( within certain limits). It costs the capitalist nothing, no more than does the skill accumulated (piled up) by the working class through practice alone and transmitted as a result (advantages of labour) to its remplaçants.a (See Hodgskin) Finally there is the accumulation and reproduction of scientific knowledge, which determines the material process of production more or less directly. Scientific knowledge is the branch of objectified labour in which reproduction—the labour time necessary to “appropriate” it—stands in the lowest ratio to the labour time required originally in production.

Process of accumulation and demand for labour. A part of the total surplus produce is converted back into capital or a part of this part is converted into variable capital, i.e. laid out in wages. With this premiss, the following needs to be remarked about the preposterous economic doctrine of the physical dependence of wages on the magnitude of the capital available (this is also to disregard foreign trade and the investment of capital abroad at interest):

1) If one says that the amount of labour employed depends on the amount of capital available, this is correct insofar as—expressed in absolute terms—it is an absolute tautology, which only appears not to be a tautology because the moments of labour appear in the capitalist mode of production and therefore also in capitalist ideology as autonomous and alien and independent of each other. It means nothing more than this, that the increase in the number of working human beings depends on (or at least finds its limit in) the degree of productivity of their labour, a degree of productivity which is on the one hand expressed in the development of their own productive capacities and the degree of energy,

knowledge and appropriateness to the purpose with which these capacities are exerted and have been exerted. But, secondly, it is expressed in the broader or narrower basis of produced productive forces on which it works and in the extent of annual reproduction, which must as raw material maintain in existence the means of subsistence and production itself for the following year. Son.. Елигн.

[XXIII-1458] 2) The whole of the surplus produce consists of newly added labour (considered from the point of view of its value). Hence also that part of it which is converted into surplus capital or forms the source of accumulation. But although the whole of that surplus capital is derived from surplus labour, nothing could be further from the truth than the notion that it is entirely exchanged for additional new labour, in the real conversion of the surplus produce into capital. It exists from the outset in forms in which it constitutes elements of constant capital, and only a part of it, relatively speaking a much more insignificant part, is converted into variable capital.

3) The more developed capitalist production is, the smaller is the part of the surplus produce which is reconverted into variable capital, and the greater is the part of the population which is constantly made redundant by the production process. The greater too is the quantity of labour which is consumed without increasing the number of workers. The supply of labour, be it noted, depends (see the passage from Lauderdale) not only on the number of workers but on the length of the working day. It should also be added that large-scale industry, while on the one hand it constantly creates an artificial redundancy of population, on the other hand creates a situation of the working class in which it reproduces itself on a mass scale as a tas de misérables,b

agriculturalists, who in turn contribute perhaps 4/6 of the whole of production, are peasants working for themselves, hence not producing in a capitalist fashion, while in the towns there is capitalist production, and the whole colony exploits the capitalist mode of production of the old countries without sharing its birthpangs. He himself admits this. On the other hand he wishes forcibly to introduce the capitalist mode of production into the colonies in their turn, and to abolish the free [exploitation of the] fertility of the soil—which is the essence of the colonies.3

//Le Trosne, De l’intérêt social etc. [In:] Physiocrates, edit. Daire, [Part II,] Paris, 1846.b

“It” (money) “has no other motion than that imparted to it by the products” ([p.] 885).

“Value consists in the exchange relation between one thing and another, between

a given amount of one product and a given amount of another” ([p.] 889).

“Properly speaking, all products of the same kind form a single mass, and their price is determined in general and without regard to particular circumstances”

([p.] 893).

(Say, [Traité d’économie politique,] 3rd ed., Vol. II, Paris, 1817, p. 438.)

“Products can only be paid for with products” ([Le Trosne, op.-cit., p.] 899).

(“Products can only be bought with products” [Say, op. cit., p. 441].) “Exchange is by its nature a contract which rests on equality, i.e. it takes place between two equal values. It is therefore not a means of self-enrichment, since as much is given as is received” ([Le Trosne, op. cit., pp.] 903[-904].)

[XXIII-1459] “Sale can be reduced ... to exchange... It takes place in the same way, between two equal values, and it is not a means of self-enrichment” ([ibid., p.] 909).

“It is ... not the parties to a contract who decide on the value; that has been decided before the contract” ([p.] 906). “A commercial transaction in which money is involved is not completed ... by the sale... [At that point] only the buyer has achieved his aim... For the seller, however, all has not yet finished: the money he has received is not yet a good suitable for his enjoyment; in order to make use of it, then, he must in turn become a buyer” ([p.] 908). “It follows from this that every purchase on the part of someone buying at that moment presupposes a prior sale, and every sale presupposes a purchase to follow... It follows also that everyone daily returns the money he has received, and puts it into circulation; and that each halt money makes indicates the fulfilment of a need by the giver, or the discharge of an obligation, and the subsequent intention to discharge an obligation or fulfil a need on the part of him who receives the money” ([pp.] 908-09).

“Exchange arrives directly at the goal, which is consumption; it has only two terms, and concludes with a single contract. But a contract in which money is involved has not been completed, since the seller must become a buyer, either in person or through the mediation of the person to whom he transfers his money. In order to arrive at consumption, which is the ultimate aim, at least four terms and three contracting parties are therefore needed, and one of the contracting parties intervenes twice” ([p.] 909).

a See [E. G. Wakefield,] England and America, Vol. I, London, 1833, and E. G. Wakefield, A View of the Art of Colonization, with Present Reference to the British Empire..., London, 1849. See also this volume, pp. 307-11.— Ed.

b Here and below Marx quotes the French authors in French.— Ed.

“It” (money) “is not a mere token, for it is itself wealth; it does not represent the values, it is their equivalent” ([p.] 910). “In the hands of the seller who has received it, the money is a pledge or draft, which he will call on when he wishes, and in the manner in which he wishes” ([p.] 910).

Accumulation over and above annual reproduction. //But the whole of the fixed capital which has not been consumed is also a result of reproduction, without which it would be devalued and lose its use value.//

“Thanks to the more or less long duration of the products of manufacture, a nation possesses a considerable fund of wealth, independent of its annual reproduction, which forms a long-term accumulation of capital. This was originally paid for with products, and is continually maintained and augmented” ([pp.] 928-29).//

//Mercier de la Rivière, L’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques (1767). [In:] Physiocrates, edit. Daire [Part II, Paris, 1846].

“One does not exchange money for money” ([p.] 486).

“At bottom, a value in money is nothing but a value in the form of product, which has merely changed its form” ([p.] 486).

“It is absolutely necessary that sellers and buyers should alternately yield up to each other by their purchases the money they have received through their sales”

([p.] 540). “Each seller, by the purchases he makes in his turn, must provide the money to enable the others to buy the commodities he wants to sell them”

([p.] 541).

[XXIII-1460] “With money one buys commodities, and with commodities one buys money; thus to sell or to buy is always ... to exchange one value, whatever it may be, for another value. Whether one of these two values is money, or they are both ordinary commodities, is in itself a matter of complete indifference”, etc.

([p.] 543).

“A seller can normally only succeed in raising the prices of his commodities if he agrees to pay, by and large, more for the commodities of the other sellers; and for the same reason a consumer can normally only pay less for his purchases if he submits to a similar reduction in the prices of the things he sells” ([p.] 555).

“Is not each consumer alternately a buyer and a seller for equal amounts of money?” ([p.] 559).

“If money represents, in our hands, the things we can wish to buy, it also represents the things we have sold to obtain that money” ([p.] 586).

Valorisation process.

“This method of adding to one particular object the value of a number of others” //e.g. adding the living costs of the tisserand,a etc.//, “of as it were heaping up various values in layers on top of one single value, has the result that this value grows to the same extent” ([p.] 599). “The expression addition gives a very clear picture of the way in which the price of a manufactured product is formed: this price is only the sum of a number of values which have been consumed, and it is arrived at by adding them together; however, addition is not the same as multiplication”

(In fact addition does=multiplication. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 x 2 = 4.)

//[H. Martyn,] The Advantages of the East-India Trade to England, Considered, London, 1720.190//

[XXIII-1461] Now we return to: 2) So-called Primitive Accumulation.1' a) If we presuppose the capitalist mode of production as historically given, the conditions are thus given in which the means of production are constantly reproduced as capital and labour as wage labour by the production process itself, for the latter is not only a process of the production of use valuesb and commodities but a process of production and reproduction of social relations, of the relations of production within which use values’5 and commodities are reproduced. And indeed, reproduction takes place in such a way that on the one hand the relations of capitalist production are reproduced on a larger scale, and on the other hand their differentia specifica, their inner tendency is giving reality a form ever more adequate to the principle. Once the capitalist mode of production is itself presupposed as given, its analysis remains important even for the present theme, because the manner in which the capitalist mode of production expands (takes possession of a greater segment of the social area) and subjects to itself spheres of production as yet not subject to it, while on the other hand it proceeds from the merely formal subsumption of labour under it to labour’s real subsumption, entirely reproduces the manner in which it arises altogether. For this reason, we shall be able in this section to have constant consideration for these changes, which proceed on the basis of the capitalist mode of production itself.

This is number I.

The second is as follows: The development of capital does not begin with the creation of the world, it does not begin ab ovo. Only in the 16th and 17th centuries does it in fact begin to be something which dominates the world and seizes hold of the whole economic formation of society. This is its infancy. Therefore, we only need to go back to conditions in the very recent past. The capitalist mode of production in fact only attains a full development with large-scale industry, and therefore dates in its totality from the last third of the 18th century (even if it was still only sporadically developed). Even the merely formal subsumption of labour under capital—on

a See this volume, pp. 243-47.— Ed.

b In the manuscript Marx wrote "things” above "use values”.— Ed. which the prolongation of the working day depends, as well as the confiscation of the whole of the disposable time of the working class as belonging to capital—only develops once the capitalist mode of production has really developed. Previously thiswasseenatmostin the system of slavery (founded on modern colonies or among ancient trading peoples or in classical antiquity, e.g. among the Romans) once production on a mass scale, hence production for sale, production of commodities, had taken control of agriculture through the concentration of landed property. Where we find manufacture before the 16th and 17th centuries, as in Italy, Spain, Constantinople, Flanders, etc., it 1) has a partially handicraft character (except perhaps in mining and metalworking), and 2) always rests on trade, on the monopoly of the carrying trade, which piles up money capital, mercantile capital, in the hands of these monopolists of the [XXIII-1462] world market of that time. Nevertheless, it is necessary to go back to earlier conditions in order to refute current notions about the so-called primitive accumulation of capital. 3) Capitalist production presupposes that a man must sell his labour because he is not in a position to sell commodities, hence is not in a position to produce commodities, hence the means of production of commodities—the objective conditions of labour— confront him as alien property. Where private property exists in one form or another, as well as the exchange of commodities, the exchange of the products of this private property, one condition of capitalist production—namely the individual who has been stripped of the means of production, of the conditions of labour—can he created for all the reasons for which the individual is deprived of, loses that private property and therefore those means of production. And these conditions are from the point of view of the isolated individuals purely accidental, they have nothing to do with the general deprivation, loss of these conditions by the mass of the people, hence with their general conversion into wage labourers. The isolated individual can be pauperised under all possible forms of private property; hence under all possible modifications of the social mode of production which presupposes private property. And yet Rome, Athens, etc., show us (even in Thebes, the ancient republic, free wage labourers arose in this manner) that the capitalist mode of production by no means originates through this pauperisation of the individual, and even of the mass of plebeians, etc. But without slavery it would have had to come into existence. If it emerges here that even the loss of the means of production by the mass of (free) people does not create the capitalist mode of production (although conditions in Athens, Sicily, etc., came close to it), this is even less the case for the circumstances and accidents by which individuals lose their means of production, and may sporadically become free wage labourers insofar as they do not live as paupers of the state (panes et circensesa ). In this investigation we are not interested in the fact that free wage labourers may sporadically be present, without affecting the society’s whole mode of production and therefore the social relations of production. 4)191 Proudhon speaks in his Philosophie de la misère of an extra-economic origin of property, by which he means landed property,b This mystery amounts to the pre-bourgeois ([precapitalist] relation [of the individual] to the conditions of his labour, initially to the natural conditions, then to the soil. He might just as well accuse capital and wage labour, as forms of property, of having an extra-economic origin. For the worker’s encounter with the objective conditions of labour as capital, and the capitalist’s encounter with the worker as a propertyless, abstract worker, presuppose an historical process, however much this relation is reproduced on this basis, once it has been given, however much it is elaborated in scope and depth. And this historical process is the history of the emergence of both capital and wage labour. In other words, the extra-economic origin of property means nothing but the historical origin of the bourgeois forms of production, forms to which the categories of political economy give theoretical or conceptual expression. The statement that pre-bourgeois history, and each phase of it, has its own economy and an economic basis of its movement, is in fact merely the tautology that human life

[XXIII-1463] has from the beginning rested on production, and—once humanity emerged from the merely animal condition— d’une manière ou d’une autre,11 on social production, whose relations are precisely what we call economic relations.19 2

[XXIII-1464] Interest calculation. Simple interest. 100:5 = 860:43 (the interest). As hundred (100) is to i

( interest . E.g. 5%), SO PRINCIPAL TO INTEREST. 1 = INTEREST OF 100. p = PRINCIPAL. As 100:i = p:x, and x = ~ .

a Bread and circuses.— Ed.

b See K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (present edition, Vol. 6, p. 197).— Ed. ‘ In one way or another.— Ed.

Compound interest: for the sake of simplification the rate of interest is assumed to be = 5%, 105/100 or 21/20 - Number of years = n. Principal = a, sum = S. Thus the formula is as follows:

S = a(21/20)^n. And solved logarithmically this gives: log. S = log. a + log. (21/20)^n = log. a + n log. (21/20) = log. a + n(log. 21 - log. 20). Let a = 1,000, n = 100 years, interest = 5%, S = x?

S = 1,000(21/20)^100. log. S = log. 1,000 + 100(log. 21 - log. 20).

log. 21 = 1.3222193
subtracting log. 20 = 1.3010300
log. 21/20 = 0.0211893

MULTIPLYING BY 100

100 log. 21/20 = 2.1189300
add log. 1,000 = 3.0000000
5.1189300

Hence log. S = 5.1189300, to which corresponds THE NATURAL NUMBER £131,501.

According to Leonhard Euler's calculation (done however to 15 decimal places instead of 7, as in the above example, owing to the length of the series of years) a principal of £1, being placed at 5% compound interest for 500 years, = £39,323,200,000. And this makes £78,646,400 (on an average) for each year of the 500.

[XXIII-1465] If not only interest is added every year to the principal, but a new sum b is always added as well, *the original principal, = a, would increase each year in the following manner:

after [the] 1st year: 21/20 a + b;
after 2 years: (21/20)^2 a + (21/20)b + b;
after 3 years: (21/20)^3 a + (21/20)^2 b + (21/20)b + b;
after 4 years: (21/20)^4 a + (21/20)^3 b + (21/20)^2 b + (21/20)b + b;
after n years: (21/20)^n a + (21/20)^(n-1)b + (21/20)^(n-2)b ... + (21/20)b + b.

Now if we take that part of this formula, in which b appears, inversely, it forms an ascending geometrical proportion, viz:

b + (21/20)b + (21/20)^2 b + (21/20)^3 b ... + (21/20)^(n-1)b.

The exponent of this series is (21/20). Now the formula for a geometrical progression is =

a(the first term) · (b^n - 1)
b - 1

supposing a the first term, b^(n-1) the last term, so that* b^n = b^(n-1) x b, and b *the ratio. Hence in our case b = first term, 21/20 = ratio. Consequently the sum of the above geometrical progression =

b((21/20)^n - 1) / (21/20 - 1) = b((21/20)^n - 1) / (1/20) = 20(21/20)^n b - 20b.

The whole expression will therefore be:

(21/20)^n a + 20(21/20)^n b - 20b = (21/20)^n(a + 20b) - 20b.

To calculate the latter expression by logarithm, we treat its first part - (21/20)^n(a + 20b) separately, and afterwards subtract 20b. Suppose a = £1,000, 5% compound [XXIII-1466] interest, b (the sum annually added) * = 100, n (the * number of years) = 25.

In this case the formula (21/20)^n x (a + 20b) - 20b resolves itself into (21/20)^25 x (1,000 + 2,000) - 2,000.

log. 21/20 = 0.021189299
25 x log. 21/20 = 0.5297324750
log. (1,000 + 2,000) = 3.4771213135
Sum = 4.0068537885, which is the logarithm of 10,159.2
Subtracting 20b = 2,000
£8,159 2s. = £8,159 2s.

Since this principal of £1,000 is always increasing, and after 25 years amounts to £8,159 2/10, it may be asked, in how many years it will amount to £1,000,000.

We have then the equation *

(21/20)^n(a + 20b) - 20b = 1,000,000 or
(3,000)(21/20)^n - 2,000 = 1,000,000.

(21/20)^n = 1,002,000 / 3,000 = 334.

n log. (21/20) = log. 334.

log. 334 = 2.5237465 and log. (21/20) = 0.0211893.

25237465 / 211893 = 119 YEARS, 1 MONTH, 7 DAYS.

[XXIII-1467] The formula developed above,

(21/20)^n(a + 20b) - 20b, or
(21/20)^n a + 20(21/20)^n b - 20b

is changed into

(21/20)^n a - 20(21/20)^n b + 20b; or into
(21/20)^n(a - 20b) + 20b if the annual total, b, is subtracted from the principal, instead of being added to it.

If n expresses in years less than a year instead of a * whole year, it becomes a fraction, but the calculation is performed by logarithms as before.

If the amount, f.i., of the principal at the end of 1 day was required, n = 1/365, if after 2 days, n = 2/365, etc.

Suppose a = £100,000, interest* = 5%. The principal is to be calculated for 8 days * (compound interest).

Then S = a · (21/20)^(8/365) = 100,000(21/20)^(8/365).

log. S = log. 100,000 + 8/365 log. (21/20), but
log. (21/20) = 0.0211893
x 8/365 = 0.0004644, to which [should be added]
log. 100,000 = 5.0000000
5.0004644, which corresponds to the natural number 100,107. If we subtract from this number 100,107 the original principal of 100,000, we find the interest for 8 days = £107.

The theory of the calculation of interest owes its first improvements to the great Leibnitz, who published the principal elements of it in the Leipsic Acta Eruditorum for 1683.*a

If a is the first term, b the exponent of the progression, and n - 1 the exponent of the final term,

a · (b^n - 1)
------------- the sum of the progression:
b - 1

If b = b/c, so that b/c < 1, hence c > b, the sum, or S, =

a(1 - b^n/c^n)
-------------- or = a(c^n - b^n) / (c^(n-1)(c - b)).
1 - b/c

a This refers to Leibnitz's article "Meditatio juridico-mathematica de interusurio simplice". - Ed.

[XXIII-1468] *To this subject belongs also the calculation of the present value of a sum of money, which is payable only after a term of years.

For as £20, in ready money, amounts to £21 in a year; so (reciprocally) a sum of £21, which cannot be received till the end of one year, is really worth only £20. If, therefore, we express, by a, a sum whose payment is due at the end of a year, the present value of this sum is 20/21 a; and, therefore, to find the present worth of a principal a, payable a year hence, we must multiply it by 20/21; to find its value two years before the time of payment, we multiply it by (20/21)^2; and, in general, its value, n years before the time of payment, will be expressed by (20/21)^n a.

Suppose a man has to receive for 5 successive years an annual rent of £100, and that he wishes to give it up for ready money, the interest being at 5%; it is required to find how much he is to receive.

For £100 due after 1 year, he receives 95.239
after 2 years 90.704
after 3 years 86.385
after 4 years 82.272
after 5 years 78.355
Sum of the 5 terms = 432.955,

which he receives in ready money for the £500.

If the annual rent = a, which commencing at present, and lasting n years, will be actually worth

a + (20/21)a + (20/21)^2 a + (20/21)^3 a + (20/21)^4 a ... (20/21)^n a.

Exponent = 20/21.

This is a geometrical progression. The whole is reduced to finding its sum.

a - (20/21)^(n+1) a
------------------- = 21a - 21(20/21)^(n+1) a.
1 - 20/21

The latter part to be calculated by logarithms, and then to be subtracted from 21a.

[XXIII-1469] When the principal alone produces interest, it is called simple interest.

When the interest, as soon as it becomes due, is added to the principal, and the whole then produces interest, it is termed compound interest.

Simple interest. p = principal lent, r the interest of £1 for 1 year, n = number of years, i = the interest of the sum lent * //hence r = *rate of interest//, m = the amount (the sum of the principal and its interest for any time, taken together).

rp = the interest of £p for one year.
nrp = the interest of £p for n years.
i = n · r · p; m = p + nrp = p(1 + nr).

These 2 equations:* 1) i = nrp, and 2) m = p(1 + nr) are sufficient * to solve any question connected with simple interest.

If q the rate per cent, then, since r the rate of interest for £1, q = 100r, or r = q/100. then* 1) i = nqp/100 and 2) m = p(1 + nq/100) = p(100 + nq)/100.

* Required the simple interest, and amount of £125 6s. 8d. in 4 years, at 5 p.c.

p = 125 1/3; r = 5/100 = 1/20 = 0.05; n = 4.
i = 4 · (1/20) · 125 1/3 = 1/5 · 125 1/3 = 25 1/15 = £25 1s. 4d.
m = £150 8s.

Discount at simple interest. p = present worth and discount of a given sum m, due n years hence, at the rate r. In n years at r p [will] = m. m = (1 + nr)p. p = m / (1 + nr). This is the present worth of p.

Discount d = m - m/(1 + nr), for the discount = the amount of money to be received after n years - the present worth of p; since

d = m - m/(1 + nr) = (m + mnr - m)/(1 + nr) = nrm/(1 + nr).

*If q the rate p.c.,

[XXIII-1470] p = 100m/(100 + nq).

d = nrm/(1 + nr) = (nq/100)m / (1 + nq/100) = nqm/(100 + nq).

Since* r (interest) * of m in the time n at the rate* r = nrm or (nq/100)m and d = nqm/(100 + nq), *it is evident that interest is always greater than discount under the same circumstances.

Compound interest. * M = (1 + r)^n P. If I = interest;

I = M - P = (1 + r)^n P - P = P((1 + r)^n - 1).

*If R = 1 + r, or one pound, together with its interest for a year,*

M = P · R^n and since I = M - P, = P · R^n - P,
I = (R^n - 1)P.

P = M/R^n * n = (log. M - log. P) / log. R.

* When compound interest is allowed, the present worth will be obtained from *

P = M/R^n, and * the discount from D = M - P = M - M/R^n = M(R^n - 1)/R^n.

[XXIII-1471] If P the present value of an annuity [A], to be paid in n years, at compound interest (R = 1 + r, £1 + its interest for one year)

the amount of P in n years will be* PR^n (which we expressed earlier as a(21/20)^n).

PR^n or M = A(R^n - 1)/(R - 1).

* If P = A(R^n - 1)/(R^n(R - 1)) and P = A/(R - 1) · (1 - 1/R^n)

we suppose n to be indefinitely great = ∞, so 1/R^n = 1/∞ = 0, and hence

P = A/(R - 1).

Hence: P = A/(R - 1) | that is to say the annuity divided by* 1 and * its interest for one year minus 1 is the present value or worth of the annuity A to continue payable for ever. Suppose R = 21/20, which is* = 1 + 1/20 or = 5%, * then the value of the perpetual annuity would be, if the annuity was £800,

800 / (21/20 - 1) = 800 / (1/20) = 20 x 800 = £16,000.

If the rate of interest = 3%

[XXIII-1472] P = 800/(103/100 - 1) = 800/(3/100) = 80,000/3 = 26,666 2/3.

If the rate of interest was* = 2 1/2%, so that R = 102 1/2/100 = 41/40, *we should have, 2 1/2 = 5/2, P = 800/(5/200) = 32,000, which corresponds to the value of P of 16,000 at 5%.

This is the formula by which the sales or purchases of Freehold Estates are regulated: and it is evident that the sum of money paid, must be greater or less according as the rate of interest of money is lower or higher. (Cf. Hind's Algebra, pp. 264-65).*193

## So-called Primitive Accumulation

//From an earlier presentation of the, subject. 
If we consider first of all the relationship as it has become, value 
which has become capital (and surplus value which has become 
surplus capital), and living labour as mere use value confronting it, 
so that living labour appears as mere means for the valorisation of 
objectified, dead labour, for its permeation with a life-giving soul 
while losing its own soul to it—and having produced as a result 
alien wealth on the one hand, but on the other, as its own 
property, only the necessitousness of living labour capacity—then 
we can see clearly that the physical conditions of real labour (the 
material in which it is valorised, the instrument by means of which 
it is valorised, and the means of subsistence which kindlé the flame 
of living labour capacity into activity and prevent its being 
extinguished, and supply the necessary matter for its life process) 
are posited in and through the process itself as alien, independent 
existences; in other words as the mode of existence of an alien person, 
as self-sufficient values-for-themselves, and thus as values which 
form wealth alien to the living labour capacity which confronts 
them in subjective isolation, the wealth of the capitalist. The 

244 The Production Process of Capital 

[XXII-1394] Tableau économique of the Reproduction Process 

as a Whole 
1) Means of Subsistence 

Industrial profit 
- 

Profit <<- 
Ae 
' 

H | 

f ! 
Constant capital Variable capital Surplus value 
400 100 200 700 
a 
ras I 
LO / 3 \ 
7 / | MS, 

200 

Product (means of subsistence) 

“ 
PROP ele es cee In terest\ 2662/3 
2667/3 SeS2.. \ 
| “= Rent 
| | 
! | 
ee aes 
Constant capital Variable capital | Surplus value Product 
1/ 
5331/3 1331/3 2667/3 933//3 
lll) Total Production 
Industrial profit 
Interest 
Rent 
ae Industrial profit 
Constant capital Variable capital Surplus clue —=sProduer Interest 
9334/3 2331/3 4667/3 1,633!/3 \ Rent 
Profit 

4662/3 

Reconversion of Surplus Value into Capital. Primitive Accumulation 245 

objective conditions of living labour appear as separate values, 
become independent as against living labour capacity as subjective 
being, which therefore appears, as against them, only as value of 
another kind (distinct from them not as value, but as use value). 
Once this separation is presupposed, the production process can only 
produce it anew, reproduce it, and that on a larger scale. How it 
does this, we have already seen. The objective conditions of living 
labour capacity are presupposed as independent existences con- 
fronting it, as the objectivity of a subject distinct from living 
labour capacity and independently confronting it. The reproduc- 
tion and valorisation, i.e. the expansion, of these objective conditions 
is therefore simultaneously their reproduction and their new 
production as the wealth of an alien subject, indifferent to and 
independently confronting labour capacity. What is reproduced 
and newly produced is not only the being of these objective 
conditions of living labour but their being as alien to the worker, as 
independent values, i.e. values belonging to an alien subject, 
confronting this living labour capacity. The objective conditions of 
labour gain a subjective existence as against living labour capacity— 
capital gives rise to the capitalist. On the other hand, the purely 
subjective being of labour capacity vis-a-vis its own conditions gives 
it a merely indifferent objective form as against these conditions— 
it is only a value of a particular use value—a commodity— alongside 
its own conditions as values of a different use value—other 
commodities. [XXII-1396] Instead of being reproduced in the 
production process as conditions for its realisation, they on the 
contrary emerge from it as conditions for their own valorisation 
and preservation as values-for-themselves over against it. The 
material on which it works is alien material; just as the instrument 
is an alien instrument; its labour appears as a mere accessory to 
them as substance and therefore objectifies itself in things not 
belonging to it. Indeed, living labour itself appears as alien vis-a-vis 
the living labour capacity whose labour it is, whose life it 
expresses, for it is surrendered to capital in return for objectified 
labour, for the product of labour itself. Labour capacity relates to 
it as to something alien, as compulsory labour. Its own labour is alien 
to it—and, as we see in capitalist production, it really is alien, as 
regards its content, its direction, and its social form—just as much 
as material and instrument are. Therefore the product too 
appears to it as a combination of alien material, alien instrument 
and alien labour—as alien property, and after production it has 
become poorer by the life force expended, and it begins the 
DRUDGERY anew as labour capacity empLoyep by the conditions of labour. 

246 The Production Process of Capital 

The recognition of the product as its own, and its awareness that 
its separation from the conditions of its realisation is an 
injustice—a relationship imposed by force—is an enormous con- 
sciousness, itself the product of the capitalist mode of production 
and just as much the knell To 1rs poom as the consciousness of the 
slave that he could not be the property of another reduced slavery to 
an artificial, lingering existence, and made it impossible for it to 
continue to provide the basis of production. 

However, if we consider the original relation, before money 
entered into the process of self-valorisation, we come up against 
various conditions which must have arisen, or been given, historically, 
for money to become capital and for labour to become wage 
labour. The essential conditions are posited in the relationship 
itself as it originally appeared: 1) On the one side, the existence of 
living labour capacity as a purely subjective existence, separated 
from the moments of its objective reality; therefore separated just 
as much from the conditions of living labour as from the means of 
existence, the means of subsistence, the means of self-maintenance of 
living labour capacity; the living possibility of labour on one side in 
this complete abstraction. 2) On the other side, the value or 
objectified labour must be an accumulation of use _ values, 
sufficiently large to provide the objective conditions not merely for 
the production of the commodities necessary to maintain or to 
reproduce living labour capacity, but also to produce surplus 
labour, to supply the objective material for it. 3) A system of free 
exchange— money circulation—between the two sides; a relation- 
ship between the two extremes which is based upon exchange 
values, not on the lord-subject relationship, i.e. production which 
does not directly supply the means of subsistence to the producer 
but is mediated by exchange; and therefore also does not have 
direct disposition over alien labour, but must buy it from the 
vehicle of this labour himself. Finally 4) the side which represents 
the objective conditions of labour in the form in which they have 
become independent must present itself as value, and the ultimate 
aim must be the positing of value, the self-valorisation of value, the 
creation of money—not immediate enjoyment or the creation of 
use values. 

[XXII-1397] So long as both sides exchange their labour with 
one another in the form of objectified labour—as products, which are 
commodities—the relation is impossible. It is equally impossible if 
the worker himself appears as the property of the other side, 
himself belongs among the objective conditions of labour, and not 
as a person engaged in exchange. (That slavery can exist at 

Reconversion of Surplus Value into Capital. Addenda 247 

individual points within the bourgeois system of production, does 
not contradict this. But slavery is then possible only because it does 
not exist at other points, and represents an anomaly in relation to 
the bourgeois system itself.) 

The conditions under which the relationship originally appears, 
or which appear as historical presuppositions for its becoming, 
exhibit at first glance a dual character—on the one side 
dissolution of lower forms of living labour, on the other side 
dissolution of relations more fortunate for the immediate pro- 
ducer. On the one hand, dissolution of slavery and serfdom. On 
the other, dissolution of the form under which the means of 
production are immediately available as the property of the 
immediate producer, whether his work is predominantly directed at 
use value (agriculture) or exchange value (urban work). Finally, 
the dissolution of the form of community in which the worker, as 
organ of this naturally evolved community, is at the same time 
posited as owner or possessor of his means of production.// 

[ADDENDA] 

//Petty, Sir Dudley North, Locke. By comparing North’s and 
Locke’s writings with Petty’s Quantulumcunque (1682) and 
A Treatise of Taxes, and Contributions (1667), their indebtedness to 
Petty can be seen. Thus in the matter of 1) the Lowerine of INTEREST;