[ Demokratisches Wochenblatt, No. 12, March 21, 1868] 

As long as there have been capitalists and workers on earth no 
book has appeared which is of as much importance for the 
workers as the one before us. The relation between capital and 
labour, the axis on which our entire present system of society 
turns, is here treated scientifically for the first time, and at that 
with a thoroughness and acuity such as was possible only for a 
German. Valuable as the writings of an Owen, Saint-Simon or 
Fourier are and will remain—it was reserved for a German first to 
reach"the height from which the whole field of modern social 
relations can be seen clearly and in full view just as the lower 
mountain scenery is seen by an observer standing on the top-most 
peak. 

Political economy up to now has taught us that labour is the 
source of all wealth and the measure of all values, so that two 
objects whose production has cost the same labour time possess 
the same value and must also be exchanged for each other, since 
on the average only equal values are exchangeable for one 
another. At the same time, however, it teaches that there exists a 
kind of stored-up labour, which it calls capital; that this capital, 
owing to the auxiliary sources contained in it, raises the 
productivity of living labour a hundred and a thousandfold, and 
in return claims a certain compensation which is termed profit or 
gain. As we all know, this occurs in reality in such a way that the 
profits of stored-up, dead labour become ever more massive, the 
capitals of the capitalists become ever more colossal, while the 

* Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, von Karl Marx. Erster Band. 
Der Produktionsprozess des Kapitals. Hamburg, O. Meissner, 1867. 

-wages of living labour become ever smaller and the mass of the 
workers living solely on wages becomes ever more numerous and 
poverty-stricken. How is this contradiction to be solved? How can 
there remain a profit for the capitalist if the worker receives in 
compensation the full value of the labour he adds to his product? 
Yet this ought to be the case, since only equal values are 
exchanged. On the other hand, how can equal values be 
exchanged, how can the worker receive the full value of his 
product, if, as is admitted by many economists, this product is 
divided between him and the capitalist? Political economy up to 
now has been helpless in the face of this contradiction, and 
writes or stutters embarrassed meaningless phrases. Even the 
previous socialist critics of political economy have not been able to 
do more than to emphasise the contradiction; no one resolved it, 
until now at last Marx has traced the process by which this profit 
arises right to its birthplace and has thereby made everything clear. 
In tracing the development of capital, Marx starts out from the 
simple, notoriously obvious fact that the capitalists increase the 
value of their capital through exchange: they buy commodities for 
their money and afterwards sell them for more money than they 
cost them. For example, a capitalist buys cotton for 1,000 talers 
and resells it for 1,100, thus “earning” 100 talers. This excess of 
100 talers over the original capital Marx calls surplus-value. Where 
does this surplus-value come from? According to the economists’ 
assumption, only equal values are exchanged and in the sphere of 
abstract theory this, of course, is correct. Hence the purchase of 
cotton and its resale can just as little yield surplus-value as the 
exchange of a silver taler for thirty silver groschen and the 
re-exchange of the small coins for a silver taler,* a process by which 
one becomes neither richer nor poorer. But surplus-value can just 
as little arise from sellers selling commodities above their value, or 
purchasers buying them below their value, because each one is in 
turn buyer and seller and things would therefore again balance. 
Just as little can it arise from buyers and sellers reciprocally 
overreaching each other, for this would create no new or 
surplus-value, but only divide the existing capital differently 
among the capitalists. In spite of the fact that the capitalist buys 
the commodities at their value and sells them at their value, he 
gets more value out than he puts in. How does this happen? 
The capitalist finds on the commodity market under present 
social conditions a commodity which has the peculiar property that 

its use is a source of new value, is a creation of new value, and this 
commodity is labour-power. 

What is the value of labour-power? The value of every 
commodity is measured by the labour required for its production. 

Labour-power exists in the form of the living worker who requires 
a definite amount of means of subsistence for his existence as well 
as for the maintenance of his family, which ensures the 
continuance of labour-power also after his death. The labour-time 
necessary for producing these means of subsistence represents, 
therefore, the value of the labour-power. The capitalist pays for it 
weekly and purchases thereby the use of one week’s labour of the 
worker. So far messieurs the economists will be pretty well in 
agreement with us as to the value of labour-power. 

The capitalist now sets his worker to work. In a certain period 
of time the worker will have performed as much labour as was 
represented by his weekly wages. Supposing that the weekly wages 
of a worker represent three workdays, then, if the worker begins 
on Monday, he has by Wednesday evening replaced to the capitalist 
the full value of the wages paid. But does he then stop working? Not 
at all. The capitalist has bought his week's labour and the worker 
must go on working during the last three days of the week too. 
This surplus-labour of the worker, over and above the time 
necessary to replace his wages, is the source of surplus-value, of 
profit, of the steadily growing increase of capital. 

Do not say it is an arbitrary assumption that the worker works 
off in three days the wages he has received, and works the 
remaining three days for the capitalist. Whether he takes exactly 
three days to replace his wages, or two or four, is to be sure quite 
immaterial here and hence varies according to circumstances; the 
main point is that the capitalist, besides the labour he pays for, 
also extracts labour that he does not pay for, and this is no arbitrary 
assumption, for the day the capitalist were to extract from the 
worker in the long run only as much labour as he paid him in 
wages, on that day he would shut down his workshop, since 
indeed his whole profit would come to nought. 

Here we have the solution of all those contradictions. The origin 
of surplus-value (of which the capitalists’ profit forms an 
important part) is now quite clear and natural. The value of the 
labour-power is paid for, but this value is far smaller than that 
which the capitalist manages to extract from the labour-power, 
and it is precisely the difference, the unpaid labour, that constitutes 
the share of the capitalist, or, more accurately, of the capitalist 
class. For even the profit that the cotton dealer made on his cotton 

in the above example must consist of unpaid labour, if cotton 
prices did not rise. The trader must have sold [it] to a cotton 
manufacturer, who is able to extract a profit for himself from his 
product besides the 100 talers, and therefore shares with him the 
unpaid labour he has pocketed. In general it is this unpaid labour 
which maintains all the non-working members of society. The state 
and municipal taxes, as far as they affect the capitalist class, as also 
the rent of the landowners, etc., are paid from it. On it rests the 
whole existing social system. 

It would, however, be absurd to assume that unpaid labour 
arose only under present conditions where production is carried 
on by capitalists on the one hand and wage-workers on the other. 
On the contrary, the oppressed class at all times has had to 
perform unpaid labour. During the whole long period when 
slavery was the prevailing form of the organisation of labour, the 
slaves had to perform much more labour than was returned to 
them in the form of means of subsistence. The same was the case 
under the rule of serfdom and right up to the abolition of peasant 
corvée labour; here in fact the difference stands out palpably 
between the time during which the peasant works for his own 
maintenance and the surplus-labour for the feudal lord, precisely 
because the latter is carried out separately from the former. The 
form has now been changed, but the substance remains and as 
long as “a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of 
production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the 
working-time necessary for his own maintenance an extra work- 
ing-time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the 
owners of the means of production” (Marx, p. 202 [218]). 

II 

[Demokratisches Wochenblatit, No. 13, March 28, 1868] 

In the previous article we saw that every worker employed by a 
capitalist performs two kinds of labour: during one part of his 
working-time he replaces the wages advanced to him by the 
capitalist, and this part of his labour Marx terms the necessary 
labour. But afterwards he has to go on working and during that 
time he produces surplus-value for the capitalist, an important part 
of which constitutes profit. That part of the labour is called 
surplus-labour. 

Let us assume that the worker works three days of the week to 
replace his wages and three days to produce surplus-value for the 

capitalist. In other words, it means that, with a twelve-hour 
working day, he works six hours daily for his wages and six hours 
for the production of surplus-value. One can get only six days out 
of the week, and even by including Sunday only seven at the most, 
but one can extract six, eight, ten, twelve, fifteen or even more 
hours of work out of every single day. The worker sells the 
capitalist a working day for his day’s wages. But, what is a working 
day? Eight hours or eighteen? 

It is in the capitalist’s interest to make the working day as long 
as possible. The longer it is, the more surplus-value it produces. 
The worker correctly feels that every hour of labour which he 
performs over and above the replacement of his wages is unjustly 
taken from him; he learns from bitter personal experience what it 
means to work excessive hours. The capitalist fights for his profit, 
the worker for his health, for a few hours of daily rest, to be able 
to engage in other human activities as well, besides working, 
sleeping and eating. It may be remarked in passing that it does 
not depend at all upon the good will of the individual capitalists 
whether they desire to embark on this struggle or not, since 
competition compels even the most philanthropic among them to 
join his colleagues and to fix working hours to be as long as theirs. 

The struggle for the fixing of the working day has lasted from — 
_the first appearance of free workers in the arena of history down 
to the present day. In various trades various traditional working 
days prevail; but in reality they are seldom observed. Only where 
the law fixes the working day and supervises its observance can 
one really say that there exists a normal working day. And up to 
now this is the case virtually solely in the factory districts of 
England. Here the ten-hour working day (ten and a half hours on 
five days, seven and a half hours on Saturday) has been fixed for 
all women and for youths of thirteen to eighteen, and since the 
men cannot work without them, they also come under the 
ten-hour working day.’ This law has been won by English 
factory workers by years of endurance, by the most persistent, 
stubborn struggle with the factory owners, by freedom of the 
press, the right of association and assembly, as well as by adroit 
utilisation of the divisions in the ruling class itself. It has become 
the palladium of the English workers, it has gradually been 
extended to all important branches of industry and last year to 
almost all trades, at least to all those employing women and 
children. The present work contains most exhaustive material on 
the history of this legislative regulation of the working day in 
England. The next “North German Imperial Diet” will also have 

factory regulations to discuss and in connection therewith the 
regulation of factory labour. We expect that none of the deputies 
that have been elected by German workers will proceed to discuss 
this bill without previously making themselves thoroughly conver- 
sant with Marxs book. There is much to be achieved here. The 
divisions within the ruling classes are more favourable to the 
workers than they ever were in England, because universal suffrage 
compels the ruling classes to court the favour of the workers. Under these 
circumstances, four or five representatives of the proletariat '”’ are 
a power, if they know how to use their position, if above all they 
know what is at issue, which the bourgeois do not know. And for 
this purpose, Marx’s book gives them all the material in ready 
form. 

We will pass over a number of further excellent investigations of 
more theoretical interest and will pause only at the final chapter 
which deals with the accumulation or amassing of capital. Here it is 
first shown that the capitalist mode of production, i.e. that inaugu- 
rated by capitalists on the one hand and wage-workers on the 
other, not only continually regenerates capital for the capitalist, 
but at the same time also continually produces the poverty of 
the workers; thereby it is provided for a constant regeneration of, on 
the one hand, capitalists who are the owners of all means of 
subsistence, all raw materials and all instruments of labour, and, 
on the other hand, the great mass of the workers, who are 
compelled to sell their labour-power to these capitalists for a 
quantum of the means of subsistence which at best just suffices to 
keep them’ able-bodied and to bring up a new generation of 
able-bodied proletarians. But capital does not merely reproduce 
-itself: it 1s continually increased and multiplied—and thereby its 
power over the propertyless class of workers. And just as it itself is 
reproduced on an ever greater scale, so the modern capitalist 
mode of production reproduces the class of propertyless workers 
also on an ever greater scale, in ever greater numbers. 
“,..Accumulation of capital reproduces the capital-relation on a 
progressive scale, more capitalists or larger capitalists at this pole, 
more wage-workers at that.... Accumulation of capital 1s, therefore, 
increase of the proletariat” (p. 600 [627]). Since, however, owing to 
the progress of machinery, owing to improved agriculture, etc., 
fewer and fewer workers are necessary in order to produce the 
same quantity of products, since this perfecting, that is, this 
making the workers superfluous, is more rapid than even the 
growth of capital, what becomes of this ever-increasing number 
of workers? They form an industrial reserve army, which, when 

business is bad or middling, is paid below the value of its labour 
‘and is irregularly employed or is left to be cared for by public 
charity, but which is indispensable to the capitalist class at times 
when business is especially lively, as is palpably evident in 
England—but which under all circumstances serves to break the 
power of resistance of the regularly employed workers and to 
keep their wages down. “The greater the social wealth ... the 
greater is the relative surplus-population, or industrial reserve- 
army. But the greater this reserve-army in proportion to the active 
(regularly employed) labour-army, the greater is the mass of a 
consolidated (permanent) surplus-population, or strata of workers, 
whose misery is in inverse ratio* to its torment of labour. The 
more extensive, finally, the lazarus-layers of the working class, and 
the industrial reserve-army, the greater is official pauperism. This 
is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation” (p. 631 [659-60)). 

These, strictly scientifically-proved—and the official economists 
are taking great care not to make even an attempt at a 
refutation—are some of the chief laws of the modern, capitalist, 
social system. But does this tell the whole story? By no means. 
Marx sharply stresses the bad sides of capitalist production but 
with equal emphasis clearly proves that this social form was 
necessary to develop the productive forces of society to a level 
which will make possible an equal development worthy of human 
beings for all members of society. All earlier forms of society were 
too poor for this. Capitalist production is the first to create the 
wealth and the productive forces necessary for this, but at the 
same time it also creates, in the numerous and oppressed workers, 
the social class which is compelled more and more to claim the 
utilisation of this wealth and these productive forces for the whole 
of society —instead of their being utilised, as they are today, for a 
monopolist class.