Manuscript of a Review. (“Rheinische Zeitung”)

|[1]| Karl Marx, Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I:
The Process of Production of Capital. Hamburg, O. Meissner, 1867.

Universal suffrage has added a new party, the Social Democratic, to our existing parliamentary parties. At the last elections for the North German Reichstag it put forward its own candidates in most of the large towns, in all factory districts, and secured six or eight deputies. Compared with the preceding but one elections, it has shown considerably greater strength, and it can therefore be assumed that, for the present at least, it is still growing. It would be folly to continue to treat the existence, the activity, and the doctrines of such a party with superior silence in a country where universal suffrage has placed the final decision in the hands of the most numerous and poorest classes. However much the few Social Democratic parliamentarians may be divided and at odds among themselves, it can be taken for certain that all factions of this party will welcome the present book as their theoretical bible, as the armoury from which they will draw their most essential arguments. For this reason alone it deserves special attention. But it is also fitted by its own content to cause a stir. If Lassalle’s chief argument — and in political economy Lassalle was only a pupil of Marx — confined itself to repeating over and over the so-called Ricardian law of wages, we have before us here a work which, with undeniably rare erudition, treats the whole relation of capital and labour in its connection with the entire economic science, which sets itself as its ultimate aim “to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society”, and which, after investigations conducted with manifest sincerity and unmistakable expert knowledge, reaches the conclusion that the whole “capitalist mode of production” must be abolished. Moreover, we should like to draw particular attention to the fact that, quite apart from the conclusions of the work, the author in the course of it presents a whole series of cardinal points of political economy in an entirely new light, and here, in purely scientific questions, arrives at results which diverge greatly from the currently accepted economics and which the academic economists will have seriously to criticise and scientifically refute if they do not wish to see their previous doctrine come to grief. In the interest of science it is to be desired that polemics over precisely these points should very soon open up in the specialist journals.

Marx begins by presenting the relation of commodity and money, the essentials of which were already published some time ago in a separate work. He then proceeds to capital, and here we come at once to the crucial point of the whole work. What is capital? Money which is transformed into a commodity in order to be transformed back from the commodity into more money than the original sum. By buying cotton for 100 thalers and selling it for 110 thalers, I confirm my 100 thalers as capital, self-valorising value. The question now arises, where do the 10 thalers that I earn in this process come from, how does it come about that 100 thalers, through two simple acts of exchange, become 110 thalers? Political economy, namely, presupposes that in all exchanges equal value is exchanged for equal value. Marx now goes through all possible cases (price fluctuations of commodities, etc.) in order to prove that, under the presuppositions given by political economy, the formation of 10 thalers of surplus-value out of 100 original thalers is impossible. Nevertheless this process takes place daily, and the economists have remained in our debt for the explanation of it. Marx gives this explanation as follows: The riddle can only be solved if we find a commodity of a quite peculiar kind on the market, a commodity whose use-value consists in producing exchange-value. This commodity exists — it is labour-power. The capitalist buys labour-power on the market and has it work for him in order to sell its product again. First of all, then, we have to examine labour-power.

What is the value of labour-power? According to the well-known law: the value of the means of subsistence necessary to maintain the worker, and to propagate his kind, in the manner historically established in a given country and a given epoch. We assume that the worker receives the full value of his labour-power. We further assume that this value is represented in a labour of six hours daily, or half a working day. The capitalist, however, maintains that he has bought the labour-power for a whole working day, and makes the worker work 12 hours or more. With twelve hours of labour, therefore, he has acquired the product of six hours of labour without paying for it. From this Marx concludes: all surplus-value — however it may be distributed, as profit of the capitalist, ground-rent, taxes, etc. — is unpaid labour.

Out of the manufacturer’s interest in extorting as much unpaid labour as possible each day and the opposed interest of the worker, arises the struggle over the length of the working day. In a very instructive illustration, which fills about a hundred pages, Marx depicts the course of this struggle in English large-scale industry, a struggle which, despite the protests of the free-trade manufacturers, ended last spring with the result that not only all factory industry, but also all small-scale enterprise, and even all domestic industry, were placed under the restrictions of the Factory Acts, by which the daily working time of women and young persons under 18 — and thereby indirectly also that of men in the most important branches of industry — is fixed at a maximum of 10½ hours. He also explains at the same time why English industry has not suffered from this, but on the contrary has gained: because the labour of each individual gained more in intensity than it was shortened in duration.

Surplus-value can also be increased in another way besides the lengthening of labour time beyond the time necessary for the production of the necessary means of subsistence or their value. In a given working day, let us say of 12 hours, there are contained, according to the previous assumption, 6 hours of necessary labour and 6 hours of labour employed in producing surplus-value. If it now succeeds through some means in reducing the necessary labour time to 5 hours, then 7 hours remain during which surplus-value is produced. This can be achieved by shortening the labour time required for the production of the necessary means of subsistence, in other words by making the means of subsistence cheaper, and this again only by improvements in production. At this point Marx again gives a detailed illustration, examining or depicting the three main levers by which these improvements are brought about: 1) co-operation, or the multiplication of the forces which arises from the simultaneous and planned joint action of many; 2) the division of labour, as it attained development in the period of manufacture proper (i.e., up to about 1770); and finally 3) machinery, with the help of which large-scale industry has developed since that time. These descriptions too are of great interest and display an astonishing expert knowledge extending into technological detail.

 We cannot go into the further details of the investigations on surplus-value and wages; we merely note, in order to avoid misunderstandings, that, as Marx proves by a host of citations, the fact that wages are less than the whole product of labour is not unknown even to academic economics. It is to be hoped that this book will afford the gentlemen of the school an opportunity to give us closer elucidation on this certainly startling point. It is much to be commended that all the factual evidence that Marx adduces is taken from the best sources, mostly official Parliamentary reports. On this occasion we support the proposal made indirectly by the author in the preface: that in Germany, too, government commissioners — who must not, however, be prejudiced bureaucrats — should be appointed to make a thorough investigation of workers’ conditions in the various industries and to lay the reports before the Reichstag and the public.

The first volume closes with the treatment of the accumulation of capital. On this point much has already been written, although we must confess that here too much that is new is presented and the old is illuminated from new sides. The most characteristic thing is the attempted proof that, alongside the concentration and accumulation of capital, and keeping pace with it, the accumulation of a surplus population of workers proceeds, and that both ultimately make a social upheaval on the one hand necessary and on the other hand possible.

Whatever the reader may think of the socialist views of the author, we believe we have shown him in the foregoing that he has to do here with a work which stands far above the common run of Social Democratic daily literature. We add that, with the exception of the rather strongly dialectical matter on the first 40 pages, the book, despite all its scientific rigour, is nevertheless very easily comprehensible and, owing to the sarcastic, altogether uncompromising style of its author, even interestingly written. |