without
fathoming
the material conditions of this operation.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
An example of the waggish way in which the English Dogberries acted in their --legal?
fixing of a wages tariff:
--The squires of Norfolk had dined, says Mr. Burke, when they fixed the rate of wages; the squires of Berks evidently thought the labourers ought not to do so, when they fixed the rate of wages at Speenhamland, 1795. . . . There they decide that ? income (weekly) should be 3s. for a man,' when the gallon or half-peck loaf of 8 lbs. 11 oz. is at 1s. , and increase regularly till bread is 1s. 5d. ; when it is above that sum decrease regularly till it be at 2s. , and then his food should be 1/5 th less. ? 43
Before the Committee of Inquiry of the House of Lords, 1814, a certain A. Bennett, a large farmer, magistrate, poor-law guardian, and wage-regulator, was asked:
--Has any proportion of the value of daily labour been made up to the labourers out of the poors' rate? ? Answer: --Yes, it has; the weekly income of every family is made up to the gallon loaf (8 lbs. 11 oz. ), and 3d. per head! . . . The gallon loaf per week is what we suppose sufficient for the maintenance of every person in the family for the week; and the 3d. is for clothes, and if the parish think proper to find clothes; the 3d. is deducted. This practice goes through all the western part of Wiltshire, and, I believe, throughout the country. ? 44 --For years,? exclaims a bourgeois author of that time, --they (the farmers) have degraded a respectable class of their countrymen, by forcing them to have recourse to the workhouse . . . the farmer, while increasing his own gains, has prevented any accumulation on the part of his labouring dependents. ? 45
The part played in our days by the direct robbery from the labourer's necessary consumption fund in the formation of surplus value, and, therefore, of the accumulation fund of capital, the so-called domestic industry has served to show. (Ch. xv. , sect. 8, c. ) Further facts on this subject will be given later.
Although in all branches of industry that part of the constant capital consisting of instruments of labour must be sufficient for a certain number of labourers (determined by the magnitude of the undertaking), it by no means always necessarily increases in the same proportion as the quantity
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of labour employed. In a factory, suppose that 100 labourers working 8 hours a day yield 800 working-hours. If the capitalist wishes to raise this sum by one half, he can employ 50 more workers; but then he must also advance more capital, not merely for wages, but for instruments of labour. But he might also let the 100 labourers work 12 hours instead of 8, and then the instruments of labour already to hand would be enough. These would then simply be more rapidly consumed. Thus additional labour, begotten of the greater tension of labour-power, can augment surplus-product and surplus value (i. e. , the subject-matter of accumulation), without corresponding augmentation in the constant part of capital.
In the extractive industries, mines, &c. , the raw materials form no part of the capital advanced. The subject of labour is in this case not a product of previous labour, but is furnished by Nature gratis, as in the case of metals, minerals, coal, stone, &c. In these cases the constant capital consists almost exclusively of instruments of labour, which can very well absorb an increased quantity of labour (day and night shifts of labourers, e. g. ). All other things being equal, the mass and value of the product will rise in direct proportion to the labour expended. As on the first day of production,. the original produce-formers, now turned into the creators of the material elements of capital - man and Nature - still work together. Thanks to the elasticity of labour-power, the domain of accumulation has extended without any previous enlargement of constant capital.
In agriculture the land under cultivation cannot be increased without the advance of more seed and manure. But this advance once made, the purely mechanical working of the soil itself produces a marvellous effect on the amount of the product. A greater quantity of labour, done by the same number of labourers as before, thus increases the fertility, without requiring any new advance in the instruments of labour. It is once again the direct action of man on Nature which becomes an immediate source of greater accumulation, without the intervention of any new capital.
Finally, in what is called manufacturing industry, every additional expenditure of labour presupposes a corresponding additional expenditure of raw materials, but not necessarily of instruments of labour. And as extractive industry and agriculture supply manufacturing industry with its raw materials and those of its instruments of labour, the additional product the former have created without additional advance of capital, tells also in favour of the latter.
General result: by incorporating with itself the two primary creators of wealth, labour-power and the land, capital acquires a power of expansion that permits it to augment the elements of its accumulation beyond the limits apparently fixed by its own magnitude, or by the value and the mass of the means of production, already produced, in which it has its being.
Another important factor in the accumulation of capital is the degree of productivity of social labour.
With the productive power of labour increases the mass of the products, in which a certain value, and, therefore, a surplus value of a given magnitude, is embodied. The rate of surplus value remaining the same or even falling, so long as it only falls more slowly, than the productive power of labour rises, the mass of the surplus-product increases. The division of this product into revenue and additional capital remaining the same, the consumption of the capitalist may, therefore, increase without any decrease in the fund of accumulation. The relative magnitude of the accumulation fund may even increase at the expense of the consumption fund, whilst the cheapening of commodities places at the disposal of the capitalist as many means of enjoyment as formerly, or even more than formerly. But hand-in-hand with the increasing productivity of labour, goes, as we have seen, the cheapening of the labourer, therefore a higher rate of surplus value, even when the real wages are rising. The latter never rise proportionally to the productive power of labour. The same value in variable capital therefore sets in movement more labour-
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power, and, therefore, more labour. The same value in constant capital is embodied in more means of production, i. e. , in more instruments of labour, materials of labour and auxiliary materials; it therefore also supplies more elements for the production both of use value and of value, and with these more absorbers of labour. The value of the additional capital, therefore, remaining the same or even diminishing, accelerated accumulation still takes place. Not only does the scale of reproduction materially extend, but the production of surplus value increases more rapidly than the value of the additional capital.
The development of the productive power of labour reacts also on the original capital already engaged in the process of production. A part of the functioning constant capital consists of instruments of labour, such as machinery, &c. , which are not consumed, and therefore not reproduced, or replaced by new ones of the same kind, until after long periods of time. But every year a part of these instruments of labour perishes or reaches the limit of its productive function. It reaches, therefore, in that year, the time for its periodical reproduction, for its replacement by new ones of the same kind. If the productiveness of labour has, during the using up of these instruments of labour, increased (and it develops continually with the uninterrupted advance of science and technology), more efficient and (considering their increased efficiency), cheaper machines, tools, apparatus, &c. , replace the old. The old capital is reproduced in a more productive form, apart from the constant detail improvements in the instruments of labour already in use. The other part of the constant capital, raw material and auxiliary substances, is constantly reproduced in less than a year; those produced by agriculture, for the most part annually. Every introduction of improved methods, therefore, works almost simultaneously on the new capital and on that already in action. Every advance in Chemistry not only multiplies the number of useful materials and the useful applications of those already known, thus extending with the growth of capital its sphere of investment. It teaches at the same time how to throw the excrements of the processes of production and consumption back again into the circle of the process of reproduction, and thus, without any previous outlay of capital, creates new matter for capital. Like the increased exploitation of natural wealth by the mere increase in the tension of labour- power, science and technology give capital a power of expansion independent of the given magnitude of the capital actually functioning. They react at the same time on that part of the original capital which has entered upon its stage of renewal. This, in passing into its new shape, incorporates gratis the social advance made while its old shape was being used up. Of course, this development of productive power is accompanied by a partial depreciation of functioning capital. So far as this depreciation makes itself acutely felt in competition, the burden falls on the labourer, in the increased exploitation of whom the capitalist looks for his indemnification.
Labour transmits to its product the value of the means of production consumed by it. On the other hand, the value and mass of the means of production set in motion by a given quantity of labour increase as the labour becomes more productive. Though the same quantity of labour adds always to its products only the same sum of new value, still the old capital value, transmitted by the labour to the products, increases with the growing productivity of labour.
An English and a Chinese spinner, e. g. , may work the same number of hours with the same intensity; then they will both in a week create equal values. But in spite of this equality, an immense difference will obtain between the value of the week's product of the Englishman, who works with a mighty automaton, and that of the Chinaman, who has but a spinning-wheel. In the same time as the Chinaman spins one pound of cotton, the Englishman spins several hundreds of pounds. A sum, many hundred times as great, of old values swells the value of his product, in which those re-appear in a new, useful form, and can thus function anew as capital.
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--In 1782,? as Frederick Engels teaches us, --all the wool crop in England of the three preceding years, lay untouched for want of labourers, and so it must have lain, if newly invented machinery had not come to its aid and spun it. ? 46
Labour embodied in the form of machinery of course did not directly force into life a single man, but it made it possible for a smaller number of labourers, with the addition of relatively less living labour, not only to consume the wool productively, and put into it new value, but to preserve in the form of yarn, &c. , its old value. At the same time, it caused and stimulated increased reproduction of wool. It is the natural property of living labour, to transmit old value, whilst it creates new. Hence, with the increase in efficacy, extent and value of its means of production, consequently with the accumulation that accompanies the development of its productive power, labour keeps up and eternises an always increasing capital value in a form ever new. ? 47 This natural power of labour takes the appearance of an intrinsic property of capital, in which it is incorporated, just as the productive forces of social labour take the appearance of inherent properties of capital, and as the constant appropriation of surplus labour by the capitalists, takes that of a constant self-expansion of capital.
With the increase of capital, the difference between the capital employed and the capital consumed increases. In other words, there is increase in the value and the material mass of the instruments of labour, such as buildings, machinery, drain-pipes, working-cattle, apparatus of every kind that function for a longer or shorter time in processes of production constantly repeated, or that serve for the attainment of particular useful effects, whilst they themselves only gradually wear out, therefore only lose their value piecemeal, therefore transfer that value to the product only bit by bit. In the same proportion as these instruments of labour serve as product- formers without adding value to the product, i. e. , in the same proportion as they are wholly employed but only partly consumed, they perform, as we saw earlier, the same gratuitous service as the natural forces, water, steam, air, electricity, etc. This gratuitous service of past labour, when seized and filled with a soul by living labour, increases with the advancing stages of accumulation.
Since past labour always disguises itself as capital, i. e. , since the passive of the labour of A, B, C, etc. , takes the form of the active of the non-labourer X, bourgeois and political economists are full of praises of the services of dead and gone labour, which, according to the Scotch genius MacCulloch, ought to receive a special remuneration in the shape of interest, profit, etc. 48 The powerful and ever-increasing assistance given by past labour to the living labour process under the form of means of production is, therefore, attributed to that form of past labour in which it is alienated, as unpaid labour, from the worker himself, i. e. , to its capitalistic form. The practical agents of capitalistic production and their pettifogging ideologists are as unable to think of the means of production as separate from the antagonistic social mask they wear today, as a slave- owner to think of the worker himself as distinct from his character as a slave.
With a given degree of exploitation of labour-power, the mass of the surplus value produced is determined by the number of workers simultaneously exploited; and this corresponds, although in varying proportions, with the magnitude of the capital. The more, therefore, capital increases by means of successive accumulations, the more does the sum of the value increase that is divided into consumption fund and accumulation fund. The capitalist can, therefore, live a more jolly life, and at the same time show more --abstinence. ? And, finally, all the springs of production act with greater elasticity, the more its scale extends with the mass of the capital advanced.
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Section 5: The So-Called Labour Fund
It has been shown in the course of this inquiry that capital is not a fixed magnitude, but is a part of social wealth, elastic and constantly fluctuating with the division of fresh surplus value into revenue and additional capital. It has been seen further that, even with a given magnitude of functioning capital, the labour-power, the science, and the land (by which are to be understood, economically, all conditions of labour furnished by Nature independently of man), embodied in it, form elastic powers of capital, allowing it, within certain limits, a field of action independent of its own magnitude. In this inquiry we have neglected all effects of the process of circulation, effects which may produce very different degrees of efficiency in the same mass of capital. And as we presupposed the limits set by capitalist production, that is to say, presupposed the process of social production in a form developed by purely spontaneous growth, we neglected any more rational combination, directly and systematically practicable with the means of production, and the mass of labour-power at present disposable. Classical economy always loved to conceive social capital as a fixed magnitude of a fixed degree of efficiency. But this prejudice was first established as a dogma by the arch-Philistine, Jeremy Bentham, that insipid, pedantic, leather- tongued oracle of the ordinary bourgeois intelligence of the 19th century. 49 Bentham is among philosophers what Martin Tupper is among poets. Both could only have been manufactured in England. 50 In the light of his dogma the commonest phenomena of the process of production, as, e. g. , its sudden expansions and contractions, nay, even accumulation itself, become perfectly inconceivable. 51The dogma was used by Bentham himself, as well as by Malthus, James Mill, MacCulloch, etc. , for an apologetic purpose, and especially in order to represent one part of capital, namely, variable capital, or that part convertible into labour-power, as a fixed magnitude. The material of variable capital, i. e. , the mass of the means of subsistence it represents for the labourer, or the so-called labour fund, was fabled as a separate part of social wealth, fixed by natural laws and unchangeable. To set in motion the part of social wealth which is to function as constant capital, or, to express it in a material form, as means of production, a definite mass of living labour is required. This mass is given technologically. But neither is the number of labourers required to render fluid this mass of labour-power given (it changes with the degree of exploitation of the individual labour-power), nor is the price of this labour-power given, but only its minimum limit, which is moreover very variable. The facts that lie at the bottom of this dogma are these: on the one hand, the labourer has no right to interfere in the division of social wealth into means of enjoyment for the non-labourer and means of production. 52 On the other hand, only in favourable and exceptional cases, has he the power to enlarge the so-called labour fund at the expense of the --revenue? of the wealthy.
What silly tautology results from the attempt to represent the capitalistic limits of the labour fund as its natural and social limits may be seen, e. g. , in Professor Fawcett. 53
--The circulating capital of a country,? he says, --is its wage-fund. Hence, if we desire to calculate the average money wages received by each labourer, we have simply to divide the amount of this capital by the number of the labouring population. ? 54
That is to say, we first add together the individual wages actually paid, and then we affirm that the sum thus obtained, forms the total value of the --labour fund? determined and vouchsafed to us by God and Nature. Lastly, we divide the sum thus obtained by the number of labourers to find out again how much may come to each on the average. An uncommonly knowing dodge this. It did not prevent Mr. Fawcett saying in the same breath:
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--The aggregate wealth which is annually saved in England, is divided into two portions; one portion is employed as capital to maintain our industry, and the other portion is exported to foreign countries. . . Only a portion, and perhaps, not a large portion of the wealth which is annually saved in this country, is invested in our own industry. 55
The greater part of the yearly accruing surplus-product, embezzled, because abstracted without return of an equivalent, from the English labourer, is thus used as capital, not in England, but in foreign countries. But with the additional capital thus exported, a part of the --labour fund? invented by God and Bentham is also exported. 56
1 --Accumulation of capital; the employment of a portion of revenue as capital. ? (Malthus: --Definitions, &c. ,? ed. Cazenove, p. 11. ) --Conversion of revenue into capital,? (Malthus: --Princ. of Pol. Econ -- 2nd Ed. , Lond. . 1836, p. 320. )
2 We here take no account of export trade, by means of which a nation can change articles of luxury either into means of production or means of subsistence, and vice versa`. In order to examine the object of our investigation in its integrity, free from all disturbing subsidiary circumstances, we must treat the whole world as one nation, and assume that capitalist production is everywhere established and has possessed itself of every branch of industry.
3 Sismondi's analysis of accumulation suffers from the great defect, that he contents himself, to too great an extent, with the phrase --conversion of revenue into capital,?
without fathoming the material conditions of this operation.
4 --Le travail primitif auquel son capital a du^ sa naissance. ? [the original labour, to which his capital owed its origin] Sismondi, l. c. , ed. Paris, t. I. , p. 109.
5 --Labour creates capital before capital employs labour. ? E. G. Wakefield, --England and America,? Lond. , 1833, Vol. II, p. 110.
6 The property of the capitalist in the product of the labour of others --is a strict consequence of the law of appropriation, the fundamental principle of which was, on the contrary, the exclusive title of every labourer to the product of his own labour. ? (Cherbuliez, --Richesse ou Pauvrete? ,? Paris, 1841, p. 58, where, however, the dialectical reversal is not properly developed. )
7 The following passage (to p. 551 --laws of capitalist appropriation. ? ) has been added to the English text in conformity with the 4th German edition.
8 We may well, therefore, feel astonished at the cleverness Of Proudhon, who would abolish capitalistic property by enforcing the eternal laws of property that are based on commodity production!
9 --Capital, viz. , accumulated wealth employed with a view to profit. ? (Malthus, l. c. ) --Capital . . . consists of wealth saved from revenue, and used with a view to profit. ? (R. Jones: --An Introductory Lecture on Polit. Econ. ,? Lond. , 1833, p. 16. )
10 --The possessors of surplus-produce or capital. ? (--The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties. A Letter to Lord John Russell. ? Lond. , 1821. )
11 --Capital, with compound interest on every portion of capital saved, is so all engrossing that all the wealth in the world from which income is derived, has long ago become the interest on capital. ? (London, Economist, 19th July, 1851. )
12 --No political economist of the present day can by saving mean. mere hoarding: and beyond this contracted and insufficient proceeding, no use of the term in reference to the national wealth can well be imagined,. but that which must arise from a different application of what is saved, founded upon a real distinction between the different kinds of labour maintained by it. ? (Malthus, l. c. , pp. 38, 39. )
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13 Thus for instance, Balzac, who so thoroughly studied every shade of avarice, represents the old usurer Gobseck as in his second childhood when he begins to heap up a hoard of commodities.
14 --Accumulation of stocks . . . upon-exchange . . . over-production. ? (Th. Corbet. l. c. , p. 104. )
15 In this sense Necker speaks of the --objets de faste et de somptuosite? ,? [things of pomp and luxury] of which --le temps a grossi l'accummulation,? [accumulation has grown with time] and which --les lois de proprie? te? ont rassemble? s dans une seule classe de la socie? te? . ? [the laws of property have brought into the hands of one class of society alone] (Oeuvres de M. Necker, Paris and Lausanne, 1789, t. ii. , p. 291. )
16 Ricardo, 1. c. , p. 163, note.
17 In spite of his --Logic,? John St. Mill never detects even such faulty analysis as this when made by his predecessors, an analysis which, even from the bourgeois standpoint of the science, cries out for rectification. In every case he registers with the dogmatism of a disciple, the confusion of his master's thoughts. So here: --The capital itself in the long run becomes entirely wages, and when replaced by the sale of produce becomes wages again. ?
18 In his description of the process of reproduction, and of accumulation, Adam Smith, in many ways, not only made no advance, but even lost considerable ground, compared with his predecessors, especially by the Physiocrats. Connected with the illusion mentioned in the text, is the really wonderful dogma, left by him as an inheritance to Political Economy, the dogma, that the price of commodities is made up of wages, profit (interest) and rent, i. e. , of wages and surplus value. Starting from this basis, Storch naively confesses, --Il est impossible de re? soudre le prix ne? cessaire dans ses e? le? ments les plus simples. ? [. . . it is impossible to resolve the necessary price into its simplest elements] (Storch, l. c. , Petersb. Edit. , 1815, t. ii. , p. 141, note. ) A fine science of economy this, which declares it impossible to resolve the price of a commodity into its simplest elements! This point will be further investigated in the seventh part of Book iii.
19 The reader will notice, that the word revenue is used in a double sense: first, to designate surplus value so far as it is the fruit periodically yielded by capital; secondly, to designate the part of that fruit which is periodically consumed by the capitalist, or added to the fund that supplies his private consumption. I have retained this double meaning because it harmonises with the language of the English and French economists.
20 Taking the usurer, that old-fashioned but ever renewed specimen of the capitalist for his text, Luther shows very aptly that the love of power is an element in the desire to get rich. --The heathen were able, by the light of reason, to conclude that a usurer is a double-dyed thief and murderer. We Christians, however, hold them in such honour, that we fairly worship them for the sake of their money. . . . Whoever eats up, robs, and steals the nourishment of another, that man commits as great a murder (so far as in him lies) as he who starves a man or utterly undoes him. Such does a usurer, and sits the while safe on his stool, when he ought rather to be hanging on the gallows, and be eaten by as many ravens as he has stolen guilders, if only there were so much flesh on him, that so many ravens could stick their beaks in and share it. Meanwhile, we hang the small thieves. . . . Little thieves are put in the stocks, great thieves go flaunting in gold and silk. . . . Therefore is there, on this earth, no greater enemy of man (after the devil) than a gripe-money, and usurer, for he wants to be God over all men. Turks, soldiers, and tyrants are also bad men, yet must they let the people live, and Confess that they are bad, and enemies, and do, nay, must, now and then show pity to some. But a usurer and money-glutton, such a one would have the whole world perish of hunger and thirst, misery and want, so far as in him lies, so that he may have all to himself, and every one may receive from him as from a God, and be his serf for ever. To wear fine cloaks, golden chains, rings, to wipe his mouth, to be deemed and taken for a worthy, pious man . . . . Usury is a great huge monster, like a werewolf, who lays waste all, more than any Cacus, Gerion or Antus. And yet decks himself out, and would be thought pious, so that people
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may not see where the oxen have gone, that he drags backwards into his den. But Hercules shall hear the cry of the oxen and of his prisoners, and shall seek Cacus even in cliffs and among rocks, and shall set the oxen loose again from the villain. For Cacus means the villain that is a pious usurer, and steals, robs, eats everything. And will not own that he has done it, and thinks no one will find him out, because the oxen, drawn backwards into his den, make it seem, from their foot-prints, that they have been let out. So the usurer would deceive the world, as though he were of use and gave the world oxen, which he, however, rends, and eats all alone. . . And since we break on the wheel, and behead highwaymen, murderers and housebreakers, how much more ought we to break on the wheel and kill. . . . hunt down, curse and behead all usurers. ? (Martin Luther, l. c. )
21 See Goethe's --Faust. ?
22 Dr. Aikin: --Description of the Country from 30 to 40 miles round Manchester. ? Lond. , 1795, p. 182, sq.
23 A. Smith, l. c. , bk. iii. , ch. iii.
24 Even J. B. Say says: --Les e? pargnes des riches se font aux de? pens des pauvres. ? [the savings of the rich are made at the expense of the poor] --The Roman proletarian lived almost entirely at the expense of society. . . . It can almost be said that modern society lives at the expense of the proletarians, on what it keeps out of the remuneration of labour. ? (Sismondi: --e?
--The squires of Norfolk had dined, says Mr. Burke, when they fixed the rate of wages; the squires of Berks evidently thought the labourers ought not to do so, when they fixed the rate of wages at Speenhamland, 1795. . . . There they decide that ? income (weekly) should be 3s. for a man,' when the gallon or half-peck loaf of 8 lbs. 11 oz. is at 1s. , and increase regularly till bread is 1s. 5d. ; when it is above that sum decrease regularly till it be at 2s. , and then his food should be 1/5 th less. ? 43
Before the Committee of Inquiry of the House of Lords, 1814, a certain A. Bennett, a large farmer, magistrate, poor-law guardian, and wage-regulator, was asked:
--Has any proportion of the value of daily labour been made up to the labourers out of the poors' rate? ? Answer: --Yes, it has; the weekly income of every family is made up to the gallon loaf (8 lbs. 11 oz. ), and 3d. per head! . . . The gallon loaf per week is what we suppose sufficient for the maintenance of every person in the family for the week; and the 3d. is for clothes, and if the parish think proper to find clothes; the 3d. is deducted. This practice goes through all the western part of Wiltshire, and, I believe, throughout the country. ? 44 --For years,? exclaims a bourgeois author of that time, --they (the farmers) have degraded a respectable class of their countrymen, by forcing them to have recourse to the workhouse . . . the farmer, while increasing his own gains, has prevented any accumulation on the part of his labouring dependents. ? 45
The part played in our days by the direct robbery from the labourer's necessary consumption fund in the formation of surplus value, and, therefore, of the accumulation fund of capital, the so-called domestic industry has served to show. (Ch. xv. , sect. 8, c. ) Further facts on this subject will be given later.
Although in all branches of industry that part of the constant capital consisting of instruments of labour must be sufficient for a certain number of labourers (determined by the magnitude of the undertaking), it by no means always necessarily increases in the same proportion as the quantity
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of labour employed. In a factory, suppose that 100 labourers working 8 hours a day yield 800 working-hours. If the capitalist wishes to raise this sum by one half, he can employ 50 more workers; but then he must also advance more capital, not merely for wages, but for instruments of labour. But he might also let the 100 labourers work 12 hours instead of 8, and then the instruments of labour already to hand would be enough. These would then simply be more rapidly consumed. Thus additional labour, begotten of the greater tension of labour-power, can augment surplus-product and surplus value (i. e. , the subject-matter of accumulation), without corresponding augmentation in the constant part of capital.
In the extractive industries, mines, &c. , the raw materials form no part of the capital advanced. The subject of labour is in this case not a product of previous labour, but is furnished by Nature gratis, as in the case of metals, minerals, coal, stone, &c. In these cases the constant capital consists almost exclusively of instruments of labour, which can very well absorb an increased quantity of labour (day and night shifts of labourers, e. g. ). All other things being equal, the mass and value of the product will rise in direct proportion to the labour expended. As on the first day of production,. the original produce-formers, now turned into the creators of the material elements of capital - man and Nature - still work together. Thanks to the elasticity of labour-power, the domain of accumulation has extended without any previous enlargement of constant capital.
In agriculture the land under cultivation cannot be increased without the advance of more seed and manure. But this advance once made, the purely mechanical working of the soil itself produces a marvellous effect on the amount of the product. A greater quantity of labour, done by the same number of labourers as before, thus increases the fertility, without requiring any new advance in the instruments of labour. It is once again the direct action of man on Nature which becomes an immediate source of greater accumulation, without the intervention of any new capital.
Finally, in what is called manufacturing industry, every additional expenditure of labour presupposes a corresponding additional expenditure of raw materials, but not necessarily of instruments of labour. And as extractive industry and agriculture supply manufacturing industry with its raw materials and those of its instruments of labour, the additional product the former have created without additional advance of capital, tells also in favour of the latter.
General result: by incorporating with itself the two primary creators of wealth, labour-power and the land, capital acquires a power of expansion that permits it to augment the elements of its accumulation beyond the limits apparently fixed by its own magnitude, or by the value and the mass of the means of production, already produced, in which it has its being.
Another important factor in the accumulation of capital is the degree of productivity of social labour.
With the productive power of labour increases the mass of the products, in which a certain value, and, therefore, a surplus value of a given magnitude, is embodied. The rate of surplus value remaining the same or even falling, so long as it only falls more slowly, than the productive power of labour rises, the mass of the surplus-product increases. The division of this product into revenue and additional capital remaining the same, the consumption of the capitalist may, therefore, increase without any decrease in the fund of accumulation. The relative magnitude of the accumulation fund may even increase at the expense of the consumption fund, whilst the cheapening of commodities places at the disposal of the capitalist as many means of enjoyment as formerly, or even more than formerly. But hand-in-hand with the increasing productivity of labour, goes, as we have seen, the cheapening of the labourer, therefore a higher rate of surplus value, even when the real wages are rising. The latter never rise proportionally to the productive power of labour. The same value in variable capital therefore sets in movement more labour-
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power, and, therefore, more labour. The same value in constant capital is embodied in more means of production, i. e. , in more instruments of labour, materials of labour and auxiliary materials; it therefore also supplies more elements for the production both of use value and of value, and with these more absorbers of labour. The value of the additional capital, therefore, remaining the same or even diminishing, accelerated accumulation still takes place. Not only does the scale of reproduction materially extend, but the production of surplus value increases more rapidly than the value of the additional capital.
The development of the productive power of labour reacts also on the original capital already engaged in the process of production. A part of the functioning constant capital consists of instruments of labour, such as machinery, &c. , which are not consumed, and therefore not reproduced, or replaced by new ones of the same kind, until after long periods of time. But every year a part of these instruments of labour perishes or reaches the limit of its productive function. It reaches, therefore, in that year, the time for its periodical reproduction, for its replacement by new ones of the same kind. If the productiveness of labour has, during the using up of these instruments of labour, increased (and it develops continually with the uninterrupted advance of science and technology), more efficient and (considering their increased efficiency), cheaper machines, tools, apparatus, &c. , replace the old. The old capital is reproduced in a more productive form, apart from the constant detail improvements in the instruments of labour already in use. The other part of the constant capital, raw material and auxiliary substances, is constantly reproduced in less than a year; those produced by agriculture, for the most part annually. Every introduction of improved methods, therefore, works almost simultaneously on the new capital and on that already in action. Every advance in Chemistry not only multiplies the number of useful materials and the useful applications of those already known, thus extending with the growth of capital its sphere of investment. It teaches at the same time how to throw the excrements of the processes of production and consumption back again into the circle of the process of reproduction, and thus, without any previous outlay of capital, creates new matter for capital. Like the increased exploitation of natural wealth by the mere increase in the tension of labour- power, science and technology give capital a power of expansion independent of the given magnitude of the capital actually functioning. They react at the same time on that part of the original capital which has entered upon its stage of renewal. This, in passing into its new shape, incorporates gratis the social advance made while its old shape was being used up. Of course, this development of productive power is accompanied by a partial depreciation of functioning capital. So far as this depreciation makes itself acutely felt in competition, the burden falls on the labourer, in the increased exploitation of whom the capitalist looks for his indemnification.
Labour transmits to its product the value of the means of production consumed by it. On the other hand, the value and mass of the means of production set in motion by a given quantity of labour increase as the labour becomes more productive. Though the same quantity of labour adds always to its products only the same sum of new value, still the old capital value, transmitted by the labour to the products, increases with the growing productivity of labour.
An English and a Chinese spinner, e. g. , may work the same number of hours with the same intensity; then they will both in a week create equal values. But in spite of this equality, an immense difference will obtain between the value of the week's product of the Englishman, who works with a mighty automaton, and that of the Chinaman, who has but a spinning-wheel. In the same time as the Chinaman spins one pound of cotton, the Englishman spins several hundreds of pounds. A sum, many hundred times as great, of old values swells the value of his product, in which those re-appear in a new, useful form, and can thus function anew as capital.
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--In 1782,? as Frederick Engels teaches us, --all the wool crop in England of the three preceding years, lay untouched for want of labourers, and so it must have lain, if newly invented machinery had not come to its aid and spun it. ? 46
Labour embodied in the form of machinery of course did not directly force into life a single man, but it made it possible for a smaller number of labourers, with the addition of relatively less living labour, not only to consume the wool productively, and put into it new value, but to preserve in the form of yarn, &c. , its old value. At the same time, it caused and stimulated increased reproduction of wool. It is the natural property of living labour, to transmit old value, whilst it creates new. Hence, with the increase in efficacy, extent and value of its means of production, consequently with the accumulation that accompanies the development of its productive power, labour keeps up and eternises an always increasing capital value in a form ever new. ? 47 This natural power of labour takes the appearance of an intrinsic property of capital, in which it is incorporated, just as the productive forces of social labour take the appearance of inherent properties of capital, and as the constant appropriation of surplus labour by the capitalists, takes that of a constant self-expansion of capital.
With the increase of capital, the difference between the capital employed and the capital consumed increases. In other words, there is increase in the value and the material mass of the instruments of labour, such as buildings, machinery, drain-pipes, working-cattle, apparatus of every kind that function for a longer or shorter time in processes of production constantly repeated, or that serve for the attainment of particular useful effects, whilst they themselves only gradually wear out, therefore only lose their value piecemeal, therefore transfer that value to the product only bit by bit. In the same proportion as these instruments of labour serve as product- formers without adding value to the product, i. e. , in the same proportion as they are wholly employed but only partly consumed, they perform, as we saw earlier, the same gratuitous service as the natural forces, water, steam, air, electricity, etc. This gratuitous service of past labour, when seized and filled with a soul by living labour, increases with the advancing stages of accumulation.
Since past labour always disguises itself as capital, i. e. , since the passive of the labour of A, B, C, etc. , takes the form of the active of the non-labourer X, bourgeois and political economists are full of praises of the services of dead and gone labour, which, according to the Scotch genius MacCulloch, ought to receive a special remuneration in the shape of interest, profit, etc. 48 The powerful and ever-increasing assistance given by past labour to the living labour process under the form of means of production is, therefore, attributed to that form of past labour in which it is alienated, as unpaid labour, from the worker himself, i. e. , to its capitalistic form. The practical agents of capitalistic production and their pettifogging ideologists are as unable to think of the means of production as separate from the antagonistic social mask they wear today, as a slave- owner to think of the worker himself as distinct from his character as a slave.
With a given degree of exploitation of labour-power, the mass of the surplus value produced is determined by the number of workers simultaneously exploited; and this corresponds, although in varying proportions, with the magnitude of the capital. The more, therefore, capital increases by means of successive accumulations, the more does the sum of the value increase that is divided into consumption fund and accumulation fund. The capitalist can, therefore, live a more jolly life, and at the same time show more --abstinence. ? And, finally, all the springs of production act with greater elasticity, the more its scale extends with the mass of the capital advanced.
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Section 5: The So-Called Labour Fund
It has been shown in the course of this inquiry that capital is not a fixed magnitude, but is a part of social wealth, elastic and constantly fluctuating with the division of fresh surplus value into revenue and additional capital. It has been seen further that, even with a given magnitude of functioning capital, the labour-power, the science, and the land (by which are to be understood, economically, all conditions of labour furnished by Nature independently of man), embodied in it, form elastic powers of capital, allowing it, within certain limits, a field of action independent of its own magnitude. In this inquiry we have neglected all effects of the process of circulation, effects which may produce very different degrees of efficiency in the same mass of capital. And as we presupposed the limits set by capitalist production, that is to say, presupposed the process of social production in a form developed by purely spontaneous growth, we neglected any more rational combination, directly and systematically practicable with the means of production, and the mass of labour-power at present disposable. Classical economy always loved to conceive social capital as a fixed magnitude of a fixed degree of efficiency. But this prejudice was first established as a dogma by the arch-Philistine, Jeremy Bentham, that insipid, pedantic, leather- tongued oracle of the ordinary bourgeois intelligence of the 19th century. 49 Bentham is among philosophers what Martin Tupper is among poets. Both could only have been manufactured in England. 50 In the light of his dogma the commonest phenomena of the process of production, as, e. g. , its sudden expansions and contractions, nay, even accumulation itself, become perfectly inconceivable. 51The dogma was used by Bentham himself, as well as by Malthus, James Mill, MacCulloch, etc. , for an apologetic purpose, and especially in order to represent one part of capital, namely, variable capital, or that part convertible into labour-power, as a fixed magnitude. The material of variable capital, i. e. , the mass of the means of subsistence it represents for the labourer, or the so-called labour fund, was fabled as a separate part of social wealth, fixed by natural laws and unchangeable. To set in motion the part of social wealth which is to function as constant capital, or, to express it in a material form, as means of production, a definite mass of living labour is required. This mass is given technologically. But neither is the number of labourers required to render fluid this mass of labour-power given (it changes with the degree of exploitation of the individual labour-power), nor is the price of this labour-power given, but only its minimum limit, which is moreover very variable. The facts that lie at the bottom of this dogma are these: on the one hand, the labourer has no right to interfere in the division of social wealth into means of enjoyment for the non-labourer and means of production. 52 On the other hand, only in favourable and exceptional cases, has he the power to enlarge the so-called labour fund at the expense of the --revenue? of the wealthy.
What silly tautology results from the attempt to represent the capitalistic limits of the labour fund as its natural and social limits may be seen, e. g. , in Professor Fawcett. 53
--The circulating capital of a country,? he says, --is its wage-fund. Hence, if we desire to calculate the average money wages received by each labourer, we have simply to divide the amount of this capital by the number of the labouring population. ? 54
That is to say, we first add together the individual wages actually paid, and then we affirm that the sum thus obtained, forms the total value of the --labour fund? determined and vouchsafed to us by God and Nature. Lastly, we divide the sum thus obtained by the number of labourers to find out again how much may come to each on the average. An uncommonly knowing dodge this. It did not prevent Mr. Fawcett saying in the same breath:
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--The aggregate wealth which is annually saved in England, is divided into two portions; one portion is employed as capital to maintain our industry, and the other portion is exported to foreign countries. . . Only a portion, and perhaps, not a large portion of the wealth which is annually saved in this country, is invested in our own industry. 55
The greater part of the yearly accruing surplus-product, embezzled, because abstracted without return of an equivalent, from the English labourer, is thus used as capital, not in England, but in foreign countries. But with the additional capital thus exported, a part of the --labour fund? invented by God and Bentham is also exported. 56
1 --Accumulation of capital; the employment of a portion of revenue as capital. ? (Malthus: --Definitions, &c. ,? ed. Cazenove, p. 11. ) --Conversion of revenue into capital,? (Malthus: --Princ. of Pol. Econ -- 2nd Ed. , Lond. . 1836, p. 320. )
2 We here take no account of export trade, by means of which a nation can change articles of luxury either into means of production or means of subsistence, and vice versa`. In order to examine the object of our investigation in its integrity, free from all disturbing subsidiary circumstances, we must treat the whole world as one nation, and assume that capitalist production is everywhere established and has possessed itself of every branch of industry.
3 Sismondi's analysis of accumulation suffers from the great defect, that he contents himself, to too great an extent, with the phrase --conversion of revenue into capital,?
without fathoming the material conditions of this operation.
4 --Le travail primitif auquel son capital a du^ sa naissance. ? [the original labour, to which his capital owed its origin] Sismondi, l. c. , ed. Paris, t. I. , p. 109.
5 --Labour creates capital before capital employs labour. ? E. G. Wakefield, --England and America,? Lond. , 1833, Vol. II, p. 110.
6 The property of the capitalist in the product of the labour of others --is a strict consequence of the law of appropriation, the fundamental principle of which was, on the contrary, the exclusive title of every labourer to the product of his own labour. ? (Cherbuliez, --Richesse ou Pauvrete? ,? Paris, 1841, p. 58, where, however, the dialectical reversal is not properly developed. )
7 The following passage (to p. 551 --laws of capitalist appropriation. ? ) has been added to the English text in conformity with the 4th German edition.
8 We may well, therefore, feel astonished at the cleverness Of Proudhon, who would abolish capitalistic property by enforcing the eternal laws of property that are based on commodity production!
9 --Capital, viz. , accumulated wealth employed with a view to profit. ? (Malthus, l. c. ) --Capital . . . consists of wealth saved from revenue, and used with a view to profit. ? (R. Jones: --An Introductory Lecture on Polit. Econ. ,? Lond. , 1833, p. 16. )
10 --The possessors of surplus-produce or capital. ? (--The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties. A Letter to Lord John Russell. ? Lond. , 1821. )
11 --Capital, with compound interest on every portion of capital saved, is so all engrossing that all the wealth in the world from which income is derived, has long ago become the interest on capital. ? (London, Economist, 19th July, 1851. )
12 --No political economist of the present day can by saving mean. mere hoarding: and beyond this contracted and insufficient proceeding, no use of the term in reference to the national wealth can well be imagined,. but that which must arise from a different application of what is saved, founded upon a real distinction between the different kinds of labour maintained by it. ? (Malthus, l. c. , pp. 38, 39. )
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13 Thus for instance, Balzac, who so thoroughly studied every shade of avarice, represents the old usurer Gobseck as in his second childhood when he begins to heap up a hoard of commodities.
14 --Accumulation of stocks . . . upon-exchange . . . over-production. ? (Th. Corbet. l. c. , p. 104. )
15 In this sense Necker speaks of the --objets de faste et de somptuosite? ,? [things of pomp and luxury] of which --le temps a grossi l'accummulation,? [accumulation has grown with time] and which --les lois de proprie? te? ont rassemble? s dans une seule classe de la socie? te? . ? [the laws of property have brought into the hands of one class of society alone] (Oeuvres de M. Necker, Paris and Lausanne, 1789, t. ii. , p. 291. )
16 Ricardo, 1. c. , p. 163, note.
17 In spite of his --Logic,? John St. Mill never detects even such faulty analysis as this when made by his predecessors, an analysis which, even from the bourgeois standpoint of the science, cries out for rectification. In every case he registers with the dogmatism of a disciple, the confusion of his master's thoughts. So here: --The capital itself in the long run becomes entirely wages, and when replaced by the sale of produce becomes wages again. ?
18 In his description of the process of reproduction, and of accumulation, Adam Smith, in many ways, not only made no advance, but even lost considerable ground, compared with his predecessors, especially by the Physiocrats. Connected with the illusion mentioned in the text, is the really wonderful dogma, left by him as an inheritance to Political Economy, the dogma, that the price of commodities is made up of wages, profit (interest) and rent, i. e. , of wages and surplus value. Starting from this basis, Storch naively confesses, --Il est impossible de re? soudre le prix ne? cessaire dans ses e? le? ments les plus simples. ? [. . . it is impossible to resolve the necessary price into its simplest elements] (Storch, l. c. , Petersb. Edit. , 1815, t. ii. , p. 141, note. ) A fine science of economy this, which declares it impossible to resolve the price of a commodity into its simplest elements! This point will be further investigated in the seventh part of Book iii.
19 The reader will notice, that the word revenue is used in a double sense: first, to designate surplus value so far as it is the fruit periodically yielded by capital; secondly, to designate the part of that fruit which is periodically consumed by the capitalist, or added to the fund that supplies his private consumption. I have retained this double meaning because it harmonises with the language of the English and French economists.
20 Taking the usurer, that old-fashioned but ever renewed specimen of the capitalist for his text, Luther shows very aptly that the love of power is an element in the desire to get rich. --The heathen were able, by the light of reason, to conclude that a usurer is a double-dyed thief and murderer. We Christians, however, hold them in such honour, that we fairly worship them for the sake of their money. . . . Whoever eats up, robs, and steals the nourishment of another, that man commits as great a murder (so far as in him lies) as he who starves a man or utterly undoes him. Such does a usurer, and sits the while safe on his stool, when he ought rather to be hanging on the gallows, and be eaten by as many ravens as he has stolen guilders, if only there were so much flesh on him, that so many ravens could stick their beaks in and share it. Meanwhile, we hang the small thieves. . . . Little thieves are put in the stocks, great thieves go flaunting in gold and silk. . . . Therefore is there, on this earth, no greater enemy of man (after the devil) than a gripe-money, and usurer, for he wants to be God over all men. Turks, soldiers, and tyrants are also bad men, yet must they let the people live, and Confess that they are bad, and enemies, and do, nay, must, now and then show pity to some. But a usurer and money-glutton, such a one would have the whole world perish of hunger and thirst, misery and want, so far as in him lies, so that he may have all to himself, and every one may receive from him as from a God, and be his serf for ever. To wear fine cloaks, golden chains, rings, to wipe his mouth, to be deemed and taken for a worthy, pious man . . . . Usury is a great huge monster, like a werewolf, who lays waste all, more than any Cacus, Gerion or Antus. And yet decks himself out, and would be thought pious, so that people
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may not see where the oxen have gone, that he drags backwards into his den. But Hercules shall hear the cry of the oxen and of his prisoners, and shall seek Cacus even in cliffs and among rocks, and shall set the oxen loose again from the villain. For Cacus means the villain that is a pious usurer, and steals, robs, eats everything. And will not own that he has done it, and thinks no one will find him out, because the oxen, drawn backwards into his den, make it seem, from their foot-prints, that they have been let out. So the usurer would deceive the world, as though he were of use and gave the world oxen, which he, however, rends, and eats all alone. . . And since we break on the wheel, and behead highwaymen, murderers and housebreakers, how much more ought we to break on the wheel and kill. . . . hunt down, curse and behead all usurers. ? (Martin Luther, l. c. )
21 See Goethe's --Faust. ?
22 Dr. Aikin: --Description of the Country from 30 to 40 miles round Manchester. ? Lond. , 1795, p. 182, sq.
23 A. Smith, l. c. , bk. iii. , ch. iii.
24 Even J. B. Say says: --Les e? pargnes des riches se font aux de? pens des pauvres. ? [the savings of the rich are made at the expense of the poor] --The Roman proletarian lived almost entirely at the expense of society. . . . It can almost be said that modern society lives at the expense of the proletarians, on what it keeps out of the remuneration of labour. ? (Sismondi: --e?
