CAPITAL A CRITIQUE OE POLITICAL ECONOMY BY KARL MAEX VOLUME I THE PROCESS OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION, BY SAMUEL MOORE AND EDWARD AVELING AND EDITED BY FEEDEKICK ENGELS REVISED AND AMPLIFIED ACCOBDING TO THE FOUETH GEBMAN EDITION BT EBNEST UNTEBMANN CHICAGO CHAELES H. KEEE & COMPANY 1906 Copyright, 1906 B* CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY CONTENTS. PAGE EDITOR'S NOTE TO THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, 7 AUTHOR'S PREFACES I. To the First Edition, .'.... 11 II. To the Second Edition 16 EDITOR'S PREFACE To the First English Translation, 27 EDITOR'S PREFACE To the Fourth German Edition 32 PART I. COMMODITIES AND MONEY. CHAPTER I. Commodities, 41 Section 1. The two Factors of a Commodity; Use Value and Value (the Substance of Value and the Magnitude of Value), 41 Section 2. The Twofold Character of the Labour embodied in Commodities, 48 Section 3. The Form of Value, or Exchange' Value, 54 A. Elementary or Accidental Form of Value 56 1. The two Poles of the Expression of Value: Relative Form and Equivalent Form, 56 The Relative Form of Value, . 57 (a.) The Nature and Import of this Form 57 (b.) Quantitative Determination of Relative Value 61 3. The Equivalent Form of Value, . 64 4. The Elementary Form of Value considered as a Whole, ... 69 B. Total or Expanded Form of Value 72 1. The Expanded Relative Form of Value 72 2. The Particular Equivalent Form 73 3. Defects of the Total or Expanded Form of Value, ..... 74 C. The General Form of Value 75 1. The altered Character of the Form of Value 75 2. The interdependent Development 01 the Relative Form of Value, and of the Equivalent Form, 78 3. Transition from the General Forro to the Money Form, ... 79 D. The Money form, 80 Section 4. The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof 81 CHAPTER II. Exchange, 96 CHAPTER III. Money, or the Circulation cf Commodities, 106 Section 1. The Measure of Value, . 106 Section 2. The Medium of Circulation, 116 a. The Metamorphosis of ^Wnmodities, 116 b. The Currency of Mone?, 128 c. Coin, and symbols of Va/ue 140 Section 3. Money, 146 a. Hoarding, 146 b. Means of Payment 151 c. Universal Money 159 PART II. THE TRANSFORMATION OF MONEY INTO CAPITAL. CHAPTER IV. The On-r*'; ^o-rrula for Capital 163 CHAPTER V. Contradictions in the General Formula of Capital 173 CHAPTER V{.~ Tne Buying and Selling of Labour-Power, 185 3 Contents. PART III. THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE SURPLUS-VALUE. PAGS CHAPTER VII. The Labour Process and the Process of producing Surplus- Value ..................... !97 Section 1. The Labour Process or the Production of JJse- Value, ..... 197 Section 2. The Production of Surplus-Value ........... 207 CHAPTER VIII. Constant Capital and Variable Capital, ....... 221 CHAPTER IX. The Rate of Surplus-Value ............ 235 Section 1. The Degree of Exploitation of Labour-Power ........ 235 Section 2. The Representation of the Components of the Value of the Pro- duct by corresponding proportional Parts of the Product itself, . . . 244 Section 3. Senior's " Last Hour," .............. 248 Section 4. Surplus-Produce, ................ 254 CHAPTER X. The Working-Day ................ 255 Section 1. The Limits of the Working- Day ............ 255 Section 2. The Greed for Surplus-Labour. Manufacturer and Boyard, . . 259 Section 3. Branches of English Industry without Legal Limits to Exploitation, 268 Section 4. Day and Night Work. The Relay System ......... 282 Section 5. The Struggle for a Normal Working-Day. Compulsory Laws for the Extension of the Working-Day from the Middle of the 14th to the End of the 17th Century ................ 290 Section 6. The Struggle for a Normal Working-Day. Compulsory Limitation by Law of the Working-Time. The English Factory Acts, 1833 to 1864, 304 Section 7. The Struggle for a Normal Working-Day. Re-action of the Eng- lish Factory Acts on Other Countries, ........... 326 CHAPTER XI. Rate and Mass of Surplus- Value, .......... 331 PART IV. PRODUCTION OP RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALCI. CHAPTER XII. The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value ........ 342 CHAPTER XIII. Co-Operation ................ 353 CHAPTER XIV. Division of Labour and Manufacture, ........ 368 Section 1. Twofold Origin of Manufacture, ........... 368 Section 2. The Detail Labourer and his Implements, ........ 372 Section 3. The two Fundamental Forms of Manufacture: Heterogeneous Manufacture, Serial Manufacture, ............ 375 Section 4. Division of Labour in Manufacture, and Division of Labour in Society ..................... 385 Section 5. The Capitalistic Character of Manufacture, ....... 395 CHAPTER XV. Machinery and Modern Industry .......... 405 Section 1. The Development of Machinery ............ 405 Section 2. The Value transferred by Machinery to the Product, .... 422 Section 3. The Proximate Effects of Machinery on the Workman ..... 430 o. Appropriation of Supplementary Labour-Power by Capital. The Employment of Women and Children, ....... 431 b. Prolongation of the Working-Day .......... 440 c. Intensification of Labour, ............ 447 Section 4. The Factory .................. 457 Siction 5. The Strife between Workman and Machinery ....... 466 Section 6. The Theory of Compensation as regards the Workpeople displaced by Machinery ................... 478 Section 7. Repulsion and Attraction of Workpeople by the Factory System. Crises of the Cotton Trade, ..... . 488 Contents. 5 PAGE Section 8. Revolution effected in Manufacture, Handicrafts, and Domestic Industry by Modern Industry, 502 a. Overthrow of Co-Operation based on Handicraft and on Divi- sion of Labour, 502 b. Re-action of the Factory System on Manufacture and Domes- tic Industries, 504 c. Modern Manufacture, 506 d. Modern Domestic Industry, 509 e. Passage of Modern Manufacture and Domestic Industry into Modern Mechanical Industry. The Hastening of this Revo- lution by the Application of the Factory Acts to those In- dustries, 514 Section 9. The Factory Acts. Sanitary and Educational Clauses of the same. Their general Extension in England 526 Section 10. Modern Industry and Agriculture 553 PART V. THE PRODUCTION OK ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE. CHAPTER XVI. Absolute and Relative Surplus- Value 557 CHAPTER XVII. Changes of Magnitude in the Price of Labour-Power and in Surplus- Value, 568 I. Length of the Working Day and Intensity of Labour constant. Pro- ductiveness of Labour variable, 569 II. Working Day constant. Productiveness of Labour constant. Intensity of Labor variable 574 III. Productiveness and Intensity of Labour constant. Length of the Work- ing Day variable, 576 IV. Simultaneous Variations in the Duration, Productiveness and In- tensity of Labour 578 (1.) Diminishing Productiveness of Labour with a simultaneous Length- ening of the Working Day, 578 (2.) Increasing Intensity and Productiveness of Labour with simul- taneous Shortening of the Working Day, 580 CHAPTER XVIII. Various FormL-e for the Rate of Surplus-Value, .... 582 PART VI. WAGES. CHAPTER XIX. The Transformation of the Value (and respectively the Price) of Labour-Power into Wages 586 CHAPTER XX. Time-wages, 594 CHAPTER XXI. Piece-Wages, 602 CHAPTER XXII. National Differences of Wages, 611 PART VII. THE ACCUMULATION Of CAPITAL. CHAPTER XXIII. Simple Reproduction, 619 CHAPTER XXIV. Conversion of Surplus- Value into Capital 634 Section 1. Capitalist Production on a progressively increasing Scale. Transi- tion of the Laws of Property that characterise Production of Com- modities into Laws of Capitalist Appropriation, 634 Section 2. Erroneous Conception, by Political Economy, of Reproduction on a progressively increasing Scale, 644 5 Contents. PAGE Section 3. Separation of Surplus-Value into Capital and Revenue. The Ab- stinence Theory, ..'.'' 648 Section 4. Circumstances that, independently of the proportional Division of Surplus-Value into Capital and Revenue, determine the Amount of Ac- cumulation. Degree of Exploitation of Labour-Power. Productivity of Labour. Growing Difference in Amount between Capital employed and Capital consumed. Magnitude of Capital advanced, 656 Section 5. The so-called Labour Fund, 667 CHAPTER XXV. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation, 671 Section 1. The increased Demand for Labour-Power that accompanies Accumu- lation, the Composition of Capital remaii.ing the same 671 Section 2. Relative Diminution of the Variable Part of Capital simultaneously with the Progress of Accumulation and of the Concentration that ac- companies it, 681 Section 3! Progressive Production of a Relative Surplus-Population, or Indus- trial Reserve Army 689 Section 4. Different Forms of the Relative Surplus-Population. The General Law of Capitalistic Accumulation 703 Section 6. Illustrations of the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation, . . 711 a. England from 1846 to 1866 711 b. The badly paid Strata of the British Industrial Class, . . .718 c. The Nomad Population, 728 d. Effect of Crises on the best paid Part of the Working Class, . 733 t. The British Agricultural Proletariat 739 /. Ireland 767 PART VIII. THE SO-CALLED PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION. CHAPTER XXVI. The Secret of Primitive Accumulation 784 CHAPTER XXVII. Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land, 788 CHAPTER XXVIII. Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated from the End of the 15th Century. Forcing down of Wages by Acts of Parliament, . 805 CHAPTER XXIX. Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer, 814 CHAPTER XXX. Reaction of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry. Crea- tion of the Home Market for Industrial Capital 817 CHAPTER XXXI. Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist, 822 CHAPTER XXXII. Historical Tendency of Capitalistic Accumulation, . . . 834 CHAPTER XX.tlll. The Modern Theory of Colonization 838 Works and Authors quoted in " Capital," 850 (Index . 866 EDITOR'S NOTE TO THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. The original plan of Marx, as outlined in his preface to the first German edition of Capital, in 1867, was to divide his work into three volumes. Volume I was to contain Book I, The Process of 'Capitalist Production. Volume II was scheduled to comprise both Book II, The Process of Capi- talist Circulation, and Book III, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. The work was to close with volume III, containing Book IV, A History of Theories of Surplus- Value. When Marx proceeded to elaborate his work for publica- tion, he had the essential portions of all three volumes, with a few exceptions, worked out in their main analyses and con- clusions, but in a very loose and unfinished form. Owing to ill health, he completed only volume I. He. died on March 14, 1883, just when a third German edition of this volume was being prepared for the printer. Frederick Engels, the intimate friend and co-operator of Marx, stepped into the place of his dead comrade and pro- ceeded to complete the work. In the course of the elabora- tion of volume II it was found that it would be wholly taken up with Book II, The Process of Capitalist Circulation. Its first German edition did not appear until May, 1885, almost 18 years after the first volume. The publication of the third volume was delayed still longer. When the second German edition of volume II ap- peared, in July, 1893, Engels was still working on volume 7 8 American Editor's Note. III. It was not until October, 1894, that the first German edition of volume III was published, in two separate parts, containing the subject matter of what had been originally planned as Book III of volume II, and treating of The Capi- talist Process of Production as a whole. The reasons for the delay in the publication of volumes II and III, and the difficulties encountered in solving the problem of elaborating the copious notes of Marx into a fin- ished and connected presentation of his theories, have been fully explained by Engels in his various prefaces to these two volumes. His great modesty led him to belittle his own share in this fundamental work. As a matter of fact, a large portion of the contents of Capital is as much a creation of Engels as though he had written it independently of Marx. Engels intended to issue the contents of the manuscripts for Book IV, originally planned as volume III, in the form of a fourth volume of Capital. But on the 6th of August, 1895, less than one year after the publication of volume III, he followed his co-worker into the grave, still leaving this work incompleted. However, some years previous to his demise, and in antici- pation of such an eventuality, he had appointed Karl Kautsky, the editor of Die Neue Zeit, the scientific organ of the German Socialist Party, as his successor and familiarized him per- sonally with the subject matter intended for volume IV of this work. The material proved to be so voluminous, that Kautsky, instead of making a fourth volume of Capital out of it, abandoned the original plan and issued his elaboration as a separate work in three volumes under the title Theories of Surplus-value. The first English translation of the first volume of Capital was edited by Engels and published in 1886. Marx had in the meantime made some changes in the text of the second American Editor's Note. 9 German edition and of the French translation, both of which appeared in 1873, and he had intended to superintend per- sonally the edition of an English version. But the state of his health interfered with this plan. Engels utilised his notes and the text of the French edition of 187.3 in the prep- aration of a third German edition, and this served as a basis for the first edition of the English translation. Owing to the fact that the title page of this English trans- lation (published by Swan Sonnenschein & 'Co.) did not dis- tinctly specify that this was but volume I ? it has often been mistaken for the complete work, in spite of the fact that the prefaces of Marx and Engels clearly pointed to the actual condition of the matter. In 1890, four years after the publication of the first Eng- lish edition, Engels edited the proofs for a fourth German edition of volume I and enlarged it still more after a re- peated comparison with the French edition and with manu- script notes of Marx. But the Swan Sonnenschein edition did not adopt this new version in its subsequent English issues. This first American edition will be the first complete Eng- lish edition of the entire Marxian theories of Capitalist Pro- duction. It will contain all three volumes of Capital in full. The present volume, I, deals with The Process of Capitalist Production in the strict meaning of the term " production." Volume II will treat of The Process- of Capitalist Circulation in the strict meaning of the, term " circulation." Volume III will contain the final analysis of The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole, that is of Production and Circulation in their mutual interrelations. The Theories of Surplus-Value,, Kautsky's elaboration of the posthumous notes of Marx and Engels, will in due time be published in an English translation as a separate work. ! io American Editor's Note. This first American edition of volume I is based on the revised fourth German edition. The text of the English version of the Swan Sonnenschein edition has been compared page for page with this improved German edition, and about ten pages of new text hitherto not rendered in English are thus presented to American readers. All the footnotes have likewise been revised and brought up to date. For all further information concerning the technical par- ticulars of this work I refer the reader to the prefaces of Marx and Engels. ERNEST UNTERMANN. Orlando, Fla., July 18, 1906. AUTHOR'S PREFACES. I. TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE work, the first volume of which I now submit to the public, forms the continuation of my "Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie" (A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) published in 1859. The long pause be- tween the first part and the continuation is due to an illness of many years' duration that again and again interrupted my work. The substance of that earlier work is summarised in the first three chapters of this volume. This is done not merely for the sake of connection and completeness. The presentation of the subject-matter is improved. As far as circumstances in any way permit, many points only hinted at in the earlier book are here worked out more fully, whilst, conversely, points worked out fully there are only touched upon in this volume. The sections on the history of the theories of value and of, money are now, of course, left out altogether. The reader of the earlier work will find, however, in the notes to the first chapter additional sources of reference relative to the history of those theories. Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the section that con- tains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of value, ii 12 Author's Prefaces. I have, as much as it was possible, popularised. 1 The value- form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why ? Because the body, as an or- ganic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society the commodity-form of the product of labor or the value-form of the commodity is the economic cell-form. To the super- ficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutisB, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy. With the exception of the section on value-form, therefore this volume cannot stand accused on the score of difficulty. I pre-suppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn sotoe- thing new and therefore to think for himself. The physicist either observes physical phenomena where they occur in their most typical form and most free from -disturbing influence, or, wherever possible, he makes experi- ments under conditions that assure the occurrence of the phe- 1 This is the more necessary, as even the section of Ferdinand Lassalle'* work against Schulze-Delitzsch, in which he professes to give "the intel- lectual quintessence" of my explanations on these subjects, contains im- portant mistakes. If Ferdinand Lassalle has borrowed almost literally from my writings, and without any acknowledgment, all the general theoretical propositions in his economic works, e.g., those on the his- torical character of capital, on the connection between the conditions of production and the mode of production, &c., &c., even to the terminology created by me, this may perhaps be due to purposes of propaganda. I am here, of course, not speaking of his detailed working out and applica- tion of these propositions, with which I have nothing to do. Author's Prefaces. 13 nomenon in its normality. In this work I have to examine the capitalist mode of production, and the conditions of pro- duction and exchange corresponding to that mode. Up to the present time, their classic ground is England. That is the reason why England is used as the chief illustration in the development of my theoretical ideas. If, however, the Ger- man reader shrugs his shoulders at the condition of the Eng- lish industrial and agricultural laborers, or in optimist fash- ion comforts himself with the thought that in Germany things are not nearly so bad, I must plainly tell him, "De te fabula narratur! " Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a ques- tion of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results. The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less de- veloped, the image of its own future. But apart from this. Where capitalist production is fully naturalised among the Germans (for instance, in the factories proper) the condition of things is much worse than in England, because the counterpoise of the Factory Acts is wanting. In all other spheres, we, like all the rest of Continental Western Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that develop- ment. Alongside of modern evils, a whole series of inherited evils oppress us, arising from the passive survival of anti- quated modes of production, with their inevitable train of social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif! The social statistics of Germany and the rest of Continental Western Europe are, in comparison with those of England, wretchedly compiled. But they raise the veil just enough 14 Author's Prefaces. to let us catch a glimpse of the Medusa head behind it We should be appalled at the state of things at home, if, as in England, our governments and parliaments appointed period- ically commissions of enquiry into economic conditions; if these commissions were armed with the same plenary powers to get at the truth ; if it was possible to find for this purpose men as competent, as free from partisanship and respect of persons as are the English factory-inspectors, her medical re- porters on public health, her commissioners of enquiry into the exploitation of women and children, into housing and food. Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters he hunted down might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters. Le us not deceive ourselves on this. As in the 18th century, the American war of independence sounded the tocsin for the European middle-class, so in the 19th century, the American civil war sounded it for the European working-class. In Eng- land the progress of social disintegration is palpable. When it has reached a certain point, it must re-act on the continent There it will take a form more brutal or more humane, accord- ing to the degree of development of the working-class itself. Apart from higher motives, therefore, their own most impor- tant interests dictate to the classes that are for the nonce the ruling ones, the removal of all legally removable hindrances to the free development of the working-class. For this reason, as well as others, I have given so large a space in this volume to the history, the details, and the results of English factory legislation. One nation can and should learn from others. And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement and it is the ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the Author's Prefaces. 15 successive phases of its normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs. To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of par- ticular class-relations and class-interests. My stand-point, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose crea- ture he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them. In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific enquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malig- nant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private in- terest. The English Established Church, e.g., will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on ^ of its income. Now-a-days atheism itself is culpa lems, as compared with criticism of existing property relations. Never- theless, there is an unmistakable advance. I refer, e.g., to the bluebook published within the last few weeks : " Correspond- ence with Her Majesty's Missions Abroad, regarding Indus- trial Questions and Trades' Unions." The representatives of the English Crown in foreign countries there declare in so many words that in Germany, in France, to be brief, in all the civilised states of the European continent, a radical change in the existing relations between capital and labor is as evident and inevitable as in England. At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Wade, vice-president of the United States, declared in public meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of the relations of 16 Author's Prefaces. capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the day. These are signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple mantles or black cassocks. They do not signify that to-morrow a miracle will happen. They show that, within the ruling- classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing. The second volume of this work will treat of the process of the circulation of capital 1 (Book II.), and of the varied forms assumed by capital in the course of its development (Book III.), the third and last volume (Book IV.), the history of the theory. Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome. As to the prejudices of so-called public opinion, to which I have never made concessions, now as aforetime the maxim of the great Florentine is mine: "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." KARL MARX. LONDON, July 25, 1867. K. TO THE SECOTTD EDITION To the present moment Political Economy, in Germany, is a foreign science. Gustav von Giilich in his "Historical de- scription of Commerce, Industry," &c., 2 especially in the two first volumes published in 1830, has examined at length the historical circumstances that prevented, in Germany, the de- velopment of the capitalist mode of production, and conse- quently the development, in that country, of modern bourgeois society. Thus the soil whence Political Economy springs was *On p. 618 the author explains what he comprises under this head. 2 Geschichtliche Darstellung des Handels, der Gewerbe und des Acker- baus, 4c., von Gustav von Giilich. 5 vols., Jena, 1830-45. Author's Prefaces. 17 wanting. This "science" had to be imported from England and France as a ready-made article; its German professors remained schoolboys. The theoretical expression of a foreign reality was turned, in their hands, into a collection of dogmas, interpreted by them in terms of the petty trading world around them, and therefore misinterpreted. The feeling of scientific impotence, a feeling iiot wholly to be repressed, and the uneasy consciousness of haviag to touch a subject in reality foreign to them, was but imperfectly concealed, either under a parade of literary and historical erudition, or by an admixture of extraneous material, borrowed from the so-called "Kameral" sciences, a medley of smatterings, through whose purgatory the hopeless candidate for the German bureaucracy has to pass. Since 1848 capitalist production has developed rapidly in Germany, and at the present time it is in the full bloom of speculation and swindling. But fate is still unpropitious to our professional economists. At the time when they were able to deal with Political Economy in a straightforward fashion, modern economic conditions did not actually exist in Germany. And as soon as these conditions did come into existence, they did so under circumstances that no longer al- lowed of their being really and impartially investigated within the bounds of the bourgeois horizon. In so far as Political Economy remains within that horizon; in so far, i.e., as the capitalist regime is looked upon as the absolutely final form of social production, instead of as a passing historical phase of its evolution, Political Economy can remain a science only so long as the class-struggle is latent or manifests itself only in isolated and sporadic phenomena. Let us take England. Its political economy belongs to the period in which the class-struggle was as yet undeveloped. Its last great representative, Ricardo, in the end, consciously makes the antagonism of class-interests, of wages and profits, i8 Authors Prefaces. of profits and rent, the starting-point of his investigations, naively taking this antagonism for a social law of nature. But by this start the science of bourgeois economy had reached the limits beyond which it could not pass. Already in the life- time of Ricardo, and in opposition to him, it was met by criti- cism, in the person of Sismondi. 1 The succeeding period, from 18^0 to 1830, was notable in England for scientific activity in the domain of Political Economy. It was the time as well of the vulgarising and extending of Ricardo's theory, as of the contest of that theory with the old school. Splendid tournaments were held. What was done then, is little known to the Continent generally, be- cause the polemic is for the most part scattered through articles in reviews, occasional literature and pamphlets. The un- prejudiced character of this polemic although the theory of Ricardo already serves, in exceptional cases, as a weapon of attack upon bourgeois economy is explained by the circum- stances of the time. On the one hand, modern industry itself was only just emerging from the age of childhood, as is shown by the fact that with the crisis of 1825 it for the first time opens the periodic cycle of its modern life. On the other hand, the class-struggle between capital and labor is forced into the background, politically by the discord between the governments and the feudal aristocracy gathered around the Holy Alliance on the one hand, and the popular masses, led by the bourgeoisie on the other; economically by the quarrel between industrial capital and aristocratic landed property a quarrel that in France was concealed by the opposition between small and large landed property, and that in England broke out openly after the Corn Laws. The literature of Political Economy in England at this time calls to mind the stormy forward movement in France after Dr. Quesnay's death, but i See my work "Critique, Ac.," p. 70. Author's Prefaces. 19 only as a Saint Martin's summer reminds us of spring. With the year 1830 came the decisive crisis. In France and in England the bourgeoisie had conquered political power. Thenceforth, the class-struggle, practically as well as theoretically, took on more and more outspoken and threatening forms. It sounded the knell of scientific bour- geois economy. It was thenceforth no longer a question, whether this .theorem or that was true, but whether it was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, polit- ically dangerous or not. In place of disinterested enquirers, there were hired prize-fighters; in place of genuine scientific research, the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic. Still, even the obtrusive pamphlets with which the Anti-Corn. Law League, led by the manufacturers Cobden and Bright, deluged the world, have a historic interest, if no scientific one, on account of their polemic against the landed aristocracy. But since then the Free Trade legislation, inaugurated by Sir Robert Peel, has deprived vulgar economy of this its last sting. The Continental revolution of 1848-9 also had its reaction in England. Men who still claimed some scientific standing and aspired to be something more than mere sophists and syco- t phants of the ruling-classes, tried to harmonise the Political Economy of capital with the claims, no longer to be ignored, of the proletariat. Hence a shallow syncretism, of which John Stuart Mill is the best representative. It is a declaration of bankruptcy by bourgeois economy, an event on which the \ great Russian scholar and critic, 1ST. Tschernyschewsky, has thrown the light of a master mind in his "Outlines of Political Economy according to Mill." In Germany, therefore, the capitalist mode of production came to a head, after its antagonistic character had already, in France and England, shown itself in a fierce strife of 2O Author's Prefaces. classes. And meanwhile, moreover, the German proletariat had attained a much more clear class-consciousness than the German bourgeoisie. Thus, at the very moment when a bour- geois science of political economy seemed at last possible in Germany, it had in reality again become impossible. Under these circumstances its professors fell into two groups. The one set, prudent, practical busicess folk, flocked to the banner of Bastiat, the most superficial and therefore the most adequate representative of the apologetic of vulgar economy; the other, proud of the professorial dignity of their science, followed John Stuart Mill in his attempt to reconcile irrecon- cilables. Just as in the classical time of bourgeois economy, so also in the time of its decline, the Germans remained mere schoolboys, imitators and followers, petty retailers and hawk- ers in the service of the great foreign wholesale concern. The peculiar historic development of German society there- fore forbids, in that country, all original work in bourgeois economy; but not the criticism of that economy. So far ag such criticism represents a class, it can only represent the class whose vocation in history is the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production and the final abolition of all classes the proletariat The learned and unlearned spokesmen of the German bour- geoisie tried at first to kill "Das Kapital" by silence, as they had managed to do with my earlier writings. As soon as they found that these tactics no longer fitted in with the conditions of the time, they wrote, under pretence of criticising my book, prescriptions "for the tranquillisation of the bourgeois mind." But they found in the workers' press see, e.g., Joseph Dietz- gen's articles in the "Volksstaat" antagonists stronger than themselves, to whom (down to this very day) they owe a reply. 1 iThe mealy-mouthed babblers of German vulgar economy fell foul of Authors Prefaces. 21 An excellent Eussian translation of "Das Kapital" appeared in the spring of 1872. The edition of 3000 copies is already nearly exhausted. As early as 1871, A. Sieber, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Kiev, in his work "David Eicardo's Theory of Value and of Capital," referred to my theory of value, of money and of capital, as in its fundamentals a necessary sequel to the teaching of Smith and Eicardo. That which astonishes the Western European in the reading of this excellent work, is the author's consistent and firm grasp of the purely theoretical position. That the method employed in "Das Kapital" has been little understood, is shown by the various conceptions, contradictory one to another, that have been formed of it. Thus the Paris Revue Positiviste reproaches me in that, on the one hand, I treat economics metaphysically, and on the other hand imagine ! confine myself to the mere critical analysis of actual facts, instead of writing recipes (Comtist ones ?) for the cook-shops of the future. In answer to the reproach in re metaphysics, Professor Sieber has it : "In so far as it deals with actual theory, the method of Marx is the deductive method of the whole English school, a school whose failings and virtues are common to the best theoretic econ- the style of my book. No one can feel the literary shortcomings in "Das Kapital" more strongly than I myself. Yet I will for the benefit and the enjoyment of these gentlemen and their public quote in this connec- tion one English and one Russian notice. The "Saturday Review," al- ways hostile to my views, said in its notice of the first edition: "The presentation of the subject invests the driest economic questions with a certain peculiar charm." The "St. Petersburg Journal" ( Sankt-Peter- burgskie Viedomosti ) , in its issue of April 20, 1872, says : "The presen- tation of the subject, with the exception of one or two exceptionally spe- cial parts, is distinguished by its comprehensibility by the general reader, its clearness, and in spite of the scientific intricacy of the subject, by an unusual liveliness. In this respect the author in no way resembles . . . the majority of German scholars who . . . write their books in a language so dry and obscure that the heads of ordinary mortals are clacked by it." 22 Author's Prefaces. omists." M. Block "Les theoriciens du socialisme en Alle- magne, Extrait du Journal des Economistes, Juillet et Aout 1872" makes the discovery that my method is analytic and says: "Par cet ouvrage M. Marx se classe parnai les esprits analytiques les plus eminents." German reviews, of course, shriek out at "Hegelian sophistics." The European Messenger of St. Petersburg, in an article dealing exclusively with the method of "Das Kapital" (May number, 1872, pp. 427-436), finds my method of inquiry severely realistic, but my method of presentation, unfortunately, German-dialectical. It says: "At first sight, if the judgment is based on the external form, of the presentation of the subject, Marx is the most ideal of ideal philosophers, always in the German, i.e., the bad sense of the word. But in point of fact he is infinitely more realis- tic than all his fore-runners in the work of economic criticism. He can in no sense be called an idealist." I cannot answer the writer better than by aid of a few extracts from his own criticism, which may interest some of my readers to whom the Russian original is inaccessible. After a quotation from the preface to my "Critique of Political Economy," Berlin, 1859, pp. 11-13, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on: "The one thing which is of moment to Marx is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connection within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connections into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing ; to show, by rigid scien- Author's Prefaces. 23 tific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or un- conscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence. . . . If in the history of civilisation the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then,it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilisation, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point. Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another fact. For this inquiry, the one thing of moment is, that both facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they actually form, each with respect to the other, different mo- menta of an evolution ; but most important of all is the rigid analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolu- tion present themselves. But it will be said, the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. This Marx directly denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist. On the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has laws of its own. ... As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given 24 Author's Prefaces. stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places. He asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of population. . . . With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital, he is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, develop- ment, and death a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point of fact, Marx's book has." Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method ? Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the ma- terial in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, Author's Prefaces. 25 to trace out their inner connection. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction. My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegel- ian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of "the Idea," he even transforms into an inde- pendent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of "the Idea." With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, 'and translated into forms of thought, The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of "Das Kapital," it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre ETiryovoiwho now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in the same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing's time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a "dead dog." I there- fore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell. In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Ger- many, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal 26 Author's Prefaces. and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire pro- fessors, because it includes in its comprehension and af- firmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up ; because it regards every his- torically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence ; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary. The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the uni- versal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage ; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire. KAKL MAKX. LONDON, January 24, 1873. EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION. nnHE publication of an English version of "Das Kapital" needs no apology. On the contrary, an explanation might be expected why this English version has been delayed until now, seeing that for some years past the theories advo- cated in this book have been constantly referred to, attacked and defended, interpreted and mis-interpreted, in the period- ical press and the current literature of both England and America. When, soon after the author's death in 1883, it became evident that an English edition of the work was really re- quired, Mr. Samuel Moore, for many years a friend of Marx and of the present writer, and than whom, perhaps, no one is more conversant with the book itself, consented to undertake the translation which the literary executors of Marx were anxious to lay before the public. It was understood that I should compare the MS. with the original work, and suggest such alterations as I might deem advisable. When, by and by, it was found that Mr. Moore's professional occupations prevented him from finishing the translation as quickly as we all desired, we gladly accepted Dr. Aveling's offer to undertake a portion of the work; at the same time Mrs. Aveling, Marx's youngest daughter, offered to check the quotations and to restore the original text of the numerous passages taken from English authors and Bluebooks and trans- lated by Marx into German. This has been done throughout, with but a few unavoidable exceptions. 27 28 Editor's Preface. The following portions of the book have been translated by Dr. Aveling: (1) Chapters X. (The Working Day), and XI. (Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value); (2) Part VI. (Wages, comprising Chapters XIX. to XXII.) ; (3) from Chapter XXIV, Section 4 (Circumstances that &c.) to the end of the book, comprising the latter part of Chapter XXIV., Chapter XXV., and the whole of Part VIII. (Chapters XXVI. to XXXIII.); (4) the two Author's prefaces. All the rest of the book has been done by Mr. Moore. While, thus, each of the translators is responsible for his share of the work' only, I bear a joint responsibility for the whole. The third German edition, which has been made the basis of our work throughout, was prepared by me, in 1883, with the assistance of notes left by the author, indicating the passages of the second edition to be replaced by designated passages, from the French text published in 1873. 1 The alter- ations thus effected in the text of the second edition generally coincided with changes prescribed by Marx in a set of MS. instructions for an English translation that was planned, about ten years ago, in America, but abandoned chiefly for want of a fit and proper translator. This MS. was placed at our disposal by our old friend Mr. F. A. Sorge of Hoboken N.J. It designates some further interpolations from the French edition ; but, being so many years older than the final instructions for the third edition, I did not consider myself at liberty to make use of it otherwise than sparingly, and chiefly in cases where it helped us over difficulties. In the same way, the French text has been referred to in most of the difficult passages, as an indicator of what the author him- self was prepared to sacrifice wherever something of the full i"Le Capital," par Karl Marx. Traduction de M. J. Roy, enttere- ment revisee par 1'auteur. Paris. Lachatre." This translation, especially in the latter part of the book, contains considerable alterations in and additions to the text of the second German edition. Editor's Preface. 29 import of the original had to be sacrificed in the rendering. There is, however, one difficulty we could not spare the reader : the use of certain terms in a sense different from what they have, not only in common life, but in ordinary political economy. But this was unavoidable. Every new aspect of a science involves a revolution in the technical terms of that science. This is best shown by chemistry, where the whole of the terminology is radically changed about once in twenty years, and where you will hardly find a single organic com- pound that has not gone through a whole series of different names. Political Economy has generally been content to take, just as they were, the terms of commercial and industrial life, and to operate with them, entirely failing to see that by so doing, it confined itself within the narrow circle of ideas ex- pressed by those terms. Thus, though perfectly aware that both profits and rent are but sub-divisions, fragments of that unpaid part of the product which the laborer has to supply to his employer (its first appropriator, though not its ultimate exclusive owner), yet even classical Political Economy never went beyond the received notions of profits and rent, never ex- amined this unpaid part of the product (called by Marx sur- plus-product) in its integrity as a whole, and therefore never arrived at a clear comprehension, either of its origin and nature, or of the laws that regulate the subsequent distribution of its value. Similarly all industry, not agricultural or handicraft, is indiscriminately comprised in the term of manu- facture, and thereby the distinction is obliterated between two great and essentially different periods of economic history : the .period of manufacture proper, based on the division of manual labor, and the period of modern industry based on machinery. It is, however, self-evident that a theory which views modern capitalist production as a mere passing stage in the economic history of mankind, must make use of terms 3O Editor's Preface. different from those habitual to writers who look upon that form of production as imperishable and final. A word respecting the author's method of quoting may not be out of place. In the majority of cases, the quotations serve, in the usual way, as documentary evidence in support of assertions made in the text. But in many instances, passages from economic writers are quoted in order to indicate when, where, and by whom a certain proposition was for the first time clearly enunciated. This is done in cases where the proposition quoted is of importance as being a more or less adequate expression of the conditions of social production and exchange prevalent at the time, and quite irrespective of Marx's recognition, or otherwise, of its general validity. These quotations, therefore, supplement the text by a running commentary taken from the history of the science. Our translation comprises the first book of the work only. But this first book is in a great measure a whole in itself, and has for twenty years ranked as an independent work. The second book, edited in German by me, in 1885, is de- cidedly incomplete without the third, which cannot be pub- lished before the end of 1887. When Book III. has been brought out in the original German, it will then be soon enough to think about preparing an English edition of both. "Das Kapital" is often called, on the Continent, "the Bible of the working class." That the conclusions arrived at in this work are daily more and more becoming the fundamental principles of the great working class movement, not only in Germany and Switzerland, but in France, in Holland and Belgium, in America, and even in Italy and Spain ; that every- where the working class more and more recognises, in these conclusions, the most adequate expression of its condition and of its aspirations, nobody acquainted with that movement will deny. And in England, too, the theories of Marx, even at this Editor's Preface. 31 moment, exercise a powerful influence upon the socialist move- ment which is spreading in the ranks of "cultured" people no less than in those of the working class. But that is not all. The time is rapidly approaching when a thorough ex- amination of England's economic position will impose itself as an irresistible national necessity. The working of the in- dustrial system of this country, impossible without a constant and rapid extension of production, and therefore of markets, is coming to a dead stop. Free trade has exhausted its re- sources ; even Manchester doubts this its quondam economic gospel. 1 Foreign industry, rapidly developing, stares Eng- lish production in the face everywhere, not only in protected, but also in neutral markets., and even on this side of the Channel. While the productive power increases in a geomet- ric, the extension of markets proceeds at best in an arithmetic ratio. The decennial cycle of stagnation, prosperity, over- production and crisis, ever recurrent from 1825 to 1867, seems indeed to have run its course ; but only to land us in the slough of despond of a permanent and chronic depression. The sighed-for period of prosperity will not come; as often as we seem to perceive its heralding symptoms, so often do they again vanish into air. Meanwhile, each succeeding winter brings up afresh the great question, "what to do with the unemployed ;" but while the number of the unemployed keeps swelling from year to year, there is nobody to answer that question ; and we can almost calculate the moment when the unemployed, losing patience, will take their own fate into i At the quarterly meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, held this afternoon, a warm discussion took place on the subject of Free Trade. A resolution was moved to the effect that "having waited in vain 40 years for other nations to follow the Free Trade example of England, this Chamber thinks the time has now arrived to reconsider that posi- tion." The resolution was rejected by a majority of one only, the figures being 21 for, and 22 against. Evening Standard, Nov. 1, 1886. 32 Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition. their own hands. Surely, at such a moment, the voice ought to he heard of a man whose whole theory is the result of a life-long study of the economic history and condition of Eng- land, and whom that study led to the conclusion that, at least in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly expected the English ruling classes to submit, without a "pro- slavery rebellion," to this peaceful and legal revolution. FREDERICK ENGELS. November 5, 1886. EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE FOURTH GERMAN EDITION. The fourth edition of this work required of me a revision, which should give to the text and foot notes their final form, so far as possible. The following brief hints will indicate the way in which I performed this task. After referring once more to the French edition and to the manuscript notes of Marx, I transferred a few additional pass- ages from the French to the German text, 1 I have also placed the long foot note concerning the rfiine workers, on pages 461-67, into the text, just as had already been done in the French and English editions. Other small changes are merely of a technical nature. Furthermore I added a few explanatory notes, especially in places where changed historical conditions seemed to requite it. All these additional notes are placed between brackets and marked with my initials. 2 i These were inserted by me in the English text of the Swan Sonnen- schein edition, and will be found on pages 539, 640-644, 687-689, and 692 of this American edition. E. U. - These were ten new notes, which I inserted in the respective place 1 * of the Swan Sonnenschein edition. E. U. Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition. 33 A complete revision of the numerous quotations had become necessary, because the English edition had been published in the mean time. Marx's youngest daughter, Eleanor, had un- dertaken the tedious task of comparing, for this edition, all the quotations with the original works, so that the quotations from English authors, which are the overwhelming majority, are not retranslated from the German, but taken from the original texts. I had to consult the English edition for this fourth German edition. In so doing I found many small inaccuracies. There were references to wrong pages, due either to mistakes in copying, or to accumulated typographical errors of three editions. There were quotation marks, or periods indicating omissions, in wrong places, such as would easily occur in making copious quotations from notes. Now and then I came across a somewhat inappropriate choice of terms made in translating. Some passages were taken from Marx's old manuscripts written in Paris, 1843-45, when he did not yet understand English and read the works of English economists in French translations. This twofold translation carried with it a slight change of expression, for instance in the case of Steuart, Ure, and others. Now I used the English text. Such and similar little inaccuracies and inadvertences were corrected. And if this fourth edition is now compared with former editions, it will be found that this whole tedious process of verification did not change in the least any essential statement of this work. There is but one single quotation which could not be located, namely that from Richard Jones, in section 3 of chapter XXIV. Marx probably made a mis- take in the title of the book. All other quotations retain their corroborative power, or even increase it in their present exact form. In this connection I must revert to an old story. I have heard of only one case, in which the genuineness of 34 Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition. a quotation by Marx was questioned. Since this case was continued beyond Marx's death, I cannot well afford to ignore it. The Berlin Concordia, the organ of the German Manufac-. turer's Association, published on March 7, 1872, an anony- mous article, entitled : "How Marx Quotes." In it the writer asserted with a superabundant display of moral indignation and unparliamentarian expressions that the quotation from Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863, (cited in the Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen's Asso- ciation, 1864, and republished in Capital, volume I, chapter XXV, section 5 a) was a falsification. It was denied that the statement: "This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power . . . entirely confined to classes of property," was contained in the stenographical report of Hansard, which was as good as an official report, "This statement is not found anywhere in Gladstone's speech. It says just the reverse. Marx has formally and materially lied in adding that sen- tence/' Marx, who received this issue of the Concordia in May of the same year, replied to the anonymous writer in the Volks- staat of June 1. As he did not remember the particular newspaper from which he had clipped this report, he con- tented himself with pointing out that the same quotation was contained in two English papers. Then he quoted the report of the Times, according to which Gladstone had said : "That is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country. I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it were my belief that it was confined to classes who are in easy circumstances. This takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring population. The aug- mentation I have described and which is founded, I think, Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition 35 upon accurate terms, is an augmentation entirely confined to classes of property." In other words, Gladstone says here that he would be sorry if things were that way, but they are. This intoxicating aug- mentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property. And so far as the quasi official Hansard is con- cerned, Marx continues: "In the subsequent manipulation of his speech for publication Mr. Gladstone was wise enough to eliminate a passage, which was so compromising in the mouth of an English Lord of the Exchequer as that one. By the way, this is an established custom in English parliament, and not by any means a discovery made by Lasker to cheat Bebel." The anonymous writer then became still madder. Pushing aside his second-hand sources in his reply in the Concordia, July 4, he modestly hints, that it is the "custom" to quote parliamentarian speeches from the official reports ; that the report of the Times (which contained the added lie) "was materially identical" with that of Hansard (which did not contain it) ; that the report of the Times even said "just the reverse of what that notorious passage of the Inaugural Ad- dress implied." Of course, our anonymous friend keeps still about the fact that the report of the Times does not only con- tain "just the reverse," but also "that notorious passage" ! Nevertheless he feels that he has been nailed down, and that only a new trick can save him. Hence he decorates his article, full of "insolent mendacity," until it bristles with pretty epithets, such as "bad faith," "dishonesty," "mendacious as- sertion," "that lying quotation," "insolent mendacity," "a completely spurious quotation," "this falsification," "simply infamous," etc., and he finds himself compelled to shift the discussion to another ground, promising "to explain in a sec- ond article, what interpretation we [the "veracious" anony- mous] place upon the meaning of Gladstone's words." As 36 Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition. though his individual opinion had anything to do with the matter! This second article is published in the Concordia of July 11. Marx replied once more in the Volksstaat of August 7, quoting also the reports of this passage in the Morning Star and Morning Advertiser of April 17, 1863. Both of them agree in quoting Gladstone to the effect that he would look with apprehension, etc., upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it were confined to classes in easy cir- cumstances. But this augmentation was entirely confined to classes possessed of property. Both of these papers also con- tain the "added lie" word for word. Marx furthermore showed, by. comparing these three independent, yet identical reports of newspapers, all of them containing the actually spoken words of Gladstone, with Hansard's report, that Glad- stone, in keeping with the "established custom," had "sub- sequently eliminated" this sentence, as Marx had said. And Marx closes with the statement, that he has no time for further controversy with the anonymous writer. It seems that this worthy had gotten all he wanted, for Marx received no more issues of the Concordia. Thus the matter seemed to be settled. It is true, people who were in touch with the university at Cambridge once or twice dropped hints as to mysterious rumors about some un- speakable literary crime, which Marx was supposed to have committed in Capital. But nothing definite could be ascer- tained in spite of all inquiries. Suddenly, on November 29, 1883, eight months after the death of Marx, a letter appeared in the Times, dated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and signed by Sedley Taylor, in which this mannikin, a dabbler in the tamest of cooperative enterprises, at last took occasion to give us some light, not only on the gossip of Cambridge, but also on the anonymous of the Concordia. Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition. 37 "What seems very queer," says the mannikin of Trinity College, "is that it remained for professor Brenta-no (then in Breslau, now in Strasburg) ... to lay bare the bad faith, which had apparently dictated that quotation from Gladstone's speech in the Inaugural Address. Mr. Karl Marx, who . . . tried to justify his quotation, had the temerity, in the deadly shifts to which Brentano's masterly attacks quickly reduced him, to claim that Mr. Gladstone tampered with the report of his speech in the Times of April 17, 1863, before it was published in Hansard, in order to eliminate a passage which was ? indeed, compromising for the British Chancellor of the Exchequer. When Brentano demonstrated by a detailed comparison of the texts, that the reportp of the Times and of Hansard agreed to the absolute exclusion of the meaning, impugned to Gladstone's words by a craftily isolated quotation, Marx retreated under the excuse of having no time." This, then, was the kernel of the walnut ! And such was the glorious reflex of Brentano's anonymous campaign, in the Concordia,, in the cooperative imagination of Cambridge! Thus he lay, and thus he handled his blade in his "masterly attack," this Saint George of the German Manufacturers' As- sociation, while the fiery dragon Marx quickly expired under his feet "in deadly shifts !" However, this Ariostian description of the struggle serves only to cover up the shifts of our Saint George. There is no longer any mention of "added lies," of "falsification," but merely of "a craftily isolated quotation." The whole question had been shifted, and Saint George and his Cambridge Knight knew very well the reason. Eleanor Marx replied in the monthly magazine To-Day, February, 1884, because the Times refused to print her state- ments. She reduced the discussion to the only point, which was in question, namely: Was that sentence a lie added by 38 Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition. Marx, or not ? Whereupon Mr. Sedley Taylor retorted : "The question whether a certain sentence had occurred in Mr. Glad- stone's speech or not" was, in his opinion, "of a very inferior importance" in the controversy between Marx and Brentano, "compared with the question, whether the quotation had been made with the intention of reproducing the meaning of Mr. Gladstone or distorting it." And then he admits that the report of the Times "contains indeed a contradiction in words" ; but, but, interpreting the context correctly, that is, in a liberal Gladstonian sense, it is evident what Mr. Gladstone intended to say. (To-Day, March, 1884.) The comic thing about this retort is that our mannikin of Cambridge now in- sists on not quoting this speech from Hansard, as is the "custom" according to the anonymous Mr. Brentano, but from the report of the Times, which the same Brentano had desig- nated as "necessarily bungling." Of course, Hansard does not contain that fatal sentence ! It was easy for Eleanor Marx to dissolve this argumentation into thin air in the same number of To-Day. Either Mr. Taylor had read the controversy of 1872. In that case he had now "lied," not only "adding," but also "subtracting." Or, he had not read it. Then it was his business to keep his mouth shut. At any rate, it was evident that he did not dare for a moment to maintain the charge of his friend Brentano to the effect that Marx had "added a lie." On he contrary, it was now claimed, that Marx, instead of adding a lie, had suppressed an important sentence. But this same sentence is quoted on page 5 of the Inaugural Address, a few lines before the alleged "added lie." And as for the "contradiction" in Gladstone's speech, isn't it precisely Marx who speaks in another foot note of that chapter in Capital of the "continual crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches of 1863 and 1864" ? Of course, he does not undertake TO reconcile Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition. 39 them by liberal bot air, like Sedley Taylor. And tbe final summing up in Eleanor Marx's reply is tbis : "On the con- trary, Marx has neither suppressed anything essential nor added any lies. He rather has restored and rescued from oblivion a certain sentence of a Gladstonian speech, which had undoubtedly been pronounced, but which somehow found its way out of Hansard." ' This was enough for Mr. Sedley Taylor. The result of this whole professorial gossip during ten years and in two great countries was that no one dared henceforth to question Marx's literary conscientiousness. In the future Mr. Sedley Taylor will probably have as little confidence in the literary fighting bulletins of Mj. Brentano, as Mr. Brentano in the papal infallibility of Hansard. FREDERICK ENGELS. LONDON, June 25, 1890. (Translated by Ernest Untermann.) BOOK I. CAPITALIST PRODUCTION PAET I. COMMODITIES AND MONEY. CHAPTER I. COMMODITIES. SECTION" 1. THE TWO FACTORS OF A COMMODITY: USE-VALUE AND VALUE (THE SUBSTANCE OF VALUE AND THE MAGNITUDE OF VALUE). THE wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as " an immense accumulation of commodities," 1 its unit being a single com- modity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity. A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no differ- 1 Karl Marx " A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," 1859, London, p. 19. 41 42 Capitalist Production. ence. 1 Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production. Every useful thing, as iron, paper, &c., may be looked at from the two points of view of quality and quantity. It is an assemblage of many properties, and may therefore be of use in various ways. To discover the various use of things is the work of history. 2 So also is the establishment of socially- recognised standards of measure for the quantities of these useful objects. The diversity of these measures has its origin partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, partly in convention. The utility of a thing makes it a use-value. 3 But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use- value, something useful. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities. When treating of use-value, we always assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens of watches, yards of linen, or tons of iron. The use-values of commodities furnish the material for a special study, that of the commercial knowledge of commodities. 4 Use-values become a reality only by use or consumption: they also con- 1 " Desire implies want ; it is the appetite of the mind, and as natural as hunger to the body. . . . The greatest number (of things) have their value from supply- ing the wants of the mind." Nicolas Barbon: "A Discourse on coining the new money lighter, in answer to Mr. Locke's Considerations," &c, London, 1696. p. 2, 3. 1 "Things have an intrinsick virtue" (this is Barbon's special term for value in use) "which in all places have the same virtue; as the loadstone to attract iron" (1. c., p. 6). The property which the magnet possesses of attracting iron, became of use only after by means of that property the polarity of the magnet had been discovered. 1 "The natural worth of anything consists in its fitness to supply the necessities, or serve the conveniences of human life." (John Locke, "Some considerations on the consequences of the lowering of interest, 1691," in Works Edit. London, 1777, Vol. II., p. 28.) In English writers of the 17th century we frequently find "worth" in the sense of value in use, and "value" in the sense of exchange value. This is quite in accordance with the spirit of a language that likes to use a Teutonic word for the actual thing, and a Romance word for its reflexion. 4 In bourgeois societies the economical fictio juris prevails, that every one, as a buyer, possesses an encyclopaedic knowledge of commodities. Commodities. 43 stitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange value. Exchange value, at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative relation, as the proportion in which values in use of one sort are exchanged for those of another sort, 1 a relation constantly changing with time and place. Hence exchange value appears to be something accidental and purely relative, and conse- quently an intrinsic value, i. e., an exchange value that is inseparably connected with, inherent in commodities, seems a contradiction in terms. 2 Let us consider the matter a little more closely. A given commodity, e. g., a quarter of wheat is exchanged for x blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c. in short, for other com- modities in the most different proportions. Instead of one exchange value, the wheat has, therefore, a great many. But since x blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c., each represent the exchange value of one quarter of wheat, x blacking, y silk, z gold, &c., must as exchange values be replaceable by each other, or equal to each other. Therefore, first: the valid exchange values of a given commodity express something equal ; secondly, exchange value, generally, is only the mode of expression, the phenomenal form, of something contained in it, yet distinguishable from it. Let us take two commodities, e. g., corn and iron. The pro- portions in which they are exchangeable, whatever .those pro- portions may be, can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron : e. g., 1 quarter corn=x cwt. iron. What does this equa- tion tell us? It tells us that in two different things in 1 quarter of corn and x cwt. of iron, there exists in equal quan- tities something common to both. The two things must there- 1 "La valeur consiste dans le rapport d'echange qui se trouve entre telle chose et telle autre, entre telle mesure d'une production, et telle mesure d'une autre." (Le Trosne: De 1' Interet Social. Physiocrates, Ed. Daire. Paris, 1845. P. 889.) 2 "Nothing can have an intrinsick value." (N. Barbon, 1. c., p. 6) ; or as But- ler says " The value of a thing Is just as much at it will bring." 44 Capitalist Production. fore be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange value, must therefore be reducible to this third. A simple geometrical illustration will make this clear. In order to calculate and compare the areas of rectilinear figures, we decompose them into triangles. But the area of the tri- angle itself is expressed by something totally different from its visible figure, namely, by half the product of the base into the .altitude. In the same way the exchange values of com- modities must be capable of being expressed in terms of some- thing common to them all, of which thing they represent a greater or less quantity. This common "something" cannot be either a geometrical, a chemical, or any other natural property of commodities. Such properties claim our attention only in so far as they affect the utility of those commodities, make them use-values. But the exchange of commodities is evidently an act character- ised by a total abstraction from use-value. Then one use- value is just as good as another, provided only it be present in sufficient quantity. Or, as old Barbon says, "one sort of wares are as good as another, if the values be equal. There is no difference or distinction in things of equal value .... An hundred pounds' worth of lead or iron, is of as great value as one hundred pounds' worth of silver or gold." 1 As use- values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as exchange values they are merely different quantities, and con- sequently do not contain an atom of use-value. If then we leave out of consideration the use-value of com- modities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour. But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use-value, we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use-value ; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be re- garded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, *N. Barbon, 1. c. p. 53 and 7. Commodities. 45 the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products them- selves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour ; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract. Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour-power ex- pended without regard to the mode of its expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that human labour-power has been expended in their production, that human labor is em- bodied in them. When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are Values. We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange value manifests itself as something totally independ- ent of their use-value. But if we abstract from their use-value, there remains their Value as defined above. Therefore, the common substance that manifests itself in the exchange value of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value. The progress of our investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed. For the present, however, we have to consider the nature of value independently of this, its form. A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only be- cause human labour in the abstract has been embodied or ma- terialised in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured ? Plainly, by the quantity of the value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the article. The quantity of labour, however, is measured by its duration, and labour- time in its turn finds its standard in weeks, days, and hours. Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of 46 Capitalist Production. value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uni- form labour-power. The total labour-power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour-power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labour-power of society, and takes effect as such ; that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an average, no more than is socially necessary. The labour-time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. The intro- duction of power looms into England probably reduced by one half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the pro- duct of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour's social labour, and consequently fell to one- half its former value. We see then that that which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labour socially neces- sary, or the labour-time socially necessary for its production. 1 Each individual commodity, in this connexion, is to be con- sidered as an average sample of its class. 2 Commodities, there- fore, in which equal quantities of labour are embodied, or which can be produced in the same time, have the same value. The value of one commodity is to the value of any other, as the labour-time necessary for the production of the one is to that necessary for the production of the other. "As values, all com- modities are only definite masses of congealed labour-time." 8 1 The value of them (the necessaries of life), when they are exchanged the one for another, is regulated by the quantity of labour necessarily required, and commonly taken in producing them." (Some Thoughts on the Interest of Money in general, and particularly in the Publick Funds, &c., Lond., p. 36.) This re- markable anonymous work, written in the last century, bears no date. It is clear, however, from internal evidence, that it appeared in the reign of George II. about 1739 or 1740. * " Toutes les productions d'un meme genre ne forment proprement qu'une masse, dont le prix se determine en general et sans egard aux circonstances particulieres." (Le Trosne, 1. c. p. 893.) K. Marx, 1. c. p. 24. Commodities. 47 The value of a commodity would therefore remain constant, if the labour-time required for its production also remained constant. But the latter changes with every variation in the productiveness of labour. This productiveness is determined by various circumstances, amongst others, by the - average amount of skill of the workmen, the state of science, and the degree of its practical application, the social organisation of production, the extent and capabilities of the means of pro- duction, and by physical conditions. For example, the same amount of labour in favourable seasons is embodied in 8 bushels of corn, and in unfavourable, only in four. The same labour extracts from rich mines more metal than from poor mines. Diamonds are of very rare occurrence on the earth's surface, and hence their discovery costs, on an aver- age, a great deal of labour-time. Consequently much labour is represented in a small compass. Jacob doubts whether gold has ever been paid for at its full value. This applies still more to diamonds. According to Eschwege, the total produce of the Brazilian diamond mines for the eighty years, ending in 1823, had not realised the price of one-and-a-half years' average produce of the sugar and coffee plantations of the same, country, although the diamonds cost much more labour, and therefore represented more value. With richer mines, the same quantity of labour would embody itself in more diamonds and their value would fall. If we could succeed at a small expenditure of labour, in converting carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks. In general, the greater the productiveness of labour, the less is the labour-time required for the production of an article, the less is the amount of labour crystallised in that article, and the less is its value ; and vise versa, the less the productiveness of labour, the greater is the labour-time required for the production of an article, and the greater is its value. The value of a commodity, there- fore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productiveness, of the labour incorporated in it. A thing can be a use-value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can 48 Capitalist Production. be useful, and the product of human labour, without beinir :i commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use-values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use-values, but use-values for others, social use-values. Lastly, nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, -so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value. SECTION 2. THE TWOFOLD CHARACTER OF THE LABOUR EM- BODIED IN COMMODITIES. At first sight a commodity presented itself to us as a complex of two things use-value and exchange-value. Later on, we saw also that labour, too, possesses the same two-fold nature; for, so far as it finds expression in value, it does not possess the same characteristics that belong to it as a creator of use-values. I was the first to point out and to examine critically this two- fold nature of the labour contained in commodities. As this point is the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political economy turns, we must go more into detail. Let us take two commodities such as a coat and 10 yards of linen, and let the former be double the value of the latter, so that, if 10 yards of linen=W, the coat=2W. The coat is a use-value that satisfies a particular want. Its existence is the result of a special sort of productive activity, the nature of which is determined by its aim, mode of opera- tion, subject, means, and result. The labour, whose utility is thus represented by the value in use of its product, or which manifests itself by making its product a use-value, we call useful labour. In this connexion we consider only its useful effect. As the coat and the linen are two qualitatively different use- values, so also are the two forms of labour that produce them, tailoring and weaving. Were these two objects not quali- tatively different, not produced respectively by labour of different quality, they could not stand to each other in the Commodities. 49 relation of commodities. Coats are not exchanged for coats, one use-value is not exchanged for another of the same kind. To all the different varieties of values in use there correspond as many different kinds of useful labour, classified according to the order, genus, species, and Variety to which they belong in the social division of labour. This division of labour is a neces- sary condition for the production of commodities, but it does not follow conversely, that the production of commodities is a necessary condition for the division of labour. In the primitive Indian community there is social division of labour, without production of commodities. Or, to take an example nearer home, in every factory the labour is divided according to a system, but this division is not brought about by the operatives mutually exchanging their individual products. Only such products can become commodities with regard to each other, as result from different kinds of labour, each kind being carried on independently and for the account of private individuals. To resume, then : In the use-value of each commodity there is contained useful labour, i. e., productive activity of a definite kind and exercised with a definite aim. Use-values cannot confront each other as commodities, unless the useful labour embodied in them is qualitatively different in each of them. In a community, the produce of which in general takes the fqrm of commodities, i. e., in a community of commodity pro- ducers, this qualitative difference between the useful forms of labour that are carried on independently by individual pro- ducers, each on their own account, develops into a complex system, a social division of labour. Anyhow, whether the coat be worn by the tailor or by his customer, in either case it operates as a use-value. Nor is the relation between the coat and the labour that produced it altered by the circumstance that tailoring may have become a special trade, an independent branch of the social division of labour. Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor. But coats and linen, like every other element of material wealth that is not the spontaneous produce of nature, must invariably owe their existence to a 50 Capitalist Production. special productive activity, exercised with a definite aim, an activity that appropriates particular nature-given materials to particular human wants. So far therefore as labour is a creator of use-value, is useful labour, it is a necessary con- dition, independent of all forms % of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life. The use-values, coat, linen, &c., i. e., the bodies of commodi- ties, are combinations of two elements matter and labour. If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a material substratum is always left, which is furnished by Nature without the help of man. The latter can work only as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter. 1 Nay more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped by natural forces. We see, then, that labour is not the only source of material wealth, of use-values produced by labour. As William Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its mother. Let us now pass from the commodity considered as a use> value to the value of commodities. By our assumption, the coat is worth twice as much as the linen. But this is a mere quantitative difference, which for the present does not concern us. We bear in mind, however, that if the value of the coat is double that of 10 yds. of linen, 20 yds. of linen must have the same value as one coat. So far as they are values, the coat and the linen are things of a like substance, objective expressions of essentially identical labour. But tailoring and weaving are, qualitatively, different kinds of labour. There are, however, states of society in which one and 1 Tutti i fenomeni dell' universe, sieno essi prodotti della mano, dell' uomo, ovvero delle universal! leggi della fisica, non ci danno idea di attuale creazione, ma unicamente di una modificazione della materia. Accostare e separare sono gli unici element! che 1'ingegno umano ritrova analizzando 1'idea della riproduzione: e tanto e riproduzione di valore (value in use, although Verri in this passage of his contro- versy with the Physiocrats is not himself quite certain of the kind of value he is speaking of) e di ricchezze se la terra 1'aria e 1'acqua ne' campi si trasmutino in grano, come se colla mano dell' uomo il glutine di un insetto si trasmuti in velluto ovvero alcuni pezzetti di metallo si organizzino a formare una ripetizione." Pietro Verri. "Meditazioni sulla Economia Politica" [first printed in 1773] in Custodi's edition of the Italian Economists, Parte Moderna, t. xv. p. 22. Commodities. 51 the same man does tailoring and weaving alternately, in which case these two forms of labour are mere modifications of the labour of the same individual, and not special and fixed func- tions of different persons; just as the coat which our tailor makes one day, and the trousers which he makes another day, imply only a variation in the labour of one and the same indi- vidual. Moreover, we see at a glance that, in our capitalist society, a given portion of human labour is, in accordance with the varying demand, at one time supplied in the form of tailor- ing, at another in the form of weaving. This change may possibly not take place without friction, but take place it must. Productive activity, if we leave out of sight its special form, viz., the useful character of the labour, is nothing but the ex- penditure of human labour-power. Tailoring and weaving, though qualitatively different productive activities, are each a productive expenditure of human brains, nerves, and muscles, and in this sense are human labour. They are but two different modes of expending human labour-power. Of course, this labour-power, which remains the same under all its modi- fications, must have attained a certain pitch of development before it can be expended in a multiplicity of modes. But the value of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract, the expenditure of human labour in general. And just as in society, a general or a banker plays a great part, but mere man, on the other hand, a very shabby part, 1 so here with mere human labour. It is the expenditure of simple labour- power, i.e.., of the labour-power which, on an average, apart from any special development, exists in the organism of every ordinary individual. Simple average labour, it is true, varies in character in different countries and at different times, but in a particular society it is given. Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple labour, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating it to the product of simple unskilled labour, represents a 1 Comp. Hegel, Philosophic des Rechts. Berlin, 1840, p. 250 190. 52 Capitalist Production. definite quantity of the latter labour alone. 1 The different proportions in which different sorts of labour are reduced to unskilled labour as their standard, are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers, and, consequently, appear to be fixed by custom. For simplicity's sake we shall henceforth account every kind of labour to be unskilled, simple labour; by this we do no more than save ourselves the trouble of making the reduction. Just as, therefore, in viewing the coat and linen as values, we abstract from their different use-values, so it is with the labour represented by those values : we disregard the difference between its useful forms, weaving and tailoring. As the use- values, coat and linen, are combinations of special productive activities with cloth and yarn, while the values, coat and linen, are, on the other hand, mere homogeneous congelations of indifferentiated labour, so the labour embodied in these latter values does not count by virtue of its productive relation to cloth and yarn, but only as being expenditure of human labour-power. Tailoring and weaving are necessary factors in the creation of the use-values, coat and linen, precisely because these two kinds of labour are of different qualities; but only in so far as abstraction is made from their special qualities, only in so far as both possess the same quality of being human labour, do tailoring and weaving form the substance of the values of the same articles. Coats and linen, however, are not merely values, but values of definite magnitude, and according to our assumption, the coat is worth twice as much as the ten yards of linen. Whence this difference in their values ? It is owing to the fact that the linen contains only half as much labour as the coat, and consequently, that in the production of the latter, labour- power must have been expended during twice the time neces- sary for the production of the former. While, therefore, with reference to use-value, the labour con- tained in a commodity counts only qualitatively, with refer- 1 The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value that the labourer gets for a given labour time, but of the value of the com- modity in which that labour time is materialised. Wages is a category that, as yt, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation. Commodities. 53 ence to value it counts only quantitatively, and must first be reduced to human labour pure and simple. In the former case, it is a question of How and What, in the latter of How much ? How long a time ? Since the magnitude of the value of a commodity represents only the quantity of labour embodied in it, it follows that all commodities, when taken in certain proportions, must be equal in value. If the productive power of all the different sorts of useful labour required for the production of a coat remains unchanged, the sum of the values of the coat produced increases with their number. If one coat represents x days' labour, two coats represent 2x days' labour, and so on. But assume that the duration of the labour necessary for the production of a coat becomes doubled or halved. In the first case, one coat is worth as much as two coats were before; in the second case, two coats are only worth as much as one was before, although in both cases one coat renders the same service as before, and the useful labour embodied in it remains of the same quality. But the quantity of labour spent on its production has altered. An increase in the quantity of use-values is an increase of material wealth. With two coats two men can be clothed, with one coat only one man. Nevertheless, an increased quan- tity of material wealth may correspond to a simultaneous fall in the magnitude of its value. This antagonistic move- ment has its origin in the two-fold character of labour. Productive power has reference, of course, only to labour of some useful concrete form ; the efficacy of any special produc- tive activity during a given time being dependent on its productiveness. Useful labour becomes, therefore, a more or less abundant source of products, in proportion to the rise or fall of its productiveness. On the other hand, no change in this productiveness affects the labour represented by value. Since productive power is an attribute of the concrete useful forms of labour, of course it can no longer have any bearing on that labour, so soon as we make abstraction from those concrete useful forms. However then productive power may vary, the same labour, exercised during equal periods of time, always yields equal amounts of value. But it will yield, during equal 54 Capitalist Production. periods of time, different quantities of values in use ; more, if the productive power rise, fewer, if it fall. The same change in productive power, which increases the fruitfulness of labour, and, in consequence, the quantity of use-values produced by that labour, will diminish the total value of this increased quantity of use-values, provided such change shorten the total labour-time necessary for their production; and vice versa. On the one hand all labour is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labour-power, and in its character of identical abstract human labour, it creates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labour is the expendi- ture of human labour-power in a special form and with a definite aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labour, it produces use-values. 1 SECTION 3. THE FOEM OF VALUE OR EXCHANGE VALUE. Commodities come into the world in the shape of use-values, articles, or goods, such as iron, linen, corn, &c. This is their plain, homely, bodily form. They are, however, commodities, 1 In order to prove that labour alone is that all-sufficient and real measure, by which at all times the value of all commodities can be estimated and com- pared, Adam Smith says, " Equal quantities of labour must at all times and in all places have the same value for the labourer. In his normal state of health, strength and activity, and with the average degree of skill that he may possess, he must always give up the same portion of his rest, his freedom, and his happiness." (Wealth of Nations, b. I. ch. v.) On the one hand, Adam Smith here (but not everywhere) confuses the determination of value by means of the quantity of labour expended in the production of commodities, with the determination of the values of commodities by means of the value of labour, and seeks in consequence to prove that equal quantities of labour have always the same value. On the other hand, he has a presentiment, that labour, so far as it manifests itself in the value of commodities, counts only ss expenditure of labour power, but he treats this expenditure as the mere sacrifice of rest, freedom, and happiness, not as the same time the normal activity of living beings. But then, he has the mod- ern wage-labourer in his eye. Much more aptly, the anonymous predecessor of Adam Smith, quoted above in Note *, p. 6, says, " one man has employed him- self a week in providing this necessary of life . . . and he that gives him some other in exchange, cannot make a better estimate of what is a proper equivalent, than by computing what cost him just as much labour and time; which in effect is no more than exchanging one man's labour in one thing for a time certain, for another man's labour in another thing for the same time." (1. c. p. 39.) [The English language has the advantage of possessing different words for the two aspects of labour here considered. The labour which creates Use- Value, and counts qualitatively, is Work, as distinguished from Labour; that which creates Value and counts quantitatively, is Labour as distingiushed from Work. ED.] Commodities. 55 only because they are something twofold, both objects of utility, and, at the same time, depositories of value. They manifest themselves therefore as commodities, or have the form of com- modities, only in so far as they have two forms, a physical or natural form, and a value form. The reality of the value of commodities differs in this respect from Dame Quickly, that we don't know "where to have it." The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse ma- teriality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition. Turn and examine a single commodity, by itself, as we will. Yet in so far as it remains an object of value, it seems impossible to grasp it. If, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expres- sions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., hu- man labour, it follows as a matter of course, tliat value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to com- modity. In fact we started from exchange value, or the exchange relation of commodities, in order to get at the value that lies hidden behind it. We must now return to this form under which value first appeared to us. Every one knows, if he knows nothing else, that commodities have a value form common to them all, and presenting a marked contrast with the varied bodily forms of their use- values. I mean their money form. Here, however, a task is set us, the performance of which has never yet even been at- tempted by bourgeois economy, the task of tracing the genesis of this money form, of developing the expression of value im- plied in the value relation of commodities, from its simplest, almost imperceptible outline, to the dazzling money form. By doing this we shall, at the same time, solve the riddle presented by money. The simplest value relation is evidently that of one com- modity to some one other commodity of a different kind. Hence the relation between the values of two commodities sup- plies us with the simplest expression of the value of a single commodity. , 56 Capitalist Production. A. Elementary or Accidental Form of. Value. x commodity A=y commodity B, or x commodity A is worth y commodity B. 20 yards of linen=l coat, or 20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat. 1. The two poles of the expression of value : Relative form and Equivalent form. The whole mystery of the form of value lies hidden in this elementary form. Its analysis, therefore, is our real difficulty. Here two different kinds of commodities (in our example the linen and the coat), evidently play two different parts. The linen expresses its value in the coat ; the coat serves as the material in which that value is expressed. The former plays an active, the latter a passive, part. The value of the linen is represented as relative value, or appears in relative form. The coat officiates as equivalent, or appears in equivalent form. The relative form and the equivalent form are two intimate- ly connected, mutually dependent and inseparable elements of the expression of value; but, at the same time, are mutually exclusive, antagonistic extremes i.e., poles of the same ex- pression. They are allotted respectively to the two different commodities brought into relation by that expression. It is not possible to express the value of linen in linen. 20 yards of linen =20 yards of linen is no expression of value. On the contrary, such an equation merely says that 20 yards of linen are nothing else than 20 yards of linen, a definite quantity of the use-value linen. The value of the linen can therefore be expressed only relatively i.e., in some other commodity. The relative form of the value of the linen pre-supposes, therefore, the presence of some other commodity here the coat under the form of an equivalent. On the other hand, the commodity that figures as the equivalent cannot at the same time assume the relative form. That second commodity is not the one whose value is expressed. Its function is merely to serve as Commodities. 57 the material in which the value of the first commodity is ex- pressed. No doubt, the expression 20 yards of linen=l coat, or 20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat, implies the opposite relation : 1 coat=20 yards of linen, or 1 coat is worth 20 yards of linen. But, in that case, I must reverse the equation, in order to ex- press the value of the coat relatively; and, so soon as I do that the linen becomes the equivalent instead of the coat. A single commodity cannot, therefore, simultaneously assume, in the same expression of value, both forms. The very polarity of these forms makes them mutually exclusive. Whether, then, a commodity assumes the relative form, or the opposite equivalent form, depends entirely upon its acci- dental position in the expression of value that is, upon whether it is the commodity whose value is being expressed or the commodity in which value is being expressed. 2. The Relative form of valiw. (a.) The nature and import of this form. In order to discover how the elementary expression of the value of a commodity lies hidden in the value relation of two commodities, we must, in the first place, consider the latter entirely apart from its quantitative aspect. The usual mode of procedure is generally the reverse, and in the value relation nothing is seen but the proportion between definite quantities of two different sorts of commodities that are considered equal to each other. It is apt to be forgotten that the magnitudes of different things can be compared quantitatively, only when those magnitudes are expressed in terms of the same unit. It is only as expressions of such a unit that they are of the same denomination, and therefore commensurable. 1 Whether 20 yards of linen=l coat or=20 coats or=x 1 The few economists, amongst whom is S. Bailey, who have occupied themselves with the analysis of the form of value, have been unable to arrive at any result, first, because they confuse the form of value with value itself; and second, be- cause, under the coarse influence of the practical bourgeois, they exclusively give their attention to the quantitative aspect of the question. "The command of quan- ity . . . constitutes value." ("Money 'and its Vicissitudes." London, 1837, p. 11. By S. Bailey. 58 Capitalist Production. coats that is, whether a given quantity of linen is worth few or many coats, every such statement implies that the linen and coats, as magnitudes of value, are expressions of the same unit, things of the same kind. Linen=coat is the basis of the equation. But the two commodities whose identity of quality is thus assumed, do not play the same part. It is only the value of the linen that is expressed. And how ? By its reference to the coat as its equivalent, as something that can be exchanged for it In this relation the coat is the mode of existence of value, is value embodied, for only as such is it the same as the linen. On the other hand, the linen's own value comes to the front, receives independent expression, for it is only as being value that it is comparable with the coat as a thing of equal value, or exchangeable with the coat To borrow an illustra- tion from chemistry, butyric acid is a different substance from propyl formate. Yet both are made up of the same chemical substances, carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O), and that, too, in like proportions namely, C 4 H 8 O 2 . If now we equate butyric acid to propyl formate, then, in the first place, propyl formate would be, in this relation, merely a form of existence of C 4 H 8 O 2 ; and in the second place, we should be stating that butyric acid also consists of C 4 H 8 O 2 . Therefore, by thus equating the two substances, expression would be given to their chemical composition, while their different physical forms would be neglected. If we say that, as values, commodities are mere congelations of human labour, we reduce them by our analysis, it is true, to the abstraction, value; but we ascribe to this value no form apart from their bodily form. It is otherwise in the value relation of one commodity to another. Here, the one stands forth in its character of value by reason of its relation to the other. By making the coat the equivalent of the linen, we equate the labour embodied in the former to that in the latter. Now, it is true that the tailoring, which makes the coat, is concrete labour of a different sort from the weaving which makes the linen. But the act of equating it to the weaving, reduces the Commodities. 59 tailoring to that which is really equal in the two kinds of labour, to their common character of human labour. In this roundabout way, then, the fact is expressed, that weaving also, in so far as it weaves value, has nothing to distinguish it from tailoring, and, consequently, is abstract human labour. It is the expression of equivalence between different sorts of com- modities that alone brings into relief the specific character of value-creating labour, and this it does by actually reducing the different varieties of labour embodied in the different kinds of commodities to their common quality of human labour in the abstract. 1 There is, however, something else required beyond the ex- pression of the specific character of the labour of which the value of the linen consists. Human labour-power in motion, or human labour, creates value, but is not itself value. It becomes value only in its congealed state, when embodied in the form of some object. In order to express the value of the linen as a congelation of human labour, that value must be expressed as having objective existence, as being a something materially different from the linen itself, and yet a something common to the linen and all other commodities. The problem is already solved. When occupying the position of equivalent in the equation of value, the coat ranks qualitatively as the equal of the linen, as something of the same kind, because it is value. In this posi- tion it is a thing in which we see nothing but value, or whose palpable bodily form represents value. Yet the coat itself, the body of the commodity, coat, is a mere use-value. A coat as such no more tells us it is value, than does the first piece of linen we take hold of. This shows that when placed in value 1 The celebrated Franklin, one of the first economists, after Wm. Petty, who saw through the nature of value, says: "Trade in general heing nothing else but the exchange of labour for labour, the value of all things is ... most justly measured by labour." (The works of B. Franklin, &c., edited by Sparks, Boston, 1836, Vol. II., p. 267.) Franklin is unconscious that by estimating the value of everything in labour, he makes abstraction from any difference in the sorts of labour exchanged, and thus reduces them all to equal human labour. But although ignorant of this, yet he says i,t. He speaks first of "the one labour," then of " the other labour," and finally of " labour," without further qualifica- tion, as the substance of the value of everything. 60 Capitalist Production. relation to the linen, the coat signifies more than when out of that relation, just as many a man strutting about in a gorgeous uniform counts for more than when in mufti. In the production of the coat, human labour-power, in the shape of tailoring, must have been actually expended. Human labour is therefore accumulated in it. In this aspect the coat is a depository of value, but though worn to a thread, it does not let this fact show through. And as equivalent of the linen in the value equation, it exists under this aspect alone, counts therefore as embodied value, as a body that is value. A, for instance, cannot be "your majesty" to B, unless at the same time majesty in B's eyes assumes the bodily form of A, and, what is more, with every new father of the people, changes its features, hair, and many other things besides. Hence, in the value equation, in which the coat is the equiva- lent of the linen, the coat officiates as the form of value. The value of the commodity linen is expressed by the bodily form of the commodity coat, the value of one by the use-value of the other. As a use-value, the linen is something palpably dif- ferent from the coat ; as value, it is the same as the coat, and now has the appearance of a coat. Thus the linen acquires a value form different from its physical form. The fact that it is value, is made manifest by its equality with the coat, just as the sheep's nature of a Christian is shown in his resemblance to the Lamb of God. We see, then, all that our analysis of the value of commo- dities has already told us, is told us by the linen itself, so soon as it comes into communication with another commodity, the coat. Only it betrays its thoughts in that language with which alone it is familiar, the language of commodities. In order to tell us that its own value is created by labour in its abstract character of human labour, it says that the coat, in so far as it is worth as much as the linen, and therefore is value, consists of the same labour as the linen. In order to inform us that its sublime reality as value is not the same as its buck- ram body, it says that value has the appearance of a coat, and consequently that so far as the linen is value, it and the coat are as like as two peas. We may here remark, that the Ian- Commodities, 61 guage of commodities has, besides Hebrew, many other more or less correct dialects. The German "werthsein," to be worth, for instance, expresses in a less striking manner than the Romance verbs "valere," "valer," "valoir," that the equating of commodity B to commodity A, is commodity A's own mode of expressing its value. Paris vaut bien une messe. By means, therefore, of the value relation expressed in our equation, the bodily form of commodity B becomes the value form of commodity A, or the body of commodity B acts as a mirror to the value of commodity A. 1 By putting itself in re- lation with commodity B, as value in propria persona, as the matter of which human labour is made up, the commodity A converts the value in use, B, into the substance in which to express its, A's, own value. The value of A, thus expressed in the use-value of B, has taken the form of relative value. (b.) Quantitative determination of Relative value. Every commodity, whose value it is intended to express, is a useful object of given quantity, as 15 bushels of corn, or 100 Ibs. of coffee. And a given quantity of any commodity con- tains a definite quantity of human labor. The value-form, must therefore not only express value generally, but also value in definite quantity. Therefore, in the value relation of com- modity A to commodity B, of the linen to the coat, not only is the latter, as value in general, made the equal in quality of the linen, but a definite quantity of coat (1 coat) is made the equivalent of a definite quantity (20 yards) of linen. The equation, 20 yards of linen=l coat, or 20 yards of linen are worth one coat, implies that the same quantity of value- substance (congealed labour) is embodied in both; that the two commodities have each cost the same amount of labour or the same quantity of labour time. But the labour time necessary for the production of 20 yards of linen or 1 coat 1 In a sort of way, it is with man as with commodities. Since he comes into the world neither with a looking glass in his hand, nor as a Fichtian philosopher, to whom "I am I " is sufficient, man first sees and recognises himself in other men. Peter only establishes his own identity as a man by first comparing him- self with Paul as being of like kind. And thereby Paul, just as he stands in his Pauline personality, becomes to Peter the type of the genus homo. 62 Capitalist Production. varies with every change in the productiveness of weaving or tailoring. We have now to consider the influence of such changes on the quantitative aspect of the relative expression of value. I. Let the value of the linen vary, 1 that of the coat remain- ing constant. If, say in consequence of the exhaustion of flax- growing soil, the labour time necessary for the production of the linen be doubled, the value of the linen will also be doubled. Instead of the equation, 20 yards of linen=l coat, we should have 20 yards of linen=2 coats, since 1 coat would now con- tain only half the labour time embodied in 20 yards of linen. If, on the other hand, in consequence, say, of improved looms, this labour time be reduced by one half, the value of the linen would fall by one half. Consequently, we should have 20 yards of linen=^ coat. The relative value of commodity A, i.e.) its value expressed in commodity B, rises and falls directly as the value of A, the value of B being supposed constant. II. Let the value of the linen remain constant^ while the value of the coat varies. If, under these circumstances, in consequence, for instance, of a poor crop of wool, the labour time necessary for the production of a coat becomes doubled, we have instead of 20 yards of linen=l coat, 20 yards of linen =| coat. If, on the other hand, the value of the coat sinks by one half, then 20 yards of linen=2 coats. Hence, if the value of commodity A remain constant, its relative value ex- pressed in commodity B rises and falls inversely as the value of B. If we compare the different cases in I. and II., we see that the same change of magnitude in relative value may arise from totally opposite causes. Thus, the equation, 20 yards of linen =1 coat, becomes 20 yards of linen=2 coats, either, because, the value of the linen has doubled, or because the value of the coat has fallen by one half ; and it becomes 20 yards of linen == coat, either, because the value of the linen has fallen by one half, or because the value of the coat has doubled. III. Let the quantities of labour time respectively 1 Value is here, as occasionally in the preceding pages, used in the sense of value determined as to quantity, or of magnitude of value. Commodities. 63 sary for the production of the linen and the coat vary sim- ultaneously in the same direction and in the same proportion. In this case 20 yards of linen continue equal to 1 coat, however much their values may have altered. Their change of value is seen as soon as they are compared with a third commodity, whose value has remained constant. If the values of all com- modities rose or fell simultaneously, and in the same propor- tion, their relative values would remain unaltered. Their real change of value would appear from the diminished or increased quantity of commodities produced in a given time. IV. The labour time respectively necessary for the produc- tion of the linen and the coat, and therefore the value of these commodities may simultaneously vary in the same direction, but at unequal rates, or in opposite directions, or in other ways. The effect of all these possible different variations, on the relative value of a commodity, may be deduced from the results of I., II., and III. Thus real changes in the magnitude of value are neither unequivocally nor exhaustively reflected in their relative expression, that is, in the equation expressing the magnitude of relative value. The relative value of a commodity may vary, although its value remains constant. Its relative value may remain constant, although its value varies; and finally, simultaneous variations in the magnitude of value and in that of its relative expression by no means necessarily correspond in amount. 1 1 This incongruity between the magnitude of value and its relative expression has, with customary ingenuity, been exploited by vulgar economists. For example "Once admit that A falls, because B, with which it is exchanged, rises, while no less labour is bestowed in the meantime on A, and your general principle of value falls to the ground. ... If he [Ricardo] allowed that when A rises in value relatively to B, B falls in value relatively to A, he cut away the ground on which he rested his grand proposition, that the value of a commodity is ever de- termined by the labour embodied in it; for if a change in the cost of A alters not only its own value in relation to B, for which it is exchanged, but also the value of B relatively to that of A, though no change has taken place in the quantity of labour to produce B, then not only the s doctrine falls to the ground which asserts that the quantity of labour bestowed on an article regulates its value, but also that which affirms the cost of an article to regulate its value." (J. Broadhurst: Political Economy, London, 1842, p. 11 and 14. Mr. Broadhurst might just as well say: consider the fractions -[>, ^ f y^, &c., the number 10 remains unchanged, and yet its proportional magnitude, its magni- 64 Capitalist Production. 3. The Equivalent form of value. We have seen that commodity A (the linen), by expressing its value in the use-value of a commodity differing in kind (the coat), at the same time impresses upon the latter a specific form of value, namely that of the equivalent The commodity linen manifests its quality of having a value by the fact that the coat, without having assumed a value form different from its bodily form, is equated to the linen. The fact that the latter therefore has a value is expressed by saying that the coat is directly exchangeable with it. Therefore, when we say that a commodity is in the equivalent form, we express the fact that it is directly exchangeable with other commodities* When one commodity, such as a coat, serves as the equivalent of another, such as linen, and coats consequently acquire the characteristic property of being directly exchangeable with linen, we are far from knowing in what proportion the two are exchangeable. The value of the linen being given in magni- tude, that proportion depends on the value of the coat. Whether the coat serves as the equivalent and the linen as relative value, or the linen as the equivalent and the coat as relative value, the magnitude of the coat's value is determined, independently of its value form, by the labour time necessary for its production. But whenever the coat assumes in the equation of value, the position of equivalent, its value acquires no quantitative expression ; on the contrary, the commodity coat now figures only as a definite quantity of some article. For instance, 40 yards of linen are worth what? 2 coats. Because the commodity coat here plays the part of equivalent, because the use-value coat, as opposed to the linen, figures as an embodiment of value, therefore a definite number of coats suffices to express the definite quantity of value in the linen. Two coats may therefore express the quantity of value of 40 yards of linen, but they can never express the quantity of their own value. A superficial observation of this fact, namely, that tude relatively to the numbers 20, 50, 100, &c., continually diminishes. There- fore the great principle that the magnitude of a whole number, such as 10, is "regulated" by the number of times unity is contained in it, falls to the ground. [The author explains in section 4 of this chapter, p. 52, note 2, what he under- stands by ;l Vulgar Economy." Ed.] Commodities. 65 in the equation of value, the equivalent figures exclusively as a simple quantity of some article, of some use-value, has misled Bailey, as also many others, both before and after him, into seeing, in the expression of value, merely a quantitative rela- tion. The truth being, that when a commodity acts as equiva- lent, no quantitative determination of its, value is expressed. The first peculiarity that strikes us, in considering the form of the equivalent, is this : use-value becomes the form of mani- festation, the phenomenal form of its opposite, value. The bodily form of the commodity becomes its value form. But, mark well, that this quid pro quo exists in the case of any commodity B, only when some other commodity A enters into a value relation with it ; and then only within the limits of this relation. Since no commodity can stand in the relation of equivalent to itself, and thus turn its own bodily shape into the expression of its own value, every commodity is compelled to choose some other commodity for its equivalent, and to ac- cept the use-value, that is to say, the bodily shape of that other commodity as the form of its own value. One of the measures that we apply to commodities as ma- terial substances, as use-values, will serve to illustrate this point. A sugar-loaf being a body, is heavy, and therefore has weight : but we can neither see nor touch this weight. We then take various pieces of iron, whose weight has been determined beforehand. The iron, as iron, is no more the form of manifes- tation of weight, than is the sugar-loaf. Nevertheless, in order to express the sugar-loaf as so much weight, we put it into a weight-relation with the iron. In this relation, the iron officiates as a body representing nothing but weight. A certain quantity of iron therefore serves as the measure of the weight of the sugar, and represents, in relation to the sugar-loaf, weight embodied, the form of manifestation of weight. This part is played by the iron only within this relation, into which the sugar or any other body, whose weight has to be determined, enters with the iron. Were they not both heavy, they could not enter into this relation, and the one could therefore not serve as the expression of the weight of the other. When we throw both into the scales, we see in reality, that as weight 66 Capitalist Production. they are both the same, and that, therefore, when taken in proper proportions, they have the same weight. Just as the substance iron, as a measure of weight, represents in relation to the sugar-loaf weight alone, so, in our expression of value, the material object, coat, in relation to the linen, represents value alone. Here, however, the analogy ceases. The iron, in the expres- sion of the weight of the sugar-loaf, represents a natural pro- perty common to both bodies, namely their weight ; but the coat in the expression of value of the linen, represents a non-natural property of both, something purely social, namely, their value. Since the relative form of value of a commodity the linen, for example expresses the value of that commodity, as being something wholly different from its substance and properties, as being, for instance, coat-like, we see that this expression itself indicates that some social relation lies at the bottom of it. With the equivalent form it is just the contrary. The very essence of this form is that the material commodity itself the coat just as it is, expresses value, and is endowed with the form of value by Nature itself. Of course this holds good only so long as the value relation exists, in which the coat stands in the position of equivalent to the linen. 1 Since, however, the properties of a thing are not the result of its relations to other things, but only manifest themselves in such relations, the coat seems to be endowed with its equivalent form, its property of being directly exchangeable, just as much by Nature as it is endowed with the property of being heavy, or the capacity to keep us warm. Hence the enigmatical character of the equiva- lent form which escapes the notice of the bourgeois political economist, until this form, completely developed, confronts him in the shape of money. He then seeks to explain away the mystical character of gold and silver, by substituting for them less dazzling commodities, and by reciting, with ever renewed satisfaction, the catalogue of all possible commodities which at one time or another have played the part of equivalent. He 1 Such expressions of relations in general, called by Hegel reflex-categories, form a very curious class. For instance, one man is king only because other men stand in the relation of subjects to him. They, on the contrary, imagine that they are subjects because he is king. Commodities. 67 has not the least suspicion that the most simple expression of value, such as 20 yds. of linen=l coat, already propounds the riddle of the equivalent form for our solution. The body of the commodity that serves as the equivalent, figures as the materialism of human labour in the abstract and is at the same time the product of some specifically useful concrete labour. This concrete labour becomes, therefore, the medium for expressing abstract human labour. If on the one hand the coat ranks as nothing but the embodiment of abstract human labour, so, on the other hand, the tailoring which is actually embodied in it, counts as nothing but the form under which that, abstract labour is realised. In the ex- pression of value of the linen, the utility of the tailoring con- sists, not in making clothes, but in making an object, which we at once recognise to be Value, and therefore to be a congelation of labour, but of labour indistinguishable from that realised in the value of the linen. In order to act as such a mirror of value, the labour of tailoring must reflect nothing besides its own abstract quality of being human labour generally. In tailoring, as well as in weaving, human labour-power is expended. Both, therefore, possess the general property of being human labour, and may, therefore, in certain cases, such as in the production of value, have to be considered under this aspect alone. There is nothing mysterious in this. But in the expression of value there is a complete turn of the tables. For instance, how is the fact to be expressed that weaving creates the value of the linen, not by virtue of being weaving, as such, but by reason of its general property of being human labour ? Simply by opposing to weaving that other particular form of concrete labour (in this instance tailoring), which produces the equivalent of the product, of weaving. Just as the coat in its bodily form became a direct expression of value, so now does tailoring, a concrete form of labour, appear as the direct and palpable embodiment of human labour generally. Hence, the second peculiarity of the equivalent form is, that concrete labour becomes the form under which its opposite, abstract human labour, manifests itself. 68 Capitalist Production. But because this concrete labour, tailoring in our case, ranks as, and is directly indentified with, unditferentiated human labour, it also ranks as identical with any other sort of labor, and therefore with that embodied in linen. Consequently, although, like all other commodity-producing labour, it is the labour of private individuals, yet, at the same time, it ranks as labour directly social in its character. This is the reason why it results in a product directly exchangeable with other com- modities. We have then a third peculiarity of the Equivalent form, namely, that the labour of private individuals takes the form of its opposite, labour directly social in its form. The two latter peculiarities of the Equivalent form will become more intelligible if we go back to the great thinker who was the first to analyse so many forms, whether of thought, society, or nature, and amongst them also the form of value. I mean Aristotle. In the first place, he clearly enunciates that the money form of commodities is only the further development of the simple form of value i. e. f of the expression of the value of one com- modity in some other commodity taken at random ; for he says 5 beds=l house (*eXaw TTOTC dvri oixtas) is not to be distinguished from 5 beds=so much money. CK\LVOJ. Trejre dvri . . . ocrou at Treire KAwu) He further sees that the value relation which gives rise to this expression makes it necessary that the house should quali- tatively be made the equal of the bed, and that, without such an equalization, these two clearly different things could not be compared with each other as commensurable quantities. "Exchange," he says, "cannot take place without equality, and equality not without commensurability" ( ow iVd-nys py ownys {rv/x/icTptas ) . Here, however, he comes to a stop, and gives up the further analysis of the form of value. "It is, however, in reality, impossible (fr] P.CV ow aXyOeia. aSwarov') , that such unlike things can be commensurable" i. e., qualita- tively equal. Such an equalisation can only be something foreign to their real nature, consequently only "a make-shift for practical purposes." Commodities. 69 Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us, what barred the way to his further analysis; it was the absence of any concept of value. What is that equal something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house ? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle. And why not ? Compared with the beds, the house does re- present something equal to them, in so far as it represents what is really equal, both in the beds and the house. And that is human labour. There was, however, an important fact which prevented Aristotle from seeing that, to attribute value to commodities, is merely a mode of expressing all labour as equal human labour, and consequently as labour of equal quality. Greek society was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and of their labour powers. The secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labour are equal and equivalent, because, and so far as they are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered, until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form of commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities. The brilliancy of Aristotle's genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, "in truth," was at the bottom of this equality. 4. The Elementary form of value considered as a whole. The elementary form of value of a commodity is contained in the equation, expressing its value relation to another com- modity of a different kind, or in its exchange relation to the same. The value of commodity A' is qualitatively expressed by the fact that commodity B is directly exchangeable with it. Its value is quantitively expressed by the fact, that a definite quantity of B is exchangeable with a definite quantity of A. In other words, the value of a commodity obtains independent 70 Capitalist Production. and definite expression, by taking the form of exchange value. When, at the beginning of this chapter, we said, in common parlance, that a commodity is both a use-value and an ex- change value, we were, accurately speaking, wrong. A com- modity is a use-value or object of utility, and a value. It manifests itself as this two-fold thing, that it is, as soon as its value assumes an independent form viz., the form exchange value. It never assumes this form when .isolated, but only when placed in a value or exchange relation with another commodity of a different kind. When once we know this, such a mode of expression does no harm ; it simply serves as an abbreviation. Our analysis has shown, that the form or expression of the value of a commodity originates in the nature of value, and not that value and its magnitude originate in the mode of their expression as exchange value. This, however, is the delusion as well of the mercantilists and their recent revivers, Ferrier, Ganilh, 1 and others, as also of their antipodes, the modern bagmen of Free Trade, such as Bastiat. The mercan- tilists lay special stress on the qualitative aspect of the expression of value, and consequently on the equivalent form of commodities, which attains its full perfection in money. The modern hawkers of Free Trade, who must get rid of their article at any price, on the other hand, lay most stress on the quantitative aspect of the relative form of value. For them there consequently exists neither value, nor magnitude of value, anywhere except in its expression by means of the exchange relation of commodities, that is, in the daily list of prices current. MacLeod, who has taken upon himself to dress up the confused ideas of Lombard Street in the most learned finery, is a successful cross between the superstitious mercantilists, and the enlightened Free Trade bagmen. A close scrutiny of the expression of the value of A in terms of B, contained in the equation expressing the value relation of A to B, has shown us that, within that relation, the bodily form 1 F. L. Ferrier, sous-inspecteur des douanes, "Du gouvernement considere dans ses rapports avec le commerce," Paris, 1805; and Charles Ganilh, " Des Systemes d'Economie politique," 2nd ed., Paris, 1821. Commodities. 71 of A figures only as a use-value, the bodily form of B only as the form or aspect of value. The opposition or contrast existing internally in each commodity between use-value and value, is, therefore, made evident externally by two com- modities being placed in such relation to each other, that the commodity whose value it is sought to express, figures directly as a mere use-value, while the commodity in which that value is to be expressed, figures directly as mere exchange value. Hence the elementary form of value of a commodity is the elementary form in which the contrast contained in that commodity, between use-value and value, becomes apparent. Every product of labour is, in all states of society, a use- value ; but it is only at a definite historical epoch in a society's development that such product becomes a commodity, viz., at the epoch when the labour spent on the production of a useful article becomes expressed as one of the objective qualities of that article, i.e., as its value. It therefore follows that the elementary value-form is also the primitive form under which a product of labour appears historically as a commodity, and that the gradual transformation of such products into commodities, proceeds pari passu with the development of the value-form. We perceive, at first sight, the deficiencies of the elementary form of value : it is a mere germ, which must undergo a series- of metamorphoses before it can ripen into the Price-form. The expression of the value of commodity A in terms of any other commodity B, merely distinguishes the value from the use-value of A, and therefore places A merely in a relation of exchange with a single different commodity, B; but it is still far from expressing A's qualitative equality, and quantitative proportionality, to all commodities. To the elementary rela- tive value-form of a commodity, there corresponds the single equivalent form of one other commodity. Thus, in the rela- tive expression of value of the linen, the coat assumes the form of equivalent, or of being directly exchangeable, only in re- lation to a single commodity, the linen. Nevertheless, the elementary form of value passes by an easy transition into a more complete form. It is true that by means 72 Capitalist Production. of the elementary form, the value of a commodity A, becomes expressed in terms of one, and only one, other commodity. But that one may be a commodity of any kind, coat, iron, corn, or anything else. Therefore, according as A is placed in rela- tion with one or the other, we get for one and the same com- modity, different elementary expressions of value. 1 The num- ber of such possible expressions is limited only by the number of the different kinds of commodities distinct from it. The isolated expression of A's value, is therefore convertible into a series, prolonged to any length, of the different elementary ex- pressions of that value. B. Total or Expanded form of value. z Com. A^u Com. B or=v Com. C or=-w Com. D or=x Com. E or=&c. (20 yards of linen=l coat or=10 Ib tea oi >: =40 Ib coffee or= 1 quarter corn or=2 ounces gold or=y 2 ton iron or=&c.) 1. The Expanded Relative form of value. The value of a single commodity, the linen, for example, is now expressed in terms of numberless other elements of the world of commodities. Every other commodity now becomes a mirror of the linen's value. 2 It is thus, that for the first time 1 In Homer, for instance, the value of an article is expressed in a series of dif- ferent things. II. VII., 472-475. 2 For this reason, we can speak of the coat-value of the linen when its value is expressed in coats, or of its corn-value when expressed in corn, and so on. Every such expression tells us, that what appears in the use-values, coat, corn, &c., is the value of the linen. " The value of any commodity denoting its relation in exchange, we may speak of it as ... corn-value, cloth-value, according to the commodity with which it is compared; and hence there are a thousand different kinds of value, as many kinds of value as there are commodities in existence, and all are equally real and equally nominal." (A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Meas- ure and Causes of Value; chiefly in reference to the writings of Mr. Ricardo and his followers. By the author of " Essays on the Formation, &c., of Opin- ions." London, 1825, p. 39. ) S. Bailey, the author of this anonymous work, a work which in its day created much stir in England, fancied that, by thus pointing out the various relative expressions of one and the same value, he had proved the impossibility of any determination of the concept of value. How- ever narrow his own views may have been, yet, that he laid his finger on some serious defects in the Ricardian Theory, is proved by the animosity with which he was attacked by Ricardo's followers. See the Westminster Review for example. . Commodities. 73 this value shows itself in its true light as a congelation of un- differentiated human labour. For the labour that creates it, now stands expressly revealed, as labour that ranks equally with every other sort of human labour, no matter what its form, whether tailoring, ploughing, mining, &c. and no matter, therefore, whether it is realised in coats, corn, iron, or gold. The linen, by virtue of the form of its value, now stands in a social relation, no longer with only one other kind of com- modity, but with the whole world of commodities. As a commodity, it is a citizen of that world. At the same time, the interminable series of value equations implies, that as re- gards the value of a commodity, it is a matter of in- difference under what particular form, or kind, of use-value it appears. In the first form, 20 yds. of linen=l coat, it might for ought that otherwise appears be pure accident, that these two com- modities are exchangeable in definite quantities. In the second form, on the contrary, we perceive at once the background that determines, and is essentially different from, this accidental appearance. The value of the linen remains unaltered in mag- nitude, whether expressed in coats, coffee, or iron, or in num- berless different commodities, the property of as many different owners. The accidental relation between two in- dividual commodity-owners disappears. It becomes plain, that it is not the exchange of commodities which regulates the magnitude of their value ; but, on the contrary, that it is the magnitude of their value which controls their exchange proportions. 2. The particular Equivalent form. Each commodity, such as coat, tea, corn, iron, &c., figures in the expression of value of the linen, as an equivalent, and con- sequently as a thing that is value. The bodily form of each of these commodities figures now as a particular equivalent form, one out of many. In the same way the manifold concrete form, one out of many. In the same way the manifold con- crete useful kinds of labour, embodied in these different com- 74 Capitalist Production. modities, rank now as so many different forms of the realisa- tion, or manifestation, of undifferentiated human labour. 3. Defects of the Total or Expanded form of value. In the first place, the relative expression of value is incom- plete because the series representing it is interminable. The chain of which each equation of value is a link, is liable at any moment to be lengthened by each new kind of commodity that comes into existence and furnishes the material for a fresh expression of value. In the second place, it is a many- coloured mosaic of disparate and independent expressions of value. And lastly, if, as must be the case, the relative value of each commodity in turn, becomes expressed in this ex- panded form, we get for each of them a relative value-form, different in every case, and consisting of an interminable series of expressions of value. The defects of the expanded relative-value form are reflected in the corresponding equiva- lent form. Since the bodily form of each single commodity is one particular equivalent form amongst numberless others, we have, on the whole, nothing but fragmentary equivalent forms, each excluding the others. In the same way, also, the special, concrete, useful kind of labour embodied in each particular equivalent, is presented only as a particular kind of labour, and therefore not as an exhaustive representative of human labour generally. The latter, indeed, gains adequate manifes- tation in the totality of its manifold, particular, concrete forms. But, in that case, its expression in an infinite series is ever incomplete and deficient in unity. The expanded relative value form is, however, nothing but the sum of the elementary relative expressions or equations of the first kind, such as 20 yards of linen=l coat 20 yards of linen=10 Ibs. of tea, etc. Each of these implies the corresponding inverted equation, 1 coat=20 yards of linen 10 Ibs. of tea=20 yards of linen, etc. In fact, when a person exchanges his linen for many other commodities, and thus expresses its value in a series of other Commodities. 75 commodities, it necessarily follows, that the various owners of the latter exchange them for the linen, and consequently express the value of their various commodities in one and the same third commodity, the linen. If then, we reverse the series, 20 yards of linen^l coat or=10 Ibs. of tea, etc., that is to say, if we give expression to the converse relation already implied in the series, we get, C. The General form of value. 1 coat 10 Ibs. of tea 40 Ibs. of coffee 1 quarter of corn - =20 yards of linen 2 ounces of gold ^ a ton of iron x com. A., etc. 1. The altered character of the form of value. All commodities now express their value (1) in an element- ary form, because in a single commodity; (2) with unity, be- cause in one and the same commodity. This form of value is elementary and the same for all, therefore general. The forms A and B were fit only to express the value of a commodity as something distinct from its use-value or material form. The first form, A, furnishes such equations as the follow- ing : 1 coat=20 yards of linen ; 10 Ibs. of tea=| ton of iron. The value of the coat is equated to linen, that of the tea to iron. But to be equated to linen, and again to iron, is to be as different as are linen and iron. This form, it is plain, occurs practically only in the first beginning, when the products of labour are converted into commodities by accidental and occasional exchanges. The second form, B, distinguishes, in a more adequate man- ner than the first, the value of a commodity from its use-value ; for the value of the coat is there placed in contrast under all possible shapes with the bodily form of the coat; it is equated 76 Capitalist Production. to linen, to iron, to tea, in short, to everything else, only not to itself, the coat. On the other hand, any general expression of value common to all is directly excluded ; for, in the equation of value of each commodity, all other commodities now appear only under the form of equivalents. The expanded form of value comes into actual existence for the first time so soon as a particular product of labour, such as cattle, is no longer exceptionally, but habitually, exchanged for various other commodities. The third and lastly developed form expresses the values of the whole world of commodities in terms of a single commodity set apart for the purpose, namely, the linen, and thus represents to us their values by means of their equality with linen. The value of every commodity is now, by being equated to linen, not only differentiated from its own use-value, but from all other use-values generally, and is, by that very fact, expressed as that which is common to all commodities. By this form, commodities are, for the first time, effectively brought into relation with one another as values, or made to appear as exchange values. The two earlier forms either express the value of each com- modity in terms of a single commodity of a different kind, or in a series of many such commodities. In both cases, it is, so to say, the special business of each single commodity to find an expression for its value, and this it does without the help of the others. These others, with respect to the former, play the passive parts of equivalents. The general form of value C, results from the joint action of the whole world of commodities, and from that alone. A commodity can acquire a general ex- pression of its value only by all other commodities, simulta- neously with it, expressing their values in the same equivalent ; and every new commodity must follow suit. It thus becomes evident that, since the existence of commodities as values is purely social, this social existence can be expressed by the totality of their social relations alone, and consequently that the form of their value must be a socially recognised form. All commodities being equated to linen now appear not only Commodities. 77 as qualitatively equal as values generally, but also as values whose magnitudes are capable of comparison. By expressing the magnitudes of their values in one and the same material, the linen, those magnitudes are also compared with each other. For instance, 10 Ibs. of tea=20 yards of linen, and 40 Ibs. of coffee=20 yards of linen. Therefore, 10 Ibs. of tea =40 Ibs. of coffee. In other words, there is contained in 1 Ib. of coffee only one-fourth as much substance of value labour as is con- tained in 1 Ib. of tea. The general form of relative value, embracing the whole world of commodities, converts the single commodity that is excluded from the rest, and made to play the part of equivalent here the linen into the universal equivalent. The bodily form of the linen is now the form assumed in common by the value of all commodities; it therefore becomes directly exchangeable with all and every of them. The substance linen becomes the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis state of every kind of human labour. Weaving, which is the labour of certain private individuals producing a particular article, linen, acquires in consequence a social character, the character of equality with all other kinds of labour. The innumerable equations of which the general form of value is composed, equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that em- bodied in every other commodity, and they thus convert weaving into the general form of manifestation of undiffer- entiated human labour. In this manner the labour realised in the values of commodities is presented not only under its negative aspect, under which abstraction is made from every concrete form and useful property of actual work, but its own positive nature is made to reveal itself expressly. The general value-form is the reduction of all kinds of actual labour to their common character of being human labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour power. The general value form, which represents all products of labour as mere congelations of undifferentiated human labour, shows by its very structure that it is the social resume of the world of commodities. That form consequently makes it 78 Capitalist Production. indisputably evident that in tlie world of commodities the character possessed by all labour of being human labour constitutes its specific social character. 2. The interdependent development of the Relative form of value, and of the Equivalent form. The degree of development of the relative form of value corresponds to that of the equivalent form. But we must bear in mind that the development of the latter is only the expres- sion and result of the development of the former. The primary or isolated relative form of value of one commodity converts some other commodity into an isolated equivalent. The expanded form of relative value, which is the expression of the value of one commodity in terms of all other commodities, endows those other commodities with the character of particular equivalents differing in kind. And lastly, a particular kind of commodity acquires the character of universal equivalent, because all other commodities make it the material in which they uniformly express their value. The antagonism between the relative form of value and the equivalent form, the two poles of the value form, is developed concurrently with that form itself. The first form, 20 yds. of linen =one coat, already contains this antagonism, without as yet fixing it. According as we read this equation forwards or backwards, the parts played by the linen and the coat are different. In the one case the relative value of the linen is expressed in the coat, in the other case the relative value of the coat is expressed in the linen. In this first form of value, therefore, it is difficult to grasp the polar contrast. Form B shows that only one single commodity at a time can completely expand its relative value, and that it acquires this expanded form only because, and in so far as, all other com- modities are, with respect to it, equivalents. Here we cannot reverse the equation, as we can the equation 20 yds. of linen= 1 coat, without altering its general character, and converting it from the expanded form of value into the general form of value. Commodities. 79 Finally, the form C gives to the world of commodities a general social relative form of value, because, and in so far as, thereby all commodities, with the exception of one, are excluded from the equivalent form. A single commodity, the linen, appears therefore to have acquired the character of direct ex- changeability with every other commodity because, and in so far as, this character is denied to every other commodity. 1 The commodity that figures as universal equivalent, is, on the other hand, excluded from the relative value form. If the linen, or any other commodity serving as universal equivalent, were, at the same time, to share in the relative form of value, it would have to serve as its own equivalent. We should then have 20 yds. of linen=20 yds. of linen ; this tautology ex- presses neither value, nor magnitude of value. In order to express the relative value of the universal equivalent, we must rather reverse the form C. This equivalent has no relative form of value in common with other commodities, but its value is relatively expressed by a never ending series of other com- modities. Thus, the expanded form of relative value, or form B, now shows itself as the specific form of relative value for the equivalent commodity. 3. Transition from the General form of value to the Money form. The universal equivalent form is a form of value in general. It can, therefore, be assumed by any commodity. On the 1 It is by no means self-evident that this character of direct and universal ex- changeability is, so to speak, a polar one, and as intimately connected with its opposite pole, the absence of direct exchangeability, as the positive pole of the magnet is with its negative counterpart. It may therefore be imagined that all commodities can simultaneously have this character impressed upon them, just as it can be imagined that all Catholics can be popes together. It is, of course, highly desirable in the eyes of the petit bourgeois, for whom the production of commodities is the ne plus ultra of human freedom and individual independence, that the inconveniences resulting from this character of commodities not being directly exchangeable, should be removed. Proudhon's socialism is a working out of this Philistine Utopia, a form of socialism which, as I have elsewhere shown, does not possess even the merit of originality. Long before his time, the task was attempted with much better success by Gray, Bray, and others. But, for all that, wisdom of this kind flourishes even now in certain circles under the name of " science." Never has any school played more tricks with the word science, than that of Proudhon, for "wo Begriffe fehlen Da stellt zur rechten Zeit ein Wort sich ein." 8o Capitalist Production. other hand, if a commodity be found to have assumed the universal equivalent form (form C), this is only because and iu so far as it has been excluded from ^he rest of all other commodities as their equivalent, and that by their own act. And from the moment that this exclusion becomes finally restricted to one particular commodity, from that moment only, the general form of relative value of the world of commodities obtains real consistence and general social validity. The particular commodity, with whose bodily 'form the equivalent form is thus socially identified, now becomes the money commodity, or serves as money. It becomes the special social function of that commodity, and consequently its social monopoly, to play within the world of commodities the part of the universal equivalent. Amongst the commodities which, in form B, figure as particular equivalents of the linen, and in form C, express in common their relative values in linen, this foremost place has been attained by one in particular namely, gold. If, then, in form C we replace the linen by gold, we get, D. The Money form. 20 yards of linen = 1 coat 10 lb of tea 40 lb of coffee 2 ounces of gold. 1 qr. of corn = a ton of iron = x commodity A = In passing from form A to form B, and from the latter to form C, the changes are fundamental. On the other hand, there is no difference between forms C and D, except that, in the latter, gold has assumed the equivalent form in the place of linen. Gold is in form D, what linen was in form C the universal equivalent'. The progress consists in this alone, that the character of direct and universal exchangeability in other words, that the universal equivalent form has now, by social custom, become finally identified with the substance, gold. Commodities. 81 Gold is now money with reference to all other commodities only because it was previously, with reference to them, a simple commodity. Like all other commodities, it was also capable of serving as an equivalent, either as simple equivalent in isolated exchanges, or as particular equivalent by the side of others. Gradually it began to serve, within varying limits, as universal equivalent. So soon as it monopolises this posi- tion in the expression of value for the world of commodities, it becomes the money commodity, and then, and not till then, does form D become distinct from form C, and the general form of value become changed into the money form. The elementary expression of the relative value of a single commodity, such as linen, in terms of the commodity, such as gold, that plays the part of money, is the price form of that commodity. The price form of the linen is therefore 20 yards of linen=2 ounces of gold, or, if 2 ounces of gold when coined are 2, 20 yards of linen=2. The difficulty in forming a concept of the money form, con- sists in clearly comprehending the universal equivalent form, and as a necessary corollary, the general form of value, form C. The latter is deducible from form B, the expanded form of value, the essential component element of which, we saw, is form A, 20 yards of linen=l coat or x commodity A=y com- modity B. The simple commodity form is therefore the germ of the money form. SECTION 4. THE FETISHISM OF COMMODITIES AND THE SECRET THEREOF. A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labour. It is as clear as noon-day, that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished by nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The g 2 Capitalist Production. form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for all that tbe table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than "table- turning" ever was. The mystical character of commodities does not originate, therefore, in their use-value. Just as little does it proceed from the nature of the determining factors of value. For, in the first place, however varied the useful kinds of labour, or productive activities, may be, it is a physiological fact, that they are functions of the human organism, and that each such function, whatever may be its nature or form, is essentially the expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, &c. Secondly, with regard to that which forms the ground-work for the quan- titative determination of value, namely, the duration of that expenditure, or the quantity of labour, it is quite clear that there is a palpable difference between its quantity and quality. In all states of society, the labour-time that it costs to produce the means of subsistence must necessarily be an object of inter- est to mankind, though not of equal interest in different stages of development. 1 And lastly, from the moment that men in any way work for one another, their labour assumes a social form. Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product of labour, so soon as it assumes the form of commodities? Clearly from this form itself. The equality of all sorts of human labour is expressed objectively by their products all being equally values ; the measure of the expenditure of labour- power by the duration of that expenditure, takes the form of the quantity of value of the products of labour; and finally, the mutual relations of the producers, within which the social 1 Among the ancient Germans the unit for measuring land was what could be harvested in a day, and was called Tagwerk, Tagwanne (jurnale, or terra jurnalis, or diornalis), Mannsmaad, &c. (See G. L. von Maurer Einleitung zur Geschicbte der Mark , &c. Verfassung, Munchen, 1859, p. 129-59.) Commodities. 83 character of their labour affirms itself, take the form of a social relation between the products. A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men's labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to the eye. There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things qua commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social rela- tion between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped re- gions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands. This I call the Fetishism which at- taches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are pro- duced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities. This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the fore- going analysis has already shown, in the peculiar social character of the labour that produces them. As a general rule, articles of utility become commodities, only because they are products of the labour of private individ- 84 Capitalist Production. uals or groups of individuals who carry on their work inde- pendently of each other. The sum total of the labour of all these private individuals forms the aggregate labour of society. Since the producers do not come into social contact with each other until they exchange their products, the specific social character of each producer's labour does not show itself except in the act of exchange. In other words, the labour of the in- dividual asserts itself as a part of the labour of society, only by means of the relations which the act of exchange establishes directly between the products, and indirectly, through them, between the producers. To the latter, therefore, the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest ap- pear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things. It is only by being ex- changed that the products of labour acquire, as values, one uni- form social status, distinct from their varied forms of existence as objects of utility. This division of a product into a useful thing and a value becomes practically important, only when ex- change has acquired such an extension that useful articles are produced for the purpose of being exchanged, and their char- acter as values has therefore to be taken into account, before- hand, during production. From this moment the labour of the individual producer acquires socially a two-fold character. On the one hand, it must, as a definite useful kind of labour, satisfy a definite social want, and thus hold its place as part and parcel of the collective labour of all, as a branch of a social division of labour that has sprung up spontaneously. On the other hand, it can satisfy the manifold wants of the individual producer himself, only in so far as the mutual exchangeability of all kinds of useful private labour is an established social fact, and therefore the private useful labour of each producer ranks on an equality with that of all others. The equalization of the most different kinds of labour can be the result only of an abstraction from their inequalities, or of reducing them to their common denominator, viz., expenditure of human labour power or human labour in the abstract. The two-fold social character of the labour of the individual appears to him, when Commodities. 85 reflected in his brain, only under those forms which are im- pressed upon that labour in everyday practice by the exchange of products. In this way, the character that his own labour possesses of being socially useful takes the form of the condi- tion, that the product must be not only useful, but useful for others, and the social character that his particular labour has of being the equal of all other particular kinds of labour, takes the form that all the physically different articles that are the pro- ducts of labour, have one common quality, viz, that of having value. Hence, when we bring the products of our labour into rela- tion with each other as values, it is not because we see in these articles the material receptacles of homogeneous human labour. Quite the contrary; whenever, by an exchange, we equate as values our different products, by that very act, we also equate, as human labour, the different kinds of labour expended upon them. We are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it. 1 Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is. It is value, rather, that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic. Later on, we try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social pro- ducts ; for to stamp an object of utility as a value, is just as much a social product as language. The recent scientific dis- covery, that the products of labour, so far as they are values, are but material expressions of the human labour spent in their production, marks, indeed, an epoch in the history of the development of the human race, but, by no means, dissipates the mist through which the social character of labour appears to us to be an objective character of the products themselves. The fact, that in the particular form of production with which we are dealing, viz., the production of commodities, the specific social character of private labour carried on independently, consists in the equality of every kind of that labour, by virtue of its being human labour, which character, therefore, assumes 1 When, therefore, Galiani says: Value is a relation between persons "La Ricchezza e una ragione tra due persone," he ought to have added: a relation be- tween persons expressed as a relation between things. (Galiani: Delia Moneta, p. 221, V. III. of Custodi's collection of "Scrittori Classici Italian! di Economia Politicia." Parte Moderna, Milano, 1803.) 86 Capitalist Production. in the product the form of value this fact appears to the producers, notwithstanding the discovery above referred to, to be just as real and final, as the fact, that, after the discovery by science of the component gases of air, the atmosphere itself remained unaltered. What, first of all, practically concerns producers when they make an exchange, is the question, how much of some other product they get for their own ? in what proportions the pro- ducts are exchangeable? When these proportions have, by custom, attained a certain stability, they appear to result from the nature of the products, so that, for instance, one ton of iron and two ounces of gold appear as naturally to be of equal value as a pound of gold and a pound of iron in spite of their different physical and chemical qualities appear to be of equal weight. The character of having value, when once impressed upon products, obtains fixity only by reason of their acting and re-acting upon each other as quantities of value. These quantities vary continually, independently of the will, fore- sight and action of the producers. To them, their own social action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them. It requires a fully developed production of commodities before, from accumulated experience alone, the scientific conviction springs up, that all the different kinds of private labour, which are carried on in- dependently of each other, and yet as spontaneously developed branches of the social division of labour, are continually being reduced to the quantitive proportions in which society re- quires them. And why? Because, in the midst of all the accidental and ever fluctuating exchange-relations between the products, the labour-time socially necessary for their pro- duction forcibly asserts itself like an over-riding law of nature. The law of gravity thus asserts itself when a house falls about our ears. 1 The determination of the magnitude of value by labour-time is therefore a secret, hidden under the apparent " What are we to think of a law that asserts itself only by periodical revolu- tions? It is just nothing but a law of Nature, founded on the want of knowledge of those whose action is the subject of it." (Friedrich Engels: Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationa lokonomie," in the "Deutsch-franzosische Jahrbucher," edited by Arnold Ruge and Karl Marx. Paris, 1844. Commodities. 87 fluctuations in the relative values of commodities. Its dis- covery, while removing all appearance of mere accidentally from the determination of the magnitude of the values of products, yet in no way alters the mode in which that determination takes place. Man's reflections on the forms of social life, and consequently, also, his scientific analysis of those forms, take a course directly opposite to that of their actual historical development. He begins, post festum, with the results of the process of develop- ment ready to hand before him. The characters that stamp products as commodities,and whose establishment is a necessary preliminary to the circulation of commodities, have already acquired the stability of natural, self-understood forms of social life, before man seeks to decipher, not their historical character, for in his eyes they are immutable, but their meaning. Con- sequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities that alone led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and it was the common expression of all commodities in money that alone led to the establishment of their characters as values. It is, however, just this ulimate money form of the world of commodities that actually conceals, instead of disclosing, the social character of private labour, and the social relations between the individual producers. When I state that coats or boots stand in a relation to linen, because it is the universal incarnation of abstract human labour, the absurdity of the statement is self-evident, Nevertheless, when the producers of coats and boots compare those articles with linen, or, what is the same thing with gold or silver, as the universal equivalent, they express the relation between their own private labour and the collective labour of society in the same absurd form. The categories of bourgeois economy consist of such like forms. They are forms of thought expressing with social validity the conditions and relations of a definite, historically determined mode of production, viz., the production of com- modities. The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour as long as they take the form of commodities, vanishes therefore, so soon as we come to other forms of production. 88 Capitalist Production. Since Robinson Crusoe's experiences are a favorite theme with political economists, 1 let us take a look at him on his island. Moderate though he be, yet some few wants he has to satisfy, and must therefore do a little useful work of various sorts, such as making tools and furniture, taming goats, fish- ing and hunting. Of his prayers and the like we take no ac- count, since they are a source of pleasure to him, and he looks upon them as so much recreation. In spite of the variety of his work, he knows that his laboui, whatever its form, is but the activity of one and the same Robinson, and consequently, that it consists of nothing but different modes of human labour. Necessity itself compels him to apportion his time accurately between his different kinds of work. Whether one kind occupies a greater space in his general activity than an- other, depends on the difficulties, greater or less as the case may be, to be overcome in attaining the useful effect aimed at. This our friend Robinson soon learns by experience, and having rescued a watch, ledger, and pen and ink from the wreck, commences, like a true-born Briton, to keep a set of books. His stock-book contains a list of the objects of utility that belong to him, of the operations necessary for their pro- duction ; and lastly, of the labour time that definite quantities of those objects have, on an average, cost him. All the rela- tions between Robinson and the objects that form this wealth of his own creation, are here so simple and clear as to be in- telligible without exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. And yet those relations contain all that is essential to the deter- mination of value. Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson's island bathed in light to the European middle ages shrouded in dark- ness. Here, instead of the independent man, we find every- 1 Even Ricardo has his stories a la Robinson. "He makes the primitive hunter and the primitive fisher straightway, as owners of commodities, exchange fish and game in the proportion in which labour-time is incorporated in these exchange values. On this occasion he commits the anachronism of making these men apply to the calculation, so far as their implements have to be taken into account, the annuity tables in current use on the London Exchange in the year 1847. 'The par- allelograms of Mr. Owen* appear to be the only form of society, besides the bour- geois form, with which he was acquainted." (Karl Marx: "Critique," &c., p. 69-70.) Commodities. 89 one dependent, serfs and lords, vassals and suzerains, lay- men and clergy. Personal dependence here characterises the social relations of production just as much as it does the other spheres of life organized on the basis of that production. But for the very reason that personal dependence forms the ground- work of society, there is no necessity for labour and its prod- ucts to assume a fantastic form different from their reality. They take the shape, in the transactions of society, of services in kind and payments in kind. Here the particular and natu- ral form of labour, and not, as in a society based on production of commodities, its general abstract form is the immediate social form of labour. Compulsory labour is just as properly measured by time, as commodity-producing labour; but every serf knows that what he expends in the service of his lord, is a definite quantity of his own personal labour-power. The tithe to be rendered to the priest is more matter of fact than his blessing. ISTo matter, then, what we may think of the parts played by the different classes of people themselves in this society, the social relations between individuals in the performance of their labour, appear at all events as their own mutual personal relations, and are not disguised under the shape of social relations between the products of labour. For an example of labour in common or directly associated labour, we have no occasion to go back to that spontaneously developed form which we find on the threshold of the history of all civilized races. 1 We have one close at hand in the patriarchal industries of a peasant family, that produces corn, cattle, yarn, linen, and clothing for home use. These differ- ent articles are, as regards the family, so many products of its labour, but as between themselves, they are not commodities. The different kinds of labour, such as tillage, cattle tending, 1 "A ridiculous presumption has latterly got abroad that common property in its primitive form is specifically a Slavonian, or even exclusively Russian form. It is the primitive form that we can prove to have existed amongst Romans, Teutons, and Celts, and even to this day we find numerous examples, ruins though they be, in India. A more exhaustive study of Asiatic, and especially of Indian forms of common property, would show how from the different forms of primitive common property, different forms of its dissolution have been developed. Thus, for instance, the various original types of Roman and Teutonic private property are deducible from different forms of Indian common property," (Karl Marx. "Critique," &c., p. 29, footnote.) go Capitalist Production. spinning, weaving and making clothes, which result in the various products, are in themselves, and such as they are, direct social functions, because functions of the family, which just as much as a society based on the production of commod- ities, possesses a spontaneously developed system of division of labour. The distribution of the work within the family, and the regulation of the labour-time of the several members, depend as well upon differences of age and sex as upon nat- ural conditions varying with the seasons. The labour-power of each individual, by its very nature, operates in this case merely as a definite portion of the whole labour-power of the family, and therefore, the measure of the expenditure of in- dividual labour-power by its duration, appears here by its very nature as a social character of their labour. Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a com- munity of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour-power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour-power of the community. All the charac- teristics of Robinson's labour are here repeated, but with this difference, that they are social, instead of individual. Every- thing produced by him was exclusively the result of his own personal labour, and therefore simply an object of use for himself. The total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive organization of the community, and the degree of historical development attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsis- tence is determined by his labour-time. Labour-time would, in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment in accord- ance with a definite social plan maintains the proper propor- tion between the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community. On the other hand, it also Commodities. 91 serves as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne by each individual and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption. The social re- lations of the individual producers, with regard both to their labour and to its products, are in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production but also to distribution. The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. And for a society based upon the production of commodities, in which the producers in general enter into social relations with one another by treating their products as commodities and values, whereby they reduce their individual private labour to the standard of homogeneous human labour for such a soci- ety, Christianity with its cultus of abstract man, more espec- ially in its bourgeois developments, Protestantism, Deism, &c., is the most fitting form, of religion. In the ancient Asiatic and other ancient modes of production, we find that the con- version of products into commodities, and therefore the con- version of men into producers of commodities, holds a subor- dinate place, which, however, increases in importance as the primitive communities approach nearer and nearer to their dissolution. Trading nations, properly so called, exist in the ancient world only in its interstices, like the gods of Epicurus in the Intermundia, or like Jews in the pores of Polish soci- ety. Those ancient social organisms of production are, as compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and trans- parent. But they are founded either on the immature devel- opment of man individually, who has not yet severed the um- bilical cord that unites him with his fellow men in a primi- tive tribal community, or upon direct relations of subjec- tion. They can arise and exist only when the development of the productive power of labour has not risen beyond a low stage, and when, therefore, the social relations within the sphere of material life, between man and man, and between man and Nature, are correspondingly narrow. This narrow- ness is reflected in the ancient worship of Nature, and in the other elements of the popular religions. The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, 92 Capitalist Production. when the practical relations of everyday life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with re- gard to his fellowmen and to nature. The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is con- sciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society a certain material ground- work or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development. Political economy has indeed analysed, however incom- pletely, 1 value and its magnitude, and has discovered what lies beneath these forms. But it has never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product 1 The insufficiency of Ricardo's analysis of the magnitude of value, and his an- alysis is by far the best, will appear from the 3rd and 4th book of this work. As regards values in general, it is the weak point of the classical school of political economy that it nowhere, expressly and with full consciousness, distinguishes be- tween labour, as it appears in the value of a product and the same labour, as it ap- pears in the use-value of that product. Of course the distinction is practically made since this school treats labour, at one time under its quantitative aspect, at another under its qualitative aspect. But it has not the least idea, that when the difference between various kinds of labour is treated as purely quantitative, their qualitative unity or equality, and therefore their reduction to abstract human labour, is implied. For instance, Ricardo declares that he agrees with Destutt de Tracy in this proposition: "As it is certain that our physical and moral faculties are alone our original riches, the employment of those faculties, labour of some kind, is our only original treasure, and it is always from this employment that all those things are created, which we call riches. . . . It is certain, too, that all those things only represent the labour which has created them, and if they have a value, or even two distinct values, they can only derive them from that (the value) of the labour from which they emanate." (Ricardo, The Principles of Pol. Econ. 3 Ed. Lond. 1821, p. 334.) We would here only point out that Ricardo puts his own more profound interpretation upon the words of Destutt. What the latter really says is, that on the one hand all things which constitute wealth represent the labour that creates them, but that on the other hand, they acquire their "two different values" (use-value and exchange-value) from "the value of labour." He thus falls into the commonplace error of the vulgar econo- mists, who assume the value of one commodity (in this case labour) in order to deter- mine the values of the rest. But Ricardo reads him as if he had said, that labour (not the value of labour) is embodied both in use-value and exchange-value. Nevertheless, Ricardo himself pays so little .attention to the two-fold character of the labour which has a two-fold embodiment, that he devotes the whole of his chapter on " Value and Riches, Their Distinctive Properties," to a laborious ex- amination of the trivialities of a J. B. Say. And at the finish he is quite astonished to find that Destutt on the one hand agrees with him as to labour being the source of value, and on the other hand with J. B. Say as to the notion of value. Commodities. 93 and labour time by the magnitude of that value. 1 These for- mula?, which bear stamped upon them in unmistakeable let- ters, that they belong to a state of society, in which the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being con- trolled by him, such formulae appear to the bourgeois intellect to be as much a self-evident necessity imposed by nature as productive labour itself. Hence forms of social production that preceded the bourgeois form, are treated by the bour- geoisie in much the same way as the Fathers of the Church treated pre-Christian religions. 2 1 It is one of the chief failings of classical economy that it has never succeeded, by means of its analysis of commodities, and, in particular, of their value, in dis- covering that form under which value becomes exchange-value. Even Adam Smith and Ricardo, the best representatives of the school, treat the form of value as a thing of no importance, as having no connection with the inherent .nature of commodities. The reason for this is not solely because their attention is en- tirely absorbed in the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The value form of the product of labour is not only the most abstract, but is also the most universal form, taken by the product in bourgeois production, and stamps that production as a particular species of social production, and thereby gives it its special historical character. If then we treat this mode of production as one eternally fixed by nature for every state of society, we necessarily overlook that which is the differentia specifica of the value-form, and consequently of the commodity-form, and of its further developments, money-form, capital-form, &c. We consequently find that economists, who are thoroughly agreed as to labour time being the measure of the magnitude of value, have the most strange and con- tradictory ideas of money, the perfected form of the general equivalent. This is seen in a striking manner when they treat of banking, where the common- place definitions of money will no longer hold water. This led to the rise of a restored mercantile system (Ganilh, &c.), which sees in 'value nothing but a social form, or rather the unsubstantial ghost of that form. Once for all I may here state, that by classical political economy, I understand that economy which, since the time of W. Petty, has investigated the real relations of production in bourgeois society, in contradistinction to vulgar economy, which deals with appear- ances only, ruminates without ceasing on the materials long since provided by scientific economy, and there seeks plausible explanations of the most obtrusive phenomena, for bourgeois daily use, but for the rest, confines itself to systema- tizing in a pedantic way, and proclaiming for everlasting truths, the trite ideas held by the self-complacent bourgeoisie with regard to their own world, to them the best of all possible worlds. 2 "The economists have a singular manner of proceeding. There are for them only two kinds of institutions, those of art and those of nature. Feudal institu- tions are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this they resemble the theologians, who also establish two kinds of religion. Every religion but their own is an invention of men, while their own religion is an emanation from God. . . . Thus there has been history, but there is no longer any." Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, A Reply to 'La Philosophic de la Misere' by Mr. Proudhon. 1847, p. 100. Truly comical is M. Bastiat, who imagines that the ancient Greeks and Romans lived by plunder alone. But when people plunder for centuries, there must always be something at hand for them to seize; the objects of plunder must be continually reproduced. It would thus appear 94 Capitalist Production. To what extent some economists are misled by the Fetishism inherent in commodities, or by the objective appearance of the social characteristics of labour, is shown, amongst other ways, by the dull and tedious quarrel over the part played by Nature in the formation of exchange value. Since exchange value is a definite social manner of expressing the amount of labour bestowed upon an object, Nature has no more to do with it, than it has in fixing the course of exchange. The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois pro- duction. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in history, though not in the same predominating and charac- teristic manner as now-a-days. Hence its Fetish character is comparatively easy to be seen through. But when we come to more concrete forms, even this appearance of simplicity vanishes. Whence arose the illusions of the monetary sys- tem ? To it gold and silver, when serving as money, did not represent a social relation between producers, but were nat- that even Greeks and Romans had some process of production, consequently, an economy, which just as much constituted the material basis of their world, as bour- geois economy constitutes that of our modern world. Or perhaps Bastiat means, that a mode of production based on slavery is based on a system of plunder. In that case he treads on dangerous ground. If a giant thinker like Aristotle erred in his appreciation of slave labour, why should a dwarf economist like Bastiat be right in his appreciation of wage labour? I seize this opportunity of shortly answering an objection taken by a German paper in America, to my work, "Critique of Political Economy, 1859." In the estimation of that paper, my view that each special mode of production and the social relations corresponding to it, in short, that the economic structure of society, is the real basis on which the juridical and political superstructure is raised, and to which definite social forms of thought correspond; that the mode of production determines the character of the social, political, and intellectual life generally, all this is very true for our own times, in which material interests preponderate, but not for the middle ages, in which Catholicism, nor for Athens and Rome, where politics, reigned supreme. In the first place it strikes one as an odd thing for any one to suppose that these well-worn phrases about the middle ages and the ancient world are unknown to anyone else. This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not live on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics, and there Catholicism, played the chief part. For the rest, it requires but a slight acquaintance with the history of the Roman republic, for example, to be aware that its secret history is the history of its landed property. On the other hand, Don Quixote long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining that knight errantry was compatible with all economical forms of society. Commodities. 95 ural objects with strange social properties. And modern economy, which looks down with such disdain on the monetary system, does not its superstition come out as clear as noon-day, whenever it treats of capital ? How long is it since economy discarded the physiocratic illusion 2 that rents grow out of the soil and not out of society ? But not to anticipate, we will content ourselves with yet another example relating to the commodity form. Could com- modities themselves speak, they would say : Our use-value may be a thing that interests men. It is no part of us as objects. What, however, does belong to us as objects, is our value. Our natural intercourse as commodities proves it. In the eyes of each other we are nothing but exchange values. Now listen how those commodities speak through the mouth of the econo- mist. "Value" (i.e., exchange value) "is a property of things, riches" (i.e., use-value) "of man. Value, in this sense, neces- sarily implies exchanges, riches do not." * "Riches" (use- value) "are the attribute of men, value is the attribute of com- modities. A man or a community is rich, a pearl or a dia- mond is valuable. . . A pearl or a diamond is valuable" as a pearl or diamond. 2 So far no chemist has ever discovered ex- change value either in a pearl or a diamond. The economical discoverers of this chemical element, who by-the-bye lay special claim to critical acumen, find however that the use-value of objects belongs to them independently of their material pro- perties, while their value^ on the other hand, forms a part of them as objects. What confirms them in this view, is the peculiar circumstances that the use-value of objects is realised without exchange, by means of a direct relation between the 1 Observations on certain verbal disputes in Pol. Econ., particularly relating to value and to demand and supply. Lond., 1821, p. 16. 2 S. Bailey, 1. c., p. 165. 3 The author of " Observations " and S. Bailey accuse Ricardo of converting ex- change value from something relative into something absolute. The opposite is the fact. He has explained the apparent relation between objects, such as diamonds and pearls, in which relation they appear as exchange values, and disclosed the true relation hidden behind the appearances, namely, their relation to each other as mere expressions of human labour. If the followers of Ricardo answer Bailey somewhat rudely, and by no means convincingly, the reason is to be sought in this, that they were unable to find in Ricardo's own works any key to the hidden relations existing between value and its form, exchange value. 96 Capitalist Production. objects and man, while, on the other hand, their value is real- ised only by exchange, that is, by means of a social process. Who fails here to call to mind our good friend, Dogberry, who informs neighbour Seacoal, that, "To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but reading and writing comes by nature." CHAPTER II. EXCHANGE. IT is plain that commodities cannot go to market and make exchanges of their own account. We must, therefore, have recourse to their guardians, who are also their owners. Com- modities are things, and therefore without power of resistance against man. If they are wanting in docility he can use force ; in other words, he can take possession of them. 1 In order that these objects may enter into relation with each other as com- modities, their guardians must place themselves in relation to one another, as persons whose will resides in those objects, and must behave in such a way that each does not appropriate the commodity of the other, and part with his own, except by means of an act done by mutual consent. They must, there- fore, mutually recognise in each other the right of private proprietors. This juridical relation, which thus expresses it- self in a contract, whether such contract be part of a developed legal system or not, is a relation between two wills, and is but the reflex of the real economical relation between the two. It is this economical relation that determines the subject matter comprised in each such juridical act. 2 The persons exist for 1 In the 12th century, so renowned for its piety, they included amongst com- modities some very delicate things. Thus a French poet of the period enumerates amongst the goods to be fund in the market of Landit, not only clothing, shoes, leather, agricultural implements, &c., but also " femmes folles de leur corps." 1 Proudhon begins by taking his ideal of justice, of "justice eternelle," from the juridical relations that correspond to the production of commodities: thereby, it may be noted, he proves, to the consolation of all good citizens, that the production of commodities is a form of production as everlasting as justice. Then he turns round and seeks to reform the actual production of commodities, and the actual legal system corresponding thereto, in accordance with this ideal. Exchange. 97 one another merely as representatives of, and, therefore, as owners of, commodities. In the course of our investigation we shall find, in general, that the characters who appear on the economic stage are but the personifications of the economical relations that exist between them. What chiefly distinguishes a commodity from its owner is the fact, that it looks upon every other commodity as but the form of appearance of its own value. A born leveller and a cynic, it is always ready to exchange not bnly soul, but body, with any and every other commodity, be the same more repul- sive than Maritornes herself. The owner makes up for this lack in the commodity of a sense of the concrete, by his own five and more senses. His commodity possesses for himself no immediate use-value. Otherwise, he would not bring it to the market. It has use-value for others; but for himself its only direct use-value is that of being a depository of exchange value, and consequently, a means of exchange. 1 Therefore, he makes up his mind to part with it for commodities whose value in use is of service to him. All commodities are non-use- values for their owners, and use-values for their non-owners. Consequently, they must all change hands. But this change of hands is what constitutes their exchange, and the latter puts them in relation with each other as values, and realises them as values. Hence commodities must be realised as values before they can be realised as use-values. On the other hand, they must show that they are use- values before they can be realised as values. For the labour spent upon them counts effectively, only in so far as it is spent What opinion should we have of a chemist, who, instead of studying the actual laws of the molecular changes in the composition and decomposition of matter, and on that foundation solving definite problems, claimed to regulate the composition and decomposition of matter by means of the "eternal ideas," of "naturalite" and "affinite?" Do we really know any more about "usury," when we say it contradicts "justice eternelle," "equite eternelle," "mutualite eternelle," and other "verites eternelles" than the fathers of the church did when they said it was incom- patible with "grace eternelle," "foi eternelle," and "la volonte eternelle de Dieu?" 1 " For two-fold is the use of every object. . . . The one is peculiar to the object as such, the other is not, as a sandal which may be worn, and is also ex- changeable. Both are uses of the sandal, for even he who exchanges the sandal for the money or food he is in want of, makes use of the sandal as a sandal. But not in its natural way. For it has not been made for the sake of being exchanged." (Aristoteles, de Rep., 1. i. c. 9.) G 98 Capitalist Production. in a form that is useful for others. Whether that labour is use- ful for others and its product consequently capable of satisfying the wants of others, can be proved only by the act of exchange. Every owner of a commodity wishes to part with it in ex- change only for those commodities whose use-value satisfies some want of his. Looked at in this way, exchange is for him simply a private transaction. On the other hand, he de- sires to realise the value of his commodity, to convert it into any other suitable commodity of equal value, irrespective of whether his own commodity has or has not any use-value for the owner of the other. From this point of view, exchange is for him a social transaction of a general character. But one and the same set of transactions cannot be simultaneously for all owners of commodities both exclusively private and ex- clusively social and general. Let us look at the matter a little closer. To the owner of a commodity, every other commodity is, in regard to his own, a particular equivalent, and consequently his own commodity is the universal equivalent for all the others. But since this applies to every owner, there is, in fact, no commodity acting as universal equivalent, and the relative value of commodities possesses no general form under which they can be equated as values and have the magnitude of their values compared. So far, therefore, they do not confront each other as commodities, but 'only as products or use-values. In their difficulties our commodity-owners think like Faust: "Im Anfang war die That." They therefore acted and transacted before they thought. Instinctively they conform to the laws imposed by the nature of commodities. They cannot bring their com- modities into relation as values, and therefore as commodities, except by comparing them with some one other commodity as the universal equivalent. That we saw from the analysis of a commodity. But a particular commodity cannot become the universal equivalent except by a social act The social action therefore of all other commodities, sets apart the par- ticular commodity in which they all represent their values. Thereby the bodily form of this commodity becomes the form of the socially recognised universal equivalent. To be the Exchange. 99 universal equivalent, becomes, by this social process, the specific function of the commodity thus excluded by the rest. Thus it becomes money. "Illi unum consilium habent et virtutem et potestatem suam bestise tradunt. Et ne quis possit emere aut vendere-, nisi qui habet characterem aut nomen bestise, aut numerum nominis ejus." (Apocalypse.} Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the exchanges, whereby different products of labour are practically equated to one another and thus by practice converted into commodities. The historical progress and extension of ex- changes develops the contrast, latent in commodities, between use-value and value. The necessity for giving an external expression to this contrast for the purposes of commercial in- tercourse, urges on the establishment of an independent form of value, and finds no rest until it is once for all satisfied by the differentiation of commodities into commodities and money. At the same rate, then,, as the conversion of products into commodities is being accomplished, so also is the conversion of one special commodity into money. 1 The direct barter of products attains the elementary form of the relative expression of value in one respect, but not in another. That form is x Commodity A=y Commodity B. The form of direct barter is x use-value A=y use-value B. 2 The articles A and B in this case are not as yet commodities, but become so only by the act of barter. The first step made by an object of utility towards acquiring exchange-value is when it forms a non-use-value for its owner, and that hap- pens when it forms a superfluous portion of some article required for his immediate wants. Objects in themselves are external to man, and consequently alienable by him. In order that this alienation may be reciprocal, it is only necessary for 1 From this we may form an estimate of the shrewdness of the petit-bourgeois socialism, which, while perpetuating the production of commodities, aims at abolishing the " antagonism " between money and commodities, and consequently, since money exists only by virtue of this antagonism, at abolishing money itself. We might just as well try to retain Catholicism without the Pope. For more on this point see my work, "Critique of Political Economy," p. 73, ff. 2 So long as, instead of two distinct use-values being exchanged, a chaotic mass of articles are offered as the equivalent of a single article, which is often the case with savages, even the direct barter of products is in its first infancy. ioo Capitalist Production. men, by a tacit understanding, to treat each other as private owners of those alienable objects, and by implication as inde- pendent individuals. But such a state of reciprocal indepen- dence has no existence in a primitive society based on pro- perty in common, whether such a society takes the form of a patriarchal family, an ancient Indian community, or a Peru- vian Inca State. The exchange of commodities, therefore, first begins on the boundaries of such communities, at their points of contact with other similar communities, or with members of the latter. So soon, however, as products once become com- modities in the external relations of a community, they also, by reaction, become so in its internal intercourse. The pro- portions in which they are exchangeable are at first quite a matter of chance. What makes them exchangeable is the mutual desire of their owners to alienate them. Meantime the need for foreign objects of utility gradually establishes itself. The constant repetition of exchange makes it a normal social act. In the course of time, therefore, some portion at least of the products of labour must be produced with a special view to exchange. From that moment the distinction becomes firmly established between the utility of an object for the pur- poses of consumption, and its utility for the purposes of ex- change. Its use-value becomes distinguished from its ex- change value. On the other hand, the quantitative proportion in which the articles are exchangeable, becomes dependent on their production itself. Custom stamps them as values with definite magnitudes. In the direct barter of products, each commodity is directly a means of exchange to its owner, and to all other persons an equivalent, but that only in so far as it has use-value for them. At this stage, therefore, the articles exchanged do not acquire a value-form independent of their own use-value, or of the individual needs of the exchangers. The necessity for a value- form grows with the increasing number and variety of the commodities exchanged. The problem and the means of solu- tion arise simultaneously. Commodity-owners never equate their own commodities to those of others, and exchange them :n a large scale, without different kinds of commodities belong- Exchange. 101 ing to different owners being exchangeable for, and equated as values to, one and the same special article. Such last-men- tioned article, by becoming the equivalent of various other commodities, acquires at once, though within narrow limits, the character of a general social equivalent. This character comes and goes with the momentary social acts that called it into life. In turns and transiently it attaches itself first to this and then to that commodity. But with the development of exchange it fixes itself firmly and exclusively to particular sorts of commodities, and becomes crystallised by assuming the money-form. The particular kind of commodity to which it sticks is at first a matter of accident. Nevertheless there are two circumstances whose influence is decisive. The money- form attaches itself either to the most important articles of ex- change from outside, and these in fact are primitive and nat- ural forms in which the exchange-value of home products finds expression; or else it attaches itself to the object of utility that forms, like cattle, the chief portion of indigenous alienable wealth. Nomad races are the first to develop the money-form, because all their worldly goods consist of movable objects and are therefore directly alienable ; and because their mode of life, by continually bringing them into contact with foreign communities, solicits the exchange of products. Man has often made man himself, under the form of slaves, serve as the prim- itive material of money, but has never used land for that purpose. Such an idea could only spring up in a bourgeois society already well developed. It dates from the last third of the 1 7th century, and the first attempt to put it in practice on a national scale was made a century afterwards, during the French bourgeois revolution. In proportion as exchange bursts its local bonds, and the value of commodities more and more expands into an embodi- ment of human labour in the abstract, in the same proportion the character of money attaches itself to commodities that are by nature fitted to perform the social function of a universal equivalent. Those commodities are the precious metals. The truth of the proposition that, "although gold and silver are not by nature money, money is by nature gold and IO2 Capitalist Production. silver," * is shown by the fitness of the physical properties of these metals for the functions of money. 2 Up to this point, however, we are acquainted only with one function of money, namely, to serve as the form of manifestation of the value of commodities, or as the material in which the magnitudes of their values are socially expressed. An adequate form of manifestation of value, a fit embodiment of abstract, undiffer- entiated, and therefore equal human labour, that material alone can be whose every sample exhibits the same uniform qualities. On the other hand, since the difference between the magnitudes of value is purely quantitative, the money com- modity must be susceptible of merely quantitative differences, must therefore be divisible at will, and equally capable of being re-united. Gold and silver possess these properties by nature. The use-value of the money commodity becomes twofold. In addition to its special use-value as a commodity (gold, for instance, serving to stop teeth, to form the raw material of articles of luxury, &c.), it acquires a formal use-value, origina- ting in its specific social function. Since all commodities are merely particular equivalents of money, the latter being their universal equivalent, they, with regard to the latter as the universal commodity, play the parts of particular commodities. 3 We have seen that the money-form is but the reflex, thrown upon one single commodity, of the value relations between all the rest. That money is a commodity 4 is therefore a new dis- 1 Karl Marx, L c. p. 212. "I metalli. . . naturalmente moneta," (Galiani. "Delia moneta" in Custodi's Collection: Parte Moderna t. iii.). 2 For further details on this subject see in my work cited above, the chapter on " The precious metals." 3 "II danaro 6 la merce universale (Verri, 1. c., p. 16). * "Silver and gold themselves (which we may call by the general name of bullion), are . . . commodities . . . rising and falling in ... value. . . Bullion, then, may be reckoned to be of higher value where the smaller "weight will purchase the greatest quantity of the product or manufacture of the countrey," &c. ("A Discourse of the General Notions of Money, Trade, and Exchange, as they stand in relations to each other." By a Merchant. Lond., 1695, p. 7.) "Silver and gold, coined or uncoined, though they are used for a measure of all other things, are no less a commodity than wine, oyl, tobacco, cloth, or stuffs." (" A Discourse concerning Trade, and that in particular of the East Indies," &c. 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 merchandize." ("A Exchange. 103 covery only for those who, when they analyse it, start from its fully developed shape. The act of exchange gives to the com- modity converted into money, not its value, but its specific value-form. By confounding these two distinct things some . writers have been led to hold that the value of gold and silver is imaginary. 1 The fact that money can, in certain functions, be replaced by mere symbols of itself, gave rise to that other mistaken notion, that it is itself a mere symbol. Nevertheless under this error lurked a presentiment that the money-form of an object is not an inseparable part of that object, but is simply the form under which certain social relations manifest them- selves. In this sense every commodity is a smybol, since, in so far as it is value, it is only the material envelope of the human labour spent upon it. 2 But if it be declared that the social characters assumed by objects, or the material forms assumed by the social qualities of labour under the regime of a definite mode of production, are mere symbols, it is in the same breath also declared that these characteristics are arbitrary fictions sanctioned by the so-called universal consent of mankind. This Treatise concerning the East India Trade being a most profitable Trade." Lon- don, 1680, Reprint 1696, p. 4.) 1 "L'oro e 1'argento hanno valore come metalli anteriore all' esser moneta." (Galiani, I.e.). Locke says, " The universal consent of mankind gave to silver, on account of its qualities which made it suitable for money, an. imaginary value." Law, on the other hand, " How could different nations give an imaginary value to any single thing ... or how could this imaginary value have maintained itself?" But the following shows how little he himself understood about the matter: "Sil- ver was exchanged in proportion to the value in use it possessed, consequently in proportion to its real value. By its adoption as money it received an additional value (une valeur additionelle)" (Jean Law: "Considerations sur le numeraire et le commerce" in E. Daire's Edit, of "Economistes Financiers du XVIII. siecle.," p. 470). 2 L' Argent en (des denrees) est le signe." (V. de Forbonnais: "Elements du Commerce, Nouv. Edit. Leyde, 1776," t. II., p. 143.) "Comme signe il est attire par les denrees." (I.e., p. 155). " L'argent est un signe d'une chose et la represente." (Montesquieu: "Esprit des Lois," Oeuvres, Lond. 1767, t. IL, p. 2.) "L'argent n'est pas simple signe, car il est lui-meme richesse; il ne represente pas les valeurs, il les equivaut." (Le Trosne, I.e., p. 910.) "The notion of value contemplates the valuable article as a mere symbol; the article counts not for what it is, but for what it is worth." (Hegel, I.e., p. 100.) Lawyers started long before economists the idea that money is a mere symbol, and that the value of the precious metals is purely imaginary. This they did in the sycophantic service of the crowned heads, supporting the right of the latter to debase the coinage, during the whole of the middle ages, by the traditions of the Roman Empire and the conceptions of money to be found in the Pandects. "Qu* aucun puisse ni doive faire doute," says an apt scholar of theirs, Philip of Valois, in a decree of 1346, " que a nous et a notre majeste royale n' appartiennent seulement. . . le IO4 Capitalist Production. suited the mode of explanation in favour during the 18th century. Unable to account for the origin of the puzzling forms assumed by social relations between man and man, peo- ple sought to denude them of their strange appearance by ascribing to them a conventional origin. It has already been remarked above that the equivalent form of a commodity does not imply the determination of the magni- tude of its value. Therefore, although we may be aware that gold is money, and consequently directly exchangeable for all other commodities, yet that fact by no means tells how much 10 Ibs., for instance, of gold is worth. Money, like every other commodity, cannot express the magnitude of its value except relatively in other commodities. This value is determined by the labour-time required for its production, and is expressed by the quantity of any other commodity that costs the same amount of labour-time. 1 Such quantitative determination of its relative value takes place at the source of its production by means of barter. When it steps into circulation as money, its value is already given. In the last decades of the 17th cen- tury it had already been shown that money is a commodity, but this step marks only the infancy of the analysis. The difficulty lies, not in comprehending that money is a commo- dity, but in discovering how, why and by what means a com- modity becomes money. 2 mestier, Ic fait, 1'etat, la provision et toute 1'ordonnance des monnaies, de donner tel cours, et pour tel prix comme il nous plait et bon nous semble." It was a maxim of the Roman Law that the value of money was fixed by decree of the emperor. It was expressly forbidden to treat money as a commodity. " Pecunias vero nulli emere fas erit, nam in usu publico constitutas oportet non esse mercem." Some good work on this question has been done by G. F. Pagnini: "Saggio sopra il giusto pregio delle cose, 1751"; Custodi "Parte Moderna," t. II. In the second part of his work Pagnini directs his polemics especially against the lawyers. 1 " If a man can bring to London an ounce of Silver out of the Earth in Peru, in the same time that he can produce a bushel of Corn, then the one is the natural price of the other; now, if by reason of new or more easie mines a man can procure two ounces of silver as easily as he formerly did one, the corn will be as cheap at ten shillings the bushel as it was before at five shillings, cseteris paribus." William Petty: "A Treatise on Taxes and Contributions." Lond., 1662, p. 32. ' The learned Professor Roscher, after first informing us that " the false defini- tions of money may be divided into two main groups: those which make it more, and those which make it less, than a commodity," gives us a long and very mixed catalogue of works on the nature of money, from which it appears that he has Exchange. 105 We have already seen, from the most elementary expres- sion of value, x commodity A=y commodity B, that the object in which the magnitude of the value of another object is repre- sented, appears to have the equivalent form independently of this relation, as a social property given to it by Nature. We followed up this false appearance to its final establishment, which is complete so soon as the universal equivalent form becomes identified with the bodily form of a particular com- modity, and thus crystallised into the money-form. What appears to happen is, not that gold becomes money, in conse- quence of all other commodities expressing their values in it, but, on the contrary, that all other commodities universally express their values in gold, because it is money. The inter- mediate steps of the process vanish in the result and leave no trace behind. Commodities find their own value already com- pletely represented, without any initiative on their part, in another commodity existing in company with them. These objects, gold and silver, just as they come out of the bowels of the earth, are forthwith the direct incarnation of all human labour. Hence the magic of money. In the form of society now under consideration, the behaviour of men in the social process of production is purely atomic. Hence their relations to each other in production assume a material character inde- pendent of their control and conscious individual action. These facts manifest themselves at first by products as a gen- eral rule taking the form of commodities. We have seen how the progressive development of a society of commodity-pro- ducers stamps one privileged commodity with the character of money. Hence the riddle presented by money is but the riddle not the remotest idea of the real history of the theory; and then he moralises thus: " For the rest, it is not to be denied that most of the later economists do not bear sufficiently in mind the pecxiliarities that distinguish money from other com- modities" (it is then, after all, either more or less than a commodity!) . . . "So far, the semi-mercantilist reaction of Ganilh is not altogether without foundation." (Wilhelm Roscher: " Die Grundlagen der Nationaloekonomie," 3rd Edn., 1858, pp. 277-210) More! less! not sufficiently! so far! not altogether! What clearness and precision of ideas and language! And such eclectic professorial twaddle is mod- estly baptised by Mr. Roscher, " the anatomico-physiological method " of political economy! One discovery however, he must have credit for, namely, that money is "a pleasant commodity." 106 Capitalist Production. presented by commodities ; only it now strikes us in its most glaring form. CHAPTER III. MONEY, OR THE CIRCULATION OF COMMODITIES. SECTION 1. THE MEASURE OF VALUES. THROUGHOUT this work, I assume ; for the sake of simplicity, gold as the money-commodity. The first chief function of money is to supply commodities with the material for the expression of their values, or to re- present their values as magnitudes of the same denomination, qualitatively equal, and quantitatively comparable. It thus serves as a universal measure of value. And only by virtue of this function does gold, the equivalent commodity par excel- lence, become money. It is not money that renders commodities commensurable. Just the contrary. It is because all commodities, as values, are realised human labour, and therefore commensurable, that their values can be measured by one and the same special com- modity, and the latter be converted into the common measure of their values, i.e., into money. Money as a measure of value, is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be as- sumed by that measure of value which is immanent in com- modities, labour-time. 1 The expression of the value of a commodity in gold x 1 The question Why does not money directly represent labour-time, so that a piece of paper may represent, for instance, x hour's labour, is at bottom the same as the question why, given the production of commodities, must products take the form of commodities? This is evident, since their taking the form of commodities implies their differentiation into commodities and money. Or, why cannot pri- vate labour labour for the account of private individuals be treated as its oppo- site, immediate social labour? I have elsewhere examined thoroughly the Utopian idea of "labour-money" in a society founded on the production of commodities (1. c., p. 61, seq.)- On this point I will only say further, that Owen's " labour- money," for instance, is no more "money" than a ticket for the theatre. Owen presupposes directly associated labour, a form of production that is entirely in- consistent with the production of commodities. The certificate of labour is merely evidence of the part taken by the individual in the common labour, and of his right to a certain portion of the common produce destined for consumption. But it never enters into Owen's head to presuppose the production of commodities, and at the same time, .by juggling with money, to try to evade the necessary con- ditions of that production. Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 107 commodity A=y money-commodity is its money-form or price. A single equation, such as 1 ton of iron=2 ounces of gold, now suffices to express the value of the iron in a socially valid manner. There is no longer any need for this equation to figure as a link in the chain of equations that express the values of all other commodities, because the equivalent com- modity, gold, now has the character of money. The general form of relative value has resumed its original shape of simple or isolated relative value. On the other hand, the expanded expression of relative value, the endless series of equations, has now hecome the form peculiar to the relative value of the money-commodity. The series itself, too, is now given, and has social recognition in the prices of actual commodities. We have only to read the quotations of a price-list backwards, to find the magnitude of the yalue of money expressed in all sorts of commodities. But money itself has no price. In order to put it on an equal footing with all other commodities in this respect, we should be obliged to equate it to itself as its own equivalent. The price or money-form of commodities is, like their form of value generally, a form quite distinct from their palpable bodily form ; it is, therefore, a purely ideal or mental form. Although invisible, the value of iron, linen and corn has actual existence in these very articles : it is ideally made perceptible by their equality with gold, a relation that, so to say, exists only in their own heads. Their owner must, therefore, lend them his tongue, or hang a ticket on them, before their prices can be communicated to the outside world. 1 Since the ex- pression of the value of commodities in gold is a merely ideal 1 Savages and half-civilised races use the tong differently. Captain Parry says of the inhabitants on the west coast of Baffin's Bay: " In this case (he refers to barter) they licked it (the thing represented to them) twice to their tongues, after which they seemed to consider the bargain satisfactorily concluded." In the same way, the Eastern Esquimaux licked the articles they received in exchange. If the tongue is thus used in the North as the organ of appropriation, no wonder that, in the South, the stomach serves as the organ of accumulated property, and that a Kaffir estimates the wealth of a man by the size of his belly. That the Kaffirs know what they are about is shown by the following: at the same time that the official British Health Report of 1864 disclosed the deficiency of fat-forming food among a large part of the working class, a certain Dr. Harvey (not, however, the celebrated discoverer of the circulation of the blood), made a good thing by adver- tising recipes for reducing the superfluous fat of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. io8 Capitalist Production. act, we may use for this purpose imaginary or ideal money. Every trader knows, that he is far from having turned his goods into money, when he has expressed their value in a price or in imaginary money, and that it does not require the least bit of real gold, to estimate in that metal millions of pounds' worth of goods. When, therefore, money serves as a measure of value, it is employed only as imaginary or ideal money. This circumstance has given rise to the wildest theories. 1 But, although the money that perform? the functions of a measure of value is only ideal money, price depends entirely upon the actual substance that is money. The value, or in other words, the quantity of human labour contained in a ton of iron, is expressed in imagination by such a quantity of the money- commodity as contains the same amount of labour as the iron. According, therefore, as the measure, of value is gold, silver, or copper, the value of the ton of iron will be expressed by very different prices, or will be represented by very different quan- tities of those metals respectively. If, therefore, two different commodities, such as gold and silver, are simultaneously measures of value, all commodities have two prices one a gold-price, the other a silver-price. These exist quietly side by side, so long as the ratio of the value of silver to that of gold remains unchanged, say, at 15 : 1. Every change in their ratio disturbs the ratio which exists between the gold-prices and the silver-prices of commodities, and thus proves, by facts, that a double standard of value is inconsistent with the functions of a standard. 2 1 See Karl Marx: "Critique, etc., chapter II. B., Theories of the Unit of Meas- ure of Money," p. 91, ff. " Wherever gold and silver have by law been made to perform the function of money or of a measure of value side by side, it has always been tried, but in vain, to treat them as one and the same material. To assume that there is an invariable ratio between the quantities of gold and silver in which a given quantity of labour-time is incorporated, is to assume, in fact, that gold and silver are of one and the same material, and that a given mass of the less valuable metal, silver, is a constant fraction of a given mass of gold. From the reign of Edward III. to the time of George II., the history of money in England consists of one long series of perturbations caused by the clashing of the legally fixed ratio be- tween the values of gold and silver, with the fluctuations in their real values. At one time gold was too high, at another, silver. The metal that for the time being was estimated below its value, was withdrawn from circulation, melted and ex- ported. The ratio between the two metals was then again altered by law, but the new nominal ratio soon came into conflict again with the real one. In our own Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 109 Commodities with definite prices present themselves under the form: a commodity A=x gold; b commodity B z gold; c commodity C=y gold, &c., where a, b, c, represent definite quantities of the commodities A, B, C and x, z, y, definite quantities of gold. The values of these commodities are, therefore, changed in imagination into so many different quan- tities of gold. Hence, in spite of the confusing variety of the commodities themselves, their values become magnitudes of the same denomination, gold-magnitudes. They are now capable of being compared with each other and measured, and the want becomes technically felt of comparing them with some fixed quantity of gold as a unit measure. This unit, by subsequent division into aliquot parts, becomes itself the standard or scale. Before they become money, gold, silver, and copper already possess such standard measures in their standards of weight, so that, for example, a pound weight, while serving as the unit, is, on the one hand, divisible into ounces, and, on the other, may be combined to make up hundredweights. 1 It is owing to this that, in all metallic currencies, the names given to the standards of money or of price were originally taken from the pre-existing names of the standards of weight. As measure of value and as standard of price, money has two times, the slight and transient fall in the value of gold compared with silver, which was a consequence of the Indo-Chinese demand for silver, produced on a far more extended scale in France the same phenomena, export of silver, and its ex- pulsion from circulation by gold. During the years 1855, 1856 and 1857, the excess in France of gold-imports over gold exports amounted to 41,580,000, while the excess of silver-exports over silver-imports was 14,704,000. In fact, in those countries in which both metals are legally measures of value, and therefore both legal tender, so that everyone has the option of paying in either metal, the metal that rises in value is at a premium, and, like every other commodity, measures its price in the over-estimated metal which alone serves in reality as the standard of value. The result of all experience and history with regard to this question is simply that, where two commodities perform by law the functions of a measure of value, in practice one alone maintains that position." (Karl Marx, 1. c. pp. 9091.) 1 The peculiar circumstance, that while the ounce of gold serves in England as the unit of the standard of money, the pound sterling does not form an aliquot part of it, has been explained as follows: " Our coinage was originally adapted to the employment of silver only, hence, an ounce of silver can always be divided into a certain adequate number of pieces of coin; but as gold was introduced at a later period into a coinage adapted only to silver, an ounce of gold cannot be coined into an aliquot number of pieces." Maclaren, "A Sketch of the History of the Currency." London, 1858, p. 16. no Capitalist Production. entirely distinct functions to perform. It is the measure of value inasmuch as it is the socially recognised incarnation of human labour ; it is the standard of price inasmuch as it is a fixed weight of metal. As the measure of value it serves to convert the values of all the manifold commodities into prices, into imaginary quantities of gold ; as the standard of price it measures those quantities of gold. The measure of values measures commodities considered as values; the standard of price measures, on the contrary, quantities of gold by a unit quantity of gold, not the value of one quantity of gold by the weight of another. In order to make gold a standard of price, a certain weight must be fixed upon as the unit In this case, as in all cases of measuring quantities of the same denomina- tion, the establishment of an unvarying unit of measure is all- important. Hence, the less the unit is subject to variation, so much the better does the standard of price fulfill its office. But only in so far as it is itself a product of labour, and, therefore, potentially variable in value, can gold serve as a measure of value. 1 It is, in the first place, quite clear that a change in the value of gold does not, in any way, affect its function as a standard of price. No matter how this value varies, the proportions between the values of different quantities of the metal remain constant. However great the fall in its value, 12 ounces of gold still have 12 times the value of 1 ounce; and in prices, the only thing considered is the relation between different quantities of gold. Since, on the other hand, no rise or fall in the value of an ounce of gold can alter its weight, no alteration can take place in the weight of its aliquot parts. Thus gold always renders the same service as an invariable standard of price, however much its value may vary. In the second place, a change in the value of gold does not interfere with its functions as a measure of value. The change affects all commodities simultaneously, and, therefore, cceterijg paribus, leaves their relative values inter se, unaltered, 1 With English writers the confusion between measure of value and standard of price (standard of value) is indescribable. Their functions, as well as their names, are constantly interchanged. Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. in although those values are now expressed in higher or lower gold-prices. Just as when we estimate the value of any commodity by a definite quantity of the use-value of some other commodity, so in estimating the value of the former in gold, we assume nothing more than that the production of a given quantity of gold costs, at the given period, a given amount of labour. As regards the fluctuations of prices generally, they are subject to the laws of elementary relative value investigated in a former chapter. A general rise in the prices of commodities can result only, either from a rise in their values the value of money remain- ing constant or from a fall in the value of money, the values of commodities remaining constant. On the other hand, a general fall in prices can result only, either from a fall in the values of commodities the value of money remaining con- stant or from a rise in the value of money, the values of commodities remaining constant. It therefore by no means follows, that a rise in the value of money necessarily implies a proportional fall in the prices of commodities ; or that a fall in the value of money implies a proportional rise in prices. Such change, of price holds good only in the case of com- modities whose value remains constant. With those, for ex- ample whose value rises, simultaneously with, and propor- tionally to, that of money, there is no alteration in price. And if their value rise either slower or faster than that of money, the fall or rise in their prices will be determined by the difference between the change in their value and that of money ; and so on. Let us now go back to the consideration of the price-form. By degrees there arises a discrepancy between the current money names of the various weights of the precious metal figuring as money, and the actual weights which those names originally represented. This discrepancy is the result of his- torical causes, among which the chief are: (1) The im- portation of foreign money into an imperfectly developed community. This happened in Rome in its early days, where gold and silver coins circulated at first as foreign commodities. H2 Capitalist Production. The names of these foreign coins never coincide with those of the indigenous weights. (2) As wealth increases, the less precious metal is thrust out by the more precious from its place as a measure of value, copper by silver, silver by gold, however much this order of sequence may be in contradiction with poetical chronology. 1 The word pound, for instance, was the money-name given to an actual pound weight of silver. When gold replaced silver as. a measure of value, the same name was applied according to the ratio between the values of silver and gold, to perhaps l-15th of a pound of gold. The word pound, as a money-name, thus becomes differentiated from the same word as a weight-name. 2 (3) The debasing of money carried on for centuries fry kings and princes to such an extent that, of the original weights of the coins, nothing in fact remained but the names. These historical causes convert the separation of the money- name from the weight-name into an established habit with the community. 3 Since the standard of money is on the one hand purely conventional, and must on the other hand find general acceptance, it is in the end regulated by law. A given weight of one of the precious metals, an ounce of gold, for instance, becomes officially divided into aliquot parts, with legally be- stowed names, such as pound, dollar, &c. These aliquot parts, which henceforth serve as units of money, are then sub- divided into other aliquot parts with legal names, such as shilling, penny, &c. 4 But, both, before and after these divisions are made, a definite weight of metal is the standard of metallic money. The sole alteration consists in the sub- division and denomination. 1 Moreover, it has not general historical validity. * It is thus that the pound sterling in English denotes less than one-third of its original weight; the pound Scot, before the union, only l-36th; the French livre, l-74th; the Spanish maravedi, less than l-1000th; and the Portuguese rei a still smaller fraction. * "Le monete le quali oggi sono ideali sono le piu antiche d'ogni nazione, e tutte furono un tempo reali, e perche erano reali con esse si contava." (Galiani: Delia moneta, 1. c., p. 153.) 4 David Urquhart remarks in his "Familiar Words" on the monstrosity (!) that now-a-days a pound (sterling), which is the unit of the English standard of money, is equal to about a quarter of an ounce of gold. "This is falsify- ing a measure, not establishing a standard." He sees in this " false denomination " of the weight of gold, as in everything else, the falsifying hand of civilisation. Money, vr the Circulation of Commodities. 113 The prices, or quantities of gold, into which the values of commodities are ideally changed, are therefore now expressed vn the names of coins, or in the legally valid names of the sub- divisions of the gold standard. Hence, instead of saying : A quarter of wheat is worth an ounce of gold ; we say, it is worth 3 17s. l(H-d. In this way commodities express by their prices how much they are worth, and money serves as money of account whenever it is a question of fixing the value of an article in its money-form. 1 The name of a thing is something distinct from the qualities of that thing. I know nothing of a man, by knowing that his name is Jacob. In the same way with regard to money, every trace of a value-relation disappears in the names pound, dollar, franc, ducat, &c. The confusion caused by attributing a hidden meaning to these cabalistic signs is all the greater, because these money-names express both the values of commodities, and, at the same time, aliquot parts of the weight of the metal that is the standard of money. 2 On the other hand, it is absolutely necessary that valu'e, in order that it may be distin- guished from the varied bodily forms of commodities, should assume this material and unmeaning, but, at the same time, purely social form. 3 1 When Anacharsis was asked for what purposes the Greeks used money, he re- plied, " For reckoning." (Athen. Deipn. 1. "lv. 49 v. 2. ed Schweighauser, 1802.) ' " Owing to the fact that money, when serving as the standard of price, appears under the same reckoning names as do the prices of commodities, and that therefore the sum of 3 17s. lOJ^d. may signify on the one hand an ounce weight of gold, and on the other, the value of a ton of iron, this reckoning name of money has been called its mint-price. Hence there sprang up the extraordinary notion, that the value of gold is estimated in its own material, and that, in centra-distinc- tion to all other commodities, its price is fixed by the State. It was erroneously thought that the giving of reckoning names to definite weights of gold, is the same thing as fixing the value of those weights." (Karl Marx. 1. c., p. 89.) 3 See "Theories of the Unit of Measure of Money" in "Critique of Political Economy," p. 91, ff. The fantastic notions about raising or lowering the mint- price of money by transferring to greater or smaller weights of gold or silver the names already legally appropriated to fixed weights of those metals; such no- tions, at least in those cases in which they aim, not at clumsy financial operations against creditors, both public and private, but at economical quack remedies have been so exhaustively treated by Wm. Petty in his " Quantulumcunque concerning money: To the Lord Marquis of Halifax, 1682," that even his immediate followers, Sir Dudley North and John Locke, not to mention later ones, could only dilute him. " If the wealth of a nation," he remarks, " could be decupled by a proclama- tion, it were strange that such proclamations have not long since been made by our Governors." (1. c., p. 36.) H 114 Capitalist Production. Price is the money-name of the labour realised in a commo- dity. Hence the expression of the equivalence of a commodity with the sum of money constituting its price, is a tautology, 1 just as in general the expression of the relative value of a commodity is a statement of the equivalence of two commod- ities. But although price, being the exponent of the magni- tude of a' commodity's value, is the exponent of its exchange- ratio with money, it does not follow that the exponent of this exchange-ratio is necessarily the exponent of the magnitude of the commodity's value. Suppose two equal quantities of social- ly necessary labour to be respectively represented by 1 quarter of wheat and 2 (nearly f oz. of gold), 2 is the expression in money of the magnitude of the value of the quarter of wheat, or is its price. If now circumstances allow of this price being raised to 3, or compel it to be reduced to 1, then although 1 and 3 may be too small or too great properly to express the magnitude of the wheat's value, nevertheless they are its prices, for they are, in the first place, the form under which its value appears, i.e., money; and in the second place, the ex- ponents of its exchange-ratio with money. If the conditions of production, in other words, if the productive power of labour remain constant, the same amount of social labour-time must, both before and after the change in price, be expended in the reproduction of a quarter of wheat. This circumstance de- pends, neither on the will of the wheat producer, nor on that of the owners of other commodities. Magnitude of value expresses a relation of social production, it expresses the connection that necessarily exists between a certain article and the portion of the total labour-time of society required to produce it. As soon as magnitude of value is con- verted into price, the above necessary relation takes the shape of a more or less accidental exchange-ratio between a single commodity and another, the money-commodity. But this ex- change-ratio may express either the real magnitude of that commodity's value, or the quantity of gold deviating from that value, for which, according to circumstances, it may be parted 1 " Ou bien, il faut consentir a dire qu'une valeur d'un million en argent vaut plus qu'une valeur egale en marchandises." (Le Trosne 1. c. p. 919), which amounts to saying, "qu'une valeur vaut plus qu'une valeur egale." Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 115 with. The possibility, therefore, of quantitative incongruity between price and magnitude of value, or the deviation of the former from the latter, is inherent in the price-form itself. This is no defect, but, on the contrary, admirably adapts the price-form to a mode of production whose inherent laws impose themselves only as the mean of apparently lawless irregulari- ties that compensate one another. The price-form, however, is not only compatible with the possibility of a quantitative incongruity between magnitude of value and price, i.e., between the former and its expression in money, but it may also conceal a qualitative inconsistency, so much so, that, although money is nothing but the value-form of commodities, price ceases altogether to express value. Objects that in themselves are no commodities, such as conscience, honour, &c., are capable of being offered for sale by their hold- ers, and of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of com- modities. Hence an object may have a price without having value. The price in that case is imaginary, like certain quan- tities in mathematics. On the other hand, the imaginary price- form may sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect real value-relation ; for instance, the price of uncultivated land, which is without value, because no human labour has been in- corporated in it. Price, like relative value in general, expresses the value of a commodity (e.g., a ton of iron), by stating that a given quan- tity of the equivalent (e.g., an ounce of gold), is directly ex- changeable for iron. But it by no means states the converse, that iron is directly exchangeable for gold. In order, there- fore, that a commodity may in practice act effectively as ex- change value, it must quit its bodily shape, must transform it- self from mere imaginary into real gold, although to the com- modity such transubstantiation may be more difficult than to the Hegelian "concept," the transition from "necessity" to "freedom," or to a lobster the casting of his shell, or to Saint Jerome the putting off of the old Adam. 1 Though a commod- 1 Jerome had to wrestle hard, not only in his youth with the bodily flesh, as is shown by his fight in the desert with the handsome women of his imagination, but also in his old age with the spiritual flesh. " I thought," he says, " I was in the spirit before the Judge of the Universe." "Who art thou?" asked a voice. "I am n6 Capitalist Production. ity may, side by side with its actual form (iron, for in- stance), take in our imagination the form of gold, yet it cannot at one and the same time actually be both iron and gold. To fix its' price, it suffices to equate it to gold in imagination. But to enable it to render to its owner the service of a universal equivalent, it must be actually replaced by gold. If the owner of the iron were to go to the owner of some other commodity offered for exchange, and were to refer him to the price of the iron as proof that it was already money, he would get the same answer as St. Peter gave in heaven to Dante, when the latter recited the creed "Assai bene 6 trascorsa D'esta moneta gift, la lega e'l peso, Ma dimmi se tu 1'hai nella tua borsa." A price therefore implies both that a commodity is exchange- able for money, and also that it must be so exchanged. On the other hand, gold serves as an ideal measure of value, only because it has already, in the process of exchange, established itself as the money-commodity. Under the ideal measure of values there lurks the hard cash. SECTION 2. THE MEDIUM OF CIRCULATION. a. The Metamorphosis of Commodities. We saw in a former chapter that the exchange of commodi- ties implies contradictory and mutually exclusive conditions. The differentiation of commodities into commodities and money does not sweep away these inconsistencies, but develops a modus Vivendi, a form in which they can exist side by side. This is generally the way in which real contradictions are reconciled. For instance, it is a contradiction to depict one body as constantly falling towards another, and as, at the same time, constantly flying away from it. The ellipse is a form of motion which, while allowing this contradiction to go on, at the same time reconciles it. In so far as exchange is a process, by which commodities are transferred from hands in which they are non-use-values, to a Christian." "Thou liest," thundered back the great Judge, "thou art nought but a Ciceronian." Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 117 hands in which they become use-values, it is a social circula- tion of matter. The product of one form of useful labour replaces that of another. When once a commodity has found a resting-place, where it can serve as a use-value, it falls out of the sphere of exchange into that of consumption. But the former sphere alone interests us at present. We have, there- fore, now to consider exchange from a formal point of view ; to investigate the change of form or metamorphosis of commodi- ties which effectuates the social circulation of matter. The comprehension of this change of form is, as a rule, very imperfect. The cause of this imperfection is, apart from indis- tinct notions of value itself, that every change of form in a commodity results from the exchange of two commodities, an ordinary one and the money-commodity. If we keep in view the material fact alone that a commodity has been exchanged for gold we overlook the very thing that we ought to observe namely, what has happened to the form of the commodity. We overlook the facts that gold, when a mere commodity, is not money, and that when other commodities express their prices in gold, this gold is but the money-form of those commodities themselves. Commodities, first of all, enter into the process of exchange just as they are. The process then differentiates them into commodities and money, and thus produces an external oppo- sition corresponding to the internal opposition inherent in them, as being at once use-values and values. Commodities as use-values now stand opposed to money as exchange value. On the other hand, both opposing sides are commodities, unities of use-value and value. But this unity of differences manifests itself at two opposite poles, and at each pole in an opposite way. Being poles they are as necessarily opposite as they are connected. On the one side of the equation we have an ordinary commodity, which is in reality a use-value. Its value is expressed only ideally in its price, by which it is equated to its opponent, the gold, as to the real embodiment of its value. On the other hand, the gold, in its metallic reality ranks as the embodiment of value, as money. Gold, as gold, is exchange value itself. As to its use-value, that has only an ideal existence, represented by the series of expres- n8 Capitalist Production. sions of relative value in which it stands face to face with all other commodities, the sum of whose uses makes up the sum of the various uses of gold. These antagonistic forms of com- modities are the real forms in which the process of their exchange moves and takes place. Let us now accompany the owner of some commodity say, our old friend the weaver of linen to the scene of action, the market. His 20 yards of linen has a definite price, 2. He exchanges it for the 2, and then, like a man of the good old stamp that he is ; he parts with the 2 for a family Bible of the same price. The linen, which in his eyes is a mere commodity, a depository of value, he alienates in exchange for gold, which is the linen's value-form, and this form he again parts with for another commodity, the Bible, which is destined to enter his house as an object of utility and of edification to its inmates. The exchange becomes an accomplished fact by two metamor- phoses of opposite yet supplementary character the conversion of the commodity into money, and the 're-conversion of the money into a commodity. 1 The two phases of this metamor- phosis are both of them distinct transactions of the weaver selling, or the exchange of the commodity for money ; buying, or the exchange of the money for a commodity ; and, the unity of the two acts, selling in order to buy. The result of the whole transaction, as regards the weaver, is this, that instead of being in possession of the linen, he now has the Bible; instead of his original commodity, he now possesses another of the same value but of different utility. In like manner he procures his other means of subsistence and means of production. From his point of view, the whole pro- cess effectuates nothing more than the exchange of the product of his labour for the product of some one else's, nothing more than an exchange of products. The exchange of commodities is therefore accompanied by the following changes in their form. 1<( ix Si TOV TTupds &vTo.fjxlpet)al!rthe commodities circulating simultaneously side by side. Btfrt oaifcte in circulation, coins are, so to say, made responsible^fp^rlaame another. If the one increase its velocity, the otfyesifeiMraa* 1 " Ce sont les productions qui le (1'argent) mettent en mouvenSerifleBTlif JfbHt circular ... La celerite de son mouvement (sc. de 1'argent) sup^l^^a $fJ n V^- Lorsqu'il en est besoin, il ne fait que glisser d'une main dans 1'autre sans s arreter un instant." (Le Trosne 1. c. pp. 915, 916.) . grtbd x 3n M ' 136 Capitalist Production. retards its own, or altogether falls out of circulation ; for the circulation can absorb only such a^ quantity of gold as when multiplied by the mean number of moves made by one single coin or element, is equal to the sum of the prices to be real- ised. Hence if the number of moves made by the separate pieces increase, the total number of those pieces in circulation diminishes. If the number of the moves diminish, the total number of pieces increases. Since the quantity of money cap- able of being absorbed by the circulation is given for a given mean velocity of currency, all that is necessary in order to ab- stract a given number of sovereigns from the circulation is to throw the same number of one-pound notes into it, a trick well known to all bankers. Just as the currency of money, generally considered, is but a reflex of the circulation of commodities, or of the antithetical metamorphoses they undergo, so, too, the velocity of that cur- rency reflects the rapidity with which commodities change their forms, the continued interlacing of one series of meta- morphoses with- another, the hurried social interchange of matter, the rapid disappearance of commodities from the sphere of circulation, and the equally rapid substitution of fresh ones in their places. Hence, in the velocity of the cur- rency we have the fluent unity of the antithetical and com- plementary phases, the unity of the conversion of the useful aspect of commodities into their value-aspect, and their re-con- version from the latter aspect to the former, or the unity of the two processes of sale and purchase. On the other hand, the retardation of the currency reflects the separation of these two processes into- isolated antithetical phases, reflects the stagna- tion in the change of form, and therefore, in the social inter- change of matter. The circulation itself, of course, gives no clue to the origin of this stagnation ; it merely puts in evidence the phenomenon itself. ^The general public, who, simultane- ously, with the retardation of the currency, see money appear and disappear less frequently at the periphery of circulation, naturally attribute this retardation to a quantitive deficiency in the circulating medium. 1 . 1 Money being . . . the common measure of buying and selling, every body who Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 137 The total quantity of money functioning during a given period as the circulating medium, is determined, on the one hand, by the sum of the prices of the circulating commodities, and on the other hand, by the rapidity with which the anti- thetical phases of the metamorphoses follow one another. On this rapidity depends what proportion of the sum of the prices can, on the average, be realised by each single coin. But the sum of the prices of the circulating commodities depends on the quantity, as well as on the prices, of the commodities. These three factors, however, state of prices, quantity of circu- lating commodities, and velocity of money-currency, are all variable. Hence, the sum of the prices to be realised, and consequently the quantity of the circulating medium depend- ing on that sum, will vary with the numerous variations of these three factors in combination. Of these variations we shall consider those alone that have been the most important in the history of prices. While prices remain constant, the quantity of the circulat- ing medium may increase owing to the number of circulating commodities increasing, or to the velocity of currency decreas- ing, or to a combination of the two. On the other hand the hath anything to sell, and cannot procure chapmen for it, is presently apt to think, that want of money in the kingdom, or country, is the cause why his goods do not go off; and so, want of money is the common cry; which is a great mistake. . . What do these people want, who cry out for money? . . . The farmer complains ... he thinks that were more money in the country, he should have a price for his goods. Then it seems money is not his want, hut a price for his corn and cattel, which he would sell, but cannot. . . Why cannot he get a price? . . . (1) Either there is too much corn and cattel in the country, so that most who come to market have need of selling, as he hath, and few of buying; or (2) There wants the usual vent abroad by transportation. . . ; or (3) The consumption fails, as when men, by reason of poverty, do not spend so much in their houses as formerly they did; wherefore it is not the increase of specific money, which would at all advance the farmer's goods, but the removal of any of these three causes, which do truly keep down the market. . . . The merchant and shopkeeper want money in the same manner, that is, they want a vent for the goods they deal in, by reason that the markets fail "... [A nation] " never thrives better, than when riches are tost from hand to hand." (Sir Dudley North: " Discourses upon Trade," Lond. 1691, pp. 11-15, passim.) Herrenschwand's fanciful notions amount merely to this, that the antagonism, which has its origin in the nature of commodities, and is repro- duced in their circulation, can be removed by increasing the circulating medium. But if, on the one hand, k is a popular delusion to ascribe stagnation in production and circulation to insufficiency of the circulating medium, it by no means follows, on the other hand, that an actual paucity of the medium in consequence, e.g., of bungling legislative interference with the regulation of currency, may not give rise to such stagnation. 138 Capitalist Prediction. quantity of the circulating medium may decrease with a decreasing number of commodities, or -with an increasing rapidity of their circulation. With a general rise in the prices of commodities, the quan- tity of the circulating medium will remain constant, provided the number of commodities in the circulation decrease propor- tionally to the increase in their prices, or provided the velocity of currency increase at the same rate as prices rise, the number of commodities in circulation remaining constant. The quan- tity of the circulating medium may decrease, owing to the num- ber of commodities decreasing more rapidly; or to the veloc- ity of currency increasing more rapidly, than prices rise. With a general fall in the prices of commodities, the quantity of the circulating medium will remain constant, provided the number of commodities increase proportionately to their fall in price, or provided the velocity of currency decrease in the same proportion. The quantity of the circulating medium will increase, provided the number of commodities increase quicker, or the rapidity of circulation decrease quicker, than the prices fall. The variations of the different factors may mutually compen- sate each other, so that notwithstanding their continued in- stability, the sum of the prices to be realised and the quantity of money in circulation remains constant; consequently, we find, especially if we take long periods into consideration, that the deviations from the average level, of the quantity of money current in any country, are much smaller than we should at first sight expect, apart of course from excessive perturbations periodically arising from industrial and commercial crises, or, less frequently, from fluctuations in the value of money. The law, that the quantity of the circulating medium is determined by the sum of the prices of the commodities circulating, and the average velocity of currency 1 may also be " There is a certain measure and proportion of money requisite to drive the trade of a nation, more or less than which would prejudice the same. Just as there is a certain proportion of farthings necessary in a small retail trade, to change sil- ver money, and to even such reckonings as cannot be adjusted with the smallest silver pieces. . . . Now, as the proportion of the number of farthings requisite in commerce is to be taken from the number of people, the frequency of their Money,, or the Circulation of Commodities. 139 stated as follows : given the sum of the values of commodities, and the average rapidity of their metamorphoses, the quantity of precious metal current as money depends on the value of that precious metal. The erroneous opinion that it is, on the contrary, prices that are determined by the quantity of the circulating medium,, and that the latter depends, on the quantity of the precious metals in a country; 1 this opinion was based by those who first beheld it, on the absurd hypothesis that commodities are without a price, and money without a value, when they first enter into circulation, and that, once in the circulation, an aliquot part of the medley of commodities is exchanged for an aliquot part of the heap of precious metals. 2 exchanges: as also, and principally, from the value of the smallest silver pieces of money; so in like manner, the proportion of money [gold and silver specie] requis- ite in our trade, is to be likewise taken from the frequency of commutations, and from the bigness of the payments." (William Petty. " A Treatise on Taxes and Contributions." Lond. 1662, p. 17.) The Theory of Hume was defended against the attacks of J. Steuart and others, by A. Young, in his "' Political Arithmetic," Lond. 1774, in which work there is a special chapter entitled " Prices depend on quantity of money," at p. 112, sqq. I have stated in " Critique, &c.," p. 232: " He (Adam Smith) passes over without remark the question as to the quantity of coin in circulation, and treats money quite wrongly as a mere commodity." This statement applies only in so far as Adam Smith, ex officio, treats of money. Now and then, however, as in his criticism of the earlier systems of political economy, he takes the right view. " The quantity of coin in every country is regulated by the value of the commodities which are to be circulated by it. ... The value of the goods annually bought and sold in any country requires a certain quantity of money to circulate and distribute them to their proper consumers, and can give employment to no more. The channel of circulation necessarily draws to itself a sum sufficient to fill it, and never admits any more." (" Wealth of Na- tions." Bk. IV., ch. I.) In like manner, ex officio, he opens his work with an apotheosis on the division of labour. Afterwards, in the last book which treats of the sources of public revenue, he occasionally repeats the denunciations of the division of labour made by his teacher, A. Ferguson. L "The prices of things will certainly rise in every nation, as the gold and silver increase amongst the people; and consequently, where the gold and silver de- crease in any nation, the prices of all things must fall proportionably to such decrease of money." (Jacob Vanderlint: "Money answers all Things." Lond. 1734, p. 5.) A careful comparison of this book with Hume's "Essays," proves to my mind without doubt that Hume was acquainted with and made use of Van- derlint's work, which is certainly an important one. The opinion that prices are determined by the quantity of the circulating medium, was also held by Barbon and other much' earlier writers. " No inconvenience," says Vanderlint, " can arise by an unrestrained trade, but very great advantage; since, if the cash of the na- tion be decreased by it, which prohibitions are designed to prevent, those nations that get the cash will certainly find everything advance in price, as the cash in- creases amongst them. And . . . our manufactures, and everything else, will soon become so moderate as to turn the balance of trade in our favour, and thereby fetch the money back again." (1. c., pp. 43, 44.) 2 .That the price of each single kind of commodity forms part of the sum of the 140 Capitalist Production. c. Coin and symbols of value. That money takes the shape of coin, springs from its function as the circulating medium. The weight of gold represented in imagination by the prices or money-names of commodities, must confront those commodities, within the circulation, in the shape of coins or pieces of gold of a given denomination. Coining, like the establishment of a standard of prices, is the business of the State. The different national uniforms worn at home by gold and silver as coins, and doffed again in the market of the world, indicate the separation between the internal or national spheres of the circulation of commodities, and their universal sphere. The only difference, therefore, between coin and bullion, is one of shape, and gold can at any time pass from one form to prices of all the commodities in circulation, is a self-evident proposition. But how use-values, which are incommensurable with regard to each other, are to be ex- changed, en masse, for the total sum of gold and silver in a country, is quite incomprehensible. If we start from the notion that all commodities together form one single commodity, of which each is but an aliquot part, we get the following beautiful result: The total commodity = x cwt. of gold; commodity A = an aliquot part of the total commodity = the same aliquot part of x cwt. of gold. This is stated in all seriousness by Montesquieu: " Si Ton compare la masse de 1'or et de 1'argent qui est dans le monde avec la somme des marchandises qui y sont, il est certain que chaque denree ou marchandise, en particulier, pourra etre comparee a une certaine portion de le masse entiere. Supposons qu'il n'y ait qu'une seule denree ou marchandise dans le monde, ou qu'il n'y ait qu'une seule qui s'achete, et qu'elle se divise comme 1'argent: Cette partie de cette marchandise repondra a une partie de la masse de 1'argent; la moitie du total de 1'une a la inoitie du total dc 1'autre, &c. . . . 1'etablissement du prix des choses depend toujours fondamentalement de la raison du total des choses au total des signes." (Montes- quieu 1. c. t III., pp. 122, 13.) As to the further development of this theory by Ricardo and his disciples, James Mill, Lord Overstone, and others, see "Critique of Political Economy," pp. 235, ff. John Stuart Mill, with his usual eclectic logic, understands how to hold at the same time the view of his father, James Mill, and the opposite view. On a comparison of the text of his compen- dium, "Principles of Pol. Econ.," with his preface to the first edition, in which preface he announces himself as the Adam Smith of his day we do not know whether to admire more the simplicity of the man, or that of the public, who took him, in good faith, for the Adam Smith he announced himself to be, although he bears about as much resemblance to Adam Smith as say General Williams, of Kars, to the Duke of Wellington. The original researches of Mr. J. S. Mill, which are neither extensive nor profound, in the domain of political economy, will be found mustered in rank and file in his little work, " Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy," which appeared in 1844. Locke asserts point blank the con- nexion between the absence of value in gold and silver, and the determination of their values by quantity alone, "Mankind having consented to put an imaginary value upon gold and silver ... the intrinsik value, regarded in these metals, is nothing but the quantity." ("Some considerations," &c., 1691, Works Ed. 1777, vol. II., p. 15.) Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 141 the other. 1 But no sooner does coin leave the mint, than it immediately finds itself on the high-road to the melting pot. During their currency, coins wear away, some more, others less. ]STame and substance, nominal weight and real weight, begin their process of separation. Coins of the same denom- ination become different in value, because they are different in weight. The weight of gold fixed upon as the standard of prices, deviates from the weight that serves as the circulating medium, and the latter thereby ceases any longer to be a real equivalent of the commodities whose prices it realises. The history of coinage during the middle ages and down into the 18th century, records the ever renewed confusion arising from this cause. The natural tendency of circulation to convert coins into a mere semblance of what they profess to be, into a symbol of the weight of metal they are officially supposed to contain, is recognised by modern legislation, which fixes the loss of weight sufficient to demonetise a gold coin, or to make it no longer legal tender. The fact that the currency of coins itself effects a separation between their nominal and their real weight, creating a dis- tinction between them as mere pieces of metal on the one hand, and as coins with a definite function on the other this fact implies the latent possibility of replacing metallic coins by tokens of some other material, by symbols serving the same purposes as coins. The practical difficulties in the way of coining extremely minute quantities of gold or silver, and the circumstance that at first the less precious metal is used as a measure of value instead of the more precious, copper instead 1 It lies, of course, entirely beyond my purpose to take into consideration such details as the seigniorage on minting. I will, however, cite for the benefit of the romantic sycophant, Adam Miiller, who admires the " generous liberality " with which the English Government coins gratuitously, the following opinion of Sir Dudley North: " Silver and gold, like other commodities, have their ebbings and flowings. Upon the arrival of quantities from Spain . . . it is carried into the Tower, and coined. Not long after there will come a demand for bullion to be exported again. If there is none, but all happens to be in coin, what then? Melt it down again; there's no loss in it, for the coining costs the owner nothing. Thus the nation has been abused, and made to pay for the twisting of straw for asses to eat. If the merchant were made to pay the price of the coinage, he would not have sent his silver to the Tower without consideration; and coined money would always keep a value above uncoined silver." (North, 1. c., p. 18.) North \vas himself one of the foremost merchants in the reign of Charles II. Capitalist Production. of silver, silver instead of gold, and that the less precious circulates as money until dethroned by the more precious all these facts explain the parts historically played by silver and copper tokens as substitutes for gold coins. Silver and copper tokens take the place of gold in those regions of the circulation where coins pass from hand to hand most rapidly, and are sub- ject to the maximum amount of wear and tear. This occurs where sales and purchases on a very small scale are continually happening. In order to prevent these satellites from establish- ing themselves permanently in the place of gold, positive enactments determine the extent to which they must be com- pulsorily received as payment instead of gold. The particular tracks pursued by the different species of coin in currency, run naturally into each other. The tokens keep company with gold, to pay fractional parts of the smallest gold coin ; gold is, on the one hand, constantly pouring into retail circulation, and on the other hand is as constantly being thrown out again by being changed into tokens. 1 The weight of metal in the silver and copper tokens is arbitrarily fixed by law. When in currency, they wear away even more rapidly than gold coins. Hence their functions are totally independent of their weight, and consequently of all value. The function of gold as coin becomes completely inde- pendent of the metallic value of that gold. Therefore things that are relatively without value, such as paper notes, can serve as coins in its place. This purely symbolic character is to a certain extent masked in metal tokens. In paper money it stands out plainly. In fact, ce n'est oue le premier pas qui coute. We allude here only to inconvertible paper money issued by 1 If silver never exceed what is wanted for the smaller payments, it cannot be collected in sufficient quantities for the larger payments . . . the use ot gold in the main payments necessarily implies also its use in the retail trade: those who have gold coin offering them for small purchases, and receiving with the com- modity purchased a balance of silver in return; by which means the surplus of silver that would otherwise encumber the retail dealer, is drawn off and dis- persed into general circulation. But if there is as much silver as will transact the small payments independent of gold, the retail trader must then receive silver for small purchases; and it must yf necessity accumulate in his hands." (David Buchanan. " Inquiry into the Taxation and Commercial Policy of Great Britain.* Edinburgh, 1844, pp. 248, 249.) Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 143 the State and having compulsory circulation. It has its immediate origin in the metallic currency. Money based upon credit implies on the other hand conditions, which from our standpoint of the simple circulation of commodities, are as yet totally unknown to us. But we may affirm this much, that just as true paper money takes its rise in the function of money as the circulating medium, so money based upon credit takes root spontaneously in the function of money as the means of payment. * The State puts in circulation bits of paper on which their various denominations, say 1, 5, &c., are printed. In so far as they actually take the place of gold to the same amount, their movement is subject to the laws that regulate the currency of money itself. A law peculiar to the circulation of paper money can spring up only from the proportion in which that paper money represents gold. Such a law exists; stated simply, it is as follows: the issue of paper money must not exceed in amount the gold (or silver as the case may be) which would actually circulate if not replaced by symbols. Now the quantity of gold which the circulation can absorb, constantly fluctuates about a given level. Still, the mass of the circulat- ing medium in a given country never sinks below a certain minimum easily ascertained by actual experience. The fact that this minimum mass continually undergoes changes in its constituent parts, or that the pieces of gold of which it consists are being constantly replaced by fresh ones, causes of course no change either in its amount or in the continuity of its circula- 1 The mandarin Wan-mao-in, the Chinese Chancellor of the Exchequer, took it into his head one day to lay before the Son of Heaven a proposal that secretly aimed at converting the assignats of the empire into convertible bank notes. The assignats Committee, in its report of April, 1854, gives him a severe snub- bing. Whether he also received the traditional drubbing with bamboos is not stated. The concluding part of the report is as follows: "The Committee has carefully examined his proposal and finds that it is entirely in favour of the merchants, and that no advantage will result to the crown." (Arbeiten der Kaiserlich Russischen Gesandtschaft zu Peking iiber China. Aus dem Russischen von Dr. K. Abel und F. A. Mecklenburg. Erster Band. Berlin, 1858, pp. 47, 59.) In his evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords on the Bank Acts, a governor of the Bank of England says with regard to the abrasion of gold coins dur- ing currency: "Every year a fresh class of sovereigns becomes too light. The class which one year passes with full weight, loses enough by wear and tear to draw the scales .next year against it." (House of Lords' Committee, 1848, n. 429.) 144 Capitalist Production. tion. It can therefore be replaced by paper symbols. If, on the other hand, all the conduits of circulation were to-day filled with paper money to the full extent of their capacity for absorbing money, they might to-morrow be overflowing in consequence of a fluctuation in the circulation of commodities. There would no longer be any standard. If the paper money exceed its proper limit, which is the amount of gold coins of the like denomination that can actually be current, it would, apart from the danger of falling into general disrepute, re- present only that quantity of gold, which, in accordance with the laws of the circulation of commodities, is required, and is alone capable of being represented by paper. If the quantity of paper money issued be double what it ought to be, then, as a matter of fact, 1 would be the money-name not of of an ounce, but of of an ounce of gold. The effect would be the same as if an alteration had taken place in the function of gold as a standard of prices. Those values that were previously expressed by the price of 1 would now be expressed by the price of 2. Paper-money is a token representing gold or money. The relation between it and the values of commodities is this, that the latter are ideally expressed in the same quantities of gold that are symbolically represented by the paper. Only in so far as paper-money represents gold, which like all other com- modities has value, is it a symbol of value. 1 Finally, some one may ask why gold is capable of being replaced by tokens that have no value ? But, as we have already seen, it is capable of being so replaced Only in so far as it functions exclusively as coin, or as the circulating 1 The following passage from Fullarton shows the want of clearness on the part of even the best writers on money, in their comprehension of its various func- tions: "That, as far as concerns our domestic exchanges, all the monetary func- tions which are usually performed by gold and silver coins, may be performed as effectually by a circulation of inconvertible notes, having no value but that factitious and conventional value they derive from the law, is a fact which admits, I conceive, of no denial. Value of this description may be made to answer all the purposes of intrinsic value, and supersede even the necessity for a standard, pro- vided only the quantity of issues be kept under due limitation." (Fullarton: "Regulation of Currencies," London, p. 210.) Because the commodity that serves as money is capable of being replaced in circulation by mere symbols of value, therefore its functions as a measure of value and a standard of prices are declared to be superfluous. Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 145 medium, and as nothing else. Now, money has other functions besides this one, and the isolated function of serving as the mere circulating medium is not necessarily the only one attached to gold coin, although this is the case with those abraded coins that continue to circulate. Each piece of money is a mere coin, or means of circulation, only so long as it ac- tually circulates. But this is just the case with that minimum mass of gold, which is capable of being replaced by paper- money. That mass remains constantly within the sphere of circulation, continually functions as a circulating medium, and exists exclusively for that purpose. Its movement therefore represents nothing but the continued alteration of the inverse phases of the metamorphosis C M C, phases in which com- modities confront their value-forms, only to disappear again immediately. The independent existence of the exchange value of a commodity is here a transient apparition, by means of which the commodity is immediately replaced by another commodity. Hence, in this process which continually makes money pass from hand to hand, the mere symbolical existence of money suffices. Its functional existence absorbs, so to say, its material existence. Being a transient and objective reflex of the prices of commodities, it serves only as a symbol of itself, and is therefore capable of being replaced by a token. 1 One thing is, however, requisite ; this token must have an objective social validity of its own, and this the paper symbol acquires by its forced currency. This compulsory action of the State can take effect only within that inner sphere of circula- tion which is co-terminous with the territories of the com- munity, but it is also only within that sphere that money completely responds to its function of being the circulating- medium, or becomes coin. 1 From the fact that gold and silver, so far as they are coins, or exclusively serve as the medium of circulation, become mere tokens of themselves, Nicholas Barbon deduces the right of Governments " to raise money," that is, to give to the weight of silver that is called a shilling the name of a greater weight, such as a crown; and so to pay creditors shillings, instead of crowns. "Money does wear and grow lighter by often telling over ... It is the denomination and cur- rency of the money that men regard in bargaining, and not the quantity of silver . . . "Tis the public authority upon the metal that makes it, money." (N. Barbon, 1. c., pp. 29, 30, 25.) J 146. Capitalist Production. SECTION 3. MONEY. The commodity that functions as a measure of value, and, either in its own person or by a representative, as the medium of circulation, is money. Gold (or silver) is therefore money. It functions as money, on the one hand, when it has to be present in its own golden person. It is then the money-com- modity, neither merely ideal, as in its function of a measure of value, nor capable of being represented, as in its function of circulating medium. On the other hand, it also functions as money, when by virtue of its function, whether that function be performed in person or by representative, it congeals into the sole form of value, the only adequate form of existence of exchange-value, in opposition to use-value, represented by all other commodities. a. Hoarding. The continual movement in circuits of the two antithetical metamorphoses of commodities, or the never ceasing alternation of sale and purchase, is reflected in the restless currency of money, or in the function that money performs of a perpetuum mobile of circulation. But so soon as the series of metamor- phoses is interrupted, so soon as sales are not supplemented by subsequent purchases, money ceases to be mobilised ; it is trans- formed, as Boisguillebert says, from "meuble" into "im- meuble," from movable into immovable, from coin into money. With the very earliest development of the circulation of commodities, there is also developed the necessity, and the passionate desire, to hold fast the product of the first metamor- phosis. This product is the transformed shape of the com- modity, or its gold-chrysalis. 1 Commodities are thus sold not for the purpose of buying others, but in order to replace their commodity-form by their money-form. From being the mere means of effecting the circulation of commodities, this change of form becomes the end and aim. The changed form of the commodity is thus prevented from functioning as its uncondi- 1 "Unc richesse en argent n'est que . . . richesse en productions, converties en argent." (Mercier de la Riviere, L c.) "Une valeur en productions n'a fait que changer de forme." (Id., p. 486.) Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 147 tionally alienable form^ or as its merely transient money-form. The money becomes petrified into a hoard, and the seller becomes a hoarder of money. In the early stages of the circulation of commodities, it is the surplus use-values alone that are converted into money. Gold and silver thus become of themselves social expressions for superfluity or wealth. This nai've form of hoarding be- comes perpetuated in those communities in which the tra- ditional mode of production is carried on for the supply of a fixed and limited circle of home wants. It is thus with the people of Asia, and particularly of the East Indies. Vander- lint, who fancies that the prices of commodities in a country are determined by the quantity of gold and silver to be found in it, asks himself why Indian commodities are so cheap. An- swer : Because the Hindoos bury their money. From 1602 to 1734, he remarks, they buried 150 millions of pounds sterling of silver, which originally came from America to Europe. 1 In the 10 years from 1856 to 1866, England exported to India and China 120,000,000 in silver, which had been received in exchange for Australian gold. Most of the silver exported to China makes its way to India. As the production of commodities further develops, every producer of commodities is compelled to make sure of the nexus rerum of the social pledge. 2 His wants are constantly making themselves felt, and necessitate the continual purchase of other people's commodities, while the production and sale of his own goods require time, and depend upon circumstances. In order then to be able to buy without selling, he must have sold previously without buying. This operation, conducted on a general scale, appears to imply a contradiction. But the precious metals at the sources of their production are directly exchanged for other commodities. And here we have sales (by the owners of commodities) without purchases (by the owners of gold or silver.) 3 And subsequent sales, by other " 'Tis by this practice they keep all their goods and manufactures at such low rates." (Vanderlint, 1. c., p. 96.) 2 Money ... is a pledge." (John Sellers: "Essays about the Poor, Manufac- turers, Trade, Plantations, and Immorality," Lond., 3699, p. 13.) 8 A purchase, in a " categorical " sense, implies that gold and silver are already the converted form of commodities, or the product of a sale. Capitalist Production. producers, unfollowed by purchases, merely bring about the distribution of the newly produced precious metals among all the owners of commodities. In this way, all along the line of exchange, hoards of gold and silver of varied extent are ac- cumulated. With the possibility of holding and storing up exchange value in the shape of a particular commodity, arises also the greed for gold. Along with the extension of circula- tion, increases the power of money, that absolutely social form of wealth ever ready for use. "Gold is a wonderful thing! Whoever possesses it is lord of all he wants. By means of gold one can even get souls into Paradise." (Columbus in his letter from Jamaica, 1503.) Since gold does not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and buyable. The circulation becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown, to come out again as a gold- crystal. Not even are the bones of saints, and still less are more delicate res sacrosanctae extra commercium hominum able to withstand this alchemy. 1 Just as every qualitative difference between commodities is extinguished in money, so money, on its side, like the radical leveller that it is, does away with all distinctions. 2 But money itself is a commodity, 1 Henry III., most Christian king of France, robbed cloisters of their relics, and turned them into money. It is well known what part the despoiling of the Delphic Temple, by the Phocians, played in the history of Greece. Temples with the ancients served as the dwellings of the gods of commodities. They were " sacred banks." With the Phoenicians, a trading people par excellence, money was the transmuted shape of everything. It was, therefore, quite in order that the virgins, who, at the feast of the Goddess of Love, gave themselves up to strangers, should offer to the goddess the piece of money they received. * "Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold ! Thus much of this, will make black white; foul, fair; Wrong right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant. . . . What this, you gods? Why, this Will lug your priests and servants from your sides; Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads; This yellow slave Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs'd; Make the hoar leprosy ador'd; place thieves, And give them title, knee and approbation, With senators on the bench; this is it, That makes the wappen'd widow wed again: ..... Come damned earth, Thou common whore of mankind." (Shakespeare: Timon of Athens.) Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 149 an external object, capable of becoming the private property of any individual. Thus social power becomes the private power of private persons. The ancients therefore denounced money as subversive of the economical and moral order of things. 1 Modern society, which soon after its birth, pulled Plutus by the hair of his head from the bowels of the earth, 2 greets gold as its Holy Grail, as the glittering incarnation of the very principle of its own life. A commodity, in its capacity of a use-value, satisfies a particular want, and is a particular element, of material wealth. But the value of a commodity measures the degree of its attraction for all other elements of material wealth, and there- fore measures the social wealth of its owner. To a barbarian owner of commodities, and even to a West-European peasant, value is the same as value-form, and therefore, to him the increase in his hoard of gold and silver is an increase in value. It is true that the value of money varies, at one time in con- sequence of a variation in its own value, at another, in consequence of a change in the value of commodities. But this, on the one hand, does not prevent 200 ounces of gold from still containing more value than 100 ounces, nor, on the other hand, does it hinder the actual metallic form of this article from continuing to be the universal equivalent form of all other commodities, and the immediate social incarnation of all human labour. The desire after hoarding is in its very nature unsatiable. In its qualitative aspect, or formally considered, money has no bounds to its efficacy, i.e., it is the universal re- presentative of material wealth, because it is directly convert- ible into any other commodity. But, at the same time, every actual sum of money is limited in amount, and therefore, as a 1 "O&Stv yap dvdp&irolffiv oiov apyvpos TOVTO K HopBei, r<55' (LvSpas ^aviffrritriv d6fj.u>v. T6S" ic8i8pvas XpijoT&s irpdy alcrxpa dvBp&irots %~X.tiv Kal iravrbs tpyov dvfffftfieiav eldtvat. (Sophocles, Antigone.) T)S ir\cove!-ias &vdciv K ru>v /j.vx&v rijs 797? airr&v rbv RXofrruva. (Athen. Deipnos.) Capitalist Production. means of purchasing, has only a limited efficacy. This antag- onism between the quantitive limits of money and its qualita- tive boundlessness, continually acts as a spur to the hoarder in his Sisyphus-like labour of accumulating. It is with him as it is with a conqueror who sees in every new country annexed, only a new boundary. In order that gold may be held as money, and made to form a hoard, it must be prevented from circulating, or from trans- forming itself into a means of enjoyment. The hoarder, therefore, makes a sacrifice of the lusts of the flesh to his gold fetish. He acts in earnest up to the Gospel of abstention. On the other hand, he can withdraw from circulation no more than what he has thrown into it in the shape of commodities. The more he produces, the more he is able to sell. Hard work, saving, and avarice, are, therefore, his three cardinal virtues, and to sell much and buy little the sum of his political economy. 1 By the side of the gross form of a hoard, we find also its aesthetic form in the. possession of gold and silver articles. This grows with the wealth of civil society. " Soyons riches ou paraissons riches" (Diderot). In this way there is created, on the one hand, a constantly extending market for gold and silver, unconnected with their functions as money, and, on the other hand, a latent source of supply, to which recourse is had principally in times of crisis and social disturbance. Hoarding serves various purposes in the economy of the metallic circulation. Its first function arises out of the con- ditions to which the currency of gold and silver coins is sub- ject We have seen how, along with the continual fluctuations in the extent and rapidity of the circulation of commodities and in their prices, the quantity of money" current unceasingly ebbs and flows. This mass must, therefore, be capable of ex- pansion and contraction. At one time money must be attached in order to act as circulating coin, at another, circulating coin must be repelled in order to act again as more or less stagnant 1 "Accrescere quanto piu si pu6 il numero de' venditori d'ogni merce, diminuere quanto piu si pu6 il numero dei compratori, questi sono i cardini sui quali si raggirano tutte le operazioni di economia politica." (Verri, 1. c. p. 52.) Money , or the Circulation of Commodities. 151 money. In order that the mass of money, actually current, may constantly saturate the absorbing power of the circulation, it is necessary that the quantity of gold and silver in a country be greater than the quantity required to function as coin. This condition is fulfilled by money taking the form of hoards. These reserves serve as conduits for the supply or withdrawal of money to or from the circulation, which in this way never overflows its banks. 1 b. Means of Payment. In the simple form of the circulation of commodities hither- to considered, we found a given value always presented to us in a double shape, as a commodity at one pole, as money at the opposite pole. The owners of commodities came therefore into contact as the respective representatives of what were already equivalents. But with the development of circulation, condi- tions arise under which the alienation of commodities becomes separated, by an interval of time, from the realisation of their prices. It will be sufficient to indicate the most simple of these conditions. One sort of article requires a longer, an- other a shorter time for its production. Again, the production of different commodities depends on different seasons of the year. One sort of commodity may be born on its own market place, another has to make a long journey to market. Commod- ity-owner No. 1, may therefore be ready to sell, before No. 2 is ready to buy. When the same transactions are continually repeated between the same persons, the conditions of sale are 1 "There is required for carrying on the trade of the nation a determinate sum of specifick money, which varies, and is sometimes more, sometimes less, as the cir- cumstances we are in require. . . . This ebbing and flowing of money supplies and accommodates itself, without any aid of Politicians. . . . The buckets work alternately; when money is scarce, bullion is coined; when bullion is scarce, money is melted." (Sir D. North, 1. c., Postscript, p. 3.) John Stuart Mill, who for a long time was an official of the East India Company, confirms the fact that in India silver ornaments still continue to perform directly the functions of a hoard. The silver ornaments are brought out and coined when there is a high rate of interest, and go back again when the rate of interest falls. (J. S. Mill's Evidence. " Reports on Bank Acts," 1857, 2084.) According to a Parliamentary document of 1864, on the gold and silver import and export of India, the im- port of gold and silver in 1863 exceeded the export by 19,367,764. During the 8 years immediately preceding 1864, the excess of imports over exports of the precious metals amounted to 109,652,917. During this century far more than 200,000,000 has been coined in India. 152 Capitalist Production. regulated in accordance with the conditions of production. On the other hand, the use of a given commodity, of a house, for instance, is sold (in common parlance, let) for a definite period. Here, it is only at the end of the term that the buyer has actually received the use-value of the commodity. !!< therefore buys it before he pays for it. The vendor sells an existing commodity, the purchaser buys as the mere represen- 1 a live of money, or rather of future money. The vendor be- comes a creditor, the purchaser becomes a debtor. Since the metamorphosis of commodities, or the development of their value-form, appears here under a new aspect, money also ac- quires a fresh function ; it becomes the means of payment. The character of creditor, or of debtor, results here from the simple circulation. The change in .the form of that circula- tion stamps buyer and seller with this new die. At first, there- fore, these new parts are just as transient and alternating as those of seller and buyer, and are in turns played by the same actors. But the opposition is not nearly so pleasant, and is far more capable of crystallization. 1 The same characters can, however, be assumed independently of the circulation of com- modities. The class-struggles of the ancient world took the form chiefly of a contest between debtors and creditors, which in Rome ended in the ruin of the plebeian debtors. They were displaced by slaves. In the middle-ages the contest ended with the ruin of the feudal debtors, who lost their po- litical power together with the economical basis on which it was established. Nevertheless, the money relation of debtor and creditor that existed at these two periods reflected only the deeper-lying antagonism between the general economical con- ditions of existence of the classes in question. Let us return to the circulation of commodities. The ap- pearance of the two equivalents, commodities and money, at the two poles of the process of sale, has ceased to be simulta- neous. The money functions now, first as a measure of value 1 The following shows the debtor and creditor relations existing between English traders at the beginning of the 18th century. " Such a spirit of cruelty reigns here in England among the men of trade, that is not to be met with in any other society of men, nor in any other kingdom of the world." ("An Essay 'on Credit and the Bankrupt Act," Lend., 1707, p. 2.) Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 153 in the determination of the price of the commodity sold; the price fixed by the contract measures the obligation of the debtor, or the sum of money that he has to pay at a fixed date. Secondly, it serves as an ideal means of purchase. Al- though existing only in the promise of the buyer to pay, it causes the commodity to change hands. It is not before the day fixed for payment that the means of payment actually steps into circulation, leaves the hand of the buyer for that of the seller. The circulating medium was transformed into a hoard, because the process stopped short after the first phase, because the converted shape of the commodity, viz., the money, was withdrawn from circulation. The means of payment enters the circulation, but only after the commodity has left it. The money is no longer the means that brings about the process. It only brings it to a close, by stepping in as the absolute form of existence of exchange value, or as the uni- versal commodity. The seller turned his commodity into money, in order thereby to satisfy some want ; the hoarder did the same in order to keep his commodity in its money-shape, and the debtor in order to be able to pay ; if he do not pay, his goods will be sold by the sheriff. The value-form of com- modities, money, is therefore now the end and aim of a sale, and that owing to a social necessity springing out of the process of circulation itself. The buyer converts money back into commodities before he has turned commodities into money : in other words, he achieves the second metamorphosis of commodities before the first. The seller's commodity circulates, and realises its price, but only in the shape of a legal claim upon money. It is con- verted into a use-value before it has been converted into money. The completion of its first metamorphosis follows only at a later period. 1 1 It will be seen from the following quotation from my book which appeared in 1859, why I take no notice in the text of an opposite form: "Contrariwise, in the process M C, the money can be alienated as a real means of purchase, and in that way, the price of the commodity can be realised before the use-value of the money is realised and the commodity actually delivered. This occurs constantly under the every-day form of pre-payments. And it is under this form, that the English government purchases opium from the ryots of India. ... In these cases, however, the money always acts as a means of purchase. . . . Of course capital Capitalist Production. The obligations falling due within a given period, repre- sent the sum of the prices of the commodities, the sale oi which gave rise to those obligations. The quantity of gold ne?essary to realise this sum, depends, in the first instance, on the rapid- ity of currency of the means of payment. That quantity is conditioned by two circumstances: first the relations between debtors and creditors from a sort of chain, in such a way that A, when he receives money from his .debtor B, straightway hands it over to C his creditor, and so on; the second cir- cumstance is the length of the intervals between the different due-days of the obligations. The continuous chain of pay- ments, or retarded first metamorphoses, is essentially different from that interlacing of the series of metamorphoses which we considered on a former page. By the currency of the circulating medium, the connexion between buyers and sellers, is not merely expressed. This connexion is originated by, and exists in, the circulation alone. Contrariwise, the move- ment of the means of payment expresses a social relation that was in existence long before. The fact that a number of sales take place simultaneously, and side by side, limits the extent to which coin can be re- placed by the rapidity of currency. On the other hand, this fact is a new lever in economising the means of payment. In proportion as payments are concentrated at one spot, special institutions and methods are developed for their liquidation. Such in the middle ages were the virements at Lyons. The debts due to A from B ; to B from C, to C from A, and so on, have only to be confronted with each other, in order to annul each other to a certain extent like positive and negative quan- tities. There thus remains only a single balance to pay. The greater the amount of the payments concentrated, the less is this balance relatively to that amount, and the less is the mass of the means of payment in circulation. The function of money as the means of payment implies a contradiction without a terminus medius. In so far as the also is advanced in the shape of money. . . . This point of view, however, does not fall within the horizon of simple circulation. ("Critique," &c., pp. 188. Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 155 payments balance one another, money functions only ideally as money of account, as a measure of value. In so far as ac- tual payments have to be made, money does not serve as a circulating medium, as a mere transient agent in the inter- change of products, but as the individual incarnation of social labour, as the independent form of existence of exchange value, as the universal commodity. This contradiction comes to a head in those phases of industrial and commercial crises which are known as monetary crises. 1 Such a crisis occurs only where the ever-lengthening chain of payments, and an artificial system of settling them, has been fully developed. Whenever there is a general and extensive disturbance of this mechanism, no matter what its cause, money becomes suddenly and imme- diately transformed, from its merely ideal shape of money of account, into hard cash. Profane commodities can no longer replace it. The use-value of commodities becomes value- less, and their value vanishes in the presence of its own independent form. On the eve of the crisis, the bourgeois, with the self-sufficiency that springs from intoxicat- ing prosperity, declares money to be a vain imagination. Commodities alone are money. But now the cry is every- where : money alone is a commodity ! As the hart pants after fresh water, so pants hia soul after money, the only wealth. 2 In a crisis, the antithesis between commodities and their value- form, money, becomes heightened into an absolute contradic- tion. Hence, in such events, the form under which money appears is of no importance. The money famine continues, 1 The monetary crisis referred to in the text, being a phase of every crisis, must be clearly distinguished from that particular form of crisis, which also is called a monetary crisis, but which may be produced by itself as an independent phenomenon in such a way as to react only indirectly on industry and commerce. The pivot of these crises is to be found in moneyed* capital, and their sphere of direct action is therefore the sphere of that capital, viz., banking, the stock exchange, and finance. 2 "The sudden reversion from a system of credit to a system of hard cash heaps theoretical fright on top of the practical panic; and the dealers by whose agency circulation is affected, shudder before the impenetrable mystery in which their own economical relations are involved" (Karl Marx, 1. c. p. 198). "The poor stand still, because the rich have no money to employ them, though they have the same land and hands to provide victuals and clothes, as ever they had; . . . "'V"'"^ '= ^ true Riches of a Nation; and not the money." (John Sellers: "Propo a College of Industry." Lond. 1695. p. 3.) which is the oposals for raising 156 Capitalist Production. whether payments have to be made in gold or in credit money such as bank notes. 1 If we now consider the sum total of the money current dur- ing a given period, we shall find that, given the rapidity of currency of the circulating medium and of the means of pay- ment, it is equal to the sum of the prices to be realised, plus the sum of the payments falling due, minus the payments that balance each other, minus finally the number of circuits in which the same piece of coin serves in turn as means of circulation and of payment. Hence, even when prices, rapid- ity of currency, and the extent of the economy in payments, are given, the quantity of money current and the mass of com- modities circulating during a given period, such as a day, no longer correspond. Money that represents commodities long withdrawn from circulation, continues to be current. Com- modities circulate, whose equivalent in money will not appear on the scene till some future day. Moreover, the debts con- tracted each day, and the payments falling due on the same day, are quite incommensurable quantities. 2 Credit-money springs directly out of the function of money as a means of payment. Certificates of the debts owing for the purchased commodities circulate for the purpose of trans- 1 The following shows how such times are exploited by the "amis du commerce." "On one occasion (1839) an old grasping banker (in the city) in his private room raised the lid of the desk he sat over, and displayed to a friend rolls of banknotes, saying with intense glee there were 600,000 of them, they were held to make money tight, and would all be let out after three o'clock on the same day." ("The Theory of Exchanges. The Bank Charter Act of 1844." Lond. 1864. p. 81.) The Observer, a semi-official government organ, contained the following paragraph on 24th April, 1864: "Some very curious rumours are current of the means which have been resorted to in order to create a scarcity of Banknotes Ques- tionable as it would seem, to suppose that any trick of the kind would be adopted, the report has been so universal that it really deserves mention." 1 "The amount of purchases or contracts entered upon during the course of any given day, will not affect the quantity of money afloat on that particular day, but, in the vast majority of cases, will resolve themselves into multifarious drafts upon the quantity of money which may be afloat at subsequent dates more or less distant. .... The bills granted or credits opened, to-day, need have no resemblance whatever, either in quantity, amount, or duration, to those granted or entered upon to-morrow or next day; nay, many of to-day's bills, and credits, when due, fall in with a mass of liabilities whose origins traverse a range of antecedent dates alto- gether indefinite, bills at 12, 6, 3 months or 1 often aggregating together to swell the common liabilities of one particular day. ..." ("The Currency Theory Reviewed: a letter to the Scottish people." By a Banker in England. Edinburgh, 1846, pp. 29, 80 passim.) Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 157 ferring those debts to others. On the other hand, to the same extent as the system of credit is extended, so is the function of money as a means of payment. In that character it takes various forms peculiar to itself under which it makes itself at home in the sphere of great commercial transactions. Gold and silver coin, on the other hand, are mostly relegated to the sphere of retail trade. 1 When the production of commodities has sufficiently ex- tended itself, money begins to serve as the means of payment beyond the sphere of the circulation of commodities. It be- comes the commodity that is the universal subject-matter of all contracts. 2 Rents, taxes, and such like payments are transformed from payments in kind into money payments. To what extent this transformation depends upon the general conditions of production, is shown, to take one example, by the fact that the Roman Empire twice failed in its attempt to levy all contributions in money. The unspeakable misery of the French agricultural population under Louis XIV., a mis- ery so eloquently denounced by Boisguillebert, Marshal, Vau- ban, and others, was due not only to the weight of the taxes, but also to the conversion of taxes in kind into money taxes. 3 1 As an example of how little ready money is required in true commercial opera- tions, I give below a statement by one of the largest London houses of its yearly receipts and payments. Its transactions during the year 1856, extending to many milions of pounds sterling, are here reduced to the scale of one million. RECEIPTS. Bankers' and Merchants' Bills payable after date, - 533,596 Cheques on Bankers, &c., payable on demand, - 357,715 Country Notes, - - - 9,627 Bank of England Notes, - 68,554 Gold - - - 28,089 Silver and Copper, - 1,486 Post Office Orders, - - 933 Total, - 1,000,000 PAYMENTS. Bills payable after date, - 302,674 Cheques on London Bankers, 663,672 Bank of England Notes, - 22,743 Gold 9,427 Silver and Copper, - - 1,484 Total, 1,000,000 "Report from the Select Committee on the Bank Acts, July, 1858," p. Ixxi. 2 "The course of trade being thus turned, from exchanging of goods for goods, or delivering and taking, to selling and paying, all the bargains . . . are now stated upon the foot of a Prince in money." "An Essay upon Publick Credit." 3rd Ed. Lond., 1710, p. 8.) 3 "L'argent. . . est devenu le bourreau de toutes choses." Finance is the "alambic, qui a fait evaporer une quantite effroyable de biens et de denrees pour 158 Capitalist Production. In Asia, on the other hand, the fact that state taxes are chiefly composed of rents payable in kind, depends on conditions of production that are reproduced with the regularity of natural phenomena. And this mode of payment tends in its turn to maintain the ancient form of production. It is one of the secrets of the conservation of the Ottoman Empire. If the foreign trade, forced upon Japan by Europeans, should lead to the substitution of money rents for rents in kind, it will be all up with the exemplary agriculture of that country. The narrow economical conditions under which that agriculture is carried on, will be swept away. In every country, certain days of the year become by habit recognised settling days for various large and recurrent pay- ments. These dates depend, apart from other revolutions in the wheel of reproduction, on conditions closely connected with the seasons. They also regulate the dates for payments that have no direct connexion with the circulation of commodities such as taxes, rents, and so on. The quantity of money re- quisite to make the payments, falling due on those dates all over the country, causes periodical, though merely superficial, perturbations in the economy of the medium of payment. 1 From the law of the rapidity of currency of the means of payment, it follows that the quantity of the means of pay- ment required for all periodical payments, whatever their source, is in inverse proportion to the length of their periods. 2 faire ce fatal precis." "L'argent declare la guerre a tout le genre humain." (Bois guillebert: "Dissertation sur la nature des richesses, de 1'argent et des tributs." Edit. Daire. Economistes financiers. Paris, 1843, t. i., pp. 413, 419, 417.) 1 "On Whitsuntide, 1824," says Mr. Craig before the Commons' Committee of 1826, "there was such an immense demand for notes upon the banks of Edinburgh, that by 11 o'clock they had not a note left in their custody. They sent round to all the different banks to borrow, but could not get them, and many of the transac- tions were adjusted by slips of paper only; yet by three o'clock the whole of the notes were returned into the banks from which they had issued! It v.-as a mere transfer from hand to hand." Although the average effective circulation of bank- notes in Scotland is less than three millions sterling, yet on certain pay days in the year, every single note in the possession of the bankers, amounting in the whole to about 7,000,000, is called into activity. On these occasions the notes have a single and specific function to perform, and so soon as they have performed it, they flow back into the various banks from which they issued. (See John Fullarton, "Regulation of Currencies." Lond: 1844, p. 85 note.) In explanation it should be stated, that in Scotland, at the date of Fullarton's work, notes and not cheques were used to withdraw deposits. *To the question. "If there were occasion to raise 40 millions p.a., whether tie Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 159 The development of money into a medium of payment makes it necessary to accumulate money against the dates fixed for the payment of the sums owing. While hoarding, as a distinct mode of acquiring riches, vanishes with the prog- ress of civil society, the formation of reserves of the means of payment grows with that progress. c. Universal Money. When money leaves the home sphere of circulation, it strips off the local garbs which it there assumes, of a standard of prices, of coin, of tokens, and of a symbol of value, and re- turns to its original form of bullion. In the trade between the markets of the world, the value of commodities is expressed so as to be universally recognised. Hence their independent value-form also, in these cases, confronts them under the shape of universal money. It is only in the markets of the world that money acquires to the full extent the character of the commodity whose bodily form is also the immediate social in- carnation of human labour in the abstract. Its real mode of existence in this sphere adequately corresponds to its ideal concept. Within the sphere of home circulation, there can be but one commodity which, by serving as a measure of value, becomes money. In the markets of the world a double measure of value holds sway, gold and silver. 1 same 6 millions (gold) . . . would suffice for such revolutions and circulations thereof, as trade requires," Petty replies in his usual masterly manner, "I answer yes: for the expense being 40 millions, if the revolutions were in such short circles, viz., weekly, as happens among poor artizans and labourers, who receive and pay every Saturday, then ^| parts of 1 million of money would answer these ends; but if the circles be quarterly, according to our custom of paying rent, and gathering taxes, then 10 millions were requisite. Wherefore, supposing payments in general to be of a mixed circle between one week and 13, then add 10 millions to |, the half of which will be 5J4, so as if we have 5J4 millions we have enough." (William Petty: "Political Anatomy of Ireland." 1672. Edit: Lond. 1691, pp. 13, 14.) 1 Hence the absurdity of every Jaw prescribing that the banks of a country shall form reserves of that precious metal alone which circulates at home. The "pleasant difficulties" thus self-created by the Bank of England, are well known. On the subject of the great epochs in the history of the changes in the relative value of gold and silver, see Karl Marx, 1. c. p. 215 sq. Sir Robert Peel, by his Bank Act of 1844, sought to tide over the difficulty, by allowing the Bank of England to issue notes against silver bullion, on condition that the reserve of silver should never ex- ceed more than one-fourth of the reserve of gold. The value of silver being for 160 Capitalist Production. Money of the world serves as the universal medium of pay- ment, as the universal means of purchasing, and as the uni- versally recognised embodiment of all wealth. Its function as a means of payment in the settling of international balances is its chief one. Hence the watchword of the mercantilists, balance of trade. 1 Gold and silver serve as international that purpose estimated at its price in the London market Note to the 4th German edition. We find ourselves once more in a period of a marked change in the relative values of gold and silver. About 25 years ago the ratio of gold to silver was 15.5 to I, now it is about 22 to 1, and silver is continually falling against gold. This is essentially a result of a revolution in the processes of production of these two metals. Formerly gold was obtained almost exclusively by washing alluvial strata containing gold, the products of disintegration of gold-carrying rocks. But now this method is no longer sufficient and has been crowded to the rear by the mining of quartz layers containing gold, a method formerly considered as secondary, although well known even to the ancients (Diodorus, 'III, 12-14). On the other hand, immense new silver deposits were discovered in the American Rocky Mountains, and these as well as the Mexican silver mines opened up by means of railroads, which per- mitted the influx of modern machinery and fuel and thereby reduced the cost and increased the output of silver mining. But there is a great difference in the way in which both metals occur in the ore beds. The gold is generally solid, but scat- tered in minute particles through the quartz layers. The whole diggings must therefore be crushed and the gold washed out or extracted by means of quicksilver. Frequently one million grams of quartz do not contain more than 1 to 3 grams of gold, and rarely more than 30 to 60 grams. Silver, on the other hand, is rarely found in the pure state, but it occurs in some ores which are easily separated from the dross and contain as much as 40 to 90% of silver. Or smaller quantities of it are found in ores like copper, lead, etc., which are themselves worth mining. This alone is sufficient to show that the work of producing gold has rather increased, while that of producing silver has certainly decreased, and this quite naturally ex- plains the fall in the value of silver. This fall in value would express itself in a still greater fall of price, if the price of silver were not held up even now by arti- ficial means. The silver deposits of America, however, have been made accessible only to a small extent, and there is, consequently, every prospect of a continued fall in the value of silver. This must be further promoted by the relative decrease of the demand for silver for articles of use and luxury, its displacement by plated wares, aluminum, etc. Judge, then, of the utopianism of the bimetallist illusion that a forced international quotation could raise silver to its old value of 15.5 to 1. The chances are rather that silver will lose more and more of its character as money on the world market. F. E. 1 The opponents, themselves, of the mercantile system, a system which consid- ered the settlement of surplus trade balances in gold and silver as the aim of inter- national trade, entirely misconceived the functions of money of the world. I have shown by the example of Ricardo in what way their false conception of the laws that regulate the quantity of the circulating medium, is reflected in their equally false conception of the international movement in the precious metals (1. c. pp. 150 sq.). His erroneous dogma: "An unfavourable balance of trade never arises but from a redundant currency. . . . The exportation of the coin is caused by its cheapness, and is not the effect, but the cause of an unfavourable balance," already occurs in Barbon: "The Balance of Trade, if there be one, is not the cause of sending away the money out of a nation; but that proceeds from the difference of the value of bullion in every country." (N. Barbon; 1. c. pp. 59, 60.) MacCul- loch in "the Literature of Political Economy, a classified catalogue, Lond. 1845," Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 161 means of purchasing chiefly and necessarily in those periods when the customary equilibrium in the interchange of products between different nations is suddenly disturbed. And lastly, it serves as the universally recognised embodiment of social wealth, whenever the question is not of buying or paying, but of transferring wealth from one country to another, and when- ever this transference in the form of commodities is rendered impossible, either by special conjunctures in the markets, or by the purpose itself that is intended. 1 Just as every country needs a reserve of money for its home circulation, so, too, it requires one for external circulation in the markets of the world. The functions of hoards, therefore, arise in part out of the function of money, as the medium of the home circulation and home payments, and in part out of its function of money of the world. 2 For this latter func- tion, the genuine money-commodity, actual gold and silver, is necessary. On that account, Sir James Steuart, in order to distinguish them from their purely local substitutes, calls gold and silver "money of the world." The current of the stream of gold and silver is a double one. On the one hand, it spreads itself from its sources over all the markets of the world, in order to become absorbed, to various extents, into the different national spheres of circulation, to fill the conduits of currency, to replace abraded gold and silver praises Barbon for this anticipation, but prudently passes over the naive forms, in which Barbon clothes the absurd suppositoin on which the "currency principle" is based. The absence of real criticism and even of honesty, in that catalogue, cul- minates in the sections devoted to the history of the theory of money; the reason is that MacCulloch in this part of the work is flattering Lord Overstone whom he calls "fecile princeps argentariorum." 1 For instance, in subsidies, money loans for carrying on wars or for enabling banks to resume cash payments, &c., it is the money form, and no other, of value that may be wanted. * I would desire, indeed, no more convincing evidence of the competency of the machinery of the hoards in specie-paying countries to perform every necessary office of international adjustment, without any sensible aid from the general circulation, than the facility with which France, when but just recovering from the shock of a destructive foreign invasion, completed within the space of 27 months the payment of her forced contribution of nearly 20 millions to the allied powers, and a con- siderable proportion of the sum in specie, without any perceptible contraction or derangement of her domestic currency, or even any alarming fluctuation of her exchanges." (Fullarton, 1. c., p. 134.) Note to the 4th German edition. A still more convincing illustration is given by the ease with which the same France, in 1871 to 1873, was able to pay off in 30 months a war indemnity ten times larger, and to a considerable extent also in metal money. F. E. K 1 62 Capitalist Production. coins, to supply the material of articles of luxury, and to petrify into hoards. 1 This first current is started by the countries that exchange their labour, realise in commodities, for the labour embodied in the precious metals by gold and silver-producing countries. On the other hand, there is a con- tinual flowing backwards and forwards of gold and silver be- tween the different national spheres of circulation, a current whose motion depends on the ceaseless fluctuations in the course of exchange. 2 Countries in which the bourgeois form of production is de- veloped to a certain extent, limit the hoards concentrated in the strong rooms of the banks to the minimum required for the proper performance of their peculiar functions. 3 When- ever these hoards are strikingly above their average, level, it is, with some exceptions, an indication of stagnation in the circulation of commodities, of an interruption in the even flow of their metamorphoses. 4 1 "L'argent se partage entre les nations relativement au besoin qu'elles en ont. . . . etant toujours attire par les productions." (Le Trosne 1. c., p. 916.) "The mines which are continually giving gold and silver, do give sufficient to supply such a needful balance to every nation." (J. Vanderlint, 1. c., p. 40.) * "Exchanges rise and fall every week, and at some particular times in the year run high against a nation, and at other times run as high on the contrary." (N. Barbon, 1. c., p. 39.) * These various functions are liable to come into dangerous conflict with one an- other whenever gold and silver have also to serve as a fund for the conversion of bank-notes. 4 "What money is more than of absolute necessity for a Home Trade, is dead stock . . . and brings no profit to that country it's kept in, but as it is trans- ported in trade, as well as imported." (John Sellers, Essays, p. 12.) "What if we have too much coin? We may melt down the heaviest and turn it into the splendour of plate, vessels or utensils of gold or silver; or send it out as a commodity, where the same is wanted or desired; or let it out at interest, where interest is high." (W. Petty: "Quantulumcunque," p. 39.) "Money is but the fat of the Body Politick, whereof too much doth as often hinder its agility, as too little makes it sick .... as fat lubricates the motion of the muscles, feeds in want of victuals, fills up the uneven cavities, and beautifies the body; so doth money in the state quicken its action, feeds from abroad in time of dearth at home; evens ac- counts . . and beautifies the whole; altho more especially the particular persons that have it in plenty." (W. Petty. "Political Anatomy of Ireland," p. 14.) PART II. THE TRANSFORMATION OF MONEY INTO CAPITAL. CHAPTEE IV. THE GENERAL FORMULA FOR CAPITAL. THE circulation of commodities is the starting point of capital. The production of commodities, their circulation, and that more developed form of their circulation called commerce, these form the historical groundwork from which it rises. The modern history of capital dates from the creation in the 16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a world- embracing market. If we abstract from the material substance of the circula- tion of commodities, that is ? from the exchange of the various use-values, and consider only the economic forms produced by this process of circulation, we find its final result to be money : this final product of the circulation of commodities is the first form in which capital appears. As a matter of history, capital, as opposed to landed prop- erty, invariably takes the form at first of money ; it appears as moneyed wealth, as the capital of the merchant and of the usurer. 1 But we have no need to refer to the origin of capi- tal in order to discover that the first form of appearance of capital is money. We can see it daily under our very eyes. 1 The contrast between the power, based on the personal relations of dominion and servitude, that is conferred by landed property, and the impersonal power that is given by money, is well expressed by the two French proverbs, "Nulle terre sans seigneur," and "L'argent n'a pas de maitre." 163 164 Capitalist Production. All new capital, to commence with, comes on the stage, that is, on the market, whether of commodities, labour, or money, even in our days, in the shape of money that by a definite process has to be transformed into capital. The first distinction we notice between money that is money only, and money that is capital, is nothing more than a differ- ence in their form of circulation. The simplest form of the circulation of commodities is C M C, the transformation of commodities into money, and the change of the money back again into commodities ; or selling in order to buy. But alongside of this form we find another specifically different form: M C M, the transformation of money into commodities, and the change of commodities back again into money; or buying in order to sell. Money that circulates in the latter manner is thereby transformed into, becomes capital, and is already potentially capital. Now let us examine the circuit M C M a little closer. It consists, like the other, of two antithetical phases. In the first phase, M C, or the purchase, the money is changed into a commodity. In the second phase, C M, or the sale, the commodity is changed back again into money. The combina- tion of these two phases constitutes the single movement whereby money is exchanged for a commodity and the same commodity is again exchanged for money; whereby a com- modity is bought in order to be sold, or, neglecting the dis- tinction in form between buying and selling, whereby a commodity is bought with money, and then money is bought with a commodity. 1 The result, in which the phases of the process vanish, is the exchange of money for money, M M. If I purchase 2000 Ibs. of cotton for 100, and resell the 2000 Ibs. of cotton for 110, I have, in fact, exchanged 100 for 110, money for money. Now it is evident that the circuit M C M would be ab- surd and without meaning if the intention were to exchange by this means two equal sums of money, 100 for 100. The 1 "Avec de 1'argent on achcte des merchandises, et avec des marchandises on achete de 1'argent." (Mercier de la Raviere: "L'ordre naturel et essentiel des societes politiques," p. 648.) The General Formula for Capital. 165 miser's plan would be far simpler and surer; he sticks to his 100 instead of exposing it to the dangers of circulation. And yet, whether the merchant who has paid 100 for his cotton sells it for 110 ; or lets it go for 100, or even 50, his money has, at all events, gone through a characteristic and original movement, quite different in kind from that which it goes through in the hands of the peasant who sells corn, and with the money thus set free buys clothes. We have therefore to examine first the distinguishing characteristics of the forms of the circuits ]\I C M and C M C, and in doing this the real difference that underlies the mere difference of form will reveal itself. Let us see, in the first place, what the two forms have in common. Both circuits are resolvable into the same two antithetical phases, C M, a sale, and M C, a purchase. In each of these phases the same material elements a commodity, and money, and the same economical dramatis personse, a buyer and a seller confront one another. Each circuit is the unity of the same two antithetical phases, and in each case this unity is brought about by the intervention of three contracting par- ties, of whom one only sells, another only buys, while the third both buys and sells. What, however, first and foremost distinguishes the circuit C M C from the circuit M C M, is the inverted order of succession of the two phases. The simple circulation of com- modities begins with a sale and ends with a purchase, while the circulation of money as capital begins with a purchase and ends with a sale. In the one case both the starting- point and the goal are commodities, in the other they are money. In the first form the movement is brought about by the intervention of money, in the second by that of a commodity. In the circulation C M C, the money is in the end con- verted into a commodity, that serves as a use-value ; it is spent once for all. In the inverted form, M C M, on the con- trary, the buyer lays out money in order that, as a seller, he may recover money. By the purchase of his commodity lie 1 66 Capitalist Production. throws money into circulation, in order to withdraw it again by the sale of the same commodity. lie lets the money go, but only with the sly intention of getting it back again. The money, therefore, is not spent, it is merely advanced. 1 In the circuit C M C, the same piece of money changes its place twice. The seller gets it from the buyer and pays it away to another seller. The complete circulation, which be- gins with the receipt, concludes with the payment, of money for commodities. It is the very contrary in the circuit M C M. Here it is not the piece of money that changes its place twice, but the commodity. The buyer takes it from the hands of the seller and passes it into the hands of another buyer. Just as in the simple circulation of commodities the double change of place of the same piece of money effects its passage from one hand into another, so here the double change of place of the same commodity brings about the reflux of the money to its point of departure. Such reflux is not dependent on the commodity being sold for more than was paid for it. This circumstance influences only the amount of the money that comes back. The reflux itself takes place, so soon as the purchased commodity is re- sold, in other words, so soon as the circuit M C M is com- pleted. We have here, therefore, a palpable difference be- tween the circulation of money as capital, and its circulation as mere money. The circuit C M C comes completely to an end, so soon as the money brought in by the sale of one commodity is abstracted again by the purchase of another. If, nevertheless, there follows a reflux of money to its start- ing point, this can only happen through a renewal or repeti- tion of the operation. If I sell a quarter of corn for 3, and with this 3 buy clothes, the money, so far as I am concerned, is spent and done with. It belongs to the clothes merchant. If I now sell a second quarter of corn, money indeed flows back to me, not however as a sequel to the first transaction, 1 "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," &c. Edited by Gen. Sir James Steuart, his son. Lond., 1805. V. I., p. 274.) The General Formula for Capital. 167 but in consequence of its repetition. The money again leaves me, so soon as I complete this second transaction hy a fresh purchase. Therefore, in the circuit C M C, the expendi- ture of money has nothing to do with its reflux. On the other hand, in M C M, the reflux of the money is conditioned by the very mode of its expenditure. Without this reflux, the operation fails, or the process is interrupted and incomplete, owing to the absence of its complementary and final phase, the sale. The circuit C M C starts with one commodity, and finishes with another, which falls out of circulation and into consumption. Consumption, the satisfaction of wants, in one word, use-value, is its end and aim. The circuit M C M, on the contrary, commences with money and ends with money. Its leading motive, and the goal that attracts it, is therefore mere exchange value. In the simple circulation of commodities, the two extremes of the circuit have the same economic form. They are both commodities, and commodities of equal value. But they are also use-values differing in their qualities, as, for example, corn and clothes. The exchange of products, of the different materials in which the labour of society is embodied, forms here the basis of the movement. It is otherwise in the cir- culation M C M, which at first sight appears purposeless, because tautological. Both extremes have the same economic form. They are both money, and therefore are not qualita-" tively different use-values; for money is but the converted form of commodities, in which their particular use-values vanish. To exchange 100 for cotton, and then this same cotton again for 100, is merely a roundabout way of ex- changing money for money, the same for the same, and ap- pears to be an operation just as purposeless as it is absurd. 1 1 "On n'echange pas de 1'argcnt centre de I'argent," says Mercier de la Riviere to the Mercantilists (1. c., p. 486). In a work, which, ex professo, treats of "trade" and "speculation," occurs the following: "All trade consists in the exchange of things of different kinds; and the advantage" (to the merchant?) "arises out of this difference. To exchange a pound of bread against a pound of bread .... would be attended with no advantage; .... Hence trade is advantageously contrasted with gambling, which consists in a mere exchange of money for money." (Th. Corbet, "An Inquiry into the Causes and Modes of the Wealth of Individuals; 1 68 Capitalist Production. One sum of money is distinguishable from another only by its amount. The character and tendency of the process M M, is therefore not due to any qualitative difference be- tween its extremes, both being money, but solely to their quantitative difference. More money is withdrawn from cir- culation at the finish than was thrown into it at the start The cotton that was bought for 100 is perhaps resold for 100-f-10 or 110. The exact form of this process is there- fore M C M', where M'=M-[- A M=the original sum ad- vanced, plus an increment. This increment or excess over the original value I call "surplus-value." The value originally advanced, therefore, not only remains intact while in circula- tion, but adds to itself a surplus-value or expands itself. It is this movement that converts it into capital. Of course it is also possible, that in C M -C, the two extremes C C, say corn and clothes, may represent different quantities of value. The farmer may sell his corn above its value, or may buy the clothes at less than their value. He may, on the other hand, "be done" by the clothes merchant. Yet, in the form of circulation now under consideration, such differences in value are purely accidental. The fact that the corn and the clothes are equivalents, does not deprive the pro- cess of all meaning, as it does in M C M. The equivalence of their values is rather a necessary condition to its normal course. The repetition or renewal of the act of selling in order to buy, is kept within bounds by the very object it aims at, namely, consumption or the satisfaction of definite wants, an or the principles of Trade and Speculation explained." London, 1841, p. 5.) Al- though Corbet does not see that M M, the exchange of money for money, is the characteristic form of circulation, not only of merchants' capital but of all capital, yet at least he acknowledges that this form is common to gambling and to one spe- cies of trade, viz., speculation: but then comes MacCulloch and makes out, that to buy in order to sell, is to speculate, and thus the difference between Speculation and Trade vanishes. "Every transaction in which an individual buys produce in order to sell it again, is, in fact, a speculation." (MacCulloch: "A Dictionary Practical, &c., of Commerce." Lond., 1847, p. 1058.) With much more naivete, Pinto, the Pindar of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, remarks, "Le commerce est un jeu: (taken from Locke) et ce n'est pas avec des gueux qu'on peut gagner. Si 1'on gag- nait long-temps en tout avec tous, il faudrait rendre de bon accord les plus grandes parties du profit pour recommencer le jeu." (Pinto: "Traite de la Circulation et du Credit" Amsterdam, 1771, p. 281.) The General Formula for Capital. 169 aim that lies altogether outside the sphere of circulation. But when- we buy in order to sell, we, on the contrary, begin and end with the same thing, money, exchange-value; and thereby the movement becomes interminable. No doubt, M becomes M+AM, 100 become 110. But when viewed in their qualitative aspect alone, 110 are the same as 100, namely money; and considered quantitatively, 110 is, like 100, a sum of definite and limited value. If now, the 110 be spent as money, they cease to play their part. They are no longer capital. Withdrawn from circulation, they become petrified into a hoard, and though they remained in that state till doomsday, not a single farthing would accrue to them. If, then, the expansion of value is once aimed at, there is just the same inducement to augment the value of the 110 as that of the 100 ; for both are but limited expressions for exchange- value, and therefore both have the same vocation to approach, by quantitative increase, as near as possible to absolute wealth. Momentarily, indeed, the value originally advanced, the 100 is distinguishable from the surplus value of 10 that is an- nexed to it during circulation ; but the distinction vanishes immediately. At the end of the process we do not receive with one hand the original 100, and with the other, the surplus-value of 10. We simply get a value of 110, which is in exactly the same condition and fitness for commencing the expanding process, as the original 100 was. Money ends- the movement only to begin it again. 1 Therefore, the final result of every separate circuit, in which a purchase and con- sequent sale are completed, forms of itself the starting point of a new circuit. The simple circulation of commodities selling in order to buy is a means of carrying out a purpose unconnected with circulation, namely, the appropriation of use-values, the satisfaction of wants. The circulation of money as capital is, on the contrary, an end in itself, for the expansion of value takes place only within this constantly 1 "Capital is divisible .... into the original capital and tne profit, the incre- ment to the capital .... although in practice this profit is immediately turned into capital, and set in motion with the original." (F. Engels, "Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalokonomie, in: Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher, herausgegcben von Arnold Ruge und Karl Marx." Paris, 1844, p. 99.) 170 Capitalist Production. renewed movement. The circulation of capital lias therefore no limits. 1 Thus the conscious representative of this move- ment, the possessor of money hecomcs a capitalist. His per- son, or rather his pocket, is the point from which the money starts and to which it returns. The expansion of value. \vhich is the objective basis or main-spring of the circulation M C M, becomes his subjective aim, and it is only in so far as the appropriation of ever more and more wealth is the ab- stract becomes the sole motive of his operations, that he func- tions as a capitalist, that is, as capital personified and en- dowed with consciousness and a will. Use-values must there- fore never be looked upon as the real aim of the capitalist; 2 neither must the profit on any single transaction. The restless never-ending process of profit-making alone is what he aims 1 Aristotle opposes (Economic to Chrematistic. He starts from the former. So far as it is the art of gaining a livelihood, it is limited to procuring those articles that are necessary to existence, and useful either to a household or the state. "True wealth (i dXi/flivdj irXoOroj) consists of such values in use; for the quantity of pos- sessions of this kind, capable of making life pleasant, is not unlimited. There is, however, a second mode of acquiring things, to which we may by preference and with correctness give the name of Chrematistic, and in this case, there appear to be no limits to riches and possessions. Trade ( 17 /caTnjXtK'i) is literally retail trade, and Aristotle takes this kind because in it values in use predominate) does not in its nature belong to Chrematistic, for here the exchange has reference only to what is necessary to themselves (the buyer or seller)." Therefore, as he goes on to show, the original form of trade was barter, but with the extension of the latter, there arose the necessity for money. On the discovery of money, barter of necessity de- veloped into KoirijXiKTj into trading in commodities, and this again, in opposition to its original tendency, grew into Chrematistic, into the art of making money. Now Chrematistic is distinguishable from (Economic in this way, that "in the case of Chrematistic, circulation is the source of riches (ironjTtK'f/ \pT\\La.Tiav .... St4 XpiHJLdruv 5to/3oX^x). And it appears to revolve about money, for money is the be- ginning and end of this kind of exchange ( rb fdp v6fj.urfjM ffrotxeiov ical Tr^pas rrjs dXXeryiji Iffrlf). Therefore also riches, such as Chrematistic strives for, are un- limited. Just as every art that is not a means to an end, but an end in itself, has no limit to its aims, because it seeks constantly to approach nearer and nearer to that end, while those arts that pursue means to an end, are not boundless, since the goal itself imposes a limit upon them, so with Chrematistic, there are no bounds to its aims, these aims being absolute wealth. (Economic not Chrematistic has a limit .... the object of the former is something different from money, of the latter the augmentation of money .... By confounding these two forms, which overlap each other, some people have been led to look upon the preservation and increase of money ad infinitum as the end and aim of (Economic." (Aristotles De Rep. edit. Bekker. lib. I. c. 8, 9. passim.) 1 "Commodities (here used in the sense of use-values) are not the terminating object of the trading capitalist, money is his terminating object." (Th. Chalmers, On Pol. Econ. &c., 2nd Ed., Glasgow, 1832, p. 166, 166.) The General Formula for Capital. 171 at. 1 This boundless greed after riches, this passionate chase after exchange-value, 2 is common to the capitalist and the miser; but while the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser. The never-ending -aug- mentation of exchange-value, which the miser strives after, by seeking to save 3 his money from circulation, is attained by the more acute capitalist, by constantly throwing it afresh into circulation. 4 The independent form, i. e., the money-form, which the value of commodities assumes in the case of simple circulation, serves only one purpose, namely, their exchange, and vanishes in the final result of the movement. On the other hand, in the circulation M C M, both the money and the commodity represent only different modes of existence of value itself, the money its general mode, and the commodity its particular, or, so to say, disguised mode, 5 It is constantly changing from one form to the other without thereby becoming lost, and thus assumes an automatically active character. If now we take in turn each of the two different forms which self-expanding value successively assumes in the course of its life, we then arrive at these two propositions : Capital is money : Capital is commodities. 8 In tr.uth, however, value is here the active factor in a process, in which, while constantly assuming the form in turn of money and commodities, it at the same time changes in magnitude, differentiates itself by throwing off surplus-value from itself; the original value, in other words, 1 "II mercante non conta quasi per niente il lucro fatto, ma mira sempre al future." (A. Genovesi, Lezioni di Economia Civile 1765), Custodi's edit, of Italian Economists. Parte Moderna t. xiii. p. 139.) 2 "The inextinguishable passion for gain, the auri sacra fames, will always lead capitalists." (MacCulloch: "The principles of Polit. Econ." London, 1830, p. 179.) This view, of course, does not prevent the same MacCulloch and others of his kidney, when in theoretical difficulties, such, for example, as the question of over- production, from transforming the same capitalist into a moral citizen, whose sole concern is for use-values, and who even developes an insatiable hunger for boots, hats, eggs, calico, and other extremely familiar sorts of use-values. 3 Swfetp is a characteristic Greek expression for hoarding. So in English to save has the same two meanings: sauver and epargner. * "Questo infinito clie le cose non hanno in progresso, hanno in giro." (Galiani.) 5 "Ce n'est pas la matiere qui fait le capital, mais la valeur de ces matieres." (J. B. Say: "Traite de 1'Econ. Polit." Seme. ed. Paris, 1817, t. 1., p. 428.) 8 "Currency (!) employed in producing articles ... is capital." (MacLeod: "The Theory and Practice of Banking." London, 1855, v. 1., ch. i., p. 55.) "Capital is commodities." (James Mill: "Elements of Pol. Econ,." Lond., 1821, p. 74.) 172 Capitalist Production. expands spontaneously. For the movement, in the course of which it adds surplus value, is its own movement, its expan- sion, therefore, is automatic expansion. Because it is value, it has acquired the occult quality of being able to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs. Value, therefore, being the active factor in such a process, and assuming at one time the form of money, at another that of commodities, but through all these changes preserving itself and expanding, it requires some independent form, by means of which its identity may at any time be established. And this form it possesses only in the shape of money. It is under the form of money that value begins and ends, and begins again, every act of its own spontaneous generation. It began by being 100, it is now 110, and so on. But the money itself is only one of the two forms of value. Unless it takes the form of some commodity, it does not become capital. There is here no antagonism, as in the case of hoarding, be- tween the money and commodities. The capitalist knows that all commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, in- wardly circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful means whereby out of money to make more money. In simple circulation, C M C, the value of commodities attained at the most a form independent of their use-values, i. e., the form of money ; but that same value now in the cir- culation M C M, or the circulation of capital, suddenly presents itself as an independent substance, endowed with a motion of its own, passing through a life-process of its own, " in which money and commodities are mere forms which it assumes and casts off in turn. Nay, more : instead of simply representing the relations of commodities, it enters now, so to say, into private relations with itself. It differentiates itself as original value from itself as surplus-value; as the father differentiates himself from himself qua the son, yet both are one and of one age : for only by the surplus value of 10 does the 100 originally advanced become capital, and so soon as this takes place, so soon as the son, and by the son, the father, Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 173 is begotten, so soon does their difference vanish, and they again become one, 110. Value therefore now becomes value in process, money in process, and, as such, capital. It comes out of circulation, enters into it again, preserves and multiplies itself within its circuit, comes back out of it with expanded bulk, and begins the same round ever afresh. 1 M M', money which begets money, such is the description of Capital from the mouths of its first interpreters, the Mercantilists. Buying in order to sell, or, more accurately, buying in order to sell dearer, M C M', appears certainly to be a form peculiar to one kind of capital alone, namely, merchants' capital. But industrial capital too is money, that is changed into commodities, and by the sale of these commodities, is re- converted into more money. The events that take place out- side the sphere of circulation, in the interval between the buy- ing and selling, do not affect the form of this movement. Lastly, in the case of interest-bearing capital, the circulation M C M' appears abridged. We have its result without the intermediate stage, in the form M M', "en style lapidaire" so to say, money that is worth more money, value that is greater than itself. MJ C M' is therefore in reality the general formula of capital as it appears prima facie within the sphere of circula- tion. CHAPTEE V. CONTRADICTIONS IN THE GENERAL FORMULA OF CAPITAL. THE. form which circulation takes when money becomes cap- ital, is opposed to all the laws we have hitherto investigated bearing on the nature of commodities, value and money, and even of circulation itself. What distinguishes this form from that of the simple circulation of commodities, is the inverted 1 Capital: "portion fructifiante de la richesse accumulee . . . valeur permanente, multipliante." (Sismondi: "Nouveaux principes de 1'econ. polit.," t. i., p. 88, 89.) 174 Capitalist Production. order of succession of the two antithetical processes, sale and purchase. How can this purely formal distinction between these processes change their character as it were by magic ? But that is not all. This inversion has no existence for two out of the three persons who transact business together. As capitalist, I buy commodities from A and sell them again to B, but as a simple owner of commodities, I sell them to B and then purchase fresh ones from A. A and B see no difference between the two sets of transactions. They are merely buyers or sellers. And I on each occasion meet them as a mere owner of either money or commodities, as a buyer or a seller, and, what is more, in both sets of transactions, I am opposed to A only as a buyer and to B only as a seller, to the one only as money, to the other only as commodities, and to either of them as capital or a capitalist, or as representative of anything that is more than money or commodities, or that can produce any effect beyond what money and commodities can. For me the purchase from A and the sale to B are part of a series. But the connexion between the two acts exists for me alone. A does not trouble himself about my transaction -with B, nor does B about my business with A. And if I offered to explain to them the meritorious nature of my action in inverting the order of succession, they would probably point out to me that I was mistaken as to that order of succession, and that the whole transaction, instead of beginning with a purchase and ending with a sale, began, on the contrary, with a sale and was concluded with a purchase. In truth, my first act, the pur- chase, was from the standpoint of A, a sale, and my second act, the sale, was from the standpoint of B, a purchase. Not con- tent with that, A and B would declare that the whole series was superfluous and nothing but Hokus Pokus; that for the future A would buy direct from B, and B sell direct to A. Thus the whole transaction would be reduced to a single act forming an isolated, non-complemented phase in the ordinary circulation of commodities, a mere sale from A's point of view, and from B's, a mere purchase. The inversion, therefore, of the order of succession, does not take us outside the sphere of the simple circulation of commodities, and we must rather Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 175 look, whether there is in this simple circulation anything per- mitting an expansion of the value that enters into circulation, and, consequently, a creation of surplus-value. Let us take the process of circulation in a form under which it presents itself as a simple and direct exchange of com- modities. This is always the case when two owners of com- modities buy from each other, and on the settling day the amounts mutually owing are equal and cancel each other. The money in this case is money of account and serves to ex- press the value of the commodities by their prices, but is not, itself, in the shape of hard cash, confronted with them. So far as regards use-values, it is clear that both parties may gain some advantage. Both part with goods that, as use-values, are of no service to them, and receive others that they can make use of. And there may also be a further gain. A, who sells wine and buys corn, possibly produces more wine, with given labour time, than farmer B could, and B, on the other hand, more corn than wine-grower A could. A, therefore, may get, for the same exchange value, more corn, and B more wine, than each would respectively get without any exchange by pro- ducing his own corn and wine. With reference, therefore, to use-value, there is good ground for saying that "exchange is a transaction by which both sides gain." * It is otherwise with exchange value. "A man who has plenty of wine and no corn treats with a man who has plenty of corn and no wine ; an ex- change takes place between them of corn to the value of 50, for wine of the same value. This act produces no increase of exchange value either for the one or the other ; for each of them already possessed, before the exchange, a value equal to that which he acquired by means of that operation." 2 The result is not altered by introducing money, as a medium of cir- culation, between the commodities, and making the sale and the purchase two distinct acts. 3 The value of a commodity is 1 "L'echange est une transaction admirable dans laquelle les deux contractants gagnent toujours (!)" (Destutt de Tracy: "Traite de la Volonte et de ses effets." Paris, 1826, p. 68.) This work appeared afterwards as "Traite de 1'Econ. Polit. 2 "Mercier de la Riviere," 1. c. p. 544. 3 "Que 1'une de ces deux valeurs soit argent, ou qu'elles soient toutes deux inar- chandises usuelles, rien de plus indifferent en soi." (Mercier de la Riviere," 1. c. p. 543.) 176 Capitalist Production. expressed in its price before it goes into circulation, and is therefore a precedent condition of circulation, not its result. 1 Abstractedly considered, that is, apart from circumstances not immediately flowing from the laws of the simple circula- tion of commodities, there is in an exchange nothing (if we except the replacing of one use-value by another) but a metamorphosis, a mere change in the form of the commodity. The same exchange value, i.e., the same quantity of incor- porated social labour, remains throughout in the hands of the owner of the commodity first in the shape of his own com- modity, then in the form of the money for which he exchanged it, and lastly, in the shape of the commodity he buys with that money. This change of form does not imply a change in the magnitude of the value. But the change, which the value of the commodity undergoes in this process, is limited to a change in its money form. This form exists first as the price of the commodity offered for sale, then as an actual sum of money, which, however, was already expressed in the price, and lastly, as the price of an equivalent commodity. This change of form no more implies, taken alone, a change in the quantity of value, than does the change of a 5 note into sovereigns, half sovereigns and shillings. So far therefore as the circula- tion of commodities effects a change in the form alone of their values, and is free from disturbing influences, it must be the exchange of equivalents. Little as Vulgar-Economy knows about the nature of value, yet whenever it wishes to consider the phenomena of circulation in their purity, it assumes that supply and demand are equal, which amounts to this, that their effect is nil. If therefore, as regards the use-values ex- changed, both buyer and seller may possibly gain something, this is not the case as regards the exchange values. Here we must rather say, "Where equality exists there can be no gain." 2 It is true, commodities may be sold at prices deviating from their values, but these deviations are to be considered as in- 1 "Ce ne sont pas les contractants qui prononcent sur valeur; elle est deride"e avant la convention." ("Le Trosne," p. 906.) * "Dove e egualita non 4 lucro." (Galiani, "Delia Moneta in Custodi, Parte Moderns, " t. iv. p. 244.) Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 177 fractions of the laws of the exchange of commodites, 1 which in its normal state is an exchange of equivalents, consequently, no method for increasing value. 2 Hence, we see that behind all attempts to represent the circulation of commodities as a source of surplus-value, there lurks a quid pro quo, a mixing up of use-value and exchange value. For instance, Condillac says: "It is not true that on an exchange of commodities we give value for value. On the contrary, each of the two contracting parties in every case, gives a less for a greater value. ... If we really exchanged equal values, neither party could make a profit. And yet, they both gain, or ought to gain. Why ? The value of a thing consists solely in its relation to our wants. What is more to the one is less to the other, and vice versfa. ... It is not to be assumed that we offer for sale articles required for our own consumption. . . . We wish to part with a use- less thing, in order to get one that we need ; we want to give less for more. ... It was natural to think that, in an ex- change, value was given for value, whenever each of the ar- ticles exchanged was of equal value with the same quantity of gold. . . . But there is another point to be considered in our calculation. The question is, whether we both exchange something superfluous for something necessary." 3 We see in this passage, how Condillac not only confuses use-value with exchange value, but in a really childish manner assumes, that in a society, in which the production of commodities is well developed, each producer produces his own means of subsis- tence, and throws into circulation only the excess over his own requirements. 4 Still, Condillac's argument is frequently used 1 "Lechange devient desavantageux pour 1'une des parties, lorsque quelque chose etrangere vient diminuer ou exagerer le prix; alors 1'egalite est blessee, mais la lesion precede de cette cause et non de 1'echange." ("Le Trosne," 1. c. p. 904.) 2 "L'echange est de sa nature un contrat d'egalite qui se fait de valeur pour valeur 6gale. II n'est done pas un moyen de s'enrichir, puisque 1'on donne autant que 1'on recoit." ("Le Trosne," 1. c. p. 903.) 3 Condillac: "Le Commerce et le Gouvernement" (1776). Edit. Daire et Molinari in the "Melanges d'Econ. Polit." Paris, 1847, p. 267, etc. * Le Trosne, therefore, answers his friend Condillac with justice as follows: "Dans une . . . societe formee il n'y a pas de surabondant en aucun genre." At the same time, in a bantering way, he remarks: "If both the persons who exchange re- ceive more to an equal amount, and part with less to an equal amount, they both get the same." It is because Condillac has not the remotest idea of the nature of L 178 Capitalist Production. by modern economists, more especially when the point is to show, that the exchange of commodities in its developed form, commerce, is productive of surplus-value. For instance, "Commerce .... adds value to products, for the same prod- ucts in the hands of consumers, are worth more than in the hands of producers, and it may strictly be considered an act of production." 1 But commodities are not paid for twice over, once on account of their use-value, and again on account of their value. And though the use-value of a commodity is more servicable to the buyer than to the seller, its money form is more serviceable to the seller. Would he otherwise sell it ? We might therefore just as well say that the buyer performs "strictly an act of production," by converting stockings, for example, into money. If commodities, or commodities and money, of equal ex- change-value, and consequently equivalents, are exchanged, it is plain that no one abstracts more value from, than he throws into, circulation. There is no creation of surplus-value. And, in its normal form, the circulation of commodities de- mands the exchange of equivalents. But in actual practice, the process does not retain its normal form. Let us, there- fore, assume an exchange of non-equivalents. In any case the market for commodities is only frequented by owners of commodities, and the power which these persons exercise over each other, is no other than the power of their commodities. The material variety of these commodities is the material incentive to the act of exchange, and makes buyers and sellers mutually dependent, because none of them possesses the object of his own wants, and each holds in his hand the object of another's wants. Besides these material differences of their use-values, there is only one other difference between commodities, namely, that between their bodily form and the form into which they are converted by sale, the difference be- exchange value that he has been chosen by Heir Professor Wilhelm Roscher as a proper person to answer for the soundness of his own childish notions. See Roscher's "Die Grundlagen der Nationalokomonie, Dritte Auflage," 1858. 1 S. P. Newman: "Elements of Polit. Econ." Andover and New York, 1835, p. 175. Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 179 tween commodities and money. And consequently the owners of commodities are distinguishable only as sellers, those who own commodities, and buyers, those who own money. Suppose then, that by some inexplicable privilege, the seller is enabled to sell his commodities above their value, what is worth 100 for 110 ; in which case the price is nominally raised 10%. The seller therefore pockets a surplus value of 10. But after he has sold he becomes a buyer. A third owner of commodities comes to him now as seller, who in this capacity also enjoys the privilege of selling his commodities 10% too dear. Our friend gained 10 as a seller only to lose it again as a buyer. 1 The nett result is, that all owners of commodities sell their goods to one another at 10% above their value, which comes precisely to the same as if they sold them at their true value. Such a general and nominal rise of prices has the same effect as if the values had been expressed in weight of silver instead of in weight of gold. The nominal prices of commodities would rise, but the real relation between their values would remain unchanged. Let us make the opposite assumption, that the buyer has the privilege of purchasing commodities under their value. In this case it is no longer necessary to bear in mind that he in his turn wll become a seller. He was so before he became buyer; he had already lost 10% in selling before he gained 10% as buyer. 2 Everything is just as it was. The creation of surplus-value, and therefore the conversion of money into capital, can consequently be explained neither on the assumption that commodities are sold above their value, nor that they are bought below their value. 3 1 "By the augmentation of the nominal value of the produce . . . sellers not en- riched . . . since what they gain as sellers, they precisely expend in the quality of buyers." ("The Essential Principles of the Wealth of Nations," &c., London, 1797, p. 66.) * "Si Ton est force de donner pour 18 livres une quantite de telle production qui en valait 24, lorsqu'on employera ce meme argent a acheter, on aura egalement pour 18 1. ce que Ton payait 24." ("Le Trosne," 1. c. p. 897.) 3 "Chaque vendeur ne peut done parvenir a rencherir habituellement ses marchan- dises, qu'en se soumettant aussi a payer habituellement plus cher les marchandises des autres vendeurs; et par la metne raison, chaque consommateur ne peut payer habituellement moins cher ce qu'il achete, qu'en se soumettant aussi a une diminu- tion semblable sur le prix des choses qu il vend." (Mercier de la Raviere," 1. c. p. 555.) i8o Capitalist Production. The problem is in no way simplified by introducing irrele- vant matters after the manner of Col. Torrens: "Effectual demand consists in the power and inclination ( !), on the part of consumers, to give for commodities, either by immediate or circuitous barter, some greater portion of ... capital than their production costs." 1 In relation to circulation, producers and consumers meet only as buyers and sellers. To assert that the surplus-value acquired by the producer has its origin in the fact that consumers pay for commodities more than their value, is only to say in other words: The owner of commod- ities possesses, as a seller, the privilege of selling too dear. The seller has himself produced the commodities or represents their producer, but the buyer has to no less extent produced the commodities represented by his money, or represents their producer. The distinction between them is, that one buys and the other sells. The fact that the owner of the commodities, under the designation of producer, sells them over their value, and under the designation of consumer, pays too much for them, does not carry us a single step further. 2 To be consistent therefore, the upholders of the delusion that surplus-value has its origin in a nominal rise of prices or in the privilege which the seller has of selling too dear, must assume the existence of a class that only buys and does not sell, i.e. f only consumes and does not produce. The existence of such a class is inexplicable from the standpoint we have so far reached, viz., that of simple circulation. But let us anticipate. The money with which such a class is constantly making pur- chases, must constantly flow into their pockets, without any exchange, gratis, by might or right, from the pockets of the commodity-owners themselves. To sell commodities above their value to such a class, is only to crib back again a part of the money previously given to it. 3 The towns of Asia *R. Torrens: "An Essay on the Production of Wealth." London, 1821, p. 349. 1 "The idea of profits being paid by the consumers, is, assuredly, very absurd. Who are the consumers?" (G. Ramsay: "An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth." Edinburgh, 1836, p. 183.) 1 "When a man is in want of a demand, does Mr. Malthus recommend him to pay some other person to take off his goods?" is a question put by an angry disciple of Ricardo to Malthus, who, like his disciple, Parson Chalmers, economically glori- fies this class of simple buyers or consumers. (See "An Inquiry into those princi- Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 181 Minor thus paid a yearly money tribute to ancient Rome. With this money Rome purchased from them commodities, and purchased them too dear. The provincials cheated the Ro- mans, and thus got back from their conquerors, in the course of trade, a portion of the tribute. Yet, for all that, the con- quered were the really cheated. Their goods were still paid for with their own money. That is not the way to get rich or to create surplus-value. Let us therefore keep within the bounds of exchange where sellers are also buyers, and buyers, sellers. Our difficulty may perhaps have arisen from treating the actors as personifications instead of as individuals. A may be clever enough to get the advantage of B or C without their being able to retaliate. A sells wine worth 40 to B, and obtains from him in exchange corn to the value of 50. A has converted his 40 into 50, has made more money out of less, and has converted his commodities into capital. Let us examine this a little more closely. Before the exchange we had 40 worth of wine in the hands of A, and 50 worth of corn in those of B, a total value of 90. After the exchange we have still the same total value of 90. The value in cir- culation has not increased by one iota, it is only distributed differently between A and B. What is a loss of value to B is surplus-value to A ; what is "minus" to one is "plus" to the other. The same change would have taken place, if A, with- out the formality of an exchange, had directly stolen the 10 from B. The sum of the values in circulation can clearly not be augmented by any change in their distribution, any more than the quantity of the precious metals in a country by a Jew selling a Queen Ann's farthing for a guinea. The cap- italist class, as a whole, in any country, cannot over-reach themselves. 1 Turn and twist then as we may, the fact remains unaltered. pies respecting the Nature of Demand and the necessity of Consumption, lately ad- vocated by Mr. Malthus," &c. Lond., 1821, p. 55.) 1 Destutt de Tracy, although, or perhaps because, he was a member of the Insti- tute, held the opposite view. He says, industrial capitalists make profits because "they all sell for more than it has cost to produce. And to whom do they sell ? In the first instance to one another." (1. c., p. 239.) 1 82 Capitalist Production. If equivalents are exchanged, no surplus-value results, and if non-equivalents are exchanged, still no surplus-value. 1 Cir- culation, or the exchange of commodities, begets no value. 2 The reason is now therefore plain why, in analysing the standard form of capital, the form under which it determines the economical organisation of modern society, we entirely left out of consideration its most popular, and, so to say, ante- diluvian forms, merchants' capital and money-lenders' capital. The circuit M C M', buying in order to sell dearer, is seen most clearly in genuine merchants' capital. But the movement takes place entirely within the sphere of circulation. Since, however, it is impossible, by circulation alone, to ac- count for the conversion of money into capital, for the forma- tion of surplus-value, it would appear, that merchants' capital is an impossibility, so long as equivalents are exchanged ; 3 that, therefore, it can only have its origin in the twofold advantage gained, over both the selling and the buying producers, by the merchant who parasitically shoves himself in between them. It is in this sense that Franklin says, "war is robbery, com- merce is generally cheating." 4 If the transformation of merchants' money into capital is to be explained otherwise than by the producers being simply cheated, a long series of intermediate steps would be necessary, which, at present, when 1 "L'echange qui se fait de deux valeurs egales n'augmente ni ne diminue la masse des valeurs subsistantes dans la societe. L'echange de deux valeurs inegalcs . . ne change rien non plus a la somme des valeurs sociales, bien qu'il ajoute a la fortune de 1'un ce pu'il ote de la fortune de 1'autre." J. B. Say, 1. c. t. I., pp. 344, 345.) Say, not in the least troubled as to the consequences of this state- ment, borrows it, almost word for word, from the Physiocrats. The following example will shew how Monsieur Say turned to account the writings of the Physiocrats, in his day quite forgotten, for the purpose of expanding the "value" of his own. His most celebrated saying, "On n'achete des produits qu'avec des produits" (1. c., t. II., p. 438) runs as follows in the original physiocratic work: "Les productions ne se paient qu'avec des productions." ("Le Trosne," 1. c., p. 899.) 1 "Enchange confers no value at all upon products." (F. Wayland: "The Ele- ments of Political Economy." Boston, 1853, p. 168.) * Under the rule of invariable equivalents commerce would be impossible. (G. Opdyke: "A Treatise on Polit Economy." New York, 1851, p. 66-69.) "The dif- ference between real value and exchange-value is based upon this fact, namely, that the value of a thing is different from the socalled equivalent given for it in trade, '.., that this equivalent is no equivalent." (F. Engels, 1. c. p. 96.) * Benjamin Franklin: Works, Vol. II. edit. Sparks in "Positions to be examined concerning National Wealth," p. 376. Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 183 the simple circulation of commodities forms our only assump- tion, are entirely wanting. What, we have said with reference to merchants' capital, applies still more to money-lenders' capital. In merchants' capital, the two extremes, the money that is thrown upon the market, and the augmented money that is withdrawn from the market, are at least connected by a purchase and a sale, in other words by the movement of the circulation. In money- lenders' capital the form M C M' is reduced to the two ex- tremes without a mean, M M', money exchanged for more money, a form that is incompatible with the nature of money, and therefore remains inexplicable from the standpoint of the circulation of commodities. Hence Aristotle: "since chrema- tistic is a double science, one part belonging to commerce, the other to economic, the latter being necessary and praiseworthy, the former based on circulation and with justice disapproved (for it is not based on Nature, but on mutual cheating), there- fore the usurer is most rightly hated, because money itself is the source of his gain, and is not used for the purposes for which it was invented. For it originated for the exchange of commodities, but interest makes out of money, more money. Hence its name ( TO/COS interest and offspring). For the be- gotten are like those who beget them. But interest is money of money, so that of all modes of making a living, this is the most contrary to nature." * In the course of our investigation, we shall find that both, merchants' capital and interest-bearing capital are derivative forms, and at the same time it will become clear, why these two forms appear in the course of history before the modern standard form of capital. We have shown that surplus-value cannot be created by circulation, and, therefore, that in its formation, something must take place in the background, which is not apparent in the circulation itself. 2 But can surplus-value possibly origin- ate anywhere else than in circulation, which is the sum total 1 Aristotle, 1. c. c. 10. * Profit, in the usual condition of the market, is not made by exchanging. Had it not existed before, neither could it after that transaction." (Ramsay, 1. c., p. 184.) 184 Capitalist Production. of all the mutual relations of commodity-owners, as far as they are determined by their commodities? Apart from circula- tion, the commodity-owner is in relation only with his own commodity. So far as regards value, that relation is limited to this, that the commodity contains a quantity of his labour, that quantity being measured by a definite social standard. This quantity is expressed by the value of the commodity, and since the value is reckoned in money of ac- count, this quantity is also expressed by the price, which we will suppose to be 10. But his labour is not represented both by the value of the commodity, and by a surplus over that value, not by a price of 10 that is also a price of 11, not by a value that is greater than itself. The commodity owner can, by his labour, create value, but not self-expanding value. He can increase the value of his commodity, by adding fresh labour, and therefore more value to the value in hand, by mak- ing, for instance, leather into boots. The same material has now more value, because it contains a greater quantity of labour. The boots have therefore more value than the leather, but the value of the leather remains what it was ; it has not expanded itself, has not, during the making of the boots, an- nexed surplus value. It is therefore impossible that outside the sphere of circulation, a producer of commodities can, with- out coming into contact with other commodity owners, ex- pand value, and consequently convert money or commodities into capital. It is therefore impossible for capital to be produced by cir- culation, and it is equally impossible for it to originate apart from circulation. It must have its origin both in circulation and yet not in circulation. We have, therefore, got a double result. The conversion of money into capital has to be explained on the basis of the laws that regulate the exchange of commod- ities, in such a way that the starting point is the exchange of equivalents. 1 Our friend, Moneybags, who as yet is only an 1 From the foregoing investigation, the reader will see that this statement only means that the formation of capital must be possible even though the price and value of a commodity be the same; for its formation cannot be attributed to any deviation of the one from the other. If prices actually differ from values, we must, first of The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 185 embryo capitalist, must buy his commodities at their value, must sell them at their value, and yet at the end of the pro- cess must withdraw more value from circulation than he threw into it at starting. His development into a full-grown capi- talist must take place, both within the sphere of circulation and without it. These are the conditions of the problem. Hie Rhodus, hie salta ! CHAPTER VI. THE BUYING AND SELLING OF LABOUR-POWER. THE change of value that occurs in the case of money intended to be converted into capital, cannot take place in the money itself, since in its function of means of purchase and of pay- ment, it does no more than realise the price of the commodity it buys or pays for; and, as hard cash, it is value petrified, never varying. 1 Just as little can it originate in the second act of circulation, the re-sale of the commodity, which does no more than transform the article from its bodily form back again into its money-form. The change must, therefore, take place in the commodity bought by the first act, M C, but not in its value, for equivalents are exchanged, and the commodity is paid for at its full value. We are, therefore, forced to the all, reduce the former to the latter, in other words treat the difference as accidental in order that the phenomena may be observed in their purity, and our observations not interfered with by disturbing circumstances that have nothing to do with the process in question. We know, moreover, that this reduction is no mere scientific process. The continual oscillation in prices, their rising and falling, compensate each other, and reduce themselves to an average price, which is their hidden regulator. It forms the guiding star of the merchant or the manufacturer in every undertaking that requires time. He knows that when a long period of time is taken, commodities are sold neither over nor under, but at their average price. If therefore he thought about the matter at all, he would formulate the problem of the formation of capital as follows: How can we account for the origin of capital on the supposition that prices are regulated by the average price, i.e., ultimately by the value of the com- modities? I say "ultimately," because average prices dp not directly coincide with the values of commodities, as Adam Smith, Ricardo, and others believe. 1 "In the form of money. . . capital is productive of no profit." (Ricardo: "Princ. of Pol. Econ." p. 267.) 1 86 Capitalist Production. conclusion that the change originates in the use-value, as such, of the commodity, i.e., in its consumption. In order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our friend, Moneybags, must be so lucky as to find, within the sphere of circulation, in the market, a commodity, whose use- value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption, therefore, is itself an em- bodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation of value. The possessor of money does find on the market such a special commodity in capacity for labour or labour-power. By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of these mental and physical capabilities exist- ing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description. But in order that our owner of money may be able to find labour-power offered for sale as a commodity, various condi- tions must first be fulfilled. The exchange of commodities of itself implies no other relations of dependence than those which result from its own nature. On this assumption, labour-power can appear upon the market as a commodity only if, and so far as, its possessor, the individual whose labour-power it is, offers it for sale, or sells it, as a commodity. In order that he may be able to do this, he must have it at his disposal, must be the untrammelled owner of his capacity for labour, i.e., of his person. 1 He and the owner of money meet in the market, and deal with each other as on the basis of equal rights, with this difference alone, that one is buyer, the other seller; both, therefore, equal in the eyes of the law. The continuance of this relation demands that the owner of the labour-power should sell it only for a definite period, for if he were to sell it rump and stump, once for all, he would be selling himself, converting himself from a free man into a slave, from an owner of a commodity into a commodity. He must constantly look upon his labour-power as his own property, his own com- modity, and this he can only do by placing it at the disposal of 1 In encyclopaedias of classical antiquities we find such nonsense as this that in the ancient world capital was fully developed, "except that the free labourer and a system of credit was wanting." Mommsen also, in his "History of Rome," commits, in this respect, one blunder after another. The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 187 the buyer temporarily, for a definite period of time. By this means alone can he avoid renouncing his rights of ownership over it. 1 The second essential condition to the owner of money find- ing labour-power in the market as a commodity in this that the labourer instead of being in the position to sell com- modities in which his labour is incorporated, must be obliged to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power, which exists only in his living self. In order that a man may be able to sell commodities other than labour-power, he must of course have the means of production, as raw material, implements, &c. No boots can be made without leather. He requires also the means of sub- sistence. Nobody not even "a musician of the future" can live upon future products, or upon use-values in an un- finished state ; and ever since the first moment of his appear- ance on the world's stage, man always has been, and must still be a consumer, both before and while he is producing. In a society where all products assume the form of commodities, these commodities must be sold after they have been produced ; it is only after their sale that they can serve in satisfying the requirements of their producer. The time necessary for their sale is superadded to that necessary for their production. For the conversion of his money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must meet in the market with the free labourer, free in the double sense, that as a free man he can 1 Hence legislation in various countries fixes a maximum for labour-contracts. Wherever free labour is the rule, the laws regulate the mode of terminating this con- tract. In some States, particularly in Mexico (before the American Civil War, also in the territories taken from Mexico, and also as a matter of fact, in the Danubian provinces till the revolution affected by Kusa), slavery is hidden under the form of peonage. By means of advances, repayable in labour, which are handed down from generation to generation, not only the individual labourer, but his family, become, de facto, the property of other persons and their families. Juarez abolished peonage. The so-called Emperor Maximilian re-established it by a decree, which, in the House of Representatives at Washington, was aptly denounced as a decree for the re-introduction of slavery into Mexico. "I may make over to another the use, for a limited time, of my particular bodily and mental aptitudes and capabilities; because, in consequence of this restriction, they are impressed with a character of alienation with regard to me as a whole. But by the alienation of all my labour- time and the whole of my work, I should be converting the substance itself, in other words, my general activity and reality, my person, into the property of another." (Hegel, "Philosophic des Rechts." Berlin, 1840, p. 104 67.) 1 88 Capitalist Production. dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that oi> the other hand he has no other commodity for sale, is short of everything necessary for the realisation of his labour- power. The question why this free labourer confronts him in the market, has no interest for the owner of money, who regards the labour market as a branch of the general market for com- modities. And for the present it interests us just as little. We cling to the fact theoretically, as he does practically. One thing, however, is clear nature does not produce on the one side owners of money or commodities, and on the other men possessing nothing but their own labour-power. This relation has no natural basis, neither is its socal basis one that is common to all historical periods: It is clearly the result of a past historial development, the product of many economical revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older forms of social production. So, too, the economical categories, already discussed by us, bear the stamp of history. Definite historical conditions are necessary that a product may become a commodity. It must not be produced as the immediate means of subsistence of the producer himself. Had we gone further, and inquired under what circumstances all, or even the majority of products take the form of commodities, we should have found that this can only happen with production of a very specific kind, capitalist production. Such an inquiry, however, would have been foreign to the analysis of commodities. Production and cir- culation of commodities can take place, although the great mass of the objects produced are intended for the immediate requirements of their producers, are not turned into commodi- ties, and consequently social production is not yet by a long way dominated in its length and breadth by exchange-value, the appearance of products as commodities presupposed such a development of the social division of labour, that the separation of use-value from exchange-value, a separation which first begins with barter, must already have been completed. But such a degree of development is common to many forms of society, which in other respects present the most varying The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 189 historical features. On the other hand, if we consider money, its existence implies a definite stage in the exchange of com- modities. The particular functions of money which it per- forms, either as the mere equivalent of commodities, or as means of circulation, or means of payment, as hoard or as universal money, point, according to the extent and relative preponderance of the one function or the other, to very differ- ent stages in the process of social production. Yet we know by experience that a circulation of commodities relatively primitive, suffices for the production of all these forms. Otherwise with capital. The historical conditions of its ex- istence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities. It can spring into life, only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence meets in the market with the free labourer selling his labour-power. And this one historical condition comprises a world's history. Capital therefore, announces from its first appearance a new epoch in the process of social production. 1 We must now examine more closely this peculiar commodity, labour-power. Like all others it has a value. 2 How is that value determined ? The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article. So far as it has value, it represents no more than a definite quantity of the average labour of society incorporated in it. Labour-power exists only as a capacity, or power of the living individual. Its production consequently presupposes his existence. Given the individual, the produc- tion of labour-power consists in his reproduction of himself or his maintenance. For his maintenance he requires a given quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour- time requisite for the production of labour-power reduces itself 1 The capitalist epoch is therefore characterised by this, that labour-power takes in the eyes of the labourer himself the form of a commodity which is his property; his labour consequently becomes wage labour. On the other hand, it is only from this moment that the produce of labour universally becomes a commodity. ! "The value or worth of a man, is as of all other things his price that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power." (Th. Hobbes: "Leviathan" ir. \Yorks, Ed. Molesworth. Lond. 1839-44, v. iii., p. 76.) 190 Capitalist Production. to that necessary for the production of those means of sub- sistence; in other words, the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the mainte- nance of the labourer. Labour-power, however, becomes a reality only by its exercise; it sets itself in action only by working. But thereby a definite quantity of human muscle, .nerve, brain, &c., is wasted, and these require to be restored. This increased expenditure demands a larger income. 1 If the owner of labour-power works to-day, to-morrow he must again be able to repeat the same process in the same conditions as regards health and strength. His means of subsistence must therefore be sufficient to maintain him in his normal state as a labouring individual. His natural wants, such as food, clothing, fuel, and housing, vary according to the climatic and other physical conditions of his country. On the other hand, the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants, as also the modes of satisfying them, are themselves the product of historical development, and depend therefore to a great extent on the degree of civilisation of a country, more particularly on the conditions under which, and consequently on the habits and degree of comfort in which, tjie class of free labourers has been formed. 2 In contradistinction therefore to the case of other commodities, there enters into the determination of the value of labour-power a historical and moral element. Never- theless, in a given country, at a given period, the average quantity of the means of subsistence necessary for the labourer is practically known. The owner of labour-power is mortal. If then his appear- ance in the market is to be continuous, and the continuous con- version of money into capital assumes this, the seller of labour- power must perpetuate himself, "in the way that every living individual perpetuates himself, by procreation." 3 The labour- power withdrawn from the market by wear and tear and death, must be continually replaced by, at the very least, an 1 Hence the Roman Villicus, as overlooker of the agricultural slaves, received "more meagre fare than working slaves, because his work was lighter." (Th, Mommsen, Rom. Geschichte, 1850, p. 810.) * Compare W. H. Thornton : "Overpopulation and its Remedy," Lond., 1846. 1 Petty. The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 191 equal amount of fresh labour-power. Hence the sum of the means of subsistence necessary for the production of labour- power must include the means necessary for the labourer's substitutes, i.e., his children, in order that this race of peculiar commodity-owners may perpetuate its appearance in the market. 1 In order to modify the human organism, so that it may ac- quire skill and handiness in a given branch of industry, and become labour-power of a special kind, a special education or training is requisite, and this, on its part, costs an equivalent in commodities of a greater or less amount. This amount varies according to the mpre or less complicated character of the labour-power. The expenses of this education (excessive- ly small in the case of ordinary labour-power), enter pro tanto into the total value spent in its production. The value of labour-power resolves itself into the value of a definite quantity of the means of subsistence. It therefore varies with the value of these means or with the quantity of labour requisite for their production. Some of the means of subsistence, such as food and fuel, are consumed daily, and a fresh supply must be provided daily. Others such as clothes and furniture last for longer periods and require to be replaced only at longer intervals. One article must be bought or paid for daily, another weekly, another quarterly, and so on. But in whatever way the sum total of these outlays may be spread over the year, they must be covered by the average income, taking one day with an- other. If the total of the commodities required daily for the production of labour-power^ A, and those required weekly =B, and those required quarterly =C, and so on, the daily average of these commodities = 88B A+B2B+4C+&c a g u p pose t h a t in this mass of commodities requisite for the average day there are embodied 6 hours of social labour, then there is incor- 1 Its (labour's natural price. . . . consists in such a quantity of necessaries and comforts of life, as, from the nature of the climate, and the habits of the coun- try, are necessary to support the labourer, and to enable him to rear such a family as may preserve, in the market, an undiminishcd supply of labour." (R. Torrens: "An Essay on the external Corn Trade." Lend., ISIS, p. 62.) The word labour is 192 Capitalist Production. porated daily in labour-power half a day's average social labour, in other words, half a day's labour in requisite for the daily production of labour-power. This quantity of labour forms the value of a day's labour-power or the value of the labour-power daily reproduced. If half a day's average social labour is incorporated in three shillings, then three shillings is the price corresponding to the value of a day's labour-power. If its owner therefore offers it for sale at three shillings a day, its selling price is equal to its value, and according to our supposition, our friend Moneybags, who is intent upon con- verting his three shillings into capital, pays this value. The minimum limit of the value of labour-power is deter- mined by the value of the commodities, without the daily supply of which the labourer cannot renew his vital energy, consequently by the value of those means of subsistence that are physically indispensable. If the price of labour-power fall to this minimum, it falls below its value, since under such circumstances it can be maintained and developed only in a crippled state. But the value of every commodity is deter- mined by the labour-time requisite to turn it out so as to be of normal quality. It is a very cheap sort of sentimentality which declares this method of determining the value of labour-power, a method prescribed by the very nature of the case, to be a brutal method, and which wails with Kossi that, "To comprehend capacity for labour (puissance de travail) at the same time that we make abstraction from the means of subsistence of the labourers during the process of production, is to comprehend a phantom (etre de raison). When we speak of labour, or capacity for labour, we speak at the same time of the labourer and his means of subsistence, of labourer and wages." 1 When we speak of capacity for labour, we do not speak of labour, any more than when we speak of capacity for digestion, we speak of digestion. The latter process requires something more than a good stomach. When we speak of capacity for labour we do not abstract from the necessary means of subsistence. On the contrary, their value is expressed in its value. If his capacity 1 Rossi. "Cours d'Econ. Polit: "Bruxelles, 1842, p. 370. The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 193 for labour remains unsold, the labourer derives no benefit from it, but rather he will feel it to be a cruel nature-imposed necessity that this capacity has cost for its production a de- finite amount of the means of subsistence and that it will con- tinue to do so for its reproduction. He will then agree with Sismondi : "that capacity for labour. ... is nothing unless it is sold." 1 One consequence of the peculiar nature of labour-power as a commodity is, that its use-value does not, on the conclusion of this contract between the buyer and seller, immediately pass into the hands of the former. Its value, like that of every other commodity, is already fixed before it goes into circula- tion, since a definite quantity of social labour has been spent upon it ; but its use-value consists in the subsequent exercise of its force. The alienation of labour-power and its actual ap- propriation by the buyer, its employment as a use-value, are separated by an interval of time. But in those cases in which the formal alienation by sale of the use-value of a commodity, is not simultaneous with its actual delivery to the buyer, the money of the latter usually functions as means of payment. 2 In every country in which the capitalist mode of production reigns, it is the custom not to pay for labour-power before it has been exercised for the period fixed by the contract, as for example, the end of each week. In all cases, therefore, the use-value of the labour-power is advanced to the capitalist : the labourer allows the buyer to consume it before he receives pay- ment of the price ; he everywhere gives credit to the capitalist. That this credit is no mere fiction, is shown not only by the occasional loss of wages on the bankruptcy of the capitalist, 3 but also by a series of more enduring consequences. 4 Never- 1 Sismondi: "Nouv. Princ. etc.," t. I. p. 112. 2 All labour is paid after it has ceased." ("An inquiry into those Principles re- specting the nature of Demand," &c., p. 104.) "Le credit commercial a du com- mencer au moment ou 1'ouvrier, premier artisan de la production, a pu, au moyen de ses economies, attendre le salaire de son travail jusqu, a la fin de la semaine, de la quinzaine, du mois, du trimestre, &c. (Ch. Ganilh: "Des Systemes de 1'Econ. Polit." 2eme. edit. Paris, 1821, t. I. p. 150.) 3 "L'ouvrier prete son industrie," but adds Storch slyly: he "risks nothing" except "de perdre son salaire .... L'ouvrier ne transmet rien de materiel." (Storch: "Cours d'Econ. Polit. Econ." Petersbourg, 1815, t. II., p. 37.) 4 One example. In London there are two sorts of bakers, the "full priced," who M 194 Capitalist Production. theless, whether money serves as a means of purchase or as a means of payment, this makes no alteration in the nature of the exchange of commodities. The price of the labour-power is fixed by the contract, although it is not realised till later, like the rent of a house. The labour-power is sold, although it is only paid for at a later period. It will, therefore, be useful, for a clear comprehension of the relation of the parties, to assume provisionally, that the possessor of labour-power, on the occasion of each sale, immediately receives the price stipulated to be paid for it. We now know how the value paid by the purchaser to the sell bread at its full value, and the "undersellers," who sell it under its value. The latter class comprises more than three-fourths of the total number of bakers, (p. xxxii in the Report of H. S. Tremenheere, commissioner to examine into "the griev- ances complained of by the journeymen bakers," &c., Lond. 1862.) The undersellers, almost without exception, sell bread adulterated with alum, soap, pearl ashes, chalk, Derbyshire stone-dust, and such like agreeable nourishing and wholesome ingredi- ents. (See fhe above cited blue book, as also the report of "the committee of 1865 on the adulteration of bread," and Dr. Hassall's "Adulterations detected," 2d Ed. Lond. 1862.) Sir John Gordon stated before the committee of 1855, that "in consequence of these adulterations, the poor man, who lives on two pounds of bread a day, does not now get one fourth part of nourishing matter, let alone th deleterious effects on his health." Tremenheere states (1. c. p. xlviii), as the rea- son, why a very large part of the working class, although well aware of this adul- teration, nevertheless accept the alum, stone-dust, &c., as part of their purchase: that it is for them "a matter of necessity to take from their baker or from the chandler's shop, such bread as they choose to supply." As they are not paid their wages before the end of the week, they in their turn are unable "to pay for the bread consumed by their families, during the week, before the end of the week," and Tremenheere adds on the evidence of witnesses, "it is notorious that bread com- posed of those mixtures, is made expressly for sale in this manner." In many English and still more Scotch agricultural districts, wages are paid fortnightly and even monthly; with such long intervals between the payments, the agricultural la- bourer is obliged to buy on credit. . . . He must pay higher prices, and is in fact tied to the shop which gives him credit. Thus at Horningham in Wilts, for ex- ample, where the wages are monthly, the same flour that he could buy elsewhere at Is lOd per stone, costs him 2s 4d per stone. ("Sixth Report" on "Public Health" by "The Medical Officer of the Privy Council, &c., 1864." p. 264.) "The block printers of Paisley and Kilmarnock enforced, by a strike, fortnightly, instead of monthly payment of wages." (Reports of the Inspectors of Factories for 31st Oct. 1853," p. 34.) As a further pretty result of the credit given by the workmen to the capitalist, we may refer to the method current in many English coal mines, where the labourer is not paid till the end of the month, and in the meantime, receives sums on account from the capitalist, often in goods for which the miner is obliged to pay more than the market price (Truck-system). "It is a common practice with the coal masters to pay once a month, and advance cash to their workmen at the end of each intermediate week. The cash is given in the shop" (i. ., the Tommy shop which belongs to the master); "the men take it on one side and lay it out on the other." (Children's Employment Commis- The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 195 possessor of this peculiar commodity, labour-power, is de- termined. The use-value which the former gets in exchange, manifests itself only in the actual usufruct, in the consump- tion of the labour-power. The money owner buys every- thing necessary for this purpose, such as raw material, in the market, and pays for it at its full value. The consumption of labour-power is at one and the same time the production of commodities and of surplus value. The consumption of labour-power is completed, as in the case of every other com- modity, outside the limits of the market or of the sphere of circulation. Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the possessor of labour-power, we therefore take leave for a time of this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the sur- face and in view of all men, and follow them both into the hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there stares us in the face "No admittance except on business." Here we shall see, not only how capital produces, but how capital is produced. We shall at last force the secret of profit making. This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. The only force that brings them together and puts them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just be- cause they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre- established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an all-shrewd providence, work together to their mutual advan- tage, for the common weal and in the interest of all. 196 Capitalist Production. On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange of commodities, which furnishes the "Free-trader Vulgaris" with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a society based on capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis personse. He, who before was the money owner, now strides, in front as capitalist ; the possessor of labour-power follows .as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on busi- ness ; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bring- ing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but a hiding. PART III. THE PKODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE SURPLUS- VALUE. CHAPTER VII. THE LABOUR-PROCESS AND THE PROCESS OF PRODUCING SURPLUS-VALUE. SECTION 1. THE LABOUR-PROCESS OR THE. PRODUCTION OF USE-VALUES. THE capitalist buys labour-power in order to use it; and labour-power in use is labour itself. The purchaser of labour- power consumes it by setting the seller of it to work. By working, the latter becomes actually, what before he only was potentially, labour-power in action, a labourer. In order that his labour may reappear in a commodity, he must, before all things, expend it on something useful, on something capable of satisfying a want of some sort. Hence, what the capitalist sets the labourer to produce, is a particular use-value, a specified article. The fact that the production of use-values, or goods, is carried on under the control of a capitalist and on his behalf, does not alter the general character of that production. We shall, therefore, in the first place, have to consider the labour-process independently of the particular form it assumes under given social conditions. Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of 197 198 Capitalist Production. her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumber- ing powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasur- able interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first in- stinctive stage. We presuppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distin- guishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a re- sult that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman's will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his at- tention is forced to be. The elementary factors of the labour-process are 1, the per- sonal activity of man, i.e., work itself, 2, the subject of that work, and 3, its instruments. The soil (and this, economically speaking, includes water) in the virgin state in which it supplies 1 man with necessaries 1 "The earth's spontaneous productions being in small quantity, and quite inde- pendent of man, appear, as it were, to be furnished by Nature, in the same way as a The Labour Process. 199 or the means of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently of him, and is the universal subject of human labour. All those things which labour merely separates from immediate connection with their environment, are subjects of labour spontaneously provided by Nature. Such are fish which we catch and take from their element, water, timber which we fell in the virgin forest, and ores which we extract from their veins. If, on the other hand, the subject of labour has, so to say, been filtered through previous labour, we call it raw material; such is ore already extracted and ready for wash- ing. All raw material is the subject of labour, but not every subject of labour is raw material ; it can only become so, after it has undergone some alteration by means of labour. An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, which the labourer interposes between himself and the subject of his labour, and which serves as the conductor of his activity. He makes use of the mechanical, physical, and chemical pro- perties of some substances in order to make other substances subservient to his aims. 1 Leaving out of consideration such, ready-made means of subsistence as fruits, in gathering which a man's own limbs serve as the instruments of his labour, the first thing of which the labourer possesses himself is not the subject of labour but its instrument. Thus Nature becomes one of the organs of his activity, one that he annexes to his own bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite of the Bible. As the earth is his original larder, so too it is his original tool house. It supplies him, for instance, with stones for throwing, grinding, pressing, cutting, &c. The earth itself is an instrument of labour, but when used as such in agri- culture implies a whole series of other instruments and a com- paratively high development of labour. 2 No sooner does small sum is given to a young man, in order to put him in a way of industry, and of making his fortune." (James Steuart: "Principles of Polit. Econ." edit. Dub- lin, 1770, v. I. p. 116.) 1 "Reason is just as cunning as she is powerful. Her cunning consists principally in her mediating activity, which, by causing objects to act and re-act on each other in accordance with their own nature, in this way, without any direct interference in the process, carries out reason's intentions." (Hegel: "Encyklopadie, Erster Theil. Die Logik." Berlin, 1840, p. 382.) 2 In his otherwise miserable work ("Theorie de 1'Econ. Polit." Paris, 1819), Ganilh enumerates in a striking manner in opposition to the "Physiocrats" the 2OO Capitalist Production. labour undergo the least development, than it requires specially prepared instruments. Thus in the oldest caves we find stone implements and weapons. In the earliest period of human history domesticated animals, i.e., animals which have been bred for the purpose, and have undergone modifications by means of labour, play the chief part as instruments of labour along with specially prepared stones, wood, bones, and shells. 1 The use and fabrication of instruments of labour, although existing in the germ among certain species of animals, is specifically characteristic of the human labour-process, and Franklin therefore defines man as a tool-making animal. Relics of by-gone instruments of labour possess the same im- portance for the investigation of extinct economical forms of society, as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct species of animals. It is not the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables us to dis- tinguish different economical epochs. 2 Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is carried on. Among the instruments of labour, those of a mechanical nature, which, taken as a whole, we may call the bone and muscles of production, offer much more decided characteristics of a given epoch of production, than those which, like pipes, tubs, baskets, jars, &c., serve only to hold the materials for labour, which latter class, we may in a general way, call the vascular system of production. The latter first begins to play an important part in the chemical industries. In a wider sense we may include among the instruments of long series of previous processes necessary before agriculture properly so called can commence. 1 Turgot in his "Reflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses" (1766) brings well into prominence the importance of domesticated animals to early civilisation. J The least important commodities of all for the technological comparison of different epochs of production are articles of luxury, in the strict meaning of the term. However little our written histories up to this time notice the development of material production, which is the basis of all social life, and therefore of all real history, yet prehistoric times have been classified in accordance with the results, not of so called historical, but of materialistic investigations. These periods have been divided, to correspond with the materials from which their implements and weapons are made, viz., into the stone, the bronze, and the iron ages. The Labour Process. 201 labour, in addition to those things that are used for directly transferring labour to its subject, and which therefore, in one way or another, serve as conductors of activity, all such objects as are necessary for carrying on the labour-process. These do not enter directly into the process, but without them it is either impossible for it to ^take place at all, or possible only to a partial extent. Once more we find the earth to be a universal instrument of this sort, for it furnishes a locus standi to the labourer and a field of employment for his activity. Among instruments that are the result of previous labour and also belong to this class, we find workshops, canals, roads, and so forth. In the labour-process, therefore, man's activity, with the help of the instruments of labour, effects an alteration, designed from the commencement, in the material worked upon. The process disappears in the product; the latter is a use-value, Nature's material adapted by a change of form to the wants of man. Labour has incorporated itself with its subject: the for- mer is materialised, the latter transformed. That which in the labourer appeared as movement, now appears in the prod- uct as a fixed quality without motion. The blacksmith forges and the product is a forging. If we examine the whole process from the point of view of its result, the product, it is plain that both the instruments and the subject of labour, are means of production, 1 and that the labour itself is productive labour. 2 Though a use-value, in the form of a product, issues from the labour-process, yet other use-values, products of previous labour, enter into it as means of production. The same use- value is both the product of a previous process, and a means of production in a later process. Products are therefore not only results, but also essential conditions of labour. WitH the exception of the extractive industries, in which 1 It appears paradoxical to assert, that uncaught fish, for instance, are a means of production in the fishing industry. But hitherto no one has discovered the art of catching fish in waters that contain none. 2 This method of determining from the standpoint of the labour-process alone, what is productive labour, is by no means directly applicable to the case of the capitalist process of production. 2O2 Capitalist Production. the material for labour is provided immediately by nature, such as mining, hunting, fishing, and agriculture (so far as the latter is confined to breaking up virgin soil), all branches of industry manipulate raw material, objects already filtered through labour, already products of labour. Such is seed in agriculture. Animals and plants, which we are accustomed to consider as products of nature, are in their present form, not only products of, say last year's labour, but the result of a gradual transformation, continued through many generations, under man's superintendence, and by means of his labour. But in the great majority of cases, instruments of labour show even to the most superficial observer, traces of the labour of past ages. Kaw material may either form the principal substance of a product, or it may enter into its formation only as an acces- sory. An accessory may be consumed by the instruments of labour, as coal under a boiler, oil by a wheel, hay by draft- horses, or it may be mixed with the raw material in order to produce some modification thereof, as chlorine into unbleached linen, coal with iron, dye-stuff with wool, or again, it may help to carry on the work itself, as in the case of the materials used for heating and lighting workshops. The distinction between principal substance and accessory vanishes in the true chemical industries, because there none of the raw material reappears, in its original composition, in the substance of the product. 1 Every object possesses various properties, and is thus capable of being applied to different uses. One and the same product may therefore serve as raw material in very different processes. Corn, for example, is a raw material for millers, starch-manu- facturers, distillers, and cattle-breeders. It also enters as raw material into its own production in the shape of seed : coal, too, is at the same time the product of, and a means of production in, coal-mining. Again, a particular product may be used in one and the same process, both as an instrument of labour and as raw material. Take, for instance, the fattening of cattle, where the animal is 1 Storch calls true raw materials "matieres," and accessory material "materiaux:" Cberbuliez describes accessories as "matieres instrumentales." The Labour Process. 203 the raw material, and at the same time an instrument for the production of manure. A product, though ready for immediate consumption, may yet serve as raw material for a further product, as grapes when they become the raw material for wine. On the other hand, labour may give us its product in such a form, that we can use it only as raw material,, as is the case with cotton, thread, and yarn. Such a raw material, though itself a product, may have to go through a whole series of different processes : in each of these in turn, it serves, with constantly varying form, as raw material, until the last process of the series leaves it a perfect product, ready for individual consumption, or for use as an instrument of labour. Hence we see, that whether a use-value is to be regarded as raw material, as instrument of labour, or as product, this is de- termined entirely by its function in the labour process, by the position it there occupies : as this varies, so does its character. Whenever therefore a product enters as a means of produc- tion into a new labour-process, it thereby loses its character of product, and becomes a mere factor in the process. A spinner treats spindles only as implements for spinning, and flax only as the material that he spins. Of course it is impossible to spin without material and spindles ; and therefore the existence of these things as products, at the commencement of the spin- ning operation, must be presumed : but in the process itself, the fact that they are products of previous labour, is a matter of utter indifference; just as in the digestive process, it is of no importance whatever, that bread is the produce of the previous labour of the farmer, the miller, and the baker. On the con- trary, it is generally by their imperfections as products, that the means of production in any process assert themselves in their character as products. A blunt knife or weak thread forcibly remind us of Mr. A., the cutler, or Mr. B., the spinner. In the finished product the labour by means of which it has acquired its useful qualities is not palpable, has apparently vanished. A machine which does not serve the purposes of labour, is useless. In addition^ it falls a prey to the destructive influence 2O4 Capitalist Production. of natural forces. Iron rusts and wood rots. Yarn with which we neither weave nor knit, is cotton wasted. Living labour must seize upon these things and rouse them from their death- sleep, change them from mere possible use-values into real and effective ones. Bathed in the fire of labour, appropriated as part and parcel of labour's organism, and, as it were, made alive for the performance of their functions in the process, they are in truth consumed, but consumed with a purpose, as ele- mentary constituents of new use-values, of new products, ever ready as means of subsistence for individual consumption, or as means of production for some new labour-process. If then, on the one hand, finished products are not only results, but also necessary conditions, of the labour-process, on the other hand, their assumption into that process, their con- tact with living labour, is the sole means by which they can be made to retain their character of use-values, and be utilised. Labour uses up its material factors, its subject and its in- struments, consumes them, and is therefore a process of con- sumption. Such productive consumption is distinguished from individual consumption by this, that the latter uses up products, as means of subsistence for the living individual ; the farmer, as means whereby alone, labour, the labour-power of the living individual, is enabled to act. The product, there- fore, of individual consumption, is the consumer himself; the result of productive consumption, is a product distinct from the consumer. In so far then, as its instruments and subjects are themselves products, labour consumes products in order to create products, or in other words, consumes one set of products by turning them into means of production for another set. But, just as in the beginning, the only participators in the labour-process were man and the earth, which latter exists independently of man, so even now we still employ in the process many means of production, provided directly by nature, that do not repre- sent any combination of natural substances with human labour. The labour process, resolved as above into its simple ele- mentary factors, is human action with a view to the produc- tion of use-values, appropriation of natural substances to hu- The Labour Process. 205 man requirements ; it is the necessary condition for effecting exchange of matter between man and Nature ; it is the ever- lasting nature-imposed condition of human existence, and therefore is independent of every social phase of that existence, or rather, is common to every such phase. It was, therefore, not necessary to represent our labourer in connexion with other labourers; man and his labour one one side, Nature and its materials on the other, sufficed. As the taste of the porridge does not tell you who grew the oats, no more does this simple process tell you of itself what are the social conditions under which it is taking place, whether under the slave-owner's brutal lash, or the anxious eye of the capitalist, whether Cincinnatus carries it on in tilling his modest farm or a savage in killing wild animals with stones. 1 Let us now return to our would-be capitalist. We left him just after he had purchased, in the open market, all the neces- sary factors of the labour-process; its objective factors, the means of production, as well as its subjective factor, labour- power. With the keen eye of an expert, he had selected the means of production and the kind of labour-power best adapted to his particular trade, be it spinning, bootmaking, or any other kind. He then proceeds to consume the commodity, the la- bour-power that he has just bought, by causing the labourer, the impersonation of that labour-power, to consume the means of production by his labour. The general character of the labour-process is evidently not changed by the fact, that the labourer works for the capitalist instead of for himself; more- over, the particular methods and operations employed in boot- making or spinning are not immediately changed by the inter- vention of the capitalist. He must begin by taking the labour- power as he finds it in the market, and consequently be satis- fied with labour of such a kind as would be found in the period immediately preceding the rise of the capitalists. Changes in a By a wonderful feat of logical acumen, Colonel Torrens has discovered in this stone of the savage the origin of capital. "In the first stone which he [the savage] flings at the wild animal he pursues, in the 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. (R. Torrens: "An Essay on the Production of Wealth," &c., pp. 70-71.) 2o6 Capitalist Production. the methods of production by the subordination of labour to capital, can take place only at a later period, and therefore will have to be treated of in a later chapter. The labour-process, turned into the process by which the capitalist consumes labour-power, exhibits two characteristic phenomena. First, the labourer works under the control of the capitalist to whom his labour belongs ; the capitalist taking good care that the work is done in a proper manner, and that the means of production are used with intelligence, so that there is no unnecessary waste of raw material, and no wear and tear of the implements beyond what is necessarily caused by the work. Secondly, the product is the property of the capitalist and not that of the labourer, its immediate producer. Suppose that a capitalist pays for a day's labour-power at its value; then the right to use that power for a day belongs to him, just as much as the right to use any other commodity, such as a horse that he has hired for the day. To the purchaser of a commodity belongs its use, and the seller of labour-power, by giving his labour, does no more, in reality, than part with the use-value that he has sold. From the instant he steps into the workshop, the use-value of his labour-power, and therefore also its use, which is labour, belongs to the capitalist. By the purchase of labour-power, the capitalist incorporates labour, as a living ferment, with the lifeless constituents of the product. From his point of view, the labour-process is nothing more than the consumption of the commodity purchased, i.e., of labour-power ; but this consumption cannot be effected except by supplying the labour-power with the means of production. The labour-process is a process between things that the capi- talist has purchased, things that have become his property. The product of this process also belongs, therefore, to him, just as much as does the wine which is the product of a process of fermentation completed in his cellar. 1 1 "Products are appropriated before they are converted into capital; this conver- sion does not secure them from such appropriation." (Cherbuliez: "Riche ou Pauvre." edit. Paris, 1841, pp. 53, 54.) "The Proletarian, by selling his labour for a definite quantity of the necessaries of life, renounces all claim to a share in the product. The mode of appropriation of the products remains the same as The Labour Process. 207 SECTION 2. THE PRODUCTION OF SUBPLUS-VALTJE. The product appropriated by the capitalist is a use-value, as yarn, for example, or boots. But, although boots are, in one sense, the basis of all social progress, and our capitalist is a decided "progressist," yet he does not manufacture boots for their own sake. Use-value is, by no means, the thing "qu'on aime pour lui-meme" in the production of commodities. Use- values are only produced by capitalists, because, and in so far as, they are the material substratum, the depositaries of ex- change-value. Our capitalist has two objects in view : in the first place, he wants to produce a use-value that has a value in exchange, that is to say, an article destined to be sold, a commodity ; and secondly, he desires to produce a commodity whose value shall be greater than the sum of the values of the commodities used in its production, that is, of the means of production and the labour-power, that he purchased with his good money in the open market. His aim is to produce not only a use-value, but a commodity also; not only use-value, but value; not only value, but at the same time surplus- value. It must be borne in mind, that we are now dealing with the production of commodities, and that, up to this point, we have only considered one aspect of the process. Just as commodities are, at the same time, use-values and values, so the process of producing them must be a labour-process, and at the same time, a process of creating value. 1 before; it is no way altered by the bargain we have mentioned. The product be- longs exclusively to the capitalist, who supplied the raw material and the neces- saries of life; and this is a rigorous consequence of the law of appropriation, a law whose fundamental principle was the very opposite, namely, that every labourer has an exclusive right to the ownership of what he produces." (1. c. p. 58.) "When the labourers receive wages for their labour .... the capitalist is then the owner not of the capital only" (he means the means of production) "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: "Ele- ments of Pol. Econ.," &c., Ed. 1821, pp. 70, 71.) 1 As has been stated in a previous note, the English language has two different expressions for these two different aspects of labour; in the Simple Labour-process, the process of producing Use-Values, it is Work; in the process of creation of Value, it is Labour, taking the term in its strictly economical sense. Ed. 208 Capitalist Production. Let us now examine production as a creation of value. We know that the value of each commodity is determined by the quantity of labour expended on and materialised in it, by the working-time necessary, under given social conditions, for its production. This rule also holds good in the case of the product that accrued to our capitalist, as the result of the labour-process carried on for him. Assuming this product to be 10 Ibs. of yarn, our first step is to calculate the quantity of labour realised in it. For spinning the yarn, raw material is required ; suppose in this case 10 Ibs. of cotton. We have no need at present to investigate the value of this cotton, for our capitalist has, we will assume, bought it at its full value, say of ten shillings. In this price the labour required for the production of the cotton is already expressed in terms of the average labour of society. We will further assume that the wear and tear of the spindle, which, for our present purpose, may represent all other instruments of labour employed, amounts to the value of 2s. If, then, twenty-four hours' labour, or two working days, are required to produce the quantity of gold represented by twelve shillings, we have here, to begin with, two days' labour already incorporated in the yarn. We must not let ourselves be misled by the circumstance that the cotton has taken a new shape wnile the substance of the spindle has to a certain extent been used up. By the general law of value, if the value of 40 Ibs. of yarn=the value of 40 Ibs. of cotton -4- the value of a whole spindle, i.e., if the same working time is required to produce the commodities on either side of this equation, then 10 Ibs. of yarn are an equiva- lent for 10 Ibs. of cotton, together with one-fourth of a spindle. In the case we are considering the same working time is ma- terialised in the 10 Ibs. of yarn on the one hand, and in the 10 Ibs. of cotton and the fraction of a spindle on the other. Therefore, whether value appears in cotton, in a spindle, or in yarn, makes no difference in the amount of that value. The spindle and cotton, instead of resting quietly side by side, join together in the process, their forms are altered, and they are turned into yarn ; but their value is no more affected by The Labour Process. 209 this fact than it would be if they had been simply exchanged for their equivalent in yarn. The labour required for the production of the cotton, the raw material of the yarn, is part of the labour necessary to produce the yarn, and is therefore contained in the yarn. The same applies to the labour embodied in the spindle, without whose wear and tear the cotton could not be spun. Hence, in determining the value of the yarn, or the labour- time required for its production, all the special processes car- ried on at various times and in different places, which were necessary, first to produce the cotton and the wasted portion of the spindle, and then with the cotton and spindle to spin the yarn, may together be looked on as different and successive phases of one and the same process. The whole of the labour in the yarn is past labour ; and it is a matter of no importance that the operations necessary for the production of its con- stituent elements were carried on at times which, referred to the present, are more remote than the final operation of spin- ning. If a definite quantity of labour, say thirty days, is requisite to build a house, the total amount of labour incor- porated in it is not altered by the fact that the work of the last day is done twenty-nine days later than that of the first. Therefore the labour contained in the raw material and the instruments of labour can be treated just as if it were labour expended in an earlier stage of the spinning process, before the labour of actual spinning commenced. The values of the means of production, i.e., the cotton and the spindle, which values are expressed in the price of twelve shillings, are therefore constituent parts of the value of the yarn, or, in other words, of the value of the product. Two conditions must nevertheless be fulfilled. First, the cotton and spindle must concur in the production of a use- value; they must in the present case become yarn. Value is independent of the particular use-value by which it is borne, but it must be embodied in a use-value of some kind. Sec- ondly, the time occupied in the labor of production must not exceed the time really necessary under the given social con- ditions of the case. Therefore, if no more than 1 Ib. of cotton 2io Capitalist Production. be requisite to spin 1 Ib. of yarn, care must be taken that no more than this weight of cotton is consumed in the production of 1 Ib. of yarn; and similarly with regard to the spindle. Though the capitalist have a hobby, and use a gold instead of a steel spindle, yet the only labour that counts for anything in the value of the yarn is that which would be required to pro- duce a steel spindle, because no more is necessary under the given social conditions. We now know what portion of the value of the yarn is owing to the cotton and the spindle. It amounts to twelve shillings or the value of two days' work. The next point for our con- sideration is, what portion of the value of the yarn is added to the cotton by the labour of the spinner. We have now to consider this labour under a very different aspect from that which it had during the labour-process ; there, we viewed it solely as that particular kind of human activity which changes cotton into yarn ; there, the more the labour was suited to the work, the better the yarn, other circumstances remaining the same. The labour of the spinner was then viewed as specifically different from other kinds of productive labour, different on the one hand in its special aim, viz., spin- ning, different, on the other hand, in the special character of its operations, in the special nature of its means of production and in the special use-value of its product. For the operation of spinning, cotton and spindles are a necessity, but for making rifled cannon they would be of no use whatever. Here, on the contrary, where we consider the labour of the spinner only so far as it is value-creating, i.e., a source of value, his labour dif- fers in no respect from the labour of the man who bores cannon, or (what here more nearly concerns us), from the labour of the cotton-planter and spindle-maker incorporated in the means of production. It is solely by reason of this identity, that cotton . planting, spindle making and spinning, are capable of forming the component parts, differing only quantitatively from each other, of one whole, namely, the value of the yarn. Here, we have nothing more to do with the quality, the nature and the specific character of the labour, but merely with its quantity. And this simply requires to be calculated. We proceed upon The Labour Process. 211 the assumption that spinning is simple, unskilled labour, the average- labour of a given state of society. Hereafter we shall see that the contrary assumption would make no difference. While the labourer is at work, his labour constantly under- goes a transformation : from being motion, it becomes an object without motion ; from being the labourer working, it becomes the thing produced. At the end of one hour's spinning, that act is represented by a definite quantity of yarn ; in other words, a definite quantity of labour, namely that of one hour, has become embodied in the cotton. We say labour, i.e., the expenditure of his vital force by the spinner, and not spinning labour, because the special work of spinning counts here, only so far as it is the expenditure of labour-power in general, and not in so far as it is the specific work of the spinner. In the process we are now considering it is of extreme im- portance, that no more time be consumed in the work of trans- forming the cotton into yarn than is necessary under the given social conditions. If under normal, i.e., average social condi- tions of production, a pounds of cotton ought to be made into b pounds of yarn by one hour's labour, then a day's labour does not count as 12 hours' labour unless 12 a pounds of cotton have been made into 12 & pounds of yarn ; for in the creation of value, the time that is socially necessary alone counts. Not only the labour, but also the raw material and the pro- duct now appear in quite a new light, very different from that in which we viewed them in the labour-process pure and sim- ple. The raw material serves now merely as an absorbent of a definite quantity of labour. By this absorption it is in fact changed into yarn, because it is spun, because labour-power in the form of spinning is added to it; but the product, the yarn, is now nothing more than a measure of the labour ab- sorbed by the cotton. If in one hour 1 Ibs. of cotton can be spun into If Ibs. of yarn, then 10 Ibs. of yarn indicate the absorption of 6 hours' labour. Definite quantities of product, these quantities being determined by experience, now represent nothing but definite quantities of labour, definite masses of crystallized labour-time. They are nothing more than the 212 Capitalist Production. materialisation of so many hours or so many days of social labour. We are here no more concerned about the facts, that the labour is the specific work of spinning, that its subject is cotton and its product yarn, than we are about the fact that the sub- ject itself is already a product and therefore raw material. If the spinner, instead of spinning, were working in a coal mine, the subject of his labour, the coal, would be supplied by Nature; nevertheless, a definite quantity of extracted coal, a hundred weight, for example, would represent a definite quan- tity of absorbed labour. We assumed, on the occasion of its sale, that the value of a day's labour-power is three shillings, and that six hours' la- bour are incorporated in that sum ; and consequently that this amount of labour is requisite to produce the necessaries of life daily required on an average by the labourer. If now our spinner by working for one hour, can convert If Ibs. of cotton into If Ibs. of yarn, 1 it follows that in six hours he will convert 10 Ibs. of cotton into 10 Ibs. of yarn. Hence, during the spin- ning process, the cotton absorbs six hours' labour. The same quantity of labour is also embodied in a piece of gold of the value of three shillings. Consequently by the mere labour of spinning, a value of three shillings is added to the cotton. Let us now consider the total value of the product, the 10 Ibs. of yarn. Two and a half days' labour have been embodied in it, of which two days were contained in the cotton and in the substance of the spindle worn away, and half a day was absorbed during the process of spinning. This two and a half days' labour is also represented by a piece of gold of the value of fifteen shillings. Hence, fifteen shillings is an adequate price for the 10 Ibs. of yarn, or the price of one pound is eight- een-pence. Our capitalist stares in astonishment. The value of the product is exactly equal to the value of the capital advanced. The value so advanced has not expanded, no surplus-value has been created, and consequently money has not been converted into capital. The price of the yarn is fifteen shillings, and 1 These figures are quite arbitrary. The Labour Process. 213 fifteen shillings were spent in the open market upon the con- stituent elements of the product, or, what amounts to the same thing, upon the factors of the labour-process ; ten shillings were paid for the cotton, two shillings for the substance of the spin- dle worn away, and three shillings for the labour-power. The swollen value of the yarn is of no avail, for it is merely the sum of the values formerly existing in the cotton, the spindle, and the labour-power ; out of such a simple addition of existing values, no surplus-value can possibly arise. 1 These separate values are now all concentrated in one thing ; but so they were also in the sum of fifteen shillings, before it was split up into three parts, by the purchase of the commodities. There is in reality nothing very strange in this result. The value of one pound of yarn being eighteenpence, if our capita- list buys 10 Ibs. of yarn in the market, he must pay fifteen shillings for them. It is clear that, whether a man buys his house ready built, or gets it built for him, in neither case will the mode of acquisition increase the amount of money laid out on the house. Our capitalist, who is at home in his vulgar economy, ex- claims : "Oh ! but I advanced my money for the express pur- pose of making more money." The way to Hell is paved with good intentions, and he might just as easily have intended to make money, without producing at all. 2 He threatens all sorts of things. He won't be caught napping again. In future he will buy the commodities in the market, instead of manufac- turing them himself. But if all his brother capitalists were to do the same, where would he find his commodities in the mar- ket? And his money he cannot eat. He tries persuasion. 1 This is the fundamental proposition on which is based the doctrine of the Physiocrats as to the unproductiveness of all labour that is not agriculture: it is irrefutable for the orthodox economist. "Cette fagon d'imputer a une seule chose la valeur de plusieurs autres" (par exemple au lin la consommation du tisserand), "d'appliquer, pour ainsi dire, couche sur couche, plusieurs valeurs sur une seule, fait que celle-ci grossit d'autant . . . . Le terme d'addition peint tres-bien la maniere dont se forme le prix des ouvrages de main-d'ocuvre; ce prix n'est qu'un total de plusieurs valeurs consommees et additionees ensemble; or, additionner n'est pas multiplier." ("Mercier de la Riviere," 1. c., p. 599.) 2 Thus from 1844-47 he withdrew part of his capital from productive employment, in order to throw it away in railway speculations; and so also, during the Ameri- can Civil War, he closed his factory, and turned his work-people into the streets, in order to gamble on the Liverpool cotton exchange. 214 Capitalist Production. "Consider ray abstinence; I might have played ducks arid drakes with the 15 shillings; but instead of that I consumed it productively, and made yarn with it." Very well, and by way of reward he is now in possession of good yarn instead of a bad conscience; and as for playing the part of a miser, it would never do for him to relapse into such bad ways as that; we have seen before to what results such asceticism leads. Besides, where nothing is, the king has lost his rights : whatever may be the merit of his abstinence, there is nothing wherewith specially to remunerate it, because the value of the product is merely the sum of the values of the commodities that were thrown into the process of production. Let him therefore console himself with the reflection that virtue is its own reward. But no, he becomes importunate. He says: "The yarn is of no use to me: I produced it for sale." In that case let him sell it, or, still better, let him for the future produce only things for satisfying his personal wants, a rem- edy that his physician M'Culloch has already prescribed as infallible against an epidemic of over-production. He now gets obstinate. "Can the labourer," he asks, "merely with his arms and legs, produce commodities out of nothing ? Did I not supply him with the materials, by means of which, and in which alone, his labour could be embodied? And as the greater part of society consists of such ne'er-do-weels, have I not rendered society incalculable service by my instruments of production, my cotton and my spindle, and not only society, but the labourer also, whom in addition I have provided with the necessaries of life ? And am I to be allowed nothing in return for all this service ?" Well, but has not the labourer rendered him the equivalent service of changing his cotton and spindle into yarn ? Moreover, there is here no question of service. 1 A service is nothing more than the useful effect of 1 Extol thyself, put on finery and adorn thyself . . . but whoever takes more or better than he gives, that is usury, and is not service, but wrong done to his neighbour, as when one steals and robs. All is not service and benefit to a neigh- bour that is called service and benefit. For an adulteress and adulterer do one another great service and pleasure. A horseman does an incendiary a great serv- ice, by helping him to rob on the highway, and pillage land and houses. The papists do ours a great service in that they don't drown, burn, murder all of them, or let them all rot in prison; but let some live, and only drive them out, The Labour Process. 215 a use-value, be it of a commodity, or be it of labour. 1 But here we are dealing with exchange-value. The capitalist paid to the labourer a value of 3 shillings, and the labourer gave him back an exact equivalent in the value of 3 shillings, added by him to the cotton: he gave him value for value. Our friend, up to this time so purse-proud, suddenly assumes the modest demeanour of his own workman, and exclaims : "Have I myself not worked ? Have I not performed the labour of superintendence and of overlooking the spinner? And does not this labour, too, create value ?" His overlooker and his manager try to hide their smiles. Meanwhile, after a hearty laugh, he re-assumes his usual mien. Though he chanted to us the whole creed of the economists, in reality, he says, he would not give a brass farthing for it. He leaves this^and all such like subterfuges and juggling tricks to the professors of political economy, who are paid for it. He himself is a prac- tical man ; and though he does not always consider what he says outside his business, yet in his business he knows what he is about. Let us examine the matter more closely. The value of a day's labour-power amounts to 3 shillings, because on our as- sumption half a day's labour is embodied in that quantity of labour-power, i.e., because the means of subsistence that are daily required for the production of labour-power^ cost half a day's labour. But the past labour that is embodied in the labour-power, and the living labour that it can call into action ; the daily cost of maintaining it, and its daily expenditure in work, are two totally different things. The former determines the exchange-value of the labour-power, the latter is its use- value. The fact that half a day's labour is necessary to keep the labourer alive during 24 hours, does not in any way pre- vent him from working a whole day. Therefore, the value of labour-power, and the value which that labour-power creates or take from them what they have. The devil himself does his servants inestimable service . . . To sum up, the world is full of great, excellent, and daily service and benefit." (Martin Luther: "An die Pfarherrn, wider den Wucher zu predigen," Wittenberg, 1540.) 'In "Critique of Pol. EC.," p. 34, I make the following remark on this point "It is not difficult to understand what 'service' the category 'service' must render to a class of economists like J. B. Say and F. Bastiat." 216 Capitalist Production. in the labour process, are two entirely different magnitudes; and this difference of the two values was what the capitalist had in view, when he was purchasing the labour-power. The useful qualities that labour-power possesses, and by virtue of which it makes yarn or boots, were to him nothing more than a conditio sine qua non; for in order to create value, labour must be expended in a useful manner. What really influenced him was the specific use-value which this commodity possesses of being a source not only of value, but of more value than it has it/self. This is the special service that the capitalist ex- pects from labour-power, and in this transaction he acts in ac- cordance with the "eternal laws" of the exchange of commodi- ties. The seller of labour-power, like the seller of any other commodity, realises its exchange-value, and parts with its use- value. * He cannot take the one without giving the other. The use-value of labour-power, or in other words, labour, belongs just as little to its seller, as the use-value of oil after it has been sold belongs to the dealer who has sold it. The owner of the money has paid the value of a day's labour-power ; his, therefore, is the use of it for a day ; a day's labour belongs to him. The circumstance, that on the one hand the daily sus- tenance of labour-power costs only half a day's labour, while on the other hand the very same labour-power can work during a whole day, that consequently the value which its use during one day creates, is double what he pays for that use, this cir- cumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller. Our capitalist foresaw this state of things, and that was the cause of his laughter. The labourer therefore finds, in the workshop, the means of production necessary for working, not only during six, but during twelve hours. Just as during the six hours' process our 10 Ibs. of cotton absorbed six hours' labour, and became 10 Ibs. of yarn, so now, 20 Ibs. of cotton will absorb 12 hours' labour and be changed into 20 Ibs. of yarn. Let us now examine the product of this prolonged process. There is now materialised in this 20 Ibs. of yarn the labour of five days, of which four days are due to the cotton and the lost steel of the spindle, the remaining day having The Labour Process. 217 been absorbed by the cotton during the spinning process. Ex- pressed in gold, the labour of five days is thirty shillings. This is therefore the price of the 20 Ibs. of yarn, giving, as before, eighteenpence as the price of a pound. But the sum of the values of the commodities that entered into the process amounts to 27 shillings. The value of the yarn is 30 shillings. Therefore the value of the product is ^ greater than the value advanced for its production ; 27 shillings have been trans- formed into 30 shillings; a surplus-value of 3 shillings has been created. The trick has at last succeeded; money has been converted into capital. Every condition of the problem is satisfied, while the laws that regulate the exchange of commodities, have been in no way violated. Equivalent has been exchanged for equivalent. For the capitalist as buyer paid for each commodity, for the cotton, the spindle and the labour-power, its full value. He then did what is done by every purchaser of commodities ; he consumed their use-value. The consumption of the labour- power, which was also the process of producing commodities, resulted in 20 Ibs. of yarn, having a value of 30 shillings. The capitalist, formerly a buyer, now returns to market as a seller, of commodities. He sells his yarn at eighteenpence a pound, which is its exact value. Yet for all that he with- draws 3 shillings more from circulation than he originally threw into it. This metamorphosis, this conversion of money into capital, takes place both within the sphere of circulation and also outside it ; within the circulation, because conditioned by the purchase of the labour-power in the market : outside the circulation, because what is done within it is only a stepping- stone to the production of surplus-value, a process which is entirely confined to the sphere of production. Thus "tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles." By turning his money into commodities that serve as the material elements of a new product, and as factors in the la- bour-process, by incorporating living labour with their dead substance, the capitalist at the same time converts value, i.e., past, materialised, and dead labour into capital, into value big with value, a live monster that is fruitful and multiplies. 218 Capitalist Production. If we now compare the two processes of producing value and of creating surplus-value, we see that the latter is nothing but the continuation of the former beyond a definite point. If on the one hand the process be not carried beyond the point, where the value paid by the capitalist for the labour-power is replaced by an exact equivalent, it is simply a process of pro- ducing value; if, on the other hand, it be continued beyond that point, it becomes a process of creating surplus-value. If we proceed further, and compare the process of producing value with the labour-process, pure and simple, we find that the latter consists of the useful labour, the work, that produces use-values. Here we contemplate the labour as producing a particular article ; we view it under its qualitative aspect alone, with regard to its end and aim. But viewed as a value-creat- ing process, the same labour-process presents itself under its quantitative aspect alone. Here it is a question merely of the time occupied by the labourer in doing the work ; of the period during which the labour-power is usefully expended. Here, the commodities that take part in the process, do not count any longer as necessary adjuncts of labour-power in the pro- duction of a definite, useful object. They count merely as depositaries of so much absorbed or materialised labour; that labour, whether previously embodied in the means of produc- tion, or incorporated in them for the first time during the process by the action of labour-power, counts in either case only according to its duration ; it amounts to so many hours or days as the case may be. Moreover, only so much of the time spent in the production of any article is counted, as, under the given social conditions, is necessary. The consequences of this are various. In the first place, it becomes necessary that the labour should be carried on under normal conditions. If a self-acting mule is the implement in general use for spinning, it would be absurd to supply the spinner with a distaff and spinning wheel. The cotton too must not be such rubbish as to cause extra waste in being worked, but must be of suitable quality. Otherwise the spinner would be found to spend more time in producing a pound of yarn than is socially necessary, in which case the The Labour Process. 219 excess of time would create neither value nor money. But whether the material factors of the process are of normal quality or not, depends not upon the labourer, but entirely upon the capitalist. Then again, the labour-power itself must be of average efficacy. In the trade in which it is being em- ployed, it must possess the average skill, handiness and quick- ness prevalent in that trade, and our capitalist took good care to buy labour-power of such normal goodness. This power must be applied with the average amount of exertion and with the usual degree of intensity; and the capitalist is as careful to see that this is done, as that his workmen are not idle for a single moment. He has bought the use of the labour-power for a definite period, and he insists upon his rights. He has no intention of being robbed. Lastly, and for this purpose our friend has a penal code of his own, all wasteful consumption of raw material or instruments of labour is strictly forbidden, be- cause what is so wasted, represents labour superfluously ex- pended, labour that does not count in the product or enter into its value. 1 We now see, that the difference between labour, considered on the one hand as producing utilities, and on the other hand, 1 This is one of the circumstances that makes production by slave labour such a costly process. The labourer here is, to use a striking expression of the ancients, distinguishable only as instrumentum vocale, from an animal as instrumentum semi-vocale, and from an implement as instrumentum mutum. But he himself takes care to let both beast and implement feel that he is none of them, but is a man. He convinces himself with immense satisfaction, that he is a different being, by treating the one unmercifully and damaging the other con amore. Hence the principle, universally applied in this method of production, only to employ the rudest and heaviest implements and such as are difficult to damage owing to their sheer clumsiness. In the slave-states bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, down to the date of the civil war, ploughs constructed on old Chinese models, which turned up the soil like a hog or a mole, instead of making furrows, were alone to be found. Conf. J. C. Cairns. "The Slave Power," London, 1862, p. 46-49. In his "Sea Board Slave States," Olmsted tells us: "I am here shown tools that no man in his senses, with us, would allow a labourer, for whom he was paying wages, to be incumbered with; and the excessive weight and clumsiness of which, I would judge, would make work at least ten per cent greater than with those ordinarily used with us. And I am assured that, in the careless and clumsy way they must be used by the slaves, anything lighter or less rude could not be furnished them with good economy, and that such tools as we constantly give our labourers and find our profit in giving them, would not last out a day in a Virginia cornfield much lighter and more free from stones though it be than ours. So, too, when I ask why mules are so universally substituted for horses on the farm, the first reason given, and confessedly the most conclusive one, is that horses cannot bear the treatment that they always must get from the negroes; horses are always soon foundered or crippled by them, 220 Capitalist Production. as creating value, a difference which \ve discovered by our analysis of a commodity, resolves itself into a distinction be- tween two aspects of the process of production. The process of production, considered on the one hand as the unity of the labour-process and the process of creating value, is production of commodities; considered on the other hand as the unity of the labour-process and the process of pro- ducing surplus-value, it is the capitalist process of production, or capitalist production of commodities. We stated, on a previous page, that in the creation of surplus-value it does not in the least matter, whether the labour appropriated by the capitalist be simple unskilled labour of average quality or more complicated skilled labour. * All labour of a higher or more complicated character than average labour is expenditure of labour-power of a more costly kind, labour-power whose production has cost more time and labour, and which therefore has a higher value, than unskilled or simple labour-power. This power being of higher value, its consumption is labour of a higher class, labour that creates in equal times proportionally higher values than unskilled labour does. Whatever difference in skill there may be between the labour of a spinner and that of a jeweller, the portion of his labour by which the jeweller merely replaces the value of his own labour-power, does not in any way differ in quality from the additional portion by which he creates surplus-value. In the making of jewellery, just as in spinning, the surplus-value results only from a quantitative excess of labour, from a lengthening-out of one and the same labour-process, in the one case, of the process of making jewels, in the other of the pro- cess of making yarn. 1 while mules will bear cudgelling, or lose a meal or two now and then, and not be materially injured, and they do not take cold or get sick, if neglected or over- worked. But I do not need to go further than the window of the room in which I am writing, to see at almost any time, treatment of cattle that would ensure the im- mediate discharge of the driver by almost any farmer owning them in the North." 1 The distinction between skilled and unskilled labour rests in part on pure illu- sion, or, to say the least, on distinctions that have long since ceased to be real, and that survive only by virtue of a traditional convention; in part on the helpless con- dition of some groups of the working-class, a condition that prevents them from exacting equally with the rest the value of their labour-power. Accidental cir- cumstances here play so great a part, that these two forms of labour sometimes Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 221 But on the other hand, in every process of creating value, the reduction of skilled labour to average social labour, e.g., one day of skilled to six days of unskilled labour, is un- avoidable. 1 We therefore save ourselves a superfluous oper- ation, and simplify our analysis, by the assumption, that the labour of the workman employed by the capitalist is unskilled average labour. CHAPTEE VIII. CONSTANT CAPITAL AND VARIABLE CAPITAL. THE various factors of the labour-process play different parts in forming the value of the product. The labourer adds fresh value to the subject of his labour by expending upon it a given amount of additional labour, no matter what the specific character and utility of that labour may be. On the other hand, the values of the means of pro- duction used up in the process are preserved, and present change places. Where, for instance, the physique of the working-class has deterio- rated, and is, relatively speaking, exhausted, which is the case in all countries with a well developed capitalist production, the lower forms of labour which demand great expenditure of muscle, are -in general considered as skilled, compared with much more delicate forms of labour; the latter sink down to the level of unskilled labour. Take as an example the labour of a bricklayer, which in England occupies a much higher level than that of a damask-weaver. Again, although the labour of a fustian cutter demands great bodily exertion, and is at the same time unhealthy, yet it counts only as unskilled labour. And then, we must not forget, that the so-called skilled labour does not occupy a large space in the field of national labour. Laing estimates that in England (and Wales) the livelihood of 11,300,000 people depends on unskilled labour. If from the total population of 18,000,000 living at the time when he wrote, we deduct 1,000,000 for the "genteel population," and 1,500,000 for paupers, vagrants, criminals, prostitutes, &c., and 4,650,000 who compose the middle-class, there remain the above mentioned 11,000,000. But in his middle-class he includes people that live on the interest of small investments, officials, men of letters, artists, schoolmasters and the like, and in order to swell the number he also includes in these 4,650,000 the better paid portion of the factory operatives! The bricklayers, too, figure amongst them. (S. Laing: "National Distress," &c., London, 1844.) "The great class who have nothing to give for food but ordinary labour, are the great bulk of the people." (James Mill, in art: "Colony," Supplement to the Encyclop. Brit., 1831.) 1 "Where reference is made to labour as a measure of value, it necessarily implies labour of one particular kind . . . the proportion which the other kinds bear to it being easily ascertained." ("Outlines of Pol. Econ.," Lond., 1832, pp. 22 and 23.) 222 Capitalist Production. themselves afresh as constituent parts of the value of the pro- duct ; the values of the cotton and the spindle, for instance, re- appear again in the value of the yarn. The value of the means of production is therefore preserved, by being trans- ferred to the product. This transfer takes place during the conversion of those means into a product, or in other words, during the labour-process. It is brought about by labour ; but how ? The labourer does not perform two operations at once, one in order to add value to the cotton, the other in order to pre- serve the value of the means of production, or, in what amounts to the same thing, to transfer to the yarn, to the product, the value of the cotton on which he works, and part of the value of the spindle with which he works. But, by the very act of adding new value, he preserves their former values. Since, however, the addition of new value to the subject of his labour, and the preservation of its former value, are two entirely dis- tinct results, produced simultaneously by the labourer, during one operation, it is plain that this twofold nature of the re- sult can be explained only by the twofold nature of his labour ; at one and the same time, it must in one character create value, and in another character preserve or transfer value. Now, in what manner does every labourer add new labour and consequently new value ? Evidently, only by labouring productively in a particular way ; the spinner by spinning, the weaver by weaving, the smith by forging. But, while thus incorporating labour generally, that is value, it is by the par- ticular form alone of the labour, by the spinning, the weaving and the forging respectively, that the means of production, the cotton and spindle, the yarn and loom, and the iron and anvil become constituent elements of the product, of a new use- value. 1 Each use-value disappears, but only to re-appear under a new form in a new use-value. Now, we saw, when we were considering the process of creating value, that, if a use-value be effectively consumed in the production of a new use-value, the quantity of labour expended in the production 1 "Labour gives a new creation for one extinguished." ("An essay on the Polit. Econ. of Nations," London, 1821. p. 13.) Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 223 of the consumed article, forms a portion of the quantity of labour necessary to produce the riew use-value ; this portion is therefore labour transferred from the means of production to the new product. Hence, the labourer preserves the values of the consumed means of production, or transfers them as por- tions of its value to the product, not by virtue of his additional labour, abstractedly considered, but by virtue of the particular useful character of that labour, by virtue of its special pro- ductive form. In so far then as labour is such specific produc- tive activity, in so far as it is spinning, weaving, or forging, it raises, by mere contact, the means of production from the dead, makes them living factors of the labour-process, and combines with them to form the new products. If the special productive labour of the workman were not spinning, he could not convert the cotton into yarn, and there- fore could not transfer the values of the cotton and spindle to the yarn. Suppose the same workman were to change his occupation to that of a joiner, he would still by a day's labour add value to the material he works upon. Consequently, we see, first, that the addition of new value takes place not by virtue of his labour being spinning in particular, or joinering in particular, but because it is labour in the abstract, a portion of the total labour of society ; and we see next, that the value added is of a given definite amount, not because his labour has a special utility, but because it is exerted for a definite time. On the one hand, then, it is by virtue of its general character, as being expenditure of human labour-power in the abstract, that spinning adds new value to the values of the cotton and the spindle; and on the other hand, it is by virtue of its special character, as being a concrete, useful process, that the same labour of spinning both transfers the values of the means of production to the product, and preserves them in the product. Hence at one and the same time there is produced a twofold result. By the simple addition of a certain quantity of labour, new value is added, and by the quality of this added labour, the original values of the means of production are preserved ii\ the product. This twofold effect, resulting from the two- 224 Capitalist Production. fold character of labour, may be traced in various phenomena. Let us assume, that some invention enables the spinner to spin as much cotton in 6 hours as he was able to spin before in 36 hours. His labour is now six times as effective as it was, for the purposes of useful production. The product of 6 hours' work has increased sixfold, from 6 Ibs. to 36 Ibs. But now the 36 Ibs. of cotton absorb only the same amount of labour as formerly did the 6 Ibs. One-sixth as much new labour is absorbed by each pound of cotton, and consequently, the value added by the labour to each pound is only one-sixth of what it formerly was. On the other hand, in the product, in the 36 Ibs. of yarn, the value transferred from the cotton is six times as great as before. By the 6 hours' spinning, the value of the raw material preserved and transferred to the product is six times as great as before, although the new value added by the labour of the spinner to each pound of the very same raw material is one-sixth what it was formerly. This shows that the two properties of labour, by virtue of which it is enabled in one case to preserve value, and in the other to create value, are essentially different. On the one hand, the longer the time necessary to spin a given weight of cotton into yarn, the greater is the new value added to the material; on the other hand, the greater the weight of the cotton spun in a given time, the greater is the value preserved, by being trans- ferred from it to the product. Let us now assume, that the productiveness of the spinner's labour, instead of varying, remains constant, that he therefore requires the same time as he formerly did, to convert one pound of cotton into yarn, but that the exchange value of the cotton varies, either by rising to six times its former value or falling to one-sixth of that value. In both these cases, the spinner puts the same quantity of labour into a pound of cot- ton, and therefore adds as much value, as he did before the change in the value : he also produces a given weight of yarn in the same time as he did before. Nevertheless, the value that he transfers from the cotton to the yarn is either one-sixth of what it was before the variation, or, as the case may be, six times as much as before. The same result occurs when the Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 225 value of the instruments of labour rises or falls, while their useful efficacy in the process remains unaltered. Again, if the technical conditions of the spinning process re- main unchanged, and no change of value takes place in the means of production, the spinner continues to consume in equal working-times equal quantities of raw material, and equal quantities of machinery of unvarying value. The value that he preserves in the product is directly proportional to the new value that he adds to the product. In two weeks he incor- porates twice as much labour, and therefore twice as much value, as in one week, and during the same time he consumes twice as much material, and wears out twice as much ma- chinery, of double the value in each case; he therefore pre- serves, in the product of two weeks, twice as much value as in the product of one week. So long as the conditions of produc- tion remain the same, the more value the labourer adds by fresh labour,, the more value he transfers and preserves; but he does so merely because this addition of new value takes place under conditions that have not varied and are independent of his own labour. Of course, it may be said in one sense, that the labourer preserves old value always in proportion to the quantity of new value that he adds. Whether the value of cotton rise from one shilling to two shillings, or fall to six- pence, the workman invariably preserves in the product of one hour only one half as much value as he preserves in two hours. In like manner, if the productiveness of his own labour varies by rising or falling, he will in one hour spin either more or less cotton, as the case may be, than he did before, and will con- sequently preserve in the product of one hour, more or less value of cotton ; but, all the same, he will preserve by two hours' labour twice as much value as he will by one. Value exists only in articles of utility, in objects : we leave out of consideration its purely symbolical representation by tokens. (Man himself, viewed as the impersonation of labour- power, is a natural object, a thing, although a living conscious thing, and labour is the manifestation of this power residing in him.) If therefore an article loses it utility, it also loses its value. The reason why means of production do not lose 226 Capitalist Production. their value, at the same time that they lose their use-value, is this: they lose in the labour-process the original form of their use-value, only to assume in the product the form of a new use- value. But, however important it may be to value, that it should have some object of utility to embody itself in, yet it is a matter of complete indifference what particular object serves this purpose; this we saw when treating of the meta- morphosis of commodities. Hence it follows that in the labour-process the means of production transfer their value to the product only so far as along with their use-value they lose also their exchange value. They give up to the product that value alone which they themselves lose as means of pro- duction. But in this respect the material factors of the labour- process do not all behave alike. The coal burnt under the boiler vanishes without leaving a trace; so, too, the tallow with which the axles of wheels are greased. Dye stuffs and other auxiliary substances also vanish but re-appear as properties of the product. Raw material forms the substance of the product, but only after it has changed its form. Hence raw material and auxiliary sub- stances lost the characteristic form with which they are clothed on entering the labour-process. It is otherwise with the in- struments of labour. Tools, machines, workshops, and vessels, are of use in the labour-process, only so long as they retain their original shape, and are ready each morning to renew the process with their shape unchanged. And just as during their lifetime, that is to say, during the continued labour-process in which they serve, they retain their shape independent of the product, so, too, they do after their death. The corpses of machines, tools, workshops, &c., are always separate and dis- tinct from the product they helped to turn out. If we now consider the case of any instrument of labour during the whole period of its service, from the day of its entry into the work- shop, till the day of its banishment into the lumber room, we find that during this period its use-value has been completely consumed, and therefore its exchange value completely trans- ferred to the product. For instance, if a spinning machine lasts for 10 years, it is plain that during that working period Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 227 its total value is gradually transferred to the product of the 10 years. The lifetime of an instrument of labour, therefore, is spent in the repetition of a greater or less number of similar operations. Its life may be compared with that of a human being. Every day brings a man 24 hours nearer to his grave : but how many days he has still to travel on that road, no man can tell accurately by merely looking at him. This difficulty, however, does not prevent life insurance offices from drawing, by means of the theory of averages, very accurate, and at the same time very profitable conclusions. So it is with the instru- ments of labour. It is known by experience how long on the average a machine of a particular kind will last. Suppose its use-value in the labour-process to last only six days. Then, on the average, it loses each day one-sixth of its use-value, and therefore parts with one-sixth of its value to the daily product. The wear and tear of all instruments, their daily loss of use- value, and the corresponding quantity of value they part with to the product, are accordingly calculated upon this basis. It is thus strikingly clear, that means of production never transfer more value to the product than they themselves lose during the labour-process by the destruction of their own use- value. If such an instrument has no value to lose, if, in other words, it is not the product of human labour, it transfers no value to the product. It helps to create use-value without con- tributing to the formation of exchange value. In this class are included all means of production supplied by Nature with- out human assistance, such as land, wind, water, metals in situ, and timber in virgin forests. Yet another interesting phenomenon here presents itself. Suppose a machine to be worth 1000, and to wear out in 1000 days. Then one thousandth part of the value of the machine is daily transferred to the day's product. At the same time, though with diminishing vitality, the machine as a whole con- tinues to take part in the labour-process. Thus it appears that one factor of the labour-process, a means of production, continually enters as a whole into that process, while it enters into the process of the formation of value by fractions only. The difference between the two processes is here reflected in 228 Capitalist Production. their material factors, by the same instrument of production taking part as a whole in the labour-process, while at the same time as an element in the formation of value, it enters only by fractions. 1 On the other hand, a means of production may take part as a whole in the formation of value, while into the labour-process it enters only bit by bit. Suppose that in spinning cotton, the waste for every 115 Ibs. used amounts to 15 Ibs., which is con- verted, not into yarn, but into "devil's dust." Now, although this 15 Ibs. of cotton never becomes a constituent element of the yarn, yet assuming this amount of waste to be normal and inevitable under average conditions of spinning, its value is just as surely transferred to the value of the yarn, as is the value of the 100 Ibs. that form the substance of the yarn. The use-value of 15 Ibs. of cotton must vanish into dust, before 100 Ibs. of yarn can be made. The destruction of this cotton is therefore a necessary condition in the production of the yarn. And because it is a necessary condition, and for no other rea- son, the value of that cotton is transferred to the product. The same holds good for every kind of refuse resulting from a labour-process, so far at least as such refuse cannot be further employed as a means in the production of new and independent 1 The subject of repairs of the implements of labour does not concern us here. A machine that is undergoing repair, no longer plays the part of an instrument, but that of a subject of labour. Work is no longer done with it, but upon it. It is quite permissible for our purpose to assume, that the labour expended on the repairs of instruments is included in the labour necessary for their original production. But in the text we deal with that wear and tear, which no doctor can cure, and which little by little brings about death, with "that kind of wear which cannot be repaired from time to time, and which, in the case of a knife, would ultimately re- duce it to a state in which the cutler would say of it, it is not worth a new blade." We have shewn in the text, that a machine takes part in every labour-process as an integral machine, but that into the simultaneous process of creating value it enters only bit by bit. How great then is the confusion of ideas exhibited in the following extract! "Mr. Ricardo says a portion of the labour of the engineer in making [stocking] machines" is contained for example in the value of a pair of stockings. "Yet the total labour, that produced each single pair of stockings .... in- cludes the whole labour of the engineer, not a portion; for one machine makes many pairs, and none of those pairs could have been done without any part of the ma- chine." ("Obs. on certain verbal disputes in Pol. Econ. particularly relating to value," p. 54.) The author, an uncommonly self-satisfied wiseacre, is right in his confusion and therefore in his contention, to this extent only, that neither Ricardo nor any other economist, before or since him, has accurately distinguished the two aspects of labour, and still less, therefore, the part played by it under each of these aspects in the formation of value. Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 229 use-values. Such an employment of refuse may be seen in the large machine works at Manchester, where mountains of iron turnings are carted away to the foundry in the evening, in order the next morning to re-appear in the workshops as solid masses of iron. We have seen that the means of production transfer value to the new product, so far only as during the labour-process they lose value in the shape of their old use-value. The maximum loss of value that they can suffer in the process, is plainly limited by the amount of the original value with which they came into the process, or in other words, by the labour-time necessary for their production. Therefore the means of pro- duction can never add more value to the product than they themselves possess independently of the process in which they assist. However useful a given kind of raw material, or a machine, or other means of production may be, though it may cost 150, or, say, 500 days' labour, yet it cannot, under any circumstances, add to the value of the product more than 150. Its value is determined not by the labour-process into which it enters as a means of production, but by that out of which it has issued as a product. In the labour-process it only serves as a mere use-value, a thing with useful properties, and could not, therefore, transfer any value to the product, unless it possessed such value previously. 1 1 From this we may judge of the absurdity of J. B. Say, who pretends to account for surplus-value (Interest, Profit, Rent), by the "services productifs" which the means of production, soil, instruments, and raw material, render in the labour-proc- ess by means of their use-values. Mr. Wm. Roscher who seldom loses an occasion of registering, in black and white, ingenious apologetic fancies, records the following specimen: "J. B. Say (Traite, t. 1. ch. 4) very truly remarks: the value produced by an oil mill, after deduction of all costs, is something new, something quite differ- ent from the labour by which the oil mill itself was erected." (I. c., p. 82, note.) Very true, Mr. Professor! the oil produced by the oil mill is indeed something very different from the labour expended in constructing the mill! By value, Mr. Roscher understands such stuff as "oil," because oil has value, notwithstanding that "Na- ture" produces petroleum, though relatively "in small quantities," a fact to which he seems to refer in his further observation : "It (Nature) produces scarcely any exchange value." Mr. Roscher's "Nature" and the exchange value it produces are rather like the foolish virgin who admitted indeed that she had had a child, but "it was such a little one." This "savant serieux" in continuation remarks: "Ricardo's school is in the habit of including capital as accumulated labour under the head of labour. This is unskilful work, because, indeed, the owner of capital, after all, does something more than the merely creating and preserving of the same: namely, the abstention from the enjoyment of it, for which he demands, e.g., interest." (1. c.) 230 Capitalist Production. While productive labour is changing the means of produc- tion into constituent elements of a new product, their value undergoes a metempsychosis. It deserts the consumed body, to occupy the newly created one. But this transmigration takes place, as it were, behind the back of the labourer. He is unable to add new labour, to create new value, without at the same time preserving old values, and this, because the labour he adds must be of a specific useful kind ; and he can- not do work of a useful kind, without employing products as the means of production of a new product, and thereby trans- ferring their value to the new product. The property there- fore which labour-power in action, living labour, possesses of preserving value, at the same time that it adds it, is a gift of Nature which costs the labourer nothing, but which is very advantageous to the capitalist inasmuch as it preserves the existing value of his capital. 1 So long as trade is good, the capitalist is too much absorbed in money-grubbing to take notice of this gratuitous gift of labour. A violent interruption of the labour-process by a crisis, makes him sensitively aware of it. 2 As regards the means of production, what is really consumed is their use-value, and the consumption of this use-value by labour results in the product. There is no consumption of How very "skilful" is this "anatomico-physiological method" of political economy, which, "indeed," converts a mere desire "after all" into a source of value. 1 "Of all the instruments of the farmers' trade, the labour of man ... is that on which he is most to rely for the repayment of his capital. The other two . . . the working stock of the cattle and the . . . carts, ploughs, spades, and so forth, without a given portion of the first, are nothing at all." (Edmund Burke: "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, originally presented to the Right Hon. W. Pitt, in the month of November 1795," Edit. London, 1800, p. 10.) 2 In "The Times" of 26th November, 1862, a manufacturer, whose mill employed 800 hands, and consumed, on the average, 150 bales of East Indian, or 130 bales of American cotton, complains, in doleful manner, of the standing expenses of his factory when not working. He estimates them at 6,000 a year. Among them are a number of items that do not concern us here, such as rent, rates, and taxes, in- surance, salaries of the manager, book-keeper, engineer, and others. Then he reck- ons 150 for coal used to heat the mill occasionally, and run the engine now and then. Besides this, he includes the wages of the people employed at odd times to keep the machinery in working order. Lastly, he puts down 1,200 for depreciation of machinery, because "the weather and the natural principle of decay do not sus- pend their operations because the steam-engine ceases to revolve." He says, em- phatically, he does not estimate his depreciation at more than the small sum of 1,200, because his machinery is already nearly worn out. Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 231 their value. 1 and it would therefore be inaccurate to say that it is reproduced. It is rather preserved ; not by reason of any operation it undergoes itself in the process; but because the article in which it originally exists, vanishes, it is true, but vanishes into some other article. Hence, in the value of the product, there is a re-appearance of the value of the means of production, but there is, strictly speaking, no reproduction of that value. That which is produced is a new use-value in which the old exchange-value re-appears. 2 It is otherwise with the subjective factor of the labour-pro- cess, with labour-power in action. While the labourer, by virtue of his labour being of a specialised kind that has a special object, preserves and transfers to the product the value of the means of production, he at the same time, by the mere act of working, creates each instant an additional or new value. Suppose the process of production to be stopped just when the workman has produced an equivalent for the value of Ms own labour-power, when, for example, by six hours' labour, he has added a value of three shillings. This value is the surplus, of the total value of the product, over the portion of its value that is due to the means of production. It is the only original bit of value formed during this process, the only portion of the value of the product created by this process. Of course, we do not forget that this new value only replaces the money advanced by the capitalist in the purchase of the labour-power, 1 "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." (S. P. Newman, 1. c. p. 296.) * In an American compendium that has gone through, perhaps, 20 editions, this passage occurs: "It matters not in what form capital re-appears;" then after a lengthy enumeration of alt the possible ingredients of production whose value re- appears in the product, the passage concludes thus: "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 time to time, and their value re-appears in that new vigour imparted to his body and mind, forming fresh capital, to be em- ployed again in the work of production." (F. Wayland, 1. c. pp. 31, 32.) Without noticing any other oddities, it suffices to observe, that what re-appears in the fresh vigour, is not the bread's price, but its blood-forming substances. What, on the other hand, re-appears in the value of that vigour, is not the means of subsistence, but their value. The same necessaries of life, at half the price, would form just as much muscle and bone, just as much vigour, but not vigour of the same value. This confusion of "value" and "vigour" coupled with our author's pharisaical indefinite- ness, mark an attempt, futile for all that, to thrash out an explanation of surplus- value from a mere re-appearance of pre-existing values. 232 Capitalist Production. and spent by the labourer on the necessaries of life. With regard to the money spent, the new value is merely a repro- duction; but, nevertheless, it is an actual, and not, as in the case of the value of the means of production, only an apparent, reproduction. The substitution of one value for another, is here effected by the creation of new value. We know, however, from what has gone before, that the labour-process may continue beyond the time necessary to re- produce and incorporate in the product a mere equivalent for the value of the labour-power. Instead of the six hours that are sufficient for the latter purpose, the process may continue for twelve hours. The action of labour-power, therefore, not only reproduces its own value, but produces value over and above it. This surplus-value is the difference between the value of the product and the value of the elements consumed in the formation of that product, in other words, of the means of production and the labour-power. By our explanation of the different parts played by the vari- ous factors of the labour-process in the formation of the pro- duct's value, we have, in fact, disclosed the characters of the different functions allotted to the different elements of capital in the process of expanding its own value. The surplus of the total value of the product, over the sum of the values of its constituent factors, is the surplus of the expanded capital over the. capital originally advanced. The means of production on the one hand, labour-power on the other, are merely the differ- ent modes of existence which the value of the original capital assumed when from being money it was transformed into the various factors of the labour-process. That part of capital then, which is represented by the means of production, by the raw material, auxiliary material and the instruments of labour, does not, in the process of production, undergo any quantitative alteration of value. I therefore call it the constant part of capital, or, more shortly, constant capital. On the other hand, that part of capital, represented by labour-power, does, in the process of production, undergo an alteration of value. It both reproduces the equivalent of its own value, and also produces an excess, a surplus-value, which Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 233 may itself vary, may be more or less according to circum- stances. This part of capital is continually being transformed from a constant into a variable magnitude. I therefore call it the variable part of capital, or, shortly, variable capital. The same elements of capital which, from the point of view of the labour-process, present themselves respectively as the objective and subjective factors, as means of production and labour- power, present themselves, from the point of view of the pro- cess of creating surplus-value, as constant and variable capital. The definition of constant capital given above by no means excludes the possibility of a change of value in its elements. Suppose the price of cotton to be one day sixpence a pound, and the next day, in consequence of a failure of the cotton crop, a shilling a pound. Each pound of the cotton bought at six- pence, and worked up after the rise in value, transfers to the product a value of one shilling; and the cotton already spun before the rise, and perhaps circulating in the markets as yarn, likewise transfers to the product twice its original value. It is plain, however, that these changes of value are independent of the increment or surplus-value added to the value of the cotton by the spinning itself. If the old cotton had never been spun, it could, after the rise, be resold at a shilling a pound instead of at sixpence. Further, the fewer the processes the cotton has gone through, the more certain is this result. We therefore find that speculators make it a rule when such sudden changes in value occur to speculate in that material on which the least possible quantity of labour has been spent: to speculate, therefore, in yarn rather than in cloth, in cotton itself, rather than in yarn. The change of value in the case we have been considering, originates, not in the process in which the cotton plays the part of a means of production, and in which it therefore functions as constant capital, but in the pro- cess in which the cotton itself is produced. The value of a commodity, it is true, is determined by the quantity of labour contained in it, but this quantity is itself limited by social con- ditions. If the time socially necessary for the production of any commodity alters and a given weight of cotton represents, after a bad harvest, more labour than after a good one all 234 Capitalist Production. previously existing commodities of the same class are affected, because they are, as it were, only individuals of the species/ and their value at any given time is measured by the labour socially necessary, i.e., by the labour necessary for their pro- duction under the then existing social conditions. As the value of the raw material may change, so, too, may that of the instruments of labour, of the machinery, &c., em- ployed in the process; and consequently that portion of the value of the product transferred to it from them, may also change. If in consequence of a new invention, machinery of a particular kind can be produced by a diminished expenditure of labour, the old machinery becomes depreciated more or less and consequently transfers so much less value to the product. But here again, the change in value originates outside the process in which the machine is acting as a means of pro- duction. Once engaged in this process, the machine cannot transfer more value than it possesses apart from the process. Just 'as a change in the value of the means of production, even after they have commenced to take a part in the labour process, does not alter their character as constant capital, so, too, a change in the proportion of constant to variable capital does not affect the respective functions of these two kinds of capital. The technical conditions of the labour process may be revolutionised to such an extent, that where formerly ten men using ten implements of small value worked up a relative- ly small quantity of raw material, one man may now, with the aid of one expensive machine, work up one hundred times as much raw material. In the latter case we have an enormous increase in the constant capital, that is represented by the total value of the means of production used, and at the same time a great reduction in the variable capital, invested in labour-power. Such a revolution, however, alters only the quantitave relation between the constant and the variable cap- ital, or the proportions in which the total capital is split up into its constant and variable constituents; it has not in the least degree affected the essential difference between the two. 1 "Toutes les productions d'un meme genre ne ferment proprement qu'une masse, dont le prix se determine en general et sans egard aux circonstances particulieres." (Lc Trosne, 1. c., p. 893.) The Rate of Surplus-value. 235 CHAPTER IX. THE RATE OF SURPLUS- VALUE. SECTION" 1. THE DEGREE OF EXPLOITATION OF LABOUB-POWEK, THE surplus-value generated in the process of production by C, the capital advanced, or in other words, the self -expansion of the value of the capital C, presents itself for our consider- ation, in the first place, as a surplus, as the amount by which the value of the product exceeds the value of its constituent element. The capital C is made up of two components, one, the sum of money c laid out upon the means of production, and the other, the sum of money v expended upon the labour-power; c represents the portion that has become constant capital, and v the portion that has become variable capital. At first then, C=c+v: for example, if 500 is the capital advanced, its com- ponents may be such that the 500=410 const, + 90 var. When the process of production is finished, we get a com- modity whose value=(c-(-v)-(-s, where s is the surplus-value; or taking our former figures, the value of this commodity may be (410 const. +90 var.) +90 surpl. The original capita) has now changed from C to C', from 500 to 590. The dif- ference is s or a surplus value of 90. Since the value of the constituent elements of the product is equal to the value of the advanced capital, it is mere tautology to say, that the ex- cess of the value of the product over the value of its constitu- ent elements, is equal to the expansion of the capital advanced or to the surplus-value produced. Nevertheless, we must examine this tautology a little more closely. The two things compared are, the value of the pro- duct, and the value of its constituents consumed in the process of production. !N"ow we have seen how that portion of the constant capital which consists of the instruments of labour, transfers to the product only a fraction of its value, while the remainder of that value continues to reside in those instru- 236 Capitalist Production. merits. Since this remainder plays no part in the formation of value, we may at present leave it on one side. To introduce it into the calculation would make no difference. For instance, taking our former example, c=410 : suppose this sum to con- sist of 312 value of raw material, 44 value of auxiliary material, and 54 value of the machinery worn away in the process; and suppose that the total value of the machinery employed is 1,054. Out of this latter sum, then, we reckon as advanced for the purpose of turning out the product, the sum of 54 alone, which the machinery loses by wear and tear in the process ; for this is all it parts with to the product. Now if we also reckon the remaining 1,000, which still con- tinues in the machinery, as transferred to the product, we ought also to reckon it as part of the value advanced, and thus make it appear on both sides of our calculation. 1 We should, in this way, get 1,500 on one side and 1,590 on the other. The difference of these two sums, or the surplus-value, would still be 90. Throughout this Book therefore, by constant capital advanced for the production of value, we always mean, unless the context is repugnant thereto, the value of the means of production actually consumed in the process, and that value alone. This being so, let us return to the formula C=c-}-v, which we saw transformed into C'=(c-f-v)+s, C becoming C'. We know that the value of the constant capital is trans- ferred to, and merely re-appears in the product. The new value actually created in the process, the value pro- duced, or value-product, is therefore not the same as the value of the product; it is not, as it would at first sight appear (c-f-v)+s or 410 const -f 90 var.+90 surpl.; but v-fs or 90 var.-{-90 surpl. not 590 but 180. If c=o, or in other words, if there were branches of industry in which the capitalist could dispense with all means of production made by previous labour, whether they be raw material, auxiliary material, or instruments of labour, employing only labour- 1 "If we reckon the value of the fixed capital employed as a part of the advances, we must reckon the remaining value of such capital at the end of the year as a part of the annual returns." (Malthus, "Princ. of Pol. Econ." 2nd ed., Lond., 1836, p. 269.) The Rate of Surplus-value. 237 power and materials supplied by Nature, in that case, there would be no constant capital to transfer to the product. This component of the value of the product, i.e., the 410 in our ex- ample, would be eliminated, but the sum of 180, the amount of new value created, or the value produced, which contains, 90 of surplus-value, would remain just as great as if c repre- sented the highest value imaginable. We should have C= (0+v)=v or C' the expanded capital v-|-s and therefore C' C=s as before. On the other hand, if s 0, or in other words, if the labour-power, whose value is advanced in the form of variable capital, were to produce only its equivalent, we should have C c-j-v or C' the value of the product= (c-(-v)-(-O or C = C'. The capital advanced would, in this case, not have expanded its value. From what has gone before, we know that surplus-value is purely the result of a variation in the value of v, of that portion of the capital which is transformed into labour-power; con- sequently, v-j-s=v-j-v / or v plus an increment of v. But the fact that it is v alone that varies, and the conditions of that variation, are obscured by the circumstance that in consequence of the increase in the variable component of the capital, there is also an increase in the sum total of the advanced capital. It was originally 500 and becomes 590. Therefore in order that our investigation may lead to accurate results, we must make abstraction from that portion of the value of the pro- duct, in which constant capital alone appears, and consequently must equate the constant capital to zero or make c=0. This is merely an application of a mathematical rule, employed whenever we operate with constant and variable magnitudes, related to each other by the symbols of addition and sub- traction only. A further difficulty is caused by the original form of the variable capital. In our example, 07 410 const. -{-90 var -f90 surpl. ; but 90 is a given and therefore a constant quantity ; hence it appears absurd to treat it as variable. But in fact, the term 90 var. is here merely a symbol to show that this value undergoes a process. The portion of the capital in- vested in the purchase of labour-power is a definite quantity of 238 Capitalist Production. materialised labour, a constant value like the value of the labour-power purchased. But in the process of production the place of the 90 is taken by the labour-power in action, dead labour is replaced by living labour, something stagnant by something flowing, a constant by a variable. The result is the reproduction of v plus an increment of v. From the point of view, then, of capitalist production, the whole process appears as the spontaneous variation of the originally constant value, which is transformed into labour-power. Both the process and its result, appear to be owing to this value. If, therefore, such expressions as "90 variable capital," or "so much self- expanding value," appear contradictory, this is only because they bring to the surface a contradiction immanent in cap- italist production. At first sight it appears a strange proceeding, to equate the constant capital to zero. Yet it is what we do every day. If, for example, we wish to calculate the amount of England's profits from the cotton industry, we first of all deduct the sums paid for cotton to the United States, India, Egypt and other countries ; in other words, the value of the capital that merely re-appears in the value of the product, is put=0. Of course the ratio of surplus-value not only to that portion of the capital from which it immediately springs, and whose change of value it represents, but also to the sum total of the capital advanced is economically of very great importance. We shall, therefore, in the third book, treat of this ratio ex- haustively. In order to enable one portion of a capital to ex- pand its value by being converted into labour-power, it is necessary that another, portion be converted into means of pro- duction. In order that variable capital may perform its func- tion, constant capital must be advanced in proper proportion, a proportion given by the special technical conditions of each labour-process. The circumstance, however, that retorts and other vessels, are necessary to a chemical process, does not compel the chemist to notice them in the result of his analysis. If we look at the means of production, in their relation to the creation of value, and to the variation in the quantity of value, apart from anything else, they appear simply as the material The Rate of Surplus-value. 239 in which labour-power, the value-creator, incorporates itself. Neither the nature, nor the value of this material is of any importance. The only requisite is that there be a sufficient supply to absorb the labour expended in the process of pro- duction. That supply once given, the material may rise or fall in value, or even be, as land and the sea, without any value in itself ; but this will have no influence on the creation of value or on the variation in the quantity of value. 1 In the first place then we equate the constant capital to zero. The capital advanced is consequently reduced from c-|-v to v, and instead of the value of the product (c+v) -f-s we have now the value produced (v-f-s). Given the new value produced= 180, which sum consequently represents the whole labour ex- pended during the process, then subtracting from it 90 the value of the variable capital, we have remaining 90, the amount of the surplus-value. This sum of 90 or s expresses the absolute quantity of surplus-value produced. The relative quantity produced, or the increase per cent of the variable capital, is determined, it is plain, by the ratio of the surplus- value to the variable capital, or is expressed by | . In our example this ratio is f $ , which gives an increase of 100%. This relative increase in the value of the variable capital, or the relative magnitude of the surplus-value, I call, "The rate of surplus-value." 2 We have seen that the labourer, during one portion of the labour-process, produces only the value of his labour-power, that is, the value of his means of subsistence. Now since his work forms part of a system, based on the social division of labour, he does not directly produce the actual necessaries which he himself consumes; he produces instead a particular commodity, yarn for example, whose value is equal to the value of those necessaries or of the money with which they 1 What Lucretius says is self-evident; "nil posse creari de nihilo," out of nothing 1 , nothing can be created. Creation of value is transformation of labour-power into labour. Labour-power itself is energy transferred to a human organism by means of nourishing matter. * In the same way that the English use the terms "rate of profit," "rate of in- terest." We shall see, in Book III., that the rate of profit is no mystery, so soon as we know the laws of surplus-value. If we reverse the process, we cannot com- prehend either the one or the other. 240 Capitalist Production. can be bought. The portion of his day's labour devoted to this purpose, will be greater or less, in proportion to the value of the necessaries that he daily requires on an average, or, what amounts to the same thing, in proportion to the labour- time required on an average to produce them. If the value of those necessaries represents on an average the expenditure of six hours' labour, the workman must on an average work for six hours to produce that value. If instead of working for the capitalist, he worked independently on his own account, he would, other things being equal, still be obliged to labour for the same number of hours, in order to produce the value of his labour-power, and thereby to gain the means of subsistence necessary for his conservation or continued reproduction. But as we have seen, during that portion of his day's labour in which he produces the value of his labour-power, say three shillings, he produces only an equivalent for the value of his labour-power already advanced by the capitalist; the new value created only replaces the variable capital advanced. It is owing to this fact, that the production of the new value of three shillings takes the semblance of a mere reproduction. That portion of the working day, then, during which this re- production takes place, I call "necessary" labour-time, and the labour expended during that time I call "necessary" labour. 1 Necessary, as regards the labourer, because independent of the particular social form of his labour; necessary, as regards capital, and the world of capitalists, because on the continued existence of the labourer depends their existence also. During the second period of the labour-process, that in which his labour is no longer necessary labour, the workman, it is true, labours, expends labour-power ; but his labour, being no longer necessary labour, he creates no value for himself. He creates surplus-value which, for the capitalist, has all the charms of a creation out of nothing. This portion of the 1 In this work, we have, up to now, employed the term "necessary labour-time," to designate the time necessary under given social conditions for the production of any commodity. Henceforward we use it to designate also the time necessary for the production of the particular commodity labour-power. The use of one and the same technical term in different senses is inconvenient, but in no science can it be altogether avoided. Compare, for instance, the higher with the lower branches of mathematics. The Rate of Surplus-value. 241 working day, I name surplus labour-time, and to the labour expended during that time, I give the name of surplus-labour. It is every bit as important, for a- correct understanding of surplus-value, to conceive it as a mere congelation of surplus- labour-time, as nothing brtt materialised surplus-labour, as it is, for a proper comprehension of value, to conceive it as a mere congelation of so many hours of labour, as nothing but ma- terialised labour. The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave labour, and one based on wage labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case ex- tracted from the actual producer, the labourer. 1 Since, on the one hand, the values of the variable capital and of the labour-power purchased by that capital are equal, and the value of this labour-power determines the necessary portion of the working day ; and since, on the other hand, the surplus-value is determined by the surplus portion of the working day, it follows that surplus-value bears the same ratio to variable capital, that surplus-labour does to necessary labour, ,1 i ,1 /. -, i s surplus labor or in other words, the rate 01 surplus-value = necessary labof -r> .1 i s i surplus labor . -i , -, . . i sotn ratios, and necg s sary i a bor express the same thing in differ- ent ways; in the one case by reference to materialised, incor- porated labour, in the other by reference to living, fluent labour. The rate of surplus-value is therefore an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labour-power by capital, or of the labourer by the capitalist. 2 1 Herr Wilhelm Thucydides Roscher has found a mare's nest. He has made the important discovery that if, on the one hand, the formation of surplus-value, or surplus-produce, and the consequent accumulation of capital, is now-a-days due to the thrift of the capitalist, on the other hand, in the lowest stages of civilisation it is the strong who compel the weak to economise (1. c. p. 78). To economise what? Labour? Or superfluous wealth that does not exist? What is it that makes such men as Roscher account for the origin of surplus-value, by a mere rechauffe of the more or less plausible excuses by the capitalist, for his appropriation of surplus- value? It is, besides their real ignorance, their apologetic dread of a scientific analysis of value and surplus-value, and of obtaining a result, possibly not alto- gether palatable to the powers that be. 2 Although the rate of surplus-value is an exact expression for the degree of ex- ploitation of labour-power, it is, in no sense, an expression for the absolute amount of exploitation. For example, if the necessary labour=5 hours and the surplus-la- bour=5 hours, the degree of exploitation is 100%. The amount of exploitation is P 242 Capitalist Production. We assumed in our example, that the value of the product =410 const. +90 var.+90 surpl., and that the capital advanced=500. Since the surplus-value=90, and the ad- vanced capital=500, we should, according to the usual way of reckoning, get as the rate of surplus value (generally con- founded with rate of profits) 18%, a rate so low as possibly to cause a pleasant surprise to Mr. Carey and other harmon- isers. But in truth, the rate of surplus-value is not equal to or but to -7-: thus it is not f # but f# or 100%, which is more than five times the apparent degree of exploitation. Although, in the case we have supposed, we are ignorant of the actual length of the working day, and of the duration in days or weeks of the labour-process, as also of the number of labourers employed, yet the rate of surplus-value -7 accurately discloses to us, by means of its equivalent expression, n e"essary ubor the relation between the two parts of the working day. This relation is here one of equality, the rate being 100%. Hence, it is plain, the labourer, in our example, works one half of the day for himself, the other half for the capitalist. The method of calculating the rate of surplus value is there- fore, shortly, as follows. We take the total value of the pro- duct and put the constant capital which merely re-appears in it, equal to zero. What remains, is the only value that has, in the process of producing the commodity, been actually created. If the amount of surplus-value be given, we have only to deduct it from this remainder, to find the variable capital. And vice versa, if the latter be given, and we require to find the surplus- value. If both be given, we have only to perform the conclud- ing operation, viz., to calculate 7- , the ratio of the surplus- value to the variable capital. Though the method is so simple, yet it may not be amiss, by means of a few examples, to exercise the reader in the applica- tion of the novel principles underlying it. First we will take the case of a spinning mill containing here measured by 5 hours. If, on the other hand, the necessary labour=6 hours and the suz-plus-labour=6 hours, the degree of exploitation remains, as before, 100%, while the actual amount of exploitation has increased 20%, namely from five hours to six. The Rate of Surplus-value. 243 10,000 mule spindles, spinning ISTo. 32 yarn from American cotton, and producing 1 Ib. of yarn weekly per spindle. We assume the waste to be 6% : under these circumstances 10,600 Ibs. of cotton are consumed weekly, of which 600 Ibs. go to waste. The price of the cotton in April, 1871, was 7f d. per Ib. ; the raw material therefore costs in round numbers 342. The 10,000 spindles, including preparation-machinery, and motive power, cost, we will assume, 1 per spindle, amounting to a total of 10,000. The wear and tear we put at 10%, or 1000 yearly 20 weekly. The rent of the building we suppose to be 300 a year or 6 a week. Coal consumed (for 100 horse-power indicated, at 4 Ibs. of coal per horse-power per hour during 60 hours, and inclusive of that consumed in heat- ing the mill), 11 tons a week at 8s. 6d. a ton, amounts to about 4^ a week : gas, 1 a week, oil, &c., 4^ a week. Total cost of the above auxiliary materials, 10 weekly. Therefore the constant portion of the value of the week's product is 378. Wages amount to 52 a week. The price of the yarn is 12^d. per Ib., which gives for the value of 10,000 Ibs. the sum of 510. The surplus value is therefore in this case 510 430 =80. We put the constant part of the value of the product=0, as it plays no part in the creation of value. There remains 132 as the weekly value created, which=52 var.-f- 80 surpl. The rate of surplus-value is therefore ff = 153^%. In a working day of IJ hours with average labour the result is: necessary labour =3f~|-hours and surplus-labour -A- 1 One more example. Jacob gives the following calculation for the year 1815. Owing to the previous adjustment of sev- eral items it is very imperfect ; nevertheless for our purpose it is sufficient. In it he assumes the price of wheat to be 8s. a quarter, and the average yield per acre to be 22 bushels. 1 The above data, which may be relied upon, were given me by a Manchester spin- ner. In England the horse-power of an engine was formerly calculated from the diameter of its cylinder, now the actual horse-oower shown by the indicator is taken. j-44 Capitalist Production. VALUE PRODUCED PER ACRE. 1 9 .Manure, 2 10 Wages, 3 10 Total, .. 7 9 Tithes, Rates, and Taxes, 1 1 Rent 1 8 Farmer's Profit ami 1 2 Total, ..311 Assuming that the price of the product is the same as its value, we here find the surplus-value distributed under the various heads of profit, interest, rent, &c. We have nothing to do with these in detail; we simply add them together, an I the sum is a surplus-value of 3 11s. Od. The sum of U-". 19.-5. Od., paid for seed and manure, is constant capital, and we put it equal to zero. There is left the sum of 3 10s. Od., which is the variable capital advanced: and we see that a r.e\v value of 3 10s. Od.-f-3 lls. Od. has been produced in its place. Therefore -i- = = f 3 3 ^ ^.' > gg a ratc of surplus- value of more than 100%. The labourer employs more tl; ;n one half of his working day in producing the surplus-value, which different persons, under different pretexts, share amongst themselves. 1 SECTION 2. THE REPRESENTATION OF THE COMPONENTS OF THE VALUE OF THE PRODUCT BY CORRESPONDING PRO- PORTIONAL PARTS OF THE PRODUCT ITSELF. Let us now return to the example by which we were shown how the capitalist converts money into capital. The product of a working day of 12 hours is 20 Ibs. of yarn, having a value of 30s. Xo less than-^ths of this value, or 24s., is due to mere re-appearance in it, of the value of the 1 The calculations given in the text are intended merely as .illustrations. \Vc lure in fact nssumed that prices^ values. We shall, however, see, in volume III., t!i;it even in the case of average prices the assumption cannot be made in this very sim- ple manner. The Rate of Surplus-value. 245 means of production (20 Ibs. of cotton, value 20s., and spindle worn away, 4s.) : it is therefore constant capital. The re- maining T % ths or 6s. is the new value created during the spin- ning process : of this one half replaces the value of the day's labour-power, or the variable capital, the remaining half con- stitutes a surplus-value of 3s. The total value then of the 20 Ibs. of yarn is made up as follows : 30s. value of yarn=24 const. -f- 3s. var.-|-3s. surpl. Since the whole of the value is contained in the 20 Ibs. of yarn produced, it follows that the various component parts of this value, can be represented as being contained respectively in corresponding parts of the product. If the value of 30s. is contained in 20 Ibs. of yarn, then T\ths of this value, or the 24s. that form its constant part, is contained in -j^j-ths of the product or in 16 Ibs. of yarn. Of the latter 13^ Ibs. represent the value of the raw material, the 20s. worth of cotton spun, and 2 Ibs. represent the 4s. worth of spindle, &c., worn away in the process. Hence the whole of the cotton used up in spinning the 20 Ibs. of yarn, is, represented by 13^ Ibs. of yarn. This latter weight of yarn contains, it is true, by weight, no more than 13^ Ibs. of cotton, worth 13 J shillings; but the 6f shillings ad- ditional value contained in it, are the equivalent for the cotton consumed in spinning the remaining 6f Ibs. of yarn. The effect is the same as if these 6 Ibs. of yarn contained no cot- ton at all, and the whole 20 Ibs. of cotton were concentrated in the 13^ Ibs. of yarn. The latter weight, on the other hand, does not contain an atom either of the value of the auxiliary materials and implements, or of the value newly created in the process. In the same way, the 2f Ibs. of yarn, in which the 4s., the remainder of the constant capital, is embodied, represents nothing but the value of the auxiliary materials and instru- ments of labour consumed in producing the 20 Ibs. of yarn. We have, therefore, arrived at this result: although eight- tenths of the product, or 16 Ibs. of yarn, is, in its character of an article of utility, just as much the fabric of the spinner's labour, as the remainder of the same product, yet when viewed 246 Capitalist Production. in this connexion, it does not contain, and has not absorbed any labour expended during the process of spinning. It is just as if the cotton had converted itself into yarn, without help ; as if the shape it had assumed was mere trickery and deceit: for so soon as our capitalist sells it for 24s., and with the money replaces his means of production, it becomes evident that this 1 6 Ibs. of yarn is nothing more than so much cotton and spindle- waste in disguise. On the other hand, the remaining 3%ths of the product, or 4 Ibs. of-yarn, represent nothing but the new value of 6s., created during the 12 hours' spinning process. All the value trans- ferred to those 4 Ibs., from the raw material and instruments of labour consumed, was, so to say, intercepted in order to bo incorporated in the 16 Ibs. first spun. In this case, it is as if the spinner had spun 4 Ibs. of yarn out of air, or, as if he had spun them with the aid of cotton and spindles, that, being the spontaneous gift of Nature, transferred no value to the product. Of this 4 Ibs. of yarn, in which the whole of the value newly created during the process, is condensed, one half represents the equivalent for the value of the labour consumed, or the 3s. variable capital, the other half represents the 3s. surplus-value. Since 12 working hours of the spinner are embodied in 6s., it follows that in yarn of the value of 30s., there must be em- bodied 60 working hours. And this quantity of labour-time does in fact exist in the 20 Ibs. of yarn ; for in r 8 7 ths or 16 Ibs. there are materialised the 48 hours of labour expended, before the commencement of the spinning process, on the means of production ; and in the remaining y\ths or 4 Ibs. there are materialised the 12 hours' work done during the process itself. On a former page we saw that the value of the yarn is equal to the sum of the new value created during the production of that yarn plus the value previously existing in the means of production. It has now been shown how the various component parts of the value of the product, parts that differ functionally from each other, may be represented by corresponding proportional parts of the product itself. To split up in this manner the product into different parts, The Rate of Surplus-value. 247 of which one represents only the labour previously spent on the means of production, or the constant capital, another, only the necessary labour spent during the process of production, or the variable capital, and another and last part, only the surplus- labour expended during the same process, or the surplus-value ; to do this, is, as will be seen later on from its application to complicated and hitherto unsolved problems, no less important than it is simple. In the preceding investigation we have treated the total product as the final result, ready for use, of a working day of 12 hours. We can however follow this total product through all the stages of its production; and in this way we shall arrive at the same result as before, if we represent the partial products, given off at the different stages, as functionally different parts of the final or total product. The spinner produces in 12 hours 20 Ibs. of yarn, or in 1 hour 1 Ibs. ; consequently he produces in 8 hours 13^ Ibs., or a partial product equal in value to all the cotton that is spun in a whole day. In like manner the partial product of the next period of 1 hour and 36 minutes, is 2 Ibs. of yarn : this represents the value of the instruments of labour that are con- sumed in 12 hours. In the following hour and 12 minutes, the spinner produces 2 Ibs. of yarn worth 3 shillings, a value equal to the whole value he creates in his 6 hours necessary labour. Finally, in the last hour and 12 minutes he produces another 2 Ibs. of yarn, whose value is equal to the surplus- value, created by his surplus-labour during half a day. This method of calculation serves the English manufacturer for everyday use ; it shows, he will say, that in the first 8 hours, or f of the working day, he gets back the value of his cotton ; and so on for the remaining hours. It is also a perfectly correct method : being in fact the first method given above with this difference, that instead of being applied to space, in which the different parts of the completed product lie side by side, it deals with time, in which those parts are successively produced. But it ,can also be accompanied by very barbarian notions, more especially in the heads of those who are as much interested, practically, in the process of making value beget 248 Capitalist Production. value, as they are in misunderstanding that process theoreti- cally. Such people may get the notion into their heads, that one spinner, for example, produces or replaces in the first 8 hours of his working day the value of the cotton ; in the following hour and 36 minutes the value of the instruments of labour worn away ; in the next hour and 12 minutes the value of the wages ; and that he devotes to the production of surplus- value for the manufacturer, only that well known "last hour." In this way the poor spinner is made to perform the two- fold miracle not only of producing cotton, spindles, steam-engine, coal, oil, &c., at the same time that he spins with them, but also of turning one working day into five ; for in, the example we are considering, the production of the raw material and in- struments of labour demands four working days of twelve hours each, and their conversion into yarn requires another such day. That the love of lucre induces an easy belief in such miracles, and that sycophant doctrinaires are never wanting to prove them, is vouched for by the following inci- dent of historical celebrity. SECTION 3. SETTLOR'S "LAST HOUR." One fine morning, in the year 1836, Nassau W. Senior, who may be called the bel-esprit of English economists, well known, alike for his economical "science," and for his beautiful style, was summoned from Oxford to Manchester, to learn in the latter place the political economy that he taught in the former. The manufacturers elected him as their champion, not only against the newly passed Factory Act, but against the still more menacing Ten-hours' agitation. With their usual prac- tical acuteness, they had found out that the learned Professor "wanted a good deal of finishing;" it was this discovery that caused them to write for him. On his side the Professor has embodied the lecture he received from the Manchester manu- facturers, in a pamphlet, entitled: "Letters on the Factory Act, as it affects the cotton manufacture." London, 1837. Here we find, amongst others, the following edifying passage : "Under the present law, no mill in which persons under 18 years of age are employed, can be worked The Rate of Surplus-value. 249 more than 11^ hours a day, that is 12 hours for 5 days in the week, and nine on Saturday. "Now the following analysis ( !) will show that in a mill so worked, the whole net profit is derived from the last hour. I will suppose a manufacturer to invest 100,000 : 80,000 in his mill and machinery, and 20,000 in raw material and wages. The annual return of that mill, supposing the capital to be turned once a year, and gross profits to be 15 per cent., ought to be goods worth 115,000 Of this 115,000, each of the twenty -three half -hours of work pro- duces 5-115ths or one twenty-third. Of these 23-23rds (con- stituting the whole 115,000) twenty, that is to say 100,000 out of the 115,000, simply replace the capital; one twenty- third (or 5000 out of the 115,000) makes up for the de- terioration of the mill and machinery. The remaining 2-23rds, that is, the last two of the twenty- three half -hours of every day, produce the net profit of 10 per cent. If, there- fore (prices remaining the same), the factory could be kept at work thirteen hours instead of eleven and a half, with an addition of about 2600 to the circulating capital, the net profit would be more than doubled. On the other hand, if the hours of working were reduced by one hour per day (prices remaining the same), the net profit would be destroyed if they were reduced by one hour and a half, even the gross profit would be destroyed." 1 1 Senior, 1. c., p. 12, 13. We let pass such extraordinary notions as are of no im- portance for our purpose; for instance, the assertion, that manufacturers reckon as part of their profit, gross or net, the amount required to make good wear and tear of machinery, or in other words, to replace a part of the capital. So, too, we pass over any question as to the accuracy of his figures. Leonard Homer has shown in "A Letter to Mr. Senior," &c., London, 1837, that they are worth no more than the so- called "Analysis." Leonard Homer was one of the Factory Inquiry Commissioners in 1833, and Inspector, or rather Censor of Factories till 1859. He rendered undy- ing service to the English working class. He carried on a life-long contest, not only with the embittered manufacturers, but also with the Cabinet, to whom the number of votes given by the masters in the Lower House, was a matter of far greater importance than the number of hours worked by the "hands" in the mills. Apart from errors in principle, Senior's statement is confused. What he really intended to say was this: The manufacturer employs the workman for 11 % hours or for 23 half-hours daily. As the working day, so, too, the working year, may be conceived to consist of 11^ hours or 23 half-hours, but each multiplied by the number of working days in the year. On this supposition, the 23 half-hours yield an annual product of 115,000; one half-hour yields^ X 115,000; 20 half-hours yield X 115,000; =100,000, i.e., they replace no more than the capital ad- 250 Capitalist Production. And the professor calls this an "analysis!" If, giving credence to the out-cries of the manufacturers, he believed that the workmen spend the best part of the day in the production, i. e., the reproduction or replacement of the value of the build- ings, machinery, cotton, coal, &e., then his analysis was super- fluous. His answer would simply have been : Gentlemen ! if you work your mills for 10 hours instead of 11, then, other things being equal, the daily consumption of cotton, machinery, &c., will decrease in proportion. You gain just as much as you lose. Your work-people will in future spend one hour and a half less time in producing or replacing the capital that has been advanced. If, on the other hand, he did not believe them without further inquiry, but, as being an expert in such matters, deemed an analysis necessary, then he ought, in a question that is concerned exclusively with the relations of net profit to the length of the working day, before all things to have asked the manufacturers, to be careful not to lump together machinery, workshops, raw material, and labour, but to be good enough to place the constant capital, invested in buildings, machinery, raw material, &c., on one side of the account, and the capital advanced in wages on the other side. If the professor then found, that in accordance with the calcu- lation of the manufacturers, the workman reproduced or re- placed his wages in 2 half-hours, in that case, he should have continued his analysis thus : According to your figures, the workman in the last hour but one produces his wages, and in the last hour your surplus- value or net profit. Now, since in equal periods he produces equal values, the produce of the last hour but one, must have the same value as that of the last hour. Further, it is only while he labours that he produces any value at all, and the amount of his labour is measured by his labour-time. This you say, amounts to 11| hours a day. He employs one portion of these 11 hours, in producing or replacing his wages, and vanced. There remain 3 half-hours, which yield ^ X 115,000= 15,000 or the gross profit. Of these 3 half-hours, one yields ^X 115,000= 5000; '. e., it makes up for the wear and tear of the machinery; the remaining 2 half-hours, i.e., the last hour, yield ^L X 115,000= 10,000 or the net profit. In the text Senior converts the* last of the product into portions of the working day itself. The Rate of Surplus-value. 251 the remaining portion in producing your net profit. Beyond this he does absolutely nothing. But since, on your assump- tion, his wages, and the surplus-value he yields, are of equal value, it is clear that he produces his wages in 5f hours, and your net profit in the other 5| hours. Again, since the value of the yarn produced in 2 hours, is equal to the sum of the values of his wages and of your net profit, the measure of the value of this yarn must be 11|- working hours, of which 5f hours measure the value of the yarn produced in the last hour but one, and 5f, the value of the yarn produced in the last hour. We now come to a ticklish point; therefore, attention! The last working hour but one is, like the first, an ordinary working hour, neither more nor less. How then can the spinner produce in one hour, in the shape of yarn, a value that embodies 5f hours labour ? The truth is that he performs no such miracle. The use-value produced by him in one hour, is a definite quantity of yarn. The value of this yarn is meas- ured by 5f working hours, of which 4f were, without any assistance from him, previously embodied in the means of production, in the cotton, the machinery, and so on; the re- maining one hour is added by him. Therefore since his wages 'are produced in 5f hours, and the yarn produced in one hour also contains 5f hours' work, there is no witchcraft in the re- sult, that the value created by his 5f hours' spinning, is equal to the value of the product spun in one hour. You are alto- gether on the wrong track,, if you think that he loses a single moment of his working day, in reproducing or replacing the values of the cotton, the machinery, and so on. On the con- trary, it is because his labour converts the cotton and spindles into yarn, because he spins, that the values of the cotton and spindles go over to the yarn of their own accord. This result is owing to the quality of his labour, not to its quantity. It is true, he will in one hour tranfer to the yarn more value, in the shape of cotton, than he will in half an hour ; but that is only because in one hour he spins up more cotton than in half an hour. You see then, your assertion, that the workman pro- duces, in the last hour but one, the value of his wages, and in the last hour your net profit, amounts to no more than this, 252 Capitalist Production. that in the yarn produced by him in 2 working hours, whether they are the 2 first or the 2 last hours of the working day, in that yarn, there are incorporated 11 working hours, or just a whole day's work, i. e., two hours of his own work and 94 hours of other people's. And my assertion that, in the first 5| hours, he produces his wages, and in the last 5f hours your net profit, amounts only to this, that you pay him for the former, but not for the latter. In speaking of payment of labour, instead of payment of labour-power, I only talk your own slang. Now, gentlemen, if you compare the working time you pay for, with that which you do not pay for, you will find that they are to one another, as half a day is to half a day ; this gives a rate of 100%, and a very pretty percentage it is. Further, there is not the least doubt, that if you make your "hands" toil for 13 hours instead of ll, and, as may be expected from you, treat the work done in that extra one hour and a half, as pure surplus-labour, then the latter will be increased from 5f hours' labour to 1\ hours' labour, and the rate of surplus-value from 100%, to 126-^-%. So that you are altogether too sanguine, in expecting that by such an addition of \\ hours to the work- ing day, the rate will rise from 100% to 200% and more, in other words that it will be "more than doubled." On the other hand man's heart is a wonderful thing, especially when car- ried in the purse you take too pessimistic a view, when you fear, that with a reduction of the hours of labour from \\\ to 10, the whole of your net profit will go to the dogs. Not at all. All other conditions remaining the same, the surplus- labour will fall from 5| hours to 4f hours, a period that still gives a very profitable rate of surplus-value, namely 82-g-f%. But this dreadful "last hour," about which you have invented more stories than have the millenarians about the day of judgment, is "all bosh." If it goes, it will cost neither you, your net profit, nor the boys and girls whom you employ, their "purity of mind." 1 Whenever your "last hour" strikes in 1 If, on the one hand, Senior proved that the net profit of the manufacturer, the existence of the English cotton industry, and England's command of the markets of the world, depend on "the last working hour," on th? other hand, Dr. Andrew Ure showed, that if children and young persons under 18 years of age, instead of be- ing kept the full 12 hours in the warm and pure moral atmosphere of the factory, The Rate of Surplus-value. 253 earnest, think on the Oxford Professor. And now, gentleman, "farewell, and may we meet again in yonder better world, but not before." Senior invented the battle cry of the "last hour" in 183G. 1 are turned out an hour sooner into the heartless and frivolous outer world 1 , they will be deprived, by idleness and vice, of all hope of salvation for their souls. Since 1848, the factory inspectors have never tired of twitting the masters with this "last,"' this "fatal hour." Thus Mr. Howell in his report of the 31st May, 1855: "Had the following ingenious calculation (he quotes Senior) been correct, every cotton factory in the United Kingdom would have been working at a loss since the year 1850." (Reports of the Insp. of Fact, for the half-year, ending 30th April, 1855, pp. 19, 20.) In the year 1848, after the passing of the 10 hour's bill, the masters of some flax spinning mills, scattered, few and far between, over the country on the borders of Dorset and Somerset, foisted a petition against the bill on to the shoul- ders of a few of their work people. One of the clauses of this petition is as fol- lows: "Your petitioners, as parents, conceive that an additional hour of leisure will tend more to demoralise the children than otherwise, believing that idleness is the parent of vice." On this the factory report of 31st Oct., 1848, says: The atmos- phere of the flax mills, in which the children of these virtuous and tender parents work, is so loaded with dust and fibre from the raw material, that it is exception- ally unpleasant to stand even 10 minutes in the spinning rooms: for you arc unable to do so without the most painful sensation, owing to the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, and mouth, being immediately filled by the clouds of flax dust from which there is no escape. The labour itself, owing to the feverish haste of the machinery, demands unceasing application of skill and movement, under the control of a watchfulness that never tires, and it seems somewhat hard, to let parents apply the term "idling" to their own children, who, after allowing for meal times, are fettered for 10 whole hours to such an occupation, in such an atmosphere. . . . These children work longer than the labourers in the neighbouring villages Such cruel talk about "idleness and vice" ought to be branded as the purest cant, and the most shameless hypocrisy That portion of the public, who, about 12 years ago, were struck by the assurance with which, under the sanction of high authority, it was publicly and most earnestly proclaimed, that the whole net profit of the manufacturer flows from the labour of the last hour, and that, therefore, the reduction of the working day by one hour, would destroy his net profit; that portion of the public, we say, will hardly believe its own eyes, when it now finds, that the original discovery of the virtues of "the last hour" has since been so far improved, as to include morals as well as profit; so that, if the duration of tha labour of children, is reduced to a full 10 hours, their morals, together with the net profits of their employers, will vanish, both being dependent on this last, this fatal hour. (See Repts., Insp. of Fact., for 31st Oct., 1848, p. 101.) The same report then gives some examples of the morality and virtue of these same pure-minded manufacturers, of the tricks, the artifices, the cajoling, the threats, and the falsifica- tions, they made use of, in order, first, to compel a few defenceless workmen to sign petitions of such a kind, and then to impose them upon Parliament as the petitions of a whole branch of industry, or a whole country. It is highly characteristic of the present status of so called economical science, that neither Senior himself, who, at a later period, to his honour be it said, energetically supported the factory legisla- tion, nor his opponents, from first to last, have ever been able to explain the false conclusions of the "original discovery." They appeal to actual experience, but the why and wherefore remains a mystery. 1 Nevertheless, the learned professor was not without some benefit from his jour- ney to Manchester. In the "Letters on the Factory Act," he makes the whole net gains including "profit" and "interest," and even "something more," depend upon 254 Capitalist Production. In the London Economist of the 15th April, 1848, the same cry was again raised by James Wilson, an economical mandarin of high standing: this time in opposition to the 10 hours' bill. SECTION 4. SURPLUS PRODUCE. The portion of the product that represents the surplus-value, (one-tenth of the 20 Ibs., or 2 Ibs. of yarn, in the example given in Sec. 2,) we call "surplus-produce." Just as the rate of surplus-value is determined by its relation, not to the sum total of the capital, but to its variable part; in like manner, the re- lative quantity of surplus-produce is determined by the ratio that this produce bears, not to the remaining part of the total product, but to that part of it in which is incorporated the necessary labour. Since the production of surplus-value is the chief end and aim of capitalist production, it is clear, that the greatness of a man's or a nation's wealth should be measured, not by the absolute quantity produced, but bv the relative magnitude of the surplus-produce. 1 The sum of the necessary labour and the surplus-labour, i.e., of the periods of time during which the workman replaces the a single unpaid hour's work of the labourer. One year previously, in his "Outlines of Political Economy," written for the instruction of Oxford students and cultivated Philistines, he had also "discovered, in opposition to Ricardo's determination of value by labour, that profit is derived from the labour of the capitalist, and interest from his asceticism, ' in other words, from his "abstinence." The dodge was an old one, but the word "abstinence" was new. Herr Roscher translates it rightly by "Enthaltung." Some of his countrymen, the Browns, Jones, and Robinsons, of Germany, not so well versed in Latin as he, have, monk-like, rendered it by "Entsagung" (renunciation). 1 "To an individual with a capital of 20,000, whose profits were 2,000 per an- num, it would be a mattter quite indifferent whether his capital would employ a 100 or 1,000 men, whether the commodity produced sold for 10,000 or 20,000, provided, in all cases, his profit were not diminished below 2,000. Is not the real interest of the nation similar? 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 of inhabitants." (Ric. 1. c., p. 416.) Long before Ricardo, Arthur Young, a fanatical upholder of surplus produce, for the rest, a rambling uncritical writer, whose reputation is in the inverse ratio of his merit, says, "Of what use, in a modern kingdom, would be a whole province thus divided, [in the old Roman man- ner, by small independent peasants], however well cultivated, except for the mere purpose of breeding men, which taken singly is a most useless purpose?" (Arthur Young: Political Arithmetic, &c. London, 1774, p. 47.) Very curious is "the strong inclination ... to represent net wealth as bene- ficial to the labouring class .... though it is evidently not on account of being net." (Th. Hopkins, On Rent of Land, &c. London, 1823, p. 126.) The Working Day. 255 value of his labour-power, and produces the surplus-value, this sum constitutes the actual time during which he works, i.e., the working day. CHAPTER X. THE WORKING DAY. SECTION 1 THE LIMITS OF THE WORKING DAT. WE started with the supposition that labour-power is bought and sold at its value. Its value, like that of all other commo- dities, is determined "by the working time necessary to its production. If the production of the average daily means of subsistence of the labourer takes up 6 hours, he must work, on the average, 6 hours every day, to produce his daily labour- power, or to reproduce the value received as the result of its sale. The necessary part of his working day amounts to 6 hours, and is, therefore, cceteris paribus, a given quantity. But with this, the extent of the working day itself is not yet given. Let us assume that the line A B represents the length of the necessary working time, say 6 hours. If the labour be pro- longed 1, 3, or 6 hours beyond A B, we have 3 other lines: Working day I. Working day II. Working day III. A B C. A B C. A B C. representing 3 different working days of 7, 9, and 12 hours. The extension B C of the line A B represents the length of the surplus labour. As the working day is A B -f- B C or A C, it varies with the variable quantity B C. Since A B is constant, the ratio of B C to A B can always be calculated. In working day I. it is ^, in working day II, -f in working day mfi A T> ci m J? j.1 j.1 j.- surplus working time j , f of A B. Since, further the ratio ne cessar y working time de- termines the rate of the surplus-value, the latter is given by the ratio of B C to A B. It amounts to 3 different working days respectively to 16f, 50 and 100 per cent. On the other hand, the rate of surplus-value alone would not give us the 256 Capitalist Production. extent of the working day. If this rate e.g., were 100 per cent., the working day might be of 8, 10, 12, or more hours. It would indicate that the 2 constituent parts of the working day, necessary-labour and surplus-labour time, were equal in extent, but not how long each of these two constituent parts was. The working day is thus not a constant, but a variable quantity. One of its parts, certainly, is determined by the working time required for the reproduction of the labour- power of the labourer himself. But its total amount varies with the duration of the surplus-labour. The working day is, therefore, determinable, but is, per se, indeterminate. 1 Although the working day is not a fixed, but a fluent quantity, it can, on the other hand, only vary within certain limits. The minimum limit is, however, not determinable; of course, if we make the extension line BC or the surplus- labour^ 0, we have a minimum limit, i.e., the part of the day which the labourer must necessarily work for his own main- tenance. On the basis of capitalist production, however, this necessary labour can form a part only of the working day ; the working day itself can never be reduced to this minimum. On the other hand, the working day has a maximum limit. It cannot be prolonged beyond a certain point. This maximum limit is conditioned by two things. First, by the physical bounds of labour-power. Within the 24 hours of the natural day a man can expend only a definite quantity of his vital force, A horse, in like manner, can only work from day to day, 8 hours. During part of the day this force must rest, sleep; during another part the man has to satisfy other physical needs, to feed, wash, and clothe himself. Besides these purely physi- cal limitations, the extension of the working day encounters moral ones. The labourer needs time for satisfying his intel- lectual and social wants, the extent and number of which are conditioned by the general state of social advancement. The variation of the working day fluctuates, therefore, within physical and social bounds. But both these limiting condi- 1 "A day's labour is vague, it may be long or short." ("An Essay on Trade and Commerce, containing observations on taxes," &c. London, 1770, p. 73.) The Working Day. 257. tions are of a very elastic nature, and allow the greatest lati- tude. So we find working days of 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hours, i.e., of the most different lengths. The capitalist has bought the labour-power at its day-rate. To him its use-value belongs during one working day. He has thus acquired the right to make the labour work for him during one day. But what is a working day ? 1 At all events, less than a natural day. By how much ? The capitalist has his own views of this ultima Thule, the necessary limit of the working day. As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus- labour. 2 Capital is dead labour, that vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him. 3 If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist. 4 The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the ex- change of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commo- dity. Suddenly the voice of the labourer, which had been 1 This question is far more important than the celebrated question of Sir Robert Peel to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce: What is a pound? A question that could only have been proposed, because Peel was as much in the dark as to the nature of money as the "little shilling men" of Birmingham. 2 It is the aim of the capitalist to obtain with his expended capital the greatest possible quantity of labour (d'obetnir du capital depense la plus forte somme de travail possible). J. G. Courcelle-Seneuil . . Traite theorique et pratique des entre- prises industrielles. 2nd ed. Paris, 1857, p. C3. * "An hour's labour lost in a day is a prodigious injury to a commercial State. . 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 consumptions." An Essay on Trade and Commerce, &c., p. 47 and 153. * "Si le manouvrier libre prend un instant de repos, 1'economie sordide qui le suit des yeux avec inquietude pretend qu'il la vole." N. Linguet. "Theorie des loix civiles, &c. London, 1767," t. II., p. 466. 258 Capitalist Production. stifled in the storm and stress of the process of production, rises : The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the crowd of other commodities, in that its use creates value, and a value greater than its own. That is why you bought it. That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labour-power. You and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer, who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my daily labour-power. But by means of the price that you pay for it each day, I must be able to reproduce it daily, and to sell it again. Apart from natural exhaustion through age, &c., I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force, health and freshness as to-day. You preach to me constantly the gospel of "saving" and "abstinence." Good ! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole wealth, labour-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of it. I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action only as much of it as is compatible with its normal duration, and healthy development. By an unlimited extension of the working day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour- power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in labour I lose in substance. The use of my labour-power and the spoliation of it are quite different things. If the average time that (doing a reasonable amount of work) an average labourer can live, is 30 years, the value of my labour-power, which you pay me from day to day is 365 1 X30 or TT?j7f its total value. But if you consume it in ten years, you pay me daily T5~5TT instead of -g-sVir of its total value, i.e., only of its daily value, and you rob me, therefore, every day of f of the value of my commodity. You pay me for one day's labour- power, whilst you use that of 3 days. That is against our contract and the law of exchanges. I demand, therefor, a working day of normal length, and I demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place. You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member The Working Day. 259 of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in the odour of sanctity to boot; but the thing that you rep- resent face to face with me has no heart in its breast. That which seems to throb there is my own heart-beating. I de- mand the normal working day because I, like every other seller, demand the value of my commodity. 1 We see then, that, apart "from extremely elastic bounds, the nature of the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit to the working day, no limit to surplus-labour. The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possi- ble, two working days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the labourer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an anti- nomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the de- termination of what is a working day, presents itself as the re- sult of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, ie.,the workisg class. SECTION 2,-r-THE GREED FOE. SURPLUS LABOR. MANUFAC- TURER AND BOYARD. Capital has not invented surplus-labour. Wherever 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 working time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production, 2 whether this proprietor be the Athenian 1 During the great strike of the London builders, 1860-61, for the reduction of the working day to 9 hours, their Committee published a manifesto that contained, to some extent, the plea of our workers. The manifesto alludes, not without irony, to the fact, that the greatest profit-monger amongst the building masters, a certain Sir M. Peto, was in the odour of sanctity. (This same Peto, after 1867, came to an end a la Strousberg.) 1 "Those who labour .... in reality feed both the pensioners . . . [called the rich] and themselves." (Edmund Burke, 1. c., p. 2.) 260 Capitalist Production. Kayaflos, Etruscan theocrat, civis Rornanus, baron, American slave owner, Wallachian Boyard, modern landlord or capitalist. 1 It is, however, clear that in any given economic formation of society, where not the exchange value but the use-value of the product predominates, surplus- labour will be limited by a given set of wants which may be greater or less, and that here no boundless thirst for surplus- labour arises from the nature of the production itself. Hence in antiquity overwork becomes horrible only when the object is to obtain exchange value in its specific independent money- form ; in the production of gold and silver. Compulsory work- ing to death is here the recognized form of over-work. Only read Diodorus Siculus. 2 Still these are exceptions in antiq- uity. But as soon as people, whose production still moves within the lower forms of slave-labour, corvee-labour, &c., are drawn into the whirlpool of an international mar- ket dominated by the capitalistic mode of production, the sale of their products for export becoming their principal interest, the civilized horrors of over-work are grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, &c. Hence the negro labour in the Southern States of the American Union preserved something of a patriarchal character, so long as production was chiefly directed to immediate local consump- tion. But in proportion, as the export of cotton became of vital interest to these states, the over-working of tlie negro and sometimes the using up of his life in 7 years' of labour became a factor in a calculated and calculating system. It was no longer a question of obtaining from him a certain quantity of useful products. It was now a question of production of sur- plus-labour itself. So was it also with the corvee, e.g., in the Danubian Principalities (now Eoumania). 1 Niebuhr in his "Roman History" says very naively: "It is evident that works like the Etruscan, which, in their ruins astound us, presuppose in little (!) states lords and vassals." Sismondi says far more to the purpose that "Brussels lace" presupposes wage-lords and wage-slaves. 2 "One cannot see these unfortunates (in the gold mines between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Arabia) who cannot even have their bodies clean, or their nakedness clothed, without pitying their miserable lot. There is no indulgence, no forbearance for the sick, the feeble, the aged, for woman's weakness. All must, forced by blows, work on until death puts an end to their sufferings and their distress." ("Diod. Sic. Bibl. Hist." lib. 3. c. 13.) The Working Day. 261 The comparison of the greed for surplus-labour in the Danubian Principalities with the same greed in English fac- tories has special interest, because surplus-labour, in the corvee has an independent and palpable form. Suppose the working day consists of 6 hours of necessary labour, and 6 hours of surplus-labour. Then the free labourer gives the capitalist every week 6 X 6 or 30 hours of surplus- labour. It is the same as if he worked 3 days in the week for himself, and 3 days in the week gratis for the capitalist. But this is not evident on the surface. Surplus-labour and neces- sary labour glide one into the other. I can, therefore, express the same relationship by saying, e.g., that the labourer in every minute works 30 seconds for himself, and 30 for the capitalist, etc. It is otherwise with the corvee. The necessary labour which the Wallachian peasant does for his own maintenance is distinctly marked off from his surplus-labour on behalf of the Boyard. The one he does on his own field, the other on the seignorial estate. Both parts of the labour-time exist, there- fore, independently, side by side one with the other. In the corvee the surplus-labour is accurately marked off from the necessary labour. This, however, can make no difference with regard to the quantitative relation of surplus-labour to neces- sary labour. Three days' surplus-labour in the week remain three days that yield no equivalent to the labourer himself, whether it be called corvee or wage-labour. But in the capi- talist the greed for surplus-labour appears in the straining after an unlimited extension of the working day, in the Boyard more simply in a direct hunting after days of corvee. 1 In the Danubian Principalities the corvee was mixed up with rents in kind and other appurtenances of bondage, but it formed the most important tribute paid to the ruling class. Where this was the case, the corvee rarely arose from serfdom ; serfdom much more frequently on the other hand took origin from the corvee. 2 This is what took place in the Roumanian 1 That which follows refers to the situation in the Roumanian provinces before the change effected since the Crimean war. 2 This holds likewise for Germany, and especially for Prussia east of the Elbe. In the 15th century the German peasant was nearly everywhere a man, who, whilst subject to certain rents paid in produce and labour was otherwise at least practically 262 Capitalist Production. Provinces. Their original mode of production was based on community of the soil, but not in the Slavonic or Indian form. Part of the land was cultivated in severalty as freehold by the members of the community, another part ager publicus was cultivated by them in common. The products of this common labour served partly as a reserve fund against bad harvests and other accidents, partly as a public store for providing the costs of war, religion, and other common expenses. In course of time military and clerical dignitaries usurped, along with the common land, the labour spent upon it. The labour of the free peasants on their common land was transformed into corvee for the thieves of the common land. This corvee soon developed into a servile relationship existing in point of fact, not in point of law, until Russia, the liberator of the world, made it legal under pretence of abolishing serfdom. The code of the corvee, which the Russian General Kisseleff proclaimed in 1831, was of course dictated by the Boyards themselves. Thus Russia conquered with one blow the magnates of the Danubian prov- inces, and the applause of liberal cretins throughout Europe. According to the "Reglement organique," as this code of the corvee is called, every Wallachian peasant owes to the so-called landlord, besides a mass of detailed payments in kind: (1), 12 days of general labour; (2), one day of field labour; (3), one day of wood carrying. In all, 14 days in the year. With deep insight into political economy, however, the working day is not taken in its ordinary sense, but as the working day neces- sary to the production of an average daily product; and that average daily product is determined in so crafty a way that no Cyclops would be done with it in 24 hours. In dry words, the Reglement itself declares with true Russian irony that by 12 working days one must understand the product of the manual labour of 36 days, by 1 day of field labour 3 days, and by 1 day free. The German colonists in Brandenburg, Pomerania, Silesia, and Eastern Prus- sia, were even legally acknowledged as free men. The victory of the nobility in the peasants' war put an end to that. Not only were the conquered South German peasants again enslaved. From the middle of the 16th century the peasants of Eastern Prussia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, and Silesia, and soon after the free peas- ants of Schleswig-Holstein were degraded to the condition of serfs. (Maurer, Fronhofe iv. vol., Meitzen, der Boden des preussischen Staats. Hansen, Leibeigen- schaft in Schleswig-Holstein. ED.) The Working Day. 263 of wood carrying in like manner three times as much. In all, 42 corvee days. To this had to be added the so-called jobagie, service due to the lord for extraordinary occasions. In propor- tion to the size of its population, every village has to furnish annually a definite contingent to the jobagie. This additional corvee is estimated at 14 days for each Wallachian peasant Thus the prescribed corvee amounts to 56 working days yearly. But the agricultural year in Wallachia numbers in consequence of the severe climate only 210 days, of which 40 for Sundays and holidays, 30 on an average for bad weather, together 70 days, do not count. 140 working days remain. The ratio of the corvee to the necessary labour |f or 66f% gives a much smaller rate of surplus- value than that which regulates the labour of the English agricultural of factory labourer. This is, however, only the legally prescribed corvee. And in a spirit yet more "liberal" than the English Factory Acts, the "Reglement organique" has known how to facilitate its own evasion. After it has made 56 days out of 12, the nominal days work of each of the 56 corvee days is again so arranged that a portion of it must fall on the ensuing day. In one day, e.g., must be weeded an extent of land, which, for this work, especially in maize plantations, needs twice as much time. The legal day's work for some kinds of agricultural labour is interpretable in such a way that the day begins in May and ends in October. In Moldavia conditions are still harder. "The corvee days of the 'Reglement organique,' " cried a Boy- ard, drunk with victory, "amount to 365 days in the year." * If the Reglement organique of the Danubian provinces was a positive expression of the greed for surplus-labour which every paragraph legalised, the English Factory Acts are the negative expression of the same greed. These acts curb the passion of capital for a limitless draining of labour-power, by forcibly limiting the working day by state regulations, made by a state that is ruled by capitalist and landlord. Apart from the working-class movement that daily grew more threatening, the limiting of factory labour was dictated by the same neces- 1 Further details are to be found in E. Regnault's "Histoire politique et sociale des Principautes Danubiennes." Paris, 1855. 264 Capitalist Production. sity which spread guano over the English fields. The same blind eagerness for plunder that in the one case exhausted the soil, had, in the other, torn up by the roots the living force of the nation. Periodical epidemics speak on this point as clearly as the diminishing military standard in Germany and France. 1 The Factory Act of 1850 now in force (1867) allows for the average working-day 10 hours, i.e., for the first 5 days 12 hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., including an hour for breakfast, and an hour for dinner, and thus leaving 10^ working hours, and 8 hours for Saturday, from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., of which -| an hour is subtracted for breakfast. 60 working hours are left, 10^ for each of the first 5 days, 7^ for the last. 2 Certain guardians of these laws are appointed, Factory Inspectors, di- rectly under the Home Secretary, whose reports are published half-yearly by order of Parliament. They give regular and official statistics of the capitalistic greed for surplus-labour. Let us listen, for a moment, to the Factory Inspectors. 3 1 "In general and within certain limits, exceeding the medium size of their kind, is evidence of the prosperity of organic beings. As to man, his bodily height lessens if his due growth is interfered with, either by physical or social conditions. In all European countries in which the conscription holds, since its introduction, the medium height of adult men, and generally their fitness for military service, has diminished. Before the revolution (1789), the minimum for the infantry in France was 165 centimetres; in 1818 (law of March 10th), 157; by the law of 1852, 156 c. m. ; on the average in France more than half are rejected on account of deficient height or bodily weakness. The military standard in Saxony was in 1780, 178 c. m. It is now 155. In Prussia it is 157. According to the statement of Dr. Meyer in the Bavarian Gazette, May 9th, 1862, the result of an average of 9 years is, that in Prussia out of 1000 conscripts 716 were unfit for military service, 317 because of deficiency in height, and 399 because of bodily defects. . . . Berlin in 1858, could not provide its contingent of recruits; it was 156 men short." J. von Liebig: "Die Chemie in inrer Anwendung auf Agrikultur und Physiologic, 1863," 7th Ed., vol 1., pp. 117, 118. , * The history of the Factory Act of 1850 will be found in the course of this chapter. 3 I only touch here and there on the period from the beginning of modern in- dustry in England to 1845. For this period I refer the reader to "Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England, von Friedrich Engels, Leipzig, 1845." How com- pletely Engels understood the nature of the capitalist* mode of production is shown by the Factory Reports, Reports on Mines, &c., that have appeared since 1845, and how wonderfully he painted the circumstances in detail is seen on the most super- ficial comparison of his work with the official reports of the Children's Employment Commission, published 18. to 20 years later (1863-1867). These deal especially with the branches of industry in which the Factory Acts had not, up to 1862, been intro- duced, in fact are not yet introduced. Here, then, little or no alteration had been enforced, by authority, in the conditions painted by Engels: I borrow my examples The Working Day. 265 "The fraudulent millowner begins work at 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 from the end of the half hour nominally allowed for breakfast, and 10 minutes at the beginning and end of the hour nominally al- lowed for dinner. He works for a quarter of an hour (some- times more, sometimes less after 2 p.m. on Saturday. Thus his gain is Before 6 a. m.. . ... ..... ... . . . . ... 15 minutes. After 6 p. m 15 " At breakfast time. ................ 10 " At dinner time.. .... . 20 " 60 Five days 300 minutes. On Saturday before 6 a. m 15 minutes. At breakfast time. . . 10 After 2 p. m 15 " 40 minutes. Total weekly , , 340 minutes. Or 5 hours and 40 minutes weekly, which multiplied by 50 working weeks in the year (allowing two for holidays and occasional stoppages) is equal to 2V working days." 1 "Five minutes a day's increased work, multiplied by 50 weeks, are equal to two and a half days of produce in the year." 2 "An additional hour a day gained by small instalments be- fore 6 a.m., after 6 p.m., and at the beginning and end of the chiefly from the free trade period after 1848, that age of paradise, of which the commercial travellers for the great firm of free trade, blatant as ignorant, tell such fabulous tales. For the rest England figures here in the forground because she is the classic representative of capitalist production, and she alone has a continuous set of official statistics of the things we are considering. 1 Suggestions, &c. by Mr. L. Homer, Inspector of Factories in: Factory Regula- <: ons Act. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 9th August, 1859, . !. 5. '-' reports of the Inspector of Factories for the half year, October, 1856, p. 35. 266 Capitalist Production. times nominally fixed for meals, is nearly equivalent to work- ing 13 months in the year." 1 Crises during which production is interrupted and the fac- tories work "short time," i.e., for only a part of the week, naturally do not affect the tendency to extend the working day. The less business there is, the more profit has to be made on the business done. The less time spent in work, the more of that time has to be turned into surplus labour-time. Thus the Factory Inspector's report on the period of the crisis from 1857 to 1858 : "It may seem inconsistent that there should be any over- working at a time when trade is so bad ; but that very bad- ness leads to the transgression by unscrupulous men, they get the extra profit of it In the last half year, says Leonard Homer, 122 mills in my district have been given up ; 143 were found standing," yet, overwork is continued beyond the legal hours. 2 "For a great part of the time," says Mr. Howell, "owing to the depression of trade, many factories were altogether closed, and a still greater number were working short time. I continue, however, to receive about the usual number of complaints that half, or three-quarters of an hour in the day, are snatched from the workers by encroaching upon the times professedly allowed for rest and refreshment." 3 The same phenomenon was repro- duced on a smaller scale during the frightful cotton-crisis from 1861 to 1865. 4 "It is sometimes advanced by way of excuse, when persons are found at work in a factory, either at a meal hour, or at some illegal time, that they will not leave the mill at the appointed hour, and that compulsion is necessary to force them to cease work [cleaning their machinery, &c.], especially , on Saturday afternoons. But, if the hands remain in a factory after the machinery has ceased to revolve . . . they would not have been so employed if sufficient time had been set apart 1 Reports, &c., 30th April, 1858, p. 9. * Reports, &c., 1. c., p. 43. s Reports, &c., 1. c., p. 25. 4 Reports, &c., for the half year ending 30th April, 1861. See Appendix No. 2; Reports, &c., 31st October, 1862, p. 7, 52, 63. The violations of the Acts became more numerous during the last half year 1863. Cf. Reports, &c., ending 31st October, 1863, p. 7. The Working Day. 267 specially for cleaning, &c., either before 6 a.m. [sic /] or before 2 p. m. on Saturday afternoons." 1 "The profit to be gained by it (over-working in violation of the Act) appears to be, to many, 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 con- siderable balance of gain. . . . 2 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." 3 These "small thefts" of capital from the labourer's meal and recreation time, the factory inspectors also designate as "petty pilfering of minutes," 4 "snatching a few minutes," 5 or, as the labourers technically called them, "nibbling and cribbling at meal times." 6 It is evident that in this atmosphere the formation of sur- plus-value by surplus-labour, is not secret. "If you allow me," said a highly respectable master to me, "to work only ten min- utes in the day over-time, you put one thousand a year in my pocket." 7 "Moments are the elements of profit." 8 1 Reports, c., October 31st, 1860, p. 23. With what fanaticism, according to the evidence of manufacturers given in courts of law, their hands set themselves against every interruption in factory labour, the following curious circumstance shows. In the beginning of June, 1836, information reached the magistrates of Dewsbury (Yorkshire) that the owners of 8 large mills in the neighbourhood of Batley had violated the Factory Acts. Some of these gentlemen were accused of having kept at work 5 boys between 12 and 15 years of age, from 6 a.m. on Friday to 4 p.m. on the following Saturday, not allowing them any respite except for meals and one hour for sleep at midnight. And these children had to do this ceaseless labour of 30 hours in the "shoddy-hole," as the hole is called, in which the woolen rags are pulled in pieces, and where a dense atmosphere of dust, shreds, &c., forces even the adult workman to cover his mouth continually with handkerchiefs for the protec- tion of his lungs! The accused gentlemen affirm in lieu of taking an oath as Quakers they were too scrupulously religious to take an oath that they had, in their great compassion for the unhappy children, allowed them four hours for sleep, but the obstinate children absolutely would not go to bed. The quaker gentlemen were mulcted in 20. Dryden anticipated these gentry: "Fox full fraught in seeming sanctity, That feared an oath, but like the devil would lie, That look'd like Lent, and had the holy leer, And durst not sin I before he said his prayer!" 8 Rep., 31st Oct., 1856, p. 34. 1. c. p., p. 48. 1. c., p. 48. 3 1. c., p. 35. 8 1. c., p. 48. 7 1. c., p. 48. 8 Report of the Insp., &c., 30th April, 1860, p. 56. 268 Capitalist Production. Xothing is from this point of view more characteristic than the designation of the workers who work full time as "full- timers," and the children under 13 who are only allowed to work 6 hours as "half-timers." The worker is here nothing more than personified labour-time. All individual distinctions are merged in those of "full-timers" and "half-timers." 1 SECTION 3. BRANCHES OF ENGLISH INDUSTRY WITHOUT LEGAL, LIMITS TO EXPLOITATION. We have hitherto considered the tendency to the extension of the working day, the were-wolf's hunger for surplus-labour in a department where the monstrous exactions, not surpassed, says an English bourgeois economist, by the cruelties of the Spaniards to the American red-skins, 2 caused capital at last to be bound by the chains of legal regulations. Now, let us cast a glance at certain branches of production in which the exploi- tation of labour is either free from fetters to this day, or was so yesterday. Mr. Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared as chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms, Notting- ham, on the 14th of January, 1860, "that there was an amount of privation and suffering among that portion of the popula- tion connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts of the kingdom, indeed, in the civilized world . . . Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o'clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone- like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate We are not surprised that Mr. Mallett, or any other manufacturer, should stand forward and protest against discussion The 1 This is the official expression both in the factories and in the reports. * "The cupidity of mill-owners whose cruelties in the pursuit of gain have hardly been exceeded by those perpetrated by the Spaniards in the conquest of America in the pursuit of gold." John Wade, History of the Middle and Working Classes, 3rd Ed. London, 1835, p. 114. The theoretical part of this book, a kind of hand-book of Political Economy, is, considering the time of its publication, original in some parts, e.g., on commercial crises. The historical part is, to a great extent, a shameless plagiarism of Sir F. M. Eden's "History of the Poor," London, 1799. The Working Day. 269 system, as the Eev. Montagu Valpy describes it, is one of unmitigated slavery, socially, physically, morally, and spirit- ually What can be thought of a town which holds a public meeting to petition that the period of labour for men shall be diminished to eighteen hours a day*? We declaim against the Virginian and Carolina cotton-planters. Is their black-market, their lash, and their barter of human flesh more detestable than this slow sacrifice of humanity which takes place in order that veils and collars may be fabricated for the benefit of capitalists ?' u The potteries of Staffordshire have, during the last 22 years, been the subject of three parliamentary inquiries. The result is embodied in Mr. Scriven's Eeport of 181-1 to the "Children's Employment Commissioners," in the report of Dr. Greenhow of 1860 published by order of the medical officer of the Privy Council (Public Health, 3rd Eeport, 112-113), lastly, in the report of Mr. Longe of 1862 in the "First Eeport of the Children's Employment Commission, of the 13th June, 1863." For my purpose it is enough to take, from the reports of 1860 and 1863, some depositions of the exploited children them- selves. From the children we may form an opinion as to the adults, especially the girls and women, and that in a branch of industry by the side of which cotton-spinning appears an agree- able and healthful occupation. 2 William Wood, 9 years old, was 7 years and 10 months when he began to work. He "ran moulds" (carried ready-moulded articles into the drying room, afterwards bringing back the empty mould) from the beginning. He came to work every day in the week at 6 a.m., and left off about 9 p.m. "I work till 9 o'clock at night six days in the week. I have done so seven or eight weeks." Fifteen hours of labour for a child of 7 years old ! J. Murray, 12 years of age, says : "I turn jigger, and run moulds. I come at 6. Sometimes I come at 4. I worked all last night, till 6 o'clock this morning. I have not been in bed since the night before last. There were eight or nine other boys working last night. All but one have come this 1 "Daily Telegraph," 17th January, 1860. 2 Cf. F. Engels' Lage, etc., p. 249-51. 270 Capitalist Production. morning. I get 3 shillings and sixpence. I do not get any more for working at night. I worked two nights last week." Ferny hough, a boy of ten : "I have not always an hour (for dinner). I have only half an hour sometimes; on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday." 1 ' Dr. Greenhow states that the average duration of life in the pottery districts of Stoke-on-Trent, and Wolstanton is ex- traordinarily short. Although in the district of Stoke, only 36.6% and in Wolstanton only 30.4% of the adult male population above 20 are employed in the potteries, among the men of that age in the first district more than half, in the second, nearly of the whole deaths are the result of pul- monary diseases among the potters. Dr. Boothroyd, a medical practitioner at Hanley, says: "Each successive generation of potters is more dwarfed and less robust than the preceding one." In like manner another doctor, Mr. M'Bean : "Since he began to practise among the potters 25 years ago, he has ob- served a marked degeneration especially shown in diminution of stature and breadth." These statements are taken from the report of Dr. Greenhow in I860. 2 From the report of the Commissioners in 1863, the follow- ing: Dr. J. T. Arledge, senior physician of the North Staf- fordshire Infirmary, says: "The potters as a class, both men and women, represent a degenerated population, both phys- ically and morally. They are, as a rule, stunted in growth, ill-shaped, and frequently ill-formed in the chest ; they become prematurely old, and are certainly short-lived ; they are phlegmatic and bloodless, and exhibit their debility of consti- tution by obstinate attacks of dyspepsia, and disorders of the liver and kidneys, and by rheumatism. But of all diseases they are especially prone to chest-disease, to pneumonia, phthisis, bronchitis, and asthma. One form would appear pe- culiar to them, and is known as potter's asthma, or potter's consumption. Scrofula attacking the glands, or bones, or other parts of the body, is a disease of two-thirds or more of the 1 Children's Employment Commission. First report, etc., 1863. Evidence, p. 16, 19, 18. Public Health, 3rd report, etc., p. 102, 104, 105. The Working Day. 271 potters That the Megenerescence' of the population of this district is not even greater than it is, is due to the constant recruiting from the adjacent country, and intermarriages with more healthy races." 1 Mr. Charles Parsons, late house surgeon of the same institu- tion, writes in a letter to Commissioner Longe, amongst other things : "I can only speak from personal observation and not from statistical data( but I do not hesitate to assert that my indignation has been aroused again and again at the sight of poor children whose health has been sacrificed to gratify the avarice of either parents or employers." He enumerates the causes of the diseases of the potters, and sums them up in the phrase, "long hours." The report of the Commission trusts that "a manufacture which has assumed so prominent a place in the whole world, will not long be subject to the remark that its great success is accompanied with the physical deterioration, wide-spread bodily suffering, and early death of the work- people . . by whose labour and skill such great results have been achieved." 2 And all that holds of the potteries in Eng- land is true of those in Scotland. 3 The manufacture of lucifer matches dates from 1833, from the discovery of the method of applying phosphorus to the match itself. Since 1845 this manufacture has rapidly devel- oped in England, and has extended especially amongst the thickly populated parts of London as well as in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle and Glas- gow. With it has spread the form of lockjaw, which a Vienna physician in 1845 discovered to be a disease peculiar to lucifer- matchmakers. Half the workers are children under thirteen, and young persons under eighteen. The manufacture is on account of its unhealthiness and unpleasantness in such bad odour that only the most miserable part of the labouring class, half-starved widows and so forth, deliver up their children to it, "the ragged, half-starved, untaught children." 4 Of the witnesses that Commissioner White examined 1 Child. Empl. Comm. I. Report, p. 24. * Children's Employment Commission, p. 22, and xi. * 1. c. p. xlvii. * 1. c. p. liv. 272 Capitalist Production. (1863), 270 were under 18, 50 under 10, 10 only 8, and 5 only 6 years old. A range of the working day from 12 to 14 or 15 hours, night-labour, irregular meal times, meals for the most part taken in the very workrooms that are pestilent with phosphorus. Dante would have found the worst horrors of his Inferno surpassed in this manufacture. In the manufacture of paper-hangings the coarser sorts are printed by machine; the finer by hand (block-printing). The most active business months are from the beginning of October to the end of April. During this time the work goes on fast and furious without intermission from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. or further into the night. J. Leach deposes: "Last winter six out of nineteen girls were away from ill-health at one time from over-work. I have to bawl at them to keep them awake." W. Duffy: "I have seen when the children could none of them keep their eyes open for the work ; indeed, none of us could." J. Lightbourne : "Am 13 ... We worked last winter till 9 (evening), and the winter before till 10. I used to cry with sore feet every night last winter." G. Apsden : "That boy of mine . . . when he was 7 years old I used to carry him on my back to and fro through the snow, and he used to have 16 hours a day ... I have often knelt down to feed him as he stood by the machine, for he could not leave it or stop." Smith, the managing partner of a Manchester factory : "We (he means his "hands" who work for "us") work on, with no stoppage for meals, so that the day's work of 10^ hours is finished by 4.30. p.m., and all after that is overtime." 1 (Does this Mr. Smith take no meals himself during 10^ hours?) "We (this same Smith) seldom leave off working before 6 p.m. (he means leave off the consumption of 'our' labour-power machines), so that we (iterum Crispinus) are really working overtime the whole year round For all these, children and adults alike (152 1 This is not to be taken in the same sense as our surplus-labour time. These gentlemen consider 10J4 hours of labour as the normal working day, which includes of course the normal surphis-labour. After this begins "overtime" which is paid a little better. It will be seen later that the labour expended during the so-called normal day is paid below its value, so that the overtime is simply a capitalist trick in order to extort more surplus-labor, which it would still be, even if the labour- power expended during the normal working day were properly paid. The Working Day. 273 children and young persons and 1-iO adults), the average work for the last 18 months has been at the very least 1 days, 5 hours, or 78-J hours a week. For the six weeks ending May 2nd this year (1862), the average was higher 8 days or 84 hours a week." Still this same Mr. Smith, who is so extremely devoted to the pluralis majestatis, adds with a smile, "Machine work is not great." So the employers in the block-printing say: "Hand labour is more healthy than machine-work." On the whole, manufacturers declare with indignation against the proposal "to stop the machines at least during meal times/ A clause, says Mr. Otley, manager of a wall-paper factory in the Borough, "which allowed work between, say 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. . . . would suit us (!) very well, but the factory hours, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., are not suitable. Our machine is always stopped for dinner. (What generosity!) There is no waste of paper and colour to speak of. But," he adds sympatheti- cally, "I can understand the loss of time not being liked.' The report of the Commission opines with naivete that the fear of some "leading firms" of losing time, i.e., the time for appropriating the labour of others, and thence losing profit is not a sufficient reason for allowing children under 13, and young persons under 18, working 12 to 16 hours per day, to lose their dinner, nor for giving it to them as coal and water are supplied to the steam-engine, soap to wool, oil to the wheel as merely auxiliary material to the instruments of labour, during the process of production itself. 1 No branch of industry in England (we do not take into account the making of bread by machinery recently intro- duced) has preserved up to the present day a method of pro- duction so archaic, so as we see from the poets of the Roman Empire pre-christian, as baking. But capital, as was said earlier, is at first indifferent as to the technical character of the labour-process ; it begins by taking it just as it finds it. The incredible adulteration of bread, especially in London, was first revealed by the House of Commons Committee "on the adulteration of articles of food' y (1855-56), and Dr. 1 l. c. Evidence, p. 123, 124, 125, 140, and 54. R 274 Capitalist Production. Hassall's work, "Adulterations detected." 1 The consequence of these revelations was the Act of August 6th, 1860, "for preventing the adulteration of articles of food and drink," an inoperative law, as it naturally shows the tenderest consider- ation for every free-trader who determines by the buying or selling of adulterated commodities "to turn an honest penny." 2 The Committee itself formulated more or less naively its con- viction that free-trade meant essentially trade with adulter- ated, or as the English ingeniously put it, "sophisticated" goods. In fact this kind of sophistry knows better than Prota- goras how to make white black, and black white, and better than the Eleatics how to demonstrate ad oculos that everything is only appearance. 3 At all events the committee had directed the attention of the public to its "daily bread," and therefore to the baking trade. At the same time in public meetings and in petitions to Parliament rose the cry of the London journeymen bakers against their over-work, &c. The cry was so urgent that Mr. H. S. Tremenheere, also a member of the Commission of 1863 several times mentioned, was appointed Royal Commissioner of Inquiry. His report, 4 together with the evidence given, roused not the heart of the public but its stomach. English- men, always well up in the Bible, knew well enough that man, unless by elective grace a capitalist, or landlord, or sinecurist, 1 Alum finely powdered, or mixed with salt, is a normal article of commerce bear- ing the significant name of "bakers' stuff." 1 Soot is a well-known and very energetic form of carbon, and forms a manure that capitalistic chimney-sweeps sell to English farmers. Now in 1862 the British juryman had in a law-suit to decide whether soot, with which, unknown to the buyer 90% of dust and sand are mixed, is genuine soot in the commercial sense or adulterated soot in the legal sense. The "amis du commerce" decided it to be genuine commercial soot, and non-suited the plaintiff farmer, who had in addition to pay the costs of the suit. 3 The French chemist, Chevallier, in his treatise on the "sophistications" of commodities, enumerates for many of the 600 or more articles which he passes in review, 10, 20, 30 different methods of adulteration. He adds that he does not know all the methods, and does not mention all that he knows. He gives 6 kinds of adulteration of sugar, 9 of olive oil, 10 of butter, 12 of salt, 19 of milk, 20 of bread, 23 of brandy, 24 bf meal, 28 of chocolate, 30 of wine, 32 of coffee, etc. Even God Almighty does not escape this fate. See Ronard de Card, on the falsifi- cations of the materials of the Sacrament. (De la falsification des substances sacra- mentelles, Paris, 1856.) * "Report, &c., relating to the grievances complained of by the journeymen bakers, &c., London, 1862," and "Second Report &c., London, 1863." The Working Day. 275 is commanded to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow, but they did not know that he had to eat daily in his bread a certain quantity of human perspiration mixed with the discharge of ' abcesses, cobwebs, dead black-beetles, and putrid German yeast, without counting alum, sand, and other agreeable mineral in- gredients. Without any regard to his holiness, Freetrade, the free baking-trade was therefore placed under the supervision of the State inspectors (Close of the Parliamentary session of 1863), and by the same Act of Parliament, work from 9 in the evening to 5 in the morning was forbidden for journeymen bakers under 18. The last clause speaks volumes as to the over-work in this old-fashioned, homely line of business. "The work of a London journeyman baker begins, as a rule, at about eleven at night. At that hour he 'makes the dough,' a laborious process, which lasts from half-an-hour to three quarters of an hour, according to the size of the batch or the labour bestowed upon it. He then lies down upon the knead- ing-board, which is also the covering of the trough in which the dough is 'made ;' and with a sack under him, and another rolled up as a pillow, he sleeps for about a couple of hours. He is then engaged in a rapid and continuous labour for about five hours throwing out the dough, 'scaling it off,' moulding it, putting it into the oven, preparing and baking rolls and fancy bread, taking the batch bread out of the oven, and up into the shop, &c., &c. The temperature of a bakehouse ranges from about 75 to upwards of 90 degrees, and in the smaller bakehouses approximates usually to the higher rather than to the lower degree of heat. When the business of making the bread, rolls, &c., is over, that of its distribution begins, and a considerable proportion of the journeymen in the trade, after working hard in the manner described during the night, are upon their legs for many hours during the day, carrying bas- kets, or wheeling hand-carts, and sometimes again in the bake- house, leaving off work at various hours between 1 and 6 p.m. according to the season of the year, or the amount and nature of their master's business; while others are again engaged in the bakehouse in 'bringing out' more batches until late in the 276 Capitalist Production. afternoon. 1 . . . During what is called 'the London season,' the operatives belonging to the 'full-priced' bakers at the West End of the town ; generally begin work at 11 p.m., and are en- gaged in making the bread, with one or two short (sometimes very short) intervals of rest, up to 8 o'clock the next morning. They are' then engaged all day long, up to 4, 5, 6, and as late as 7 o'clock in the evening carrying out bread, or sometimes in the afternoon in the bakehouse again, assisting in the biscuit- baking. They may have, after they have done their work, sometimes five or six, sometimes only four or five hours' sleep before they begin again. On Fridays they always begin sooner, some about ten o'clock, and continue in some cases, at work, either in making or delivering the bread up to 8 p.m. on Saturday night, but more generally up to 4 or 5 o'clock, Sunday morning. On Sundays the men must attend twice or three times during the day for an hour or two to make prepa- rations for the next day's bread The men employed by the underselling masters (who sell their bread under the 'full price,' and who, as already pointed out, comprise three- fourths of the London bakers) have not only to work on the average longer hours, but their work is almost entirely confined to the bakehouse. The underselling masters generally sell their bread .... in the shop. If they send it out, which is not com- mon, except as supplying chandlers' shops, they usually employ other hands for that purpose. It is not their practice to deliver bread from house to house. Towards the end of the week the men begin on Thursday night at 10 o'clock, and continue on with only slight intermission until late on Saturday evening." 2 Even the bourgeois intellect understands the position of the "underselling" masters. "The unpaid labour of the men was made the source whereby the competition was carried on." 3 And the "full-priced" baker denounces his underselling com- petitors to the Commission of Inquiry as thieves of foreign labour and adulterators. "They only exist now by first de- frauding the public, and next getting 18 hours work out of their men for 12 hours' wages." 4 1 1. c. First Report, &c., p. vi. 2 1. c. p. Ixxi. * George Read, The History of Baking, London, 1848, p. 16. * Report (First) &c. Evidence of the "full-priced" baker Cheeseman, p. 108. The Working Day. 277 The adulteration of bread and the formation of a class of bakers that sells the bread below the full price, date from the beginning of the 18th century, from the time when the corporate character of the trade was lost, and the capitalist in the form of the miller or flour-factor, rises behind the nominal master baker. 1 Thus was laid the foundation of capitalistic production in this trade, of the unlimited extension of the working day and of night labour,, although the latter only since 1824 gained a serious footing, even in London. 2 After what has just been said, it will be understood that the Report of the Commission classes journeymen bakers among the short-lived labourers, who, having by good luck escaped the normal decimation of the children of the working-class, rarely reach the age of 42. Nevertheless, the baking trade is always overwhelmed with applicants. The sources of the supply of these labour-powers to London are Scotland, the western agri- cultural districts of England, and Germany. In the years 1858-60, the journeymen bakers in Ireland organized at their own expense great meetings to agitate against night and Sunday work. The public e.g., at the Dublin meeting in May, 1860 took their part with Irish warmth. As a result of this movement, day labor alone was successfully established in Wexford, Kilkenny, Clonmel, Water- ford, &c. "In Limerick, where the grievances of the journey- men are demonstrated to be excessive, the movement has been defeated by the opposition of the master bakers, the miller bakers being the greatest opponents. The example of Limerick . led to a retrogression in Ennis and Tipperary. In Cork, where the strongest possible demonstration of feeling took place, the masters, by exercising their power of turning the men out of employment, have defeated the movement. In Dublin, the master bakers have offered the most determined opposition to 1 George Read, 1. c. At the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th cen- turies the factors (agents) that crowded into every possible trade were still de- nounced as "public nuisances." Thus the Grand Jury at the quarter session of the Justices of the Peace for the County of Somerset, addressed a presentment to the Lower House which, among other things, states, "that these factors of Blackwell Hall are a Public Nuisance and Prejudice to the Clothing Trade, and ought to be put down as a Nuisance." The case of our English Wool, &c., London, 1685, p. 6, 7. 2 First Report, &c. 278 Capitalist Production. the movement, and by discountenancing as much as possible the journeymen promoting it, have succeeded in leading the men into acquiescence in Sunday work and night work, con- trary to the convictions of the men." 1 The Committee of the English Government, which Govern- ment, in Ireland, is armed to the teeth, and generally knows how to show it, remonstrates in mild, though funereal, tones with the implacable master bakers of Dublin, Limerick, Cork, &c. : "The Committee believe that the hours of labour are limited by natural laws, which cannot be violated with im- punity. That for master bakers to induce their workmen, by the fear of losing employment, to violate their religious con- victions and their better feelings, to disobey the laws of the land, and to disregard public opinion (this all refers to Sunday labour), is calculated to provoke ill-feeling between workmen and masters, . . . and affords an example dangerous to religion, morality, and social order. . . . The Committee believe that any constant work beyond 12 hours a-day encroaches on the domestic and private life of the working man, and so leads to disastrous moral results, interfering with each man's home, and the discharge of his family duties as a son, a brother, a hus- band, a father. That work beyond 12 hours has a tendency to undermine the health of the working man, and so leads to premature old age and death, to the great injury of families of working men, thus deprived of the care and support of the head of the family when most required." 2 So far, we have dealt with Ireland. On the other side of the channel, in Scotland, the agricultural labourer, the plough- man, protests against his 13-14 hours' work in the most in- clement climate, with 4 hours' additional work on Sunday (in this land of Sabbatarians!), 3 whilst, at the same time, three railway men are standing before a London coroner's jury a guard, an engine-driver, a signalman. A tremendous railway accident has hurried hundreds of passengers into another world. The negligence of the employes is the cause of the 1 Report of Committee on the Baking Trade in Ireland for 1861. * 1. c. * Public meeting of agricultural labourers at Lasswade, near Edinburgh, January 5th, 1866. (See "Workman's Advocate," January 13th, 1866.) The formation The Working Day. 279 misfortune. They declare with one voice before the jury that ten or twelve years before, their labour only lasted eight hours a-day. During the last five or six years it had been screwed up to 14, 18, and 20 hours, and under a specially severe pres- sure of holiday-makers, at times of excursion trains, it often lasted for 40 or 50 hours without a break. They were ordinary men, not Cyclops. At a certain point their labour-power failed. Torpor seized them. Their brain ceased to think, their eyes to see. The thoroughly "respectable" British jurymen answered by a verdict that sent them to the next assizes on a charge of manslaughter, and, in a gentle "rider" to their ver- dict, expressed the pious hope that the capitalistic magnates of the railways would, in future, be more extravagant in the purchase of a sufficient quantity of labour-power, and more "abstemious," more "self-denying," more "thrifty," in the draining of paid labour-power. 1 From the motley crowd of labourers of all callings, ages, since the close of 1865 of a Trades' Union among the agricultural labourers at first in Scotland is a historic event. In one of the most oppressed agricultural districts of England, Buckinghamshire, the labourers, in March, 1867, made a great strike for the raising of their weekly wage from 9-10 shillings to 12 shillings. (It will be seen from the preceding passage that the movement of the English agricultural proletariat, entirely crushed since the suppression of its violent manifestations after 1330, and especially since the introduction of the new Poor Laws, begins again in the sixties, until it becomes finally epoch-making in 1872. I return to this in the 2nd volume, as well as to the blue books that have appeared since 1867 on the position of the Eng- lish land labourers. Addendum to the 3rd ed.) 1 "Reynolds' Newspaper," January, 1866. Every week this same paper has, under the sensational headings, "Fearful and fatal accidents," "Appalling tragedies," &c., a whole list of fresh railway catastrophes. On these an employe on the North Staffordshire line comments: "Everyone knows the consequences that may occur if the driver and fireman of a locomotive engine are not continually on the look-out. How can that be expected from a man who has been at such work for 29 or 30 hours, exposed to the weather, and without rest. The following is an example which is of very frequent occurrence: One fireman commenced work on the Monday morn- ing at a very early hour. When he had finished what is called a day's work, he had been on duty 14 hours 50 minutes. Before he had time to get his tea, he was again called on for duty. . . . The next time he finished he had been on duty 14 hours 25 minutes, making a total of 29 hours 15 minutes without intermission. The rest of the week's work was made up as follows: Wednesday, 15 hours; Thurs- day, 15 hours 35 minutes; Friday, 14J4 hours; Saturday, 14 hours 10 minutes, making a total for the week of 88 hours 40 minutes. Now, sir, fancy his astonishment on being paid 6}4 days for the whole. Thinking it was a mistake, he applied to the time- keeper, . . . and inquired what they considered a day's work, and was told 13 hours for a good man (i.e., 78 hours. . . . He then asked for what he had made over and above the 78 hours per week, but was refused. However, he was at last lold they would give him another quarter, i.e., lOd." 1. c., 4th February, 1866. 280 Capitalist Production. sexes, that press on us more busily than the souls of the slain on Ulysses, on whom without referring to the blue books under their arms we see at a glance the mark of over-work, let us take two more figures whose striking contrast proves* that before capital all men are alike a milliner and a black- smith. In the last week of June^ 1863, all the London daily papers published a paragraph with the "sensational" heading "Death from simple over-work." It dealt with the death of the milliner, Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years of age, employed in a highly-respectable dressmaking establishment, exploited by a lady with the pleasant name of Elise. The old, often-told story, 1 was once more recounted. This girl worked, on an average, 16 hours, during the season often 30 hours, without a break, whilst her failing labour-powerwas revived by occasional supplies of sherry, port, or coffee. It was just now the height of the season. It was necessary to conjure up in the twinkling of an eye the gorgeous dresses for the noble ladies bidden to the ball in honour of the newly-imported Princess of Wales. Mary Anne Walkley had worked without intermission for 26 hours, with 60 other girls, 30 in one room, that only afforded ^ of the cubic feet of air required for them. At night, they slept in pairs in one of the stifling holes into which the bedroom was divided by partitions of board. 2 And this was one of the best Cf. F. Engels. 1. c., pp. 253, 154. *Dr. Letheby, Consulting Physician of the Board of Health, declared: "The mini- mum of air for each adult ought to be in a sleeping room 300, and in a dwelling room 500 cubic feet." Dr. Richardson, Senior Physician to one of the London Hospitals: "With needlewomen of all kinds, including milliners, dressmakers, and ordinary sempstresses, there are three miseries over-work, deficient air, and either deficient food or deficient digestion. . . . Needlework, in the main, ... is infinitely better adapted to women than to men. But the mischiefs of the trade, in the metropolis especially, are that it is monopolised by some twenty-six capitalists, who, under the advantages that spring from capital, can bring in capital to force economy out of labour. This power tells throughout the whole class. If a dress- maker can get a little circle of customers, such is the competition that, in her home, she must work to the death to hold together, and this same over-work she must of necessity inflict on any who may assist her. If she fail, or do not try independently, she must join an establishment, where her labour is not less, but where her money is safe. Placed thus, she becomes a mere slave, tossed about with the variations of society. Now at home, in one room, starving, or near to it, then engaged 15, 16, aye, even 18 hours out of the 24, in an air that is scarcely tolerable, and on food which, even if it be good, cannot be digested in the absence of pure The Working Day. 281 millinery establishments in London. Mary Anne Walkley fell ill on the Friday, died on Sunday, without, to the astonish- ment of Madame Elise, having previously completed the work in hand. The doctor, Mr. Keys, called too late to the death- bed, duly bore witness before the coroner's jury that "Mary Anne Walkley had died from long hours of work in an over- crowded workroom, and a too small and badly-ventilated bed- room." In order to give the doctor a lesson in good manners, the coroner's jury thereupon brought in a verdict that "the deceased had died of apoplexy, but there was reason to fear that her death had been accelerated by over-work in an over- crowded workroom, &c." "Our white slaves," cried the "Morn- ing Star," the organ of the free-traders, Cobden and Bright, "our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine and die." 1 "It is not in dressmakers' rooms that working to death is the order of the day, but in a thousand other places ; in every place I had almost said, where ( a thriving business' has to be done. . . . We will take the blacksmith as a type. If the poets were true, there is no man so hearty, so merry, as the blacksmith; he rises early and strikes his sparks before the sun ; he eats and drinks and sleeps as no other man. Working in moderation, he is, in fact, in one of the best of air. On these victims, consumption, which is purely a disease of bad air, feeds." Dr. Richardson: "Work and Overwork," in "Social Science Review," 18th July, 1863. 1 "Morning Star," 23rd June, 1863. The "Times" made use of the circumstance to defend the American slave owners against Bright, &c. "Very many of us think," says a leader of July 2nd, 1868, "that, while we work our own young women to death, using the scourge of starvation, instead of the crack of the whip, as the instrument of compulsion, we have scarcely a right to hound on fire and slaughter against families who were born slave owners, and who, at least, feed their slaves well, and work them lightly." In the same manner, the "Standard," a Tory organ, fell foul of the Rev. Newman Hall: "He excommunicated the slave owners, but prays with the fine folk who, without remorse, make the omnibus drivers and con- ductors of London, &c., work 16 hours a-day for the wages of a dog." Finally, spake the oracle, Thomas Carlyle, of whom I wrote, in 1850, "Zum Teufel ist der Genius, der Kultus ist geblieben." In a short parable, he reduces the one great event of contemporary history, the American civil war, to this level, that the Peter of the North wants to break the head of the Paul of the South with all his might, because the Peter of the North hires his labour by the day, and the Paul of tht South hires his by the life. ("Macmillan's Magazine." Ilias Americana in nuce. August, 1863.) Thus, the bubble of Tory sympathy for the urban workers by no means for the rural has burst at last. The sum of all is slavery! 282 Capitalist Production. human positions, physically speaking. But we follow him into the city or town, and we see the stress of work on that strong man, and what then is his position in the death-rate of his country. In Marylebone, blacksmiths die at the rate of 31 per thousand per annum, or 11 above the mean of the male adults of the country in its entirety. The occupation, instinctive almost as a portion of human art, unobjectionable as a branch of human industry, is made by mere excess of work, the de- stroyer of the man. He can strike so many blows per day, walk so many steps, breathe so many breaths, produce so much work, and live an average, say of fifty years; he is made to strike so many more blows, to walk so many more steps, to breathe so many more breaths per day, and to increase alto- gether a fourth of his life. He meets the effort ; the result is, that producing for a limited time a fourth more work, he dies at 37 for 50." 1 SECTION 4. DAY AND NIGHT WORK. THE RELAY SYSTEM. Constant capital, the means of production, considered from the standpoint of the creation of surplus-value, only exist to absorb labour, and with every drop of labour a proportional quantity of surplus-labour. While they fail to do this, their mere existence causes a relative loss to the capitalist, for they represent during the time they lie fallow, a useless advance of capital. And this loss becomes positive and absolute as soon as the intermission of their employment necessitates additional outlay at the recommencement of work. The prolongation of the working day beyond the limits of the natural day, into the night, only acts as a palliative. It quenches only in a slight degree the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour. To appropriate labour during all the 24 hours of the day is, there- fore, the inherent tendency of capitalist production. But as it is physically impossible to exploit the same individual labour- power constantly during the night as well as the day, to over- come this physical hindrance, an alternation becomes necessary between the workpeople whose powers are exhausted by day, 1 Dr. Richardson, 1. c. The Working Day. 283 and those who are used up by night. This alternation may be effected in various ways ; e.g., it may be so arranged that part of the workers are one week employed on day work, the next week on night work. It is well-known that this relay system, this alternation of two sets of workers, held full sway in the full-blooded youth-time of the English cotton manufacture, and that at the present time it still flourishes, among others, in the cotton spinning of the Moscow district. This 24 hours' process of production exists to-day as a system in many of the branches of industry of Great Britain that are still "free," in the blast-furnaces, forges, plate-rolling mills, and other metal- lurgical establishments in England, Wales, and Scotland. The working time here includes, besides the 24 hours of the 6 working days, a great part also of the 24 hours of Sunday. The workers consist of men and women, adults and children of both sexes. The ages of the children and young persons run through all intermediate grades, from 8 (in some cases from 6) to 18. 1 In some branches of industry, the girls and women work through the night together with the males. 2 Placing on one side the generally injurious influence of night-labour, 3 the duration of the process of production, un- 1 Children's Employment Commission. Third Report. London, 1864, p. iv., v., vi. * "Both in Staffordshire and in South Wales young girls and women are employed on the pit banks and on the coke heaps, not only b'y day but also by night. This practice has been often noticed in Reports presented to Parliament, as being attended with great and notorious evils. These females employed with the men, hardly dis- tinguished from them in their dress, and begrimed with dirt and smoke, are exposed to the deterioration of character, arising from the loss of self-respect, which can hardly fail to follow from their unfeminine occupation." (1. c. 194., p. xxvi. Cf. Fourth Report (1865), 61, p. xiii.) It is the same in glass-works. *A steel manufacturer who employs children in night labour remarked: "It seems but natural that boys who work at night cannot sleep and get proper rest by day, hut will be running about." (1. c. Fourth Report, 63, p. xiii.) On the im- portance of sunlight for the maintenance and growth of the body, a physician writes: "Light also acts upon the tissues of the body directly in hardening them and supporting their elasticity. The muscles of animals, when they are deprived of a proper amount of light, become soft and inelastic, the nervous power loses its tone from defective stimulation, and the elaboration of all growth seems to be perverted. ... In the case of children, constant access to plenty of light during the day, and to the direct rays of the sun for a part of it, is most essential to health. Light assists in the elaboration of good plastic blood, and hardens the fibre after it has been laid down. It also act? as a stimulus upon the organs of sight, and by this means brings about more activity in the various cerebral func- tions." Dr. W. Strange, Senior Physician of the Worcester General Hospital, from 284 Capitalist Production. broken during the 24 hours, offers very welcome opportunities of exceeding the limits of the normal working day, e.g., in the branches of industry already mentioned, which are of an exceedingly fatiguing nature; the official working day means for each worker usually 12 hours by night or day. But the over-work beyond this amount is in many cases, to use the words of the English official report, "truly fearful." 1 "It is impossible," the report continues, "for any mind to realise the amount of work described in the following passages as being performed by boys of from 9 to 12 years of age .... without coming irresistibly to the conclusion that such abuses of the power of parents and of employers can no longer be allowed to exist." 2 "The practice of boys working at all by day and night turns either in the usual course of things, or at pressing times, seems inevitably to open the door to their not unfrequently working unduly long hours. These hours are, indeed, in some cases, not only cruelly but even incredibly long for children. Amongst a number of boys it will, of course, not unfrequently happen that one or more are from some cause absent. When this happens, their place is made up by one or more boys, who work in the other turn. That this is a well understood system is plain . . . from the answer of the manager of some large rolling-mills, who, when I asked him how the place of the boys absent from their turn was made up, 'I daresay, sir, you know that as well .as I do,' and admitted, the fact." 3 "At a rolling-mill where the proper hours were from 6 a.m. to 5 1 p.m., a boy worked about four nights every week till 8$ p.m. at least . . . and this for six months. Another, at 9 years old, sometimes made three 12-hour shifts running, and, whose work on "Health" (1864) this passage is taken, writes in a letter to Mr. White, one of the commissioners: "I have had opportunities formerly, when in Lancashire, of observing the effects of night-work upon children, and I have no hesitation in saying, contrary to what some employers were fond of asserting, those children who were subjected to it soon suffered in their health." (1. c. 284, p. 55.) That such a question should furnish the material of serious controversy, shows plainly how capitalist production acts on the brain-functions of capitalists and their retainers. *L c. 67, p. xii. I. c. Fourth Report (1865), 58, p. xii. * 1. C. The Working Day. 285 when 10, has made two days and two nights running." A third, "now 10 ... worked from 6 a.m. till 12 p.m. three nights, and till 9 p.m. the other nights." "Another, now 13, . . . worked from 6 p.m. till 12 noon next day, for a week together, and sometimes for three shifts together, e.g., from Monday morning till Tuesday night." "Another, now 12, has worked in an iron foundry at Stavely from 6 a.m. till 12 p.m. for a fortnight on end; could not do it any more." "George Allinsworth, age 9, came here as cellar-boy last Friday; next morning we had to begin at 3, so I stopped here all night. Live five miles off. Slept on the floor of the furnace, over head, with an apron under me, and a bit of a jacket over me. The two other days I have been here at 6 a.m. Aye ! it is hot in here. Before I came here I was nearly a year at the same work at some works in the country. Began there, too, at 3 on Saturday morning always did, but was very gain [near] home, and could sleep at home. Other days I began at 6 in the morning, and gi'en over at 6 or 7 in the evening," &C. 1 1 1. c., p. xiii. The degree of culture of these "labour-powers" must naturally be such as appears in the following dialogues with one of the commissioners: Jere- miah Haynes, age 12 "Four times four is 8; 4 fours are 16. A king is him that has all t'.'.a money and -ild. We have a King (told it is a Queen), they call her the Princess Alexandria. Told that she married the Queen's son. The Queen's son is the Princess Alexandria. A Princess is a man." William Turner, age 12 "Don't live in England. Think it is a country, but didn't know before." John Morris, age 14 "Have heard say that God made the world, and that all the people was drownded but one; heard say that one was a little bird." William Smith, age 15 <"God made man, man made woman." Edward Taylor, age 15 "Do not know of London." Henry Matthewman, age 17 "Had been to chapel, but missed a good many times lately. One name that they preached about was Jesus Christ, but I cannot say any others, and I cannot tell anything about him. He was not killed, but died like other people. He was not the same as other people in some ways, because he was religious in some ways, and others isn't." (1. c. p. xv.) "The devil is a good person. I don't know where he lives." "Christ was a wicked man." "This girl spelt God as dog, and did not know the name of the queen." ("Ch. Employment Comm. V. Report, 1866," p. 65, n. 278.) The same system obtains in the glass and paper works as in the metallurgical, already cited. In the paper factories, where the paper is made by machinery, night-work is the rule for all processes, except rag-sorting. In some cases night-work, by relays, is carried on incessantly through the whole week, usually from Sunday night until midnight of the following Saturday. Those who are on day-work work 5 days of 12, and 1 day of 18 hours; those on night-work 5 nights of 12, and 1 of 6 hours in each week. In other cases each set works 24 hours consecutively on alternate days, one set working 6 hours on Monday, and 18 on Saturday to make up the 24 hours. In other cases an intermediate system prevails, by which all employed on the paper- making machinery work 15 or 16 hours every day in the week. This system, says Commissioner Lord, "seems to combine all the evils of both the 12 hours' and the 24 286 Capitalist Production. Let us now hear how capital itself regards this 24 hours' system. The extreme forms of the system, its abuse in the "cruel and incredible" extension of the working day are natur- ally passed over in silence. Capital only speaks of the system in its "normal" form. Messrs. Naylor & Vickers, steel manufacturers, who employ between 600 and 700 persons, among whom only 10 per cent, are under 18, and of those, only 20 boys under 18 work in night sets thus express themselves: "The boys do not suffer from the heat. The temperature is probably from 86 to 90. .... At the forges and in the rolling-mills the hands work night and day, in relays, but all the other parts of the work are day work, i.e., from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. In the forge the hours are from 12 to 12. Some of the hands always work in the night, without any alternation of day and night work. We do not find any difference in the health of those who work regularly by night and those who work by day, and probably people can sleep better if they have the same period of rest than if it is changed About 20 of the boys under the age of 18 work in the night sets We could not well do without lads under 18 working by night. The objection would be in the increase in the cost of produc- tion Skilled hands and the heads in every department are difficult to get, but of the lads we could get any number. But from the small proportion of boys that we employ the subject (i.e., of restrictions on night work) is of little im- portance or interest to us." 1 Mr. J. Ellis, one of the firm of Messrs. John Brown & Co., steel and iron works, employing about 3000 men and boys, part hours' relays." Children under 13, young persons under 18, and women, work under this night system. Sometimes under the 12 hours' system they are obliged, on account of the non-appearance of those that ought to relieve them, to work a double turn of 24 hours. The evidence proves that boys and girls very often work over- time, which, not un frequently, extends to 24 or even 36 hours of uninterrupted toil. In the continuous and unvarying process of glazing are found girls of 12 who work the whole month 14 hours a day, "without any regular relief or cessation beyond 2 or, at most, 3 breaks of half-an-hour each for meals." In some mills, where regular night-work has been entirely given up, over-work goes on to a terri- ble extent, "and that often in the dirtiest, and in the hottest, and in the most monotonous of the various processes." ("Ch. Employment Comm. Report IV 7 ., 1865," p. xxxviii. and xxxix.) > Fourth Report, &c., 1865, 79, p. xvi. The Working Day. 287 of whose operations, namely, iron and heavier steel work, goes on night and day by relays states "that in the heavier steel work one or two boys are employed to a score or two men." Their concern employs upwards of 500 boys under 18 of whom about ^ or 170 are under the age of 13. With reference to the proposed alteration of the law, Mr. Ellis says : "I do not think it would be very objectionable to require that no person under the age of 18 should work more than 12 hours in the 24. But we do not think that any line could be drawn over the age of 12, at which boys could be dispensed with for night work. But we would sooner be prevented from employing boys under the age of 13, or even so high as 14, at all, than not be allowed to employ boys that we do have at night. Those boys who work in the day sets must take their turn in the night sets also, because the men could not work in the night sets only; it would ruin their health We think, however, that night work in alternate weeks is no harm. (Messrs. Baylor & Vickers, on the other hand, in conformity with the interest of their business, considered that periodically changed night- labour might possibly do more harm than continual night- labour.) We find the men who do it, as well as the others who do other work only by day Our objections to not allowing boys under 18 to work at night, would be on account of the increase of expense, but this is the only reason. (What cynical naivete!) We think that the increase would be more than the trade, with due regard to its being successfully carried out, could fairly bear. (What mealy-mouthed phraseology!) Labour is scarce here, and might fall short if there were such a regulation." (i.e., Ellis Brown & Co. might fall into the fatal perplexity of being obliged to pay labour-power its full value.) 1 The "Cyclops Steel and Iron Works," of Messrs. Cammel & Co., are conducted on the same large scale as those of the above mentioned John Brown & Co. The managing director had handed in his evidence to the Government Commissioner, Mr. White, in writing. Later he found it convenient to suppress the MS. when it had been returned to him for revision. Mr. White, however, has a good memory. He remembered quite M. c. 80, p. xvi. 288 Capitalist Production. clearly that for the Messrs. Cyclops the forbidding of the night-labour of children and young persons "would be im- possible, it would be tantamount to stopping their works," and yet their business employs little more than 6% of boys under 18, and less than 1% under 13. 1 On the same subject Mr. E. F. Sanderson, of the firm of Sanderson, Bros., & Co., steel rolling-mills and forges, Atter- cliffe, says: "Great difficulty would be caused by preventing boys under 18 from working at night. The chief would be the increase of cost from employing men instead of boys. I can- not say what this would be, but probably it would not be enough to enable the manufacturers to raise the price of steel, and consequently it would fall on them, as of course the men (what queer-headed folk !) would refuse to pay it." Mr. San- derson does not know how much he pays the children, but "perhaps the younger boys get from 4s. to 5s. a week. . . . The boys' work is of a kind for which the strength of the boys is generally ('generally,' of course not always) quite sufficient, and consequently there would be no gain in the greater strength of the men to counterbalance the loss, or it would be only in the few cases in which the metal is heavy. The men would not like so well not to have boys under them, as men would be less obedient Besides, boys must begin young to learn the trade. Leaving day work alone open to boys would not answer this purpose." And why not? Why could not boys learn their handicraft in the day-time ? Your reason ? "Owing to the men working days and nights in alternate weeks, the men would be separated half the time from their boys, and would lose half the profit which they make from them. The training which they give to an apprentice is considered as part of the return for the boys' labour, and thus enables the men to get it at a cheaper rate. Each man would want half of this profit." In other words, Messrs. Sanderson would have to pay part of the wages of the adult men out of their own pockets instead of by the night work of the boys. Messrs. Sanderson's profit would thus fall to some extent, and this is the good Sanderson- M. c. 82, p. xvii. The Working Day. 289 .ian reason why boys cannot learn their handicraft in the day. 1 In addition to this, it would throw night labour on those who worked instead of the boys, which they would not be able to stand. The difficulties in fact would be so great that they would very likely lead to the giving up of night work al- together, and "as far as the work itself is concerned," says E. F. Sanderson, "this would suit as well, but But Messrs. Sanderson have something else to make besides steel. Steel- making is simply a pretext for surplus-value making. The smelting furnaces, rolling-mills, &c., the buildings, machinery, iron, coal, &c. have something more to do than transform them- selves into steel. They are there to absorb surplus-labour, and naturally absorb more in 24 hours than in 12. In fact they give, by grace of God and law, the Sandersons a cheque on the working time of a certain number of hands for all the 24 hours of the day, and they lose their character as capital, are there- fore a pure loss for the Sandersons, as soon as their function of absorbing labour is interrupted. "But then there would be the loss from so much expensive machinery, lying idle half the time, and to get through the amount of work which we are able to do on the present system, we should have to double our premises and plant, which would double the outlay." But why should these Sandersons pretend to a privilege not enjoyed by the other capitalists who only work during the day, and whose buildings, machinery, raw material, therefore lie "idle" during the night? E. F. Sanderson answers in the name of all the Sandersons : "It is true that there is this loss from machinery lying idle in those manufactories in which work only goes on by day. But the use of furnaces would involve a further loss in our case. If they were kept up there would be a waste of fuel (instead of, as now ; a waste of the living substance of the workers), and if they were not, there would be loss of time in laying the fires and getting the heat up (whilst the loss of sleeping time, even to children of 8, is a gain of working time for the Sanderson tribe), and the furnaces themselves 1 In our reflecting and reasoning age a man is not worth much who cannot give a good reason for everything, no matter how bad or how crazy. Everything in the world that has been done wrong has been done wrong for the very best of reasons. (Hegel, 1. c., p. 249.) S 290 Capitalist Production. would suffer from the changes of temperature." (Whilst those same furnaces suffer nothing from the day and night changes of labour.) 1 SECTION 5. THE STRUGGLE FOB. A NORMAL WORKING DAY. COMPULSORY LAWS FOR THE EXTENSION OF THE WORKING DAY FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE 14TH TO THE END OF THE 1?TH CENTURY. and to the selling of the products of this la- bour. 1 The guilds of the middle ages therefore tried to prevent by force the transformation of the master of a trade into a capitalist, by limiting the number of labourers that could be employed by one master within a very small maximum. The possessor of money or commodities actually turns into a capitalist in such cases only where the minimum sum advanced for production greatly exceeds the maximum of the middle ages. Here, as in natural science, is shown the correctness of 1 "The farmer cannot rely on his own labour, and if he does, I will maintain that he is a loser by it. His employment should be a general attention to the whole: his thresher must be watched, or he will soon lose his wages in corn not threshed out; his mowers, reapers, &c., 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." ("An Inquiry into the connection between the Price of Provisions and the Size of Farms, &c. By a Farmer." London, 1773, p. 12.) This book is very interesting. In it the genesis of the "capitalist farmer" or "merchant farmer," as he is explicitly called, may be studied, and his self-glorification at the expense of the small farmer who has only to do with bare subsistence, be noted. "The class of capitalists are from the first partially, and they become ultimately completely, discharged from the necessity of the manual labour." ("Text-book of Lectures on the Political Economy of Nations. By the Rev. Richard Jones." Hertford, 1852. Lecture III. p. 39.) V 338 Capitalist Production. the law discovered by Hegel (in his "Logic"), that merely quantitative differences beyond a certain point pass into quali- tative changes. 1 The minimum of the sum of value that the individual pos- sessor of money or commodities must command, in order to metamorphose himself into a capitalist, changes with the dif- ferent stages of development of capitalist production, and is at given stages different in different spheres of production, according to their special and technical conditions. Certain spheres of production demand, even at the very outset of capi- talist production, a minimum of capital that is not as yet found in the hands of single individuals. This gives rise partly to state subsidies to private persons, as in France in the time of Colbert, and as in many German states up to our own epoch ; partly to the formation of societies with legal monopoly for the exploitation of certain branches of industry and com- merce, the fore-runners of our own modern joint-stock com- panies. 2 Within the process of production, as we have seen, capital acquired the command over labour, i. e., over functioning la- bouring-power or the labourer himself. Personified capital, the capitalist takes care that the labourer does his work regu- larly and with the proper degree of intensity. Capital further developed into a coercive relation, which compels the working class to do more work than the narrow round of its own life-wants prescribes. As a producer of the activity of others, as a pumper-out of surplus-labour and ex- ploiter of labour-power, it surpasses in energy, disregard of 1 The molecular theory of modern chemistry first scientifically worked out by Laurent and Gerhardt rests on no other law. (Addition to 3rd Edition.) For the explanation of this statement, which is not very clear to non-chemists, we remark that the author speaks here of the homologous series of carbon compounds, first so named by C. Gerhardt in 1843, each series of which has its own general algebraic formula. Thus the series of paraffins: Cn H 2 n+ s , that of the normal alcohols: Cn H*n-|- 2 O; of the normal fatty acids: Cn H J n O 1 and many others. In the above examples, by the simply quantitative addition of C H* to the molecular formula, a qualitatively different body is each time formed. On the share (overestimated by Marx) of Laurent and Gerhardt in the determination of this important fact see Kopp, "Ent- wicklung der Chemie." Munchen, 1873, pp. 709, 716, and Schorlemmer, "Rise and Progress of Organic Chemistry." London, 1879, p. 54. Ed. 2 Martin Luther calls these kinds of institutions: "The Company Monopolia." Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value. 339 bounds, recklessness and efficiency, all earlier systems of pro- duction based on directly compulsory labour. At first, capital subordinates labour on the basis of the tech- nical conditions in which it historically finds it. It does not, therefore, change immediately the mode of production. The production of surplus-value in the form hitherto considered by us by means of simple extension of the working-day, proved, therefore, to be independent of any change in the mode of production itself. It was not less active in the old- fashioned bakeries than in the modern cotton factories. If we consider the process of production from the point of view of the simple labour-process, the labourer stands in rela- tion to the means of production, not in their quality as capital, but as the mere means and material of his own intelligent pro- ductive activity. In tanning, e. g., he deals with the skins as his simple object of labour. It is not the capitalist whose skin he tans. But it is different as soon as we deal with the process of production from the point of view of the process of creation of surplus-value. The means of production are at once changed into means for the absorption of the labour of others. It is now no longer the labourer that employes the means of production, but the means of production that employ the la- bourer. Instead of being consumed by him as material ele- ments of his productive activity, they consume him as the ferment necessary to their own life-process, and the life-process of capital consists only in its movement as value constantly expanding, constantly multiplying itself. Furnaces and work- shops that stand idle by night, and absorb no living labour, are "a mere loss" to the capitalist. Hence, furnaces and work- shops constitute lawful claims upon the night-labour of the workpeople. The simple transformation of money into the material factors of the process of production, into means of production, transforms the latter into a title and a right to the labour and surplus-labour of others. An example will show, in conclusion, how this sophistication, peculiar to and charac- teristic of capitalist production, this complete inversion of the relation between dead and living labour, between value and 340 Capitalist Production. the force that creates value, mirrors itself in the consciousness of capitalists. During the revolt of the English factory lords between 1848 and 1850, "the head of one of the oldest and most respectable houses in the West of Scotland, Messrs. Car- lile Sons & Co., of the linen and cotton thread factory at Pais- ley, a company which has now existed for about a century, which was in operation in 1752, and four generations of the same family have conducted it" . . . this "very intelli- gent gentleman" then wrote a letter * in the "Glasgow Daily Mail" of April 25th, 1849, with the title, "The relay system," in which among other things the following grotesquely naive passage occurs: "Let us now . . . see what evils will attend the limiting to 10 hours the working of the factory. . . . They amount to the most serious damage to the mill- owner's prospects and property. If he (i. e., his "hands") worked 12 hours before, and is limited to 10, then every 12 machines or spindles in his establishment shrink to 10, and should the works be disposed of, they will be valued only as 10, so that a sixth part would thus be deducted from the value of every factory in the country." 2 To this West of Scotland bourgeois brain, inheriting the accumulated capitalistic qualities of "four generations," the value of the means of production, spindles, &c. is so insepar- ably mixed up with their property, as capital, to expand their own value, and to swallow up daily a definite quantity of the unpaid labour of others, that the head of the firm of Carlile & Co. actually imagines that if he sells his factory, not only will the value of the spindles be paid to him, but, in addition, their power of annexing surplus-value, not only the labour which is embodied in them, and is necessary to the production of spin- dles of this kind, but also the surplus-labour which they help 1 Reports of Insp. of Fact., April 30th, 1849, p. 59. *1. c., p. 60. Factory Inspector Stuart, himself a Scotchman, and in contrast to the English Factory Inspectors, quite taken captive by the capitalistic method of thinking, remarks expressly on this letter which he incorporates in his report that it is "the most useful of the communications which any of the factory-owners working with relays have given to those engaged in the same trade, and which is the most calculated to remove the prejudices of such of them as have scruples respecting any change of the arrangement of the hours of work." Rate and Mass of Surplus Value. 341 to pump out daily from the brave Scots of Paisley, and for that very reason he thinks that with the shortening of the working-day by 2 hours, the selling-price of 12 spinning ma- chines dwindles to that of 10 ! PART IV. PRODUCTION OF RELATIVE SURPLUS- VALUE. CHAPTER XII. THE CONCEPT OF RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE. THAT portion of the working-day which merely produces an equivalent for the value paid by the capitalist for his labour- power, has, up to this point, been treated by us as a constant magnitude; and such in fact it is, under given conditions of production and at a given stage in the economical develop- ment of society. Beyond this, his necessary labour-time, the labourer, we saw, could continue to work for 2, 3, 4, 6, &c., hours. The rate of surplus-value and the length of the working day depended on the magnitude of this prolongation. Though the necessary labour-time was constant, we saw, on the other hand, that the total working-day was variable. Now suppose we have a working-day whose length, and whose apportionment between necessary labour and surplus-labour, are given. Let the whole line a c, a b c, repre- sent, for example, a working-day of 12 hours; the portion of a b 10 hours of necessary labour, and the portion b c 2 hours of surplus-labour. How now can the production of surplus- value be increased, i.e., how can the surplus-labour be pro- longed, without, or independently of, any prolongation of a c ? Although the lengh of a c is given, b c appears to be capable of prolongation, if not by extension beyond its end c, which is also the end of the working day a c, yet, at all events, by push- ing back its, starting point b in the direction of a. Assume that b' b in the line, a b' b c is equal to half of b c 342 The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value. 343 or to one hour's labour-time. If now, in a c, the working day of 12 hours, we move the point b to b', b c becomes V c; the surplus-labour increases by one-half, from 2 hours to 3 hours, although the working day remains as before at 12 hours. This extension of the surplus labour-time from b c to b' c, from 2 hours to 3 hours, is, however, evidently impossible, without a simultaneous contraction of the necessary labour- time from a b into a b', from 10 hours to 9 hours. The pro- longation of the surplus-labour would correspond to a shorten- ing of the necessary labour; or a portion of the labour-time previously consumed, in reality, for the labourer's own bene- fit, would be converted into labour-time for the benefit of the capitalist. There would be an alteration, not in the length of the working day, but in its division into necessary labour- time and surplus labour-time. On the other hand, it is evident that the duration of the surplus-labour is given, when the length of the working day, and the value of labour-power, are given. The value of la- bour-power, i.e., the labour-time requisite to produce labour- power, determines the labour-time necessary for the repro- duction of that value. If one working hour be embodied in sixpence, and the value of a day's labour-power be five shill- ings, the labourer must work 10 hours a day, in order to re- place the value paid by capital for his labour-power, or to produce an equivalent for the value of his daily necessary means of subsistence. Given the value of these means of sub- sistence, the value of his labour-power is given ; * and given the value of his labour-power, the duration of his necessary la- bour-time is given. The duration of the surplus-labour, how- 1 The value of his average daily wages is determined by what the labourer requires "so as to live, labour, and generate." (Wm. Petty: "Political Anatomy of Ireland," 1672, p. 64.) "The price of Labour is always constituted of the price of necessaries . . . whenever . . . the labouring man's wages will not, suitably to his low rank and station, as a labouring man, support such a family as is often the lot of many of them to have," he does not receive proper wages. (J. Vanderlint, 1. c. p. 15.) "Le simple ouvrier, qui n'a que ses bras et son Industrie, n'a rien qu'autant qu'il parvient a vendre a d'autres sa peine. ... En tout genre de travail il doit arriver, et il arrive en effet, que le salaire de 1'ouvrier se borne a ce qui lui est neces- saire pour lui procurer sa substance." (Turgot, Reflexions, &c., Oeuvres ed. Daire t. I. p. 10). "The price of the necessaries of life is, in fact, the cost of producing labour." (Malthus, Inquiry into, &c., Rent, London, 1815, p. 48 note). 244 'Capitalist Production. ever, is arrived at, by subtracting the necessary labour-tin^ from the total working day. Ten hours subtracted from twelve, leave two, and it is not easy to see, how, under the given conditions, the surplus-labour can possibly be prolonged beyond two hours. No doubt, the capitalist can, instead of five shillings, pay the labourer four shillings and sixpence or even less. For the reproduction of this value of four shill- ings and sixpence, nine hours labour-time would suffice; and consequently three hours of surplus-labour, instead of two, would accrue to the capitalist, and the surplus-value would rise from one shilling to eighteenpence. This result, however, would be obtained only by lowering the wages of the labourer below the valuo of his labour-power. With the four shillings and sixpence which he produces in nine hours, he commands one-tenth less of the necessaries of life than before, and conse- quently the proper reproduction of his labour-power is crip- pled. The surplus-labour would in this case be prolonged only by an overstepping of its normal limits ; its domain would be extended only by a usurpation of part of the domain of necessary labour-time. Despite the important part which this method plays in actual practice, we are excluded from considering it in this place, by our assumption, that all com- modities, including labour-power, are bought and sold at their full value. Granted this, it follows that the labour-time nec- essary for the production of labour-power, or for the reproduc- tion of its value, cannot be lessened by a fall in the labourer's wages below the value of his labour-power, but only by a fall in this value itself. Given the length of the working day, the prolongation of the surplus-labour must of necessity originate in the curtailment of the necessary labour-time; the latter cannot arise from the former. In the example we have taken, it is necessary that the value of labour-power should actually fall by one-tenth, in order that the necessary labour-time may be diminished by one-tenth, i.e., from ten hours to nine, and in order that the surplus-labour may consequently be pro- longed from two hours to three. Such a fall in the value of labour-power implies, however, that the same necessaries of life which were formerly pro- The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value. 345 duced in ten hours, can now be produced in nine hours. But this is impossible without an increase in the productiveness of labour. For example, suppose a shoemaker, with given tools, makes in one working day of twelve hours, one pair of boots. If he must make two pairs in the same time, the productive- ness of his labour must be doubled ; and this cannot be done, except by an alteration in his tools or in his mode of working, or in both. Hence, the conditions of production, i.e., his mode of production, and the labour-process itself, must be revolutionised. By increase in the productiveness of labour, we mean, generally, an alteration in the labour-process, of such a kind as to shorten the labour-time socially necessary for tlio production of a commodity, and to endow a given quantity of labour with the power of producing a greater quantity of use-value. 1 Hitherto in treating of surplus-value, arising from a simple prolongation of the working day, we have as- sumed the mode of production to be given and invariable. But when surplus-value has to be produced by the conversion of necessary labour into surplus-labour, it by no means suffices for capital to take over the labour-process in the form under which it has been historically handed down, and then simply to prolong the duration of that process. The technical and so- cial conditions of the process, and consequently the very mode of production must be revolutionised, before the productive- ness of labour can be increased. By that means alone can the value of labour-power be made to sink, and the portion of the working day necessary for the reproduction of that value, be shortened. The surplus-value produced by prolongation of the working day, I call absolute surplus-value. On the other hand, the surplus-value arising from, the curtailment of the necessary labour-time, and from the corresponding alteration in the re- spective lengths of the two components of the working day, I call relative surplus-value. 1 "Quando si perfezionano le arti, che non e altro che la scoperta di nuove vie, onde si possa compiere una manufattura con meno gente o (che e lo stesso) in minor tempo di prima." (Galiani 1. c. p. 159.) "L'economie sur les frais de production ne peut done etre autre chose que 1'economie sur la quantite de travail employe pour produire." (Sismondi, Etudes t. I. p. 22.) 246 Capitalist Production. In order to effect a fall in the value of labour-power, the in- crease in the productiveness of labour must seize upon those branches of industry, whose products determine the value of labour-power, and consequently either belong to the class of customary means of subsistence, or are capable of supplying the place of those means. But the value of a commodity is determined, not only by the quantity of labour which the la- bourer directly bestows upon that commodity, but also by th'e labour contained in the means of production. For instance, the value of a pair of boots depends, not only on the cobbler's labour, but also on the value of the leather, wax, thread, &c. Hence, a fall in the value of labour-power is also brought about by an increase in the productiveness of labour, and by a cor- responding cheapening of commodities in those industries which supply the instruments of labour and the raw material, that form the material elements of the constant capital re- quired for producing the necessaries of life. But an increase in the productiveness of labour in those branches of industry which supply neither the necessaries of life, nor the means of production for such necessaries, leaves the value of labour- power undisturbed. The cheapened commodity, of course, causes only a pro tanto fall in the value of labour-power, a fall proportional to the extent of that commodity's employment in the reproduc- tion of labour-power. Shirts, for instance, are a necessary means of subsistence, but are only one out of many. The totality of the necessaries of life consists, however, of various commodities, each the product of a distinct industry ; and the value of each of those commodities enters as a component part into the value of labour-power. This latter value decreases with the decrease of the labour-time necessary for its reproduc- tion ; the total decrease being the sum of all the different cur- tailments of labour-time effected in those various and distinct industries. This general result is treated, here, as if it were the immediate result directly aimed at in each individual case. Whenever an individual capitalist cheapens shirts, for in- stance, by increasing the productiveness of labour, he by no means necessarily aims at reducing the value of labour-power The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value. 347 and shortening, pro tanto, the necessary labour-time. But it is only in so far as he ultimately contributes to this result, that he assists in raising the general rate of surplus-value. 1 The general and necessary tendencies of capital- must be dis- tinguished from their forms of manifestation. It is riot our intention to consider, here, the way in which the laws, immanent in capitalist production, manifest them- selves in the movements of individual masses of capital, where they assert themselves as coercive laws of competition, and are brought home to the mind and consciousness of the individual capitalist as the directing motives of his operations. But this much is clear ; a scientific analysis of competition is not possi- ble, before we have a conception of the inner nature of capital, just as the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies are not intelligible to any but him, who is acquainted with their real motions, motions which are not directly perceptible by the senses. Nevertheless, for the better comprehension of the production of relative surplus-value, we may add the follow- ing remarks, in which we assume nothing more than the re- sults we have already obtained. If one hour's labour is embodied in sixpence, a value of six shillings will be produced in a working day of 12 hours. Suppose, that with the prevailing productiveness of labour, 12 articles are produced in these 12 hours. Let the value of the means of production used in each article be sixpence. Under these circumstances, each article costs one shilling: sixpence for the value of the means of production, and sixpence for the value newly added in working with those means. Now let some one capitalist contrive to double the productiveness of labour, and to produce in the working day of 12 hours, 24 in- stead of 12 such articles. The value of the means of produc- tion remaining the same, the value of each article will fall to ninepence, made up of sixpence for the value of the means of production and threepence for the value newly added by the labour. Despite the doubled productiveness of labour, the 1 "Let us suppose . . . the products ... of the manufacturer are doubled by improvement in machinery ... he will be able to clothe his workmen by means of a smaller proportion of the entire return . . . and thus his profit will be raised. But in no other way will it be influenced." (Ramsay, 1. c. p. 168, 109.) 248 Capitalist Production. day's labour creates, as before, a new value of six shillings and no more, which, however, is now spread over twice as many articles. Of this value each article now has embodied in it TjVth, instead ofy^th, threepence instead of sixpence; or, what amounts to the same thing, only half an hour's instead of a whole hour's labour-time, is now added to the means of pro- duction while they are being transformed into each article. The individual value of these articles is now below their social value; in other words, they have cost less labour-time than the great bulk of the same article produced under the average social conditions. Each article costs, on an average, one shill- ing, and represents 2 hours of social labour; but under the altered mode of production it costs only ninepence, or contains only 1 hours' labour. The real value of a commodity is, however, not its individual value, but its social value ; that is to say, the real value is not measured by the labour-time that the article in each individual case costs the producer, but by the labour-time socially required for its production. If there- fore, the capitalist who applies the new method, sells his com- modity at its social value of one shilling, he sells it for three- pence above its individual value, and thus realises an extra surplus-value of threepence. On the other hand, the working day of 12 hours is, as regards him, now represented by 24 arti- cles instead of 12. Hence, in order to get rid of the product of one working day, the demand must be double what it was, i.e., the market must become twice as extensive. Other things being equal, his commodities can command a more extended market only by a diminution of their prices. He will there- fore sell them above their individual but under their social value, say at tenpence each. By this means he still squeezes an extra surplus-value of one penny out of each. This aug- mentation of surplus-value is pocketed by him, whether his commodities belong or not to the class of necessary means of subsistence that participate in determining the general value of labour-power. Hence, independently of this latter circum- stance, there is a motive for each individual capitalist to cheapen his commodities, by increasing the productiveness of labour. The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value. 349 Nevertheless, even in this case ? the increased production of surplus-value arises from the curtailment of the necessary labour-time, and from the corresponding prolongation of the surplus-labour. 1 Let the necessary labour-time amount to 10 hours, the value of a day's labour-power to five shillings, the surplus labour-time to 2 hours, and the daily surplus-value to one shilling. But the capitalist now produces 24 articles, which he sells at tenpence a-piece, making twenty shillings in all. Since the value of the means of production is twelve shillings, 14f of these articles merely replace the constant capital advanced. The labour of the 12 hours' working day is represented by the remaining 9f articles. Since the prices of the labour power is five shillings, 6 articles represent the necessary labour-time, and 3f articles the surplus-labour. The ratio of the necessary labour to the surplus-labour, which under average social conditions was 5:1, is now only 5 : 3. The same result may be arrived at in the following way. The value of the product of the working day of 12 hours is twenty shillings. Of this sum, twelve shillings belong to the value of the means of production, a value that merely re-appears. There remain eight shillings, which are the expression in money, of the value newly created during the working day. This sum is greater than the sum in which average social labour of the same kind is expressed: twelve hours of the latter labour are expressed by six shillings only. The excep- tionally productive labour operates as intensified labour; it creates in equal periods of time greater values than average social labour of the same kind. (See Ch. I. Sect. 1. p. 11.) , But our capitalist still continues to pay as before only five shillings as the value of a day's labour-power. Hence, instead of 10 hours, the labourer need now work only 7 hours, in order to re-produce this value. His surplus-labour is, there- fore, increased 2f hours, and the surplus-value he produces 1 "A man's profit does not depend upon his command of the produce of other men's labour, but upon his command of labour itself. If he can sell his goods at a higher price, while his workmen's wages remain unaltered, he is clearly benefited. A smaller proportion of what he produces is sufficient to put that labour into mo- tion, and a larger proportion consequently remains for himself." ("Outlines of Pol. Econ." London, 1832, pp. 49, 60.) 350 Capitalist Production. grows from one, into three shillings. Hence, the capitalist who applies the improved method of production appropriates to surplus-labour a greater portion of the working day, than the other capitalists in the same trade. He does individually, what the whole body of capitalists engaged in producing rela- tive surplus-value, do collectively. On the other hand, how- ever, this extra surplus-value vanishes, so soon as the new method ^production has become general and has consequently caused the difference between the individual value of the cheapened commodity and its social value to vanish. The law of the determination of value by labour-time, a law which brings under its sway the individual capitalist who applies the new method of production, by compelling him to sell his goods under their social value, this same law, acting as a co- ercive law of competition, forces his competitors to adopt the new method. 1 The general rate of surplus- value is, therefore, ultimately affected by the whole process, only when the in- crease in the productiveness of labour, has seized upon those branches of production that are connected with, and has cheapened those commodities tha.t form part of, the necessary means of subsistence, and are therefore elements of the value of labour-power. The value of commodities is in inverse ratio to the produc- tiveness of labour. And so, too, is the value of labour-power, because it . depends on the values of commodities. Relative surplus-value is, on the contrary, directly proportional to that productiveness. It rises with rising and falls with falling productiveness. The value of money being assumed to be constant, an average social working day of 12 hours always produces the same new value, six shillings, no matter how this sum may be apportioned between surplus-value and wages. But if, in consequence of increased productiveness, the value of the necessaries of life fall, and the value of a day's labour- 1 "If my neighbour by doing much with little labour, can sell cheap, I must con- trive to sell as cheap as he. So' that every art, trade, or engine, doing work with labour of fewer hands, and consequently cheaper, begets in others a kind of necessity and emulation, either of using the same art, trade, or engine, or of inventing some- thing like it, that every man may be upon the square, that no man may be able to undersell his neighbour." ("The Advantages of the East India Trade to England." London, 1720, p. 67.) The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value. 351 power be thereby reduced from five shillings to three, the sur- plus-value increases from one shilling to three. Ten hours were necessary" for the reproduction of the value of the labour- power; now only six are required. Four hours have been set free, and can be annexed to the domain of surplus-labour. Hence there is immanent in capital an inclination and con- stant tendency, to heighten the productiveness of labour, in order to cheapen commodities, and by such cheapening to cheapen the labourer himself. 1 The value of a commodity is, in itself, of no interest to the capitalist. What alone interests him, is the surplus-value that dwells in it, and is realisable by sale. Realisation of the sur- plus-value necessarily carries with it the refunding of the value that was advanced. Now, since relative surplus-value increases in direct proportion to the development of the pro- ductiveness of labour, while, on the other hand, the value of commodities diminishes in the same proportion ; since one and the same process cheapens commodities, and augments the sur- plus-value contained in them ; we have here the solution of the riddle: why does the capitalist, whose sole concern is the pro- duction of exchange-value, continually strive to depress the exchange-value of commodities? A riddle with which Ques- nay, one of the founders of political economy, tormented his opponents, and to which they could give him no answer. "You acknowledge," he says, "that the more expenses and the cost of labour can, in the manufacture of industrial products, be reduced without injury to production, the more advantage- ous is such reduction, because it diminishes the price of the finished article. And yet, you believe that the production of wealth, which arises from the labour of the workpeople, con- 1 "In whatever proportion the expenses of a labourer are diminished, in the same proportion will his wages be diminished, if the restraints upon industry are at the same time taken off." ("Considerations concerning taking off of the Bounty on Corn Exported," &c., Lond., 1753, p. 7.) "The interest of trade requires, that corn and all provisions should be as cheap as possible; for whatever makes them dear, must make labour dear also ... 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." (1. c. p. 3.) "Wages are decreased in the same proportion as the powers of production increase. Machinery, it is true, cheap- ens the necessaries of life, but it also cheapens the labourer." ("A Prize Essay on the Comparative Merits of Competition and Co-operation." London, 1834, p. 27.) 352 Capitalist Production. sists in the augmentation of the exchange-value of their products." 1 The shortening of the working day is, therefore, by no means what is aimed at, in capitalist production, when labour is economised by increasing its productiveness. 2 It is only the shortening of the labour-time, necessary for the production of a definite quantity of commodities, that is aimed at. The fact that the workman, when the productiveness of his labour has been increased, produces, say 10 times as many commodi- ties as before, and thus spends one-tenth as much labour-time on each, by no means prevents him from continuing to work 12 hours as before, nor from producing in those 12 hours 1200 articles instead of 120. Nay, more, his working day may be prolonged at the same time, so as to make him produce, say 1400 articles in 14 hours. In the treatises, therefore, of economists of the stamp of MacCulloch, Ure, Senior, and tutti quanti, we may read upon one page, that the labourer owes a debt of gratitude to capital for developing his productiveness, because the necessary labour-time is thereby shortened, and on the next page, that he must prove his gratitude by working in future for 15 hours instead of 10. The object of all develop- ment of the productiveness of labour, within the limits of capitalist production, is to shorten that part of the working day, during which the workman must labour for his own bene- fit, and by that very shortening, to lengthen the other part of the day, during which he is at liberty to work gratis for the capitalist. How far this result is also attainable, without cheapening commodities, will appear from an examination of 1 "Us conviennent que plus on peut, sans prejudice, epargner de frais ou de travaux dispendieux dans la fabrication des ouvrages des artisans, plus cette epargne est pro- fitable par la diminution des prix de ces ouvrages. Cependant ils croient que la pro- duction de richesse qui resulte des travaux des artisans consiste dans 1'augmentation de la valeur venale de leurs ouvrages." (Quesnay: "Dialogues sur le Commerce et sur les Travaux des artisans," pp. 188, 189.) * "Ces speculateurs si economes du travail des ouvriers qu'il faudrait qu'ils pay- assent." (J. N. Bidaut: "Du Monopole qui s'etablit dans les arts industriels et le commerce." Paris, 1828, p. 13.) "The employer will be always on the stretch to economise time and labour." (Dugald Stewart: Works ed. by Sir W. Hamilton. Edinburgh, v. viii., 1855. Lecture on Polit. Econ., p. 318.) "Their (the capitalists') interest is that the productive powers of the labourers they employ should be the greatest possible. On promoting that power their attention is fixed and almost ex- clusively fixed." (R. Jones: 1. c. Lecture III.) isO-Operation. 353 the particular modes oi producing relative surplus-value, to which examination we now proceed. CHAPTER XIII. CO-OPEEATION. CAPITALIST production only then really begins, as we have already seen, when each individual capital employs simultane- ously a comparatively large number of labourers ; when conse- quently the labour-process is carried on on an extensive scale and yields, relatively, large quantities of products. A greater number of labourers working together, at the same time, in one place (or, if you will, in the same field of labour), in order to produce the same sort of commodity under the master- ship of one capitalist, constitutes, both historically and logi- cally, the starting point of capitalist production. With regard to the mode of production itself, manufacture, in its strict meaning, is hardly to be distinguished, in its earliest stages, from the handicraft trades of the guilds, otherwise than by the greater number of workmen simultaneously employed by one and the same individual capital. The workshop of the mediaeval master handicraftsman is simply enlarged. At first, therefore, the difference is purely quantitative. We have shown that the surplus-value produced by a given capital is equal to the surplus-value produced by each work- man multiplied by the number of workmen simultaneously em- ployed. The number of workmen in itself does not affect, either the rate of surplus-value, or the degree of exploitation of labour-power. If a working day of 12 hours be embodied in six shillings, 1200 such days will be embodied in 1200 times 6 shillings. In one case 12X1200 working hours, and in the other 12 such hours are incorporated in the product, In the production of value a number of workmen rank merely as so ma? y individual workmen ; and it therefore makes no difference in the value produced whether the 1200 men work separate!' or united under the control of one capitalist. W 354 Capitalist Production. Nevertheless, within certain limits, a modification takes place. The labour realised in value, is labour of an average social quality; is consequently the expenditure of average labour-power. Any average magnitude, however, is merely the average of a number of separate magnitudes all of one kind, but differing as to quantity. In every industry, each individual labourer, be he Peter or Paul, differs from the average labourer. These individual differences, or "errors" as they are called in mathematics, compensate one another, and vanish, whenever a certain minimum number of workmen are employed together. The celebrated sophist and syco- phant, Edmund Burke, goes so far as to make the following assertion, based on his practical observations as a farmer; viz., that "in so small a platoon" as that of five farm labour- ers, all individual differenoes in the labour vanish, and that consequently any given five adult farm labourers taken to- gether, will in the same time do as much work as any other five. 1 But, however that may be, it is clear, that the collec- tive working day of a large number of workmen simultane- ously employed, divided by the number of these workmen, gives one day of average social labour. For example, let the working day of each individual be 12 hours. Then the collect- ive working day of 12 men simultaneously employed, consists of 144 hours; and although the labour of each of the dozen men may deviate more or less from average social labour, each of them requiring a different time for the same operation, yet since the working day of each is one-twelfth of the collective working day of 144 hours, it possesses the qualities of an aver- age social working day. From the point of view, however, of the capitalist who employs these 12 men, the working day is that of the whole dozen. Each individual man's day is '"Unquestionably, there is a good deal of difference between the value of one man's labour and that of another from strength, dexterity, and honest application. But I am quite sure, from my best observation, that any given five men will, in their total, afford a proportion of labour equal to any other five within the periods of life I have stated; that is, that among such five men there will be one possessing all the qualifications of a good workman, one bad, and the other three middling, and ap- proximating to the first and the last. So that in so- small a platoon as that of even five, you will find the full complement of all that five men can earn." (E. Burke, 1. c. p. 15, 10). Compare Quetelet on the average individual. Co-Operation. 355 an aliquot part of the collective working day, no matter whether the 12 men assist one another in their work, or whether the connexion between their operations consists mere- ly in the fact, that the men are all working for the same capi- talist. But if the 12 men are employed in six pairs, by as many different small masters., it will be quite a matter of chance, whether each of these masters produces the same value, and consequently whether he realises the general rate of sur- plus-value. Deviations would occur in individual cases. If one workman required considerably more time for the produc- tion of a commodity than is socially necessary, the duration of the necessary labour-time would, in his case, sensibly deviate from the labour-time socially necessary on an average; and consequently his labour would not count as average labour, nor his labour-power as average labour-power. It would either be not saleable at all, or only at something below the average value of labour-power. A fixed minimum of efficiency in all labour is therefore assumed, and we shall see, later on, that capitalist production provides the means of fixing this mini- mum. Nevertheless, this minimum deviates from the aver- age, although on the other hand the capitalist has to pay the average value of labour-power. Of the six small masters, one would therefore squeeze out more than the average rate of surplus-value, another less. The inequalities would be com- pensated for the society at large, but not for the individual masters. Thus the laws of the production of value are only fully realised for the individual producer, when he produces as a capitalist, and employes a number of workmen together, whose labour, by its collective nature, is at once stamped as average social labour. 1 Even without an alteration in the system of working, the simultaneous employment of a large number of labourers effects a revolution in the material conditions of the labour- process. The buildings in which they work, the store-houses 1 Professor Roscher claims to have discovered that one needlewoman employed by Mrs. Roscher during two days, does more work than two needlewomen employed together during one day. The learned professor should not study the capitalist proc- ess of production in the nursery, nor under circumstances where the principal per- sonage, the capitalist, is wanting. 356 Capitalist Production. for the raw material, the implements and utensils used simul- taneously or in turns by the workmen ; in short, a portion of the means of production, are now consumed in common. On the one hand, the exchange-value of these means of production is not increased ; for the exchange value of a commodity is not raised by its use-value being consumed more thoroughly and to greater advantage. On the other hand, they are used in com- mon, and therefore on a larger scale than before. A room where twenty weavers work at twenty looms must be larger than the room of a single weaver with two assistants. But it costs less labour to build one workshop for twenty persons than to build ten to accommodate two weavers each; thus the value of the means of production that are concentrated for use in common on a large scale does not increase in direct propor- tion to the expansion and to the increased useful effect of those means. When consumed in common, they give up a smaller part of their value to each single product; partly be- cause the total value they part with is spread over a greater quantity of products, and partly because their value, though absolutely greater, is, having regard. to their sphere of action in the process, relatively less than the value of isolated means of production. Owing to this, the value of a part of the con- stant capital falls, and in proportion to the magnitude of the fall, the total value of the commodity also falls. The effect is the same as if the means of production had cost less. The economy in their application is entirely owing to their being consumed in common by a large number of workmen. More- over, this character of being necessary conditions of social labour, a character that distinguishes them from the dispersed and relatively more costly means of production of isolated, in- dependent labourers, or small masters, is acquired even when the numerous workmen assembled together do not assist one another, but merely work side by side. A portion of the instruments of labour acquires this social character before the labour-process itself does so. Economy in the use of the means of production has to be considered under two aspects. First, as cheapening commodi- ties, and thereby bringing about a fall in the value of labour- Co-Operation. 357 power. Secondly, as altering the ratio of the surplus-value to the total capital advanced, i.e., to the sum of the values of the constant and variable capital. The latter aspect will not be considered until we come to the third volume, to which, with the object of treating them in their proper connexion, we also relegate many other points that relate to the present question. The march of our analysis compels this splitting up of the subject matter, a splitting up that is quite in keeping with the spirit of capitalist production. For since, in this mode of pro- duction, the workman finds the instruments of labour existing independently of him as another man's property, economy in their use appears, with regard to him, to be a distinct operation, one that does not concern him, and which, therefore, has no connexion with the methods by which his own personal pro- ductiveness is increased. When numerous labourers work together side by side, whether in one and the same process, or in different but con- nected processes, they are said to co-operate, or to work in co- operation. 1 Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry, or the defensive power of a regiment of infantry, is essentially differ- ent from the sum of the offensive or defensive powers of the individual cavalry or infantry soldiers taken separately, so the sum total of the mechanical forces exerted by isolated workmen differs from the social force that is developed, when many hands take part simultaneously in one and the same un- divided operation, such as raising a heavy weight, turning a winch, or removing an obstacle. 2 In such cases the effect of the combined labour could either not be produced at all by isolated individual labour, or it could only be produced by a great expenditure of time, or on a very dwarfed scale. Not only have we here an increase in the productive power of the 1 "Concours de forces." (Destutt de Tracy, 1. c., p. 78.) 2 "There are numerous operations of so simple a kind as not to admit a division into parts, which cannot be performed without the co-operation of many pairs of hands. I would instance the lifting of a large tree on to a wain . . . every- thing, in short, which cannot be done unless a great many pairs of hands help each other in the same undivided employment and at the same time" (E. G. Wakefield: "A Vf.ew of the Art of Colonisation." London: 1849, p. 168). 358 Capitalist Production. individual, by means of co-operation, but the creation of a new power, namely, the collective power of masses. 1 Apart from the new power that arises from the fusion of many forces into one single force, mere social contact begets in most industries an emulation and a stimulation of the animal spirits that heighten the efficiency of each individual workman. Hence it is that a dozen persons working together will, in their collective working-day of 144 hours, produce far more than twelve isolated men each working 12 hours, or than one man who works twelve days in succession. 2 The reason of this is that a man is, if not as Aristotle contends, a political, 3 at all events a social animal. Although a number of man may be occupied together at the same time on the same, or the same kind of work, yet the labour of each, as a part of the collective labour, may corres- pond to a distinct phase of the labour-process, through all whose phases, in consequence of co-operation, the subject of their labour passes with greater speed. For instance, if a dozen masons place themselves in a row, so as to pass stones from the foot of a ladder to its summit, each of them does the same thing; nevertheless, their separate acts form connected parts of one total operation ; they are particular phases, which must be gone through by each stone; and the stones are thus carried up quicker by the 24 hands of the row of men than they could be if each man went separately up and down the 1 "As one man cannot, and ten men must strain to lift a tun of weight, yet 100 men can do it only by the strength of a finger of each of them." (John Sellers: "Proposals for raising a College of Industry." London, 1696, p. 21.) 1 "There is also" (when the same number of men are employed by one farmer on 300 acres, instead of by ten farmers with 30 acres a piece) "an advantage in the pro- portion of servants, which will not so easily be understood but by practical men; for it is natural to say,,as 1 is to 4, so are 3: to 12; but this will not hold good in practice; for in harvest time and many other operations which require that kind of despatch by the throwing many hands together, the work is better and more expedi- tiously done;- f. i. in harvest, 2 drivers, 2 loaders, 2 pitchers, 2 rakers, and the rest at the rick, or in the barn, will despatch double the work that the same number of hands would do if divided into different gangs on different farms." ("An Inquiry into the connection between the present Price of Provisions and the Size of Farms." By a Farmer. London, 1773, pp. 7, 8.) * Strictly, Aristotle's definition is that man is by nature a town-citizen. This is quite as characteristic of ancient classical society as Franklin's definition of man, as a tool-making animal, is characteristic of Yankeedom. Co-Operation. 359 ladder with his burden. 1 The object is carried over the same distance in a shorter time. Again, a combination of labour occurs whenever a building, for instance, is taken in hand on different sides simultaneously; although here also the co- operating masons are doing the same, or the same kind of work. The 12 masons, in their collective working day of 144 hours, make much more progress with the building than one mason could make working for 12 days, or 144 hours. The reason is, that a body of men working in concert has hands and eyes both before and behind, and is, to a certain degree, omni-present. The various parts of the work progress simul- taneously. In the above instances we have laid stress upon the point that the men do the same ; or the same kind of work, because this, the most simple form of labour in common, plays a great part in co-operation, even in its most fully developed stage. If the work be complicated, then the mere number of the men who co-operate allows of the various operations being appor- tioned to different hands, and, consequently, of being carried on simultaneously. The time necessary for the completion of the whole work is thereby shortened. 2 In many industries, there are critical periods, determined by the nature of the process, during which certain definite results must be obtained. For instance, if a flock of sheep has to be shorn, or a field of wheat to be cut and harvested, the quantity and quality of the product depends on the work being begun and ended within a certain time. In these cases, the time that ought to be taken by the process is prescribed, just as it 1 On doit encore remarquer que cette division partielle de travail peut se faire quand meme les ouvriers sont occupes d'une meme besogne. Des magons par ex- emple, occupes a faire passer de mains en mains des briques a un echafaudage su- perieur, font tous la meme besogne, et pourtant il existe parmi eux une espece de division de travail, qui consiste en ce que chacun d'eux fait passer la brique par un espace donne, et que tous ensemble la font parvenir beaucoup plus promptement a 1'endroit marque qu'ils ne le feraient si chacun d'eux portait sa brique separement jusqu 'a 1'echafaudage superieur," (F. Skarbek: "Theorie des richesses sociales." Paris, 1829. t. I. pp. 97, 98.) 2 "Est-il question d'executer un travail complique, plusieurs choses doivent etre faites simultancment. L'un en fait une pendant que 1'autre en fait une autre, et tous contribuent a 1'effet qu'un seul homme n'aurait pu produire. L'un rame pendant que 1'autre dent le gouvernail, et qu'un troisieme jette le filet ou harponne le poisson, et la peche a un succes impossible sans ce concours." (Destutt de Tracy, 1. c.) 360 Capitalist Production. is in herring fishing. A single person cannot carve a working day of more than, say 12 hours, out of the natural day, but 100 men co-operating extend the working day to 1,200 hours. The shortness of the time allowed for the work is compensated for by the large mass of labour thrown upon the field of pro- duction at the decisive moment. The completion of the task within the proper time depends on the simultaneous applica- tion of numerous combined working days ; the amount of use- ful effect depends on the number of labourers; this number, however, is always smaller than the number of isolated la- bourers required to do the same amount of work in the same period. 1 It is owing to the absence of this kind of co-opera- tion that, in the western part of the United States, quantities of corn, and in those parts of East India where English rule has destroyed the old communities, quantities of cotton, are yearly wasted. 2 On the one hand, co-operation allows of the work being car- ried on over an extended space ; it is consequently imperatively called for in certain undertakings, such as draining, construct- ing dykes, irrigation works, and the making of canals, roads and railways. On the other hand, while extending the scale of production, it renders possible a relative contraction of the arena. This contraction of arena simultaneous with, and aris- ing from, extension of scale, whereby a number of useless ex- penses are cut down, is owing to the conglomeration of labour- ers, to the aggregation of various processes, and to the con- centration of the means of production. 3 1 "The doing of it (agricultural work) at the critical juncture is of so much the greater consequence." ("An Inquiry into the Connection between the Present Price," &c., p. 9.) "In agriculture, there is no more important factor than that of time." (Liebig: "Ueber Theorie und Praxis in der Landwirthschaft." 1856. p. 23.) ! "The next evil is one which one would scarcely expect to find in a country which exports more labour than any other in the world, with the exception, perhaps, of China and England the impossibility of procuring a sufficient number of hands to clean the cotton. The consequence of this is that large quantities of the crop are left unpicked, while another portion is gathered from the ground when it has fallen, and is of course discoloured and partially rotted, so that for want of labour at the proper season the cultivator is actually forced to submit to the loss of a large part of that crop for which England is so anxiously looking." (Bengal Hurkaru. Bi- Monthly Overland Summary of News, 22nd July, 1861.) s In the progress of culture "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." Although "relatively to the amount of capital and labour employed, Co-Operation. 361 The combined working day produces, relatively to an equal sum of isolated working-days, a greater quantity of use-values, and, consequently, diminishes the labour-time necessary for the production of a given useful effect. Whether the combined working-day, in a given case, acquires this increased produc- tive power, because it heightens the mechanical force of labour, or extends its sphere of action over a greater space, or con- tracts the field of production relatively to the scale of produc- tion, or at the critical moment sets large masses of labour to work, or excites emulation between individuals and raises their animal spirits, or impresses on the similar operations carried on by a number of men the stamp of continuity and many- sidedness, or performs simultaneously different operations, or economises the means of production by use in common, or lends to individual labour the character of average social labour which ever of these be the cause of the increase, the special productive power of the combined working day is, under all circumstances, the social productive power of labour, or the productive power of social labour. This power is due to co- operation itself. When the labourer co-operates systematic- ally with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species. 1 As a general rule, labourers cannot co-operate without being brought together : their assemblage in one place is a necessary condition of their co-operation. Hence wage labourers cannot co-operate, unless they are employed simultaneously by the same capital, the same capitalist, and unless therefore their labour-powers are bought simultaneously by him. The total value of these labour-powers, or the amount of the wages of these labourers for a day, or a week, as the case may be, must be ready in the pocket of the capitalist, before the workmen are assembled for the process of production. The payment of space is concentrated, 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." (R. Jones: "An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth," part I. On Rent. London, 1831, p. 191.) 1 "La forza di ciascuno uomo e minima, ma la ritinione delle minime forze forma una forza totale maggiore anche della somma delle forze medesime fino a che le forze per essere riunite possono diminuere il tempo ed accrescere lo spazio della loro azione." (G. R. Carli, Note to P. Verri, 1. c. t., xv. p. 196.) 362 Capitalist Production. 300 workmen at once, though only for one day, requires a greater outlay of capital, than does the payment of a smaller number of men, week by week, during a whole year. Hence the number of the labourers that co-operate, or the scale of co-operation, depends, in the first instance, on the amount of capital that the individual capitalist can spare for the purchase of labour-power; in other words, on the extent to which a single capitalist has command over the means of subsistence of a number of labourers. And as with the variable, so it is with the constant capital. For example, the outlay on raw material is 30 times as great, for the capitalist who employs 300 men, as it is for each of the 30 capitalists who employ 10 men. The value and quan- tity of the instruments of labour used in common do not, it is true, increase at the same rate as the number of workmen, but they do increase very considerably. Hence, concentration of large masses of the means of production in the hands of indi- vidual capitalists, is a material condition for the co-operation of wage-labourers, and the extent of the co-operation or the scale of production, depends on the extent of this concentra- tion. We saw in a former chapter, that a certain minimum amount of capital was necessary, in order that the number of labourers simultaneously employed, and, consequently, the amount of surplus-value produced, might suffice to liberate the employer himself from manual labour, to convert him from a small master into a capitalist, and thus formally to establish capital- ist production. We now see that a certain minimum amount is a necessary condition for the conversion of numerous iso- lated and independent processes into one combined social process. We also saw that at first, the subjection of labour to capital was only a formal- result of the fact, that the labourer, instead of working for himself, works for and consequently under the capitalist. By the co-operation of numerous wage-labourers, the sway of capital developes into a requisite for carrying on the labour-process itself, into a real requisite of production^ That a capitalist should command on the field of production, Co-Operation. 363 is now as indispensable as that a general should command on the field of battle. All combined labour on a large scale requires, more or less, a directing authority, in order to secure the harmonious work- ing of the individual activities, and to perform the general functions that have their origin in the action of the combined organism, as distinguished from the action of its separate or- gans. A single violin player is his own conductor; an orches- tra requires a separate one. The work of directing, superin- tending, and adjusting, becomes one of the functions of capital, from the moment that the labour under the control of capital, becomes co-operative. Once a function of capital, it acquires special characteristics. The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist produc- tion, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus- value, 1 and consequently to exploit labour-power to the great- est possible extent. As the number of the co-operating labour- ers increases, so too does their resistance to the domination of capital, and with it, the necessity for capital to overcome this resistance by counter-pressure. The control exercised by the capitalist is not only a special function, due to the nature of the social labour-process, and peculiar to that process, but it is, at the same time, a function of the exploitation of a social labour-process, and is consequently rooted in the unavoidable antagonism between the exploiter and the living and labouring raw material he exploits. Again, in proportion to the increasing mass of the means of production, now no longer the property of the labourer, but of the capitalist, the necessity increases for some effective control over the proper application of those means. 2 More- 1 "Profits ... is the sole end of trade." (J. Vanderlint, 1. c., p. 11.) 2 That Philistine paper, the Spectator, states that after the introduction of a sort of partnership between capitalist and workmen in the "Wirework Company of Manchester," "the first result was a sudden decrease in waste, the men not seeing why they should waste their own property any more than any other master's, and waste is, perhaps, next to bad debts, the greatest source of manufacturing loss." The same paper finds that the main defect in the Rochdale co-operative experiments is this: "They showed that associations of workmen could manage shops, mills, and almost all forms of industry with success, and they immediately improved the condition of the men; but then they did not leave a clear place for masters." Quelle horreur! 364 Capitalist Production. over, the co-operation of wage labourers is entirely brought about by the capital that employs them. Their union into one single productive body and the establishment of a connexion between their individual functions, are matters foreign and external to them, are not their own act, but the act of the capital that brings and keeps them together. Hence the con- nexion existing between their various labours appears to them, ideally, in the shape of a preconceived plan of the capitalist, and practically in the shape of the authority of the same capi- talist, in the shape of the powerful will of another, who sub- jects their activity to his aims. If, then, the control of the capitalist is in substance twofold by reason of the twofold nature of the process of production itself, which, on the one hand, is a social process for producing use-values, on the other, a process for creating surplus-value in form that control is despotic. As co-operation extends its scale, this despotism takes forms peculiar to itself. Just as at first the capitalist is relieved from actual labour so soon as his capital has reached that minimum amount with which capitalist production, as such begins, so now, he hands over the work of direct and con- stant supervision of the individual workmen, and groups of workmen, to a special kind of wage labourer. An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers (managers), and sergeants (foremen, overlookers), who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. The work of supervision becomes their established and exclusive function. When comparing the mode of production of isolated peasants and artizans with production by slave labour the political economist counts this 1 labour of superintendence among the faux frais of production. 1 But, when considering the capitalist mode of production, he, on the contrary, treats the work of control made necessary by the co-operative character of the labour process as identical with the different work of control, necessitated by the capitalist 1 Professor Cairns, after stating that the superintendence of labour is a leading feature of production by slaves in the Southern States of North America, continues: "The peasant proprietor (of the North), appropriating the whole produce of his toil, needs no other stimulus to exertion. Superintendence is here completely dispensed with." (Cairnes, 1. c., pp. 48, 19.) Co-Operation. 365 character of that process and the antagonism of interests be- tween capitalist and labourer. 1 It is not because he is a leader of industry that a man is a capitalist; on the contrary, he is a leader of industry because he is a capitalist. The leadership of industry is an attribute of capital, just as in feudal times the functions of general and judge were attributes of landed property. 2 The labourer is the owner of his labour-power until he has done bargaining for its sale with the capitalist ; and he can sell no more than what he has i.e., his individual, isolated labour-power. This state of things is in no way altered by the fact that the capitalist, instead of buying the labour-power of one man, buys that of 100, and enters into separate con- tracts with 100 unconnected men instead of with one. He is at liberty to set the 100 men to work, without letting them co-operate. He pays them the value of 100 independent labour-powers, but he does not pay for the combined labour- power of the hundred. Being independent of each other, the labourers are isolated persons, who enter into relations with the capitalist, but not with one another. This co-operation begins only with the labour process, but they have then ceased to belong to themselves. On entering that process, they be- come incorporated with capital. As co-operators, as members of a working organism, they are but special modes of existence of capital. Hence, the productive power developed by the labourer when working in co-operation, is the productive power of capital. This power is developed gratuitously, whenever the workmen are placed under given conditions, and it is capi- tal that places them under such conditions. Because this power costs capital nothing, and because, on the other hand, the labourer himself does not develop it before his labour belongs to capital, it appears as a power with which capital 1 Sir James Steuart, a writer altogether remarkable for his quick eye for the characteristic social distinctions between different modes of production, says: "Why do large undertakings in the manufacturing way ruin private industry, but by coming nearer to the simplicity of slaves?" ("Prin. of Pol. Econ.," London, 1767, v. I., p. 167, 168.) 2 Auguste Comte and his school might therefore have shown that feudal lords are an eternal necessity in the same way that they have done in the case of the lords of capital. 366 Capitalist Production. is endowed by Nature a productive power that is immanent in capital. The colossal effects of simple co-operation are to be seen in the gigantic structures of the ancient Asiatics, Egyptians, Etruscans, &c. "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 has produced stupendous monuments which still indicate their power. The teeming valley of the Nile . . . produced food for a swarming non-agricultural population, and this food, belonging to the monarch and the priesthood, afford- ed the means of erecting the mighty monuments which filled the land. ... In moving the colossal statues and vast masses of which the transport creates wonder, human labour almost alone, was prodigally used. . . . The number of the labourers and the concentration of their efforts sufficed. 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 to the task, but their number is their strength, and the power of directing these masses gave rise to the palaces and temples, the pyramids, and the armies of gigantic statues of which the remains astonish and perplex us. It is that con- finement of the revenues which feed them, to one or a few hands, which makes such undertakings possible/' 1 This power of Asiatic and Egyptian kings, Etruscan theocrats, &c., has in modern society been transferred to the capitalist, whether he be an isolated, or as in joint stock companies, a collective capitalist. Co-operation, such as we find it at the dawn of human de- velopment, among races who live by the chase, 2 or say, in 1 R. Jones. "Text-book of Lectures," &c., pp. 77, 78. The ancient Assyrian, Egyptian, and other collections in London, and in other European capitals, make us eye-witnesses of the modes of carrying on that co-operative labour. 1 Linguet is probably right, when in his "Theorie des Lois Civiles," he declares Co-Operation. 367 the agriculture of Indian communities, is based, on the one hand, on ownership in common of the means of production, and on the other hand, on the fact, that in those cases, each individual has no more torn himself off from the navel-string of his tribe or community, than each bee has freed itself from connexion with the hive. Such co-operation is distinguished from capitalistic co-operation by both of the above characteris- tics. The sporadic application of co-operation on a large scale in ancient times, in the middle ages, and in modern colonies, reposes on relations of dominion and servitude, principally on slavery. The capitalistic form, on the contrary, presupposes from first to last, the free wage labourer, who sells his labour- power to capital. Historically, however, this form is devel- oped in opposition to peasant agriculture and to the carrying on of independent handicrafts whether in guilds or not. 1 From the standpoint of these, capitalistic co-operation does not mani- fest itself as a particular historical form of co-operation, but co-operation itself appears to be a historical form peculiar to, and specifically distinguishing, the capitalist process of pro- duction. Just as the social productive power of labour that is de- veloped by co-operation, appears to be the productive power of capital, so co-operation itself, contrasted with the process of production carried on by isolated independent labourers, or even by small employers, appears to be a specific form of the capitalist process of production. It is the first change experi- enced by the actual labour-process, when subjected to capital. This change takes place spontaneously. The simultaneous employment of a large number of wage-labourers, in one and the same process, which is a necessary condition of this change, also forms the starting -point of capitalist production. This point coincides with the birth of capital itself. If then, on the hunting to 'be the first form of co-operation, and man-hunting (war) one of the earliest forms of hunting. 1 Peasant agriculture on a small scale, and the carrying on of independent handi- crafts, which together form the basis of the feudal mode of production, and after the dissolution of that system, continue side by side with the capitalist mode, also form the economic foundation of the classical communities at their best, after the primitive form of ownership of land in common had disappeared, and before slavery had seized on production in earnest. 368 Capitalist Production. one hand, the capitalist mode of production presents itself to us historically, as a necessary condition to the transformation of the labour-process into a social process, so, on the other hand, this social form of the labour-process presents itself, as a method employed by capital for the more profitable exploita- tion of labour, by increasing that labour's productiveness. In the elementary form, under which we have hitherto viewed it, co-operation is a necessary concomitant of all pro- duction on a large scale, but it does not, in itself, represent a fixed form characteristic of a particular epoch in the develop- ment of the capitalist mode of production. At the most it appears to do so, and that only approximately, in the handi- craft-like beginnings of manufacture, 1 and in that kind of agriculture on a large scale, which corresponds to the epoch of manufacture, and is distinguished from peasant agriculture, mainly by the number .of the labourers simultaneously em- ployed, and by the mass of the means of production con- centrated for their use. Simple co-operation is always the prevailing form, in those branches of . production in which capital operates on a large scale, and division of labour and machinery play but a subordinate part. Co-operation ever constitutes the fundamental form of the capitalist mode of production; nevertheless, the elementary form of co-operation continues to subsist as a particular form of capitalist production side by side with the more developed forms of that mode of production. CHAPTER XIV. DIVISION OF LABOUR AND MANUFACTURE. SECTION 1. TWOFOLD ORIGIN OF MANUFACTURE. THAT co-operation which is based on division of labour, as- sumes its typical form in the manufacture, and is the prevalent 1 "Whether the united skill, industry, and emulation of many together on the same work be not the way to advance it? And whether it had been otherwise possible for England, to have carried on her Woollen Manufacture to so great a per- fection?" (Berkeley. "The Querist." London, 1760, p. 56, par. 521.) Division of Labour and Manufacture. 369 characteristic form of the capitalist process of production throughout the manufacturing period properly so called. That period, roughly speaking, extends from the middle of the 16th to ,the last third of the 18th century. Manufacture takes its rise in two ways : (1) By the assemblage, in one workshop under the control of a single capitalist, of labourers belonging to various inde- pendent handicrafts, but through whose hands a given article must pass on its way to completion. A carriage, for example, was formerly the product of the labour of a great number of independent artificers, such as wheelwrights, harness-makers, tailors, locksmiths, upholsterers, turners, fringe-makers, gla- ziers, painters, polishers, gilders, &c. In the manufacture of carriages, however, all these different artificers are assembled in one building, where they work into one another's hands. It is true that a carriage cannot be gilt before it has been made. But if a number of carriages are being made simultaneously, some may be in the hands of the gilders while others are going through an earlier process. So far, we are still in the domain of simple co-operation, which finds its materials ready to hand in the shape of men and things. But very soon an important change takes place. The tailor, the locksmith, and the other artificers, being now exclusively occupied in carriage-making, each gradually loses, through want of practice, the ability to carry on, to its full extent, his old handicraft. But, on the other hand, his activity now confined in one groove, assumes the form best adapted to the narrowed sphere of action. At first, carriage manufacture is a combination of various inde- pendent handicrafts. By degrees, it becomes the splitting up of carriage making into its various detail processes, each of which crystallizes into the exclusive function of a particular workman, the manufacture, as a whole, being carried on by the men in conjunction. In the same way, cloth manufacture, as also a whole series of other manufactures, arose by com- bining different handicrafts together under the control of a single capitalist. 1 1 To give a more modern instance: The silk spinning and weaving of Lyons and Nimes "est toute patriarcale; elle emploie beaucoup de femmes et d'enfants, mais X 370 Capitalist Production. (2.) Manufacture also arises in a way exactly the reverse of this namely, by one capitalist employing simultaneously in one workshop a number of artificers, who all do the same, or the same kind of work, such as making paper, type, or needles. This is co-operation in its most elementary form. Each of these artificers (with the help, perhaps, of one or two appren- tices), makes the entire commodity, and he consequently per- forms in succession all the operations necessary for its produc- tion. He still works in his old handicraft-like way. But very soon external circumstances cause a different use to be made of the concentration of the workmen on one spot, and of the simultaneousness of their work. An increased quantity of the article has perhaps to be delivered within a given time. The work is therefore re-distributed. Instead of each man being allowed to perform all the various operations in succes- sion, these operations are changed into disconnected, isolated ones, carried on side by side; each is assigned to a different artificer, and the whole of them together are performed simul- taneously by the co-operating workmen. This accidental re- partition gets repeated, developes advantages of its own, and gradually ossifies into a systematic division of labour. The commodity, from being the individual product of an inde- pendent artificer, becomes the social product of a union of artificers, each of whom performs one, and only one, of the constituent partial operations. The same operations which, in the case of a papermaker belonging to a German Guild, merged one into the other as the successive acts of one artificer, became in the Dutch paper manufacture so many partial operations carried on side by side by numerous co-operating labourers. The needlemaker of the Nuremberg Guild was the corner- sans les epuiser ni les corrompre; elle les laisse dans leur belles vallees de la Drome, du Var, de 1'Isere, de Vaucluse, pour y clever des vers et devider leurs cocons; jamais elle n'entre dans une veritable fabrique. Pour etre aussi bien observe . . . le principe de la division du travail s'y revet d'un caractere special. II y a bien des devideuses, des moulineurs, des teinturiers, des encolleurs, puis des tisserands; mais ils ne sont pas reunis dans tin meme etablissement, ne dependent pas d'un meme maitre; tous ils sont independants." (A. Blanqui: "Cours d'Econ. Industrielle." Recueilli par A. Blaise. Paris, 1838-39, pp. 79). Since Blanqui wrote this, the various independent labourers have, to some extent, been united in factories. [And since Marx wrote the above, the powerloom has invaded these factories, and is now 1886 rapidly superseding the handloom. ED.] Division of Labour and Manufacture. 371 stone on which the English needle manufacture was raised. But while in Nuremberg that single artificer performed a series of perhaps 20 operations one after another, in England it was not long before there were 20 needlemakers side by side, each performing one alone of those 20 operations; and in conse- quence of further experience, each of those 20 operations was again split up, isolated, and made the exclusive function of a separate workman. The mode in which manufacture arises ? its growth, out of handicrafts, is therefore twofold. On the one hand, it arises from the union of various independent handicrafts, which be- come stripped of their independence and specialised to such an extent as to be reduced to mere supplementary partial processes in the production of one particular commodity. On the other hand, it arises from the co-operation of artificers of one handi- craft; it splits up that particular handicraft into its various detail operations, isolating, and making these operations inde- pendent of one another up to the point where each becomes the exclusive function of a particular labourer. On the one hand, therefore, manufacture either introduces division of labour into a process of production, or further developes that divi- sion; on the other hand, it unites together handicrafts that were formerly separate. But whatever may have been its par- ticular starting point, its final form is invariably the same a productive mechanism whose parts are human beings. For a proper understanding of the division of labour in manufacture, it is essential that the following points be firmly grasped. First, the decomposition of a process of production into its various successive steps coincides, here, strictly with the resolution of a handicraft into its successive manual opera- tions. Whether complex or simple, each operation has to be done by hand, retains the character of a handicraft, and is therefore dependent on the strength, skill, quickness, and sure- ness, of the individual workman in handling his tools. The handicraft continues to be the basis. This narrow technical basis excludes a really scientific analysis of any definite process of industrial production, since it is still a condition that each detail process gone through by the product must be capable of 37*2 Capitalist Production. being done by hand and of forming, in its way, a separate handicraft. It is just because handicraft skill continues, in this way, to be the foundation of the process of production, that each workman becomes exclusively assigned to a partial function, and that for the rest of his life, his labour-power is turned into the organ of this detail function. Secondly, this division of labour is a particular sort of co- operation, and many of its disadvantages spring from the general character of co-operation, and not from this particular form of it. SECTION 2. THE DETAIL, LABOUBER AND HIS IMPLEMENTS. If we now go more into detail, it is, in the first place, clear that a labourer who all his life performs one and the same simple operation, converts his whole body into the automatic, specialised implement of that operation. Consequently, he takes less time in doing it, than the artificer who performs a whole series of operations in succession. But the collective labourer, who constitutes the living mechanism of manufacture, is made up solely of such specialised detail labourers. Hence, in comparison with the independent handicraft, more is pro- duced in a given time, or the productive power of labour is increased. 1 Moreover, when once this fractional work is es- tablished as the exclusive function of one person, the methods it employs become perfected. The workman's continued repe- tition of the same simple act, and the concentration of his attention on it, teach him by experience how to attain the desired effect with the minimum of exertion. But since there are always several generations of labourers living at one time, and working together at the manufacture of a given article, the technical skill, the tricks of the trade thus acquired, be- come established, and are accumulated and handed down. 2 Manufacture, in fact, produces the skill of the detail labourer, * "The more any manufacture of much variety shall be distributed and assigned to different artists, the same must needs be better done and with greater expedition, with less loss of time and labour." ("The Advantages of the East India Trade," Lond., 1720. p. 71.) 1 "Easy labour is transmitted skill." (Th. Hodgskin, 1. c. p. 125.) Division of Labour and Manufacture. 373 by reproducing, and systematically driving to an extreme within the workshop, the naturally developed differentiation of trades, which it found ready to hand in society at large. On the other hand, the conversion of fractional work into the life-calling of one man ? corresponds to the tendency shown by earlier societies, to make trades hereditary; either to petrify them into castes, or whenever definite historical conditions beget in the individual a tendency to vary in a manner incom- patible with the nature of castes, to ossify them into guilds. Castes and guilds arise from the action of the same natural law, that regulates the differentiation of plants and animals into species and varieties, except that, when a certain degree of development has been reached, the heredity of castes and the exclusiveness of guilds are ordained as a law of society. 1 "The muslins of D'akka in fineness, the calicoes and other piece goods of Coromandel in brilliant and durable colours, have never been surpassed. Yet they are produced without capital, machinery, division of labour, or any of those means which give such facilities to the manufacturing interest of Europe. The weaver is merely a detached individual, working a web when ordered of a, customer, and with a loom of the rudest construction, consisting sometimes of a few branches or bars of wood, put roughly together. There is even no expedient for rolling up the warp ; the loom must therefore be kept stretched to its full length, and becomes so inconveniently large, that it cannot be contained within the hut of the manufacturer, who is therefore compelled to ply his trade in the open air, where it is interrupted by every vicissitude of the weather." 2 It is only the special skill accumulated from generation to genera- 1 "The arts also have ... in Egypt reached the requisite degree of perfection. For it is the only country where artificers may not in any way meddle with the affairs of another class of citizens, but must follow that calling alone which by law is hereditary in thqr clan ... In other countries it is found that trades- men divide their attention between too many objects. At one time they try agri- culture, at another they take to commerce, at another they busy themselves with two or three occupations at once. In free countries, they mostly frequent the assemblies of the people. ... In Egypt, on the contrary, every artificer is severely pun- ished if he meddles with affairs of State, or carries on several trades at once. Thus there is nothing to disturb their application to their calling. . . . Moreover, since they inherit from their forefathers numerous rules, they are eager to discover fresh advantages." (Diodorus Siculus: Bibl. Hist. 1. 1. c. 74.) 2 Historical and descriptive account of Brit. India, &c., by Hugh Murray and 374 Capitalist Production. tion, and transmitted from father to son, that gives to the Hindoo, as it does to the spider, this proficiency. And yet the work of such a Hindoo weaver is very complicated, compared with that of a manufacturing labourer. An artificer, who performs one after another the various fractional operations in the production of a finished article, must at one time change his place, at another his tools. The transition from one operation to another interrupts the flow of his labour, and creates, so to say, gaps in his working day. These gaps close up so soon as he is tied to one and the same operation all day long; they vanish in proportion as the changes in his work diminish. The resulting increased pro- ductive power is owing either to an increased expenditure of labour-power in a given time i.e., to increased intensity of labour or to a decrease in the amount of labour-power un- productively consumed. The extra expenditure of power, de- manded by every transition from rest to motion, is made up for by prolonging the duration of the normal velocity when once acquired. On the other hand, constant labour of one uniform kind disturbs the intensity and flow of a man's animal spirits, which find recreation and delight in mere change of activity. The productiveness of labour depends not only on the pro- ficiency of the workman, but on the perfection of his tools. Tools of the same kind, such as knives, drills, gimlets, ham- mers, &c. may be employed in different processes; and the same tool may serve various purposes in a single process. But so soon as the different operations of a labour-process are dis- connected the one from the other, and each fractional operation acquires in the hands of the detail labourer a suitable and peculiar form, alterations become necessary in the implements that previously served more than one purpose. The direction taken by this change is determined by the difficulties ex- perienced in consequence of the unchanged form of the imple- ment. Manufacture is characterized by the differentiation of James Wilson, &c., Edinburgh 1832. v. II. p. 449. The Indian loom is upright, i. e., the warp is stretched vertically. Division of Labour and Manufacture. 375 the instruments of labour a differentiation whereby imple- ments of a given sort acquire fixed shapes, adapted to each particular application, and by the specialisation of those in- struments, giving to each special instrument its full play only in the hands of a specific detail labourer. In Birmingham alone 500 varieties of hammers are produced, and not only is each adapted to one particular process, but several varieties often serve exclusively for the different operations in one and the same process. The manufacturing period simplifies, im- proves, and multiplies the implements of labour, by adapting them to the exclusively special functions of each detail la- bourer. 1 It thus creates at the same time one of the material conditions for the existence of machinery, which consists of a combination of simple instruments. The detail labourer and his implements are the simplest elements of manufacture. Let us now turn to its aspect as a whole. SECTION 3. THE TWO FUNDAMENTAL FORMS OF MANUFAC- TURE: HETEROGENEOUS MANUFACTURE, SERIAL MANUFAC- TURE. The organisation of manufacture has two fundamental forms, which, in spite of occasional blending, are essentially different in kind, and, moreover, play very distinct parts in the subsequent transformation of manufacture into modern indus- try carried on by machinery. This double character arises from the nature of the article produced. This article either results from the mere mechanical fitting together of partial products made independently, or owes its completed shape to a series of connected processes and manipulations. A locomotive, for instance, consists of more than 5000 inde- pendent parts. It cannot, however, serve as an example of 1 Darwin in his epoch-making work on the origin of species, remarks, with refer- ence to the natural organs of plants and animals, "So long as one and the same organ has different kinds of work to perform, a ground for its changeability may possibly be found in this, that natural selection preserves or suppresses each small variation of form less carefully than if that organ were destined for one special purpose alone. Thus, knives that are adapted to cut all sorts of things, may, on the whole, be of one shape; hut an implement destined to be used exclusively in one way must have a different shape for every different use." 376 Capitalist Production. the first kind of genuine manufacture, for it is a structure produced by modern mechanical industry. But a watch can; and William Petty used it to illustrate the division of labour in manufacture. Formerly the individual work of a Nurem- berg artificer, the watch has been transformed into the social product of an immense number of detail labourers, such as mainspring makers, dial makers, spiral spring makers, jewelled hole makers, ruby lever makers, hand makers, case makers, screw makers, gilders, with numerous sub-divisions, such as wheel makers (brass and steel separate), pin makers, movement makers, acheveur de pignon (fixes the wheels on the axles, polishes the facets, &c.), pivot makers, planteur de finissagc (puts the wheels and springs in the works), finisseur de barillet (cuts teeth in the wheels, makes the holes of the right size, &c.), escapement makers, cylinder makers for cylinder escape- ment, escapement wheel makers, balance wheel makers, ra- quette makers (apparatus for regulating the watch), the planteur d'echappement (escapement maker proper) ; then the repasseur de barrillet (finishes the box for the spring, &c.), steel polishers, wheel polishers, screw polishers, figure painters, dial enamellers (melt the enamel on the copper), fabricant de pendants (makes the ring by which the case is hung), finisseur de charniere (puts the brass hinge in the cover, &c.) faiseur de secret (puts in the springs that open the case), graveur, ciseleur, polisseur de boite, &c., &c., and last of all the re- passeur, who fits together the whole watch and hands it over in a going state. Only a few parts of the watch pass through several hands; and all these membra disjecta come together for the first time in the hand that binds them into one mechanical whole. This external relation between the finished product, and its various and diverse elements makes it, as well in this case as in the case of all similar finished articles, a matter of chance whether the detail labourers are brought together in one workshop or not The detail operations may further be carried on like so many independent handicrafts, as they are in the Cantons of Vaud and Neufchatel ; while in Geneva there exist large watch manufactories where the detail labourers directly co-operate under the control of a single capitalist. Division of Labour and Manufacture. 377 And even in the latter case the dial, the springs, and the case, are seldom made in the factory itself. To carry on the trade as a manufacture, with concentration of workmen, is, in the watch trade, profitable only under exceptional conditions, be- cause competition is greater between the labourers who desire to work at home, and because the splitting up of the work into a number of heterogeneous processes, permits but little use of the instruments of labour in common, and the capitalist, by scattering the work, saves the outlay on workshops, &C. 1 Nevertheless the position of this detail labourer who, though he works at home, does so for a capitalist (manufacturer, etablisseur), is very different from that of the independent artificer, who works for his own customers. 2 The second kind of manufacture, its perfected form, pro- duces articles that go through connected phases of develop- ment, through a series of processes step by step, like the wire in the manufacture of needles, which passes through the hands of 72 and sometimes even 92 different detail workmen. In so far as such a manufacture, when first started, com- bines scattered handicrafts, it lessens the space by which the various phases of production are separated from each other. The time taken in passing from one stage to another is shortened, so is the labour that effectuates this passage. 3 In comparison with a handicraft, productive power is gained, and 1 In the year 1854 Geneva produced 80,000 watches, which is not one-fifth of the production in the Canton of Neufchatel. La Chaux-de-Fond alone, which we may look upon as a huge watch manufactory, produces yearly twice as many as Geneva. From 1850-61 Geneva produced 750,000 watches. See "Report from Geneva on the Watch Trade" in "Reports by H. M.'s Secretaries of Embassy and Legation on the Manufactures, Commerce, &c., No. 6, 1863." The want of connexion alone, between the processes into which the production of articles that merely consist of parts fitted together is split up, makes it very difficult to convert such a manufacture into a branch of modern industry carried on by machinery; but in the case of a watch there are two other impediments in addition, the minuteness and delicacy of its parts, and its character as an article of luxury. Hence their variety, which is such, that in the best London houses scarcely a dozen watches are made alike in the course, of a year. The watch manufactory of Messrs. Vacheron & Constantin, in which machinery has been employed with success, produces at the most three or four different varieties of size and form. 2 In watchmaking, that classical example of heterogeneous manufacture, we may study with great accuracy the above mentioned differentiation and specialisation of the instruments of labour caused by the sub-division of handicrafts. 3 "In so close a cohabitation of the people, the carriage must needs be less." ("The Advantages of the East India Trade," p. 106.) 3/8 Capitalist Production. this gain is owing to the general co-operative character of manufacture. On the other hand, division of labour, which is the distinguishing principle of manufacture, requires the isola- tion of the various stages of production and their independ- ence of each other. The establishment and maintenance of a connexion between the isolated functions necessitates the in- cessant transport of the article from one hand to another, and from one process to another. From the standpoint of modern mechanical industry, this necessity stands forth as a character- istic and costly disadvantage, and one that is immanent in the principle of manufacture, 1 If we confine our attention to some particular lot of raw materials, of rags, for instance, in paper manufacture, or of wire in needle manufacture, we perceive that it passes in succession through a series of stages in the hands of the various detail workmen until completion. On the other hand, if we look at the workshop as a whole, we see the raw material in all the stages of its production at the same time. The col- lective labourer, with one set of his many hands armed with one kind of tools, draws the wire, with another set, armed with different tools, he, at the same time, straightens it, with another, he cuts it, with another points it and so on. The different detail processes which were successive in time, have become simultaneous, go on side by side in space. Hence, production of greater quantum of finished commodities in a given time. 2 This simultaneity, it is true, is due to the general co-operative form of the process as a whole; but Manufacture not only finds the conditions for co-operation really to hand, it also, to some extent, creates them by the sub-division of handicraft labour. On the other hand, it 1 "The isolation of the different stages of manufacture, consequent upon the em- ployment of manual labour, adds immensely to the cost of production, the loss mainly arising from the mere removals from one process to another." ("The In- dustry of Nations." Lond., 1855. Part II., p. 200.) 2 "It (the division of labour) produces also an economy of time by separating the work into its different branches, all of which may be carried on 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 multi- tude of pins completely finished in the same time as a single pin might have been either cut or pointed." (Dugald Stewart, 1. c., p. 319.) Division of Labour and Manufacture. 379 accomplishes this social organisation of the labour-process only by riveting each labourer to a single fractional detail. Since the fractional product of each detail labourer is, at the same time, only a particular stage in the development of one and the same finished article, each labourer, or each group of labourers, prepares the raw material for another labourer or group. The result of the labour of the one is the starting point for the labour of the other. The workman therefore gives occupation directly to the other. The labour-time necessary in each partial process, for attaining the desired effect, is learnt by experience ; and the mechanism of Manu- facture, as a whole, is based on the assumption that a given result will be obtained in a given time. It is only on this assumption that the various supplementary labour-processes can proceed uninterruptedly, simultaneously, and side by side. It is clear that this direct dependence of the operations, and therefore of the labourers, on each other, compels each one of them to spend on his work no more than the necessary time, and thus a continuity, uniformity, regularity, order, 1 and even intensity of labour, of quite a different kind, is begotten than is to be found in an independent handicraft or even in simple co-operation. The rule that the labour-time expended on a commodity should not exceed that which is socially necessary for its production, appears, in the production of commodities generally, to be established by the mere effect of competition ; since, to express ourselves superficially, each single producer is obliged to sell his commodity at its market price. In Manufacture, on the contrary, the turning out of a given quantum of product in a given time is a technical law of the process of production itself. 2 Different operations take, however, unequal periods, and yield therefore, in equal times unequal quantities of fractional products. If, therefore, the same labourer has, day after day, 1 "The more variety of artists to every manufacture . . . the greater the order and regularity of every work, the same must needs be done in less time, the labour must be less." ("The .Advantages," &c., p. GS.) 2 Nevertheless, the manufacturing system, in many branches of industry, attains this result but very imperfectly, because it knows not how to control with certainty the general chemical and physical conditions of the process of production. 380 Capitalist Production. to perform the same operation, there must be a different num- ber of labourers for each operation ; for instance, in type manu- facture, there are four founders and two breakers to one rub- ber: the founder casts 2,000 type an hour, the breaker breaks up 4,000, and the rubber polishes 8,000. Here we have again the principle of co-operation in its simplest form, the simulta- neous employment of many doing the same thing; only now, this principle is the expression of an organic relation. The division of labour, as carried out in the Manufacture, not only simplifies and multiplies the qualitatively different parts of the social collective labourer, but also creates a fixed mathematical relation or ratio which regulates the qualitative extent of those parts i.e., the relative number of labourers, or the relative size of the group of labourers, for each detail operation. It de- velopes, along with the qualitative sub-division of the social labour process, a quantitative rule and proportionality for that process. When once the most fitting proportion has been experi- mentally established for the numbers of the detail labourers in the various groups when producing on a given scale, that scale can be extended only by employing a multiple of each particu- lar group. 1 There is this to boot, that the same individual can do certain kinds of work just as well on a large as on a small scale ; for instance, the labour of superintendence, the carriage of the fractional product from one stage to the next, &c. The isolation of such functions, their allotment to a particular labourer, does not become advantageous till after an increase in the number of labourers employed ; but this increase must affect every group proportionally. The isolated group of labourers to whom any particular detail function is assigned, is made up of homogeneous ele- ments, and is one of the constituent parts of the total mechanism. In many manufactures, however, the group itself 1 "When (from the peculiar nature of the produce of each manufactory), the num- ber of processes into which it is most advantageous to divide it is ascertained, as well as the number of individuals to be employed, then all other manufactories which do not employ a direct multiple of this number will produce the article at a greater cost. . . . Hence arises one of the causes of the great size of manufacturing establishments." (C. Babbage. "On the Economy of Machinery," 1st ed. London, 1838. Ch. xxi., p. 172-173.) Division of Labour and Manufacture. 381 is an organised body of labour, the total mechanism being a repetition or multiplication of these elementary organisms. Take, for instance, the manufacture of glass bottles. It may be resolved into three essentially different stages. First, the preliminary stage, consisting of the preparation of the com- ponents of the glass, mixing the sand and lime, &c., and melt- ing them into a fluid mass of glass. 1 Various detail labourers are employed in this first stage, and also in the final one of re- moving the bottles from the drying furnace, sorting and pack- ing them, &c. In the middle, between these two stages, comes the glass melting proper, the manipulation of the fluid mass. At each mouth of the furnace, there works a group, called "the hole," consisting of one bottlemaker or finisher, one blower, one gatherer, one putter-up or whetter-off, and one taker-in. These five detail workers are so many special organs of a single working organism that acts only as a whole, and therefore can operate only by the direct co-operation of the whole five. The whole body is paralysed if but one of its members be wanting. But a glass furnace has several openings (in England from 4 to 6), each of which contains an earthenware melting-pot full of molten glass, and employs a similar five-membered group of workers. The organisation of each group is based on division of labour, but the bond between the different groups is simple co-operation, which, by using in common one of the means of production the furnace, causes it to be more economically con- sumed. Such a furnace, with its 4-6 groups, constitutes a glass house; and a glass manufactory comprises a number of such glass houses, together with the apparatus and workmen requisite for the preparatory and final stages. Finally, just as Manufacture arises in part from the com- bination of various handicrafts, so, too, it developes into a com- bination of various manufactures. The larger English glass manufacturers, for instance, make their own earthenware melting-pots, because, on the quality of these depends, to a great extent, the success or failure of the process. The manu- 1 In England, the melting-furnace is distinct from the glass-furnace in which the glass is manipulated. In Belgium, one and the same furnace serves for both processes. 382 Capitalist Production. facture of one of the means of production is here united with that of the product. On the other hand, the manufacture of the product may be united with other manufactures, of which that product is the raw material, or with the products of which it is itself subsequently mixed. Thus, we find the manufac- ture of flint glass combined with that of glass cutting and brass founding; the latter for the metal settings of various articles of glass. The various manufactures so combined form more or less separate departments of a larger manufacture, but are at the same time independent processes, each with its own division of labour. In spite of the many advantages offered by this combination of manufactures, it never grows into a com- plete technical system on its own foundation. That happens only on its transformation into an industry carried on by ma- chinery. Early in the manufacturing period, the principle of lessen- ing the necessary labour-time in the production of commodi- ties, 1 was accepted and formulated: and the use of machines, especially for certain simple first processes that have to be con- ducted on a very large scale, and with the application of great force, sprang up here and there. Thus, at an early period in paper manufacture, the tearing up of the rags was done by paper mills; and in metal works, the pounding of the ores was effected by stamping mills. 2 The Eoman Empire had handed down the elementary form of all machinery in the water-wheel. 3 The handicraft period bequeathed to us the great inventions of the compass, of gunpowder, of type-printing, and of the automatic clock. But, on the whole, machinery played that subordinate part which Adam Smith assigns to it in compari- sion with division of labour. 4 The sporadic use of machinery 1 This can be seen from W. Petty, John Sellers, Andrew Yarranton, "The Ad- vantages of the East India Trade," and J. Vanderlint, not to mention others. 2 Towards the end of the 16th century, mortars and sieves were still used in France for pounding and washing ores. " The whole history of the development of machinery can be traced in the history of the corn mill. The factory in England is still a "mill." In German technological works of the first decade of this century, the term "Mtihle" is still found in use, not only for all machinery driven by the forces of Nature, but also for all manu- factures where apparatus in the nature of machinery is applied. * As will be seen more in detail in "Theories of Surplus- Value," Adam Smith has Division of Labour and Manufacture. 383 in the 17th century was of the greatest importance, because it supplied the great mathematicians of that time with a practical basis and stimulant to the creation of the science of mechanics. The collective labourer, formed by the combination of a number of detail labourers, is the machinery specially char- acteristic of the manufacturing period. The various opera- tions that are performed in turns by the producer of a com- modity, and coalesce one with another during the progress of production, lay claim to him in various ways. In one opera- tion he must exert more strength, in another more skill, in an- other more attention ; and the sr.me individual does not possess all these qualities in an equal degree. After Manufacture has once separated, made independent, and isolated the various operations, the labourers are divided, classified, and grouped according to their predominating qualities. If their natural endowments are, on the one hand, the foundation on which the division of labour is built up, on the other hand, Manu- facture, once introduced, developes in them new powers that are by nature fitted only for limited and special functions. The collective labourer now possesses, in an equal degree of excellence, all the qualities requisite for production, and ex- pends them in the most economical manner, by exclusively employing all his organs, consisting of particular labourers, or groups of labourers, in performing their special functions. 1 The one-sidedness and the deficiencies of the detail labourer become perfections when he is a part of the collective labourer. 2 The habit of doing only one thing converts him into a never not established a single new proposition relating to division of labour. What, how- ever, characterises him as the political economist par excellence of the period of Manufacture, is the stress he lays on division of labour. The subordinate part which he assigns to machinery gave occasion in the early days of modern mechanical in- dustry to the polemic of Lauderdale, and, at a later period, to that of Ure. A. Smith also confounds differentiation of the instruments of labour, in which the detail labourers themselves took an active part, with the invention of machinery; in this latter, it is not the workmen in manufactories, but learned men, handicraftsmen, and even peasants (Brindley), who play a part. 1 "The master manufacturer, by dividing the work to be executed into different processes, each requiring different degrees of skill or of force, can purchase exactly that precise quantity of both which is necessary for each process; whereas, if the whole work were executed by one workman, that person must possess sufficient skill to perform the most difficult, and sufficient strength to execute the most laborious of the operations into which the article is divided." (Ch. Babbage. 1. c., ch. xviii.) 2 For instance, abnormal development of some muscles, curvature of bones, &c. 384 Capitalist Production. failing instrument, while his connexion with the whole me- chanism compels him to work with the regularity of the parts of a machine. 1 Since the collective labourer has functions, both simple and complex, both high and low, his members, the individual labour-powers, require different degrees of training, and must therefore have different values. Manufacture, therefore, de- velopes a hierarchy of labour-powers, to which there corres- ponds a scale of wages. If, on the one hand, the individual laborers are appropriated and annexed for life by a limited function; on the other hand, the various operations of the hierarchy are parcelled out among the laboures according to both their natural and their acquired capabilities. 2 Every process of production, however, requires certain simple manip- ulations, which every man is capable of doing. They too are now severed from their connexion with more pregnant mo- ments of activity, and ossified into exclusive functions of spec- ially appointed labourers. Hence, Manufacture begets, in every handicraft that it seizes upon, a class of so-called unskilled labourers, a class which handicraft industry strictly excluded. If it developes a one-sided specialty into a perfection, at the expense of the whole of a man's working capacity, it also begins to make a specialty of the absence of all development. Alongside of the hierarchic gradation there steps the sim- ple separation of the labourers into skilled and unskilled. For the latter, the cost of apprenticeship vanishes; for the former, it diminishes, compared with that of artificers, in 1 The question put by one of the Inquiry Commissioners, How the young persons are kept steadily to their work, is very correctly answered by Mr. Wm. Marshall, the general manager of a glass manufactory: "They cannot well neglect their work; when they once begin, they must go on; they are just the same as parts of a machine." ("Children's Empl. Comm.," 4th Rep., 1865, p. 247.) J Dr. Ure, in his apotheosis of Modern Mechanical Industry, brings out the peculiar character of manufacture more sharply than previous economists, who had not his polemical interest in the matters, and more sharply even than his contemporaries Babbage, e.g., who, though much his superior as a mathematician and mechanician, treated mechanical industry from the standpoint of manufacture alone. Ure says, "This appropriation ... to each, a workman of appropriate value and cost was naturally assigned, forms the very essence of division of labour." On the other hand, he describes this division as "adaptation of labour to the different talents of men," and lastly, characterises the whole manufacturing system as "a system for the division or gradation of labour," as "the division of labour into degrees of skill," &c: (Ure, 1. c. pp. 19-23 passim.) Division of Labour and Manufacture. 385 consequence of the functions being simplified. In both cases the value of labour-power falls. 1 An exception to this law holds good whenever the decomposition of the labour- process begets new and comprehensive functions, that either had no place at all, or only a very modest one, in handicrafts. The fall in the value of labour-power, caused by the disap- pearance or diminution of the expense of apprenticeship, im- plies a direct increase of surplus-value for the benefit of capital ; for everything that shortens the necessary labour- time required for the reproduction of labour-power, extends the domain of surplus-labour. SECTION 4. DIVISION OF LABOUR IN MANUFACTURE, AND DIVISION OF LABOUR IN SOCIETY. We first considered the origin of Manufacture, then its simple elements, then the detail labourer and his implements, and finally, the totality of the mechanism. We shall now lightly touch upon the relation between the division of labour in manufacture, and the social division of labour, which forms the foundation of all production of commodities. If we keep labour alone in view, we may designate the separation of social production into its main division or genera viz., agriculture, industries, etc., as division of labour in general, and the splitting up of these families into species and sub-species, as division of labour in particular, and the division of labour within the workshop as division of labour in singular or in detail. 2 1 "Each handicraftsman being . . . enabled to perfect himself by practice in one point, became ... a cheaper workman." (Ure, 1. c., p. 19.) 1 "Division of labour proceeds from the separation of professions the most widely different to that division, where several labourers divide between them the preparation of one and the same product, as in manufacture." (Storch: "Cours d'Econ. Pol. Paris Edn." t. I., p. 173.) "Nous rencontrons chez les peuples parvenus a un certain degre de civilisation trois genres de divisions d'industrie: la premiere, que nous nommerons generale, amene la distinction des producteurs en agricultcurs, manu- facturiers et commercans, elle se rapporte aux trois principales branches d'industrie nationale; la seconde, qu'on pourrait appeler speciale, est la division de chaque genre d'industrie en especes ... la troisieme division d'industrie, celle enfin qu'on devrait qualifier de division de la besogne ou de travail proprement dit, est celle qui s'etablit dans les arts et les metiers separes . . . qui s'etablit dans la plupart des manufactures et des ateliers." (Skarbek. 1. c. pp. 84, 85.) Y 386 Capitalist Production. Division of labour in a society, and the corresponding ty- ing down of individuals to a particular calling, developea itself, just as does the division of labour in manufacture, from oppo- site st;ir(ing points. Within a family, 1 and after further de- velopment within a tribe, there springs up naturally a division of labour, caused by differences of sex and age, a division that is consequently based on a purely physiological foundation, which division enlarges its materials by the expansion of the community, by the increase of population, and more especially, by the conflicts between different tribes, and the subjugation of one tribe by another. On the other hand, as I have before remarked, the exchange of products springs up at the points where different families, tribes, communities, come in contact ; for, in the beginning of civilisation, it is not private indi- viduals but families, tribes, &c., that meet on an independent footing. Different communities find different means of pro- duction and different means of subsistence in their natural environment. Hence, their modes of production, and of living, and their products are different. It is this spontaneously de- veloped difference which, when different communities come in contact, calls forth the mutual exchange of products, and the consequent gradual conversion of those products into com- modities. Exchange does not create the differences between the spheres of production, but brings such as are already differ- ent into relation, and thus converts them into more or less inter- dependent branches of the collective production of an enlarged society. In the latter case, the social division of labour arises from the exchange between spheres of production, that are originally distinct and independent of one another. In the former, where the physiological division of labour is the start- ing point, the particular organs of a compact whole grow loose, and break off, principally owing to the exchange of commodi- ties with foreign communities, and then isolate themselves so 1 Note to the third edition. Subsequent very searching study of the primitive condition of man, led the author to the conclusion, that it was not the family that originally developed into the tribe, but that, on the contrary, the tribe was the primi- tive and spontaneously developed form of human association, on the basis of blood relationship, and that out of the first incipient loosening of the tribal bonds, the many and various forms of the family were afterwards developed. (Ed. 3rd ed.) Division of Labour and Manufacture. 387 far, that the sole bond, still connecting the various kinds of work, is the exchange of the products as commodities. In the one case, it is the making dependent what was before inde- pendent; in the other case, the making independent what was before dependent, The foundation of every division of labour that is well de- veloped, and brought about by the exchange of commodities, is the separation between town and country. 1 It may be said, that the whole economical history of society is summed up in the movement of this antithesis. We pass it over, however, for the present. Just as a certain number of simultaneously employed labourers are the material pre-requisites for division of labour in manufacture, so are the number and density of the popula- tion, which here correspond to the agglomeration in one work- shop, a necessary condition for the division of labour in society. 2 Nevertheless, this density is more or less relative. A relatively thinly populated country, with well-developed means of communication, has a denser population than a more numerously populated country, with badly-developed means of communication ; and in this sense the Northern States of the American Union, for instance, are more thickly populated than India. 3 Since the production and the circulation of commodities are the general pre-requisites of the capitalist mode of production, division of labour in manufacture demands, that division of labour in society at large should previously have attained a 1 Sir James Steuart is the economist who has handled this subject best. How little his book, which appeared ten years before the "Wealth of Nations," is known, even at the present time, may be judged from the fact that the admirers of Malthtis do not even know that the first edition of the latter's work on population contains, except in the purely declamatory part, very little but extracts from Steuart, and in a less degree, from Wallace and Townsend. 2 "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, 1. c. p. 50.) "As the number of labourers increases, the productive power of society augments in the compound ratio of that increase, multi- plied by the effects of the division of labour." (Th. Hodgskin, 1. c. pp. 125, 126.) 3 In consequence of the great demand for cotton after 1861, the production of cotton, in some thickly populated districts of India, was extended at the expense of rice cultivation. In consequence there arose local famines, the defective means of communication not permitting the failure of rice in one district to be compensated by importation from another. 388 Capitalist Production. certain degree of development. Inversely, the former division reacts upon and developes and multiplies the latter. Simul- taneously, with the differentiation of the instruments of labour, the industries that produce these instruments, become more and more differentiated. 1 If the manufacturing system seize upon an industry, which, previously, was carried on in con- nexion with others, either as a chief or as a subordinate industry, and by one producer, these industries immediately separate their connexion, and become independent. If it seize upon a particular stage in the production of a com- modity, the other stages of its production become converted into so many independent industries. It has already been stated, that where the finished article consists merely of a number of parts fitted together, the detail operations may re- establish themselves as genuine and separate handicrafts. In order to carry out more perfectly the division of labour in manufacture, a single branch of production is, according to the varieties of its raw material, or the various forms that one and the same raw material may assume, split up into numerous, and to some extent, entirely new manufactures. Accordingly, in France alone, the first half of the 18th cen- tury, over 100 different kinds of silk stuffs were woven, and in Avignon, it was law, that " every apprentice should devote himself to only one sort of fabrication, and should not learn the preparation of several kinds of stuff at once." The territorial division of labour, which confines special branches of production to special districts of a country, acquires fresh stimulus from the manufacturing system, which exploits every special advantage. 2 The Colonial system and the opening out of the markets of the world, both of which are included in the general conditions of existence of the manufacturing period, furnish rich material for developing the division of labour in society. It is not the place, here, to go on to 1 Thus, the fabrication of shuttles formed, as early as the 17th century, a special branch of industry in Holland. 1 "Whether the woollen manufacture of England is not divided into several parts or branches appropriated to particular places, where they are only or principally manufactured; fine cloths in Somersetshire coarse in Yorkshire, long ells at Exeter, soies at Sudbury, crapes at Norwich, linseys at Kendal, blankets at Whitney, and 80 forth." (Berkeley: "The Querist," 1750, p. 520.) Division of Labour and Manufacture. 389 show how division of labour seizes upon, not only the econom- ical, but every other sphere of society, and everywhere lays the foundation of that all engrossing system of specialising and sorting men, that development in a man of one single faculty at the expense of all other faculties, which caused A. Ferguson, the master of Adam Smith, to exclaim: " We make n nation of Helots, and have no free citizens." 1 But, in spite of the numberous analogies and links connect- ing them, division of labour in the interior of a society, and that in the interior of a workshop, differ not only in degree, but also in kind. The analogy appears most indisputable where there is an invisible bond uniting the various branches of trade. For instance the cattle breeder produces hides, the tanner makes the hides into leather, and the shoemaker, the leather into boots. Here the thing produced by each of them is but a step towards the final form, which is the product of all their labours combined. There are, besides, all the various industries that supply the cattle-breeder, the tanner, and the shoemaker with the means of production. Now it is quite possible to imagine, with Adam Smith, that the difference be- tAvccn the above social division of labour, and the division in manufacture, is merely subjective, exists merely for the ob- server, who, in a manufacture, can see with one glance, all the numerous operations being performed on one spot, while in the instance given above, the spreading out of the work over great areas, and the great number of people employed in each branch of labour, obscure the connexion. 2 But what is 1 A. Ferguson: "History of Civil Society." Edinburgh, 1767; Part iv. sect, ii., p. 285. 2 In manufacture proper, he says, the division of labour appears to be greater, because "those employed in every different branch of the work can often be col- lected 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 great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of the work em- ploys so great a number of workmen, that it is impossible to collect them all into the same workhouse . . . the division is not near so obvious." (A. Smith: "Wealth of Nations," bk. i. ch. i.) The celebrated passage in the same chapter that begins witli the words, "Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day labourer in a civilized and thriving country," &c., and then proceeds to depict what an enormous number and variety of industries contribute to the satisfaction of the wants of an ordinary labourer, is copied almost word for word from B. de Mande- ville's Remarks to his "Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Publick Benefits." (First ed., without the remarks, 1706; with the remarks, 1714.) 390 Capitalist Production. it that forms the bond between the independent labours of the cattle-breeder, the tanner, and the shoemaker? It is the fact that their respective products are commodities. What, on the other hand, characterises division of labour in manufac- tures ? The fact that the detail labourer produces no com- modities. 1 It is only the common product of all the detail labourers that becomes a commodity. 2 Division of labour in a society is brought about by the purchase and sale of the products of different branches of industry, while the connexion between the detail operations in a workshop, are due to the sale of the labour-power of several workmen to one capitalist, who applies it as combined labour-power. The division of labour in the workshop implies concentration of the means of production in the hands of one capitalist ; the division of labour in society implies their dispersion among many inde- pendent producers of commodities. While within the work- shop, the iron law of proportionality subjects definite numbers of workmen to definite functions, in the society outside the workshop, chance and caprice have full play in distributing the producers and their means of production among the various branches of industry. The different spheres of production, it is true, constantly tend to an equilibrium: for, on the one hand, while each producer of a commodity is bound to pro- duce a use-value, to satisfy a particular social want, and while 1 "There is no longer anything 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 in itself, there is nothing on which the labourer can seize, and say: It is my product, this I will keep to myself." ("Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital." Lond., 1825, p. 25.) The author of this admirable work is the Th. Hodgskin I have already cited. : This distinction between division of labour in society and in manufacture, was practically illustrated to the Yankees. One of the new taxes devised at Washington during the civil war, was the duty of 6% "on all industrial products." Question: What is an industrial product? Answer of the legislature: A thing is produced "when it ii made," and it is made when it is ready for sale. Now, for one example out of many. The New York and Philadelphia manufacturers had previously been in the habit of "making" umbrellas, with all their belongings. But since an umbrella is a mix-turn compositum of very heterogeneous parts, by degrees these parts became the products of various separate industries, carried on independently in different places. They entered as separate commodities into the umbrella man- ufactory, where they were fitted together. The Yankees have given to articles thus fitted together, the name of "assembled articles," a name they deserve, for being an assemblage of taxes. Thus the umbrella "assembles," first, 6% on the price of each of its elements, and a further 6% on its own total price. Division of Labour and Manufacture. 391 the extent of these wants differs quantitatively, still there exists an inner relation which settles their proportions into a regular system, and that system one of spontaneous growth; and, on the other hand, the law of the value of commodities ultimately determines how much of its disposable working-time society can expend on each particular class of commodities. But this constant tendency to equilibrium, of the various spheres of production, is exercised, only in the shape of a reaction against the constant upsetting of this equilibrium. The a priori system on which the division of labour, within the workshop, is regularly carried out, becomes in the division of labour within the society, an a posteriori, nature-imposed necessity, controlling the lawless caprice of the producers, and perceptible in the barometrical fluctuations of the market prices. Division of labour within the workshop implies the undisputed authority of the capitalist over men, that are but parts of a mechanism that belongs to him. The division of labour within the society brings into contact independent commodity-producers, who acknowledge no other authority but that of competition, of the coercion exerted by the pressure of their mutual interests; just as in the animal kingdom, the helium omnium contra omnes more or less preserves the con- ditions of existence of every species. The same bourgeois mind which praises division of labour in the workshop, life- long annexation of the labourer to a partial operation, and his complete subjection to capital, as being an organisation of labour that increases its productiveness that same bourgeois mind denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to socially control and regulate the process of production, as an inroad upon such sacred things as the rights of property, freedom and unrestricted play for the bent of the individual capitalist. It is very characteristic that the enthusiastic apol- ogists of the factory system have nothing more damning to urge against a general organization of the labour of society, than that it would turn all society into one immense factory. If, in a society with capitalist production, anarchy in the social division of labour and despotism in that of the workshop are mutual conditions the one of the other, we find, on the con- 292 Capitalist Production. trary, in those earlier forms of society in which the separation of trades has been spontaneously developed, then crystallized, and finally made permanent by law, on the one hand, a speci- men of the organization of the labour of society, in accordance with an approved and authoritative plan, and on the other, the entire exclusion of division of labour in the workshop, or at all events a mere dwarflike or sporadic and accidental development of the same. 1 Those small and extremely ancient Indian communities, some of which have continued down to this day, are based on possession in common of the land, on the blending of agricul- ture and handicrafts, and on an unalterable division of labour, which serves, whenever a new community is started, as a plan and scheme ready cut and dried. Occupying areas of from 100 up to several thousand acres, each forms a compact whole producing .ill it requires. The chief part of the products is destined for direct use by the community itself, and does not take the form of a commodity. Hence, production here is independent of that division of labour brought about, in Indian society as a whole, by means of the exchange of commodities. It is the surplus alone that becomes a commodity, and a portion of even that, not until it has reached the hands of the State, into whose hands from time immemorial a certain quantity of these products has found its way in the shape of rent in kind. The constitution of these communities varies in different parts of India. In those of the simplest form, the land is tilled in common, and the produce divided among the members. At the same time, spinning and weaving are carried on in each family as subsidiary industries. Side by side with the masses thus occupied with one and the same work, we find the "chief inhabitant," who is judge, police, and tax-gatherer in one; the bookkeeper who keeps the accounts of the tillage and registers everything relating thereto; another official, who prosecutes 1 "On peut . . . etablir en regie generate, que moins 1'autorite preside a la division du travail dans 1'interieur de la societe, plus la division du travail se developpe dans 1'interieur de 1'atelier, et plus elle y est soumise a 1'autorite d'un seul. Ainsi Fautorit6 dans 1'atelier et celle dans la societe, par rapport a la division dutravail, sont en raison inverse 1'une de 1'autre." (Karl Marx, "Misere," &c., pp. 130-131.) Division of Labour and Manufacture. 393 criminals, protects strangers travelling through, and escorts them to the next village; the boundary man, who guards the boundaries against neighbouring communities ; the water-over- seer, who distributes the water from the common tanks for irrigation ; the Brahmin ; who conducts the religious services ; the schoolmaster, who on the sand teaches the children reading and writing; the calendar-Brahmin, or astrologer, who makes known the lucky or unlucky days for seed-time and harvest, and for every other kind of agricultural work ; a smith and a carpenter, who make and repair all the agricultural imple- ments ; the potter, who makes all the pottery of the village ; the barber, the washerman, who washes clothes, the silversmith, here and there the poet, who in some communities replaces the silversmith, in others the schoolmaster. This dozen of indi- viduals is maintained at the expense of the whole community. If the population increases, a new community is founded, on the pattern of the old one, on unoccupied land. The whole mechanism discloses a systematic division of labour; but a division like that in manufactures is impossible, since the smith and the carpenter, &c., find an unchanging market, and at the most there occur, according to the sizes of the villages, two or three of each, instead of one. 1 The law that regulates the division of labour in the community acts with the irresisti- ble authority of a law of Nature, at the same time that each individual artificer, the smith, the carpenter, and so on, con- ducts in his workshop all the operations of his handicraft in the traditional way, but independently, and without recogniz- ing any authority over him. The simplicity of the organisa- tion for production in these self-sufficing communities that constantly reproduce themselves in the same form, and when accidentally destroyed, spring up again on the spot and with the same name 2 this simplicity supplies the key to the secret 1 Lieut.-Col. Mark Wilks: "Historical Sketches of the South of India." Lond., 1810-17, v. I., pp. 118-20. A good description of the various forms of the Indian communities is to be found in George Campbell's "Modern India." Lond., 1852. 2 "Under this simple form . . . the inhabitants of the country have lived from time immemorial. The boundaries of the villages have been but seldom altered; and though the villages themselves have been sometimes injured, and even desolated by war, famine, and disease, the same name, the same limits, the same interests, and even the same families, have continued for ages. The inhabitants give themselves 394 Capitalist Production. of the unchangeableness of Asiatic societies, an unchangeable- ness in such striking contrast with the constant dissolution and refounding of Asiatic States, and the never-ceasing changes of dynasty. The structure of the economical elements of society remains untouched by the storm-clouds of the political sky. The rules of the guilds, as I have said before, by limiting most strictly the number of apprentices and journeymen that a single master could employ, prevented him from becoming a capitalist. Moreover, he could not employ his journeymen in any other handicraft than the one in which he was a master. The guilds zealously repelled every encroachment by the capital of merchants, the only form of free capital with which they came in contact. A merchant could buy every kind of com- modity, but labour as a commodity he could not buy. He existed only on sufferance, as a dealer in the products of the handicrafts. If circumstances called for a further division of labour, the existing guilds split themselves up into varieties, or founded new guilds by the side of the old ones ; all this, how- ever, without concentrating various handicrafts in a single workshop. Hence, the guild organization, however much it may have contributed by separating, isolating, and perfecting the handicrafts, to create the material conditions for the exist- ence of manufacture, excluded division of labour in the work- shop. On the whole, the labourer and his means of production remained closely united, like the snail with its shell, and thus there was wanting the principal basis of manufacture, the sep- aration of the labourer from his means of Droduction, and the conversion of these means into capital. While division of labour in society at large, whether such division be brought about or not by exchange of commodities, is common to economical formations of society the most diverse, division of labour in the workshop, as practised by manufac- ture, is a special creation of the capitalist mode of production alone. no trouble about the breaking up and division of kingdoms; while the village remains entire, they care not to what power it is transferred, or to what sovereign it devolves; its internal economy remains unchanged." (Th. Stamford Raffles, late Lieut. Gov. of Java: "The History of Java." Lond., 1817, Vol. I., p. 285.) Division of Labour and Manufacture. 395 SECTION 5. THE CAPITALISTIC CHARACTER OF MANUFACTURE. An increased number of labourers under the control of one capitalist is the natural starting-point, as well of co-operation generally, as of manufacture in particular. But the division of labour in the manufacture makes this increase in the num- ber of workmen a technical necessity. The minimum number that any given capitalist is bound to employ is here prescribed by the previously established division of labour. On the other hand, the advantages of further division are obtainable only by adding to the number of workmen, and this can be done only by adding multiples of the various detail groups. But an increase in the variable component of the capital employed necessitates an increase in its constant component, too, in the workshops, implements, &c., and, in particular, in the raw material, the call for which grows quicker than the number of workmen. The quantity of it consumed in a given time, by a given amount of labour, increases in the same ratio as does the productive power of that labour in consequence of its division. Hence, it is a law, based on the very nature of manufacture, that the minimum amount of capital, which is bound to be in the hands of each capitalist, must keep increasing; in other words, that the transformation into capital of the social means of production and subsistence must keep extending. 1 In manuf acture, as well as in simple co-operation, the collec- tive working organism is a form of existence of capital. The mechanism that is made up of numerous individual detail labourers belongs to the capitalist. Hence, the productive power resulting from a combination of labourers appears to be the productive power of capital. Manufacture proper not only 1 "It is not sufficient that the capital" (the writer should have said the necessary means of subsistence and of production) "required for the sub-division of handi- crafts should be in readiness in the society: it must also be accumulated in the hands of the employers in sufficiently large quantities to enable them to conduct their operations on a large scale. . . . The more the division increases, the more does the constant employment of a given number of labourers require greater outlay of capital in tools, raw material, &c.," (Storch: Cours d'Econ. Polit. Paris Ed., t. I. pp. 250, 251.) "La concentration des instruments de production et la division du travail sont aussi inseparables 1'une de 1'autre que le sont, dans le regime politique, la con- centration des pouvoirs publics et la division des interets prives." (Karl Marx. 1. c., p. 134.) 396 Capitalist Production. subjects the previously independent workman to the discipline and command of capital, but, in addition, creates a hierarchic gradation of the workmen themselves. While simple co-opera- tion leaves the mode of working by the individual for the most part unchanged, manufacture thoroughly revolutionises it, and seizes labour-power by its very roots. It converts the labourer into a crippled monstrosity, by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts ; just as in the States of La Plata they butcher a whole beast for the sake of his hide or his tallow. Not only is the detail work distributed to the different individuals, but the individual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional operation, 1 and the absurd fable of Menenius Agrippa, which makes man a mere fragment of his own body, becomes realised. 2 If, at first, the workman sells his labour-power to capital, because the material means of producing a commodity fail him, now his very labour-power refuses its services unless it has been sold to capital. Its functions can be exercised only in an environ- ment that exists in .the workshop of the capitalist after the sale. By nature unfitted to make anything independently, the manufacturing labourer developes productive activity as a mere appendage of the capitalist's workshop. 3 As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital. The knowledge, the judgment, and the will, which, though in ever so small a degree, are practised by the independent peasant or handicraftsman, in the same way as the savage makes the whole art of war consist in the exercise of his per- sonal cunning these faculties are now required only for the workshop as a whole. Intelligence in production expands in 1 Dugald Stewart calls manufacturing labourers "living automatons . . . cm- ployed in the details of the work." (1. c., p. 318.) * In corals, each individual is, in fact, the stomach of the whole group; but it sup- plies the group with nourishment, instead of, like the Roman patrician, withdraw- ing it. 3 "L'ouvrier qui porte dans ses bras tout un metier, peut aller partout exercer son Industrie et trouver des moyens de subsister: 1'autre (the manufacturing labourer) n'est qu'un accessoire qui, separ6 de ses confreres, n'a plus ni capacite, ni independ- ance, et qui se trouve force 1 d'accepter la loi qu'on juge a propos de lui imposer." (Storch. 1. c, Petersb. edit, 1815, t. I., p. 204.) Division of Labour and Manufacture. 397 one direction, because it vanishes in many others. What is lost by the detail labourers, is concentrated in the capital that employs them. 1 It is a result of the division of labour in manufactures, that the labourer is brought face to face with the intellectual potencies of the material process of production^ as the property of another, and as a ruling power. This sepa- ration begins in simple co-operation, where the capitalist re- presents to the single workman, the oneness and the will of the associated labour. It is developed in manufacture which cuts down the labourer into a detail labourer. It is com- pleted in modern industry, which makes science a productive force distinct from labour and presses it into the service of capital. 2 In manufacture, in order to make the collective labourer, and through him capital, rich in social productive power, each labourer must be made poor in individual productive powers. "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. Manufactures, accordingly, prosper most where the mind is least consulted, and where the workshop may ... be considered as an engine, the parts of which are men." 3 As a matter of fact, some few manufacturers in the middle of the 18th century preferred, for certain operations that were trade secrets, to employ half- idiotic persons. 4 "The understandings of the greater part of men," says Adam Smith, "are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations . . . has no occasion to exert his understanding. .... He generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is 1 A. Ferguson, 1. c., p. 281 : "The former may have gained what the other has lost." 2 "The man of knowledge and the productive labourer come to be widely divided fiom each other, and knowledge, instead of remaining the handmaid of labour in the hand of the labourer to increase his productive powers . . . has almost every- where arrayed itself against labour . . . systematically deluding and leading them (the labourers) astray in order to render their muscular powers entirely mechanical and obedient." (VV. Thompson: "An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribu- tion of Wealth. London, 1824," p. 274.) * A. Ferguson, 1. c., p. 280. 4 J. D. Tuckett: "A History of the Past and Present State of the Labouring Population." Lond., 1846. 398 Capitalist Production. possible for a human creature to become." After describing the stupidity of the detail labourer he goes on : "The uni- formity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind It corrupts even the activity of his body and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employments than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems in this manner to be acquired at the expense of his in- tellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilised society, this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall." 1 For preventing the complete deterioration of the great mass of the people by division of labour, A. Smith commends education of the people by the State, lout prudently, and in homoeopathic doses. G. Gamier, his French translator and commentator, who, under the first French Empire, quite natu- rally developed into a senator, quite as naturally opposes him on this point. Education of the masses, he urges, violates the first law of the division of labour, and with it "our whole social system would be proscribed." "Like all other divisions of labour," he says, "that between hand labour and head la- bour 2 is more pronounced and decided in proportion as society (he rightly uses this word, for capital, landed property and their State) becomes richer. This division of labour, like every other, is an effect of past, and a cause of future progress .... ought the government then to work in opposition to this division of labour, and to hinder its natural course ? Ought it to expend a part of the public money in the attempt to con- 1 A. Smith: Wealth of Nations, Bk. V., ch. I., art II. Being a pupil of A. Fer- guson who showed the disadvantageous effects of division of labour, Adam Smith was perfectly clear on this point. In the introduction to his work, where he ex pro- fesso praises division of labour, he indicates only in a cursory manner that it is the source of social inequalities. It is not till the 5th Book, on the Revenue of the State, that he reproduces Ferguson. In my "Misere de la Philosophic," I have sufficiently explained the historical connection between Ferguson, A. Smith, Lemontey, and Say, as regards their criticisms of Division of Labour, and have shown, for the first time, that Division of Labour as practised in manufactures, is a specific form of the capitalist mode of production. 2 Ferguson had already said, 1. c. p. 281: "And thinking itself, in this age of separations, may become a peculiar craft." Division of Labour and Manufacture. 399 found and blend together two classes of labour, which are striving after division and separation ?' n Some crippling of body and mind is inseparable even from division of labour in society as a whole. Since, however, man- ufacture carries this social separation of branches of labour much further, and also, by its peculiar division, attacks the in- dividual at the very roots of his life, it is the first to afford the materials for, and to give a start to, industrial pathology. 2 "To subdivide a man is to execute him, if he deserves the. sentence, to assassinate him if he does not. . . . The sub- division of labour is the assassination of a people." 3 Co-operation based on division of labour, in other words, manufacture, commences as a spontaneous formation. So soon as it attains some consistence and extension, it becomes the re- cognised methodical and systematic form of capitalist produc- tion. History shows how the division of labour peculiar to manufacture, strictly so called, acquires the best adapted form at first by experience, as it were behind the backs of the actors,, and then, like the guild handicrafts, strives to hold fast that form when once found, and here and there succeeds in keeping it for centuries. Any alteration. in this form, except in trivial matters, is solely owing to a revolution in the instruments of labour. Modern manufacture wherever it arises I do not here allude to modern industry based on machinery either finds the disjecta membra poetse ready to hand, and only wait- 1 G. Gamier, vol. V. of his translation of A. Smith, pp. 45. 2 Ramazzini, professor of practical medicine at Padua, published in 1713 his work "De morbis artificum," which was translated into French 1781, reprinted in 1841 in the "Encyclopedic des Sciences Medicales. 7ae Dis. Auteurs Classiques." The period of Modern Mechanical Industry has, of course, very much enlarged his cat- alogue of labour's diseases. See "Hygiene physique et morale de 1'ouvrier dans les grandes villes en general et dans la ville de Lyon en particulier. Par le Dr. A. L. Fonterel, Paris, 1858," and "Die Krankheiten, welche verschiednen Standen, Altern und Geschlechtern eigenthumlich sind. 6 Vols. Ulm, 1860," and others. In 1854 the Society of Arts appointed a Commission of Inquiry into industrial pathology. The list of documents collected by this commission is to be seen in the catalogue of the "Twickenham Economic Museum." Very important are the official "Reports on Public Health." See also Eduard Reich, M.D. "Ueber die Entartung des Menschen," Erlangen, 1868. 3 (D. Urquhart: Familiar Words. Lond., 1855, p. 119.) Hegel held very ><>retical views on division of labour. In his Rechtsphilosophie he says: "By well educated men we understand in the first instance, those who can do everything that others do." 4OO Capitalist Production. ing to be collected together, as is the case in the manufacture of clothes in large towns, or it can easily apply the principle of division, simply by exclusively assigning the various opera- tions of a handicraft (such as bookbinding) to particular men. In such cases, a week's experience is enough to determine the proportion between the numbers of the hands necessary for the various functions. 1 By decomposition of handicrafts, by specialisation of the in- struments of labour, by the formation of detail labourers, and by grouping and combining the latter into a single mechanism, division of labour in manufacture creates a qualitative grada- tion, and a quantitative proportion in the social process of production ; it consequently creates a definite organization of the labour of society, and thereby developes at the same time new productive forces in the society. In its specific capitalist form and under the given conditions, it could take no other form than a capitalistic one manufacture is but a particular method of begetting relative surplus-value, or of augmenting at the expense of the labourer the self-expansion of capital usually called social wealth, "Wealth of Nations," &c. It in- creases the social productive power of labour, not only for the benefit of the capitalist instead of for that of the labourer, but it does this by crippling the individual labourers. It creates new conditions for the lordship of capital over labour. If, therefore, on the one hand, it presents itself historically as a progress and as a necessary phase in the economic develop- ment of society, on the other hand it is a refined and civilised method of exploitation. Political economy, which as an independent science, first sprang into being during the period of manufacture, views the social division of labour only from the standpoint of manu- facture, 2 and sees in it only the means of producing more com- modities with a given quantity of labour, and, consequently, 1 The simple belief in the inventive genius exercised a priori by the individual capitalist in division of labour, exists now-a-days only among German professors, of the stamp of Herr Roscher, who, to recompense the capitalist from whose Jovian head division of labour sprang ready formed, dedicates to him "various wages" (diverse Arbeitslohne). The more or less extensive application of division of labour depends on length of purse, not on greatness of genius. 2 The older writers, like Petty and the anonymous author of "Advantages of the Division of Labour and Manufacture. 401 of cheapening commodities and hurrying on the accumulation of capital. In most striking contrast with this accentuation of quantity and exchange-value, is the attitude of the writers of classical antiquity, who hold exclusively by quality and use- value. 1 In consequence of the separation of the social branches of production, commodities are better made, the vari- ous bents and talents of men select a suitable field, 2 and with- out some restraint no important results can be obtained any- where. 3 Hence both product and producer are improved by division of labour. If the growth of the quantity produced is occasionally mentioned, this is only done with reference to the greater abundance of use values. There is not a word alluding to exchange-value or- to the cheapening of commodities. This aspect, from the standpoint of use-value alone, is taken as well by Plato, 4 who treats division of labour as the foundation on East India Trade," bring out the capitalist character of division of labour as applied in manufacture more than A. Smith does. 1 Amongst the moderns may be excepted a few writers of the 18th century, like Beccaria and James Harris, who with regard to division of labour almost entirely follow the ancients. Thus, Beccaria: "Ciascuno prova coll' esperienza, che applicando la mano e 1'ingegno sempre allo stesso genere di opere e di produtte, egli phi facili, piu abbondanti e migliori ne traca risultati, di quello che se ciascuno isolatamente le cose tutte a se necessarie soltanto facesse. . . . Dividendosi in tal maniera per la comune e privati utilita gli uomini in varie classi e condizioni." (Cesare Beccaria: "Elementi di Econ. Pubblica," ed. Custodi, Parte Moderna, t. xi., p. 28.) James Harris, afterwards Earl of Malmesbury, celebrated for the "Diaries" of his embassy at St. Petersburg, says in a note to his "Dialogue Concerning Happiness," Lond., 1741, reprinted afterwards in "Three Treatises, &c., 3 Ed., Lond., 1772:" "The whole argument to prove society natural (i.e., by division of employments) . . is taken from the second book of Plato's Republic." 2 Thus, in the Odyssey xiv., 228, "^AXXos yap r' &\\oiffiv avyp eiriTepirtrat %pyois" and Archilochus in Sextus Empiricus, " "AXXos 4XXy fir' 1 fpytf Kap8lt)v lalverai." 3 "IIoXX' ^irlffraro tpya, cca/cwj S'^irlsraTO ird.vra..'" Every Athenian considered himself superior as a producer of commodities to a Spartan; for the latter in time of war had men enough at his disposal but could not command money, as Thucydides makes Pericles say in the speech inciting the Athenians to the Peloponnesian war: "Sci/uao-f re trotfJ.(>Tepoi ol atirovpyol TWV avffpdnruv % XP^M 00 " 1 iro\efieiv." (Thuc: l.I.c. 41.) Nevertheless, even with regard to material production, afrrapiceta, as opposed to division of labour remained their ideal, " irap' Siv yap rb eC, Trapa TOIJTWV Kal ri> ofo-a/Dm." It should be mentioned here that at the date of the fall of the 30 Tyrants there were still not 5000 Athenians without landed property. * With Plato, division of labour within the community is a development from the multifarious requirements, and the limited capacities of individuals. The main point with him is, that the labourer must adapt himself to the work, not the work to the labourer; which latter is unavoidable, if he carries on several trades at once, thus making one or the other of them subordinate. "Oi5 "yip 0\ti rb irpa.rrbfj.evov rrjv rov irpdrrovros ffxdMjv ireptfj.tven', dXX' dvdyicr) rbv irpdrrovra T trparToiitinf ftra.KO\ov6eii> /arj iv Trapepyov pepei, 'Ai'dyKy. 'E/c di] rovrwv w\eiu re tV.otrra Z 402 Capitalist Production. which the division of society into classes is based, as by Xeno- phon, 1 who with characteristic bourgeois instinct, approaches more nearly to division of labour within the workshop. Plato's Republic, in so far as division of labour is treated in it, as the formative principle of the State, is merely the Athenian ideali- sation of the Egyptian system of castes, Egypt having served as the model of an industrial country to many of his contem- poraries also, amongst others to Isocrates, 2 and it continued to have this importance to the Greeks of the Koman Empire. 3 During the manufacturing period proper, i.e., the period ylyverai ical K &yu>v tcpdrrii" (Rep. 1. 2. Ed. Baiter, Orelli, &c.). So in Thucydides 1. c. c., 42: "Seafaring is an art like any other, and cannot, as circumstances require, be carried on as a subsidiary occupation; nay, other subsidiary occupations cannot be carried on alongside of this one." If the work, says Plato, has to wait for the labourer, the critical point in the process is missed and the article spoiled, fpyov Kaipbv Si6\\vral. The same Platonic idea is found recurring in the protest of the English bleachers against the cause in the Factory Act that provides fixed meal times for all oper- atives. Their business cannot wait the convenience of the workmen, for "in the various operations of singeing, washing, bleaching, mangling, calendering, and dyeing, none of them can be stopped at a given moment without risk of damage . . . . to enforce the same dinner hour for all the work-people might occasion- ally subject valuable goods to the risk of danger by incomplete operations." Le platonisme ou va-t-il se nicher! 1 Xenophon says, it is not only an honour to receive food from the table of the King of Persia, but such food is much more tasty than other food. "And there is nothing wonderful in this, for as the other arts are brought to special perfection in the great towns, so the royal food is prepared in a special way. For in the small towns the same man makes bedsteads, doors, ploughs and tables: often, too, he builds houses into the bargain, and is quite content if he finds custom sufficient for his sustenance. It is altogether impossible for a man who does so many things to do them all well. But in the great towns, where each man can find many buyers, one trade is sufficient to maintain the man who carries it on. Nay, there is often not even need of one complete trade, but one man makes shoes for men, another for women. Here and there one man gets a living by sewing, another by cutting out shoes; one does nothing but cut out clothes, another nothing but sew the pieces together. It follows necessarily then, that he who does the simplest kind of work, undoubted- ly does it better than any one else. So it is with the art of cooking." (Xen. Cyrop. 1. viii., c. 2.) Xenophon here lays stress exclusively upon the excellence to be attained in use-value, although he well knows that the gradations of the di- vision of labour depend on the extent of the market. 1 He (Busiris) divided them all into special castes commanded that the same individuals should always carry on the same trade, for he knew that they who change their occupations become skilled in none; but that those who constantly stick to one occupation bring it to the highest perfection. In truth, we shall also find that in relation to the arts and handicrafts, they have outstripped their rivals more than a master does a bungler; and the contrivances for maintaining the mon- archy and the other institutions, of their State are so admirable that the most celebrated philosophers who treat of this subject praise the constitution of the Egyptian State above all others. (Isocrates, Busiris, c. 8.) 1 Cf. Diodorus Siculus. Division of Labour and Manufacture. 403 during which manufacture is the predominant form taken by capitalist production, many obstacles are opposed to the full development of the peculiar tendencies of manufacture. Al- though manufacture creates, as we have already seen, a simple separation of the labourers into skilled and unskilled, simul- taneously with their hierarchic arrangement in classes, yet the number of the unskilled labourers, owing to the preponderating influence of the skilled, remains very limited. Although it adapts the detail operations to the various degrees of maturity, strength, and development of the living instruments of labour, thus conducing to exploitation of women and children, yet this tendency as a whole is wrecked on the habits and the resistance of the male labourers. Although the splitting up of handi- crafts lowers the cost of forming the workman, and thereby lowers his value, yet for the more difficult detail work, a longer apprenticeship is necessary, and, even where it would be super- fluous, is jealously insisted upon by the workmen. In Eng- land, for instance, we find the laws of apprenticeship, with the seven years' probation, in full force down to the end of the manufacturing period ; and they are not thrown on one side till the advent of Modern Industry. Since handicraft skill is the foundation of manufacture, and since the mechanism of manu- facture as a whole possesses no framework, apart from the la- bourers themselves, capital is constantly compelled to wrestle with the insubordination of the workmen. "By the infirmity of human nature," says friend Ure, "it happens that the more skilful the workman, the more self-willed and intractable he is apt to become, and of course the less fit a component of a me- chanical system in which ... he may do great damage to the whole." 1 Hence throughout the whole manufacturing period there runs the complaint of want of discipline among the work- men. 2 And had we not the testimony of contemporary writers, the simple facts that, during the period between the 16th cen- tury and the epoch of Modern Industry, capital failed to be- come the master of the whole disposable working-time of the 1 Ure, 1. c., p. 20. ! This is more the case in England than in France, and more in France than in Holland. 404 Capitalist Production. manufacturing labourers, that manufactures are short-lived, and change their locality from one country to another with the emigrating or immigrating workmen, these facts would speak volumes. "Order must in one way or another be established," exclaims in 1770 the oft-cited author of the "Essay on Trade and Commerce." "Order," re-echoes Dr. Andrew Ure Go years later, "Order" was wanting in manufacture based on "the scholastic dogma of division of labour," and "Arkwright created order." At the same time manufacture was unable, either to seize upon the production of society to its full extent, or to revolu- tionise that production to its very core. It towered up as an economical work of art, on the broad foundation of the town handicrafts, and of the rural domestic industries. At a given stage in its development, the narrow technical basis on which manufacture rested, came into conflict with requirements of production that were created by manufacture itself. One of its most finished creations was the workshop for {he production of the instruments of labour themselves, including especially the complicated mechanical apparatus then already- employed. A machine-factory, says Ure, "displayed the di- vision of labour in manifold gradations the file, the drill, the lathe, having each its different workman in the order of skill." (p. 21.) This workshop, the product of the division of labour in manufacture, produced in its turn machines. It is they that sweep away the handicraftsman's work as the regulating principle of social production. Thus, on the one hand, the technical reason for the life-long annexation of the workman to a detail function is removed. On the other hand, the fetters that this same principle laid on the dominion of capital, fall away. Machinery and Modern Industry. 405 CHAPTER XV. MACHINERY AND MODERN INDUSTRY. SECTION 1. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MACHINERY. STUART MILL says in his Principles of Political Econ- omy: "It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lighted the day's toil of any human being." 1 That is, however, by no means the aim of the capitalistic ap- plication of machinery. Like every other increase in the productiveness of labour, machinery is intended to cheapen commodities, and, by shortening that portion of the working- day, in which the labourer works for himself, to lengthen the other portion that he gives, without an equivalent, to the capitalist. In short, it is a -means for producing surplus- value. In manufacture, the revolution in the mode of production begins with the labour-power, in modern industry it begins with the instruments of labour. Our first inquiry then is, how the instruments of labour are converted from tools into machines, or what is the difference between a machine and the implements of a handicraft ? We are only concerned here with striking and general characteristics; for epochs in the history of society are no more separated from each other by hard and fast lines of demarcation, than are geological epochs. Mathematicians and mechanicians, and in this they are fol- lowed by a few English economists, call a tool a simple ma- chine, and a machine a complex tool. They see no essential difference between them, and even give the name of machine to the simple mechanical powers, the lever, the inclined plane, the screw, the wedge, &c. 2 As a matter of fact, every machine is a combination of those simple powers, no matter how they 1 Mill should have said, "of any human being not fed by other people's labour," for, without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers. 2 See, for instance, Hutton: "Course of Mathematics." 406 Capitalist Production. may be disguised. From the economical standpoint this ex- planation is worth nothing, because the historical element is wanting. Another explanation of the difference between tool and machine is that in the case of a tool, man is the motive power, while the motive power of a machine is something dif- ferent from man, is, for instance, an animal, water, wind, and so on. 1 According to this, a plough drawn by oxen, which is a contrivance common to the most different epochs, would be a machine, while Claussen's circular loom, which, worked by a single labourer, weaves 96,000 picks per minute, would be a mere tool. Nay, this very loom, though a tool when worked by hand, would, if worked by steam, be a machine. And since the application of animal power is one of man's earliest inven- tions, production by machinery would have preceded produc- tion by handicrafts. When in 1735, John Wyalt brought out his spinning machine, and began the industrial revolution of the 18th century, not a word did he say about an ass driving it instead of a man, and yet this part fell-to the ass. He de- scribed it as a machine "to spin without fingers." 2 1 "From this point of view we may draw a sharp line of distinction between a tool and a machine: spades, hammers, chisels, &c., combinations of levers and of screws, in all of which, no matter how complicated they may be in other respects, man is the motive power, all this falls under the idea of a tool; but the plough, which is drawn by animal power, and windmills, &c., must be classed among machines." (Wilhelm Schulz: "Die Bewegung der Produktion. Zurich, 1843," p. 38.) In many respects a book to be recommended. * Before his time, spinning machines, although very imperfect ones, had already been used, and Italy was probably the country of their first appearance. A critical history of technology would show how little any of the inventions of the 18th cen- tury are the work of a single individual. Hitherto there is no such book. Darwin has interested us in the history of Nature's Technology, i.e., in the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of or- gans that are the material basis of all social organisation, deserve equal attention? And would not such a history be easier to compile since, as Vico says, human history differs from natural history in this, that we have made the former, but not the latter? Technology discloses man's mode of dealing with Nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them. Every history of religion even, that fails to take account of this material basis, is uncritical. It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earth- ly core of the misty creations of religion, than, conversely, it is, to develop from the actual relations of life the corresponding celestialised forms of those relations. The latter method is the only materialistic, and therefore the only scientific one. The weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism that ex- cludes history and its process, are at once evident from the abstract and ideological Machinery and Modern Industry. 407 All fully developed machinery consists of three essentially different parts, the motor mechanism, the transmitting mechan- ism, and finally the tool or working machine. The motor mechanism is that which puts the whole in motion. It either generates its own motive power, like the steam engine, the caloric engine, the electro-magnetic machine, &c., or it receives its impulse from some already existing natural force, like the water-wheel from a head of water, the wind-mill from wind, &c. The transmitting mechanism, composed of fly-wheels, shafting, toothed wheels, pullies, straps, ropes, bands, pinions, and gearing of the most varied kinds, regulates the motion, changes its form where necessary, as for instance, from linear to circular, and divides and distributes it among the working machines. These two first parts of the whole mechanism are there, solely for putting the working machines in motion, by means of which motion the subject of labour is seized upon and modified as desired. The tool or working-machine is that part of the machinery with which the industrial revolution of the 18th century started. And to this day it constantly serves as such a starting point, whenever a handicraft, or a manu- facture, is turned into an industry carried on by machinery. On a closer examination of the working-machine proper, we find in it, as a general rule, though often, no doubt, under very altered forms, the apparatus and tools used by the handicrafts- man or manufacturing workman ; with this difference, that instead of being human implements, they are the implements of a mechanism, or mechanical implements. Either the entire machine is only a more or less altered mechanical edition of the old handicraft tool, as, for instance, the power-loom; 1 or the working parts fitted in the frame of the machine are old acquaintances, as spindles are in a mule, needles in a stocking- loom, saws in a sawing machine, and knives in a chopping machine. The distinction between these tools and the body proper of the machine, exists from their very birth ; for they conceptions of its spokesmen, whenever they venture beyond the bounds of their own speciality. 1 Especially in the original form of the power-loom, we recognise, at the first glance, the ancient loom. In its modern form, the power-loom has undergone es- sential alterations. 408 Capitalist Production. continue for the most part to be produced by handicraft, or by manufacture, and are afterwards fitted into the body of the machine, which is the product of machinery. 1 The machine proper is therefore a mechanism that, after being set in motion, performs with its tools the same operations that were formerly done by the workman with similar tools. Whether the motive power is derived from man, or from some other machine, makes no difference in this respect. From the moment that the tool proper is taken from man, and fitted into a mechanism, a machine takes the place of a mere implement. The difference strikes one at once, even in those cases where man himself continues to be the prime mover. The number of implements that he himself can use simultaneously, is limited by the num- ber of his own natural instruments of production, by the number of his bodily organs. In Germany, they tried at first to make one spinner work two spinning wheels, that is, to work simultaneously with both hands and both feet. This was too difficult. Later, a treddle spinning wheel with two spin- dles was invented, but adepts in spinning, who could spin two threads at once, were almost as scarce as two-headed men. The Jenny, on the other hand, even at its very birth, spun with 12-18 spindles, and the stocking-loom knits with many thousand needles at once. The number of tools that a machine can bring into play simultaneously, is from the very first emancipated from the organic limits that hedge in the tools of a handicraftsman. In many manual implements the distinction between man as mere motive power, and man as the workman or operator properly so-called, is brought into striking contrast. For in- stance, the foot is merely the prime mover of the spinning wheel, while the hand, working with the spindle, and drawing and twisting, performs the real operation of spinning. It is this last part of the handicraftsman's implement that is first *It is only during the Inst 15 yerrs C-.c., since about 1850), that a constantly increasing portion of these machine tools have been made in England by machinery, and that not by the same manurncmrc- s . ':o make the machines. Instances of machines for the fabrica:ion of these m-c!u,:ci1 tools are, the automatic bobbin- making engine, the card-setting engine, shuti.^-iauking machines, and machines for forging mule and throot.e s..mUles. Machinery and Modern Industry. 409 seized upon by the industrial revolution, leaving to the work- man, in addition to his new labour of watching the machine with his eyes and correcting its mistakes with his hands, the merely mechanical part of being the moving power. On the other hand, implements, in regard to which man has always acted as a simple motive power, as, for instance, by turning the crank of a mill, 1 by pumping, by moving up and down the arm of a bellows, by pounding with a mortar, &c., such implements soon call for the application of animals, water, 2 and wind as motive powers. Here and there, long before .the period of manufacture, and also, to some extent, during that period, these implements pass over into machines, but without creat- ing any revolution in the mode of production. It becomes evident, in the period of Modern Industry, that these imple- ments, even under their form of manual tools, are already machines. For instance, the pumps with which the Dutch, in 1836-7, emptied the Lake of Harlem, were constructed on the principle of ordinary pumps; the only difference being, that their pistons were driven by cyclopean steam-engines, instead of by men. The common and very imperfect bellows of the blacksmith is, in England, occasionally converted into a blow- ing-engine, by connecting its arm with a steam-engine. The steam-engine itself, such as it was at its invention, during the manufacturing period at the close of the 17th century, and such as it continued to be down to 1780, 3 did not give rise to any industrial revolution. It was, on the contrary, the inven- 1 Moses says: "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads the corn." The Christian philanthropists of Germany, on the contrary, fastened a wooden board round the necks of the serfs, whom they used as a motive power for grinding, in order to prevent them from putting flour into their mouths with their hands. 2 It was partly the want of streams with a good fall on them, and partly their battles with superabundance of water in other respects, that compelled the Dutch to resort to wind as a motive power. The windmill itself they got from Germany, where its invention was the origin of a pretty squabble between the nobles, the priests, and the emperor, as to which of those three the wind "belonged." The air makes bondage, was the cry in Germany, at the same time that the wind was making Holland free. What it reduced to bondage in this case, was not the Dutchman, but the land for the Dutchman. In 1836, 12,000 windmills of 6000 horse-power were still employed in Holland, to prevent two-thirds of the land from being reconverted i) morasses. a 1 1 was, indeed, very much improved by Watt's first so-called single acting en- gine; but, in this form, it continued to be a mere machine for raising water, and i he liquor from salt mines. 4io Capitalist Production. tion of machines that made a revolution in the form of steam- engines necessary. As soon as man, instead of working with an implement on the subject of his labour, becomes merely the motive power of an implement-machine, it is a mere acci- dent that motive power takes the disguise of human muscle; and it may equally well take the form of wind, water or steam. Of course, this does not prevent such a change of form from producing great technical alterations in the mechanism that was originally constructed to be driven by man alone. Now- adays, all machines that have their way to make, such as sew- ing machines, bread-making machines, &c., are, unless from their very nature their use on a small scale is excluded, con- structed to be driven both by human and by purely mechan- ical motive power. The machine, which is the starting point of the industrial revolution, supersedes the workman, who handles a single tool, by a mechanism operating with a number of similar tools, and set in motion by a single motive power, whatever the form of that power may be. 1 Here we have the machine, but only as an elementary factor of production by machinery. Increase in the size of the machine, and in the number of its working tools, calls for a more massive mechanism to drive it ; and this mechanism requires, in order to overcome its resist- ance, a mightier moving power than that of man, apart from the fact that man is a very imperfect instrument for producing uniform continued motion. But assuming that he is acting simply as a motor, that a machine has taken the place of his tool, it is evident that he can be replaced by natural forces. Of all the great motors handed down from the manufacturing period, horse-power is the worst, partly because a horse has a head of his own, partly because he is costly, and the extent to which he is applicable in factories is very restricted. 2 Never- 1 "The union of all these simple instruments, set in motion by a single motor, constitutes a machine." (Babbage, 1. c.) * In January, 1861, John C. Morton read before the Society of Arts a paper on "The forces employed in agriculture." He there states: "Every improvement that furthers the uniformity of the land makes the steam-engine more and more applica- ble to the production of pure mechanical force. . . . Horse-power is requisite wherever crooked fences and other obstructions prevent uniform action. These obstructions are vanishing day by day. For operations that demand more exercise Machinery and Modern Industry. 411 theless the horse was extensively used during the infancy of Modern Industry. This is proved, as well by the complaints of contemporary agriculturists, as by the term "horse-power," which has survived to this day as an expression for mechanical force. Wind was too inconstant and uncontrollable, and besides, in England, the birthplace of Modern Industry, the use of water- power preponderated even during the manufacturing period. In the 17th century attempts had already been made to turn two pairs of millstones with a single water-wheel. But the increased size of the gearing was too much for the water- power, which had now become insufficient, and this was one of the circumstances that led to a more accurate investigation of the laws of friction. In the same way the irregularity caused by the motive power in mills that were put in motion by pushing and pulling a lever, led to the theory, and the application, of the fly-wheel, which afterwards plays so im- portant a part in Modern Industry. 1 In this way, during the manufacturing period, were developed the first scientific and technical elements of Modern Mechanical Industry. Ark- wright's throstle-spinning mill was from the very first turned by water. But for all that, the use of water, as the predomi- nant motive power, was beset with difficulties. It could not be increased at will, it failed at certain seasons of the year, and, above all, it was essentially local. 2 Not till the invention of Watt's second and so called double-acting steam-engine, was a of will than actual force, the only power applicable is that controlled every instant by the human mind in other words, man-power." Mr. Morton then reduces steam- power, horse-power, and man-power, to the unit in general use for steam-engines, namely, the force required to raise 33,000 Ibs. one foot in one minute, and reckons the cost of one horse-power from a steam-engine to be 3d., and from a horse to be 5}^d. per hour. Further, if a horse must fully maintain its health, it can work no more than 8 hours a day. Three at the least out of every seven horses used on tillage land during the year can be dispensed with, by using steam-power, at an expense not greater than that which, the horses dispensed with, would cost dur- ing the 3 or 4 months in which alone they can be used effectively. Lastly, steam- power, in those agricultural operations in which it can be employed, improves, in comparison with horse-power, the quality of the work. To do the work of a steam- engine would require 66 men, at a total cost of 15s. an hour, and to do the work of a horse, 32 men, at a total cost of 8s. an hour. 1 Faulhcbr, 1625; De Cous, 1688. 2 The modern turbine frees the industrial exploitation of water-power from many of its former fetters. 412 Capitalist Production. prime mover found, that begot its own force by the consump- tion of coal and. water, whose power was entirely under man's control, that was mobile and a means of locomotion, that was urban and not, like the water-wheel, rural, that permitted pro- duction to be concentrated in towns instead of, like the water- wheels, being scattered up and down the country, 1 that was of universal technical application, and, relatively speaking, little affected in its choice of residence by local circumstances. The greatness of Watt's genius showed itself, in the specification of the patent that he took out in April, 1784. In that specifica- tion his steam-engine is described, not as an invention for a specific purpose, but as an agent universally applicable in Mechanical Industry. In it he points out applications, many of which, as for instance, the steam-hammer, were not intro- duced till half a century later. Nevertheless he doubted the use of steam-engines in navigation. His successors, Boulton and Watt, sent to the exhibition of 1851 steam-engines of colos- sal size for ocean steamers. As soon as tools had been converted from being manual implements of man into implements of a mechanical apparatus, of a machine, the motive mechanism also acquired an indepen- dent form, entirely emancipated from the restraints of human strength. Thereupon the individual machine, that we have hitherto been considering, sinks into a mere factor in produc- tion by machinery. One motive mechanism was now able to drive many machines at once. The motive mechanism grows with the number of the machines that are turned simultane- ously, and the transmitting mechanism becomes a wide-spread- ing apparatus. We now proceed to distinguish the co-operation of a number 1 "In the early days of textile manufactures, the locality of the factory depended upon the existence of a stream having a sufficient fall to turn a water-wheel; and, although the establishment of the water mills was the commencement of the break- ing up of the domestic system of manufacture, yet the mills necessarily situated upon streams, and frequently at considerable distances the one from the other, form- ed part of a rural, rather than an urban system; and it was not until the introduc- tion of the steam-power as a substitute for the stream that factories were congre- gated in towns, and localities where the coal and water required for the production of steam were found in sufficient quantities. The steam-engine is the parent of manufacturing towns." (A. Redgrave in "Reports of the Insp. of Fact. 30th April, 1866," p. 36.) Machinery and Modern Industry. 413 of machines of one kind from a complex system of machinery. In the one case, the product is entirely made by a single machine, which performs all the various operations previously done by one handicraftsman with his tool ; as, for instance, by a weaver with his loom ; or by several handicraftsmen success- ively, either separately or as members of a system of Manu- facture. 1 For example, in the manufacture of envelopes, one man folded the paper with the folder, another laid on the gum, a third turned the flap over, on which the device is impressed, a fourth embossed the device, and so on ; and for each of these operations the envelope had to change hands. One single envelope machine now performs all these operations at once, and makes more than 3000 envelopes in an hour. In the Lon- don exhibition of 1862, there was an American machine for making paper cornets. It cut the paper, pasted, folded, and finished 300 in a minute. Here, the whole process, which, when carried on as Manufacture, was split up into, and carried out by, a series of operations, is completed by a single machine, working a combination of various tools. Now, whether such a machine be merely a reproduction of a complicated manual implement, or a combination of various simple implements specialised by Manufacture, in either case, in the factory, i.e., in the workshop in which machinery alone is used, we meet again with simple co-operation; and, leaving the workman out of consideration for the moment, this co-operation presents itself to us, in the first instance, as the conglomeration in one place of similar and simultaneously acting machines. Thus, a weaving factory is constituted of a number of power-looms, working side by side, and a sewing factory of a number of sewing machines all in the same building. But there is here a technical oneness in the whole system, owing to all the ma- 1 From the standpoint of division of labour in Manufacture, weaving was not simple, but on the contrary, complicated manual labour; and consequently the power-loom is a machine that does very complicated work. It is altogether errone- ous to suppose that modern machinery originally appropriated these operations alone, which division of labour had simplified. Spinning and weaving were, during the manufacturing period, split up into new species, and the implements were modified and improved; but the labour itself was in no way divided, and it retained its handi- craft character. It is not the labour, but the instrument of labour, that serves as the starting-point of the machine. 414 Capitalist Production. chines receiving their impulse simultaneously, and in an equal degree, from the pulsations of the common prime mover, by the intermediary of the transmitting mechanism ; and this mechanism, to a certain extent, is also common to them all, since only particular ramifications of it branch off to each machine. Just as a number of tools, then, form the organs of a machine, so a number of machines of one kind constitute the organs of the motive mechanism. A real machinery system, however, does not take the place of these independent machines, until the subject of labour goes through a connected series of detail processes, that are carried out by a chain of machines of various kinds, the one supple- menting the other. Here we have again the co-operation by division of labour that characterises Manufacture; only now, it is a combination of detail machines. The special tools of the various detail workmen, such as those of the beaters, comb- ers, spinners, &c., in the woollen manufacture, are now trans- formed into the tools of specialised machines, each machine constituting a special organ, with a special function, in the system. In those branches of industry in which the machinery system is first introduced, Manufacture itself furnishes, in a general way, the natural basis for the division, and consequent organisation, of the process of production. 1 Nevertheless an essential difference at once manifests itself. In Manufacture it is the workmen who, with their manual implements, must, 1 Before the epoch of Mechanical Industry, the wool manufacture was the pre- dominating manufacture in England. Hence it was in this industry that, in the first half of the 18th century, the most experiments were made. Cotton, which required less careful preparation for its treatment by machinery, derived the benefit of the experience gained on wool, just as afterwards the manipulation of wool by machin- ery was developed on the lines of cotton-spinning and weaving by machinery. It was only during the 10 years immediately preceding 1866, that isolated details of the wool manufacture, such as wool-combing, were incorporated in the factory system. "The application of power to the process of combing wool . . . . ' extensively in operation since the introduction of the combing machine, especially Lister's . . . undoubtedly had the effect of throwing a very large number of men out of work. Wool was formerly combed by hand, most frequently in the cottage of the comber. It is now very generally combed in the factory, and hand- labour is superseded, except in some particular kinds of work, in which hand-combed wool is still preferred. Many of the hand-combers found employment in the fac- tories, but the produce of the hand-combers bears so small a proportion to that of the machine, that the employment of a very large number of combers has passed away." (Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 31st Oct., 1856, p. 16.) Machinery and Modern Industry. 415 either singly or in groups, carry 011 each particular detail proc- ess. If, on the one hand, the workman becomes adapted to the process, on the other, the process was previously made suitable to the workman. This subjective principle of the division of labour no longer exists in production by machinery. Here, the process as a whole is examined objectively, in itself, that is to say, without regard to the question of its execution by hu- man hands, it is analysed into its constituent phases ; and the problem, how to execute each detail process, and bind them all into a whole, is solved by the aid of machines, chemistry, &C. 1 But, of course, in this case also, theory must be perfected by accumulated experience on a large scale. Each detail machine supplies raw material to the machine next in order ; and since they are all working at the same time, the product is always going through the various stages of its fabrication, and is also constantly in a state of transition, from one phase to another. Just as in Manufacture, the direct co-operation of the detail labourers establishes a numerical proportion between the spe- cial groups, so in an organised system of machinery, where one detail machine is constantly kept employed by another, a fixed relation is established between their numbers, their size, and their speed. The collective machine, now an organised system of various kinds of single machines, and of groups of single machines, becomes more and more perfect, the more the process as a whole becomes a continuous one, i.e., the less the raw material is interrupted in its passage from its first phase to its last ; in other words, the more its passage from one phase to another is effected, not by the hand of man, but by the ma- chinery itself. In Manufacture the isolation of each detail process is a condition imposed by the nature of division of labour, but in the fully developed factory the continuity of those processes is, on the contrary, imperative. A system of machinery, whether it reposes on the mere co- operation of similar machines, as in weaving, or on a combina- tion of different machines, as in spinning, constitutes in itself 1 "The principle of the factory system, then, is to substitute . . . the parti- tion of a process into its essential constituents, for the division or graduation of labour among artisans." (Andrew Ure: "The Philosophy of Manufactures." Lond., 1835, p. 20.) 416 Capitalist Production. a huge automaton, whenever it is driven by a self-acting prime mover. But although the factory as a whole be driven by its steam-engine, yet either some of the individual machines may require the aid of the workman for some of their movements (such aid was necessary for the running -in of the mule car- riage, before the invention of the self-acting mule, and is still necessary in fine-spinning mills) ; or, to enable a machine to do its work, certain parts of it may require to be handled by the workman like a manual tool; this was the case in machine- makers' workshops, before the conversion of the slide rest into a self-actor. As soon as a machine executes, without man's help, all the movements requisite to elaborate the raw material, needing only attendance from him, we have an automatic sys- tem of machinery, and one that is susceptible of constant im- provement in its details. Such improvements as the apparatus that stops a drawing frame, whenever a sliver breaks, and the self-acting stop, that stops the power-loom so soon as the shuttle bobbin is emptied of weft, are quite modern inventions. As an example, both of continuity of production, and of the carry- ing out of the automatic principle, we may take a modern paper mill. In the paper industry generally, we may advan- tageously study in detail not only the distinctions between modes of production based on different means of production, but also the connexion of the social conditions of production with those modes : for the old German paper-making furnishes us with a sample of handicraft production ; that of Holland in the 17th and of France in the 18th century with a sample of manufacturing in the strict sense ; and that of modern Eng- land with a sample of automatic fabrication of this article. Besides these, there still exist, in India and 'China, two dis- tinct antique Asiatic forms of the same industry. An organised system of machines, to which motion is com- municated by the transmitting mechanism from a central automaton, is the most developed form of production by ma- chinery. Here we have, in the place of the isolated machine, a mechanical monster whose body fills whole factories, and whose demon power, at first veiled under the slow and meas- Machinery and Modern Industry. 417 ured motions of his giant limbs, at length, breaks out into the fast and furious whirl of his countless working organs. There were mules and steam-engines before there were any labourers, whose exclusive occupation it was to make mules and steam-engines ; just as men wore clothes before there were such people as tailors. The inventions of Vaucanson, Ark- wright, Watt, and others, were, however, practicable, only because those inventors found, ready to hand, a considerable number of skilled mechanical workmen, placed at their dis- posal by the manufacturing period. Some of these workmen were independent handicraftmen of various trades, others were grouped together in manufactures, in which, as before-men- tioned, division of labour was strictly carried out. As inven- tions increased in number, and the demand for the newly discovered machines grew larger, the machine-making industry split up, more and more, into numerous independent branches, and division of labour in these manufactures was more and more developed. Here, then, we see in Manufacture the imme- diate technical foundation of Modern Industry. Manufacture produced the machinery, by means of which Modern Industry abolished the handicraft and manufacturing systems in those spheres of production that it first seized upon. The factory system was therefore raised, in the natural course of things, on an inadequate foundation. When the system attained to a certain degree of development, it had to root up this ready- made foundation, which in the meantime had been elaborated on the old lines, and to build up for itself a basis that should correspond to its methods of production. Just as the indi- vidual machine retains a dwarfish character, so long as it is worked by the power of man alone, and just as no system of machinery could be properly developed before the steam engine took the place of the earlier motive powers, animals, wind, and even water ; so, too, Modern Industry was crippled in its com- plete development, so long as its characteristic instrument of production, the machine, owed its existence to personal strength and personal skill, and depended on the muscular de- velopment, the keenness of sight, and the cunning of hand, with which the detail workmen in manufactures, and the 4i 8 Capitalist Production. manual labourers in handicrafts, wielded their dwarfish imple- ments. Thus, apart from the dearness of the machines made in this way, a circumstance that is ever present to the mind of the capitalist, the expansion of industries carried on by means of machinery, and the invasion by machinery of fresh branches of production, were dependent on the growth of a class of work- men, who, owing to the almost artistic nature of their employ- ment, could increase their numbers only gradually, and not by leaps and bounds. But besides this, at a certain stage of its development, Modern Industry became technologically incom- patible with the basis furnished for it by handicraft and Manu- facture. The increasing size of the prime movers, of the transmitting mechanism, and of the machines proper, the greater complication, multiformity and regularity of the details of these machines, as they more and more departed from the model of those originally made by manual labour, and acquired a form, untrammelled except by the conditions under which they worked, 1 the perfecting of the automatic system, and the use, every day more avoidable, of a more refractory ma- terial, such as iron instead of wood the solution of all these problems, which sprang up by the force of circumstances, everywhere met with a stumbling-block in the personal restric- tions which even the collective labourer of Manufacture could not break through, except to a limited extent. Such machines as the modern hydraulic press, the modern powerloom, and the modern carding engine, could never have been furnished by Manufacture. A radical change in the mode of production in one sphere of industry involves a similar change in other spheres. This 1 The powerloom was at first made chiefly of wood; in its improved modern form it is made of iron. To what an extent the old forms of the instruments of pro- duction influenced their new forms at first starting, is shown by, amongst other things, the most superficial comparison of the present powerloom with the old one, of the modern blowing apparatus of a blast-furnace with the first inefficient me- chanical reproduction of the ordinary bellows, and perhaps more strikingly than in any other way, by the attempts before the invention of the present locomotive, to construct a locomotive that actually had two feet, which after the fashion of a horse, it raised alternately from the ground. It is only after considerable develop- ment of the science of mechanics, and accumulated practical experience, that the form of a machine becomes settled entirely in accordance with mechanical prin- ciples, and emancipated from the traditional form of the tool that gave rise to it. Machinery and Modern Industry. 419 happens at first in such branches of industry as are connected together by being separate phases of a process, and yet are isolated by the social division of labour, in such a way, that each of them produces an independent commodity. Thus spinning by machinery made weaving by machinery a neces- sity, and both together made the mechanical and chemical revo- lution that took place in bleaching, printing, and dyeing, im- perative. So too, on the other hand, the revolution in cotton- spinning called forth the invention of the gin, for separating the seeds from the cotton fibre ; it was only by means of this invention, that the production of cotton became possible on the enormous scale at present required. 1 But more especially, the revolution in the modes of production of industry and agricul- ture made necessary a revolution in the general conditions of the social process of production, i.e., in the means of communi- cation and of transport. In a society whose pivot, to use an expression of Fourier, was agriculture on a small scale, with its subsidiary domestic industries, and the urban handicrafts, the means of communication and transport were so utterly inade- quate to the productive requirements of the manufacturing period, with its extended division of social labour, its concen- tration of the instruments of labour, and of the workmen, and its colonial markets, that they became in fact revolutionised. In the same way the means of communication and transport handed down from the manufacturing period soon became un- bearable trammels on Modern Industry, with its feverish haste of production, its enormous extent, its constant flinging of capital and labour from one sphere of production into another, and its newly-created connexions with the markets of the whole world. Hence, apart from the radical changes intro- duced in the construction of sailing vessels, the means of communication and transport became gradually adapted to the modes of production of mechanical industry, by the creation of a system of river steamers, railways, ocean steamers, and 1 Eli Whitney's cotton gin had until very recent times undergone less essential changes than any other machine of the 18th century. It is only during the last decade (i.e., since 1856) that another American, Mr. Emery, of Albany, New York, has rendered Whitney's gin antiquated by an improvement as simple as it is effective. 420 Capitalist Production. telegraphs. But the huge masses of iron that had now to be forged, to be welded, to be cut, to be bored, and to be shaped, demanded, on their part, cyclopean machines, for the construc- tion of which the methods of the manufacturing period were utterly inadequate. Modern Industry had therefore itself to take in hand the machine, its characteristic instrument of production, and to construct machines by machines. It was not till it did this, that it built up for itself a fitting technical foundation, and stood on its own feet. Machinery, simultaneously with the increasing use of it, in the first decades of this century, appro- priated, by degrees, the fabrication of machines proper. But it was only during the decade preceding 1866, that the con- struction of railways and ocean steamers on a stupendous scale called into existence the cyclopean machines now employed in the construction of prime movers. The most essential condition to the production of machines by machines was a prime mover capable of exerting any amount of force, and yet under perfect control. Such a con- dition was already supplied by the steam-engine. But at the same time it was necessary to produce the geometrically accu- rate straight lines, planes, circles, cylinders, cones, and spheres, required in the detail parts of the machines. This problem Henry Maudsley solved in the first decade of this century by the invention of the slide rest, a tool that was soon made automatic, and in a modified form was applied to other con- structive machines besides the lathe, for which it was originally intended. This mechanical appliance replaces, not some par- ticular tool, but the hand itself, which produces a given form by holding and guiding the cutting tool along the iron or other material operated upon. Thus it became possible to produce the forms of the individual parts of machinery "with a degree of ease, accuracy, and speed, that no accumulated experience of the hand of the most skilled workman could give." 1 1 "The Industry of Nations, Lond., 1855," Part II., p. 239. This work also re- marks: "Simple and outwardly unimportant as this appendage to lathes may appear, it is not, we believe, averring too much to state, that its influence in improving and extending the use of machinery has been as great as that produced by Watt's im- provements of the steam-engine itself. Its introduction went at once to perfect all machinery, to cheapen it, and to stimulate invention and improvement." Machinery and Modern Industry. 421 If we now fix our attention on that portion of the machinery employed in the construction of machines, which constitutes the operating tool, we find the manual implements reappear- ing, but on a cyclopean scale. The operating part of the boring machine is an immense drill driven by a steam-engine; without this machine, on the other hand, the cylinders c.f large steam-engines and of hydaulic presses could not be made. The mechanical lathe is only a cyclopean reproduction of the ordinary foot-lathe ; the planing machine, an iron carpenter, that works on iron with the same tools that the human car- penter employs on wood ; the instrument that, on the London wharves, cuts, the veneers, is a gigantic razor ; the tool of the shearing machine, which shears iron as easily as a tailor's scissors cut cloth, is a monster pair of scissors; and the steam hammer works with an ordinary hammer head, but of such a weight that not Thor himself could wield it. 1 These steam hammers are an invention of Nasmyth, and there is one that weighs over 6 tons and strikes with a vertical fall of 7 feet, on an anvil weighing 36 tons. It is mere child's play for it to crush a block of granite into powder, yet it is no less capable of driving, with a succession of light taps, a nail into a piece of soft wood. 2 The implements of labour, in the form of machinery, neces- sitate the substitution of natural forces for human force, and the conscious application of science, instead of rule of thumb. In Manufacture, the organisation of the social labour-process is purely subjective ; it is a combination of detail labourers ; in its machinery system, Modern Industry has a productive or- ganism that is purely objective, in which the labourer becomes a mere appendage to an already existing material condition of production. In simple co-operation, and even in that founded on division of labour, the suppression of the isolated, by the collective, workman still appears to be more or less accidental. Machinery, with a few exceptions to be mentioned later, oper- 1 One of these machines, used for forging paddle-wheel shafts in London, is called "Thor." It forges a shaft of 16}^ tons with as much ease as a blacksmith forges a horse-shoe. 2 Wood working machines that are also capable of being employed on a small scale are mostly American inventions. 422 Capitalist Production. ates only by means of associated labour, or labour in common. Hence, the co-operative character of the labour-process is, in the latter case, a technical necessity dictated by the instrument of labour itself. SECTION 2. THE VALUE TRANSFERRED BY MACHINERY TO THE PRODUCT. We saw that the productive forces resulting from co-opera- tion and division of labour cost capital nothing. They are natural forces of social labour. So also physical forces, like steam, water, &c., when appropriated to productive processes, cost nothing. But just as a man requires lungs to breathe with, so he requires something that is work of man's hand, in order to consume physical forces productively. A water-wheel is necessary to exploit the force of water, and a steam engine to exploit the elasticity of steam. Once discovered, the law of the deviation of the magnetic needle in the field of an electric current, or the law of magnetisation of iron, around which an electric current circulates, cost never a penny. 1 But the exploitation of these laws for the purposes of telegraphy, &c., necessitates a costly and expensive apparatus. The tool, as we have seen, is not exterminated by the machine. From being a dwarf implement of the human organism, it expands and multiplies into the implement of mechanism created by man. Capital now sets the labourer to work, not with a manual tool, but with a machine which itself handles the tools. Although, therefore, it is clear at the first glance that, by incorporating both stupendous physical forces, and the natural sciences, with the process of production, Modern Industry raises the produc- tiveness of labour to an extraordinary degree, it is by no means equally clear, that this increased productive force is not, on the other hand, purchased by an increased expenditure of 1 Science, generally speaking, costs the capitalist nothing, a fa^t that by no means hinders him from exploiting it. The science of others is as much annexed by capital as the labour of others. Capitalistic appropriation and personal appropriation, whether of science or of material wealth, are, however, totally different things. Dr. Tre himself deplores the gross ignorance of mechanical science existing among his c'.ear machinery-exploiting manufacturers, and Liebig can a tale unfold about the astounding ignorance of chemistry displayed by English chemical manufacturers. Machinery and Modern Industry. 423 labour. Machinery, like every other component of constant capital, creates no new value, but yields up its own value to the product that it serves to beget. In so far as the machine has value, and, in consequence, parts with value to the product, it forms an element in the value of that product. Instead of being cheapened, the product is made dearer in proportion to the value of the machine. And it is clear as noon-day, that machines and systems of machinery, the characteristic instru- ments of labour of Modern Industry, are incomparably more loaded with value than the implements used in handicrafts and manufactures. In the first place, it must be observed that the machinery, while always entering as a whole into the labour-process, enters into the value-begetting process only by bits. It never adds more value than it loses, on an average, by wear and tear. Hence there is a great difference between the value of a ma- chine, and the value transferred in a given time by that machine to the product, The longer the life of the machine in the labour-process, the greater is that difference. It is true, no doubt, as we have already seen, that every instrument of labour enters as a whole into the labour-process, and only piece- meal, proportionally to its average daily loss by wear and- tear, into the value-begetting process. But this difference between the instrument as a whole and its daily wear and tear, is much greater in a machine than in a tool, because the machine, being made from more durable material, has a longer life ; because its employment, being regulated by strictly scientific laws, allows of greater economy in the wear and tear of its parts, and in the materials it consumes ; and lastly, because its field of produc- tion is incomparably larger than that of a tool. After making allowance, both in the case of the machine and of the tool, for their average daily cost, that is for the value they transmit to the product by their average daily wear and tear, and for their consumption of auxiliary substances, such as oil, coal, and so on, they each do their work gratuitously, just like the forces furnished by nature without the help of man. The greater the productive power of the machinery compared with that of the tool, the greater is the extent of its gratuitous service com- 424 Capitalist Production. pared with that of the tool. In Modern Industry man suc- ceeded for the first time in making the product of his past labour work on a large scale gratuitously, like the forces of nature. 1 In treating of Co-operation and Manufacture, it was shown that certain general factors of production, such as buildings, are, in comparison with the scattered means of production of the isolated workman, economised by being consumed in com- mon, and that they therefore make the product cheaper. In a system of machinery, not only is the framework of the machine consumed in common by its numerous operating implements, but the prime mover, together with a part of the transmitting mechanism, is consumed in common by the numerous operative machines. Given the difference between the value of the machinery, and the value transferred by it in a day to the product, the extent to which this latter value makes the product dearer, depends in the first instance, upon the size of the product; so to say, upon its area. Mr. Baynes, of Blackburn, in a lecture published in 1858, estimates that "each real mechanical horse- power 2 will drive 450 self-acting mule spindles, with pre- 1 Ricardo lays such stress on this effect of machinery (of which, in other connex- ions, he takes no more notice than he does of the general distinction between the labour-process and the process of creating surplus-value), that he occasionally loses sight of the value given up by machines to the product, and puts machines on the same footing as natural forces. Thus "Adam Smith nowhere undervalues the serv- ices which the natural agents and machinery perform for us, but he very justly dis- tinguishes the nature of the value which they add to commodities . ' . . as they perform their work gratuitously, the assistance which they afford us, adds nothing to value in exchange." (Ric. 1. c., p. 336, 337.) This observation of Ricardo is of course correct in so far as it is directed against J. B. Say, who imagines that machines render the "service" of creating value which forms a part of "profits." 1 A horse-power is equal to a force of 33,000 foot-pounds per minute, i.e., to a force that raises 33,000 pounds one foot in a minute, or one pound 33,000 feet. This is the horse-power meant in the text. In ordinary language, and also here and there in quotations in this work, a distinction is drawn between the "nominal" and the "commercial" or "indicated" horse-power of the same engine. The old or nominal horse-power is calculated exclusively from the length of piston-stroke, and the diameter of the cylinder, and leaves pressure of steam and piston speed out of consideration. It expresses practically this: This engine would be one of 50 horse-power, if it were driven with the same low pressure of steam, and the same slow piston speed, as in the days of Boulton and Watt. But the two latter factors have increased enormously since those days. In order to measure the mechanical force exerted to-day by an engine, an indicator has been invented which shows the pressure of the steam in the cylinder. The piston speed is easily ascertained Thus Machinery and Modern Industry. 425 paration, or 200 throstle spindles, or 15 looms for 40 inch cloth with the appliances for warping, sizing, &c." In the first case, it is the day's produce of 450 mule spindles, in the second, of 200 throstle spindles, in the third, of 15 power- looms, over which the daily cost of one horse-power, and the wear and tear of the machinery set in motion by that power, are spread ; so that only a very minute value is transferred by such wear and tear to a pound of yarn or a yard of cloth. The same is the case with the steam-hammer mentioned above. Since its daily wear and tear, its coal-consumption, &c., are spread over the stupendous masses of iron hammered by it in a day, only a small value is added to a hundredweight of iron ; but that value would be very great, if the cyclopean instrument were employed in driving in nails. Given a machine's capacity for work, that is, the number of its operating tools, or, where it is a question of force, their mass, the amount of its product will depend on the velocity of its working parts, on the speed, for instance, of the spindles, or on the number of blows given by the hammer in a minute. Many of these colossal hammers strike seventy times in a minute, and Ryder's patent machine for forging spindles with small hammers gives as many as TOO strokes per minute. Given the rate at which machinery transfers its value to the product, the amount of value so transferred depends on the total value of the machinery. 1 The less labour it contains, the less value it imparts to the product. The less value it gives up, so much the more productive it is, and so much the more the "indicated" or "commercial" horse-power of an engine is expressed by a mathe- matical formula, involving diameter of cylinder, length of stroke, piston speed, and steam pressure, simultaneously, and showing what multiple of 33,000 pounds is really raised by the engine in a minute. Hence, one "nominal" horse-power may exert three, four, or even five "indicated" or "real" horse-powers. This observa- tion is made for the purpose of explaining various citations in the subsequent pages. (The editor.) 1 The reader who is imbued with capitalist notions will naturally miss here the "interest" that the machine, in proportion to its capital value, adds to the product. It is, however, easily seen that since a machine no more creates new value than any other part of constant capital, it cannot add any value under the name of "interest." It is also evident that here, where we are treating of the production of surplus value, we cannot assume a priori the existence of any part of that value under the name of interest. The capitalist mode of calculating, which appears, prima facie, absurd, and repugnant to the laws of the creation of value, will be explained in the third book of this work. 426 Capitalist Production. its services approximate to those of natural forces. But the production of machinery by machinery lessens its value rela- tively to its extension and efficacy. An analysis and comparison of the prices of commodities produced by handicrafts or manufacturers, and of the prices of' the same commodities produced by machinery, shows generally that, in the product of machinery, the value due to the instru- ments of labour, increases relatively, but decreases absolutely. In other words, its absolute amount decreases, but its amount, relatively to the total value of the product, of a pound of yarn, for instance, increases. 1 It is evident that whenever it costs as much labour to pro- duce a machine as is saved by the employment of that machine, there is nothing but a transposition of labour; consequently the total labour required to produce a commodity is not lessened or the productiveness of labour is not increased. It is clear, however, that the difference between the labour a machine costs, and the labour it saves, in other words, that the degree of its productiveness does not depend on the difference between its own value and the value of the implement it re- places. As long as the labour spent on a machine, and conse- quently the portion of its value added to the product, remains 1 This portion of value which is added by the machinery, decreases both absolutely and relatively, when the machinery does away with horses and other animals that are employed as mere moving forces, and not as machines for changing the form of matter. It may here be incidentally observed, that Descartes, in defining animals as mere machines, saw with eyes of the manufacturing period, while to eyes of the middle ages, animals were assistants to man, as they were later to Von Haller in his "Restauration der Staatswissenschaften." That Descartes, like Bacon, anticipated an alteration in the form of production, and the practical subjugation of Nature by Man, as a result of the altered methods of thought, is plain from his "Discours de la Methode." He there says: "II est possible (by the methods he introduced in philosophy) de parvenir a des connaissances fort utiles a la vie, et qu'au lieu de cette philosophic speculative qu'on enseigne dans les ecoles, on en peut trouver une pratique, par laquelle, connaissant la force et les actions du feu, de 1'eau, de 1'air, des astres, et de tous les autres corps qui nous environnent, aussi distinctement que nous connaissons les divers metiers de nos artisans, nous les pourrious employer en meme fac.on a tous les usages auxquels ils sont propres, et ainsi nous rendre comme maitres et possesseurs de la nature" and thus "contribuer au perfectionnement de la vie humaine." In the preface to Sir Dudley North's "Discourses upon Trade " (1691) it is stated, that Descartes' method had begun to free political economy from the old fables and superstitious notions of gold, trade, &c. On the whole, however, the early English economists sided with Bacon and Hobbes as their philosophers; while, at a later period, the philosopher Kfl Q7S Ibs. 27,533,968 wric ion asi r,37 Ibs. 31,669,267 tr^c 978 S37 A3 Value Expor- ted, 1848. Value Expor- ted, 1851. Value Expor- ted, 1860. Value Expor- ted, 1865. COTTON. 5,927,831 6,634,026 9 870,875 10,351,04 Cloth 16,753,369 23,454,810 42 141 505 46,903,796 TLAX & HEMP. Yarn 493 449 951 426 1 801 72 2,505,497 Cloth 2,802,789 4,107 396 4 804 803 9,155,318 SILK. Yarn 195 380 918 342 768,067 Cloth 77 789 1 130 398 1 587 303 1,409,221 WOOL. Yarn 776,975 1 484 544 3 843,450 5,424,017 Cloth 5 733 828 8 377 183 12 156 998 20,102,259 458 . Capitalist Production. annexing the labour of women and children, augments the number of human beings who form the material for capitalistic exploitation, how it confiscates the whole of the workman's disposable time, by immoderate extension of the hours of labour, and how finally its progress, which allows of enormous increase of production in shorter and shorter periods, serves as a means of systematically getting more work done in a shorter time, or in exploiting labour-power more intensely. We now turn to the factory as a whole, and that in its most perfect form. Dr. Ure, the Pindar of the automatic factory, describes it, on the one hand as "Combined co-operation of many orders of workpeople, adult and young, in tending with assiduous skill, a system of productive machines, continuously impelled by a central power" (the prime mover) ; on the other hand, as "a vast automaton, composed of various mechanical and intel- lectual organs, acting in uninterrupted concert for the produc- tion of a common object, all of them being subordinate to a self-regulated moving force." These two descriptions are far from being identical. In one, the collective labourer, or social body of labour, appears as the dominant subject and the me- chanical automaton as the object; in the other, the automaton itself is the subject, and the workmen are merely conscious organs, co-ordinate with the unconscious organs of the automa- ton, and together with them, subordinated to the central moving-power. The first description is applicable to every possible employment of machinery on a large scale, the second is characteristic of its use by capital, and therefore of the modern factory system. Ure prefers therefore, to describe the central machine, from which the motion comes, not only as an See the Bluebooks "Statistical Abstract of the United Kingdom, Nos. 8 and 13." Lond., 1861 and 1866. In Lancashire the number of mills increased only 4 per cent, between 1839 and 1850; 19 per cent, between 1850 and 1856; and 33 per cent, be- tween 1856 and 1862; while the persons employed in them during each of the above periods of 11 years increased absolutely, but diminished relatively. (See "Rep. of Insp. of Fact., for 31st Oct, 1862," p. 63.) The cotton trade preponderates in Lancashire. We may form an idea of the stupendous nature of the cotton trade in that district, when we consider that, of the gross number of textile factories in the United Kingdom, it absorbs 45.2 per cent., of the spindles 83.3 per cent., of the power-looms 81.4 per cent., of the mechanical horse-power 72.6 per cent., and of the total number of persons employed 58.2 per cent. (1. c., p. 62-63.) Machinery and Modern Industry. 459 automaton, but as an autocrat. "In these spacious halls the benignant power of steam summons around him his myriads of willing menials." 1 Along with the tool, the skill of the workman in handling it passes over to the machine. The capabilities of the tool are emancipated from the restraints that are inseparable from human labour-power. Thereby the technical foundation on which is based the division of labour in Manufacture, is swept away. Hence, in the place of the hierarchy of specialised workmen that characterises manufacture, there steps, in the automatic factory, a tendency to equalise and reduce to one and the same level every kind of work that has to be done by the minders of the machines; 2 in the place of the artifi- cially produced differentiations of the detail workmen, step the natural differences of age and sex. So far as division of labour re-appears in the factory, it is primarily a distribution of the workmen among the specialised machines; and of masses of workmen, not however organised into groups, among the various departments of the factory, in each of which they work at a number of similar machines placed together; their co-operation, therefore, is only simple. The organised group, peculiar to manufacture, is replaced by the connexion between the head workman and his few assist- ants. The essential division is, into workmen who are actually employed on the machines (among whom are included a few who look after the engine), and into mere attendants (almost exclusively children) of these workmen. Among the attend- ants are reckoned more or less all "Feeders" who supply the machines with the material to be worked. In addition to these two principal classes, there is a numerically unimportant class of persons, whose occupation it is to look after the whole of the machinery and repair it from time to time; such. as engineers, mechanics, joiners, &c. This is a superior class of workmen, some of them scientifically educated, others brought up to a trade ; it is distinct from the factory operative class, *Ure, 1. c. ( p. 18. 2 Ure, 1. c., p. 31. See Karl Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, p. 122. 460 Capitalist Production. and merely aggregated to it. 1 This division of labour is purely technical. To work at a machine, the workman should be taught from childhood, in order that he may learn to adapt his own move- ments to the uniform and unceasing motion of an automaton. When the machinery, as a whole, forms a system of manifold machines, working simultaneously and in concert, the co-opera- tion based upon it, requires the distribution of various groups of workmen among the different kinds of machines. But the employment of machinery does away with the necessity of crystallizing this distribution after the manner of Manufac- ture, by the constant annexation of a particular man to a par- ticular function. 2 Since the motion of the whole system does not proceed from the workman, but from the machinery, a change of persons can take place at any time without an inter- ruption of the work. The most striking proof of this is afforded by the relays system, put into operation by the manu- facturers during their revolt from 1848-1850. Lastly, the quickness with which machine work is learnt by young people, does away with the necessity of bringing up for exclusive em- ployment by machinery, a special class of operatives. 3 With 1 It looks very like intentional misleading by statistics (which misleading it would be possible to prove in detail in other cases too), when the English factory legislation excludes from its operation the class of labourers last mentioned in the text, while the parliamentary returns expressly include in the category of factory operatives, not only engineers, mechanics, &c., but also managers, salesmen, messengers, warehouse- men, packers, &c., in short everybody, except the owner of the factory himself. 2 Ure grants this. He says, "in case of need," the workmen can be moved at the will of the manager from one machine to another, and he triumphantly exclaims: "Such a change is in flat contradiction with the old routine, that divides the labour, and to one workman assigns the task of fashioning the head of a needle, to another the sharpening of the point." He had much better have asked himself, why this "old routine" is departed from in the automatic factory, only "in case of need." * When distress is very great, as, for instance, during the American civil war, the factory operative is now and then set by the Bourgeois to do the roughest of work, such as road-making, &c. The English "ateliers nationaux" of 1S62 and the follow- ing years, established for the benefit of the destitute cotton operatives, differ from the French of 1848 in this, that in the latter the workmen had to do unproductive work at the expense of the state, in the former they had to do productive municipal work to the advantage of the bourgeois, and that, too, cheaper than the regular- workmen, with whom they were thus thrown into competition. "The physical ap- pearance of the cotton operatives is unquestionably improved. This I attribute . . . as to the men, to outdoor labour on public works." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact.," 81st Oct., 1865, p. 59.) The writer here alludes to the Preston factory operatives, who were employed on Preston Moor. Machinery and Modern Industry. 461 regard to the work of the mere attendants, it can, to some extent, be replaced in the mill by machines, 1 and owing to its extreme simplicity, it allows of a rapid and constant change of the individuals burdened with this drudgery. Although then, technically speaking, the old system of division of labour is thrown overboard by machinery, it hangs on in the factory, as a traditional habit handed down from Manufacture, and is afterwards systematically re-moulded and established in a more hideous form by capital, as a means of exploiting labour-power. The life-long speciality of handling one and the same tool, now becomes the life-long speciality of serving one and the same machine. Machinery is put to a wrong use, with the object of transforming the workman, from his very childhood, into a part of a detail-machine. 2 In this way, not only are the expenses of his re-production considerably lessened, but at the same time his helpless dependence upon the factory as a whole, and therefore upon the capitalist, is rendered complete. Here as everywhere else, we must dis- tinguish between the increased productiveness due to tho development of the social process of production, and that due to the capitalist exploitation of that process. In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in tho factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manu- facture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the work- 1 An example: The various mechanical apparatus introduced since the Act of 1844 into woollen mills, for replacing the labour of children. So soon as it shall happen that the children of the manufacturers themselves have to go through a course of schooling as helpers in the mill, this almost unexplored territory of mechanics will soon make remarkable progress. "Of machinery, perhaps self-acting mules are as dangerous as any other kind. Most of the accidents from them happen to little children, from their creeping under the mules to sweep the floor whilst the mules are in motion. Several 'minders' have been fined for this offence, but without much general benefit. If machine makers would only invent a self-sweeper, by whose use the necessity for these little children to creep under the machinery might be pre- vented, it would be a happy addition to our protective measures." ("Reports of Insp. of Fact." for 31st Oct., I860, p. 63.) 2 So much then for Proudhon's wonderful idea: he "construes" machinery not as a synthesis of instruments of labour, but as' a synthesis of detail operations for the benefit of the labourer himself. 462 Capitalist Production. man, v.'lio becomes its mere living appendage. "The miserable routine of endless drudgery and toil in which the same mechanical process is gone through over and over again, is like the labour of Sisyphus. The burden of labour, like the rock, keeps ever falling back on the worn-out labourer." 1 At the same time that factory work exhausts the nervous system to the uttermost, it does away with the many-sided play of the muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily and intellectual activity. 2 The lightening of the labour, even, becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free the labourer from work, but deprives the work of all interest. Every kind of capitalist production in so far as it is not only a labour-process, but also a process of creating surplus-value, has this in common, that it is not the workman that employs the instruments of labour, but the instruments of labour that employ the workman. But it is only in the factory system that this inversion for the first time acquires technical and palpable reality. By means of its conversion into an automa- ton, the instrument of labour confronts the labourer, during the labour-process, in the shape of capital, of dead labour, that dominates, and pumps dry, living labour-power. The separa- tion of the intellectual powers of production from the manual labour, and the conversion of those powers into the might of capital over labour, is, as we have already shown, finally com- pleted by modern industry erected on the foundation of machinery. The special skill of each individual insignificant factory operative vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity before the science, the gigantic physical forces, and the mass of labour that are embodied in the factory mechanism and, together with that mechanism, constitute the power of the "master." This "master," therefore, in whose brain the machinery and his monopoly of it are inseparably united, 1 F. Engels, 1. c. p. 217. Even an ordinary and optimist freetrader, like Mr. Molinari, goes so far as to say "Un homme s'use plus vite en surveillant, quinze heures par jour, 1'evolution uniforme d'un mecanisme, qu'en 'exenjant, dans le meme espace de temps, sa force physique. Ce travail de surveillance qui servirait peut- etre d'utile gymnastique a 1'intelligence, s'il n'etait pas trop prolonge, detruit a la longue, par son exces, et 1'intelligence, et le corps meme." (G. de Molinari: fitudes Economiques." Paris 1840.) * F. Engels, 1. c. p. 216. Machinery and Modern Industry. 463 whenever he falls out with his "hands," contemptuously tells them : "The factory operatives should keep in wholesome remembrance the fact that theirs is really a low species of skilled labour ; and that there is none which is more easily acquired, or of its quality more amply remunerated, or which by a short training of the least expert can be more quickly, as well as abundantly, acquired. . . . The master's machin- ery really plays a far more important part in the business of production than the labour and the skill of the operative, which six months' education can teach, and a common labourer can learn." 1 The technical subordination of the workman to the uniform motion of the instruments of labour, and the peculiar composition of the body of workpeople, consisting as it does of individuals of both sexes and of all ages, give rise to a barrack discipline, which is elaborated into a complete system in the factory, and which fully developes the before mentioned labour of overlooking, thereby dividing the workpeople into operatives and overlookers, into private soldiers and sergeants of an industrial army. "The main difficulty [in the automatic factory] . . . lay . . . above all in training human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work, and to iden- tify themselves with the unvarying regularity of the complex automaton. To devise and administer a successful code of factory discipline, suited to the necessities of factory diligence, was the Herculean enterprise, the noble achievement of Ark- wright ! Even at the present day, when the system is perfectly organised and its labour lightened to the utmost, it is found nearly impossible to convert persons past the age of puberty, into useful factory hands." 2 The factory code in which capi- tal formulates, like a private legislator, and at his own good will, his autocracy over his workpeople, unaccompanied by that division of responsibility, in other matters so much approved 1 "The Master Spinners' and Manufacturers' Defence Fund. Report of the Com- mittee." Manchester, 1854, p. 17. We shall see hereafter that the "master" can sing quite another song, when he is threatened with the loss of his "living" autom- aton. 2 Ure, 1. c. p. 15. Whoever knows the life history of Arkwright, will never dub this barber-genius "noble." Of all the great inventors of the 18th century, he was incontestably the greatest thiever of other people's inventions and the meanest fellow. 464 Capitalist Production. of by the bourgeoisie, and unaccompanied by the still more approved representative system, this code is but the capitalistic caricature of that social regulation of the labour-process which becomes requisite in co-operation on a great scale, and in the employment in common, of instruments of labour and especially of machinery. The place of the slave driver's lash is taken by the overlooker's book of penalties. All punish- ments naturally resolve themselves into fines and deductions from wages, and the law-giving talent of the factory Lycurgus so arranges matters, that a violation of his laws is, if possible, more profitable to him than the keeping of them. 1 1 "The slavery in which the bourgeoisie has bound the proletariat, comes nowhere more plainly into daylight than in the factory system. In it all freedom comes to an end both at law and in fact. The workman must be in the factory at half past five. If he come a few minutes late, he is punished; if he come 10 minutes late, he is not allowed to enter until after breakfast, and thus loses a quarter of a day's wage. He must eat, drink and sleep at word of command. . . . The despotic bell calls him from his bed, calls him from breakfast and dinner. And how does he fare in the mill? There the master is the absolute law-giver. He makes what regulations he pleases; he alters and makes additions to his code at pleasure; and if he insert the veriest nonsense, the courts say to the workman: Since you have entered into this contract voluntarily, you must now carry it out. . . . These workmen are con- demned to live, from their ninth year till their death, under this mental and bodily torture." (F. Engels 1. c. p. 217, sq.) What, "the courts say," I will illustrate by two examples. One occurs at Sheffield at the end of 1866. In that town a workman had engaged himself for 2 years in a steelworks. In consequence of a quarrel with his employer he left the works, and declared that under no circumstances would he work for that master any more. He was prosecuted for breach of contract, and condemned to two months' imprisonment. (If the master break the contract, he can be proceeded against only in a civil action, and risks nothing but money damages). After the workman has served his two months, the master invites him to return to the works, pursuant to the contract. Workman says; no: he has already been pun- ished for the breach. The master prosecutes again, the court condemns again, al- though one of the judges, Mr. Shee, publicly denounces this as a legal monstrosity, by which a man can periodically, as long as he lives, be punished over and over again for the same offence or crime. This judgment was given not by the "Great Unpaid," the provincial Dogberries, but by one of the highest courts of justice in London. Note to the 4th German edition. This has now been abolished. With the excep- tion of a few cases, for instance in public gas works, the English laborer has been placed on an equity with the employers in cases of contract breaking, and can be proceeded against only by the civil courts. F. E. . The second case occurs in Wiltshire at the end of November 1863. About 30 power-loom weavers, in the employment of one Harrup, a cloth manufacturer at Leower's Mill, Westbury Leigh, struck work because master Harrup indulged in the agreeable habit of making deductions from their wages for being late in the morn- ing; 6d. for 2 minutes; Is. for 3 minutes, and Is. 6d. for ten minutes. This is at the rate of 9s. per hour, and 4 10s. Od. per diem; while the wages of the weavers on the average of a year, never exceed 10s. to 12s. weekly. Harrup also appointed a boy to announce the starting time by a whistle, which he often did be- fore six o'clock in the morning: and if the hands were not all there at the moment the whistle ceased, the doors were closed, and those hands who were outside were Machinery and Modern Industry. 465 We shall here merely allude to the material conditions under which factory labour is carried on. Every organ of sense is injured in an equal degree by artificial elevation of the tem- perature, by the dust-laden atmosphere, by the deafening noise, not to mention danger to life and limb among the thickly crowded machinery, which, with the regularity of the seasons, issues its list of the killed and wounded in the industrial battle. 1 Economy of the social means of production, matured fined: and as there was no clock on the premises, the unfortunate hands were at the mercy of the young Harrup-inspired time-keeper. The hands on strike, mothers of families as well as girls, offered to resume work if the time-keeper were replaced by a clock, and a more reasonable scale of fines were introduced. Harrup summoned 19 women and girls before the magistrates for breach of contract. To the niter in- dignation of all present, they were each mulcted in a fine of 6d. and 2s. Cd. for costs. Harrup was followed from the court by a crowd of people who hissed him. A favourite operation with manufacturers is to punish the workpeople by deductions made from their wages on account of faults in the material worked on. This method gave rise in 1860 to a general strike in the English pottery districts. The reports of the Ch. Empl. Com. (1863-1866), give cases where the worker not only receives no wages, but becomes, by means of his labour, and of the penal regulations, the debtor to boot, of his worthy master. The late cotton crisis also furnished edifying examples of the sagacity shown by the factory autocrats in making deductions from wages. Mr. R. Baker, the Inspector of Factories, says, "I have myself had lately to direct prosecutions against one cotton mill occupier for having in those pinching and painful times deducted lOd. a piece from some of the young workers employed by him, for the surgeon's certificate (for which he himself had only paid 6d.), when only allowed by the law to deduct 3d., and by custom nothing at all .... And I have been informed of another, who, in order to keep without the law, but to attain the same object, charges the poor children who work for him a shilling each, as a fee for learning them the art and mystery of cotton spinning, so soon as they are declared by the surgeon fit and proper persons for that occupation. There may therefore be undercurrent causes for such extraordinary exhibitions as strikes, not only wherever they arise, but particularly at such times as the present, which without explanation, render them inexplicable to the public understanding." He al- ludes here to a strike of power-loom weavers at Darwin, June, 1863. ("Reports of Insp. of Fact, for 30 April, 1863," pp. 50-51.) The reports always go beyond their official dates. 1 The protection afforded by the Factory Acts against dangerous machinery has had a beneficial effect. "But . . . there are other sources of accident which did not exist twenty years since; one especially, viz., the increased speed on the ma- chinery. Wheels, rollers, spindles and shuttles are now propelled at increased ami increasing rates; fingers must be quicker and defter in their movements to take up the broken thread, for, if placed with hesitation or carelessness, they are sacrificed. . . . A large number of accidents are caused by the eagerness of the workpeople to get through their work expeditiously. It must be remembered that it is of the highest importance to manufacturers that their machinery should be in motion, i.e., producing yarns and goods. Every minute's stoppage is not only a loss of power, but of production, and the workpeople are urged by the overlookers, who are in- terested in the quantity of work turned off, to keep the machinery in motion; and it is no less important to those of the operatives who are paid by the weight or piece that the machines should be kept in motion. Consequently, although it is strictly forbidden in many, nay in most factories, that machinery should be clean- 2D 466 Capitalist Production. and forced as in a hothouse by the factory system, is turned, in the hands of capital into systematic robbery of what is neces- sary for the life of the workman while he is at work, robbery of space, light, air, and of protection to his person against the dangerous and unwholesome accompaniments of the productive process, not to mention the robbery of appliances for the com- fort of the workman. 1 Is Fourier wrong when he calls fac- tories "tempered bagnos ?" 2 SECTION 5. THE STRIFE BETWEEN WORKMAN AND MACHINE. The contest between the capitalist and the wage-labourer dates back to the very origin of capital. It raged on through- out the whole manufacturing period. 3 But only since the ed while in motion, it is nevertheless the constant practice in most if not in all, that the workpeople do, unreproved, pick out waste, wipe rollers and wheels, &c., while their frames are in motion. Thus from this cause only, 906 accidents have occurred during the six months Although a great deal of cleaning is constantly going on day by day, yet Saturday is generally the day set apart for the thorough cleaning of the machinery, and a great deal of this is done while the ma- chinery is in motion." Since cleaning is not paid for, the workpeople seek to get done with it as speedily as possible. Hence "the number of accidents which occur on Fridays, and especially on Saturdays, is much larger than on any other day. On the former the excess is nearly 12 per cent, over the average number of the four first days of the week, and on the latter day the excess is 25 per cent, over the average of the preceding five days; or, if the number of working-hours on Satur- day being taken into account 7 J^ hours on Saturday as compared with 10 J4 on other days there is an excess of 65 per cent, on Saturdays over the average of the other five days." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct, 1866," p. 9, 15, 16, 17.) 1 In Part I. of Book III. I shall give an account of a recent campaign by the English manufacturers against the Clauses in the Factory Acts that protect the "hands" against dangerous machinery. For the present, let this one quotation from the official report of Leonard Homer suffice: "I have heard some millowners speak with inexcusable levity of some of the accidents; such, for instance, as the loss of a finger being a trifling matter. A working-man's living and prospects depend so much upon his fingers, that any loss of them is a very serious matter to him. When I have heard such inconsiderate remarks made, I have usually put this question: Suppose you were in want of an additional workman, and two were to apply, both equally well qualified in other respects, but one had lost a thumb or a forefinger, which would you engage? There never was a hesitation as to the an- swer." .... The manufacturers have "mistaken prejudices against what they have heard represented as a pseudo-philanthropic legislation." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1855." These manufacturers are clever folk, and not without rea- son were they enthusiastic for the slave-holder's rebellion. * In those factories that have been longest subject to the Factory Acts, with their compulsory limitation of the hours of labour, and other regulations, many of the older abuses have vanished. The very improvement of the machinery demands to a certain extent "improved construction of the buildings," and this is an advantage to the workpeople. (See "Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 31st Oct., 1863," p. 109.> 3 See amongst others, John Houghton: "Husbandry and Trade improved. Loa- Machinery and Modern Industry. 467 introduction of machinery has the workman fought against the instrument of labour itself, the material embodiment of capital. He revolts against this particular form of the means of produc- tion, as being the material basis of the capitalist mode of pro- duction. In the 17th century nearly all Europe experienced revolts of the workpeople against the ribbon-loom, a machine for weaving ribbons and trimmings, called in Germany Band- muhle, Schnurmiihle, and Miihlenstuhl. These machines were invented in Germany. Abbe Laucellotti, in a work that ap- peared in Venice in 1636, but which was written in 1579, says as follows: "Anthony Miiller of Danzig, saw about 50 years ago in that town, a very ingenious machine, which weaves 4 to 6 pieces at once. But the Mayor being apprehensive that this invention might throw a large number of workmen on the streets, caused the inventor to be secretly strangled or drowned." In Leyden, this machine was not used till 1629 ; there the riots of the ribbon-weavers at length compelled the Town Council to prohibit it. "In hac urbe," says Boxhorn (Inst. Pol., 1663), referring to the introduction of this ma- chine in Leyden, "ante hos viginti circiter annos instrumentum quidam invenerunt textorium, quo solus plus panni et facilius conficere poterat, quam plures aequali tempore. Hinc turba? orta3 et querulae textorum, tandemque usus hujus instrumenti a magistratu prohibitus est." After making various decrees more or less prohibitive against this loom in 1632, 1639, &c., the States General of Holland at length permitted it to be used, under certain conditions, by the decree of the 15th De- cember, 1661. It was also prohibited in Cologne in 1676, at the same time that its introduction into England was causing disturbances among the workpeople. By an imperial Edict of 19th Feb., 1685, its use was forbidden throughout all Germany. don, 1727." "The Advantages of the East India Trade, 1720." John Sellers, 1. c. The masters and their workmen are, unhappily, in a perpetual war with each other. The invariable object of the former is to get their work done as cheaply as possible; and they do not fail to employ every artifice to this purpose, whilst the latter are equally attentive to every occasion of distressing their masters into a com- pliance with higher demands." ("An Inquiry into the Causes of the Present High Prices of Provisions," p. 61-62. Author, the Rev. Nathaniel Forster, quite on the side of the workmen.) 468 Capitalist Production. In Hamburg it was burnt in public by order of the Senate. The Emperor Charles VI., on 9th Feb., 1719, renewed the edict of 1685, and not till 1765 was its use openly allowed in the Electorate of Saxony. This machine, which shook Europe to its foundations, was in fact the precursor of the mule and the power-loom, and of the industrial revolution of the 18th century. It enabled a totally inexperienced boy, to set the whole loom with all its shuttles in motion, by simply moving a rod backwards and forwards, and in its improved form pro- duced from 40 to 50 pieces at once. About 1630, a wind-sawmill, erected near London by a Dutchman, succumbed to the excesses of the populace. Even as late as the beginning of the 18th century, sawmills driven by water overcame the opposition of the people, supported as it was by parliament, only with great difficulty. No sooner had Everet in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine that was driven by water-power, than it was set on fire by 100,000 people who had been thrown out of work. Fifty thousand workpeople, who had previously lived by carding wool, petitioned parliament against Arkwright's scribbling mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of machinery that occurred in the English manufacturing dis- tricts during the first 15 years of this century, chiefly caused by the employment of the power-loom, and known as the Luddite movement, gave the an ti- jacobin governments of a Sidmouth, a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most re-actionary and forcible measures. It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used. 1 The contests about wages in Manufacture, presuppose manu- facture, and are in no sense directed against its existence. The opposition against the establishment of new manufactures, pro- ceeds from the guilds and privileged towns, not from the work- 1 In old-fashioned manufactures the revolts of the workpeople against machinery, even to this day, occasionally assume a savage character as in the case of the Sheffield file cutters in 1865. Machinery and Modern Industry. 469 people. Hence the writers of the manufacturing period treat the division of labour chiefly as a means of virtually supplying a deficiency of labourers, and not as a means of actually dis- placing those in work. This distinction is self-evident. If it be said that 100 millions of people would be required in Eng- land to spin with the old spinning-wheel the cotton that is now spun with mules by 500,000 people, this does not mean that the mules took the place of those millions who never existed. It means only this, that many millions of workpeople would be required to replace the spinning machinery. If, on the other hand, we say, that in England the power-loom threw 800,000 weavers on the streets, we do not refer to existing machinery, that would have to be replaced by a definite number of work- people, but to a number of weavers in existence who were actually -replaced or displaced by the looms. During the man- ufacturing period, handicraft labour, altered though it was by division of labour, was yet the basis. The demands of the new colonial markets could not be satisfied owing to the relatively small number of town operatives handed down from the middle ages, and the manufactures proper opened out new fields of production to the rural population, driven from the land by the dissolution of the feudal system. At that time, therefore, division of labour and co-operation in the workshops, were viewed more from the positive aspect, that they made the workpeople more productive. 1 Long before the period of Modern Industry, co-operation and the concentration of the instruments of labour in the hands of a few, gave rise, in numerous countries where these methods were applied in agri- 1 Sir James Stewart also understands machinery quite in this sense. "Je con- sidere done les machines comme des moyens d'augmenter (virtuellement) le nombre des gens industrieux qu'on n'est pas oblige de nourrir. . . . En quoi 1'effet d'une machine differe-t-il de celui de nouveaux habitants?" (French trans, t. I., 1. I., ch. XIX.) More naive is Petty, who says, it replaces "Polygamy." The above point of view is, at the most, admissible only for some parts of the United States. On the other hand, "machinery can seldom be used with success to abridge the labour of an individual; more time would be lost in its construction than could be saved by its application. It is only useful when it acts on great masses, when a single machine can assist the work of thousands. It is accordingly in the most populous countries, where there are most idle men, that it is most abundant. . . . It is not called into use by a scarcity of men, but by the facility with which they can be brought to work in masses." (Piercy Ravenstone: "Thoughts on the Fund- ing System and its Effects." London, 1824, p. 15.) 470 Capitalist Production. culture, to great, sudden and forcible revolutions in the modes of production, and consequentially, in the conditions of exist- ence, and the means of employment of the rural populations. But this contest at first takes place more between the large and the small landed proprietors, than between capital and wage-labour; on the other hand, when the labourers are dis- placed by the instruments of labour, by sheep, horses, &c., in this case force is directly resorted to in the first instance as the prelude to the industrial revolution. The labourers are first driven from the land, and then come the sheep. Land grab- bing on a great scale, such as was perpetrated in England, is the first step in creating a field for the establishment of agri- culture on a great scale. 1 Hence this subversion of agriculture puts on, at first, more the appearance of a political revolution. The instrument of labour, when it takes the form of a machine, immediately becomes a competitor of the workman himself. 2 The self-expansion of capital by means of machinery is thenceforward directly proportional to the number of the workpeople, whose means of livelihood have been destroyed by that machinery. The whole system of capitalist production is based on the fact that the workman sells his labour-power as a commodity. Division of labour specialises this labour-power, by reducing it to skill in handling a particular tool. So soon as the handling of this tool becomes the work of a machine, then, with the use-value, the exchange-value too, of the work- man's labour-power vanishes; the workman becomes unsale- able, like paper money thrown out of currency by legal enact- ment. That portion of the working class, thus by machinery rendered superfluous, i.e., no longer immediately necessary for the self-expansion of capital, either goes to the wall in the unequal contest of the old handicrafts and manufactures with machinery, or else floods all the more easily accessible branches of industry, swamps the labour market, and sinks the price of labour-power below its value. It is impressed upon the work- 1 Note to the 4th German edition. This applies also to Germany. Wherever agriculture on a large scale exists in Germany, that is, particularly in the Kast, it was made possible through the "trapping of peasants" in vogue since the 16th century, and more particularly since 1648. F. E. 1 "Machinery and labour are in constant competition." Ricardo, 1. c., p. 479. Machinery mid Modern Industry. 471 people, as a great consolation, first, that their sufferings are only temporary ("a temporary inconvenience"), secondly, that machinery acquires the mastery over the whole of a given field of production, only by degrees, so that the extent and intensity of its destructive effect is diminished. The first consolation neutralizes the second. When machinery seizes on an industry by degrees, it produces chronic misery among the operatives who compete with it. Where the transition is rapid, the effect is acute and felt hy great masses. History discloses no tragedy more horrible than the gradual extinction of the English hand- loom weavers, an extinction that was spread over several de- cades, and finally sealed in 1838. Many of them died of star- vation, many with families vegetated for a long time on 2^ d. a day. 1 On the other hand, the English cotton machinery pro- duced an acute effect in India. The Governor General re- ported 1834-35. "The misery hardly finds a parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of the cotton-weavers are bleaching the plains of India." No doubt, in turning them out of this "temporal" world, the machinery caused them no more than "a temporary inconvenience." For the rest, since machinery is continually seizing upon new fields of production, its temporary effect is really permanent. Hence, the char- acter of independance and estrangement which the capitalist mode of production as a whole gives to the instruments of labour and to the product, as against the workman, is devel- 1 The competition between hand-weaving and power-weaving in England, before the passing of the Poor Law of 1833, was prolonged by supplementing the wages, which had fallen considerably below the minimum, with parish relief. "The Rev. Mr. Turner was, in 1827, rector of Wilmslow, in Cheshire, a manufacturing dis- trict. The questions of the Committee of Emigration, and Mr. Turner's answers, show how the competition of human labour is maintained against machinery." Ques- tion: Has not the use of the power-loom superseded the use of the hand-loom? An- swer: Undoubtedly; it would have superseded them much more than it has done, if the hand-loom weavers were not enabled to submit to a reduction of wages. Question: 'But in submitting he has accepted wages which are insufficient to support him, and looks to parochial contribution as the remainder of his support? Answer: Yes, and in fact the competition between the hand-loom and the power- loom is maintained out of the poor-rates. Thus degrading pauperism or expatria- tion, is the benefit which the industrious receive from the introduction of machinery, to be reduced from the respectable and in some degree independent mechanic, to the cringing wretch who lives on the debasing bread of charity. This they call a tempory inconvenience." ("A Prize Essay on the comparative merits of Compe- tition and Co-operation." Lond., 1S34, p. 29.) 472 Capitalist Production. oped by means of machinery into a thorough antagonism. 1 Therefore, it is with the advent of machinery, that the work- man for the first time brutally revolts against the instruments of labour. The instrument of labour strikes down the labourer. This direct antagonism between the two comes out most strongly, whenever newly introduced machinery competes with handi- crafts or manufactures, handed down from former times. But even in Modern Industry the continental improvement of machinery, and the development of the automatic system, has an analogous effect. "The object of improved machinery is to diminish manual labour, to provide for the performance of a process or the completion of a link in a manufacture by the aid of an iron instead of the human apparatus." 2 "The adaptation of power to machinery heretofore moved by hand, is almost of daily occurrence . . . the minor improve- ments in machinery having for their object economy of power, the production of better work, the turning off more work in the -same time, or in supplying the place of a child, a female, or a man, are constant, and 'although sometimes apparently of no great moment, have somewhat important results." 3 "Whenever a process requires peculiar dexterity and steadiness of hand, it is withdrawn, as soon as possible, from the cunning workman, who is prone to irregularities of many kinds, and it is placed in charge of a peculiar mechanism, so self-regulating that a child can superintend it." 4 "On the automatic plan 1 "The same cause which may increase the revenue of the country" (i.e., as Ricardo explains in the same passage, the revenues of landlords and capitalists, whose wealth, from the economical point of view, forms the Wealth of the Nation), "may at the same time render the population redundant and deteriorate the condi- tion of the labourer." (Ricardo, 1. c., p. 460.) "The constant aim and the ten- dency of every improvement in machinery is, in fact, to do away entirely with the labour of man, or to lessen its price by substituting the labour of women and chil- dren for that of grown up men, or of unskilled for that of skilled workmen." (Ure, I. c., t. I., p. 35). * "Rep. Insp. Fact, for 31st October, 1858," p. 43. 3 "Rep. Insp. Fact, for 31st October, 1856," p. 15. 1 Ure, 1. c., p. 19. "The great advantage of the machinery employed in brick- making consists in this, that the employer is made entirely independent of skilled labourers." ("Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Report," Lond., 1S66, p. 180, n. 46.) Mr. A. Sturrock, superintendent of the machine department of the Great Northern Railway, says, with regard to the building of locomotives, &c. : "Expensive English workmen are being less used every day. The production of the workshops of England is Machinery and Modern Industry. 473 skilled labour gets progressively superseded." 1 "The effect of improvements in machinery, not merely in superseding the necessity for the employment of the same quantity of adult labour as before, in order to produce a given result, but in substituting one description of human labour for another, the less skilled for the more skilled, juvenile for adult, female for male, causes a fresh disturbance in the rate of wages." 2 "The effect of substituting the self-acting mule for the common mule, is to discharge the greater part of the men spinners, and to retain adolescents and children." 3 The extraordinary power of expansion of the factory system owing to accumulated prac- tical experience, to the mechanical means at hand, and to con- stant technical progress, was proved to us by the giant strides of that system under the pressure of a shortened working day. But who, in 1860, the Zenith year of the English cotton indus- try, would have dreamt of the galloping improvements in ma- chinery, and the corresponding displacement of working people, called into being during the following 3 years, under the stimulus of the American Civil War ? A couple of examples from the Reports of the Inspectors of Factories will suffice on this point. A Manchester manufacturer states : "We formerly had 75 carding engines, now we have 12, doing the same quan- tity of work. . . . We are doing with fewer hands by 14, at a saving in wages of 10 a-week. Our estimated saving in waste is about 10% in the quantity of cotton consumed." "In another fine spinning mill in Manchester, I was informed that through increased speed and the adoption of some self-acting processes, a reduction had been made, in number, for a fourth in one department, and of above half in another, and that the introduction of the combing machine in place of the second carding, had considerably reduced the number of hands for- merly employed in the carding room." Another spinning mill is estimated to effect a saving of labour of 10%. The Messrs. being increased by the use of improved tools and these tools are again served by a low class of labour . . . Formerly their skilled labour necessarily produced all the parts of engines. Now the parts of engines are produced by labour with less skill, but with good tools. By tools, I mean engineer's machinery, lathes, planing machines, drills, and so on. ("Royal Com. on Railways." Lend., 1867, Minutes of Evidence, n. 17,862 and 17,863.) 1 Ure, 1. c., p. 20. 2 Ure, 1. c., p. 321. 3 Ure, 1. c. p. 23. 474 Capitalist Production. Gilmour, spinners at Manchester, state : "In our blowing-room department we consider our expense with new machinery is fully one-third less in wages and hands ... in the jack- frame and drawing-frame room, about one-third less in ex- pense, and likewise one-third less in hands; in the spinning- room about one-third less in expenses. But this is not all ; when our yarn goes to the manufacturers, it is so much better by the application of our new machinery, that they will pro- duce a greater quantity of cloth, and cheaper than from the yarn produced by old machinery." 1 Mr. Kedgrave further remarks in the same Report : "The reduction of hands against increased production is, in fact, constantly taking place; in woollen mills the reduction commenced some time since, and is continuing; a few days since, the master of a school in the neighbourhood of Rochdale said to me, that the great falling off in the girls' school is not only caused by the distress, but by the changes of machinery in the woollen mills, in consequence of which a reduction of 70 short-timers had taken place." 2 The following table shows the total result of the mechanical improvements in the English cotton industry due to the American civil war. NUMBER OF FACTORIES. 1858 1861 1868 England and Wales 2,046 2,715 2,405 Scotland 152 163 131 Ireland 12 9 13 United Kingdom 2,210 2,887 2,549 NUMBER OF POWER-LOOMS. 1858 1861 1868 England and Wales 275,590 368,125 344,719 Scotland 21,624 30,110 31,864 Ireland 1,633 1,757 2,746 United Kingdom 298,847 399,992 379,329 1 "Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st Oct., 1863," pp. 108, 109. *1. c., p. 109. The rapid improvement of machinery, during the crisis, allowed the English manufacturers, immediately after the termination of the American civil war, and almost in no time, to glut the markets of the world again. Cloth, during the last six months of 1866, was almost unsaleable. Thereupon began the consignment of goods to India and China, thus naturally making the glut more intense. At the beginning of 1867 the manufacturers resorted to their usual way out of the difficulty, Machinery and Modern Industry. 475 NUMBER OF SPINDLES. 1858 1861 1868 England and Wales 25,818,576 28,352,152 30,478,228 Scotland 2,041,129 1,915,398 1,397,546 Ireland 150,512 119,944 124,240 li nited Kingdom 28,010,217 30,387,494 32,000,014 NUMBER OF PERSONS EMPLOYED. 1858 1861 1868 England and Wales 341,170 407,598 357,052 Scotland 34,698 41,237 39,809 Ireland 3,345 2,734 4,203 United Kingdom 379,213 451,569 401,064 Hence, between 1861 and 1868, 338 cotton factories dis- appeared, in other words more productive machinery on a larger scale was concentrated in the hands of a smaller num- ber of capitalists. The number of power-looms decreased by 20,663 ; but since their product increased in the same period, an improved loom must have yielded more than an old one. Lastly the number of spindles increased by 1,612,541, while the number of operatives decreased by 50,505. The "tem- porary" misery, inflicted on the workpeople by the cotton-crisis, was heightened, and from being temporary made permanent, by the rapid and persistent progress of machinery. But machinery not only acts as a competitor who gets the better of the workman, and is constantly on the point of making him superfluous. It is also a power inimical to him, and as such capital proclaims it from the roof tops and as such makes use of it. It is the most powerful weapon for repress- ing strikes, those periodical revolts of the working class against the autocracy of capital. 1 According to Gaskell, the steam viz., reducing wages 5 per cent. The workpeople resisted, and said that the only remedy was to work short time, 4 days a-week; and their theory was the correct one. After holding out for some time, the self-elected captains of industry had to make up their minds to short time, with reduced wages in some places, and in others without. 1 "The relation of master and man in the blown-flint bottle trades amounts to a chronic strike." Hence the impetus given to the manufacture of pressed glass, in which the chief operations are done by machinery. One firm in Newcastle, who formerly produced 350,000 Ibs. of blown-flint glass, now produces in its place 3,000,- 500 Ibs. of pressed glass. ("Ch. Empl. Comm., Fourth Rep.," 1865, pp. 262, 263.) 476 Capitalist Production. engine was from the very first an antagonist of hiinian power, an antagonist that enabled the capitalist to tread under foot the growing claims of the workmen, who threatened the newly born factory system with a crisis. 1 It would be possible to write quite a history of the inventions, made since 1830, for the sole purpose of supplying capital with weapons against the revolts of the working class. At the head of these in import- ance, stands the self-acting mule, because it opened up a new epoch in the automatic system. 2 Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam hammer, gives the following evidence before the Trades Union Commission, with regard to the improvements made by him in machinery and introduced in consequence of the wide-spread and long strikes of the engineers in 1851. "The characteristic feature of our modern mechanical improvements, is the introduction of self- acting tool machinery. What every mechanical workman has now to do, and what every boy can do, is not to work himself but to superintend the beautiful labour of the machine. The whole class of workmen that depend exclusively on their skill, is now done away with. Formerly, I employed four boys to every mechanic. Thanks to these new mechanical combina- tions, I have reduced the number of grown-up men from 1500 to 750. The result was a considerable increase in my profits." Ure says of a machine used in calico printing: "At length capitalists sought deliverance from this intolerable bondage" [namely the, in their eyes, burdensome terms of their contracts with the workmen] "in the resources of science, and were speedily re-instated in their legitimate rule, that of the head over the inferior members." Speaking of an invention for dressing warps : "Then the combined malcontents, who fancied themselves impregnably intrenched behind the old lines of division of labour, found their flanks turned and their defences rendered useless by the new mechanical tactics, and were obliged to surrender at discretion." With regard to the in- 1 Gaskell. "The Manufacturing Population of England, London, 1833," pp. 3, 4. *W. Fairbairn discovered several very important applications of machinery to the construction of machines, in consequence of strikes in his own workshops. Machinery and Modern Industry. 477 vention of the self-acting mule, he says : "A creation destined to restore order among the industrious classes. . . . This invention confirms the great doctrine already propounded, that when capital enlists science into her service, the refractory hand of labour will always be taught docility." 1 Although lire's work appeared 30 years ago, at a time when the factory system was comparatively but little developed, it still perfectly expresses the spirit of the factory, not only by its undisguised cynicism, but also by the nai'vetc with which it blurts out the stupid contradictions of the capitalist brain. For instance, after propounding the "doctrine" stated above, that capital, with the aid of science taken into its pay, always reduces the refractory hand of labour to docility, he grows indignant be- cause "it (physico-mechanical science) has been accused of lending itself to the rich capitalist as an instrument for harrassing the poor." After preaching a long sermon to show how advantageous the rapid development of machinery is to the working classes, he warns them, that by their obstinacy and their strikes they hasten that development. "Violent re- vulsions of this nature," he says, "display short-sighted man in the contemptible character of a self -tormentor." A few pages before he states the contrary. "Had it not been for the violent collisions and interruptions resulting from erroneous views among the factory operatives, the factory system would have been developed still more rapidly and beneficially for all concerned." Then he exclaims again: "Fortunately for the state of society in the cotton districts of Great Britain, the improvements in machinery are gradual." "It" (improve- ment in machinery) "is said to lower the rate of earnings of adults by displacing a portion of them, and thus rendering their number superabundant as compared with the demand for their labour. It certainly augments the demand for the labour of children and increases the rate of their wages." On the other hand, this same dispenser of consola.tion defends the lowness of the children's wages on the ground that it pre- vents parents from sending their children at too early an age into the factory. The whole of his book is a vindication of a 1 Ure, 1. c., pp. 368-370. 478 Capitalist Production. working day of unrestricted length; that Parliament should forbid children of 13 years to be exhausted by working 12 hours a day, reminds his liberal soul of the darkest days of the middle ages. This does not prevent him from calling upon the factory operatives to thank Providence, who by means of machinery has given them the leisure to think of their "im- mortal interests." 1 SECTION 6. THE THEOEY OF COMPENSATION AS REOARDS THE WORKPEOPLE DISPLACED BY MACHINERY. James Mill, MacCulloch, Torrens, Senior, John Stuart Mill, and a whole series besides, of bourgeois political economists, insist that all machinery that displaces workmen, simul- taneously and necessarily sets free an amount of capital adequate to employ the same identical workmen. 2 Suppose a capitalist to employ 100 workmen, at 30 a year each, in a carpet factory. The variable capital annually laid out amounts, therefore, to 3000. Suppose, also, that he discharges 50 of his workmen, and employs the remaining 50 with machinery that costs him 1500. To simplify matters, we take no account of buildings, coal, &c. Further suppose that the raw material annually consumed costs 3000, both before and after the change. 3 Is any capital set free by this metamorphosis ? Before the change, the total sum of 6000 consisted half of constant, and half of variable capital. After the change it consists of 4500 constant (3000 raw material and 1500 machinery), and 1500 variable capital. The vari- able capital, instead of being one half, is only one quarter, of the total capital. Instead of being set free, a part of the capital is here locked up in such a way as to cease to be ex- changed against labour-power: variable has been changed into constant capital. Other things remaining unchanged, the capital of 6000, can, in future, employ no more than 50 men. 1 Ure, 1. c. pp. 368, 7, 370, 280, 321, 281, 370, 475. * Ricardo originally was also of this opinion, but afterwards expressly disclaimed it, with the scientific impartiality and love of truth characteristic of him. See 1. c. ch. xxxi. "On Machinery." 1 Nota bene. My illustration is entirely on the lines of those given by the above- named economists. Machinery and Modern Industry. 479 With each improvement in the machinery, it will employ fewer. If the newly introduced machinery had cost less than did the labour-power and implements displaced by it, if, for instance, instead of costing 1500, it had cost only 1000, a variable capital of 1000 would have been converted into constant capital, and locked up ; and a capital of 500 would have been set free. The latter sum, supposing wages unchanged, would form a fund sufficient to employ about 16 out of the 50 men discharged; nay, less than 16, for, in order to be employed as capital, a part of this 500 must now become constant capital, thus leaving only the remainder to be laid out in labour- power. But, suppose, besides, that the making of the new machinery affords employment to a greater number of mechanics, can that be called compensation to the carpet makers, thrown on the streets ? At the best, its construction employs fewer men than its employment displaces. The sum of 1500 that formerly represented the wages of the discharged carpet- makers, now represents in the shape of machinery: (1) the value of the means of production used in the construction of that machinery, (2) the wages of the mechanics employed in its construction, and (3) the surplus-value falling to the share of their "master." Further, the machinery need not be re- newed till it is worn out. Hence, in order to keep the in- creased number of mechanics in constant employment, one carpet manufacturer after another must displace workmen by machines. As a matter of fact, the apologists do not mean this sort of setting free. They have in their minds the means of sub- sistence of the liberated workpeople. It cannot be denied, in the above instance, that the machinery not only liberates 50 men, thus placing them at others' disposal, but, at the same time, it withdraws from their consumption, and sets free, means of subsistence to the value of 1500. The simple fact, by no means a new one, that machinery cuts off the workmen from their means of subsistence is, therefore, in economical parlance tantamount to this, that machinery liberates means of subsistence for the workman, or converts those means into 480 Capitalist Production. capital for his employment. The mode of expression, you POP, is everything. Nominibus mollire licet mala. This theory implies that the 1500 worth of means of sub- sistence was capital that was being expanded by the labour of the 50 men discharged. That, consequently, this capital falls out of employment so soon as they commence their forced holidays, and never rests till it has found a fresh investment, where it can again be productively consumed by these same 50 men. That sooner or later, therefore, the capital and the workmen must come together again, and that, then, the com- pensation is complete. That the sufferings of the workmen displaced by machinery are therefore as transient as are the riches of this world. In relation to the discharged workmen, the 1500 worth of means of subsistence never was capital. What really con- fronted them as capital, was the sum of 1500, afterwards laid out in machinery. On looking closer it will be seen that this sum represented part of the carpets produced in a year by the 50 discharged men, which part they received as wages from their employer in money instead of in kind. With the carpets in the form of money, they bought means of subsistence to the value of 1500. These means, therefore, were to them, not capital, but commodities, and they, as regards these com- modities, were not wage-labourers, but buyers. The circum- stance that they were "freed" by the machinery, from the means of purchase, changed them from buyers into non-buyers. Hence a lessened demand for those commodities voila tout If this diminution be not compensated by an increase from some other quarter, the market price of the commodities falls. If this state of things lasts for some time, and extends, there follows a discharge of workmen employed in the production of these commodities. Some of the capital that was previously devoted to production of necessary means of subsistence, has to become reproduced in another form. While prices fall, and capital is being displaced, the labourers employed in the pro- duction of necessary means of subsistence are in their turn "freed" from a part of their wages. Instead, therefore, of proving that, when machinery frees the workman from his Machinery and Modern Industry. 481 means of subsistence, it simultaneously converts those means into capital for his further employment, our apologists, with their cut-and-dried law of supply and demand, prove, on the contrary, that machinery throws workmen on the streets not only in that branch of production in which it is introduced, but also in those branches in which it is not introduced. The real facts, which are travestied by the optimism of economists, are as follows : The labourers, when driven out of the workshop by the machinery, are thrown upon the labour market, and there add to the number of workmen at the dis- posal of the capitalists. In Part VII. of this book it will be seen that, this effect of machinery, which, as we have seen, is represented to be a compensation to the working class, is on the contrary a most frightful scourge. For the present I will only sav this: The labourers that are thrown out of work in V V any branch of industry, can no doubt seek for employment in some other branch. If they find it, and thus renew the bond between them and the means of subsistence, this takes place only by the intermediary of a new and additional capital that is seeking investment; not at all by the intermediary of the capital that formerly employed them and was afterwards con- verted into machinery. And even should they find employ- ment, what a poor look-out is theirs ! Crippled as they are by division of labour, these poor devils are worth so little outside their old trade, that they cannot find admission into any indus- tries, except a few of inferior kind, that are over-supplied with underpaid workmen. 1 Further, every branch of industry attracts each year a new stream of men, who furnish a con- tingent from which to fill up vacancies, and to draw a supply for expansion. So soon as machinery sets free a part of the workmen employed in a given branch of industry, the reserve 1 A disciple of Ricardo, in answer to the insipidities of J. B. Say, remarks on this point: "Where division of labour is well developed, the skill of the labourer is available only in that particular branch in which it has been acquired; he himself is a sort of machine. It does not therefore help matters one jot, to repeat in parrot fashion, that things have a tendency to find their level. On looking around us we cannot but see, that they are unable to find their level for a long time; and that when they do find it, the level is always lower than at the commencement of the process." ("An Inquiry into those Principles respecting the Nature of Demand," &c. Lond. 1821, p. 72.) 2E 482 Capitalist Production. men dre also diverted into new channels of employment, and become absorbed in other branches; meanwhile the original victims, during the period of transition, for the most part starve and perish. It is an undoubted fact that machinery, as such, is not re- sponsible for "setting free" the workman from the means of subsistence. . It cheapens and increases production in that branch which it seizes on, and at first makes no change in the mass of the means of subsistence produced in other branches. Hence, after its introduction, the society possesses as much, if not more, of the necessaries of life than before, for the la- bourers thrown out of work; and that quite apart from the enormous share of the annual produce wasted by the non-. workers. And this is the point relied on by our apologists! The contradictions and antagonisms inseparable from the capi- talist employment of machinery, do not exist, they say, since they do not arise out of machinery, as such, but out of its capitalist employment! Since therefore machinery, consid- ered alone, shortens the hours of labour, but, when in the service of capital, lengthens them ; since in itself it lightens labour, but when employed by capital, heightens the intensity of labour ; since in itself it is a victory of man over the forces of nature, but in the hands of capital, makes man the slave of those forces; since in itself it increases the wealth of the producers, but in the hands of capital, makes them paupers for all these reasons and others besides, says the bourgeois economist without more ado, it is clear as noonday that all these contradictions are a mere semblance of the reality, and that, as a matter of fact, they have neither an actual nor a theoretical existence. Thus he saves himself from all further puzzling of the brain, and what is more, implicitly declares his opponent to be stupid enough to contend against, not the capi- talistic employment of machinery, but machinery itself. No doubt he is far from denying that temporary incon- venience may result from the capitalist use of machinery. But where is the medal without its reverse! Any employment of machinery, except by capital, is to him an impossibility. Exploitation of the workman by the machine is therefore, with Machinery and Modern Industry. 483 him, identical with exploitation of the machine by the work- man. Whoever, therefore, exposes the real state of things in the capitalistic employment of machinery, is against its em- ployment in any way, and is an enemy of social progress! 1 Exactly the reasoning of the celebrated Bill Sykes. "Gentle- men of the jury, no doubt the throat of this commercial traveller has been cut. But that is not my fault, it is the fault of the knife ! Must we, for such a temporary inconvenience, abolish the use of the knife ? Only consider ! where would agriculture and trade be without the knife ? Is it not as salutary in surgery, as it is knowing in anatomy ? And in addition a willing help at the festive board ? If you abolish, the knife you hurl us back into the depths of barbarism." 2 Although machinery necessarily throws men out of work in those industries into which it is introduced, yet it may, not- withstanding this, bring about an increase of employment in other industries. This effect, however, has nothing in common with the so-called theory of compensation. Since every article produced by a machine is cheaper than a -similar article pro- duced by hand, we deduce the following infallible law : If the total quantity of the article produced by machinery, be equal to the total quantity of the article previously produced by a handicraft or by manufacture, and now made by machinery, then the total labour expended is diminished. The new labour spent on the instruments of labour, on the machinery, on the coal, and so on, must necessarily be less than the labour dis- placed by the use of the machinery ; otherwise the product of the machine would be as dear, or dearer, than the product of the manual labour. But, as a matter of fact, the total quantity of the article produced by machinery with a diminished num- 1 MacCulloch, amongst others, is a past master in this pretentious cretinism. "If," he says, with the affected naivete of a child of 8 years, "if it be advantageous, to develope the skill of the workman more and more, so that he is capable of produc- ing, with the same or with a less quantity of labour, a constantly increasing quantity of commodities, it must also be advantageous, that he should avail himself of the help of such machinery as will assist him most effectively in the attainment of this result." (MacCulloch: "Princ. of Pol. Econ.," Lond. 1830, p. 166.) 2 "The inventor of the spinning machine has ruined India, a fact, however, that touches us but little." A. Thiers: De la propriete. M. Thiers here confounds the spinning machine with the power-loom, "a fact, however, that touches us but little." 484 Capitalist Production. ber of workmen, instead of remaining equal to, by far exceeds the total quantity of the hand-made article that has been dis- placed. Suppose that 400,000 yards of cloth have been pro- duced on power-looms by fewer weavers than could weave 100,000 yards by hand. In the quadrupled product there lies four times as much raw material. Hence the production of raw material must be quadrupled. But as regards the instru- ments of labour, such as buildings, coal, machinery, and so on, it is different; the limit up to which the additional labour required for their production can increase, varies with the difference between the quantity of the machine-made article, and the quantity of the same article that the same number of workmen could make by hand. Hence, as the use of machinery extends in a given industry, the immediate effect is to increase production in the other in- dustries that furnish the first with means of production. How far employment is thereby found for an increased number of men, depends, given the length of the working-day and the intensity of labour, on the composition of the capital employed, i.e., on the ratio of its constant to its variable component. This ratio, in its turn, varies considerably with the extent to which machinery has already seized on, or is then seizing on, those trades. The number of the men condemned to work in coal and metal mines increased enormously owing to the progress of the English factory system; but during the last few decades this increase of number has been less rapid, owing to the use of new machinery in mining. 1 A new type of workman springs into life along with the machine, namely, its maker. We have already learnt that machinery has possessed itself even of this branch of production on a scale that grows greater every day. 2 As to raw material, 3 there is not the 1 According to the census of 1861 (Vol. II., Lond., 1863), the number of people employed in coal mines in England and Wales, amounted to 246,613, of which 73,545 were under, and 173,067 were over 20 years. Of those under 20, 835 were between 5 and 10 years. 30,701 between 10 and 15 years, 42.010 between 15 and 19 years. The number employed in iron, copper, lead, tin, and other mines of every descrip- tion, was 319,222. 1 In England and Wales, in 1861, there were employed in making machinery, 60,807 persons, including the masters and their clerks, &c., also all agents and business people connected with this industry, but excluding the makers of small machines, such as sewing machines, &c., as also the makers of the operative parts of machines, such as spindles. The total number of civil engineers amounted io 3329. 8 Since iron is one of the most important raw materials, let me here state that, in Machinery and Modern Industry. 485 least doubt that the rapid strides of cotton spinning, not only pushed on with tropical luxuriance the growth of cotton in the United States, and with it the African slave trade, but also made the breeding of slaves the chief business of the border slave-states. When, in 1790, the first census of slaves was taken in the United States, their number was 697,000 ; in 1861 it had nearly reached four millions. On the other hand, it is no less certain that the rise of the English woollen factories, together with the gradual conversion of arable land into sheep pasture, brought about the superfluity of agricultural labourers that led to their being driven in masses into the towns. Ire- land, having during the last twenty years reduced its popula- tion by nearly one half, is at this moment undergoing the pro- cess of still further reducing the number of its inhabitants, so as exactly to suit the requirements of its landlords and of the English woollen manufacturers. When machinery is applied to any of the preliminary or intermediate stages through which the subject of labour has to pass on its way to completion, there is an increased yield of material in those stages, and simultaneously an increased demand for labour in the handicrafts or manufactures supplied by the produce of the machines. Spinning by machinery, for example, supplied yarn so cheaply and so abundantly that the hand-loom weavers were, at first, about to work full time with- out increased outlay. Their earnings accordingly rose. 1 Hence a flow of people into the cotton-weaving trade, till at length the 800,000 weavers, called into existence by the Jenny, the throstle and the mule, were overwhelmed by the power- loom. So also, owing to the abundance of clothing materials produced by machinery, the number of tailors, seamtresses and needle-women, went on increasing until the appearance of the sewing machine. 1861, there were in England and Wales 125,771 operative iron founders, of whom 123,430 were males, 2341 females. Of the former 30,810 were under, and 92,620 over 20 years. 1 "A family of four grown up persons, with two children as winders, earned at the end of the last, and the beginning of the present century, by ten hours' daily labour, 4 a week. If the work was very pressing, they could earn more . . . Before that they had always suffered from a deficient supply of yarn." (Gaskeil, I. c., pp. 25-27.) 486 Capitalist Production. In proportion as machinery, with the aid of a relatively small number of workpeople, increases the mass of raw materials, intermediate products, instruments of labour, &c., the working-up of these raw materials and intermediate pro- ducts becomes split up into numberless branches ; social pro- duction increases in diversity. The factory system carries the social division of labour immeasurably further than does manufacture, for it increases the productiveness of the in- dustries it seizes upon, in a far higher degree. The immediate result of machinery is to augment surplus- value and the mass of products in which surplus-value is embodied. And, as the substances consumed by the capitalists and their dependants become more plentiful, so too do these orders of society. Their growing wealth, and the relatively diminished number of workmen required to produce the neces- saries of life beget, simultaneously with the rise of new and luxurious wants, the means of satisfying those wants. A larger portion of the produce of society is changed into surplus produce, and a larger part of the surplus produce is supplied for consumption in a multiplicity of refined shapes. In other words, the production of luxuries increases. 1 The refined and varied forms of the products are also due to new relations with the markets of the world, relations that are created by Modern Industry. ]N~ot only are greater quantities of foreign articles of luxury exchanged for home products, but a greater mass of foreign raw materials, ingredients, and intermediate products, are used as means of production in the home industries. Owing to these relations with the markets of the world the demand for labour increases in the carrying trades, which split up into numerous varieties. 2 The increase of the means of production and subsistence, accompanied by a relative diminution in the number of labourers, causes an increased demand for labour in making canals, docks, tunnels, bridges, and so on, works that can only 1 F. Engels in "Lage, &c.," points out the miserable condition of a large number of those who work on these very articles of luxury. See also numerous instances in the "Reports of the Children's Employment Commission." * In 1861, in England and Wales, there were 94,665 sailors in the merchant service. Machinery and Modern Industry. 487 bear fruit in the far future. Entirely new branches of pro- duction, creating new fields of labour, are also formed, as the direct result either of machinery or of the general industrial changes brought about by it. But the place occupied by these branches in the general production is, even in the most de- veloped countries, far from important. The number of labourers that find employment in them is directly propor- tional to the demand, created by those industries, for the crudest form of manual labour. The chief industries of this kind are, at present, gas works, telegraphs, photography, steam navigation, and railways. According to the census of 1861 for England and Wales, we find in the gas industry (gasworks, production of mechanical apparatus, servants of the gas companies &c.), 15,211 persons; in telegraphy, 2399; in photography, 2366 ; steam navigation, 3570 ; and in rail- ways, 70,599, of whom the unskilled "navvies," more or less permanently employed, and the whole administrative and com- mercial staff, make up about 28,000. The total number of persons, therefore, employed in these five new industries amounts to 94,145. Lastly, the extraordinary productiveness of modern indus- try, accompanied as it is by both a more extensive and a more intense exploitation of labour-power in all other spheres of production, allows of the unproductive employment of a larger and larger part of the working class, and the consequent reproduction, on a constantly extending scale, of the ancient domestic slaves under the name of a servant class, including men-servants, women-servants, lackeys, c. According to the census of 1861, the population of England and Wales was 20,066,244 ; of these, 9,776,259 males, and 10,289,965 female. If we deduct from this population all who are too old or too young for work, all unproductive women, young persons and children, the "ideological" classes, such as government officials, priests, lawyers, soldiers, &c. ; further, all who have no occu- pation but to consume the labour of others in the form of rent, interest, &c. ; and, lastly, paupers, vagabonds, and criminals, there remain in round numbers eight millions of the two sexes of every age, including in that number every 488 Capitalist Production. capitalist who is m any way engaged in industry, commerce, or finance. Among these, 8 millions are : Agricultural labourers (including shep- PERSONS. herds, farm servants, and maidserv- ants living in the houses of farmers), 1,098,261 All who are employed in cotton, woollen, worsted, flax, hemp, silk, and jute fac- tories, in stocking making and lace making by machinery, . . . 642,607' All who are employed in coal mines and metal mines, ..... 565,835 All who are employed in metal works (blast-furnaces, rolling mills, &c.), and metal manufactures of every kind, '396,998 2 The servant class, .... 1,208, 648 3 All the persons employed in textile factories and in mines, taken together, number 1,208,442 ; those employed in textile factories and metal industries, taken together, number 1,039,- 605; in both cases less than the number of modern. domestic slaves. What a splendid result of the capitalist exploitation of machinery ! SECTION 7. REPULSION AND ATTRACTION OF WORKPEOPLE BY THE FACTORY SYSTEM. CRISIS IN THE COTTON TRADE. All political economists of any standing admit that the introduction of new machinery has a baneful effect on the workmen in the old handicrafts and manufactures with which this machinery at first competes. Almost all of them bemoan the slavery of the factory operative. And what is the great trump-card that they play ? That machinery, after the 1 Of these only 177,596 are males above 13 years of age. 2 Of these, 30,501 are females. * Of these, 137,447 males. None are included in the 1,208,648 who do not serve in private houses. Between 1861 and 1870 the number of male servants nearly doubled itself. It increased to 267,671. In the year 1847 there were 2694 game- keepers (for the landlords' preserves), in 1869 there were 4921. The young servant girls in the houses of the London lower middle class are in common parlance called "slaveys." Machinery and Modern Industry. 489 horrors of the period of introduction and development have subsided, instead of diminishing, in the long run increases the number of the slaves of labour ! Yes, political economy revels in the hideous theory, hideous to every " philanthro- pist " who believes in the eternal nature-ordained necessity for capitalist production, that after a period of growth and transi- tion, even its crowning success, the factory system based on machinery, grinds down more workpeople than on its first introduction it throws on the streets. 1 It is true that in some cases, as we saw from instances of English worsted and silk factories, an extraordinary extension of the factory system may, at a certain stage of its develop- ment, be accompanied not only by a relative, but by an absolute decrease in the number of' operatives employed. In the year 1860, when a special census of all the factories in the United Kingdom was taken by order of Parliament, the fac- tories in those parts of Lancashire, Cheshire, and Yorkshire, included in the district of Mr. Baker, the factory inspector, numbered 652 ; 570 of these contained 85,622 power-looms, 6,819,146 spindles (exclusive of doubling spindles), employed 27,439 horse-power (steam), and 1390 (water), and 94,119 persons. In the year 1865, the same factories contained, looms 95,163, spindles 7,025,031, had a steam-power of 28,925 horses, and a water-power of 1445 horses, and em- ployed 88,913 persons. Between 1860 and 1865, therefore, 1 Ganilh, on the contrary, considers the final result of the factory system to be an absolutely less number of operatives, at whose expense an increased number of "gens hotinetes" live and develop their well-known "perfectibilite perfectible." Lit- tle as he understands the movement of production, at least he feels, that machinery cept by his own words: "Les classes condamnees a produire et a consommer diminuent, et les classes qui dirigent le travail, qui soulagent, consolent, et eclairent toute la population, se multiplient. et s'approprient tous les bienfaits qui resultent de la diminution des frais du travail, de 1'abondance des productions, et du bon marche des consommations. Dans cette direction, 1'espece humaine s'eleve aux plus hautes conceptions du genie, penetre dans les profondeurs mysterieuses de la religion, etablit les principes salutaires de la morale (which consists in 's'approprier tous les bienfaits,' &c.), les lois tutelaires de la liberte (liberty of 'les classes con- damnees a produire?') et du pouvoir, de 1'obeissance et de la justice, du devoir et de 1'humanite." For this twaddle see "Des Systemes d'Economie Politique, &c., Par M. Ch. Ganilh." Seme ed., Paris, 1821, t. II., p. 224, and see p. 212. 490 Capitalist Production. the increase in looms was 11%, in spindles 3%, and in engine- power 3 ( /o, while the number of persons employed decreased 5$%. 1 Between 1852 and 1862, considerable extension of the English woollen manufacture took place, while the number of hands employed in it remained almost stationary, showing how greatly the introduction of new machines had superseded the labour of preceding periods. 2 In certain cases, the increase in the number of hands employed is only apparent ; that is, it is not due to the extension of the factories already established, but to the gradual annexation of connected trades; for in- stance, the increase in power-looms, and in the hands em- ployed by them between 1838 and 1856, was, in the cotton trade, simply owing to the extension of this branch of in- dustry; but in the other trades to the application of steam- power to the carpet-loom, to the ribbon-loom, and to the linen- loom, which previously had been worked by the power of men. 3 Hence the increase of the hands in these latter trades was merely a symptom of a diminution in the total number employed. Finally, we have considered this question entirely apart from the fact, that everywhere, except in the metal industries, young persons (under 18), and women and children form the preponderating element in the class of factory hands. Nevertheless, in spite of the mass of hands actually dis- placed and virtually replaced by machinery, we can under- stand how the factory operatives, through the building of more mills and the extension of old ones in a given industry, may become more numerous than the manufacturing work- 1 "Reports of Insp. of Fact., 31 Oct., 1865," p. 68, sq. At the same time, how- ever, means of employment for an increased number of hands was ready in 110 new mills with 11,625 looms, 628,756 spindles and 2695 total horse-power of steam and water (1 c.). * "Reports, &c., for 31 Oct., 1862," p. 79. At the end of 1871, Mr. A. Redgrave, the factory inspector, in a lecture given at Bradford, in the New Mechanics' Insti- tution, said: "What has struck me for some time past is the altered appearance of the woollen factories. Formerly they were filled with women and children, now machinery seems to do all the work. At my asking for an explanation of this from a manufacturer, he gave me the following: 'Under the old system I employed 63 persons; after the introduction of improved machinery I reduced my hands to 33, and lately, in consequence of new and extensive alterations, I have been in a position to reduce those 33 to 13.' " 3 See "Reports, &c., 31 Oct., 1856," p. 16. Machinery and Modern Industry. 491 men and handicraftsmen that have been displaced. Suppose, for example, that in the old mode of production, a capital of 500 is employed weekly, two-fifths being constant and three- fifths variable capital, i.e.,, 200 being laid out in means of production, and 300, say 1 per man, in labour-power. On the introduction of machinery the composition of this capital becomes altered. We will suppose it to consist of four-fifths constant and one-fifth variable, which means that only 100 is now laid out in labour-power. Consequently, two-thirds of the workmen are discharged. If now the business extends, and the total capital employed grows to 1500 under un- changed conditions, the number of operatives employed will increase to 300, just as many as before the introduction of the machinery. If the capital further grows to 2000, 400 men will be employed, or one-third more than under the old system. Their numbers have, in point of fact, increased by 100, but relatively, i.e., in proportion to the total capital advanced, they have diminished by 800, for the 2000 capital would, in the old state of things, have employed 1200 instead of 400 men. Hence, a relative decrease in the number of hands is consistent with an actual increase. We assumed above that while the total capital increases, its composition remains the same, because the conditions of production remain constant. But we have already seen that, with every advance in the use of machinery, the constant component of capital, that part which consists of machinery, raw material, &c., increases, while the variable component, the part laid out in labour- power, decreases. We also know that in no other system of production is improvement so continuous, and the composition of the capital employed so constantly changing as in the factory system. These changes are, however, continually inter- rupted by periods of rest, during which there is a mere quanti- tative extension of the factories on the existing technical basis. During such periods the operatives increase in number. Thus, in 1835, the total number of operatives in the cotton, woollen, worsted, flax, and silk factories in the United Kingdom was only 354,684; while in 1861 the number of the power-loom weavers alone (of both sexes and of all ages, from eight years 492 Capitalist Production. upwards), amounted to 230,654. Certainly, this growth ap- pears less important when we consider that in 1838 the hand- loom weavers with their families still numbered 800,000, 1 not tj mention those thrown out of work in Asia, and on the Continent of Europe. In the few remarks I have still to make on this point, I shall refer to some actually existing relations, the existence of which our theoretical investigation has not yet disclosed. So long as, in a given branch of industry, the factory system extends itself at the expense of the old handicrafts or of manu- facture, the result is as sure as is the result of an encounter be- tween any army furnished with breach-loaders, and one armed with bows and arrows. This first period, during which ma- chinery conquers its field of action, is of decisive importance owing to the extraordinary profits that it helps to produce. These profits not only form a source of accelerated accumu- lation, but also attract into the favoured sphere of production a large part of the additional social capital that is being constantly created, and is ever on the look-out for new in- vestments. The special advantages of this first period of fast and furious activity are felt in every branch of production that machinery invades. So soon, however, as the factory system has gained a certain breadth of footing and a definite degree of maturity, and, especially, so soon as its technical basis, machinery, is itself produced by machinery ; so soon as coal mining and iron mining, the metal industries, and the means of transport have been revolutionised ; so soon, in short, as the general conditions requisite for production by the modern industrial system have been established, this mode of production acquires an elasticity, a capacity for sudden extension by leaps and bounds that finds no hindrance except in the supply of raw material and in the disposal of the pro- duce. On the one hand, the immediate effect of machinery is 1 "The sufferings of the hand-loom weavers were the subject of an inquiry by a Royal Commission, but although their distress was acknowledged and lamented, the amelioration of their condition was left, and probably necessarily so, to the chances and changes of time, which it may now be hoped" F20 years later 11 "have nearly obliterated those miseries, and not improbably by the present great extension of the power-loom." ("Rep. Insp. of Fct., 31 Oct., 1856," p. 15.) Machinery and Modern Industry. 493 to increase the supply of raw material in the same "way, for example, as the cotton gin augmented the production of cotton. 1 On the other hand ; the cheapness of the articles pro- duced by machinery, and the improved means of transport arid communication furnish the weapons for conquering foreign markets. By ruining handicraft production in other countries, machinery forcibly converts them into fields for the supply of its raw material. In this way East India was compelled to produce cotton, wool, hemp, jute, and indigo for Great Britain. 2 By constantly making a part of the hands "super- numerary," modern industry, in all countries where it has taken root, gives a spur to emigration and to the colonization of foreign lands, which are thereby converted into settlements for growing the raw material of the mother country; just as Australia, for example, was converted into a colony for grow- ing wool. 3 A new and international division of labour, a division suited to the requirements of the chief centres of modern industry springs up, and converts one part of the globe into a chiefly agricultural field of production, for supplying the other part which remains a chiefly industrial field. This evolution hangs together with radical changes in agriculture which we need not here further inquire into. 4 1 Other ways in which machinery affects the production of raw material will be mentioned ifl the third book. 2 EXPORT OF COTTON FROM INDIA TO GREAT BRITAIN. 1846. 34,540,143 Ibs. I860. 204,141,168 Ibs. 1865. 445,947,600 Ibs. 8 EXPORT OF WOOL FROM INDIA TO GREAT BRITAIN. 1846. 4,570,581 Ibs. I860. 20,214,173 Ibs. 1865. 20,679,111 Ibs. EXPORT OF WOOL FROM THE CAPE TO GREAT BRITAIN. 2,958,457 Ibs. I860. 16,574,345 Ibs. 1865. 29,920,623 Ibs. EXPORT OF WOOL FROM AUSTRALIA TO GRBAT BRITAIN. 1846. 21,789,346 Ibs. I860. 59,166,616 Ibs. 1865. 109,734,261 Ibs. * The economical development of the United States is itself a product of European, more especially of English modern industry. In their present form (1866) the States must still be considered a European colony. Note to the 4th German edition. Since then the United States has developed into the second industrial country of the world, without thereby losing its colonial character entirely. F. E. EXPORT OF COTTON FROM THE UNITED STATES TO GREAT BRITAIN. 1846. 401,949,393 Ibs. 1852. 765,630,543 Ibs. 1859. 961,707,264 Ibs. I860. 1,115,890,608 Ibs. 494 Capitalist Production. On the motion of Mr. Gladstone, the House of Commons ordered, on the 17th February, 1867, a return of the total quantities of grain, corn, and flour, of all sorts, imported into, and exported from, the United Kingdom, between the years 1831 and 1866. I give below a summary of the result. The flour is given in quarters of corn. QUINQUENNIAL PERIODS AND THE YEAR 1866. ANNUAL AVERAGE. 1831-1835. 1836-1840. 1841-1845. 1846-1850. Import (Qrs.) - - 1,096,373 2,389,729 2,843,865 8,776,552 Export " 225,363 251,770 139,056 155,461 Excess of Import over export - - 871,110 2,137,959 2,704,809 8,621,091 POPULATION. Yearly average in each period, - - 24,621,107 25,929,507 27,262,569 27,797,598 Average quantity of corn, &c., in qrs., consumed annu- ally per head over and ahove the home produce con- sumed, - - - - 0-036 0-082 0-099 0-310 EXPORT OK CORN, &C., FROM THE UNITED STATES TO GREAT BRITAIN. 1850. 1862. Wheat, cwts. ... 16,202,312 41,033,503 Barley, ' ... 3,669,653 6,624,800 Oats, 3,174,801 4,426.994 Rye, " 388,749 7,108 Flour, 3,819,440 7,207,113 Buckwheat, cwts. . . . 1054 19,571 1850. 1862. Maize, cwts. 6,473,161 11,694,818 Bere or Bigg (a sort c \ 2039 7675 Barley), cwts. Peas, cwts. 811,620 1,024,722 Beans, " ... 1,822,972 2,037,137 Total exports, . . . 34,365,801 74,083,351 Machinery and Modern Industry. 495 QUINQUENNIAL PERIODS, &c. ( CONTINUED. ) ANNUAL AVERAGE. 1851-1855. 1856-1860. 1861-1865. 1866. Import (Qrs.) - - 8,345,237 10,912,612 15,009,871 16,457,340 Export " 307,491 341,150 302,754 216,218 Excess of Import over export - 8,037,746 10,572,462 14,707,117 16,241,122 POPULATION. Yearly average in each period, - - 27,572,923 28,391,544 29,381,460 29,935,404 Average quantity of corn, &c., in qrs., consumed annu- ally per head over and above the home produce con- sumed, - - - - 0-291 0-372 0-543 0-543 The enormous power, inherent in the factory system, of ex- panding by jumps, and the dependence of that system on the markets of the world, necessarily beget feverish production, followed by over-filling of the markets, whereupon contraction of the markets brings on crippling of production. The life of modern industry becomes a series of periods of moderate activity, prosperity, over-production, crisis and stagnation. The uncertainty and instability to which machinery subjects the employment, and consequently the conditions of existence, of the operatives become normal, owing to these periodic changes of the industrial cycle. Except in the periods of pros- perity, there rages between the capitalists the most furious combat for the share of each in the markets. This share is directly proportional to the cheapness of the product. Besides the rivalry that this struggle begets in the application of improved machinery for replacing labour-power, and of new methods of production, there also comes a time in every indus- trial cycle, when a forcible reduction of wages beneath the 496 Capitalist Production. value of labour-power, is attempted for the purpose of cheap- ening commodities. 1 A necessary condition, therefore, to the growth of the num- ber of factory hands, is a proportionally much more rapid growth of the amount of capital invested in mills. This growth, however, is conditioned by the ebb and flow of the industrial cycle. It is, besides, constantly interrupted by the technical progress that at one time virtually supplies the place of new workmen, at another, actually displaces old ones. This qualitative change in mechanical industry continually dis- charges hands from the factory, or shuts its doors against the fresh stream of recruits, while the purely quantitative exten- sion of the factories absorbs not only the men thrown out of work, but also fresh contingents. The workpeople are thus continually both repelled and attracted, hustled from pillar to post, while, at the same time, constant changes take place in the sex, age, and skill of the levies. The lot of the factory operatives will be best depicted by tak- ing a rapid survey of the course of the English cotton industry. From 1770 to 1815 this trade was depressed or stagnant for 1 In an appeal made in July, 1866, to the Trade Societies of England, by the shoemakers of Leicester, who had been thrown on the streets by a lock-out, it is stated: "Twenty years ago the Leicester shoe trade was revolutionised by the introduction of riveting in the place of stitching. At that time good wages could be earned. Great competition was shown between the different firms as to which could turn out the neatest article. Shortly afterwards, however, a worse kind of competition sprang up, namely, that of underselling one another in the market. The injurious consequences soon manifested themselves in reductions of wages, and so sweepingly quick was the fall in the price of labour, that many firms now pay only one half of the original wages. And yet, though wages sink lower and lower, profits appear, with each alteration in the scale of wages, to increase." Even bad times are utilized by the manufacturers, for making exceptional profits by ex- cessive lowering of wages, i.e., by a direct robbery of the labourer's means of sub- sistence. One example (it has reference to the crisis in the Coventry silk weaving) : "From information I have received from manufacturers as well as workmen, there seems to be no doubt that wages have been reduced to a greater extent than either the competition of the foreign producers, or other circumstances have rendered necessary ... the majority of weavers are working at a reduction of 30 to 40 per cent, in their wages. A piece of ribbon for making which the weaver got 6s. or 7s. five years back, now only brings them 3s. 3d. or 3s. 6d.; other work is now priced at 2s. and 2s. 3d. which was formerly priced at 4s. and 4s. 3d. The reduction in wage seems to have been carried to a greater extent than is neces- sary for increasing demand. Indeed, the reduction in the cost of weaving, in the case of many descriptions of ribbons, has not been accompanied by any cor- responding reduction in the selling price of the manufactured article." (Mr. F. D. Longe's Report. "Ch. Emp. Com., V. Rep., 1866," p. 114, 1.) Machinery and Modern Industry. 497 5 years only. During this period of 45 years the English manufacturers had a monopoly of machinery and of the mark- ets of the world. From 1815 to 1821 depression ; 1822 and 1823 prosperity; 1824 abolition of the laws against Trades' Unions, great extension of factories everywhere; 1825 crisis; 1826 great misery and riots among the factory operatives; 1827 slight improvement ; 1828 great increase in power-looms, and in exports; 1829 exports, especially to India, surpass all former years; 1830 glutted markets, great distress; 1831 to 1833 continued depression, the monopoly of the trade with India and China withdrawn from the East India Company ; 1834 great increase of factories and machinery, shortness of hands. The new poor law furthers the migration of agricul- tural labourers into the factory districts. The country districts swept of children. White slave trade; 1835 great prosperity, contemporaneous starvation of the handloom weavers; 1836 great prosperity; 1837 and 1838 depression and crisis; 1839 revival; 1840 great depression, riots, calling out of the mili- tary; 1841 and 1842 frightful suffering among the factory operatives ; 1842 the manufacturers lock the hands out of the factories in order to enforce the repeal of the Corn Laws, The operatives stream in thousands into the towns of Lanca- shire and Yorkshire, are driven back by the military, and their leaders brought to trial at Lancaster; 1843 great misery; 1844 revival; 1845 great prosperity; 1846 continued improve- ment at first, then reaction. Repeal of the Corn Laws; 1847 crisis, general reduction of wages by 10 and more per cent, in honour of the "big loaf;" 1848 continued depression; Manchester under military protection; 1849 revival; 1850 prosperity; 1851 falling prices, low wages, frequent strikes; 1852 improvement begins, strikes continue, the manufacturers threaten to import foreign hands; 1853 increasing exports. Strike for 8 months, and great misery at Preston ; 1854 prosperity, glutted markets; 1855 news of failures stream in from the United States, Canada, and the Eastern markets; 1856 great prosperity; 1857 crisis; 1858 improvement; 1859 great prosperity, increase in factories; 1860 Zenith of the English cotton trade, the Indian, Australian, and other mark- 2 F 498 Capitalist Production. cts so glutted with goods that even in 1863 they had not ab- sorbed the whole lot ; the French Treaty of Commerce, enorm- ous growth of factories and machinery; 18G1 prosperity con- tinues for a time, reaction, the American civil war, cotton famine; 1862 to 1863 complete collapse. The history of the cotton famine is too characteristic to dis- pense with dwelling upon it for a moment. From the indi- cations as to the condition of the markets of the world in 1860 and 1861, we see that the cotton famine came in the nick of time for the manufacturers, and was to some extent advan- tageous to them, a fact that was acknowledged in the reports of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, proclaimed in Par- liament by Palmerston and Derby, and confirmed by events. 1 No doubt, among the 2887 cotton mills in the United Kingdom in 1861, there were many of small size. According to the report of Mr. A. Redgrave, out of the 2109 mills included in his district, 392 or 19% employed less than ten horse-power each ; 345, or 16% employed 10 II. P., and less than 20 II. P. ; while 1372 employed upwards of 20 H. P. 2 The majority of the small mills were weaving sheds, built during the period pf prosperity after 1858, for the most part by speculators, of whom one supplied the yarn, another the machinery, a third the buildings, and were worked by men who had been over- lookers, or by other persons of small means. These small manufacturers mostly went to the wall. The same fate would have overtaken them in the commercial crisis that was staved off only by the cotton famine. Although they formed one- third of the total number of manufacturers, yet their mills absorbed a much smaller part of the capital invested in the cotton trade. As to the extent of the stoppage, it appears from authentic estimates, that in October 1862, 60.3% of the spindles, and 58% of the looms were standing. This refers to the cotton trade as a whole, and, of course, requires consider- able modification for individual districts. Only very few mills worked full time (60 hours a week), the remainder worked at intervals. Even in those few cases where full time was worked, and at the customary rate of piece-wage, the weekly 1 Conf. Reports of Insp. of Fact. 31st October, 1862, p. 30. 2 1. c., p. 19. Machinery and Modern Industry. 499 wages of the operatives necessarily shrank, owing to good cotton being replaced by bad, Sea Island by Egyptian (in fine spinning mills), American and Egyptian by Surat, and pure cotton by mixing of waste and Surat. The shorter fibre of the Surat cotton and its dirty condition, the greater fragility of the thread, the substitution of all sorts of heavy ingredients for flour in sizing the warps, all these lessened the speed of the machinery, or the number of looms that could be superin- tended by one weaver, increased the labour caused by defects in the machinery, and reduced the piece-wage by reducing the mass of the product turned off. Where Surat cotton was used the loss to the operatives when on full time, amounted to 20, 30, and more per cent. But besides this, the majority of the manufacturers reduced the rate of piece-wage by 5, 7^, and 10 per cent. We can therefore conceive the situation of those hands who were employed for only 3, 3^ or 4 days a week, of for only 6 hours a day. Even in 1863, after a comparative improvement had set in, the weekly wages of spinners and of weavers were 3s. 4d., 3s. 10d., 4s. 6d. and 5s. Id. 1 Even in this miserable state of things, however, the inventive spirit of the master never stood still, but was exercised in making deductions from wages. These were to some extent inflicted as a penalty for defects in the finished article that were really due to his bad cotton and to his unsuitable machinery. More- over, where the manufacturer owned the cottages of the work- people, he paid himself his rents by deducting the amount from these miserable wages. Mr. Redgrave tells us of self- acting minders (operatives who manage a pair of self-acting mules) "earning at the end of a fortnight's full work 8s. lid., and that from this sum was deduced the rent of the house, the manufacturer, however, returning half the rent as a gift. The minders took away the sum of 6s. lid. In many places the self-acting minders ranged from 5s. to 9s. per week, and the weavers from 2s. to 6s. ptr week, during the latter part of 1862. " 2 Even when working short time the rent was fre- quently deducted from the wages of the operatives. 3 No 1 "Rep. Insp. of Fact., 31st October, 1865," pp. 41-45. 2 "Rep. Insp. of Fact., 31st October, 1863." * 1. c., p. 51. 500 Capitalist Production. wonder that in some parts of Lancashire a kind of famine fever broke out. But more characteristic than all this, was the revolution that took place in the process of production at the expense of the workpeople. Experimenta in corpore vili, like those of anatomists on frogs, were formally made. "Al- though," says Mr. Redgrave, "I have given the actual earnings of the operatives in the several mills, it does not follow that they earn the same amount week by week. The operatives are subject to great fluctuation from the constant experi- mentalizing of the manufacturers .... the earnings of the operatives rise and fall with the quality of the cotton mixings ; sometimes they have been within 15 per cent, of former earnings, and then, in a week or two, they have fallen off from 50 to 60 per cent." 1 These experiments were not made solely at the expense of the workman's means of subsistence. His five senses also had to pay the penalty. "The people who are employed in making up Surat cotton complain very much. They inform me, on opening the bales of cotton there is an intolerable smell, which causes sickness .... In the mixing, scribbling and carding rooms, the dust and dirt which are disengaged, irritate the air passages, and give rise to cough and difficulty of breathing. A disease of the skin, no doubt from the irritation of the dirt contained in the Surat cotton, also prevails . . . The fibre being so short, a great amount of size, both animal and vegetable, is used .... Bronchitis is more prevalent owing to the dust. Inflammatory sore throat is common, from the same cause. Sickness and dyspepsia are produced by the frequent breaking of the weft, when the weaver sucks the weft through the eye of the shuttle." On the other hand, the substitutes for flour were a Fortunatus' purse to the manufacturers, by increasing the weight of the yarn. They caused "15 Ibs. of raw material to weigh 26 Ibs. after it was woven." 2 In the Report of Inspectors of Factories for 30th April, 1864, we read as follows: "The trade is avail- ing itself of this resource at present to an extent which is even discreditable. I have heard on good authority of a cloth weighing 8 Ibs. which was made of 5| Ibs. cotton and 2f Ibs. M. c., pp. 50-51. M. c., pp. 62-63. Machinery and Modern Industry. 501 size; and of another cloth weighing 5^ Ibs., of which 2 Ibs. was size. These were ordinary export shirtings. In cloths of other descriptions, as much as 50 per cent, size is sometimes added ; so that a manufacturer may, and does truly boast, that he is getting rich by selling cloth for less money per pound than he paid for the mere yarn of which they are composed." 1 But the workpeople had to suffer, not only from the experi- ments of the manufacturers inside the mills, and of the muni- cipalities outside, not only from reduced wages and absence of work, from Avant and from charity, and from the eulogistic speeches of lords and commons. "Unfortunate females who, in consequence of the cotton famine, were at its commence- ment thrown out of employment, and have thereby become outcasts of society; and now though trade has revived, and work is plentiful, continue members of that unfortunate class, and are likely to continue so. There are also in the borough more youthful prostitutes than I have known for the last 25 years." 2 "We find then, in the first 45 years of the English cotton trade, from 1770 to 1815, only 5 years of crisis and stagna- tion ; but this was the period of monopoly. The second period from 1815 to 1863 counts, during its 48 years, only 20 years of revival and prosperity against 28 of depression and stag- nation. Between 1815 and 1830 the competition with the continent of Europe and with the United States sets in. After 1833, the extension of the Asiatic markets is enforced by "destruction of the human race" (the wholesale extinction of Indian handloom weavers). After the repeal of the Corn Laws, from 1846 to 1863, there are 8 years of moderate activity and prosperity against 9 years of depression and stag- nation. The condition of the adult male operatives, even during the years of prosperity, may be judged from the note subjoined. 3 *Rep. &c. 30th April, 1864, p. 27. 2 From a letter of Mr. Harris, Chief Constable of Bolton, in Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st October, 1865, pp. 61-62. s In an appeal, dated 1863, of the factory operatives of Lancashire, &c., for the purpose of forming a society for organised emigration, we find the following: "That a large emigration of factory workers is now absolutely essential to raise them 502 Capitalist Production. SECTION 8. REVOLUTION EFFECTED IN MANUFACTURE, HANDICRAFTS. AND DOMESTIC INDUSTRY BY MODERN IN- DUSTRY. a. Overthrow of Co-operation based on Handicraft and on the Division of Labour. We have seen how machinery does away with co-operation based on handicrafts, and with manufacture based on the divi- sion of handicraft labour. An example of the first sort is the mowing-machine; it replaces co-operation between mowers. A striking example of the second kind, is the needle-making machine. According to Adam Smith, 10 men, in his day, made in co-operation, over 48,000 needles a-day. On the other hand, a single needle-machine makes 145,000 in a work- ing day of 11 hours. One woman or one girl superintends four such machines, and so produces near upon 600,000 needles in a day, and upwards of 3,000,000 in a week. 1 A single machine, when it takes the place of co-operation or of manufacture, may itself serve as the basis of an industry of a from their present prostrate .condition, few will deny; but to show that a con- tinuous stream of emigration is at all times demanded, and, without which it is impossible for them to maintain their position in ordinary times, we beg to call attention to the subjoined facts: In 1814 the official value of cotton goods ex- ported was 17,665,378, whilst the real marketable value was 20,070,824. In 1858 the official value of cotton goods exported, was 182,221,681; but the real or marketable value was only 43,001,322, being a ten-fold quantity sold for little more than double the former price. To produce results so disadvantageous to the country generally, and to the factory workers in particular, several causes have co-operated, which, had circumstances permitted, we should have brought more prominently under your notice; suffice it for the present to say that the most obvious one is the constant redundancy of labour, without which a trade so ruinous in its effects never could have been carried on, and which requires a constantly extending market to save it from annihilation. Our cotton mills may be brought to a stand by the periodical stagnations of trade, which, under present arrange- ments, are as inevitable as death itself; but the human mind is constantly at work, and although we believe we are under the mark in stating that six millions of persons have left these shores during the last 25 years, yet, from the natural increase of population, and the displacement of labour to cheapen production, a large percentage of the male adults in the most prosperous times find it impossible to obtain work in factories on any conditions whatever." ("Reports of Insp. of Fact., 30th April, 1863," pp. 51-52. We shall, in a later chapter, see how our friends, the manufacturers, endeavored, during the catastrophe in the cotton trade, to prevent by every means, including State interference, the emigration of the operatives. ^'Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Report, 1864," p. 108, n. 447. Machinery and Modern Industry. 503 handicraft character. Still, such a return to handicrafts is but a transition to the, factory system, which, as a rule, makes its appearance so soon as the human muscles are re- placed, for the purpose of driving the machines, by a me- chanical motive power, such as steam or water. Here and there, but in any case only for a time, an industry may be carried on, on a small scale, by means of mechanical power. This is effected by hiring steam power, as is done in some of the Birmingham trades, or by the use of small caloric- engines, as in some branches of weaving. 1 In the Coventry silk weaving industry the experiment of "cottage factories" was tried. In the centre of a square surrounded by rows of cottages, an engine-house was built and the engine connected by shafts with the looms in the cottages. In all cases the power was hired at so much per loom. The rent was pay- able weekly, whether the looms worked or not. Each cottage held from 2 to 6 looms ; some belonged to the weaver, some were bought on credit, some were hired. The struggle be- tween these cottage factories and the factory proper, lasted over 12 years. It ended with the complete ruin of the 300 cottage-factories. 2 Wherever the nature of the process did not involve production on a large scale, the new industries that have sprung up in the last few decades, such as envelope making, steel-pen making, &c., have, as a general rule, first passed through the handicraft stage, and then the manufactur- ing stage, as short phases of transition to the factory stage. The transition is very difficult in those cases where the pro- duction of the article by manufacture consists, not of a series of graduated processes, but of a great number of discon- nected ones. This circumstance formed a great hindrance to 15 years ago, a machine was invented that automatically per- formed 6 separate operations at once. The first steel-pens were supplied by the handicraft system, in the year 1820, at 7 4s, the gross; in 1830 they were supplied by manufacture 1 In the United States the restoration in this way, of handicrafts based on machinery is frequent; and therefore, when the inevitable transition to the factory system shall take place, the ensuing concentration will, compared with Europe and even with England, stride on in seven-league boots. 2 See "Rep. of Insp. of Fact, 31st Oct., 1865," p. 64. 504 Capitalist Production. at 8s., and to-day the factory system supplies them to the trade at from 2s. to 6d. the gross. 1 b. Re-action of the Factory System on Manufacture and Domestic Industries. Along with the development of the factory system and of the revolution in agriculture that accompanies it, production in all the other branches of industry not only extends, hut alters its character. The principle, carried out in the factory system, of analysing the process of production into its con- stituent phases, and of solving the problems thus proposed by the application of mechanics, of chemistry, and of the whole range of the natural sciences, becomes the determining prin- ciple everywhere. Hence, machinery squeezes itself into the manufacturing industries first for one detail process, then for another. Thus the solid crystal of their organisation, based on the old division of labour, becomes dissolved, and makes way for constant changes. Independently of this, a radical change takes place in the composition of the collective labourer, a change of the persons working in combination. In contrast with the manufacturing period, the division of labour is thenceforth based, wherever possible, on the employment of women, of children of all ages, and of unskilled labourers, in one word, on cheap labour, as it is characteristically called in England. This is the case not only with all production on a large scale, whether employing machinery or not, but also with the so-called domestic industry, whether carried on in the houses of the workpeople or in small workshops. This modern so-called domestic industry has nothing, except the name, in common with the old-fashioned domestic industry, the existence of which presupposes independent urban handi- crafts, independent peasant farming, and above all, a dwell- ing-house for the labourer and his family. That old-fash- 1 Mr. Gillott erected in Birmingham the first steel-pen factory on a large scale. It produced, so early as 1851, over 180,000,000 of pens yearly, and consumed 120 tons of steel. Birmingham has the monopoly of this industry in the United Kingdom, and at present produces thousands of millions of steel pens. According to the Census of 1861, the number of persons employed was 1428, of whom 1268 were females from 5 years of age upwards. Machinery and Modern Industry. 505 ioned industry has now been converted into an outside de- partment of the factory, the manufactory, or the warehouse. Besides the factory operatives, the manufacturing workmen and the handicraftsmen, whom it concentrates in large masses at one spot, and directly commands, capital also sets in mo- tion, by means of invisible threads, another army ; that of the workers in the domestic industries, who dwell in the large towns and are also scattered over the face of the country. An example : The shirt factory of Messrs. Tille at Londonderry, which employs 1000 operatives in the factory itself, and 9000 people spread up and down the country and working in their own houses. 1 The exploitation of cheap and immature lalxmr-power is carried out in a more shameless manner in modern Manu- facture than in the factory proper. This is because the tech- nical foundation of the factory system, namely, the substi- tution of machines for muscular power, and the light char- acter of the labour, is almost entirely absent in Manufacture, and at the same time women and over-young children are subjected, in a most unconscionable way, to the influence of poisonous or injurious substances. This exploitation is more shameless in the so-called domestic industry than in manu- factures, and that because the power of resistance in the labourers decreases with their dissemination ; because a whole series of plundering parasites insinuate themselves between the employer and the workman ; because a domestic industry has always to compete, either with the factory system, or with manufacturing in the same branch of production; because poverty robs the workman of the conditions most essential to his labour, of space, light and ventilation; because employ- ment becomes more and more irregular; and, finally, because in these the last resorts of the masses made "redundant" by Modern Industry and Agriculture, competition for work at- tains its maximum. Economy in the means of production, first systematically carried out in the factory system, and there, from the very beginning, coincident with the most reck- less squandering of labour-power, and robbery of the con- 1 Ch. Empl. Comm., II. Rep. 18C4, p. LXVIII., n. 415. 506 Capitalist Production. ditions normally requisite for labour this economy now shows its antagonistic and murderous side more and more in a given branch of industry, the less the social productive power of labour and the technical basis for a combination of processes are developed in that branch. c. Modern Manufacture. I now proceed, by a few examples, to illustrate the prin- ciples laid down above. As a matter of fact, the reader is already familiar with numerous instances given in the chapter on the working day. In the hardware manufactures of Birmingham and the neighborhood, there are employed, mostly in very heavy work, 30,000 children and young per- sons, besides 10,000 women. There they are to be seen in the unwholesome brass-foundries, button factories, enamelling, galvanizing, and lackering works. 1 Owing to the excessive labour of their workpeople, both adult and non-adult, certain London houses where newspapers and books are printed have got the ill-omened name of "slaughter-houses." 2 Similar ex- cesses are practised in bookbinding, where the victims are chiefly women, girls, and children ; young persons have to do heavy work in rope-walks and night-work in salt mines, candle manufactories, and chemical works; young people are worked to death at turning the looms in silk weaving, when it is not carried on by machinery. 3 One of the most shameful, the most dirty, and the worst paid kinds of labour, and one on which women and young girls are by preference employed, is the sorting of rags. It is well known that Great Britain, apart from its own immense store of rags, is the emporium for the rag trade of the whole world. They flow in from Japan, from the most remote States of South America, and from the Canary Islands. But the chief sources of their supply are Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Egypt, Turkey, Belgium, and Holland. They are used for manure, for mak- 1 And now forsooth children are employed at file-cutting in Sheffield. *Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. 1866, p. 3, n. 24, p. 6, n. 55, 56, p. 7, n. 59, 60. 3 L. c, pp. 114, 115, n. 6, 7. The commissioner justly remarks that though as a rule machines take the place of men, here literally young persons replace machines. Machinery and Modern Industry. 507 ing bed-flocks, for shoddy, and they serve as the raw material of paper. The rag-sorters are the medium for the spread of small-pox and other infectious diseases, and they themselves are the first victims. 1 A classical example of over-work, of hard and inappropriate labour, and of its brutalising effects on the workman from his childhood upwards, is afforded not only by coal-mining and miners generally, but also by tile and brick making, in which industry the recently invented ma- chinery is, in England, used only here and there. Between May and September the work lasts from 5 in the morning till 8 in the evening, and where the drying is done in the open air, it often lasts from 4 in the morning till 9 in the even- ing. Work from 5 in the morning till 7 in the evening is considered "reduced" and "moderate." Both boys and girls of 6 and even of 4 years of age are employed. They work for the same number of hours, often longer, than the adults. The work is hard and the summer heat increases the exhaustion. In a certain tile field at Mosley, e.g., a young woman, 24 years of age, was in the habit of making 2000 tiles a day, with the assistance of 2 little girls, who carried the clay for her, and stacked the tiles. These girls carried daily 10 tons up the slippery sides of the clay pits, from a depth of 30 feet, and then for a distance of 210 feet. "It is impossible for a child to pass through the purgatory of a tile-field without great moral degradation . . . the low language, which they are accustomed to hear from their tenderest years, the filthy, indecent, and shameless habits, amidst which, unknow- ing, and half wild, they grow up, make them in after life lawless, abandoned, dissolute. ... A frightful source of demoralization is the mode of living. Each moulder, who is always a skilled labourer, and the chief of a group, supplies his 7 subordinates with board and lodging in his cottage. Whether members of his family or not, the men, boys, and girls all sleep in the cottage, which contains generally two, exceptionally 3 rooms, all on the ground floor, and badly venti- lated. These people are so exhausted after the day's work, 1 See the Report on the rag trade, and numerous details in Public Health, VIII. Rep. Lond. 1866, app. pp. 196, 208. 508 Capitalist Production. that neither the rules of health, of cleanliness, nor of decency are in the least observed. Many of these cottages are models of untidiness, dirt, and dust . . . The greatest evil of the system that employs young girls on this sort of work, con- sists in this, that, as a rule, it chains them fast from child- hood for the whole of their after-life to the most abandoned rabble. They become rough, foul-mouthed boys, before Na- ture has taught them that they are women. Clothed in a few dirty rags, the legs naked far above the knees, hair and face besmeared with dirt, they learn to treat all feelings of decency and of shame with contempt. During meal-times they lie at full length in the fields, or watch the boys bathing in a neighboring canal. Their heavy day's work at length completed, they put on better clothes, and accompany the men to the public houses." That excessive insobriety is prevalent from childhood upwards among the whole of this class, is only natural. "The worst is that the brickmakers despair of themselves. You might as well, said one of the better kind to a chaplain of Southallfield, try to raise and improve the devil as a brickie, sir!" 1 As to the manner in which capital effects an economy in the requisites of labour, in modern Manufacture (in which I include all workshops of larger size, except factories proper), official and most ample material bearing on it is to be found in the Public Health Eeports IV. (1863) and VI. (1864). The description of the workshops, more especially those of the London printers and tailors, surpasses the most loathsome phantasies of our romance writers. The effect on the health of the workpeople is self-evident. Dr. Simon, the chief medical officer of the Privy Council and the official editor of the "Public Health Report," says: "In my fourth Report (1863) I showed, how it is practically impossible for the workpeople to insist upon that which is their first sanitary right, viz., the right that, no matter what the work for which their employer brings them together, the labour, so far as it depends upon him, should be freed from all avoidably un- 1 Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep., 1866, xvi., n. 96, 97, and p. 130, n. 39, 61. See also III. Rep., 1864, p. 48, 56. Machinery and Modern Industry. 509 wholesome conditions. I pointed out, that while the work- people are practically incapable of doing themselves this sani tary justice, they are unable to obtain any effective support from the paid adminstrations of the sanitary police. . . . The life of myriads of workmen and workwomen is now use- lessly tortured and shortened by the never-ending physical suffering that their mere occupation begets." 1 In illustration of the way in which the workrooms influence the state of health, Dr. Simon gives the following table of mortality. 2 Number of persons of all Industries compared Death rate per 100,000 men in ages employed in the re- as regards the respective industries between spective industries. health. the stated ages. 958,265 Agriculture in England & Wales Age 25-35. 743 Age 35-45. 805 Age 45-55. 1,145 22,301 men "j 12,379 women J London tailors 958 1,262 2,093 13,803 London printers 894 1,747 2,367 b. Modern Domestic Industry. I now come to the so-called domestic industry. In order to get an idea of the horrors of this sphere, in which capital conducts its exploitation in the background of modern me- chanical industry, one must go to the apparently quiet idyllic trade of nail-making, 3 carried on in a few remote villages of England. In this place, however, it will be enough to give a 1 Public Health. Sixth Rep. Lond. 1864, p. 31. 2 1. c., p. 30. Dr. Simon remarks that the mortality among the London tailors and printers between the ages of 25 and 35 is in fact much greater, because the em- ployers in London obtain from the country a great number of young people up to 30 years of age, as "apprentices" and "improvers," who come for the purpose of being perfected in their trade. These figure in the census as Londoners, they swell out the number of heads on which the London death-rate is calculated, without adding proportionally to the number of deaths in that place. The greater part of them in fact return to the country, and especially in cases of severe illness. (1. c.) 1 1 allude here to hammered nails, as distinguished from nails cut out and made by machinery. See Child. Empl. Comm., Third Rep. p. xi, p. xix, n. 125-130, p. 63, n. 11, p. 114, n. 487, p. 137, n. 674. cjio Capitalist Production. few examples from those branches of the lace-making and straw-plaiting industries that are not yet carried on by the aid of machinery, and that as yet do not compete with branches carried* on in factories or in manufactories. Of the 150,000 persons employed in England in the pro- duction of lace, about 10,000 fall under the authority of the Factory Act, 1861. Almost the whole of the remaining 140,- 000 are women, young persons, and children of both sexes, the male sex, however, being weakly represented. The state of health of this cheap material for exploitation will be seen from the following table, computed by Dr. Trueman, physi- cian to the Nottingham General Dispensary. Out of 686 fe- male patients who were lace makers, most of them between the ages of 17 and 24, the number of consumptive ones were : 1852. 1 in 45. 1855. 1 in 18. 1858. 1 in 15. 1853. 1 in 28. 1856. 1 in 15. 1859. 1 in 9. 1854. 1 in 17. 1857. 1 in 13. I860. 1 in 8. 1861. 1 in 8. 1 This progress in the rate of consumption ought to suffice for the most optimist of progressists, and for the biggest hawker of lies among the Free Trade bagmen of Germany. The Factory Act of 1861 regulates the actual making of the lace, so far as it is done by machinery, and this is the rule in England. The branches that we are now about to examine, solely with regard to those of the workpeople who work at home, and not those who work in manufactories or ware- houses, fall into two divisions, viz., (1), finishing; (2), mend- ing. The former gives the finishing touches to the machine- made lace, and includes numerous sub-divisions. The lace finishing is done either in what are called "Mis- tresses' Houses," or by women in their own houses, with or without the help of their children. The women who keep the "Mistresses' Houses" are themselves poor. The workroom is in a private house. The mistresses take orders from manu- facturers, or from warehousemen, and employ as many women, Ch. Empl. Comm., II. Rep., p. xxii., n. 166. Machinery and Modern Industry. 511 girls, and young children as the size of their rooms and the fluctuating demand of the business will allow. The number of the workwomen employed in these workrooms varies from 20 to 40 in some, and from 10 to 20 in others. The average age at which the children commence work is six years, but in many cases it is below five. The usual working hours are from 8 in the morning till eight in the evening, with 1? hours for meals, which are taken at irregular intervals, and often in the foul workrooms. When business is brisk, the labour fre- quently lasts from 8 or even 6 o'clock in the morning till 10, 11, or 12 o'clock at night. In English barracks the regulation space allotted to each soldier is 500-600 cubic feet, and in the military hospitals 1200 cubic feet. But in those finishing styes there are but 67 to 100 cubic feet to each person. At the same time the oxygen of the air is consumed by gas-lights. In order to keep the lace clean, and although the floor is tiled or flagged, the children are often compelled, even in winter, to pull off their shoes. "It is not at all uncommon in Notting- ham to find 14 to 20 children huddled together in a small room, of, perhaps, not more than 12 feet square, and employed for 15 hours out of the 24, at work that of itself is exhausting, from its weariness and monotony, and is besides carried on under every possible unwholesome condition. . . . Even the very youngest children work with a strained attention and a rapidity that is astonishing, hardly ever giving their fingers rest or slowering their motion. If a question be asked them, they never raise their eyes from their work for fear of losing a single moment." The "long stick" is used by the mistresses as a stimulant more and more as the working hours are pro- longed. "The children gradually tire and becomes as restless as birds towards the end of their long detention at an occupa- tion that is monotonous, eye-straining, and exhausting from the uniformity in the posture of the body. Their work is like slavery." 1 When women and their children work at home, which now-a-days means in a hired room, often in a garret, the state of things is, if possible, still worse. This sort of work is giving out within a circle of 80 miles radius from Not- 1 Ch. Empl. Comm., II. Rep., 1864, pp. xix., xx., xxi. Capitalist Production. tingham. On leaving the warehouses at 9 or 10 o'clock at night, the children are often given a bundle of lace to take home with them and finish. The Pharisee of a capitalist represented by one of his servants, accompanies this action, of course, with the unctuous phrase : "That's for mother," yet he knows well enough that the poor children must sit up and help. 1 Pillow lace making is chiefly carried on in England in two agricultural districts one, the Honiton lace district, extending from 20 to 30 miles along the south coast of Devonshire, and including a few places in Xorth Devon ; the other comprising a great part of the counties of Buckingham, Bedford, and Northampton, and also the adjoining portions of Oxfordshire and Huntingdonshire. The cottages of the agricultural la- bourers are the places where the work is usually carried on. Many manufacturers employ upwards of 3000 of these lace makers, who are chiefly children and young persons of the fe- male sex exclusively. The state of things described as in- cidental to lace finishing is here repeated, save that instead of the "mistresses' houses," we find what are called "lace schools," kept by poor women in their cottages. From their fifth year and often earlier, until their twelfth or fifteenth year, the children work in these schools ; during the first year the very young ones work from four to eight hours, and later on, from six in the morning till eight and ten o'clock at night. "The rooms are generally the ordinary living rooms of small cottages, the chimney stopped up to keep out draughts, the inmates kept warm by their own animal heat alone, and this frequently in winter. In other cases, these so-called school- rooms are like small store-rooms without fire-places. . . . The overcrowding in these dens and the consequent vitiation of the air are often extreme. Added to this is the injurious effect of drains, privies, decomposing substances, and other filth usual in the purileus of the smaller cottages." With re- gard to space: "In one lace school 18 girls and a mistress, 35 cubic feet to each person ; in another, where the smell was unbearable, 18 persons and 24 cubic feet per head. In this 1 1. c., pp. xxi., xxvi. Machinery and Modern Industry. 513 industry are to be found employed children of 2 and 2-| years." 1 Where lace-making ends in the counties of Buckingham and Bedford, straw-plaiting begins, and extends over a large part of Hertfordshire and the westerly and northerly parts of Essex. In 1861, there were 40,043 persons employed in straw-plaiting and straw-hat making; of these 3815 were males of all ages, the rest females, of whom 14,913, includ- ing about 7000 children, were under 20 years of age. In the place of the lace-schools we find here the "straw-plait schools." The children commence their instruction in straw- plaiting generally in their 4th, often between their 3rd and 4th year. Education, of course, they get none. The children themselves call the elementary schools, "natural schools," to distinguish them from these blood-sucking institutions, in which they are kept at work simply to get through the task, generally 30 yards daily, prescribed by their half -starved mothers. These same mothers often make them work at home, after school is over, till 10, 11, and 12 o'clock at night. The straw cuts their mouths, with which they constantly moisten it, and their fingers. Dr. Ballard gives it as the general opinion of the whole body of medical officers in Lon- don, that 300 cubic feet is the minimum space proper for each person in a bedroom or work-room. But in the straw- plait schools space is more sparingly allotted than in the lace-schools, "12f, 17, 18-| and below 22 cubic feet for each person." The smaller of these numbers, says one of the commissioners, Mr. White, represents less space than the half of what a child would occupy if packed in a box measur- ing 3 feet in each direction. Thus do the children enjoy life till the age of 12 or 14. The wretched half -starved parents think of nothing but getting as much as possible out of their children. The latter, as soon as they are grown up, do not care a farthing, and naturally so, for their parents, and leave them. "It is no wonder that ignorance and vice abound in a population so brought up. . . . Their morality is at the lowest ebb, ... a great number of the women have il- 1 1. C., pp. xxix., xxx. 3G 514 Capitalist Production. legitimate children, and that at such an immature age that even those most conversant with criminal statistics are as- tounded." 1 And the native land of these model families is the pattern Christian country of Europe so says at least Count Montalembert, certainly a competent, authority on Christianity ! Wages in the above industries, miserable as they are (the maximum wages of a child in the straw-plait schools rising in rare cases to 3 shillings, are reduced far below their nominal amount by the prevalence of the truck system every- where, but especially in the lace districts. 2 e. Passage of modern Manufacture, and Domestic Industry into Modern Mechanical Industry. The hastening of this revolution by the application of the Factory Acts to those Industries. The cheapening of labour-power, by sheer abuse of the labour of women and children, by sheer robbery of every nor- mal condition requisite for working and living, and by the sheer brutality of over-work and night-work, meets at last with natural obstacles that cannot be overstepped. So also, when based on these methods, do the cheapening of com- modities and capitalist exploitation in general. So soon as this point is at last reached and it takes many years the hour has struck for the introduction of machinery, and for the thenceforth rapid conversion of the scattered domestic indus- tries and also of manufactures into factory industries. An example, on the most colossal scale, of this movement is afforded by the production of wearing apparel. This in- dustry, according to the classification of the Childrens' Em- ployment Commission, comprises straw-hat makers, ladies'-hat makers, cap-makers, tailors, milliners and dressmakers, shirt- makers, corset-makers, glove-makers, shoemakers, besides many minor branches, such as the making of neck-ties, collars, c. In 1861, the number of females employed in these in- dustries, in England and Wales, amounted to 586,299, of 1 1. c. pp. xl, xli. * Child, Empl. Comm. I. Rep. 1863, p. 185. Machinery and Modern Industry. 515 these 115,242 at the least were under 20, and 16,650 under 15 years of age. The number of these workwomen in the United Kingdom in 1861, was 750,33-i. The number of males em- ployed in England and Wales, in haymaking, shoe-making, glove-making and tailoring was 437,969 ; of these 14,964 under 15 years, 89,285 between 15 and 20, and 333,117 over 20 years. Many of the smaller branches are not included in these figures. But take the figures as they stand ; we then have for England and Wales alone, according to the census of 1861, a total of 1,024,277 persons, about as many as are absorbed by agriculture and cattle breeding. We begin to understand what becomes of the immense quantities of goods conjured up by the magic of machinery, and of the enormous masses of workpeople, which that machinery sets free. The production of wearing apparel is carried on partly in manufactories in whose workrooms there is but a reproduction of that division of labour, the membra disjecta of which were found ready to hand ; partly by small master-handicraftsmen ; these, however, do not, as formerly, work for individual con- sumers, but for manufactories and warehouses, and to such an extent that often whole towns and stretches of country carry on certain branches, such as shoe-making, as a specialty; finally, on a very great scale by the so-called domestic workers, who form an external department of the manufactories, ware- houses, and even of the workshops of the smaller masters. 1 The raw material, &c., is supplied by mechanical industry, the mass of cheap human material (taillable a merci et miseri- corde) is composed of the individuals "liberated" by me- chanical industry and improved agriculture. The manu- factures of this class owed their origin chiefly to the .capital- ist's need of having at hand an army ready equipped to meet any increase of demand. 2 These manufactures, nevertheless, allowed the scattered handicrafts and domestic industries to 1 In England millinery and dressmaking are for the most part carried on, on the premises of the employer, partly by workwomen who live there, partly by women who live off the premises. 2 Mr. White, a commissioner, visited a military clothing manufactory that employed 1000 to 1200 persons, almost all females, and a shoe manufactory with 1300 persons; 01 these nearly one half were children and young persons. 516 Capitalist Production. continue to exist as a broad foundation. The great production of surplus-value in these branches of labour, and the pro- gressive cheapening of their articles, were and are chiefly due to the minimum wages paid, no more than requisite for a miserable vegetation, and to the extension of working time up to the maximum endurable by the human organism. It was in fact by the cheapness of the human sweat and the human blood, which were converted into commodities, that the markets were constantly being extended, and continue daily to be extended ; more especially was this the case with England's colonial markets, where, besides, English tastes and habits prevail. At last the critical point was reached. The basis of the old method, sheer brutality in the exploitation of the workpeople, accompanied more or less by a systematic di- vision of labour, no longer sufficed for the extending markets and for the still more rapidly extending competition of the capitalists. The hour struck for the advent of machinery. The decisively revolutionary machine, the machine which at- tacks in an equal degree the whole of the numberless branches of this sphere of production, dressmaking, tailoring, shoe- making, sewing, hat-making, and many others, is the sewing- machine. Its immediate effect on the workpeople is like that of all machinery, which, since the rise of modern industry, has seized upon new branches of trade. Children of too tender an age are sent adrift. The wage of the machine hands rises compared with that of the house-workers, many of whom be- long to the poorest of the poor. That of the better situated handicraftsmen, with whom the machine competes, sinks. The new machine hands are exclusively girls and young women. With the help of mechanical force, they destroy the monopoly that male labour had of the heavier work, and they drive off from the lighter work numbers of old women and very young children. The overpowering competition crushes the weakest of the manual labourers. The fearful in- crease in death from starvation during the last 10 years in London runs parallel with the extension of machine sewing. 1 1 An instance. The weekly report of deaths by the Registrar General dated 26th Machinery and Modern Industry. 517 The new workwomen turn the machine by hand and foot, or by hand alone, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing, ac- cording to the weight, size and special make of the machine, and expend a great deal of labour-power. Their occupation is unwholesome, owing to the long hours, although in most cases they are not so long as under the old system. Wher- ever the sewing machine locates itself in narrow and already over-crowded workrooms, it adds to the unwholesome in- fluences. "The effect," says Mr. Lord, "on entering low- ceiled workrooms in which 30 to 40 machine hands are work- ing is unbearable. . . . The heat, partly due to the gas stoves used for warming the irons, is horrible. . . . Even when moderate hours of work, i.e., from 8 in the morning till 6 in the evening, prevail in such places, yet 3 or 4 persons fall into a swoon regularly every day." 1 The revolution in the industrial methods which is the necessary result of the revolution in the instruments of pro- duction, is effected by a medley of transition forms. These forms vary according to the extent to which the sewing ma- chine has become prevalent in one branch of industry or the oilier, to the time during which it has been in operation, to the previous condition of the workpeople, to the preponderance of manufacture, of handicrafts or of domestic industry, to the rent of the workrooms, &c. 2 In dressmaking, for instance, where the labour for the most part was already organised, chiefly by simple co-operation, the sewing machine at first formed nearly a new factor in that manufacturing industry. In tailoring, shirtmaking, shoemaking, &c., all the forms are intermingled. Here the factory system proper. There mid- dlemen receive the raw material from the capitalist en chef, and group around their sewing machines, in "chambers" and "garrets," from 10 to 50 or more workwomen. Finally, as is Feb., 1S64, contains 5 cases of death from starvation. On the same day the "Times" reports another case. Six victims of starvation in one week! 1 Child. Empl. Comm., Second Rep., 1864, p. Ixvii. n. 4069, p. 84, n. 124, p. Ixxiii., n. 441, p. 66, n. 6, p. 84, n. 126, p. 78, n. 76, n. 69, p. Ixxii., n. 483. 3 "The rental of premises required for workrooms seems the element which ultimately determines the point; and consequently it is in the metropolis, that the old system of giving work out to small employers and families has been longest re- tained, and earliest returned to." (1. c. p. 83, n. 123.) The concluding statement in this quotation refers exclusively to shoemaking. 518 Capitalist Production. always the case with machinery when not organised into a system, and when it can also be used in dwarfish proportions, handicraftsmen and domestic workers, along with their fam- ilies, or with a little extra labour from without, makes use of their own sewing machines. 1 The system actually prevalent in England is, that the capitalist concentrates a large number of machines on his premises, and then distributes the pro- duce of those machines for further manipulation amongst the domestic workers. 2 The variety of the transition forms, how- ever, does not conceal the tendency to conversion into the factory system proper. ' This tendency is nurtured by the very nature of the sewing machine, the manifold uses of which push on the concentration, under one roof, and one manage- ment, of previously separated branches of a trade. It is also favoured by the circumstance that preparatory needlework, and certain other operations, are most conveniently done on the premises where the machine is at work ; as well as by the inevitable expropriation of the hand sewers, and of the do- mestic workers who work with their own machines. This fate has already in part overtaken them. The constantly increasing amount of capital invested in sewing machines, 3 gives the spur to the production of, and gluts the markets with, machine-made articles, thereby giving the signal to the domestic workers for the sale of their machines. The over- production of sewing machines themselves, causes their pro- ducers, in bad want of a sale, to let them out for so much a week, thus crushing by their deadly competition the small owners of machines. 4 Constant changes in the construction of the machines, and their ever-increasing cheapness, de- preciate day by day the older makes, and allow of their being sold in great numbers, at absurd prices, to large capitalists, who alone can thus employ them at a profit. Finally, the sub- stitution of the steam-engine for man gives in this, as in all similar revolutions, the finishing blow. At first, the use of 1 In glove-making and other industries where the condition of the workpeople is hardly distinguishable from that of paupers, this does not occur. M. c. p. 2, n. 122. s In the wholesale boot and shoe trade of Leicester alone, there were in 1864, 800 sewing machines already in use. 4 1. c. p. 84, n. 124. Machinery and Modern Industry. 519 steam power meets with mere technical difficulties, such as unsteadiness in the machines, difficulty in controlling their speed, rapid wear and tear of the lighter machines, &c., all of which are soon overcome by experience. 1 If, on the one hand, the concentration of many machines in large manu- factories leads to the use of steam power, on the other hand, the competition of steam with human muscles hastens on the concentration of workpeople and machines in large factories. Thus England is at present experiencing, not only in the colossal industry of making wearing apparel, but in most of the other trades mentioned above, the conversion of manu- facture, of handicrafts, and of domestic work into the factory system, after each of those forms of production, totally changed and disorganized under the influence of modern in- dustry, has long ago reproduced, and even overdone, all the horrors of the factory system, without participating in any of the elements of social progress it contains. 2 This industrial revolution which takes place spontaneously, is artificially helped on by the extension of the Factory Acts to all industries in which women, young persons and children are employed. The compulsory regulation of the working day as regards its length, pauses, beginning and end, the sys- tem of relays of children, the exclusion of all children under a certain age, &c., necessitates on the one hand more machinery 3 and the substitution of steam as a motive power in the place 1 Instances: The Army Clothing Depot at Pimlico, London, the Shirt factory of Tillie and Henderson at Londonderry, and the clothes factory of Messrs. Tait at Limerick which employs about 1200 hands. 3 "Tendency to factory system" (1. c. p. Ixvii.). "The whole employment is at this time in a state of transition, and is undergoing the same change as that effected in the lace trade, weaving, &c." (1. c. n. 405.) "A complete revolution" (1. c. p. xlvi. n. 318). At the date of the Child. Empl. Comm. of 1840, stocking making was still done by manual labour. Since 1846 various sorts of machines have been in- troduced, which are now driven by steam. The total number of persons of both sexes and of all ages from 3 years upwards, employed in stocking making in Eng- land, was in 1862 about 129,000. Of these only 4063 were, according to the Parlia- mentary Return of the llth February, 1862, working under the Factory Acts. 3 Thus, e.g., in the earthenware trade, Messrs. Cochrane, of the Britain Pottery, Glasgow, report: "To keep up our quantity we have gone extensively into machines wrought by unskilled labour, and every day convinces us that we can produce a greater quantity than by the old method." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1865," p. 13.) "The effect of the Fact. Acts is to force on the further introduc- tion of machinery" (1. c., p. 13-14). 520 Capitalist Production. of muscles. 1 On the other hand, in order to make up for the loss of time, an expansion occurs of the means of production used in common, of the furnaces, buildings, &c. ; in one word, greater concentration of the means of production and a corres- pondingly greater concourse of workpeople. The chief objec- tion, repeatedly and passionately urged on behalf of each manufacture threatened with the Factory Act, is in fact this, that in order to continue the business on the old scale a greater outlay of capital will be necessary. But as regards labour in the so-called domestic industries and the inter- mediate forms between them and Manufacture, so soon as limits are put to the working day and to the employment of children, those industries go to the wall. Unlimited exploita- tion of cheap labour-power is the sole foundation of their power to compete. One of the essential conditions for the existence of the fac- tory system, especially when the length of the working day is fixed, is certainty in the result, i.e., the production in a given time of a given quantity of commodities, or of a given useful effect. The statutory pauses in the working day, moreover, imply the assumption that periodical and sudden cessation of the work does no harm to the article undergoing the process of production. This certainty in the result, and this possibility of interrupting the work are, of course, easier to be attained in the purely mechanical industries than in those in which chemical and physical processes play a part; as, for instance, in the earthenware trade, in bleaching, dyeing, baking, and in most of the metal industries. Wherever there is a working day without restriction as to length, wherever there is night work and unrestricted waste of human life, there the slightest obstacle presented by the nature of the work to a change for the better is soon looked upon as an everlasting barrier erected by Nature. No poison kills vermin with more certainty than the Factory Act removes such everlasting barriers. No one made a greater outcry over "impossibilities" than our friends the earthenwares manufacturers. In 1864, however, they 1 Thus, after the extension of the Factory Act to the potteries, great increase of .power-jiggers in place of hand-moved jiggers. Machinery and Modern Industry. 521 were brought under the Act, and within sixteen months every "impossibility" had vanished. "The improved method," called forth by the Act, "of making slip by pressure instead of by exaporation, the newly-constructed stoves for drying the ware in its green state, &c., are each events of great im- portances in the pottery art, and mark an advance which the preceding century could not rival. . . . It has even con- siderably reduced the temperature of the stoves themselves with a considerable saving of fuel, and with a readier effect on the ware." 1 In spite of every prophecy, the cost price of earthenware did not rise, but the quantity produced did, and to such an extent that the export for the twelve months, end- ing ^December, 1865, exceeded in value by 138,628 the average of the preceding three years. In the manufacture of matches it was thought to be an indispensable requirement, that boys, even while bolting their dinner, should go on dip- ping the matches in melted phosphorus, the poisonous vapour from which rose into their faces. The Factory Act (1864) made the saving of time a necessity, and so forced into ex- istence a dipping machine, the vapour from which could not come in contact with the workers. 2 So, at the present time, in those branches of the lace manufacture not yet subject to the Factory Act, it is maintained that the meal times cannot be regular owing to the different periods required by the various kinds of lace for drying, which periods vary from three minutes up to an hour and more. To this the Children's Employment Commissioners answer: "The circumstances of this case are precisely analogous to that of the paper-stainers, dealt with in our first report. Some of the principal manu- facturers in the trade urged that in consequence of the nature of the materials used, and their various processes, they would be unable, without serious loss, to stop for meal times at any given moment. But it was seen from the evidence that, by due care and previous arrangement, the apprehended difficulty '"Report of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1865," pp. 96 and 127. 2 The introduction of this and other machinery into match-making caused in one department alone 230 young persons to be replaced by 32 boys and girls of 14 to 17 years of age. This saving in labour was carried still further in 1865, by the em- ployment of steam power. 522 Capitalist Production. would be got over; and accordingly, by clause C of section 6 of the Factory Acts Extension Act, passed during this Session of Parliament, an interval of eighteen months is given to them from the passing of the Act before they are required to conform to the meal hours, specified by the Factory Acts." 1 Hardly had the Act been passed when our friends the manu- facturers found out: "The inconveniences we expected to arise from the introduction of the Factory Acts into our branch of manufacture, I am happy to say, have not arisen. We do not find the production at all interfered with ; in short, we produce more in the same time." 2 It is evident that the English legislature, which certainly no one will venture to reproach with being overdosed with genius, has been led by experience to the conclusion that a simple com- pulsory law is sufficient to enact away all the so-called im- pediments, opposed by the nature of the process, to the re- striction and regulation of the working day. Hence, on the introduction of the Factory Act into a given industry, a period varying from six to eighteen months is fixed within which it is incumbent on the manufacturers to remove all technical impediments to the working of the Act. Mira- beau's "Impossible! ne me dites jamaisce bete de mot!" is par- ticularly applicable to modern technology. But though the Factory Acts thus artificially ripen the material elements necessary for the conversion of the manufacturing system into the factory system, yet at the same time, owing to the neces- sity they impose for greater outlay of capital, they hasten on the decline of the small masters, and the concentration of capital. 3 Besides the purely technical impediments that are remov- able by technical means, the irregular habits of the work- 1 "Ch. Empl. Comm., II. Rep., 1864," p. ix., n. 60. *"Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct. 1865," p. 22. * "But it must be borne in mind that those improvements, though carried out fully i.-i some establishments, are by no means general, and are not capable of being brought into use in many of the old manufactories without an expenditure of capital beyond the means of many of the present occupiers." "I cannot but rejoice," writes Sub-Insp. May, "that notwithstanding the temporary disorganization which in- evitably follows the introduction of such a measure (as the Factory Act Extension .Set), and is, indeed, directly indicative of the evils which it was intended to rem- idy, ':,c." (Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1865.) Machinery and Modern Industry. 523 people themselves obstruct the regulation of the hours of labour. This is especially the case where piece wage pre- dominates, and where loss of time in one part of the day or week can be made good by subsequent overtime, or by night work, a process which brutalises the adult workman, and ruins his wife and children. 1 Although this absence of regularity in the expenditure of labour-power is a natural and rude reaction against the tedium of monotonous drudgery, it originates, also, to a much greater degree from anarchy in production, anarchy that in its turn pre-supposes un- bridled exploitation of labour-power by the capitalist. Be- sides the general periodic changes of the industrial cycle, and the special fluctuations in the markets to which each industry is subject, we may also reckon what is called "the season," dependent either on the periodicity of favourable seasons of the year for navigation ; or on fashion, and the sudden placing of large orders that have to be executed in the shortest possible time. The habit of giving such orders becomes more frequent with the extension of railways and telegraphs, "The extension of the railway system throughout the coun- try has tended very much to encourage giving short notice. Purchasers now come up from Glasgow, Manchester, and Ed- inburgh once every fortnight or so to the wholesale city warehouses which we supply, and give small orders requiring immediate execution, instead of buying from stock as they used to do. Years ago we were always able to work in the slack times, so as to meet the demand of the next season, but now no one can say beforehand what will be the de- mand then." 2 1 With blast furnaces, for instance, "work towards the end of the week being generally much increased in duration in consequence of the habit of the men of idling on Monday and occasionally during a part or the whole of Tuesday also. (Child. Empl. Comm., III. Rep., p. vi.) "The little masters generally have very irregular hours. They lose two or three days, and then work all night to make it up. . . . They always employ their own children, if they have any." (1. c., p. vii.) "The want of regularity in coming to work, encouraged by the possibility and practice of making up for this by working longer hours." (1. c., p. xviii.) "In Birmingham .... an enormous amount of time is lost .... idling part of the time, slaving the rest." (1. c., p. xi.) 2 "Child Empl. Comm., IV. Rep. p. xxxii.," "The extension of the railway sys- tem is said to have contributed greatly to this custom of giving sudden orders, and the consequent hurry, neglect of meal times, and late hours of the workpeople." (1. c., p. xxxi.) 524 Capitalist Production. In those factories and manufactories that are not yet sub- ject to the Factory Acts, the most fearful overwork prevails periodically during what is called the season, in consequence of sudden orders. In the outside department of the factory, of the manufactory, and of the warehouse, the so-called do- mestic workers, whose employment is at the best irregular, are entirely dependent for their raw material and their orders on the caprice of the capitalist, who, in this industry, is not hampered by any regard for depreciation of his buildings and machinery, and risks nothing by a stoppage of work, but the skin of the worker himself. Here then he sets him- self systematically to work to form an industrial reserve force that shall be ready at a moment's notice; during one part of the year he decimates this force by the most inhuman toil, during the other part, he lets it starve for want of work. "The employers avail themselves of the habitual irregularity in the home-work, when any extra work is wanted at a push, so that the work goes on till 11, and 12 p.m. or 2 a.m., or as the usual phrase is, "all hours," and that in localities where "the stench is enough to knock you down, you go to the door, perhaps, and open it, but shudder to go further." 1 "They are curious men," said one of the witnesses, a shoemaker, speaking of the masters, "they think it does a boy no harm to work too hard for half the year, if he is nearly idle for the other half." 2 In the same way as technical impediments, so too, those "usages which have grown with the growth of trade" were and still are proclaimed by interested capitalists as obstacles due to the nature of the work. This was a favorite cry of the - cotton lords at the time they were first threatened with the Factory Acts. Although their industry more than any other depends on navigation, yet experience has given them the lie. Since then, every pretended obstruction to business has been treated by the Factory inspectors as a mere sham. 3 The l Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep. p. xxxv. n. 235, 237. * Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep. p. 127, n. 56. * "With respect to the loss of trade by non-completion of shipping orders in time, I remember that this was the pet argument of the factory masters in 1832 and 1833. Nothing that can be advanced now on this subject, could have the force that it had Machinery and Modern Industry. 525 thoroughly conscientious investigations of the Children's Em- ployment Commission prove that the effect of the regulation of the hours of work, in some industries, was to spread the mass of labour previously employed more evenly over the whole year; 1 that this regulation was the first rational bridle on the murderous, meaningless caprices of fashion, 2 caprices that consort so badly with the system of modern industry; that the development of ocean navigation and of the means of communication generally, has swept away the technical basis on which season-work was really supported, 3 and that all other so-called unconquerable difficulties vanish before larger buildings, additional machinery, increase in the num- ber of workpeople employed, 4 and the alterations caused by all these in the mode of conducting the wholesale trade. 5 But for all that, capital never becomes reconciled to such changes and this is admitted over and over again by its own repre- sentatives except "under the pressure of a General Act of then, before steam had halved all distances and established new regulations for transit. It quite failed at that time of proof when put to the test, and again it will certainly fail should it have to be tried." (Reports of Insp. of Fact, 31 Oct., 1862, pp. 54, 55. 1 Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep. p. xviii. n. 118. 2 John Bellers remarked as far back as 1699: "The uncertainty of fashions does increase necessitous poor. It has two great mischiefs in it. 1st, The journeymen are miserable in winter for want of work, the mercers and master weavers not dar- ing to lay out their stocks to keep the journeymen employed before the spring comes, and they know what the fashion will then be: 2ndly, in the spring the jour- neymen are not sufficient, but the master-weavers must draw in many prentices, that they may supply the trade of the kingdom in a quarter or half a year, which robs the plough of hands, drains the country of labourers, and in a great part stocks the city with beggars, and starves some in winter that are ashamed to beg." (Essays about the Poor, Manufactures, &c., p. 9.) 3 Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. p. 171, n. 34. * The evidence of some Bradford export-houses is as follows: "Under these cir- cumstances, it seems clear that no boys need be worked longer than from 8 a.m. to 7 or 7.30 p.m., in making up. It is merely a question of extra hands and extra outlay. If some masters were not so greedy, the boys would not work late; an extra machine costs only 16 or 18; much of such overtime as does occur is to be referred to an insufficiency of appliances, and a want of space." Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. p. 171, n. 31, 36, 38. 1. c. A London manufacturer, who in other respects looks upon the compulsory regulation of the hours of labour as a protection for ' the workpeople against the manufacturers, and for the manufacturers themselves against the wholesale trade, states: "The pressure in our business is caused by the shippers, who want, e.g., to send the goods by sailing vessel so as to reach their destination at a given season, and at the same time want to pocket the difference in freight between a sailing vessel and a steamship, or who select the earlier of two steamships in order to be in the foreign market before their competitors." 526 Capitalist Production. Parliament" 1 for the compulsory regulation of the hours of labour. SECTION 9. THE FACTOEY ACTS. SANITARY AND EDUCATION CLAUSES OF THE SAME. THEIR GENERAL EXTENSION IN ENGLAND. Factory legislation, that first conscious and methodical re- action of society against the spontaneously developed form of the process of production, is, as we have seen, just as much the necessary product of modern industry as cotton yarn, self- actors, and the electric telegraph. Before passing to the con- sideration of the extension of that legislation in England, we shall shortly notice certain clauses contained in the Factory Acts, and not relating to the hours of work. Apart from their wording, which makes it easy for the capitalist to evade them, the sanitary clauses are extremely meagre, and, in fact, limited to provisions for whitewashing the walls, for insuring cleanliness in some other matters, for ventilation, and for protection against dangerous machinery. In the third book we shall return again to the fanatical op- position of the masters to those clauses which imposed upon them a slight expenditure on appliances for protecting the limbs of their workpeople, an opposition that throws a fresh and glaring light on the free trade dogma, according to which, in a society with conflicting interests, each individual neces- sarily furthers the common weal by seeking nothing but his own personal advantage! One example is enough. The reader knows that during the last 20 years, the flax industry has very much extended, and that, with that extension, the number of scutching mills in Ireland has increased. In 1864 there were in that country 1800 of these mills. Regu- larly in autumn and winter women and "young persons," the wives, sons, and daughters of the neighboring small farmers, a class of people totally unaccustomed to machinery, are taken from field labour to feed the rollers of the scutching ' "This could be obviated," says a manufacturer, "at the expense of an enlarge- ment of the works under the pressure of a General Act of Parliament." 1. c. p. x. n. 38. Machinery and Modern Industry. 527 mills with flax. The accidents, both as regards number and kind, are wholly unexampled in the history of machinery. In one scutching mill, at Kildinan, near Cork, there occurred between 1852 and 1856, six fatal accidents and sixty mutilations ; every one of which might have been prevented by the simplest appliances, at the cost of a few shillings. Dr. W. White, the certifying surgeon for factories at Down- patrick, states in his official report, dated the 15th December, 1865 ; "The serious accidents at the scutching mills are of the most fearful nature. In many cases a quarter of the body is torn from the trunk, and either involves death, or a future of wretched incapacity and suffering. The increase of mills in the country will, of course, extend these dreadful re- sults, and it will be a great boon if they are brought under the legislature. I am convinced that by proper supervision of scutching mills a vast sacrifice of life and limb would be averted." 1 What could possibly show better the character of the capi- talist mode of production, than the necessity that exists for forcing upon it, by Acts of Parliament, the simplest ap- pliances for maintaining cleanliness and health ? In the pot- teries the Factory Act of 1864 "has whitewashed and cleansed upwards of 200 workshops, after a period of abstinence from any such cleaning, in many cases of 20 years, and in some, entirely," (this is the "abstinence" of the capitalist!) "in which were employed 27,800 artisans, hitherto breathing through protracted days and often nights of labour, a mephitic atmosphere, and which rendered an otherwise comparatively innocuous occupation, pregnant with disease and death, The Act has improved the ventilation very much." 2 At the same time, this portion of the Act strikingly shows that the capi- talist mode of production, owing to its very nature, excludes all rational improvement beyond a certain point. It has been stated over and over again that the English doctors are unanimous in declaring that where the work is continuous, 500 cubic feet is the very least space that should be allowed 1 1. c. p. xv. n. 72. sqq. 2 Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st October, 1865, p. 127. 528 Capitalist Production. for each person. Now, if the Factory Acts, owing to their compulsory provisions, indirectly hasten on the conversion of small workshops into factories, thus indirectly "attacking the proprietary rights of the smaller capitalists, and assuring a monopoly to the great ones, so, if it were made obligatory to provide the proper space for each workman in every work- shop, thousands of small employers would, at one full swoop, he expropriated directly! The very root of the capitalist mode of production, i.e., the self-expansion of all capital, large or small, by means of the "free" purchase and consumption of labour-power, would be attacked. Factory legislation is therefore brought to a dead-lock before these 500 cubic feet of breathing space. The sanitary officers, the industrial in- quiry commissioners, the factory inspectors, all harp, over and over again, upon the necessity for those 500 cubic feet, and upon the impossibility of wringing them out of capital. They thus, in fact, declare that consumption and other lung diseases among the workpeople are necessary conditions to the existence of capital. 1 Paltry as the education clauses of the Act appear on the whole, yet they proclaim elementary education to be an in- dispensable condition to the employment of children. 2 The success of those clauses proved for the first time the possi- bility of combining education and gymnastics 3 with manual 1 It has been found out by experiment, that with each respiration of average in- tensity made by a healthy average individual, about 25 cubic inches of air are con- sumed, and that about 20 respirations are made in each minute. Hence the air inhaled in 24 hours by each individual is about 720,000 cubic inches, or 416 cubic feet. It is clear, however, that air which has been once breathed, can no longer serve for the same process until it has been purified in the great workshop of Nature. According to the expe/iments of Valentin and Brunner, it appears that a healthy man gives off about 1300 cubic inches of carbonic acid per hour; this would give about 8 ounces of solid carbon thrown off from the lungs in 24 hours. "Every man should have at least 800 cubic feet." (Huxley.) 2 According to the English Factory Act, parents cannot send their children under 14 years of age into Factories under the control of the Act, unless at the same time they allow them to receive elementary education. The manufacturer is re- sponsible for compliance with the Act. "Factory education is compulsory, and it is a condition of labour." (Rep. Insp. Fact. 31st Oct., 1863, p. 111. * On the very advantageous results of combining gymnastics (and drilling in the case of boys) with compulsory education for factory children and pauper scholars, see the speech of N. W. Senior at the seventh annual congress of "The National Association for the Promotion of Social Science," in "Report of Proceedings, &c., Lond. 1863," p. 63, 64, also the Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st Oct., 1865, p. 118, 119, 120, 126 sqq. Machinery and Modern Industry. 529 labour, and, consequently, of combining manual labour with education and gymnastics. The factory inspectors soon found out by questioning the schoolmasters, that the factory children, although receiving only one half the education of the regular day scholars, yet learnt quite as much and often more. "This can be accounted for by the simple fact that, with only being at school for one half of the day, they are always fresh, and nearly always ready and willing to receive instruction. The system on which they work, half manual labour, and half school, renders each employment a rest and a relief to the other; consequently, both are far more congenial to the child, than would be the case were he kept constantly at one. It is quite clear that a boy who has been at school all the morning, cannot (in hot weather particularly) cope with one who comes fresh and bright from his work." 1 Further information on this point will be found in Senior's speech at the Social Science Congress at Edinburgh in 1863. He there shows, amongst other things, how the monotonous and uselessly long school hours of the children of the upper and middle classes, uselessly add to the labour of the teacher, "while he not only fruitlessly, but absolutely injuriously, wastes the time, health, and energy of the children." 2 From the Factory system budded, as Robert Owen has shown us in detail, the germ of the education of the future, an education that will, in the case of every child over a given age, combine productive 1 Rep. Insp. Fact. 31st Oct. 1865, p. 118. A silk manufacturer naively states to the Children's Employment Commissioners: "I am quite sure that the true secret of producing efficient workpeople is to be found in uniting education and labour from a period of childhood. Of course the occupation must not be too severe, nor irksome, or unhealthy. But of the advantage of the union I have no doubt. I wish my own children could have some work as well as play to give variety to their schooling." (Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. p. 82. n. 36.) 2 Senior, 1. c. p. 66. How Modern Industry, when it has attained to a certain pitch, is capable, by the revolution it effects in the mode of production and in the social conditions of production, of also revolutionizing people's minds, is strikingly shown by a comparison of Senior's speech in 1863, with his philippic against the Factory Act of 1833; or by a comparison, of the views of the congress above referred to, with the fact that in certain country districts of England poor parents are for- bidden, on pain of death by starvation, to educate their children. Thus, e.g., Mr. Snell reports it to be a common occurrence in Somersetshire that, when a poor per- son claims parish relief, he is compelled to take his children from school. Mr. Wollarton, the clergyman at Feltham, also tells of cases where all relief was denied to certain families "because they were sending their children to school!" 2H 530 Capitalist Production. labour with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods of adding to the efficiency of production, but as the only method of producing fully developed human beings. Modern Industry, as we have seen, sweeps away by techni- cal means the manufacturing division of labour, under which each man is bound hand and foot for life to a single detail- operation. At the same time, the capitalistic form of that in- dustry reproduces this same division of labour in a still more monstrous shape; in the factory proper, by converting the workman into a living appendage of the machine; and every- where outside the Factory, partly by the sporadic use of machinery and machine workers, 1 partly by re-establishing the divisions of labour on a fresh basis by the general intro- duction of the labour of women and children, and of cheap unskilled labour. The antagonism between the manufacturing division of labour and the methods of Modern Industry makes itself forcibly felt. It manifests itself, amongst other ways, in the frightful fact that a great part of the children employed in modern factories and manufactures, are from their earliest years riveted to the most simple manipulations, and exploited for years, without being taught a single sort of work that would afterwards make them of use, even in the same manufac- tory or factory. In the English letter press printing trade, for example, there existed formerly a system, corresponding to that in the old manufactures and handicrafts, of advancing the apprentices from easy to more and more difficult work. They went through a course of teaching till they were finished printers. To be able to read and write was for every one of 1 Wherever handicraft-machines, driven by men, compete directly or indirectly with more developed machines driven by mechanical power, a great change takes place with regard to the labourer who drives the machine. At first the steam-engine replaces this labourer, afterwards he must replace the steam-engine. Consequently the tension and the amount of labour-power expended become monstrous, and especially so in the case of the children who are condemned to this torture. Thus Mr. Longe, one of the commissioners, found in Coventry and the neighbourhood boys of from 10 to 15 years employed in driving the ribbon looms, not to mention younger children who had to drive smaller machines. "It is extraordinarily fatiguing work. The boy is a mere substitute for steam-power." (Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. 1S66, p. 114, n. 6.) As to the fatal consequences of "this system of slavery," as the official report styles it, see 1. c. p. 114 sqq. Machinery and Modern Industry. 531 them a requirement of their trade. All this was changed by the printing machine. It employs two sort of labourers, one grown up, tenters, the other, boys mostly from 11 to 17 years of age whose sole business is either to spread the sheets of paper under the machine, or to take from it the printed sheets. They perform this weary task, in London especially, for 14, 15, and 16 hours at a stretch, during several days in the week, and frequently for 36 hours, with only 2 hours' rest for meals and sleep I 1 A great part of them cannot read, and they are, as a rule, utter savages and very extraordinary creatures. " To qualify them for the work which they have to do, they require no intellectual training; there is little room in it for skill, and less for judgment ; their wages, though rather high for boys, do not increase proportionately as they grow up, and the majority of them cannot look for advancement to the better paid and more responsible post of machine minder, because while each machine has but one minder, it has at least two, and often four boys attached to it." 2 As soon as they get too old for such child's work, that is about 17 at the latest, they are discharged from the printing establishments. They become recruits of crime. Several attempts to procure them employment else- where, were rendered of no avail by their ignorance and brutality, and by their mental and bodily degradation. As with the division of labour in the interior of the manu- facturing workshops, so it is with the division of labour in the interior of society. So long as handicraft and manufacture form the general groundwork of social production, the sub- jection of the producer to one branch exclusively, the breaking up of the multifariousness of his employment, 3 is a necessary step in the development. On that ground-work each separate M. c. p. 3, n. 24. M. c. p. 7, n. 60. 3 "In some parts of the Highlands of Scotland, not many years ago, every peasant, according to the Statistical Account, made his own shoes of leather tanned" by him- self. 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 the sheep and sown in tke flaxfield. 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." (Dugald Stewart's Works. Hamilton's Ed., Vol. viii., p. 327-328.) 532 Capitalist Production. branch of production acquires empirically the form that is technically suited to it, slowly perfects it, and, so soon as a given degree of maturity has been reached, rapidly crystallizes that form. The only thing, that here and there causes a change, besides new raw material supplied by commerce, is the gradual alteration of the instruments of labour. But their form, too, once definitely settled by experience, petrifies, as is proved by their being in many cases handed down in the same form by one generation to another during thousands of years. A characteristic feature is, that, even down into the eighteenth century, the different trades were called " mysteries " (mys- teres) 1 ; into their secrets none but those duly initiated could penetrate. Modern Industry rent the veil that concealed from men their own social process of production, and that turned the various, spontaneously divided branches of production into so many riddles, not only to outsiders, but even to the initiated. The principle which it pursued, of resolving each process into its constituent movements, without any regard to their possible execution by the hand of man, created the new modern science of technology. The varied, apparently unconnected, and pet- rified forms of the industrial processes now resolved themselves into so man conscious and systematic applications of natural science to the attainment of given useful effects. Technology also discovered the few main fundamental forms of motion, which, despite the diversity of the instruments used, are neces- sarily taken by every productive action of the human body; just as the science of mechanics sees in the most complicated machinery nothing but the continual repetition of the simple mechanical powers. Modern Industry never looks upon and treats the existing form of a process as final. The technical basis of that industry is therefore revolutionary, while all earlier modes of produc- tion were essentially conservative. 2 By means of machinery, 1 In the celebrated "Livre des metiers" of Etienne Boileau, we find it prescribed that a journeyman on being admitted among the masters had to swear "to love his brethren with brotherly love, to support them in their respective trades, not wilfully to betray the secrets of the trade, and besides, in the interests of all, not to recom- mend his own wares by calling the attention of the buyer to defects in the articles made by others." 1 "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without continually revolutionizing the instru- Machinery and Modern Industry. 533 chemical processes and other methods, it is continually causing changes not only in the technical basis of production, but also in the functions of the labourer, and in the social combinations of the labour-process. At the same time, it thereby also revolutionizes the division of labour within the society, and incessantly launches masses of capital and of workpeople from one branch of production to another. But if Modern Industry, by its very nature, therefore necessitates variation of labour, fluency of function, universal mobility of the labourer, on the other hand, in its capitalistic form, it reproduces the old division of labour with its ossified particularisations. We have seen how this absolute contradiction between the techni- cal necessities of Modern Industry, and the social character inherent in its capitalistic form, dispels all fixity and security in the situation of the labourer; how it constantly threatens, by taking away the instruments of labour, to snatch from his hands his means of subsistence, 1 and, by suppressing his detail- function, to make him superfluous. We have seen, too, how this antagonism vents its rage in the creation of that monstros- ity, an industrial reserve army, kept in misery in order to be always at the disposal of capital; in the incessant human sacrifices from among the working class, in the most reckless squandering of labour-power, and in the devastation caused by a social anarchy which turns every economical progress into a social calamity. This is the negative side. But if, on the one hand, variation of work at present imposes itself after the manner of an overpowering natural law, and with the blindly destructive action of a natural law that meets with resist- ments of production, and thereby the relations of production and all the social relations. Conservation, in an unaltered form, of the old modes of production was on the contrary the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolution in production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is pro- faned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. (F. Engels and Karl Marx: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. Lond, 1848, p. 5.) 1 "You take my life When you do take the means whereby I live." SHAKESPEARE. 534 Capitalist Production. ance, 1 at all points, Modern Industry, on the other hand, through its catastrophes imposes the necessity of recognising, as a fundamental law of production, variation of work, conse- quently fitness of the labourer for varied work, consequently the greatest possible development of his varied aptitudes. It becomes a question of life and death for society to adapt the mode of production to the normal functioning of this law, Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty of death, to replace the detail-worker of to-day, crippled by life- long repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to the mere fragment of a man, by the fully developed individual, fit for a variety of labours, ready to face any change of production, and to whom the different social func- tions he performs, are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers. One step already spontaneously taken towards effecting this revolution is the establishment of technical and agricultural schools, and of "ecoles d'enseignement professionnel," in which the children of the working-men receive some little instruction in technology and in the practical handling of the various implements of labour. Though the Factory Act, that first and meagre concession wrung from capital, is limited to combining elementary education with work in the factory, there can be no doubt that when the working class comes into power, as inevitably it must, technical instruction, both theoretical and practical, will take its proper place in the working-class schools. There is also no doubt that such revolutionary fer- ments, the final result of which is the abolition of the old divi- sion of labour, are diametrically opposed to the capitalist! form of production, and to the economic status of the labourer cor- responding to that form. But the historical development of 1 A French workman, on his return from San-Francisco, writes as follows : "I never could have believed, that I was capable of working at the various occupations I was employed on in California. I was firmly convinced that I was fit for nothing but letter-press printing. . . . Once in the midst of this world of adventurers, who change their occupation as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did as the others. As mining did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for tke town, where in succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, &c. In consequence of thus finding out that I am fit for any sort of work, I feel less of a mollusk and more of a man." (A. Courbon. De 1'enseignement professionnel, Seme ed. p. 60.) Machinery and Modern Industry. 535 the antagonisms, immanent in a given form of production, is the only way in which that form of production can be dissolved and a new form established. "N"e sutor ultra crepidam" this nee plus ultra of handicraft wisdom became sheer non- sense, from the moment the watchmaker Watt invented the steam-engine, the barber Arkwright, the throstle, and the work- ing-jeweller, Fulton, the steamship. 1 So long as Factory legislation is confined to regulating the labour in factories, manufactories, &c., it is regarded as a mere interference with the exploiting rights of capital. But when it comes to regulating the so-called "home-labour," 2 it is immediately viewed as a direct attack on the patria potestas, on parental authority. The tender-hearted English Parlia- ment long affected to shrink from taking this step. The force of facts, however compelled it at last to acknowledge that modern industry, in overturning the economical foundation on which was based the traditional family, and the family labour corresponding to it, had also unloosened all traditional family ties. The rights of the children had to be proclaimed. The final report of the Ch. Empl. Comm. of 1866, states: "It is unhappily, to a painful degree, apparent throughout the whole of the evidence, that against no persons do the children of both sexes so much require protection as against their parents." The system of unlimited exploitation of children's labour in general and the so-called home-labour in particular is "main- tained only because the parents are able, without check or con- trol, to exercise this arbitrary and mischievous power over their young and tender offspring Parents must not possess the absolute power of making their children mere 'ma- 1 John Bellers, a very phenomenon in the history of political economy, saw most clearly at the end of the 17th century, the necessity for abolishing the present system of education and division of labour, which beget hypertrophy and atrophy at the two opposite extremities of society. Amongst other things he says this: "An idle learning being little better than the learning of idleness . . . Bodily labour, it's a primitive institution of God . . . Labour being as proper for the bodies' health as eating is for its living; for what pains a man saves by ease, he will find in disease Labour adds oyl to the lamp of life, when thinking inflames it .... A childish silly employ" (a warning this, by presentiment, against the Basedows and their modern imitators) "leaves the children's minds silly." (Pro- posals for raising a college of industry of all useful trades and husbandry. Loud., 1696, p. 12, 14, 18.) 2 This sort of labour goes on mostly in small workshops, as we have seen in the 536 Capitalist Production. chines to earn so much weekly wage.' .... The chil- dren and young persons, therefore, in all such cases may justi- fiably claim from the legislature, as a natural right, that an exemption should be secured to them, from what destroys pre- maturely their physical strength, and lowers them in the scale of intellectual and moral beings." 1 It was not, however, the misuse of parental authority that created the capitalistic ex- ploitation, whether direct or indirect, of children's labour ; but, on the contrary, it was the capitalistic mode of exploitation which, by sweeping away the economical basis of parental au- thority, made its exercise degenerate into a mischievous misuse of power. However terrible and disgusting the dissolution, under the capitalist system, of the old family ties may appear, nevertheless, modern industry, by assigning as it does an im- portant part in the process of production, outside the domestic- sphere, to women, to young persons, and to children of boli! sexes, creates a new economical foundation for a higher form of the family and of the relations between the sexes. It is, of course, just as absurd to hold the Teuton ic-christi an form of the family to be absolute and final as it would be to apply that character to the ancient Roman, the ancient Greek, or the East- ern forms which, moreover, taken together form a series in his- toric development. Moreover, it is obvious that the fact of the collective working group being composed of individuals of both sexes and all ages, must necessarily, under suitable conditions, become a source of humane development; although in its spon- taneously developed, brutal, capitalistic form, where the labourer exists for the process of production, and not the proc- ess of production for the labourer, that fact is a pestiferous source of corruption and slavery. 2 The necessity for a generalization of the Factory Acts, for transforming them from an exceptional law relating to me- chanical spinning and weaving those first creations of ma- lace-tnaking and straw-plaiting trades, and as could be shown more in detail from the metal trades of Sheffield, Birmingham, &c. 1 Ch. Eriipl. Comm., V, Rep., p. xxv., n. 162, and II. Rep., p. xxxviii., n. 185, 289, p. xxv., xxvi., n. 191. * "Factory labour may be as pure and as excellent as domestic labour, and perhaps more so." (Rep. Insp. Feet., 31st October, 1865, p. 127.) Machinery and Modern Industry. 537 chinery into a law affecting social production as a whole, arose, as we Lave seen, from the mode in which Modern Indus- try was historically developed. In the rear of that industry, the traditional form of manufacture, of handicraft, and of domestic industry, is entirely revolutionised ; manufactures are constantly passing into the factory system, and handicrafts into manufactures ; and lastly, the spheres of handicraft and of the domestic industries become, in a, comparatively speak- ing, wonderfully short time, dens of misery in which capitalis- tic exploitation obtains free play for the wildest excesses. There are two circumstances that finally turn the scale: first, the constantly recurring experience that capital, so soon as it finds itself subject to legal control at one point, compensates it- self all the more recklessly at other points ;* secondly, the cry of the capitalists for equality in the conditions of competition, i.e., for equal restraint on all exploitation of labour. 2 On this point let us listen to two heart-broken cries. Messrs. Cooksley of Bristol, nail and chain, &c., manufacturers, spon- taneously introduced the regulations of the Factory Act into their business. "As the old irregular system prevails in neigh- bouring works, the Messrs. Cooksley are subject to the disad- vantage of having their boys enticed to continue their labour elsewhere after 6 p.m. 'This,' they naturally say, 'is an unjus- tice and loss to us, as it exhausts a portion of the boy's strength, of which we ought to have the full benefit.' " 3 Mr. J. Simp- son (paper box and bagmaker, London) states before the com- missioners of the Ch. Empl. Comm. : "He would sign any petition for it" (legislative interference) .... "As it was, he always felt restless at night, when he had closed his place, lest others should be working later than him and getting away his orders." 4 Summarising, the Ch. Empl. Comm. says : "It would be unjust to the larger employers that their factories should be placed under regulation, while the hours of labour in the smaller places in their own branch of business were under no legislative restriction. And to the injustice arising 1 Rep. Insp. of Fact., 31st October, 1865, p. 27-32. * Numerous instances will be found in Rep. of Insp. of Fact. 8 Ch. Empl. Comm., V. Rep., p. x., n. 35. 4 Ch. Empl. Comm., V. Rep., p. ix., n. 28. 538 Capitalist Production. from the unfair conditions of competition, in regard to hours, that would be created if the smaller places of work were ex- empt, would be added the disadvantage to the larger manufac- turers, of finding their supply of juvenile and female labour drawn off to the places of work exempt from legislation. Further, a stimulus would be given to the multiplication of the smaller places of work, which are almost invariably the least favourable to the health, comfort, education, and general im- provement of the people." 1 In its final report the Commission proposes to subject to the Factory Act more than 1,400,000 children, young persons, and women, of which number about one half are exploited in small industries and by the so-called home-work. 2 It says, "But if it should seem fit to Parliament to place the whole of that large number of children, young persons and females under the protective legislation above adverted to ... it cannot be doubted that such legislation would have a most beneficent effect, not only upon the young and the feeble, who are its more immediate objects, but upon the still larger body of adult workers, who would in all these employments, both directly and indirectly, come immediately under its influence. It would enforce upon them regular and moderate hours; it would lead to their places of work being kept in a healthy and cleanly state ; it would therefore husband and improve that store of physical strength on which their own well-being and that of the country so much depends ; it would save the rising generation from that over-exertion at an early age which undermines their constitutions and leads to premature decay ; 1 1. c., p. xxv., n. 165-167. As to the advantages of large scale, compared with small scale, industries, see Ch. Empl. Comm., III. Rep., p. 13, n. 144, p. 25, n. 121, p. 26, n. 125, p. 27, n. 140, &c. * The trades proposed to be brought under the Act were the following: Lace- making, stocking-weaving, straw-plaiting, the manufacture of wearing apparel with its numerous subdivisions, artificial flower-making, shoemaking, hat-making, glove- making, tailoring, all metal works, from blast furnaces down to needleworks, &c., paper-mills, glass-works, tobacco factories, india-rubber works, braid-making (for weaving), hand-carpet-making, umbrella and parasol making, the manufacture of spindles and spools, letter-press printing, book-binding, manufacture of stationery (including paper bags, cards, coloured paper, &c.,) rope-making, manufacture of jet ornaments, brick-making, silk manufacture by hand, Coventry weaving, salt works, tallow chandlers, cement works, sugar refineries, biscuit-making, various industries connected with timber, and other mixed trades. Machinery and Modern Industry. 539 finally, it would ensure them at least up to the age of 13 the opportunity of receiving the elements of education, and would put an end to that utter ignorance .... so faithfully exhibited in the Keports of our Assistant Commissioners, and which cannot be regarded without the deepest pain, and a pro- found sense of national degradation." * The Tory Cabinet announced in the speech from the Throne, on February 5, 1867, that it had formulated the recommendations 2 of the Industrial Commission of Inquiry in "Bills." A new experiment of 20 years' duration at the ex- pense of the working class had been necessary to accomplish so much. As early as 1840, a Commission of Parliament had been appointed to inquire into the conditions of child labor. Its report, as Senior remarks, disclosed "the most frightful picture of avarice, selfishness and cruelty on the part of masters and of parents, and of juvenile and infantile misery, degradation and destruction ever presented. ... It may be supposed that it describes the horrors of a past age. But there is unhappily evidence that those horrors continue as in- tense as they were. A pamphlet published by Hardwicko about 2 years ago states that the abuses complained of in 1842, are in full bloom at the present day. It is a strange proof of the general neglect of the morals and health of the children of the working class, that this report lay unnoticed for 20 years, during which the children, 'bred up without the remotest sign of comprehension as to what is meant by the term morals, who had neither knowledge, nor religion, nor natural affection/ were allowed to become the parents of the present generation." 3 The social conditions having undergone a change, Parlia- ment could not venture to shelve the demands of the Com- 1 1. c. p. xxv. n. 169. 2 The Factory Acts Extension Act was passed on August 12, 1867. It regulated all metal foundries, forges, and manufactures, including machine shops, furthermore glass, paper, gutta-percha, caoutchouc, tobacco manufactures, printing shops, book binderies, and finally all workshops employing more than 50 persons. The Hours of Labor Regulation Act was passed on August 17, 1867, and regulates the smaller workshops and the so-called house work. I revert to these laws, and to the new Mining Act of 1872 in volume II. 3 Senior, Social Science Congress, pp. 5558. 54O Capitalist Production. mission of 1862 3 as it had done those of the Commission of 1840. Hence in 1864, when the Commission had not yet published more than a part of its reports, the earthenware in- dustries (including the potteries, makers of paper-hangings, matches, cartridges, and caps, and fustian cutters were made subject to the Acts in force in the textile industries. In the speech from the Throne, on 5th February, 1867, the Tory Cabinet of the day announced the introduction of Bills, founded on the final recommendations of the Commission, which had completed its labours in 1866. On the 15th August, 1867, the Factory Acts Extension Act, and on the 21st August, the Workshops' Regulation Act re- ceived the Royal Assent; the former Act having reference to large industries, the latter to small. The former applies to blast-furnaces, iron and copper mills, foundries, machine shops, metal manufactories, gutta-percha works, paper mills, glass works, tobacco manufactories, letter- press printing (including newspapers) book-binding, in short to all industrial establishments of the above kind, in which 50 individuals or more are occupied simultaneously, and for not less than 100 days during the year. To give an idea of the extent of the sphere embraced by the Workshops' Regulation Act in its application, we cite from its interpretation clause, the following passages : "Handicraft shall mean any manual labour exercised by way of trade, or for purposes of gain, or incidental to, the making any article or part of an article, or in, or incidental to, the altering, repairing, ornamenting, finishing, or otherwise adapting for sale any article." "Workshop shall mean any room or place whatever in the open air or under cover, in which any handicraft is carried on by any child, young person, or woman, and to which and over which the person by whom such child, young person, or woman is employed, has the right of access and control." "Employed shall mean occupied in any handicraft, whether for wages or not, under a master or under a parent as herein defined." "Pa/rent shall mean parent, guardian, or person, having Machinery and Modern Industry. 541 the custody of, or control over, any . . . child or young person." Clause 7, which imposes a penalty for employment of children, young persons, and women, contrary to the provisions of the Act, subjects to lines, riot only the occupier of the work- shops, whether parent or not, but even "the parent of, or the person deriving any direct benefit from the labour of, or hav- ing the control over, the child, young person or woman." The Factory Acts Extension Act, which affects the large establishments, derogates from the Factory Act by a crowd of vicious exceptions and cowardly compromises with the masters. The Workshops' Regulation Act, wretched in all its de- tails, remained a dead letter in the hands of the municipal and local authorities who were charged with its execution. When, in 1871, Parliament withdrew from them this power, in order to confer it on the Factory Inspectors, to whose province it thus added by a single stroke more than one hun- dred thousand workshops, and three hundred brickworks, care was taken at the same time not to add more than eight as- sistants to their already undermanned staff. 1 What strikes us, then, in the English legislation of 1867, is, on the one hand, the necessity imposed on the parliament of the ruling classes, of adopting in principle measures so extra- ordinary, and on so great a scale, against the excesses of capitalistic exploitation ; and on the other hand, the hesitation, the repugnance, and the bad faith, with which it lent itself to the task of carrying those measures into practice. The Inquiry Commission of 1862 also proposed a new regu- lation of the mining industry, an industry distinguished from others by the exceptional characteristic that the interests of landlord and capitalist there join hands. The antagonism of these two interests had been favourable to Factory legislation, while on the other hand the absence of that antagonism is sufficient to explain the delays and chicanery of the legislation on mines. 1 The "personnel" of this staff consisted of 2 inspectors, 2 assistant inspectors and 41 sub-inspectors. Eight additional sub-inspectors were appointed in 1871. The total cost of administering the Acts in England, Scotland, and Ireland amounted for the year 1871-72 to no more than 25,347, inclusive of the law expenses in- curred by prosecutions of offending masters. 542 Capitalist Production. The Inquiry Commission of 1840 had made revelations so terrible, so shocking, and creating such a scandal all over Europe, that to salve its ' conscience Parliament passed the Mining Act of 1842, in which it limited itself to forbidding the employment underground in mines of children under 10 years of age and females. Then another Act, The Mines' Inspecting Act of 1860, pro- vides that mines shall be inspected by public officers nominated specially for that purpose, and that boys between the ages of 10 and 12 years shall not be employed, unless they have a school certificate, or go to school for a certain number of hours. This Act was a complete dead letter owing to the ridiculously small number of inspectors, the meagreness of their powers, and other causes that will become apparent as we proceed. One of the most recent blue books on mines is the "Report from the Select Committee on Mines, together with &c. Evi- dence, 23rd July, 1866." This Report is the work of a Parliamentary Committee selected from members of the House of Commons, and authorised to summon and examine wit- nesses. It is a thick folio volume in which the Report itself occupies only five lines to this effect: that the committee has nothing to say, and that more witnesses must be examined ! The mode of examining the witnesses reminds one of the cross-examination of witnesses in English courts of justice, where the advocate tries, by means of impudent, unexpected, equivocal and involved questions, put without connection, to in- timidate, surprise, and confound the witness, and to give a forced meaning to the answers extorted from him. In this in- quiry the members of the committee themselves are the cross- examiners, and among them are to be found both mine owners and mine exploiters; the witnesses are mostly working coal- miners. The whole farce is too characteristic of the spirit of capital, not to call for a few extracts from this Report. For the sake of conciseness I have classified them. I may also add that every question and its answer are numbered in the English Blue Books. Machinery and Modern Industry. 543 I. EMPLOYMENT IN MINES OF BOYS OF 10 YEAJKS AND UP- WARDS. In the mines the work, inclusive of going and re- turning, usually lasts 14 or 15 hours, sometimes even from 3, 4, and 5 o'clock a.m., till 5 and 6 o'clock p.m., (n. 6., 452, 83). The adults work in two shifts, of eight hours each ; but there is no alteration with the boys, on account of the expense (n. 80, 203, 204.) The younger boys are chiefly employed in opening and shutting the ventilating doors in the various parts of the mine ; the older ones are employed on heavier work, in carrying coal, &c. (n. 122, 739, 1747). They work these long hours underground until their 18th or 22nd year, when they are put to miners work proper, (n. 161.) Children and young persons are at present worse treated, and harder worked than at any previous period (n. 1663 '1667). And now Hussey Vivian (himself an exploiter of mines) asks: "Would not the opinion of the workman depend upon the poverty of the workman's family ?" Mr. Bruce : "Do you not think it would be a very hard case, where a parent had been injured, or where he was sickly, or where a father was dead, and there was only a mother, to prevent a child between 12 and 14 earning Is. 7d. a day for the good of the family ? . . . You must lay down a general rule? . . . Are you pre- pared to recommend legislation which would prevent the em- ployment of children under 12 and 14, whatever the state of their parents might be?" "Yes." (ns. 107-110). Vivian: "Supposing that an enactment were passed preventing the em- ployment of children under the age of 14, would it not be probable that . . . the parents of children would seek employment for their children in other directions, for instance, in manufacture?" "Not generally I think," (n. 174). Kin- naird : "Some of the boys are keepers of doors ?" "Yes." "Is there not generally a very great draught every time you open a door or close it?" "Yes, generally there is." "It sounds a very easy thing, but it is in fact rather a painful one?" "He is imprisoned there just the same as if he was in a cell of a gaol." Bourgeois Vivian : "Whenever a boy is furnished with a lamp cannot he read ?" "Yes, he can read, if he finds himself in candles ... I suppose he would be found 544 Capitalist Production. fault with if lie were discovered reading; he is there to mind his business, he has a duty to perform, and he has to attend to it in the first place, and I do not think it would be allowed down the pit." (ns. 139, 141, 143, 158, 160.) II. EDUCATION. The working miners want a law for the compulsory education of their children, as in factories. They declare the clauses of the Act of 1860, which require a school certificate to be obtained before employing boys of 10 and 12 years of age, to be quite illusory. The examination of the witnesses on this subject is truly droll. "Is it (the Act) required more against the masters or against the parents ?" "It is required against both I think." "You cannot say whether it is required against one more than against the other ?" "No ; I can hardly answer that question." (ns. 115, 116.) "Does there appear to be any desire on the part of the employers that the boys should have such hours as to enable them to go to school ?" "No ; the hours are never shortened for that purpose." (n. 137.) Mr. Kinnaird: "Should you say that the colliers generally improve their education; have you any instances of men who have, since they began to work, greatly improved their education, or do they not rather go back, and lose any advantage that they may have gained ?" "They generally become worse: they do not improve; they acquire bad habits ; they get on to drinking and gambling and such like, and they go completely to wreck," (n. 211). "Do they make any attempt of the kind (for providing instruction) by having schools at night ?" "There are few collieries where night schools are held, and perhaps at those collieries a few boys do go to those schools; but they are so physically ex- hausted that it is to no purpose that they go there." (n. 454.) "You are then," concludes the bourgeois, "against education ?" "Most certainly not; but," &c. (n. 443.) "But are they (the employers) not compelled to demand them" (school certifi- cates) ? "By law they are; but I am not aware that they are demanded by the employers." "Then it is your opinion, that this provision of the Act as to requiring certificates, is not gen- erally carried out in the collieries ?" "It is not carried out." (ns. 443, 444.) "Do the men take a great interest in this Machinery and Modern Industry. 545 question" (of education) ? "The majority of them do." (n. 717.) "Are they very anxious to see the law enforced?" "The majority are." (n. 718.) "Do you think that in this country any law that you pass . . . can really be effectual unless the population themselves assist in putting it into opera- tion ?" "Many a man might wish to object to employing a boy, but he would perhaps become marked by it." (n. 720.) "Marked by whom ?" "By his employers." (n. 721.) "Do you think that the employers would find any fault with a man who obeyed the law. ... ?" "I believe they would." (n. 722.) "Have you ever heard of any workman objecting to employ a boy between 10 and 12, who could not write or read?" "It is not left to men's option." (n. 123.) "Would you call for the interference of Parliament ?" "I think that if anything effectual is to be done in the education of the colliers' children, it will have to be made compulsory by Act of Parliament." (n. 1634.) "Would you lay that obligation upon the colliers only, of all the work people of Great Britain ?" "I came to speak for the colliers." (n. 1636.) "Why should you distinguish them (colliery boys) from other boys ?" "Because I think they are an exception to the rule." (n. 1638.) "In what respect?" "In a phys- ical respect." (n. 1639.) "Why should education be more valuable to them than to other classes of lads?" "I do not know that it is more valuable; but through the over-exertion in mines there is less chance for the boys that are employed there to get education, either at Sunday schools, or at day schools." (n. 1640.) "It is impossible to look at a question of this sort absolutely by itself?" (n. 1644.) "Is there a sufficiency of schools?" "No." . . . (n. 1646.) "If the state were to require that every child should be sent to school, would there be schools for the children to go to ?" "No ; but I think if the circumstances were to spring up, the schools would be forthcoming." (n. 1647.) "Some of them (the boys) cannot read and write at all, I suppose ?" "The majority can- not. . . . The majority of the men themselves cannot." (ns. 705, 725.) III. EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. Since 1842 women are no 2 I 546 Capitalist Production. more employed underground, but are occupied on the surface in loading the coal, &c., in drawing the tubs to the canals and railway waggons, in sorting, &c. Their numbers have con- siderably increased during the last three or four years, (n. 1727.) They are mostly the wives, daughters, and widows of the working miners, and their ages range from 12 to 50 or 60 years, (ns. 645, 1779.) "What is the feeling among the working miners as to the employment of women ?" "I think they generally condemn it" (n. 648.) "What objection do you see to it ?" "I think it is degrading to the sex." (n. 649.) "There is a peculiarity of dress?" "Yes . . . it is rather a man's dress, and I believe in some cases, it drowns all sense of decency." "Do the women smoke?" "Some do." "And I suppose it is very dirty work ?" "Very dirty." "They get black and grimy ?" "As black as those who are down the mines ... I believe that a woman having children, (and there are plenty on the banks that have) cannot do her duty to her children." (ns. 650- 654, 701.) "Do you think that those widows could get em- ployment anywhere else, which would bring them in as much wages as that (from 8s. to 10s. a week) ?" "I cannot speak to that." (n. .709.) "You would still be prepared, would you," (flint-hearted fellow!) "to prevent their obtaining a livelihood by these means ?" "I would." (n. 710.) "What is the general feeling in the district . . . as to the em- ployment of women ?" "The feeling is that it is degrading ; and we wish as miners to have more respect to the fair sex than to see them placed on the pit bank. . . . Some part of the work is very hard ; some of these girls have raised as much as 10 tons of stuff a day." (ns. 1715, 1717.) "Do you think that the women employed about the collieries are less moral than the women employed in the factories ?" " . . the percentage of bad ones may be a little more . . . than with the girls in the factories." (n. 1237.) "But you are not quite satisfied with the state of morality in the factories?" "No." (n. 1733.) "Would you prohibit the employment of women in factories also ?" "No, I would not." (n. 1734.) "Why not ?" "I think it a more honourable oc- Machinery and Modern Industry. 547 cupation for them in the mills." (n. 1735.) "Still it is injurious to their morality, you think?" "Not so much as working on the pit bank ; but it is more on the social position I take it; I do not take it on its moral ground alone. The degradation, in its social bearing on the girls, is deplorable in the extreme. When these 400 or 500 girls become colliers' wives, the men suffer greatly from this degradation, and it causes them to leave their homes and drink." (n. 1736.) "You would be obliged to stop the employment of women in the ironworks as well, would you not, if you stopped it in the collieries ?" "I cannot speak for any other trade." (n. 1737.) "Can you see any difference in the circumstances of women employed in iron-works, and the circumstances of women employed above ground in collieries ?" "I have not ascertained anything as to that." (n. 1740.) "Can you see anything that makes a distinction between one class and the other ?" "I have not ascertained that, but I know from house to house visitation, that it is a deplorable state of things in. our district. . . ." (n. 1741.) "Would you interfere in every case with the employment of women where that em- ployment was degrading?" "It would become injurious, I think, in this way : the best feelings of Englishmen have been gained from the instruction of a mother . . . (n. 1750.) "That equally applies to agricultural employments, does it not ?" "Yes, but that is only for two seasons, and we have work all the four seasons." (n. 1751.) " They often work day and night, wet through to the skin, their constitu- tion undermined and their health ruined." "You have not inquired into that subject perhaps ?" "I have certainly taken note of it as I have gone along, and certainly I have seen nothing parallel to the effects of the employment of women on the pit bank. . . . It is the work of a man ... a strong man." (ns. 1753, 1793, 1794.) "Your feeling upon the whole subject is that the better class of colliers who desire to raise themselves and humanise themselves, instead of de- riving help from the women, are pulled down by them?" "Yes." (n. 1808.) After some further crooked questions from these bourgeois, the secret of their "sympathy" for 548 Capitalist Production. widows, poor families, &c., comes out at last. "The coal pro- prietor appoints certain gentlemen to take the oversight of the workings, and it is their policy, in order to receive ap- probation, to place things on the most economical basis they can, and these girls are employed at from Is. up to Is. 6d. a clay, where a man at the rate of 2s. 6d. a day would have to be employed." (n. 1816.) IV. CORONER'S INQUESTS. "With regard to coroner's in- quests in your district, have the workmen confidence in the pro- ceedings at these inquests when accidents occur ?" "No ; they have not," (n. 306.) "Why not?" "Chiefly because the men who are generally chosen, are men who know nothing about mines and such like." "Are not workmen summoned at all upon the juries ?" "Never but as witnesses to my knowl- edge." "Who are the people who are generally summoned upon these juries ?" "Generally tradesmen in the neighbor- hood . . . from their circumstances they are sometimes liable to be influenced by their employers . . . the owners of the works. They are generally men who have no knowl- edge, and can scarcely understand the witnesses who are called before them, and the terms which are used and such like." "Would you have the jury composed of persons who had been employed in mining?" "Yes, partly . . . they (the workmen) think that the verdict is not in accordance with the evidence given generally, "(ns. 361, 364, 366, 368, 371, 375.) "One great object in summoning a jury is to have an impartial one, is it not ?" "Yes, I should think so." "Do you think that the juries would be impartial if they were composed to a con- siderable extent of workmen ?" "I cannot see any motive which the workmen would have to act partially . . . they necessarily have a better knowledge of the operations in con- nection with the mine." "You do not think there would be a tendency on the part of the workmen to return unfairly severe verdicts?" "No, I think not." (ns. 378, 379, 380.) V. FALSE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. The workmen demand to be paid weekly instead of fortnightly, and by weight in- stead of by cubical contents of the tubs ; they also demand pro- tection against the use of false weights, &c. (n. 1071.) "If Machinery and Modern Industry. 549 the tubs were fraudulently increased, a man could discontinue working by giving 14 days' notice ?" "But if he goes to an- other place, there is the same thing going on there." (n. 1071.) "But he can leave that place where the wrong has been committed ?" "It is general ; wherever he goes, he has to submit to it." (n. 1072.) "Could a man leave by giving 14 days' notice?" "Yes," (n. 1073.) And yet they are not satisfied! VI. INSPECTION OF MINES. Casualties from explosions are not the only things the workmen suffer from. (n. 234, sqq.) "Our men complained very much of the bad ventilation of the collieries . . . the ventilation is so bad in general that the men can scarcely breathe ; they are quite unfit for em- ployment of any kind after they have been for a length of time in connection with their work; indeed, just at the part of the mine where I am working, men have been obliged to leave their employment and come home in consequence of that . . . some of them have been out of work for weeks just in consequence of the bad state of the ventilation where there is not explosive gas . . . there is plenty of air generally in the main courses, yet pains are not taken to get air into the workings where men are working." "Why do you not apply to the inspector ?" "To tell the truth there are many men who are timid on that point; there have been cases of men being sacrificed and losing their employment in conse- quence of applying to the inspector." "Why ; is he a marked man for having complained?" "Yes." "And he finds it difficult to get employment in another mine ?" "Yes." "Do you think the mines in your neighborhood are sufficiently in- spected to insure a compliance with the provisions of the Act?" "No; they are not inspected at all ... the in- spector has been down just once in the pit, and it has been going seven years. ... In the district to which I belong there are not a sufficient number of inspectors. We have one old man more than 70 years of age to inspect more than 130 collieries." "You wish to have a class of sub-inspectors?" "Yes." (ns. 234, 241, 251, 254, 274, 275, 554, 276, 293.) But do you think it would be possible for government to main- 550 Capitalist Production. tain such, an army of inspectors as would be necessary to do all that you want them to do, without information from the men ?" "No, I should think it would be next to impossible." . . . "It would be desirable the inspectors should come oftener ?" "Yes, and without being sent for." (n. 280, 277.) "Do you not think that the effect of having these inspectors examining the collieries so frequently would be to shift the responsibility (!) of supplying proper ventilation from the owners of the collieries to the Government officials ?" "No, I do not think that, I think that they should make it their busi- ness to enforce the Acts which are already in existence." (n. 285.) "When you speak of sub-inspectors, do you mean men at a less salary, and of an inferior stamp to the present in- spectors ?" "I would not have them inferior, if you could get them otherwise." (n. 294.) "Do you merely want more inspectors, or do you want a *lower class of men as an in- spector?" "A man who would knock about, and see that things are kept right; a man who would not be afraid of him- self." (n. 295.) "If you obtained your wish in getting an inferior class of inspectors appointed, do you think there would be no danger from want of skill, &c. ?" "I think not, I think that the Government would see after that, and have proper men in that position." (n. 297.) This kind of examination becomes at last too much even for the chairman of the com- mittee, and he interrupts with the observation: "You want a class of men who would look into all the details of the mine, and would go into all the holes and corners, and go into the real facts . . . they would report to the chief inspector, who would then bring his scientific knowledge to bear on the facts they have stated ?" (ns. 298, 299.) "Would it not en- tail very great expense if all these old workings were kept ventilated ?" "Yes, expense might be incurred, but life would be at the same time protected." (n. 531.) A working miner objects to the 17th section of the Act of 1860; he says, "At the present time, if the inspector of mines finds a part of the mine unfit to work in, he has to report it to the mine owner and the Home Secretary. After doing that, there is given to the owner 20 days to look over the matter; at the end of 20 Machinery and Modern Industry. 551 days he has the power to refuse making any alteration in the mine; but, when he refuses, the mine owner writes to the Home Secretary, at the same time nominating five engineers, and from those five engineers named by the mine owner him- self, the Home Secretary appoints one, I think, as arbitrator, or appoints arbitrators from them ; now we think in that case the mine owner virtually appoints his own arbitrator." (n. 581.) Bourgeois examiner, himself a mine owner: "But . . . is this a merely speculative objection?" (n. 586.) "Then you have a very poor opinion of the integrity of min- ing engineers ?" "It is most certainly unjust and inequi- table." (n. 588.) "Do not mining engineers possess a sort of public character, and do not you think that they are above making such a partial decision as you apprehend ?" "I do not wish to answer such a question as that with respect to the personal character of those men. I believe that in many cases they would act very partially indeed, and that it ought not to be in their hands to do so, where men's lives are at stake." (n. 589.) This same bourgeois is not ashamed to put this ques- tion : "Do you not think that the mine owner also suffers loss from an explosion ?" Finally, "Are not you workmen in Lancashire able to take care of your own interests without calling in the Government to help you?" "No." (n. 1042.) In the year 1865 there were 3217 coal mines in Great Britain, and 12 inspectors. A Yorkshire mine owner himself calculates ("Times," 26th January, 1867), that putting on one side their office work, which absorbs all their time, each mine can be visited but once in ten years by an inspector. No wonder that explosions have increased progressively, both in number and extent (sometimes with a loss of 200-300 men), during the last ten years. The very defective Act, passed in 1872, is the first that regulates the hours of labour of the children employed in mines, and makes exploiters and owners, to a certain extent, responsible for so-called accidents. The Royal Commission appointed in 1867, to inquire into the employment in agriculture of children, young persons, and women, has published some very important reports. Several 552 Capitalist Production. attempts to apply the principles of the Factory Acts, but in a modified form, to agriculture have been made, but have so far resulted in complete failure. All that I wish to draw atten- tion to here is the existence of an irresistible tendency towards the general application of those principles. . If the general extension of factory legislation to all trades for the purpose of protecting the working class both in mind and body has become inevitable, on the other hand, as we have already pointed out, that extension hastens on the gen- eral conversion of numerous isolated small industries into a few combined industries carried on upon a large scale; it therefore accelerates the concentration of capital and the ex- clusive predominance of the factory system. It destroys both the ancient and the transitional forms, behind which the do- minion of capital is still in part concealed, and replaces them by the direct and open sway of capital; but thereby it also generalises the direct opposition to this sway. While in each individual workshop it enforces uniformity, regularity, order, and economy, it increases by the immense spur which the limi- tation and regulation of the working day give to technical im- provement, the anarchy and the catastrophes of capitalist pro- duction as a whole, the intensity of labour, and the compe- tition of machinery with the labourer. By the destruction of petty and domestic industries it destroys the last resort of the "redundant population," and with it the sole remaining safety- valve of the whole social mechanism. By maturing the ma- terial conditions, and the combination on a social scale of the processes of production, it matures the contradictions and antagonisms of the capitalist form of production, and thereby provides, along with the elements for the formation of a new society, the forces for exploding the old one. 1 1 Robert Owen, the father of Co-operative Factories and Stores, but who, as before remarked, in no way shared the illusions of his followers with regard to the bear- ing of these isolated elements of transformation, not only practically made the fac- tory system the sole foundation of his experiments, but also declared that system to be theoretically the starting point of the social revolution. Herr Vissering, Pro- fessor of Political Economy in the University of Leyden, appears to have a suspicion of this when, in his "Handboek van Praktische Staatshuishoudkunde, 1860-62," which reproduces all the platitudes of vulgar economy, he strongly supports handi- crafts against the factory system. Note to the 4th German edition. The new juristic abortion created by English legislation in the mutually contradictory Factory Acts, Machinery and Modern Industry. 553 SECTION 10. MODEKN INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE. The revolution called forth by modern industry in agricul- ture, and in the social relations of agricultural producers, will be investigated later on. In this place we shall merely indi- cate a few results by way of anticipation. If the use of machinery in agriculture is for the most part free from the injurious physical effect it has on the factory operative, 1 its action in superseding the labourers is more intense, and finds less resistance, as we shall see later in detail. In the counties of Cambridge and Suffolk, for example, the area of cultivated land has extended very much within the last 20 years (up to 1868), while in the same period the rural population has diminished, not only relatively, but absolutely. In the United States it is as yet only virtually that agricultural machines Fatcory Extension Act, and Workshop Act, became finally unbearable, and in conse- quence, the Factory and Workshops Act of 1878 made this entire legislation into a new code. Of course, we cannot give an exhaustive critique of the present indus- trial code of England in this place. The following notes may suffice; The Act com- prizes (1) Textile mills. Here everything remains about as it was. Working time allowed for children over 10 years, 5% hours per day, or 8 hours per day and Sat- urday off. For young persons and women, 10 hours on 5 days, and no more than 6% hours on Saturday. (2) Other than textile mills. Here the rules are more nearly approximated to those of class (1), but still many of them permit excep- tions favoring the capitalist, which may even be extended in special cases by the permission of the Minister of the Interior. (3) Workshops, denned about the same as in the former act. So far as children, young persons, or women are employed in them, workshops are placed in about the same class with other than textile mills, but again with special favors. (4) Workshops, in which no children or young per- sons, but only persons of both sexes over 18 years are employed. This class enjoys still other favors. (5) Domestic Workshops, in which only members of the family are employed in the home of the family. Here the rules are still more elastic, with the additional restriction that the inspector must not enter rooms serving at the same time as homes without the permission of the Minister or the Judge. Finally, the unconditional surrender of straw plating, lace making, glove making to the family circle. Yet, with all its shortcomings, this law, and the factory laws of the Swiss Confederation passed March 23, 1877, are by far the best on this subject. A comparison of these two codes is particularly interesting, because it reveals the advantages and disadvantages of the two different methods of legislation, the English, "historical" method interfering from case to case, and the continental, more gen- eralising method built upon the traditions of the French revolution. Unfortunately, the English code is still largely a dead letter on account of the lack of in- spectors. F. E. 1 A detailed description of the machinery employed in English agriculture is found in "The Agricultural Implements and Machines of England," by Dr. W. Hamm. Second edition, 1856. In a sketch of the evolution of English agriculture Mr. Hamm follows too narrowly the ideas of Mr. Leonce de Lavergne. (Note to the 4th German edition.) This is now obsolete, of course. F. E. 554 Capitalist Production. replace labourers; in other words, they allow ot the culti- vation by the farmer of a larger surface, but do not actually expel the labourers employed. In 1861 the number of per- sons occupied in England and Wales in the manufacture of agricultural machines was 1034, whilst the number of agri- cultural labourers employed in the use of agricultural ma- chines and steam engines did not exceed 1205., In the sphere of agriculture, modern industry has a more revolutionary effect than elsewhere, for this reason, that it annihilates the peasant, that bulwark of the old society, and replaces him by the wage labourer. Thus the desire for social changes, and the class antagonisms are brought to the same level in the country as in the towns. The irrational, old fash- ioned methods of agriculture are replaced by scientific ones. Capitalist production completely tears asunder the old bond of union which held together agriculture and manufacture in their infancy. But at the same time it creates the material conditions for a higher synthesis in the future, viz., the union of agriculture and industry on the basis of the more perfected forms they have each acquired during their temporary separa- tion. Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centres, and causing an ever increasing preponderance of town population, on the one hand concentrates the historical motive-power of society ; on the other hand, it disturbs the cir- culation of matter between man and the soil, i.e., prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing ; it therefore violates the conditions neces- sary to lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intel- lectual life of the rural labourer. 1 But while upsetting the naturally grown conditions for the maintenance of that circu- lation of matter, it imperiously calls for its restoration as a 1 "You divide the people into two hostile camps of clownish boors and emascu- lated dwarfs. Good heavens! a nation divided into agricultural and commercial interests, calling itself sane; nay, styling itself enlightened and civilized, not only in spite of, but in consequence of this monstrous and unnatural division." (David Urquhart, 1. c., p. 119.) This passage shows, at one and the same time, the strength and the weakness of that kind of criticism which knows how to judge and condemn the present, but not how to comprehend it. Machinery and Modern Industry. 555 system, as a regulating law of social production, and under a form appropriate to the full development of the human race. In agriculture as in manufacture, the transformation of pro- duction under the sway of capital, means, at the same time, the martyrdom of the producer ; the instrument of labour be- comes the means of enslaving, exploiting, and impoverishing the labourer; the social combination and organization of la- bour-processes is turned into an organised mode of crushing out the workman's individual vitality, freedom, and inde- pendence. The dispersion of the rural labourers over larger areas breaks their power of resistance while concentration increases that of the town operatives. In modern agriculture, as in the urban industries, the increased productiveness and quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil ; all progress in increasing the fertility of the- soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its development on the foundation of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction. 1 1 See Liebig: "Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologic, 7. Auflage, 1862," and especially the "Einleitung in die Naturgesetze des Feldbaus," in the 1st Volume. To have developed from the point of view of natural science, the negative, i.e., destructive side of modern agriculture, is one of Liebig's immortal merits. His summary, too, of the history of agriculture, although not free from gross errors, contains flashes of light. It is, however, to be regretted that he ven- tures on such hap-hazard assertions as the following: "By greater pulverising and more frequent ploughing, the circulation of air in the interior of porous soil is aided, and the surface exposed to the action of the atmosphere is increased and renewed; but it is easily seen that the increased yield of the land cannot be proportional to the labour spent on that land, but increases in a much smaller proportion. This law," adds Liebig, "was first enunciated by John Stuart Mill in his 'Principles of Pol. Econ.', Vol I., p. 17, as follows: 'That the produce of land increases, coeteris paribus, in a diminishing ratio to the increase of the labourers employed" (Mill here introduces in an erroneous form the law enunciated by Ricardo's school, for since the 'decrease of the labourers employed,' kept even pace in England with the advance of agriculture, the law discovered in, and applied to, England, could have no application to that country, at all events), "is the universal law of agricultural in- dustry.' This is very remarkable, since Mill was ignorant of the reason for this law." (Liebig, 1. c., Bd. I., p. 143 and Note.) Apart from Liebig's wrong interpretation of the word "labour," by which word he understands something quite different from what political economy does, it is, in any case, "very remarkable" that he should 556 Capitalist Production. Capitalist production, therefore, developes technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth the soil and the labourer. make Mr. John Stuart Mill the first propounder of a theory which was first published by James Anderson in A. Smith's days, and was repeated in various works down to the beginning of the 19th century; a theory which Malthus, that master in plagiarism (the whole of his population theory is a shameless plagiarism), appropriated to him- self in 1815; which West developed at the same time as, and independently of, Anderson; which in the year 1817 was connected by Ricardo with the general theory of value, then made the round of the world as Ricardo's theory, and in 1820 was vulgarised by James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill; and which, finally, was reproduced by John Stuart Mill and others, as a dogma already quite common-place, and known to every school-boy. It cannot be denied that John Stuart Mill owes his, at all events, "remarkable" authority almost entirely to such quid-pro-quos. PART V. THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE AND OF RELATIVE SURPLUS- VALUE. CHAPTER XVI. ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE. IN considering the labour-process, we began (see Chapter V.) by treating it in the abstract, apart from its historical forms, as a process between man and nature. We there stated, p. 160 : "If we examine the whole labour-process, from the point of view of its result, it is plain that both the instruments and the subject of labour are means of production, and that the labour itself is productive labour." And in Note 2, same page, we further added : "This method of determining, from the standpoint of the labour-process alone, what is productive labour, is by no means directly applicable to the case of the capitalist process of production." We now proceed to the further development of this subject. So far as the labour-process is purely individual, one and the same labourer unites in himself all the functions, that later on become separated. When an individual appropriates natural objects for his livelihood, no one controls him but himself. Afterwards he is controlled by others. A single man cannot operate upon nature without calling his own muscles into play under the control of his own brain. As in the natural body head and hand wait upon each other, so the labour-process unites the labour of the hand with that of the head. Later on they part company and even become deadly foes. The product 557 558 Capitalist Production. ceases to be the direct product of the individual, and becomes a social product, produced in common by a collective labourer, i.e., by a combination of workmen,, each of whom takes only a part, greater or less, in the manipulation of the subject of their labour. As the co-operative character of the labour-process becomes more and more marked, so, as a necessary consequence, does our, notion of productive labour, and of its agent the pro- ductive labourer, become extended. In order to labour pro- ductively, it is no longer necessary for you to do manual work yourself ; enough, if you are an organ of the collective labourer, and perform one of its subordinate functions. The first defini- tion given above of productive labour, a definition deduced from the very nature of the production of material objects, still remains correct for the collective labourer, considered as a whole. But it no longer holds good for each member taken individually. On the other hand, however, our notion of productive labour becomes narrowed. Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus-value. The labourer produces, not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply produce. He must produce surplus-value. That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the capi- talist, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital. If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive labourer, when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a gausage factory, does not alter the relation. Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour, but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the direct means of creating surplus-value. To be a productive labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune. In Book IV. which treats of the history of the theory, it will be more clearly seen, that the production of surplus-value has Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value. 559 at all times been made, by classical political economists, the distinguishing characteristic of the productive labourer. Hence their definition of a productive labourer changes with their comprehension of the nature of surplus-value. Thus the Physiocrats insist that only agricultural labour is productive, since that alone, they say, yields a surplus-value. And they say so because, with them, surplus-value has no existence ex- cept in the form of rent. The prolongation of the working day beyond the point at which the labourer would have produced just an equivalent for the value of his labour-power, and the appropriation of that surplus-labour by capital, this is production of absolute surplus-value. It forms the general groundwork of the capi- talist Fystem, and the starting point for the production of rela- tive surplus-value. The latter presupposes that the working day is already divided into two parts, necessary labour, and surplus-labour. In order to prolong the surplus-labour, the necessary labour is shortened by methods whereby the equiva- lent for the wages is produced in less time. The production of absolute surplus-value turns exclusively upon the length of the working day; the production of relative surplus-value, revolutionises out and out the technical processes of labour, ?nd the composition of society. It therefore presupposes a specific mode, the capitalist mode of production, a mode which, along with its methods, means, and conditions, arises and de- velopes itself spontaneously on the foundation afforded by the formal subjection of labour to capital In the course of this development, the formal subjection is replaced by the real sub- jection of labour to capital. It will suffice merely to refer to certain intermediate forms, in which surplus-labour is not extorted by direct compulsion from the producer, nor the producer himself yet formally sub- jected to capital In such forms capital has not yet acquired the direct control of the labour-process. By the side of inde- pendent producers who carry on their handicrafts and agricul- ture in the traditional old-fashioned way, there stands the usurer or the merchant, with his usurer's capital or merchant's capital, feeding on them like a parasite. The predominance, in 560 Capitalist Production. a society, of this form of exploitation excludes the capitalist mode of production ; to which mode, however, this form may serve as a transition, as it did towards the close of the Middle Ages. Finally, as is shown by modern "domestic industry," some intermediate forms are here and there reproduced in the background of Modern Industry, though their physiognomy is totally changed. If, on the one hand, the mere formal subjection of labour to capital suffices for the production of absolute surplus-value, if, e.g., it is sufficient that handicraftsmen who previously worked on their own account, or as apprentices of a master, should become wage labourers under the direct control of a capitalist ; so, on the other hand, we have seen, how the methods of pro- ducing relative surplus-value, are, at the same time, methods of producing absolute surplus-value, ^ay, more, the excessive prolongation of the working day turned out to be the peculiar product of Modern Industry. Generally speaking, the specifi- cally capitalist mode of production ceases to be a mere means of producing relative surplus-value, so soon as that mode has conquered an entire branch of production ; and still more so, so soon as it has conquered all the important branches. It then becomes the general, socially predominant form of pro- duction. As a special method of producing relative surplus- value, it remains effective only, first, in so far as it seizes upon industries that previously were only formally subject to capital, that is, so far as it is propagandist; secondly, in so far as the industries that have been taken over by it, continue to be revolutionized by changes in the methods of production. From one standpoint, any distinction between absolute and relative surplus-value appears illusory. Relative surplus- value is absolute, since it compels the absolute prolongation of the working day beyond the labour-time necessary to the exist- ence of the labourer himself Absolute surplus-value is rela- tive, since it makes necessary such a development of the pro- ductiveness of labour, as will allow of the necessary labour- time being confined to a portion of the working day. But if we keep in mind the behaviour of surplus-value, this appear- ance of identity vanishes. Once the capitalist mode of produc- Absolute and Relative Surplus-lvalue. 561 tion established and become general, the difference between absolute and relative surplus-value makes itself felt, whenever there is a question of raising the rate of surplus-value. As- suming that labour-power is paid for at its value, we are con- fronted by this alternative : given the productiveness of labour and its normal intensity, the rate of surplus-value can be raised only by the actual prolongation of the working day; on the other hand, given the length of the working day, that rise can be effected only by a change in the relative magnitudes of the components of the working day, viz., necessary labour and sur- plus-labour ; a change, which, if the wages are not to fall be- low the value of labour-power, presupposes a change either in the productiveness or in the intensity of the labour. If the labourer wants all his time to produce the necessary means of subsistence for himself and his race, he has no time left in which to work gratis for others. Without a certain de- gree of productiveness in his labour, he has no such super- fluous time at his disposal; without such superfluous time, no surplus-labour, and therefore no capitalists, no slave-owners, no feudal lords, in one word, no class of large proprietors. 1 Thus we may say that surplus-value rests on a natural basis ; but this is permissible only in the very general sense, that there is no natural obstacle absolutely preventing one man from disburdening himself of the labour requisite for his own existence, and burdening another with it, any more, for in- stance, than unconquerable natural obstacles prevent one man from eating the flesh of another. 2 No mystical ideas must in any way be connected, as sometimes happens, with this his- torically developed productiveness of labour. It is only after men have raised themselves above the rank of animals, when therefore their labour has been to some extent socialised, that a state of things arises in which the surplus-labour of the one becomes a condition of existence for the other. At the 1 "The very existence of the master-capitalists, as a distinct class, is dependent on the productiveness of industry." (Ramsay, 1. c. p. 206.) "If each man's labour were but enough to produce his own food, there could be no property." (Raven- stone, 1. c. p. 14, 15). - According to a recent calculation, there are yet at least 4,000,000 cannibals in those parts of the earth which have already been explored. 2J 562 Capitalist Production. dawn of civilisation the productiveness acquired by labour is small, but so too are the wants which develop with and by the means of satisfying them. Further, at that early period, the portion of society that lives on the labour of others is infinitely small compared with the mass of direct producers Along with the progress in the productiveness of labour, that small portion of society increases both absolutely and relatively. 1 Besides, capital with its accompanying relations springs up from an economic soil that is the product of a long process of development. The productiveness of labour that serves as its foundation and starting point, is a gift, not of nature, but of a history embracing thousands of centuries. Apart from the degree of development, greater or less, in the form of social production, the productiveness of labour is fet- tered by physical conditions. These are all referable to the constitution of man himself (race, &c.), and to surrounding nature. The external physical conditions fall into two great economical classes, (1) Natural wealth in means of subsist- ence, i.e., a fruitful soil, waters teeming with fish, &c., and (2), natural wealth in the instruments of labour, such as waterfalls, navigable rivers, wood, metal, coal, &c. At the dawn of civilisation, it is the first class that turns the scale ; at a higher stage of development, it is the second. Compare, for example, England with India, or in ancient times, Athens and Corinth with the shores of the Black Sea. The fewer the number of natural wants imperatively calling for satisfaction, and the greater the natural fertility of the soil and the favourableness of the climate, so much less is the the producer. So much greater therefore can be the excess of labour-time necessary for the maintenance and reproduction of his labour for others over his labour for himself. Diodorus long ago remarked this in relation to the ancient 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 at hand ; they also give them the 1 "Among the wild Indians in America, almost everything is the labourer's, 99 parts of a hundred are to be put upon the account of labour. In England, perhaps, the labourer has not 2 A." (The Advantages of the East India Trade, &c. p. 73.) Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value. 563 lower part of the papyrus stem to eat> so far as it can be roasted in the fire, and the roots and stalks of marsh plants, some raw, some boiled and roasted. Most of the children go without shoos and unclothed, for the air is so mild. Hence a child, until he is grown up, costs his parents not more, on the whole, than twenty drachmas. It is this, chiefly, which ex- plains why the population of Egypt is so numerous, and, there- fore, why so many great works can be undertaken." 1 Never- theless the grand structures of ancient Egypt are less due to the extent of its population than to the large proportion of it that was freely disposable. Just as the individual labourer can do more surplus-labour in proportion as his necessary labour-time is less, so with regard to the working population. The smaller the part of it which is required for the production of the necessary means of subsistence, so much the greater is the part that can be set to do other work. Capitalist production once assumed, then, all other circum- stances remaining the same, and given the length of the work- ing day, the quantity of surplus-labour will vary with the physical conditions of labour, especially with the fertility of the soil. But it by no means follows from this that the most fruitful soil is the most fitted for the growth of the capitalist mode of production. This mode is based on the dominion of man over nature. Where nature is too lavish, she "keeps him. in hand, like a child in leading-strings." She does not impose upon him any necessity to develop himself. 2 It is not the tropics with their luxuriant vegetation, but the temperate zone, that is the mother country of capital. It is not the mere fertility of the soil, but the differentiation of the soil, the 1 Diodorus, I. c. 1. I. c. 80. 2 "The first (natural wealth) as it is most noble and advantageous, so doth it make the people careless, proud, and given to all excesses; whereas the second enforceth vigilancy, literature, arts and policy." (England's Treasure by Foreign Trade. Or the Balance of our Foreign Trade is the Rule of our Treasure. Written by Thomas Mun of London, merchant, and now published for the common good by his son John Mun. London, 1669, p. 181, 182.) "Nor can I conceive a greater curse upon a body of people, than to be thrown upon a spot of land, where the productions for subsistence and food were, in great measure, spontaneous, and the climate required or admitted little care for raiment and covering . . . there may be an extreme on the other side. A soil incapable of produce by labour is quite as bad as a soil that produces plentifully without any labour." (An Inquiry into the present High Price of Provisions. Lend., 1767. p. 10.) 564 Capitalist Production. variety of its natural products, the changes of the seasons, which form the physical basis for the social division of labour, and which, by changes in the natural surroundings, spur man on to the multiplication of his wants, his capabilities, his means and modes of labour. It is the necessity of bringing a natural force under the control of society, of economising, of appropriating or subduing it on a large scale by the work of man's hand, that first plays the decisive part in the history of industry. Examples are, the irrigation works in Egypt, 1 Lombardy, Holland, or India and Persia where irrigation by means of artificial canals, not only supplies the soil with the water indispensable to it, but also carries down to it, in the shape of sediment from the hills, mineral fertilizers. The secret of the flourishing state of industry in Spain and Sicily under the dominion of the Arabs lay in their irrigation works. 2 Favourable natural conditions alone, gave us only the possi- bility, never the reality, of surplus-labour, nor, consequently, of surplus-value and a surplus-product. The result of differ- ence in the natural conditions of labour is this, that the same quantity of labour satisfies, in different countries, a different mass of requirements, 3 consequently, that under circumstances 1 The necessity for predicting the rise and fall of the Nile created Egyptian as- tronomy, and with it the dominion of the priests, as directors of agriculture. "Le solstice est le moment de 1'annee oil commence la crue du Nil, et celui que les Egyptiens ont du observer avec le plus d'attention . . . C'etait cette annee tropique qu'il leur importait de marquer pour se diriger dans leurs operations agri- coles. Us durent done chercher dans le ciel un signe apparent de son retour." (Cuvier: Discours sur les revolutions du globe, ed. Hoefer. Paris, 1863, p. 141.) J One of the material bases of the power of the state over the small disconnected producing organisms in India, was the regulation of the water supply. The Ma- hometan rulers of India understood this better than their English successors. It is enough to recall to mind the famine of 1866, which cost the lives of more than a million Hindoos in the district of Orissa, in the Bengal presidency. * There are no two countries which furnish an equal number of the necessaries of life in -equal plenty, and with the same quantity of labour. Men's wants increase or diminish with the severity or temperateness of the climate they live in; conse- quently, the proportion of trade which the inhabitants of different countries are obliged to carry on through necessity cannot be the same, nor is it practicable to ascertain the degree of variation farther than by the degrees of Heat and Cold; from whence one may make this general conclusion, that the quantity of labour required for a certain number of people is greatest in cold climates, and least in hot ones; for in the former men not only want more clothes, but the earth more cultivating than the latter." (An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest. Lend. 1750. p. 60.) The author of this epoch-making anonymous work is J. Massey. Hume took his theory of interest from it. Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value. 565 in other respects analogous, the necessary labour-time is differ- ent. These conditions affect surplus-labour only as natural limits, i.e., by fixing the points at which labour for others can begin. In proportion as industry advances, these natural limits recede. In the midst of our West European society, where the labourer purchases the right to work for his own livelihood only by paying for it in surplus-labour, the idea easily takes root that it is an inherent quality of human labour to furnish a surplus-product. 1 But consider, for ex- ample, an inhabitant of the eastern islands of the Asiatic Archipelago, where sago grows wild in the forests. "When the inhabitants have convinced themselves, by boring a hole in the tree, that the pith is ripe, the trunk 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. One tree commonly yields 300 Ibs., and occasionally 500 to 600 Ibs. There, then, people go into the forests, and cut bread for themselves, just as with us they cut firewood." 2 Sup- pose now such an eastern bread-cutter requires 12 working hours a week for the satisfaction of all his wants. Nature's direct gift to him is plenty of leisure time. Before he can apply this leisure time productively for himself, a whole series of historical events is required ; before he spends it in surplus- labour for strangers, compulsion is necessary. If capitalist production were introduced, the honest fellow would perhaps have to work six days a week, in order to appropriate to him- self the product of one working day The bounty of Nature does not explain why he would then have to work 6 days a week, or why he must furnish 5 days of surplus-labour. It explains only why his necessary labour-time would be limited to one day a week. But in no case would his surplus-pro- duct arise from some occult quality inherent in human labour. Thus, not only does the historically developed social pro- ductiveness of labour, but also i,ts natural productiveness, ap- pear to be productiveness of the capital with which that labour is incorporated. 1 "Chaqtte travail doit (this appears also to be part of the droits et devoirs du : ;. .-en) laisser tin excedant." Proudhon. - i'. Shouw: "Die Erde, die Pflanze und der Mensch, 2 Ed. Leipz. 1854, p. 148. 566 Capitalist Production. Ricardo never concerns himself about the origin of surplus- value. He treats it as a thing inherent in the capitalist mode of production, which mode, in his eyes, is the natural form of social production. Whenever he discusses the productiveness of labour, he seeks in it, not the cause of surplus-value, but the cause that determines the magnitude of that value. On the other band, his school has openly proclaimed the produc- tiveness of labour to be the originating cause of profit (read: Surplus-value). This at all events is a progress as against the mercantilists who, on their side, derived the excess of the price over the cost of production of the product, from the act of exchange, from the product being sold above its value. Nevertheless, Ricardo's school simply shirked the problem, they did not solve it. In fact these bourgeois economists in- stinctively saw, and rightly so, that it is very dangerous to stir too deeply the burning question of the origin of surplus- value. But what are we to think of John Stuart Mill, who, half a century after Ricardo, solemnly claims superiority over the mercantilists, by clumsily repeating the wretched evasions of Ricardo's earliest vulgarisers? Mill says: "The cause of profit is that labour produces more than is required for its support." So far, nothing but the old story; but Mill wishing to add something of his own, proceeds : "To vary the form of the theorem ; the reason why capital yields a profit, is because food, clothing, materials and tools, last longer than the time which was required to produce them." He here confounds the duration of labour-time with the duration of its products. According to this view, a baker whose product lasts only a day, could never extract from his workpeople the same profit, as a machine maker whose prod- ucts endures for 20 years and more. Of course it is very true, that if a bird's nest did not last longer than the time it takes in building, birds would have to do without nests. This fundamental truth once established, Mill establishes his own superiority over the mercantilists. "We thus see," he proceeds, "that profit arises, not from the incident of ex- change, but from the productive power of labour; and the general profit of the country is always what the productive Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value. 567 power of labour makes it, whether any exchange takes place or not. If there were no division of employments, there would be no buying or selling, but there would still be profit." For Mill then, exchange, buying and selling, those general condi- tions of capitalist production, are but an incident, and there would always be profits even without the purchase and sale of labour-power! "If," he continues, "the labourers of the country collectively produce twenty per cent more than their wages, profits will be twenty per cent, whatever prices may or may not be." This is, on the one hand, a rare bit of tautology ; for if labourers produce a surplus-value of 20% for the capitalist, his profit will be to the total wages of the labourers as 20 : 100. On the other hand, it is absolutely false to say that "profits will be 20%." They will always be less, because they are cal- culated upon the sum total of the capital advanced. If, for example, the capitalist have advanced 500, of which 400 is laid out in means of production and 100 in wages, and if the rate of surplus-value be 20%, the rate of profit will be 20: 500, i.e., 4% and not 20%. Then follows a splendid example of Mill's method of han- dling the different historical forms of social production: "I assume, throughout, the state of things which, where the labourers and capitalists are separate classes, prevails, with few exceptions, universally; namely, that the capitalist ad- vances the whole expenses, including the entire remuneration of the labourer." Strange optical illusion to see everywhere a state of things which as yet exist only exceptionally on our earth. But let us finish Mill is willing to concede, "that he should do so is not a matter of inherent necessity." On the contrary: "the labourer might wait, until the produc- tion is complete, for all that part of his wages which exceeds mere necessaries ; and even for the whole, if he has funds in hand sufficient for his temporary support. But in the latter case, the labourer is to that extent really a capitalist in the concern, by supplying a portion of the funds necessary for carrying it on." Mill might have gone further and have added, that the labourer who advances to himself not only the 568 Capitalist Production. necessaries of life but also the means of production, is in reality nothing but his own wage-labourer. lie might also have said that the American peasant proprietor is but a serf who does enforced labour for himself instead of for his lord. After thus proving clearly, that even if capitalist produc- tion had no existence, still it would always exist, Mill is con- sistent enough to show, on the contrary, that it has no ex- istence, even when it does exist. "And even in the former case" (when the workman is a wage labourer to whom the capitalist advances all the necessaries of life, he the labourer), "may be looked upon in the same light," i.e., as a capitalist, "since, contributing his labour at less than the market price, (!) he may be regarded as lending the difference (?) to his employer and receiving it back with interest, &C." 1 In re- ality, the labourer advances his labour gratuitously to the capitalist during, say one week, in order to receive .the market price at the end of the week, &c., and it is this which, accord- ing to Mill, transforms him into a capitalist. On the level plain, simple mounds look like hills ; and the imbecile flatness of the present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects. CHAPTER XYIL CHANGES OF MAGNITUDE IN THE PRICE OF LABOUR-POWER ANI> IN SURPLUS-VALUE. THE value of labour-power is determined by the value of the necessaries of life habitually required by the average labourer. The quantity of these necessaries is known at any given epoch of a given society, and can therefore be treated as a constant magnitude. What changes, is the value of this quantity. There are, besides, two other factors that enter into the de- termination of the value of labour-power. One, the expenses 1 7. St. Mill. Principles of Pol. Econ. Lond. 1868, p. 252-53 passim. Changes of Magnitude. 569 of developing that power, which expenses vary with the mode of production ; the other, its natural diversity, the difference between the labour-power of men and women, of children and adults. The employment of these different sorts of labour- power, an employment which is, in its turn, made necessary by the mode of production, makes a great difference in the cost of maintaining the family of the labourer, and in the value of the labour-power of the adult male. Both these factors, how- ever, are excluded in the following investigation. 1 I assume (1) that commodities are sold at their value; (2) that the price of labour-power rises occasionally above its value, but never sinks below it. On this assumption we have seen that the relative magni- tudes of surplus-value and of price of labour-power are de- termined by three circumstances; (1) the length of the work- ing day, or the extensive magnitude of labour; (2) the normal intensity of labour, its intensive magnitude, whereby a given quantity of labour is expended in a given time; (3) the pro- ductiveness of labour, whereby the same quantum of labour yields, in a given time, a greater or less quantum of product, dependent on the degree of development in the conditions of production. Very different combinations are clearly possible, according as one of the three factors is constant and two vari- able, or two constant and one variable, or lastly, all three simultaneously variable. And the number of these combina- tions is augmented by the fact that, when these factors simul- taneously vary, the amount and direction of their respective variations may differ. In what follows the chief combinations alone are considered. 1. Length of the working day and intensity of labour constant. Productiveness of labour variable. On these assumptions the value of labour-power, and the magnitude of surplus-value, are determined by three laws. (1.) A working day of given length always creates the same amount of value, no matter how the productiveness of labour, 1 The case considered at pages 347-350 is here of course omitted. (Note by editor of third edition.) 5/o Capitalist Production. and, with it, the mass of the product, and the price of each single commodity produced, may vary. If the value created by a working day of 12 hours be, say, six shillings, then, although the mass of the articles produce^ varies with the productiveness of labour, the only result is that the value represented by six shillings is spread over a greater or less number of articles. (2.) Surplus-value and the value of labour-power vary in opposite directions. A variation in the productiveness of labour, its increase or diminution, causes a variation in the opposite direction in the value of labour-power, and in the same direction in surplus-value. The value created by a working day of 12 hours is a con- stant quantity, say, six shillings. This constant quantity is the sum of the surplus-value plus the value of the labour-power, which latter value the labourer replaces by an equivalent. It is self-evident, that if a constant quantity consist of two parts, neither of them can increase without the other diminishing. Let the two parts at starting be equal ; 3 shillings value of la- bour-power, 3 shillings surplus-value, Then the value of the labour-power cannot rise from three shillings to four, with- out the surplus-value falling from three shillings to two ; and the surplus-value cannot rise from three shillings to four, without the value of labour-power falling from three shillings to two. Under these circumstances, therefore, no change can take place in the absolute magnitude, either of the surplus- value, or of the value of labour-power, without a simultaneous change in their relative magnitudes, i.e., relatively to each other. It is impossible for them to rise or fall simultane- ously. Further, the value of labour-power cannot fall, and con- sequently surplus-value cannot rise, without a rise in the pro- ductiveness of labour. For instance, in the above case, the value of the labour-power cannot sink from three shillings to two, unless an increase in the productiveness of labour makes it possible to produce in 4 hours the same quantity of necessaries as previously required 6 hours to produce. On the other hand } the value of the labour-power cannot rise Changes of Magnitude. 571 from three shillings to four, without a decrease in the pro- ductiveness of labour, whereby eight hours become requisite to produce the same quantity of necessaries, for the production of which six hours previously sufficed. It follows from this, that an increase in the productivenes of labour causes a fall in the value of labour-power and a consequent rise in surplus- value, while, on the other hand, a decrease in such productive- ness causes a rise in the value of labour-power, and a fall in surplus-value. In formulating this law, Eicardo overlooked one circum- stance ; although a change in the magnitude of the surplus- value or surplus-labour causes a change in the opposite di- rection in the magnitude of the value of labour-power, or in the quantity of necessary labour, it by no means follows that they vary in the same proportion. They do increase or diminish by the same quantity. But their proportional in- crease or diminution plepends on their original magnitudes before the change in the productiveness of labour took place. If the value of the labour-power be 4 shillings, or the neces- sary labour-time 8 hours, and the surplus- value be 2 shillings, or the surplus-labour 4 hours, and if, in consequence of an increase in the productiveness of labour, the value of the labour-power fall to 3 shillings, or the necessary labour to 6 hours, the surplus-value will rise to 3 shillngs, or the surplus- labour to 6 hours. The same quantity, 1 shilling or 2 hours, is added in one case and subtracted in the other. But the pro- portional change of magnitude is different in each case. While the value of the labour-power falls from 4 shillings to 3, i.e., by \ or 25%, the surplus-value rises from 2 shillings to 3, i.e., by -J or 50%. It therefore follows that the proportional in- crease of diminution in surplus-value, consequent on a given change in the productiveness of labour, depends on the original magnitude of that portion of the working day which embodies itself in surplus-value; the smaller that portion, the greater is the proportional change; the greater that portion, the less is the proportional change. (3.) Increase or diminution in surplus-value is always con- 572 Capitalist Production. sequent on, and never the cause of, the corresponding dimi- nution or increase in the value of labour-power. 1 Since the working-day is constant in magnitude, and is represented by a value of constant magnitude, since, to every variation in the magnitude of surplus-value, there corresponds an inverse variation in the value of labour-power, and since the value of labour-power cannot change, except in consequence of a change in the productiveness of labour, it clearly follows, under these conditions, that every change of magnitude in sur- plus-value arises from an inverse change of magnitude in the value of labour-power. If, then, as we have already seen, there can be no change of absolute magnitude in the value of labour-power, and in surplus-value, unaccompanied by a change in their relative magnitudes, so now it follows that no change in their relative magnitudes is possible, without a previous change in the absolute magnitude of the value of labour-power. According to the third law, a change in the magnitude of surplus-value, presupposes a movement in the value of labour- power, which movement is brought about by a variation in the productiveness of labour. The limit of this change is given by the altered value of labour-power. Nevertheless, even when circumstances allow the law to operate, subsidiary move- ments may occur. For example: if in consequence of the increased productiveness of labour, the value of labour-power fall from 4 shillings to 3, or the necessary labour-time from 8 hours to 6, the price of labour-power may possibly not fall below 3s. 8d., 3s. 6d., or 3s. 2d., and the surplus-value conse- quently not rise above 3s. 4d v 3c. 6d., or 3s. lOd. The amount of this fall, the lowest limit of which is 3 shillings (the new value of labour-power), depends on the relative 1 To this third law MacCulloch has made, amongst others, this absurd addition, that a rise in surplus value unaccompanied by a fall in the value of labour-power, can occur through the abolition of taxes payable by the capitalist. The abolition of such taxes makes no change whatever in the quantity of surplus-value that the capitalist extorts at first-hand from the labourer. It alters only the proportion in which that surplus-value is divided between himself and third persons. It conse- quently makes no alteration whatever in the relation between surplus-value and value of labour-power. MacCulloch's exception therefore proves only his misapprehension of the rule, a misfortune that as oftens happens to him in the vulgarisation of Ricardo, as it does to J. B. Say in the vulgarisation of Adam Smith. Changes of Magnitude. 573 weight, which the pressure of capital on the one side, and the resistance of the labourer on the other, throws into the scale. The value of labour-power is determined by the value of a given quantity of necessaries. It is the value and not the mass of these necessaries that varies with the productiveness of labour. It is, however, possible that, owing to an increase of productiveness, both the labourer, and the capitalist may simultaneously be able .to appropriate a greater quantity of these necessaries, without any change in the price of labour- power or in surplus-value. If the value of labour-power be 3 shillings, and the necessary labour-time amount to 6 hours, if the surplus-value likewise be 3 shillings, and the surplus- labour 6 hours, then if the productiveness of labour were doubled without altering the ratio of necessary labour to surplus-labour, there would be no change of magnitude in surplus-value and price of labour-power. The only result would be that each of them would represent twice as many use-values as before; these use-values being twice as cheap as before. Although labour-power would be unchanged in price, it would be above its value. If, however, the prices of labour- power had fallen, not to Is. 6d. ? the lowest possible point con- sistent with its new value, but to 2s. lOd. or 2s. 6d., still this lower price would represent an increased mass of necessaries. In this way it is possible with an increasing productiveness of labour, for the price of labour-power to keep on falling, and yet this fall to be accompanied by a constant growth in the mass of the labourer's means of subsistence. But even in such case, the fall in the value of labour-power would cause a corre- sponding rise of surplus-value, and thus the abyss between the labourer's position and that of the capitalist would keep widening. 1 Ricardo was the first who accurately formulated the three laws we have above stated. But he falls into the following errors: (1) he looks upon the special conditions under which 1 "When an alteration takes place in the productiveness of industry, and that either more or less is produced by a given quantity of labour and capital, the propor- tion of wages may obviously vary, whilst the quantity, which that proportion repre- sents, remains the same, or the quantity may vary, whilst the proportion remains the same." ("Outlines of Political Economy," &c., p. 67.) 574 Capitalist Production. these laws hold good as the general and sole conditions of capitalist production. He knows no change, either in the length of the working day, or in the intensity of labour ; con- sequently with him there can be only one variable factor, viz., the productiveness of labour; (2), and this errors vitiates his analysis much more than (1), he has not, any more than have the other economists, investigated surplus-value as such, i.e., independently of its particular forms, such a profit, rent, &c. He therefore confounds together the laws of the rate of sur- plus-value and the laws of the rate of profit. The rate of profit is, as we have already said, the ratio of the surplus-value to the total capital advanced ; the rate of surplus-value is the ratio of the surplus-value to the variable part of that capital. Assume that a capital C of 500 is made up of raw material, instruments of labour, &c. (c) to the amount of 400 ; and of wages (v) to the amount of 100 ; and further, that the sur- plus-value (s)=100. Then we have rate of surplus-value i = I o = 100f . But the rate of profit i-=^?= 20%. It is, besides, obvious that the rate of profit may depend on circumstances that in.no way affect the rate of surplus-value. I shall show in Book III. that, with a given rate of surplus- value, we may have any number of rates of profit, and that various rates of surplus-value may, under given conditions, express themselves in a single rate of profit. II. Working-day constant. Productiveness of labour constant. Intensity of labour variable. Increased intensity of labour means increased expenditure of labour in a given time. Hence a working-day of more intense labour is embodied in more products than is one of less intense labour, the length of each day being the same. In- creased productiveness of labour also, it is true, will supply more products in a given working-day. But in this latter case, the value of each single product falls, for it costs less labour than before ; in the former case, that value remains unchanged, for each article costs the same labour as before. Here we have an increase in the number of products, unaccompanied Changes of Magnitude. 575 by a fall in their individual prices : as their number increases, so does the sum of their prices. But in the case of increased productiveness, a given value is spread over a greater mass of products. Hence the length of the working-day being con- stant, a day's labour of increased intensity will be incorporated in an increased value, and, the value of money remaining un- changed, in more money. The value created varies with the extent to which the intensity of labour deviates from its nor- mal intensity in the society. A given working-day, there- fore, no longer creates a constant, but a variable value; in a day of 12 hours of ordinary intensity, the value created is, say 6 shillings, but with increased intensity, the value created may be 7, 8, or more shillings. It is clear that, if the value cre- ated by a day's labour increases from, say, 6 to 8 shillings, then the two parts into which this value is divided, viz., price of labour-power and surplus-value, may both of them increase simultaneously, and either equally or unequally. They may both simultaneously increase from 3 shillings to 4. Here, the rise in the price of labour-power does not necessarily imply that the price has risen above the value of labour-power. On the contrary, the rise in price may be accompanied by a fall in value. This occurs whenever the rise in the price of labour- power does not compensate for its increased wear and tear. We know that, with transitory exceptions, a change in the productiveness of labour does not cause any change in the value of labour-power, nor consequently in the magnitude of surplus-value, unless the products of the industries affected are articles habitually consumed by the laborers. In the present case this condition no longer applies. For when the variation is either in the duration or in the intensity of labour, there is always a corresponding change in the magnitude of the value created, independently of the nature of the article in which that value is embodied. If the intensity of labour were to increase simultaneously and equally in every branch of industry, then the new and higher degree of intensity would become the normal degree for the society, and would therefore cease to be taken account of. But still, even then, the intensity of labour would be different 576 Capitalist Production. in different countries, and would modify the international ap- plication of the law of value. The more intense working- day of one nation would be represented by a greater sum of money than would the less intense day of another nation. 1 III. Productiveness and Intensity of Labour constant. Length of the working-day variable. The working-day may vary in two ways. It may be made either longer or shorter. From our present data, and within the limits of the assumptions made on p. 528 we obtain the following laws: (1.) The working-day creates a greater or less amount of value in proportion to its length thus, a variable and not a constant quantity of value. (2.) Every change in the relation between the magnitudes of surplus value and of the value of labour-power arises from a change in the absolute magnitude of the surplus-labour, and consequently of the surplus-value. (3.) The absolute value of labour-power can change only in consequence of the reaction exercised by the prolongation of surplus-value upon the wear and tear of labour-power. Every change in this absolute value is therefore the effect, but never the cause, of a change in the magnitude of surplus-value. We begin with the case in which the working-day is short- ened. (1). A shortening of the working-day under the conditions given above, leaves the value of labour-power, and with it,_ the necessary labour-time, unaltered. It reduces the surplus- labour and surplus-value. Along with the absolute magnitude of the latter, its relative magnitude also falls, i.e., its magni- tude relatively to the value of labour-power whose magni- tude remains unaltered. Only by lowering the price of la- 1 "All things being equal, the English manufacturer can turn out a considerably larger amount of work in a given time than a foreign manufacturer, so much as to counterbalance the difference of the working-days, between 60 hours a week here, and 72 or 80 elsewhere." (Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 31st Oct. 1855, p. 65.) The most infallible means for reducing this qualitative difference between the English nnd Continental working hour would be a law shortening quantitatively the length of the working-day in Continental factories. Changes of Magnitude. 577 bour-power below its value could the capitalist save himself harmless. All the usual arguments against the shortening of the working-day, assume that it takes place under the conditions we have here supposed to exist; but in reality the very con- trary is the case: a change in the productiveness and intensity of labour either precedes, or immediately follows, a shorten- ing of the working-day. 1 (2). Lengthening of the working-day. Let the necessary labour-time be 6 hours, or the value of labour-power 3 shil- lings; also let the surplus-labour be 6 hours or the surplus- value 3 shillings. The whole working-day then amounts to 12 hours and is embodied in a value of 6 shillings. If, now, the working-day be lengthened by 2 hours and the price of labour-power remain unaltered, the surplus-value increases both absolutely and relatively. Although there is no absolute change in the value of labour-power, it suffers a relative fall. Under the conditions assumed in I. there could not be a change of relative magnitude in the value of labour-power without a change in its absolute magnitude. Here, on the contrary, the change of relative magnitude in the value of labour-power is the result of the change of absolute magnitude in surplus- value. Since the value in which a day's labour is embodied, in- creases with the length of that day, it is evident that the sur- plus-value and the price of labour-power may simultaneously increase, either by equal or unequal quantities. This simul- taneous increase is therefore possible in two cases, one, the actual lengthening of the working-day, the other, an increase in the intensity of labour unaccompanied by such lengthen- ing. When the working-day is prolonged, the price of labour- power may fall below its value, although that price be nomin- ally unchanged or even rise. The value of a day's labour- power, is, as will be remembered, estimated from its normal average duration, or from the normal duration of Mfe among 1 "There are compensating circumstances . . . which the working of the Ten Hours' Act has brought to light." (Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 1st Dec. 1848, p. 7.) 2K 578 Capitalist Production. the labourers, and from corresponding normal transformations of organised bodily matter into motion, 2 in conformity with the nature of man. Up to a certain point, the increased wear and tear of labour-power, inseparable from a lengthened working- day, may be compensated by higher wages. But beyond this point the wear and tear increases in geometrical progression, and every condition suitable for the normal reproduction and functioning of labour-power is suppressed. The price of labour-power and the degree of its exploitation cease to be commensurable quantities. IV. Simultaneous variations in the duration, productiveness, and intensity of labour. It is obvious that a large number of combinations are here possible. Any two of the factors may vary and the third remain constant, or all three may vary at once. They may vary either in the same or in different degrees, in the same or in opposite directions, with the result that the variations counteract one another, either wholly or in part. Neverthe- less the analysis of every possible case is easy in view of the results given in I., II., and III. The effect of every possible combination may be found by treating each factor in turn as variable, and the other two constant for the time being. We shall, therefore, notice, and that briefly, but two important cases. (1). Diminishing productiveness of labour with a simultaneous lengthening of the working-day. In speaking of diminishing productiveness of labour, we here refer to diminution in those industries whose products de- termine the value of labour-power; such a diminution, for example, as results from decreasing fertility of the soil, and from the corresponding dearness of its products. Take the 1 "The amount of labour which a man had undergone in the course of 24 hours might be approximately arrived at by an examination of the chymical changes which had taken place in his body, changed forms in matter indicating the anterior exer- cise of dynamic force." (Grove: "On the Correlation of Physical Forces.") Changes of Magnitude. 579 working-day at 12 hours and the value created by it at 6 shillings, of which one half replaces the value of the labour- power, the other forms the surplus-value. Suppose, in conse- quence of the increased dearness of the products of the soil, that the value of labour-power rises from 3 shillings to 4, and therefore the necessary labour-time from 6 hours to 8. If there be no change in the length of the working-day, the sur- plus-labour would fall from 6 hours to 4, the surplus-value from 3 shillings to 2. If the day be lengthened by 2 hours, i.e., from 12 hours to 14, the surplus-labour remains at 6 hours, the surplus-value at 6 shillings, but the surplus-value decreases compared with the value of labour-power, as meas- ured by the necessary labour-time. If the day be lengthened by 4 hours, viz., from 12 hours to 16, the proportional magni- tudes of surplus-value and value of labour-power, of surplus- labour and necessary labour, continue unchanged, but the absolute magnitude of surplus-value rises from 3 shillings to 4, that of the surplus-labour from 6 hours to 8, an increment of 33^%. Therefore, with diminishing productiveness of labour and a simultaneous lengthening of the working-day, the ab- solute magnitude of surplus-value may continue unaltered, at the same time that its relative magnitude diminishes ; its rela- tive magnitude may continue unchanged, at the same time that its absolute magnitude increases ; and, provided the lengthening of the day be sufficient, both may increase. In the period between 1799 and 1815 the increasing price of provisions led in England to a nominal rise in wages, although the real wages, expressed in the necessaries of life, fell. From this fact West and Ricardo drew the conclusion, that the diminution in the productiveness of agricultural labour had brought about a fall in the rate of surplus-value, and they made this assumption of a fact that existed only in their imaginations, the starting-point of important investigations into the relative magnitudes of wages, profits, and rent. But, as a matter of fact, surplus-value had at that time, thanks to the increased intensity of labour, and to the prolongation of the working-day, increased both in absolute and relative mag- nitude. This was the period in which the right to prolong 580 Capitalist Production. the hours of labour to an outrageous extent was established / the period that was especially characterised by an accelerated accumulation of capital here, by pauperism there. 2 (2) Increasing intensity and productiveness of labour ivith simultaneous shortening of the working-day. Increased productiveness and greater intensity of labour, both have a like effect. They both augment the mass of articles produced in a given time. Both, therefore, shorten that portion of the working-day which the labourer needs to produce his means of subsistence or their equivalent. The minimum length of the working-day is fixed by this necessary but contractile portion of it. If the whole working-day were to shrink to the length of this portion, surplus-labour would vanish, a consummation utterly impossible under the regime of capital. Only by suppressing the capitalist form of pro- duction could the length of the working-day be reduced to 1 "Corn and labour rarely march quite abreast; but there is an obvious limit be- yond which they cannot be separated. With regard to the unusual exertions made by the labouring classes in periods of dearness, which produce the fall of wages noticed in the evidence" (namely, before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, 1814-15), "they are most meritorious in the individuals, and certainly favour the growth of capital. But no man of humanity could wish to see them constant and unremitted. They are most admirable as a temporary relief; but if they were con- stantly in action, effects of a similar kind would result from them, as from the population of a country being pushed to the very extreme limits of its food." (Malthus: "Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent," Lond., 1815, p. 48, note.) All honour to Malthus that he lays stress on the lengthening of the hours of labour, a fact to which he elsewhere in his pamphlet draws attention, while Ricardo and others, in face of the most notorious facts, make invariability in the length of the working-day the ground-work of all their investigations. But the conservative interests, which Malthus served, prevented him from seeing that an unlimited prolongation of the working-day, combined with an extraordinary develop- ment of machinery, and the exploitation of women and children, must inevitably have made a great portion of the working class "supernumerary," particularly when- ever the war should have ceased, and the monopoly of England in the markets of the world should have come to an end. It was, of course, far more convenient, and much more in conformity with the interests of the ruling classes, whom Malthus adored like a true priest, to explain this "over-population" by the eternal laws of Nature, rather than by the historical laws of capitalist production. 2 " A principal cause of the increase of capital, during the war, proceeded from the greater exertions, and perhaps the greater privations of the labouring classes, the most numerous in every society. More women and children were compelled by necessitous circumstances, to enter upon laborious occupations, and former work- men were, from the same cause, obliged to devote a greater portion of their time to increase production." (Essays on Pol. Econ., in which are illustrated the prin- cipal causes of the present national distress. Lond., 1830, p. 248.) Changes of Magnitude. 581 the necessary labour-time. But, even in that case, the latter would extend its limits. On the one hand, because the notion of "means of subsistence" would considerably expand, and the labourer would lay claim to an altogether different standard of life. On the other hand, because a part of what is now surplus-labour, would then count as necessary labour ; I mean the labour of forming a fund for reserve and accumulation. The more the productiveness of labour increases, the more can the working-day be shortened ; and the more the working- day is shortened, the more can the intensity of labour increase. From a social point of view, the productiveness increases in the same ratio as the economy of labour, which, in its turn, includes not only economy of the means of production, but also the avoidance of all useless labour. The capitalist mode of production, while on the one hand, enforcing economy in each individual business, on the other hand, begets, by its anarchical system of competition, the most outrageous squandering of labour-power and of the social means of production, not to mention the creation of a vast number of employments, at present indispensable, but in themselves superfluous. The intensity and productiveness of labour being given, the time which society is bound to devote to material production is shorter, and as a consequence, the time at its disposal for the free development, intellectual and social, of the individual is greater, in proportion as the work is more and more evenly divided among all the able-bodied members of society, and as a particular class is more and more deprived of the power to shift the natural burden of labour from its own shoulders to those of another layer of society. In this direction, the shortening of the working-day finds at last a limit in the generalisation of labour. In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour-time. 582 Capitalist Production. CHAPTER XVIII. VARIOUS FORMULAE FOR THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE, WE have seen that the rate of surplus-value is represented by the following formulae. T Surplus-value / \ Surplus-value Sur] * Variable Capital V v / Value of labour-power Nece Surplus-labour essary labour The two first of these formulae represent, as a ratio of values, that which, in the third, is represented as a ratio of the times during which those values are produced. These formula*, supplementary the one to the other, are rigorously definite and correct. We therefore find them substantially, but not con- sciously, worked out in classical political economy. There we meet with the following derivative formulae. II. Surplus-labour Surplus-value Surplus-product Working-day ~ Value of the Product Total Product One and the same ratio is here expressed as a ratio of labour-times, of the values in which those labour-times are embodied, and of the products in which those values exist. It is of course understood that, by "Value of the Product," is meant only the value newly created in a working-day, the constant part of the value of the product being excluded. In all of these formulae (!!.)> the actual degree of exploita- tion of labour, or the rate of surplus-value, is falsely expressed. Let the working-day be 12 hours. Then, making the same assumptions as in former instances, the real degree of ex- ploitation of labour will be represented in the following pro- portions. 6 hours surplus-labour Surplus-value of 3 sh. _ ^ ,-..-. ^ 6 hours necessary labour Variable Capital of 3 sh. " ~ *W /O From formulae II. we get very differently, 6 hours surplus-labour Surplus-value of 3 sh. _ ,, ~. ~. Working-day of 12 hours Value created of 6 sh. **'' / These derivative formulae express, in reality, only the pro- Various Formula; for Rate of Surplus-Value. 583 portion in which the working-day, or the value produced by it, is divided between capitalist and labourer. If they are to be treated as direct expressions of the degree of self-expansion of capital, the following erroneous law would hold good : Sur- plus-labour or surplus-value can never reach 100%. 1 Since the surplus-labour is only an aliquot part of the working-day, or since surplus-value is only an aliquot part of the value created, the surplus-labour must necessarily be always less than the working-day, or the surplus-value always less than the total value created. In order, however, to attain the ratio of 100:100 they must be equal. In order that the surplus-labour may absorb the whole day (i. e., an average day of any week or year), the necessary labour must sink to zero. But if the necessary labour vanish, so too does the surplus- labour, since it is only a function of the former. The ratio Surplus-labour Surnlus-vp.Iue ,-> / i ,1 i , ~ or Value created can therefore never reach the limit still less rise to 1> 100 x . But not so the rate of surplus- value, the real degree of exploitation of labour. Take, e.g., the estimate of L. de Lavergne, according to which the English agricultural labourer gets only ^, the capitalist (farmer) on the other hand f of the product 2 or of its value, apart from the question of how the booty is subsequently divided between the 1 Thus, e.g., in "Dritter Brief an v. Kirchmann von Rodbertus. Widerlegung der Ricardo'schen Theorie von der Grundrente und Begriindung einer neuen Renten- theorie. Berlin, 1851." I shall return to this letter later on; in spite of its erro- neous theory of rent, it sees through the nature of capitalist production. Note by the Editor of the 3rd Edition. It may be seen from this how favourably Marx judged his predecessors, whenever he found in them real progress, or new and sound ideas. The subsequent publication of Rodbertus' letters to Rud. Meyer has shown that the above acknowledgment by Marx wants restricting to some extent. In those letters this passage occurs: "Capital must be rescued not only from labour, but from itself, and that will be best effected, by treating the acts of the industrial capitalist as economical and political functions, that have been delegated to him with his capital, and by treating his profit as a form of salary, because we still know no other social organisation. But salaries may be regulated, and may also be re- duced if they take too much from wages. The irruption of Marx into Society, as I may call his book, must be warded off. . . . Altogether, Marx's book is not so much an investigation into capital, as a polemic against the present form of capital, a form which he confounds with the concept itself of capital." (Briefe, &c., von Dr. Rodbertus-Jagetzow, herausgg. von Dr. Rud. Meyer, Berlin, 1881, I. Bd. p. 111., 48. Brief von Rodbertus.). To such ideological commonplaces did the bold attack by Rodbertus in his "social letters" finally dwindle down. 2 That part of the product which merely replaces the constant capital advanced, is of course left out in this caluclation. Mr. L. de Lavergne, a blind admirer of Eng- land, is inclined to estimate the share of the capitalist too low, rather than too high. 584 Capitalist Production. capitalist, the landlord and others. According to this, the sur- plus-labour of the English agricultural labourer is to his necessary labour as 3 :1, which gives a rate of exploitation of 300%. The favourite method of treating the working-day as con- stant in magnitude became, through the use of the formulae II., a fixed usage, because in them surplus-labour is always compared with a working-day of given length. The same holds good when the repartition of the value produced is ex- clusively kept in sight. The working-day that has already been realised in a given value, must necessarily be a day of given length. The habit of representing surplus-value and value of labour- power as fractions of the value created a habit that originates in the capitalist mode of production itself, and whose import will hereafter be disclosed conceals the very transaction that characterises capital, namely the exchange of variable capital for living labour-power, and the consequent exclusion of the labourer from the product. Instead of the real fact, we have the false semblance of an association, in which labourer and capitalist divide the product in proportion to the different ele- ments which they respectively contribute towards its for- mation. 1 Moreover, the formulae II. can at any time be reconverted , f IT -r / j? i Surplus-labour of 6 hours into formulas I. If, for instance, we have W orking-d ay of i. hours the necessary labour-time being 12 hours less the surplus- labour of 6 hours, we get the following result, Surplus-labour of 6 hours 100 Necessary-labour of 6 hours 100 > There is a third formula which I have occasionally already anticipated ; it is TTT Surplus-value _ Surplus-labour _ Unpaid labour Value of labour-power Necessary labour Paid labour After the investigations we have given above, it is no longer possible to be misled, by the formula p^d labour^ > i nt con- 1 All well-developed forms of capitalist production being forms of co-operation, nothing is, of course, easier, than to make abstraction from their antagonistic char- Various Formula for Rate of Surplus-Value. 585 eluding, that the capitalist pays for labour and not for labour- power. This formula is only a popular expression for Nec r e P !sa S r' y 1ab U o r ur- The capitalist pays the value, so far as price co- incides with value, of the labour-power, and receives in ex- change the disposal of the living labour-power itself. His usufruct is spread over two periods. During one the labourer produces a value that is only equal to the value of his labour- power: he produces its equivalent. Thus the capitalist re- ceives in return for his advance of the price of the labour pow- er, a product of the same price. It is the same as if he had bought the product ready made in the market. During the other period, the period of surplus-labour, the usufruct of the labour-power creates a value for the capitalist, that costs him no equivalent. 1 This expenditure of labour-power comes to him gratis. In this sense it is that surplus-labour can be called unpaid labour. Capital, therefore, is not only, as Adam Smith says, the command over labour. It is essentially the command over un- paid labour. All surplus-value, whatever particular form (profit, interest, or rent), it may subsequently crystallise into, is in substance the materialisation of unpaid labour. The se- cret of the self-expansion of capital resolves itself into having the disposal of a definite quantity of other people's unpaid labour. acter, and to transform them by a word into some form of free association, as is done by A. de Laborde in "De 1'Esprit de 1' Association dans tous les interets de la communaute." Paris 1818. H. Carey, the Yankee, occasionally performs this con- juring trick with like success, even with the relations resulting from slavery. 1 Although the Physiocrats could not penetrate the mystery of surplus-value, yet this much was clear to them, viz., that it is "une richesse independante et disponible qu'il (the possessor) n'a point achetee et qu'il vend." (Turgot: "Reflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses," p. 11.) PART VI. WAGES. CHAPTER XIX. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE VALUE (AND RESPECTIVELY THE OF LABOUR-POWER INTO WAGES. ON the surface of bourgeois society the wage of the la- bourer appears as the price of labour, a certain quantity of money that is paid for a certain quantity of labour. Thus people speak of the value of labour and call its expression in money its necessary or natural price. On the other hand they speak of the market prices of labour, i.e., prices oscillating above or below its natural price. But what is the value of a commodity ? The objective form of the social labour expended in its production. And how do we measure the quantity of this value? By the quantity of the labour contained in it. How then is the value, e.g., of a 12 hours' working day to be determined ? By the 12 work- ing hours contained in a working day of 12 hours, which is an absurd tautology. 1 1 "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 b 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 estimated, not by the quantity of labour bestowed on its production, but by the quantity of labour be- stowed on the production of the silver, for which the cloth is exchanged." (A. Critical Discourse on the Nature, &c., of Value, p. 50, 51.) 586 Value of Labour-Power and Wages. 587 In order to be sold as a commodity in the market, labour must at all events exist before it is sold. But could the labourer give it an independent objective existence, he would sell a commodity and not labour. 1 Apart from these contradictions, a direct exchange of money, i.e., of realized labour, with living labour would either do away with the law of value which only begins to develop itself freely on the basis of capitalist production, or do away with capitalist production itself, which rests directly on wage- labour. The working day of 12 hours embodies itself, e.g., in a money value of 6s. Either equivalents are exchanged, and then the labourer receives 6s. for 12 hours' labour ; the price of his labour would be equal to the price of his product. In this case he produces no surplus-value, for the buyer of his labour, the 6s. are not transformed into capital, the basis of capitalist production vanishes. But it is on this very basis that he sells his labour and that his labour is wage-labour. Or else he receives for 12 hours' labour less than 6s., i.e., less than 12 hours' labour. Twelve hours labour are exchanged against 10, 6, &c., hours' labour. This equalisation of un- equal quantities not merely does away with the determination of value. Such a self-destructive contradiction cannot be in any way even enunciated or formulated as a law. 2 It is of no avail to deduce the exchange of more labour against less, from their difference of form, the one being realized, the other living. 3 This is the more absurd as the 1 "If you call labour a commodity, it is not like a commodity which is first pro- duced 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 the moment it is brought to market; nay, it is brought to market before it is created." (Observations on some Verbal Disputes, etc., pp. 75, 76.) 2 "Treating labour as a commodity, and capital, the produce of labour, as another, then, if the values of these two commodities were regulated by equal quantities of labour, a given amount of labour would . . . exchange for that quantity of capita'l which had been produced by the same amount of labour; antecedent labour would . . . exchange for the same amount as present labour. But the value of labour in relation to other commodities ... is determined not by equal quantities of labour." (E. G. Wakefield in his edition of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," vol. i., London, 1836, p. 231, note.) 3 "II a fallu convenir (a new edition of the contrat social!) que toutes les fois qu'il echangerait du travail fait contre du travail a faire, le dernier (le capitaliste) aurait une valeur superieure au premier" (le travailleur). Simonde (.i.e., Sismondi), "De la Richesse Commerciale," Geneve, 1803, t. 1, p. 37- 588 Capitalist Production. value of a commodity is determined not by the quantity of labour actually realized in it, but by the quantity of living labour necessary for its production. A commodity represents, say 6 working hours. If an invention is made by which it can be produced in 3 hours, the value, even of the commodity already produced, falls by half. It represents now 3 hours of social labour instead of the 6 formerly necessary. It is the quantity of labour required for its production, not the realized form of that labour, by which the amount of the value of a commodity is determined. That which comes directly face to face with the possessor of money on the market, is in fact not labour, but the labourer. What the latter sells is his labour-power. As soon as his labour actually begins, it has already ceased to belong to him ; it can therefore no longer be sold by him. Labour is the substance, and the immanent measure of value, but has itself no value. 1 In the expression "value of labour," the idea of value is not only completely obliterated, but actually reversed. It is an expression as imaginary as the value of the earth. These imaginary expressions, arise, however, from the relations of production themselves. They are categories for the phe- nomenal forms of essential relations. That in their appear- ance things often represent themselves in inverted form is pretty well known in every science except political economy. 2 1 "Labour the exclusive standard of value . . . the greater of all wealth, no commodity." Th. Hodgskin, 1. c. p. 186. 2 On the other hand, the attempt to explain such expressions as merely poetic license only shows the impotence of the analysis. Hence, in answer to Proudhon's phrase; "Le travail est dit valoir, non pas en tant que marchandise lui meme, mais en vue des valeurs qu'on suppose, renfermees puissanciellement en lui. La valeur du travail est une expression figuree," &c., I have remarked: "Dans le travail- marchandise qui est d'une realite effrayant, il (Proudhon) ne voit qu'une ellipse grammaticale. Done, toute la societe actuelle fondee sur le travail-marchandise, est desormais fondee sur une license poetique, sur une expression figuree. La socieie veut-elle 'eliminer tous les inconvenients,' qui la travaillent, eh bien! qu'elle elimine les termes malsonnants, qu'elle change de Langage, et pour cela elle n'a qu' a s'adresser a 1'Academie pour lui demander une nouvelle Edition de son dictionnaire." (Karl Marx. "Misere de la Philosophic," p. 34, 35.) It is naturally still more convenient to understand by value nothing at all. Then one can without difficulty subsume everything under this category. Thus, e.g., J. B. Say; what is "valeur?" Answer: "C'est ce qu'une chose vaut," and what is "prix?" Answer; "La valeur d'une chose exprimee en monnaie." And why has "le travail de la terre . . . Value of Labour-Power and Wages. 589 Classical political economy borrowed from every-day life the category "price of labour" without further criticism, and then simply asked the question, how is this price determined ? It soon recognized that the change in the relations of demand and supply explained in regard to the price of labour, as of all other commodities, nothing except its changes, i.e., the oscilla- tions of the market price above or below a certain mean. If demand and supply balance, the oscillation of prices ceases, all other conditions remaining the same. But then demand and supply also cease to explain anything. The price of labour, at x the moment when demand and supply are in equilibrium, is its natural price, determined independently of the relation of demand and supply. And how this price is determined, is just the question. Or a larger period of oscillations in the market-price is taken, e.g., a year, and they are found to can- cel one the other, leaving a mean average quantity, a relatively constant magnitude. This had naturally to be determined otherwise than by its own compensating variations. This price which always finally predominates over the accidental market- prices of labour and regulates them, this "necessary price" (physiocrats) or "natural price" of labour (Adam Smith) can, as with all other commodities, be nothing else than its value expressed in money. In this way political economy expected to penetrate athwart the accidental prices of labour, to the value of labour. As with other commodities, this value was determined by the cost of production. But what is the cost of production of the labourer, i.e., the cost of producing or re- producing the labourer himself ? This question unconsciously substituted itself in political economy for the original one; for the search after the cost of production of labour as such turned in a circle and never left the spot. What economists therefore call value of labour, is in fact the value of labour- power, as it exists in the personality of the labourer, which is as different from its function, labour, as a machine is from the work it performs. Occupied with the difference between une valeur? Parce qu'on y met un prix." Therefore value is what a thing is worth, and the land has its "value," because its value is "expressed in money." This is, anyhow, a very simple way of explaining the why and the wherefore of things. 59 Capitalist Production. the market-price of labour and its-so-called value, with the relation of this value to the rate of profit, and to the values of the commodities produced by means of labour, &c., they never discovered that the course of the analysis had led not only from the market prices of labour to its presumed value, but had led to the resolution of this value of labour itself into the value of labour-power. Classical economy never ar- rived at a consciousness of the results of its own analysis; it accepted uncritically the categories "value of labour," "natural price of labour," &c., as final and as adequate expressions for the value-relation under consideration, and was thus led, as will be seen later, into inextricable confusion and contradic- tion, while it offered to the vulgar economists a secure basis of operations for their shallowness, which on principle worships appearances only. Let us next see how value (and price) of labour-power, present themselves in this transformed condition as wages. We know that the daily value of labour-power is calculated upon a certain length of the labourer's life, to which, again, corresponds a certain length of working-day. Assume the habitual working-day as 12 hours, the daily value of labour- power as 3s., the expression in money of a value that embodies 6 hours of labour. If the labourer receives 3s., then he re- ceives the value of his labour-power functioning through 12 hours. If, now, this value of a day's labour-power is ex- pressed as the value of a day's labour itself, we have the formula : Twelve hours' labour has a value of 3s. The value of labour-power thus determines the value of labour, or, ex- pressed in money, its necessary price. If, on the other hand, the price of labour-power differs from its value, in like man- ner the price of labour differs from its so-called value. As the value of labour is only an irrational expression for the value of labour-power, it follows, of course, that the value of labour must always be less than the value it produces, for the capitalist always makes labour-power work longer than is necessary for the reproduction of its own value. In the above example, the value of the labour-power that functions through 12 hours is 3s., a value for the reproduction of which 6 hours Value of Lab our -Power and Wages. 591 arc required. The value which the labour-power produces is, on the other hand, 6s., because it, in fact, functions during 12 hours, and .the value it produces depends, not on its own value, but on the length of time it is in action. Thus, we have a result absurd at first sight that labour which creates a value of 6s. possesses a value of 3s. 1 We see, further: The value of 3s. by which a part only of the working day i.e., 6 hours' labour is paid for, appears as the value or price of the whole working-day of 12 hours, which thus includes 6 hours unpaid for. The- wage-form thus extinguishes every trace of the division of the working-day into necessary labour and surplus-labour, into paid and un- paid labour. All labour appears as paid labour. In the corvee, the labour of the worker for himself, and his compul- sory labour for his lord, differ in space and time in the clear- est possible way. In slave-labour, even that part of the working-day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave's laty)ur appears as unpaid labour. 2 In wage- labour, on the contrary, even surplus labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation con- ceals the unrequited labour of the wage-labourer. Hence, we may understand the decisive importance of the transformation of value and price of labour-power into the form of wages, or into the value and price of labour itself. This phenomenal form, which makes the actual relation in- visible, and, indeed, shows the direct opposite of that relation, forms the basis of all the juridicial notions of both labourer and capitalist, of all the mystifications of the capitalistic mode of 1 Cf. Zur Kritik der Politischen CEkonomie, p. 40, where I state that, in the por- tion of that work that deals with Capital, this problem will be solved: "How does production, on the basis of exchange-value determined simply by labour-time, lead to the result that the exchange-value of labour is less than the exchange-value of its product?" 2 The "Morning Star," a London free-trade organ, naif to silliness, protested again and again during the American civil war, with all the moral indignation of which man is capable, that the negro in the "Confederate States" worked absolutely for nothing. It should have compared the daily cost of such a negro with that of the free workman in the East end of London. 59- Capitalist Production. production, of all its illusions as to liberty, of all the apologetic shifts of the vulgar economists. If history took a long time to get at the bottom of the mystery of wages, nothing, on the other hand, is more easy to understand than the necessity, the raison d'etre, of this phenomenon. The exchange between capital and labour at first presents itself to the mind in the same guise as the buying and selling of all other commodities. The buyer gives a certain sum of money, the seller an article of a nature different from money. The jurist's consciousness recognises in this, at most, a material difference, expressed in the juridically equivalent formalse: "Do ut des, do ut facias, facio ut des, facio ut facias." Further. Exchange-value and use-value, being intrin- sically incommensurable magnitudes, the expressions "value of labour," "price of labour," do not seem more irrational than the expressions "value of cotton," "price of cotton." More- over, the labourer is paid after he has given his labour. In its function of means of payment, money realises subsequently the value or price of the article supplied i.e., in this par- ticular case, the value or price of the labour supplied. Finally, the use-value supplied by the labourer to the capitalist is not, in fact, his labour-power, but its function, some definite useful labour, the work of tailoring, shoemaking, spinning, &c. That this same labour is, on the other hand, the universal value-creating element, and thus possesses a property by which it differs from all other commodities, is beyond the cognisance of the ordinary mind. Let us put ourselves in .the place of the labourer who receives for 12 hours' labour, say the value produced by 6 hours' labour, say 3s. For him, in fact, his 12 hours' labour is the means of buying the 3s. The value of his labour- power may vary, with the value of his usual means of sub- sistence, from 3 to 4 shillings, or from 3 to 2 shillings; or, if the value of his labour-power remains constant, its price may, in consequence of changing relations of demand and supply, rise to 4s. or fall to 2s. He always gives 12 hours of labour. Every change in the amount of the equivalent that he receives Value of Labour-Power and Wages. 593 appears to him, therefore, necessarily as a change in the value or price of his 12 hours' work. This circumstance misled Adam Smith, who treated the working-day as a constant quantity, 1 to the assertion that the value of labour is constant, although the value of the means of subsistence may vary, and the same working-day, therefore, may represent itself in more, or less money for the labourer. Let us consider, on the other hand, the capitalist. He wishes to receive as much labour as possible for as little money as possible. Practically, therefore, the only thing that interests him is the difference between the price of labour- power and the value which its function creates. But, then, he tries to buy all commodities as cheaply as possible, and always accounts for his profit by simple cheating, by buying under, and selling over the value. Hence, he never comes to see that, if such a thing as the value of labour really existed, and be really paid this value no capital would exist, his money would not be turned into capital. Moreover, the actual movement of wages presents phe- nomena which seem to prove that not the value of labour- power is paid, but the value of its function, of labour itself. We may reduce these phenomena to two great classes: (1.) Change of wages with the changing length of the working- day. One might as well conclude that not the value of a machine is paid, but that of its working, because it costs more to hire a machine for a week than for a day. (2.) The indi- vidual difference in the wages of different labourers who do the same kind of work. We find this individual difference, but are not deceived by it, in the system of slavery, whero, frankly and openly, without any circumlocution, labour-power itself is sold. Only, in the slave system, the advantage of a labour-power above the average, and the disadvantage of a labour-power below the average, affects the slave-owner ; in the wage-labour system it affects the labourer himself, because his labour-power is, in the one case, sold by himself, in the other, by a third person. * Adam Smith only accidentally alludes to the variation of the working-day when he is referring to piece-wages. 2L 594 Capitalist Production. For the rest, in respect to the phenomenal form, "value and price of labour/' or "wages," as contrasted with the essential relation manifested therein, viz., the value and price of labour- power, the same difference holds that holds in respect to all phenomena and their hidden substratum. The former appear directly and spontaneously as current modes of thought; the latter must first be discovered by science. Classical political economy nearly touches the true relation of things, without, however, consciously formulating it This it cannot so long as it sticks in its bourgeois skin. CHAPTER XX. TIME-WAGES. WAGES themselves again take many forms, a fact not recog- nizable in the ordinary economical treatises which, exclusively interested in the material side of the question, neglect every difference of form. An exposition of all these forms however, belongs to the special study of wage-labour, not therefore to this work. Still the two fundamental forms must be briefly worked out here. The sale of labour-power, as will be remembered, takes place for a definite period of time. The converted form under which the daily, weekly, &c., value of labour-power presents itself, is hence that of time-wages, therefore day-wages, &c. Next it is to be noted that the laws set forth, in the 17th chapter, on the changes in the relative magnitudes of price of labour-power and surplus-value, pass by a simple transforma- tion of form, into laws of wages. Similarly the distinction between the exchange-value of labour-power, and the sum of the necessaries of life into which this value is converted, now reappears as the distinction between nominal and real wages. It would be useless to repeat here, with regard to the phe- nomenal form, what has been already worked out in the sub- Time-Wages. 595 stantial form. We limit ourselves therefore to a few points characteristic of time-wages. The sum of money 1 which the labourer receives for his daily or weekly labour, forms the amount of his nominal wages, or of his wages estimated in value. But it is clear that according to the length of the working-day, that is, according to the amount of actual labour daily supplied, the same daily or weekly wage may represent very different prices of labour, i.e., very different sums of money for the same quantity of labour. 2 We must, therefore, in considering time-wages, again dis- tinguish between the sum total of the daily or weekly wages, &c., and the price of labour. How then to find this price, i.e., the money-value of a given quantity of labour ? The aver- age price of labour is found, when the average daily value of the labour-power is divided by the average number of hours in the working-day. If, e.g., the daily value of labour-power is 3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 working hours, and if the working-day is 12 hours, the price of 1 working hour is YZ shillings=3d. The price of the working hour thus found serves as the unit measure for the price of labour. It follows therefore that the daily and weekly wages, &c., may remain the same, although the price of labour falls con- stantly. If, e.g., the habitual working-day is 10 hours and the daily value of the labour-power 3s., the price of the working hour is 3f d. It falls to 3d. as soon as the working-day rises to 12 hours, to 2f d. as soon as it rises to 15 hours. Daily or weekly wages remain, despite all this, unchanged. On the contrary, the daily or weekly wages may rise, although the price of labour remains constant or even falls. If, e.g., the working day is 10 hours, and the daily value of labour- power 3 shillings, the price of one working hour is 3f d. If the labourer in consequence of increase of trade works 12 hours, the price of labour remaining the same, his daily wage 1 The value of money itself is here always supposed constant. 2 "The price of labour is the sum paid for a given quantity of labour." (Sir Edward West, "Price of Corn and Wages of Labour." London, 1836, p. 67). West is the author of the anonymous "Essay on the Application of Capital to Land. By a Fellow of the University College of Oxford, London, 1815." An epoch mak- ing work in the history of political economy. 596 Capitalist Production. now rises to 3 shillings 7 d. without any variation in the price of labour. The same result might follow if, instead of the ex- tensive amount of labour, its intensive amount increased. 1 The rise of the nominal daily or weekly wages may therefore he accompanied by a price of labour that remains stationary or falls. The same holds as to the income of the labourer's family, as soon as the quantity of labour expended by the head of the family is increased by the labour of the members of his family. There are, therefore, methods of lowering the price of labour independent of the reduction of the nominal daily or weekly wages. 2 As a general law it follows that, given the amount of daily, weekly labour, &c., the daily or weekly wages depend on the price of labour which, itself varies either with the value of labour-power, or with the difference between its price and its value. Given, on the other hand, the price of labour, the daily or weekly wages depend on the quantity of the daily or weekly labour. The unit measure for time-wages, the price of the working- hour, is the quotient of the value of a day's labour-power, divided by the number of hours of the average working-day. Let the latter be 12 hours, and the daily value of labour-power 3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 hours of labour. Under these circumstances the price of a working-hour is 3d., 1 "The wages of labour depend upon the price of labour and the quantity of labour performed. . . . An increase in the wages of labour does not necessarily imply an enhancement of the price of labour. From fuller employment, and greater exertions, the wages of labour may be considerably increased, while the price of labour may continue the same." West, 1. c. pp. 67, 68, 112. The main question: "How is the price of labour determined?" West, however, dismisses with mere banalities. 2 This is perceived by the fanatical representative of the industrial bourgeoisie of the 18th century, the author of the "Essay on Trade and Commerce" often quoted by us, although he puts the matter in a confused way: "It is the quantity of labour and not the price of it (he means by this the nominal daily or weekly wages) 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. Master manufacturers know that there are various ways of raising and felling the price of labour, besides that of altering its nominal amount." (1. c. pp. 48, 61.) In his "Three Lectures on the rate of Wages," London, 1830, in which N. W. Senior uses West's work without mentioning it, he says: "The labourer is prin- cipally interested in the amount of wages," (p. 14.), that is to say the labourer is principally interested in what he receives, the nominal sum of his wages, not in that which he gives, the amount of labour! Time-Wages. 597 the value produced in it is 6d. If the labourer is now em- ployed less than 12 hours (or less than 6 days in the week), e.g., only 6 or 8 hours, he receives, with this price of labour, only 2s. or Is. 6d. a day. 1 As on our hypothesis he must work on the average 6 hours daily, in order to produce a day's wage corresponding merely to the value of his labour-power, as according to the same hypothesis he works only half of every hour for himself, and half for the capitalist, it is clear that he cannot obtain for himself the value of the product of 6 hours if he is employed less than 12 hours. In previous chapters we saw the destructive consequences of over-work; here we find the sources of the sufferings that result to the labourer from his insufficient employment. If the hour's wage is fixed so that the capitalist does not bind himself to pay a day's or a week's wage, but only to pay wages for the hours during which he chooses to employ the labourer, he can employ him for a shorter time than that which is originally the basis of the calculation of the hour-wage, of the unit-measure of the price of labour. Since this unit is -, . . i i . daily value of labour-power ., / determined by the ratio ^ working . day of a given number >of hours , it, of course, loses all the meaning as soon as the working day ceases to contain a definite number of hours. The connexion between the paid and the unpaid labour is destroyed. The capitalist can now wring from the labourer a certain quantity of sur- plus-labour without allowing him the labour-time necessary for his own subsistence. He can annihilate all regularity of employment, and according to his own convenience, caprice, and the interest of the moment, make the most enormous over-work alternate with relative or absolute cessation of work. He can, under the pretence of paying "the normal price of labour," abnormally lengthen the working-day with- out any corresponding compensation to the labourer. Hence 1 The effect of such an abnormal lessening of employment is quite different from that of a general reduction of the working-day, enforced by law. The former has nothing to do with the absolute length of the working-day, and may occur just as well in a working-day of 15, as of 6 hours. The normal price of labour is in the first case calculated on the labourer working 15 hours, in the second case in his working 6 hours a day on the average. The result is therefore the same if he in the one case is employed only for 7^4, in the other only for 3 hours. 598 Capitalist Production. the perfectly rational revolt in 1860 of the London labourers, employed in the building trades, against the attempt of the capitalists to impose on them this sort of wage by the hour. The legal limitation of the working-day puts an end to such mischief, although not, of course, to the diminution of em- ployment caused by the competition of machinery, by changes in the quality of the labourers employed, and by crisis partial or general. With an increasing daily or weekly wage the price of labour may remain nominally constant, and yet may fall below its normal level. This occurs every time that, the price of labour (reckoned per working hour) remaining constant, the work- ing-day is prolonged beyond its customary length. If in ,1 P ,. daily value of labour-power ,1 j ,1 the fraction : working day ~ ^ ne denominator increases, the numerator increases yet more rapidly. The value of labour- power, as dependent on its wear and tear, increases with the duration of its functioning, and in more rapid proportion than the increase of that duration. In many branches of industry where time-wage is the general rule without legal limits to the working-time, the habit has, therefore, spontaneously grown up of regarding the working-day as normal only up to a cer- tain point, e.g., up to the expiration of the tenth hour ("nor- mal working-day," "the day's work," "the regular hours of work"). Beyond this limit the working-time is over-time, and is, taking the hour as unit-measure, paid better ("extra pay"), although often in a proportion ridiculously small. 1 The nor- mal working-day exists here as a fraction of the actual work- ing-day, and the latter, often during the whole year, lasts longer than the former. 2 The increase in the price of labour with the extension of the working-day beyond a certain normal 1 "The rate of payment for overtime (in lace-making) is so small, from YiA. and $4d. to 2d. per hour, that it stands in painful contrast to the amount of injury produced to the health and stamina of the workpeople. . . The small amount thus earned is also often obliged to be spent in extra nourishment." ("Child Emp. Com., II. Rep.," p. xvi., n. 117.) * E.g., in paper-staining before the recent introduction into this trade of the Fac- tory Act. "We work on with no stoppage for meals, so that the day's work of 10J4 hours is finished by 4.30 p.m., and all after that is overtime, and we seldom leave off working before 6 p.m., so that we are really working overtime the whole year round." (Mr. Smith's "Evidence in Child Emp. Com., I. Rep.," p. 125.) Time-Wages. 599 limit, takes such a shape in various British industries that the low price of labour during the so-called normal time compels the labourer to work during the better paid over-time, if he wishes to obtain a sufficient wage at all. 1 Legal limitation of the working-day puts an end to these amenities. 2 It is a fact generally known that, the longer the working- days, in any branch of industry, the lower are the wages. 3 A. Redgrave, factory-inspector, illustrates this by a comparative review of the 20 years from 1839-1859, according to which wages rose in the factories under the 10 hours' law, whilst they fell in the factories in which the work lasted 14 to 15 hours daily. 4 From the law: "the price of labour being given, the daily or weekly wage depends on the quantity of labour expended," it follows, first of all, that, the lower the price of labour, the greater must be the quantity of labour, or the longer must be 1 E.g., in the Scotch bleaching-works. "In some parts of Scotland this trade [before the introduction of the Factory Act in 1862] was carried on by a system of overtime, i.e., ten hours a day were the regular hours of work, for which a nominal wage of Is. 2d. per day was paid to a man, there being every day overtime for three or four hours, paid at the rate of 3d. per hour. The effect of this system . . . a man could not earn more than 8s. per week when working the ordinary hours . . . without overtime they could not earn a fair day's wages." ("Kept, of Insp. of Factories," April 30th, 1803, p. 10.) "The higher wages, for getting adult males to work longer hours, are a temptation too strong to be resisted." ("Kept, of Insp. of Fact.," April 30th, 1848, p. 5.) The bookbinding trade in the city of London employs very many young girls from 14 to 15 years old, and that under indentures which prescribe certain definite hours of labour. Nevertheless, they work in the last week of each month until 10, 11, 12, or 1 o'clock at night, along with the older labourers, in a very mixed company. "The masters tempt them by extra pay and supper," which they eat in neighboring public-houses. The great debauchery thus produced among these 'young immortals' ("Children's Employment Comm., V. Rept.," p. 44, n. 191) is compensated by the fact that among the rest many Bibles and religious books are bound by them. 1 See "Reports of Insp. of Fact.," 30th April, 1863, 1. c. With very accurate ap- preciation of the state of things, the London labourers employed in the buildirfg trades declared, during the great strike and lockout of 1860, that they would only accept wages by the hour under two conditions (!) that, with the price of the working-hour, a normal working-day of 9 and 10 hours respectively should be fixed, and that the price of the hour for the 10 hours' working-day should be higher than that for the hour of the 9 hours' working-day; (2) that every hour beyond the normal working-day should be reckoned as overtime and proportionally more highly paid. 8 "It is a very notable thing, too, that where long hours are the rule, small wages are also so." ("Report of Insp. of Fact.," 31st Oct., 1863, p. 9.) "The work which obtains the scanty pittance of food, is, for the most part, excessively prolonged." ("Public Health, Sixth Report," 1864, p. 15.) 4 "Reports of Inspectors of Fact.," 30th April, 1860, pp. 31, 32. 6oo Capitalist Production. the working-day for the labourer to secure even a miserable average-wage. The lowness of the price of labour acts hero as a stimulus to the extension of the labour-time. 1 On the other hand, the extension of the working-time pro- duces, in its turn, a fall in the price of labour, and with this a fall in the day's or week's wages. The determination of the price of labour by: daily value of labour-power working-day of a given number of hours, shows that a mere prolongation of the working-day lowers the price of labour, if no compensation steps in. But the same circumstances which allow the capitalist in the long run to prolong the working-day, also allow him first, and compel him finally, to nominally lower the price of labour, until the total price of the increased number of hours is lowered, and, there- fore, the daily or weekly wage. Reference to two circum- stances is suificient here. If one man does the work of 1 or 2 men, the supply of labour increases, although the supply of labour-power on the market remains constant. The competi- tion thus created between the labourers allows the capitalist to beat down the price of labour, whilst the falling price of labour allows him, on the other hand, to screw up still further the working-time. 2 Soon, however, this command over abnor- mal quantities of unpaid labour, i.e., quantities in excess of the average social amount, becomes a source of competition amongst the capitalists themselves. A part of the price of the commodity consists of the price of labour. The unpaid part of the labour-price need not be reckoned in the price of the 1 The hand-nail makers in England, e.g., have, on account of the low price of labour, to work 15 hours a day in order to hammer out their miserable weekly wage. "It's a great many hours in a day (6 a.m. to 8 p.m.), and he has to work hard all the time to get lid. or Is., and there is the wear of the tools, the cost of firing, and something for waste iron to go out of this, which takes off altogether 2j4d. or 3d." ("Children's Employment Com., III. Report," p. 136, n. 671.) The women earn by the same working-time a week's wage of only 5 shillings (1. c., p. 137, n. 674. 2 If a factory-hand, e.g., refused to work the customary long hours, "he would very shortly be replaced by somebody who would work any length of time, and thus be thrown out of employment." ("Report of Inspectors of Fact.," 31st Oct., 1848. Evidence, p. 39, n. 58.) "If one man performs the work of two . . . the rate of profits will generally be raised ... in consequence of the additional supply of labour having diminished its price." (Senior, 1. c., p. 14.) Time- W ages. 60 1 commodity. It may be presented to the buyer. This is the first step to which competition leads. The second -step to which it drives, is to exclude also from the selling-price of the commodity, at least a part of the abnormal surplus-value created by the extension of the working-day. In this way an abnormally low selling-price of the commodity arises, at first sporadically, and becomes fixed by degrees; a lower selling price which henceforward becomes the constant basis of a miserable wage for an excessive working-time, as originally it was the product of these very circumstances. This movement is simply indicated here, as the analysis of competition does not belong to this part of our subject. Nevertheless, the capi- talist may, for a moment, speak for himself. "In Birmingham there is so much competition of masters one against another, that many are obliged to do things as employers that they would otherwise be ashamed of; and yet no more money is made, but only the public gets the benefit." 1 The reader will remember the two sorts of London bakers, of whom one sold the bread at its full price (the "full-priced" bakers), the other below its normal price ("the underpriced," "the under- sellers"). The "full-priced" denounced their rivals before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry: "They only exist now by first defrauding the public, and next getting 18 hours' work out of their men for 12 hours' wages. . . . The unpaid labour of the men was made . . . the source whereby the competition was carried on, and continues so to this day. . . . The competition among the master bakers is the cause of the difficulty in getting rid of night-work. An under- seller, who sells his bread below the cost price according to the price of flour, must make it up by getting more out of the labour of the men. . . . If I got only 12 hours' work out of my men, and my neighbour got 18 or 20, he must beat me in the selling price. If the men could insist on payment for over-work, this would be set right A large number of those employed by the undersellers are foreigners, 1 "Children's Employment Com., III. Rep.," Evidence, p. 66, n. 22. 602 Capitalist Production. and youths, who are obliged to accept almost any wages they can obtain." 1 This jeremiad is also interesting because it shows, how the appearance only of the relations of production mirrors itself in the brain of the capitalist. The capitalist does not know that the normal price of labour also includes a definite quantity of unpaid labour, and that this very unpaid labour is the normal source of his gain. The category, surplus-labour- time, does not exist at all for him, since it is included in the normal working-day, which he thinks he has paid for in the day's wages. But overtime does exist for him, the prolonga- tion of the working day beyond the limits corresponding with the usual price of labour. Face to face with his underselling competitor, he even insists upon extra pay for this overtime. He again does not know that this extra pay includes unpaid labour, just as well as does the price of the customary hour of labour. For example, the price of one hour of the 12 hours' working-day is 3d v say the value-product of half a working- hour, whilst the price of the overtime working-hour is 4d., or the value-product of f of a working-hour. In the first case the capitalist appropriates to himself one-half, in the second, one-third of the working-hours without paying for it. CHAPTER XXI. PIECE-WAGES. WAGES by the piece are nothing else than a converted form of wages by time, just as wages by time are a converted form of the value or price of labour-power. In piece-wages it seems at first sight as if the use-value 1 "Report, &c., relative to the Grievances complained of by the Journeymen Bakers." Lond. 1862, p. 411, and ib. Evidence, notes 479, 359, 27. Anyhow the full-priced also, as was mentioned above, and as their spokesman, Bennett, himself admits, make their men "generally begin work at 11 p.m. . . . up to 8 o'clock the next morning . . . they are then engaged all day long ... as late as 7 o'clock in the evening." (1. c., p. 22.) Piece-Wages. 603 bought from the labourer was, not the function of his labour- power, living labour, but labour already realised in the pro- duct, and as if the price of this labour was determined, not as with time-wages, by the fraction, daily value of labor power working day of given number of hours but by the capacity for work of the producer. 1 The confidence that trusts in this appearance ought to re- ceive a first severe shock from the fact that both forms of wages exist side by side, simultaneously, in the same branches of industry ; e.g., "the compositors of London, as a general rule, work by the piece, time-work being the exception, while those in the country work by the day, the exception being work by the piece. The shipwrights of the port of London work by the job or piece, while those of all other parts work by the day." 2 In the same saddlery shops of London, often for the same work, piece-wages are paid to the French, time-wages to the English. In the regular factories in which throughout piece- wages predominate, particular kinds of work are unsuitable to this form of wage, and are therefore paid by time. 3 But it is moreover self-evident that the difference of form in the payment of wages alters in no way their essential nature, 1 "The system of piece-work illustrates an epoch in the history of the working man; it is halfway between the position of the mere day labourer depending upon the will of the capitalist and the co-operative artisan, who in the not distant future promises to combine the artizan and the capitalist in his own person. Piece-workers are in fact their own masters' even whilst working upon the capital of the employer." (John Watts: "Trade Societies and Strikes, Machinery and Co-operative Societies." Manchester, 1865, p. 52, 53.) I quote this little work because it is a very sink of all long-ago-rotten, apologetic commonplaces. This same Mr. Watts earlier traded in Owenism and published in 1842 another pamphlet: "Facts and Fictions of Political Economists," in which among other things he declares that "property is robbery." That is long ago. 2 T. J. Dunning: "Trade's Unions and Strikes," Lond. 1860. p. 22. 1 How the existence, side by side and simultaneously, of these two forms of wage favours the masters' cheating: "A factory employs 400 people, the half of which work by the piece, and have a direct interest in working longer hours. The other 200 are paid by the day, work equally long with the others, and get no more money for their overtime. . . . The work of these 200 people for half an hour a day is equal to one person's work for 50 hours, or % of one person's labour in a week, and is a positive gain to the employer." ("Reports of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1860," p. 9.) "Overworking to a very considerable extent still prevails; and, in most instances, with that security against detection and punishment which the jaw itself affords. I have in many former reports shown . . . the injury to workpeople who are not employed on piece-work, but receive weekly wages." Leon- ard Horner in "Reports of Insp. of Fact." 30th April, 1859, pp. 8, 9.) 604 Capitalist Production. although the one form may be more favorable to the develop- ment of capitalist production than the other. Let the ordinary working day contain 12 hours of which 6 are paid, 6 unpaid. Let its value-product be 6 shillings, that of one hour's labour therefore 6d. Let us suppose that, as the result of experience, a labourer who works with the average amount of intensity and skill, who, therefore, gives in fact only the time socially necessary to the production of an article, supplies in 12 hours 24 pieces, either distinct products or measurable parts of a continuous whole. Then the value of these 24 pieces, after subtraction of the portion of constant capital contained in them, is 6 shillings, and the value of a single piece 3d. The labourer receives l|d. per piece, and thus earns in 12 hours 3 shillings. Just as, with time-wages, it does not matter whether we assume that the labourer works 6 hours for himself and 6 hours for the capitalist, or half of every hour for himself, and the other half for the capitalist, so here it does not matter whether we say that each individual piece is half paid, and half unpaid for, or that the price of 12 pieces is the equivalent only of the value of the labour-power, whilst in the other 12 pieces surplus-value is incorporated. The form of piece-wages is just as irrational as that of time- wages. Whilst in our example two pieces of a commodity, after subtraction of the value of the means of production con- sumed in them, are worth 6d. as being the product of one hour, the labourer receives for them a price of 3d. Piece-wages do not, in fact, distinctly express any relation of value. It is not, therefore, a question of measuring the value of the piece by the working time incorporated in it, but on the contrary of measuring the working-time the labourer has expended, by the number of pieces he has produced. In time-wages the labour is measured by its immediate duration, in piece-wages by the quantity of products in which the labour has embodied itself during a given time. 1 The price of labour-time itself is finally determined by the equation ; value of a day's labour=daily 1 "Le salaire peut se mesurer de deux manieres: ou sur la duree du travail, ou sur son produit." ("Abrege elementaire des principes dc 1'Economie Politique." Paris 1796, p. 32.) The author of this anonymous work: G. Gamier. Piece-Wages. 605 value of labour-power. Piece-wage is, therefore, only a modi- fied form of time-wage. Let us now consider a little more closely the characteristic peculiarities of piece-wages. The quality of the labour is here controlled by the work itself, which must be of average perfection if the piece-price is to be paid in full. Piece-wages become, from this point of view, the most fruitful source of reductions of wages and capi- talistic cheating. They furnish to the capitalist an exact measure for the intensity of labour. Only the working-time which is em- bodied in a quantum of commodities determined beforehand and experimentally fixed, counts as socially necessary working time, and is paid as such. In the larger workshops of the London tailors, therefore, a certain piece of work, a waistcoat e.g., is called an hour, or half an hour, the hour at 6d. By practise it is known how much is the average product of one hour. With new fashions, repairs, etc., a contest arises between master and labourer, whether a particular piece, of work is one hour, and so on, until here also experience decides. Similarly in the London furniture workshops, etc. If the labourer does not possess the average capacity, if he cannot in consequence supply a certain minimum of work per day, he is dismissed. 1 Since the quality and intensity of the work are here con- trolled by the form of wage itself, superintendence of labour becomes in great part superfluous. Piece-wages therefore lay the foundation of the modern "domestic labour," described above, as well as of a hierarchically organised system of exploi- tation and oppression. The latter has two fundamental forms. On the one hand piece-wages facilitate the interposition of parasites between the capitalist and the wage-labourer, the "sub-letting of labour." The gain of these middle-men comes 1 "So much weight of cotton is delivered to him [the spinner], and he has to return by a certain time, in lieu of it, a given weight of twist or yarn, of a certain degree of fineness, and he is paid so much per pound for all that he so returns. If his work is defective in quality, the penalty falls on him, if less in quantity than the minimum fixed for a given time, he is dismissed and an abler operative procured." (Ure 1. c. p. 317.) 606 Capitalist Production, entirely from the difference between the labour price which the capitalist pays, and the part of that price which they actually allow to reach the labourer. 1 In England this system is char- acteristically called the "Sweating system." On the other hand piece-wage allows the capitalist to make a contract for so much per piece with the head labourer in manufactures with the chief of some group, in mines with the extractor of the coal, in the factory with the actual machine-worker at a price for which the head labourer himself undertakes the en- listing and payment of his assistant workpeople. The exploi- tation of the labourer by capital is here effected through the exploitation of the labourer by the labourer. 2 Given piece-wage, it is naturally the personal interest of the labourer to strain his labour-power as intensely as possible; this enables the capitalist to raise more easily the normal de- gree of intensity of labour. 3 It is moreover now the personal interest of the labourer to lengthen the working day, since with it his daily or weekly wages rise. 4 This gradually brings 1 "It is when work passes through several hands, each of which is to take its share of profits, while only the last does the work, that the pay which reaches the work-woman is miserably disproportioned." (Child Emp. Com. II. Report, p. Ixx, n. 484.) 2 Even Watts, the apologetic, remarks: "It would be a great improvement to the system of piece-work, if all the men employed on a job were partners in the con- tract, each according to his abilities, instead of one man being interested in over- working his fellows for his own benefit." (1. c. p. 63.) On the vileness of this system, cf. Child. Emp. Com. Rep. III. p. 66, n. 22, p. 11, n. 124, p. xi. n. 13, 63, 69, etc. * This spontaneous result is often artificially helped along, e.g., in the Engineering Trade of London, a customary trick is "the selecting of a man who possesses su- perior physical strength and quickness, as the principal of several workmen, and paying him an additional rate, by the quarter or otherwise, with the understanding that he is to exert himself to the utmost to induce the others, who are only paid the ordinary wages, to keep up to him. . . . Without any comment this will go far to explain many of the complaints of stinting the action, superior skill, and working-power, made by the employers against the men" (in Trades-Unions. Dun- ning, 1. c. pp. 22, 23). As the author is himself a labourer and secretary of a Trade's Union, this might be taken for exaggeration. But the reader may compare the "highly respectable" Cyclopedia of Agriculture of J. Ch. Morton, Art. "La- bourer," where this method is recommended to the farmers as an approved one. * "All those who are paid by piece-work . . . profit by the transgression of the legal limits of work. This observation as to the willingness to work overtime is especially applicable to the women employed as weavers and reelers." (Rept. of Insp. of Fact., 30th April, 1858, p. 9). "This system (piece-work), so advantageous to the employer . . . tends directly to encourage the young potter greatly to overwork himself during the four or five years during which he is employed in the piece-work system, but at low wages. . . . This is ... another great cause Piece-Wages. 607 on a reaction like that already described in time-wages, without reckoning that the prolongation of the working day, even if the piece-wage remains constant, includes of necessity a fall in the price of the labour. In time-wages, with few exceptions, the same wage holds for the same kind of work, whilst in piece-wages, though the price of the working time is measured by a certain quantity of product, the day's or week's wage will vary with the indi- vidual differences of the labourers, of whom one supplies in a given time the minimum of product only, another the average, a third more than the average. With regard to actual receipts there is, therefore, great variety according to the different skill, strength, energy, staying-power, etc., of the individual la- bourers. l Of course this does not alter the general relations be- tween capital and wage-labour. First, the individual differ- ences balance one another in the workshop as a whole, which thus supplies in a given working-time the average product, and the total wages paid will be the average wages of that particular branch of industry. Second, the proportion be- tween wages and surplus-value remains unaltered, since the mass of surplus-labour supplied by each particular labourer corresponds with the wage received by him. But the wider scope that piece-wage gives to individuality, tends to develop on the one hand that individuality, and with it the sense of liberty, independence, and self-control of the labourers, on the other, their competition one with another. Piece-work has, therefore, a tendency, while raising individual wages above the average, to lower this average itself. But where a particular rate of piece-wage has for a long time been fixed by tradition, and its lowering, therefore, presented especial diffi- culties, the masters, in such exceptional cases, sometimes had recourse to its compulsory transformation into time-wages. Hence, e.g., in 1860 a great strike among the ribbon-weavers to which the bad constitutions of the potters are to be attributed." (Child Empl. Com. I. Kept., p. xiii.) 1 "Where the work in any trade is paid for by the piece at so much per job . . . wages may very materially differ in amount. . . . But in work by the day theie is generally an uniform rate . . . recognized by both employer and employed as the standard of wages for the general run of workmen in the trade." (Dunning, 1. c. p. 17.) 608 Capitalist Production. of Coventry. 1 Piece-wage is finally one of the chief supports of the hour-system described in the preceding chapter. 2 From what has been shown so far, it follows that piece-wage is the form of wages most in harmony with the capitalist mode of production. Although by no means new it figures side by side with time-wages officially in the French and English labour statutes of the 14th century it only conquers a larger field for action during the period of Manufacture, properly so-called. In the stormy youth of Modern Industry, especially from 1797 to 1815, it served as a lever for the lengthening of the working day, and the lowering of wages. Very important materials for the fluctuation of wages during that period are to be found in the Blue-books: "Report and Evidence from the Select Committee on Petitions respecting the Corn Laws," (Parliamentary Session of 1813-14), and "Report from the Lords' Committee, on the state of the Growth, Commerce, and Consumption of Grain, and all Laws relating thereto," (Session of 1814-15). Here we find docu- mentary evidence of the constant lowering of the price of labour from the beginning of the Anti-Jacobin War. In the weaving industry, e.g., piece-wages had fallen so low that in 1 "Le travail des Compagnons-artisans sera regie a la journee ou a la piece . . . Ces maitres-artisans savent a peu pres combien d'ouvrage un compagnon-artisan peut faire par jour dans chaque metier, et les payent souvent a proportion de 1'ouvrage qu'ils font; ainsi ces compagnons travaillent autant qu'ils peuvent, pour leur propre interet, sans autre inspection." (Cantillon, Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en general, Amst. Ed., 1756, pp. 185 and 202. The first edition appeared in 1755.) Cantillon, from whom Quesnay, Sir James Steuart & A. Smith have largely drawn, already here represents piece-wage as simply a modified form of time-wage. The French edition of Cantillon professes in its title to be a translation from the Eng- lish, but the English edition: "The analysis of Trade, Commerce, etc., by Philip Cantillon, late of the city of London, Merchant," is not only of later date (1759), but proves by its contents that it is a later and revised edition; e.g., in the French edition, Hume is not yet mentioned, whilst in the English, on the other hand, Petty hardly figures any longer. The English edition is theoretically less important, but it contains numerous details referring specifically to English commerce, bullion trade, etc., that are wanting in the French text. The words on the title-page of the English edition, according to which the work is "Taken chiefly from the manu- script of a very ingenious gentleman, deceased, and adapted, etc," seem, therefore, a pure fiction, very customary at that time. 2 "Combien de fois n'avons-nous pas vu, dans certains ateliers, embaucher beaucoup plus d'ouvriers que ne le demandait le travail a mettre en main? Souvent, dans la prevision d'un travail aleatoire, quelquefois meme imaginaire, on admet des ouvriers: comme on les paie aux pieces, on se dit qu'on ne court aucun risque, parceque toutes les pertes de temps seront a la charge des inoccupes." (H. Gregoir: "Les Typo- graphes devant le Tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles," Bruxelles, 1865, p. 9.) Piece-Wages. 609 spite of the very great lengthening of the working day, the daily wages were then lower than before. "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 . . . the difference in the wages of skilful and common labour is far less now than at any former period." 1 How little the increased in- tensity and extension of labour through piece-wages benefited the agricultural proletariat, the following passage borrowed from a work on the side of the landlords and farmers shows : "By far the greater part of agricultural operations is done by people, who are hired for the day or on piece-work. Their weekly wages are about 12s. ? and although it may be assumed that a man earns on piece-work under the greater stimulus to labour, Is. or perhaps 2s. more than on weekly wages, yet it is found, on calculating his total income, that his loss of employ- ment, during the year, outweighs this gain . . . Fur- ther, it will generally be found that the wages of these men bear a certain proportion to the price of the necessary means of subsistence, so that a man with two children is able to bring up his family without recourse to parish relief." 2 Malthus at that time remarked with reference to the facts published by Parliament: "I confess that I see, with misgiving, the great extension of the practice of piece-wage. Really hard work during 12 or 14 hours of the day, or for any longer time, is too much for any human being." 3 In the workshops under the Factory Acts, piece-wage be- comes the general rule, because capital can there only increase the efficacy of the working day by intensifying labour. 4 With the changing productiveness of labour the same quan- tum of product represents a varying working time. There- fore, piece-wage also varies, for it is the money expression of a determined working time. In our example above, 24 pieces were produced in 12 hours, whilst the value of the product 1 Remarks on the Commercial Policy of Great Britain, London, 1815. 2 A defence on the Land-owners and Farmers of Great Britain, 1814, pp. 4, 5. s Malthus, Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent, Lond., 1815. 4 "Those who are paid by piece-work . . . constitute probably four-fifths of the workers in the factories." "Report of Insp. of Fact, 30th April, 1858." 2M 610 Capitalist Production. of the 12 hours was 6s., the daily value of the labour- power 3s., the price of the labour-hour 3d., and the wage for one piece l^d. In one piece half-an-hour's labour was absorbed. If the same working day now supplies, in conse- quence of the doubled productiveness of labour, 48 pieces instead of 24, and all other circumstances remain unchanged, then the piece-wage falls from l|d. to fd., as every piece now only represents ^, instead of of a working hour. 24 by l|d. =3s., and in like manner 48 by fd.=3s. In other words, piece-wage is lowered in the same proportion as the number of the pieces produced in the same time rises, 1 and therefore as the working time spent on the same piece falls. This change in piece-wage, so far purely nominal, leads to constant battles between capitalist and labour. Either because the capitalist uses it as a pretext for actually lowering the price of labour, or because increased productive power of labour is accompanied by an increased intensity of the same. Or because the labourer takes seriously the appearance of piece-wages, viz., that his product is paid for, and not his labour-power, and therefore revolts against a lowering of wages, unaccompanied by a lower- ing in the selling price of the commodity. "The operatives .... carefully watch the price of the raw material and the price of manufactured goods, and are thus enabled to form an accurate estimate of their master's profits." 2 The capitalist rightly knocks on the head such pretensions as gross errors as to the nature of wage-labour. 3 He cries out against this usurping attempt to lay taxes on the advance of 1 "The productive power of his spinning-machine is accurately measured, and the rate of pay for work done with it decreases with, though not as, the increase of its productive power." (Ure, 1. c., p. 317.) This last apologetic phrase Ure himself again cancels. The lengthening of the mule causes some increase of labour, he admits. The labour does therefore not diminish in the same ratio as its productivity increases. Further: "By this increase the productive power of the machine will be augmented one-fifth. When this event happens the spinner will not be paid at the same rate for work done as he was before, but as that rate will not be diminished in the ratio of one-fifth, the improvement will augment his money earn- ings for any given number of hours' work," but "the foregoing statement requires a certain modification. . . . The spinner has to pay something additional for juvenile aid out of his additional sixpence, accompanied by displacing a portion of adults" (1. c. p. 321), which has in no way a tendency to raise wages. * H. Fawcett: "The Economic Position of the British Labourer. Cambridge and London, 1865," p. 178. * In the London Standard of October 26, 1861, there is a report of proceedings National Differences of Wages. 611 industry, and declares roundly that the productiveness of labour does not concern the labourer at all. 1 CHAPTER XXII. NATIONAL DIFFERENCES OF WAGES. IN the 17th chapter we were occupied with the manifold combinations which may bring about a change in magnitude of the value of labour-power this magnitude being considered either absolutely or relatively, i.e., as compared with surplus- value ; whilst on the other hand, the quantum of the means of subsistence in which the price of labour is realised might again undergo fluctuations independent of, or different from, the changes of this price. 2 As has been already said, the sim- ple translation of the value or respectively of the price of labour-power into the exoteric form of wages transforms all these laws into laws of the fluctuations of wages. That which appears in these fluctuations of wages within a single country as a series of varying combinations, may appear in different countries as contemporaneous difference of national wages. In the comparison of the wages in different nations, we must therefore take into account all the factors that determine of the firm of John Bright & Co., before the Rochdale magistrates "to prosecute for intimidation the agents of the Carpet Weavers Trades' Union. 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 work- men had no claim whatever to share in the profits made by the investment of their employer's capital in mechanical improvements. Accordingly, Messrs. Bright pro- posed to lower the rate of pay from IJ^d. per yard to Id., 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 fair warning before hand." 1 "Trades' Unions, in their desire to maintain wages, endeavour to share in the benefits of improved machinery. (Quelle horreur!) . . . the demanding higher wages, because labour is abbreviated, is in other words the endeavour to establish a duty on mechanical improvements." ("On Combination of Trades, new ed., London, 1834," p. 42.) 3 "It is not accurate to say that wages" (he deals here with their money expres- sion) "are increased, because they purchase more of a cheaper article." (David Buchanan in his edition of Adam Smith's "Wealth," &c., 1814, Vol. I., p. 417. Note.) 612 changes in the amount of tho value of labour-power ; the price and the extent of the prime necessaries of life as naturally and historically developed, the cc&t of training the labourers, the part played by the labour of women and children, the produc- tiveness of labour, its extensive and intensive magnitude. Even the most superficial comparison requires the reduction first of the average day-wage for the same trades, in different countries, to a uniform working day. After this reduction to the same terms of the day-wages, time-wage must again be translated into piece-wage, as the latter only can be a measure both of the productivity and the intensity of labour. In every country there is a certain average intensity of labour, below which the labour for the production of a com- modity requires more than the socially necessary time, and therefore does not reckon as labour of normal quality. Only a degree of intensity above the national average affects, in a given country, the measure of value of the mere duration of the working time. This is not the case on the universal market, whose integral parts are the individual countries. The average intensity of labour changes from country to coun- try ; here it is greater, there less. These national averages form a scale, whose unit of measure is the average unit of universal labour. The more intense national labour, therefore, as compared with the less intense, produces in the same time more value, which expresses itself in more money. But the law of value in its international application is yet more modified by this, that on the world-market the more productive national labour reckons also as the more intense, so long as the more productive nation is not compelled by com- petition to lower the selling price of its commodities to the level of their value. In proportion as capitalist production is developed in a country, in the same proportion do the national intensity and productivity of labour there rise above the international level. 1 The different quantities of commodities of the same kind, pro- duced in different countries in the same working time, have, 1 We shall inquire, in another place, what circumstances in relation to productivity may modify this law for individual branches of industry. National Differences of Wages. 613 therefore, unequal international values, which are expressed in different prices, i.e., in sums of money varying according to international values. The relative value of money will, there- fore, be less m the nation with more developed capitalist mode of production than in the nation with less developed. It follows, ihen, that the nominal wages, the equivalent of labour-power expressed in money, will also be higher in the first nation, than in the second; which does not at all prove that this holds also for the real wages, i.e., for the means of subsistence placed at the disposal of the labourer. But oven apart from these relative differences of the value of money in different countries, it will be found, frequently, that the daily or weekly, &c., wage in the first nation is higher than in the second, whilst the relative price of labour, i.e., the price of labour as compared both with surplus-value and with the value of the product, stands higher in the second than in the first 1 J. W. Cowell, member of the Factory Commission of 1833, after careful investigation of the spinning trade, came to ihe conclusion that, " in England wages are virtually lower to the capitalist, though higher to the operative than on the Continent of Europe." (Ure, p. 314.) The English Factory Inspector, Alexander Redgrave, in his Report of Oct. 31st, 1866, proves by comparative statistics with Continental states, that in spite of lower wages and much longer working-time, Continental labour is, in proportion to the product, dearer than English. An English manager of a cotton factory in Olden- 1 James Anderson remarks in his polemic against Adam Smith : "It deserves, likewise, to be remarked, that although the apparent price of labour is usually lower in poor countries, where the produce of the soil, and grain in general, is cheap; yet it is in fact for the most part really higher than in other countries. For it is not the wages that is given to the labourer per day that constitutes the real price of labour, although it is its apparent price. The real price is that which a certain quantity of work performed actually costs the employer; and considered in this light, labour is in almost all cases cheaper in rich countries than in those that are poorer, although the price of grain, and other provisions, is usually much lower in the last than in the first. . . . Labour estimated by the day, is much lower in Scotland than in England. . . . Labour by the piece is generally cheaper in England." (James Anderson, Observations on the means of exciting a spirit of National Indus- try, &c., Edin. 1777, pp. 350, 351). On the contrary, lowness of wages produces, in its turn, dearness of labour. "Labour being dearer in Ireland than it is in England . . . because the wages are so much lower." (N. 2079 in Royal Com- mission on Railways, Minutes, 1867.) 6i4 Capitalist Production. burg, declares that the working-time there lasted from 5.30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturdays included, and that the workpeople there, when under English overlookers, did not supply during this time quite so much product as the English in 10 hours, but under German overlookers much less. Wages are much lower than in England, in many cases 50 %, but the number of hands in proportion to the machinery was much greater, in certain departments in the proportion of 5 :3. Mr. Redgrave gives very full details as to the Russian cotton factories. The data were given him by an English manager until recently em- ployed there. On this Russian soil, so fruitful of all infamies, the old horrors of the early days of English factories are in full swing. The managers are, of course, English, as the native Russian capitalist is of no use in factory business. Despite all over-work, continued day and night, despite the most shameful under-payment of the workpeople, Russian manu- facture manages to vegetate only by prohibition of foreign competition. I give, in conclusion, a comparative table of Mr. Redgrave's, on the average number of spindles per factory and per spinner in the different countries of Europe. He, himself, remarks that he had collected these figures a few years ago, and that since that time the size of the factories and the number of spindles per labourer in England has increased. Ho supposes, however, an approximately equal progress in the Continental countries mentioned, so that the numbers given would still have their value for purposes of comparison. AVERAGE NUMBER OF SPINDLES PER FACTORY. England, average of spindles per factory 12,600 France, " 1,500 Prussia, 1,500 Belgium, " " 4,000 Saxony, 4,500 Austria, 7,000 Switzerland" " 8,000 National Differences of W ages. 615 AVERAGE NUMBER OF PERSONS EMPLOYED TO SPINDLES. France, one person to 14 spindles Russia, 28 " Prussia, 37 " Bavaria, " 46 " Austria, " 49 " Belgium, " 50 " Saxony, " 50 " Switzerland, " 55 Smaller States of Germany, 55 Great Britain, " 74 " " This comparison," says Mr. Redgrave, " is yet more un- favourable to Great Britain, inasmuch as there is so large a number of factories in which weaving by power is carried on in conjunction with spinning [whilst in the table the weavers are not deducted], and the factories abroad are chiefly spinning factories ; if it were possible to compare like with like, strictly, I could find many cotton spinning factories in my district in which mules containing 2,200 spindles are minded by one man (the " minder ") and two assistants only, turning off daily 220 Ibs. of yarn, measuring 400 miles in length." (Reports of Insp. of Fact, 31st Oct., 1866, p. 31-33, passim.) It is well known that in Eastern Europe as well as in Asia, English companies have undertaken the construction of rail- ways, and have, in making them, employed side by side with the native labourers, a certain number of English working- men. Compelled by practical necessity, they thus have had to take into account the national difference in the intensity of labour, but this has brought them no loss. Their experience shows that even if the height of wages corresponds more or less with the average intensity of labour, the relative price of labour varies generally in the inverse direction. 1 "Essay on the Rate of Wages, with an Examination of the Causes of the Differ- ences in the Conditions of the Labouring Population throughout the World," Phila- delphia, 1835. 616 Capitalist Production. In an " Essay on the Rate of Wages," 1 one of his first econo- mic writings, H. Carey tries to prove that the wages of the different nations are directly proportional to the degree of productiveness of the national working days, in order to draw from this international relation, the conclusion that wages everywhere rise and fall in proportion to the productiveness of labour. The whole of our analysis of the production of surplus value shows the absurdity of this conclusion, even if Carey himself had proved his premises, instead of, after his usual uncritical and superficial fashion, shuffling to and fro a confused mass of statistical materials. The best of it is that he does not assert that things actually are as they ought to be according to his theory. For State intervention has falsified the natural economic relations. The different national wages must be reckoned, therefore, as if that part of each that goes to tjie State in the form of taxes, came to the labourer himself. Ought not Mr. Carey to consider further whether those " State expenses " are not the " natural " fruits of capitalistic develop- ment? The reasoning is quite worthy of the man who first declared the relations of capitalist production to be eternal laws of nature and reason, whose free, harmonious working is only disturbed by the intervention of the State, in order after- wards to discover that the diabolical influence of England on the world-market (an influence which, it appears, does not spring from the natural laws of capitalist production) necessi- tates State intervention, i.e., the protection of those laws of nature and reason by the State, alias the System of Protection. He discovered further, that the theorems of Ricardo and oth- ers, in which existing social antagonisms and contradictions are formulated, are not the ideal product of the real economic movement, but on the contrary, that the real antagonisms of capitalist production in England and elsewhere are the result of the theories of Ricardo and others ! Finally, he discovered that it is, in the last resort, commerce that destroys the inborn beauties and harmonies of the capitalist mode of production. A step further, and he will, perhaps, discover that the one evil in capitalist production is capital itself. Only a man National Differences of Wages. 617 with such atrocious want of the critical faculty and such spurious erudition deserved, in spite of his Protectionist her- esy, to become the secret source of the harmonious wisdom of a Bastiat, and of all the other Free Trade optimists of to-day. THE conversion of a sum of money into means of production and labour-power, is the first step taken by the quantum of value that is going to function as capital. This conversion takes place in the market, within the sphere of circulation. The second step, the process of production, js complete so soon as the means of production have been converted into commodi- ties whose value exceeds that of their component parts, and, therefore, contains the capital originally advanced, plus a surplus-value. These commodities must thc.i be thrown into circulation. They must be sold, their value realised in money, this money afresh converted into capital, and so over and over again. This circular movement, in which the same phases are continually gone through in succession, forms the circulation of capital. The first condition of accumulation is that the capitalist must have contrived to sell his commodities, and to reconvert into capital the greater part of the money so received. In the following pages we shall assume that capital circulates in its normal way. The detailed analysis of the process will be found in Book II. The capitalist who produces surplus-value i.e., who ex- tracts unpaid labour directly from the labourers, and fixes it in commodities, is, indeed, the first appropriator, but by no means the ultimate owner, of this surplus-value. He has to share it with capitalists, with landowners, &c., who fulfill other functions in the complex of social production. Surplus- value, therefore, splits up into various parts. Its fragments fall to various categories of persons, and take various forms, 618 Simple Reproduction. 619 independent the one of the other, such as profit, interest, mer- chants' profit, rent, &c. It is only in Book III. that we can take in hand these modified forms of surplus-value. On the one hand, then, we assume that the Capitalist sells at their value the commodities he has produced, without con- cerning ourselves either about the new forms that .capital assumes while in the sphere of circulation, or about the con- crete conditions of reproduction hidden under these forms. On the other hand, we treat the capitalist producer as owner of the entire surplus-value, or, better perhaps, as the repre- sentative of all the sharers with him in the booty. We, there- fore, first of all consider accumulation from an abstract point, of view i.e.., as a mere phase in the actual process of production. So far as accumulation takes place, the capitalist must have succeeded in selling his commodities, and in reconverting the sale-money into capital. Moreover, the breaking-up of sur- plus-value into fragments neither alters its nature nor the con- ditions under which it becomes an element of accumulation. Whatever be the proportion of surplus-value which the indus- trial capitalist retains for himself, or yields up to others, he is the one who, in the first instance, appropriates it. We, there- fore, assume no more than what actually takes place. On the other hand, the simple fundamental form of the process of accumulation is obscured by the incident of the circulation which brings it about, and by the splitting up of surplus-value. An exact analysis of the process, therefore, demands that we should, for a time, disregard all phenomena that hide the play of its inner mechanism. CHAPTER XXIII. SIMPLE REPRODUCTION. WHATEVER the form of the process of production in a society, it must be a continuous process, must continue to go periodi- cally through the same phases. A society can no more cease 62O Capitalist Production. to produce than it can cease to consume.' When viewed, there- fore, as a connected whole, and as flowing on with incessant renewal, every social process of production is, at the same time, a process of reproduction. The conditions of production are also those of reproduction. No society can go on producing, in other words, no society can reproduce, unless it constantly reconverts a part of its products into means of production, or elements of fresh products. All other circumstances remaining the same, the only mode by which it can reproduce its wealth, and maintain it at one level, is by replacing the means of production i.e., the instruments of labour, the raw material, and the auxiliary substances con- sumed in the course of the year by an equal quantity of the same kind of articles ; these must be separated from the mass of the yearly products, and thrown afresh into the process of production. Hence, a definite portion of each year's product belongs to the domain of production. Destined for productive consumption from the very first, this portion exists, for the most part, in the shape of articles totally unfitted for individ- ual consumption. If production be capitalistic in form, so, too, will be repro- duction. Just as in the former the labour-process figures but as a means towards the self-expansion of capital, so in the lat- ter it figures but as a means of reproducing as capital i.e., as self -expanding value, the value advanced. It is only be- cause his money constantly functions as capital that the economical guise of a capitalist attaches to a man. If, for instance, a sum of 100 has this year been converted into capi- tal, and produced a surplus-value of 20, it must continue dur- ing next year, and subsequent years, to repeat the same opera- tion. As a periodic increment of the , capital advanced, or periodic fruit of capital in process, surplus-value acquires the form of a revenue flowing out of capital. 1 1 "Mais ces riches, qui consomment les produits du travail des autres, ne peu- vcnt les obtenir que par des echanges [purchases of commodities.]. S'ils donnent ce- pendant leur richesse acquise et accumulee en retour centre ces produits nouveaux qui sont 1'objet de leur fantaisie, ils semblent exposes a ipuiser bientot leur fonds de reserve; ils ne travaillent point, avons-nous dit, et ils ne peuvent meme travailler; on croirait done que chaque jour doit voir diminuer leurs vieilles richesses, et que lorsqu'U ne leur en restera plus, rien ne sera offert en exchange aux ouvriers qui Simple Reproduction. 621 If this revenue serve tlie capitalist only as a fund to provide for his consumption, and be spent as periodically as it is gained, then, cseteris paribus, simple reproduction will take place. And although this reproduction is a mere repetition of the process of production on the old scale, yet this mere repe- tition, or continuity, gives a new character to the process, or, rather, causes the disappearance of some apparent character- istics which it possessed as an isolated discontinuous process. The purchase of labour-power for a fixed period is the pre- lude to the process of production ; and this prelude is con- stantly repeated when the stipulated term comes to an end, when a definite period of production, such as a week or a month, has elapsed. But the labourer is not paid until after he has expended his labour-power, and realised in commodities not only its^ value, but surplus-value. He has, therefore, pro- duced not only surplus-value, which we for the present regard as a fund to meet the private consumption of the capitalist, but he has also produced, before it flows back to him in the shape of wages, the fund out of which he himself is paid, the variable capital ; and his employment lasts only so long as he continues to reproduce this fund. Hence, that formula of the economists, referred to in Chapter XVIII., which represents wages as a share in the product itself. 1 What flows back to the labourer in the shape of wages is a portion of the product tli at is continuously reproduced by him. The capitalist, it is true, pays him in money, but this money is merely the trans- muted form of the product of his labour. While he is con- verting a portion of the means of production into products, a portion of his former product is being turned into money. It is his labour of last week, or of last year, that pays for his labour-power this week or this year. The illusion begotten by travaillent exclusivement pour eux. . . . Mais dans 1'ordre social, la richesse a acquis la propriete de se reproduire par le travail d'autrui, et sans que son pro- prietaire y concoure. La richesse, comme le travail, et par le travail, donne un fruit annuel qui peut etre detruit chaque annee sans que le riche en devienne plus pauvre. Ce fruit est le revenu qui nait du capital." (Sismondi: Nouv. Princ. d'Econ. Pol. Paris, 1819. t. I. pp. 81-82.) 1 "Wages as well as profits are to be considered, each of them, as really a por- tion of the finished product." (Ramsay, I.e., p. 142.) "The share of the product which comes to the labourer in the form of wages." (J. Mill, Elements, &c. Trans- ited by Parissot. Paris, 1823. p. 34.) 622 Capitalist Production. the intervention of money vanishes immediately, if, instead of taking a single capitalist and a single labourer, we take the class of capitalists and the class of labourers as a whole. The capitalist class is constantly giving to the labouring class order- notes, in the form of money, on a portion of the commodities produced by the latter and appropriated by the former. The labourers give these order-notes back just as constantly to the capitalist class, and in this way get their share of their own product. The transaction is veiled by the commodity-form of the product and the money-form of the commodity. Variable capital is therefore only a particular historical form of appearance of the fund for providing the necessaries of life, or the labour-fund which the labourer requires for the main- tenance of himself and family, and which, whatever be the system of social production, he must himself produce and re- produce. If the labour-fund constantly flows to him in the form of money that pays for his labour, it is because the pro- duct he has created moves constantly away from him in the form of capital. But all this does not alter the fact, that it is the labourer's own labour, realised in a product, which is ad- vanced to him by the capitalist. 1 Let us take a peasant liable to do compulsory service for his lord. He works on his own land, with his own means of production, for, say, 3 days a week. The 3 other days he does forced work on the lord's do- main. He constantly reproduces his own labour-fund, which never, in his case, takes the form of a money payment for his labour, advanced by another person. But in return, his un- paid forced labour for the lord, on its side, never acquires the character of voluntary paid labour. If one fine morning the lord appropriates to himself the land, the cattle, the seed, in a word, the means of production of this peasant, the latter will thenceforth be obliged to sell his labour-power to the lord. He will, cacteris paribus, labour 6 days a week as before, 3 for him- self, 3 for his lord, who thenceforth becomes a wages-paying capitalist. As before, he will use up the means of production 1 "When capital is employed in advancing to the workmen his wages, it adds nothing to the funds for the maintenance of labour." (Cazenove in note to his edition of Malthus, Definitions in Pol. Econ. London, 1853, p. 22.) Simple Reproduction. 623 as means of production, and transfer their value to the product. As before, a definite portion of the product will be devoted to reproduction. But from the moment that the forced labour is changed into wage-labour, from that moment the labour-fund, which the peasant himself continues as before to produce and reproduce, takes the form of a capital advanced in the form of wages by the lord. The bourgeois economist whose narrow mind is unable to separate the form of appearance from the thing that appears, shuts his eyes to the fact, that it is but here and there on the face of the earth, that even now-a-days the labour-fund crops up in the form of capital. 1 Variable capital, it is true, only then loses its character of a value advanced out of the capitalist's funds, 2 when we view the process of capitalist production in the flow of its constant renewal. But that process must have had a beginning of some kind. From our present stand-point it therefore seems likely that the capitalist, once upon a time, became possessed of money, by some accumulation that took place independently of the unpaid labour of others, and that this was, therefore, how he was enabled to frequent the market as a buyer of labour-power. However this may be, the mere continuity of the process, the simple reproduction, brings about some other wonderful changes, which affect not only the variable, but the total capital. If a capital of 1000 beget yearly a surplus-value of 200, and if this surplus-value be consumed every year, it is clear that at the end of 5 years the surplus-value consumed will amount to 5X200 or the 1000 originally advanced. If only a part, say one half, were consumed, the same result would follow at the end of 10 years, since 10X100=1000. General Rule : The value of the capital advanced divided by the surplus-value annually consumed, gives the number of years, or reproduction periods, at the expiration of which the 1 "The wages of labour are advanced by capitalists in the case of less than one fourth of the labourers of the earth." (Rich. Jones: Textbook of Lectures on the Pol. Econ. of Nations. Hertford, 1852, p. 16.) 2 "Though the manufacturer" (i.e. the labourer) "has his wages advanced to him by his master, he in reality costs him no expense, the value of these wages being generally reserved, together with a profit, in the improved value of the subject upon which his labour is bestowed." (A. Smith 1. c. Book II. ch. III. p. 311.) 624 Capitalist Production. capital originally advanced has been consumed by the capitalist and has disappeared. The capitalist thinks, that he is consum- ing the produce of the unpaid labour of others, i.e., the sur- plus-value, and is keeping intact his original capital ; but what he thinks cannot alter facts. After the lapse of a certain number of years the capital value he then possesses is equal to the sum total of the surplus-value appropriated by him during those years, and the total value he has consumed is equal to that of his original capital. It is true, he has in hand a capital whose amount has not changed, and of which a part, viz., the buildings, machinery, &c., were already there when the work of his business began. But what we have to do with here, is not the material elements, but the value, of that capital. When a person gets through all his property, by taking upon himself debts equal to the value of that property, it is clear that his property represents nothing but the sum total of his debts. And so it is with the capitalist; when he has con- sumed the equivalent of his original capital, the value of his present capital represents nothing but the total amount of the surplus-value appropriated by him without payment. Not a single atom of the value of his old capital continues to exist. Apart then from all accumulation, the mere continuity of the process of production, in other words simple reproduction, sooner or later, and of necessity, converts every capital into accumulated capital, or capitalised surplus-value. Even if that capital was originally acquired by the personal labour of its employer, it sooner or later becomes value appropriated without an equivalent, the unpaid labour of others materialised either in money or in some other object. We saw in chapter IV. that in order to convert money into capital something more is required than the production and circulation of commodities. We saw that on the one side the possessor of value or money, on the other, the possessor of the value-creating substance ; on the one side, the possessor of the means of production and sub- sistence, on the other, the possessor of nothing but labour- power, must confront one another as buyer and seller. The separation of labour from its product, of subjective labour- power from the objective conditions of labour, was therefore Simple Reproduction. 625 the real foundation in fact, and the starting point of capitalist production. But that which at first was but a starting point, becomes, by the mere continuity of the process, by simple reproduction, the peculiar result, constantly renewed and perpetuated, of capitalist production. On the one hand, the process of pro- duction incessantly converts material wealth into capital, into means of creating more wealth and means of enjoyment for the capitalist. On the other hand the labourer, on quitting the process, is what he was on entering it, a source of wealth, but devoid of all means of making that wealth his own. Since, before entering on the process, his own labour has already been alienated from himself by the sale of his labour-poweiy has been appropriated by the capitalist and incorporated with capi- tal, it must, during the process, be realised in a product that does not belong to him. Since the process of production is also the process by which the capitalist consumes labour-power, the product of the labourer is incessantly converted, not only into commodities, but into capital, into value that sucks up the value-creating power, into means of subsistence that buy the person of the labourer, into means of production that command the producers. 1 The labourer therefore constantly produces material, objective wealth, but in the form of capital, of an alien power that dominates and exploits him; and the capitalist as constantly produces labour-power, but in the form of a subjective source of wealth, separated from the objects in and by which it can alone be realised ; in short he produces the labourer, but as a wage-labourer. 2 This incessant repro- duction, this perpetuation of the labourer, is the sine qua non of capitalist production. The labourer consumes in a twofold way. While producing 1 "This is a remarkably peculiar property of productive labour. Whatever is productively consumed is capital, and it becomes capital by consumption." (James Mill 1. c. p. 242.) James Mill, however, never got on the track of this "remarkably peculiar property." "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." (Reasons for a limited Exportation of Wool. London, 1677, p. 19.) "The farmer now absurdly asserts, that he keeps the poor. They are indeed kept in misery." (Reasons for the late increase of the Poor Rates; or a comparative view of the prices of labour and provisions. London, 1777, p. 37.) 2N 626 Capitalist Production. he consumes by his labour the means of production, and con- verts them into products with a higher value than that of the capital advanced. This is his productive consumption. It is at the same time consumption of his labour-power by the capitalist who bought it. On the other hand, the labourer turns the money paid to him for his labour-power, into means of subsistence: this is his individual consumption. The la- bourer's productive consumption, and his individual consump- tion, are therefore totally distinct. In the former, he acts as the motive power of capital, and belongs to the capitalist. In the latter, he belongs to himself, and performs his necessary vital functions outside the process of production. The result of the one is, that the capitalist lives; of the other, that the labourer lives. When treating of the working-day, we saw that the labourer is often compelled to make his individual consumption a mere incident of production. In such a case, he supplies himself with necessaries in order to maintain his labour-power, just as coal and water are supplied to the steam engine and oil to the wheel. His means of consumption, in that case, are the mere means of consumption required by a means of production ; his individual consumption is directly productive consumption. This, however, appears to be an abuse not essentially apper- taining to capitalist production. 1 The matter takes quite another aspect, when we contemplate, not the single capitalist, and the single labourer, but the capi- talist class and the labouring class, not an isolated process of production, but capitalist production in full swing, and on its actual social scale. By converting part of his capital into labour-power, the capitalist augments the value of his entire capital. He kills two birds with one stone. He profits, not only by what he receives from, but by what he gives to, the labourer. The capital given in exchange for labour-power is converted into necessaries, by the consumption of which the muscles, nerves, bones, and brains of existing labourers are reproduced, and new labourers are begotten. Within the lim- 1 Rossi would not declaim so emphatically against this, had he really penetrated the secret of "productive consumption.'' Simple Reproduction. 627 its of what is strictly necessary, the individual consumption of the working class is, therefore, the reconversion of the means of subsistence given by capital in exchange for labour-power, into fresh labour-power at the disposal of capital for exploita- tion. It is the production and reproduction of that means of production so indispensible to the capitalist: the labourer him- self. The individual consumption of the labourer, whether it proceed within the workshop or outside it, whether it be part of the process of production or not, forms therefore a factor of the production and reproduction of capital; just as cleaning machinery does, whether it be done while the machinery is working or while it is standing. The fact that the labourer consumes his means of subsistence for his own purposes, and not to please the capitalist, has no bearing on the matter. The consumption of food by a beast of burden is none the less a necessary factor in the process of production, because the beast enjoys what it eats. The maintenance and reproduction of the working-class is, and must ever be, a necessary condition to the reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may safely leave its fulfillment to the labourer's instincts of self-preservation and of propagation. All the capitalist cares for, is to reduce the labourer's individual consumption as far as possible to what is strictly necessary, and he is far away from imitating those brutal South Americans, who force their labourers to take the more substantial, rather than the less substantial, kind of food. 1 Hence both the capitalist and his ideological representative, the political economist, consider that part alone of the labour- er's individual consumption to be productive, which is requi- site for the perpetuation of the class, and which therefore must take place in order that the capitalist may have labour-power to consume; what the labourer consumes for his own pleasure 1 "The labourers in the mines of S. America, whose daily task (the heaviest per- haps in the world) consists in bringing to the surface on their shoulders a load of metal weighing from 180 to 200 pounds, from a depth of 450 feet, live on bread and beans only; they themselves would prefer the bread alone for food, but their masters, who have found out that the men cannot work so hard on bread, treat them like horses, and compel them to eat beans; beans, however, are relatively much richer in bone-earth (phosphate of lime) than is bread" (Liebig, 1. c.. vol. 1, p. 194, note). 628 Capitalist Production. beyond that part, is unproductive consumption. 1 If the ac- cumulation of capital were to cause a rise of wages and an increase in the labourer's consumption, unaccompanied by increase in the consumption of labour-power by capital, the additional capital would be consumed unproductively. 2 In reality, the individual consumption of the labourer is unpro- ductive as regards himself, for it reproduces nothing but the needy individual ; it is productive to the capitalist and the State, since it is the production of the power that creates their wealth. 3 From a social point of view, therefore, the working-class, even when not directly engaged in the labour-process, is just as much an appendage of capital as the ordinary instruments of labour. Even its individual consumption is, within certain limits, a mere factor in the process of production. That proc- ess, however, takes good care to prevent these self-conscious in- struments from leaving it in the lurch, for it removes their product, as fast as it is made, from their pole to the opposite pole of capital. Individual consumption provides, on the one hand, the means for their maintenance and reproduction: on the other hand, it secures by the annihilation of the necessaries of life, the continued reappearance of the workman in the labour-market. The Roman slave was held by fetters: the wage-labourer is bound to his owner by invisible threads. The appearance of independence is kept up by means of a constant change of employers, and by the fictio juris of a contract. In former times, capital resorted to legislation, whenever necessary, to enforce its proprietary rights over the free la- bourer. For instance, down to 1815, the emigration of me- chanics employed in machine making was, in England, for- bidden, under grievous pains and penalties. 1 James Mill, 1. c., p. 288. 1 "If the price of labour should rise so high that, notwithstanding the increase of capital, no more could be employed, I should say that such increase of capital would be still unproductively consumed." (Ricardo, 1. c., p. 163.) "The only productive consumption, properly so-called, is the consumption or destruction of wealth" (he alludes to the means of production) "by capitalists with a view to reproduction .... The workman .... is a productive con- sumer to the person who employs him, and to the State, but not, strictly speaking, to himself." (Malthus* Definitions, &c., p. 30.) Simple Reproduction. 629 The reproduction of the working class carries with it the accumulation of skill, that is handed down from one genera- tion to another. 1 To what extent the capitalist reckons the existence of such a skilled class among the factors of produc- tion that belong to him by right, and to what extent he actu- ally regards it as the reality of his variable capital, is seen so soon as a crisis threatens him with its loss In consequence of the civil war in the United States and of the accompanying cotton famine, the majority of the cotton operatives in Lanca- shire were, as is well known, thrown out of work. Both from the working-class itself, and from other ranks of society, there arose a cry for State aid, or for voluntary national subscrip- tions, in order to enable the "superfluous" hands to emigrate to the colonies or to the United States. Thereupon, the "Times" published on the 24th March, 1863, a letter from Edmund Potter, a former president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. This letter was rightly called in the House of Commons, the manufacturers' manifesto. 2 We cull here a few characteristic passages, in which the proprietary rights of capital over labour-power are unblushingly asserted. "He" (the man out of work) "may be told the supply of cotton-workers is too large .... and .... must .... in fact be reduced by a third, perhaps, and that then there will be a healthy demand for the remaining two-thirds .... Public opinion .... urges emigration .... The master cannot willingly see his labour supply being removed ; he may think, and perhaps justly, that it is both wrong and unsound .... But if the public funds are to be devoted to assist emigration, he has a right to be heard, and perhaps to protest." Mr. Potter then shows how useful the cotton trade is, how the "trade has undoubtedly drawn the surplus-population from Ireland and from the agricultural districts," how immense is its extent, how in the year 1860 it yielded ^ ths of the total 1 "The only thing, of which one can say, that it is stored up and prepared before- hand, is the skill of the labourer .... The accumulation and storage of skilled labour, that most important operation, is, as regards the great mass of labourers, accomplished without any capital whatever." (Tho. Hodgskin: Labour Defended, &c., p. 13.) ! "That letter might be looked upon as the manifesto of the manufacturers." (Ferrand: Motion on the Cotton Famine, H. o. C, 27th April, 1863.) 630 Capitalist Production. English exports, how, after a few years, it will again expand by the extension of the market, particularly of the Indian mar- ket, and by calling forth a plentiful supply of cotton at 6d. per Ib. He then continues: "Some time . . . , one, two, or three years, it may be, will produce the quantity .... The question I would put then is this Is the trade worth retain- ing? Is it worth while to keep the machinery (he means the living labour machines) in order, and is it not the greatest folly to think of parting with that? I think it is. I allow that the workers are not a property, not the property of Lanca- shire and the masters ; but they are the strength of both ; they are the mental and trained power which cannot be replaced for a generation ; the mere machinery which they work might much of it be beneficially replaced, nay improved, in a twelve- month. 1 Encourage or allow ( !) the working-power to emi- grate, and what of the capitalist ? . . . Take away the cream of the workers, and fixed capital will depreciate in a great degree, and the floating will not subject itself to a strug- gle with the short supply of inferior labour We are told the workers wish it" (emigration). "Very natural it is that they should do so . - . . . Reduce, compress the cotton trade by taking away its working power and reducing their wages expenditure, say one-fifth, or five millions, and what then would happen to the class above, the small shopkeep- ers ; and what of the rents, the cottage rents .... Trace out the effects upward to the small farmer, the better house- holder, and .... the landowner, and say if there could be any suggestion more suicidal to all classes of the country than by enfeebling a nation by exporting the best of its manufac- turing population, and destroying the value of some of its most 1 It will not be forgotten that this same capital sings quite another song, under- ordinary circumstances, when there is a question of reducing wages. Then the masters exclaim with one voice: "The factory operatives should keep in wholesome remembrance the fact that theirs is really a low species of skilled labour; and that there is none which is more easily acquired, or of its quality more amply remuner- ated, or which, by a short training of the least expert, can be more quickly, as well as abundantly, acquired .... The master's machinery" (which we now learn can be replaced with advantage in 12 months) "really plays a far more important part in the business of production than the labour and skill of the operative" (who cannot now be replaced under 30 years), "which six months' education can teach, and a common labourer can learn." (See ante, p. 423.) Simple Reproduction. 631 productive capital and enrichment .... I advise a loan (of five or six millions sterling), . . . extending it may be over two or three years, administered by special commission- ers added to the Boards of Guardians in the cotton districts, under special legislative regulations, enforcing some occupa- tion or labour, as a means of keeping up at least the moral standard of the recipients of the loan .... can anything be worse for landowners or masters than parting with the best of the workers, and demoralising and disappointing the rest by an extended depletive emigration, a depletion of capital and value in an entire province ?" Potter, the chosen mouthpiece of the manufacturers, distin- guishes two sorts of "machinery," each of which belongs to the capitalist, and of which one stands in his factory, the other at night-time and on Sundays is housed outside the factory, in cottages. The one is inanimate, the other living. The inani- mate machinery not only wears out and depreciates from day to day, but a great part of it becomes so quickly super-annu- ated, by constant technical progress, that it can be replaced with advantage by new machinery after a few months. The living machinery, on the contrary, gets better the longer it lasts, and in proportion as the skill, handed from one genera- tion to another, accumulates. The "Times" answered the cotton lord as follows : "Mr. Edmund Potter is so impressed with the exceptional and supreme importance of the cotton masters that, in order to preserve this class and perpetuate their profession, he would keep half a million of the labouring class confined in a great moral workhouse against their will. 'Is the trade worth re- taining ?' asks Mr. Potter. 'Certainly by all honest means it is,' we answer. 'Is it worth while keeping the machinery in order ?' again asks Mr. Potter. Here we hesitate. By the 'machinery' Mr. Potter means the human machinery, for he goes on to protest that he does not mean to use them as an absolute property. We must confess that we do not think it 'worth while,' or even possible, to keep the human machinery in order that is. to shut it up and keep it oiled till it is wanted. Human machinery will rust under inaction, oil and 632 Capitalist Production. rub it as you may. Moreover, the human machinery will, as we have just seen, get the steam up of its own accord, and burst or run a muck in our great towns. It might, as Mr. Potter says, require some time to reproduce the workers, but, having machinists and capitalists at hand, we could always find thrifty, hard, industrious men wherewith to improvise more master manufacturers than we can ever want. Mr. Pot- ter talks of the trade reviving 'in one, two, or three years,' and he asks us not 'to encourage or allow ( !) the working power to emigrate.' He says that it is very natural the workers should wish to emigrate; but he thinks that in spite of their desire, the nation ought to keep this half million of workers with their 700,000 dependents, shut up in the cotton districts; and as a necessary consequence, he must of course think that the nation ought to keep down their discontent by force, and sus- tain them by alms and upon the chance that the cotton mas- ters may some day want them . . . The time is come when the great public opinion of these islands must operate to save this 'working power' from those who would deal with it as they would deal with iron, and coal, and cotton." The "Times' " article was only a jeu d'esprit. The "great public opinion" was, in fact, of Mr. Potter's opinion, that the factory operatives are part of the movable fittings of a factory. Their emigration was prevented. 1 They were locked up in that "moral workhouse," the cotton districts, and they form, as before, "the strength" of the cotton manufacturers of Lan- cashire. Capitalist production, therefore, of itself reproduces the separation between labour-power and the means of labour. It thereby reproduces and perpetuates the condition for exploit- ing the labourer. It incessantly forces him, to sell his labour- 1 Parliament did not vote a single farthing in aid of emigration, but simply passed some Acts empowering the municipal corporations to keep the operatives in a half- starved state, i.e., to exploit them at less than the normal wages. On the other hand, when 3 years later, the cattle disease broke out, Parliament broke wildly through its usages and voted, straight off, millions for indemnifying the millionaire landlords, whose farmers in any event came off without loss, owincr to the rise in the price of meat. The bull-like bellow of the landed proprietors at the opening of Par- liament, in 1866, showed that a man can Worship the cow Sabala without being a Hindoo, and can change himself into an ox without being a Jupiter. Simple Reproduction. 633 power in order to live, and enables the capitalist to purchase labour-power in order that he may enrich himself. 1 It is no longer a mere accident, that capitalist and labourer confront each other in the market as buyer and seller. It is the process itself that incessantly hurls back the labourer on to the market as a vendor of his labour-power, and that incessantly converts his own product into a means by which another man can pur- chase him. In reality, the labourer belongs to capital before he has sold himself to capital. His economical bondage 2 is both brought about and concealed by the periodic sale of him- self, by his change of masters, and by the oscillations in the market price of labour-power. 3 Capitalist production, therefore, under its aspect of a con- tinuous connected process, .of a process of reproduction, pro- duces not only commodities, not only surplus-value, but it also produces and reproduces the capitalist, relation; on the one side the capitalist, on the other the wage-labourer. 4 1 "L'ouvrier demandait de la subsistence pour vivre, le chef demandait du travail pour gagner." (Sismondi, 1. c., p. 91.) 1 A boorishly clumsy form of this bondage exists in the county of Durham. This is one of the few counties, in which undisputed proprietary rights over the allows the latter some choice. In this elsewhere, rents only such farms as hav the cottage is a part of the wages. Th ircumstances do not secure to the farmer gricultural labourer. The mining industry ounty, the farmer, contrary to the custom on them labourers' cottages. The rent of se cottages are known as "hinds' houses." They are let to the labourers in consideration of certain feudal services, under a con- tract called "bondage," which, amongst other things, binds the labourer during the time he is employed elsewhere, to leave some one, say his daughter, &c., to supply his place. The labourer himself is called a "bondsman." The relationship here set up also shows how individual consumption by the labourer becomes consumption on be- half of capital or productive consumption from quite a new point of view: "It is curious to observe that the very dung of the hind and bondsman is the perquisite of the calculating lord . . . and the lord will allow no privy but his own to exist in the neighbourhood, and will rather give a bit of manure here and there for a garden than bate any 'part of his seigneurial right." (Public Health, Report VII., 1864, p. 188.) 3 It will not be forgotten, that, with respect to the labour of children, &c., even the formality of a voluntary sale disappears. 4 "Capital pre-supposes wage-labour, and wage-labour pre-supposes capital. One is a necessary condition to the existence of the other; they mutually call each other into existence. Does an operative in a cotton-factory produce nothing but cotton goods? No, he produces capital. He produces values that give fresh command over his labour, and that, by means of such command, create fresh values." (Karl Marx: Lohnarbeit und Kapital, in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 266, 7th April, 1849.) The articles published under the above title in the N. Rh. Z. are parts of some lectures given by me on that subject, in 1847, in the German "Arbeiter-Verein" at Brussels, the publication of which was interrupted by the revolution of February. 634 Capitalist Production. CHAPTER XXIV. CONVERSION OF SURPLUS- VALUE INTO CAPITAL. SECTION I. CAPITALIST PRODUCTION ON A PROGRESSIVELY INCREASING SCALE* TRANSITION OF THE LAWS OF PROP- ERTY THAT CHARACTERISE PRODUCTION OF COMMODITIES INTO LAWS OF CAPITALIST APPROPRIATION. HITHERTO we have investigated how surplus-value emanates from capital; we have now to see how capital arises from surplus-value. Employing surplus-value as capital, reconver- ting it into capital, is called accumulation of capital. 1 First let us consider this transaction from the standpoint of the individual capitalist. Suppose a spinner to have advanced a capital of 10,000, of which four-fifths (8000) are laid out in cotton, machinery, &c., and one-fifth (2000) in wages. Let him produce 240,000 Ibs. of yarn annually, having a value of 12,000. The rate of surplus-value being 100%, the sur- plus-value lies in the surplus or net product of 40,000 Ibs. of yarn, one sixth of the gross product, with a value of 2000 which will be realized by a sale. 2000 is 2000. We can neither see nor smell in this sum of money a trace of surplus- value. When we know that a given value is surplus-value, we know how its owner came by it; but that does not alter the nature either of value or of money. In order to convert this additional sum of 2000 into cap- ital, the master spinner will, all circumstances remaining as before, advance four-fifths of it (1600) in the purchase of cotton, c., and one-fifth (400) in the purchase of additional spinners, who will find in the market the necessaries of life whose value the master has advanced to them. Then the new 1 "Accumulation of capita!; the employment of a portion of revenue as capital." (Malthus: Definitions, &c., ed. Cazenove p. 11.) "Conversion of revenue into capi- tal." Malthus: Princ. of Pol. Econ., 2nd Ed., Lond., 1836, p. 319.) Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 635 capital of 2000 functions in the spinning mill, and brings in, in its turil, a surplus-value of 400. The capital-value was originally advanced in the money form. The surplus-value on the contrary is, originally, the value of a definite portion of the gross product. If this gross product be sold, converted into money, the capital-value re- gains its original form. From this moment the capital- value and the surplus-value are both of them sums of money, and their reconversion into capital takes place in precisely the same way. The one, as well as the other, is laid out by the capitalist in the purchase of commodities that place him in a position to begin afresh the fabrication of his goods, and this time, on an extended scale. But in order to be able to buy those commodities, he must find them ready in the market. His own yarns circulate, only because he brings his annual product to market, as all other capitalists likewise do with their commodities. But these commodities, before coming to market, were part of the general annual product, part of the total mass of objects of every kind, into which the sum of the individual capitals, i.e., the total capital of society, had been converted in the course of the year, and of which each capi- talist had in hand only an aliquot part. The transactions in the market effectuate only the interchange of the individual components of this annual product, transfer them from one hand to another, but can neither augment the total annual production, nor alter the nature of the objects produced. Hence the use that can be made of the total annual product, depends entirely upon its own composition, but in no way upon circulation. The annual production must in the first place furnish all those objects (use-values) from which the material components of capital, used up in the course of the year, have to be re- placed. Deducting these there remains the net or surplus- product, in which the surplus-value lies. And of what does this surplus-product consist? Only of things destined to sat- isfy the wants and desires of the capitalist class, things which, consequently, enter into the consumption fund of the capital- 636 Capitalist Production. ists? Were that the case, the cup of surplus-value would be drained to the very dregs, and nothing but simple reproduc- tion would ever take place. To accumulate it is necessary to convert a portion of the surplus-product into capital. But we cannot, except by a miracle, convert into capital anything but Buch articles as can be employed in the labour-process (i.e., means of production), and such further articles as are suitable for the sustenance of the labourer, (i.e., means of subsistence.) Consequently, a part of the annual surplus-labour must have been applied to the production of additional means of production and subsist- ence, over and above the quMitity of these things required to replace the capital advanced. In one word, surplus-value ia convertible into capital solely because the surplus-product, whose value it is, already comprises the material elements of new capital. 1 Now in order to Allow of these elements actually function- ing as capital, the capitalist class requires . additional labour. If the exploitation of the labourers already employed do not increase, either extensively or intensively, then additional labour-power must be found. For this the mechanism of capitalist production provides beforehand, by converting tho working class into a class dependent on wages, a class whose ordinary wages suffice, not only for its maintenance, but for its increase. It is only necessary for capital to incorporate this additional labour-power, annually supplied by the working class in the shape of labourers of all ages, with the surplus means of production comprised in the annual produce, and che conversion of surplus-value into capital is complete. From a concrete point of view, accumulation resolves itself into the reproduction of capital on a progressively increasing icale. The circle in which simple reproduction moves, alters 1 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 rice .ersa. 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 iteslf of every branch of industry. Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 637 its form, and, to use Sismondi's expression, changes into a spiral. 1 Let us now return to our illustration. It is the old story: Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, and so on. The original capital of 10,000 brings in a surplus-value of 2000, which is capitalised. The new capital of 2000 brings in a surplus-value of 400, and this, too, is capitalised, converted into a second additional capital, which, in its turn, produces a further surplus-value of 80. And so the ball rolls on. We here leave out of consideration the portion of the sur- plus-value consumed by the capitalist. Just as little does it concern us, for the moment, whether the additional capital is joined on. to the original capital, or is separated from it to function independently; whether the same capitalist, who accumulated it, employs it, or whether he hands it over to another. This only we must not forget, that by the side of the newly-formed capital, the original capital continues to re- produce itself, and to produce surplus-value, and that this is also true of all accumulated capital, and the additional capital engendered by it. The original capital was formed by the advance of 10,000. How did the owner become possessed of it? "By his own labour and that of his forefathers," answer unanimously the spokesmen of political economy. 2 And, in fact, their supposi- tion appears the only one consonant with the laws of the pro- duction of commodities. But it is quite otherwise with regard to the additional capital of 2000. How that originated we know perfectly well. There is not one single atom of its value that does not owe its existence to unpaid labour. The means of production, with which the additional labour-power is incorporated, as well as the necessaries with which the labourers are sustained, are nothing but component parts of the surplus product, of the tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capi- 1 Sismondi's analysis of accumulation suffers from the great defect, that he con- tents himself, to too great an extent, with the phrase "conversion of revenue into capital," without fathoming the material conditions of this operation. 2 "Le travail primitif auquel son capital a du sa naissance." Sismondi, 1. c., cd. Paris, t. I., p. 109. 638 Capitalist Production. talist class. Though the latter with a portion of that tribute purchases the additional labour-power even at its full price, so that equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, yet the transac- tion is for all that only the old dodge of eve.ry conquerer who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has robbed them of. If the additional capital employs the person who produced it, this producer must not only continue to augment the value of the original capital, but must buy back the fruits of his previous labour with more labour than they cost. When viewed as a transaction between the capitalist class and the working class, it makes no difference that additional labourers are employed by means of the unpaid labour of the previously employed labourers. The capitalist may even convert the additional capital into a machine that throws the producers of that capital out of work, and that replaces them by a few children. In every case the working class creates by the sur- plus-labour of one year the capital destined to employ addi- tional labour in the following year. 1 And this is what is called: creating capital out of capital. The accumulation of the first additional capital of 2000 presupposes a value of 10,000 belonging to the capitalist by virtue of his "primitive labour," and advanced by him. The second additional capital of 400 presupposes, on the con- trary, only the previous accumulation of the 2000, of which the 400 is the surplus-value capitalised. The ownership of past unpaid labour is thenceforth the sole condition for the appropriation of living unpaid labour on a constantly increas- ing scale. The more the capitalist has accumulated, the more is he able to accumulate. In so far as the surplus-value, of which the additional capital, No. 1, consists, is the result of the purchase of labour- power with part of the original capital, a purchase that con- formed to the laws of the exchange of commodities, and that, from a legal stand-point, presupposes nothing beyond the free disposal, on the part of the labourer, of his own capacities, and 1 "Labour creates capital before capital employs labour." E. G. Wakefield, Eng- land and America. Lond., 1833, Vol. II., p. 110. Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 639 on the part of the owner of money or commodities, of the values that belong to him ; in so far as the additional capital, No. 2, &c., is the mere result of No. 1, and, therefore, a consequence of the above condition; in so far as each single transaction invariably conforms to the laws of the exchange of commodi- ties, the capitalist buying labour-power, the labourer selling it, and we will assume at its real value; in so far as all this is true, it is evident that the laws of appropriation or of private property, laws that are based on the production and circula- tion of commodities, become by their own inner and inexorable dialectic changed into their very opposite. 1 The exchange of equivalents, the original operation with which we started, has now become turned round in such a way that there is only an apparent exchange. This is owing to the fact, first, that the capital which is exchanged for labour-power is itself but a portion of the product of others' labour appropriated without an equivalent; and, secondly, that this capital must not only be replaced by its producer, but replaced together with an added surplus. The relation of exchange subsisting between capitalist and labourer becomes a mere semblance appertaining to the process of circulation, a mere form, foreign to the real nature of the transaction, and only mystify it. The ever re- peated purchase and sale of labour-power is now the mere form ; what really takes place is this the capitalist again and again appropriates, without equivalent, a portion of the pre- viously materialised labour of others, and exchanges it for a greater quantity of living labour. At first the rights of prop- erty seemed to us to be based on a man's own labour. At least, some such assumption was necessary since only com- modity owners with equal rights confronted each other, and the sole means by which a man could become possessed of the commodities of others, was by alienating his own commodities ; and these could be replaced by labour alone. Now, however, 1 Just as at a given stage in its development, commodity production necessarily passes into capitalistic commodity production (in fact, it is only on the basis of capitalistic production that products take the general and predominant form of com- modities), so the laws of property that are based on commodity production, neces- sarily turn into the laws of capitalist appropriation. 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 1 640 Capitalist Production. property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capital- ist, to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or its product and to be the impossibility, on the part of the labourer, of ap- propriating his own product. The separation of property from labour has become the necessary consequence of a law that apparently originated in their identity. 1 No matter how severely the capitalist mode of appropriation may seem to slap the face of the fundamental laws of the pro- duction of commodities, it does not arise from a violation, but from an application of these laws. A brief retrospect upon the succession of phases, whose climax the capitalist accumu- lation is, may serve once more to make this clear. We have seen, in the first place, that the original transfor- mation of a certain quantity of values into capital proceeded strictly according to the laws of exchange. One of the con- tracting parties sells his labour-power, the other buys it. The first receives the exchange-value of his commodity, while its use-value, labour, passes into the possession of the other. This second party then converts means of production belong- ing to him into a new product belonging to him by right through the instrumentality of labour also belonging to him. The value of this product comprizes, in the first place, the value of the consumed means of production. Useful labour cannot consume these means of production without trans- ferring their value to the new product But in order to be saleable labour-power must be able to furnish useful labour in that line of industry in which it is to be employed. The value of the new product comprizes, furthermore, the equivalent of the value of labour-power and a surplus-value. It does so for the reason that the labour-power sold for a cer- tain length of time, such, as a day, a week, etc., has less value than is produced by its employment during that time. The labourer, however, has received the exchange-value of his la- 1 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, Riche ou Pauvre. Paris, 1841, p. 68, where, however, the dialectical reversal is not properly developed.) Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 641 bour-power and given up its use-value in return, as happens in every sale and purchase. The fact that this particular commodity labour-power has the peculiar use-value of supplying labour and creating value cannot affect the general law of the production of commodi- ties.. Hence, if the sum of values advanced in wages is not merely reproduce in the product, but also increased by a surplus-value, this is not due to an advantage gained over the seller, who received the value of his commodity, but simply to the consumption of this commodity by the buyer. The law of exchange requires, equality only for the exchange- values of the commodities passed from hand to hand. But it requires at the outset a disparity of their use-values, and has nothing to do with their consumption, which does not begin until after the trade has been made. The original transformation of money into capital pro- ceeds, therefore, in strict compliance with the economic laws of the production of 'commodities and with the property right derived therefrom. Nevertheless it has the following results : (1) That the product belongs to the capitalist, not to the labourer ; (2) That the value of this product comprizes a surplus- value over and above the vttlue of the advanced capital. This surplus-value has cost the- labourer labour, but the capi- talist nothing, yet it becomes the lawful property of the capi- talist ; (3) That the labourer has Reproduced his labour-power and can sell it once more, if he #uds a buyer for it. Simple reproduction, is but a periodical repetition of this first operation. Money is thereby transformed again and again into capital. The general law is not violated thereby, but rather finds an opportunity to manifest itself permanently. "Several successive exchanges have merely made of the last a representative of the first." (Sismondi, 1. c., p. 70.) Nevertheless we have seen that this simple reproduction suffices to impregnate this first operation, so far as it was considered an isolated transaction, with a totally different character. "Of those, who divide the national revenue 20 642 Capitalist Production. among themselves, some (the labourers) acquire each year a new title to it by new labour, while others (the capitalists) have previously acquired a permanent title to it by primitive work." (Sismondi, 1. c., p. 111.) The domain of labour is evidently not the only one in which primogeniture accom- plishes wonders. It does not alter matters any, if simple reproduction is replaced by reproduction on an enlarged scale, by accumula- tion. In the first instance the capitalist consumes the entire surplus-value, in the second he demonstrates his civic virtue by consuming only a part of it and converting the remainder into money. The surplus-value is his property, it has never belonged to anybody else. If he advances it to production, he makes ad- vances from his own funds just as he did on the day when he first came on the market That this fund in the present case comes from the unpaid labour of his labourers, does not alter the matter in the least. If labourer B is employed with surplus-values produced by labourer A, then, in the first place, A supplied this surplus-value without having the just price of his commodity reduced by one farthing, and, in the sec- ond place, this transaction is none of B's concern. What B demands and has a right to demand is that the capitalist should pay him the value of his labour-power. "Both sides are gainers; the labourer, by having the fruit of his labour advanced to him" (that is, the fruit of the unpaid labour of others) "before he has performed any labour" (that is, be- fore his own labour has borne any fruit) ; "the master, be- cause the labour of this labourer was worth more than his wages" (that is, produced a value greater than that of his wages). (Sismondi, 1. c., p. 135.) True, the matter assumes an entirely different aspect when we look upon capitalist production in the uninterrupted flow of its reproduction, and when we consider the capitalist class as a whole and its antagonist, the working class, instead of the individual capitalist and the individual labourer. But in so doing we should be applying a standard which is totally foreign to the production of commodities. Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 643 In the production of commodities only sellers and buyers, independent of one another, meet. Their mutual relations cease with the termination of their mutual contract. If the transaction is repeated, it is done by a new contract, which has nothing to do with the former one, and only an accident brings the same seller once more together with the same buyer. Hence, if the production of commodities, or a transaction belonging to it, is to be judged by its own economic laws, we must consider each act of exchange by itself, outside of all connection with the act of exchange preceding it and following it. And since purchases and sales are transacted between in- dividuals, it will not do to seek therein relations between en- tire classes of society. No matter how long may be the series of periodical repro- ductions and former accumulations through which the capital now invested may have passed, it always retains its primal virginity. So long as the laws of exchange are observed in every act of exchange, individually considered, the mode of appropriation may be completely revolutionised without in the least affecting the property right bestowed by the produc- tion of commodities. The same right remains in force, whether it be at a time when the product belonged to the pro- ducer, and when this producer, exchanging equivalent for equivalent, could enrich himself only by his own labour, or whether it be under capitalism, where the social wealth be- comes in an ever increasing degree the property of those, who are in a position to appropriate to themselves again and again the unpaid labour of others. This result becomes inevitable, as soon as labour-power is sold as a commodity by the "free" labourer himself. It is from that time on that the production of commodities becomes universal and a typical form of production. Henceforth every product is intended at the outset for sale, and all pro- duced wealth passes through the circulation. The produc- tion of commodities jdoes not impose itself upon the whole society, until wage-labour becomes its basis. And only then does it unfold all its powers. To say that the intervention of wage labour adulterates the production of commodities 644 Capitalist Production. means to say that the production of commodities must not develop, if it wishes to remain unadulterated. To the same extent that it continues to develop by its own inherent laws into a capitalist production, the property laws of the produc- tion of commodities are converted into the laws of capitalistic appropriation. 1 We have seen that even in the case of simple reproduction, all capital, whatever its original source, becomes converted in- to accumulated capital, capitalised surplus-value. But in the flood of production all the capital originally advanced becomes a vanishing quantity (magnitudo evanescens, in the mathema- tical sense), compared with the directly accumulated capital, i.e., with the surplus-value or surplus product that is recon- verted into capital, whether it function in the hands of its accumulator, or in those of others. Hence, political economy describes capital in general as "accumulated wealth" (con- verted surplus-value or revenue), "that is employed over again in the production of surplus-value," 2 and the capitalist as "the owner of surplus-value." 3 It is merely another way of expressing the same thing to say that all existing capital is accumulated or capitalised interest, for interest is a mere fragment of surplus-value. 4 SECTION 2. ERRONEOUS CONCEPTION BY POLITICAL ECONOMY OF REPRODUCTION ON A PROGRESSIVELY IN- CREASING SCALE. Before we further investigate accumulation or the reconver- sion of surplus-value into capital, we must brush on one side an ambiguity introduced by the classical economists, 1 Admire, therefore, the craftiness of Proudhon who wishes to abolish capitalist property by enforcing against it the eternal property laws of the production of commodities. 2 "Capital, viz., accumulated wealth employed with a view to profit." (Malthus, 1. c.) "Capital .... consists of wealth saved from revenue, and used with a view to profit." (R. Jones: An Introductory Lecture on Polit. Econ., Lend., 1833, p. 16.) 3 "The possessors of surplus produce or capital." (The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties. A Letter to Lord John Russell. Lond., 1821.) * "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, 1859.) Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 645 Just as little as the commodities that the capitalist buys with a part of the surplus- value for his own consumption, cerve the purpose of production and of creation of value, so little is the labour that he buys for the satisfaction of his natural and social requirements, productive labour. Instead of converting surplus-value into capital, he, on the contrary, by the purchase of those commodities and that labour, consumes or expends it as revenue. In the face of the habitual mode of life of the old feudal nobility, which, as Hegel rightly says, "consists in consuming what is in hand," and more especially displays itself in the luxury of personal retainers, it was ex- tremely important for bourgeois economy to promulgate the doctrine that accumulation of capital is the first duty of every citizen, and to preach without ceasing, that a man cannot ac- cumulate, if he eats up all his revenue, instead of spending a good part of it in the acquisition of additional productive la- bourers, who bring in more than they cost. On the other hand the economists had to contend against the popular prejudice, that confuses capitalist production with hoarding, 1 and fancies that accumulated wealth is either wealth that is rescued from being destroyed in its existing form, i.e., from being con- sumed, or wealth that is withdrawn from circulation. Exclu- sion of money from circulation would also exclude absolutely its self-expansion as capital, while accumulation of a hoard in the shape of commodities would be sheer tomfoolery. 2 The accumulation of commodities in great masses is the result either of overproduction or of a stoppage of circulation. 3 It is true that the popular mind is impressed by the sight, on the one hand, of the mass of goods that are stored up for gradual consumption by the rich, 4 and on the other hand, by the for- 1 "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 refer- ence 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, 1. c., p. 38, 39.) 2 Thus for instance, Balzac, who so thoroughly studied every shade of avarice, represents the old usurer Gobsec as in his second childhood when he begins to heap up a hoard of commodities. 3 "Accumulation of stocks . . . non-exchange . . . over-production." (Th. Corbet 1. c., p. 14.) 4 In this sense Necker speaks of the "objets de faste et de somptuosite," of which 646 Capitalist Production. mation of reserve stocks ; the latter, a phenomenon that is com- mon to all modes of production, and on which we shall dwell for a moment, when we come to analyse circulation. Classical economy is therefore quite right, when it maintains that the consumption of surplus-products by productive, instead of by unproductive labourers, is a characteristic feature of the process of accumulation. But at this point the mistakes also begin. Adam Smith has mad it the fashion, to represent accumulation as nothing more than consumption of surplus- products by productive labourers, which amounts to saying, that the capitalising of surplus-value consists in merely turn- ing surplus-value into labour-power. Let us see what Ricardo e.g., says: "It must be understood that all the productions of a country are consumed ; but it makes the greatest differ- ence imaginable whether they are consumed by thoae who reproduce, or by those who do not reproduce another value. When we say that revenue is saved, and added to capital, what we mean is, that the portion of revenue, so said to be added to capital, is consumed by productive instead of unproductive labourers. There can be no greater error than in supposing that capital is increased by non-consumption." 1 There can be no greater error than that which Ricardo and all subsequent economists repeat after A. Smith, viz., that "the part of rev- enue, of which it is said, it has been added to capital, is con- sumed by productive labourers." According to this, all sur- plus-value that is changed into capital becomes variable cap- ital. So far from this being the case, the surplus-value, like the original capital, divides itself into constant capital and variable capital, into means of production and labour-power. Labour-power is the form under which variable capital exists during the process of production. In this process the labour- power is itself consumed by the capitalist while the means of production are consumed by the labour-power in the exercise of its function, labour. At the same time, the money paid for the purchase of the labour-power, is converted into necessaries, "le temps a grossi 1'accumulation," and which "les lois de propriete ont rassembles dans une seule classe de la societe." (Oeuvres de M. Necker, Paris and Lausanne, 1789, t. ii. p. 291.; 1 Ricardo, 1. c., p. 163, note. Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 647 iliac are consumed, not by "productive labour," but by the ''productive labourer." Adam Smith, by a fundamentally perverted analysis, arrives at the absurd conclusion, that even though each individual capital is divided into a constant and a variable part, the capital of society resolves itself only into variable capital, i.e., is laid out exclusively in payment of wages. For instance, suppose a cloth manufacturer converts 2000 into capital. One portion he lays out in buying weavers, the other in woollen yarn, machinery, &c. But the people, from whom he buys the yarn and the machinery, pay for labour with a part of the purchase money, and so on until the whole 2000 are spent in the payment of wages, i.e., un- til the entire product represented by the 2000 has been con- sumed by productive labourers. It is evident that the whole gist of this argument lies in the words "and so on," which send us from pillar to post. In truth, Adam Smith breaks his investigation off, just where its difficulties begin. 1 The annual process of reproduction is easily understood, so long as we keep in view merely the sum total of the year's production. But every single component of this product must be brought into the market as a commodity, and there the diffi- culty begins. The movements of the individual capitals, and of the personal revenues, cross and intermingle and are lost in the general change of places, in the circulation of the wealth of society ; this dazes the sight, and propounds very complicated problems for solution. In the third part of Book II. I shall give the analysis of the real bearings of the facts. It is one of the great merits of the Physiocrats, that in their Tableau economique they were the first to attempt to depict the annual production in the shape in which it is presented to us after passing through the process of circulation. 2 1 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 stand- point 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." 2 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 the Physiocrats. Connected with the 648 Capitalist Production. For the rest, it is a matter of course, that political economy, acting in the interests of the capitalist class, has not failed to exploit the doctrine of Adam Smith, viz., that the whole of that part of the surplus product which is converted into capital, is consumed by the working class. SECTION 3. SEPAEATION OF SURPLUS-VALUE INTO CAPITAL. AND REVENUE. THE ABSTINENCE THEORY. In the last preceding chapter, we treated surplus-value (or the surplus product) solely as a fund for supplying the in- dividual consumption of the capitalist. In this chapter we have, so far treated it solely as a fund for accumulation. It is, however, neither the one nor the other, but is both to- gether. One portion is consumed by the capitalist as rev- enue, 1 the other is employed as capital, is accumulated. Given the mass of surplus-value, then, the larger the one of these parts, the smaller is the other. Cffiteris paribus, the ratio of these parts determines the magnitude of the ac- cumulation. But it is by the owner of the surplus-value, by the capitalist alone, that the division is made. It is his de- liberate act. That part of the tribute exacted by him which he accumulates, is said to be saved by him, because he does not eat it, i.e., because he performs the function of a capitalist, and enriches himself. Except as personified capital, the capitalist has no historical value, and no right to that historical existence, which, to use an expression of the witty Lichnowsky, "hasn't got no date," illusion mentioned in the text, is the really wonderful dogma, left by him as an in- heritance 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, "II est impossible de resoudre le prix necessaire dans ses elements les plus simples." (Storch, 1. c. Petersb. Edit. 1815, t. i. p. 140, 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 inves- tigated in the seventh part of Book iii. 1 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. Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 649 And so far only is the necessity for his own transitory ex- istence implied in the transitory necessity for the capitalist mode of production. But, so far as he is personified capital, it is not values in use and the enjoyment of them, but exchange- value and its augmentation, that spur him into action. Fan- atically bent on making value expand itself, he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production's sake; he thus forces the development of the productive powers of so- ciety, and creates those material conditions, which alone can form the real basis of a higher form of society, a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle. Only as personified capital is the capitalist respectable. As such, he shares with the miser the passion for wealth as wealth. But that which in the miser is a mere idiosyncrasy, is, in the capitalist, the effect of the social mechanism, of which he is but one of the wheels. More- over, the development of capitalist production makes it con- stantly necessary to keep increasing the amount of the capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition makes the immanent laws of capitalist production to be felt by each individual capitalist, as external coercive laws. It compels him to keep constantly extending his capital, in order to preserve it, but extend it he cannot, except by means of progressive accumulation. So far, therefore, as his actions are a mere function of capital endowed as capital is, in his person, with conscious- ness and a will his own private consumption is a robbery perpetrated on accumulation, just as in book-keeping by double entry, the private expenditure of the capitalist is placed on the debtor side of his account against his capital. To accumulate, is to conquer the world of social wealth, to in- crease the mass of human beings exploited by him, and thus to extend both the direct and the indirect sway of the capital- ist. 1 1 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 .... 650 Capitalist Production. But original sin is at work everywhere. As capitalist pro- duction, accumulation, and wealth, become developed, the capitalist ceases to be the mere incarnation of capital. He has a fellow-feeling for his own Adam, and his education gradu- ally enables him to smile at the rage for asceticism, as a mere prejudice of the old-fashioned miser. While the capitalist of the classical type brands individual consumption as a sin against his function, and as "abstinence" from accumulating, the modernised capitalist is capable of looking upon accumula- tion as "abstinence" from pleasure. " Two souls, alas, do dwell within his breast ; The one is ever parting from the other." l At the historical dawn of capitalist production, and every capitalist upstart has personally to go through this historical stage avarice, and desire to get rich, are the ruling passions. 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 him- self, 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 were-wolf, who lays waste all, more than any Cacus, Gerion or Antus. And yet decks himself out, and would be thought pious, so that people 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, while 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, 1. c.) 1 See Goethe's Faust. Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 651 But the progress of capitalist production not only creates a world of delights ; it lays open, in speculation and the credit system, a thousand sources of sudden enrichment. When a certain stage of development has been reached, a conventional degree of prodigality, which is also an exhibition of wealth, and consequently a source of credit, becomes a business neces- sity to the "unfortunate" capitalist. Luxury enters into capital's expenses of representation. Moreover, the capitalist gets rich, not like the miser, in proportion to his personal labour and restricted consumption, but at the same rate as he squeezes out the labour-power of others, and enforces on the labourer abstinence from all life's enjoyments. Although, therefore, the prodigality of the capitalist never possesses the bona-fide character of the open-handed feudal lord's, prodigal- ity, but, on the contrary, has always lurking behind it the most sordid avarice and the most anxious calculation, yet his ex- penditure grows with his accumulation, without the one neces- sarily restricting the other. But along with this growth, there is at the same time developed in his breast, a Faustian con- flict between the passion for accumulation, and the desire for enjoyment. Dr. Aikin says in a work published in 1795 : "The trade of Manchester may be divided into four periods. First, when manufacturers were obliged to work hard for their livelihood." They enriched themselves chiefly by robbing the parents, whose children were bound as apprentices to them : the parents paid a high premium, while the apprentices were starved. On the other hand, the average profits were low, and to ac- cumulate, extreme parsimony was requisite. They lived like misers, and were far from consuming even the interest on their capital. "The second period, when they had begun to acquire little fortunes, but worked as hard as before," for direct ex- ploitation of labour costs labour, as every slave-driver knows "and lived in as plain a manner as before. . . . The third, when luxury began, and the trade was pushed by send- ing out riders for orders into every market town in the King- dom. . . . It isi probable that few or no capitals of 3000 to 4000 acquired by trade existed here before 1690. 652 Capitalist Production. However, about that time, or a little later, the traders had got money beforehand, and began to build modern brick houses, instead of those of wood and plaster." Even in the early part of the 18th century, a Manchester manufacturer, who placed a pint of foreign wine before his guests, exposed himself to the remarks and headsttakings of all his neighbors. Before the rise of machinery, a manufacturer's evening expenditure at the public-house where they all met, never exceeded sixpence for a glass of punch, and a penny for a screw of tobacco. It was not till 1758, and this marks an epoch, that a person actually engaged in business was seen with an equipage of his own. "The fourth period," the last 30 years of the 18th century, "is that in which expense and luxury have made great progress, and was supported by a trade extended by means of riders and factors through every part of Europe." 1 What would the good Dr. Aikin say if he could rise from his grave and see the Manchester of to-day ? Accumulate, accumulate ! That is Moses and the prophets ! "Industry furnishes the material which saving accumulates." 2 Therefore, save, save, i.e., reconvert the greatest possible por- tion of surplus-value, or surplus-product into capital! Ac- cumulation for accumulation's sake, production for produc- tion's sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single instant deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth. 3 But what avails lamentation in the* face of historical necessity ? If to classical economy, the proletarian is but a machine for the production of surplus-value ; on the other hand, the capital- ist is in its eyes only a machine for the conversion of this ' surplus-value into additional capital. Political economy takes the historical function of the capitalist in bitter earnest. In order to charm out of his bosom the awful conflict between 1 Dr. Aikin: Description of the country from 30 to 40 miles round Manchester. Lond., 1795, p. 182, sqq. * A. Smith: 1. c., bk. iii., ch. iii. Even J. B. Say says: "Les epargnes des riches se font aux depens des pauvres." "The Roman proletarian lived almost entirely at the expense of society It can almost be said that modern lives at the expense of the proletarians, on what it keeps out of the remuneration of labour." (Sismondi: Etudes, &c., t. L, p, 84.) Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 653 ' the desire for enjoyment and the chase after riches, Malthus, about the year 1820, advocated a division of labour, which assigns to the capitalist actually engaged in production, the business of accumulating, and to the other sharers in surplus- value, to the landlords, the place-men, the beneficed clergy, > *u^ "S.S 4J ^ o'S^ -* . 2 ^-OjV "^ ^ . r-c dj o o ~ 3 |.g s J> Hi ^ fel T3 j< ^ ^ > p ^ G !7 r* !> &,=*; ^8 r" 5 'iT'^ *" 5 ^5 ^ 4J PH -v rt '(^ ^ [ } ~~* C 5n *^ ^_^ ^jQ O ^ CH - V ^J __ S s ^ - ^,HH ^ S CJ .]"! O ^--^ s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. 2 4 8 8 2 6 1 6 3 5 8 8 1 6 6 6 1 3J 2 4 8 8 1 7 1 9 2 4 8 8 1 1 1 9 6 8 1 1 -, 1 6, 10 6 2 8 6 1 01 3 5 1 1-, 2- 1 1 4 5 8 1 li SECOND VILLAGE. 6 S s. d. 7 1 -, 1 6, s. d. 10 a, d. 1 6 s. d. 8 6 s. d. 1 Of 6 8 7 1 ., 1 6, 7 1 3 5 8 8J 8 10 7 7 1 3J 5 8J 7 4 6 7 7 1 6J 5 5J 11 3 5 7 7 1 6J 5 5J 1 1 744 Capitalist Production. THIRD VILLAGE. *o c D " v Childre t> en si := Sja c I f 9 * w tt, 2 *"" . 8jg 111 Ifil 3 u -> D C ^C 4^ ^ C ||| ,2. S s % 3$u *^-'*~^ *~* 5 |^.2 s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. 4 6 7 7 1 6 1 3 5 7 1 -, 2 -, 11 6 10 10 8 2 1 1 A 2 5 1 -, 2 6, 5 1 4 2 ! The repeal of the Corn Laws gave a marvellous impulse to English agriculture. 2 Drainage on the most extensive scale, new methods of stall-feeding, and of the artificial cultivation of green crops, introduction of mechanical manuring appa- ratus, new treatment of clay soils, increased use of mineral manures, employment of the steam-engine, and of all kinds of new machinery, more intensive cultivation generally, characterised this epoch. Mr. Pusey, Chairman of the Royal Agricultural Society, declares that the (relative) expenses of fanning have been reduced nearly one-half by the introduction of new machinery. On the other hand, the actual return of the soil rose rapidly. Greater outlay of capital per acre, and, as a consequence, more rapid concentration of farms, were essential conditions of the new method. 3 At the same 1 London Economist, March 29th, 1845, p. 290. * The landed aristocracy advanced themselves to this end, of course per Parliament, funds from the State Treasury, at a very low rate of interest, which the farmers have to make good at a much higher rate. 1 The decrease of the middle-class farmers can be seen especially in the census category: "Farmer's son, grandson, brother, nephew, daughter, grand-daughter, sister, niece"; in a word, the members of his own family, employed by the farmer. This category numbered, in 1851, 216,851 persons; in 1861, only 176,151. From 1851 to 1871, the farms under 20 acres fell by more than 900 in number; those between 50 and 75 acres fell from 8,253 to 6,370; the same thing occurred with all other farms under 100 acres. On the other hand, during the same twenty years, the number of large farms increased; those of 300-500 acres rose from 7,771 to 8,410, those of more than 500 acres from 2.755 to 3,914, those of more than 1,000 acres from 492 to 582. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 745 time, the area under cultivation increased, from 1846 to 1856, by 464,119 acres, without reckoning the great area in the Eastern Counties which was transformed from rabbit war- rens and poor pastures into magnificent cornfields. It has already been seen that, at the same time, the total numbe- of persons employed in agriculture fell. As far as the actual agricultural labourers of both sexes and of all ages are con- cerned, their number fell from 1,241,396, in 1851, to 1,163,- 217 in 1861. l If the English Registrar-General, therefore, rightly remarks : "The increase of farmers and farm-labourers, since 1801, bears no kind of proportion ... to the in- crease of agricultural produce," 2 this disproportion obtains much more for the last period, when a positive decrease of the agricultural population went hand in hand with increase of the area under cultivation, with more intensive cultivation, un- heard-of accumulation of the capital incorporated with the soil, and devoted to its working, an augmentation in the prod- ucts of the soil without parallel in the history of English agriculture, plethoric rent-rolls of landlords, and growing wealth of the capitalist farmers. If we take this, together with the swift, unbroken extension of the markets, viz., the towns, and the reign of Free Trade, then the agricultural la- borer was at last, post tot discrimina rerum, placed in circum- stances that ought, secundum artem, to have made him drunk with happiness. But Professor Rogers comes lo the conclusion that the lot of the English agricultural labourer of to-day, not to speak of his predecessor in the last half on the 14th and in the 15th cen- tury, but only compared with his predecessor from 1770 to 1780, has changed for the worse to an extraordinary extent, that "the peasant has again become a serf," and a serf worse fed and worse clothed. 3 Dr. Julian Hunter, in his epoch- making report on the dwellings of the agricultural labourers, says: "The cost of the hind" (a name for the agricultural labourer, inherited from time of serfdom) "is fixed at the 1 The number of shepherds increased from 12,517 to 25,559. 2 Census. 1. c., p. 36. 8 Rogers. 1. c. p. 693, p. 10. Mr. Rogers belongs to the Liberal School, is a per- sonal friend of Cobden and Bright, and therefore no laudator temporis acti. 746 Capitalist Production. lowest possible amount on which he can live . . . the supplies of wages and shelter are not calculated on the profit to be derived from him. He is a zero in farming calcula- tions. 1 . . . The means [of subsistence] being always supposed to be a fixed quantity. 2 As to any further reduction J of his income, he may say, nihil habeo nihil euro. He has no fears for the future, because he has now only the spare supply necessary to keep him. He has reached the zero from which are dated the calculations of the farmer. Come what will, he has no share either in prosperity or adversity." 3 In the year 1863, an official inquiry took place into the con- ditions of nourishment and labour of the criminals condemned to transportation and penal servitude. The results are re- corded in two voluminous blue books. Among other -things it is said: "From an elaborate comparison between the diet of convicts in the convict prisons in England, and that of paupers in workhouses and of free labourers in the same country . . . it certainly appears that the former are much better fed than either of the two other classes," 4 whilst "the amount of labour required from an ordinary convict under penal servitude is about one half of what would be done by an ordinary day labourer." 5 A few characteristic depositions of witnesses : John Smith, governor of the Edinburgh prison, de- poses: No. 5056. "The diet of the English prisons [is] superior to that of ordinary labourers in England." No. 50. "It is the fact . . . that the ordinary agricultural la- bourers in Scotland very seldom get any meat at all." An- swer No. 3047. "Is there anything that you are aware of to account for the necessity of feeding them very much better than ordinary labourers ? Certainly not." No. 3048. "Do you think that further experiments ought to be made in order 1 Public Health. Seventh Report, 1864, p. 242. It is therefore nothing unusual either for the landlord to raise a labourer's rent as soon as he hears that he is earning a little more, or for the farmer to lower the wage of the labourer, "because his wife has found a tade," 1. c. *1. c. p. 135. *I. c. p. 134. 4 Report of the Commissioners .... relating to transportation and penal servitude, Lond. 1863, pp. 42, 50. 8 1. c. p. 77. Memorandum by the Lord Chief Justice. The General Lazv of Capitalist Accumulation. 747 to ascertain whether a dietary might not be hit upon for prisoners employed on public works nearly approaching to the dietary of free labourers? 1 . . . "He [the agricultural labourer] might say: 'I work hard, and have not enough to eat, and when in prison I did not work harder where 1 had plenty to eat, and therefore it is better for me to be in prison again than here.' " 2 From the tables appended to the first volume of the Report I have compiled the annexed comparative summary. WEEKLY AMOUNT OF NUTRIMENT. Quantity of Nitro*- genous Jn- gredients. Quantity of Non-Nitro- genous In- gredients. Quantity of Mineral Matter. Total. Ounces Ounces Ounces Ounces Portland ( convict 28-95 150:06 4-68 103:69 Sailor in the Navy 29-63 152-91 4:52 187-06 Soldier 25-55 114-49 3-94 14-98 Working Coachmaker 24-53 162-06 4-23 190:82 Compositor 21-24 100-83 3-12 125:19 Agricultural labourer 17:73 118-06 3-29 139-083 The general result of the inquiry by the medical commission of 1863, on the food of the lowest fed classes, is already known to the reader. He will remember that the diet of a great part of the agricultural labourer's families is below the minimum necessary "to arrest starvation diseases." This is especially the case in all the purely rural districts of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Wilts, Stafford, Oxford, Berks, and Herts. "The nourishment obtained by the labourer himself," says Dr. E. Smith, "is larger than the average quantity indicates, since he eats a larger share . . . necessary to enable him to per- 1 1. c. Vol. II. Minutes of Evidence. *1. c. Vol. I. Appendix p. 280. 1. c. pp. 274, 275. 748 Capitalist Production. form his labour ... of food than the other members of the family, including in the poorer districts nearly all the meat and bacon. . . . The quantity of food obtained by the wife and also by the children at the period of rapid growth, is in many cases, in almost every county, deficient, and particu- larly in nitrogen." 1 The male and female servants living with the farmers themselves are sufficiently nourished. Their num- ber fell from 288,277 in 1851, to 204,962 in 1861. "The la- bour of women in the fields," says Dr. Smith, "whatever may be its disadvantages, ... is under present circumstances of great advantage to the family, since it adds that amount of income which . . . provides shoes and clothing and pays the rent, and thus enables the family to be better fed." 2 One of the most remarkable results of the inquiry was that the agricultural labourer of England, as compared with other parts of the United Kingdom, "is considerably the worst fed," as the appended table shows: Quantities of Carbon and Nitrogen weekly consumed by an average agricultural adult. .Carbon, grains. Nitrogen, grains. England 46 -673 1 -594 Wales 48 -354 2 -031 Scotland 48 -980 2 :348 Ireland 43-366 2'434. 3 1 Public Health, Sixth Report, 1863, pp. 238, 249, 261, 262. 2 1. c. p. 262. 3 1. c. p. 17. The English agricultural labourer receives only ft as much milV and Vi as much bread as the Irish. Arthur Young in his "Tour through Ireland," at the beginning of this century, already noticed the better nourishment of the latter. The reason is simply this, that poor Irish farmer is incomparably more humane than the rich English. As regards Wales, that which is said in the text holds only for tlie south-west. All the doctors there agree that the increase of the deathrate through tuberculosis, scrofula, etc., increases in intensity with the deterioration of the physical condition of the population, and all ascribe this deterioration to pov- erty. "His (the farm labourer's) keep is reckoned at about five pence a day, but in many districts it was said to be of much less cost to the farmer," [himself very poor]. . . . "A morsel of the salt meat or bacon, . . . salted and dried to the texture of mahogany, and hardly worth the difficult process of assimilation . . . . is used to flavour a large quantity of broth or gruel, of meal and leeks, and day after day this is the labourer's dinner." The advance of industry resulted for him, in this harsh and damp climate, in "the abandonment of the solid home- spun clothing in favour of the cheap and so-called cotton goods," and of stronger The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 749 "To the insufficient quantity and miserable quality of the house accommodation generally had," says Dr. Simon, in his official Health Report, "by our agricultural labourers, almost every page of Dr. Hunter's report bears testimony. And gradually, for many years past, the state of the labourer in these respects has been deteriorating, house-room being now greatly more difficult for him to find, and, when found, greatly less suitable to his needs than, perhaps, for centuries had been the case. Especially within the last twenty or thirty years, the evil has been in very rapid increase, and the household cir- cumstances of the labourer are now in the highest degree de- plorable. Except in so far as they whom his labour enriches, see fit to treat him with a kind of pitiful indulgence, he is quite peculiarly helpless in the matter. Whether he shall find house-room on the land which he contributes to till, whether the house-room which he gets shall be human or swineish, drinks for so-called tea. "The agriculturist, after several hours' exposure to wind and rain, gains his cottage to sit by a fire of peat or of balls of clay and small coal kneaded together, from which volumes of carbonic and sulphurous acids are poured forth. His walls are of mud and stones, his floor the bare earth which was there before the hut was built, his roof a mass of loose and sodden thatch. Every crevice is stopped to maintain warmth, and in an atmosphere of diabolic odour, with a mud floor, with his only clothes drying on his back, he often sups and sleeps with his wife and children. Obstetricians who have passed parts of the night in such cabins have described how they found their feet sinking in the mud of the floor, and they were forced (easy task) to drill a hole through the wall to effect a little private respiration. It was attested by numerous witnesses in various grades of life, that to these insanitary influences, and many more, the underfed peasant was nightly ex- posed, and of the result, a debilitated and scrofulous people, there was no want of evidence The statements of the relieving officers of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire show in a striking way the same state of things. There is besides "a plague more horrible still, the great number of idiots." Now a word on the climatic conditions. "A strong south-west wind blows over the whole country for 8 or 9 months in the year, bringing with it torrents of rain, which discharge prin- cipally upon the western slopes of the hills. Trees are rare, except in sheltered places, and where not protected, are blown out of all shape. The cottages generally crouch under some bank, or often in a ravine or quarry, and none but the smallest sheep and native cattle can live on the pastures The young people mi- grate to the eastern mining districts of Glamorgan and Monmouth. Carmarthenshire is the breeding ground of the mining population and their hospital. The population can therefore barely maintain its numbers." Thus in Cardiganshire: 1851. 1861. Males 45,155 44,446 Females 52,459 52,955 97,614 97,401 97,614 97,401 Dr. Hunter's Report in Public Health, Seventh Report. 1864. pp. 498-502 passim. 750 Capitalist Production, whether he shall have the little space of garden that so vastly lessens the pressure of his poverty all this does not depend on his willingness and ability to pay reasonable rent for the decent accommodation he requires, but depends on the use which others may see fit to make of their 'right to do as they will with their own.' However large may be a farm, there is no law that a certain proportion of labourers' dwellings (much less of decent dwellings) shall be upon it; nor does any law reserve for the labourer ever so little right in that soil to which his industry is as needful as sun and rain. . . . An extraneous element weighs the balance heavily against him . . . the influence of the Poor Law in its provisions con- cerning settlement and chargeability. 1 Under this influence, each parish has a pecuniary interest in reducing to a minimum the number of its resident labourers : for, unhappily, agricul- tural labour instead of implying a safe and permanent in- dependence for the hard-working labourer and his family, im- plies for the most part only a longer or shorter circuit to eventual pauperism a pauperism which, during the whole cir- cuit, is so near, that any illness or temporary failure of occu- pation necessitates immediate recourse to parochial relief and thus all residence of agricultural population in a parish is glaringly an addition to its poor rates. . . . Large pro- prietors 2 . . . have but to resolve that there shall be no labourers' dwellings on their estates, and their estates will thenceforth be virtually free from half their responsibility for the poor. How far it has been intended, in the English con- stitution and law, that this kind of unconditional property in land should be acquirable, and that a landlord, 'doing as he wills with his own,' should be able to treat the cultivators of the soil as aliens, whom he may expel from his territory, is a question which I do not pretend to discuss. . . . For that (power) of eviction . . . does not exist only in 1 In 1865 this law was improved to some extent. It will soon be learnt from experience that tinkering of this sort is of no use. 2 In order to understand that which follows, we must remember that "Close Villages" are those whose owners are one or two large landlords. "Open villages," those whose soil belongs to many smaller landlords. It is in the latter that building speculators can build cottages and lodging-houses. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 751 theory. Chi a very large scale it prevails in practice prevails . . . as a main governing condition in the household cir- cumstances of agricultural labour. . . . As regards the extent of the evil, it may suffice to refer to the evidence which Dr. Hunter has compiled from the last census, that destruc- tion of houses, notwithstanding increased local demands for them, had, during the last ten years, been in progress in 821 separate parishes or townships of England, so that irrespec- tively of persons who had been forced to become non-resident (that is in the parishes in which they work), these parishes and townships were receiving in 1861, as compared with 1851, a population 5^ per cent, greater, into house-room 44 P er cent. less. . . . When the process of depopulation has completed itself, the result, says Dr. Hunter, is a show- village where the cottages have been reduced to a few, and where none but persons who are needed as shepherds, garden- ers, or game-keepers, are allowed to live ; regular servants who receive the good treatment usual to their class. 1 But the land requires cultivation, and it will be found that the labourers employed upon it are not the tenants of the owner, but that they come from a neighboring open village, perhaps three miles off, where a numerous small proprietary had received them when their cottages were destroyed in the close villages around. Where things are tending to the above result, often the cottages which stand, testify, in their unrepaired and wretched condition, to the extinction to which they are doomed. They are seen standing in the various stages of natural decay. While the shelter holds together, the labourer is permitted to rent it, and glad enough he will often be to do so, even at the price of decent lodging. But no repair, no improvement shall it receive, except such as its penniless occupants can supply. And when at last it becomes quite uninhabitable uninhabit- 1 A show village of this kind looks very nice, but is as unreal as the villages that Catherine II. saw on her journey to the Crimea. In recent times the shepherd also has often been banished from the show villages; e.g., near Market Harboro' is a sheep-farm of about 500 acres, which only employs the labour of one man. To reduce the long trudges over these wide plains, the beautiful pastures of Leicester and Northampton, the shepherd used to get a cottage on the farm. Now they give him a thirteenth shilling a week for lodging, that he must find far away in an open village. 752 Capitalist Production. able even to the humblest standard of serfdom it will be but one more destroyed cottage, and future poor-rates will be somewhat lightened. While great owners are thus escaping from poor-rates through the depopulation of lands over which they have control, the nearest town or open village receive the evicted labourers: the nearest, I say, but this "nearest" may mean three or four miles distant from the farm where the la- bourer has his daily toil. To that daily toil there will then have to be added, as though it were nothing, the daily need of walking six or eight miles for power of earning his bread. And whatever farm-work is done by his wife and children, is done at the same disadvantage. Nor is this nearly all the toil which the distance occasions him. In the open village, cot- tage-speculators bus scraps of land, which they throng as densely as they can with the cheapest of all possible hovels. And into those wretched habitations (which, even if they ad- join the open country, have some of the worst features of the worst town residences) crowd the agricultural labourers of England. 1 . . . Nor on the other hand must it be sup- posed that even when the labourer is housed upon the lands which he cultivates, his household circumstances are generally such as his life of productive industry would seem to deserve. Even on princely estates . . . his cottage . . . may 1 "The labourers' houses (in the open villages, which, of course, are always over- crowded) are usually in rows, built with their backs against the extreme edge of the plot of land which the builder could call his, and on this account are not allowed light and air, except from the front." (Dr. Hunter's Report, 1. c. ,p. 135.) Very often the beerseller or grocer of the village is at the same time the letter of its houses. In this case the agricultural labourer finds in him a second master, besides the farmer. He must be his customer as well as his tenant. "The hind with his 10s. a week, minus a rent of 4 a year .... is obliged to buy at the seller's own terms, his modicum of tea, sugar, flour, soap, candles, and beer." (1. c., p. 132.) These open villages form, in fact, the "penal settlements" of the English agricultural proletariat. Many of the cottages are simply lodging-houses, through which all the rabble of the neighbourhood passes. The country labourer and his family who had often, in a way truly wonderful, preserved, under the foulest condi- tions, a thoroughness and purity of character, go, in these, utterly to the devil, it is, of course, the fashion amongst the aristocratic shylocks to shrug their shoulders pharisaically at the building speculators, the small landlords, and the open villages. They know well enough that their "close villages" and "show villages" are the birth- places of the open villages, and could not exist without them. "The labourers . . . . were it not for the small owners, would, for by far the most part, have to sleep under the trees of the farms on which they work." (1. c., p. 135.) The system of "open" and "closed" villages obtains in all the Midland counties and throughout the East of England. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 753 be of the meanest description. There are landlords who deem any style good enough for their labourer and his family, and who yet do not disdain to drive with him the hardest pos- sible bargain for rent. 1 It may be but a ruinous one-bed- roomed hut, having no fire-grate, no privy, no opening window, no water supply but the ditch, no garden but the labourer is helpless against the wrong. . . . And the Nuisances Re- moval Acts . . . are ... a mere dead letter . . in great part dependent for their working on such cottage owners as the one from whom his (the labourer's) hovel is rented. . . . From brighter, but exceptional scenes, it is requisite in the interests of justice, that attention should again be drawn to the overwhelming preponderance of facts which are a reproach to the civilization of England. Lamentable indeed, must be the case, when, notwithstanding all that is evident with regard to the quality of the present accommodation, it is the common conclusion of competent ob- servers that even the general badness of dwellings is an evil infinitely less urgent than their mere numerical insufficiency. For years the overcrowding of rural labourer's dwellings has been a matter of deep concern, not only to persons who care for sanitary good, but to persons who care for decent and moral life. For again and again in phrases so -uniform that they seem stereotyped, reporters on the spread of epidemic disease in rural districts, have insisted on the extreme im- portance of that over-crowding, as an influence which renders it a quite hopeless task, to attempt the limiting of any infection which is introduced. And again and again it has been pointed out that, notwithstanding the many salubrious in- fluences which there are in country life, the crowding which 1 "The employer .... is .... directly or indirectly securing to him- self the profit on a man employed at 10s. a week, and receiving from this poor hind 4 or 5 annual rent for houses not worth 20 in a really free market, but maintained at their artificial value by the power of the owner to say 'Use my house, or go seek a hiring elsewhere, without a character from me.' .... Does a man wish to better himself, to go as a plate-layer on the railway, or to begin quarry- work, the same power is ready with 'Work for me at this low rate of wages, or be- gone at a week's notice; take your pig with you, and get what you can for the potatoes growing in your garden.' Should his interest appear to be better served by it, an enhanced rent is sometimes preferred in these cases by the owner (i.e. the farmer) as the penalty for leaving his service." (Dr. Hunter, 1. c., p. 132.) 2V 754 Capitalist Production. so favours the extension of contagious disease, also favours the> origination of disease which is not contagious. And those who have denounced the over-crowded state of our rural popu- lation have not been silent as to a further mischief. Even where their primary concern has been only with the injury to health, often almost perforce they have referred to other rela- tions on the subject. In showing how frequently it happens that adult persons of both sexes, married and unmarried, are huddled together in single small sleeping rooms, their reports have carried the conviction that, under the circumstances they describe, decency must always be outraged, and morality al- most of necessity must suffer. 1 Thus, for instance, in the appendix of my last annual report, Dr. Ord, reporting on an outbreak of fever at Wing, in Buckinghamshire, mentions how a young man who had come thither from Wingrave with fever, "in the first days of his illness slept in a room with nine other persons. Within a fortnight several of these persons were at- tacked, and in the course of a few weeks five out of the nine had fever, and one' died." . . . From Dr. Harvey, of St. George's Hospital, who, on private professional business, visited Wing during the time of the epidemic, I received in- formation exactly in the sense of the above report. . . . "A young woman having fever, lay at night in a room occupied by her father and mother, her bastard child, two young men (her brothers), and her two sisters, each with a bastard child 10 persons in all. A few weeks ago 13 persons slept in it." 2 Dr. Hunter investigated 5,375 cottages of agricultural lab- ourers, not only in the purely agricultural districts, but in all counties of England. Of these, 2,195 had only one bed- 1 "New married couples are no edifying study for grown-up brothers and sisters; and though instances must not be recorded, sufficient data are remembered to war- rant the remark, that great depression and sometimes death are the lot of the female participator in the offence of incest." (Dr. Hunter, 1. c., p. 137.) A mem- ber of the rural police who had for many years been a detective in the worst quarters of London, says of the girls of his village: "their boldness and shameless- ness I never saw equalled during some years of police life and detective duty in the worst parts of London They live like pigs, great boys and girls, mothers and fathers, all sleeping in one room, in many instances." (Child. Empl. Com. Sixth Report, 1867, p. 77 sq. 155.) * Public Health. Seventh Report, 1864, pp. 9, 14 passim. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 755 room (often at the same time used as living-room), 2,930 only two, and 250, more than two. I will give a few speci- mens culled from a. dozen counties. (1.) BEDFORDSHIRE. Wrestlingwotih. Bedrooms about 12 feet long and 10 broad, although many are smaller than this. The small, one-storied cots are often divided by partitions into two bed- rooms, one bed frequently in a kitchen, 5 feet 6 inches in height. Eent, 3 a year. The tenants have to make their own privies, the landlord only supplies a hole. As soon as one has made a privy, it is made use of by the whole neigh- borhood. One house, belonging to a family called Richard- son, was of quite unapproachable beauty. "Its plaster walls bulged very like a lady's dress in a curtsey. One gable end was convex, the other concave, and on this last, unfortunately, stood the chimney, a curved tube of clay and wood like an elephant's trunk. A long stick served as prop to prevent the chimney from falling. The doorway and window were rhomboidal." Of 17 houses visited, only 4 had more than one bedroom, and those four overcrowded. The cots with one bedroom sheltered 3 adults and 3 children, a married couple with 6 children, &c. Dunton. High rents, from 4 to 5 ; weekly wages of the man, 10s. They hope to pay the rent by the straw-plaiting of the family. The higher the rent, the greater the number that must work together to pay it. Six adults, living with 4 children in one sleeping apartment, pay 3 10s. for it. The cheapest house in Dunton, 15 feet long externally, 10 broad, let for 3. Only one of the houses investigated had 2 bedrooms. A little outside the village, a house whose "tenants dunged against the house-side," the lower 9 inches of the door eaten away through sheer rottenness ; the door- way, a single opening closed at night by a few bricks, in- geniously pushed up after shutting and covered with some matting. Half a window, with glass and frame, had gone the way of all flesh. Here, without furniture, huddled to- 756 Capitalist Production. gether, were 3 adults and 5 children. Dunton is not worse than the rest of Biggleswade Union. (2.) BERKSHIRE. Beenham. In June, 1864, a man, his wife and 4 children lived in a cot (one-storied cottage). A daughter came home from service with scarlet fever. She died. One child sick- ened and died. The mother and one child were down with typhus when Dr. Hunter was called in. The father and one child slept outside, but the difficulty of securing isolation was seen here, for in the crowded market of the miserable vil- lage lay the linen of the fever-stricken household, waiting for the wash. The rent of H.'s house, Is. a week ; one bedroom for man, wife, and 6 children. One house let for 8d. a- week, 14 feet 6 inches long, 7 feet broad; kitchen, 6 feet high ; the bedroom without window, fire-place, door, or open- ing, except into the lobby ; no garden. A man lived here for a little while, with two grown-up daughters and one grown- up son ; father and son slept on the bed, the girls in the pas- sage. Each of the latter had a child while the family was living here, but one went to the workhouse for her con- finement and then came home. (3.) BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. 30 cottages on 1,000 acres of land contained here about 130-140 persons. The parish of Bradenham comprises 1,000 acres; it numbered, in 1851, 36 houses and a population of 84 males and 54 females. This inequality of the sexes was partly remedied in 1861, when they numbered 98 males and 87 females; increase in 10 years of 14 men and 33 women. Meanwhile, the number of houses was one less. Winslow. Great part of this newly built in good style; de- mand for houses appears very marked, since very miserable cots let at Is. to Is. 3d. per week. Water Eaton. Here the landlords, in view of the increas- ing population, have destroyed about 20 per cent, of the ex- isting houses. A poor labourer, who had to go about 4 miles The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 757 to his work, answered the question, whether he could not find a cot nearer : "No ; they know better than to take a man in with my large family." Tinker's End, near Winslow. A bedroom in which were 4 adults and 4 children; 11 feet long, 9 feet broad, 6 feet 5 inches high at its highest part; another 11 feet 3 inches by 9 feet, 5 feet 10 inches high, sheltered 6 persons. Each of these families had less space than is considered necessary for a convict, No house had more than one bedroom, not one of them a back-door ; water very scarce ; weekly rent from Is. 4d. to 2s. In 16 of the houses visited, only 1 man that earned 10s. a week. The quantity of air for each person under the circumstances just described corresponds to that which he would have if he were shut up in a box of 4 feet measuring each way, the whole night. But then, the ancient dens af- forded a certain amount of unintentional ventilation. (4.) CAMBRIDGESHIRE, Gamblmgay belongs to several landlords. It contains the wretchedest cots to be found anywhere. Much straw-plait- ing. "A deadly lassitude, a hopeless surrendering up to filth," reigns in Gamblingay. The neglect in its centre, be- comes mortification at its extremities, north and south, where the houses are rotting to pieces. The absentee landlords bleed this poor rookery too freely. The rents are very high ; 8 or 9 persons packed in one sleeping apartment, in 2 cases 6 adults, each with 1 or 2 children in one small bedroom. (5.) ESSEX. In this county, diminutions in the number of persons and of cottages go, in many parishes, hand in hand. In not less than 22 parishes, however, the destruction of houses has not prevented increase of population, or has not brought about that expulsion which, under the name "migration to towns," generally occurs. In Fingringhoe, a parish of 3443 acres, were in 1851, 145 houses; in 1861, only 110. But the people did not wish to go away, and managed even to increase under 758 Capitalist Production. these circumstances. In 1851, 252 persons inhabited 61 houses, but in 1861, 262 persons were squeezed into 49 houses. In Basilden, in 1851, 157 persons lived on 1827 acres, in 35 houses; at the end of ten years, 180 persons in 27 houses. In the parishes of Fingringhoe, South Farnbridge, Widford, Basilden, and Ramsden Crags, in 1851, 1392 persons were living on 8449 acres in 316 houses; in 1861, on the same area, 1473 persons in 249 houses. (6.) HEREFORDSHIRE. This little county has suffered more from the "eviction- spirit" than any other in England. At Nadby, over-crowded cottages generally, with only 2 bedrooms, belonging for the most part to the farmers. They easily let them for 3 or 4 a-year, and paid a weekly wage of 9s. (7.) HUNTINGDON. Hartford had, in 1851, 87 houses; shortly after this, 19 cottages were destroyed in this small parish of 1720 acres; population in 1831, 452 ; in 1852, 832 ; and in 1861, 341. 14 cottages, each with 1 bedroom, were visited. In one, a mar- ried couple, 3 grown-up sons, 1 grown-up daughter, 4 chil- dren in all 10; in another, 3 adults, 6 children. One of these rooms, in which 8 people slept, was 12 feet 10 inches long, 12 feet 2 inches broad, 6 feet 9 inches high: the average, without making any deduction for projections into the apart- ment, gave about 130 cubic feet per head. In the 14 sleep- ing rooms, 34 adults and 33 children. These cottages are seldom provided with gardens, but many of the inmates are able to farm small allotments at 10s. or 12s. per rood. These allotments are at a distance from the houses, which are with- out privies. The family "must either go to the allotment to deposit their ordures," or, as happens in this place, saving your presence, "use a closet with a trough set like a drawer in a chest of drawers, and drawn out weekly and conveyed to the allotment to be emptied where its contents were wanted." In Japan, the circle of life-conditions moves more decently than this. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 759 (8.) LINCOLNSHIRE. Langtoft. A man lives here, in Wright's house, with his wife, her mother, and 5 children ; the house has a front kit- chen, scullery, bedroom over the front kitchen ; front kitchen and bedroom, 12 feet 2 inches by 9 feet 5 inches; the whole ground floor, 21 feet 2 inches by 9 feet 5 inches. The bed- room is a garret; the walls run together into the roof like a sugar-loaf, a dormer-window opening in front. "Why did he live here ? On account of the garden ? No ; it is very small. Rent? High, Is. 3d. per week. Near his work? No ; 6 miles away, so that he walks daily, to and fro, 12 miles. He lived there, because it was a tenantable cot," and because he wanted to have a cot for himself alone, anywhere, at any price, and in any conditions. The following are the statistics of 12 houses in Langtoft, with 12 bedrooms, 38 adults, and 36 children. TWELVE HOUSES IN LANGTOFT. in *S ol o Houses. Bedroom Adults. Children. Number persons Houses. Bedroom Adults . Children Number < persons No. 1. 1 3 5 8 No. 7. 1 3 3 6 M 2. 1 4 3 1 ,, 8. 1 3 2 5 ,, 3. 1 4 4 8 M 1 2 2 4. 1 5 4 9 ,,io. 1 2 3 5 5. 1 2 2 4 11. 1 3 3 6 ,, G. 1 5 3 8 12. 1 2 4 6 i (9.) KENT. Kennington, very seriously over-populated in 1859, when diphtheria appeared, and the parish doctor instituted a med- 760 Capitalist Production. ical inquiry into the condition of the poorer classes. He found that in this locality, where much labour is employed, various cots had been destroyed and no new ones built, hi one district stood four houses, named birdcages ; each had 4 rooms of the following dimensions in feet and inches: Kitchen ; 9 ft. by 58 ft. 11 by 6 ft. 6 Scullery : 8 ft. 6 by 4 ft 6 by 6 ft. 6. Bedroom: 8 ft 5 by 5 ft 10 by 6 ft 3. Bedroom: 8 ft 3 by 8 ft 4 by 6 ft 3. (10.) NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. BrinwortJi, Pickford and Floore: in these villages in tho winter 20 30 men were lounging about the streets from want of work. The farmers do not always till sufficiently the corn and turnip lands, and the landlord has found it best to throw all his farms together into 2 or 3. Hence want of employ- .ment Whilst on one side of the wall, the land calls for labour, on the other side the defrauded labourers are casting at it longing glances. Feverishly overworked in summer, and half- starved in winter, it is no wonder if they say in their peculiar dialect, "the parson and gentlefolk seem frit to death at them." At Floore, instances, in one bedroom of the smallest size, of couples with 4, 5, 6 children ; 3 adults with 5 children ; a couple with grandfather and 6 children down with scarlet fever, &c. ; in two houses with two bedrooms, two families of 8 and 9 adults respectively. (11.) WILTSHIRE. Stratton. 31 houses visited, 8 with only one bedroom. Peri till, in the same parish : a cot let at Is. 3d. weekly with 4 adults and 4 children, had nothing good about it, except tho walls, from the floor of rough-hewn pieces of stones to the roof of worn-out thatch. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 761 (12.) WORCESTERSHIRE. Kopse-destniction here not quite so excessive; yet from :51 to 1861, the numher of inhabitants to each house on the average, has risen from 4 '2 to 4-6. Badsey. Many cots and little gardens here. Some of the farmers declare that the cots are "a great nuisance here, be- cause they bring the poor." On the statement of one gentle- man : "The poor are none the better for them ; if you build 500 they will let fast enough, in fact, the more you build, the more they want," (according to him the houses give birth to the inhabitants, who then by a law of Nature press on "the means of housing"). Dr. Hunter remarks: "Now these poor must come from somewhere, and as there is no particular at- traction, such as doles, at Badsey, it must be repulsion from some other unfit place, which will send them here. If each could find an allotment near his work, he would not prefer Badsey, where he pays for his scrap of ground twice as much as the farmer pays for his." The continual emigration to the towns, the continual forma- tion of surplus-population in the country through the concen- tration of farms, conversion of arable land into pasture, ma- chinery, &c., and the continual eviction of the agricultural population by the destruction of their cottages, go hand in hand. The more empty the district is of men, the greater is its "relative surplus-population," the greater is their pressure on the means of employment, the greater is the absolute ex- cess of the agricultural population over the means for hous- ing it, the greater, therefore, in the villages is the local sur- plus-population and the most pestilential packing together of human beings. The packing together of knots of men in scat- tered little villages and small country towns corresponds to the forcible draining of men from the surface of the land. The continuous superseding of the agricultural labourers, in spite of their diminishing number and the increasing mass of their products, gives birth to their pauperism. Their pauperism is ultimately a motive to their eviction and the chief source of their miserable housing which breaks down their last power 762 Capitalist Production. of resistance, and makes them mere slaves of the landed pro- prietors and the farmers. 1 Thus the minimum of wages be- comes a law of Nature to them. On the other hand, the land, in spite of its constant "relative surplus-population," is at the same time under-populated. This is seen, not only locally at the points where the efflux of men to towns, mines, railroad- making, &c., is most marked. It is to be seen everywhere, in harvest-time as well as in spring and summer, at those fre- quently recurring times when English agriculture, so care- ful and intensive, wants extra hands. There are always too many agricultural labourers for the ordinary, and always too few for the exceptional or temporary needs of the cultivation of the soil. 2 Hence we find in the official documents contra- dictory complaints from the same places of deficiency and ex- cess of labour simultaneously. The temporary or local want of labour brings about no rise in wages, but a forcing of the women and children into the fields, and exploitation at an age constantly lowered. As soon as the exploitation of the 1 "The heaven-born employment of the hind gives dignity even to this position. He is not a slave, but a soldier of peace, and deserves his place in married men's quarters to be provided by the landlord, who has claimed a power of enforced labour similar to that the country demands of the soldier. He no more receives market price for his work than does the soldier. Like the soldier he is caught young, ignorant, knowing only his own trade, and his own locality. Early marriage and the operation of the various laws of settlement affect the one as enlistment and the Mutiny Act affect the other." (Dr. Hunter, 1. c., p. 132.) Sometimes an excep- tionally soft-hearted landlord relents at the solitude he has created. "It is a melancholy thing to stand alone in one's country," said Lord Leicester, when com- plimented on the completion of Hookham. "I look around and not a house is to be seen but mine. I am the giant of Giant Castle, and have eat up all my neigh- bours." *A similar movement is seen during the last ten years in France; in proportion as capitalist production there takes possession of agriculture, it drives the "surplus" agricultural population into the towns. Here also we find deterioration in the housing and other conditions at the source of the surplus-population. On the special "proletariat fonder," to which this system of parcelling out the land has given rjse, see, among others, the work of Colins, already quoted, and Karl Marx "Der Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte." 2nd edition. Hamburg, 1869, pp. 56, &c. In 1846, the town population in France was represented by 24.42, the agri- cultural by 75.58; in 1861, the town by 28.86, the agricultural by 71.4 per cent. During the last 5 years, the diminution of the agricultural percentage of the popu- lation has been yet more marked. As early as 1846, Pierre Dupont in his "Ouvriers" sang: Mai vetus, loges dans des trous, Sous les combles, dans les decombres, Nous vivons avec les hiboux Et les larrons, amis des ombres. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 763 women and children takes place on a larger scale, it becomes in turn a new means of making a surplus-population of the male agricultural labourer and of keeping down his wage. In the east of England thrives a beautiful fruit of this vicious circle the so-called gang-system, to which I must briefly re- turn here. 1 The gang-system obtains almost exclusively in the counties of Lincoln, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Nottingham, here and there in the neighbouring counties of Northampton, Bedford, and Rutland. Lincolnshire will serve us as an example. A large part of this country is new land, marsh formerly, or even, as in others of the eastern counties just named, won lately from the sea. The steam-engine has worked wonders in the way of drainage. What were once fens and sandbanks, bear now a luxuriant sea of corn and the highest of rents. The same thing holds of the alluvial lands won by human endeavor, as in the island of Axholme and other parishes on the banks of the Trent. In proportion as the new farms arose, not only were no new cottages built : old ones were demolished, and the supply of labour had to come from open villages, miles away, by long roads that wound along the sides of the hills. There alone had the population formerly found shelter from the incessant floods of the winter- time. The labourers that dwell on the farms of 400 1000 acres (they are called "confined labourers") are solely em- ployed on such kinds of agricultural work as is permanent, difficult, and carried on by aid of horses. For every 100 acres there is, on an average, scarcely one cottage. A fen farmer, e.g., gave evidence- before the Commission of In- quiry: "I farm 320 acres, all arable land. I have not one cottage on my farm. I have only one labourer on my farm now. I have four horsemen lodging about. We get light work done by gangs." 2 The soil requires much light field labour, such as weeding, hoeing, certain processes of manur- ing, removing of stones, &c. This is done by the gangs, or or- ganised bands that dwell in the open villages. 1 "Sixth and last Report of the Children's Employment Commission," published at the end of March, 1867. It deals solely with the agricultural. 2 "Child. Empl. Comm., VI. Report." Evidence 173, p. 37. 764 Capitalist Production. The gang consists of 10 to 40 or 50 persons, women, young persons of both sexes (13-18 years of age, although the boys are for the most part eliminated at the age of 13), and chil- dren of both sexes (6-13 years of age). At the head is the gang-master, always an ordinary agricultural labourer, gen- erally what is called a bad lot, a scapegrace, unsteady, drunken, but with a dash of enterprise and savior faire. He is the recruiting-sergeant for the gang, which works under him, not under the farmer. He generally arranges with the latter for piece-work, and his income, which on the average is not very much above that of an ordinary agricultural la- bourer, 1 depends almost entirely upon the dexterity with which he manages to extract within the shortest time the greatest possible amount of labour from his gang. The farmers have discovered that women work steadily only under the direction of men, but that women and children, once set going, impetuously spend their life-force as Fourier knew while the adult male labourer is shrewd enough to economise his as much as he can. The gang-master goes from one farm to another, and thus employs his gang from 6 to 8 months in the year. Employment by him is, therefore, much more lucrative and more certain for the labouring families, than employment by the individual farmer, who only employs chil- dren occasionally. This circumstance so completely rivets his influence in the open villages that children are generally only to be hired through his instrumentality. The lending out of these individually, independently of the gang, is his second trade. The "drawbacks" of the system are the over-work of the children and young persons, the enormous marches that they make daily to and from the farms, 5, 6, and sometimes 7 miles distant, finally, the demoralisation of the gang. Although the gangmaster, who, in some districts is called "the driver," is armed with a long stick, he uses it but seldom, and complaints of brutal treatment are exceptional. He is a democratic em- peror, or a kind of Pied Piper of Hamelin. He must there- 1 Some gangmasters, however, have worked themselves up to the position of farmers of 500 acres, or proprietors of whole rows of houses. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 765 fore be popular with his subjects, and lie binds them to him- self by the charms of the gipsy life under his direction. Coarse freedom, a noisy jollity, and obscenest impudence give attractions to the gang. Generally the gangmaster pays up in a public house; then he returns home at the head of the procession reeling drunk, propped up right and left by a stalwart virago, while children and young persons bring up the rear, boisterous, and singing chaffing and bawdy songs. On the return journey what Fourier calls "phanerogamic," is the order of the day. The getting with child of girls of 13 and 14 by their male companions of the same age, is common. The open villages which supply the contingent of the gang, become Sodoms and Gomorrahs, 1 and have twice as high a rate of illegitimate births as the rest of the kingdom. The moral character of girls bred in these schools, when married women, was shown above. Their children, when opium does not give them the finishing stroke, are born recruits of the gang. The gang in its classical form just described, is called the public, common, or tramping gang. For there are also private gangs. These are made up in the same way as the common gang, but count fewer members, and work, not under a gang- master, but under some old farm servant, whom the farmer does not know how to employ in any better way. The gipsy fun has vanished here, but according to all witnesses, the pay- ment and treatment of the children is worse. The gang-system, which during the last years has steadily increased, 2 clearly does not exist for the sake of the gang- master. It exists for the enrichment of the large farmers, 3 and indirectly of the landlords. 4 For the farmer there is no 1 "Half the girls of Ludford have been ruined by going out" (in gangs). 1. c. p. 6, 32. * "They (gangs) have greatly increased of late years. In some places they are said to have been introduced at comparatively late dates; in others where gangs . . . . have been known for many years .... more and younger children are employed in them." (1. c., p. 79, 174.) 3 "Small farmers never employ gangs." "It is not on poor land, but on land which affords rent of from 40 to 50 shillings, that women and children are em- ployed in the greatest numbers." (1. c., pp. 17, 14.) 4 To one of these gentlemen the taste of his rent was so grateful that he in- dignantly declared to the Commission of Inquiry that the whole hubbub was only 766 Capitalist Production. more ingenious method of keeping his labourers well below the normal level, and yet of always having an extra hand ready for extra work, of extracting the greatest possible amount of labour with the least possible amount of money, 1 and of making adult male labour "redundant." From the exposition already made, it will be understood why, on the one hand, a greater or less lack of employment for the agricultural labourer is admitted, while on the other, the gang-system is at the same time declared "necessary" on ac- count of the want of adult male labour and its migration to the towns. 2 The cleanly weeded land, and the uncleanly hu- man weeds, of Lincolnshire, are pole and counterpole of capitalistic production. 3 due to the name of the system. If instead of "gang" it were called "the Agricul- tural Juvenile Industrial Self-supporting Association," everything would be all right. 1 "Gang work is cheaper than other work; that is why they are employed," says a former gangmaster (1. c., p. 17, 14). "The gang-system is decidedly the cheap- est for the farmer, and decidedly the worst for the children," says a farmer. (1. c., p. 16, 3.) * "Undoubtedly much of the work now done by children in gangs used to be done by men and women. More men are out of work now where children and women are employed than formerly." (1. c., p. 43, n. 202.) On the other hand, "the labour question in some agricultural districts, particularly the arable, is becoming so serious in consequence of emigration, and the facility afforded by railways for get- ting to large towns that I (the "I" is the steward of a great lord) think the services of children are most indispensable." (1. c., p. 80, n. 180.) For the "labour ques- tion" in English agricultural districts, differently from the rest of the civilised world, means the landlords' and farmers' question, viz., how it is possible, despite an always increasing exodus of the agricultural folk, to keep up a sufficient relative surplus-population in the country, and by means of it keep the wages of the agri- cultural labourer at a minimum? The "Public Health Report," where in dealing with the subject of children's mortality, the gang-system is treated in passing, remains unknown to the press, and, therefore, to the English public. On the other hand, the last report of the "Child. Empl. Comm." afforded the press sensational copy always welcome. Whilst the Liberal press asked how the fine gentlemen and ladies, and the well-paid clergy of the State Church, with whom Lincolnshire swarms, could allow such a system to arise on their estates, under their very eyes, they who send out expressly missions to the Antipodes, "for the improvement of the morals of South Sea Islanders" the more refined press confined itself to reflections on the coarse degradation of the agri- cultural population who are capable of selling their children into such slavery! Under the accursed conditions to which these "delicate" people condemn the agri- cultural labourer, it would not be surprising if he ate his own children. What is really wonderful is the healthy integrity of character, he has, in great part, retained. The official reports prove that the parents, even in the gang districts, loathe the gang-system. "There is much in the evidence that show that the parents of the children would, in many instances, be glad to be aided by the requirements of a legal obligation, to resist the pressure and the temptations to which they are often sub- ject, fhey are liable to be urged at times by the parish officers, at times by em- The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation, 767 (/.) IRELAND. In concluding this section, we must travel for a moment to Ireland. First, the main facts of the case. The population of Ireland had, in 1841, reached 8,222,664 ; in 1851, it had dwindled to 6,623,985 ; in 1861, to 5,850,309 ; in 1866, to 5^ millions, nearly to its level in 1801. The diminution began with the famine year, 1846, so that Ireland, in less than twenty years, lost more than^-ths of its people. 1 Table A. LIVE STOCK. Year. HOBSES. CATTLE. Total Number. Decrease. Total Number. Decrease. Increase. 1860 619,811 3,606,374 1861 614,232 5,993 3,471,688 138,316 1862 602,894 11,338 3,254,890 216,798 1863 579,978 22,916 3,144,231 110,695 1864 562,158 17,820 3,262,294 118,063 1865 547,867 14,291 3,493,414 231,120 ployers, under threats of being themselves discharged, to be taken to work at an age when . . . school attendance . . . would be manifestly to their greater ad- vantage All that time and strength wasted; all the suffering from extra and unprofitable fatigue produced to the labourer and to his children; every instance in which the parent may have traced the moral ruin of his child to the under- mining of delicacy by the overcrowding of cottages, or to the contaminating in- fluences of the public gang, must have been so many incentives to feelings in the minds of the labouring poor which can be well understood, and which it would be needless to particularise. They must be conscious that much bodily and mental pain has thus been inflicted upon them from causes for which they were in no way answerable; to which, had it b.en in their power, they would have in no way consented; and against which they were powerless to struggle." (1. c., p. xx., 82, and xxiii., n. 90.) 1 Population of Ireland, 1801, 5,319,867 persons; 1811, 0,084,996; 1821, 6,869.544; 1831, 7,828,347; 1841, 8,222,664. Capitalist Production. Its total emigration from May, 1851, to July, 1865, numbered 1,591,487 : the emigration during the years 1861-1865 was more than half-a-million. The number of inhabitated houses fell, from 1851-1861, by 52,990. From 1851-1861, the number of holdings of 15 to 30 acres increased 61,000, that of holdings over 30 acres, 109,000, whilst the total number of all farms fell 120,000, a fall, therefore, solely due to the suppression of farms under 15 acres i.e., to their central- isation. Year. SHEEP. PIGS. Total Number. Decrease. Increase. Total Number. Decrease. Increase. 1860 3,542,080 1,271,072 1861 3,556,050 13,970 1,102,042 169,030 1862 3,456,132 99,918 1,154,324 52,282 1863 3,308,204 147,982 1,067,458 86,866 1864 3,366,941 58,737 1,058,480 8,978 1865 3,688,742 321,801 1,299,893 241,413 The decrease of the population was naturally accompanied by a decrease in the mass of products. For our purpose, it suffices to consider the 5 years from 1861-1865 during which over half-a-million emigrated, and the absolute number of people sank by more than of a million. From the above tables it results: HORSES. CATTLE. SHEEP. PIGS. Absolute Decrease. Absolute Decrease. Absolute Increase. Absolute Increase. 72,358 i 116,626 146,608 28,819 i 1 The result would be found yet more unfavourable if we went further back. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 769 Let us now turn to agriculture, which yields the means of subsistence for cattle and for men. In the following table is calculated the decrease or increase for each separate year, as compared with its immediate predecessor. The Cereal Crops include wheat, oats, barley, rye, beans and peas ; the Green Crops, potatoes, turnips, mangolds, beet-root, cabbages, car- rots, parsnips, vetches, &c. Table B. INCREASE OR DECREASE IN THE AREA UNDER CROPS AND GRASS IN ACERAGE. y V > Cereal Crops. Green Crops. Grass and Clover. Flax. Total Cultivated Land. Decrease. Decrease. Increase. Decrease. Increase. Decrease. Increase. Decrease. Increase. Acres. Acres. Acres Acres Acres Acres Acres. Acres Acres. 1881 15,701 36,974 47,969 19,271 81,873 1862 72,784 74,785 6,623 2,055 138,841 1863 144,719 19,358 7,724 63,922 92,431 1864 122,437 2,317 47,486 87,761 10,493 1855 72,450 25,241 68,970 50,159 28,218 1861-65 438,041 107,984 82,834 122,850 330,860 In the year 1865, 127,470 additional acres came under the heading "grass land," chiefly because the area under the head- ing of "bog and waste unoccupied," decreased by 101,5-13 acres. If we compare 1865 with 1864, there is a decrease in cereals of 246,667 qrs., of which 48,999 were wheat, 160,605 oats, 29,892 barley, &c. : the decrease in potatoes was 446,398 tons, although the area of their cultivation increased in 1865. From the movement of population and the agricultural pro- duce of Ireland, we pass to the movement in the purse of its Thus: Sheep in 1865, 3,688,742, but in 1856, 3,094,294. Pigs in 1865, 1,299,893, but in 1858, 1,409,883. 2 W 770 Capitalist Production. GO ? w PH H M ffl O M g H 3 tigl ||s *" W 00 <" ; ; j * " . 0** A> 5? g If ~ |" a" ^.C 5 *oo Q|^S||||- tfflj u u* u a Increai creas i i N 3 S -H "o ^ " __^.2^3 O ... U "rt . u ^ t~ ^ co ex --.-. c C 'S V o *5o<-= S* .:5 n ^ g S 2 cfl ^.-a jj"H -<= ?|5 8i |i' S v E llS U 5 e a co -H e* b in * <-i b ipsii i Is5a 5 .rf| o , o n v CS o co os 00-* o as eo TJI ej co ya-l|7l s eo * * 'fo eo o co o g IH Sjj**!! H u < I u O 2 c * co ^ os -r>o _ eo >o eo - nj; ti --^^ ris"i;i Illii^i IZ S * S S* w 1 .. C * i? k I Q kp O i 11 i os" g" co" g" fe -a co o E 3,2 C C< = T3- s!*;:- 8 ^ .. 'C "O " V> at Increas< crease *" - 8 ' "" 8" y fc'S S - 5< o 2 Es "o-S S 2 2^ |;,s-itS|| Cultivated 6 a i to" j" t-" o" *C c -nfi O S " Oj= rf - X S's'ft 1 *" u - a fc oo""*- 1 4> fi u f. I 1 1 1 1 1 i 5 1 1; iJ is'S3'-i jSSls*8 8 *| ~ .2o.co^S^ s Sll Illlf x "J ""-o tS u S c .. 2 s'c* : | i 77 J j T H i IJ k -lill-9 jss^HI^l u 1 c - 1 : ^ i : S ? 1 = = I jf I || j J I 1 | j H-2 S .-S-SS^- 5 .g g a e S 8 Coooo2w2oja 3r 1 As Ireland is regarded as the promised land of the "principle of population,'' A. Sadler, before the publication of his work on population, issued his famous book. "Ireland, its evils and their remedies. 2nd edition, London, 1829." Here, by com parison of the statistics of the individual provinces, and of the individual counties in each province, he proves that the misery there is not, as Malthus would have it, hi proportion to the number of the population, but in inverse ratio to this. 2 Between 1851 and 1874, the total number ot emigrants amounted to 2,325,922. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation 775 it decreases. Whilst large number of acres, that were for- merly tilled, lie idle or are turned permanently into grass- land, a great part of the waste land and peat bogs that were unused formerly, become of service for the extension of cat- tle-breeding. The smaller and medium farmers I reckon among these all who do not cultivate more than 100 acres still make up about ^j-ths of the whole number. 1 They are, one after the other, and with a degree of force unknown be- fore, crushed by the competition of an agriculture managed by capital, and therefore they continually furnish new recruits to the class of wage-labourers. The one great industry of Ire- land, linen-manufacture, requires relatively few adult men and only employs altogether, in spite of its expansion since the price of cotton rose in 1861-1866, a comparatively insig- nificant part of the population. Like all the other great mod- ern industries, it constantly produces, by incessant fluctuations, a relative surplus-population within its own sphere, even with an absolute increase in the mass of human beings absorbed by it. The misery of the agricultural population forms the pedestal for gigantic shirt-factories, whose armies of labourers are, for the most part, scattered over the country. Here, we encounter again the system described above of domestic in- dustry, which in under-payment and over-work, possesses its own systematic means for creating supernumerary labourers. Finally, although the depopulation has not such destructive consequences as would result in a country with fully developed capitalistic production, it does not go on without constant re- action upon the home>-market. The gap which emigration causes here, limits not only the local demand for labour, but also the incomes of small shopkeepers, artisans, tradespeople generally. Hence the diminution in incomes between 60 and 100 in table E. A clear statement of the condition of the agricultural la- bourers in Ireland is to be found in the Reports of the Irish Poor Law Inspectors (1870). 2 Officials of a government 1 According to a table in Murphy's "Ireland industrial, political and social," 1870, 9*.6 per cert, of the holdings do not reach 100 acres, 5.4 exceed 100 acres. 2 "K29<-rV; /r):n the Poor Law Inspectors on the wages of Agricultural Labourers 776 Capitalist Production. which is maintained only by bayonets and by a state of siege, now open, now disguised, they have to observe all the pre- cautions of language that their colleagues in England disdain. In spite of this, however, they do not let their government cradle itself in illusions. According to them the rate of wages in the country, still very low, has within the last 20 years risen 50-60 per cent., and stands now, on the average, at 6s. to 9s. per week. But behind this apparent rise, is hidden an actual fall in wages, for it does not correspond at all to the rise in price of the necessary means of subsistence that has taken place in the meantime. For proof, the following ex- tract from the official accounts of an Irish workhouse. AVERAGE WEEKLY COST PER HEAD. Year ended Provisions and Necessaries. Clothing. Total. 29th Sept. 1849 Is. 3Jd. 3d. Is. 6Jd. 1869 2s. 7|d. 6d. SB. IJd. The price of the necessary means of subsistence is therefore fully twice, and that of clothing exactly twice, as much as they were 20 years before. Even apart from this disproportion, the mere comparison of the rate of wages expressed in gold would give a result far from accurate. Before the famine, the great mass of agricul- tural wages were paid in kind, only the smallest part in money; to-day, payment in money is the rule. From this it follows that, whatever the amount of the real wage, its money rate must rise. "Previous to the famine, the labourer enjoyed his cabin . . . with a rood, or half-acre or acre in Dublin, 1870." See also "Agricultural Labourers (Ireland) Return, etc., 8 March 1862, London 1862." The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 777 of land, and facilities for ... a crop of potatoes. He was able to read his pig and keep fowl. . . . But they now have to buy bread, and they have no refuse upon which they can feed a pig or fowl, and they have consequently no benefit from the sale of a pig, fowl, or eggs." 1 In fact, for- merly, the agricultural labourers were but the smallest of the small farmers, and formed for the most part a kind of rear- guard of the medium and large farms on which they found employment Only since the catastrophe of 1846 have they begun to form a fraction of the class of purely wage-la- boirrers, a special class, connected with its wage-masters only b,y monetary relations. We know what were the conditions of their dwellings in 1846. Since then they have grown yet worse. A part of the agricultural labourers, which, however, grows less day by day, dwells still on the holdings of the farmers in over-crowded huts, whose hideousness far surpasses the worst that the English agricultural labourers offered us in this way. And this holds generally with the exception of certain tracts of Ulster; in the south, in the counties of Cork, Limerick, Kil- kenny, &c. ; in the east, in Wicklow, Wexford, &c. ; in the centre of Ireland, in King's and Queen's County, Dublin, &c. ; in the west, in Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo, Galway, &c. "The agricultural labourers' huts," an inspector cries out, "are a disgrace to the Christianity and to the civilisation of this country." 2 In order to increase the attractions of these holes for the labourers, the pieces of land belonging thereto from time immemorial, are systematically confiscated. "The mere sense that they exist subject to this species of ban, on the part of the landlords and their agents, has . . . given birth in the minds of the labourers to corresponding senti- ments of antagonism and dissatisfaction towards those by whom they are thus led to regard themselves are being treated as ... a proscribed race." 3 The first act of the agricultural revolution was to sweep away the huts situated on the field of labour. This was done on the largest scale, and as if in obedience to a command from 1 1. c. pp. 29, 1. * 1. c. p. 12. L. c. p. 12, 778 Capitalist Production. on high. Thus many labourers were compelled to seek shelter in villages and towns. There they were thrown like refuse into garrets, holes, cellars and corners, in the worst back slums. Thousands of Irish families, who according to the testimony of the English, eaten up as these are with national prejudice, are notable for their rare attachment to the domestic hearth, for their gaiety and the purity of their home-life, found them- selves suddenly transplanted into hotbeds of vice. The men are now obliged to seek work of the neighboring farmers and are only hired by the day, and therefore under the most precarious forms of wage. Hence "they sometimes have long distances to go to and from work, often get wet, and suffer much hardship, not unfrequently ending in sickness, disease and want." 1 "The towns have had to receive from year to year what was deemed to be the surplus-labour of the rural division ; " 2 and then people still wonder "there is still a surplus of labour in the towns and villages, and either a scarcity or a threatened scarcity in some of the country divisions." 3 The truth is that this want only becomes perceptible "in harvest-time, or during spring, or at such times as agricultural operations are carried on with activity ; at other periods of the year many hands are idle ;" 4 that "from the digging out of the main crop of potatoes in October until the early spring following . . ' . there is no employment for them ;" 5 and further, that during the ac- tive times they " are subject to broken days and to all kinds of interruptions." 6 These results of the agricultural revolution i.e., the change of arable into pasture land, the use of machinery, the most rigorous economy of labour, &c., are still further aggravated by the model landlords, who, instead of spending their rents in other countries, condescend to live in Ireland on their de- mesnes. In order that the law of supply and demand may not be broken, these gentlemen draw their "labour-supply . . . chiefly from their small tenants,, who are obliged to attend when required to do the landlord's work, at rates of wages, in 1 l. c. p. 25. M. c. p. 25. "1. c. pp. 31, 32. * 1. c. p. 27. 1. c. p. 1. L c. p. 25. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 779 many instances, considerably under the current rates paid to ordinary labourers, and without regard to the inconvenience or loss to the tenant of being obliged to neglect his own business at critical periods of sowing or reaping." 1 The uncertainty and irregularity of employment, the con- stant return and long duration of gluts of labour, all these symptoms of a relative surplus-population, figure therefore in the reports of the Poor Law administration, as so many hard- ships of the agricultural proletariat. It will be remembered that we met, in the English agricultural proletariat, with a similar spectacle. But the difference is that in England, an industrial country, the industrial reserve recruits itself from the country districts, whilst in Ireland, an agricultural coun- try, the agricultural reserve recruits itself from the towns, the cities of refuge of the expelled agricultural labourers. In the former, the supernumeraries of agriculture are transformed into factory-operatives; in the latter, those forced into the towns, whilst at the same time they press on the wages in towns, remain agricultural labourers, and are constantly sent back to the country districts in search of work. The official inspectors sum up the material condition of the agricultural labourer as follows: "Though living with the strictest frugality, his own wages are barely sufficient to pro- vide food for an ordinary family and pay his rent, and he de- pends upon other sources for the means of clothing himself, his wife, and children. . . The atmosphere of these cabins, combined with the other privations they are subjected to, has made this class particularly susceptible to low fever and pul- monary consumption." 2 After this, it is no wonder that, ac- cording to the unanimous testimony of the inspectors, a sombre discontent runs through the ranks of this class, that they long for the return of the past, loathe the present, despair of the fu- ture, give themselves up to "to the evil influence of agita- tors," and have only one fixed idea, to emigrate to America. This is the land of Cockaigne, into which the great Malthu- sian panacea, depopulation, has transformed green Erin. What a happy life the Irish factory operative leads, one M. c. p. 30 *1. c. pp. 21, 13. 780 Capitalist Production. example will show: "On my recent visit to the North of Ireland," says the English Factory Inspector, Robert Baker, "I met with the following evidence of effort in an Irish skill- ed workman to afford education to his children ; and I give his evidence verbatim, as I took it from his mouth. That ho was a skilled factory hand, may be understood when I say that he was employed on goods for the Manchester market. 'John- son. I am a beetler and work from 6 in the morning till 11 at night, from Monday till Friday. Saturday we leave off at 6 p.m,. and get three hours of it (for meals and rest). I have five children in all. For this work I get 10s. 6d. a week ; my wife works here also, and gets 5s. a week. The oldest girl who is 12, mindis the house. She is also cook, and all the servant we have. She gets the young ones ready for school. A girl going past the house wakes me at half past five in the morning. My wife gets up and goes along with me. We get nothing (to eat) before we come to work. The child of 12 takes care of the little children all the day, and we get noth- ing till breakfast at eight. At eight we go home. We get tea once a week; at other times we get stirabout, sometimes of oatmeal, sometimes of Indian meal, as we are able to get it. In the winter we get a little sugar and water to our Indian meal. In the summer we get a few potatoes, planting a small patch ourselves; and when they are done we get back to stirabout. Sometimes we get a little milk as it may be. So we go on from day to day, Sunday and week day, always the same the year round. I am always very much tired when I have done at night. We may see a bit of flesh meat sometimes, but very seldom. Three of our children attend school, for whom we pay Id. a week a head. Our rent is 9d. a week. Peat for firing costs Is. 6d. a fortnight at the very lowest." 1 Such are Irish wages, such is Irish life ! In fact the misery of Ireland is again the topic of the day in England. At the end of 1866 and the beginning of 1867, one of the Irish land magnates, Lord Dufferin, set about its solu- tion in the "Times." "Wie menschlich von solch grossem Herrn!" 1 Kept, of Insp. of Fact. 31st Oct., 1866, p. 96. The General Lazv of Capitalist Accumulation. 781 From Table E. we saw that, during 1864, of 4,368,610 of total profits, three surplus-value makers pocketed only 262,610; that in 1865, however, out of 4,669,979 total profits, the same three virtuosi of "abstinence" pocketed 274,448; in 1864, 26 surplus-value makers reached to 646,377; in 1865, 28 surplus-value makers reached to 736,448 ; in 18C4, 121 surplus-value makers, 1,066,912 ; in 1865, 186 surplus-value makers, 1,320,996; in 1864, 1131 surplus-value makers 2,150,818, nearly half of the total an- nual profit; in 1865, 1194 surplus-value makers 2,418,933, more than half of the total annual profit. But the lion's share, which an inconceivably small number of land magnates in England, Scotland and Ireland swallow up of the yearly national rental, is so monstrous that the wisdom of the English state does not think fit to afford the same statistical materials about the distribution of rents as about the distribution of profits. Lord Dufferin is one of those land magnates. That rent-rolls and profits can ever be "excessive," or that their plethora is in any way connected with plethora of the people's misery is, an idea as "disreputable" as "unsound." He keeps to facts. The fact is that, as the Irish population diminishes, the Irish rent-rolls swell; that depopulation benefits the land- lords, therefore also benefits the soil, and, therefore the people, that were accessory of the soil. He declares, therefore, that Ireland is still over-populated, and the stream of emigration still flows too lazily. To be perfectly happy, Ireland must get rid of at least one-third of a million of labouring men. Let no man imagine that this lord, poetic into the bargain, is a physician of the school of Sangrado, who as often as he did not find his patient better, ordered phlebotomy and again phlebotomy, until the patient lost his sickness at the same time as his blood. Lord Dufferin demands a new blood-letting of one-third of a million only, instead of about two millions ; in fact, without the getting rid of these, the millennium in Erin is not to be. The proof is easily given. Centralisation has from 1851 to 1861 destroyed principally farms of the first three categories, under 1 and not over 15 acres. These above all must disappear. This gives 307,058 782 Capitalist Production. NUMBER AND EXTENT OF FARMS IN IRELAND IN 1864. (1) Farms not over 1 acre. (2) Farms over 1, not over 5 acres. (3) Farms over 5, not over 15 aeres. (4) Farms over 15, not over 30 acres. No. Acres. No. Acres. No. Acres. No. Acres. 48,653 25,394 82,037 288,916 176,368 1,836,310 138,578 3,051,343 (5) Farms over 30, not over 50 acres. (6) Farms over 50, not over 100 acres. (7) Farms over 100 acres. (8) Total area. No. 71,961 Acres. 2,906,274 No. 54,247 Acres. 3,983,880 No. 31,927 Acres. 8,227,807 Acres. 26,319,9241 "supernumerary" farmers, and reckoning the families the low average of 4 persons 1,228,232 persons. On the extravagant supposition that, after the agricultural revolution is complete, one-fourth of these are again absorbable, there remain for emi- gration 921,174 persons. Categories, 4, 5, 6, of over 15 and not over 100 acres, are, as was known long since in England, too small for capitalistic cultivation of corn, and for sheep- breeding are almost vanishing quantities. On the same sup- position as before, therefore, there are further 788,761 persons to emigrate; total, 1,709,532. And as 1'appetit vient en mangeant, Rent-roll's eyes will soon discover that Ireland, with 3^/2 millions, is still always miserable because she is over- populated. Therefore her depopulation must go yet further, that thus she may fulfill her true destiny, that of an English siheep walk and cattle-pasture. 2 1 The total area includes also peat, bogs, and waste land. 2 How the famine and its consequences have been deliberately made the most of, both by the individual landlords and by the English legislature, to forcibly carry out the agricultural revolution and to thin the population of Ireland down to the propor- tion satisfactory to the landlords, I shall show more fully in Vol. III. of this work, in the section on landed property. There also I return to the condition of the small farmers and the agricultural labourers. At present, only one quotation. Nassau W. Senior says, with other things, in his posthumous work, "Journals, Conversations and Essays, relating to Ireland." 2 vols. London 1868; Vol. II., p. 282. "Well," said Dr. G., "we have got our Poor Law and it is a great instrument for giving the The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 783 Like all good things in this bad world, this profitable method has its drawbacks. With the accumulation of rents in Ireland, the accumulation of the Irish in America keeps pace. The Irishman, banished by sheep and ox, reappears on the other side of the ocean as a Fenian ? and face to face with the old queen of the sea rises, threatening and more threatening, the young giant Republic: Acerba fata Romanos agunt Scelusque fraternse necis. victory to the landlords. Another, and a still more powerful instrument is emigra- tion . . . No friend to Ireland can wish the war to be prolonged [between the landlords and the small Celtic farmers] still less, that it should end by the victory of the tenants. The sooner it is over the sooner Ireland becomes a grazing country, with the comparatively thin population which a grazing country requires, the better for all classes." The English Corn Laws of 1815 secured Ireland the monopoly of the free importation of corn into Great Britain. They favoured artificially, therefore, the cultivation of corn. With the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846, this monopoly was suddenly removed. Apart from all other circumstances, this event alone was sufficient to give a great impulse to the turning of Irish arable into pasture land, to the concentration of farms, and to the eviction of small cultivators. After the fruitfulness of the Irish soil had been praised from 1815 to 1846, and proclaimed loudly as by Nature herself destined for the cultivation of wheat, English agrono- mists, economists, politicians, discover suddenly that it is good for nothing but to produce forage. M. Leonce de Lavergne has hastened to repeat this on the other side of the Channel. It takes a "serious" man, a La Lavergne, to be caught by such childishness. PAET VIII. THE SO-CALLED PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION. CHAPTER XXVI. THE SECRET OF PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION. WE have seen how money is changed into capital ; how through capital surplus-value is made, and from surplus^ value more capital. But the accumulation of capital pre- supposes surplus-value; surplus-value presupposes capital- istic production ; capitalistic production presupposes the pre- existence of considerable masses of capital and of labour-pow- er in the hands of producers of commodities. The whole movement, therefore, seems to turn in a vicious circle, out of which we can only get by supposing a primitive accumulation (previous accumulation of Adam Smith) preceding capital- istic accumulation ; an accumulation not the result of the capi- talist mode of production, but its starting point. This primitive accumulation plays in Political Economy about the same part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past. In times long gone by there were two sorts of people ; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. The legend of theological original sin tells us certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow ; but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind ! Thus it came to pass that the former 784 The Secret of Primitive Accumulation. 785 sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long- ceased to work. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to us in the defence of property. M. Thiers, e.g., had the assurance to repeat it with all the solemnity of a states- man, to the French people, once so spirituel. But as soon as the question of property crops up, it becomes a sacred duty to proclaim the intellectual food of the infant as the one thing fit for all ages and for all stages of development, In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, rol> bery, murder, briefly force, play the great part. In the tender annals of Political Economy, the idyllic reigns from time im- memorial. Right and "labour" were from all time the sole means of enrichment, the present year of course always ex- cepted. As a matter of fact, the methods of primitive accumu- lation are anything but idyllic. In themselves, money and commodities are no more capital than are the means of production and of subsistence. They want transforming into capital. But this transformation it- self can only take place under certain circumstances that centre in this, viz., that two very different kinds of commodity- possessors must come face to face and into contact; on the one hand, the owners of money, means of production, means of subsistence, who are eager to increase the sum of values they possess, by buying other people's- labour-power; on the other hand, free labourers, the sellers of their own labour-pow- er, and therefore the sellers of labour. Free labourers, in the double sense that neither they themselves form part and parcel of the means of production, as in the case of slaves, bondsmen, &c., nor do the means of production belong to them, as in the case of peasant-proprietors; they are, therefore, free from, unencumbered by, any means of production of their own. With this polarisation of the market for commodities, the fundamental conditions of capitalist production are given. The capitalist system presupposes the complete sep- 2 x 786 Capitalist Production. aration of the labourers from all property in tlie means by which they can realise their labour. As soon as capitalist production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a continually extending scale. The process, therefore, that clears the way for the capitalist system, can be none other than the process which takes away from the labourer the possession of his means of production ; a process that transforms, on the one hand, the social means of subsistence and of production into capital, on the other, the immediate producers into wage-labourers. The so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as primitive, because it forms the pre-historic stage of capital and of the mode of produc- tion corresponding with it. The economic structure of capitalistic society has grown out of the economic structure of feudal society. The dissolution of the latter set free the elements of the former. The immediate producer, the labourer, could only dispose of his own person after he had ceased to be attached to the soil and ceased to be the slave, serf, or bondman of another. To become a free seller of labour-power, who carries his com- modity wherever he finds a market, he must further have escaped from the regime of the guilds, their rules for appren- tices and journeymen, and the impediments of their labour regulations. ]Jence, the historical movement which changes the producers into wage-workers, appears, on the one hand, as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds, and this side alone exists for our bourgeois histor- ians. But, on the other hand, these new freedmen became sell- ers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of ex- istence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire. The industrial capitalists, these new potentates, had on their part not only to displace the guild masters of handicrafts, but also the feudal lords, the possessors of the sources of wealth. The Secret of Primitive Accumulation. 787 In this respect their conquest of social power appears as the fruit of a victorious struggle both against feudal lordship and its revolting prerogatives, and against the guilds and the fetters they laid on the free development of production and the free exploitation of man by man. The chevaliers d'industrie, how- ever, only succeed in supplanting the chevaliers of the sword by making use of events of which they themselves were wholly innocent. They have risen by means as vile as those by which the Roman freed-man once on a time made himself the master of his patronus. The starting-point of the development that gave rise to the wage-labourer as well as to the capitalist, was the servitude of the labourer. The advance consisted in a change of form of this servitude, in the transformation of feudal exploitation in- to capitalist exploitation. To understand its march, we need not go back very far. Although we come across the first be- ginnings of capitalist production as early as the 14th or 15th century, sporadically, in certain towns of the Mediterranean, the capitalistic era dates from the 16th century. Wherever it appears, the abolition of serfdom has been long effected, and the highest development of the middle ages, the existence of sovereign towns, has been long on the wane. In the history of primitive accumulation, all revolutions are epoch-making that act as levers for the capitalist class in course of formation ; but, above all, those moments when great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled as free and "unattached" proletarians on the labour market, The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process. The history of this expropriation, in different countries, assumes different aspects, and runs through its various phases in different orders of succession, and at different periods. In England alone, which we take as our example, has it the classic form. 1 1 In Italy, where capitalistic production developed earliest, the dissolution of serfdom also took place earlier than elsewhere. The serf was emancipated in that country before he had acquired any prescriptive right to the soil. His emancipation at once transformed him into a free proletarian, who, moreover, found his master ready waiting for him in the towns, for the most part handed down as legacies from 788 Capitalist Production. CHAPTER XXVII. EXPROPRIATION OF THE AGRICULTURAL POPULATION FROM THE LAND. IN England, serfdom had practically disappeared in the last part of the 14th century. The immense majority of the population 1 consisted then, and to a still larger extent, in the 15th century, of free peasant proprietors, whatever was the feudal title under which their right of property was hidden. In the larger seignorial domains, the old bailiff, himself a serf, was displaced by the free farmer. The wage-labourers of agriculture consisted partly of peasants, who utilised their leisure time by working on the large estates, partly of an independent special class of wage-labourers, relatively and absolutely few in numbers. The latter also were practically at the same time peasant farmers, since, besides their wages, they had alloted to them arable land to the extent of 4 or more acres, together with their cottages. Besides they, with the rest of the peasants, enjoyed the UMifruct of the common land, which gave pasture to their cattle, furnished them with timber, fire-wood, turf, &c. 2 In all countries of Europe, the Roman time. When the revolution of the world-market, about the end of the 15th century, annihilated Northern Italy's commercial supremacy, a movement in the reverse direction set in. The labourers of the towns were driven en masse into the country, and gave an impulse, never before seen, to the petite culture, carried on in the form of gardening. 1 "The petty proprietors who cultivated their own fields with their own hands, and enjoyed a modest competence .... then formed a much more important part of the nation than at present. If we may trust the best statistical writers of that age, not less than 160,000 proprietors who, with their families, must have made up more than a seventh of the whole population, derived their subsistence from little freehold estates. The average income of these small landlords .... was esti- mated at between 60 and 70 a year. It was computed that the number of per- sons who tilled their own land was greater than the number of those who farmed the land of others." Macaulay: History of England, 10th ed., 1854, I. p. 333,334 Even in the last third of the 17th century, ^ of the English people were agricul- ural. (1. c., p. 413.) I quote Macaulay, because as systematic falsifier of history he minimises as much as possible facts of this kind. 2 We must never forget that even the serf was not only the owner, if but a tribute-paying owner, of the piece of land attached to his house, but also a co- possessor of the common land. "Le paysan y (in Silesia, under Frederick II.) est Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 789 feudal production is characterised by division of the soil amongst the greatest possible number of sub-feudatories. The might of the feudal lord, like that of the sovereign, depended not on the length of his rent roll, but on the number of his subjects, and the latter depended on the number of peasant proprietors. 1 Although, therefore, the English land, after the jSTorman conquest, was distributed in gigantic baronies, one of which often included some 900 of the old Anglo-Saxon lord- ships, it was bestrewn with small peasant properties, only here and there interspersed with great seignorial domains. Such conditions, together with the prosperity of the towns so charac- teristic of the 15th century, allowed of that wealth of the people which Chancellor Fortescue so eloquently paints in his "Laudes legum Anglise;" but it excluded the possibility of capitalistic wealth. The prelude of the revolution that laid the foundation of the capitalist mode of production, was played in the last third of the 15th, and the first decade of the 16th century. A mass of free proletarians was hurled on the labour-market by the breaking-up of the bands of feudal retainers, who, as Sir James Steuart well says, "everywhere uselessly filled house and castle." Although the royal power, itself a product of bour- geois development, in its strife after absolute sovereignty for- cibly hastened on the dissolution of these bands of retainers, it was by no means the sole cause of it. In insolent conflict with king and parliament, the great feudal lords created an incomparably larger proletariat by the forcible driving of the peasantry from the land, to which the latter had the same feudal right as the lord himself, and by the usurpation of the common lands. The rapid rise of the Flemish wool manufac- tures, and the corresponding rise in the price of wool in Eng- land, gave the direct impulse to these evictions. The old nobil- serf." Nevertheless, these serfs possess common lands. "On n" a pas pu encore engager les Silesiens au partage des communes, tandis que dans la Nouvelle Marche, il n'y a guere de village ou ce partage ne soit execute avec le plus grand succes." (Mirabeau: De la Monarchic Prussienne. Londres, 1788, t. ii., pp. 125, 126.) 1 Japan, with its purely feudal organisation of landed property and its developed petite culture, gives a much truer picture of the European middle ages than all our history books, dictated as these are, for the most part, by bourgeois prejudices. It is very convenient to be "liberal" at the expense of the middle ages. 790 Capitalist Production. ity had been devoured by the great feudal wars. The new nobility was the child of its time, for which money was the power of all powers. Transformation of arable land into sheep-walks was, therefore, its cry. Harrison, in his "Descrip- tion of England, prefixed to Holinshed's Chronicle," describes how the expropriation of small peasants is ruining the country. "What care our great encroachers ?" The dwellings of the peasants and the cottages of the labourers were razed to the ground or doomed to decay. "If," says Harrison, "the old records of euerie manour be sought .... it will soon appear that in some manour seventeene, eighteene, or twentie houses are shrunk .... that England was neuer less fur- nished with people than at the present. ... Of cities and townes either utterly decaied or more than a quarter or half diminished, though some one be a little increased here or there ; of townes pulled downe for sheepe-walks, and no more but the lordships now standing in them .... I could saie some- what." The complaints of tLese old chroniclers are always exaggerated, but they reflect faithfully the impression made on contemporaries by the revolution in the conditions of prod- uction. A comparison of the writings of Chancellor Fortescue and Thomas More reveals the gulf between the 15th and 16th century. As- Thornton rightly has it, the English working- class was precipitated without any transition from its golden into its iron age. Legislation was terrified at this revolution. It did not yet stand on that height of civilisation where the "wealth of the nation" (i.e., the formation of capital, and the reckless ex- ploitation and impoverishing of the mass of the people) figure as the ultima Tbule of all state-craft. In his history of Henry VII., Bacon says: "Inclosures at that time (1489) began to be more frequent, whereby arable land (which could not be manured without people and families) was turned into pasture, which was easily rid by a few herdsmen ; and tenan- cies for years, lives, and at will (whereupon much of the yeo- manry lived) were turned into demenses. This bred a decay of people, and (by consequence) a decay of towns, churches, tithes, and the like In remedying of this inconvenience Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 791 the king's wisdom was admirable, and the parliament at that time .... they took a course to take away depopulating in- closures, and depopulating pasturage." An Act of Henry VII., 1489, cap. 19, forbad the destruction of all "houses of husbandry" to which at least 20 acres of land belonged. By an Act, 25 Henry VIII., the same law was renewed. It re- cites, among other things, that many farms and large flocks of cattle, especially of sheep, are concentrated in the hands of a few men, whereby the rent of land has much risen and tillage has fallen off, churches and houses have been pulled down, and marvellous numbers of people have been deprived of the means wherewith to maintain themselves and their families. The Act, therefore, ordains the rebuilding of the decayed farm- steads, and fixes a proportion between corn land and pasture land, &c. An Act of 1533 recites that some owners possess 24,000 sheep, and limits the number to be owned to 2000. * The cry of the people and the legislation directed, for 150 years after Henry VII., against the appropriation of the small farmers and peasants, were alike fruitless. The secret of their inefficiency Bacon, without knowing it, reveals to us. "The device of King Henry VII.," says Bacon, in his "Essays, Civil and Moral," Essay 29, "was profound and admirable, in making farms and houses of husbandry of a standard ; that is, maintained with such a proportion of land unto them as may breed a subject to live in convenient plenty, and no ser- vile condition, and to keep the plough in the hands of the owners and not mere hirelings." 2 What the capital system 1 In his "Utopia," Thomas More says, that in England "your shepe that were wont to be so meke and tame, and so smal eaters, now, as I heare saye, be become so great devourers and so wylde that they eate up, and swallow downe, the very men themselfes." "Utopia," transl. by Robinson., ed. Arber, Lond., 1869, p. 41. 2 Bacon shows the connexion between a free, well-to-do peasantry and good in- fantry. "This did wonderfully concern the might and mannerhood of the kingdom to have farms as it were of. a standard sufficient to maintain an able body out of penury, and did in effect amortize a great part of the lands of the kingdom unto the hold and occupation of the yeomanry or middle people, of a condition between gentlemen, and cottagers and peasants For it hath been held by the general opinion of men of best judgment in the wars .... that the principal strength of an army consisteth in the infantry or foot. And to make good infantry it requireth men bred, not in a servile or indigent fashion, but in some free and plentiful manner. Therefore, if a state run most to noblemen and gentlemen, and that the husbandmen and ploughmen be but as their workfolk and labourers, or ~92 Capitalist Production. demanded was, on the other hand, a degraded and almost servile condition of the mass of the people, the transformation of them into mercenaries, and of their means of labour into capital. During this rtansformation period, legislation also strove to retain the 4 acres of land by the cottage of the ag- ricultural wage-labourer, and forbad him to take lodgers into his cottage. In the reign of James I. 1627, Roger Crocker of Front Mill, was condemned for having built a cottage on the manor of Front Mill without 4 acres of land attached to the same in perpetuity. As late as Charles I.'s reign, 1638, a royal commission was appointed to enforce the carrying out of the old laws, especially that referring to the 4 acres of land. Even in Cromwell's time, the building of a house with- in 4 miles of London was forbidden unless it was endowed with 4 acres of land. As late as the first half of the 18th century complaint is made if the cottage of the agricultural labourer has not an adjunct of one or two acres of land. Now- adays he is lucky if it is furnished with a little garden, or if he may rent, far away from his cottage, a few roods. "Landlords and farmers," says Dr. Hunter, "work here hand in hand. A few acres to the cottage would make the labourers too independent." 1 The process of forcible expropriation of the people received in the 16th century a new and frightful impulse from the Reformation, and from the consequent colossal spoliation of the church property. The Catholic church was, at the time of the Reformation, feudal proprietor of a great part of the English land. The suppression of the monasteries, &c., hurled their inmates into the proletariat. The estates of the church were to a large extent given away to rapacious else mere cottages (which are but hous'd beggars), you may have a good cavalry, but never good stable bands of foot And this is to be seen in France, and Italy, and some other parts abroad, where in effect all is noblesse or peasantry . . . . insomuch that they are inforced to employ mercenary bands of Switzers and the like, for their battalions of foot; whereby also it comes to pass that those nations have much people and few soldiers." ("The Reign of Henry VII." Ver- batim reprint from Rennet's England. Ed. 1719. Lond., 1870, p. 308.) 1 Dr. Hunter, 1. c., p. 134. "The quantity of land assigned (in the old laws) would now be judged too great for labourers, and rather as likely to convert them into small farmers." (George Roberts: "The Social History of the People of the Southern Counties of England in past centuries." Lond., 1856, pp. 184-185.) Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 793 royal favourites, or sold at a nominal price to speculating farmers and citizens, who drove out, en masse, the hereditary sub-tenants and threw their holdings into one. The legally guaranteed property of the poorer folk in a part of the church's tithes was tacitly confiscated. 1 "Pauper ubique jacet," cried Queen Elizabeth, after a journey through England. In the 43rd year of her reign the nation was obliged to recognise pauperism officially by the introduction of a poor-rate. "The authors of this law seem to have been ashamed to state the grounds of it, for [contrary to traditional usage] it has no pre- amble whatever." 2 By the 16th of Charles L, ch. 4, it was declared perpetual, and in fact only in 1834 did it take a new and harsher form. 3 These immediate results of the Reforma- tion were not its most lasting ones. The property of the 1 "The right of the poor to share in the tithe, is established by the tenour of an- cient statutes." (Tuckett, 1. c., Vol. II., pp. 804-805.) 2 William Cobbett: "A History of the Protestant Reformation," 471. 3 The "spirit" of Protestantism may be seen from the following, among other things. In the south of England certain landed proprietors and well-to-do farmers put their heads together and propounded ten questions as to the right interpretation of the poor-law of Elizabeth. These they laid before a celebrated jurist of that time, Sergeant Snigge (later a judge under James I.) for his opinion. "Question 9 Some of the more wealthy farmers in the parish have devised a skilful mode by which all the trouble of executing this Act (the 43rd of Elizabeth) might be avoided. They have proposed that we shall erect a prison in the parish, and then give notice to the neighbourhood, that if any persons are disposed to farm the poor of this parish, they do give in sealed proposals, on a certain day, of the lowest price at which they will take them off our hands; and that they will be authorised to refuse to any one unless he be shut up in the aforesaid prison. The proposers of this plan conceive that there will be found in the adjoining counties, persons, who, being un- willing to labour and not possessing substance or credit to take a farm or ship, so as to live without labour, may be induced to make a very advantageous offer to the parish. If any of the poor perish under the contractor's care, the sin will lie at his door, as the parish will have done its duty by them. We are, however, apprehen- sive that the present Act (43rd of Elizabeth) will not warrant a prudential measure of this kind; but you are to learn that the rest of the freeholders of the county, and of the adjoining county of B, will very readily join in instructing their members to propose an Act to enable the parish to contract with a person to lock up and work the poor; and to declare that if any person shall refuse to be so locked up and worked, he shall be entitled to no relief. This, it is hoped, will prevent per- sons in distress from wanting relief, and be the means of keeping down parishes." (R. Blakey: "The History of Political Literature from the earliest Times." Lond., 1855, Vol. II., pp. 84-85.) In Scotland, the abolition of serfdom took place some centuries later than in England. Even in 1698, Fletcher of Saltoun, declared in the Scotch parliament, "The number of beggars in Scotland is reckoned at not less than 200,000. The only remedy that I, a republican on principle can suggest, is to restore the old state of serfdom, to make slaves of all those who are unable to provide for their own subsistence." Eden, 1. c., Book I., ch. 1, pp. 60-61, says, "The decrease of villenage seems necessarily to have been the era of the origin of the poor. Manu- 794 Capitalist Production. church formed the religious bulwark of the traditional condi- tions of landed property. With its fall these were no longer tenable. 1 Even in the last decade of the 17th century, the yeomanry, the class of independent peasants, were more numerous than the class of farmers. They had formed the backbone of Crom- wolPs strength, and, even according to the confession of Macaulay, stood in favourable contrast to the drunken squires and to their servants, the country clergy, who had to marry their master's cast-off mistresses. About 1750, the yeomanry had disappeared, 2 and so had, in the last decade of the 18th century, the last trace of the common land of the agricultural labourer. We leave on one side here the purely economic causes of the agricultural revolution. We deal only with the forcible means employed. After the restoration of the Stuarts, the landed proprietors carried, by legal means, an act of usurpation, effected every- where on the Continent without any legal formality. They abolished the feudal tenure of land, i.e., they got rid of all its obligations to the State, "indemnified" the State by taxes on the peasantry and the rest of the mass of the people, vindi- cated for themselves the rights of modern private property in estates to which they had only a feudal title, and, finally, passed those laws of settlement, which, mutatis muiandis, had the same effect on the English agricultural labourer, as the factures and commerce are the two parents of our national poor." Eden, like our Scotch republican on principle, errs only in this: not the abolition of villenage, but the abolition of the property of the agricultural labourer in the soil made him a proletarian, and eventually a pauper. In France, where the expropriation was effected in another way, the ordonnance of Moulins, 1571, and the Edict of 1656, correspond to the English poor-laws. 1 Professor Rogers, although formerly Professor of Political Economy in the Uni- versity of Oxford, the hotbed of Protestant orthodoxy, in his preface to the "History of Agriculture" lays stress on the fact of the pauperisation of the mass of the people by the Reformation. - A letter to Sir T. C. Banbury, Bart., on the High Price of Provisions. By a Suffolk Gentleman. Ipswich, 1795, p. 4. Even the fanatical advocate of the system of large farms, the author of the "Inquiry into the connection of large farms, etc., London, 1773," p. 133, says: "I most 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 monopolizing 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." Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 795 edict of the Tartar Boris Godunof on the Russian peasantry. The "glorious Revolution" brought into power, along with William of Orange, the landlord and capitalist appropriators of surplus-value. 1 They inaugurated the new era by practis- ing on a colossal scale thefts of state lands, thefts that had been hitherto managed more modestly. These estates were given away, sold at a ridiculous figure, or even annexed to private es- tates by direct seizure. 2 All this happened without the slight- est observation of legal etiquette. The crown lands thus fraudulently appropriated, together with the robbery of the Church estates, as far as these had not been lost again during the republican revolution, form the basis of the to-day princely domains of the English oligarchy. 3 The bourgeois capitalists favoured the operation with the view, among others, to pro- moting free trade in land, to extending the domain of modern agriculture on the large farm-system, and to increasing their supply of the free agricultural proletarians ready to hand. Besides, the new landed aristocracy was the natural ally of the new bankocracy, of the newly-hatched haute finance, and of the large manufacturers, then depending on protective duties. The English bourgeoisie acted for its own interest quite as wisely as did the Swedish bourgeoisie who, reversing the process, hand in hand with their economic allies, the peasantry, helped the kings in the forcible resumption of the Crown lands from the oligarchy. This happened since 1604 under Charles X. and Charles XI. Communal property always distinct from the State prop- 1 On the private moral character of this bourgeois hero, among other things: "The large grant of lands in Ireland to Lady Orkney, in 1695, is a public instance of the king's affection, and the lady's influence. . . . Lady Orkney's endearing offices are supposed to have been- foeda labiorum ministerial' (In the Sloanc Manu- script Collection, at the British Museum, No. 4224. The Manuscript is entitled: "The charakter and behaviour of King William, Sunderland, etc., as represented in Original Letters to the Duke of Shrewsbury, from Somers Halifax, Oxford, Secre- tary Vernon, etc." It is full of curiosa.) 2 "The illegal alienation of the Crown Estates, partly by sale and partly by gift, is a scandalous chapter in English history ... a gigantic fraud on the nation." (F. W. Newman, Lectures on Political Economy. London, 1851, pp. 129, 130.) [For details as to how the present large landed proprietors of England came into their possessions see "Our Old Nobility. By Noblesse Oblige." London, 1879. Ed.] * Read e.g., E. Burke's Pamphlet on the ducal house of Bedford, whose offshoot was Lord John Russell, the "tomtit of Liberalism." 796 Capitalist Production. crty just dealt with was an old Teutonic institution which lived on under cover of feudalism. We have seen how the forcible usurpation of this, generally accompanied by the turn- ing of arable into pasture land, begins at the end of the 15th and extends into the 16th century. But, at that time, the process was carried on by means of individual acts of violence against which legislation, for a hundred and fifty years, fought in vain. The advance made by the 18th century shows itself in this, that the law itself becomes now the instrument of the theft of the people's land, although the large farmers make use of their little independent methods as well. 1 The parlia- mentary form of the robbery is that of Acts for enclosures of Commons, in other words, decrees by which the landlords grant themselves the people's land as private property, decrees of expropriation of the people. Sir F. M. Eden refutes his own crafty special pleading, in which he tries to represent com- munal property as the private property of the great landlords who have taken the place of the feudal lords, when he, him- self, demands a "general "Act of Parliament for the enclosure of Commons," (admitting thereby that a parliamentary coup d'etat is necessary for its transformation into private prop- erty), and moreover calls on the legislature for the indemnifi- cation for the expropriated poor. 2 Whilst the place of the independent yeoman was taken by tenants at will, small farmers on yearly leases, a servile -rabble dependent on the pleasure of the landlords, the "systematic robbery of the Communal lands helped especially, next to the theft of the State domains, to swell those large farms, that were called in the 18th century capital farms 3 or merchant farms, 4 and to "set free" the agricultural populations as prole- tarians for manufacturing industry. 1 "The farmers forbid cottagers to keep any living creatures besides themselves and children, 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, &c., but the real fact, I believe, is that the farmers may have the whole right of common to themselves." (A Political Inquiry into the consequences of enclosing Waste Lands. London, 1785 p. 75.) 1 Eden, 1. c. preface. 1 "Capital Farms." Two letters on the Flour Trade and the Dearness of Corn. By a person in business. London, 1767, pp. 19, 20. 4 "Merchant Farms." An inquiry into thp present High Prices of Provisions. Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 797 The 18th century, however, did not yet recognise as fully as the 19th, the identity between national wealth and the poverty of the people. Hence the most vigorous polemic, in the eco- nomic literature of that time, on the "enclosure of commons." From the mass of materials that lie before me, I give a few extracts that will throw a strong light on the circumstances of the time. "In several parishes of Hertfordshire," writes one indignant person, "24 farms, numbering on the average 50-150 acres, have been melted up into three farms." 1 "In Northamptonshire and Leicestershire the enclosure of common lands has taken place on a very large scale, and most of the new lordships, resulting from the enclosure, have been turned into pasturage, in consequence of which many lordships have not now 50 acres ploughed yearly, in which 1500 were ploughed formerly. The ruins of former dwelling-houses, barns, stables, &c.," are the sole traces of the former inhabi- tants. "An hundred houses and families have in some open field villages .... dwindled to eight or ten .... The land- holders in most parishes that have been enclosed only 15 or 20 years, are very few in comparison of the numbers who occupied them in their open-field state. It is no uncommon thing for 4 or 5 wealthy graziers to engross a large enclosed lorship which was before in the hands' of 20 or 30 farmers, and as many smaller tenants and proprietors. All these are hereby thrown out of their livings with their families and many other families who were chiefly employed and supported by them." 2 It was not only the land that lay waste, but often land cultivated either in. common or. held under a definite rent paid to the community, that was annexed by the neighbouring landlords under pretext of enclosure. "I have here in view enclosures of open fields and lands already improved. It is acknowledged by even the writers in defence of enclosures that these di- minished villages increase the monopolies of farms, raise the London, 1767, p. 11. Note. This excellent work, that was published anonymously, is by the Rev. Nathaniel Forstcr. 1 Thomas Wright: A short address to the public on the monopoly of large farms, 1779, pp. 2, 3. 1 Rev. Addington : Inquiry into the reasons for or against enclosing open fields. London, 1772, pp. 37, 43 passim. 798 Capitalist Production. prices of provisions, and produce depopulation .... and even the enclosure of waste lands (as now carried on) bears hard on the poor, by depriving them of a part of their subsist- ence, and only goes towards increasing fanns already too large. 1 "When," says Dr. Price, "this land gets into the hands of a few great farmers, the consequence must be that the little farmers" (earlier designated by him "a multitude of lit- tle proprietors and tenants, who maintain themselves and families by the produce of the ground they occupy by sheep kept on a common, by poultry, hogs, &c., and who therefore have little occasion to purchase any of the means of subsist- ence") "will be converted into a body of men who earn their subsistence by working for others, and who will be under a ne- cessity of going to market for all they want .... There will, perhaps, be more labour, because there will be more compulsion to it .... Towns and manufacturers will increase, because more will be driven to them in quest of places and employment. 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. 2 He sums up the eifect of the enclosures thus: "Upon the whole, the circum- stances 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 has become more dif- ficult." 3 In fact, usurpation of the common lands and the 1 Dr. R. Price, 1. c., v. ii., p. 155, Forster, Addington, Kent, Price, and James Anderson, should be read and compared with the miserable prattle of Sycophant MacCulloch in his catalogue: The Literature of Political Economy, London, 1845. 2 Price, 1. c., p. 147. * Price, 1. c., p. 159. We are reminded of ancient Rome. "The rich had got pos- session of the greater part of the undivided land. They trusted in the conditions of the time, that these possessions would not be again taken from them, and bought, therefore, some of the. pieces of land lying near theirs, and belonging to the poor, with the acquiescence of their owners, and took some by force, so that they now were cultivating widely extended domains, instead of isolated fields. Then they employed slaves in agriculture and cattle-breeding, because freemen would have been taken from labour for military service. The possession of slaves brought them great gain, inasmuch as these, on account of their immunity from military service, could freely multiply and have a multitude of children. Thus the powerful men drew all wealth to themselves, and all the land swarmed with slaves. The Italians, on the other hand, were always decreasing in number, destroyed as they were by poverty, taxes, and military service. Even when times of peace came, they were doomed to Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 799 revolution in agriculture accompanying this, told so acutely on the agricultural labourers that, even according to Eden, be- tween 1765 and 1780, their wages began to fall below the mini- mum, and to be supplemented by official poor-law relief. Their wages, he says, "were not more than enough for the abso- lute necessaries of life." Let us hear for a moment a defender of enclosures and an opponent of Dr. Price. "Nor is it a consequence that there must be depopulation, because men are not seen wasting their labour in the open field .... 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" (to which, of course, the "converted" ones do not belong) "should wish for .... the produce being greater when their joint labours are employed on one farm, there will be a surplus for manufactures, and by this means manufactures, one of the mines of the nation, will increase, in proportion to the quantity of corn produced." 1 The stoical peace of mind with which the political economist regards the most shameless violation of the "sacred rights of property" and the grossest acts of violence to persons, as soon as they are necessary to lay the foundations of the capitalistic mode of production, is shown by Sir. F. M. Eden, philanthro- pist and tory, to boot. The whole series of thefts, outrages, and popular misery, that accompanied the forcible expropria- tion of the people, from the last third of the 15th to the end of the 18th century, lead him merely to the comfortable conclu- sion: "The due proportion between arable land and pasture had to be established. During the whole of the 14th and the greater part of the 15th century, there was one acre of pasture complete inactivity, because the rich were in possession of the soil, and used slaves instead of free men in the tilling of it." (Appian: Civil Wars, I. 7.) This pas- sage refers to the time before the Licinian rogations. Military service, which has- tened to so great an extent the ruin of the Roman plebeians, was also the chief means by which, as in a forcing-house, Charlemagne brought about the transforma- tion of free German peasants into serfs and bondsmen. 1 An Inquiry into the Connection between the Present Prices of Provisions, &c., p. 124, 129. To the like effect, but with an opposite tendency: "Working-men are driven from their cottages and forced into the towns to seek for employment; but then a larger surplus is obtained, and thus capital is augmented." (The Perils of the Nation, 2nd ed. London. 1843, p. 14.) Soo Capitalist Production. to 2, 3 and even 4 of arable land. About the middle of the 16th century the proportion was changed to 2 acres of pasture to 2, later on, of 2 acres of pasture to one of arable, until at last the just proportion of 3 acres of pasture to one of arable hind was attained." In the 19th century, the very memory of the connexion Ijetween the agricultural labourer and the communal property had, of course, vanished. To say nothing of more recent times, have the agricultural population received a farthing of com- pensation for the 3,511,770 acres of common land which be- tween 1801 and 1831 were stolen from them and by parlia- mentary devices presented to the landlords by the landlords ? The last process of wholesale expropriation of the agricul- tural population from the soil is, finally, the so-called clearing of estates, i.e., the sweeping men off them. All the English methods hitherto considered culminated in "clearing." As we saw in the picture of modern conditions given in a former chapter, where there are no more independent peasants to get rid of, the "clearing" of cottages begins ; so that the agricul- tural labourers do not find on the soil cultivated by them even the spot necessary for their own housing. But what "clearing of estates" really and properly signifies, we learn only in the promised land of modern romance, the Highlands of Scotland. There the process is distinguished by its systematic character, by the magnitude of the scale on which it is carried out at one blow (in Ireland landlords have gone to the length of sweeping away several villages at once; in Scotland areas as large as German principalities are dealt with), finally by the pecu- liar form of property, under which the embezzled lands were held. The Highland Celts were organised in clans, each of which was the owner of the land on which it was settled. The representative of the clan, its chief or "great man," was only the titular owner of this property, just as the Queen of Eng- land is the titular owner of all 'the national soil. When the English government succeeded in suppressing the intestine wars of these "great men," and their constant incursions into the Lowland plains, the chiefs of the clans by no means gave Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 80 1 up their time-honoured trade as robbers ; they only changed its form. On their own authority they transformed their nominal right into a right of private property, and as this brought them into collision with their clansmen, resolved to drive them out by open force. "A king of England might as well claim to drive his subjects into the sea," says Professor Newman. 1 This revolution, which began in Scotland after the last rising of the followers of the Pretender, can be followed through its first phases in the writings of Sir James Steuart 2 and James Anderson. 3 In the 18th century the hunted-out Gaels were forbidden to emigrate from the country, with a view to driv- ing them by force to Glasgow and other manufacturing towns. 4 As an example of the method 5 obtaining in the 19th century, the "clearing" made by the Duchess of Sutherland will suf- fice here. This person, well instructed in economy, resolved, *1. c., p. 132. 2 Steuart says: "If you compare the rent of these lands" (he erroneously includes in this economic category the tribute of the taskmen to the clan-chief) "with the extent, it appears very small. If you compare it with the numbers fed upon the farm, you will find that an estate in the Highlands maintains, perhaps, ten times as many people as another of the same value in a good and fertile province." (1. c. f vol. i., ch. xvi., p. 104.) 8 James Anderson : Observations on the means of exciting a spirit of National Industry, &c. Edinburgh, 1777. * In 1860 the people expropriated by force were exported to Canada under false pretences. Some fled to the mountains and neighbouring islands. They were fol- lowed by the police, came to blows with them and escaped. 5 "In the Highlands of Scotland," says Buchanan, the commentator on Adam Smith, 1814, "the ancient state of property is daily subverted. . . . The land- lord, without regard to the hereditary tenant (a category used in error here), 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 the 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 popula- tion is reduced, not to what the land will maintain, but to what it will employ. The dispossessed tenants either seek a subsistence in the neighbouring towns," &c. (David Buchanan: Observations on, &c., A. Smith's Wealth of Nations. Edinburgh, 1814, vol. iv., p. 144.) "The Scotch grandees 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. . . . Man is bar- tered for a fleece or a carcase of mutton, nay, held cheaper. . . . Why, how much worse is it than the intention of the Moguls, who, when they had broken into the northern provinces of China, proposed in council to exterminate the in- habitants, and convert the land into pasture. This proposal many Highland pro- prietors have effected in their ovr. country against their own countrymen." (George Ensor: An inquiry concerning fee population of nations. Lond., 1818, pp. 215, 216.) 2Y 802 Capitalist Production. on entering upon her government, to effect a radical cure, and to turn the whole country, whose population had already been, by earlier processes of the like kind, reduced to 15,000, into a sheep-walk. From 1814 to 1820 these 15,000 inhabitants, about 3000 families, were systematically hunted and rooted out. All their villages were destroyed and burnt, all their fields turned into pasturage. British soldiers enforced this eviction, and came to blows with the inhabitants. One old woman was burnt to death in the flames of the hut, which she refused to leave. Thus this fine lady appropriated 791,- 000 acres of land that had from time immemorial belonged to the clan. She assigned to the expelled inhabitants about 6000 acres on the sea-shore 2 acres per family. The 6000 acres had until this time lain waste, and brought in no in- come to their owners. The Duchess, in the nobility of her heart, actually went so far as to let these at an average rent of 2s. 6d. per acre to the clansmen, who for centuries had shed their blood for her family. The whole of the stolen clan-land she divided into 29 great sheep farms, each inhabited by a single family, for the most part imported English farm- servants. In the year 1835 the 15,000 Gaels were already replaced by 131,000 sheep. The remnant of the aborigines flung on the sea-shore, tried to live by catching fish. They became amphibious and lived, as an English author says, half on land and half on water, and withal only half on both. 1 But the brave Gaels must expiate yet more bitterly their idolatry, romantic and of the mountains, for the "great men" of the clan. The smell of their fish rose to the noses of the great men. They scented some profit in it, and let the sea- shore to the great fishmongers of London. For the second time the Gaels were hunted out. 2 1 When the present Duchess of Sutherland entertained Mrs. Beecher Stowe, au- thoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," with great magnificence in London, to show her sympathy for the negro slaves of the American republic a sympathy that she pru- dently forgot, with her fellow-aristocrats, during the civil war, in which every ."noble" English heart beat for the slave-owner I gave in the "New York Tribune" the facts about the Sutherland slaves. (Epitomised in part by Carey in The Slave Trade. London, 1853, p. 202, 203.) My article was reprinted in a Scotch news- paper, and led to a pretty polemic between the latter and the sycophants of the Sinherlands. " Interesting details on this fish trade will be found in Mr. David Urquhart's Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 803 But, finally, part of the sheep-walks are turned into deer preserves. Every one knows that there are no real forests in England. The deer in the parks of the great are demurely domestic cattle, fat as London aldermen. Scotland is there- fore the last refuge of the "noble passion." "In the High- lands," says Somers in 1848, "new forests are springing up like mushrooms. Here, on one side of Gaick, you have the new forest of Glenfeshie ; and there on the other you have the new forest of Ardverikie. In the same line you have the Black Mount, an immense waste also recently erected. From east to west from the neighbourhood of Aberdeen to the crags of Oban you have now a continuous line of forests; while in other parts of the Highlands there are the new for- ests of Loch Archaig, Glengarry, Glenmoriston, &c. Sheep were introduced into glens which had been the seats of com- munities of small farmers ; and the latter were driven to seek subsistence on coarser and more sterile tracks of soil. Now deer are supplanting sheep; and these are once more dispos- sessing the small tenants, who will necessarily be driven down upon still coarser land and to more grinding penury. Deer forests 1 and the people cannot co-exist. One or other of the two must yield. Let the forests be increased in number and extent during the next quarter of a century, as they have been in the last, and the Gaels will perish from their native soil. . . . This movement among the Highland proprietors is with some a matter of ambition. . . . with some love of sport. . . . while others, of a more practical cast, follow the trade in deer with an eye solely to profit. For it is a fact, that a mountain range laid out in forest is, in many cases, more profitable to the proprietor than when let as a sheep walk. The huntsman who wants a deer-forest limits his offers by no other calculation than the extent of his purse. . . . Sufferings have been inflicted in the Highlands Portfolio, new series. Nassau W. Senior, in his posthumous work, already quoted, terms "the proceedings in Sutherlandshire one of the most beneficent clearings since the memory of man." (1. c.) 1 The deer-forests of Scotland contain not a single tree. The sheep are driven from, and then the deer driven to, the naked hills, and then it is called a deei forest. Not even timber-planting and real forest culture. 804 Capitalist Production. scarcely less severe than those occasioned by the policy of the Norman kings. Deer have received extended ranges, while men have been hunted within a narrower and still narrower circle. . . . One after one the liberties of the people have been cloven down. . . . And the oppressions are daily on the increase. . . . The clearance and dispersion of the people is pursued by the proprietors as a settled principle, as an agricultural necessity, just as trees and brushwood are cleared from the wastes of America or Australia ; and the op- eration goes on in a quiet, business-like way, &c.' n 1 Robert Somers: Letters from the Highlands: or the Famine of 1847. London 1848, pp. 12-28 passim. These letters originally appeared in the "Times." The Eng- lish economists of course explained the famine of the Gaels in 1847, by their over- population. At all events, they "were pressing on their food-supply." The "clear- ing of estates," or as it is called in Germany "Bauernlegen," occurred in Germany especially after the 30 years' war, and led to peasant-revolts as late as 1790 in Kursachsen. It obtained especially in East Germany. In most of the Prussian provinces, Frederick II. for the first time secured right of property for the peasants. After the conquest of Silesia he forced the landlords to rebuild the huts, barns, etc., and to provide the peasants with cattle and implements. He wanted soldiers for his army and tax-payers for his treasury. For the rest, the pleasant life that the peasant led under Frederick's system of finance and hodge-podge rule of despotism, bureau- cracy and feudalism, may be seen from the following quotation from his admirer, Mirabeau: "Le lin fait done une des grandes richesses du cultivateur dans le Nord de 1'Allemagne. Malheureusement pour 1'espece humaine, ce n'est qu'une ressource contre la misere et non un moyen de bien-etre. Les impots directs, les corvees, les servitudes de tout genre, ecrasent le cultivateur allemand, qui paie encore des impots indirects dans tout ce qu'il achete et poure comble de ruine, il n'ose pas vendre ses productions ou et comme il le veuf, il n'ose pas achter ce dont il a besoin aux marchands qui pourraient le lui livrer au meilleur prix. Toutes ces causes le ruinent insensiblement, et il se trouverait hors d'etat de payer les impots directs a 1'echeance sans la filerie; elle lui off re une ressource, en occupant utilement sa femme, ses enfants, ses servants, ses valets, et lui-meme; mais quelle penible vie, meme aidee de ce secours. En etc, il travaille comme un forgat au labourage et a la recolte; il se couche a 9 heures et se leve a deux, pour suffire aux travaux; en hiver il devrait reparer ses forces par un plus grand repos; mais il manquera de grains pour le pain et les semailles, s'il se defait des denrees qu'il faudrait vendre pour payer les impots. II faut done filer pour suppleer a ce vide il faut y apporter la plus grande assiduite. Aussi le paysan se couche-t-il en hiver a minuit, une heure, et se leve a cinq ou six; ou bien il se couche a neuf, et se leve a deux, et cela tous les jours de la vie si ce n'est le dimanche. Ces exces de veille et de travail usent la nature humaine, et de la vient qu' hommes et femmes vieillissent beaucoup plutot dans les campagnes que dans les villes. (Mirabeau, 1. c. t. III., pp. 212 sqq.) Note to the second edition. In April 1866, 18 years after the publication of the work of Robert Somers quoted above, Professor Leone Levi gave a lecture before the Society of Arts on the transformation of sheep walks into deer-forests, in which he depicts the advance in the devastation of the Scottish Highlands. He says, with other things: "Depopulation and transformation into sheep-walks were the most convenient means for getting an income without expenditure. ... A deer forest in place of a sheep-walk was a common change in the Highlands. The landowners turned out the sheep as they once turned out the men from their estates, and wel- Legislation Against the Expropriated. 805 The spoliation of the churche's property, the fraudulent alienation of the State domains, the robbery of the common lands, the usurpation of feudal and clan property, and its transformation into modern private property under circum- stances of reckless terrorism, were just so many idyllic meth- ods of primitive accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalistic agriculture, made the soil part and parcel of cap- ital, and created for the town industries the necessary supply of a "free" and outlawed proletariat. CHAPTER XXVIII. BLOODY LEGISLATION AGAINST THE EXPROPRIATED, FROM THE END OF THE 15TH CENTURY. FORCING DO WIST OF WAGES BY ACTS OF PARLIAMENT. THE proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands of feudal retainers and by the forcible expropriation of the peo- comed the new tenants the wild beasts and tha feathered birds. . . . One can walk from the Earl of Dalhousie's estates in Forfarshire to John o' Groats, without ever leaving forest land. ... In many of these woods the fox, the wild cat, the 'marten, the polecat, the weasel and the Alpine hare are common; whilst the rabbit, the squirrel and the rat have lately made their way into the country. Im- mense tracts of land, much of which is described in the statistical account of Scot- land as having a pasturage in richness and extent of very superior description, are thus shut out from all cultivation and improvement, and are solely devoted to the sport of a few persons for a very brief period of the year." The London Economist of June 2, 1866, says, "Amongst the items of news in a Scotch paper of last week, we read. . . . 'One of the finest sheep farms in Sutherlandshire, for which a rent of 1,200 a year was recently offered, on the expiry of the existing lease this year, is to be converted into a deer forest.' Here we see the modern instincts of feudalism . . . operating pretty much as they did when the Norman Conqueror destroyed 36 villages to create the New Forest. . . . Two millions of acres . . . totally laid waste, embracing within their area some of the most fertile lands of Scotland. The natural grass of Glen Tilt was among the most nutritive in the county of Perth. The deer forest of Ben Aulder was by far the best grazing ground in the wide district of Badenoch; a part of the Black Mount forest was the best pasture for black-faced sheep in Scotland. Some idea of the ground laid waste for purely sporting purposes in Scotland may be formed from the fact that it embraced an area larger than the whole county of Perth. The resources of the forest of Ben Aulder might give some idea of the loss sustained from the forced desolations. The ground would pasture 15,000 sheep, and as it was not more than one-thirtieth part of the old forest ground in Scotland ... it might, &c., . . . All that forest land is as totally unproductive. ... It might thus as well have been submerged under the waters of the German Ocean. . . . Such extemporized wildernesses or deserts ought to be put down by the decided inter- ference of the Legislature." 806 Capitalist Production. pie from the soil, this ''free" proletariat could not possibly be absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown upon the world. On the other hand, these men, suddenly dragged from their wanted mode of life, could not as suddenly adapt themselves to the discipline of their new condition. They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circum- stances. Hence at the end of the 15th and during the whole of the 16th century, throughout Western Europe a bloody legislation against vagabondage. The fathers of the present working-class were chastised for their enforced transforma- tion into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them as "voluntary" criminals, and assumed that it depended on their own goodwill to go on working under the old conditions that no longer existed. In England this legislation began under Henry VII. Henry VIII. 1530 : Beggars old and unable to work receive a beggar's licence. On the other hand, whipping and impris- onment for sturdy vagabonds. They are to be tied to the cart- tail and whipped until the blood streams from their bodies, then to swear an oath to go back to their birthplace or to where they have lived the last three years and to "put themselves to labour." What grim irony ! In 27 Henry VIII. the for- mer statute is repeated, but strengthened with new clauses. For the second arrest for vagabondage the whipping is to be repeated and half the ear sliced off; but for the third relapse the offender is to be executed as a hardened criminal and enemy of the common weal. Edward VI. : A statute of the first year of his reign, 1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler. The master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chains. If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is con- demned to slavery for life and is to be branded on forehead or 1-nek with the letter S ; if he runs away thrice, he is to be exe- cuted as a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let Legislation Against the Expropriated. 807 him out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle. If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on informa- tion, are to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vaga- bond has been idling about for three days, he is to be taken to *his birthplace, branded with a redhot iron with the letter V on the breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at some other labour. If the vagabond gives a false birthplace, he is then to become the slave for life of this place, of its in- habitants, or its corporation, and to be branded with an S. All persons have the right to take away the children of the vaga- bonds and to keep them as apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls until the 20th. If they run away, they are to become up to this age the slaves of their masters, who can put them in irons, whip them, &c., if they like. Every master may put an iron ring round the neck, arms or legs of his slave, by which to know him more easily and to be more certain of him. 1 The last part of the statute provides, that certain poor people may be employed by a place or by persons, who are willing to give them food and drink and to find them work. This kind of parish-slaves was kept up in England until far into the 19th century under the name of "roundsmen." Elizabeth, 1572 : Unlicensed beggars above 14 years of age are to be severely flogged and branded on the left ear unless some one will take them into service for two years; in case of a repetition of the offence, if they are over 18, they are to be executed, unless some one will take them into service for two years ; but for the third offence they are to be executed without mercy as felons. Similar statutes: 18 Elizabeth, c. 13, and another of 1597. James I : Any one wandering about and begging is declared a rogue and a vagabond. Justices of the peace in petty ses- sions are authorised to have them publicly whipped and for the first offence to imprison them for 6 months, for the second for 2 years. Whilst in prison they are to be whipped as much J The author of the Essay on Trade, etc., 1770, says, "In the reign of Edward VI. indeed the English seem to have set, in good earnest, about encouraging manufac- tures and employing the poor. This we learn from a remarkable statute which runs thus: 'That all vagrants shall be branded, &c.,' " 1. c., p. 5. 808 Capitalist Production. and as often as the justices of the peace think fit ... Incor- rigible and dangerous rogues are to be branded with an R on the left shoulder and set to hard labour, and if they are caught begging again, to be executed without mercy. These statutes, legally binding until the beginning of the 18th century, were only repealed by 12 Ann, c. 23. 1 Similar laws in France, where by the middle of the 17th century a kingdom of vagabonds (truands) was established in Paris. Even at the beginning of Louis XVI.'s reign (Or- dinance of July 13th, 1777) every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and not practising a trade, is to be sent to the galleys. Of the same nature are the statute of Charles V. for the Netherlands (Oc- tober, 1537), the first edict of the States and Towns of Hol- land (March 10, 1614), the "Plakaat" of the United Provinces (June 26, 1649), &c. Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropri- * In France, the regisseur, steward, collector of dues for the feudal lords during cormaraunte and very plage of his native contrey maye compasse aboute and inclose many thousand akers of grounde together within one pale or hedge, the husbandmen be thrust owte of their owne, or els either by coneyne and fraude, or by violent op- pression they be put besydes it, or by wrongs and iniuries thei be so weried that they be compelled to sell all: by one meanes, therfore, or by other, either by hooke or crooke they muste needes departe awaye, poore, selye, wretched soules, men, women, husbands, wiues, fatherlesse children, widowes, wofull mothers with their yonge babes, and their whole household smal in substance, and muche in numbre, as husbandrye requireth many handes. Awaye thei trudge, I say, owte of their knowen accustomed houses, fyndynge no place to reste in. AH their householde stuffe, which is very little woorthe, thoughe it might well abide the sale: yet beeynge sodainely thruste owte, they be constrayned to sell it for a thing of nought. And when they haue wandered abrode tyll that be spent, what can they then els doe but steale, and then Justly pardy be hanged, or els go about beggyng. And yet then also they be caste in prison as vagabondes, because theey go aboute and worke not; whom no man wyl set a worke though thei neuer so willyngly profre themselues therto." Of these poor fugitives of whom Thomas More says that they were forced to thieve, "7200 great and petty thieves were put to death," in the reign of Henry VIII. (Hollinshed, description of England, Vol. 1., p. 186.) In Elizabeth's time, "rogues were trussed up apace, and that there was not one year commonly wherein three or four hundred were not devoured and eaten up by the gallowes." (Strype's Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion, and other Various Occur- rences in the Church of England during Queen Elizabeth's Happy Reign. Second ed., 1725, Vol. 2.) According to this same Strype, in Somersetshire, in one year, 40 persons were executed, 35 robbers burnt in the hand, 37 whipped, and 183 dis- charged as "incorrigible vagabonds." Nevertheless, he is of opinion that this iarge number of prisoners does not comprise even a fifth of the actual criminals, thanks to the negligence of the justices and the foolish compassion of the people; and the other counties of England were not better off in this respect than Somersetshire, while some were even worse. Legislation Against the Expropriated. 809 ated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vaga- bonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws gro- tesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system. I It is not enough that the conditions of labour are concen- trated in a ma&s, in the shape of capital, at the one pole of society, while at the other are grouped masses of men, who have nothing to sell but their labour-power. Neither is it enough that they are compelled to sell it voluntarily. The advance of capitalist production develops a working-class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production is self-evident laws of nature. The organization of the capitalist process of production, once fully developed, breaks down all resistance. The constant generation of a relative surplus-population keeps the law of supply and demand of labour, and therefore keeps wages, in a rut that corresponds with the wants of capital. The dull compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the capitalist. Direct force, outside economic conditions, is of course still used, but only exceptionally. In the ordinary run of things, the labourer can be left to the "natural laws of production," i.e., to his dependence on capital, a dependence springing from, and guaranteed in perpetuity by, the conditions of production themselves. It is otherwise dur- ing the historic genesis of capitalist production. The bour- geoisie, at its. rise, wants and uses the power of the state to "regulate" wages, i.e., to force them within the limits suitable for surplus-value making, to lengthen the working-day and to keep the labourer himself in the normal degree of dependence. This is an essential element of the so-called primitive accumu- lation. The class of wage-labourers, which arose in the latter half of the 14th century, formed then and in the following century only a very small part of the population, well protected in its position by the independent peasant proprietary in the coun- try and the guild-organization in the town. In country and town master and workman stood close together socially. The subordination of labour to capital was only formal i.e., the 8io Capitalist Production. mode of production itself had as yet no specific capitalistic character. Variable capital preponderated greatly over con- stant The demand for wage-labour grew, therefore, rapidly with every accumulation