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Preface .......... . .... ............................... 15 DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION. FIRST SECTION. COMMODITIES AND MONEY. ... CHAPTER I.--COMMODITIES. I. Use-value and exchange-value.-The substance of . value.-Magnitude of value, labor-time socially necessary.-II. Two-fold aspect of labor.-Two-fold social character of specific labor.-Reduction of all labor to a certain quantity of simple labor.--III. Value, a social reality, appears only in exchange.-- $ The form of value.-V. The material appearance of the social character of labor................... 21 CHAPTER II.-EXCHANGE. - The relations of the owners of commodities, and the conditions of these relations.-The exchange-relation involves necessarily the money-form.-The money- f orm attaches itself to the precious metals.......... 35 CHAPTER III.-MONEY OR THE CIRCULATION OF COMMODITIES. I. The measure of values.--The price-form.-II. The circulation of commodities.--The currency of money. --Legal-tender or coins and paper-money.--III. Re- serves of gold and silver, or hoards.-Money as the means of payment.--Universal money ....,,..... . 39 SECOND SECTION. THE TRANSFORMATION OF MONEY INTO CAPITAL. CHAPTER IV.--THE GENERAL FORMULA FOR CAPITAL. The simple circulation of commodities, and the circula- tion of money as 'capital.-Surplus-value............ 56 CHAPTER V.--CONTRADICTIONS IN THE GENERAL FORMULA FOR CAPITAL. The circulation of commodities is based on the exchange of equivalent values.-Even admitting the exchange of unequal values, the circulation of commodities cannot create surplus-value........................ 60 CHAPTER VI.--PURCHASE AND SALE OF LABOR- POWER. The source of surplus-value is labor-power.--The value of labor-power ............................... ..... 65 THIRD SECTION. THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE SURPLUS-VALUE. CHAPTER VII.-THE PRODUCTION OF USE-VALUES AND THE PRODUCTION OF SURPLUS-VALUE. I. Labor in general and its elements.-Labor performed for the profit of the capitalist.--II. The analysis of the value of the product.--Difference between the value of labor-power, and the value that it is capable of creating.-The problem of the transformation of money into capital is solved ........................ ?70 CHAPTER VIII.-CONSTANT CAPITAL AND VARIABLE CAPITAL. The preservation of value, and the creation of value by labor.-Value simply preserved, and value repro- duced and increased ............................... 82 CHAPTER IX.-THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE. I. Necessary labor and surplus-labor.-The degree of exploitation of labor-power.-II. The elements of the value of the product expressed in portions of this product and in fractions of the working-day.-III. The "last hour."-IV. The' net product ............ 88 CHAPTER X.-THE WORKING-DAY. I. The limits of the working-day.-II. The greed of capital for surplus-labor.--III. The exploitation of the free laborer in form and in fact.-Day and night work.-IV. Regulation of the working-day.--V. The struggle for the limitation of the working-day.. 98 CHAPTER XI.-RATE AND MASS OF SURPLUS-VALUE. The prolongation of the working-day counterbalances a decrease in the number of the laborers.-A certain minimum of money necessary for the transformation of money into capital .............................. 107 FOURTH SECTION. THE PRODUCTION OF RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALTe. CHAPTER XII.--RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE. Reduction of the necessary labor-time.--Increase of the productiveness of labor and of surplus-value........ 112 CHAPTER XIII.-CO-OPERATION. The collective power of labor.-Results and conditions of collective labor.-The leadership in industry belongs to capital.-The collective power of labor appears as a power immanent in capital ..................... 117 CHAPTER XIV.-DIVISION OF LABOR AND MANUFAC- TURE. I. Two-fold origin of manufacture.-II. The detail laborer and his implements.-III. The two funda- mental forms of manufacture.-General mechanism of manufacture.-Effect of manufacture on labor.- IV. Division of labor in manufacture and in society. -V. The capitalist character of manufacture ...... 125 CHAPTER XV.--MACHINERY AND MODERN INDUSTRY. I. The development of machinery.-The development of modern industry.-II. The value transferred by machinery to the product.-III. The labor of women and children.-The prolongation of the working- day.-The intensification of labor.-IV. The fac- tory.-V. The strife between workman and ma- chinery.--VI. The theory of compensation.--VII. Repulsion and attraction of work-people by the factory system.--VIII. Suppression of co-operation based on handicrafts and division of labor.-Re- action of the factory system on manufacture and domestic industries.-Transition from modern man- ufacture and domestic industry to modern mechani- cal industry.--IX. Contradiction between the nature of modern industry and its capitalist form.-The factory system and education.-The factory system, and the family.-Revolutionary consequences of factory-legislation.--X. Modern industry and agri- culture ................................. . 141 FIFTH SECTION. ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATION OF THE PRODUCTION OF SURPLUS-VALUE. CHAPTER XVI.-ASOLUTE AND RELATIVE SURPLUS- VALUE. The distinctive characteristic of productive labor.-The productiveness of labor and surplus-value.......... 176 CHAPTER XVII.-CHANGES OF MAGNITUDE IN THE VALUE OF LABOR-POWER AND IN SURPLUS-VALUE. I. Duration and intensity of labor constant. Product- iveness variable.-II. Duration and productiveness of labor constant. Intensity variable.--III. Inten- sity and productiveness of labor constant. Duration variable.-IV. Simultaneous variations in the dura- tion, intensity and productiveness of labor......... 182 CHAPTER XVIII.-MODES OF EXPRESSING THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE. Various formulae expressing this rate.--Surplus-value has its source in unpaid labor...................... 191 SIXTH SECTION. WAGES. CHAPTER XIX.--THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE VALUE OR PRICE OF LABOR-POWER INTO WAGES. Wages are the price, not of labor, but of labor-power.- The wage-form conceals the real relation between capital and labor ................................ 193 CHAPTER XX.-TIME-WAGES. The price of labor.-Working only part-time contrasted with a general curtailment of the working-day.-Low price of labor and prolongation of the day......... 198 CHAPTER XXI.-PIECE-WAGES. This change in the form of wages in no wise alters their nature.-Special characteristics of this form of wages that make it the form best adapted to capitalist pro- duction ............................................ 203 CHAPTER XXII.-NATIONAL DIFFERENCES OF WAGES. How to compare the rates of wages in different nations. --Modifications of the law of value in its inter- national application.-Apparent wages and real wages ...................................... 208 SEVENTH SECTION. THIE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL INTRODUCTION. The circulation of capital.-Examination of the funda- mental mechanism of accumulation ................. 211 CHAPTER XXIII.-SIMPLE' REPRODUCTION. The part of capital advanced in wages is only a part of the past labor of the laborer.--All capital advanced is transformed sooner or later into accumulated capital.--The productive consumption and the indi- vidual consumption of the laborer.-Simple repro- dluction keeps the workingman in the situation of a wage-laborer .................................................... 213 CHAPTER XXIV.-TRANSFORMATION OF SURPLUS- VALUE INTO CAPITAL. I. Reproduction on an increasing scale.-The more the capitalist has accumulated, the more he can accumu- late.-Capitalist appropriation is only the applica- tion of the laws of the production of commodities.-- II. False ideas concerning accumulation.-III. Di- vision of surplus-value into capital and revenue.- The abstinence theory.-IV. Circumstances which affect the extent of accumulation.-Degree of ex- ploitation of labor-power.-Productivity of labor.-- Growing difference between capital employed and capital consumed.-Magnitude of capital advanced.-- V. The labor-fund............................... 221 CHAPTER XXV.--THE GENERAL LAW OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION. I. The composition of capital.--Circumstances under which the accumulation of capital may induce a rise in wages.-The magnitude of capital does not depend on the number of the working population.--II. Dim- inution of the variable part of capital compared to the constant part.--Concentration and centraliza- tion.--III. Relative and actual demand for labor. --The law of population peculiar to the capitalist period.--Formation of an industrial reserve army.- How the general rate of wages is determined.--Delu- 10 sion of the law of supply and demand.--IV. Differ- ent forms of the relative surplus-population.- Pauperism is the inevitable consequence of the capi- talist aystem ..................................... 239 EIGHTH SECTION. PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION. CHAPTER XXVI.-THE SECRET OF PRIMITIVE ACCU- MULATION. I. Divorce of the producer from the means of produc- tion.--Explanation of the historical process which has superseded the feudal regime by the capitalist regime.-II. Brute force succeeded by the exploiting process as a subjugating agency.-III. Establish- ment of the home market for industrial capital....... 269 CHAPTER XXVII.-GENESIS OF THE INDUSTRIAL CAPITALIST. Primitive accumulation is accomplished by force.-The colonial regime, public debts and the protectionist system ............................................. 276 CHAPTER XXVIII.-HISTORICAL TENDENCY OF CAPI- TALIST ACCUMULATION. Private property based on personal labor superseded by capitalist property.-The transformation of capital- ist ownership into social ownership ................. 282 CHAPTER XXIX.--THE MODERN THEORY OF COLO- NIZATION. The necessity of the conditions that we have recognized as indispensable to capitalist exploitation, clearly appears in the colonies.--Confessions of political economy ............................................ 287 llntrobuctory 1$lote. Natural science made great advances about the middle of this century. It changed our way of looking at all subjects. The great change is this. We now look upon all things as growths or developments from former things. This gives to all branches of thought and science a con- tinuity that enables us to trace their development in the past, and, within limits, to predict their continued de- velopment in'the future. This idea of growth, develop- ment or descent, together with the idea of the struggle for existence, constitute the modern dectrine of evolu- tion. Now, this doctrine of continuous growth or descent had been applied to political and social institutions a hundred years ago by England's greatest statesman, Edmund Burke. But few understood Burke then, just as few un- derstand him now, and so this principle had little effect upon thought on social, economic, and political ques- tions, until the middle of the century when Karl Marx and Frederick Engels applied it to economics and so- ciology with tremendous power in their epoch-making Communist Manifesto, published in 1848. Karl Marx was born of Jewish parentage in Treves, Prussia, in 1818, and enjoyed the best educational ad- vantages that Europe could afford, studying at Jena, Bonn, and Berlin. As a result of the revolutionary move- ments of 1848-9, he was expelled from Prussia and re- 12 fused a refuge in France. Soon after, he settled in Lon- don and for eight years served as London correspondent of the New York Tribune. He availed himself of the opportunities afforded by the British Museum and other great libraries and collec- tions to make a profound study of political economy and the economic history of England. The result of this study we have in CAPITAL, the greatest work on econom- ics ever produced. The baldest statement of the merits of this work by one familiar with it, must seem the most extravagant hyperbole to those who know it not. The first volume of this book which is, as Frederick Engels said, "in a great measure a whole in itself," was published in London, in 1867. It has always ranked as an independent work. It was not translated into Eng- lish until 1886. The second and third volumes, pub- lished respectively in 1885 and 1895, are not yet avail- able in English. The first volume is often spoken of as "the Bible of the working-class," and certain it is that those who be- come familiar with this "Bible," in its extended form, must work, for it is long and requires the closest atten- tion and most careful study, but this work is well re- paid. This labor-time includes no surplus-labor-time. The need for a popular abridgement of this volume has long been keenly felt. The late Dr. Aveling attempted to supply this want in "The Student's Marx," a work which in the judgment of many competent critics sur- passes in difficulty anything that Marx himself ever wrote. 13 The epitome, here translated, was published in Paris, in 1883, by Gabriel Deville, possibly the most brilliant writer among the French Marxians. It is the most suc- cessful attempt yet made to popularize Marx's scientific economics. It is by no means free from difficulties, for the subject is essentially a complex and difficult subject, but there are no difficulties that reasonable attention and patience will not enable the average reader to overcome. There is no attempt at originality. The very words in most cases are Marx's own words, and Capital is followed so closely that the first twenty-five chapters correspond in subject and treatment with the first twenty-five chapters of Capital. Chapter XXVI corresponds in the main with Chapter XXVI of Capital, but also contains portions of chapter XXX. The last three chapters-XXVII, XXVIII, and XXIX-correspond to the last three chap- ters-XXXI, XXXII, and XXXIII-of Capital. Marx's scientific theory is fully expounded in this epitome, but the facts-facts drawn from English official sources, Blue-books, Reports of Factory Inspectors, etc. -on which this theory rests are necessarily omitted. In many economic works this would not be an im- portant omission. In this case, it would be difficult to overstate its importance; for in Capital the theory and its fact-foundation are so thoroughly blended that the theory is but the subjective side of the facts, and the facts the objective side of the theory. Therefore, this epitome is in no sense a substitute for Capital itself. It is intended for those who have not the time, or it may be the patience and industry, to read Cap- ital, and it is hoped that it may be the means of tempting 14 many of them to read the book itself, for in this case, as in many others, the difficulties are far more formidable in the distance than when boldly faced at arm's length. I am keenly conscious of the defects incident to every translation, which are all the greater in a scientific work like this, and I can only say I have done my best to make the book plain and clear and have never wittingly sacri- ficed lucidity to literary elegance or even to grammatical correctness. My only hope is that the book may serve to give the American reading public a juster conception of the philosophy of Karl Marx and of the principles and purposes of Modern Socialism. ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE. Bound Brook, N. J., September 28, 1899. jPreface. By study, and by observation of the phenomena of in- organic and organic Nature, Man becomes conscious of their relations of cause and effect and becomes more and more the master of his own development. Before co-ordinating his ideas and grasping their dif- ferent relations, man acts. This is true, both in the childhood of the individual and the race. But it is only from the time that it becomes subordinate to deliberate thought that his action ceases to be incoherent and be- comes really and rapidly effective. And what is true of every other kind of action is true of revolutionary action. It must have science for its guide, or its puerile efforts will produce only abortive effects. No matter what the subject may be, to maintain that science is useless or that study has had its day, is only an idle pretext to avoid study or an attempt to excuse wilful, persistent ignorance. It is evident that the study of social life, alone and of itself, will not modify the social form and will not fur- nish, elaborated in the smallest details, the ground-plan and elevation of a new society; but it will disclose the constituent elements of the present society; their essen- tial combinations and relations, their tendencies and the law which presides over their evolution. This knowledge will put us in a position, not "to abolish by decrees the natural phases of the development of modern society, 16 but to shorten the period of pregnancy and to mitigate the pangs of child-birth." By preaching the thorough study of society, Karl Marx did not pretend to be the creator of a science unknown before him. This is proven by the numerous notes to his work, which is, on the contrary, based on the labors of the economists who preceded him, and he had the courage and candor, in the case of every proposition, to cite the author who first formulated it. But no one has done more than Marx to make plain by their analysis the true meaning and tendency of social pheiomena. No one, therefore has done more for the emancipation of the working-class, for the emancipation of humanity. Yes, without doubt, others, before him, felt the social injustices and grew righteously indignant. Many were those who dreamt of remedying these evils and drew up on paper admirable projects of reform. Inspired by a laudable generosity, having in most cases a very clear per- ception of the sufferings of the masses, they criticized with as much justice as eloquence the existing order of things. But as they had no exact conception of its causes and its evolution, they constructed (on paper) model so- cieties that were none the less chimerical because their architects had some correct intuitions. If they had the universal welfare as a motive, they did not have reality as a guide. In their projects of social renovation, they entirely disregarded facts, pretending to have recourse only to the pure light of reason, as if reason, which is only the co- ordination and generalization of the ideas furnished by experience, could be, in itself, a source of knowledge-- 17 knowledge external and superior to the cerebral modifi- cations of external impressions. In a word, they were idealists, just as the anarchists are to-day. Instead of making reality the starting point of their reasoning, they attribute reality to the fictions born of their particular ideal of absolute justice. Finding, from the speculative point of view, that the most agreeable of all social regimes would be that which would permit the most unrestricted freedom to the blos- soming of individuality, and which would have no law save the free will of individuals, the anarchists preach its realization without troubling themselves to inquire whether the economic necessities permit of its establish- ment. They do not suspect the retrograde character of the extreme individualism, the unlimited autonomy, which is the essence of anarchism. In the various orders of facts, evolution is invariably accomplished by the transition from an incoherent form to a more and more coherent form, from a state of diffu- sion to a state of concentration. And, as the concentra- tion of the parts becomes greater, their reciprocal inter- dependence increases, that is to say, that more and more they cannot extend the range of their own activity with- out the co-operation of the other parts. This is a general truth that the anarchists do not suspect. Poor fellows! They pretend to see further than anyone else, but they do not even perceive that they are marching backwards. For all these fanciful conceptions-although more or less well meant-Marx was the first to substitute the study of social phenomena based on the only real con- ception-the materialist conception. He did not sing 18 the praises of a system more or less perfect from the sub- jective point of view. He scrupulously examined the facts, methodically arranged the results of his examina- tion and drew the conclusion, which was and is the scientific explanation of the historical progress of human- ity, and, particularly, of the capitalist period through which we are passing. History, he has shown, is nothing but the history of class conflicts. The division of society into classes, which made its appearance with the social life of man, rests on economic relations-maintained by force-which enable some to succeed in shifting on to the shoulders of others the natural necessity of labor. Material interests have always been the inciting mo- tives of the incessant struggles of the privileged classes, either with each other, or against the inferior classes at whose expense they live. Man is dominated by the ma- terial conditions of life, and these conditions, and there- fore the mode of production, have determined and will determine human customs, ethics and institutions-so- cial, economic, political, juridical, etc. As soon as one part of society has monopolized the means of production, the other part, upon whom the burden of labor falls, is obliged to add to the labor-time necessary for its own support, a certain surplus-labor time, for which it receives no equivalent,--time that is devoted to supporting and enriching the possessors of the means of production. As an extractor of unpaid labor, which, by means of the increasing surplus-value whose source it is, accumulates every day, more and more, in the hands of the proprietary class the instruments of its 19 dominion, the capitalist regime surpasses in power all the antecedent regimes founded on compulsory labor. But, to-day, the economic conditions begotten by this regime, trammelled in their natural evolution by this very regime, inexorably tend to break the capitalist mould which can no longer contain them, and these destroying principles are the elements of the new society. The historic mission of the class at present exploited- the proletariat-which is being organized and disciplined by the very mechanism of capitalist production, is to complete the work of destruction begun by the develop- ment of social antagonisms. It must, first of all, defini- tively wrest from its class adversaries the political power -the command of the force devoted by them to preserv- ing intact their economic monopolies and privileges. Once in control of the political power, it will be able, by proceeding to the socialization of the means of pro- duction through the expropriation of the usurpers of the fruits of others' toil, to suppress the present contradiction between collective production and private capitalist ap- propriation, and to realize the universalization of labor and the abolition of classes. Such is a summary sketch of the irrefutable theory taught by Marx. His constant aim is to enable every reader to judge of its truth and validity for himself. As thought is nothing but the intellectual reflex of the real movement of things, he has not for an instant departed from the material foundation of his thought, from external phenomena; he has not separated man from the conditions of his existence. He has observed, he has stated the results of his observation, and purely 20 by the depth of his analysis he has complemented his positive conception of the present order by the knowledge of the inevitable dissolution of this order. This masterly work has unfortunately been hitherto too little known in France, or known only in a garbled and distorted form. I have attempted, by epitomizing it, to make it accessible to all. This epitome, undertaken on the flattering invitation and executed with the kindly encouragement of Karl Marx, follows the French edition. This is the most com- plete edition and the last one revised by the author, as death did not leave him the time to prepare the third German edition which he had planned and which will soon be published by his devoted friend, his worthy co- worker, his literary 'executor, Frederick Engels. GABRIEL DEVILLE. Paris, August 10, 1883. DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION. FIRST SECTION.-Commodities and Money. CHAPTER I. COMMODITIES. I. Use-value and exchange-value.-The substance of value.--Magnitude of value, labor-time socially necessary. -II. Two-fold aspect of labor.-TW'o-fold social charac- ter of specific labor.-Reduction of all labor to a certain quantity of simple labor.-III. Value, a social reality, appears only in exchange.-The form of value.-IV. The material appearance of the social character of labor. The commodity, that is to say, an object that, instead of being consumed by the producer, is destined to be exchanged, to be sold, is the elementary form of the wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of produc- tion reigns. The analysis of the commodity must, con- sequently be the starting point of our study. I.-Use Value and Exchange Value. Let us take two objects, a table and some wheat, for instance. By reason of their particular qualities, each of these two objects serves to satisfy distinct needs, both then are useful to the man who utilizes them. To become a commodity, an object must be, first, a useful thing, a thing that contributes to the satisfaction of human needs of one sort or another. The utility of a thing, utility which springs from the natural qualities of the thing, and appears in its use or consumption, makes of that thing a use-value. Destined by him who manufactures it to satisfy the needs or the convenience of others, any object whatso- ever is turned over by the producer to him to whom it is useful, to the one who wishes to use it, in exchange for another object, and by that act it becomes a com- modity. The varying ratio, in which commodities of different kinds exchange for each other, constitutes theix exchange-value. The Substance of Value. Let us consider the exchange-relation of two commod- ities-75 pounds of wheat, I assume are equal to 100 pounds of iron. What does this mean? That in two different objects, wheat and iron, there exists something in common. This common "something" cannot be any natural property of the commodities. No account is taken of their natural qualities, except in so far as these qualities give them utility, which makes them use-values; in their exchange, and it is this which characterizes the exchange- relation, men pay no heed to their respective utility, but only ask if each is present in sufficient quantity. As use-values, commodities are, before all, of different quali- ties; as exchange-values they can only be of different quantities. If, then, we leave out of consideration the natural prop- erties, the use-value, of commodities, they have only one quality left, that of being products of labor. 22 2a And so, at this stage of our analysis, in looking at a table, a house, a sack of wheat, etc., we must leave out of consideration the respective utility of these objects, their particular useful form; we have not to concern our- selves with the special productive labor of the cabinet- maker, the mason, the plowman, etc., which has given them this particular form. Disregarding thus in these forms of labor their peculiar outward appearance, there is left to them for us only their common character; they are, from this point, all reduced to an expenditure of human labor-power, that is to say, to wear and tear of man's organism, without regard to the particular form in which this power has been expended. Results of the expenditure of human power in general, types of the same undifferentiated labor, commodities now manifest but one thing, which is that in their pro- duction labor-power has been expended, that labor is accumulated in them. In so far as they are materializa- tions of this labor, without regard to its form, they are values. The "something" common which manifests itself in the exchange-relation or in the exchange-value of commodities, is their value. Magnitude of Value, Labor-time Socially Necessary. The substance of value is labor, the measure of the quantity of value is the quantity of labor, measured by its own duration, by labor-time. The labor-time that determines the value of an article is the time socially necessary to its production, that is to say the time necessary not in a particular case, but on the average. It is the time required by any task 24Q executed with the average degree of skill and intensity, and under the normal conditions of the given social environment. The magnitude of value of a commodity would not change, if the time necessary for its production remained constant. But the latter varies with every modification of the productiveness of labor, that is to say, with every improvement made in the processes or the external condi- tions by aid of which labor-power manifests itself. The productivity of labor depends then, among other things, on the average skillfulness of the workmen, on the extent and efficiency of the means of production, and on cir- cumstances purely natural. For instance, the same quantity of labor in favorable seasons is embodied in eight bushels of wheat, and, in bad seasons, only in four. In general, if the productiveness of labor increases, the time necessary for the production of an article dimin- ishing, the value of that article diminishes, and inversely, if the productiveness diminishes, the value increases. But, no matter what the variations in its productiveness may be, the same labor functioning during the same time, always creates the same value; but it furnishes, in a given time, more or less use-values, objects of utility, as its productiveness increases or diminishes. If there are produced in the same time, thanks to a development of productiveness, two coats instead of one, each coat will continue to have the utility that it had before the rate of production was doubled; but with these two coats two men can be clothed instead of one, so that there is then an increase of material wealth; nevertheless, the value of the sum of the objects of utility thus doubled, 25 remains constant. Two coats made in the same time that one was formerly, are worth no more than the one was before. A variation in productivity, which renders labor more fruitful, increases the quantity of articles turned out by it, and, consequently, increases material wealth; but it does not change the value of this quantity thus materially increased if the total labor-time employed in its manu- facture is the same. We know the substance of value: it is labor. We know its measure: it is the duration of labor. A thing may be a use-value and not be a value. This is the case when it is useful to man without being the result of his labor. Examples of this are, the air, natural meadows, virgin soil, etc. A use-value has value only so far as human labor is stored up in it. For in- stance, the water that flows in a river, although useful in many ways to man, has, nevertheless, no value; but if, by the use of buckets or pipes, it is raised to the fifth floor, it at once acquires value, because to bring it there, a certain quantity of human strength has been expended. A thing may be useful and a product of labor without being a commodity. Any one who, by his product, satisfies his own needs, creates only a use-value for him- self. To produce commodities, it is necessary to produce use-values with the object of turning them over to the consumption of others by the medium of exchange. Finally, no object can be a value if it is not useful; if an object is useless, the labor that it contains, having been uselessly expended, does not create value. II.---Two-fold Aspect of Labor. The labors of the cabinet-maker, the mason, the plow- man, etc., create value by virtue of their common quality of being human labor; but they form a table, a house, wheat, etc., in a word different use-values, only because they have different qualities. Every kind of labor is, viewed from one side, a physical expenditure of human strength and forms, by virtue of this identity of nature, the value of commodities. Viewed from the other side, every kind of labor is an expenditure of human strength under such or such a productive form determined by the particular object to be attained, and, by this quality of being diverse useful labor, it produces use-values or useful things. Two-fold Social Character of Specific Labor. To all the different kinds of useful objects necessitated by the variety of human needs, there correspond as many different kinds of labor. To satisfy the divers needs of man, labor presents itself, now under one useful form, now under another, and thus we have an innumerable multitude of industries. Although carried on independently of each other, ac- cording to the will and for the private account of their producers, without apparent connection, these various specific kinds of useful labor manifest themselves as mutually supplementary parts of labor in general des- stined to satisfy all social needs. The individual trades, each of which corresponds at most to a single category of needs and the indispensable variety of which is not the result of any arrangement, form, taken as a whole, as it were, the links in the chain of the social system of the division of labor adapting itself to the infinite diversity of human needs. In this way, with men working for each other, their specific kinds of labor assume, by virtue of that fact alone a social character; now these specific kinds of labor also have a social character on account of their mutual resemblance due to their quality of being human labor in general, this resemblance appearing only in exchange, that is to say in a social relation that makes them con- front each other upon a footing of equivalence, in spite of their natural differences. Reduction of alt Labor to a Certain Quantity of Simple Labor. The various transformations of natural substances and their appropriation to various human needs, which con- stitute the whole task of mankind, are more or less toil- some in the doing. The different kinds of labor that re- sult require more or less skill. But when we speak of human labor, from the point of view of value, we regard it only as simple labor, that is to say, as the expenditure of simple labor-power, the power that any ordinary man, without special training, possesses in his organism. Simple average labor, it is true, varies in character in different countries and at different times; but it is always fixed in a given society. Superior labor is only simple labor multiplied; it may al- ways be reduced to a greater quantity of simple labor: a day, for instance, of superior or skilled labor to two days of simple labor. Experience shows that this reduction of all labor to a certain quantity of one homogeneous labor is made every- where, every day. Commodities varying the most widely are uniformly expressed in money, that is to say, in a cer- tain mass of gold or silver. By so expressing them, the different kinds of labor of which these commodities are the products, however skilled the labor may be, are reduced, in one ratio or another, to the product of one identical kind of labor, the labor that furnishes gold or silver, which are represented by all, the difference being in quantity only. III.-Value, a Social Reality, Appears Only in Ex- change. Commodities are commodities only because they are two things at once, objects of utility and embodiments of value. They can then enter into circulation only when they appear in a two-fold form, their natural form and their value-form. Taken by itself, a commodity, in so far as it is an object of value, remains intangible; we may go on, repeating, indeed, that it is human labor materialized, but though we reduce this value to a mere abstraction, not an atom of matter will be found in it; afterwards as before, it has only one palpable form, its natural form as an object of utility. If we remember that the reality of commodities in so far as they are values, consists in this, that they are ex- pressions of one identical social substance, human labor, it becomes evident that this reality, being purely social, 29 can manifest itself only in social transactions. The char- acter of value appears in the mutual relations of com- modities, and in these relations only, It is in exchange that the products of labor manifest a social existence, as values, under one identical form, distinct from their material existence, under various forms, as objects of utility. A commodity expresses its value by the fact that it appears capable of being exchanged for another com- modity, by the fact, in a word, that it appears as an exchange-value, but it expresses it in this way only. If value manifests itself in the exchange relation, it is not because exchange begets value; it is, on the con- trary, the value of the commodity which controls its exchange-relations, which determines its relations with other commodities. A comparison will make this clear. A sugar-loaf is heavy, but its appearance in itself does not indicate that it is heavy, and still less does it tell us what its weight is. Let us take various pieces of iron of ascertained weight. In itself, the material form of the iron is as little indicative of weight as is that of the sugar. Placed in the balance with the sugar-loaf, these pieces of iron will make its weight known to us. Thus, the magnitude of its weight, which did not appear when we considered the sugar-loaf by itself, manifests itself when it is brought into relation with the iron; but it is not the relation between the weight of the sugar and the iron that is the cause of the existence of the weight of the sugar; it is, on the contrary, the weight that determines this relation or ratio. This relation of the iron to the sugar is possible only because these two objects, so different from the point of view of their utility, have a common property, weight; and, in this relationship, the iron is regarded as a body that represents only weight. No regard is paid to its other properties. It serves only as a measure of weight. Just so, in an expression of value, such as, 20 yards of linen =1 coat, the second commodity represents only value; the particular utility of the coat is, in this case, left out of consideration, and it serves only as a measure of value of the linen. Here, however, the resemblance ceases. In the expression of the weight of the sugar-loaf, the iron represents a quality common to the two bodies, but a natural quality, their weight; in the expression of value of the linen compared to the coat, the coat represents indeed a quality common to the two objects, but this is not a natural quality--it is a quality whose origin is purely social, their value. A commodity which is a two-fold thing, an object of utility and a value, appears then to be what it is, a two- fold thing, only when it is no longer considered in isola- tion, only when through its relationship with another commodity, by means of the possibility of being ex- changed, it gives to its value a perceptible form, the form of exchange-value, distinct from its natural form. The Form of Value. In so far as they are values, all commodities are ex- pressions of one identical substance, human labor, and are replaceable the one by the other. A commodity is, cone- quently, exchangeable with any other commodity what- ever. In practice, the immediate exchange of all com- modities is impossible, One commodity alone is found 31 to be immediately exchangeable with all others. Every- body knows that commodities have a particular value- form, the money-form. This money form rises from the simple form of the exchange-ratio, which is 20 yards of linen=1 coat, or 75 pounds of wheat=100 pounds of iron, etc. In the beginning, any commodity whatever is thus exchanged for any other and different commodity. This is the fact in the case of isolated exchanges, where one commodity accidentally expresses its value in any other. Then, one particular commodity is exchanged, no longer by chance for one other commodity, but regularly for various others. 20 yards of linen, I assume, are equal, alternately, to one coat, 75 pounds of wheat, 100 pounds of iron, etc.; one commodity then expresses its value in a series of commodities, while before it expressed it in one only. Up to this point, it is always one commodity only which expresses its value-in the first case in one other commodity, in the second case in many others. Each commodity has to find its own form or forms of value; there is not as yet one form of value, or value-form, com- mon to all commodities. In the preceding formula, we see that 20 yards of linen--1 coat, or 75 pounds of wheat, or 100 pounds of iron, or .... , etc. The commodity, whose value is to be expressed, does not change,--it is always linen,-- but the commodities that express its value vary,--it is now a coat, now some wheat, now some iron, etc. One single commodity, linen, may have as many mirrors of its value as there are other different commodities. And, 32 therefore, should we wish, on the contrary, one identical mirror to reflect the value of all commodities, let us transpose our example. We now have: 1 coat==20 yards of linen, 75 pounds of wheat=20 yards of linen, 100 pounds of iron=20 yards of linen, etc. This formula, which is only the preceding formula reversed, and the preceding formula being only the development of the simple form of the exchange-relation, this gives us at last, for all commodities, a uniform expression of value. All now have one common measure of value, linen, which, being immediately exchangeable with them, is for all the form in which their value is incarnated. Commodities, from the point of view of value, are purely socially things, and so their value-form must as- sume a form socially valid. And the value-form has at- tained stability only from the moment when it has be- come attached to one special kind of commodities, to a unique object universally recognized. This unique object, the official value-form, might, theoretically, be any commodity whatever. The special commodity, with the natural form of which value has gradually become identified, is gold. Let us substitute gold in our last formula for linen, and we get the money form of value. All commodities are reduced to a certain quantity of gold. Before its historical conquest of. this social monopoly of the value-form, gold was a commodity like all others. It functions to-day as money confronting all other com- modities, only because it formerly played, beside them, the role of a commodity. Like them all, it appeared at SS first accidentally in isolated exchanges. Little by little it came to function, within broader or narrower limits, as a general measure of value. At the present time, it is exclusively by the use of it as a medium, that the owners of commodities exchange their products for others. The money form of value now seems to be its natural form. If we say that wheat, a coat, or boots have a cer- tain relation to linen, as the measure of value, as the general incarnation of human labor, the striking strange- ness of this proposition is at once obvious. When the producers of these commodities, instead of comparing them to linen, compare them, though it comes to the same thing, to gold or silver, the thing is no longer astonishing. A commodity does not appear to have be- come money because other commodities express their value in it, but, quite the opposite, commodities appear to express their value in it because it is money. IV.The Material Appearance of the Social Character of Labor. This money form or money tends then to give a false idea of the relations of the producers of commodities. These relations appear as relations of the products that are brought together to be exchanged. For this purpose their values are compared, that is to say the labor that they embody, though of different kinds, is compared by virtue of its quality as homogeneous human labor. Thus there is attributed to these various kinds of labor and their products a social outward appearance distinct from their natural appearance. 34 And the products of labor which, in themselves, are things simple and easy to understand, become complex, full of subtleties, enigmatical, as soon as they are re- garded as objects of value apart from their physical nature, as soon as, in a word, they become commodities. Exchange-value, which is in truth only a particular social manner of estimating the labor expended in the making of an object, and which has, consequently, only a social reality, has become so familar to everyone that it seems to be, like the money-form, in the case of gold and silver, an essential property of objects. Appearing in the historical period in which the mer- cantile mode of production holds sway, the character of value has taken on the appearance of a material element of things, inseparable from them and eternal; while the fact is there are modes of production in which the social form of the products of labor is identified with their natural form instead of being distinct from it, in which products appear as objects having various uses and not as commodities reciprocally exchangeable. This material appearance disguising a purely social character, this illusion that it is a natural property of things to exchange for each other in definite propor- tions, transforms, in the eyes of the producers, their own social movement, their personal relations, relations as- sumed with a view to the exchange of their products, into a movement of the things themselves, a movement that leads them, so far are they from being able to control it. Production and its relations, creations of man, rule man instead of being ruled by him. 35 An analogous fact may be found in the hazy region of the religious world. There, the products of the hu- man brain become Gods and assume the aspect of inde- pendent beings, provided with particular bodies and in communication with men and with each other. It is just the same with the products of man's hands in the mer- cantile world. CHAPTER II. EXCHANGE. The relations of the owners of commodities, and the con- ditions of these relations.--The exchange-relation involves necessarily the money-form.-The money-form attaches itself to the precious metals. The Relations of the Owners of Commodities and the Conditions of these Relations. Commodities cannot go to market all alone and conduct their own exchanges. In order that these objects may enter into relation with each other as commodities, their owners or guardians must place themselves in relation to one another as persons, and must act 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. For this alienation to be recip- rocal, they must then tacitly recognize each other as the private proprietors of the things alienated. This juri- dical relation, which takes the form of a contract, is only the relation between two wills, and is the reflex of the 36 economic relation. The persons here exist for one an- other merely as representatives of the commodities they possess. For the owner of a commodity who wishes to exchange it for another, this commodity is not a use-value, an object of utility; if it was useful to him he would not seek to get rid of it. The only utility the trader finds in his commodity is that it is capable of being useful to others, that it is, in consequence, an instrument of ex- change, that it is a depository of value. He wishes, therefore, to exchange it for other commodities whose use-value is capable of satisfying his personal needs. All commodities are non-use-values for their owners, and use-values for those who do not own them, and so they must change hands. This changing of hands is exactly what constitutes their exchange. Now the latter brings them into relation with each other as values. Only after their exchange do they become use-values for their new owners, who have taken them with a view to their utility. Hence commodities must manifest theihselves as values before they can be realized as use-values. On the other hand, their use-value must be demon- strated before they can be relized as values; for they are realized as values only because it is demonstrated that the labor expended in their production has been put forth under a form useful to others; and this is demonstrated only when they are brought face to face with some one desirous to own them with a view to their utility; this is demonstrated, in one word, only by their exchange. To sum up, it is only when theyhave utility that com- modities can appear as values. But, they must have al- ready appeared as values before manifesting their utility. How can these contradictory conditions for the owners of commodities be satisfied ? The Exchange-Relation Involves Necessarily the Money- Form. In this situation, commodities can show their value and their quantity of value, only when they are placed upon a footing of equality with a certain quan- tity of a useful thing whose value is already demonstra- ted. Two commodities manifest their value by their comparison with a third commodity whose utility, already recognized, gives bodily form to the value of the two others. This third commodity, the value-form of the others, becomes money, as we have seen in the preceding chapter. It is the exchange-relation which necessarily involves the money-form. The historical development of production and ex- change has imprinted, more and more, upon the products of labor the character of commodities, of things produced for others; a larger and ever larger portion of useful objects has been produced intentionally to be exchanged, that is to say that the objects have been regarded, not from the point of view of their utility, but merely as values, even in their production. In order to effect the exchange with a view to which they were made, it must be possible to compare their respective values, and this comparison can be made only by the aid of another com- modity. The requirements of commerce have thus given 38 birth to a palpable form, enabling us to compare objects as values. This palpable form which has attached itself, first to one commodity, then to another, has ended by attaching itself exclusively to one particular kind of commodity. By common consent, one special commodity has been set apart from all others, and serves as an exponent of their values. The natural form of this commodity is socially established as the incarnation of value. It functions as money, it becomes money. The Money-Form Attaches Itself to the Precious Metals. Chance decided in the first place the kind of commod- ity in which the money-form fixed itself, but this form soon attached itself to commodities whose natural prop- erties fitted them for this social function, that is to say, to the precious metals. In fact, all the different pieces or samples of these metals are identical in their material qualities, and they alone of such substances are capable of being prepared in such forms (coins) as are adapted to the manifestation of value, fitted to serve as palpable images of homogeneous human labor. Moreover, as commodities differ as values only in quantity, in order to adapt itself to every slightest variation in quantity, the money commodity must .be susceptible of quantitative differences; now, gold and silver are divisible at will. The use-value of the gold and silver transformed into the money commodity, becomes two-fold-besides their utility as commodities (gold serves as the raw material for many articles), they have, in consequence of their role as money, a peculiar utility. 39 The social relation of exchange, which transforms gold and silver into money, does not give them their value, which they had before becoming money, but only gives them this special value-form. Because we know that gold has this special value-form, the money-form, which renders it immediately exchangeable for all other com- modities, we do not on that account know, for instance, how much twenty francs in gold are worth. Like every other commodity, gold can express its own quantity of value only in other commodities. By reading an ordin- ary market report from right to left we find the quantity of "value of gold expressed in many other commodities. CHAPTER III. MONEY OR THE CIRCULATION OF COMMODITIES. I. The measure of values.--The price-form.--II. The circulation of commodities.--The currency of money.-- Legal-tender or coins and paper-money.--III. Reserves of gold and silver or hoards.-Money as the means of payment. --Universal money. I.-The Measure of Values. For simplicity's sake we assume that gold is the money- commodity. In fact, in countries like France, where two commodities, gold and silver, legally perform the function of a measure of value, only one of them main- tains that position. The first function of gold is to furnish to all commo- dities the material in which they express their values, i. e., 40 to represent their values as magnitudes of the same denomination, qualitatively alike, and, therefore, quan- titatively comparable. It thus serves as a universal measure of value. But it is not gold in its character of money that ren- ders commodities commensurable. On the contrary, it is because they are commensurable, being, as values, of equal quality as materializations of human labor, that they can all measure their magnitude of value in one special commodity transformed into a common measure of value. Money, as a measure of value, is only the outward form which must necessarily be worn by the real measure, immanent in them, which is always labor-time. The Price-Form. The expression in gold of the magnitude of value of a commodity is its money form or price. The price of commodities is not a visible thing. Their owner is obliged to fasten labels to them to announce their prices, to represent their equality with gold. There is not a merchant who does not know full well that not a single grain of real gold is needed to estimate in gold the value of millions of commodities. Although in its function as the measure of value, money is employed only as imaginary money, the determination of prices does none the less depend altogether upon the material of money. If this material were copper instead of gold, values would be represented by quantities of copper dif- fering from the quantities of gold that now represent them, in other words by different prices. 41 In so far as they are varying quantities of one identical thing, gold, commodities may be compared with each other and measured, and this necessitates comparing them with some fixed quantity of gold as a term of com- parison or unit of measure. As this quantity of gold must have social authenticity, it is regulated by law. Divided into aliquot parts, this fixed quantity of metal becomes the standard of prices. Gold here, therefore, fulfills a second function. We know that, as the measure of values, it serves to transform the values of commodities into imaginary quantities of gold or prices. Now, as the standard of price, it mea- sures these various quantities of gold by a fixed quantity, it compares them with one and the same fixed weight of gold. The prices or the quantities of gold into which the imagination transforms commodities are, therefore, expressed by the monetary names of this fixed weight, or unit of measures, and its subdivisions, such as dollars, dimes, etc. Prices then simultaneously indicate two things, the magnitude of value of commodities, and the fraction or multiple of the weight of gold, that is the unit of mea- sure, for which they are directly exchangeable. If the price, as the exponent of the magnitude of a commodity's value, is the exponent of its exchange-ratio with money, it does not follow that the exponent of its exchange-ratio with money is necessarily identical with the exponent of its magnitude of value. The magnitude of value expresses, in fact, the essen- tial relation existing between a commodity and the social labor-time needed to produce it. As soon as value is transformed into price, this relation appears as the ex- change-ratio of the commodity with money. But this exchange-ratio may express either the real value of the commodity or the greater or smaller quantity of gold with which, according to circumstances, it may be equated. Suppose that a sack of wheat is produced in the same labor-time as 13 grammes of gold, and that 2 louis is the monetary name of 13 grammes of gold; then the money expression of the value of the sack of wheat, or its price, is 2 louis. If, while the conditions of production remain the same demanding the same expenditure of labor, circumstances occur that allow the sack of wheat to be advanced to 3 louis or reduced to 1 louis, then 3 louis and 1 louis are expressions respectively greater or less than the value of the wheat, nevertheless they are its prices, for they ex- press the exchange-ratio of the wheat and money. The possibility, therefore, of a quantitative difference between the price of a commodity and its magnitude of value is inherent in the two-fold role of the price-form. In the price, that is to say in the monetary name of commodities, their equivalence with gold is not yet an accomplished fact. For a commodity to act effecth rely in practice as exchange-value, it must cease to be merely imaginary gold and transform itself into real g [ld. To give it a price it suffices to declare it equal to purely imaginary gold, but it must be replaced by re? gold, if it is to do its owner the service of procuring hiMr, by means of its exchange, the things that he wants. 43 The price-form simply states that the commodities are for sale and the conditions upon which the owner is willing to part with them. Prices are the amorous glances by which commodities coquet with money. For money to allow itself to be attracted by commodities, their use-value must be recognized. We do not speak of the errors, more or less intentional, made in fixing prices, for they are quickly corrected on the market by the rates of competitors. II.-The Circulation of Commodities. Exchange causes commodities to pass from the hands in which they are non-use-values into hands in which they serve as use-values. When once they reach a place where they serve as objects of utility, commodities disap- pear from the realm of exchange, and fall into the realm of consumption. But this is effected only after a series of changes of form. Let us observe on the market some trader, say a weaver. He first exchanges his commodity, 20 yards of linen, for instance, for 2 louis in gold; then, these two louis for a coat. In thus acting, the weaver parts with the linen, which is for him only a depository of value, for gold, and the gold, the value-form of the linen, for another com- modity, the coat, which will be for him a use-value. The result of this transaction is that the weaver has procured, in place of his first commodity, another commodity of equal value, but of different utility; and in this fashion he procures his means of subsistence and production. In the last analysis there-is only a substitution of one commodity for another, or only an exchange of products. 44 But this exchange in taking place gives rise to two oppo- site and complemental transformations: the transforma- tion of the commodity into money and the re-transfor- mation of the money into a commodity. These two transformations represent, from the standpoint of the owner of the commodity, two acts: a sale, an exchange of a commodity for money, and a purchase, an exchange of money for a commodity. The sum of the two acts contained in the operation (linen-money-coat), or, which comes to the same thing (commodity-money-commodity), may be summed up thus: selling in order to purchase. The same act that is a sale for the weaver is a purchase for the person who gives him 2 louis for his linen; and these two louis were even then the product of a sale when they were in the hands of the buyer of the linen. For, apart from its exchange at its source of production, that is to say there where it is exchanged as the immediate product of labor for another product of the same value, gold represents, in the hands of every trading producer, the realized price of a commodity. The buyer of the linen has gotten these 2 louis, I assume, from the transformation of a sack of wheat into money; we see, then, that the linen, which, considered as having been sold, is the beginning of the exchange- movement (linen-money-coat), is, when considered as having been bought, the end of another exchange-move- inent (wheat-money-linen). On the other hand, the act which is a purchase for the weaver, is a sale for the tailor, who, in his turn, converts the 2 louis coming from the sale of his coat into another commodity, a cask of wine, for instance. The end of the 45 movement (linen-money-coat) is thus the beginning of another (coat-money-wine). The first transformation of one commodity, linen, is then the last of another, wheat. The last transforma- tion of the same commodity, linen, is the first of another, the coat, and so forth. The whole of these interlinked movements constitutes the circulation of commodities. The circulation of commodities, leading, as we have just seen, in each of its particular movements, to an ex- change of products, is essentially differentiated from their direct exchange. Our weaver has, indeed, ex- changed, in the end, his commodity, linen, for another, the coat; but this fact is true only from his point of view. The seller of the coat, to whose establishment the weaver went with the gold, the value-form of his linen, probably had no thought of exchanging his coat for linen. The commodity of the tailor has been substituted for the commodity of the weaver, but weavers and tailors, under the general conditions regulating the circulation of com- modities, do not reciprocally exchange their products. They do not look beyond the money, and coins cannot betray the articles for which they have been exchanged. Moreover, circulation does not end, like direct barter, when the products have exchanged hands. The money does not disappear. In the movement (linen-money- coat), the linen, sold to some one who wishes to use it, drops out of circulation and the money replaces it; the coat drops out afterward, and the money again replaces it, and so on. When the commodity of a trader, in our example, the tailor, replaces that of another, as the 46 weaver, the money always passes into the fingers of a third person, as the wine-merchant. The purchase is the necessary complement of the sale, but the second of these two complemental operations does not necessarily follow the first immediately; a longer or shorter space of time may separate them. If the sep- aration of the two operations is too prolonged, their intimate connection, their oneness, asserts itself by pro- ducing a crisis. The Currency' of Money. As soon as the seller supplements the sale by a purchase the money slips from his hands. In our example, this money passes from the hands of the weaver into those of the tailor, and from those of the tailor into those of the wine-merchant, realizing successively the prices of their respective commodities. The movement that the circu- lation of commodities directly imparts to money, is a constant movement away from its starting-point, causing it to pass incessantly from hand to hand. This is what we call the currency of money. The question is: how much money this movement of circulation is capable of absorbing ? In a given country, there take place every day sales, more or less numerous, of various commodities. The value of the commodities sold "was, before their sale, expressed by their prices, that is to say, by definite 1 Translator's Note.-This word is here used as in the English transla- tion of "Capital", in its original meaning of the course or track followed by money as it changes from hand to hand-a course essentially differ- ing from circulation. amounts of ideal gold. Money realizes the prices of these commodities by making them pass from the seller to the buyer. In other words, it really represents the quantity or sum of gold previously expressed in imagination by the sum of the prices of the commodities. The quantity of money requisite for the circulation of all the commodities on the market is determined, then, by the total sum of their prices. Let this total vary, and the quantity of circulating money will vary in the same proportion. The ultimate source of some of the variations in this quantity is in money or gold itself. Before gold functions as a measure of value, its own value is determined. It functions as such only because it is, itself, a product of labor, that is to say a variable value. Therefore, let its value change, and the valuation of commodities based upon its value will evidently change also. If the value of gold rises, if we assume that it doubles, one dollar will be worth as much as two dollars were be- fore, and the commodities that were worth two dollars will, consequently, be worth one; if it falls, by a half for instance, two dollars will be worth no more than one was before, and the commodities that were worth two dollars will be worth four. We assume, naturally, in both cases that the value of the commodities, that is to say the length of time necessary for their production, remains constant. Thus, prices, being the estimate in gold of the value of commodities, vary with the value of gold. If the value of commodities does not change, prices fall if the value of gold rises, and rise if it falls. 48 The quantity of money in circulation being determined by the sum total of the prices to be realized, every varia- tion in these prices involves a variation in the quantity of circulating money. This variation may arise, as we have seen, from money itself, in so far as it is, not an instru- ment of circulation, but a measure of value. This being understood, we will assume that the value of gold is given, as in fact it is, momentarily, when the price of a com- modity is estimated in it. Let us observe a number of unrelated sales, the isolated sales, for instance, of a sack of wheat, twenty yards of linen, a coat, and a cask of wine. The price of each article being two louis, to realize the prices of the four, eight louis must be thrown into circulation. If, on the con- trary, these same commodities form the links of the chain of transformations described in a former paragraph, a sack of wheat-two louis-twenty yards of linen-two louis-a coat-two louis-a cask of wine-two louis, the same two louis that find a resting-place in the pocket of the wine-merchant, cause the four commodities to circu- late by realizing their prices successively; in this case, the velocity of the currency of the money makes good the deficiency in its quantity. The displacement four times repeated of the two louis, results from the transformations, fully accomplished- their sale having been followed by a purchase-and linked together, of the wheat, the linen and the coat, which end- ed in the first transformation of the wine. The mutually complemental movements, which form such a series, take place successively. They require, therefore, more or less time for their accomplishment, and hence the velocity of 49 the currency of money, which, as we have just seen, affects its quantity, is measured by the number of movements of the same coins in a given time. Suppose that the circulation of our four commodities takes a day, the amount of the money circulating, two louis, multiplied by the number of the movements, four, of coins of the same denomination, equals the sum, eight louis, of the prices of the commodities. The circulation in a given country during a given time is made up of isolated sales or purchases in which the money is displaced only once, and of series of transfor- mations more or less extended in which the same coins go through more or less numerous displacements. The separate coins composing the sum total of the money in circulation, function then with varying activity, but the "whole number of pieces of the same denomination realize, during a given time, a certain total aggregate of prices. There is thus established an average velocity of the cur- rency of money. This mean velocity being known, the quantity of gold that can function as the medium of cir- culation may be determined, since that quantity multi- plied by the average number of its displacements must be equal to the aggregate of the prices to be realized. The velocity of the currency of money is only the reflex of the velocity of the transformations of commodities, of their more or less rapid disappearance from circulation and of the substitution for them of new commodities. When the currency of money is rapid, it brings into prominence the intimate union of the sale and purchase as two acts executed alternately by the same traders. In- versely, when the currency of money is slow, it makes 50 apparent the separation of these two operations and the stagnation in the metamorphic changes of commodities. This stagnation is generally attributed to the insufficient quantity of the metal forming the circulating medium; while the fact is, as we have seen, the quantity of the circulating medium, in a given period of time, is deter- mined by the sum total of the prices of all the commo- dities in circulation and by the average velocity of their transformations into money by means of sales and into other commodities by means of purchases. Legal-Tender or Coins and Paper-Money. Legal-tender has its origin in the function that money performs as the circulating medium. The weight of gold adopted as the unit of measure and its subdivisions must confront commodities on the market, under the form of legal-tender or coins. Just as the establishment of a unit of measure, coining is the business of the State. Gold and silver take on thus, in their quality as legal-tender, an official form, a national uniform, which they remove when they enter the market of the world. In the process of circulation, coins of gold and silver wear away more or less, and consequently lose more or less of their weight. Coins of the same denomination come to be, in this way, of unequal value, having no longer the same weight, but still in cir- culation they are deemed equal, While losing their weight, they retain their nominal value. Circulation tends, then, to transform legal-tender coins into mere symbols of their official weight of metal. 51 The legal-tender function of gold, thus detached from its metallic value by the friction incident to its circula- tion, may be performed by things relatively without any value, such as bits of paper. Being then, considered as legal-tender or circulating-medium, only its own token, money may, in this function, be .replaced by simple tokens. The only requisite for this is that the symbol of money, paper money, shall, like money itself, have social validity. This, the action of the State gives it. Moreover, as a substitute for money, it must be propor- tioned in its emission to the quantity of money that it represents, and that would actually circulate. If it ex- ceeds this legitimate proportion, it in fact, depreciates. If the quantity of paper-money is double what it should be, then a dollar-bill, for instance, represents only fifty cents. We are here speaking only of legal-tender paper- money forced into circulation by the State. III.-Reserves of Goid and Silver or Hoards. As soon as the circulation of commodities develops, there develops along with it the necessity and desire to get and hold fast to what is, under the regime of mer- cantile production, the key to power over all things else, money. Every producer must provide himself a store of money. In fact, the needs of the producer are of constant recur- rence, and keep him constantly buying the commodities of others, while the production and sale of his own commodities requires more or less time, and is de- pendent upon. a thousand hazards. To be able to buy without selling, one must first have sold without buying 52 Men, therefore, sell commodities, not to buy others at once, but to replace them with money which they save and spend as the need for it occurs. Money is purposely arrested in its circulation and becomes petrified, so to speak, into a hoard, and the seller becomes a hoarder of money. In this way, all along the line of exchange, larger or smaller hoards of money are accumulated. It has been seen above that the quantity of money in circulation is determined by the aggregate of the prices of the commodities in circulation and by the velocity of their circulation. This quantity rises and falls then with the circulation of commodities. At one time, a larger quantity of money must enter into circulation; at another a portion of the money current must drop out of circula- tion. It is by the reserves of money that accumulate, or deplete themselves, under the form of hoards, that this condition is fulfilled. Money as the .M'eans of Payment. In the form of the circulation of commodities thus far considered, the parties appear, some as the representa- tives of commodities, others as the representatives of cash. But with the development of circulation, condi- tions arise that tend to interpose a longer or shorter interval of time between the sale of a commodity and the realization of its price. Some kinds of commodities require for their produc- tion more time than others. Some are produced only at certain suitable seasons of the year. It may happen then that one of the parties will be ready to sell, swhen the other has not as yet the means to buy. When the same transactions are constantly recurring between the same persons, the conditions of sale are gradually regu- lated to suit the conditions of production. The one will sell an existing commodity, the other will buy without immediate payment, as a representative of future money. The seller becomes a creditor, the buyer, a debtor; and money acquires a new function, it becomes the means of payment. The appearance in a sale of the commodity and the money has ceased to be simultaneous. The money func- tions now, in the first place, as a measure of value in fixing the price of the commodity sold. Established by the contract, this price is the index of the obligation of the purchaser, that is to say the measure of the amount of money he has to pay at a fixed date. Then again, it functions as an ideal means of purchase. Although it exists only on the promise of the buyer, it nevertheless transfers the commodity to him. It is only at the expiration of the stated time that it enters the circulation as the means of payment, or in other words that it passes from the hands of the buyer into those of the seller. The circulating medium, money, became a hoard be- cause the movement of circulation was arrested at the end of its first phase, because the sale was not followed by a purchase. As the means of payment, it enters the cir- culation only after the commodity has left it. The seller transformed his commodity into money, to satisfy his wants by the purchase of useful objects; the hoarder of money transformed his to preserve it under the form 54 of exchange-value directly commanding every sort of commodity, to keep it in its money-shape; and the pur- chaser, who went in debt, transformed his, to be able to meet his debt. If he does not effect this transformation, if he does not pay his debt when due, his goods will be sold by the officers of the law. The metamorphosis of the commodity into money becomes, thus, a social necessity which imposes itself upon the producer of commodities, irrespective of his personal needs or inclinations. The payments to be made may balance each other. In this case, no actual payment is made, but the obliga- tions reciprocally cancel each other. And institutions are organized on purpose to effect these cancellations, which decrease the quantity of money (legal-tender) used. Moreover, there enters into the circulation every day, a certain amount of money to meet the obligations due that day, but which represents commodities long withdrawn from circulation. Under these conditions, the quantity of money in circulation during a given period, if the velocity of the currency of the circulating medium and of the means of payment is given, is equal to the aggre- gate of the prices of the commodities to be realized, plus the sum of the payments falling due in that period, and minus the sum of the payments that balance each other. Credit-money (drafts, checks, etc.) springs directly from the function of money as the means of payment. Certificates of debts contracted for goods bought, them- selves circulate in their turn, to transfer to others the credits proven by them. With the extension of the credit system, money as the means of payment takes on peculiar forms of existence by the aid of which the great com- 55 mercial operations are conducted, while coins of gold and silver are for the most part relegated to retail trade. In every country, there become established certain general settling-days, certain determined seasons, when payments are made on a large scale; and the function of money as the means of payment necessitates the accumu- lation of the amounts required for these settling-days. Universal Money. When metallic money leaves the home sphere of circu- lation, it strips off the local forms with which it had clothed itself, to return to its primal form of the bar or ingot. Within the limits of home circulation, only one commo- dity can serve as the measure of value. On the markets of the world, a double measure of value holds sway-gold and silver. SECOND SECTION.-The Transformation of MVioney Into Capital CHAPTER IV. THE GENERAL FORMULA FOR CAPITAL. The simple circulation of commodities, and the circulation of mroney as capital.-Surplus-value. The Simple Circulation of Commodities, and the Circu- lation of Money as Capital. The circulation of commodities is the starting-point of capital. It appears only when the production of com- modities and commerce have already attained a certain degree of development. The modern history of capital dates from the creation, in the 16th century, of a world- wide commerce and a world-wide market. We have seen that the simplest form of the circulation of commodities is (20 yards of linen-2 louis-i coat) or (commodity-money-commodity), the transformation of the commodity into money, and the re-transformation of the money into a commodity, or selling in order to buy. But, by the side of this form, we find another altogether distinct from it (money-commodity-money), the trans- formation of money into a co'mmodity, and the re-trans- formation of the commodity into money, or buying in order to sell. Every sum of money that goes through this circuit becomes capital. It is well to remark here that this movement, buying to sell, is distinct from the ordinary form of the circula- tion of commodities only from the point of view of the person who conducts this movement, beginning and end- ing in money, i. e., the capitalist. In fact it is composed of two phases of the ordinary circulation, a purchase and a sale, separated from the phases that, usually, precede and follow them, and considered as constituting a com- plete operation. The first act or phase, the purchase, is a sale from the point of view of the person from whom the capitalist buys; the second phase, the sale, is a purchase from the point of view of the person to whom the capital- ist sells. There if there nothing but the ordinary con- catenation of the usual phases of circulation. Buying to sell, considered as a finished operation, differentiated from ordinary circulation, exists only from the point of view of the capitalist. In each of these two circuits-(commodity-money -commodity) and (money-commodity-money), the same two material elements, commodity and money, confront each other. But, while the first circuit, the simple circulation of commodities, begins with a sale and ends with a purchase, the second, the circulation of money as capital, begins with a purchase and ends with a sale. In the first form the money is in the end transformed into a commodity destined to serve as a use-value, as a useful thing. From the time of the purchase it moves always away from its starting-point. It is spent once and for all. In the second, the money that the buyer throws into circulation, he means in the end to withdraw by acting as a seller. This money returning, as it does, to its starting-point, is, when it is in the first place thrown into circulation, simply advanced. Surplus-Value. A use-value capable of satisfying a need, that is the end and aim of the first circuit, which results in an exchange of products of the same magnitude as values, though of different character as use-values, for instance, linen and a coat. The linen may chance to be sold for more than it is worth, or the coat to be bought below its value. One of the parties is likely enough to be cheated, but this pos- sible inequality of the values exchanged is here only an accident. The usual characteristic of this form of cir- culation is the equality in value of the two extremes, the two commodities. ' The second circuit ends as it begins, in money. Its end and aim is, consequently, exchange-value. The two ex, tremes, the two sums of money, identical in quality and utility, can be distinguished from each other only by their quantity. To exchange 100 dollars for 100 dollars would be an absurd enough operation. The circuit (money-commodity-money) can be justified then only by the quantitative difference between the two sums of money. To conclude, more money is drawn out of circulation at the end than was thrown into it in the beginning, so that the exact form of this circuit is, for example, (100 dollars-2,000 pounds of cotton--ll0 dollars). The result is that a sum of money, 100 dollars, is exchanged for a greater sum, 110 dollars. This increase or excess of 10 dollars, we call surplus-value. Not only, then, does the value ad- vanced maintain itself intact in circulation, but it even grows larger, and it is this fact that transforms it into capital. The movement of selling in order to buy, which aims at the appropriation of things suited to satisfy definite wants, has its natural limitations, outside the sphere of circulation, so that when the requirements of consump- tion are met, the movement ceases. On the contrary, the movement of buying in order to sell, aiming at the augmentation of value, has no limits, for if it ceases, value, which is augmented only by its continuous repetition, will no longer grow. The last term of the circuit (money-commodity-money) 110 dollars in our example, is the first term of a new circuit of the same kind, and the last term of this new circuit is again larger than it, and so on. As the representative of this movement, the possessor of money becomes a capitalist. To constantly renew the profit-breeding circuit by constantly putting back his money into circulation, to make value create surplus- value-that is his inciting motive. Use-value or utility does not concern him; for him, commodities and money function only as different forms of value, which, by in- cessantly changing their forms, also change their mag- nitude, and seem to have acquired the power of breeding their kind. It is under the form of money that value begins, ends and re-begins its own spontaneous genera- tion. It is under the commodity-form, that it appears as 60 the means of making money. Money-commodity-more money,-that is the general formula of capital as it ap- pears in the realm of circulation. CHAPTER V. CONTRADICTIONS IN THE GENERAL FORMULA FOR CAPITAL. The circulation of commodities is based on the exchange of equivalent values.-Even admitting the exchange of un- equal values, the circulation of commodities cannot create surplus-value. The Circulation of Commodities is Based on the Ex- change of Equivalent Values. We are now going to inquire whether there is anything in the nature of the circulation of commodities that per- mits the expansion of the values that enter into it, i. e., the formation of surplus-value. Let us consider the direct barter of two commodities, an exchange in which money intervenes only ideally, as the expression in money of the commodities. It is clear that both parties may benefit by it. Both get rid of prod- ucts that have no utility to them, and obtain others that they need. A man who has much wheat and no wine, exchanges with another who has much wine and no wheat, a value of 100 dollars in wheat for 100 dollars in wine. From the point of view of use-value or utility, there is in this an advantage for both. The exchange, 61 in this respect, is a transaction by which each party bene- fits. But, from the point of view of exchange-value, the exchange of 100 dollars in wheat for 100 dollars in wine produces no increase in wealth for either of the parties, since each of them had before the exchange a value equal to that which he got by the exchange. This result is in no way altered by the actual introduc- tion of money as the intermediary or instrument of cir- culation between the commodities, by the separation of the sale and the purchase into two distinct acts. Abstractly, apart from the accidental circumstances not due to the laws governing circulation, there is in cir- culation, beside the substitution of one useful product for another, nothing but a mere change in the form of the commodity. The same magnitude of value is always in the hands of the owner of the commodity; but he has this value, first in the form of his own product, placed upon sale, then in the form of money, the realized price of his product, 100 dollars as we assume, and finally, in the form of the product of some one else bought for that same sum, some wine for instance. These changes in form do not imply any change in the quantity of value, any more than does the changing of a ten-dollar bill into five two-dollar bills. The only regular outcome, then, of circulation, which is with respect to the value of commodities only a. change in form, is the exchange of equivalent values. If then, as regards use-value, exchange profits both parties, it cannot be, in its pure form, as regards ex- change-value, a source of profits. Therefore, no pro- duction of surplus-value can be due to the nature of circulation itself. 62 Even Admitting the Exchange of Unequal Values, the Circulation of Commodities cannot Create Surplus- value. Nevertheless, as in fact we are obliged to admit the formation of surplus-value, and as in the actual course of events there is nearly always a departure from the hypothetical normal form, let us suppose, in order to attempt an explanation of this formation, that there is an exchange of unequal values. In any case, there are upon the market only com- modity-owners confronting commodity-owners. The inciting motive of the exchange, which is that the parties have not in their possession the objects they need, and have the objects others need, places them in a position of reciprocal independence. To say that surplus-value results, for the producers, from the fact that they sell their commodities for more than they are worth, amounts to saying that in the character of vendors they have the privilege of selling too dear. The vendor has produced the commodity him- self or he represents the producer of it; but the buyer also has produced, or represents the person who did produce, the commodity metamorphosed into that money with which he buys. On both sides there are producers; the only difference is that one buys and the other sells. If the owner of commodities, under the title of producer or vendor, sells commodities for more than they are worth, and if, under the title of consumer or purchaser, he pays too high for them, he makes in the one case what he loses in the other, and this does not advance us a single step toward the solution of the question. It would be just the same, were we to suppose, in- stead of the vendor having the privilege to sell too dear, that the buyer had the privilege of paying less than their value for commodities. As he was a vendor before he was a buyer and becomes a vendor again after- ward, he would lose, as vendor, the profit realized as purchaser. We have been considering sellers and buyers in general, without taking their individual characteristics into ac- count. Let us suppose now that Peter, who is very shrewd, does business with Paul and James. Peter sells Paul wine worth 80 dollars for 100 dollars, and with this 100 dollars he buys from James wheat worth 120 dollars; Peter thus makes a profit of 40 dollars. Before the exchange, we had 80 dollars' worth of wine in Peter's possession, 100 dollars in money in Paul's, and 120 dollars' worth of wheat in James'-a total value of 300 dollars. After the exchange, we have 120 dollars' worth of wheat in the hands of Peter, the cunning fellow, 80 dollars' worth of wine in Paul's hands and 100 dollars in money in James'-a total value of. 300 dollars. The value in circulation has not increased a single penny. There is only a difference in its distribution between Peter, Paul and James. It is just as if Peter had stolen forty dollars. A change in the distribution of the circu- lating values does not increase their quantity. Turn or twist them all you will, the facts remain the same. If equivalent values are exchanged, no surplus- value is produced; neither is any produced if unequal 64 values are exchanged. The circulation or exchange of commodities cannot create any value. The quantity of values thrown into circulation being incapable of ex- panding there, there must take place, outside the sphere of circulation, something that renders possible the for- mation of surplus-value. But is this formation possible outside the sphere of circulation? It appears impossible that, outside of the realm of cir- culation, the commodity producer can impart to his prod- uct the power of breeding surplus-value; for, apart from circulation, he is alone with his commodity containing a certain quantity of his labor, which determines the value of his product. He can raise the value of his product by adding to it new value by means of new labor, but without new labor he cannot make this value increase by its own virtue. Our conclusion then is: the possessor of money must, first, buy commodities at their just value, then sell them for what they are worth, and yet, in the end, must with- draw more value than he advanced; this transformation of money into capital must take place within the domain of circulation, and at the same time it must not take place there. These are the conditions of the problem. (; CHAPTER VI. PURCHASE AND SALE OF LABOR-POWER. The source of surplus-value is labor-power.--The value of labor-power. The Source of Surplus-Value is Labor-Power. The increase of value which transforms money into capital, does not occur in the money; whether it serves as means of purchase or as means of payment, it only realizes the prices of the commodities that it buys or for which it pays. It is by nature incapable of growth or expansion. The change in value must take place, then, in the commodity bought and later sold at an advance. This change can be effected neither by the purchase nor by the subsequent sale. In these two transactions, there is, indeed, according to our hypothesis, only an exchange of equivalent values. There remains, there- fore, only one possible supposition, and this is that the change occurs during the use of the commodity after its purchase and before it is again sold. Now we are con- sidering a change in exchange-value. In order to obtain an increase in exchange-value by the use of a commodity, the plutocrat must have the luck to find on the market a commodity possessing the peculiar virtue of being, through its employment or utilization, a source of ex- change-value, so that to use or consume it is to create value. And our man actually finds on the market a com- modity endowed with this peculiar virtue. This com- modity is called capacity for work, or labor-power. This name must be understood to include all the muscular 66 and intellectual faculties existing in man's organism that he has to bring into. action in order to produce useful things. The exchange-relation only indicates that the parties regard each other as the owners of the commodities exchanged, and as free agents, equal in rights. Labor- power can be sold, then, as a commodity only by its own owner. Its owner must enjoy the same legal rights as the money-owner with whom he contracts. He must be the untrammelled master of his person, free to dis- pose of it as he wills. He must never sell his labor-power except for a fixed time, so that at the expiration of this time he shall again be the absolute owner of it. If he were to sell it once for all he would convert himself from the free man that he was into a slave, from a merchant into merchandise. On the other hand, for the money-owner to find labor- power to buy, the owner of that power must be without both the means of subsistence and the means of produc- tion, i. e., raw materials, tools, etc., which would enable him to satisfy his wants by selling the commodities produced by his labor. He must be thus obliged to offer for sale his labor-power as a commodity, not having any other commodity to sell, nor the means to live with- out selling that. It is clear that Nature does not produce, on the one side, the owners of money or commodities, and on the other, men possessing nothing but their labor-power. This relation has no natural foundation. Neither is it a social relation common to all periods of history. And the special characteristic of the capitalist period is that (U the possessor of the means of subsistence and production meets upon the market the laborer, whose labor-power has assumed the form of a commodity, and whose labor has consequently assumed the form of wage-labor. The Value of Labor-Power. Like every other commodity, labor-power has a value, determined, like all the rest, by the labor-time necessary to its production. Labor-power being a capacity of the living individual, its continued existence is conditioned upon the main- tenance of the individual. For his support or main- tenance, the individual requires a certain quantity of the means of subsistence. Labor-power has, therefore, exactly the value of the means of subsistence necessary to the laborer to enable him to labor day after day in the same conditions of fitness and health. The natural wants, such as food, clothing, fuel, lodging, etc., vary with the climate and the other physical pecu- liarities of the country. On the other hand, the number and extent of the so-called natural wants, as well as the methods of satisfying them, is largely dependent upon the degree of civilization attained. But, for a given country and period, the quantity of the necessary means of subsistence is likewise given or determinable. The owners of labor-power are mortal. To insure its continuous re-appearance on the market, which the con- tinuous transformation of money into capital exacts, the owners of labor-power must perpetuate -themselves by the natural reproduction of a quantity of labor- power, at least equal to the quantity removed from the 68 market by wear and tear, and death. The amount of the means of subsistence necessary for the production of labor-power, includes, therefore, the means of sub- sistence of those who are to take the places of the laborers, that is to say, their children. Again, to modify human nature so as to cause it to acquire skill and rapidity in a special kind of labor, to develop it into a special kind of labor-power, a certain education is necessary, and this training costs a larger or smaller outlay in various commodities. As the value of labor-power is equal to the sum of the commodities necessary for its production, when this sum increases, as in the case just considered, its value increases. The price of labor-power reaches its minimum when it falls to the value of the means of subsistence absolutely indispensable to the life of the laborer. The laborer then merely vegetates. Now, as the value of labor- power is based on normal conditions of existence, its price is, in this case, below its value. It is a consequence of the peculiar nature of labor- power that its use-value does not at once upon the making of the contract between its buyer and seller pass into the hands of the buyer. If its value, since its production requires the expenditure of a certain quantity of social labor, is determined before it enters into circulation, its use-value, which consists in its actual exercise, only appears afterward. The alienation of labor-power and its exercise as a use-value, in other words, its sale and its employment are not simultaneous. Now, nearly always when the purchaser of commodities does not enjoy their use-value at the time of the sale, the seller receives his 69 money only after the expiration of a longer or shorter time, when his commodity has already served the pur- chaser as a use-value. In every country in which the capitalist mode of production reigns, labor-power is paid for only after it has already functioned during a certain time fixed by the contract, at the end of every week, for instance. Everywhere, then, the laborer allows the capitalist to consume his labor-power before he, the laborer, gets its price, in a word, everywhere he gives the capitalist credit. As this credit, which is no mere ficti- tious advantage for the capitalist, does not modify the essential nature of the exchange, we will provisionally assume, in order to avoid needless complications, that the owner of labor-power receives the price stipulated as soon as he sells it. The use-value delivered by the laborer to the pur- chaser in exchange for his money manifests itself only in its own employment, in the consumption of the labor- power sold. This consumption, which is at the same time the production of commodities and of surplus-value, is accomplished, like the consumption of every com- modity, outside of the market, beyond the domain of circulation. Consequently, we must leave this domain and penetrate into the domain of production, if we would learn the secret of the making of surplus-value. THIRD SECTION.--The Production of Absolute Surplus-value. CHAPTER VII. THE PRODUCTION OF USE-VALUES AND THE PRODUCTION OF SURPLUS-VALUE. I. Labor in general and its elements.-Labor performed for the profit of the capitalist.-II. The analysis of the value of the product.-Difference between the value of labor-power and the value that it is capable of creating.-The problem of the transformation of money into capital is solved. I.-Labor in General and its Elements. The use or employment of labor-power is labor. The buyer of labor-power consumes it by making 'its vendor labor. For the laborer to produce commodities, his labor must be useful, that is to say, it must realize itself in use-values. It is then a particular use-value, a special useful article, that the capitalist causes to be produced by his workingman. The intervention of the capitalist cannot modify the essential nature of labor, and so we are going to examine, to begin with, the processes of useful labor in general. The simple elements of all labor are: First, the per- sonal activity of the worker, or labor in its strict signifi- cance; second, the subject on which the labor acts; and third, the means by which it acts. First.-The personal activity of the worker is an ex- penditure of the forces with which his body is endowed. The result to be achieved by this activity exists, before the effort is put forth, in the mind of the man. He constantly and consciously directs his will to the achieve- ment of his purpose or ideal. And this is the more neces- sary when the labor, its object and its methods are the less attractive. Second.-The earth is the universal subject of labor, and its existence is independent of man's acts. All those things which labor merely separates from their attach- ment to the earth, such as timber felled in virgin forests, minerals extracted from their veins, etc., are subjects of labor freely provided by Nature. The subject which has already been acted upon by labor, such as prepared mineral ore, is called raw material. All raw material is the subject of labor, but every subject of labor is not raw material; it becomes raw material only by under- going some modification effected by labor. Third.-The means or instrument of labor is a thing or a combination of things, which the worker interposes between himself and the subject of his labor, to facilitate his action. Man transforms external things into organs of his own activity, organs with which he supplements his natural organs. The earth is the original store- house from which he draws his instruments of labor. It furnishes him, for instance, stones for grinding, cutting, throwing, pressing, etc. As soon as the least development of labor takes place, specially prepared in- struments of labor are required. The criterion by which we distinguish one economic period from another is not so much what is made, as the way in which it is made and the tools by which it is made. Beside the things that serve as instruments of or aids to the action of man, the means of labor include, in a wider sense, all the material conditions which, without entering directly into the operations performed, are yet indispensable to their performance, or-at least--their absence would render the labor imperfect. Such are workshops, canals, roads, etc. In the labor-process, then, the activity of man effects, by the aid of the instruments of labor, an intentional modification in its subject. This process terminates in the finished product, that is to say, in a use-value, a substance transformed so as to adapt it to human require- ments. Labor, incorporated with its subject, is material- ized. That which appeared in the laborer as action, now appears in the product as a fixed quality. The laborer forged, and the product is a forging. If we con- sider the whole of this process from the point of view of its result, the product, then the instrument and sub- ject of labor both appear as means of production, and the labor itself as productive labor. With the exception of the extractive industries, such as the working of mines, hunting, fishing, etc., in which the subject of labor is furnished directly by Nature, all the other branches of industry fashion raw materials, that is to say, objects already acted upon by labor. The product- of one kind of labor becomes thus the means of production of another. The raw material may form the principal substance of a product, or it may be a factor in its formation 73 only as auxiliary material. The latter then is consumed by the instrument of labor, as the coal by the steam- engine, the hay by draft-horses; or else it is directly applied to the raw material to bring about some modifica- tion of it, as, for instance, dye to wool; or else, again, it facilitates the performance of the labor, as in the case of the materials used for lighting and heating work- shops. As everything has various properties, and is, there- fore, capable of more than one use, the same product is suited to form the raw material of various processes. Thus, grains serve as raw material to the miller, the starch-maker, the distiller and the cattle-raiser, etc.; as seed they serve as raw material in their own pro- duction. In the same process, the same product may serve both as an instrument of labor and as raw material. In the fattening of cattle, for instance, the animal, the subject of labor, functions also as the instrument of labor in the making of manure. A product already existing in a state fitted for con- sumption, may nevertheless become in its turn the raw material of another product. The grape is the raw material of wine. There are also products unfit for any use except to serve as raw material. Such a prod- uct may be said to be only half-made, as, for instance, cotton as it leaves the gin. Whether a use-value is a product, a raw material or an instrument of labor is determined solely by the place it occupies in the labor-process, and as it changes its place, its character changes. As every use-value enters into new processes as a means of production, it thereby loses its character of product, and only functions as a factor in the process of the production of new products. Labor uses up its material elements, the subject of labor and the instrument of labor, and is, consequently, an act .of consumption. This productive consumption is distinguished from individual consumption by this, that the latter consumes the products as means of indi- vidual enjoyment, while the former consumes them as the means by which labor functions. The product of individual consumption is the consumer himself; the result of productive consumption is a product distinct from the consumer. The process of useful labor, which we have just an- alyzed from the general point of view, that is to say, activity which has for its object the production of use- values, the appropriation of external objects to our needs, is a physical necessity of human life, common to all social forms. Its study from this general point of view, therefore, cannot tell us under what special social conditions this labor is performed in a given case. Labor Performed for the Profit of the Capitalist. The embryonic capitalist buys on the market-care- fully selecting the proper quality and paying a just price-all that is necessary for the performance of labor, i. e., the means of production and labor-power. The general nature of labor, which we have just set forth, evidently is not modified by the intervention of the capitalist. Regarded as the consumption of labor- power by the capitalist, the labor-process presents only two peculiarities. In the first place, the laborer works under the control of the capitalist, to whom his labor belongs. The capi- talist carefully watches to see that the means of pro- duction are intelligently employed with a view to the end aimed at, that the work is thoroughly done, and that the implements are not unnecessarily injured. Secondly, the product is the property of the capitalist and not that of the immediate producer, the laborer. As the capitalist pays for labor-power at its value, by the day I assume, the use of that power belongs to him, consequently, during the day paid for, just as much as the use of a horse hired by the day. The use of a com- modity, indeed, belongs to its purchaser, and, by giving his labor, the owner of labor- pwer, the workingman, gives nothing in fact but the us value that he has sold. From his entrance into the wo hop, the use of his power, his labor, belongs to the c iialist. By buying labor-power, the capitalist adds labo*;~s the active con- stituent of the product, to the passive constituents, the means of production, already in his possession. The labor-process is a process between things the capitalist has purchased, things that belong to him. The product resulting from this tprocess belongs to him then, just as much as does the wine, the product of fermentation that takes place in hil cellar. II.-The Analysis of the Valaue of the Product. The product, the property of the capitalist, is a use- value, as linen, for ilistance, or boots. But, as a rule, it is not love of linen that incites the capitalist to make linen. In the production of commodities, the use-value, the useful object, serves only as a depository of value. The chief concern of the capitalist is to produce a useful object that has exchange-value, an article intended for sale, a commodity. Besides this, the capitalist wishes the value of this commodity to exceed the value of the commodities employed in producing it, that is to say, the value of the means of production and the labor- power to buy which he has advanced his money. He wishes to produce not only a useful thing, but a value, and not only a value, but also a surplus-value. Just as the commodity is at once a use-value and an exchange-value, so its production must be at once the formation of use-value and the formation of value. Let us now consider production from the point of view of value. We know that the value of a commodity is deter- mined by the quantity of labor incorporated in it, by the time socially necessary for its production. We must then calculate the amount of labor contained in the product that our capitalist has had made, ten pounds of yarn, as I suppose. To produce this yarn he required raw material, say, 10 pounds of cotton, bought on the market at their value, let us say, $2.60. We suppose that the wear and tear of the instruments employed amounts to 60 cents. If a quantity of gold, $3.20, which is equal to the sum of these two amounts, requires for its production 24 hours' labor, it follows, the working-day being 12 hours, that 2 days' work are already incorporated in this yarn. We know the value that the cotton and the wear and tear of the spindles give to the yarn. It is equal to $3.20. It remains for us to find out the value that the labor of the spinner adds to the product. It is not the special kind of labor, or its quality, which is important here, but its quantity. It is no longer a question, as it was when we were concerned with use- value, of the particular wants that the activity of the laborer aims to satisfy, but simply of the time during which he has expended his power in useful efforts. We must not forget, moreover, that the time necessary under the ordinary conditions of production, is the only time that counts in the formation of value. From this last point of view, the raw material simply absorbs a certain quantity of labor, considered solely as an expenditure of human power in general. It is true that this absorption of labor here transforms the raw material into yarn, as the power of the laborer is ex- pended under the particular form of spinning; but the product, the yarn, for the time, serves only to indicate the quantity of labor absorbed by the cotton. Ten pounds of yarn will indicate 6 hours' labor, if the spinning of 1 2-3 pounds of cotton, for example, requires one hour. Certain quantities of product, determined by ex- perience, represent the expenditure of labor-power during certain definite times. At the time of the sale of the labor-power, it was agreed, I assume, that its daily value was 80 cents, a quantity of gold representing 6 hours' labor, and that, consequently, 6 hours' labor was required to produce what was necessary for the daily support of the laborer. Now, our spinner has transformed in 6 hours, in a half- day of labor, the 10 pounds of cotton into 10 pounds of yarn. As the same labor-time is embodied in a quantity of gold worth 80 cents, he has added a value of 80 cents to the cotton. Let us now calculate the total value of the product. The 10 pounds of yarn contain two and one-half days' labor--the cotton and spindles represent two days and the spinning half a day. The same quantity of labor is incarnated in a quantity of gold, worth four dollars. The price of four dollars expresses, therefore, the exact value of 10 pounds of yarn, and the price of 40 cents that of 1 pound. The figures throughout this analysis are arbitrary, but the analysis is the same, whatever the figures may be, and whatever kind of product may be regarded. The value of the product is equal to the value of the capital advanced. The value advanced has not bred, it has brought forth no surplus-value, and the money, consequently, has not been transformed into capital. The price of the 10 pounds of yarn is four dollars, and four dollars have been spent on the market in the pur- chase of the constituent elements of the product: $2.60 for 10 pounds of cotton, 60 cents for the wear and tear of the spindles during 6 hours, and 80 cents for labor-power. Difference between the Value of Labor-Power and the Value it is Capable of Creating. Let us examine the matter more closely. The labor- power comes to 80 cents, because the means of sub- 79 sistence necessary for the daily support of this power cost 80 cents. The owner of this labor-power, the work- ingman, produces a value equal to it in a half-day of labor. This does not mean that he is not able to work a whole day and produce more. The value of labor- power, and the value that it is capable of creating, differ then in magnitude. In its sale, labor-power realizes its value determined by the expense of its daily support; in its use it is capable of producing in a day more value than it has cost its purchaser. It is this difference in value that the capitalist had in view when he bought the labor-power. Moreover, there is nothing in all this which is not in conformity with the laws governing the exchange of commodities. In fact, the laborer, the vendor of labor- power, like the vendor of every other commodity, receives its exchange-value and parts with its use-value; he can- not obtain the first without giving up the second. The use-value of labor-power, i. e. labor, does not belong to its vendor any more than the use of oil belongs to the grocer after he has sold it. The man with the money has paid the value of a day's labor-power, and, there- fore, its use during one day, the labor of an entire day, belongs to him. That the daily sustenance of this power costs only a half-day of labor, while it is capable of functioning an entire day, that is to say, that the value created by its use during a day is greater than its own daily value, this is a rare stroke of good luck for the purchas y but it does not infringe the rights of the vendor. 80 The laborer finds, therefore, in the workshop the means of production necessary not for a half-day, but for a day of labor, i. e. for twelve hours. Since 10 pounds of cotton, by absorbing 6 hours' labor, are transformed into 10 pounds of yarn, 20 pounds of cotton, by absorbing 12 hours' labor, will .be transformed into 20 pounds of yarn. These 20 pounds contain then 5 days' labor, of which four days were materialized in the cotton and spindles consumed and the other one has been absorbed by the cotton during the spinning. Now, if a quantity of gold, $3.20, is the product of 24 hours' labor, the expression in money of 5 days' labor of 12 hours each will be $8.00. That, then, is the price of the 20 pounds of yarn. As before, the price per pound is 40 cents. But the total value of the commodities employed in the process is $7.20: $5.20 for 20 pounds of cotton, $1.20 for the wear and tear of the spindles during 12 hours, and 80 cents for the day's labor. The $7.20 advanced are transformed into $8.00. They have brought forth a surplus-value of 80 cents; the trick is at last turned, the money has been transformed into capital. The Problem of the Transformation of Money into Capital is Solved. The problem, as we stated it at the close of Chapter V, is solved in accordance with all its terms and conditions. On the market, the capitalist buys at their just value the various commodities-cotton, spindles, labor-power. Thea he does what every other buyer does, he consumes their use-value. The consumption of the labor-power being at the same time the production of commodities, furnishes a product of 20 pounds of yarn worth eight dollars. The capitalist who left the market after his purchases, returns to it now as a seller. He sells the yarn for 40 cents a pound, not a particle above its value, and yet he draws out of the circulation 80 cents more than he formerly threw into it. This transformation of his money into capital takes place within the domain of circulation, and it does not take place there. The circulation serves as an intermediary. It is upon the market that labor-power is sold, to be exploited out- side of the market, within the domain of production where it becomes the source of surplus-value. The production of surplus-value is, then, nothing but the production of value prolonged beyond a certain point. If the action of the labor is continued only up to the point where the value of labor-power paid by capital is replaced by an equivalent value, there is in that case only a simple production of value; when it continues beyond this limit, we have the production of surplus-value. CHAPTER VIII. CONSTANT CAPITAL AND VARIABLE CAPITAL. The preservation of value and the creation of value by labor.-Value simply preserved, and value reproduced and increased'. The Preservation of Value and the Creation of Value by Labor. The various factors of the labor-process play different parts in the formation of the value of the products. The laborer adds a new value to the subject of labor by putting additional labor upon it, no matter what the character or utility of that labor may be. On the other hand, we find re-appearing in the value of the product, the value of the means of production con- sumed, for instance, the value of the cotton and the spindles in the value of the yarn. The value of the means of production is then preserved and transferred to the product through the medium of labor. But how ? The laborer does not work once to add a new value to the cotton, and a second time to preserve the old value, or, what comes to the same thing, to transfer to the yarn the value of the spindles that he uses and that of the cotton on which he works. It is by the simple addition of a new value that he preserves the old value. But as to add a new value to the subject of labor and to preserve an old value in the product, are two wholly different results that the laborer obtains simultaneously, this two-fold effect can obviously only result from the two-fold character of his labor. This labor must at the same time create value by virtue of 83 one of its properties, and, by virtue of another, preserve or transfer value. The spinner adds new value by labor only by spinning, the weaver by weaving, the smith by forging, etc. In other words it is the special productive form in which the lab6r is expended that causes the means of produc- tion, such as cotton and spindles, the yarn and loom, the iron and the anvil, to give birth to a new product. Now, we have seen that the labor-time necessary to make the means of production consumed, counts as a factor in the value of the new product. The laborer then preserves the value of the means of production consumed and transfers it to the product, as a con- stituent portion of its value, by the special useful form of the labor he adds to it. If the special productive labor of the workingman was not spinning, for example, he would not make yarn, and, not making yarn, he would not transfer to his product the value of the spindles and the cotton em- ployed in spinning. But, by a day's labor, our spinner, if he were to change his trade and become a carpenter, would, as before, add value to his materials. There- fore, he adds this new value by his labor considered, not as the labor of a spinner or a carpenter, but as labor in general, as the expenditure of human power; and he adds a definite quantity of value, not because his labor has this or that particular useful form, but because it has lasted a definite time. Thus, by a quantity of new labor, a new value is added, and, by the quality or kind of the labor added, the original values of the means of production are preserved in the product. 84 This two-fold effect of the same labor is clearly ap- parent in many phenomena. Let us suppose that some invention enables the spinner to spin in six hours as much cotton as he spun before in eighteen. As productive activity the efficiency of his labor has been tripled, and his product is three times greater-thirty pounds of yarn instead of ten. The quantity of value added by the six hours' spinning to the cotton remains the same; but this same quantity, which was absorbed by ten pounds, is now distributed over thirty, and, therefore, each pound absorbs only one-third as much as before. On the other hand, as thirty pounds of cotton, instead of five, are now employed in six hours' spinning, the product of six hours con- tains three times as much value transferred from the cotton. Thus, in six hours' spinning three times as much of the value of the raw material is preserved and transferred to the product, although the value added to each pound of the same material is only one-third as much as before. This shows the essential difference between the property by virtue of which labor preserves value and the property by virtue of which, during the same process, it creates value. The means of production transfer to the product only the value that they lose by losing their original utility; but, in this respect, the material elements of labor act differently. Raw materials and auxiliary substances lose their characteristic appearance during the labor-process. It is quite otherwise with what are properly called the instruments of labor, which last a longer or shorter time, and function in a greater or smaller number of operations. As experience tells how long on the average an instrument of labor lasts, we can calculate its daily wear and tear or the amount it transfers daily from its own value to the product; but the instrument of labor, a machine, for instance, though transferring thus every day a portion of its value to its daily product, always performs its part in the labor-process as an integral whole. Consequently, although an instrument of labor enters as a whole into the production of a useful object, a use- value, it enters only bit by bit into the formation of value. Inversely, a means of production may enter as a whole into the formation of value, although it enters into the production of use-value only bit by bit. Sup- pose that in spinning 115 pounds of cotton the waste amounts to 15. If this loss of 15 pounds is usual, inevitable on the average in manufacture, the value of the 15 pounds of cotton that are not transformed into yarn enter just as much into the value of the yarn as does the value of the 100 pounds that form its sub- stance. If this waste is a necessary condition of pro- duction, the cotton wasted or lost transfers its value to the yarn. The means of production transfer to the new product only the value that they lose in their original form, and so they can add to it only the value that they themselves have. Their value is determined, not by the labor into which they enter as means of production, but by the labor from which they issued as products. 85 Value Simply Preserved, and Value Reproduced and Increased. Labor-power in action, living labor, has then the property of preserving value while adding new value. If this property costs the laborer nothing, it is very advantageous to the capitalist, who owes to it the pre- servation of the existing value of his capital. He be- comes aware of this in industrial crises, when labor is interrupted, and he suffers loss by the deterioration of the means of production that compose his capital, raw materials, machinery, etc. We say that the value of the means of production is preserved, and not reproduced, because the objects in which it orignally exists disappear only to put on a new useful form and the value persists beneath the changes of form. The thing produced is a new useful object in which the original value continues to appear. While labor is preserving and transferring the value of the means of production to the product, every instant it creates new value. Suppose production halts when the laborer has just created the equivalent of the daily value of his own labor-power, when he has, for instance, added by six hours' work, a value of 80 cents. This value replaces the money advanced by the capitalist in the purchase of the labor-power and then spent by the laborer for articles of subsistence. But this value, con- trary to what we have shown in the case of the value of the means of production, is actually produced. If one value is here replaced by another, it is by means of a new creation. 87 We already know, however, that labor continues beyond the point where the equivalent of the value of the labor-power would be reproduced and added to the subject of labor. Instead of the six hours that would suffice, I assume, for that, the process lasts twelve hours or more. Labor-power in action, then, not only repro- duces its own value, but it also produces value over and above it. This surplus-value forms the excess of the value of the product over the value of its constituent elements, the means of production and labor-power. Then, in production, that portion of the capital which in converted into means of production, i. e., into new materials, auxiliary substances and instruments of labor does not, in the process of production, change the magni- tude of its value. This is why we call it the constant portion of capital, or, more briefly, constant capital. On the contrary, that portion of the capital converted into labor-power changes its value in the productive process. It first reproduces its own value, and then pro- duces, besides, an excess, a larger or smaller surplus- value. As this portion of capital changes in magnitude, we call it the variable portion of capital, or, more briefly, variable capital. 88 CHAPTER IX. THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE. I. Necessary labor and surplus-labor.--The degree of e1- ploitation of labor-power.-II. The elements of the value of the product expressed in portions of this product and in fractions of the working-day.--III. The "last hour."--IV. The net product. On one side, we have the constant capital, which sim- ply furnishes labor-power with the means for its mater- ialization, means whose value, as it simply reappears, is the same before as after the productive process. On the other side we have the variable capital equal, before pro- duction, to the purchase price of the labor-power, and equal, after production, to that value reproduced, plus a larger or smaller increment. As surplus-value results from the increase of value of the variable capital, it is evident that it is the relation of the surplus-value to the variable capital that determines in what ratio this in- crease takes place. Let us take the figures given in Chapter VII. As 80 cents was the portion of the capital used to purchase the labor-power of one man for one day, in a word, the variable capital, and as the surplus value was 80 cents, this last figure expresses the absolute mag- nitude of the surplus-value produced by one laborer in one day. Its relative magnitude, that is to say, its magni- tude compared to that of the variable capital before the increase in its value, is expressed by the ratio of 80 to 80, that is to say, it is 100 per cent. This relative magni- tude is what we call the rate of surplus-value. We must not confound the rate of surplus-value, which is the ratio 89 of the surplus-value to the variable portion of the capital advanced, and which is the only direct expression of the degree of the exploitation of labor, with the rate of profit, which is the ratio of the surplus-value to the total capital advanced. I.---Necessary Labor and Surplus-Labor. We have seen that the laborer, during one part of the day, produces only the daily value of his labor-power, that is to say, the value of the means of subsistence neces- sary for his support. As his work is part and parcel of a system organized on the basis of the social division of labor, he does not produce his means of subsistence di- rectly, but, under the form of a particular commodity, yarn for example, whose value is equal to that of his means of subsistence, or to that of the money with which he buys them. In this part of the day, longer or shorter according to the average value of his daily sustenance, the laborer, whether he works for a capitalist or not, only replaces one value by another. The production of value during this time is only a mere reproduction. That part of the day in which this reproduction is accomplished we call necessary labor-time, and the labor put forth during this time we call necessary labor. Necessary for the laborer who, whatever may be the social form of his labor, gains during this time his livelihood. Necessary for the capi- talist system whose foundation is the existence of the laborer. That part of the working-day which continues be- yond the limits of necessary labor, forms no value for the ;aborer, but it forms surplus-value for the capitalist. We call that part of the day surplus labor-time, and the labor expended in that time we call surplus-labor. If value in general is only a simple materialization of labor-time, surplus-value is a simple materialization of surplus labor- time. It is realized surplus-labor. The different economic forms of social organization, such as slavery and the wages-system, are differentiated only by the mode in which this surplus-labor is extorted from the immediate producer, the laborer. The Degree of Exploitation of Labor-power. On the one hand, the value of the variable capital is equal to the value of the labor-power it buys, and the value of this power determines the necessary portion of the working-day; on the other hand, the surplus-value is determined by the duration of the surplus portion of this same working-day, by the surplus-labor. Therefore the rate of surplus-value expressed by the ratio of the surplus-value to the variable capital, is also expressed by the equivalent ratio of the surplus-labor to the neces- sary labor. The rate of surplus-labor is, consequently, the exact expression of the degree of exploitation of labor-power by capital, or of the laborer by the capitalist, but we must not confound the degree of exploitation with the absolute magnitude of the exploitation. Suppose the necessary labor equals five hours and that the surplus-labor also equals five hours, then the degree of exploitation, ex- pressed by the ratio of 5 to 5, is 100 per cent., and the absolute magnitude of the exploitation is 5 hours. If, 91 on the contrary, the necessary labor and the surplus- labor are each equal to six hours, the degree of exploi- tation expressed by the ratio of 6 to 6 has not changed. It is still 100 per cent., while the absolute magnitude of the exploitation, which before was five hours, has in- creased by one hour, i. e., 20 per cent. To calculate the rate of surplus-value, we take the value of the product, minus the value of the constant capital, which existed before and which only reappears. The value then remaining is the only value really created dur- ing the process of producing the commodity. If the surplus-value is known, we must subtract it from the value we have obtained to find the variable capital. If it is the variable capital that is known, we must deduct it to find the surplus-value. If both are known, we have only to calculate the ratio of the surplus-value to the variable capital, i. e., to divide the surplus-value by the variable capital, and by multiplying the result of this division by 100, we get the rate per cent. of surplus- value. II.-The Elements of the Value of the Product Expressed in Portions of this Product and in Fractions of the Working-day. Let us again take the example we used in Chapter VII, to show how the capitalist transforms his money into capital. The necessary labor of the spinner amounts to six hours and his surplus-labor is the same. The laborer works, therefore, half of the day for himself, and half for the capitalist, and the degree of exploitation is 100 per cent. 92 The product of the working-day of 12 hours is 20 pounds of yarn worth eight dollars; 8/10 of this value, or $6.40, is due to the value of the means of production consumed-$5.20 for the purchase-price of the cotton and $1.20 for the wear and tear of the spindles. This $6.40 represents, consequently, the value which simply reappears. In other words, R/1o of the value of the yarn are formed by the constant capital. The remaining 2/10 are the new value of $1.60 created during and by the spinning. One half of this value replaces the value of the day's labor-power, which was advanced, that is to say the variable capital of 80 cents; the other half constitutes the surplus-value of 80 cents. The value of $8.00 in yarn equals then the constant capital, $6.40, plus the variable capital, 80 cents, and finally plus the surplus- value, 80 cents. Since the total value of $8.00 is represented by 20 pounds of yarn, the different elements of this value, which we have just pointed out, may be represented by portions of this product. If the value of $8.00 is contained in 20 pounds of yarn, then 8/10 of this value, or its constant portion of $6.40 will be contained in 8/10 of the product, or in 16 pounds of yarn. These 16 pounds represent then the value of the cotton bought and the wear and tear of the spindles, in all $6.40. Thirteen (13) pounds of yarn represent the $'5.20. worth of cotton, and 3 pounds represent the $1.20 for wear and tear of the spindles. Thirteen pounds of yarn actually contain only thir- teen pounds of cotton worth-as 20 pounds cost $5.20- $3.38. The difference of $1.82 is equivalent to the cot- 93 ton contained in the other 7 pounds of yarn. But the 13 pounds of yarn here represent all the cotton contained in the total product of 20 pounds of yarn. At 40 cents a pound they are worth in fact $5.20, the same as the 20 pounds of cotton. To offset this, they represent nothing else. They are looked upon as not containing an atom of the value of the instruments of labor employed, nor of the new value created by the spinning. In the same way, the three pounds of yarn are worth $1.20-equal to twelve hours' wear and tear of the spindles. Three pounds represent then the value of the instruments of labor con- sumed during the whole process of producing the 2O pounds of yarn; but they represent that alone, without containing an atom of the new value created by the spinning. To recapitulate, eight tenths of the product, or 16 pounds of yarn, are deemed not to contain an atom of the new value created by the labor of the spinner. And, in fact, when the capitalist sells them for $6.40 and with the money replaces his means of production, it becomes evident that the 16 pounds of yarn are only cotton and spindles in disguise. On the other hand, the remaining two-tenths, or four pounds of yarn, represent conse- quently only the value which remains, the new value of $1.60 created in the twelve hours' labor. The labor of the spinner materialized in the product of 20 pounds of yarn, is now concentrated in four pounds, in two tenths of the product, of which one-tenth or two pounds represents the value of the labor-power employed, that is to say, the 80 cents of variable capital advanced, and the other tenth represents the 80 cents of surplus-value. 94 Since twelve hours' labor create a value of $1.60, the value of the yarn, amounting to eight dollars, represents sixty hours' labor. This is because, besides the twelve hours' spinning, the eight dollars worth of yarn embody the labor-time contained by the means of production consumed, i. e., four days of twelve hours each, or forty- eight hours' labor which preceded the spinning process and were materialized in a value of $6.40. We can then split up the result of production, the prod- uct, into one part which represents only the labor con- tained in the means of production, or the constant part of capital, into another part which represents only the nec- essary labor added during the productive process, or the variable part of capital, and into a final part which repre- sents only the surplus-labor added, or the surplus-value. The total product made in a certain time, for example, one day, decomposed in this way into parts representing the various elements of its value, may also have these ele- ments represented by fractions of the working-day. The spinner produces in twelve hours 20 pounds of yarn. Therefore, in 36 minutes he produces one pound, and in 7 hours and 48 minutes 13 pounds of yarn, that is to say, a portion of the product equivalent in value to all the cotton employed during the day. In the same way the portion produced in the following hour and 48 min- utes is equal to three pounds of yarn and represents therefore the value of the spindles used up during the twelve hours' labor. In the same way again, the spinner produces in the hour and twelve minutes that follow two pounds of yarn representing a value equal to the entire value that he creates in the six hours of necessary labor. Finally, in the last seventy-two minutes, he produces two pounds more of yarn whose value is equal to the surplus- value produced by his six hours of surplus-labor. What he produces in these seventy-two minutes, note it well, is two pounds of yarn whose entire value is equal to the surplus-value that the day's labor yields the capi- talist; but the entire value of these two pounds is com- posed, in addition to the value resulting from the labor of the spinner, of the value of the past labor which pro- duced the cotton and the spindles consumed in its manu- facture. III.-The "Last Hour." Because the various elements of the value of the prod- uct may be represented by proportional parts of the work- ing-day, and because the surplus-value is then found to be represented by the value of the product of the last seventy-two minutes, it is not necessary to conclude, as do certain economists attempting to oppose in the name of science every reduction of the working-day, that the laborer, out of his twelve hours' day, consecrates to the manufacturer for the production of surplus-value only the last seventy-two minutes, the "last hour," as they say. The surplus-value is equal, in fact, not to the value of the labor-power expended during the last seventy-two minutes, but to the value of the product to produce which labor-power is expended during this time. That is, it is equal to the value of the means of production, the cotton and spindles, consumed during seventy-two min- utes, plus the new value which the labor of the spinner adds to them, during this same time, while it is consum- ing them. 96 And, to believe these economists, if the labor-time were diminished by seventy-two minutes, while wages remained the same, there would no longer be any surplus-value, and the unfortunate capitalist would no longer make any- thing. Their reasoning is, briefly, this: As two pounds of yarn are the product of seventy-two minutes' spinning, if the day of the spinner were reduced by seventy-two minutes, the capitalist would have two pounds less of yarn, and as two pounds of yarn are worth 80 cents, he would have 80 cents less. Now, as his surplus-value, his profit was 80 cents, as soon as he has 80 cents less, he no longer makes anything. Let us examine the matter a little. For two pounds of yarn two pounds of cotton are re- quired, besides the spindles which are worn in manu- facturing it. As the 20 pounds of cotton cost $5.20, two pounds cost 52 cents. The wear and tear of the spindles in spinning 20 pounds amounts to $1.20, which is 12 cents for two pounds. If the production is reduced by 2 pounds of yarn, this means that the expenditure is also reduced by 52 cents plus 12 cents, or 64 cents. If it is true that the capitalist receives 80 cents less, he also ex- pends 64 cents less. By cutting 72 minutes off the 12 hours' labor, he loses then only 16 cents. If he makes only 16 cents less than formerly, his surplus-value, his net profit, which was 80 cents, is now 80 cents less 16 cents, or 64 cents, and the duration of the surplus-labor is 4 hours and 48 minutes instead of 6 hours; that is to say, the rate of surplus-value is 80 per cent.--a very handsome rate still. To say in our example that the .spinner, whose day lasts 12 hours, produces in the last seventy-two minutes the net profit of the capitalist, is just the same as to say quite plainly that his product of seventy-two minutes, two pounds of yarn, represents, regarded in its entirety, as much labor-time as the portion of the day devoted to the formation of surplus-value. In fact, we have just now seen that the means of production consumed to produce 20 pounds of yarn contained, before the spinning process, 48 hours' labor. The means of production consumed for 2 pounds contain, then, the tenth of this time, that is to say, 4 hours and 48 minutes of past labor, which, added to the 72 minutes of spinning, gives for two pounds of yarn a total of six hours, equal to the daily surplus labor-time of the spinner. IV.L The Net Product. The part of the product that represents the surplus- value, we call the net product or "surplus-produce." Just as the rate of surplus-value is determined by its ratio, not with the total capital, but with the variable part of capital, in the same way the relative amount of the net product is determined by its ratio, not with the entire product, but with the part of the product that repre- sents the necessary labor. The relative magnitude of the net product is the true measure of the degree of the ac- cumulation of wealth. The total of the necessary labor and the surplus-labor, i. e., the entire time during which the laborer produces the equivalent of his labor-power and surplus-value, forms the absolute magnitude of his labor-time, i. e., the work- ing-day. 01APTER X. THE WORKING-DAY. I. The limits of the working-day.--II. The greed of ca pital for surplus-labor.--III. The exploitation of the free laborer in form and in fact.--Day and night work.--IV. Regulation of the working-day.--V. The struggle for the limnitation of the working-day. I.-The Limits of the Working-Day. We started with the assumption that labor-power is bought and sold at its value. This value, like that of every other commodity, is determined by the labor-time necessary for its production. As the capitalist buys labor-power at its day-rate, he therefore acquires the right to make the laborer work for him during one day. But, what is a working-day ? The working-day varies between limits imposed by society, on the one hand, and by Nature on the other. The minimum limit is that portion of the day during which the laborer must necessarily work for his own maintenance, but our social organization, based on the capitalist mode of production, does not permit it to reach this limit. As this method of production is based, in reality, on the formation of surplus-value, it demands a certain quantity of labor in excess of the necessary labor, or, in other words, a certain quantity of surplus- labor. There is also a maximum limit that the physical 99 limitations of labor-power, the time necessarily devoted every day by the laborer to sleeping, eating, etc., that Nature, in a word, does not allow the working-day to overstep. These limits are extremely elastic. In any case, a working-day is less than a natural day. How much less ? One of its parts, indeed, is determined by the necessary labor-time; but its total magnitude varies according to the duration of the surplus-labor. Like every other purchaser, the capitalist purchaser of labor-power seeks to derive the greatest possible ad- vantage from the use of the commodity he has bought. He has only one motive-to increase his capital, to create surplus-value, to absorb as much surplus-labor as pos- sible. On his side, the laborer rightly wishes his labor-power to develop regularly and healthily, and to continue effec- tive for a normal period, and he is therefore willing to expend it only within limits compatible with these conditions. He is willing to use up each day only the amount of power that his wages suffice to enable him to rebuild in readiness for the next day. The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he strives to prolong the working-day as far as possible. The laborer maintains his rights as a vendor, when he wishes to restrict the working-day sufficiently, so that it shall not exceed the limits compatible with his continued bodily health. Here, then, we have right opposed to right, both alike based on the law which governs the exchange of commodities. Between two 100 equal rights, what decides?' Force. That is why the regulation of the working-day appears in the history of capitalist production as a struggle between the capitalist class and the working class. II.-The Greed of Capital for Surplus-Labor. The capitalist has not invented surplus-labor. Wher- ever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the laborer, free or not, is com- pelled to add to the labor-time necessary for his own sustenance some surplus labor-time to furnish the means of subsistence for the owner' of the means of produc- tion. It matters but little whether this proprietor is a slave-owner, a feudal lord or a capitalist. Yet, when the economic form of a society is such that the utility of a thing is considered rather than the quantity of gold or silver for which it can be ex- changed, in other words, the use-value rather than the exchange-value, surplus-labor will be limited by the satisfaction of certain definite wants. On the contrary, when exchange-value reigns supreme, to make the laborer work as much and as long as possible becomes the rule. As soon as peoples whose production is still carried on by the aid of the lower economic forms of slavery and serfdom are drawn into an international market dominated by the capitalist mode of production, and the sale of their products abroad becomes, in consequence, their principal interest, then the horrors of surplus- labor, this fruit of civilization, are engrafted on the barbarism of slavery and serfdom. So long as produc- 101 tion in the Southern States of the American Union was directed principally to the satisfaction of immediate needs, the labor of the negroes preserved a moderate character. But when the exportation of cotton became the principal interest of those States, the negro was overworked and the exhaustion of his vital forces in seven years' labor became part of a coldly calculated system. It was no longer a question, as before, of ob- taining from him a certain quantity of useful products. It had become a question of the production of surplus- value at any cost. The history of serfdom in the princi- palities on the Danube tells the same story. What is a working-day? What is the length of time during which capital has the right to consume the labor- power, the value of which it buys for one day ? How far may the day be prolonged beyond the labor neces- sary for the reproduction of that power ? To all these questions, capital replies: The working-day includes twenty-four full hours, less the hours for rest without which labor-power would be absolutely unable to con- tinue its service. If one talks of time for intellectual development, for the free exercise of the powers of the body and mind, capital cries: "Nonsense !" Capital monopolizes the time required for the de- velopment and maintenance of the body in good health; it grudges the time for meals; and it reduces the sleep- ing-time to the minimum of lifeless torpor without which the exhausted organism could no longer perform its functions. It is not the normal sustenance of labor- power that serves as a rule for the limitation of the 102 working-day; it is, on the contrary, the greatest possible daily expenditure of his powers which regulates the rest- time granted to the laborer. III.-The Exploitation of the Free Laborer in Form and in Fact. On the assumption that the working-day consists of six hours of necessary labor and six hours of surplus- labor, the free laborer furnishes the capitalist in the six work-days of the week thirty-six hours of surplus-labor. It is just as though he worked three days for himself and three days, gratis, for the capitalist. But this truth does not appear on the surface. Surplus-labor and necessary labor are blended together. It is otherwise with the corveel. Under the form of the corvee, the surplus-labor is independent of, and distinct from, the necessary labor. The peasant performs the latter on his own field, and the former on the seignorial estate. He can thus plainly distinguish the work he does for his own support, from the work he does for the feudal lord. The exploitation of the free laborer by the capitalist is less apparent. It has a more hypocritical form. The difference in form does not in any way alter the facts beneath the form, unless it makes them worse. Three days of surplus-labor a week are always three days' labor which yield nothing to the worker himself, no matter what name be given to them, be it corvie or profits. The sole concern of capital, as we have said, is (1) Translator's Note. It may be as well to say the corvee is the com- pulsory, uncompensated labor furnished by the serf to his lord. 103 the maximum of exertion it can wrest from labor-power in a day. It strives to attain its goal without vexing its soul about the duration of the life of labor-power. And therefore it hastens the enfeeblement and the premature death of that power, by depriving it, by the forced pro- longation of the working-day, of the conditions requisite for it to function normally, and thus retards or prevents the normal physical and moral development of the workers. It would seem, nevertheless, that the self-interest of capital ought to impel it to husband prudently a power which is indispensable to it. But general experience shows the capitalist that there is an excess of population, that is to say, an excess relative to the momentary re- quirements of capital, although this abundant multitude is formed of human generations born with deficient vital- ity, starved and stunted, ready victims of disease and death. Experience also shows the intelligent observer how rapidly capitalist production, which, historically speak- ing, is of recent date, attacks the vital power of the people at the very root. It shows him how the degeneration of the industrial population is retarded only by the con- stant absorption of fresh elements from the country, and shows him how the toilers of the fields are themselves beginning to degenerate. But capital concerns itself as little about the degrada- tion of the race as it does about the final destruction of the world. In every period of speculation every one knows that the crash will come some day, but every one hopes not to be carried down by it, after having reaped 104 the golden harvest preceding it. "After me the deluge !" That is the motto of every capitalist. Day and Night IWork. Capital thinks then only about the formation of sur- plus-value, without disturbing itself about the health or the length of life of the laborer. It is true that, taking all the facts into consideration, this does not depend on the good or ill will of the individual capitalist. Compe- tition sets aside the wishes of individuals and brings the capitalists face to face with the imperious laws of cap- italist production. If they remain idle, the means of production are a source of loss for the capitalist; for they represent, dur- ing the time in which they are not absorbing labor, a use- less advance of capital. Besides this, they often require an additional outlay on the resumption of work. As it is physically impossible for the same possessors of labor- power to work twenty-four hours every day, the capital- ists hae gotten around the difficulty. This was for them a question of profits. They conceived the idea of util- izing their work-people alternately day and night. This can be done in various ways. A part of the employees of the factory may, for instance, do day work one week and night work the next week. The system of night work increases the profits of the capitalist in the same proportion that it facilitates the scandalous exploitation of the laborer. It has, moreover, a pernicious effect upon health; but the capitalist realizes a profit from it, and for him that is the only thing to be considered. 105 IV.-Regulation of the Working-Day. In every possible fashion, the capitalist abuses the laborer to the uttermost, so long as he is not prevented from doing so by society. The establishment of an en- durable working-day is the result of a long struggle be- tween the capitalist and the laborer. Yet, the history of this struggle shows two opposite tendencies. While modern legislation shortens the working-day, early legislation attempted to prolong it. The effort was made to extract from the laborer, with the help of the State, a quantity of labor that the economic condi- tions unaided could not as yet force from him. It takes centuries before the free laborer, in consequence of the development of capitalist production voluntarily agrees, -that is to say, is socially compelled,-to sell the whole of his active life, his capacity for labor, for the price of his customary means of subsistence, his birthright for a mess of pottage. Hence it is natural that the prolongation of the working-day imposed from the middle of the 14th down to the beginning of the 18th century with the aid of the State, approximately corresponds with the short- ening of the working-day, which the State here and there decrees and imposes in the second half of the 19th cen- tury. If, in such States as England, the laws curb, by an official limitation of the working-day, the merciless eager- ness of capital to absorb labor, this is because, not to speak of the more and more threatening attitude of the working-classes, this limitation has been dictated by necessity. The same blind cupidity which exhausts the 106 soil, attacks at their roots the vital forces of the nation, and, as we have shown, causes the rapid deterioration of the race. 1V.--The Struggle for the Limitation of the Working-Day. The special object, the real goal of capitalist produc- tion is the production of surplus-value, or the extraction of surplus-labor. It is only the independent laborer who can, as the owner of a commodity, enter into a contract with the capitalist; but the isolated laborer, the laborer considered as the free vendor of his labor-power, must succumb without even a show of resistance, as soon as capitalist production attains a certain degree of de- velopment. Our laborer, it must be confessed, comes forth from the domain of production greatly altered. On the mar- ket he appeared as the owner of the commodity "labor- power" face to face with the owners of other commodi- ties, dealer against dealer. The contract by which he sold his labor-power seemed to result from an agreement between two free wills, that of the vendor and that of the purchaser. The bargain made, he discovers that he was not free, that the time for which he is free to sell his labor-power is the time for which he is forced to sell it, and that in truth the vampire which preys upon him will not release him as long as he has a drop of blood left in him to be exploited. To defend themselves against this exploita- tion, the laborers must, by a collective effort, by a class- pressure, secure the erection of a social obstacle to pre- vent them, the laborers, from selling by "free contract" 10 themselves and their children into slavery and death. The pompous "declaration of the rights of man" is thus replaced by a modest law which makes plain when the time which the laborer sells ends, and when his own time begins. CHAPTER XI. RATE AND MASS OF SURPLUS-VALUE. The prolongation of the working-day counterbalances a decrease in the number of the laborers.-A certain minimum of money necessary for the transformation of money into capital. The Prolongation of the Working-Day Counterbalances a Decrease in the Number of the Laborers. Let us assume that the average value of one day's labor-power is 80 cents, and that six hours a day are requisite to reproduce it. Hence to buy this power, the capitalist must advance 80 cents. How much surplus- value will this 80 cents yield him ? This depends on the ratio of the labor devoted to the formation of surplus- value-surplus-labor-to the labor devoted to the re- production of wages necessary labor. In a word, it depends on the rate of surplus-value. If this rate is 100 per cent., the surplus value will amount to 80 cents, representing six hours' surplus-labor; if the rate is fifty per cent., it will be forty cents, representing three hours' surplus-labor. Hence, the rate of surplus-value deter- mines the mass of surplus-value individually produced 108 by one laborer, the value of his labor-power being given. The variable capital is the expression in money of the value of all, the labor-powers the capitalist employs at once. If 80 cents, the price of one labor-power, pro- duces daily a surplus-value of 40 cents, the price of 100 labor-powers, a variable capital of 80 dollars, will pro- duce a surplus-value of 40 dollars, a sum equal to the result of the multiplication of the variable capital, 80 by 50-100, a fraction which expresses the rate of surplus- value. Therefore, the mass of surplus-value produced by a given variable capital is equal to the value of this capital multiplied by the rate of surplus-value. Suppose that the rate of surplus-value falls 50 per cent., and thus becomes 25 per cent., instead of 50 per cent., and that, on the other hand, the variable capital is doubled and becomes 160 dollars, instead of 80 dollars, then the surplus-value would be equal to 160 multiplied by 25-100, or to 40 dollars as before. Consequently, the mass of surplus-value remains constant, when the rate of surplus-value falls if the variable capital increases, or inversely, when the variable capital decreases if the rate of surplus-value rises in the same proportion. A contraction of the variable capital may then be counterbalanced by a proportional rise in the rate of surplus-value; or, as the variable capital depends on the number of the laborers employed, a reduction in the number of the laborers employed may be counterbalanced by a proportional prolongation of their working-day. TUp to a certain point, the amount of labor exploitable by capital, thus becomes independent of the number of la- borers. 109 Nevertheless, this compensation of the fewness of the laborers by the prolongation of the day has impassable limits. The working-day, in fact, has physical limita- tions. However prolonged, it is still always less than the natural day of twenty-four hours. With 100 labor- ers paid 80 cents a day, and working twelve hours---6 hours being necessary labor-time--the rate of surplus- value is 100 per cent., and the capitalist has a daily sur- plus-value of 80 dollars. If he hires only one-third as many laborers, his surplus-value will inevitably be less, because he cannot impose upon them three times as many hours of surplus-labor; for eighteen hours of surplus-labor, added to the six hours of necessary labor, would make the working-day as long as the natural day, leaving no time for the absolutely indis- pensable daily rest. The physical limitations of the working-day--necessarily limiting the surplus-labor con- tained by it-set an absolute limit to the compensation of a reduction in the number of laborers employed by a pro- longation of the working-day, i. e., by raising the degree of exploitation. A Certain Minimum of Money Necessary for the Trans- formation of Money Into Capital. As value is only realized labor, it is evident that the mass of value a capitalist produces, depends exclusively on the quantity of labor he exploits. As we have just seen, he can exploit more or less labor with the same number of laborers, as the working-day is longer or shorter. But, if the value of labor-power and the rate of surplus-value, or, in other words, the division of the 110 day into necessary labor and surplus-labor are given, then the total mass of value, including the surplus-value, that a capitalist realizes is exclusively determined by the number of laborers that he employs, and this number depends on the magnitude of the variable capital that he advances, on the sum that he devotes to the purchase of labor-power. The mass of surplus-value produced is then propor- tional to the magnitude of the variable capital. From this point of view the constant capital has no effect. The value of the means of production, be it great or small, has not the slightest influence on the mass of the value produced, which is only the new value added by labor to the value preserved by the means of production. It follows from what has been said that not every sum of money is convertible into capital. This transforma- tion requires the would-be capitalist to have in his hands a certain minimum of money. As he wishes not only to live by the labor of others, but also to grow rich by that labor, he must have a number of laborers sufficiently large so that their surplus labor-time shall provide at once for his support and his enrichment. Of course, he can participate in the work himself, but he is then nothing but a hybrid between capitalist and laborer, a small employer. At a certain stage of econo- mic development, the capitalist must be able to devote all his time to the appropriation and oversight of the labor of others and to the sale of the products of that labor. He must then exploit a sufficient number of laborers to exempt him from himself participating in the labor of production. 111 This minimum of money that must be advanced varies with the varying degrees of the development of pro- duction. With a given degree of development, it varies in different industries, according to their special techni- cal conditions. In production considered from the point of view of the utility of the product, the means of production, so far as the laborer is concerned, act only as materials for the exercise of his productive activity. If it is considered from the point of view of surplus-value, the means of production are at once transformed into means for the absorption of the labor of others. The laborer no longer employs them, but, on the con- trary, they employ the laborer. Instead of being con- sumed by him as the material elements of his productive activity, they consume him as the indispensable vital element of their own life-process, and the life-process of capital is nothing but its expansion as constantly multi- plying value. As a means to compel others to work, to exploit labor- power, and to extort from it surplus-labor, the capitalist system surpasses in energy, efficiency and unlimited. power, all earlier systems of production based on the different kinds of directly compulsory labor. 112 FOURTH SECTION.--The Production of Relative Surplus-value. CHAPTER XII. RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE. Reduction of the necessary labor-time.--Increase of the productiveness of labor and' of surplus-value. Reduction of the Necessary Labor-Time. Up. to this point we have considered that portion of the working-day during which the laborer only replaces the value paid him by the capitalist, as having a fixed constant length. And in fact its duration is constant so long as the conditions of production do not varj. Be- yond this fixed duration, this necessary time, labor may be prolonged a larger or smaller number of hours, and the rate of surplus-value and the total length of the day will vary with the length of this prolongation. And so, even when the necessary labor-time is constant, the working-day as a whole is, on the contrary, variable. Now, suppose a working-day with a given limited du- ration, for instance, a day of twelve hours. The surplus- labor and the necessary labor taken together cannot ex- ceed twelve hours. How, then, can the surplus-labor, the production of surplus-value, be increased? There 113 is only one way to do it, and that is to shorten the neces- sary labor-time, and in the same ratio to lengtheh the part of the twelve hours devoted to surplus-labor. In this way, a part of the time which the laborer had thus far, as a matter of fact, employed for himself, womld be converted into labor-time for the capitalist. The limits of the day would be unaltered. The only change would be in its division between necessary labor and surplus- labor. On the other hand, if the length of the entire working- day and the daily value of labor-power are given, the duration of the surplus-labor is necessarily fixed. If this value (of labor-power per day) is 80 cents, a quantity of gold incarnating six hours' labor, the laborer must toil six hours to replace the value of his labor-power paid each day by the capitalist, or, to produce an equivalent for the value of the means of sustenance required for his daily support. The value of these means of sustenance determines the per diem value of his labor-power, and the value of his labor-power determines the daily dura- tion. of his necessary labor. The necessary labor-time might be, and is, in prac- tice, shortened by reducing wages below the value of labor-power. But we assume here that labor-power is bought and sold at its just value. On this assumption, the time devoted to reproducing this value can diminish only when this value itself diminishes. Now this value depends on the value of the sum of the means of sub- sistence required for its support. Hence, the value of these must diminish. Five hours must, for instance, suffice to produce the same quantity of the means of 114 subsistence formerly produced in six, and this produc- tion of the same quantity of the means of subsistence in a shorter time can result only from an increase in the pro- ductive power of labor. Such an increase in productiv- ity c ,n only be brought about by an alteration in the instruments or in the methods of labor, or in both at once. Hence, a revolution must be effected in the con- ditions of production. Increase of the Productiveness of Labor and of Surplus- Value. By an increase of the productive power or of the pro- ductivity of labor, we mean, generally, an alteration in its processes reducing the time necessary, on the average, for the production of a commodity, thus enabling less labor to produce more objects of utility. When we considered the surplus-value, arising from the prolongation of the labor-time, the mode of produc- tion was deemed to be given and unchanging., But when it is a question of forming surplus-value by the trans- formation of necessary labor into surplus-labor, instead of leaving the customary processes of labor untouched, capital must alter the technical and social conditions of labor, that is to say, it must transform the mode of pro- duction. In this way only can it increase the productiv- ity of labor, and thus lower the value of labor-power, and by so doing, shorten the time employed in reproducing it._ The surplus-value produced by the simple prolonga- tion of the working-day we call absolute surplus-value, and we give the name of relative surplus-value to the surplus-value, which is, on the contrary, the result of the 115 curtailment of the necessary labor-time and of the con- sequent change in the relative length of the two com- ponents of the working-day-necessary labor and surplus-labor. In order to cause a fall in the value of labor-power, the increase of productivity must take place in those branches of industry whose products determine the value of labor-power, that is to say, which furnish either the commodities necessary for the maintenance of the labor- er or the means of production used in making those com- modities. But the lower price of one of these articles decreases the value of labor-power only in proportion to the extent to which it enters into the reproduction of labor-power. In those branches of industry which fur- nish neither the means of subsistence nor their material elements, an increase in productivity does not alter the value of labor-power. We saw in Chapter I. that the value of commodities, and consequently of labor-power, since its value is deter- mined by the value of commodities, falls when there is an increase in the productivity of the labor to which they owe their existence. On the other hand, an increase in the productiveness of labor increases the time devoted to the formation of surplus-value, and relative surplus- value rises when the productivity of labor rises. And so, by lowering the price of commodities, the de- velopment of the productive power of labor lowers the price of the laborer. This development, under the capi- talist regime, results in shortening the part of the day in which the laborer works for himself, and in lengthening the part in which he works, gratis, for the capitalist, 116 The same processes that lower the price of commodities, increase the surplus-value which those commodities yield. The saving of labor effected by such a develop- ment never tends, as certain economists would have one believe, to shorten the working-day. The fact that, thanks to an increase in productivity, the laborer can produce in an hour ten times as much as formerly, has no tendency to prevent his employer from continuing to make him work, at the least, as long as before. 117 CHAPTER XIII. CO-OPERATION. The collective power of labor.--Results and conditions of collective labor.-The leadership in industry belongs to capital.-The collective power of labor appears as a power immanent in capital. The Collective Power of Labor. Capitalist production does not, in fact, begin to exist until one master exploits simultaneously many wage- workers. A large number of workers working at the same time, under the control of the same capital, in the same place, in order to produce the same sort of com- modities-that is the historic starting-point of capitalist production. The laws governing the production of value are fully effective only for the exploiter of a collective body of laborers. In fact, the labor looked upon as the creator of value is labor of average quality, that is, the product of average labor-power. In every branch of industry, each individual laborer differs more or less from the average laborer. Although he takes more or less time than the average for a given operation, he receives the average value of labor-power, and in consequence his employer derives from his labor more or less than the general rate of surplus-value. These individual differ- ences in the degree of skillfulness compensate each other and disappear when a large number of laborers working together are considered. The day of a sufficiently large number of laborers exploited simultaneously, constitutes a day of social labor, i. e., an average day. 118 Even without an alteration in the processes by which labor is performed, the employment of many laborers brings about a revolution in the material conditions of labor. A workshop occupied by twenty weavers with twenty looms, must be larger than that of an employer who hires only two weavers; but the building of ten workshops for twenty weavers working two in a shop, costs more than building one only, accommodating twenty together. The value of the means of production concentrated and used in common is much less than the value of the scattered means of production that they replace. Be- sides, this value is spread over a mass of products, rela- tively much larger. The portion of value that they transfer to the commodities is consequently diminished. The effect is the same as if they had cost less. The economy in their employment is due entirely to their consumption in common. When numerous laborers work together with a com- mon object, in the same productive process, or in differ- ent but related processes, when their forces are com- bined, their labor takes the co-operative form. Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry is essentially different from the sum of the forces separately put in action by each of the cavalrymen, so the sum of the powers of the individual workingmen differs from the power that is developed when they work together in one and the same operation. We have here then not a simple numerical increase of individual productive powers, but a creation, by the aid of co-operation, of a new power, acting only as collective power. 119 Results and Conditions of Collective Labor. Besides the new power resulting from the fusion of numerous forces into one common force, the social con- tact in itself acts as a stimulus which heightens the efficiency of the individual. The co-operation of laborers makes it possible to ap- portion to different hands the divers operations that the manufacture of a product involves, and in this way to have them performed simultaneously, thus curtailing the time necessary for its manufacture. It also makes it possible to supplement the short duration of the time available under certain circumstances, by the great quan- tity of labor a collective body of laborers can perform in a short time. It also renders feasible vast under- takings, otherwise impossible, even while contracting the arena of production by the concentration of the means of production and the laborers, and thus reducing the relative cost of production. Compared to an equal sum of isolated working-days, the collective working-day produces more useful objects, and thus decreases the time necessary to obtain a given desired effect. To sum up, collective labor gives results that individual labor could never yield. This special productive power of the collective day is a power imma- nent in social labor or labor in common. By acting simultaneously with others to achieve a common purpose and upon a preconcerted plan, the laborer strips off the limitations of his individuality, and develops the powers of his species. 120 Men must be brought together in one place as an essential condition of their common action, their co- operation. For a capitalist to be able to exploit simul- taneously a number of wage-workers, he must buy their labor-powers simultaneously. The total value of these labor-powers or a certain amount of wages for the day or the week must be ready accumulated in the pocket of the capitalist before the laborers are brought together for the process 'of production. Hence the number of the laborers co-operating, or the extent of co-operation, de- pends in the first place on the magnitude of the capital available for the purchase of labor-power, that is to say, on the extent to which a single capitalist has command over the means of subsistence of numerous laborers. On the other hand, the enlargement of the variable part of capital necessitates the growth of its constant part. Co-operation is accompanied by a marked increase in the value and quantity of the means of production- raw materials and instruments of labor. The more the productive powers of labor are developed, the greater the consumption of raw materials in a given time. The concentration of the means of production in the hands of capitalists is, therefore, the material condition of all co-operation between wage-workers. We saw (Chapter XI.) that the owner of money must have a certain minimum amount enabling him to exploit a number of laborers large enough to relieve him from all manual labor. Unless this condition is met, the petty master workman can never be replaced by the capitalist, and production can never assume the form of capitalist production. The minimum magnitude of capital that 121 must be accumulated in the hands of individuals, now ap- pears as the concentration of wealth necessary to trans- form isolated, individual labor into collective labor. The Leadership in Industry Belongs to Capital. In the infancy of capital, its control over labor has an almost accidental character. The laborer works under the orders of the capitalist because he has sold him his labor-power, and he sold it because he had not the ma- terial means to work on his own account. But as soon as co-operation among wage-workers begins, the leader- ship of capital appears as an indispensable condition of the performance of labor. All social or common labor requires a directing authority to bring the individual activities into harmony. A musician performing a solo directs himself, but an orchestra requires a leader. This function of directing and superintending becomes the function of capital, as soon as the labor which is subor- dinated to it becomes co-operative, and, as a capitalist function, it acquires special characteristics. The potent incentive of capitalist production is the necessity of making capital yield returns. Its control- ling end and aim is the greatest possible formation of surplus-value, or, what comes to the same thing, the greatest possible exploitation of labor-power. As the number of laborers collectively exploited rises, their power of resisting the capitalist also increases, and a more energetic power of control must be brought into play to overcome all resistance. In the hands of the capitalist, this power of control is not only then a special function springing out of the very nature of co-operative or social 1 '2? labor, but it is also, above all, the function of exploiting social labor, a function based on the inevitable antagon- ism between the exploiter and the living power that he exploits. The form of this control cannot but become despotic. The peculiar forms of this despotism develop as co-operation develops. The capitalist begins by freeing himself from manual labor. Then, when his capital expands and with it the collective power he exploits also grows, he gives up his function of direct supervision of the laborers and the groups of workers, and entrusts it to a special kind of wage-worker. As soon as he finds himself at the head of an industrial army, he feels the need of superior offi- cers (directors, managers, etc.), and sub-officers (over- seers, inspectors, foremen, etc.), who, during. the labor- process, command in the name of capital. The labor of supervision becomes the exclusive function of these special wage-workers. The leadership in industry be- longs to capital, just as in feudal times the functions of general and judge were attributes of landed property. Auguste Comte and the positivist school have tried to prove the eternal necessity for lords or captains of capi- tal. They could just as well, and with the same argu- ments, prove the eternal necessity for feudal lords. The Collective Power of Labor Appears as a Power Im- manent in Capital. The laborer is the owner of his labor-power so long as he is discussing its selling-price with the capitalist, and he can sell only what he owns-his individual labor- power. It is in this fashion that the capitalist makes 123 contracts with one or with a hundred laborers, indepen- dent of each other, and whom he could employ without having them co-operate. The capitalist pays each of the hundred laborers for his separate labor-power, but he does not pay for the new power-the combined power of the hundred. As independent persons, the laborers are isolated in- dividuals who enter into relations with the same capital, but not with each other. The bond between their indi- vidual functions, their unity as a producing body or or- ganism is to be found, not in them, but in the capital that brings them together. Their co-operation begins only in the labor-process; but, when that process begins, they have already ceased to be their own owners. From the moment they enter this process, they are only a particular form of the existence of capital. The productive power developed and shown by wage-workers, when they func- tion as collective or co-operative labor, is, consequently, the productive power of capital. Because the social power of labor costs capital nothing, and, on the other hand, because the wage-worker does not develop it until after his labor belongs to capital, it appears to be a power with which capital is endowed by nature, a pro- ductive power immanent in capital. If the collective power of labor developed by co-opera- tion appears as the productive power of capital, co-opera- tion appears as the specific form of capitalist production. In the hands of capital, this socialization of labor in- creases its productive powers, only in order to derive more profit from its exploitation. 124 The capitalist mode of production is none the less an historical necessity for the transformation of the isolated labor of the individual into social or collective labor. It is because this mode of production and the co-operative form of labor that it implies are developed in the progress of history in opposition to, and in competition with, the earlier system of petty agriculture and small handi- crafts-it is because of this that co-operation appears as the specific form of capitalist production, when capitalist co-operation is, in fact, only one particular form of co- operation. 125 CHAPTER XIV. DIVISION OF LABOR AND MANUFACTURE. I. Two-fold origin of manufacture.-II. The detail laborer and his implements.--III. The two fundamental forms of manufacture.-General mechanism of manufacture.-Effect of manufacture on labor.--IV. Division of labor in manu- facture and in society.--V. The capitalist character of manu- facture. I.-Two-Fold Origin of Manufacture. That species of co-operation which is based on division of labor assumes its classical form in manufacture, and is the dominant form during the manufacturing period, properly so-called. That period extends from about the middle of the sixteenth down to the last third of the eighteenth century. Manufacture has a two-fold origin. (1) On the one hand, there may be assembled in a single workshop, under the orders of the same capitalist, artisans of divers handicrafts through whose hands a product must pass on its road to completion. A car- riage was at first the collective product of a great num- ber of artisans independent of each other, such as wheel- wrights, saddlers, tailors, turners, painters, locksmiths, glaziers, etc. The manufacture of carriages has brought all these together in one and the same place, where they work simultaneously. As many carriages are made at once, each laborer constantly has his particular task to perform. But soon an essential modification is intro- duced. The locksmith, the tailor, etc., who are occupied only in making carriages, gradually get out of practice 126 and lose their ability to carry on their trade in its full extent. Limited now to one special branch of their trade, their skill acquires the form most fit for that re- stricted field of action. (2) On the other hand, a large number of laborers, each one of whom makes the same object, may be em- ployed at the same time, by the same capitalist, in the same workshop. Here we have co-operation in its sim- plest form. Each one of the laborers makes the finished commodity by performing in succession the various oper- ations necessary. In consequence of external circum- stances, some day, instead of having the various opera- tions performed by each of the laborers, as before, each operation is especially allotted to one particular laborer, and all are then simultaneously performed by the co- operating laborers, each laborer performing only one operation, instead of performing them all one after the other. This division, once accidentally brought about, is repeated, shows its peculiar advantages, and ends by becoming a systematic division of labor. Formerly the individual product of one independent craftsman per- forming a lot of different operations, the commodity be- comes the social product of an assemblage of craftsmen, each of whom constantly performs one and only one de- tail operation. The origin of manufacture-its development from handicrafts--is, then, two-fold. On the one hand, its starting-point is the combination of various independent handicrafts, which, after they are brought together, are simplified and specialized to such an extent that they be- come nothing more than mere partial operations, supple- 127 menting each other in the production of some one par- ticular commodity. On the other hand, manufacture seizes upon the co-operation of craftsmen of the same kind, it splits up their handicraft into its various operations, iso- lates these operations and makes them independent of each other, so that each becomes the exclusive function of one laborer, who, as he now makes only a part of a prod- uct, is now nothing more than a detail laborer. Hence, in the one case, it combines distinct handicrafts to make one product; in the other case, it develops the division of labor within a handicraft. But whatever its starting- point, its final form is the same: a productive organism whose parts or members are human beings. To understand thoroughly the division of labor in manufacture, it is essential not to lose sight of the two following points: First, the performance of the various operations does not cease to depend on the strength, skill and quickness of the workman in handling his tool; and so each workman is bound to a detail function, a par- tial function for his entire life-time. Second, the division of labor in manufacture is a par- ticular kind of co-operation; its advantages, however, spring especially, not from this particular form, but from the nature of co-operation in general. II.-The Detail Laborer and His Implements. The detail laborer transforms his entire body into the mechanical organ of one and the same simple operation, which he performs his life long, so that he comes to per- form it more quickly than the artisan who performs 4 128 whole series of operations. Hence, compared to the in- dependent handicraft, manufacture, which is composed exclusively of detail laborers, turns out more products in less time. In other words, it increases the productive power of labor. The artisan who has to perform various operations must at one time change his place-at another, his tools. The transition from one operation to another involves interruptions of his labor, unproductive intervals. These intervals disappear, leaving more time for production, in proportion to the decrease in the number of changes from one operation to another made by each laborer-a decrease due to the division of labor. On the other hand, this continuous and uniform labor finally wearies the organism, which finds relaxation and charm in the vari- ety of its activities. As soon as the portions of the labor-process thus di- vided become the exclusive functions of detail laborers, their methods are perfected. When a man constantly repeats one simple act, and concentrafes his attention upon it, he gradually learns by experience to attain the desired useful effect with the smallest possible expendi- ture of strength. And, as there always are several gen- erations of laborers living and working at the same time, in the same shops, the technical skill, the tricks of the trade, thus acquired are accumulated and handed down, and in this way the productive *power of labor is in- creased. The productivity of labor does not depend solely on the skilfulness of the laborer, but also on the perfection of his tools. The same kind of tool may be used in differ- 1~9 ent operations. As these operations become indepen- dent and isolated, the tool does not keep its single form, but is divided and subdivided more and more into dif- erent varieties, each of which has a form adapted for only one use, but that form is the form best adapted for that use. The manufacturing period simplifies, special- izes, perfects and multiplies the instruments of labor by adapting them to the separate and exclusive functions of detail laborers. The detail laborer and his tool are the simple elements of manufacture. We are going to examine its general mechanism. III.-The Two Fundamental Forms of Manufacture. Manufacture presents two fundamental forms, .which, in spite of their occasional blending, constitute two es- sentially distinct species, which play very different parts in the subsequent transformation of manufacture into modern, mechanical industry. This double character arises from the nature of the product, which owes its final form either to a mere mechanical assembling of independent, partial products, or to a series of connected transformations. The first species (of manufacture) furnishes products whose final form is only a simple union of partial prod- ucts. These partial products may be the fruits of dis- tinct handicrafts. A sample product of this kind is the watch. The watch has become the social product of an immense number of laborers, such as spring-makers, 130 dial-makers, hand-makers, case-makers, screw-makers, gilders, etc. There are many sub-divisions of these. There are, for instance, wheel-makers (brass and steel separate), movement-makers, pivot-makers, escapement- makers, balance-wheel-makers, wheel polishers, screw polishers, figure painters, engravers, case polishers, etc., etc., and finally the repasseur who assembles and fits to- gether the separate parts and turns out the watch all ready for sale. But as these elements differ so widely, it is wholly a matter of chance whether the artisans who make them are brought together under one roof or not. The artisans, who work in rooms in their own homes performing these detail operations, do so for the capital- ist, and carry on a bitter competition with their fellows to the profit of the capitalist, who, moreover, is saved the expense of a workshop. And so, in this species of production, there are advantages (for the capitalist) in manufacturing exploitation, only under exceptional cir- cumstances. The second species of manufacture, its perfected form, furnishes products that pass through a whole series of processes in their gradual development. In the manu- facture of pins, for instance, the brass wire passes through the hands of nearly a hundred workmen, each perform- ing a different operation. In so far as such a manu- facture combines handicrafts formerly independent, it diminishes the intervals of time between the different operations, and the gain in productive power resulting from this economy of time is due to the co-operative character of the manufacture. 131 General Mechanism of Manufacturt. Before reaching its final form, the subject of labor, brass for instance in the manufacture of pins, passes through a whole series of operations which, taking the whole number of products in course of manufacture into consideration, are all being performed at the same time. At the same time one may see the cutting of the wire, the making of the pin-heads, the sharpening of the points, etc. The product thus appears simultaneously in all stages of its development. Since the partial product of each detail laborer is only a particular stage in the development of the finished work, the result of the labor of one forms the starting- point for the labor of another. The labor-time neces- sary in each partial operation to obtain the desired useful effect is established by experience, and the whole mech- anism of manufacture functions only on condition that a given result be obtained in a given time. It is in this way only that the various fragmentary and supplemen- tary labor-processes can be carried on side by side and without interruption. This direct interdependence in which the laborers are placed with regard to each other is the reflex of the interdependence of the processes, and compels each one of them to devote to his function no more than the necessary time and thus increases the pro- ductivity of the labor. Different operations require, however, unequal pe- riods of time and yield, therefore, in equal times unequal quantities of partial products. Hence, for the same la- borer to perform every day without loss of time one 132 identical operation, a different number of laborers must be employed for each different operation. For instance, there are four founders to two breakers and one rubber in type manufacture. In an hour the founder casts 2,000 type, while the breaker separates 4,000, and the rubber polishes 8,000. When once the most fitting proportion has been ex- perimentally established for the numbers of the detail laborers in the various groups when producing on a given scale, that scale can be extended only by employing a multiple of each and every group. The special group may be composed, not only of labor- ers performing the same task, but of workmen having each his particular function in the making of a partial product. The group is then a perfectly organized col- lective laborer. The workmen who compose it are so many different organs of one collective force which func- tions only by virtue of the direct co-operation of all. If only one of them be missing the whole group is par- alyzed. Finally, just as manufacture arises in part from the combination of different handicrafts, it may in its turn develop by combining together different manufacturers. It is thus that in the large glass works they make the earthen-ware melting-pots that that manufacture re- quires. The manufacture of the means of production is united to that of the product, and the manufacture of the product to the manufactures into which it enters as a raw material. The manufactures thus combined form departments of manufacture at large, while constituting 133 independent processes of production each with its own distinct division of labor. In spite of its advantages, this combination of manufactures only becomes a unified system after the transformation of manufacturing in- dustry into industry conducted by machinery. With the development of manufacture there also springs up here and there the use of machines, especially for certain simple preliminary processes that can only be performed on a large scale and with the expenditure of considerable power. The pounding of ores in metal works is such a process. But, in general, in the manu- facturing period, machines play only a secondary part. Effect of Manufacture on Labor. The collective laborer, formed by the combination of a large number of detail laborers, forms the mechan- ism specially characteristic of the manufacturing period. The various operations that are performed in turns by the individual producer of a commodity and are blended together in his labor as a whole, require different qual- ities. In one he must display more skill, in another more strength, in a third more attention, etc., and the same individual does not possess all these faculties in an equal degree. When the different operations are once separated and rendered independent, the laborers are divided and grouped according to their predominating faculties or qualities. In this way the collective laborer possesses all the requisite productive faculties, that it is impos- sible to find united in the individual laborer, and he ap- 1341 plies them in the most economical and practical fashion, by employing his component individuals only upon the functions for which their qualities adapt them. The incompleteness and defectiveness of the detail laborer become perfections when he is an organ of the collective laborer. The habit of performing only one function transforms him into the unerring and mechanical organ of that func- tion, while the whole mechanism compels him to act with the regularity of a part of a machine. As the various functions of the collective laborer are more or less simple or complex, higher or lower in char- acter, his organs, the individual labor-powers, must also be more or less simple or skilled, more or less developed. Consequently they have different values. Manufacture thus creates, to conform to the hierarchy of functions, a hierarchy of labor-powers to which there is a correspond- ing gradation of wages. Every productive process requires certain simple tasks that any ordinary man is capable of performing: These are severed from the important operations which neces- sitate them, and converted into exclusive functions of certain laborers. Hence manufacture produces, in every handicraft it seizes upon, a category of common or un- skilled laborers. If it develops the isolated specialty so far that the skill in it becomes excessive at the expense of the artisan's labor-power as an integral whole, it also begins to make a specialty of the absence of all develop- ment. Beside the hierarchic gradation, there takes place a simple division of the laborers into skilled and un- skilled. 135 For the latter, the expenses of apprenticeship vanish; for the former, they are less than they were when a complete handicraft had to be learned. In both cases labor-power falls in value. The relative fall in the value of labor-power, caused by the disappearance or diminu- tion of the expenses of apprenticeship, occasions a direct increase of surplus-value to the advantage of capital. Ev- ery thing, in fact, that reduces the time necessary for the production of labor-power, by that very reduction en- larges the domain of surplus-labor. IV.---Division of Labor in Manufacture and in Society. Let us now consider the relation between the division of labor in manufacture and the social division of labor, the allotment of individuals to various occupations,which forms the general basis of all commodity-production. If we limit ourselves to the examination of labor alone, we may designate the separation of social production into its great branches-agriculture, mechanical indus- try, etc.-as division of labor in general. The separation of these main divisions of production into species and varieties, we may designate as division of labor in par- ticular, and finally the division of labor within the work- shop as division of labor in detail. Just as the division of labor in manufacture requires, as its material basis, the simultaneous employment of a certain number of laborers, so the division of labor in society requires a large and compact population which corresponds to the agglomeration of laborers in the work- shop. 138 Division of labor in manufacture takes root only where the social division of labor has already attained a certain stage of development. On the other hand, the former division develops and multiplies the latter, subdividing an occupation in accordance with the variety of its oper- ations and organizing these different operations into dis- tinct trades. In spite of the analogies and relations that exist be- tween the division of labor in society and the division of labor within the workshop, there is nevertheless an es- sential difference between them. The analogy is striking wherever a close tie unites dif- ferent branches of industry. The cattle-raiser, for in- stance, produces hides; the tanner transforms them into leather; and the shoe-maker makes boots with the leather. In this social division of labor, as in the division in man- ufacture, each furnishes only a fraction of the final prod- uct and the final product is the collective result of these special kinds of labor. But what forms the tie between the independent la- bors of the cattle-raiser, the tanner, and the shoe-maker ? It is the fact that their respective products are com- modities. And what is the distinguishing mark, on the contrary, of the division of labor in manufacture ? It is the fact that the detail laborers do not produce com- modities; only their collective product becomes a com- modity. The division of labor in manufacture implies concentration of the means of production in the hands of a capitalist; the social division of labor implies the dispersion of the means of production among many in- 137 dependent producers of commodities. While in manu- facture the proportion indicated by experience deter- mines the number of laborers assigned to each particular function, in society chance and caprice control in the most chaotic fashion the distribution of the producers and their means of production among the various branches of labor. While the different branches of production expand or contract according to the variation in market prices, they nevertheless tend, under the pressure of crises, to ap- proach an equilibrium. But this tendency toward an equilibrium is only a reaction against the constant des- truction of this equilibrium. The division of labor in manufacture implies the ab- solute authority of the capitalist over men transformed into mere parts of a mechanism that belongs to him. The division of labor in society confronts with each other in- dependent producers who recognize no authority but that of competition, and no power but the pressure exerted upon them by their mutual interests. And that bourgeois mind which lauds the division of labor in manufacture, i. e., the perpetual condemnation of the laborer to one detail operation and his absolute subordination to the capitalist, loudly and indignantly protests when any one proposes the social control, regulation, and organization of production! It denounces every attempt of this kind as an attack upon the rights of property and upon liberty. "Do you wish to transform society into a factory ?" shriek these enthusiastic partisans of the factory system. The factory regime is, it would appear, good only for the 138 proletarians. Anarchy in the division of labor in society and despotism in the division of labor in manufacture characterize bourgeois society. While the division of labor in society, with or without the exchange of commodities, is common to the most diverse economic forms of society, the division of labor in manufacture is a special creation of the capitalist mode of production. V.-The Capitalist Character of Manufacture. With manufacture and the division of labor, the min- imum number of laborers that a capitalist must employ is imposed upon him by the established division of labor. To obtain the advantages of a further division he must enlarge his personnel, and we have seen that every in- crease must affect simultaneously, in given proportions, all the groups in the workshop. This enlargement of the part of capital devoted to the purchase of labor-powers -of the variable capital-naturally necessitates the in- crease of the constant part advanced in the means of production, especially in raw materials. Hence manu- facture continuously increases the minimum of money that is indispensable to the capitalist. Manufacture completely revolutionizes the individual mode of working and attacks labor-power at its root. It maims the laborer, it turns him into a monstrosity by stimulating the unnatural development of his detail dex- terity at the expense of his general development. The individual is converted into a mechanical automaton with only one function. If his dexterity is acquired at 139 the expense of his intelligence, the knowledge and intel- lectual development which he loses become concentrated in others as a power dominating him, a power enrolled in the service of capital. Originally, the laborer sold his labor-power to cap- ital, only because he lacked the material means of produc- tion. But now the workman no longer has an entire trade or complete handicraft. He does not know how to perform the various operations that contribute to the production of a commodity. Without the co-operation of a larger or smaller number of fellow-workers, the one and only detail function that he is capable of performing is of no avail. Now, he is only an accessory that in isola- tion has no utility. Hence his labor-power is useless to him, if it is not sold. It is unable to function outside of the social environment that exists only in the workshop of the capitalist. Co-operation based on division of labor--that is to say, manufacture--is, in its infancy, a spontaneous cre- ation. As soon as it has acquired some stability and a broad enough foundation, it becomes the recognized and systematic form of capitalistic production. Division of labor, which is developed experimentally, is only one particular method of increasing the income of capital at the expense of the laborer. While increas- ing the productive powers of labor, it creates new con- ditions which assure the domination of labor by capital. It appears then both as a progress historically, a neces- sary stage in the economic evolution of society, and as a refined and civilized method of exploitation. 140 So long as manufacture is the dominant form of the capitalist mode of production, the realization of the ruling tendencies of capital still encounters obstacles. In spite of every thing, handicraft skill remains the foundation of manufacture. The skilled laborers are the more numerous and manufacture cannot proceed without them. They have, therefore, a certain power of resistance. Capital has to struggle incessantly against their insubordination. 141 CHAPTER XV. MACHINERY AND MODERN INDUSTRY. I. The development of machinery.-The development of modern industry.-II. The value transferred by machinery to the product.-III. The labor of women and ,children.-- The prolongation of the working-d'ay.-The intensification of labor-IV. The factory.-V. The strife between work- man and machinery.-VI. The theory of compensation.-- VII. Repulsion and attraction of work-people by the factory system.--VIII. Suppression of co-operation based on handi- crafts and division of labor.-Reaction of the factory system on manufacture and domestic industries.--Transition from modern manufacture and domestic industry to modern mechanical industry.-IX. Contradiction between the nature of modern industry and' its capitalist form.-The factory system and education.-The factory system and the family. Revolutionary consequences of factory legislation.-X. Modern industry and agriculture. I.-The Development of Machinery. Like every other development of the productive power of labor, the capitalist employment of machinery tends only to diminish the price of commodities and, conse- quently, to curtail the part of the day in which the la- borer works for himself, in order to lengthen the other part in which he works only for the capitalist. Like man- ufacture, it is a particular method for the formation of relative surplus-value. 140 In manufacture, the industrial revolution begins with labor-power; in mechanical production, it begins with the instruments of labor. We must first then try to find out how the instrument of labor is transformed from a tool into a machine, and in that way accurately define the difference between a machine and a manual tool. All developed machinery is composed of three essen- tially different parts: the motor mechanism, the trans- mitting mechanism, and the tool or working machine. The motor mechanism drives the whole machine. It generates its own motive-power, like the steam-engine, or receives its impulse from an external natural force, like the water-wheel from a water-fall, the wing of a wind-mill from currents of air, etc. The transmitting mechanism composed of fly-wheels, belts, pulleys, etc., regulates the motion, distributes it, changes its form if necessary, and transmits it to the working machine, the machine-tool. The motor and transmitting mechanism exist, in fact, only to set the machine-tool in motion and make it seize upon the sub- ject of labor and change its form. In examining the machine-tool, we find reappearing in it on a large scale, although under modified forms, the apparatus and tools used by the handicraftsman or the manufacturing workman; but they are no longer the manual implements of man, but have become the mechanical implements of a machine. The machine is therefore a mechanism which, when properly set in mo- tion, performs with its tools the same operations that the workman formerly performed with like tools. 143 As soon as the implement, taken from the hand of man, is wielded by machinery, the machine-tool has taken the place of the simple tool, and a complete revolution has been effected, even when man continues to supply the motive power. For the number of tools with which man can work simultaneously is limited by the number of his own organs. While man has only two hands to hold needles, the stocking-loom, run by one man, knits with many thousand needles. The number of tools that a machine can bring into play simultaneously is there- fore emancipated from the organic limits that hedge in the tools of a handicraftsman. There are some implements that show clearly the dou- ble role of the laborer as the mere motive power and as the artificer. Take, as an example, the spinning-wheel. The foot acts on the treadle as motive power, while the hands spin by working with the spindle. It is this last part of the handicraftsman's implement that the indus- trial revolution first seizes upon, leaving to the workman, besides his new task of watching and attending to the machine, the purely mechanical role of furnishing the motive power. The machine, the starting-point of the industrial rev- olution, supersedes the workman, who handles one tool, by a mechanism which works simultaneously with a num- ber of similar tools, and which is driven by a single mo- tive power, whatever the form of that power may be. Such a machine is however only a mere element of me- chanical production. When a certain point is reached, the dimensions of the operating machine and the number of its tools can be 144 increased only by bringing into requisition a driving power mightier than that of man, leaving out of consider- ation the fact that man is a very imperfect agent for the production of continuous and uniform motion. And therefore, when the tool is replaced by a machine driven by man, it soon becomes necessary to replace man, as a source of motive power, by other natural forces. Horses, wind, and water have been tried; but it was only with the invention of Watt's steam-engine that there was discovered a prime mover capable of generating its own motive power by consuming water and coal, and whose unlimited power is completely under the control of man. Besides, as this prime mover was not restricted in its sphere of action to those special localities where natural power, such as water, etc., was situated, it could be moved from place to place and installed wherever its action was required. After the emancipation of the prime mover from the limitations of human strength, the isolated machine-tool, which inaugurated the industrial revolution, becomes a mere organ of the mechanism of production. One motive mechanism can now drive many machines. The entire productive mechanism presents then two distinct forms: either the co-operation of many similar machines, as in weaving, or a combination of different machines as in spinning. In the first case, the product is made entirely by a single machine which performs all the operations. And the factory, the true form of the workshop based on the employment of machinery, appears at first as an agglom- eration of machines of the same kind, working at the same time, in the same place. Thus a weaving factory is formed by the assemblage in one place bf many power- looms. But here there is a true technical unity in the whole system, since all the machines derive their motion uniformly from a common motor mechanism. Just as a number of tools form the organs of a machine, so a number of similar machines form the organs of a single motive mechanism. In the second case, when the subject of labor has to pass through a series of gradual transformations, the machinery system accomplishes them by the use of dif- ferent machines, but these machines are linked together into a chain. That co-operation with division of labor, characteristic of manufacture, reappears here as a com- bination of detail machines. However, an essential dif- ference manifests itself at once. The division of labor in manufacture is strictly limited by the extent of human strength and capacity, and the division must be so ar- ranged that each of the detail operations into which it splits the process can be performed by manual imple- ments in men's hands. Mechanical production, on the contrary, freed from the restraints of human strength and capacity, bases the division of a process of produc- tion into several operations on the analysis of its con- stituent principles and successive stages, while the ques- tion of technical execution is solved by the aid of me- chanics, etc. Just as in manufacture, the direct co-opera- tion of the detail laborers establishes definite numerical proportions between the different groups of laborers, so in the combination of different machines, the uninter- rupted employment of one detail machine by another, 146 each furnishing the following machine with its subject of labor, creates a definite relation between their number, their size, their speed, and the number of laborers of each special kind that must be employed. Whatever form it may take, an organized system of machines, working in unison, to which motion is com- municated by a transmitting mechanism from a central prime mover which generates its own motive power, is the most highly developed expression or form of produc- tive machinery. The isolated machine has been replaced by a mechanical monster whose gigantic limbs and organs fill entire buildings. The Development of Modern Industry. The division of labor in manufacture gave birth to the workshop for making the implements and mechanical apparatus already in use in some manufactures. This workshop with its laborers-skilled mechanics-made possible the application of the great inventions. It built machines. As these inventions multiplied and the de- mand for machines increased, the industry of machine- making was divided into varied and independent branch- es, and in each of these branches the division of labor was developed. Historically, then, manufacture forms the technical basis of modern industry. The machines furnished by manufacture replaced manufacture by modern industry. But, while develop- ing, modern industry revolutionized its technical basis, machine construction, and subordinated it to its new principle, production by machinery. 147 Just as the machine was only a paltry thing as long as it derived its motion from human power, just as the machine system progressed slowly until the traditional motive powers-animals, wind, and even water-were replaced by steam, so modern industry was retarded in its progress so long as the machine itself owed its exist- ence to human strength and skill, and thus depended on the muscular strength, the accuracy of vision and manual dexterity of the workman. This is not all. The transformation of the mode of production in one branch of industry involves a trans- formation in another. The means of communication and transportation, made inadequate by the development of production, had to adapt themselves to the exigencies of modern industry. We see the result in railways and transatlantic steamships. The enormous masses of iron, that it consequently be- came necessary to forge, weld, and fashion, necessitated monster machines that the methods of manufacture were unable to provide. Modern industry was therefore obliged to resort to its characteristic instrument of production, the machine it- self, to produce other machines. It thus created for it- self a technical basis in conformity with its ruling prin- ciple. A prime mover capable of exerting any desired amount of power already existed in the steam-engine. But in order to be able to make machines by machinery, it was requisite to produce mechanically the geometrically ac- curate forms, such as the circle, the cone, the sphere, etc., required in some parts of machines. This problem 148 was solved in the beginning of our century by the inven- tion of the slide-rest, which was soon made automatic. This appliance, the slide-rest, made it possible to pro- duce the desired geometrical forms with a degree of ease, accuracy, and speed that no accumulated experience of the hand of the most skilled workman could give. Modern industry, being able thereafter to develop freely, made the co-operative character of the labor- process a technical necessity imposed by the very nature of the instrument of labor. It created a productive or- ganism, which exists in the workshop, independent of the laborer, and which forms the material condition of his labor. Capital stands confronting him in a new and more redoubtable form-that of a monstrous automaton beside which the power of the individual laborer sinks into in- significance. II.--The Value transferred by Machinery to the Product. We saw that the productive powers resulting from co-operation and division of labor cost capital nothing. They are the natural forces of social labor. Neither do the physical forces appropriated to the purposes of pro- duction, such as water, steam, etc., cost anything; but, in order to utilize these forces, there is need of certain apparatus made by man; to utilize the motive power of water, a water-wheel is needed; to exploit the elasticity of steam, a steam-engine is needed. If then it is evident at the first glance that mechanical industry increases prodigiously the productivity of labor, one may nevertheless question whether the use of ma- 149 chinery saves more labor than its construction and main- tenance costs. Like every other component of constant capital or the part of capital advanced in means of production, machin- ery does not produce value, but only transfers its own value to the article that it is used to make. Now, this instrument of labor of modern industry, machinery, is very valuable compared to the instruments of labor used in handicrafts and manufacture. If machinery is always utilized as a whole in the cre- ation of a product, that is to say, as a factor in produc- tion, it is only consumed by fractions in the formation of value, that is to say, as an element of value. After the product is created, the machine, in fact, is still there. It has served as a whole in creating it, but it has not dis- appeared in the process of creation. It is there, ready to start once more to make a new product. It never con- fers more value than it loses, on the average, by wear and tear. There is then a great difference between the value of a machine and the value that it transfers to its product, between the machine as an element of value and the machine as a factor in production. As a machine lasts a long time and its daily wear and tear and expense are spread out over immense quantities of products, each one of its products absorbs only a very small portion of its value, and this portion decreases as the productivity of the machine increases. Given the rate at which the machine is worn out and consequently the rate at which it transfers its value to the product, the magnitude of the value transferred de- pends on the original value of the machine. The less 150 labor it embodies, the less value it has and the less it adds to the product. It is clear that there may be a simple displacement of labor. If there has been expended in the production of a machine as much labor-time as its use economizes, the total quantity of labor required for the production of a commodity, and, consequently, the value of the com- modity has not diminished. But the value transferred to the product may be diminished, even though the pur- chase of a machine costs as much as the purchase of the labor-powers that it replaces, because, in this case, the machine replaces more labor-time than is represented by it. The price of the machine, in fact, expresses its value, that is to say, that it is the equivalent of all the labor-time that it contains, no matter how that time was divided between necessary labor and surplus-labor; while the same price paid to the laborers whom it replaces, is not the equivalent of all the labor-time that they furnish, but is only equal to a part of that time-their necessary labor-time. Considered solely as a means of cheapening the prod- uct, the employment of machinery is limited in this way: the labor-time expended in its production must be less than the labor-time saved by its use. For the capitalist, the use of machinery is still more closely limited. He pays, not for labor, but for labor- power, and the actual wages of the laborer are often be- low the value of his labor-power. Therefore the cap- italist is governed in his calculations by the difference between the price of machinery and the price of the labor-powers it displaces. It is this difference that deter- 1851 mines the net cost to the capitalist and decides him to employ the machine or not. From his standpoint, profit springs from the diminution, not of the labor he em- ploys, but of the labor for which he pays. I I.- The Labor of Women and Children. By rendering muscular exertion needless, machinery makes it possible to employ laborers without great mus- cular strength, whose limbs are but slightly developed, but are, on that account, all the more supple. When capital seized upon the machine it at once sought the la- bor of women and children. Machinery, that mighty agent for saving human labor, was straightway converted into an instrument for increasing the number of wage- workers. It brought all the members of the family, with- out distinction of age or sex, under the sway of capital. All were forced to work for the profit of the capitalist. Childhood was robbed of its playtime, and adults could no longer work in freedom at home for the support of the family. The value of the laborer's labor-power was formerly determined by the cost of maintaining the laborer and his family. By throwing the family on the labor-market and thus distributing among several labor-powers the value of one single labor-power, machinery lowers the value of labor-rower. It may be that the four labor- powers, for example, that a working-class family now sells, bring in more than the single labor-power of the head of the family did formerly; but there are also four days' labor instead of one. Four persons now, instead of 152 one, must furnish to capital, not only labor, but also surplus-labor, in order for a single family to live. Thus machinery, while multiplying the exploitable human material, at the same time raises the degree of exploita- tion. Machinery, as employed by capital, profoundly changes the nature of the contract between the capitalist and the laborer. The fundamental condition of this contract was that the capitalist and laborer should deal together as free persons, both commodity owners, one the owner of money or the means of production, the other the owner of labor-power. All this is overthrown, as soon as the capitalist buys women and children. Formerly, the la- borer sold his own labor-power, of which he could freely dispose; now, he sells women and children. He has be- come a slave-dealer. By the addition to the working-class of a large number of women and children, machinery at length succeeds in breaking down the resistance that the male laborer still opposed in the manufacturing period to the despot- ism of capital. The apparent ease of working with machinery, and the more pliant and docile character of women and children, aid in reducing labor to servitude. The Prolongation of the Working-day. Machinery creates, both new conditions which allow capital to give a free rein to its constant tendency to pro- long the working-day, and new motives which intensify its thirst for the labor of others. 153 The longer the period during which the niachine functions, the larger is the quantity of products over which is spread the value that it transfers, and the small- er is the share added to each commodity. Now, the active life-time of the machine is evidently determined by the length of the working-day multiplied by the number of days during which it functions. The material wear and tear of machines is twofold. They wear out, on the one hand, by use, on the other, by non-use, as a sword rusts in its scabbard. .But in use the wear and tear is compensated, while in non-use there is nothing to show for it. Therefore every effort is made to curtail the time during which the machine is not in use. Where it is feasible, they are run day and night. The machine is, besides, subject to what might be called moral wear and tear. In however good condition it may be, it depreciates in value by the construction of improved machines which come into competition with it. The danger of its moral wear and tear is lessened by shortening the period of its physical wear and tear, and it is clear that prolonging the working-day shortens this period. The prolongation of the working-day makes it pos- sible to extend the scale of production without increas- ing the part of the capital represented by buildings and machinery. Thus, the surplus-value is increased, and the expenses necessary to obtain it diminished. On the other hand, the development of mechanical production com- pels the investment of an ever-increasing part of capital in means of labor, machinery, etc., and every interrup- 154 tion of the working-time renders useless, so long as it lasts, this ever-growing capital. The smallest possible in- tervals of idleness and a continuous prolongation of the working-day are then desirable for the capitalist. We saw, in Chapter XI, that the sum or mass of sur- plus-value is determined by the magnitude of the variable capital-in other words, by the number of laborers simul- taneously employed-and by the rate of surplus-value. But if mechanical industry diminishes the labor-time necessary for the reproduction of the wages paid, and thus increases the rate of surplus-value, it obtains this result only by replacing the laborers with machines, that is to say, only by diminishing the number of laborers em- ployed by a given capital. It transforms into machinery or constant capital, that yields no surplus-value, a part of th.e capital that was before spent for labor-powers and did yield surplus-value. Hence, the use of machinery with a view to increasing surplus-value involves a con- tradiction. By the curtailment of the necessary labor- time, it raises the rate of surplus-value; by the reduction of the number of laborers employed by a given capital, it diminishes the mass of surplus-value. This contra- diction, instinctively felt though not consciously real- ized, drives the capitalist to prolong the working-day in the most abnormal fashion, in order to compensate the decrease in the relative number of laborers exploited, by increasing the duration of their surplus-labor and thus heightening the degree of their exploitation. lIMachinery in the hands of capital creates, therefore, new and powerful motives for excessively prolonging the working-day. By adding to the army under the com- 155 mand of capital, women and children-strata of the working-class formerly exempt-and by placing in a re- serve corps the laborers displaced by machinery, it pro- duces a superabundant working population which is com- pelled to yield to the dictation of capital. Hence this economic phenomenon, that machinery, the most efficient instrument for curtailing labor-time, becomes, by a strange paradox, the most unfailing instrumentality for transforming the entire life time of the laborer and of his family into time devoted to the expansion of capital. The Intensification of Labor. The excessive prolongation of daily labor brought about by machinery in the hands of capitalists, and the consequent degeneration of the working-class finally lead to a reaction on the part of society which, feeling itself menaced at the very sources of its vitality, enacts legal limitations of the working-day. As soon as the growing rebellion of the working-class compelled the State to de- cree a normial day, capital sought to achieve by an in- crease of the quantity of labor performed in a given time what it had been forbidden to accomplish by a progres- sive multiplication of the hours of labor. With the legal curtailment of the day, the laborer was compelled to expend, by means of a greater exertion of his powers, more activity in the.same time. Henceforth there are two ways of estimating the magnitude of labor -by its duration and by its degree of intensity. How is a greater expenditure of vital power in the same time obtained ? How is labor rendered more intense ? 15(3 The curtailment of the day intensifies labor in accord- ance with this evident law, that the efficient capacity of every animal force is in inverse ratio to the time during which it acts. Within certain limits, what is lost in dura- tion is gained in efficiency. So soon as legislation abridges the working-day, ma- chinery is converted, in the hands of the capitalist, into a systematic means for extorting more labor out of every moment. But in order for machinery to exert this greater pressure upon its human servitors, it must be constantly improved. Every improvement in the system of machin- ery becomes a new means of exploitation, while the cur- tailment of the day forces the capitalist to derive from the means of production, driven at utmost tension, the greatest possible effect, while he strives to keep their running expenses down to the absolute minimum. IV.-The Factory. We have just studied the basis of the factory-machin- ery-and the direct reaction of mechanical industry on the laborer. Let us now examine the factory itself. The modern factory may be described as a vast autom- aton, composed of various mechanical and intellectual organs-the machines and the laborers-acting in un- interrupted concert for the production of a common ob- ject, all of them being subordinate to a self-regulated moving force. Skill in handling the tool passes from the workman to the machine. Therefore, the hierarchy of specialized 157 workmen, characteristic of the division of labor in manu- facture, is replaced in the factory by the tendency to equalize and reduce to one and the same level every kind of work that has to be done by the minders of the ma- chines. 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 attend- ants (almost exclusively children) of these workmen. In addition to these two principal classes, there is a numer- ically 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, etc. Every child learns very easily to adapt his or her move- ments to the continuous and uniform motion of machin- ery. And, the ease and rapidity with which machine- work is learned does away with the necessity for trans- forming, as in manufacture, each sort of labor into an exclusive occupation. If the laborers must be distributed among the various machines, it is no longer indispensable to confine each one to a single task. As the movement of the factory (as a whole) is due to machinery and not to the laborer, the personnel may be constantly changed without causing any interruption in the progress of the work. Although, then, from the technical point of view, the mechanical system puts an end to the former system of division of laborer, the latter nevertheless persists in the factory, at first as a tradition inherited from manufac- ture, afterward because capital lays hold of it to preserve it and remold it into a still more hideous form as a means 158 to the systematic exploitation of labor-power. The spec- ialty which consisted in handling one detail tool for a life-time, becomes the specialty of serving one detail machine for a life-time. Machinery is misused, in order to transform the laborer from his very infancy into a part of a machine, which is itself only a part of a system of machinery. He is thus bound to one simple operation and never learns the whole of even one stage in the pro- cess of production, and therefore he is good for nothing, if the opportunity to perform this operation is taken from him, either by his discharge, or by a new invention. He is thus made absolutely dependent upon the factory, and therefore upon capital. In manufacture and handicrafts, the workman makes use of a tool; in the factory, the machine makes use of him. In manufacture, the motion of the implement pro- ceeds from him; in the factory, he only follows the movements of the machine. The instrument of labor transformed into an automaton confronts the laborer, during the labor-process, under the form of capital- dead labor, that dominates and pumps dry his living labor-power. Factory work not only over-excites the nervous system to the uttermost, but it prevents the varied play of the muscles, and fetters every free activity of the mind and body. The very ease of the labor becomes a torture, since the machine does not relieve the workman of labor, but robs the labor of all interest. Modern industry finally completes the separation we have already pointed out be- tween manual labor and the intellectual powers of pro- duction, converted by it into the power of capital over 159 labor. It converts science into a productive power in- dependent of labor, links it to the mechanical system, and makes them both the property of the "master." All the productive forces tend to insure the domina- tion of this "master"-the capitalist-and in his eyes the existence of machinery is inseparably linked to his mo- nopoly of it. The subordination of the workman to the invariable regularity of the movements of machinery creates a bar- rack-like discipline, perfectly organized in the factory- regime. Under that regime there is no liberty, either as an abstract right or as an actual fact. The workman eats, drinks, and sleeps at the word of command. The despotic bell calls him from his insufficient rest and his unfinished meals. The factory owner is an absolute law-giver. At his own good pleasure, he formulates, into a factory-code, his tyrannical authority over his workmen. To the laborers who complain of the unreasonable and arbitrary rules of the capitalist, he replies: "Since you voluntarily agreed to this contract, you must submit to its terms." The place of the slave-driver's lash is taken by the over- seer's book of penalties. All penalties naturally take the form of fines and deductions from wages, so that the cap- italist profits even more by the violation than by the keeping of his laws. We will not discuss the material conditions under which, for the sake of economy, factory labor is carried on -the high temperature, the foul air loaded with the dust from the raw materials, the deafening noise of the ma- chines, without mentioning the risks run among the 160 powerful machines, surrounding one on all sides and reg- ularly furnishing the material for a list of industrial mutilations and murders. V.-The Strife Between Workman and Machinery. The struggle between the capitalist and the wage- worker dates from the very origin of industrial capital, and it raged throughout the period of manufacture. But only since the introduction of machinery has the work- man attacked the instrument of labor. He rebels against this particular form of the instrument, which, in his eyes, is only a formidable enemy. It took both time and experience for the workingmen to learn to distinguish between machinery and the use made of it by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against their use as means to exploitation. Under the form of a machine the instrument of labor becomes the direct competitor of the laborer, and this antagonism manifests itself especially when newly intro- duced machines come into competition with the meth- ods in use in handicrafts and manufacture. The general system of capitalist production is based on the fact that the workman sells his labor-power as a commodity. Division of labor cripples this power by specializing it into ability to handle one detail tool. So soon as this tool is wielded by a machine, the workman loses his utility, just as a demonetized coin will no longer circulate. When that part of the working-class which machinery thus renders superfluous-not immediately 161 needed for purposes of capitalist exploitation-does not succumb, it either vegetates in a state of pitiable poverty that keeps it in the ranks of the reserve-corps of capital's army, or else overcrowds other occupations in which it lowers the value of labor-power. The antagonism between the machine and the laborer shows itself with analogous effects even in modern in- dustry, when an improvement in the machinery takes place. The constant aim of these improvements is to diminish the manual labor for a given capital, which, thanks to these improvements, not only requires fewer laborers, but also constantly substitutes the less skilled for the more skilled, children for adults, and women for men. Now, all these changes cause variations in the rate of wages that are disastrous to the laborer. And the machine does not act solely as a competitor whose superior power is always on the point of render- ing the wage-laborer superfluous. It is as a power hos- tile to the laborer that capital makes use of it. It has become the most effective weapon for repressing strikes, those periodic revolts of labor against the despotism of capital. Some of the most important applications of machinery (new inventions or improvements in existing machinery) have been introduced by capital, in order to overcome the resistance of striking workingmen. VI.-The Theory of Compensation. Some bourgeois economists maintain that machinery, by rendering superfluous in one kind of labor, some work- men who were employed in it-i. e., by discharging them 162 and depriving them of their wages-sets free, by that very act, an amount of capital that destiny (as Mr. Mc- Kinley would say) decrees shall employ them anew in some other occupation. Hence, they say, there is here a compensation for the loss of employment. To deprive a laborer of the means of subsistence-to starve him- these gentlemen call freeing these means of subsistence for the laborer as new means for his employment in an- other industry. It all depends, you see, on the form in which the fact is expressed. The truth is that the workmen made superfluous by machinery are driven from the workshop and thrown upon the labor-market where they add to the numbers of the workmen already at the disposal of capital. Driven from one branch of industry, they can, of course, seek employment in another. But if they find it, if they once more get the means to buy the means of subsistence which their discharge set free-that is to say, which their lack of wages prevented them from buying-they owe this to a new capital that has appeared on the labor- market, and not to the capital that formerly employed them. The latter capital has not been "set free," but has been converted into machinery. And their chances are very slender; for, except in their former occupation, these men, stunted by the division of labor, are worth very little and are admitted only into the lower grades of employment that are poorly paid, and because no skill is exacted, are always plentifully supplied with applicants for employment. Machinery is not responsible for the miseries that fol- low in its train. It is not its fault if, in our social en- 163 vironment, it separates the laborer from his means of sub- sistence. Wherever it is introduced, it renders the prod- uct cheaper and more abundant. After its introduction, society possesses at least as much, if not more, of the necessaries of life, than before, for the laborers displaced by it, without taking into account the immense portion of the annual product squandered by idlers. If machinery has become the instrument of man's en- slavement; if this unfailing means for shortening the day's work prolongs it; if this magic wand for increasing the wealth of the producer impoverishes him-all this is because its use is controlled by the capitalists. These contradictions and antagonisms, inseparable from the use of machinery in a bourgeois environment, spring not from the nature of machinery, but from its employment by capitalists as an exploiting agency. Although machinery throws a larger or smaller num- ber of laborers out of work in the handicrafts and branches of manufacture into which it is introduced, it may nevertheless cause an increase of employment in other branches of production. As the quantity of articles made is much larger with machinery, more raw materials are needed, and therefore the industries that furnish these raw materials must in- crease the bulk of their products. It is true that this in- crease may not be effected solely by increasing the num- ber of the laborers. The intensity of the labor may be heightened or its duration lengthened. Machines give rise to a kind of laborers devoted ex- clusively to their construction, and the more machines there are, the more numerous this category of laborers 164 becomes. As machinery increases the mass of the raw materials, instruments of labor, etc., the industries which make use of these raw.materials, etc., divide up more and more into various branches, and the social division of labor is developed far further than under the action of manufacture. The system of mechanical production augments sur- plus-value. This increase of wealth in the capitalist class, accompanied, as it is, by a relative diminution of the number of laborers employed in producing the neces- saries of life, creates, with the new demand for luxury, new means of satisfying this demand. The production of luxuries increases. This development of luxury causes a rapid growth-ever growing more rapid - of the class of domestic servants, composed of lackeys, coachmen, cooks, maids, etc. The multiplication of the means of labor and sub- sistence leads to the construction of gigantic systems of communication and transportation. New industries arise and open new avenues to labor. But all these extensions of the domain of employment have nothing in common with the so-called theory of compensation. VII.-Repulsion and Attraction of Work-people by the Factory System. Every improvement in machinery diminishes the num- ber of the laborers required, and, therefore, banishes from the factory a part of its personnel. But, when mechanical exploitation is introduced or improved in one branch of industry, the extraordinary profits enjoyed 165 by those who are the first to apply the improved meth- ods, soon bring on a period of feverish activity. These profits attract capital which is always seeking for specially profitable investments. The new processes come into general use. The erection of new factories and the enlargement of old ones thus caused, in- creases the total number of laborers employed. This expansion of the amount of capital invested in factories -in other words, a quantitative change in mechanical industry-attracts laborers, while the improvement in machinery-in other words, a qualitative change-re- pels them. But the expansion of production, caused by the mul- tiplication of factories, floods the market with an ap- parent excess of commodities and this, in turn, leads to a retardation, a paralysis of production. The life of industry is thus transformed into a series of periods of moderate activity, prosperity, over-production and stag- nation. The laborers are alternately attracted and repelled driven hither and yon-and this process is accompanied by continual changes in the age, sex and skill of the work-people employed. The uncertainty, the ups and downs to which exploitation by machinery subjects the laborers finally become the normal condi- tions of their existence. VIII.-Suppression of Co-operation Based on Handi- crafts and Division of Labor. Exploitation by machinery suppresses co-operation based on handicraft labor. For example, the mowing- machine supersedes the co-operation of a number of mowers. Machinery also suppresses manufacture based on the division of manual labor. The machine for mak- ing pins gives us an example of this. One woman looks after four machines producing many more pins than many men formerly did by the system of division of labor. When a single machine takes the place of co-operation or of manufacture, it may itself become the basis of a new handicraft. However, this organization of a handi- craft on the basis of a machine serves merely as a tran- sition to the factory system which makes its appearance ordinarily, as soon as water or steam take the place of human muscles as the motive power. Here and there, nevertheless, a petty industry may for a time be carried on by mechanical power, by hiring steam-power or by using small power-generators, such as gas engines. Reaction of the Factory System on Manufacture and Domestic Industries. As modern mechanical industry develops, the char- acter of all branches of industry is transformed. Machinery forces its way into the old manufacturing industries, now for one detail operation, now for an- other, and thus deranges their organization based on a fixed system of division of labor and completely revolu- tionizes the composition of their working force. Thence- forth, the division of labor is based on the employment of women, children and unskilled laborers-more briefly, on the employment of cheap labor. 188 167 Machinery also acts in the same way upon the so- called domestic industry. Whether the latter is carried on in the actual dwelling of the laborer or in small work- shops, it is now only an annex to the factory, the manu- factory or the wholesale house. Articles of clothing, for example, are largely made by these so-called home- laborers,-no longer, as formerly, for individual con- sumers, but for proprietors of factories, stores, etc., who furnish the materials when they give out the work. Thus, besides the factory operatives, the manufacturing work- men and the handicraftsmen whom it concentrates in large masses in huge workshops, capital also has an in- dustrial army scattered over the country and in the large towns. The exploitation of cheap laborers is practiced with more cynicism in modern manufacture than in the fac- tory, properly thus called, because the substitution of machines for muscular power, which has taken place in the latter, is scarcely to be met with in manufacture. In domestic industry, this exploitation is still more scandalous than in manufacture, because the scattered condition of the workers weakens their power of re- sistance, because a whole band of intermediaries, de- vouring parasites, insinuate themselves between the employer and the worker; because the worker is too poor to provide himself with the most necessary condi- tions for his labor-ample space, air and light-; be- cause, finally, it is among this class of laborers that the competition of worker with worker attains its maximum. These antiquated modes of production, modified and 18S deformed, under the influence of modern industry, re- produce and even exaggerate its enormities for a time, but they are doomed to disappear. Transition from Modern Manufacture and Domestic Industry to Modern Mechanical Industry. The cheapening of labor-power by sheer abuse of the labor of women and children, by brutally depriving the workers of the normal conditions of life and exertion, and by over-work and abuse of night-work meets, at last, with physical obstacles, that the limitations of human strength and endurance make insurmountable. Hence, the cheapening of commodities brought about by these processes, and capitalist exploitation based upon them, are also checked at the same point. Though it takes many and long years to reach this point, when it is reached the hour has struck for the transformation of domestic industries and manufacture into the factory system. The progress of this industrial revolution is hastened by the legal regulation of the working-day, by the ex- clusion of children under a certain age, etc., which force the capitalist manufacturer to multiply the number of his machines, and to substitute steam for muscles as a motive-power. The only weapon of domestic or house- hold industries in the war of competition is unlimited exploitation of cheap labor-power. Hence, as soon as the limits of the day are legally fixed, and child-labor is restricted, they are condemned to death. 169 IX.-Contradiction Between the Nature of Modern Industry and its Capitalist Form. So long as handicrafts and manufacture form the basis of social production, the subordination of the workman to one exclusive occupation and the consequent hindrance to the development of his varied aptitudes may be looked upon as necessary conditions of production. The vari- ous branches of industry form so many callings closed to all who are not versed in the secrets and routine of the trade. The new science of technology, created by modern industry, to-day teaches these secrets. It describes the various industrial processes, analyzes them, resolves their actual complex and intricate movements into a few fun- damental forms of mechanical motion, and seeks to dis- cover the improvements that may be made in these processes. Modern industry never looks upon and treats the existing form of a process as final. While the preservation of their established mode of production was the fundamental condition of all former industrial classes, the bourgeoisie, by incessantly modi- fying the instruments of labor, per force, modify con- tinuously the relations of production and the entire com- plex of social relations, which is founded on the form taken by material production. Hence, its basis is revo- lutionary, while the basis of all former modes of produc- tion was essentially conservative. If the very nature of modern industry necessitates changes in the labor-process, frequent modifications of 170 the functions of the laborers, and the versatility of the laborer, on the other hand, in its capitalist form, it re- produces the old division of labor in an even more odious form. The laborer was formerly tied for his whole life to one detail operation. Modern industry makes him an appendage of a detail machine. We know that this absolute contradiction between the technical necessities of modern industry and its social characteristics under the capitalist regime ends by destroying all the elements of certainty and stability in the life of the laborer, whose livelihood, as we saw in paragraph IV, of this chapter, may slip from his grasp with his instrument of labor at any moment, and who is constantly in danger of being made superfluous by the suppression of his particular detail function. This antagonism gives rise, as we have seen in paragraph V, to the monstrosity of an industrial reserve army, kept by poverty at the disposal of capital. It leads to the periodic decimation of the working-class, to the most reckless squandering of labor-power, to the ravages of a social anarchy which turns every economical progress into a public calamity for the working-class. The Factory System and Education. In spite of the hindrances to variation of labor under the capitalist regime, the very catastrophes which modern industry causes, imperatively compel the recog- nition of variation of work, and of the necessity of the greatest possible development of the various aptitudes of the laborer, as one of the laws of modern production. This is a question of life or death. Yes, modern in- 171 dustry compels society under penalty of death, to replace the one-sided worker of to-day, the drudge of one detail- function of production by the completely developed in- dividual, ready and able to take up any kind of work, and who, by performing various and diverse functions, only gives free scope to the variety of his natural or acquired powers. The bourgeoisie, who, by establishing special schools for their own sons, simply obey the tendencies inherent in modern production, concede to the proletarians the bare pretence of practical education. But, since legis- lation has been compelled to combine elementary instruc- tion, however defective, with industrial labor, the in- evitable conquest of political power by the working-class will introduce the teaching of theoretical and practical technology in the people's schools. The education of the future will combine-for all children above a certain age-manual productive labor with mental instruction and gymnastics-and also, in the case of boys, military exercises. This is the only way to produce fully de- veloped human beings. It is beyond doubt that the development of the new factors which will finally lead to the suppression of the old division of labor, binding each laborer to one detail operation, is in flagrant contradiction with the capital- ist system of industry and the economic environment in which it places the workman. But the historical development of the contradictions and antagonisms in- herent in a given mode of production and the social organization that corresponds to it, is, in practice, the only way by which they can be dissolved and the way 172 prepared for another mode of production and a new form of social organization. "Let every worker stick to his trade !" This acme of wisdom in the period of handicraft and manufacture became utter nonsense from the time that the clock- maker Watt invented the steam-engine, the barber Arkwright the throstle, and the goldsmith Fulton the steamboat. The Factory System and the Family. The shameful exploitation of the labor of children forced legislation to interfere and attack not only the lordly rights of capital, but also the authority of parents. The law-making power, although devoted to the inter- ests of capital, has been forced by the tactless ruthless- ness of capital to take steps to preserve the new gen- erations from premature decay. It was necessary for the representatives of the ruling-classes to take measures against the excesses of capitalist exploitation, and what could be more characteristic of this mode of production than this necessity ? The abuse of paternal authority did not create the exploitation of childhood. Quite the contrary, capitalist exploitation made this authority degenerate into an abuse. Legal intervention is an official confession that modern industry has converted the capitalist exploitation of women and children, which, by upsetting the home- life, has destroyed the working-class family of former times, into an economic calamity; a confession that it has transformed parental authority into a device of the 173 social mechanism intended to force the proletarian to furnish children to the capitalist directly or indirectly. The proletarian must, under pain of death, play his role of procurer and dealer in slaves. However terrible and disgusting in the present en- vironment the dissolution of the old family ties may ap- pear, modern industry by virtue of the decisive role that it allots to women and children outside of the domestic circle, does nevertheless create a new economic founda- tion on which will arise a higher form of the family and of the relations between the sexes. It is just as absurd to consider the present form of the family as absolute and final, as it would have been to so regard its Oriental, Greek or Roman forms. The very fact that the collective working-group is composed of individuals of both sexes and of all ages, although a source of corruption and slav- ery under the rule of capital, contains the germs of a coming social evolution. In history, as in Nature, out of decay issues life. Revolutionary Consequences of Factory Legislation. While enforcing upon each separate industrial estab- lishment uniformity and regularity, the legislation limit- ing the working-day is indispensable for the physical and moral protection of the working-class, though it multi- plies, by the stimulus it gives to mechanical development, the anarchy and catastrophes of social production. It un- duly intensifies labor and embitters the competition be- tween the laborer and the machine. It hastens the trans- formation of individual labor into labor organized on a 174 large scale and accelerates the concentration of capital! By wiping out small manufacture and domestic indus- tries, it removes the last refuge of a host of laborers whom it robs of their means of subsistence, and who are kept by want at the disposition of capital until the dawn of the day when it shall permit them to work. Thus it takes away the safety-valve of the whole social mecha- nism. At the same time it broadens the base of the strug- gle against the domination of capital. It develops, along with the elements for the formation of a new society, the forces destined to destroy the old one. X.-Modern Industry and Agriculture. If the employment of machinery in agriculture is largely free from the inconveniences and physical dan- gers to which it exposes the factory operative, its tend- ency to supersede and displace the laborer is realized in action with greater power. In the domain of agriculture, modern industry has a more revolutionary effect than anywhere else on this account:-It does away with the peasant, that bulwark of society as it was, and puts in his place the wage-laborer. The need and longing for social regeneration and the class-struggle are thus made common to town and coun- try. In agriculture as in manufacture, the capitalist trans- formation of production seems to be only the martyrdom of the producer. The instrument of labor becomes the means of subduing, exploiting, and impoverishing the laborer. The social organization of labor becomes the 175 means of crushing the individual independence of the laborer. But the dispersion of the agricultural laborers over vast areas breaks down their power of resistance, while concentration increases that of the urban work- ers. In modern agriculture, just as in urban industries, the increased productivity of labor is bought at the price of the destruction of labor-power. Moreover, all progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress not only in the art of exploiting the laborer, but also in the art of exhausting the soil. All progress in the art of rendering the soil more fertile for a time is a progress in the ruin of its sources of fertility. Capitalist production therefore develops the social form of production only by exhausting at once the two sources from whence springs all wealth-land and labor- power. FIFTH SECTION. ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATION OF THE PRODUCTION OF SURPLUS-VALUE. CHAPTER XVI. ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE. The distinctive characteristic of productive labor.--T'he productiveness of labor, and surplus-value. The Distinctive Characteristic of Productive Labor. We saw, in Chapter VII, that, if we consider the labor- process from the point of view of its result, the instru- ment and subject of labor both appear as means of pro- duction and the labor itself as productive labor. Man creates a product-performs certain productive labor-- by appropriating an external object to his needs, and in that operation the manual labor and the intellectual labor are indissolubly bound together, just as the hand and the head are mutually interdependent in Nature. Nevertheless, as soon as the individual product is transformed into a social product-the product of a collective laborer whose component members participate in very divergent degrees in the making of the product- 177 though this definition of productive labor-deduced from the very nature of material production-remains true so far as regards the collective laborer considered as a single individuality, it no longer applies to each one of the component members individually. In order to work productively, it is no longer necessary to perform manual labor directly. It is enough to be an organ of the collective laborer and to perform some one of its functions. But this is not the special characteristic of productive labor under the capitalist system. There the object of production is surplus-value, and a laborer is not regarded as performing productive work unless he produces surplus-value for the capitalist, or un- less his labor causes capital to expand. A teacher in a school, for example, is a productive laborer, not because he forms the minds of his pupils in a useful and suitable way, but because, by so doing, he brings in dollars for his employer. That the latter has invested his capital in a teaching'factory instead of a sausage factory does not alter the matter at all. The essential condition is that capital must bring in returns or profits. Henceforth the idea of productive labor is no longer limited to the relation between the exertion and the use- ful result, between the producer and the product, but includes more particularly the social relation which con- verts the labor into the immediate instrument of the expansion of capital. Therefore, classical political econ- omyhas always maintained that the distinctive character- istic of productive labor was that it yielded surplus- value. 178 The Productiveness of Labor, and Surplus-value. The prolongation of the working-day beyond the time his cost of maintenance, and the appropriation of that requisite for the laborer to produce an equivalent for surplus-labor by the capitalist constitute, as we saw in Chapter XII, the production of absolute surplus-value. In order to increase this surplus-labor, the necessary labor-time is curtailed, by securing the production of the equivalent of the wages in less time, and the surplus- value thus realized is the relative surplus-value. The production of absolute surplus-value affects only the duration of labor. The production of relative sur- plus-value completely transforms the technical processes and the social combinations of the laborers. It develops along with the development of the capitalist mode of pro- duction. When once the latter is established as the gen- eral mode of production, the difference between relative surplus-value and absolute surplus-value makes itself felt whenever an attempt is made to raise the rate of surplus- value. If labor-power is assumed to be paid for at its just value, and the limits of the working-day are given and constant, the rate of surplus-value can be raised only by increasing either the intensity or the productiveness of labor. On the contrary, the intensity and the pro- ductiveness of labor remaining constant, the rate of sur- plus-value can be raised only by a prolongation of the working-day. Nevertheless, no matter what the length of the work- ing-day may be, there will be no surplus-value, unless the 179 labor possesses the minimum of productiveness necessary to produce the equivalent of the laborer's means of sub- sistence in less than the whole of the working-day. If the labor necessary for the support of the producer and his family takes all his disposable time, how can he work gratuitously for others ? Without a certain degree of productiveness of labor, there is no time left for this gratuitous labor; without this surplus-time, there is no surplus-labor, and consequently no surplus-value and no net-product, but also no capitalists, no slave-owners, no feudal lords, in one word, no proprietary class. It has been held that this necessary degree of produc- tiveness is a natural quality of labor-a productiveness -ready made as it were-with which Nature endows men upon their entrance into the world. The powers of primitive man were formed, on the con- trary, only very gradually, under the pressure of his physical needs. When, thanks to their rude efforts, men had succeeded in raising themselves above their primi- tive animal condition, and when consequently their la- bor had already been, to some extent, socialized, then, and only then, were such conditions produced that the surplus-labor of one could become a source of livelihood for another who could shift upon him the burden of labor, and this never took place without the use of force to make the one submit to the other. The productive- ness of labor is the result of a long historical develop- ment. Apart from the social form of production, the produc- tiveness of labor depends on the natural conditions under which the labor is performed. These conditions may 180 all be reduced to either the man himself, his race, etc., or his natural surroundings. The external natural con- ditions, from the economic point of view, split up into two great classes: natural wealth in means of subsist- ence--i. e., a fertile soil, waters well stocked with fish, etc.; and natural wealth in the instruments of labor, such as waterfalls, navigable rivers, wood, metal, coal, etc. In the beginnings of civilization, it is the first class which is decisive; later on, in a more advanced society, it is the second. Favorable natural circumstances furnish the possibil- ity, but never the reality, of surplus-labor; nor, conse- quently, of surplus-value and a net product. As the cli- mate is more or less mild, the soil more or less fertile, etc., the number of primitive wants (food, clothing, etc.) and the efforts necessary for their satisfaction will be greater or less; so that, under circumstances otherwise similar, the necessary labor-time will differ in different countries; but surplus-labor can begin only at the point where neces- sary labor ends. The physical influences which determine the relative magnitude of the latter, therefore, set a nat- ural limit to surplus-labor. This natural limit recedes as industry advances and the instruments of production are improved. In our society, where the laborer buys the permission to work for his own existence only by paying for it with surplus-labor, it is easy to imagine that it is a natural quality of human labor to furnish surplus-value. But regard, for instance, an inhabitant of the eastern islands of the Asiatic archipelago, where the sago palm grows wild in the forests. The pith of each tree ordinarily 181 yields three or four hundred pounds of edible meal. There, men go into the forest and cut their bread, just as with us they cut their fire-wood. Suppose that it takes an inhabitant of these islands one day's work to procure in this way enough to satisfy his wants for a week. It is evident that the bounty granted him by Nature is plenty of leisure, and that force would be required to compel him to employ this leisure time in labor and surplus-labor for others. If capitalist production was introduced on his island, the honest islander would probably have to work six days a week to obtain permission to devote to his own support the product of one day's work. The bounty of Nature does not explain why he would then have to work six days a week instead of the one which would suffice for his support, or, in other words, why he must furnish surplus-value. It only explains why the surplus-labor could amount to five days and the necessary labor be limited to one. To sum up, productiveness explains the degree attained by surplus-value, but is never the cause of surplus-value. Its cause is always surplus-labor, how- ever it may be extorted. 182 CHAPTER XVII. CHANGES OF MAGNITUDE IN THE VALUE OF LABOR- POWER AND IN SURPLUS-VALUE. I. Duration and intensity of labor constant. Productive- ness variable.-II. Duration and productiveness of labor constant. Intensity variable.-III. Intensity and productive- ness of labor constant. Duration variable.-IV. Simul- taneous variations in the duration, intensity and productive- ness of labor. We saw that the ratio between the magnitude of sur- plus-value and the price of labor-power is determined by: 1st, the duration of labor, or its extensive magni- tude; 2d, its degree of intensity, which governs the amount of labor expended in a given time; 3d, its de- gree of productiveness which regulates the amount pro- duced by a given exertion in a given time. The combina- tion of these three elements may give rise to very diverse results. One element may vary in magnitude while the other two remain constant, or two of them may vary si- multaneously, or all three may vary. Moreover, one may increase while another diminishes, or one may merely in- crease or diminish more rapidly than another. Let us consider the principal combinations. I.--Duration and Intensity of Labor Constant. Pro- ductiveness Variable. These conditions assumed, we get the three following laws: 183 1st. A working-day of given length always produces the same magnitude of value, however the productive- ness of the labor may vary. If one hour's work of ordinary intensity produces a value of ten cents, a day of twelve hours will produce just $1.20, no matter what the productiveness of the la- bor may be. We assume that the value of money is con- stant. If the productiveness of labor increases or dimin- ishes, the same day will simply furnish a larger or smaller quantity of products, and the value of $1.20 will thus be spread over more or fewer commodities. 2d. Surplus-value and the value of labor-power vary inversely. Surplus-value rises with a rise in the produc- tiveness of labor and falls when it falls--i. e., it varies in the same direction; while the value of labor-power varies in the opposite direction. It rises when productiveness falls, and vice versa. The day of twelve hours always produces the same value, for example, $1.20, composed of two parts the surplus-value and the equivalent for the value of labor- power, say 60 cents each. It is clear that these two parts together cannot exceed $1.20, while the surplus-value cannot rise to 80 cents unless the labor-power falls to 40 cents, and vice versa. If an increase in productiveness makes it possible to produce in four hours the same quantity of articles of subsistence that formerly required six hours, as the value of labor-power is determined by the value of these articles of subsistence, it will fall from 60 to 40 cents, but it will rise from 60 to 80 cents, if a de- 184 crease in productiveness makes it take eight hours to produce the means of sustenance before produced in only six. Since surplus-value rises when the value of labor-power falls, and vice versa, it follows that an in- crease in productiveness, while diminishing the value of labor-power, must augment the surplus-value, and that a decrease in productiveness, while raising the value of labor-power, must diminish the surplus-value. It should be remembered that the only variations in productive- ness, which influence the value of labor-power, are those which occur in the industries whose products are or- dinarily consumed by the working-classes. Though surplus-value and the value of labor-power vary in opposite directions they do not necessarily vary in the same proportion. In fact, if a day produces a value of $1.20, and the value of labor-power is 80 cents, the surplus-value will be 40 cents. Now, suppose that in consequence of a rise in productiveness, the value of labor-power falls to 60 cents, and the surplus-value at the same time rises to 60 cents. This same difference of 20 cents decreases the value of labor-power, which was 80 cents by a quarter or 25 per cent., and increases the surplus-value, which was 40 cents, by a half or 50 per cent. 3d. The rise or fall in surplus-value is always the ef- fect and never the cause of the corresponding fall or rise in the value of labor-power. Suppose that $1.20, the value produced by a twelve- hour day, is made up of 80 cents-the value of labor- power, and 40 cents-surplus-value. In other words, 185 there are eight hours necessary labor and four of surplus- labor. If the productiveness of labor be doubled, then the laborer will have to work only half as long as before to produce the equivalent of his daily means of subsist- ence. His necessary labor will fall from eight hours to four and, consequently, his surplus-labor will rise from four hours to eight, just as the value of his labor-power will fall from 80 cents to 40 cents, and this fall will cause the surplus-value to rise from 40 cents to 80 cents. It is the variation in the productiveness of labor which, in the first place, causes the rise or fall in the value of labor-power, while the upward or downward movement of the latter causes, in its turn, a movement of surplus- value in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, this reduction of the price of labor- power to its value determined by the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the support of the laborer may, according to the amount of resistance offered by the workers and the pressure exerted by capital, be more or less retarded, more or less fully effected. Labor-power may be paid for above its value, although its price does not vary or even falls, if that price exceeds its new value -if, in the above example, it remains above 40 cents, after the productiveness of labor has been doubled. Some economists have maintained that surplus-value may rise without a fall in the value of labor-power, when the taxes that the capitalist has to pay are reduced. A reduction of taxes has absolutely no effect on the quan- tity of surplus-labor, and therefore no effect on the mag- nitude of the surplus-value which the capitalist extorts from the laborer. It only changes the proportion accord- 188 ing to which the capitalist pockets the surplus-value himself or is compelled to share it with others. It does not alter in the least the relation between surplus-value and the value of labor-power. II.--Duration and Productiveness of Labor Constant. Intensity Variable. When there is an increase in productiveness, labor yields in a given time more products, but not more value. When there is a rise in intensity, it yields, in a given time, not only more products, but also more value, be- cause in this case the increase in products is due to an increase of labor. If its duration and productiveness are given, labor will produce more value in the same ratio that its rate of intensity rises above the rate socially nor- mal. As the value produced during a day of twelve hours thus ceases to be a fixed magnitude, it follows that sur- plus-value and the value of labor-power may vary simul- taneously in the same direction, at the same rate or at dif- ferent rates. If a day of the same duration, by reason of a rise in the intensity of labor, produces $1.60, instead of $1.20, the share of the laborer and that of the capitalist may evidently both rise simultaneously from 60 cents to 80 cents. Such a rise in the price of labor-power does not imply that it is paid for above its value, for the heightening of the intensity of labor reacts on the value of labor- power, since it accelerates its exhaustion by wear and tear. In spite of the advance in price, the price may 187 even be below the value of labor-power. This occurs when- ever the rise in the price of labor-power does not counter- balance its increased wear and tear. III.--Intensity and Productiveness of Labor Constant. Duration Variable. If the duration be variable, labor may be either cur- tailed or prolonged. Under the conditions assumed, we obtain the following laws: 1st. The value produced by a day's work rises or falls with the length of the day. 2d. Every variation in the relation between the mag- nitudes of the surplus-value and of the value of labor- power springs from a change in the magnitude of the surplus-labor and, consequently, of the surplus-value. 3d. The absolute value of labor-power can vary only in consequence of the effect of the prolongation of sur- plus-labor on the wear and tear of labor-power. Every change in this absolute value is, therefore, the effect and never the cause of a change in the magnitude of sur- plus-value. We assume that the working-day, to start with, is made up of twelve hours-six of necessary labor and six of surplus-labor, and that it produces a value of ten cents an hour or $1.20 a day, half of which goes to the laborer and the other half to the capitalist. We begin by considering the curtailment of the work- ing-day, let us say, from twelve hours to ten. After that, 188 it produces a value of only one dollar. As the neces- sary labor is six hours, the surplus-labor is reduced from six hours to four, and, therefore, the surplus-value falls from 60 cents to 40 cents. Though the value of labor- power remains constant, compared to surplus-value its relative magnitude increases in consequence of the fall in surplus-value. The value of labor-power is now to sur- plus-value as 3 is to 2, 150 per cent., instead of being as 3 is to 3, 100 per cent. The capitalist can compensate this fall in surplus-value only by buying labor-power be- low its value. Beneath the customary arguments against reducing the hours of labor lies the assumption that it is to be done under the conditions here supposed, that is to say, the productiveness and intensity of labor are as- sumed to be fixed and constant, while in fact both are always increased soon after the curtailment of the work- ing-day. If there is a prolongation of the working-day, let us say, from twelve hours to fourteen, these two hours are added to the surplus-labor, and, therefore, the surplus- value rises from 60 cents to 80 cents. Although the nominal value of labor-power remains the same, com- pared to surplus-value it loses in relative magnitude, in consequence of the rise in surplus-value. The value of labor-power is now to surplus-value as 3 is to 4, 75 per cent., instead of being as 3 is to 3, 100 per cent. When the working-day is prolonged, labor-power may fall below its value, though its price remains constant or even rises, if this price does not counterbalance the great- er expenditure of vital power, that the prolonged labor extorts from the laborer. IV.--Simultaneous V'ariations in the Duration, Inten- sity, and Productiveness of Labor. Here many combinations are possible, but all may be readily analyzed by the method followed in the above analyses. We will pause to consider only one case of pe- culiar interest-a rise in the intensity and productiveness of labor co-incident with a shortening of its duration. The increase of the productivity and intensity of labor greatly augments the quantity of commodities produced in a given time, and thus curtails the part of the day in which the laborer only produces the equivalent of his means of subsistence. This necessary part of the work- ing-day, though it is capable of further reduction, forms the minimum limit of the working-day-a limit that can never be reached under the regime of capital. If this regime was suppressed, surplus-labor would vanish, and the entire day would be equal to the necessary labor-time. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that a portion of the present surplus-labor, that portion which is devoted to the formation of a fund for reserve and accumulation, would then count as necessary labor, while necessary la- bor now includes only the labor devoted to the support of a class of wage-laborers who exist solely to produce wealth for their masters. The more labor increases in productive power, the more can its duration be shortened; and the more its duration is shortened, the more its intensity can be heightened. From a social point of view, the productive- ness of labor increases with the avoidance of all useless waste both of the means of production and of vital power. 190 The capitalist regime, it is true, enforces economy in the use of the means of production upon each separate establishment; but, on the other hand, it converts the insane waste of labor-power into a means of economy for the exploiter, and it also compels, by its anarchical system of competition, the most reckless squandering of productive labor and of the social means of production, not to speak of the host of parasitic functions it begets and renders more or less indispensable. The intensity and productiveness of labor being given, the time that society is bound to devote to material pro- duction is shorter, and the time at its disposal for the free development of the individual is longer, according as the distribution of work among all the members of the society is more equal, and as the power of one class to shift the natural burden of labor on to the shoulders of another class becomes smaller and smaller. In this di- rection, the shortening of the working-day finds its ul- timate limit in the generalization of manual labor, when all work, the labor of each, will be as small as possible. Capitalist society buys leisure for a single class at the cost of the transformation of the entire life-time of the masses into labor-time. 191 CHAPTER XVIII. MODES OF EXPRESSING THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE. Various formulae expressing this rate.-Surplus-value has its source in unpaid labor. Various Formulae Expressing this Rate. We saw, in Chapter IX, that the rate of surplus-value is equal to the ratio of the surplus-value to the variable capital, or to the ratio of the surplus-value to the value of labor-power, or to the ratio of the surplus-labor to the necessary labor. The rate of surplus-value is, finally, expressed by the ratio of unpaid labor to paid labor. Surplus-Value has its Source in Unpaid Labor. The capitalist pays not for labor, the product, but for labor-power, productive capacity. Having paid for that power for a day or a week the capitalist secures in return the right to exploit it for a day or a week. This period of exploitation is divided into two portions. During one, the laborer only produces the equivalent of the price of his labor-power; during the other, he works gratis and, therefore, yields the capitalist a value for which he has given no equivalent-a value that costs the capitalist nothing. In this sense, the surplus-labor from which sur- plus-value is derived, may be called unpaid labor. It is now apparent how little respect is due to the opin- i9u of people--whose interests lead them to disguise the 192 truth-who endeavor to give to this exchange of variable capital for the use of labor-power-an exchange which results in the appropriation of the product by the non- producer-the false appearance of an association of mu- tual interests in which the laborer and the capitalist di- vide the product in proportion to the different elements which they respectively contribute toward its formation. Capital is not only, as Adam Smith said, the power of disposing of the labor of others, but it is essentially the power of disposing of unpaid labor. All surplus-value, no matter what its particular form-profit, interest, rent, etc.-may be, is in substance the materialization of un- paid labor. The whole secret of capital's power of breed- ing or expanding is that it is able to dispose of a certain amount of the labor of others without paying for it. SIXTH SECTION. WAGES. CHAPTER XIX. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE VALUE OR PRICE OF LABOR-POWER INTO WAGES. Wages are the price, not of labor, but of labor-power.- The wage-form conceals the real relation between capital and labor. Wages Are the Price, Not of Labor, But of Labor-Power. If we look only on the surface of bourgeois society, the wages of the laborer seem to be the remuneration of labor -so much money paid for so much labor. Labor is then treated as a commodity, the market-price of which rises and falls above or below its value. But what is this value ? Value represents the social labor expended in the production of a commodity. And how is the magnitude of value of a commodity measured ? By the quantity of labor that it contains. How then do we determine, for example, the value of twelve hours' labor ? By the twelve hours' labor that it contains, which is evidently absurd, 194 In order to be taken to market and sold as a com- modity, the labor must, at all events, have been in ex- istence beforehand. But if the laborer could endow it with a material existence, separate from and independent of himself, he would sell a commodity and not labor. That which directly confronts the capitalist on the market is not labor, but the laborer. What he sells is his labor-power. As soon as he begins to exert his labor- power, to labor, as soon as his labor exists, this labor has already ceased to belong to him, and can no longer be sold by him. Labor is the substance and measure of value, but itself has no value. The expression, value of labor, is an inaccurate expression which has its source in the apparent forms of the relations of production. Having made this error, classical political economy proceeded to inquire how the price of labor was deter- mined. It recognized that in the case of labor, as in the case of every other commodity, the relation between sup- ply and demand explained only the oscillations of the market-price above or below a certain mean. As soon as supply and demand balance each other, the changes in price which they had occasioned cease, but the whole effect of supply and demand also ceases at the same point. If, when they are in equilibrium, the price of labor no longer depends upon their influence, upon what then does it depend ? The price of labor, like the price of every other commodity, can only be its value expressed in money, and this value, political economy determined in the last analysis, by the value of the means of subsis- tence necessary for the support and re-production of the 195 laborer. Without suspecting it, political economy thus substituted for the ostensible subject of its researches, the value of labor, the value of labor-power, a power which exists only in the person of the laborer, and is dis- tinct from its function, labor, just as a machine is dis- tinct from its operations. But classical political econ- omy remained unconscious of this confusion. The Wage-Form Conceals the Real Relation Between Capital and Labor. According to all the appearances, indeed, what the capitalist pays is the value of the utility that the laborer gives him, the value of labor. Moreover, the laborer is not paid until he has delivered his labor. Now, in its function as means of payment money only realizes sub- sequently the value or prize of the article delivered- in this case, the value or price of the labor performed. Nothing but the experience of practical life brings to light the twofold utility of labor-the property of satisfy- ing a need, which it has in common with all commodi- ties, and the property of creating value which differen- tiates it from all other commodities and makes it impos- sible for it, as the value-creating element, to have any value of its own. Take a day of twelve hours producing a value of $1.20, half of which is equal to the daily value of labor-power. By confounding the value of the power with the value of its function, with the labor that it per- forms, we get this formula: Twelve hours' labor has a value of 60 cents; and we thus reach the ab- 196 surd result that labor which creates a value of $1.20 is worth only 60 cents. But in a capitalist society this is not apparent. There, the value of 60 cents for the pro- duction of which only six hours' labor are requisite, ap- pears as the value of the full day's labor. By receiving a wage of 60 cents a day, the laborer appears to receive all the value to which his labor entitles him, and it is precisely on this account that the excess of the value of his product over the value of his wage takes the form of a surplus-value of 60 cents created by capital and not by labor. The wage-form, or direct payment of labor, therefore, extinguishes every trace of the division of the working- day into necessary labor and surplus-labor-into paid labor and unpaid labor-so that all the labor of the free laborer is deemed to be paid labor. In the corvie, the labor of the serf for himself and his compulsory labor for his lord are clearly distinct from each other, being performed in different places. In the system of slavery, even that part of the day in which the slave is only re- placing the value of his own means of subsistence, in which, therefore, he really works for himself, seems to be labor for his owner. All his labor wears the appear- ance of unpaid labor. (In slavery, the property relation conceals the labor of the slave for himself. In the wages- system, the money relation conceals the gratuitous labor of the wage-worker for the capitalist.) It is now possible to understand the immense practical importance of this change of form which makes the remuneration of labor-power appear as the wages of labor --the price of labor-power as the price of its function. The apparent form renders the real relation between capital and labor invisible. From it flow all the juridical notions of the wage-laborer and the capitalist, all the mystifications of capitalist production, all the illusions regarding liberty, all the justificatory rhetoric of or- dinary political economy. 198 CHAPTER XX. TIME-WAGES. The price of labor.-Working only part-time contrasted with a general curtailment of the working-day.-Low price of labor and prolongation of the day. Wages assume very varied forms. We will consider the two fundamental forms-time-wages and piece-wages. The Price of Labor-Power. Labor-power is always sold, it will be remembered, for a definite period of time. Hence, in the first place, the daily. or weekly value of labor-power appears under the phenomenal form of time-wages-day-wages or week- wages. In time-wages, the difference must be noted between the total amount of the wages by the day, week, etc., and the price of labor. It is clear, indeed, that according to the length of the day, the same daily or weekly wages may represent very different prices of labor. The av- erage price of labor is obtained by dividing the average daily value of labor-power by the average number of hours in the working-day. If, for instance, the daily value is 60 cents, and the working-day is twelve hours long, the price of one hour is equal to 60 cents divided by twelve-or to 5 cents. The price per hour, thus found, is the unit measure of the price of labor. Wages may remain constant and the price of labor rise or fall. If, for example, the working-day becomes ten 199 hours, and wages remain at 60 cents, the price of labor per hour will be found to be 6 cents. If the day rises to fifteen hours, the price per hour will fall to 4 cents. On the contrary, wages may rise, although the price of labor does not change or even falls. If the average day is ten hours, and the daily value of labor-power 60 cents, the price per hour is 6 cents. If, in consequence of an im- provement in trade, the laborer works 12 hours instead of ten, and the price of labor is unchanged, his daily wages will rise to 72 cents. In this last case, let us note parenthetically, that in spite of the rise in wages, labor- power may still be paid below its value, if this advance is not sufficient to counterbalance the greater wear and tear of labor-power resulting from the longer labor ex- acted. In general, the duration of the daily or weekly labor being given, the daily or weekly wages will depend on the price of labor. If the price of labor is given, the daily or weekly wages will depend on the daily or weekly dura- tion of labor. Working Only Part-Time, Contrasted With a General Curtailment of the Working-Day. The price of one hour's labor-the unit measure of time-wages--is obtained, as we have said, by dividing the daily value of labor-power by the number of hours in the average day. But, if the employer does not give the laborer regular employment for this number of hours, the laborer receives less than his regular wages. Here we 200 discover the source of the ills that result for the laborer from insufficient employment or partial idleness. If the time used as a basis for calculating the wages per hour is twelve hours, for instance, and if the laborer is employed for only six or eight hours, his wages per hour, which multiplied by twelve just answer to provide him with the necessary means of subsistence, become quite inadequate when they are-in consequence of short- ened employment-no longer multiplied by twelve, but by six or eight. Naturally it is necessary not to confound the effect of this partial want of work with the decrease of work that would result from a general curtailment of the work- ing-day. In the first case, the ordinary price of labor is calculated on the basis of the regular day being, for in- stance, twelve hours, and if the laborer works less-let us say, eight hours-his wages are inadequate for his sup- port; while, in the second case, the ordinary price of labor would be calculated on the basis of the regular day be- ing, for instance, only eight hours, and, therefore, the price per hour would be higher. Even then it might happen that the laborer would not receive his full regular wages, but this would happen only when he was employed less than eight hours, while this happens in the first case, if he is employed less than twelve hours. Low Price of Labor and Prolongation of the Day. In some branches of industry in which time-wages are the general rule, the custom has grown up of considering as normal a day of a certain number of hours, as, for in- 201 stance, ten. After this point begins what is known as over-time, and which is paid a little more per hour. The low price of labor during the time considered normal, forces the laborer, in order to secure an adequate wage, to work during the over-time which is a little less poorly paid. This leads to-an advantage for the capitalist-a prolongation of the working-day. Legal limitation of the working-day puts an end to this trickery. We saw above that, the price of labor being given, the daily or weekly wages depend on the duration of the labor performed. It follows from this that the lower the price of labor, the longer must the working-day be for the laborer to obtain an adequate wage. If the price of labor per hour was 3 cents, the laborer would have to work fifteen hours to obtain a daily wage of 45 cents; if the price of labor per hour is 5 cents, a day of twelve hours is sufficient to provide him a daily wage of 60 cents. The low price of labor, therefore, necessarily leads to the pro- longation of the labor-time. But if the prolongation of the day is, as has been shown, the natural effect of the reduced price of labor, it may, on its side, become the cause of a reduction of the price of labor, and, therefore, of a reduction of daily or weekly wages. If, thanks to the prolongation of the day, one man performs the work of two, the supply of labor is increased, although the number of laborers on the market has not varied. The competition thus created be- tween the laborers enables the capitalist to reduce the price of labor, and the fall of this price, as we have just seen, makes possible, in its turn, a still further pro- longation of the day. The capitalist, therefore, profits in two ways-both by the fall of the ordinary price of labor, and by its extraordinary duration. Meanwhile, however, this power of disposing of an un- usual amount of unpaid labor soon becomes a source of competition among the capitalists themselves. In order to hold and secure as many orders as possible, they reduce the prices of the commodities on which they are making the most. These reduced prices finally become fixed at an abnormally low level, which becomes thenceforth the permanent basis of miserably low wages for the laborers in these industries. 203 CHAPTER XXI. PIECE-WAGES. This change in the form of wages in no wise alters their nature.-Special characteristics of this form of wages that make it the form best adapted to capitalist production. This Change in the Form of Wages in No Wise Alters Their Nature. Under the form of piece-wages, it seems, at first sight, as if the laborer was paid not for the value of his labor- power, but for the value of the labor already realized in the product, and as if this price was determined by the effective capacity of the producer. It is, in fact, nothing but a converted form of time-wages. Let us assume that the ordinary working-day is made up of twelve hours-six of necessary or paid labor and six of surplus or unpaid labor-and that the value pro- duced is $1.20. The product of one hour's labor will, therefore, be ten cents. It is assumed to be estab- lished by experience that a laborer who works with the average degree of intensity and skill-who takes, therefore, only the time socially necessary for the production of an article-turns out in twelve hours twelve of these products or fractions of products. These twelve articles, after deducting the value of the means of production they represent, are worth $1.20, and each of them is worth ten cents. The laborer gets 204 5 cents a piece, and so in twelve hours earns 60 cents, while the commodities produced by twelve hours' labor are worth $1.20, minus the value of the means of pro- duction consumed in their production. Just as, in the case of wages by the day, itkmakes no difference whether we say that the laborer works six hours for himself and six hours for the capitalist-or half of every hour for himself and the other half for his em- ployer-just so here in the case of piece-wages it is im- material whether we say that each article is half paid for and half not paid for-or that the price of six hours is only the equivalent of the value of the labor-power, while the surplus-value is incarnated in the six other articles for which the laborer is not paid. In time-wages, the labor is measured directly by its duration; in piece-wages, it is measured by the quantity. of products in which it embodies itself in a given time. But, in both cases, the value of a day's labor is determined by the daily value of labor-power. Therefore, piece-wages is only a modified form of time-wages. If the productiveness of labor increases-if, for in- stance, the quantity of products obtainable in a given time is doubled, the rate of piece-wages will fall in the same proportion-it will drop 50 per cent. so that the wages per diem will not change at all. In either case-- no matter what the form of wages-what the capitalist pays for, we repeat, is not labor, but labor-power. One form of payment may be more favorable than another to the development of capitalist production, but no change in form can modify the nature of wages. 205 Special Characteristics of This Form of Wages, That Make It the Form Best Adapted to Capitalist Production. Under this form of wages, the work must be of average quality or the laborer will not be paid the stated price per article. From this point of view, piece-wages give rise to numberless pretexts for fines or deductions from the earnings of the laborer, and help the capitalist to rob him of the miserable pittance he contracts to give him. At the same time, this system provides the capitalist with an exact measure of the intensity of labor. The only labor-time paid for is that which is embodied in a mass of products fixed in advance and established by experience. If the laborer does not possess the ave'rage efficiency-if he cannot turn out in a working-day the fixed minimum of products-he is discharged. As the quality and intensity of the labor are thus guaranteed by the very form of the wages, a large part of the labor of superintendence becomes superfluous. This fact is the foundation not only of modern domestic or household industry, but also of a whole system of op- pression and exploitation-a system hierarchically organ- ized. This system has two fundamental forms. On the one hand, piece-wages facilitate the interven- tion of parasites between the capitalist and the laborer -the sweating system. The profit of the sweaters comes altogether from the difference between the price of labor paid by the capitalist and the portion of this price which they allow to reach the laborer. On the other 206 hand, piece-wages enable the capitalist to make a con- tract for so much per piece with a head-laborer, or chief of a group, etc., who undertakes for the price stipulated to hire and pay his own assistants. The exploitation of the laborers by capital is here effected through the ex- ploitation of the laborer by the laborer. Under piece-wages, the personal interest of the laborer incites him to exert his power at the highest possible tension, and this makes it easier for the capitalist to raise the normal intensity of labor. The laborer is likewise interested in prolonging the working-day, since his daily or weekly wages rise with its prolongation. This leads to a reaction analogous to the one we referred to at the close of the last chapter. Time-wages imply, with few exceptions, equality of pay for laborers performing the same kind of work. Piece- wages, which measure the price of labor-time by a fixed quantity of product, naturally vary according to the extent by which the quantity of product turned out in a given time exceeds the established minimum. Hence, under piece-wages, the different degrees of skill, strength, energy, and endurance of the individual laborers cause great differences in their respective receipts. This, however, causes no change in the general rela- tions between capital and the wages of the laborer. In the first place, these individual differences compensate or cancel each other in the workshop as a whole. In the second place, the ratio between wages and surplus-value is not altered, since the mass of surplus-value furnished 207 by each laborer corresponds to his individual wages. But piece-wages tend therefore to develop on the one hand the spirit of independence and self-government among the laborers, and on the other hand, to develop their competi- tion with their fellows. The result is that while individual wages rise above the general level, the general level tends to sink lower. Finally, piece-wages enable the employer to apply the system already described of giving the laborer employ- ment for only a part of the full day or week. All this shows that piece-wages is the form of wages best adapted to the capitalist mode of production. CHAPTER XXII. NATIONAL DIFFERENCES OF WAGES. How to compare the ,rates of wages in different nations. --Modifications of the law of value in its international application.-Apparent wages and real wages. How to Compare the Rates of Wages in Different Nations. To compare the rates of wages in different nations, one must begin by considering all the conditions control- ling the value of labor-power in each respective country -such as the extent of the ordinary needs and require- ments of its inhabitants, the prices of the means of subsistence, the average size of working-class families, the cost of the laborer's training, the part played by the labor of women and children, and finally the produc- tiveness, duration and intensity of labor. When the daily duration of labor and the wages per day in each country are known, it is easy to calculate for each country the price per hour of labor in the same branches of industry. One is then in a position to com- pare the rates of time-wages in the different nations. Then these time-wages must be reduced to piece-wages, as the latter are the only index of the varying degrees of the intensity and productivity of labor. To do this all that is required, when one knows the price per hour of labor in a branch of industry, is to find out how much time is spent in the making of an article in that branch. 209 Modifications of the Law of Value in its International Application. In every country there is a certain ordinary intensity of labor. When the intensity is below this common level a product consumes more labor-time than is socially necessary; but, no matter how much time it has con- sumed, it has on the national market only the value cor- respondent to the time socially necessary for its produc- tion. Value is measured solely by the duration of this socially necessary time, and this rule is modified only when the labor attains a degree of intensity above the nationally normal intensity. This is not the case on the universal market where the products of different countries are brought together for sale and trade. The ordinary intensity of national labor is not the same in all countries. It is greater here, and smaller there. These various national averages or standards of intensity form a scale, whose unit of measure is the average international intensity of labor. Compared to the more intense national labor, the less intense na- tional labor creates in the same time less value, which expresses itself in less money. Another more profound modification of the law of value in its application to the universal market is that the more productive national labor counts, on this market, as the more intense labor---i. e., as labor pro- ducing not only a greater quantity of products but also a greater quantity of value-so long as the more pro- ductive nation is not forced by competition to lower the 210 selling price of its commodities to the level of their real value. If capitalist production is more highly developed in a particular country, the national labor of that country will, as a consequence, have a greater average pro- ductiveness and intensity than general international labor will have, and the quantity of value produced in the same time will be greater and will express itself in more money. And money will be worth relatively less in such a country than in countries where capitalist production is less developed. Apparent Wages and Real Wages. From this last fact it follows that nominal wages, the expression of labor-power in money, will on the average be higher in the more advanced countries than in the more backward. It does not necessarily follow that this will hold true for real wages, i. e., for the means of sub- sistence placed at the disposal of the laborer. Apart from this difference in the value of money com- pared to commodities, it will often be found that even if the daily or weekly wages are higher in one nation, the relative price of labor, i. e., its price compared either to the surplus-value or to the value of the product, is lower in that nation, than in countries where lower wages obtain. While the apparent or nominal price of labor is usually lower in poor countries, where as a rule food stuffs are cheap, the real price, i. e., the cost to the capitalist of a certain quantity of accomplished labor, is, nearly always, dearer than in rich countries. SEVENTH SECTION. THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL. INTRODUCTION. The circulation of capital.-Examination of the funda- mental mechanism of accumulation. The Circulation of Capital. The transformation of a sum of money into means of production and labor-power, which is the first phase of the movement of value that is going to function as cap- ital, takes place on the market, within the domain of cir- culation. The process of production, the second phase of this movement, is completed so soon as the means of produc- tion are transformed into commodities whose value is greater than the value of their component elements, and, therefore, includes a surplus-value in addition to the value of the money advanced. These commodities must then be thrown into circula- tion. They must be sold, their value realized in money, and this money again transformed into capital, and so on. It is this movement which constitutes the circulation of capital, 212 Examination of the Fundamental Mechanism of Accu- mulation. The first condition of accumulation is that the cap- italist must have succeeded in selling his commodities and in re-converting into capital the greater part of the money thus obtained. Capital must regularly pass through its normal circulatory movement, and we shall assume that it does so. The capitalist who produces surplus-value--i. e., who directly extracts from the laborer unpaid labor-is the first appropriator of it, but he does not remain the sole owner of it. Surplus-value is split up into different parts, received by various categories of persons, under differ- ent forms, such as manufacturing profit, interest, mer- cantile profit, rent, etc. But this division changes neither the nature of surplus-value nor the conditions under which it becomes the source of accumulation. No mat- ter what the portion the capitalist employer retains for himself, he is ever the one who in the beginning ap- propriates the whole of it, and who, alone, transforms it into capital. We.can then treat him as the representa- tive of all those who receive a share of the booty. The intervening movement of circulation and the di- vision of the surplus-value into various portions assume varying forms, and thus complicate and obscure the fundamental process of accumulation. In order to sim- plify its analysis we must, for the time, disregard every- thing which conceals the working of its essential mech- anism, and study accumulation from the point of view of production. 213 CHAPTER XXIII. SIMPLE REPRODUCTION. The part of capital advanced in wages is only a part of the past labor of 'the laborer.--All capital advanced' is trans- formed sooner or later into accumulated capital.-The pro- ductive consumption and the individual consumption of the laborer.-Simple reproduction keeps the workingman in the situation of a, wage-laborer. No matter what its social form, production must be continuous. A society can not cease to produce any more than it can cease to consume. In order to produce continuously, it must continually transform a part of its products into means of production- into elements of new products. To maintain its wealth at the same level-all the conditions remaining the same -it must replace the instruments of labor, the raw ma- terials, and the auxiliary substances; in a word, the means of production consumed during, for instance, a year, by an equal annual quantity of articles of the same kind. In other words, these must be reproduced. If production has the capitalist form, reproduction will have the same form. From the point of view of the former, the labor-process serves then as a means for creating surplus-value. From the point of view of the latter, it serves as a means of reproducing or perpetuat- ing as capital--i. e., as self-expanding value--the value that has been advanced. As a periodic increment of the value advanced, sur- plus-value acquires the form of a revenue flowing from capital. If the capitalist consumes this revenue, and it 214 is, therefore, spent as regularly as it is received, this will be a case-all other conditions remaining the same- of simple reproduction. In other words, the capital will continue to function without expanding. But this rep- etition by capital of the same operations on the same scale gives it certain characteristics which we are going to examine. The Part of Capital Advanced in Wages Is Only a Part of the Past Labor of the Laborer. Let us first consider that part of capital which is ad- vanced in wages-the variable capital. Before beginning to produce, the capitalist buys labor- powers for a definite period of time; but he pays for them only after the laborer has worked and added to the product the value of his own labor-power and a surplus- value. Besides this surplus-value, which is the capitalist's consumption fund, the laborer has, therefore, produced the fund for his own payment, the variable capital, be- fore its return to him in the shape of wages. A part of the labor performed by him last week or last month pays for his labor of to-day or of next month. That part of his product which returns to the laborer as wages is, it is true, paid to him in money; but the money is only the value-form of the commodities, and this in no way alters the fact that it is always only a part of his own past and realized labor that the laborer receives under the form of an advance from the capitalist. Yet, before renewing and repeating itself, this move- ment of production must have begun and gone on for 215 a certain time, during which the laborer-not having produced anything as yet-could not yet be paid out of his own product, and could not live on the air of heaven. Must it not be that when the capitalist class first ap- peared on the market to buy labor-power, it had already accumulated by its own industry and economy a hoard which enabled it to advance the laborer's means of sub- sistence in the form of money? Provisionally we are willing to accept this solution, but we will examine its merits more carefully in the chapter on the primitive accumulation. All Capital Advanced Is Transformed Sooner or Later into Accumulated Capital. At all events, the continuous reproduction soon changes the original character of the entire capital ad- vanced-both the variable part and the constant part. If a capital of $5,000 yields annually a surplus-value of $1,000 which the capitalist consumes, it is clear that after this annual movement has been repeated five times the sum of the surplus-value consumed will be equal to $1,000 multiplied by 5, or to $5,000-. e., to the total value of the capital advanced. If only half of the annual surplus-value were to be con- sumed, the same result would be reached at the end of ten years instead of five, for by multiplying half of the sur- plus-value, $500, by 10, we get $5,000, just the same. Generally speaking, by dividing the capital advanced by the amount of surplus-value consumed annually we get the number of years, at the expiration of which the orig- 218 inal capital will have been entirely consumed by the cap- italist, and will, therefore, have disappeared. Hence, after a certain time, the capital-value, which belonged to the capitalist, is equal to the sum of the sur- plus-value that he has gratuitously acquired during this same time, and the sum of the value that he has advanced is equal to the sum of the value he has consumed. It is true that he has all along had in his hands a capital whose magnitude has not varied. But when a man runs through all his property by making debts equal to it, the value of his property then represents merely the sum of his debts. In the same way, when the capitalist has consumed the equivalent of the capital he advanced, the value of this capital then represents merely the sum of the surplus-value appropriated by him. Simple reproduction suffices, therefore, to transform sooner or later all the capital advanced into accumulated capital, or capitalized surplus-value. Even if the original capital were acquired by the personal labor of the em- ployer, after its entrance into the domain of production it becomes, after a longer or shorter period of time, value appropriated without an equivalent-the materializatioi of the unpaid labor of others. The Productive Consumption and the Individual Con- sumption of the Laborer. The consumption of the laborer is twofold. In the process of production he consumes by his labor the means of production, in order to transform them into products with a value higher than that of the capital advanced. This is his productive consumption, and it is at the same time the consumption of his labor-power by the capital- ist to whom it belongs. But the money given as the pur- chase price of this power is spent by the laborer for the means of subsistence, and this is what constitutes his individual consumption. The productive consumption and the individual con- sumption of the laborer are then entirely 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 vital functions outside the domain of production. The result of the former is the organic life of capital; the result of the latter is the in- dividual life of the laborer himself. By transforming a part of his capital into labor-power, the capitalist ensures the preservation and expansion of his entire capital. But he kills two birds with one stone. He profits both by what he receives from the laborer and also by what he gives to him. The capital which is paid out for labor-power is ex- changed by the working-class for the means of sub- sistence, and the consumption of these serves to repro- duce the muscles, nerves, and brains of existing laborers, and to form new laborers. Within the limits of what is strictly necessary, the individual consumption of the working-class is, therefore, only the transformation of the means of subsistence that the sale of their labor- power enabled them to buy into new labor-power--into fresh material for capital to exploit. As it is the pro- duction and reproduction of the instrument of labor 218 most indispensable to the capitalist-the laborer him- self-the individual consumption of the laborer is, there- fore, a factor in the reproduction of capital. It is true that the laborer devotes himself to his indi- vidual consumption for his own gratification and not to please the capitalist. But does the fact that the beasts of burden also love to eat, make their nourishment any the less the business of their owners? The consequence is that the capitalist does not have to watch over the individual consumption of the laborers. He boldly trusts to the free laborer's instincts of self-preservation and propagation. In this matter his one anxiety is to limit the individual consumption of the laborers to what is most strictly necessary. Therefore, that sycophant of capital, the vulgar po- litical economist, considers as productive only that part of individual consumption without which the working class could not continue to exist and grow, and which, therefore, is absolutely necessary to furnish capital with labor-power (in sufficient quantities) to consume. All that the laborer may spend in excess of this amount for his own physical or intellectual enjoyment is unpro- ductive consumption-a crime in the eyes of the vulgar economist. The individual consumption of the laborer may rightly be called unproductive, so far as regards the laborer himself, for it reproduces naught but the needy individual; on the other hand, it is productive for the capitalist and the State, since it produces the power that creates their wealth. 19 Simple Reproduction Keeps the Workingman in the Situation of a Wage-laborer. From the social point of view, the working-class is therefore, like every other instrument of labor, an ap- pendage of capital. For the productive movement of capital, the individual consumption of the laborers is, within certain limits, a necessary condition. This indi- vidual consumption which secures their maintenance and reproduction, at the same time destroys the means of subsistence which they procured by selling them- selves, and obliges them to constantly reappear on the market. We saw, in Chapter VI, that the production and circulation of commodities were not enough to give birth to capital. Besides these conditions it was necessary that the plutocrat should find on the market other men, free, but forced to sell "voluntarily" their labor-power by their lack of anything else to sell. The separation between the product and the producer, between one category of persons having in their possession all things necessary for the realization of labor, and another category of persons owning nothing but their own labor-power- that was the starting point of capitalist production. But this, which was the starting-point, afterward be- comes, thanks to simple reproduction, a result constantly renewed. On the one hand, the movement of production incessantly transforms material wealth into capital and into means of enjoyment for the capitalist. On the other hand, the laborer is afterward exactly what he was be- fore-the personal source of wealth, but expropriated 20O from the means necessary for the realization of his own labor. The periodic repetition of the movement of capitalist production continually transforms the product of the wage-laborer into a value which pumps dry the power which creates value, into means of production which dominate the producer, into means of subsistence that become the purchase price of the laborer himself. The capitalist mode of production, therefore, of itself reproduces the separation between the laborer and the conditions of labor. It thereby reproduces and perpetu- ates the conditions which compel the laborer to sell himself in order to live, and enable the capitalist to buy him in order to enrich himself. It is no longer chance which brings them face to face on the market as seller and buyer. It is the actual character of the mode of production itself that incessantly flings the laborer back upon the market as the vendor of his own labor- power, and incessantly transforms his product into the means by which the capitalist buys him. In reality, the laborer belongs to the capitalist class, to the class which controls the means of life, before he sells himself to an individual capitalist. His economic servitude is masked by the periodic repetition of this sale, by the sham "rree contract," by the change of indi- vidual masters, and by the oscillations in the market- price of labor. The movement of capitalist production considered in its continuity (or regarded as reproduction) does not, therefore, produce commodities alone, nor surplus-value alone, but it reproduces and perpetuates its foundation --the workingman in the situation of a wage-laborer. 221 CHAPTER XXIV. TRANSFORMATION OF SURPLUS-VALUE .INTO CAPITAL. I. Reproduction on an increasing scale.--The more the capitalist has accumulated, the more he can accumulate.- Capitalist appropriation is only the application of the laws of the pqduction of commodities.-II. False ideas con- cerning accumulation.-III. Division of surplus-value into capital and revenue.-The abstinence theory.-IV. Circum- stances which affect the extent of accumulation.-Degree of exploitation of labor-power.--Productivity of labor.- Growing 'difference between capital employed and capital consumed.--Magnitude, of capital advanced.-V. The labor- lund. I.-Reproduction on an Increasing Scale. In the previous chapters we have seen how surplus- value springs out of capital; we are now going to see how capital issues from surplus-value. If, instead of being spent, the surplus-value is advanced and employed as capital, a new capital is formed and joined to the former capital. To use surplus-value as capital then is to accumulate capital. Let us first con- sider this operation from the point of view of the indi- vidual capitalist. A master-spinner, for example, has advanced a capital of $50,000.00, of which $40,000.00 or four-fifths are laid out in cotton, machinery, etc, and the remaining fifth in wages. With this, he produces annually 150,000 pounds of yarn, worth 40 cents a pound, or a total value of $60,000.00. The surplus-value, which is therefore 222 $10,000.00, exists in the net product of 25,000 pounds (which is one-sixth of the gross product), since their sale at 40 cents a pound brings in an equivalent amount. Ten thousand dollars are always ten thousand dollars. The fact that they are surplus-value tells us how they came into the hands of the capitalist, but it makes no change in their nature as value or money. To capitalize this new sum of $10,000.00 then,-all other circumstances remaining the same-the master- spinner will simply have to advance four-fifths of it in the purchase of cotton, etc., and one-fifth in the pur- chase of additional spinners. Then the new capital of $10,000.00 will function in the spinning-process and yield in its turn a surplus-value of $2,000.00. The capital-value was originally advanced under the form of money. The surplus-value, on the contrary, exists at first as the value of a certain quantity of the gross product. If the sale of the latter, its exchange for money, gives the capital-value back its" original money form, it metamorphoses the original form of surplus- value, the commodity form. But after the sale of the gross product, the capital-value and the surplus-value are, both of them, sums of money, and their transforma- tion into capital, which takes place afterward, is ac- complished in the same way in both cases. The master- spinner lays out each of them in the same way in the purchase of commodities that place him in a position to begin anew, and this time on a larger scale, the fabrica- tion of his product. But, in order to be able to buy the constituent ele- ments of this process, he must find them on the market, 23 The annual production must, therefore, furnish not only all those articles naturally fitted to replace the material components of capital used up during the year, but it must furnish a greater quantity of these articles than the quantity consumed, and also an additional supply of labor-power, in order that the new and enlarged capital- value may be able to function. The mechanism of capitalist production provides this additional supply of labor-power, by reproducing the working-class as a wage-paid class-a class whose ordi- nary wages ensure not only its continued existence but also its continued growth. A part of the annual surplus- labor must be employed in producing means of produc- tion and subsistence in excess of the amount needed to replace the capital advanced. It is then only necessary for capital to incorporate the additional labor-power, annually supplied by the working-class, in the shape of laborers of all ages, with the surplus means of production included in the annual produce. Accumulation results, therefore, from the reproduc- tion of capital on an increasing scale. The More the Capitalist has Accumulated, the More he can Accumulate. The original capital was formed, in our example, by the advance of $50,000.00. How did the plutocrat get possession of that wealth ? "By his own labor or that of his ancestors," answer in chorus the spokesmen of po- litical economy, and their supposition seems, indeed, the only one in conformity with the laws of the production of commodities. 224 It is quite otherwise in regard to the new capital of $10,000.00. Its origin we know all about. It is capital- ized surplus-value. From the start, it does not contain a single atom of value that is not drawn from the unpaid labor of others. The means of production with which the additional labor-power is incorporated, as well as the means of subsistence that sustain the additional labor- ers, are nothing but parts of the net product-of the tribute annually wrested from the working-class by the capitalist class. Though the latter, with a portion of this tribute, buys from the working-class additional labor- power, even at its just price, this is no more than is done by every military conqueror, who graciously pays for the goods of the conquered with the money he has robbed them of. By its surplus-labor of this year, the working- class creates new capital, which will make possible the employment of additional labor next year. This is what is called: the creation of capital by capital. The accumulation of the first new capital of $10,000.00 presupposes that the sum of $50,000.00, advanced as the original capital, comes out of the pocket of the capitalist where it was put by his "primitive labor." But the ac- cumulation of the second additional capital of $2,000.00 presupposes only the previous accumulation of the $10,000.00 capital-the capitalized surplus-value of the original capital. It follows that the more the capi- talist has accumulated, the greater is his power of further accumulation. In other words, the more he has ap- propriated in the past of the unpaid labor of others, the greater is his present power of appropriating living un- paid labor, 225 Capitalist Appropriation is Only the Application of the Laws of the Production of Commodities. It is very important to understand that this mode of enrichment is the result, not of the violation, but, on the contrary, of the application of the laws of commodity production. To convince oneself of this, it suffices to observe the successive operations that result in accu- mulation. We saw that the original transformation of a certain value into capital took place conformably to the laws of exchange. One of the parties sold his labor-power and the other bought it. The first receives the value of his commodity, the use of which-labor-accordingly becomes the property of the second. The latter then transforms the means of production which he owns, by means of the labor which is his by right of purchase, into a new product, which also is indisputably his private property. The value of this product contains first, the value of the means of production consumed; but labor could not advantageously consume these means of production with- out transferring their value to the product. It con- tains, in addition, a value equal to the value of the labor- power and a surplus-value. This result is due to the fact that the labor-power sold for a fixed time--as a day, or a week, etc.-possesses less value than its use produces in the same time. But in obtaining the ex- change-value of his labor-power, the laborer has parted with the use-value, as is the case in every purchase and sale of commodities. 226 That this particular article, labor-power, in its use or consumption furnishes labor, and therefore produces value, does not alter at all the general law of the pro- duction of commodities. If then the amount of value advanced in wages reappears in the product with a sur- plus, this does not spring from a wrong done to the vendor, for he received the equivalent of his commodity, but from the consumption of this commodity by the purchaser. The only equality of the articles exchanged required by the law of exchange is equality in exchange- value, and this very law assumes a difference between their use-values, and it has nothing to do with their con- sumption, which does not begin till after the consum- mation of the bargain made on the market. The original transformation of money into capital takes place then in conformity with the economic laws of commodity production and with the rights of property which are a consequence of those laws. How can this fact be modified because, afterward, it is surplus-value that the capitalist transforms into capital ? This sur- plus-value is his property, as we have just seen; and the additional laborers whom, by functioning in its turn as capital, it serves to hire, have nothing to do with the fact that it was produced beforehand by laborers. All that these additional laborers can demand is that the capitalist shall pay them also the value of their labor-power. Things would no longer appear in the same light if we were to examine the relations of the capitalist and the laborers, no longer separately, but as a connected concatenation, if we were to consider the capitalist class and the working-class. Butt as commodity production 227 only confronts sellers and buyers independent the one of the other, in order to judge of this production by its own laws, we must take each transaction separately and not in its connection either with that which precedes it, or with that which follows it. Moreover, as sales and purchases are always transactions between individuals, we must not here examine into the relations between classes. And so, every time that it enters upon its functions, capital recovers its virginity. It is in accordance with the laws of commodity production that under the capitalist regime wealth can be constantly more and more mono- polized by means of the continuous appropriation of the unpaid labor of others. How great the illusion then of certain Socialist schools who imagine they can abolish the regime of capital by applying to it the laws of com- modity production! II.-False Ideas Concerning Accumulation. The commodities that the capitalist buys as means of enjoyment evidently do not serve him as means of production and value expansion; neither is the labor that he buys for the same purpose productive labor. In this way he squanders the surplus-value as revenue, instead of making it breed as capital. Therefore bourgeois political economy has preached, as the first of civic duties, accumulation-i. e., the duty of employing a large share of one's revenue in hiring productive laborers, who bring in more than they are paid, 228 It had to combat the popular prejudice that confounds capitalist accumulation with the amassing of hoards, as though putting money under lock and key was not the surest method to prevent its capitalization. It is also important not to confound capitalist accumulation, which is a productive process, with the augmentation of wealth which goes to form the consumption fund of the rich and which is gradually used up, nor with the formation of reserve stocks, which is a feature common to all modes of production. Classical political economy is perfectly right in main- taining that the trait most characteristic of accumula- tion is that the people supported by the net product must be productive and not unproductive laborers. But the place where it errs is when it draws from this the conclusion that the part of the net product which is transformed into capital is consumed by the working- class. According to this way of thinking, all the surplus- value transformed into capital would be laid out in wages. On the contrary, it splits up, like the capital-value from which it sprung, into the purchase price of the means of production and thle purchase price of labor-power. If it is to be converted into additional labor-power, the net product must contain a surplus quantity of articles of subsistence of primary necessity; but if this additional labor-power is to be exploited, the net product must also contain new means of production which do not enter into the personal consumption of the laborers, any more than they do into that of the capitalists. 1Ii.-Division of Surplus-value into Capital and Revenue. One portion of the surplus-value is spent by the capi- talist as revenue, and the other portion accumulated as capital. All other circumstances remaining the same, the proportion by which this division is made will de- termine the magnitude of accumulation. It is the owner of the surplus-value, the capitalist, who divides it. This ratio then depends upon his will. The part of the tribute extorted by him, that he accumulates, he is said to "save," because he does not eat it -i. e. because he fulfils his function as a capitalist, which is to enrich himself. The capitalist has no historical value, no historical right to life, no social raison d'etre, save in his function as personified capital. It is only in this capacity that the necessity for his own ephemeral existence is a con- sequence of the transitory necessity for the capitalist mode of production. The inciting motive of his activity is then neither use-value nor enjoyment, but rather ex- change-value and its constant augmentation. The fa- natical agent of the process of accumulation, he inces- santly forces men to produce for production's sake, and thus unconsciously drives them to develop those pro- ductive powers and material conditions which alone can form the basis of a new and higher society. The development of capitalist production demands the continuous enlargement of the capital invested in an enterprise, and competition compels every individual capitalist, whether he will or no, to conduct his business 230 in harmony with the laws of capitalist production. It makes it impossible for him to preserve his capital with- out expanding it, and he cannot go on expanding it ex- cept by means of progressive accumulation. His will and his conscience express only the requirements of the capi- tal he represents, and he looks upon his personal con- sumption as a sort of theft-at the least, a loan-from accumulation. But, as the capitalist mode of production develops, and with it accumulation and wealth develop, the capi- talist ceases to be a mere personification of capital. While the capitalist of the old stamp condemns every in- dividual expenditure which is not indispensable, seeing in it only an encroachment upon accumulation, the modernized capitalist is capable of seeing in the capital- ization of surplus-value an obstacle to the gratification of his insatiable thirst for pleasure. At the beginning of capitalist production-and this fact is repeated in the individual life of every industrial upstart-avarice and desire to get rich are the ruling passions. But the progress of production not only cre- ates an entire new world of pleasures; it opens with speculation and credit a thousand sources of sudden en- richment. At a certain stage of development, it even imposes upon the unhappy capitalist a wholly conven- tional prodigality, which is at once a display of wealth and a means of obtaining credit. Luxury becomes a business necessity, and thus one of the expenses neces- sarily incident to the possession of capital. This is not all. The capitalist does not grow rich, like the independent peasant and artisan, in proportion to 31 his individual labor and personal frugality, but in pro- portion to the unpaid labor of others that he absorbs, and to the abstinence from all the joys of life that he inflicts upon his laborers. As his accumulations increase his prodigality grows, while his accumulation is not nec- essarily restricted by his growing expenditure. But there rages within him a struggle between the desire for ac- cumulation and the desire for enjoyment. The Abstinence Theory. Save, constantly save! i. e., incessantly reconvert the largest possible portion of the surplus-value or net prod- uct into capital! Accumulate for accumulation's sake! Produce for production's sake! Such is the shiboleth, the exhortation of political economy proclaiming the histor- ical mission of the bourgeois period. If the proletarian is only a machine for producing surplus-value, the capi- talist is only a machine for capitalizing that surplus- value. But it was after 1830, at a time when Socialist doc- trines were spreading-Fourierism and St. Simonism in France and Owenism in England-, when the town pro- letariat at Lyons sounded the tocsin of revolution, when in England the rural proletariat were using the incendi- ary torch, that political economy revealed to the world a marvellous doctrine for the salvation of society. It transformed at a stroke the conditions of the labor- process into so many acts of "abstinence" on the part of the capitalist-on the natural assumption that the la- borer does not abstain from working for him. The 232 capitalist "imposes upon himself," wrote G. de Moli- nari, a "privation by lending his instruments of produc- tion to the laborer"; he imposes upon himself a privation, in other words, when he makes his means of production a source of value as capital by incorporating labor-power with them, instead of eating them up just as they are- manures, draft-horses, cotton, steam-engines, etc. In short, the world still lives by grace alone of the ascetic self-sacrifice of the capitalist. Not only accumu- lation, but "the simple conservation of a capital requires a constant effort to resist the temptation to consume it." (Courcelle-Seneuil.) One would have to be devoid of all humane feelings not to attempt to release the capitalist from his temptations and his martyrdom by releasing him from his capital. IV.-Circumstances which Affect the Extent of Accumulation. If the proportion according to which the surplus-value is split into capital and revenue is given, the magnitude of the capital accumulated evidently depends on the mag- nitude of the surplus-value. Suppose, for instance, that 80 per cent. of the surplus-value is capitalized and 20 per cent. consumed, then the capital accumulated will amount to $480.00 or to $240.00, according as the sur- plus-value was $600.00 or $300.00. And so, all the cir- cumstances which determine the magnitude of the sur- plus-value are factors in determining the extent of ac- cumulation. Let us recapitulate them, but solely from this last point of view. 23t3 Degree of Exploitation of Labor-Power. It is known that the rate of surplus-value depends, in the first place, on the degree of exploitation of labor- power. In discussing the production of surplus-value, we always assumed that the laborer received the just value of his labor-power. Reductions below this value, nevertheless, play in practice a very important role. And this transforms, to a certain extent, the consumption fund required for the support of the laborer into an ac- cumulation fund for the capitalist. Therefore the tend- ency of capital is to reduce wages as far as possible and to eliminate from the consumption of the working-class everything that it considers superfluous. Capital has been aided in this purpose by the cosmopolitan competi- tion, to which the development of capitalist production has given birth, between all the laborers on the face of the globe. And it is to-day a question of nothing less than of lowering, in a future more or less close at hand, the European level of wages to the Chinese level. Moreover, a higher degree of exploitation of labor- power makes it possible to increase the quantity of labor without increasing the equipment of instruments of la- bor, machinery, apparatus, tools, buildings, shops, etc. Let an establishment employ, for example, 100 men working 8 hours a day, and they will furnish daily 800 hours of labor. If, in order to raise this amount of labor by one-half, the capitalist were to hire 50 additional laborers, he would not only have to increase his outlay in wages, but also in equipment. While, by making his hundred laborers work twelve hours a day instead of 234 eight, he would get the same result, and the former equipment would still be sufficient. This equipment, be- ing used more, would wear out more quickly, and would have to be more frequently renewed, and that is all. In this way, additional labor, obtained by requiring from labor-power a more prolonged effort, increases the surplus-value or the net product-the substance of ac- cumulation-without necessitating a previous and pro- portional increase of the part of capital laid out in equip- ment. A simple increase of labor, drawn from the same num- ber of laborers, suffices in the extractive industries, such as mining, etc., to increase the value and mass of the prod- uct-the free gift of Nature-and, therefore, to swell the fund destined for accumulation. In agriculture, where the mechanical action of labor on the soil, of itself, mar- vellously increases the fertility, a like increase of the amount of labor adds to this effect; as in the extractive industries, it is the direct action of man on Nature which promotes accumulation. Moreover, since the extractive industries and agriculture furnish materials to manu- facturing industry, the excess of products which an augmentation of labor, without additional outlay, pro- cures in the former, benefits the latter. Capital then may owe an increase in its elements of accumulation solely to those two basic sources of wealth--labor-power and land. Productivity of Labor. Another important factor in accumulation is the de- gree of productivity of social labor. If the surplus-value is given, the mass of the net prod- uct-the incarnation of the surplus-value-corresponds to the productivity of the labor functioning. In pro- portion then as labor develops its productive powers, in- creasing the efficiency and abundance of the means of production and lowering their prices and the prices of the means of subsistence, and of the raw materials and auxiliary substances, the net product includes a larger and larger mass of means of enjoyment and accumula- tion. The part of the surplus-value which is capitalized may then even increase relatively to the other part which forms the revenue, without diminishing the actual consumption of the capitalist, for with the increase in productivity a smaller value is realized in a larger quan- tity of useful objects. Growing Difference Between Capital Employed and Capital Consumed. It is a natural property of labor, while creating new values, to "preserve values already in existence. Labor transfers to the product the value of the means of pro- duction consumed. Hence, as its means of production increase in efficiency, mass and value-i. e., as it becomes more productive and more promotive of accumulation, capital preserves and perpetuates a constantly increas- ing capital-value. The part of capital which is advanced in the form of mechanical equipment always functions in the produc- tive process as a whole, while, as it is worn out only little by little, it transfers its value only by bits to the com- 236 modifies which it successively aids in making. Its in- crease results in a greater and greater difference in magnitude between the total capital employed and the part of it which is consumed in each separate operation. Compare, for instance, the value of the European rail- ways, with the quantity of value that they lose by wear and tear in one day. Now, in so far as they contribute to produce useful effects without increasing the expenses of production, these instruments created by man render free services-free as the services of natural forces- steam, water, air, etc. These gratuitous services of past labor energized by living labor, multiply with the de- velopment of the productive powers and the accumu- lation of capital which accompanies that development. The more and more potent assistance which, under the form of mechanical equipment, past labor renders to living labor, is attributed by the economists, not to the laborer who did the work, but to the capitalist who appropriated the product. From their point of view, the instrument of labor and its character as capital, which it owes to the transitory social environment, can not be separated, any more than the mind of a Georgia planter could distinguish between the laborer himself and his character as a slave. Magnitude of Capital Advanced. If the degree of the exploitation of labor-power is given, the magnitude of the surplus-value is determined by the number of laborers simultaneously exploited, and this number corresponds, though in varying proportions, 237 with the magnitude of the capital advanced. Hence, the more capital increases by means of successive accumula- tions, the more also does the value increase that is to be divided into consumption-fund and accumulation-fund. V.-The Labor-Fund. The capitalists, their creatures and their governments squander every year a goodly portion of the net annual product. Besides this, they store up in their consump- tion-fund for gradual use a mass of objects that might otherwise be reproductively employed, and they render sterile, by attaching it to their personal service, a great mass of labor-power. The quantity of wealth which is capitalized, is then never as large as it might be. The ratio between its magnitude and the total magnitude of the social wealth varies with every change in the division of the surplus-value into personal revenue and new cap- ital. And so, instead of being a predetermined and fixed portion of the wealth of society, the social capital is merely a variable fraction of it. Nevertheless certain economists are disposed to see in the social capital only a predetermined portion of the social wealth, and they apply this theory to what they call the "wage-fund" or "labor-fund." According to them this is a particular portion of the social wealth, the value of a definite quantity of the means of subsist- ence. The limits of this quantity, though they vary from time to time, at any given moment are positively fixed by Nature, and it is in vain that the working-class struggles against these fatal barriers. To believe them, 238 the sum to be distributed among the wage-workers being thus given, it follows that if the share received by each of the recipients is too small, this is because there are too many of them, and, in the last analysis, their misery is a result, not of the social order, but of the natural order. In the first place, the limits which the capitalist sys- tem imposes upon the consumption of the producer are "natural" only in the capitalist environment, just as the lash functions as the "natural" stimulus to labor only in the environment of slavery. It is, indeed, char- acteristic of the nature of capitalist production to limit the share of the producer to what is necessary for the maintenance of his labor-power, and to assign the bal- ance of his product to the capitalist. To make good their case, the economists ought, first of all, to have proved that, in spite of its quite recent origin, the capitalist mode of social production is nevertheless the unalterable and "natural" mode. But, even under the special form of the capitalist sys- tem, it is not true that the "wage-fund" is predetermined by the magnitude of the social wealth or of the social capital. Since the social capital is merely a variable por- tion of the social wealth, the wage-fund, which is only one part of this capital, can not be a predetermined and fixed portion of the social wealth. 239 CHAPTER XXV. THE GENERAL LAW OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION. I. The composition of capital.-Circumstances under which the accumulation of capital may induce a rise in wages.-- The magnitude of capital does not depend on the number of the working population.--II. Diminution of the variable part of capital compared to the constant part.-Concentra- tian and centralization.-III. Relative and active demand for labor.-The law of population peculiar to the capitalist period.--Formation of an industrial reserve army.-How the general rate of wages is determined'.-IV. Different forms of the relative surplus-population.-Pauperism is the inevi- table consequence of the capitalist system. I.-The Composition of Capital. We now have to consider the influence that the growth of capital exercises on the lot of the working-class. The most important factor in the solution of this problem is the composition of capital and the changes that it under- goes with the progress of accumulation. The composition of capital may be looked upon from two points of view. As regards value, it is determined by* the proportion in which the capital is divided into its con-- stant part (the value of the means of production) and its variable part (the value of labor-power). As regards its substance, as it appears in the process of production, all capital consists of means of production and living labor-power, and its composition is determined by the proportion between the mass of the means of production 240 employed and the quantity of labor necessary to utilize them. The first mentioned composition of capital is the value- composition and the latter the technical composition. And, in order to express the close tie between them, we will give the name of organic composition of capital to its value-composition in so far as the latter is determined by its technical composition and, therefore, reflects the variations in the latter. When we speak without quali- fication of the composition of capitals its organic compo- sition is always intended. The numerous individual capitals invested in a par- ticular branch of production and functioning in the hands of many independent capitalists, differ more or less in composition, but the average of their individual com- positions constitute the composition of the total capital devoted to that branch of production. Between one branch of production and another, the average com- position of capital varies widely, but the average of all these average compositions constitutes the composition of the total social capital employed in a country, and it is this last which concerns us in the following investiga- tions. Circumstances Under Which the Accumulation of Cap- ital May Induce a Rise in Wages. A certain quantity of the surplus-value capitalized must be advanced in wages. Hence, assuming the com- position of capital to remain constant, the demand for labor will advance with accumulation, and the variable 241 part of capital will increase, at least, as rapidly as its total mass. On this assumption the constant progress of accumula- tion must induce, sooner or later, a gradual advance of wages. For, as each year furnishes employment for a larger number of wage-laborers than the preceding year, the constantly increasing requirements of accumulation will at last exceed the ordinary supply of labor, and, therefore, the rate of wages will rise. But the more or less favorable circumstances in which the working-class reproduces and multiplies itself, in no wise alter the fundamental character of capitalist repro- duction. Just as simple reproduction constantly repro- duces the same social relation-the capitalist class on the one side, and wage-workers on the other-so accu- mulation merely reproduces the same relation, but with more or greater capitalists on the one side, and more wage-workers on the other. The reproduction of cap- ital necessarily implies that of its great instrument of value-expansion-labor-power. Accumulation of capital is then at the same time increase of the proletariat-of wage-laborers transforming their labor-power into the vital energy of capital and remaining thus, whether they will or no, the serfs of their own product-a product that belongs to the capitalist. In the situation that we are assuming-and which is the most favorable situation possible for the laborers- their state of dependence takes on more endurable forms. Instead of growing in intensity, the capitalist exploita- tion and domination simply grow in extent, as capital expands and the number of its subjects grows larger. 2k The latter get back then a larger portion of their con- stantly increasing net product, so that they find them- selves in a position to enlarge the circle of their enjoy- ments, to buy better food, clothing, furniture, etc., and to lay by some money for a rainy day. But just as bet- ter treatment, more abundant food, more suitable cloth- ing, and a little more pocket money do not free the slave from the fetters of his slavery, neither do they free the wage-serf from his servitude. It must not be forgotten that formation of surplus- value is the absolute law of the capitalist mode of produc- tion. What the purchaser of labor-power proposes to him- self is to enrich himself by making his capital breed or expaid, by producing commodities containing more labor than he pays for, and by the sale of which he, therefore, realizes a portion of value that costs him nothing. Whether the conditions of the sale of labor-power are more or less favorable for the laborers, it is a part of the nature of wages always to cause a certain quantity of unpaid labor to be performed. A rise in wages indicates then, at best, only a relative diminution of the unpaid labor that the laborer must always furnish. But this diminution can never go far enough to endanger the capitalist system. We have admitted that the rate of wages may rise in consequence of the accumulation of capital outstripping the growth of the supply of labor. Then we have this alternative. Either wages continue to rise, and this up- ward movement being caused by the progress of accumu- lation, it is evident that the diminution of the unpaid labor of the workers does not prevent capital from ex- 243 tending its domination. Or else, the continued rise of wages begins to interfere with accumulation, and the lat- ter begins to abate; but this abatement of itself removes the first cause of the rise-viz., the excess of capital compared to the supply of labor. Then the rate of wages falls again to a level consistent with the requirements of the self-expansion of capital-a level which may be above, the same as, or below the level that wages stood at, just before the rise in wages took place. Thus the mechanism of capitalist production of itself overcomes the obstacles it occasionally creates, even when the composition of capital remains constant. But a rise in wages is a powerful stimulus to the improvement of machinery and thereby leads to a change in the compo- sition of capital which inevitably causes a fall in wages. The Magnitude of Capital Does Not Depend On the Number of the Working Population. It is highly important to thoroughly comprehend the connection between the variations in the rate of accumu- lation of capital and the oscillations in the rate of wages which are related to them. Now, it is an excess of capital due to more rapid accu- mulation which renders the labor supply relatively insuf- ficient, and tends, therefore, to raise its price. Now, it is a slackening of accumulation, which renders the labor supply relatively excessive and lowers its price. The rise and fall in the rate of accumulation of capital produces then alternately relative insufficiency and superabund- ance of the supply of labor. But it is not an actual de- 244 crease in the number of the working population, which renders the capital superabundant in the first case, nor an actual augmentation of this number, which renders the capital insufficient in the second. The relation between the accumulation of capital and the rate of wages is simply the relation between the un- paid labor transformed into capital, and the additional paid labor necessary to make this additional capital func- tion. It is not at all a relation between two terms in- dependent, the one of.the other-that is, on one side the magnitude of capital, and, on the other, the number of the working population. It is, in the last analysis, simply a relation between the unpaid labor and the paid labor of the same working population. If the quantity of unpaid labor supplied by the work- ing-class, and accumulated by the capitalist class, in- creases so rapidly that its conversion into capital requires an extraordinary addition of paid labor, then wages rise, and, all other circumstances remaining the same, the unpaid labor proportionally diminishes. But as soon as, in consequence of this diminution of surplus-labor, ac- cumulation abates, a reaction sets in; a smaller portion of revenue is capitalized, the. demand for labor weakens and wages fall. The price of labor, therefore, can rise only within limits which leave intact the foundations of the capitalist system, and assure the reproduction of capital on a pro. gressively increasing scale. And how could it be other- wise under a system in which the laborer exists solely to increase the wealth of others-wealth created by him ? Just as in the religious world, man is dominated by the 245 products of his own brain, so, in the world of capitalist production, he is dominated by the products of his own hand. II.---Diminution of the Variable Part of Capital Com- pared to the Constant Part. As the raising of wages depends only on the continuous progress of accumulation and on its degree of rapidity, we must elucidate the conditions .under which this prog- ress is accomplished. "The same cause," said Adam Smith, "which raises the wages of labor, the increase of stock, tends to increase its productive powers, and to make a smaller quantity of labor produce a greater quantity of work." How is this result obtained ? By a series of changes in the methods of production which enable a given quantity of labor-power to operate a constantly increasing mass of the means of production. This increase of the means of production, as compared to labor-power, is of two kinds. Some, such as machines, buildings, furnaces, etc., are increased in number, size, and efficiency, in order to make the labor more productive; while others-raw ma- terials and auxiliary substances-increase because the labor, having become more productive, consumes more of them in a given time. In the progress of accumulation there takes place not only a quantitative increase of the different elements of capital; but the development of productive powers, which this progress brings to pass, also manifests itself in quali- tative changes in the technical composition of capital. 246 The mass of the means of production-mechanical equip- ment and materials-increases more and more in com- parison with the quantity of labor-power requisite for their productive employment. These changes in the technical composition of capital re-act on its value-composition and involve a more and more considerable increase of its constant part at the expense of its variable part. So that if, for example, in an early stage of accumulation fifty per cent. of the capital-value is converted into means of production and fifty per cent. into labor, at a more advanced stage eighty per cent. of the capital-value will be laid out in means of production and only twenty per cent. in labor. But this increase in value of the means of production is only a very approximate index of the much more rapid and considerable increase in their mass. The reason is that the development of the productive powers of labor, manifested by the increase of the means of production compared to labor-power, causes a fall in the value of the majority of the products of labor, and especially of those which function as means of production. Their value then increases, but not so rapidly as their mass. It must, moreover, be remarked that the progress of accumulation, though it diminishes the variable capital compared to the constant capital, is not inconsistent with an absolute increase of the variable capital. Suppose that a capital-value of $1,200 is, at first, equally divided between constant capital and variable capital, and that after a while, when in consequence of accumulation the capital-value amounts to $3,600, the variable element forms only one-fifth of. the whole, then, in spite of its 247 relative decrease from a half to a fifth, this variable ele- ment will have actually risen from $600 to $720. Co-operation, manufacturing division of labor, me- chanical production-in a word, the methods that natu- rally tend to develop the productive powers of collective labor-can only be introduced when production is already carried on on a comparatively large scale, and as this scale is extended, the more rapid becomes the development of these methods. On the basis of the wage-system, the scale of operations depends, in the first place, on the magnitude of the masses of capital accumulated in the hands of individual producers. This explains why a cer- tain preliminary accumulation-the origin of which we will look into further on-is the starting-point of the capitalist mode of production. But all the methods that this mode of production employs to render labor more productive are so many methods for increasing the sur- plus-value or net product which is the source of accumu- lation. If then accumulation must have reached a cer- tain stage of development before the capitalist mode of production could be established, conversely this mode of production accelerates accumulation, and this more rapid rate of accumulation makes it possible to enlarge the scope of industrial undertakings, and thus causes a further extension of the scale of capitalist production. This reciprocal action and reaction brings about changes in the technical composition of capital which diminish more and more the variable constituent-which serves to pay for labor-power-compared with the constant constituent-which represents the value of the means of production employed. 248 Concentration and Centralization. Every one of the individual masses of capital which in their totality form the social capital, represents in the first place a certain concentration of means of production and subsistence in the hands of a capitalist. And, as accumulation progresses, this concentration increases. While increasing the reproductive components of wealth, accumulation at the same time concentrates them more and more in the hands of individual producers. All these individual capitals, which form the social cap- ital, pass side by side through the accumulative process -i. e., they are 'simultaneously reproduced on a pro- gressively increasing scale. Each individual capital is enriched by new increments resulting from this repro- duction, and thus, while expanding, preserves its distinct existence, and limits the field of action of others. There- fore, not only are there as many centres of concentration as of accumulation, but the division of the social capital into many independent capitals is maintained precisely because every individual capital functions as a centre of concentration. The enlargement of individual capitals increases the social capital in the same proportion. But the accu- mulation of social capital results, not only from the pro- gressive growth of individual capitals, but also from their multiplication in number, caused, for example, by the conversion of stagnant values into individual capitals. Moreover, great capitals that have been long accumulat- ing may suddenly be split up into several distinct cap- itals, as happens when the estate of a capitalist family 249 is divided among the heirs. Concentration is thus thwarted, both by the formation of new capitals, and by the division of old ones. The process of social accumulation produces then two sets of phenomena :-on the one hand, the greater and greater concentration of the reproductive elements of wealth in the hands of individual proprietors, and, on the other, the dispersion and multiplication of centres of accumulation and concentration. At a certain point in economic progress this splitting up of the social capital into many individual capitals comes in conflict with an opposing tendency-the tend- ency of different centres of accumulation and concentra- tion to mutually attract each other and finally to unite, Here, then, we have the fusion of a number of capitals into a smaller number-in a word, this is what is properly called centralization. Let us briefly examine this attrac- tion of capital by capital. The weapons in the war of competition are low prices. The cheapness of products depends, ceteris paribus, on the productivity of labor, and the latter depends on the scale of production. Therefore, the great capitals beat the smaller. We saw above, in Chapters XI and XIII, that the more the capitalist mode of production develops, the larger becomes the minimum amount of capital nec- essary to carry on a particular industry under its normal conditions. The petty capitals, therefore, rush into those branches of production which modern industry has not as yet invaded, or which it dominates as yet only in a sporadic and partial fashion. There the most furious competition rages and always ends in the ruin of many 250 petty capitalists whose capitals are in part wiped out, and in part pass into the hands of the victors. The development of capitalist production brought forth an altogether new force-the credit system. This was, originally, slyly introduced as a modest aid to ac- cumulation. It soon became a new and terrible weapon in the war of competition, and finally developed into an immense, complex, widely ramified, social apparatus for the centralization of capitals. With the extension and growth of accumulation and capitalist production, competition and the credit sys- tem, the most powerful instruments of centralization, develop proportionally. And so, in our time, the tend- ency to centralization is stronger than in any prior his- torical epoch. The main point which differentiates cen- tralization from concentration, which is simply the con- sequence of reproduction on an increasing scale, is that centralization does not depend on an actual increase of the social capital. The latter is the sum of the indi- vidual capitals, and these form the subject-matter of centralization. They may be more or less considerable, according as accumulation is more or less advanced, but centralization involves only a change in the distribution of existing capitals, only a change in the number of the individual capitals composing the social capital. In a particular branch of production, centralization would not have reached its ultimate limit, until all the capitals engaged in it should form only one single indi- vidual capital. In a given society, it would not have reached its ultimate limit, until the entire national cap- 251 ital should form only one single capital in the hands of a single capitalist or of a single company of capitalists. Centralization only promotes the progress of accumu- ]ation by placing the industrial magnates in a position to extend the scale of their operations. Whether this re- sult be due to accumulation or to centralization, whether the latter be effected by the process of forcible annexa- tion-i. e., by certain capitals overthrowing others and absorbing their dispersed elements, or whether the fusion of many capitals be accomplished by the process of "be- nevolent assimilation" by stock-companies, trusts, etc., the economic effect will remain just the same. The ex- tended scale of production will always be the starting- point of a more comprehensive organization of collective labor, of a greater development of its material instru- ments, in other words, of a more and more thorough transformation of the routine processes of production on a small scale into processes of production socially com- bined and scientifically directed. But it is evident that accumulation-the gradual in- crease of capital by means of its reproduction on an increasing scale-is but a slow process compared to cen- tralization, which, in the first place, merely changes the quantitative arrangement of the component parts of the social capital. The great railway systems, for example, would not yet be built, if they had had to wait for accu- mulation to raise up individual capitals equal to this cyclopean task which the centralization of capital, by means of stock-companies, accomplished, as it were, in a trice. The great capitals created by centralization aie repro- duced like the others, but more quickly than the others, and become, therefore, in their turn powerful agents of social accumulation. By enlarging the scale and accel- erating the rate of accumulation, centralization multi- plies and precipitates alterations in the technical com- position of capital, alterations which enlarge its con- stant part at the expense of its variable part, or cause a relative diminution of the demand for labor compared to the magnitude of capital. III.-Relative and Actual Demand for Labor. The actual demand for labor occasioned by a particular capital depends, not on the absolute magnitude of this capital, but on the absolute magnitude of its variable part which is the only part of it exchanged for labor- power. The relative demand for labor occasioned by a particular capital-i. e., the ratio between the magnitude of this capital and the quantity of labor that it absorbs, is determined by the ratio between the total magnitude of this capital and the magnitude of its variable part. We have just shown that, while accumulation enlarges the social capital, it at the same time reduces the relative magnitude of its variable part, and thus diminishes the relative demand for labor. What now is the effect of this process on the lot of the wage-working-class ? To solve this problem, it is clear that we must begin by in- quiring how a diminution in the relative demand for labor reacts on the actual demand for labor. Suppose a capital of $240; let the relative magnitude of the variable part be one-half of the whole capital. If, 253 while the latter remains unchanged, the variable com- ponent falls from a half to a third, its actual magnitude will then be only $80, instead of $120. The rule is that so long as the magnitude of a capital remains constant, every diminution of the relative magnitude of its vari- able part is also a diminution of its actual magnitude. If the capital of $240 be tripled, it will be $720; and, if the relative magnitude of the variable part falls in this same proportion-i. e., if it is divided by 3, and, therefore, falls from a half to a sixth, its actual magnitude will be $120 as in the beginning, since $120 is the sixth of $720, just as it is the half of $240. The rule is that, if the capital varies in magnitude, the wage-fund, in spite of a diminution of its relative magnitude, will preserve the same actual magnitude, if this diminution is propor- tionate to the increase of the entire capital. If our capital of $240 be doubled, it will be $480; and, if the relative magnitude of the variable part falls at a more rapid rate than this rate of increase of the entire capital-if, for instance, it falls, as before, from a half to a sixth, its actual magnitude will then be only $80. The rule is, if the ratio of decrease of the relative magni- tude of the variable part of capital be greater than the ratio of increase of the entire capital advanced, the wage- fund will suffer an actual diminution in spite of the in- crease of the capital. If this capital of $240 is tripled (as in a prior illustra- tion), it will be equal to $720; and, if the relative magni- tude of the variable part falls, but in a ratio smaller than the capital's ratio of increase-if it be divided by 2 while the capital was multiplied by 3, it will fall from a half 2 54 to a quarter, but its actual magnitude will rise to $180. The rule is, if the ratio of decrease of the relative magni- tude of the variable part of capital be smaller than the ratio of increase of the entire capital, the wage-fund will receive an actual augmentation, in spite of the diminu- tion of its relative magnitude. These illustrations show us, both the successive stages which the masses of the social capital distributed among the different branches of production pass through, and the various conditions which different branches of pro- duction simultaneously present. We have the examples of factories in which the same number of workers suffice to operate an increasing quan- tity of means of production. As, in this case, the in- crease of capital is due to the increase of its constant ele- ment, it, therefore, proportionally diminishes the relative quantity of the labor-power exploited, without chang- ing its actual quantity. We also have examples of an actual diminution of the number of workers employed in certain branches of industry, and of their simultaneous actual increase in other branches of industry, although in both cases there is an actual enlargement of the capi- tal invested. We pointed out, in Chapter XV, the causes which, in spite of contrary tendencies, swell the ranks of the wage- workers with the progress of accumulation. We will here recapitulate what was there said that is pertinent to our present subject, The same development of machinery, which occasions a diminution, not only relative, but often actual, of the number of workers employed in certain branches of in- 255 dustry, enables these branches to turn out a larger mass of cheap products, and, in this way, promotes the devel- opment of other industries-those to which the branches already revolutionized furnish the means of production, or else those from which they draw their materials, tools, etc., and thus there are formed so many new openings for labor. Besides, there are times when this process of technical revolution seems to pause, and in such intervals accumu- lation appears as a process of growth on the technical basis last established. Then, the law according to which the demand for labor increases in the same ratio as cap- ital again comes into partial operation. But, at the very time, when the number of workers attracted by capital reaches its maximum, products become so abundant that the smallest obstacle to their distribution seems to bring the social mechanism to a standstill, and the demand for labor abates or temporarily ceases. The necessity for economy on the part of the capitalists leads to tech- nical improvements, which naturally diminish the number of the workers required. And the intervals, during which accumulation tends to increase the demand for labor, become shorter and shorter. Thus, as soon as mechanical industry gains the ascend- ancy, the progress of accumulation redoubles the energy of the forces which tend to diminish the relative demand for labor, and weakens the forces which tend to increase the actual demand for labor. The variable capital, and consequently the demand for labor, increases with the growth of the social capital, of which it forms a part, but it increases in a decreasing ratio, 256 The Law of Population Peculiar to the Capitalist Period. As the actual demand for labor is controlled not only by the magnitude of the variable capital already func- tioning, but also by the average rate of its continued increase (Chapter XXIV), the supply of labor remains normal so long as it follows this movement of the variable capital. But when the rate of increase of the variable capital falls, the same supply of labor, which up to that time was normal, becomes superabundant, so that a larger or smaller portion of the wage-working-class, having ceased to be necessary for the expansion of capital, is now superfluous or supernumerary. As this circuit is repeated with the progress of accumulation, it leads to the forma- tion of a constantly increasing surplus-population. The progress of accumulation and the movement, which accompanies it, of a relative diminution of the vari- able capital and of a corresponding diminution of the relative demand for labor, which, as we have just seen, involve the actual increase of the variable capital and of the demand for labor in a decreasing ratio, also involve, as a sort of final complemental consequence, the creation of a relative surplus-population. We say "relative," be- cause it is due, not to an actual increase of the working- population, but to the condition and composition of the social capital, which enable it to dispense with a larger or smaller proportion of the working-population. As this surplus-population exists only with relation to the temporary requirements of capitalist exploitation, it may increase and diminish suddenly as production contracts and expands. 257 By causing the accumulation of capital, and, in propor- tion to their success in accomplishing this, the wage- working-class themselves, therefore, produce the means of their own transformation into a relative surplus-pop- ulation. That is the law of population peculiar to the capitalist period, and corresponding to its particular mode of production. Every historical mode of social pro- duction has its own law of population, a law applicable only to it, and which passes out of existence with it, and has, therefore, only an historical value. Formation of an Industrial Reserve Army. If accumulation, the development of wealth on a capi- talist basis, necessarily creates a surplus laboring popula- tion, the latter becomes, in its turn, the most powerful lever of accumulation-even a condition of existence of fully developed capitalist production. This surplus- population forms an industrial reserve army belonging to capital just as absolutely, as if it had raised and dis- ciplined it at its own expense. Independently of the nat- ural increase of population, it provides capital, to meet its varying requirements, with a mass of human material always at its disposal for exploitation. The presence of this industrial reserve army, the recall of part or all of it to active service, followed by its re- formation on a larger scale-all this is part and parcel of the checkered life traversed by modern industry-a well nigh regular, decennial cycle-not to speak of other ir- regular perturbations-made up of periods of ordinary activity, overproduction, crisis, and stagnation. 258 This peculiar course of modern industry is not met with in any of the former epochs of human history. These recurrent cycles, which always end in a general crisis- the end of one cycle and the starting-point of another- only date from the time when mechanical progress, hav- ing struck its roots deep in the economic soil, began to exercise a preponderating influence over the entire na- tional production; when, thanks to it, foreign commerce began to surpass domestic trade in importance; when the universal market annexed successively vast areas in America, Asia, and Australia; and when, finally, the industrial nations had become sufficiently numerous. Up to the present time the length of these periods has been ten or eleven years, but there is no reason why this figure should be permanent. On the contrary, it is a necessary conclusion from the laws of capitalist production, which we have just developed, that it will vary, and that the cycles will grow shorter. The industrial progress which follows the advance of accumulation, while it constantly reduces the number of laborers necessary to operate an increasing mass of means of production, at the same time increases the quantity of work that the individual laborer has to furnish. As it develops the productive powers of labor and thereby de- rives more products from less labor, the capitalist system also develops the means of extracting more work from the wage-laborer, either by prolonging his working-day or by rendering his labor more intense, or else by appar- ently increasing the number of the workers employed, by replacing one skilled and high-priced worker by sev- eral unskilled and cheap workers-men by women, adults 259 by children, one American workingman by three Chinese. These are all methods for diminishing the demand for labor and rendering the supply of it excessive-in a word, for producing supernumeraries. The over-work inflicted on the portion of the wage- working-class in active service, the employed, swells the ranks of the unemployed-the reserves-and the com- petition of the latter against the former in the search for employment places a pressure upon the employed that forces them to submit more meekly to the dictates of capital. How the General Rate of Wages Is Determined. The variations in the general rate of wages are ex- clusively determined by the varying proportions in which the working-class is divided between the active army and the reserve army; and the increase or decrease of the rel- ative surplus-population corresponds to the periodic changes of the industrial cycle. Instead of making the supply of labor depend on the alternate increase and decrease of the actively function- ing capital, the gospel of bourgeois political economy makes the expansion or contraction of capital depend on an absolute rise or fall in the number of the working population. According to this doctrine, accumulation produces a rise in wages, and this rise gradually causes an increase in t�he number of the laborers, which contin- ues until the labor-market is so overstocked, that the capital is no longer adequate to employ them all at once. 260 Then wages fall. This fall is a mortal blow to the work- ing population. At the least, it prevents them from in- creasing, so that, compared to the number of the labor- ers, capital again becomes excessive, and the demand for labor once more begins to exceed the supply, wages rise again, and so on. And a cycle of this sort would be possible under the capitalist system of production! Why, before the rise of wages could have produced the slightest actual in- crease in the absolute number of the population really capable of working, again and again would the time have passed by during which the industrial campaign must have been opened, the battle fought, and the victory won! However rapid human reproduction may be, in any case, there must be an interval of a generation be- fore adult workers can be replaced. Now, the profits of factory-owners depend especially on their ability to take advantage of the favorable moment when there is a brisk demand. They must, therefore, be able to respond to a sudden change in the market by an immediate increase of their output. They must, therefore, find ready and wait- ing on the market plenty of disposable "hands." They can not wait until their demand for hands causes, by raising the rate of wages, a sufficient increase of the popu- lation to provide them the hands they need. Capitalist accumulation could not proceed without a surplus work- ing-class population. The expansion of production at a given moment is possible only with a reserve army under the orders of capital, only when the working force may be increased independently of the natural increase of popu- latian, The economists confound the laws that regulate the general rate of wages, and express the ratio between capital and labor-power--both considered in their total- ity-with the laws which distribute, in detail, the popula- tion among the various branches of industry. Special circumstances favor accumulation, now in one branch, now in another. As soon as the profits in one branch surpass the average rate of profit, additional capi- tals rush into it, the demand for labor grows stronger and wages rise. Their rise attracts a larger part of the working-class to the privileged branch of industry until by force of this continued influx of labor-power wages fall back to their ordinary level, or even fall below it. Then the rush of laborers into that branch of industry not only ceases, but is followed by an exodus from it into other branches. Accumulation of capital really produces a rise of wages; this rise, an increase of laborers; this in- crease, a fall of wages; and, finally, this fall, a decrease of laborers. But the economists err by proclaiming as a gen- eral law of wages a rule based upon a local oscillation of the labor-market, produced by changes in the distribu- tion of the laborers among the various branches of pro- duction. Delusion of the Law of Supply and Demand. After it has once become the pivot on which the law of supply and demand of labor turns, relative surplus- population permits this law to function only within lim- its consonant with capitalist domination and exploita- tion. 21 262 Let us revert, in this connection, to a theory already referred to in Chapter XV. When a machine displaces laborers hitherto employed, the utopians of political economy pretend that this operation at the same time sets free a certain capital destined to employ them anew in some other branch of industry. We have shown that this is in no sense true. No part of the former capital is set free for the discharged laborers, who, on the con- trary, are set free for new capitals to dispose of-if there chance to be any such new capitals. We are now in a position to understand how little heed should be paid to this pretended "theory of compensation." The laborers displaced by the machine and set free, are at the disposition of every new capital about to enter upon productive activity. Whether this capital attracts them or others, the effect produced on the general de- mand for labor will always be nil, if this new capital is just sufficient to withdraw from the market as many hands as the machines threw upon it. If it withdraws a less number, the result will be an increase in the number of the unemployed. Lastly, if it 'withdraws a larger number, the general demand for labor will increase only to the extent that the number of laborers thus newly em- ployed exceeds the number of those displaced by the ma- chine. The increase that would have taken place in the general demand for laborers as a consequence of the new eapitals seeking investment, is, therefore, in every case neutralized to the extent of the competition of the labor- ers thrown upon the labor-market by machinery. And that is the general effect of all the methods that contribute to render laborers superfluous. Thanks to them, the supply and demand of labor cease to be inde- pendent movements of two opposing forces-labor-power and capital. Capital acts on both sides at once. If its accumulation increases the demand for laborers, we know that it also increases the supply by making super- numeraries. Its dice are loaded. Under these condi- tions, the law of supply and demand of labor completes the despotism of capital. And so, when the laborers begin to perceive that their function as instruments of the expansion of capital be- comes more precarious with the increase in the pro- ductiveness of their labor and the growth of the wealth of their masters; when they discover that the deadly violence of the competition among themselves depends entirely on the pressure exerted by the reserve army; when, in order to weaken the baleful effect of this "natural" law of capitalist accumulation, they combine and organize to secure common, concerted action of the employed and the unemployed, then straightway capital and its authorized defender, the bourgeois political economist, cry out against this sacrilegious attempt to violate the "eternal" law of supply and demand. IV.-Different Forms of the Relative Surplus- Population. Althougb. the relative surplus-population is infinitely varied in form, yet we can distinguish a few great eats- gories, a few very pronounced differences of form-the floating form, the latent form and the stagnant form. The centres of modern industry, factories, manufac- 283 264 tories, iron-works, mines, etc., without cessation, alter- nately attract and repel laborers; but, generally speaking, they attract more in the long run than they repel, so that the number of laborers exploited goes on increas- ing, although it relatively decreases compared to the scale of production. Here the surplus-population exists in the floating form. Factories and most manufactories employ male labor- ers only until they reach maturity. After that only a very small portion of them are retained, and the majority are regularly discharged. This majority forms an ele- ment of the surplus-population that grows with the extension of modern industry. Capital requires a larger proportion of women, children and young people than of mature men. The exploitation of labor-power by capi- tal is, moreover, so severe that the laborer is worked out, used up at an age when he ought to be only half-way along life's pathway. When he reaches mature age, he must make room for a younger worker, and must drop down a step in the social scale, fortunate if he is not irrevocably relegated to the ranks of the supernumera- ries. Moreover, it is among the modern industrial work- ing-class that there is found the shortest average dura- tion of life. Under these conditions the ranks of this portion of the proletariat can grow in numbers only by a frequent renewal of the individual elements. There- fore, the generations must follow, one the other, in rapid succession. This social necessity is met by means of early marriages, and by the premium that the exploita- tion of children places upon their production. As soon as capitalist production seizes upon agri- S65 culture and introduces the use of machinery, the de- mand for labor absokitely falls in proportion to the accumulation of capital. Therefore, part of the agri- cultural population is always on the point of transition into an urban or manufacturing population. The coun- try could not furnish the towns and cities with new elements of population, as it does, if there were not in the country itself a latent surplus-population, which be- comes apparent in its full extent only at periods of emigration on a large scale from the country to the towns and cities. The farm laborer is, therefore, re- duced to the minimum of wages, and has one foot already in the slough of pauperism. On the other hand, notwithstanding this relative sur- plus-population, the population of the agricultural dis- tricts is, at the same time, insufficient. This lack is felt, not only locally in those places where there is a rapid drain of population to the towns, the mines, the rail- ways, etc., but generally, in spring, summer and autumn, at the season when agriculture requires additional hands. There are always too many laborers for the ordinary re- quirements, always too few for the exceptional and tem- porary requirements of agriculture. Tle third category of the relative surplus-population --the stagnant--really belongs to the active industrial army, but at the same time the extreme irregularity of its employment makes it an inexhaustible reservoir of disposable labor-power. Wonted to chronic misery, to conditions of existence altogether precarious and shame- fully below the ordinary level of the working-class, it becomes the broad basis of special branches of exploita- 266 tion in which labor-time attains its maximum and the rate of wages its minimum. The so-called domestic in- dustry furnishes us a frightful example of this. This stratum, which is incessantly recruited from the super- numerary forces of modern 'industry and agriculture, reproduces itself on an increasing scale. If the deaths are many, the birth-rate is also very high. Such a phenom- enon reminds one of the extraordinarily rapid and copi- ous reproduction of certain weak and constantly hunted species of animals. "Poverty," said Adam Smith, "seems favorable to generation." Finally, the lowest residuum of the relative surplus- population dwells in the hell of pauperism. Without counting the tramps, criminals, prostitutes, beggars and all those who are called the dangerous classes, this social stratum is composed of three categories. The first comprises the laborers able to work. Its numbers increase at every crisis, and diminish at every revival of business. The second category comprises orphans and the children of the dependent poor. These are so many candidates for the industrial reserve army, and, in times of great prosperity they are, as a body, drafted into active service. The third category em- braces the most wretched of the poor, first, working men and women whom the social development has, as it were, demonetized, by suppressing the special detail operation which the division of labor had made their only means of support; then, those who have, unhappily, passed the normal age of the productive laborer; and, finally, the immediate victims of industry-the sickly, the maimed, widows, etc., whose numbers rise with the rise in the number of dangerous machines, mines, chemical works, etc. Pauperism is the Inevitable Consequence of the Capi- talist System. Pauperism is the military hospital (Soldiers' Home) of the labor army. Its production is included in that of the relative surplus-population; it is equally inevitable. Together with surplus-population, it forms a condition of the existence of capitalist wealth. As the same causes which develop the accumulation of capital with the productive power of labor lead to the setting free of labor-power, the industrial reserve army must increase with the development of the material instrumentalities of wealth. But the more the reserve army grows in proportion to the active army of labor, the greater also is the growth of official pauperism. That is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation. The action of this law, as of every other, is naturally modified by the particular circumstances. The analysis of relative surplus-value (in the Fourth Section) led us to this conclusion: in the environment of the capitalist system, where the laborer does not make use of the means of production, but the means of pro- duction make use of the laborer, all methods for multi- plying the resources and the power of collective labor are brought into use at the expense of the individual laborer; all means for developing production transform themselves into means for dominating and exploiting the 268 producer; they mutilate him till he is nothing but a fragment of a man, an appendage of a machine; they array against him, as so many hostile forces, the scientific powers of production; they take away all charm from his labor and convert it into compulsory toil; they render the conditions under which his labor is performed more and more oppressive, and subject the laborer during his working hours to a despotism as unlimited as it is degrad- ing; they convert his entire life into labor-time, and drive his wife and children into the factories-the hard- labor penitentiaries of capitalism. But all the methods that promote the production of surplus-value are equally conducive to accumulation, and all progress in accumulation promotes, on its side, the development of those methods. It follows, therefore, that, whether the rate of wages be high or low, the con- dition of the laborer must grow worse in the same meas- ure that capital accumulates. Therefore, accumulation of wealth, on one side, is offset by the equal accumula- tion of poverty, suffering, ignorance, brutality, physical and moral degradation, and slavery, on the other side-- the side of the class that produces this very capital. EIGHTH SECTION. PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION. CHAPTER XXVI. THE SECRET OF PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION. I. Divorce of the producer from the means of production. --Explanation of the historical process which has super- seded, the feudal regime by the capitalist regime.-II. Brute force superseded by the exploiting process as a subjugating agency.-III. Establishment of the home markert for indus- trial capital. I.-Divorce of the Producer from the Means of Pro- duction. We have seen how money becomes capital, how capital becomes the source of surplus-value, and surplus-value the source of more capital. But capitalist accumulation supposes the prior existence of surplus-value, and sur- plus-value implies the existence of the capitalist mode of production, which in its turn implies the previous ac- cumulation of considerable masses of capital in the hands of producers of commodities. This whole movement, therefore, seems to turn in a vicious circle, from which there is no escape save the assumption of a primitive 270 accumulation serving as the starting-point of capitalist production instead of being a result of it. What is the genesis of this primitive accumulation ? According to actual history, conquest, enslavement, armed robbery, and the reign of brute force have always been the dominant factors. On the contrary, according to those pious frauds-the text-books of political econ- omy-the entire course of economic industry has been a continuous idyl. There have never been any means of enrichment but labor and integrity. In truth, the meth- ods of primitive accumulation are anything but suitable subjects for an idyl. The thieving confiscation of the property of churches and charitable institutions, the fraudulent alienation of the domains of the State, the pillage of the communal lands, and the transformation, under the sway of terrorism, of feudal property into modern private property-these and such as these are the idyllic sources of primitive accumulation. If, in the relation between the capitalist and the wage- worker, the former plays the role of master and the latter the role of servant, this is in consequence of a contract by which not only the laborer is placed at the disposal, and, therefore, under the orders, of the capitalist, but by which also he renounces all property-rights in his own product. Why does the wage-worker make this bargain ? Because he owns only his own personal labor-power, labor in the potential state, while all the external conditions requisite for the materialization of this potentiality, the materials and tools necessary for the productive per- formance of labor, the command over the means of sub- 271 sistence indispensable to life, are all in the power of the other contracting party. The basis of the capitalist system is, therefore, the ab- solute divorce of the producer from the means of produQ- tion. Before this system could be established, therefore, the means of production must, to some extent at least, have been forcibly wrested from the producers, who em- ployed thern to realize their own labor-power, and must have been appropriated by producers of commodities who employed them to speculate in the labor of others. The historical process which divorced labor from its external conditions, from the means of production,-that js, prim- itive accumulation in a nut shell. Explanation of the Historical Process Which Has Superseded the Feudal Regime by the Capitalist Regime. The economic structure of capitalism has evolved from the economic structure of feudalism. The dis- solution of the one set free the constituent elements of the other. Before the laborer, the immediate producer, could dis- pose of his own person, he must first have ceased to be attached to the soil or to the person of another. Further, he could not become the free vendor of labor, taking his commodity, labor-power, wherever he could find a market for it, until he escaped from the regime of the guilds, with their privileges, their wardens, their rules of appren- ticeship, etc. Hence, the historical movement which transforms the producers into wage-workers appears as their emancipation from serfdom and the regime of the guilds. On the other hand, these men thus emancipated became sellers of themselves, only because they were obliged to, in order to live, only because they had been robbed of all their means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the former order of things. The history of their expropriation is not open to dispute, it is written in the history of humanity in indel- ible letters of fire and blood. On their side, the industrial capitalists, these new po- tentates, had not only to displace the handicraft guild- masters,'but also the feudal nobles who held possession of the sources of wealth. Their accession to power ap- pears, from this point of view, as the result of a victorious struggle against lordly power with its revolting privi- leges, and against the regime of the guilds with the tram- mels that it placed upon the free development of produc- tion and the free exploitation of man by man. The forward movement consisted in changing the form of servitude. Feudal exploitation has been transformed into capitalist exploitation. II.-Brute Force Succeeded by the Exploiting Process as a Subjugating Agency. That the material conditions of labor under the form of capital confronted on the market men with nothing to sell save their labor-power, was not enough. That the latter were compelled by force to sell themselves "volun- tarily" was not enough. 273 The nascent bourgeoisie-and here we have an essen- tial factor in primitive accumulation-could not get along without the constant intervention of the State to prolong the working-day (Chapter X), to "regulate" wages, i. e., to lower them to an agreeable level, to keep the laborer in the desired degree of subjection, forcing him under the yoke of the wage-system by grotesquely severe laws, directed, in the West of Europe toward the end of the fifteenth century and during the sixteenth, against the homeless proletariat, against the forefathers of the present working-class punished for having been transformed, in most cases by forcible expropriation, into vagabonds and paupers. We do not forget that, in the beginning of the French Revolution, the bourgeoisie dared to rob the working- class of the right of association which the latter had just won. By a law of the 14th of June, 1791, every agreement between laborers for the defense of their com- mon interests was declared a "crime against liberty and in violation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man," and punishable by fine and deprivation of the rights of citizenship. With the progress of capitalist production there is formed a larger and larger class of laborers who, owing to education and transmitted habits, submit to the ex- igencies of the economic regime just as instinctively as they do to the changes of the seasons. So soon as this mode of production has reached a certain stage of de- velopment, its mechanism breaks down all resistance; the constant presence of a relative surplus-population keeps the law of supply and demand of labor, and therefore wages, within limits in harmony with the requirements of capital; and the unyielding pressure of the economic conditions completes the despotism of the capitalist over the laborer. Sometimes, even yet constraint is resorted to, brute force is employed, but this is only an exception. In the ordinary course of events the laborer can be aban- doned to the action of the "natural laws" of society,- i. e., to his condition of dependence upon capital begot- ten, guaranteed and perpetuated by the very mechanism of production. III.-Establishment of the Home Market for Industrial Capital. The repeated expropriation of the tillers of the soil, aided by the barbarous laws against vagabonds, supplied the town industries with a host of proletarians and helped destroy the old domestic industry. We must pause an instant and examine this factor in primitive accumula- tion. Formerly the peasant family first made or fashioned, and then directly consumed, at least in great part, food- stuffs and raw materials-fruits of their own labor. From simple use-values these raw materials have become com- modities and are sold to manufactories, and the objects which were, thanks to these materials, made in the coun- try itself, are transformed into articles of manufacture which find their market in the country. From that time, the domestic industries of the peasants disappeared. This disappearance alone can give the home market of a country the extent and stability demanded by the re- quirements of capitalist production. But the manufacturing period, properly so-called, did not succeed in carrying this revolution through in thor- ough and radical fashion. If it did, indeed, destroy do- mestic industries in certain branches of industry and in particular localities, it created them elsewhere. It gave rise to the formation of a class of small peasant-artisans, for whom the tilling of the soil has become an accessory calling, and whose principal occupation is industrial la- bor, the products of which they sell to manufacturers either directly or through the medium of merchants. Modern mechanical industry definitively and absolutely divorces agriculture from rural domestic industry whose roots-spinning and weaving by hand-it tears up. The necessary development of the collective powers of labor and the transformation of routine production on a small scale into scientific, socially organized production date from the era of this definitive divorce. As it is me- chanical industry which completes this separation, it is also to it that capital is, in the first instance, indebted for the complete conquest of the home market of a country. CHAPTER XXVII. GENESIS OF THE INDUSTRIAL CAPITALIST. Primitive accumulation is accomplished by force.-The colonial regime, public debts, and the protectionist system. Primitive Accumulation Is Accomplished By Force. There is no doubt that many guild-masters, inde- pendent artisans and even wage-laborers first became embryonic capitalists, and then gradually, by means of a constantly expanding exploitation of wage-labor accom- panied by a corresponding accumulation, metamorphosed themselves into fully developed capitalists. Yet, this gradual formation of capital was far from meeting the commercial requirements of the new world- market created by the great discoveries of the end of the fifteenth century. But the middle ages had handed down two forms of capital which develop under the most di- verse economic regimes, and which, before the modern era, were the only forms of capital. These are usurer's capital and merchant's capital. Now, the feudal system in the country and the guild organization in the towns were barriers which prevented the money-capital, formed by usury and commerce, from turning into industrial cap- ital, but these barriers were at last overthrown. The discovery of gold and silver mines in America, the entombment in the mines of the enslaved natives or their extermnination, the beginning of the conquest and pillage 277 of the East Indies, the conversion of Africa into a hunt- ing-ground for the kidnapping of negroes-these were the benevolent processes of primitive accumulation which signalized the rosy dawn of the capitalist era. Imme- diately afterward the mer~cantile war broke out with the entire globe for its theatre. Beginning with the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain, it assumes gigantic pro- portions in the crusade of England against the French Revolution and in our own times is still going on in a series of piratical onslaughts such as the notorious opium wars against China and the "benevolent assimilation" of the Philippine Islands by the United States. Of the different methods of primitive accumulation, such as the colonial system, public debts, modern fiscal methods, the protectionist system, etc., some are based on the employment of brute force; but all, without excep- tion, make use of the powers of the State-the concen- trated and organized force of society-in order to violent- ly accelerate the passage from the feudal economic order to the capitalist economic order, and to curtail the transi- tion period. In fact, force is the midwife of every old society in the throes of child-birth. Force is an economic agency. The Colonial Regime, Public Debts and the Protection- ist System. The colonial system developed navigation and com- merce. It called into existence mercantile companies to which governments granted monopolies and privileges, and these companies became powerful instrumentalities 2 8 for the concentration of capital. It secured markets for the nascent manufactures, and the monopoly of the co- lonial market doubled the ease of accumulation in manu- facture. The treasures extorted by plain force, outside Europe, by the forced labor of aborigines reduced to slav- ery, by pillage and murder, were brought back to the mother country, to function there as capital. In our days, industrial supremacy implies commercial suprem- acy; but, in the manufacturing period, properly so-called, it is commercial supremacy which gives industrial su- premacy. This explains why the colonial regime played such an important part in those days. The system of public debts, which Venice and Genoa began to introduce in the middle ages, came into general use throughout Europe during the period of manufac- ture. National debt-in other words, the sale or hy- pothecation of the State, whether it be despotic, consti- tutional or republican-placed its stamp upon the cap- italist era. The only part of the so-called national wealth, that is actually in the collective possession of modern peoples, is their national debt. .The public debt acts as one of the most powerful in- struments of primitive accumulation. By a stroke of its magic wand, it endows barren money with reproductive powers, and thus transforms it into capital-expanding capital, but free from the risks inseparable from its em- ployment as industrial capital or even as the capital of a money-loaner dealing with individuals. Those who loan to the State, in truth, give up nothing, for their principal, transformed into easily negotiable 279 public securities, continues to function in their hands like so much legal-tender money. But, besides the class of idle bondholders thus created, besides the suddenly arisen fortunes of the financiers who act as middlemen between the government and the nation, the public debt has given rise to stock companies, to commerce in nego- tiable paper of every kind, to gambling operations, to stock-broking-inta word, to the speculation of Lombard Street and Wall Street, and to the supremacy of the mod- ern Money Power. At their birth, the great banks, adorned with sonor- ous national titles, were merely associations of private speculators who established themselves alongside of the respective governments and, thanks to the privileges they secured from them, were able to lend them the money of the public--i. e., the money of their depositors. As the national debt rests upon the public revenue, from which the annual interest must be paid, the modern system of taxation was the necessary consequence of na- tional loans. These loans, which enable governments to meet extraordinary expenses, without making the tax- payer immediately conscious of the added burden, lead afterward to a rise in the tax-rate. On the other hand, the raising of taxes caused by the accumulation of debts successively contracted, compels governments, in the event of new extraordinary expenditures, to resort to new loans. The modern fiscal system which rests, in the be- ginning, on the taxation of articles of primary necessity, and involves, consequently, the raising of their prices, must in virtue of the nature of its own mechanism, therefore, become more and more oppressive. Over- 280 taxation is not an incident, but is of the essence of the system, and it constantly tends to expropriate the peasants, the artisans, and the other elements of the lower middle-class. The great part, which the public debt, and the cor- respondent fiscal system, have played in the capitalization of wealth and the expropriation of the masses, has led many writers to fall into the mistake of seeking to find in this debt system the fundamental cause of the misery of modern peoples. The protectionist system, with its protective duties, its bounties on exportation, its monopolies in the home market, etc., was an artificial means of manufacturing* manufacturers, of expropriating independent laborers, of transforming the instruments and material conditions of labor into capital, and of forcibly curtailing the period of transition from the mediaeval to the modern mode of production. The process of manufacturing manufactur- ers was still further simplified in certain countries which had profited by Colbert's object-lessons. Here, the en- chanted source from which the industrial exploiters di- rectly drew their primitive capital- under the form of a loan or even of a gratuitous grant-was often the public treasury. The colonial system, public debts, squandering of the * Translator's Note. Heretofore in this work the word manufacture, and its derivatives, have been used in the strict sense of manufacture before the introduction of modern machinery. Here, they are used in their popular meaning. 281 public revenue, industrial protection, commercial wars, etc., developed tremendously during the infancy of mod- ern industry. In short, that is how the divorce of the laborer from the means of realizing his labor was accomplished, that is how the latter were transformed into capital and the mass of the people into wage-laborers. Capital comes into the world sweating blood and dirt from every pore. CHIAPTER XXVIII. HISTORICAL TENDENCY OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION. Private property based on personal labor superseded by capitalist property.-The transformation of capitalist owner- ship into social ownership. Private Property Based on Personal Labor Supersedec by Capitalist Property. We have now seen that the primitive accumulation of capital, its historical formation, is essentially the ex- propriation of the immediate producer, the desuetude of property based on the personal labor of its possessor. Private property, as the antithesis of collective prop- erty, exists only where the instruments and other ex- ternal requisites for labor belong to individuals. But the specific character of private property depends upon whether these individuals are laborers or non-laborers. The private property of the laborer in his means of production is a feature of petty agricultural or manu- facturing industry, and petty industry is a school for the development of the manual dexterity, the artistic skill and the free individuality of the laborer. It is true, this mode of production is met with under slavery, serfdom and other forms of dependence. But it flourishes, it dis- plays its full energy, it assumes its developed and classical form, only where the laborer is the free owner of the means of labor that he himself makes use of--the peasant 283 of the soil that he tills, the handicraftsman of the tool that he handles with artistic skill. This industrial regime of independent petty produ- cers, working on their own account, implies the sub- division of the land and the broad distribution of the other means of production. As it excludes their concen- tration, it also excludes co-operation on a large scale, the division of labor in shop or field, machinery, the scientific conquest of Nature by man, the free development of the social powers of labor, and the conscious and intelligent co-ordination and correlation of the activities of all the members of a society. It is compatible only with a prim- itive and undeveloped state of production and of society. To perpetuate it, if that were possible, would be, as Pecquer well said, "to decree universal mediocrity." But, when it reaches a certain stage, it begets the material agents of its own dissolution. From that mo- ment, forces and passions which it restrains begin to stir in the bosom of society. It is an obstacle to development. It must be, it is annihilated. The process of its elimina- tion transforming the individually owned and widely dis- persed means of production into socially concentrated means of production, converting the Lilliputian property of the many into the Brobdingnagian property of the few; this tragic, frightful expropriation of the laboring populat:ion heralds the birth of capital. This general movement includes a whole series of violent processes, only the more important of which we passed in review in the course of our investigation into the methods of 'primitive accumulation. 284 The expropriation of the immediate producers was car- ried out with a pitiless cynicism inspired by the most in- famous motives, the most sordid passions-all the more odious on account of their pettiness. Private property based on personal labor, that form of property which welds, as it were, the isolated and autonomous laborer to the external conditions of his labor, is superseded by capitalist private property based on exploitation of the labor of others-on the wage-system. The Transformation of Capitalist Ownership into Social Ownership. As soon as this process of transformation has decom- posed the old society from top to bottom; as soon as the producers are changed into proletarians and their means of labor into capital; as soon as, in short, the capitalist regime is firmly established on its own economic founda- tion, then the further socialization of labor as well as the progressive transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited instrumental- ities used in common, in a word, the further elimination of private properties, take on a new form. He who is now to be expropriated is no longer the independent laborer, but the capitalist, the commander of an army or of a squad of laborers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of tjhe laws of capitalist production itself, laws which bring about the concentration of capitals. With the progress of centralization-the expropriation of many capitalists by a few-there are developed, on a constantly increasing scale, the application of scientific technology, the thor- ough and methodical exploitation of the land, the trans- formation of tools into machines that are effective only when used in common and the consequent economy in the use of the means of production, and the economic intercourse of all peoples 'on the world-market which prints upon the capitalist regime its international char- acter. Proportionate to the decrease in the number of cap- italist potentates, who usurp and monopolize all the ad- vantages of this period of social evolution, is the growth of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, and exploita- tion, but also of the resistance of the working-class con- stantly growing, and better and better disciplined, united and organized by the very mechanism of capitalist pro- duction. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production which has grown and flourished with it and thanks to it. The socialization of labor and the centralization of the means of production reach a point when they can no longer be held within their cap- italist envelope. This envelope is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist property is tolled. The expropriators are about to be, in their turn, expropriated. Capitalist appropriation is in harmony with the cap- italist mode of production, but it constitutes the first negation of private property based on the independent and individual labor of the owner. But capitalist pro- duction begets its own negation with the same inevitable- ness that characterizes the operation of the laws of Na- ture. It tends to re-establish not the private property of the laborer, but his proprietorship based on the prog- 286 re s realized by the capitalist period, on co-operation and the possession in common of all the means of production including land. As modern industry develops, the cap- italist bourgeoisie produce, above all else, their own grave diggers. Their elimination and the triumph of the proletariat are alike inevitable. It naturally required more time, effort, and trouble to transform scattered, petty, private property, based on individual labor, into capitalist property, than will be required for the transformation of capitalist property, which, in fact, already rests on a collective mode of pro- duction, into social property. In the former case it was a question of the expropria- tion of the masses by a few usurpers; in the latter case it is a question of the expropriation of a few usurpers by the masses. CHAPTER XXIX. THE MODERN THEORY OF COLONIZATION. The necessity of the conditions that we have recognized as indispensable to capitalist exploitation, clearly appears in the coionies.-Confessions of political economy. The Necessity of the Conditions That We Have Recog- nized as Indispensable to Capitalist Emploitation, Clearly Appears in the Colonies. For bourgeois political economy it is not a question of knowing whether such or such a fact is true, but of whether its acceptance and promulgation as truth will help or hurt capital. It strives, therefore, to keep up a very convenient confusion between two wholly distinct kinds of private property:-private property based on personal labor, and capitalist property based on the labor of others-forgetting, by design, that the latter grows only on the tomb of the former. Among us, in western Europe, primitive accumulation, i. e., the expropriation of the laborers, is, in part, accom- plished. Either the capitalist regime has gained posses- sion of the entire field of national production, or, where economic conditions are less advanced, it at least in- directly affects the social forms which persist beside it, though they are gradually decaying together with the antiquated mode of production to which they belong. Ii 288 the colonies, i. e., in true colonies with a virgin soil colonized by free immigrants, it is altogether different. There, the capitalist mode of production and appro- priation comes in conflict, everywhere, with that form of property which is the fruit of the owner's personal labor, and with the producer who, disposing freely of the means of production, enriches himself instead of enriching the capitalist. The opposition between these two modes of appropriation, which political economy denies among us in Europe, is there verified by the facts, by the struggle waged between them. The economist, when colonial affairs are under discus- sion, enters upon the path of confession, and proves that the development of the collective powers of labor, of co- operation, of the manufacturing division of labor, and the extensive use of machinery, etc., are impossible, un- less some way can be discovered to provide colonial in- dustry with laborers who, having been robbed of the means of labor, will be obliged to sell themselves, and obliged to accept the conditions of sale indispensable to capitalist production,-unless, in a word, some way can be found to manufacture wage-workers. He discovers that capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons, a relation which is established through the medium of things. A negro is a negro; it is only under certain conditions that he becomes a slave. A certain machine, for example, is a machine for spin- ning cotton; it is only under certain defined conditions that it becomes capital. Apart from these conditions it is no more capital than gold per se is money; capital is a social relation of production. 289 The economist discovers also that the possession of money, means of subsistence, machines, and other means of production, does not make a man a capitalist, unless there is forthcoming his complemental correlative, the wage-laborer-another man forced to sell himself "volun- tarily." Means of production and subsistence become capital only when they are used as means of exploiting and dominating labor. The essential characteristic of every free colony is that every colonist can appropriate a portion of the soil to serve him as his individual means of production, without preventing the colonists who arrive later on from doing the same thing. Where all men are free and where every one can obtain at his pleasure a piece of land, laborers are difficult to get, and when gotten, very dear. When the laborer can accumulate for himself, and this he can do as long as he is the owner of his own means of production, capitalist accumulation and appropriation are impossible. Their indispensable pre-requisite--a wage-working-class -is wanting. The supreme beauty of capitalist production consists not only in this-that it constantly reproduces the wage- worker as a wage-worker, but in this-that it creates a class of superfluous wage-workers. In this way it keeps the law of supply and demand of labor in the right rut, the oscillations of the market-price of labor are kept within limits, the most favorable possible to capitalist exploitation, the indispensable subjection of the laborer to the capitalist is guaranteed, and finally this relation of absolute dependence which, in Europe, the lying econ- 9 omist disguises by solemnly adorning it with the euphemistic title of a "free contract" between two equally independent commodity owners-the one parting with the commodity, capital, and the other with the com- modity, labor-is perpetuated. In the atmosphere of the colonies this enticing error of the economists can not live. As the wage-worker of to-day becomes the inde- pendent artisan or farmer of to-morrow, the supply of labor is neither regular nor adequate. This continuous transformation of wage-workers into free producers, working for themselves and not for capital, enriching themselves instead of enriching that superior being, the capitalist has, in practice, a demoralizing (?) and deplor- able (?) effect on the labor-market and, therefore, on the rate of wages. Confessions of Political Economy. Under these circumstances not only does the degree of exploitation remain outrageously low, but the wage- worker also loses, with his actual dependence on the cap- italist, all deferential feelings toward the capitalist. Therefore the economist, Merivale, declares that "in col- onies this dependence must be created by artificial, means." Moreover, M. de Molinari, a fanatical free-trader, writes: "In the colonies where slavery has been abolished and this forced labor has not been replaced by an equiv- alent quantity of free labor, may be found the counter- part of what takes place every day under our eyes. There the common laborers exploit in their turn the employers of 291 labor, by demanding from them wages out of all pro- portion to their legitimate share in the product." Ah! But what becomes of the sacred law of supply and demand? If, in Europe, the employer cuts down the laborer's legitimate share, why should not the laborer, over yonder in the colonies where circumstances happen to be favorable instead of disastrous to him, cut down the share df the employer ? Or is it possible that this poor law of supply and demand, which functions so automatically in Europe, requires a little aid from the police, in the colonies ? The secret discovered in the new world by the political economy of the old world, and naively betrayed in its lugubrations on the colonies, is that the capitalist mode of production and accumulation, and, therefore, capital- ist private property, presuppose the annihilation of pri- vate property based on personal labor; in other words, that its basis is the expropriation of the laborer, since the indispensable, subjugated and disciplined wage-workers are to be had, only when the laborers can no longer work for themselves, only, therefore, when they are no longer in possession of the means of production. THE END. PRESS COMMENTS on The Silver Cross FROM THE FRENCH OF EUGENE SUE. The Silver Cross; or, The Carpenter of Nazareth is the English translation of a novel of the time of Christ, by Eugene Sue. He paints vividly the scenes and incidents in the life of the Savior that are mentioned in the Gospels, artistically filling in the backgrounds and environments, and thus giving to the story a peculiar value, but it was not written primarily for this purpose. It is a part of the great work of the author, "'The Mysteries of the People," which, as the preface of this translation points out, though a work of fiction, "is the best universal history extant; better than any work avowedly on history, it graphically traces the special features of the several systems of class-rule as they have succeeded each other from epoch to epoch, together with the nature of the struggle between the contending classes." The Bookseller, .ewsdealer & Stationer. Whatever may be one's religious (or irreligious) opinions, no candid reader of history can fail to find the life of the man Jesus interesting and admirable. This book is a historical novel founded upon the story of his life, his social teachings, and his persecution by the master class (Jewish and Roman alike) whose interests were threatened by his influence. The story is well told, in a characteristically French style, a stylecharacteristic, too, of Eugene Sue. The Tocsin. The Tocsin, Minneapolis, Minn. By request, the Tocsin again calls attention to the translation of Eugene Sue's book, " The Silver Cross, or the Car- penter of Nazareth. " A comrade writes of the book as follows: To the Editor of the Tocsin: Having read the above named book, I consider it so valuable an adjunct to our propaganda work that I would fain arouse the interest of our comrades every- where to an appreciation of its importance. "The Silver Cross" is one of the gems taken from Eugene Sue's masterpiece "The mysteries of the People" or "History of a Proletarian Family". This monumental work, which is history in the garb of fiction, shows the industrial development through which the race has passed with the accompanying systems of class rule and exploitation with which it was attended. No "inspired" writer ever set forth so graphic a portrayal of the Nazarene as does this "profane" work of the great Frenchman. The book divests Christ of the supernatural and presents him in what the thinking must see is the true light. JERSEY CITY. JOHN HOSSACK. Tike Tocsin. The International Publishing Company has just issued " The Silver Cross, or the Carpenter of Naza- reth, " a translation from the French of Eugene Sue. It is a pathetic page from biblical histo ry that, according to the preface, "holds the mirror up to the capitalist class-its orators, pulpiteers, politicians, lawyers, together with all its other menials of high and low degree-and by the reflection cast enlightens and warns ". The book follows closely the lines appearing in the Bible and varies from it only to find expression as a historical novel. The biblical outlines are filled out and the picture is shaded by the larger detail that is gathered and the local color that is given to it by the charm of Eugene Sue. - There are many who seldom read the Bible now, but reading the " Silver Cross " as we have it in this book from the hand of Eugene Sue it will serve to show any such something of the wide range the Bible has and may perchance reawaken an interest that, for some reason, has, but should not have, waned in our time. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. THE SILVER CROSS. This is a translation from the French and is a work of particular interest in view of present economic conditions and the crisis which we are rapidly approaching. As the title would indicate, the story is of the time of Jesus. The con- dition of the society of that time is clearly and strongly portrayed, the iron rule of the oppressing class, the hypocrisy and corruption of those in positions of trust, the rottenness of the whole social fabric, the resemb- lance between the Roman empire then and the United States today will cause the thoughtful to question gravely as to the future, lThe Coming Jation. This book is a preservation facsimile produced for the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It is made in compliance with copyright law and produced on acid-free archival 60# book weight paper which meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (permanence of paper). Preservation facsimile printing and binding by Northern Micrographics Brookhaven Bindery La Crosse, Wisconsin 2013